Had Mrs. Skinner not arrived with her chocolate the very next moment, Emma would have escaped the sooner, but as it was, she was forced to endure Winterly's bold scrutiny a while longer.

By the time she left him her nerves were fatally raveled, and desiring a moment to herself she made good her escape, fleeing directly to her suit where she threw herself on the ironed counterpane to mull her thoughts over as she stared at the ceiling. However, no matter the length of time she devoted ruminating over the mysterious castle and its enigmatic master, Emma felt no less confused. And no less disquieted by Anna's warning.

It was then that she finally decided to respond to the letter she had, at first, read with mistrustful eyes; now that she was not so sure that she wasn't more inclined to heed Anna's obscure warning.

"Your 'friends' are not who, or even what, you think they are."

"Well, I do not think them human." She had seen enough to know that there was certainly something strange about the Winterlys. And Anna seemed to know far more than she let on.

Not for the first time, she wondered what Anna had been trying to say. Taking a sheaf of paper from the writing desk, she penned her response and begged her friend for further intelligence, explaining that she was now ready to believe whatever Anna was ready to disclose.

The writing and sealing of her letter was only the work of a few brief minutes, and once she had slipped the note into her reticule, she resolved to walk to Whitby and have it posted herself.

First, though, she wanted to have a better look at the volume Anna had given her and carefully lifted it out from where it lay at the bottom of her portmanteau.

Vampyris. "But I don't believe in vampyres," she whispered. Her words, however, held no conviction. "Yes, you do," was the swift response that sounded in her own heart.

She ran her fingers hesitantly over the gilt lettering and the panel-stamped binding before she folded her legs under her and opened it up over her lap. The endpaper, like the rest of the book, was stained with age, almost three hundred years worth of oxidation.

It was here that someone had long ago scrawled a name, Antoine Leblanc, the letters bold and prominent, and the year that the book had been translated and transcribed from Latin into German.

The illustrations too had been meticulously copied by a masterful hand, the details exquisite and the colors vivid.

It was only logical to assume, she mused, that this Antoine Leblanc must have been an ancestor of Anna's husband, Monster Leblanc. Another watcher, as they called themselves.

The grimoire, for that was what it looked like, seemed to be a collection of legends represented in such a rational and official way that Emma felt it more a summary of reports than an anthology of myths. Whoever had scribed these reports was not a storyteller, but a ... watcher — a sort of journalist of the occult.

Finding herself captivated by the words, she was only vaguely aware that the book was imbued with incense, the fragrance steeped with exotic mysticism. As she turned each yellowed leaf the sweet smell of it became all the stronger, drawing her in all the more.

Her eyes scrolled hungrily over each brittle page and then halted abruptly over one particular image that was labeled with a single name: Lilith.

The woman, presumably Lilith, looked to be in a maddened fury, her red hair in wild billows about her face as she tore her way through bodies. In one hand she clutched a severed limb and in the other she held a fistful of hair still attached to a decapitated head.

As Emma read on, thoroughly intrigued and disturbed by the image, it was to find that Lilith had been good and benign at one point, but that the death of her lover had precipitated her into madness. Finally, it had been her brothers and sisters that had been forced to dispatch her and put an end to Lilith's reign of terror. That day, the very last in April, had evermore become known as Hexennacht. The Night Of Witches.

But there was no mention of Vampyres, and so she read on.

Further along, and in a chapter apart from Lilith's, Emma's eyes were struck with the word 'Vampyrpest' which occasioned her to take the time to translate the rest of the chapter.

The author spoke of having borne witness to an unaccountable outbreak of what the peasants had described as a magischen ansteckung, a sort of demoniacal infection. The date had been disclosed as having occurred in the reign of a Hapsburg King by the name of John Sigismund Zápolya, or John The First. It was he that had dispatched his soldiers to further investigate the superstitions of his people.

There they found, in that small Carpathian village of indeterminate location, that thirteen people had indeed succumbed to a strange epidemic, and in only a matter of three weeks. The deaths, they discovered, were purported to be the work of evil specters that visited their victims in the nighttime. 

The Hungarians, he wrote, called these spectres Pamgri, and the Servians, Vampyres.

To bring order to the village that had, by and large, already suffered far too many inexplicable losses, the soldiers suffered the peasants to do as they pleased and, what was more, went so far as to aid them in disinterring bodies.

In one instance, it had been recorded that a man suspected of vampyrism had been exhumed after forty days in his grave. Upon removing his cerements it was discovered that his body was peculiarly uncorrupted.

The man was bloated with blood, as of a satisfied leech, his mouth red, and his face ruddy with a healthful appearance that bespoke his otherworldly affliction. From his ears and nostrils flowed little rills of blood that continued to flood his casket.

Consequently, he was staked where he lay, and the blood spilled forth from his chest as though he still lived. The vampyre was then accordingly decapitated, after which he was burned and the ashes then thrown into the river.

Emma gaped at the pictures that accompanied the text, feeling her own blood grow steadily colder.

The resounding slam of the heavy front door below so startled her that she gasped and slammed the book shut reflexively, as though she was naughty child caught reading what she oughtn't. After she'd hurriedly buried the book under her petticoats in her trunk, she rushed into the hallway to peer over the baluster.

There below she remarked the foyer filling with workmen as they carried ladders, tools, and whatever other appurtenances they required. Evidently the noise had carried to Milli's room as well for she too emerged moments later, her complexion somewhat less brilliant than the day before.

"Do not tell me you too had no sleep last night?" Emma asked, returning her gaze back to the laborers and traders who were like as not already beginning preparations for the Solecist Ball that was fast approaching.

Her sister affected a bright smile and replied that, on the contrary, she had slept like the dead, but that the traveling had likely exhausted her far more than she'd expected.

Later, when they had joined Victoria in her parlor, Milli's pallor did not go unnoticed by their host either. "My dear, are you quite sure you would not rather stay abed until you have recovered your strength?"

"No, indeed!" she replied with a laugh, "I did not give myself the trouble of such a long journey only to cloister myself in my room."

"Then shall we go into town?" Emma asked. "I have a great desire to see the abbey ruins, and the fresh air might do Milli some good." The castle was such a cold and drafty place after all.

Victoria glanced towards the muted sunlight pouring in from the casement and, with a pinched expression, turned her attention back to Milli. "But surely you do not feel well enough for such an energetic undertaking?" There was a slight hopefulness in her tone.

"Victoria is right, sister, you look very ill. Perhaps we should only walk about the gardens today."

"Do stop treating me like an invalid, Emma. I am perfectly well." Milli then helped herself to a pastry and nibbled delicately before catching her sister's anxious eye. "Truly, there is nothing the matter with me. I want to go to Whitby and see the ships."

The matter was therewith settled and the ladies were soon climbing into the open barouche, its top folded down. Victoria stepped up directly, hiding her stern visage under her parasol while Emma lifted her face to the sun as it broke through the grey clouds.

As her sister was handed up, Emma glanced back at the castle now that she could better study it in the daylight.

For all that the sun had momentarily diluted the gloom from her heart, it did nothing to lessen the tenebrosity that clung, like the gargoyles themselves, to the very walls of Castle Winterly. One particular gargoyle, its forked tongue hanging obscenely from its cruel face, appeared to watch her very closely, its stony eyes seemingly pinned to Emma's.

At last the driver's whip signaled their departure and the stone battlements, thankfully, soon disappeared as the barouche was steered through the avenue of ancient yews. Unfortunately, by the time they reached the port, Milli was looking far worse than she had earlier and it was decided that they would return.

"But you needn't return home on my account," said Milli to her sister. "Victoria does not wish to catch the sun on her face and I am feeling tired, but you, Emma, must stay a while, since we are here, and see the ruins as you planned to."

"Yes," Victoria readily agreed, "Once we are home I shall send the barouche back for you directly and it will await you here. When you are ready, my driver will bring you back."

It took a little more convincing, but finally Emma agreed to the scheme, believing that it was important that she post her letter to Anna. Whether or not she was being silly, she had not wished to hand the letter over to Winterly's servants, and, as a result, would now have to find anther means to see the job done. Moreover, she was not quite ready yet to return to the oppressive bleakness of the castle.

She watched the barouche disappear back along the route they had come, past a row of shipbuilders' warehouses. Assuring herself that nothing nefarious would betide her sister in the meant time, she betook herself directly to the nearest inn and handed her letter into the proprietor's safekeeping. With a congenial smile, he took payment and promised to have it posted for her.

That done, she took a moment to enjoy the view and partake of the brisk, salty air. A large whaling ship was sailing slowly into port, the gulls heralding the whalers' arrival with their excited shrieks. It had doubtless just returned from Greenland, she surmised, and was presumably already filled with whale oil, which was attested to by a large jaw bone that had been fastened to the mast. That same oil would soon be lighting the very street lamps she passed beneath.

At length, and by following the innkeeper's directions, Emma found herself traversing the steep, stone steps that eventually took her all the way up to St. Mary's Church. One hundred and ninety nine in all there were.

The hilltop was little more than a grassy plateau on which the church, like a castellated sentry, looked out over the vast, dark sea and the River Esk, as if watching over the seamen, whalers, and lifeboatmen that came and went below the cliffs each day.

Emma wandered through the churchyard a short while, her fingers running across the lichen that clung to each weatherworn tombstones as she read the names of the men and women that lay beneath her feet. For a grim moment she wondered what she'd find if she suddenly took it into her head to exhume one of the bodies that rested under the grass.

Would the corpse look lifelike? Would it's skin be stretched tightly over its bones like Mrs. Skinner's? Would there be blood gushing from its ears, and mouth like she'd read in Anna's book this morning? Or would there be nothing there but muddy bones?

Whatever ghouls or phantoms wandered hereabout, she left them to themselves and headed to the abbey, inexorably drawn to the cold and beautiful ruins that towered over the moorland and the white-capped ocean. The grey ceiling had thickened throughout the morning and was now a solid layer of clouds brooding darkly overhead.

It was to this somber atmosphere that the abbey's gothic facade seemed perfectly suited.

It was an impressive old structure that lent such disquietude to its windswept surroundings, that Emma could not help but shiver in response.

Once again, she felt sure that she was being watched. And, she was certain, not by the specters she'd left in the churchyard. No, something far more threatening.

🌟Who's watching?! Friend or foe?🌟