Rassmussen Plantation part 5

“Hateful shadows.” Thought Cinnamon, who blew out her candle and covered her head with the musty blankets.

Cinnamon was asleep before long, and Tybalt, growing cramped, hopped out of the bed silently, and walked across the rug. He stopped for just a moment before he walked out the door, looking back briefly at his mistress, who was still sleeping peacefully, and with a ‘purr’ he set out into the dark house.

The moon was out by then, and moonbeams lit Tybalt’s way across the floor. 

What a strange place they had come to, Tybalt mused, wondering why they had left the last place. He sensed that they had come here to stay, that the old house now belonged to his lady. He’d protect her here as he had everywhere else they had gone, pacing the house and the gardens, the neighborhood as her silent watchman. Tybalt was a watcher, and a good one at that. He saw everything that went on. And heard them, too. A slight swirling of dust downstairs, what was that? He quietly took to the stairs, padding down them and across the foyer, where all was now quiet. A mouse scurried across his path, and in a moment he was on it, a quick killer. He decided to have is dinner right there, since he was feeling a bit hungry.  Mouse bones were crunchy, but manageable. He didn’t mind bones so much, but he was glad that mice did not have those pesky feathers to bother with.

Preoccupied with his dinner, Tybalt did not see the shadow pass behind him, then up the stairs and toward Old Rassmussen’s bedroom. What a quiet figure, to pass so quietly that even a cat did not hear.

The shadow slipped down the hall quickly, and stopped before the door of Old Rassmussen’s room. The figure laid a hand on the door to open it a little wider, a the door opened with the smallest protest.

Downstairs Tybalt’s ears jumped. The sound came from upstairs! A door! Perhaps Cinnamon was awake and frightened, or sleepwalking as she sometimes did. He had better get up there.

The room upstairs was totally dark. The shadow crept across the room and hovered a moment at the foot of the bed, then came around, closer to Cinnamon’s head. Gently and slowly it pulled back the covers from over her.

Tybalt entered at just that moment and saw the figure. His back arched and he hissed violently, spitting and swiping. Get away from her!

The figure took a step back, but made no other move. After a moment, Tybalt let his back down. The figure did not seem so menacing as it had at first. Tybalt hopped up on the bed, still protective of his lady. The figure seemed to smile, both frightening and reassuring at once. Tyablt seemed to sense that this shadow was like him; a watcher. A protector.

And suddenly as it had come, it was gone.

Tybalt decided not to leave Cinnamon for the rest of the night, and so curled himself up in her arms. Just before he fell asleep, he could not help but wonder; if the house came with it’s own protector, just what was it protecting them from?

The sunlight shining through the shutters woke Cinnamon the next morning. She shook her head and rolled over. Ouch. She smiled a little that her muscles were sore from the previous day’s work. Her stomach gave a little ache, a reminder that she was hungry.

“Always hungry,” she mused, “always needing to be fed. How much I could get done if I just didn’t have to eat.”

She felt acutely lonely as she got out of bed, even with Tybalt there, whom she gently scooted out of her way before exiting her bed. She spotted the grand vanity near the window that was hers now, and sat down at it. There were several silver handled hairbrushes in one of the drawers- some long handled, some short handled, some with boar bristles and others with thick wooden teeth.

She chose a long handles brush with thick, wooden teeth, and started brushing her curly red hair. She’d had a strange dream the night before. She’d dreamed that she’d been in her bed sleeping, when a voice called to her from outside. She’d dreamed that she had put on her dressing robe and gone down the stairs, but there had been no one at the door.

The dream had left her with an unsettled feeling.

Cinnamon re-adjusted herself on the bench, looked on the mirror, and, with the long, silver-handled brush, brushed the memories and shadows out of her head.

There was no one to see her today, so she decided to just let her hair fall loose and slightly curled over her shoulders. Then she put on her usual uniform of overalls and a boys cap, remembered to make her bed, and took the silver brushes downstairs to be polished.

So again began the scrubbing. First she shined the brushes, then she started on the pots and pans she hadn’t managed the day before. The water was a little too cool on the last round, so she went outside to get more wood for a bigger fire. There was always plenty of downed wood in the swamp, but often it was too damp for burning. She wandered deeper into the woods than she had the previous day, pulling dry twigs off the cypress trees instead of the ground, where they would be sure to be wet. The ground below her feet squelched unpleasantly as she stepped on it, in a few places her feet sank into the mud, once all the way up to her ankle.

“Ugh!” she protested, pulling her foot up out of the grime, and heading back to the mansion with her arms full of wood.

She thought she heard voices up ahead, and so slowed her pace, looking carefully to see who her guests might be. She saw a wagon pulled around the front, and so thought that perhaps her guests had gone around back, looking for her. She saw them before they saw her; a group of four women, two older than her by a good fifteen to twenty years, and the other two younger, their daughters most likely, milling about the back door.

“Hello?” she greeted them, coming out of the swamp, her arms still laden with her firewood. 

The women jumped around to look at her.

“You must be mad, girl!” one of the older woman said, the words tumbling out involuntarily.

“Blanche!” chastised the other older woman, “For shame!”

The first woman, Blanche, looked ashamed.

“I’m so sorry.” apologized Blanche, “You startled me, coming out of those woods the way you did. This place…”

“It’s my home now,” said Cinnamon, “And you are welcome here. Won’t you come in?”

Two of the women, Blanche and her daughter, looked very apprehensive, but the other two smiled politely and accepted. After the briefest hesitation, the other women did as well. Cinnamon escorted the women into the dining room off the kitchen, which was certainly not clean, but cleaner than most of the other rooms.

“I’d get you some tea or lemonade, but I haven’t any.” Cinnamon apologized, sitting down around the table with them.

“Of course you haven’t my dear!” exclaimed one woman. “Pray, let me introduce you to us. I am Cindy, and this is my daughter Alexandra. My sister-in-law is Blanche, and her daughter Sally. We are all Talbots- her husband is my husband’s brother.”

“How very nice to meet you. I am Cinnamon Rassmussen.”

“Cinnamon! What a peculiar name,” said Alexandra with a smile, “And we haven’t come for tea; we’ve come to offer our help. We heard from old Ben that there were lights in the windows here last night, and we’d heard that you were coming, so we thought it was you.”

“There’s lights in these windows often enough.” Cinnamon heard Sally murmur to her mother.

“What do you mean, Sally?” Cinnamon asked, beginning to dislike Sally.

“Oh! Oh, nothing. I don’t mean a thing.” Sally stammered.

There was a pregnant pause.

“Look,” Cinnamon sighed, “I know the stories, I know the legend. I know that everyone claims the place is cursed, so I’m not surprised to hear rumors about lights in the windows at night. I’m not afraid.”

Alexandra laughed out loud, “Oh! Oh, I like you. You’re a spunky one.”

Sally narrowed her eyes at them.

Cindy reached across the table, and put a hand on Cinnamon’s wrist.

“We want to help you out, that’s all. I’ve brought some things with me in the wagon, two chickens and a few eggs, and a few fixin’s for sandwiches, bread and ham and cheese.”

Cinnamon was taken aback at her new neighbor’s generosity.

“Why, thank you! Thank you very much, I…”

“Oh, none of that!” Cindy smiled, a cheery smile that reminded Cinnamon of sunshine, “Now, tell us where to begin.”

The work of five women was much more effective than the work of just one. The dust fairly flew, and the older women were especially helpful in deciding what rooms they would keep covered in sheets, and which would be used more often. Cinnamon didn’t like keeping any of the rooms covered in sheets, because she found it unwelcoming and spooky, but she knew she couldn’t keep the whole mansion up and running by herself.

“What on earth are you going to do with a place like this?” asked Alexandra later, as the two finished sweeping the dust off of the grand staircase. 

“I was thinking I could board travelers.” Cinnamon mused, “I’ve got enough rooms, anyway.”

“Well, we’ve got most the bedrooms in decent order. The sheets kept most everything just fine, no matter how much time went past.”

“Just how much time was that?” Cinnamon asked.

Alexandra gave her a look, “Well, no one can say for sure. Stories say that ever since that night the place has been still, and after Old Rassmussen buried that Alyce, he hid away and disappeared. My Gran says that horses would come and go from time to time, mostly at night, and lights could be seen in the windows at night, but it just got stranger and stranger until it got totally still, and someone got it into their head to go lookin’ after Old Rassmussen, and when they got here, it was just like this, and no one was here.”

The strangest part of cleaning the house was cleaning up the moldering banquet. The women were as shocked as Cinnamon to find it still there, after fifty years, still sitting on the table. Blanche and Sally flatly refused to go into the room, so it was left to Cindy, Alexandra and Cinnamon to clean it. There was very little rottenness in the food, it was so decomposed that it was a lot like dirt, platters and platters of fine china, filled with dirt. Cinnamon wanted it poured into the garden, thinking that it would make for fertile soil.

“What should I do with this?” asked Cindy, bringing Cinnamon the silver mask from the floor where she had dropped it.

Cinnamon looked at it a for a long minute, then proffered her hand.

“Give it here,” she smiled, “it’s mine now, too.”

At that moment Blanche stuck her head in the door.

“It’s getting late. We ought to get going.”

And so they did. Cindy left the food she had promised, and said that she would return soon. Cinnamon watched them drive away until there was nothing left to see, and she turned back into the house, to face another night with the darkness.

But it wasn’t night just yet. Cinnamon took the mask she still had in her hand with her up to her room. She sat back down in the stool before the mirror of the vanity. She turned her face this way and that, looking at it from all angles.

Could that face be pretty? Wasn’t she, after all, related to the famous belle who once wore the mask? Cinnamon lifted the mask up to her face, and tied the ribbons behind her head. She didn’t like the feeling it gave her, so she quickly pulled it off and set it back down.

Damned thing.