After Braeden went to bed and the partygoers went up to their rooms in the mansion, Serafina went down into the basement to see her pa. She passed maids and manservants she knew by name. She saw footmen and assistants. But none of them saw her.
When she finally came to the workshop, she found it empty. There was no sign of her pa. She waited a few moments, thinking he would soon return, but he did not.
Her heart began to fill with a terrible dread. Had this, too, changed?
She searched the basement room by room, the kitchens and pantries, the workrooms and the storerooms. Biltmore was just too large! She finally found her pa repairing the small, wheeled electric motor that powered the house’s dumbwaiter. She sighed with relief.
Her pa was on his knees, pulling a wrench. The muscles on his bare, sweating forearm bulged. He was a large, gruff man with a barrel chest and thick limbs. He wore simple work clothes, a leather apron, and a heavy leather belt laden with tools. She had seen him working a thousand times, had handed him screwdrivers and hammers when he needed them, had run to retrieve parts and materials for him. But she’d never seen him like this. There was no joy in his work tonight, no sense of purpose. He moved slowly, doggedly, his eyes mournful. He was going through the motions of his life, but his spirit was gone.
“Pa…” she said, standing before him. “Can you see me?”
To her surprise, her pa stopped his work. He slowly turned as if gazing at the empty air around him. It was clear that he couldn’t see her, but he stared at the emptiness for a long time as if he was sure something was there.
After a few moments, he pulled out a rag and wiped his brow. Then he lowered his head and wiped his eyes, a wave of emotion racking through his shoulders. She could see the flicker of memories in his face, the sadness in his eyes. She didn’t know what Braeden knew of her demise, but one thing was certain: her pa thought she was dead.
She could see it in his face and in the way he moved. His dream of having a daughter had been the joy of his life for these twelve years. But now she was gone. He was alone, true and certain.
Seeing him there by himself, her heart broke.
Finally, he gave up on fixing the machine and sighed as if it was all pointless anyway. She’d never seen him break from a job before the job was done. The idea of leaving a machine unmended was inconceivable.
As he hoisted his leather tool satchel over his shoulder and trudged back toward the workshop, Serafina followed him. He walked slowly, without spirit or purpose, like a wanderer who has nothing to go home to.
She stayed close to him as he moved back and forth in the shop, putting his tools away and preparing his late-night meal.
As he cooked his supper of chicken and grits over his little cook stove and then ate alone, she sat across from him in her old chair. It was here that she used to listen to his stories and share her own, telling him about the rats she had caught or the falling stars she’d seen streaking through the sky. But now her plate and her spoon sat on the bench, unused for months.
“I’ll eat my grits, Pa, I swear I will,” she said out loud as tears welled in her eyes.
A little while later, when he lay in his bed and fell asleep, she crawled onto her own empty cot behind the boiler and lay down. She didn’t know what else to do.
When you’re dreaming, what happens if you fall asleep in your dream? Do you dream? And is your dream real life?
If she was dead and buried, how could she be tired?
She didn’t know, but maybe sleep wasn’t about the body, but about rest for the mind and the spirit.
All she knew was that she was exhausted. Trembling and forlorn, she curled up in a ball.
As she fell asleep, she slipped into a dream where she was biting and clawing, fighting in a black, swirling world, and then it all fell away and all she could feel was the earth and the river and the wind, a vast world without form, and she felt herself being swept through it like she was nothing but a particle of dust, and then a tiny droplet of water, and then a wisp of air, until she finally dissolved into nothingness.
She started awake with a violent jerk.
When she looked around the workshop she didn’t know whether she was awake or asleep. Did she just dream of her death? Or was her death the reality and what she was experiencing now the dream?
She remembered the frightening sensation of her feet being torn into little pieces by the current of the river, and the feeling of the wind high in the trees almost sweeping her away. I only have so much more time left here, she thought, and then I’m going to fade away completely.
She looked at her surroundings, trying to understand. It was dark, the witching hour between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m.
Still shaking from the dream, she rose from her bed and stood in the workshop, not sure what to do. She just stood there and breathed and tried to figure out whether she was truly breathing or dreaming of breathing or remembering breathing.
Finally, she went over to her pa sleeping on his cot.
She tried to touch his side to make sure he was truly there. She felt a vague shape, but no warmth, no response to her touch. It was just as it had been with Braeden.
Even though she couldn’t feel her father’s warmth, and he couldn’t feel hers, she curled up beside her pa like a little kitten so small and light that it wasn’t even felt against its master’s chest. And she tried not to sleep.
In the morning, when her pa woke and began his day, she tried to touch him, tried to speak with him, tried to tell him what was happening to her, tried to warn him about what she’d seen in the forest, tried to tell him to check the stream flowing into the pond, but the more she tried, the more sadness it seemed to cause him. Her presence wasn’t a comfort to him, but a sorrow. She was haunting him.
Finally, when he gathered his tool bag and went off to work, she let him go, not because she wanted to let him go, but for mercy’s sake.
Serafina sat alone at the bottom of the basement steps, her head on her hands. She had to figure out a way to get back into the world and warn everyone that they were in danger. She’d been attacked, and clearly Braeden had been attacked, and she was sure that there were more attacks to come.
“But what can I do?” she asked herself. How could she talk to the people she loved? How could she warn them?
She had found Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt, Braeden, Gidean, and her pa, but there was one more person at Biltmore who might be able to help her. She went up the back stairway to the fourth floor and down the corridor into the maids’ quarters.
When she came to the particular maid’s room she was looking for, the door was ajar.
As Serafina paused, a bad feeling crept into her.
“Essie?” she asked quietly. “Essie, are you there?”
Finally, Serafina slipped slowly into the room.
Her friend Essie’s room was empty and lifeless. Essie’s books and newspapers weren’t on the nightstand by the bed. Essie’s drawings of flowers and plants weren’t on the wall. Essie’s clothes weren’t strewn across the floor and chair. The bed had no sheets or pillows.
Serafina’s heart sank.
No one was living in this room anymore.