The Death of Jane Lawrence

In the fictional nation of Great Breltain, still recovering from a war with neighboring Ruzka, practical young accountant Jane Shoringfield proposes a marriage of convenience to Dr. Augustine Lawrence, a reclusive surgeon new to the town of Larrenton. Jane's parents died in the war, and she was raised by her guardians, the Cunninghams, who are now relocating to the capital, Camhurst. Needing a husband to remain in Larrenton, Jane offers to manage Augustine's finances and assist at his surgery in exchange for a marriage in name only. Augustine initially refuses but relents after seeing her skill with his chaotic accounts. He sets one condition: Jane must never stay the night at Lindridge Hall, his decaying family estate outside town.

Jane proves herself during a harrowing emergency surgery on a laborer named Mr. Renton, who arrives with a self-inflicted abdominal wound and a bizarre malformation of the bowel. The shared intensity forges an unexpected bond. When Renton dies the following day, Augustine's grief deepens their intimacy. He shows Jane two rings carved from bone growths removed from a patient whose body had gradually turned to bone, places one on her finger, and Jane kisses him.

They marry within the week. A wedding parade carries them to Lindridge Hall, a crumbling manor where Augustine insists Jane leave before sunset. A storm strands her for two nights. During this time, Jane discovers recurring payments in Augustine's ledger linked to a woman named Elodie—Augustine's first wife, as she will later learn—all apparently rejected by the recipients. She overhears the servants discussing a woman who once lived at the hall and sightings of a red-eyed figure in the windows. Augustine claims Elodie was merely a patient who died of fever.

Unable to sleep one night, Jane sees a woman with golden hair and red eyes in the library window, followed by three tall, inhuman figures with crescent-shaped heads. She follows them to Augustine's study, where the red-eyed woman appears behind him. Jane collapses. The next morning, Augustine insists it was a nightmare, but Jane finds wax burns on her foot from the candelabra she carried, proving she was awake.

The truth unravels further when eight of Augustine's former university colleagues arrive uninvited. Dr. Andrew Vingh reveals that Elodie was Augustine's wife, who died of yellow fever while Augustine was traveling. Jane confronts Augustine, who admits the lie but argues Elodie was never part of their arrangement. Meanwhile, Dr. Avdotya Nizamiev, a specialist from Camhurst's psychiatric asylum, explains privately that Augustine's university circle practiced magic as part of a secret eating club. Nizamiev describes magic as requiring genuine belief in the impossible, with rituals serving as proofs to focus the practitioner's will. After Elodie's death, Augustine attempted a resurrection ritual that failed, instead summoning hostile spirits and binding him to the estate with an illness that worsens whenever he stays away. Dr. Georgiana Hunt proposes a ritual, and Jane volunteers. During the working, she has a vision of Augustine cutting open Elodie's chest while Elodie is still alive. Jane collapses screaming.

After the guests depart, Jane breaks into the locked cellar and discovers a crypt of white stone beneath the house. Elodie's ghost appears, bloody and chest split open, and seizes Jane by the throat. Jane fights free, but the attack causes a mysterious mass to begin growing in her abdomen. She flees to Larrenton, only to find that the Cunninghams have departed for Camhurst without saying goodbye. With nowhere else to turn, she returns to the surgery and demands the full truth. Augustine confesses: Elodie was dying when he returned home. He split open her chest and tried to pump her heart manually, but she died. He then performed a resurrection ritual from his family's occult texts. It failed but opened a doorway that filled the house with spirits. His family discovered him with Elodie's body and abandoned him. He insists his suffering is deserved and refuses any remedy. Jane accuses him of disguising arrogance as humility and leaves.

Jane cares for Abigail Yew, a young woman with a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy. After Augustine's surgery, Jane sits vigil until Abigail survives against all expectations. When a child at a nearby farm falls critically ill, Jane finds Augustine at Lindridge Hall incapacitated by laudanum, a powerful opiate. The spirits manipulate Augustine into believing Jane is dying of yellow fever. He sedates her with ether and drags her to the crypt, where he begins bleeding her on the stone plinth. Jane fights free and slams the cellar door. In a moment of unconscious magic, the door transforms into featureless white stone, sealing Augustine inside. Jane follows Augustine's notes to treat the sick boy, Orren, but Orren dies.

Haunted by these failures, Jane receives instructions from Dr. Nizamiev for a seven-day ritual of deprivation intended to awaken magical abilities. She begins the working at Lindridge Hall after the servants depart at their normal time, using cocaine to stay awake, forgoing sleep, and consuming ritualized meals. Each dawn she cracks a hen's egg that develops progressively from a spot of blood to a half-formed chick, marking her advancement. She repels spirits with chalk circles and discovers she can move objects with her will. When the servants later return and try to remove her, she dismisses them.

On the fourth night, Augustine appears and crosses Jane's protective circle, something no spirit has managed. They make love. By morning he is gone, the crypt still sealed. When creatures wearing the faces of the Cunninghams appear, speaking with impossible knowledge of Jane's insecurities, she traps them and watches their facades crack to reveal the crescent-headed statues. These are not ghosts but entities that feed on shame and guilt. Jane summons Elodie's image in a mirror, and Elodie communicates that ghosts are not real. Jane realizes the Augustine who visited was neither spirit nor the real man, and Augustine might still be alive behind the sealed wall.

Jane peels away the stone blocking the cellar, enduring agonizing pain from the mass in her abdomen. Deep in the crypt, she collapses. Warm hands find her: Augustine, barely alive after six days underground. He carries her to the stone plinth and, at Jane's insistence, operates without anesthesia so she can remain conscious to perform her part of the spell. The mass has grown Augustine's hair, teeth, and an eye. Jane frames the surgery as a magical working: Burning the excised mass will sever Augustine's connection to the house and banish the spirits. She dies on the table.

In a liminal space outside time, Jane perceives all of Lindridge Hall's history. She discovers that Elodie has been truly absent since the failed resurrection; the Elodie who appeared to Jane was Jane herself, moving backward through time from this moment. She also learns that Augustine died in the crypt days earlier. The Augustine who crosses her circle and operates on her is a creation of her own magic. Rather than unmake him, Jane completes the working: The burned mass fills in his gaps and banishes the entities.

Jane gasps back to life as the statues crumble and Lindridge Hall collapses. Augustine carries her out. Mr. Lowell, Augustine's porter, arrives with a carriage and returns them to the surgery. Augustine does not sicken from nights away; the curse is broken. Dr. Nizamiev visits to assess Jane's mental state, and Jane carefully denies any belief in the supernatural. Augustine proposes moving to Camhurst, where Jane could attend university. Jane agrees, choosing to accept her happiness, even knowing the man beside her is not entirely the one she married but something new, something she helped create.