With a sudden jerk, her mother sat up on her knees, her jawbones snapping and locking back into place. The woman touched her face as if to make sure everything was still intact. “It is done.” The voice, however, was not her mother’s. The woman stood up in one swift motion, but then stumbled, as if her body were an ill-fitting suit, walking woodenly to the stairs, her knees swaying and the purple robe dragging on the floor behind her. The creature climbed the stairs, leaving Juliet sitting naked and alone on the floor inside the circle, candles burning and vomit drying on her thighs.
Juliet arose and pulled her blood-soaked nightgown from the floor. She hobbled over to the kitchen sink to try to wash the brown poultice off her body. With a crude scrub, she got most of it off and wrapped the bloody dress around her, the fabric now having a thickness to it and the sopping material cold against her skin. Stopping first at the door to close and latch it, she blew out the candles and stared for a moment at the brown leather book with elaborate gold and purple embossed designs lying on the table. Juliet reached out to touch it, but pulled her hand back abruptly, feeling she should take the book and burn it. What she’d seen her mother do tonight with it had frightened her. That thing had frightened her, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that it had come from this book. When she looked at the etching on the cover, she saw the symbol of it—the goat creature that had been in the kitchen. She stepped quietly up the stairs to the bedroom, rolling her nightgown into a ball and hiding it behind her side of the bed on the floor while Delphine slept soundly. Shivering, she changed into another nightgown and crawled into the warm bed, but despite the usual heaviness of the blankets, the cold would not leave her and the smell of the cloves and earth still lingered on her body. The pungent smell was the only reminder that what she had seen had been real. While she might have wrapped her arms around Delphine for warmth, she did not want to touch her sister. This wasn’t a normal chill, and what had happened with her mother in the kitchen had not been normal. Her mother was not normal. If Juliet had wondered about her mother’s past, she no longer doubted the secrets the woman had kept from the family. The devil himself had been invited into their house that night. Of that, Juliet was sure.
When she woke in the morning, the kitchen was clean and no sign of a chalk circle, leather book, black candle, or blood remained. Juliet’s father came through the door with a worried look. He was a kind man with a big face and broad nose, but now his face was flushed. “It’s your mother,” he said. “She’s taken ill.”
Following him up to the bedroom, she found her mother lying in her bed. While Juliet had a chill that she could not shake, her mother’s clothes were soaked in sweat. The whites of the woman’s eyes were bloody red as though they were about to burst. Her mother spied Juliet and smiled.
“The doctor is coming,” said her father. “He isn’t sure what it is. Thinks it could be the plague and that you children ought not to be in here, but your mother wanted to see you.” He turned at the door. “She only asked for you.”
Juliet nodded. She felt certain that what had felled her mother was not the plague or any other earthly ailment.
“I’ll keep Delphine and Marcel away from here.” His steps were heavy down the stairs.
After he’d left the room, Juliet’s mother smiled. “It is done.”
Juliet could see bruises around the woman’s chin from where her jaw had been broken to allow that thing to step into her mouth, but otherwise there was no trace of what had happened in the kitchen. Juliet found she could not look at her; the whites of her eyes were now almost purely red. “I know, Maman.” Juliet began to cry. “But you’re sick because of me, aren’t you? You’re sick because of what we did last night.” Juliet had not been sure what her mother had been last night, but the woman now lying in front of her was her mother once again. “It’s my fault.”
She shook her head. “No. No. I will get better, you’ll see. You must listen to me. There isn’t time. A letter will arrive for you in a few days. You must do what that letter says. You must do what he says. Do you understand me?”
“Who?” Juliet was afraid that the “he” was the thing from the leather book.
“Just listen to him. He will protect you.”
“Protect me from what?” Juliet stroked her mother’s forehead, but her mother seemed not to register it. “What do I need protection from? I don’t understand any of this, Maman.”
“I can’t see you, Juliet. Do you understand me? Say it.”
“I understand,” Juliet lied. “A letter will arrive,” she repeated. “I will do what it says and I will listen to him.” Juliet began to sob. “I’m so sorry. I did this to you—to our family.”
“Non. It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have had the baby, Juliet. It was too dangerous.” The woman smiled. “It was all Marchant’s fault, but he will pay for it. All this nonsense with the paintings. You wouldn’t have been safe anymore.” The woman struggled to breathe, but choked out her words, which had become choppy. “I destroyed them all. Do as the man says. I worked so hard for you to be safe.”
“But I have been safe, Maman.”
The woman shook her head. “No. He is so dangerous. So dangerous…”
“I don’t understand,” Juliet whispered to her mother, but her mother was quiet now. Did she mean Marchant? She held her mother’s hand until she heard a groan and a rattle and then nothing but the sound of the wind shaking the shutter at the window.
Because the doctor was not sure it wasn’t plague, they burned, then buried her mother’s remains the next day. When no one in the LaCompte house came down with anything in a week’s time, the doctor let the family leave the farm. Anxious to finally see Marchant, Juliet walked up the hill to his studio, but found it empty—not like before with the drapes still on the daybed—everything had been cleaned out with a finality that frightened her. Juliet entered the courtyard and found the maid who had cared for Marcel sweeping the stones.
“Monsieur Marchant left a week ago for Paris. His wife and baby died together in childbirth. He is selling this house.”
“Did he leave anything for me? A letter perhaps?”
The maid shook her head, turned, and walked into the kitchen, shutting the door tightly.
Juliet came back out of the studio and spied the unfinished nude sketches of her in the burn pile. Juliet thought about retrieving them and saving them, but with so much lost, they were too painful to look at, so she left them.
Night had fallen and Juliet realized that her father had not gotten water. She took the bucket and headed to the well. He didn’t know that such things were required for the running of the house. The moon was full and illuminated everything. As she walked down to the well, she heard the reassuring sounds of the chickens busy in their yard.
She thought of Marchant and how the feel of his touch still burned on her skin. She felt her legs grow weak and stopped pumping the well. Sobs overtook her. What would her family do now?
It was the sound of sticks cracking as someone stepped on them and the yank of her dress that snapped her back to reality. She was spun and thrown to the ground. Gasping, Juliet looked up to find Michel Busson and another boy standing over her.