Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror Read Online Free PDF

from the direction of the Merrimack Bridge, and beyond: "lower Edmundston," "lower town."
     
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    "Just for a walk. Just for an hour."
    So Magdalena told herself, late one afternoon when the commingled smells of lilac and the sea made her blood rush so she felt almost faint with longing. And her pretty shimmering-white room at the top of the house on Charter Street seemed to her a box, a cage, suffocating.
    "I won't go far, I promise. I won't get lost—"
    It would be Magdalena's first venture outside of the house on Charter Street since her arrival weeks before. Out of the high, hilly residential district of dignified old houses and elegant tree-lined cobblestone streets. Out of the fair, blossom-fragrant air of upper Edmundston and into the denser, more brackish air of lower Edmundston. Magdalena had spent more time than usual with Aunt Erica that day, both in the morning and in the early afternoon following dinner; now she was free for what remained of the day, and eager to have her adventure. Draping a russet-red silk shawl around her shoulders, one of her aunt's numerous gifts; leaving her head bare, despite the wind and the uncertain spring sky, alternately bright with sun and roiling with thunder-bearing clouds. She should have waited for a calmer day, she knew, but her pulse raced, she was filled with longing, yearning, for—what?
    "Just for a walk, really. I promise not to get lost."
    Like a guilty child she was explaining herself to Aunt Erica, who, if she knew, would have disapproved. Not fitting, child! Not fit for a lady, to walk on foot into lower town!
    But Aunt Erica had retired for the day; even now Aunt Erica was napping in her room that smelled of talcum, medicine and mildew, blinds drawn tight against the afternoon sun. Even as Magdalena had been reading to her from the Bible, the Book of Psalms, the old woman lapsed by degrees into a light, snoring doze, her papery-white doll's face empty of expression. Magdalena had gazed upon her aunt with sympathy, yet horror. She'd calculated that Erica Kistenmacher wasn't so very old—in her late sixties. And you could see that once, not so long ago, she'd been a youthful attractive woman with eyes, a sweet mouth. Magdalena shivered despite the overheated room thinking I will never be so old! I will never be you, Aunt Erica!
    A grandfather clock in the hall was quietly chiming the hour of five o'clock as, stealthy as a cat, Magdalena descended the stairs from the third floor to the second, and from the second floor to the first. Except, in the foyer, at the front door, she had difficulty working the lock. Glimpsing Magdalena as she passed in the hall, Hannah called out, startled, "Miss Schön! Where are you going?" Magdalena said, guiltily, "Just for a walk, Hannah. In the neighborhood." Hannah approached, her hands folded in her stiff-starched white apron; she was frowning as if she had more to say, but did not speak at first. Magdalena's cheeks burned pleasurably—it was the first time Hannah had spoken so directly to her, and looked her full in the face. Magdalena said, "I won't get lost, I promise. I won't go far." Hannah hesitated, biting her thin lower lip; then murmured, "Here, miss. I'll get the lock. You'll have to ring to be let back in, you know. This door is always double-bolted."
    So Magdalena escaped the house on Charter Street, walking downhill in the fresh warm lilac-intoxicated air, trusting to instinct to make her way toward the Merrimack Bridge. Noting how, before long, the houses she passed were smaller, less "historic"; there were woodframe bungalows, row houses, shops and stores and a wide, traffic-heavy street called Fayette, upon which streetcars clattered. This street led to the Merrimack Bridge which Magdalena crossed with some hesitation, for she had to walk on a narrow, mesh-floored pedestrian walk of a kind she'd never seen before, beneath which, all too visibly, the river rushed, not luminous or glittering in sunlight but