In the Shadow of Spindrift House by Mira Grant

Author:Mira Grant [Grant, Mira]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Published: 2019-06-30T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5:

Leaking

1.

Her name was Violet Upton, and she was the daughter of one of the richest fishermen in Port Mercy. The man she had married was Lyall Upton, her third cousin, and if there had been some whispers in the town about how her last name hadn’t changed when her belly started to swell, she could ignore them. She had the finest house, the finest husband, and would soon have the finest child in all of New England. At night, she slept with her window open, listening to the sweet, distant singing of the sea.

It had been calling her home since she was only a child, but now, for a time, it had changed the whisper of its words, urging her to stay on the land a little longer, to stay dry, to step away from the tangle of the tide. There was an ocean in her belly, one with its own strange customs and shadowy depths, and the two waters were never intended to meet. She would bear this child on the land, and any other children who came after it, until her childbearing days were done, either out of age or illness. She knew that, as surely as she knew the tempo of the tides that surged within her, the beating of the second heart that slowly strengthened beneath her own.

The ocean was older than she was, older than her husband, older even than the delightful playground of Spindrift House, where every room was another sweet surprise. The ocean would wait. For now, she would be the captain of the ship that was her body, and she would see her single passenger safely to the shallow waters where life could thrive.

Violet walked the halls of Spindrift House, and she was not afraid, not even when she felt the windows watching her, not even when the wallpaper changed. She was a small predator in the protection of a larger one, and she was beloved, not only here, but fathoms below, in the dark and dreadful depths where she would one day be made glorious, where she would one day be made free.

This was a special day. Her man had brought her papers, bills of sale and ledgers proving that their family wealth was growing, and it was on her shoulders to keep them safe from those greedy hands that would snatch them away, leave the Uptons without their fair share of the ocean’s bounty. She carried her precious burden through the house to the pantry door, and then, stepping through, pushed a certain shelf that caused the entire wall to swing inward, revealing the steps down to the basement. It smelled, deliciously, of decay.

She took the first step down—

“Harlowe! Snap out of it!”

Hands grabbed my shoulders, shocking me out of my fugue. For a heart-stopping moment, it felt like I was hanging suspended in darkness, looking down a terrible tunnel from which not even air could escape. I gasped, and the tunnel became a doorway, and the darkness became the ordinary shadows of an unlit hall.

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