The Face in the House

40

Dear Diary,

Thornewood has taught me many lessons, but this is one lesson I will not soon forget: Don't go looking for bodies unless you want to find a body. Or maybe it's: If you go looking for a body, you will find one.

I'm still working out the proper phrasing.

What disease of the mind must I have, that I find myself laughing at such ideas? And they are not merely ideas at all. Not anymore.

Maybe my sleuthing began as a bit of fun. Some adventure to pass the time in this old country house.

I cannot bring myself to say the words aloud. I fear it will bring this dreadful nightmare into a cold, horrible reality. Still, the words are festering in my mind, burning into my very soul . . .

Arabella White is dead.

I write and already I wish to scratch it off the page, as if erasing it would also erase the truth of the statement.

Arabella White is dead.

I write the words again, in hopes that they may become mere words once again. Writing these words . . . it is as if I am killing her myself.

(How can one go from laughing to crying and back again in a single moment?)

Arabella White is dead. I write it a third time in hopes it will make the screaming stop -- but to no effect. Though I know she no longer rests in her chamber downstairs, that she has no air in her lungs with which to scream, I can still hear her. I can hear her right now, screaming and wailing like an animal caught in a trap.

This is my punishment.

I looked for a mystery and I found one. I looked for trouble and I found it.

I looked for a body. And there it was.

***

Dear Diary,

I am deeply aware of how my prior entry may portray my state of mind. I wish with all I have that it was merely insanity on my part, that some illness of the mind had taken me, that I had succumbed to delusion. I long for insanity and regret my senses, for this affair is not a delusion. I continue to witness this terrifying reality with a mind capable of processing it. It is worse, I think, than losing myself altogether.

The proof of my sanity lies in my current endeavor, which is to document what I have discovered. I hope that one day, when I am released from this terrible force that holds me in this house (in this world!) that someone should find this diary, and read this account, and know what has happened here.

Night after night, I awoke to screams. In the beginning, it frightened me. I would jolt awake, startled from my slumber, to the sound of the mistress's shrieks downstairs. Soon, however, it became routine, a nightly duty like any other at Thornewood House.

So when I awoke that morning, unusually rested and confused by the sunlight, I knew something was very, very wrong. I had slept through the night with no interruption.

I already knew in my heart that she was dead.

It was early, and the house was quiet. I peeked into Arabella's room and found it empty. I saw the glow of light beneath the office door and knew Mr. Poole was working on the books. I let my feet guide me through the kitchen to the cellar door and down the dark staircase.

I smelled it before I saw it, and when I did I became violently sick, vomited until there was nothing but bile to expel. The air in the cellar was thick and hazy, and smelled sickeningly sweet, like burnt sugar and rot. And there on the work table was the body, recognizable only by the sick feeling in my gut. Her skin was black and scorched, burned to a crisp, shriveled like a raisin.