Midnight Calling

The manor had a way of pressing silence into its servants. By day, the air hummed with footsteps, clinking cutlery, the barked orders of the lord; by night, it felt hollowed, the silence so complete it seemed alive. The busyness of the day is good for one thing—Distraction. Perhaps it was a setup for the betterment of the story at large, keeping everyone—or maybe just Cecilia—so busy that they did not have time to think too deeply about exploring the intricacies of this world. But by accident or design, as days and days went by without the need for food, drink, or sleep, when the night rolled in, she was left with nothing but time to think.

And there Cecilia was, laid awake in her narrow bed in the servants’ quarters, doing just that. Thinking. Thinking, thinking, pondering, wondering, thinking. Rain scratched against the shutters. Somewhere above, a floorboard creaked, though no one should have been walking at that hour. She told herself to ignore it. She told herself to sleep.

Yet her throat was dry. She swallowed, trying to sate herself with her own spit. The more she thought, thought, thought, though, the antsier she became until she muttered, “Forget it. Let’s have a little treat.” She paused. “Of water.” Another pause, then a slap to her forehead. “I consider that a treat now…”

Nevertheless, she rose and padded to the kitchens for a glass of water. For once, it was an uneventful trip. She retrieved the least fancy glass she could find, hoping it wouldn’t be missed, and poured herself some water.

If she purposely left it warm, perhaps as heated as she could without lighting a fire in the dead of night, she tried not to think about her last hot mug of water. And for that same reason, she may have also stolen a couple of cookies while she was at it.

On her way back through the darkened hall, she stopped short. A figure stood hauntingly at the far end of the hall, half-lit by the flow of a single wall sconce. They were familiar—tall, thin, haloed in a flowing gown and loose curls of hair. Cecilia blinked, squinted through the dark, and whispered loud enough to the other might hear, “Calliope?”

“Good evening!”

Cecilia jumped a foot in the air, glass crashing and splashing to the ground, as a voice spoke from behind her. She spun around, hand clutching her chest, to see Calliope’s bright, eerie smile. She was barefoot, her silken nightdress whispering around her ankles, her hair unpinned and loose as though she had stepped from a painting. “What the—?” She spun again to look down the hall’s end, only to see it empty, the figure now happily next to her. When she head snapped back again, she exclaimed, trying to keep her voice at a civil volume, “How on earth did you do that?!”

Calliope shrugged, carefree. “We are not on earth, so I would not know how to explain it.” Moving right on from that insanely ominous statement, she clasped her hands together as she exclaimed, “But oh, my midnight angel! I did not realize you wandered as well!”

Cecilia, her heart still trying to burst from the confines of her ribcage, wheezed. “I was thirsty, miss.” She looked down to the floor, wincing at the chipped shards of glass and puddle of water across the marble. “Though now I’ll just clean and head back to bed.”

“Thirst.” The heiress tilted her head, her loose hair falling across one shoulder. “We are all thirsty, in our way. For water, for air, for truths withheld.”

Great Odin on a bike, every sentence of hers was a riddle.

Cecilia tried to smile, but unease flickered in her chest. “Yes, well…”

“You should not roam alone, though,” the young lady continued, stepping closer, her bare feet making no sound against the floorboards. “The house remembers old things best in the dark. And sometimes it shows them, if one is willing to look.”

Cecilia’s eyes widened as Calliope walked across the floor. “Miss, watch your feet!”

The heiress’s eyes glimmered in the sconce-light. “Faces. Whispers. Rooms that do not belong. I hear them most at night.” Her smile stayed strong, unaltered even as she stood directly atop the shards of glass, no doubt cutting into her heels and arches. “But when you are willing to face such fearsome things, you will find they do not have as much power over you as either of you assumed.”

Blue eyes held Cecilia’s captive, the contact unrelenting as their faces rested only a breath away from one another. She touched Cecilia’s hand lightly, just the brush of her fingers, too cool against her skin. “You’ve already started your study, Angel Cecilia. You’ll know what to do.” Suddenly, a warmer surface was pressed into her hand, Calliope wrapping her fingers around the object. “Sooner than you think.”

Cecilia’s pulse quickened. She dipped her head in the faintest nod, unsure if it was agreement or mere courtesy.

The heiress smiled, satisfied, as though something unspoken had already been sealed. Then she slipped away down the corridor, nightgown trailing pale as mist until she vanished into the dark.

Cecilia stood alone, staring at the empty hallway for a moment before looking down at her occupied hand. It held a glass of water, and at her feet, there was no longer a puddle nor glass shards.

The echo of her touch stayed cool against her skin.