Previously: At last we arrived at another long, long passage. From the walls a few orange lamps hung, which grew sparser, and caused the hall to grow dimmer, with each step. Holden muttered angrily as he fumbled about. Finally, he seemed to have found a switch, and with a click, another lamp flared to life. And there, someone else was waiting to greet us — one tall, slim figure draped in a dark veil, its pale, bony fingers reaching out into the lamplight.

 

I cried out and stumbled backward.

 

“Sophie, my dear!” Holden cried. “Whatever is the matter!”

 

I looked down. My hands were clenched tightly around Holden’s elbow, creasing his brown suit. Holden had turned to catch me with his other arm, and he gazed down at me with concern.

 

“What is that!” I gasped.

 

Holden reached over and threw the black veil off. Its shadow quickly retreated, revealing a marble sculpture of a gorgeous young woman, whose slender hands gestured towards us. Her eyes were innocent, and she smiled sweetly at something in the distance. Looking at her now, I couldn’t explain the fear that had overcome me. I could’ve sworn that this was the figure that had chased me across the plain — but this seemed irrational when I saw that, more than she was angelic, she was lifeless.

 

“This is another of my collections.” Holden tried to explain with an even voice, but I could tell that he was confused by my overreaction. “I do love collecting beautiful things. Her name is Angelina; she was sculpted in the likeness of the classical greats.” 

 

“Oh,” I blushed, stepping away from Holden. “Sorry.” I felt silly and melodramatic, but he laughed good naturedly and offered me his elbow. Gratefully, I slipped my arm through it, and we continued on our way.

​

At last, we came to a stop at my bedroom door, and after I had thanked Holden for the house tour, he left me to my own devices.

​

It wasn't long before I decided to venture out into the hall again. With a book in hand, I skipped down the stairs, searching for the best place to meet Sydney Carton. 

 

I stepped into the dining room where we had eaten breakfast earlier. The food was still there, looking as pristine as it did before. But I decided that I didn’t want the smell of sausages on my book, and made for a small side door at the opposite end of the room. I realised that it hadn’t been a part of the house tour, and I wondered how many more rooms there must be in the house, hidden from me and nestled in the most unlikely crooks and crannies of its countless twisting halls.

 

I pushed the door open. It was a kitchen, and was fairly small and cramped. Two dry sinks stood adjacent to the gas stove and the countertop. I couldn’t help but notice that the stove was covered in silvery spider silk. And when I turned on the tap, a stream of brown water gurgled out unsteadily, as if it hadn’t been used in a while. 

 

I was about to turn and go when something on the counter caught my attention. There, behind the cereal boxes and the cookie jars, a single bottle of red wine gleamed, stoic and unassuming. I wondered if it was meant for guests. How romantic it must be, I thought, to read an old book in an old house with a glass of wine in my hand. Excited, I leaned forward to take a closer look.

 

Next to the wine bottle was a small wooden chalice, and lying next to the chalice was a large bag of white, circular wafers, each with a cross marked on it — communion biscuits. My eyebrows leapt up. So that's what the red wine was for. But how on earth did Holden get a hold of these? Was there a factory that did wholesales of holy bread? Did he frequent a warehouse that bartered pieces of Christ’s body by the gram? Curious, I set my novel down on the counter and reached for the communion biscuits.

 

All of a sudden, I felt a cold chill, as if I was being watched. I quickly let go of the biscuits, and as I looked around to make sure I was alone, my eyes fell upon a twentieth-century refrigerator in the corner of the room. After a moment of indecision, I approached it and opened it.

​

Except for a little black rectangle placed at the center of the top compartment, the fridge was empty. With a gnawing sense of apprehension, I drew the rectangle out, and came face to face for a third time with the glaring letters of the New Testament. 

 

The pages were delicate, and their golden edges cleaved to each other briefly as I parted them with trembling fingers. Like the other two copies, it looked new. Untouched, yet placed strategically about the house, it was as if it wasn’t kept to be read... but to ward something off.

 

What could it be? I wondered. A thousand pins rolled under my skin. A dark cloud closed over my vision. The same creeping sensation I felt the night before began to eat at me. What could it be? A cold breath blew on my neck. A primeval wail hummed in my ears, a wail that felt old, older than the very walls of the house. The temperature of the Bible began to drop rapidly, and I dropped the book onto the counter.

 

“My dear Sophie!”

 

I jumped. Color flooded back into my field of vision. My tongue had gone dry. My heart pounded in my ears.

 

“I see you’ve found the kitchen,” Holden chuckled. He leaned against the doorframe with ease, completely oblivious to my distress. “Apologies for its current condition — it hasn’t been expecting any guests. Are you hungry, perhaps?”

 

“Just walking around,” I managed.

 

“I’m so pleased that you’ve taken a liking to the house,” he said. He took me by the shoulders and gently steered me out of the room. As he did, he smiled down at me, flashing again those two rows of white, white teeth.

 

Immediately, I forgot my anxiety. My unspeakable fear — of something supernatural, perhaps — was illuminated by his presence into a farce.

 

I spent the rest of the day holed up in my room, watching the rain fall relentlessly below. There was a small garden right under my window, which was filled with tulips, roses, and baby’s breath, and was evidently cultivated with much love and effort. Those flowers were so small, and so battered by the rain, yet so resiliently beautiful, just like Holden’s way of life — pure, stubborn, simple.

 

The rain was still going on by the time the sun touched the horizon. With the sky beginning to darken, I got up from the window ledge and re-emerged into the hallway, wondering what we were going to have for dinner.

 

The stuffed crow stared right at me as I entered the dining room. As I forced myself to look away, my heart sank. Besides the breakfast spread from the morning, which remained untouched, there was nothing else to eat. I gulped and left, making my way deeper into the house instead.

 

Eventually, after many wrong turns and dead ends, I found my way back to Holden’s little astronomy room. Following his example, I made for the drapes at the other end and pulled, revealing the deep blue of an onsetting dusk. I stood there for a long time, watching the landscape, when the door behind me creaked open.

 

It was Holden again. He held up a book in his hand, almost apologetically.

 

“I believe this is yours,” he said, and came forward. It was my copy of A Tale of Two Cities, the very one I had left in the kitchen this morning when I had discovered the communion biscuits.

 

“I must have left it this morning when I…” I paused. Somehow I felt that I had trespassed on some secret room, and that he did not want to be reminded of it. “Thank you, Holden.”

 

“I found it hours ago,” he said sheepishly. “I meant to bring it to you then, but I must confess that my curiosity got the better of me. I was curious… curious just what sort of person you were… and so I read it.” He offered the book out to me, and I took it with both hands. “I must say, I like your taste in books.”

 

“It has definitely been widely analysed for its political commentary. But I think… I like it best for its romance.”

 

Holden was quiet, listening to me intently.

 

“Not just that between Lucy and Darnay,” I mused. “I think Lucy is too much of a Victorian feminine ideal to be a relatable heroine. I’m thinking of Sydney Carton. How he only exists for one purpose in the narrative — to be sacrificed for love.”

​

“It is fascinating,” Holden agreed. “And beautiful.”

 

“Yeah. To exist only for the one purpose of romance,” I nodded my head. “Of course, I think it’s too simplistic, too reductionist to believe that the only love that is true is the kind that supplants the need for everything else. But sometimes I feel like it would be nice if we worshiped love in real life as much as we did in our books.”

 

“Why do you say that?” Holden asked.

 

“A bad experience,” I said vaguely. “A man I knew… and all the men I’ve ever known, really. There are just so many distractions in the city. Careers, entertainments, nightlife. Hard to come by a man that would die for his love of you, these days.”

 

The hole in the cityscape as I remembered it was rapidly filled in with the pieces of a past romance. A handsome man began to take form, but his dashing looks had been bought; lip fillers, cheek implants, braces, eyelash extensions. The memories that had been too painful to unearth flushed into my mind, like a flood that had been bubbling up behind a broken dam. Then clear as day, I could see the winning smile he offered to me, even as his eyes wandered somewhere else. They darted around, drinking in the city; and I could feel the thrumming intensity with which the more he had, the more he wanted. “How can you hold the attention of someone like that?” I mused. “How can you even consider building a life with him, when he felt like he had the whole world in his hands, to gorge upon and to discard with the snap of his fingers?”

 

“I have never agreed more.” Holden said emphatically. “Urban distractions are poisonous for love.” 

 

“Do you speak from experience, Holden?”

 

Holden looked away. His glassy eyes were open, but he didn’t seem to see out of them. As he swallowed, I saw the bump in his throat hitch up and drop back down. 

 

“Yes,” he barely whispered. “A dear friend of mine.”

 

I waited for him to offer more information, and when he didn’t, I didn’t press. Then he surprised me by going on.

 

“Since I came into this property,” Holden said. “I have never looked back, never went to the city. It is just so full of– of things– things that could lead you astray. Things that are simply unnatural— to crawl out of one’s home in the dead of night, for instance, to mesh and crash your bodies in an orgy of violent dance. Such things as I have never heard, since the days when it was said that the vampires cajoled the dead to come from their graves and join them in a deathly waltz.”

 

I considered this. Having grown up in the city, the bustling nightlife had never occurred to me as something unnatural. But wasn’t Holden right, to some extent, that those sorts of things had led us astray? Distracted us from what was real and true? Replaced the subtle joys of well-crafted romances with the cheap, sensory pleasures of loud drums and flashing lights? 

 

Holden took my hand. I looked up into his eyes, surprised. His expression was warm. “It may have been wrong of me. But I do not regret taking your book after all. I feel as though I have come to understand you that much more,” he said earnestly.

 

I smiled at him. He flashed a white, toothy grin in return.

 

Just then, a wintry wind rustled through the house, making me shiver involuntarily. With a chill, I remembered what I had seen earlier.

 

“Holden?” I said. He raised his eyebrows expectantly, bidding me to ask.

 

“What’s the matter with all these copies of the New Testament? Why do you have so many in the house?”

 

Holden looked out the window, which was pitch black by now. To reply, he merely said: “It is better to be in the company of the Lord than in the company of none.”

 

“You’re alone?” I asked.

 

“Yes, alone; you face the problem of a bustling, overwhelming city, but I wager I am haunted by another. I am all alone out on this property.”

 

I wondered that he had no servants after all. It meant that all the cleaning, the cooking, and the maintenance of the house had fallen to Holden. I turned to him and watched him tug at the collar of his crumpled suit, then followed his gaze out the window. In each ensuing second of silence I imagined that a veiled figure threw itself onto the glass to get to us. With a shudder, I looked away.

 

At that moment, Holden cried out in dismay. I spun and looked again, suffocated by dread. But there was no one there. I could see nothing in the dark, dark night. I might as well have been looking at a canvas doused in black paint.

 

Then a lightning bolt lashed the sky like a whip. The trees and shrubs shook violently, teetering towards the ground. The grass was whipped up into a frenzy, bending every which way. And over it all, torrents of rain collapsed in droves, piercing the earth like so many crystal needles, then dissolving into swirling eddies in the overflown yard. Lightning flashed a second time, illuminating the front of the house for a split-second. In that moment, with an awful crack and a crash, the front porch split off from the house and slid down the hill, crumbling as it went.

 

“My flower garden will be washed away,” Holden moaned. 

 

I hurried to Holden’s side and held his arm in solidarity. I felt sorry for him, as we watched the fruits of his hard labor become destroyed in one fell swoop. Dimly, I felt afraid for myself, though I couldn’t quite explain why. It was a claustrophobic kind of dread that stirred in me, because even then, I knew that leaving the house was no longer an option. But I stayed silent, feeling that it was insensitive to broach such a subject while Holden mourned his flowers. Together, we watched the black sky, getting glimpses of the growing flood when it would chance that lightning struck. 

 

Finally, Holden turned to me, and took my hand gently from his arm. “It is late. We should get some rest.”

 

We walked out of the room and retraced our steps through the twisting halls. Every so often, thunder would shake the house, and the lamps on the wall would flicker out. I shivered and stuck closer to Holden. He accompanied me up the stairs and stopped just outside of my bedroom.

 

“There you are,” he said. “Go to sleep, dear Sophie.”

 

The thunder rumbled again, causing the lights to go out for a fraction of a second. When they came back on, Holden was still there, smiling in a tired way.

 

“Holden,” my voice caught in my throat. He glanced at me not unkindly, but also a bit absentmindedly. “I’m scared to be alone.”

 

He gave me a distracted laugh and my shoulder a light pat. His hand lingered, and his mouth moved, as if he was deciding what to say. I waited tenderly for him to say anything, to comfort me, perhaps, or even to offer to sleep in the next room over.

 

Finally, he spoke: “Remember the house rule. Don’t make any noise.”

 

Then he closed the door and left. I stood there for a moment, cold and alone. Then I turned to slip into bed, but not before I heard a click behind me.

 

Holden had locked the door on my behalf.