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Jamie knows every inch of the grounds of the manor. Been walking it for nearly five years now. Knows every leaf, every branch, every flower in this world she lives and breathes in. The one she pours so much of herself into day in and day out, as the seasons and years come and go, she puts her head down in the dirt and tends to it, channeling all the aching loneliness of her heart into something that’ll grow and maybe, if she’s lucky, make the world a little more beautiful and alive along the way.
So Jamie knows, sure as the skin she’s wearing is her own, that something is wrong. She doesn’t know how she got to Bly in the first place, really. And not in the wider existential way (which was, in fact, rather straightforward. She got out, took the first job that kept her working hard enough to stay busy and out of trouble, which eventually took her to the middle of the country, even further from anything that resembled her old life), but in a very concrete ‘one-moment-I-was-sitting-on-my-couch-and-the-next-I’m-standing-here’ sort of way.
So Jamie knows, sure as she knows every leaf, every branch, every flower on the grounds of Bly Manor, that something is wrong. The air seems to be vibrating off-key, shadows are falling in the wrong direction, and everything is tilted just a little bit to the left.
There’s a strange girl standing on the parapet. She looks young, about Flora’s age, the moon illuminating her white nightgown like a spectre. She has a long, single braid and Jamie opens her mouth to try and call out, but no sound escapes. No one should be up there, Jamie thinks, it’s not safe. She thinks about when Dani had arrived and said she’d seen a man up there. Thinks about Peter Quint slinking about. Thinks she’d like to get to that little girl faster than anyone else.
It seems Jamie only has to consider going upstairs before she finds herself there, suddenly standing at the top of the staircase despite never having walked a single step towards it. She puts it out of her mind since it doesn’t matter as much as finding the kid as the knot of dread in her stomach grows stronger, taking root, with each passing moment.
Something pulls her towards Dominic and Charlotte’s room, tugging from deep inside her chest, and whatever Jamie expected to find in there, it wasn’t Rebecca Jessel, hanging from the ceiling with a noose around her neck, wearing the same outfit she’d last seen Dani in not three hours ago. She doesn’t have time to scream as a white blur dashes out of the room and Rebecca’s gruesome arm raises to point a finger to follow, her message clear. Jame doesn’t look back as she sprints after the girl back through the hallway and down the stairs, but Rebecca’s empty, haunted eyes follow her anyway.
The girl in the nightgown is standing just ahead, right on the other side of the threshold, the great big doors of the manor yawning wide open into the night. Jamie takes a step forward from the staircase to the foyer but finds her foot falling through the floor. She looks down and finds that the manor is gone; her leg, which had gone through the floor, is now knee-deep in the lake. The girl is gone, only the black stretch of darkness with the moon shining bright overhead. Dread is still sending thin tendrils out from the rotten roots and Jamie will be damned if she finds herself coming up just a little too short once more, unable to save someone at the edge of these waters. Not again.
Whatever bad thing is about to happen is dangling dangerously overhead like a guillotine blade, sharp and slanted, and Jamie shouts a desperate blind warning into the darkness when suddenly the girl reappears, popping into being like a flickering lightbulb. She’s facing away from her, staring up at the moon, and Jamie sloshes forward best she can to get to her. Her clothes are heavy, slogging through the water, but when she finally gets close enough to reach out and lay a hand on her shoulder, thick clouds cover the moon under the shroud of darkness and the world blinks out of existence.
When moonlight emerges once more, illuminating the lake, the girl is gone and a strangled scream makes it halfway out of Jamie’s throat as terror takes over at the sudden ghostly, wet visage of Dani, just as Jamie left her in the hallway just three hours ago, now without a face, her features smoothed over like soft clay. Her hair, matted and wet, hangs in gaunt curtains and nothing remains of her beautiful, perfect face aside from thin lips that are all that’s left of Dani’s mouth and her lips don’t move, don’t make a sound, but Jamie hears it ringing in her head anyway clear as day - Hurry - before she wakes up in a cold sweat, gasping for air on the couch in her flat.
And Jamie knows, sure as she knows every leaf, every branch, and every flower at Bly that something is wrong. She scrambles for the phone and dials the only other number she’s ever bothered to memorize.
It’s near 1am but the phone barely rings once before it picks up and a haggard and urgent “Hello?” comes through the line as if they’d been anxiously waiting for the call. She needs to get back. Dani’s ghostly warning still rings in her ear: Hurry.
“Owen?” Jamie rasps back, throat dry.