The Man in Black

Lydia Sylvester thought nothing when she saw the man enter the ballroom.

He was an odd sight, to be sure. He was dressed head to toe in black, from shoes to suit and back down to his pristine black socks. On the top of his head rested a freshly styled black coiffure, and, although she couldn’t quite see from the other side of the room, she could have sworn that she saw ebony irises piercing out from narrowed, searching eyes. His entrance was not heralded, and nobody turned or even seemed to care that he had walked into the room. He was a jet black statue in a colorful and sumptuous daydream, but nonetheless, she thought nothing.

After all, her father’s balls had been attended by eccentrics for as long as she could remember. At the age of sixteen, in fact, when she was first allowed to make an appearance at such an event, she had been greeted by no less than six religious zealots, a score of suffragettes, and a woman who claimed to have seen a unicorn in the woods behind her house. She was frightened of what they had to offer, be it promotional pamphlets or, in the latter case, a large quantity of opiates, but she had learned to grin and bear it over the years. Sometimes, she even welcomed the breath of fresh air that a new individual brought to her life--but only when that breath was sweet. Thus, her only thought after a long while of watching the man was to make a mental note to ask her best friend, much more socially adept than she, who he was.

As if on cue, the minute she made the note, she saw a flash of red hair and pink taffeta from the corner of her eye: signposts of flamboyance and perfect taste, which could mark the appearance of only one person.

She turned towards the pops of color with an easy smile. “Miss Wadsworth,” she said. “I had heard you wouldn’t be coming.”

Amelia Wadsworth turned at the sound of her voice and squealed, as she was wont to do. She grabbed fistfuls of her massive skirt and ran towards Lydia, a wide grin on her face. “Miss Sylvester, I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she said, grabbing her friend’s hands and spinning her around in her excitement.

Laughing, Lydia planted her feet firmly on the marble floor, stopping Amelia’s momentum with a start. “Miss Wadsworth,” she said with calculated suspicion. “Isn’t your grandfather on his deathbed?”

“Oh, yes, that,” Amelia said, finally understanding. “Well, he told me just an hour ago, he told me, ‘Amelia, Death will be busy tonight. He will not come for me.’” She shrugged. “I suppose he said it to comfort me. I don’t think he intended to convince me to abandon his bedside.”

Lydia let out a shrill giggle, the kind that Amelia gasped at when she emitted it in public, and this instance was no exception. “Miss Wadsworth, you devil,” she said, briefly turning to survey the room around them.

When she turned, the man was closer than before, around the center of the room now. A chill ran down her spine as she realized that he did, in fact, have ebony eyes, and they were still searching.

Eyebrows knitted in worry, she leaned closer to Amelia, the skirts of their dresses meeting like taffeta oil and lace vinegar. “I say,” she asked, working to keep the concern from her voice, “do you know that man over there?”

Amelia looked where Lydia was looking, scanning the crowd for the source of her friend’s inquiry. “Which one?” she replied. “There are quite a few here.”

Lydia smiled softly. “The one right there,” she said, pointing. “The man in black.”

Amelia floated back down to the bottoms of her feet. “I don’t see a man in black, Miss Sylvester,” she said.

Lydia opened her mouth to respond, then stopped, absorbing the statement. “That’s impossible,” she finally replied. She turned to Amelia, searching for some mirth or joking, a sign that her leg was being pulled, but there was nothing there but a slight mote of concern.

She turned back to the man, in order to point him out again, and gasped sharply--he had progressed. He was close enough that she could see the black handkerchief sticking just so out of his jacket pocket. It, like everything else about him, was neat, perfect, and dark. “That’s impossible,” she repeated in a shaking whisper.

A hand touched her back, and she started, only to recognize the soft, warm feeling of Amelia’s touch. “Miss Sylvester?” she asked. “Is anything the matter?”

Lydia swallowed, barely registering the question. “The man right there, right in front of us,” she said. “The man with the black hair, and the black suit, and the black eyes, standing right in front of us. Don’t you see him?”

“Lydia,” Amelia replied, and it was only the startling breach of politeness that pulled Lydia back to reality. “There is no man in black there.”

A silence passed, stifling and complete. “That’s impossible,” she said once more. She pointed at the man in black but could not form the words spiralling through her panic-stricken head. From this distance, she could just barely see a long, jagged scar under his eye, and her heart began to pound in her chest. “You have to,” she whispered. She whirled to Amelia, who was looking ever more frightened. “You have to see him. Somebody has to see him!”

Her voice, having risen in pitch, called the whole room to attention, and the silence that followed was deafening.

Breathing heavily, Lydia turned back to face the man in black, letting out a shrill and tortured scream as she saw him standing right before her. She could see every stitch of his suit and every pore on his face, and she was trembling in his presence. Lifting up one pale, quivering finger, she screamed, “Doesn’t anybody see the man in black?”

Every eye in the room turned to look at the space in front of her, but no recognition appeared in any of those eyes. The only indication that anything was happening was in the ebony eyes, which twinkled as the man in black smiled wide.

“Lydia,” Amelia said in her ear, forcing her chin to look away. “There is nobody there.”

Before she could respond, she was dragged away. She was aware of a thousand eyes watching her, but she did not care.

“You’re going to sit down for a while,” Amelia continued. “Alright?”

Lydia did not respond, did not nod, just stared straight into Amelia’s eyes--she did not dare to look at the man in black again. She did not dare to see how close he had grown.

When next she blinked, she was sitting in a hard-backed wooden chair, and a glass of water was sitting coldy in her sweat-covered hands, moistening them even further with condensation. Out the corner of her eye, she spotted Amelia and a maid, speaking in hushed voices where they believed she could not see her. She could not, however, hear them, and this frustrated her. She did not want to be sent somewhere for visions or hallucinations. She was not insane or suffering from some malady--there was a man there. A man in black.

Once the tremors in her hand ceased, she raised the glass to her lips and took a long, methodical sip, swallowing the entirety of its contents in a matter of seconds. The cold, fresh taste lingered on her tongue, and she felt better. It could have been a vision, she thought, letting out a breath. It could have been too much dancing. But now I am alone, and sitting, and I am--

“Miss Sylvester?”

She turned to the voice and let out a short, excruciating gasp.

The man in black was standing right before her. His shoes shone under the gas lamps, as did his eyes, which, she noticed with some trepidation, were no longer searching. Whatever they were looking for, they had found it.

His large, calloused hand was held out to her, strong and expectant. “May I have this dance?”

As if on cue, the band broke into a waltz, slow and sweeping: one, two, three, one, two, three. Lydia’s heart was pounding so hard that she was sure anyone could see it pumping in and out against her tightly laced corset.

“Who are you?” she whispered, barely audible.

The man simply smiled. It was a warm smile, showing no teeth but still sending comfort and support to the terrified girl in the wooden chair. It changed his entire appearance somehow, like the darkness was not some evil entity. Like the darkness was simply the sky in the night--constant, expected. Sheltering.

“May I have this dance?” he asked again.

Before she knew it, her hand was in his.

Slowly, slowly, she stood up. Her legs were shaky but stable, and she did not stumble on her way to face him. He was decidedly taller than her; she had to take a few steps to be within dancing distance of him. His smile grew as she drew closer, a light welcoming a moth into its embrace.

She placed her free hand on his shoulder, soft under layers of black fabric, and he followed suit, placing a warm hand, much warmer than any that had tried to comfort her that night, on the small of her back. It was exhilarating. It was an all-encompassing feeling of...of…

Within seconds, she fell backwards, suddenly losing her balance, and the man’s arms followed, dipping her just above the cold floor below. Her heart was beginning to pound again, but slower. So much slower.

Above the blood swirling in her ears, she could barely hear a voice--his voice--say, “Time to go home, Miss Sylvester.”

And the world went dark.

---

Lydia Sylvester, daughter of esteemed parliamentary official Jonathan Sylvester, died suddenly during one of his lavish balls. The cause remains unknown, but she was reported as having vivid hallucinations shortly before her death. An autopsy will be released later in the week, but doctors conjecture that the heiress may have been poisoned (an emptied water glass was spotted near her body). In any case, we ask simply that you send condolences to her grieving family, and pray that her soul will be claimed for Heaven.