BEATRICE: November 11, 1978

A note from Beatrice: It is a few days past since the events I will describe below occurred. For the sake of accuracy, I will do my best to remember the details as I perceived them in the moment, and not in retrospect.

When I woke, it took me a moment to differentiate the pounding in my head from the pounding at the door. I stumbled from my makeshift bed on the couch, my sleeping bag wrapping itself around my ankles.

The knocking continued, echoing throughout the foyer and, tired as I was, I made a low, aggravated sound as I threw open the door. A sharp burst of cold air hit me in the face, assisting my wake-up call, and I blinked blearily at the sight of Helena Keats standing on the sinking porch of Knockbury Manor, her tan trench coat wrapped tightly around her waist, a wet umbrella closed at her side.

She raised an eyebrow at me and said, “You look horrible.”

I stared dumbly at her until my brain caught up with the situation, “What are you doing here?”

She raised her thin wrist and primly looked at her watch, “It’s just past two in the afternoon, and you’re only getting up now?”

I rubbed at my face, the last vestiges of sleep still encasing my eyelids, “I don’t think I slept very well.”

Helena was silent, still observing me. Then – “It’s been two days since I saw you last.”

I blinked dumbly at her as those words settled in. Deflated, I leaned against the doorway in a slump, “Did I miss anything good?”

Helena shrugged, “Only Friday.”

She cocked her head slightly, continuing to look at me, “Are you going to let me in?”

I let her in.

When I returned to the parlor room with the intention of changing out of my sleep clothes, only slightly embarrassed that the elegant Helena Keats had seen me in my school-issued white nightie, I discovered that my bag was missing, and with it, my journal and the bundle of letters I had found the day before. To my immense relief, the few books I had borrowed from the Society library remained. I would not be murdered by Sheila O’Shaunnasy, yet.

If I’d been more appropriately awake perhaps I would have been more troubled by my missing things. But I was exhausted and could only summon up a semblance of annoyance. I raised my eyes to the ceiling and muttered an series of curses that, upon hearing it, Sister Nursia would give me a week’s worth of detention.

“Everything alright?” Helena asked, stepping into the room behind me.

She was observing my makeshift bed with a slight frown on her face, “The house seems to have misplaced my bag,” I told her, “And all my clothes.”

Helena took that statement with her typical amount of nonchalant grace, “How terribly rude of it.”

I rubbed my forehead and shepherded her out of the room, “I supposed I’ll have to scrounge up something,” I muttered to myself.

With great reluctance on Helena’s part, even despite my reassurances, I led her upstairs. Her discomfort was palpable but lasted only until we made it to the first landing where she paused to study the stained-glass window.

“A peculiar image to choose,” she remarked.

I smirked, thinking Helena was just the type of person to use the word ‘peculiar’ instead of ‘odd’ or perhaps, even, ‘completely bizarre’.

“I think the Knocks were rather good at being peculiar.”

Helena hummed in agreement, “Bellamy was known to be rather strange, but it was Bellona that people were most fascinated by.’‘ We began to climb again, and Helena warmed to the subject, all fear of falling through the ancient staircase gone, “She never married. The Knocks quickly became too rich for it to matter that much, but it still caused rumors.”

I resisted rolling my eyes. Rumors again.

“Such as?”

“That perhaps she’d had a lover during the war who died,” Helena said, following behind me, “Or that Bellemy wasn’t actually her brother. All nonsense, really, when an easier explanation was that she simply wasn’t interested.”

“In marriage?”

“In men.”

I nearly stumbled up the next step, my face warming slightly, “Ah.”

Helena raised an eyebrow at me, something I am learning she does when she finds me particularly amusing. Or naive.

“She was a young, reportedly beautiful, and most importantly, a very rich woman. But she never displayed any interest in a single marriage prospect made to her. And her brother didn’t force her to.”

“That’s…odd for that time period, I assume?”

Helena hummed, “Not unheard of, no. But strange, perhaps, when you think of how business savvy they both were, how conscious Bellemy was, anyway, of their family’s reputation.”

I looked back to the stained glass window, “You insinuated that the twins had something to do with the death of the young woman in the cottage.”

“That is the local suspicion, yes.”

“And what do you suspect?”

Helena considered the question seriously, “I don’t know. There is a pattern to the deaths associated with the Knock family. I’ve always thought patterns mean something.”

I agree, yet I did not say so. It came to me then that I was standing at the top of the stairs in only my nightie. I shook off the hundred year-old rumor that hung around us, as well as my growing embarrassment at my attire, and led Helena to Delphina’s room and study.

Inside, Helena’s face took on an expression I had not yet encountered with her – glee. As I sorted through the remains of Delphina’s wardrobe, Helena examined the bookshelves with unabashed fascination. To keep her occupied while I changed behind the privacy screen, I encouraged her to explore the documents and tools left on the desk from my earlier exploration.

When I emerged dressed in dark gray trousers and, what I assumed to be a men’s white shirt, pulling the attached suspenders over my shoulders, Helena blinked at me a few times before pointing at the photograph on the desk, “Who is Marguerite?”

“I don’t know,” I told her honestly. I’d forgotten about the photo.

Helena looked back at the picture, “Delphina Knock was chummy with the press, but she was notoriously private. She gave a lot of interviews, so we actually know quite a lot about her expeditions, given that she funded them herself.”

“She seemed rather eccentric.” I said, watching her not watch me.

“Yes, I’ve always thought so. That’s a lock-picking set.”

She was pointing at the strange set of tools on the desk, and I exclaimed, “That’s what that is?”

Helena hummed and picked up the tools, inspecting them.

I sighed in disappointment, “I supposed she was a thief, then.”

“Thief?”

I nodded and reached over to grab one of the letters from Avery Cauville, “This man accuses her of it a few times.”

Helena took the letter from me, muttering under her breath about the assumptions made by men about successful women. She read while I buttoned up the rest of my borrowed shirt.

“Interesting,” she said, handing it back to me, “I know that the archive on the mainland has some of Cauville’s journals and letters. He did something with stocks, I think? Whatever that means. I didn’t know they corresponded, but I suppose it makes sense, given the circles Delphina traveled in.”

I debated whether or not to show her the other two rooms, but in the end, my need for collaboration ran out. I am unused to being on assignment alone, and belatedly realized I missed having someone to hash out ideas with. I put on a brave face while opening the door to Celeste’s room but did not follow Helena as she walked inside. The room stayed quiet as she peered in.

“It’s empty,” she said, sounding surprised.

I nodded, “This was Celeste’s room. I suppose they cleared it out after she died.”

We moved to the second room, and here I paused.

“You mentioned the doctor, Sonia Gray, came to the island to treat Hester?”

“Yes. Sonia had spent summers here as a child, which is how she met my mother. She understood the people here, and the need for a doctor.”

“Do you know what she was treating Hester for?”

Helena crossed her arms, her brow furrowing, “Mother said she had episodes. She struggled mentally, yes, but that there was a physical ailment as well. Sonia tried to treat her for both.”

I nodded, a suspicion growing in my mind. Helena’s eyes met mine, “Why do you ask?”

I opened the door, and this time I stepped through first. I wanted her to see the writings on the walls, wondering if she would reach the same conclusion as I.

“Oh.” Helena said, turning in a circle, gaze raking over the walls, the boxes stowed haphazardly within the middle of the room.

“That’s a line from Sylvia Plath,” she said, pointing to the short verse on the wall, “Mad Girl’s Love Song.”

“Do you recognize anything else?”

She paused at the lifelike painting of Hester by the door, the bloody eyes held in a delicate white hand, “I don’t. But that verse reads oddly biblical.”

“I thought the same,” I said, coming to stand next to her, shoulder to shoulder. We both faced the painted Hester, “She was mad.”

“I’m sure there is a more medically appropriate term for it, but,” Helena sighed, “yes, she was.”

A low scratching sound began behind us, and my heart leapt in my chest. A sudden burst of protectiveness rose within me. I did not want to subject Helena Keats, unflappable as she seemed, to the hauntings of this room. If it had frightened me, a seasoned professional, then I did not wish to subject that to someone unprepared.

I ushered her quickly from the room. Helena’s eyebrows raised in surprise at my hurry, but she said nothing.

“Do you know anything about the sisters before they came to Knockbury?” I asked, leading her back towards the stairs, “You said they didn’t grow up here.”

“They were born in Chicago,” Helena said, “They were older when they came to stay on the island, maybe twenty-five. Have you not explored the other rooms yet?”

We’d paused again on the landing, thankfully this time I was dressed more appropriately.

“Not yet,” I told her, with some reluctance

She studied me for a moment, before nodding, “Have you eaten anything today?”

In the kitchen I discovered that the chairs were also mysteriously missing, so we were left to take a late lunch and our coffees standing at the counter.

I took a sip and the coffee burned my tongue satisfactorily. I had gone two days without it. It’s amazing I was upright at all.

“So,” Helena said, leveling a look at me. It was more of a statement than a precursor to more, so I waited before repeating, “So?”

“You lost time again.”

“I did.”

She waited to see if I’d say more, or perhaps freak out and faint into my coffee. When I did not spontaneously burst into tears, she put down her cup with some finality and said, “Look, I think you should leave this house. Stay with me for a few days, get your head back on straight, and then return and continue whatever it is you are set on doing here,” she paused, “Or, alternatively, burn it to the ground and collect the insurance money.”

I laughed, despite the tinge of panic I had at the thought of the house being destroyed, “I can’t leave yet.”

Helena leveled me with a clinical stare, “Why not?”

“Because it’s trying to tell me something,” I took another sip, then clarified, “The house is.”

“The house,” she said back to me slowly, “Is trying to tell you something?”

I nodded. Helena tapped the counter with a neat, manicured nail, “You’re a strange woman, Beatrice. What do you mean the house is trying to tell you something?”

Quite foolishly, I realized that Helena didn’t know who I was. She had no idea that my chosen profession is to expel ghosts from places and homes such as Knockbury. That I had come to Knockbury because of the convenient and surprising inheritance, yes, but also to research, to strengthen my skills as a Society woman.

Perhaps it was due to my disjointed sleep schedule, but consciously or not, I had already decided to take Helena into my confidence when she appeared at the door this morning. It is not against protocol per se, to reveal the existence of the Sybil Society to non-members but it isn’t exactly encouraged. At some point, I will have to speak to Sister Nursia regarding Helena. That, however, I can worry about later.

Helena was quiet throughout my explanation, listening intently, and asked only a few clarifying questions before nodding to herself

“So your Society’s protocol is to investigate, counsel, and then finally eliminate the spirits?”

I nodded into my coffee.

“Do ghosts not ever leave willingly?”

“Some.” I acquiesced, “Though most of the time that is not the case. A spirit remains because some part of it is still attached to this plane of existence, whether it be, if you’ll pardon the phrasing, ‘unfinished business’ or something else entirely.”

“And what sort of spirits have you been encountering here?”

I told her about Ruthie Daniels, Annie Haskins, the woman in the window, the image of a body hung in the foyer. I realized too late that she’d probably been curious if her mother was haunting Knockbury Manor, whether Alodia Keats was stuck here like so many others.

I didn’t know how to reassure her, since I wasn’t entirely certain that she wasn’t.

“None of the spirits so far are remotely close to what I’ve experienced before,” I told her excitedly, “My peers would be ecstatic to have a chance at the hauntings here.”

“Is that why you haven’t asked anyone for help?” Helena asked bluntly.

“Yes,” I told her honestly, “But, if I am related to the Knocks, if one of the twins did have a baby. If that baby is me, involving anyone else seemed,” I paused, “wrong. To me.”

Helena observed me for a long time, her gaze calculating. “Will you let me help you?”

The expression on my face must have given away my surprise, because she quickly explained: “The Knock family’s history is tied up in my own, whether I like it or not. Plus, you’ll need resources, which my library has. Besides all that, you’re interesting.” She took a sip of her coffee, “Do you know how frightfully boring it is to be a highly educated woman in a town this size?”

I smiled at her, charmed. In the spirit of sharing knowledge, and feeling revived after two cups of coffee, I retrieved a few of the texts Sheila had allowed me to take with me from the Society library.

“Appearances of the ghosts, or lack thereof, aside, the scale of the hauntings in this house are rare,” I explained to Helena opening The Classification of Place-Bound Spirits, Fifth Edition, “Full bodied manifestation, corporeal forms, even some poltergeist activity,” I began flipping to various pages I had bookmarked and laying out my notes in front of me, “Not to mention plane shifts - you’ve noticed my lack of kitchen furniture? - and a tree is missing from the conservatory-”

Helena held up a hand, forcing me to pause, “I have no context for what you are talking about,” she looked down at the text in front of her, “A full bodied manifestation? How is that different from a ghost?”

“It is a manifestation of a feeling, or leftover energy,” I pulled out Florin Ionescu’s Enchiridion of Manifestations and Apparitions and read, “‘A powerful manifestation takes on a physicality that can represent a traumatic event, or in very rare cases, a powerful thought.’” Helena took the book and I watched as her eyes scanned the page, almost greedily.

“There is a whole world I didn’t know about,” she murmured. She looked up at me and smiled, “Thank you for sharing it with me, Beatrice.”

I felt my face warm at the onslaught of her sudden smile. To stop myself from saying something silly, I began to tell her what I had experienced in both Hester and Celeste’s bedrooms.

“Given how Celeste died, I suppose a haunting to that degree is warranted?” Helena asked afterwards, tapping the book between us in thought.

“But not Hester’s. There’s not even evidence that she’s died, correct? Hester could still be alive, for all we know.”

Helena hummed, “She was reported missing some time after Celeste’s death. That’s the extent of what is known here on the island.”

I sighed. “Well, my focus for now should be on the spirits in the house,” I said, only slightly exasperated at the thought of how little I have accomplished so far at Knockbury, “My past attempts have been unsuccessful. Only Ruthie Daniels responds.”

Helena hummed, “Given who she was in life, that makes sense.” When I gave her a questioning look, she waved me off, “Nevermind. You said that a ghost’s power comes from their strongest feelings?”

At my nod she continued,“We know Hester wasn’t healthy. Even if she didn’t die in the house, even if she is still alive, couldn’t, hypothetically, those feelings still be trapped in that room?” She tapped the book, as if referencing it, “Like residual energy?”

A curious, and fascinating thought, one I made note of to bring up when I next sent correspondence back to the Society. It was of course possible, though Hester must have been a person of extraordinary nature in life to have manifested that type of energy.

Over another cup of coffee, I took Helena through my notes and all the documents I have collected so far. When I showed her the deed to Knockbury Manor given to me by Mr. Fowl, she paused and pointed to the signature that was written at the bottom, “That’s not Alater Knock’s handwriting.”

I blinked quickly at her, struck dumb, “What?”

“No, I’m fairly certain,” she murmured, “We have a few things at the library we could compare it to - petitions he signed, donations made, things like that.”

Too many questions suddenly filled my head, “Whose handwriting could it be?”

Helena shrugged, “I can’t say. I don’t recognize it, but I never saw any other correspondence from a Knock family member to compare it to.”

I felt a form of dread begin to take root in my chest. A vision filled my mind, one of some other orphan girl who was going to show up with the real deed to Knockbury Manor and chase me out of my haunted house.

Helena broke through my haze of panic, “It begs the question of why you, and who wanted you here bad enough to forge Alater’s signature. Or,” she tilted her head slightly, “who knew about you.”

I rubbed my eyes, “We could ask.”

“Ask?” Helena repeated, “Ask a ghost?”

“Well, I suppose I was thinking of the lawyer,” then, picturing Mr. Fowl, “Frankly I’d prefer a ghost.”

Her eyes widened, “Truly? You’d show me how you do it?”

I shrugged, “I don’t know how successful it would be.”

“We should try anyway,” Helena said, fidgeting slightly, she cleared her throat, “You never know.”

Her obvious excitement had me smiling. But the day had grown darker during our conversation, and I didn’t feel that I was in the best state of mind to attempt a summoning, tired as I was. We agreed that Helena would return the following morning and we would try then. Walking her to the door, I couldn’t help but notice how much lighter I felt, how excited I was about her return to assist me in investigating.

“Thank you,” she said suddenly, turning to me, “For including me in this.”

I snorted, “As the unofficial Knock family historian, I think you are almost entitled to be included.”

Helena seemed pleased at that. She tucked the collar of her trench coat tighter around her neck. I watched her until she disappeared from sight down the lane that led away from Knockbury Manor, the sun setting with her.