Page 59 of My Darling Girls

That hole is getting bigger. You must fill it.

“I don’t understand you.”

There’s a place that grants salvation. I can take you there.

His words are menacing, hollow, even. As if he’s speaking a half-truth. As if, for whatever reason, he’s toying with her.

“What is this place that offers salvation?”

A laugh that sounds like a snapping of wood in the fire.

It has different names. But most people know it as the other realm.

His words travel through her bones like whispers—warm and tingling. “You want me to go to the world of the dead?”

I don’t want you to do anything, Jo. I’m offering you help. The choice is yours.

She gets to her feet and goes to her camera. Looks through its lens. The mist in the corner is thicker. Whiter. The ghost of Miss Lambert, half of her torso submerged in the mist and half of her in Jo’s world, looks at her expectantly. And Jo can see her choice in every line, every angle of Miss Lambert’s half-rotten face. Jo must go to the underworld. Not for love. Love burns through you like a wildfire, consumes you and leaves nothing but charred bones in its wake. No, she doesn’t want love. And she doesn’t need to fill whatever hole the old man wants her to fill.

Jo steps back from the camera. “What salvation will I find there?”

Only you can answer that.

She doesn’t know what her salvation would look like. Not to remember? Not to feel guilt ever again? “What happens when I get to this other realm?”

It’s up to you what happens there. But if you decide to go through it, you’ll have to face your sins. Your penance.

She could never really run away from her memories. What if facing her past is her salvation? She grips the side of the Knickerbocker stand so hard her knuckles turn white. “What is my penance?” She lowers her face to the lens. She knows the answer, but she needs the old man to confirm it.

His jaw tenses, and his eyes slide to the corner of the room where the mist swirls. Where the ghost stands, awaiting. Her features change and mold into a grimace, the familiar gap between her teeth widens. One second, Miss Lambert is a solid shape, and another she’s fluid—water in her veins, tree roots instead of her eyes.

“I see.” Jo sighs and looks over the camera at the man. “Will I find peace?”

You will.

He looks at her for so long, she starts to tremble. A thin smile spreads on his gray face. His pupils grow as black as coal.

What do you wish for, Josephine? What’s your true wish?

“To never see or talk to the dead,” she answers. “That’s my true wish.” Emotions roil through her faster than she can understand them. There’s worry that she’s gone completely mad. Sorrow. It’s heart wrenching to be reminded of her past. To see Miss Lambert. Then relief. Perhaps it’s time to atone. And what if in return she can get her wish granted and be free of the dead? “How do I get to that place?” She imagines a big hole opening up beneath her and her falling down, down, down. Until she reaches the place where only the dead live, listless and lost. “How do I come back?”

Another chuckle.

Jo narrows her eyes.

Most go there in their sleep.

“Sleep?” She thinks of the opium. That’s the only way she sleeps now.

Your dreams are the door. I’m the doorman.

She doesn’t dream when she takes opium. Her sleep is a blissful nothingness. She likes it like that. Her heart hurts. It’s a familiar clawing, sharp ache of guilt. Maybe if she does whatever she needs to do in that place, maybe this feeling of guilt—a familiar presence pressing against her skin—will finally release her.

“Tell me more.”

The man rolls his right shoulder out of its socket, joints cracking loudly, and pulls his arms from beneath the ropes that tie him to the settee. There are flecks of fire in his eyes as he extends his arm, which grows longer and longer until he reaches the white mist. He dips his hand into the mist, pulls it back, and his arm retracts. There’s a black velvet pouch in his hand. Something clanks inside. Coins, Jo realizes. The pouch is full of coins.

One silver dollar for the passage.