Hilltop House

Cora, Eighteen

How long she'd been there, she couldn't tell. None of it seemed to follow the rules of time or even make sense in a material way. It wasn't quite as it had been in her dreams; there'd been less clarity, there, a sort of haziness and always the distant awareness that she'd wake at some point. But these halls and rooms—she'd been wandering for what had to have been hours, moving in a sort of throbbing atmosphere through an illogical labyrinth, lost and yet strangely unafraid, her body sedated, drunk on something other than alcohol. It was the heart of the house; that much, she knew. This was its rawness, its self laid bare to her. It was everything she knew it wanted to be. Somehow, in all her dreams, it had communicated this to her because it trusted her, it cared about her—it wanted to be with her.

Cora saw everything around her with striking focus and yet at the same time felt as if she moved underwater. No, not water—it was thinner than that, and somehow echoing into what sounded like a vast emptiness, the echoes at odds with the closeness of the corridors enshrouding her. Of everything she'd seen since entering her closet, the girl hadn't come across a single window that looked out into a world beyond. She'd walked low-ceilinged, wood-paneled rooms and dripping corridors and vast galleries, massive marble staircases and columns of narrow, twisty spiral steps, just as she had in her dreams, and yet they were more vivid, more real, with detail she'd not recalled. Around it all hovered the constant onus of watchfulness, of some predatory presence waiting within every sight and sound. It was the house, surely, but what it meant for her she didn't know, couldn't fathom. Her thoughts were disordered; her perception was flawed. And for all the clarity she felt she'd gained, all the sharp edges of the images around her, there was an overall heavier cloak descending upon her, something that wouldn't dampen her senses or awareness but would hinder her ability to make proper judgments, to move in ways she wanted to move. It was there--the threat of control. She was going to lose herself. Even as she continued to wander freely, she could feel the pull of something beyond her. Her recognition of it had come on slowly--when she'd first stepped into this amorphous place, she'd not felt it at all . . . or had she?

Without any sense of time, she couldn't tell much of anything.

Her arms . . . was there not pressure on them? As if hands-and-yet-not-hands were touching her, and her stomach--the impressions were there as well, and on her legs, her shoulders, all of her, from all sides as if some invisible presence wanted to caress her, to pet her. It was utterly unnerving, and yet she could see no source, couldn't even say there was a source. Her lips--something played at the corners, tickled as delicately as if a thread brushed against the invisible hairs there, and when she lowered her chin slightly, opened her mouth, something pushed her lower lip down, tenderly, so that her teeth showed. There were more such strange sensations, soft things, subdued manipulations, some delicate exploration of her physical form, and Cora found she was entirely unable to stop it. The investigation was gentle at first, almost shy if she could give character to it, in conjunction with her own wary wandering. But somehow, gradually, it began to feel invasive, to affect her in uncomfortable ways. She became concerned that whatever was there was growing too free with her.

Her only response to it was to continue moving, to behave as if she appreciated all she was experiencing, to touch and explore the shifting interior of this place. As long as she kept on, the invisible inspector remained subdued.

When something happened to change it all, Cora was in an endless hallway, innumerable doors with giant rubies for knobs—no, she was in a strange gallery, mirrors reflecting one another across a vast expanse, a dark ballroom, and she was sure the shadows were filled with whatever it was that inspected her. But then, other locations and images filtered across and through her, as well--spidery alcoves and somber tapestry-lined bedrooms, marble statues tucked into alcoves, water trickling down mossy old stones, effusive bouquets of pale spider-webbed flowers, black flamed candles burning in crystal chandeliers, dusty tomes and jars of pickling oddities and phantom music, veined fountains and translucent colored glass and peeling wallpaper and bizarre steaming indoor pools and creeping greenhouses and dripping candelabras and distant mewling sounds and nearby footsteps and incense and melting wax and gaping portraits and something hostile--something poisonous, something that sought her in all of this fever dream, this protean maze. Her form was hardly her own, her mind was losing itself; she had little grasp on who she was or what lay beyond any of this . . . what was this, after all? Had she always been here? And where was here? It was all too confusing.