The Cruelest Month

‘No thank you, mon beau Gabri. Not just yet.’ Madeleine smiled and the tension was broken. Without further discussion the group got to work. Chairs were brought into the bedroom and placed in a circle.



Jeanne put the bag she’d carried on one of the chairs and started unpacking while Clara and Myrna explored. They looked at the fireplace with its dark mahogany mantel and severe Victorian portrait above. The bookcase was full of leather-bound volumes from a time when people actually read them and didn’t just buy them by the yard from decorators.



‘I wonder where the bird is,’ said Clara, reaching for the items on the dresser.



‘Hiding from us, poor thing. Probably terrified,’ said Myrna, pointing her flashlight into a dark corner. No bird.



‘It’s like a museum.’ Gabri joined them and picked up a silver mirror.



‘It’s like a mausoleum,’ said Hazel. When they turned back to the body of the room they were astonished to see the place lit by candles. There must have been twenty of them scattered around the bedroom. It glowed, but somehow the candlelight, so warm and inviting at Clara and Peter’s, made a mockery of itself in this room. The darkness seemed darker and the flickering flames threw grotesque shadows against the rich wallpaper. Clara felt like dousing each candle, vanquishing the demons their own shadows created. Even her own, so familiar, was distorted and hideous.



Sitting now in the circle, her back to the open door, Clara noticed that four candles remained unlit. After each person had chosen a chair Jeanne reached into a small sack. Then she walked about their circle scattering something.



‘This is now a sacred circle,’ she intoned, her face alternately in shadow and light, her eyes sunken into her head so that they looked to be empty black sockets. ‘This salt will bless the circle and keep all within safe.’



Clara felt Myrna’s hand take hers. The only sound was the soft pelting as Jeanne scattered the salt round their circle. Clara’s head was tingling, alert to any sound. The thought of a bird swooping out of the darkness, talons extended, beak open and shrieking, was freaking her out. The skin on the back of her neck was crawling.



Jeanne struck a match and Clara almost jumped out of her skin.



‘The wisdom of the four corners of the earth is invited into our sacred circle, to protect and guide us and watch over our work tonight as we cleanse this house of the spirits that are strangling it. Of the evil that’s taken hold here. Of all the wickedness, the fear, the terror, the hatred that binds itself to this house. To this very room.’



‘Are we having fun yet?’ Gabri whispered.



Jeanne lit the candles one by one and returned to her seat, composing herself. She was the only one. Clara could feel her heart pounding and her breathing coming in short, jagged gulps. Beside her Myrna was squirming as though ants were crawling over her. All round their circle people were staring and pale. The circle might be sacred, thought Clara, but it’s definitely scared. She looked round and wondered, if this was a movie and she and Peter were watching it curled up on their sofa, which of them would get it first?



Monsieur Béliveau, craven, gaunt, grieving?



Gilles Sandon, massive and strong, more at home in the woods than in a Victorian mansion?



Hazel, so kind and generous. Or was it weak? Or her daughter, insatiable Sophie?



No. Clara’s gaze landed on Odile. She would be the first one lost. Poor, sweet Odile. Already lost, really. The most needy and the least missed. She was genetically designed to be eaten first. Clara felt badly for the brutality of her thoughts. She blamed the house. This house that blocked out the good and rewarded the rest.



‘And now we call the dead,’ said Jeanne, and Clara, who didn’t think she could get more afraid, did.



‘We know you’re here.’ Jeanne’s voice was growing stronger and stranger. ‘They’re coming. Coming from the basement, coming from the attic. They’re all around us now. They’re coming down the hallway.’



And Clara was sure she could hear footsteps. Shuffling, limping footfalls on the carpet outside. She could see the Mummy, arms out, bandages filthy and rotting, shuffling toward them, along the dark and damned corridor. Why had they kept the door open?



‘Be here,’ Jeanne growled. ‘Now!’ She clapped her hands.



A shriek was heard inside the room, inside their sacred circle. Then another.



And a thud.



The dead had arrived.



NINE



Chief Inspector Armand Gamache looked over the top of his newspaper and stole a peek at his infant granddaughter. She was sitting in the mud on the edge of Beaver Lake, sticking her filthy big toe into her mouth. Her face was covered in either mud or chocolate, or something else entirely that didn’t bear thinking of.