Your bridegroom is six feet under in the frozen timber, Clara, and crying won't buy your fare back to Missouri.
The hammering stopped as abruptly as it began. An unnatural silence descended, broken only by the frantic pounding of my own heart.
I stood in the center of the room, my hands outstretched, feeling nothing but empty air. The darkness was absolute. I couldn’t even see my own hand inches from my face.
A new chill began to seep into the room. It wasn’t the usual draftiness of the old homestead. This was a profound cold, sharp and biting, that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
My breath plumed out in thick, white clouds. The air grew colder still, dropping precipitously until I could feel my fingers and toes beginning to numb.
I shivered violently, hugging myself, trying to generate some warmth. The temperature plummeted to sub-zero, even indoors. It was as if a piece of the frozen Montana winter had seeped into my very bones.
Then, a faint, soft blue luminescence began to form. It pulsed gently on the windowpane, a ghostly glow against the impenetrable blackness of the boarded-up glass.
My eyes strained, trying to make sense of the light. It wasn’t coming from outside. It was *on* the glass, within the room, defying the shutters that sealed off the world.
Then, slowly, agonizingly, a pattern began to form in the frost coating the glass. Invisible fingers, guided by some unseen force, were writing.
First, a bold “O.” Then “C.” “T.” “O.” “B.” “E.” “R.”
My breath hitched. My entire body broke out in gooseflesh, not just from the cold, but from sheer terror.
The glowing letters continued, forming the full word. “OCTOBER.”
Then, a space. And a number. “1.” Followed by a “4.”
“OCTOBER 14.”
My mind reeled. October 14th. That date. It was three days *before* Elijah had sent the telegraph to Missouri. Three days before his message, full of false sympathy, claiming Silas had “suddenly fallen ill” and that I should hasten my journey.
Elijah had claimed Silas had died seven days ago, which would have been around October 21st. But this date, October 14th, meant Silas was already dead, or dying, when the telegram was even conceived.
The entire journey, my supposed marriage to Silas, then to Thomas, had been a calculated trap from the very beginning. Elijah had manipulated me, called me to Montana, knowing Silas was already gone.
The glowing blue letters on the frost-covered glass faded, leaving only the impenetrable darkness and the bone-chilling cold. The presence in the room was gone, but its message lingered, a spectral accusation.
Silas hadn’t just died; he had been murdered, and Elijah had planned this for weeks.
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