A Lesson in Vengeance

by Victoria Lee

I read that drowning is a good way to go. By all accounts the pain fades and euphoria blooms in its place like hothouse flowers, red orchid roots tethered to the stones in your pocket.

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality. —Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

and pretend not to remember the spot where I’d pried the baseboard loose from the wall last year and concealed my version of contraband: tarot cards, long taper candles, herbs hidden in empty mint tins. I used to arrange them atop my dresser in a neat row the way another girl might arrange her makeup.

I didn’t know how to explain to her that being friendless at Dalloway was better than being friendless anywhere else. At least here the walls know me, the floors, the soil. I am rooted at Dalloway. Dalloway is mine.

But I want to find a loose thread on the collar of her shirt and tug. I want to unravel her.

A year ago, Alex and I let something evil into this house. What if it never left?

Ex scientia ultio. From knowledge comes vengeance.

I make my way back into the kitchen, where the gin has been replaced by an unfamiliar green drink that tastes bitter, like rotten herbs. I drink it anyway, because that’s what you do at parties, because my mother’s blood runs in my veins and, like Cecelia Morrow, it turns out I cannot face the real world without the taste of lies in my mouth and liquor in my blood.

Our eyes meet across the room. And for once I’m not even tempted to turn away. I lift my chin and hold her gaze, sharp beneath straight brows, somehow clear despite the empty absinthe glass she holds in hand. I want to crack open her chest and peer inside, see how she ticks.

But I do, just in time to catch the twist to Clara’s pink lips, the brief and brutal gesture with two fingers: scissors snapping shut.

I draw a three-card tarot reading: all swords. I glimpse a light on, through the crack beneath Housemistress MacDonald’s door, but I’m not quite so pathetic yet as to seek her company.

The grandmother clock that sits between the fiction and poetry shelves has gone silent. Its hands are stuck at 3:03.

“I want to explore the gradations of human morality: how indifference can slide into evil, what drives a person toward murder. And I want to interrogate the concept of the psychopath: whether villainy exists in that truest form or if it’s simply a manifestation of some human drive that lurks in all of us.”

I wonder if Ellis feels it. If Ellis is scared of it, or if she hopes a shadow of that evil will seep up from the ground and infect her, the way it infected Margery Lemont.

Ellis’s brow arches at a perfect angle. “Curiouser and curiouser,” she says.

“A perfect story,” Ellis corrects. “Dalloway School: founded to teach the arcane arts to young witches under the guise of an expensive finishing school. Dalloway’s first headmistress: daughter of a witch. And of course the Dalloway Five, who murdered one of their own in a satanic ritual. Reality only aspires to such perversity.”

“How many finishing schools do you know with rare book rooms crammed full of pentacles and pages made out of human skin?”

“But of course, you’re right,” I add. “They weren’t really witches. They were just girls.” Just girls. Just clever, bright young women. Too clever and bright for their time. And they were killed for it.

It wasn’t until I came here and learned more about the history of the school, about the witches, that I fell in love with the dark.

And I can’t forget what Ellis wondered: whether the drive to murder sleeps quiet in all of us, if we’re all two steps away from the ledge, waiting for an excuse to throw out both hands and push. I think about the moment the rope snapped and the world went quiet and still, my body weightless without Alex dragging it down, the snow in my eyes and the emptiness on the mountain. The hollow feeling that carved its way into my chest. And the relief.

And then there’s us: the literati, the bookish intelligentsia with an affinity for horn-rimmed glasses and pages that smell like dust.

At least I didn’t have to buy my friends, Alex had said the night she died, cheeks blotchy with rage; and even then I’d known she was right.

“Just so,” Ellis interjects. “As Astell said herself: ‘It were well if we could look into the very Soul of the beloved Person, to discover what resemblance it bears to our own.’ ”

“How can you understand a character’s mind without sharing their experiences?” Ellis says archly.

I draw a card: the Page of Cups. My room smells like Alex’s perfume.

This seems like a lot of work for a scene that may or may not ever materialize. Then again, I suppose procrastination is universal. Not even the great Ellis Haley is immune.

“It’s chamomile,” Ellis says. “One squeeze of lemon and a half teaspoon of honey. That is how you take it, right?” I had no idea she’d even noticed how I drink my tea—or that I drink tea to begin with. And yet here she stands, hands clasped behind her back and the tea itself steaming right next to my potted echeveria. I arch my brows, pick up the mug, and take a tiny sip. God, she even got it to the perfect temperature.

“How is the book going?” She grimaces. “Not well. I’m starting to think writing about murder wasn’t the best of plans, considering—” “Considering you can’t kill someone to see what it’s like.”

God. Just last week the party line was how magic isn’t real. And yet it is; I know it is. The question isn’t whether magic is real. It’s whether I can touch it without being consumed by it.

Our first kiss was at a rooftop party in the city.

I’d never wanted to touch someone so much in my life.

There on that rooftop, with the city alive around us, Alex slid her fingers along my cheek and stepped closer and kissed me. A breeze was picking up and my wineglass was shaking in my hand, but Alex was kissing me. Her lips tasted like chocolate. But I can’t think about her anymore. I can’t remember that kiss now. I don’t want to.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I tell her. “Do what?” She spares me a sidelong glance. “I don’t want to work with Ursula Prince. It’s as simple as that.” As simple as that. Somehow, I don’t think it is.

They say knowing the name of a thing gives you power over it. And right now, I need power. As much of it as I can get.

“I don’t understand,” she says again. “Alex didn’t die on a mountain. She died here, at school. She drowned.”

In for a penny, in for a pound—

My mouth has gone dry as I stare down at the book. And it is just a book. It holds no special power. It can’t hurt me if I don’t let it.

Every spell is a pomegranate seed on your tongue, binding you to the underworld.

the red berries of the mountain ash and in the dark sky the birds’ night migrations

“Ellis.” My voice comes out half a gasp; I’d be humiliated by that gasp if I weren’t so busy staring at the tarot cards that fan out between my fingers. They’re matte black, lined only with the faintest threads of metallic gold tracing out the shapes of skeleton figures, a glossy jet finish poured into the cages of skulls and bones so they glint in the afternoon light. “These are…”

For once, the forest is empty of ghosts, the sky clear and glittering. Nothing evil can touch us like this. We’re dryads cavorting in autumn, wood spirits breathing out starlight.

I find a beautiful girl who has eyes like night and skin cool as water. I tell the girl that, as I slide my touch along her cheek. A serial killer sort of thing to say—I love your skin—but she smiles at me.

drew a card from my deck when I woke up. The Nine of Swords. I replaced it, shuffled, and drew again, and got the Nine of Swords for a second time. Fear and nightmares.

Whatever protection last night’s spell had given me is gone now, melted like ice. Last night didn’t summon snow. Last night summoned death.

And Ellis Haley can go fuck herself.

Bury my bones deep, that I might feel the flames of Hell. —Last words of Margery Lemont, buried alive in the year 1714; recorded by those present at her burial

But what else am I going to say? Ellis sees me. I need to be seen.

The Secret Garden. It’s the same copy Ellis gave me in the graveyard, the same copy I left leaning against Alex’s headstone, with its old pages and embossed gold foil.

But I can’t help myself. I slide the book out of its space between two Austens with shaking hands. When I open the ancient pages I smell something familiar, something that isn’t glue or rotting paper. It’s jasmine and vetiver. It’s…Alex. It’s Alex’s perfume. Pressed between chapters three and four is a sprig of hellebore.

When I told Ellis about Alex, she never said it wasn’t my fault. She’d said, You didn’t have malevolent intent. There was a difference, which Ellis—Ellis the writer, Ellis alone in the dead of winter—understood better than anyone.