Ortum Infernum [d.m]

Chapter Twenty-Two

September 2005

    Shadows moved in the corners of her room, slinking along the walls and creeping between the furnitures. They taunted her. Imprints of her that vicariously whispered of the unjustified silence that she had subjected herself to.

    The shadows that crept along the ceiling blamed the Gods for her misfortunes. They cursed at the hands of cruelty she had been dealt with. Threatened to tear down the pearly gates for her, to set flames ablaze and turn what once was holy into an abysmal of damnation.

    To paint the world in her misery.

    But there was nothing lurking there. Not really. It was all happening inside her head.

    "Odette," Dr. Goldstein's voice pulled her attention away from the shadow that was wavering by her dresser. "You were telling me about your week."

    She nodded at the reminder. Right. Odette parted her lips to continue where she had trailed off, but she couldn't remember. What couldn't she remember?

    "Your garden. Did any of the new flowers bloom?" Dr. Goldstein kindly supplied and the disconnected link seemed to rewire itself in her mind and she remembered what they were talking about.

    She couldn't see the garden from her bedroom window and she couldn't recall if any of the flowers had bloomed. Odette felt her fingers spasm in her lap and she fought to keep her bottom lip from trembling.

    "I think they did," she lied.

June 1998

    There was scratching at her door. Odette clamped her arms over her head to conceal the noise as she buried her face into the pillow. Her body trembled beyond her control. It felt as though she was losing her mind.

    Flames flickered in the oil lamps, casting elongated shadows that seemed to crawl up the side of her bed. The sounds persisted and cries rang out through the night. Odette felt bile rise in her throat.

    Her kneazles clawed at the door, vocalising their desire to enter her room. They must have escaped the sitting room somehow. Odette had requested the house-elves to keep them confined there. She couldn't bear to be in close proximity with them. Not after -.

    Odette gasped for air. Her trembling body entangled with the covers and she felt claws dragging down her arms.

    How could she explain to her kneazles that she couldn't be around them without feeling sick? Without being reminded of her sin?

    All she could think of, as the persistent sounds filtered into the space, was of a classroom and a cage.

    She had been under the imperius curse when it happened. But she could still remember it all so vividly.

    The feel of fur between her fingers, the daintiness of a bone, a catch of claws against her skin, the hilt of an unforgiving dagger, warm liquid that coated her hands; trailed down her arms.

    The recollection of it turned her insides into molten lead. They seared and branded her organs in repentance.

    Odette wasn't sure how much of it was her warped memories and how much of it was her overactive imagination, conjured to fill in the blank spaces that her mind couldn't make sense of. Everything was blurred in between.

    All she could remember with vivid clarity was blood. The feel of it on her skin. The scent of it in the air.

    In the darkness of the night, she heard Mrs. Norris cry.