The next morning, as Celia prepared breakfast, the door flew open. Mariam swayed in the doorway, her face gaunt and her eyes wild with fear.

“Did the storm shake y’last night, Mariam?” Celia had asked, but Mariam wouldn’t answer.

She simply let out a squawk of terror and bolted from the house, shrieking something that sounded like “Master Maxwell’s mad!” No one could explain her sudden onset of apparent madness, & no one in the house, in town, or any surrounding areas had seen her since. The only theory was that Master Maxwell Stevens had done something so strange and peculiar to her or in her presence to “admonish” her for her “disobedience.”

Celia later found out from the old gardener that this wasn’t the first time this had happened: four other housekeepers and two butlers had fled from their posts in a similar manner within two years of coming into their positions. The housekeeper’s post was cursed, he claimed. Celia swallowed uneasily at this thought.

She’d been made housekeeper upon Mariam’s flight.