The Dark Between by Sonia Gensler Page B

before the mirror. The prior evening she’d taken only a small sip before falling into bed. Her stomach knotted at the thought of sinking back into that dull drowsiness. What harm would come if today she skipped her dose entirely?
    A vision of the ghastly woman flashed in her mind, prompting her to reach for the bottle. The feel of the cool glassreassured her. She ran her thumb along the edge of the stopper as she studied the label.
    It had been a long time since a seizure had run its course. Nearly five years, in fact. She hadn’t dwelled on those episodes in ages—the drug had dulled her memory—but now they came to mind in vivid detail.
    On the first afternoon she’d been allowed outdoors following the accident, Elsie had celebrated her new freedom by sitting in the sun, weaving flowers into a wreath near the old well. Upon completing the dainty circlet, she’d placed it on her head and wandered closer to the well to admire the lichen that crept along its stone.
    Suddenly the air had writhed and shimmered before her eyes. That first time had felt like falling into a hole or a dark dream. When she opened her eyes again all had vanished—the meadow, the well, and the trees. Elsie shivered in the darkness. A small figure emerged from the gloom, a girl whose long curls fanned away from her pale face. The skirt of her dress, wet and mud-stained, seemed to float around her slight body. When her mouth opened, words billowed out like fog.
    “I only wanted to see myself,” the girl breathed. “Mummy’s going to be very angry about my dress.”
    That was all—a simple confession that framed a horrible truth—and then Elsie blinked and found herself back in the meadow.
    She’d dismissed it as a nightmare, more unsettling than frightening. Not worth mentioning to anyone. A short time later, however, a gossiping young housemaid let slip that the vicar’s niece had fallen into a Peverel well and drowned. As soon as the words were spoken, the maid clapped her hands over her mouth. “I weren’t supposed to say anything, miss,” she mumbled. “Her Ladyship said you was too delicate to hear of it, butmaybe now that you’re healed proper and out of bed, she won’t mind you knowing?”
    At first Elsie was too stunned to speak. Had she somehow seen the vicar’s niece that day by the well? Was it a premonition … or an encounter with the dead?
    “Exactly when did the poor child die?” she finally asked.
    “Whilst you was recovering. You was sleeping most of the day and having the most peculiar nightmares, so Her Ladyship didn’t want you to hear of the girl’s death. She feared it would upset your rest. Oh, miss, you’ve gone so pale—have I upset you?”
    Elsie dismissed the maid as calmly as she could and spent the morning puzzling over what she’d learned. Could such a vision, one in which a girl’s hair and gown floated as though she were underwater, merely be a nightmare? It seemed too specific to be coincidence.
    It was the second vision, a few months later, that truly terrified her. Sadly, it also proved her undoing as her mother’s darling little girl. They had been packing away her grandmother’s clothes and linens shortly after the old woman’s death. Though Elsie had suffered a bout of gooseflesh as she folded the yellowed underclothes, she’d felt no hint of sorrow. The Dowager Lady Rolleston, widowed early and kind to no one but her son, had excelled at being unpleasant. It was no secret that only Elsie’s father mourned her death. And that death had seemed to go on for an eternity—an extended cycle of relapses and last-minute rallies. Elsie had sighed with relief when Mother told her the old woman’s struggle had finally ended.
    That day, as she tidied the room so the maids could give it a proper airing, she glanced toward the handsome oak headboard of the bed and saw the air writhe and shimmer as it had that strange day in the meadow. Her knees buckled and she collapsed to the floor,