Serafina and the Black Cloak. Robert Beatty

hesitated, frightened, her heart pounding so hard it felt like it was going to burst. Her body shook all over. She didn’t want to go another step, but friends had to help friends. She didn’t know much about life, but she did know that, knew that for sure, and she wasn’t going to run away like a scared-out-of-her-wits squirrel just when somebody needed her most. Trembling all over, she steadied herself the best she could, sucked in a deep breath and pushed herself round the corner.

      A broken lantern lay tipped on the stone floor, its glass shattered but the flame still burning. In its halo of faltering light, a girl in a yellow dress struggled for her life. A tall man in a black cloak and hood, his hands stained with blood, grabbed the girl by the wrists.

      The girl tried to pull away. ‘No! Let me go!’ she screamed.

      ‘Quiet down,’ the man told her, his voice seething in a dark, unworldly tone. ‘I’m not going to hurt you, child . . .’ he said for the second time.

      The girl had curly blonde hair and pale white skin. She fought to escape, but the man in the black cloak pulled her towards him. He tangled her in his arms. She flailed and struck him in the face with her tiny fists.

      ‘Just stay still, and it will all be over,’ he said, pulling her towards him.

      Serafina suddenly realised that she’d made a dreadful mistake. This was far more than she could handle. She knew that she should help the girl, but she was so scared that her feet stuck to the floor. She couldn’t even breathe, let alone fight.

      Help her! Serafina’s mind screamed at her. Help her! Attack the rat! Attack the rat!

      She finally plucked up her courage and charged forward, but just at that moment, the man’s black satin cloak floated upward as if possessed by a smoky spirit. The girl screamed. The folds of the cloak slithered around her like the tentacles of a hungry serpent. The cloak seemed to move of its own accord, wrapping, twisting, accompanied by a disturbing rattling noise, like the hissing threats of a hundred rattlesnakes. Serafina saw the girl’s horrified face looking at her from within the folds of the enveloping cloak, the girl’s pleading blue eyes wide with fear. Help me! Help me! Then the folds closed over her, the scream went silent and the girl disappeared, leaving nothing but the blackness of the cloak.

      Serafina gasped in shock. One moment the girl was struggling to get free, and the next she had vanished into thin air. The cloak had consumed her. Overwhelmed with confusion, grief and fear, Serafina just stood there in stunned bewilderment.

      For several seconds, the man seemed to vibrate violently, and a ghoulish aura glowed around him in a dark, shimmering haze. A horribly foul smell of rotting guts invaded Serafina’s nostrils, forcing her head to jerk back. She wrinkled her nose and squinched her mouth and tried not to breathe it in.

      She must have made some sort of involuntary gagging noise, for the man in the black cloak suddenly turned and looked at her, seeing her for the first time. It felt like a giant claw gripped her around her chest. The folds of the man’s hood shrouded his face, but she could see that his eyes blazed with an unnatural light.

      She stood frozen, utterly terrified.

      The man whispered in a raspy voice. ‘I’m not going to hurt you, child . . .’

      Hearing those eerie words jolted Serafina into action. She had just seen what those words led to.

       Not this time, rat!

      With a burst of new energy, she turned and ran.

      She tore through the labyrinth of criss-crossing tunnels, running and running, certain that she was leaving him far in the distance. But, when she glanced over her shoulder, the hooded man was flying through the air right behind her, levitated by the power of the billowing black cloak, his bloody hands reaching towards 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 grey smoke. The awful rotting odour 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, she made herself small and pressed herself through the narrow slot of one of the machines.

      When Serafina was born, there had been a number of things physically different