The Face in the House

45

Souls burn slow.

If death is a dark calm, then life is a burning chaos.

Where life is ruled by extremes -- by the angry forces of nature, by the lustful, the kind, the cruel, the ridiculous -- death is neutral and ruled by none. It is final, unforgiving, and impartial.

At least, that had once been his belief.

As the fire ravaged through Thornewood House, Edward Poole contemplated this. He had had decades to ponder his existence, situated as he was somewhere between the two extremes -- life and death -- but no decade felt quite so long as these moments he spent burning beneath the house.

Souls burn slow.

What did he believe now? What was left to believe in, when he was just moments away from oblivion? In those moments, Poole could only bring himself to believe in pain. He had once thought he had cheated death, but now it seemed that death had simply been letting him win.

Was this its revenge, then, for meddling in spaces he did not belong? For believing he had a right to pull its delicate strings, to weave its webs? For taking lives, for saving them? Which was the greater sin?

The pain intensified, a maddening, white-hot pain. His other senses numbed, as if making room for the large influx of pure, unadulterated suffering. The crackle of the flames simmered, receded to the background. The orange glow dimmed to blackness.

Through the pain, he thought of Rose . . .

He stood at his desk, focusing intently on the steaming beaker before him. He watched the reaction, pleased with the result, and scribbled a note into his journal: PROMISING.

He jumped when he heard footsteps. Though he had lived with her for decades, they had never met. She was a strange woman, liked to be alone, and for that, Poole quite liked her. She only ever ventured into the basement to store odds and ends, he had observed, and that was fine by him. His laboratory was entirely concealed, enclosed and with no doors or windows. He doubted the room was even sketched into the floor plan.

Lately, however, he noticed that the woman's "odds and ends" were overruling the house. The basement was filled with boxes of seemingly worthless junk. Newspapers, books, bundles of mail. Poole noted it absently -- it really was none of his business -- but the woman was most definitely losing her mind.

The noise that followed the footstep came so abruptly he didn't have time to react. The crash shook the room, knocked his beaker off the desk, sending steam and dust flourishing into the air.

The brick wall that separated the laboratory from the rest of the cellar had crumbled, likely from the weight of the boxes the woman had stacked up against it.

And there she was -- Rose White -- a small, elderly woman standing in the rubble, eyes bright with surprise. Her face was lined finely with age, but she glowed with energy and held herself upright with impressive strength. The shock of it might've had anyone else her age clutching their chest, but Rose just stood, observing. Even when her eyes found him in the candlelight, she did not flinch.

He did. He was so surprised to have been found out that he instantly recoiled, and made some foolish attempt to hide. It wasn't just that he had been caught by surprise, and he wasn't simply afraid of being discovered. It was that the woman before him looked acutely familiar.

It was a strange thought for someone in his position, but he couldn't help but think it was like seeing a ghost. Despite her age, the woman's face was so uncannily similar to Arabella's that he had no doubt he was looking at a direct descendant. His heart twisted in his chest -- this was how she would have looked, if she had had the chance to grow old . . .

The woman stood, staring. By the look on her face, the clarity in her eyes, he knew it was no use to hide. He stood upright.

"Hello," he said.

"Hello," Rose answered.

From that moment, it was decided. He would look after her. He would be there for as long as she would have him.