Serafina and the Black Cloak - Robert Beatty Page 0,7

right behind her, levitated by the power of the billowing black cloak, his bloody hands reaching toward her.

Serafina tried to run faster, but just as she came to the bottom of the stairs that led up to the main level of the basement, the man in the black cloak grabbed her. One hand clamped her shoulder. The other locked on to her neck. She turned and hissed like a snared animal. She whirled and clawed in a wild circle and broke herself free.

She bounded up the stairs three at a time, but he followed right behind her. He reached out and yanked her head back by her hair. She screamed in pain.

“Time to give up now, little child,” he said calmly, even as the tightening of his fist slowly tore strands of her hair from her head.

“I ain’t never!” she snarled, and bit his arm. She fought as hard as she could, scratching and clawing with her fingernails, but it didn’t matter. The man in the black cloak was far too strong. He pulled her into his chest, entangling her in his arms.

The folds of the black cloak rose up around her, pulsing with gray smoke. The awful rotting odor made her gag. All she could hear was that loathsome rattling noise as the cloak slithered and twisted its way around her body. She felt like she was being crushed in the coil of a boa constrictor.

“I’m not going to hurt you, child…” came the hideous rasping voice again, as if the man wasn’t of his own mind but possessed by a demented, ravenous demon.

The folds of the cloak cast a wretched pall over her, drenching her in a dripping, suffocating sickness. She felt her soul slipping away from her—not just slipping, but being yanked, being extracted. Death was so near that she could see its blackness with her own eyes and she could hear the screams of the children who had gone before her.

“No! No! No!” she screamed in defiance. She didn’t want to go. Hissing wildly, she reached up and clutched his face, clawing at his eyes. She kicked his chest with her feet. She bit him repeatedly, snapping like a snarling, rabid beast, and she tasted his blood in her mouth. The girl in the yellow dress had fought, but nothing like this. Finally, Serafina twisted out of his grip and spun to the ground. She landed on her feet and leapt away.

She wanted to get back to her pa, but she couldn’t make it that far. She fled down the corridor and dashed into the main kitchen. There were a dozen places to hide. Should she slip behind the black cast-iron ovens? Or crawl up among the copper pots hanging from the ceiling rack? No. She knew she had to find a better place.

She was back in her territory now, and she knew it well. She knew the darkness and she knew the light. She knew the left and the right. She had killed rats in every corner of this place, and there was no way she was going to let herself become one of those rats. She was the C.R.C. No trap or weapon or evil man was going to catch her. Like a wild creature, she ran and jumped and crawled.

When she reached the linen storage room, with all its wooden shelves and stacks of folded white sheets and blankets, she scampered into a crumbling break in the wall, in the back corner beneath the lowest shelf. Even if the man did notice the hole, it would seem impossibly small for anyone to fit through. But she knew it provided a shortcut into the back of the laundry.

She came out in the room where they hung and dried the fancy folks’ bedsheets. The moon had risen outside, and its light shone through the basement windows. Hundreds of flowing white sheets hung from the ceiling like ghosts, the silver moonlight casting them into an eerie glow. She slipped slowly between the hanging sheets, wondering if they would provide her the concealment she needed. But she thought better of it and kept going.

For good or ill, she had an idea. She knew that Mr. Vanderbilt prided himself on installing the most advanced equipment at Biltmore. Her pa had constructed special drying racks that rolled on metal ceiling tracks that tucked into narrow chambers where the sheets and clothes were dried with the radiant heat of well-sealed steam pipes. Determined to find the best possible hiding place,