Reflected sorrows

Chapter 2

She saw it before her before she even believed it was close; it had been such a long journey, and now she stood here, waiting on the door to open with a cackle of mischief and grin upon her terror as she trembled within the towering crimson walls. It was cold here, too. So cold. It felt hollow and meaningless with the icy hands it lay upon her shoulders and ran down her spine, down her arms. There lay ahead of her a large, cavernous room that had the arid stench of regret lingering inside it and even within the crumbling bricks and the thin, tearing fibres of the carpet- it was the image of ruin, the mouth of a cave that was as ravenous as the eyes of a bloodthirsty beast. And there lay paintings on the wall- but they were no decayed, ancient brushstrokes that seemed to bring peeled up paint like regrets on the page; it was almost a picture, a snapshot into another world as she gazed upon them, and there lay not even a single imperfection in the paper, almost as clear as a photograph. Impossibly clear and inhumanly melancholic in its perfected view of the world. There were images of wild and rugged nature, but only through windows of time where the pristine glass was somewhat ashamed of its state. It was on the inside of the image, however, grandiose and like chasms of sound echoing through a master's composition. It had banisters looming above the stairs, as if it were made for uncannily tall creatures, and there lay even in the carpets an insidious sense of perfectionism that no human could have made- how could such a place have such perfectly, faultlessly preserved paintings; somehow it unearthed in her a sense of unnerving familiarity. She felt as if... She knew the girl pained with that same backdrop of a red and dark wood house, with trees silhouetted in the outside from glistening windows. Somehow, perhaps in another life, she knew this girl; she knew the freckles sprinkled over her face around her joyous eyes; somehow the girl seemed forlorn, however. The pristine, ochre blue little dress seemed somewhat hollow. Cold. Emotionless. Arid of all joy- but the painting had so much joy in every brushstroke; how was it so sorrowful? How was it so full of incessant grief?

With a curious nature hiding behind a veil of uncanny emotions of familiarity, she put on a fake smile and leapt forward towards every little detail; the tear in the carpet, and the way decay seemed to leech through the hole in the floor, casting chasms of ravines into the red and gold carpet; it was an ocean of once fantastical wonders, now worn by age and covered in a sense of unnerving grief blanketing the wood as it rotted. Then, turning her attention to the banisters, she admired their phlegmatic grace with an undertone of intimidation glistening in her gaze and casting its malice through into even the most insistent thoughts of curiosity. It wasn't meant to be so sorrowful- perhaps it should even have been a joyous occasion if it were not for the insidious shadow of doubt and uncanny terror that lurked in her path. Perhaps the painting was just a painting, and the shadows of shattered glass simply the works of such an ancient place as the littered the windowsills like rain. Perhaps. Perhaps. But perhaps it wasn't just that. It felt too familiar to be simply a coincidence that her gaze searched for things before it had seen them. She prayed, a shudder trickling down her spine. It should have been less hollow than this- so much less empty of feeling. She had chosen to come to this place, and yet she felt that the walls knew her; they had called her here, dragging her forth and yet convincing her she wanted to- she should feel so much more than stale regret pounding on in the background like a beating drum, never once halting to give way to the impenetrable veil of silence, instead writhing against its grasp and giving her only dull curiosity that led her further and further into this abyssal, labyrinthine place. These walls, these paintings, all the precariously balanced bricks, they had plucked her from her house and pulled her on through the drearily falling rain, not caring about her terror.

She yawned, taking a sip out of her flask of water; it was almost time to be leaving- she looked at her pocket watch: it was only just 11pm, the time drooling and seeping through cracks in the dark and decaying wood. She could sense the fingers of slowness crawling down her spine and sending a shiver through her, just as a draught came through one wall, where the wood had rotted so that there was a clear view of the next room, and the furniture it contained- with a dull curiosity thrumming in the back of her mind, she stepped through, and saw yet more paintings littering the walls; they depicted scenes of parties, with the rooms full of life and full of laughter. It was almost as if she was seeing into the scene, watching on as the champagne was sipped. But the next painting had brushstrokes more careless than the last, somewhat less intricate than the images they had cast before her before; a fallen lady, who had a dress that flowed down the steps in a river of sorrows, and a face that gazed with unclear colours into the outside- they were almost milky in the carelessness with which the strokes were placed, as if there hadn't been the time for such futile matters. But she knew the uncanny, blue tint of those eyes; the way the light glinted in the pupil. Like the darkness that reigns over the land as a candle is blown out. She stared into that milky, hollow gaze, so phlegmatic and constant in its glare. Tentatively, she took a few steps to the side. Those eyes. She saw their woeful, sapphire hue at every corner. How, in a world so full of sense and of logic, did such a strange wonder lurk? But surely, she was just imagining it. With a sense of unease crawling over her skin, she gazed upon the furnishings, that were scattered across the room in disarray. They were almost perfectly preserved; they had not a speck of dust littering their surface, and the veil of ruin, which lay remorselessly upon every corner, seemed not to penetrate their fabrics. All this was too uncanny- those paintings, too, were intermittently unnerving. With a wish to leave, casting away all the memories, she fled, through the hole in the wall, and heard the creak of the floorboards as she scuttled away.

Those eyes followed her even as she climbed down the sprawling stairs that lead into an incessant, inescapable dread; her footsteps were simply the ticking of the clock- her heartbeats were the seconds in which she glanced behind her, only to find that the cruel glare of those eyes was cast insidiously down upon her, its sagacious malice potent as the words spoken by bickering lovers. She wished the darkness was not as bitter and melancholy in those milky, shadowed pupils; it was almost just too shadowed and ill-looking, as if the ragged breaths were rasps in her own ears and she were there to see the queen fall. But then as she turned away, the same acrimonious malice was reflected in the intermittent shadow that infested the stairs down a dark and labyrinthine pathway. It was as if a mirror had been placed there, reflecting only what lay in what it was shown, but somehow tainting it with sorrow beyond her own imaginings- it had a potent stench of grief when reflected back, but subtle; a glint in the eyes of the brushstrokes that displayed a glimmer of cruelty and disdain for the outside world. 

Then, turning to the darkness lurking within the swirling chamber, she tentatively wandered on, the banisters vipers beneath her hands with scales scraping past her skin. And it led her on, with only her feeble terror to guide her, down a hall she somehow knew. She knew the jagged tilt of these stairs and the way the grinned at her as she made another step. She knew the cruel and phlegmatic entrails of darkness crawling eternally toward her cowering form- she knew the intimidating brush of the entrails against her skin. She felt the vipers slithering tongue against her throat, and she gazed with unease into the uncanny abyss; reaching for the light which lay in her bag, she grasped in her hand a lighter and carver her way through the woebegone curtain of shadow falling across the stairway ahead; it cascaded down, and she felt its leeching sorrows with every step further into the insidious, unrelenting dread. With the lighting of the lantern, she saw that with one more step would lead her into a chasm of dust, full of many webs that glinted in the orange light. They stared upon the room, watching her caustically and cackling while she could not see them. They lay upon every surface, spreading and festering leaving a stench of vile sorrows to envelope the room in a sealed doom to be forever forgotten. As she entered, however, a hush fell over the veil, tearing the untouched curtain of forgotten memories into pieces and shattering it into tiny pieces, sharp and piercing to walk on. She inspected every corner of the room. She could not gaze upon it without a strange sense of dreary melancholia seeping into her mind, tendrils crawling through her mind. It felt almost too still to be built by the negligence of man, but too cold to be natural.

 So, with a sense of vitriol haunting every glance, she gazed upon the towering bookshelves. They were, for such an old, abandoned building, very disorganised; they lay scattered across the ground in deft piles that leaned, threatening to cascade to the floor at any moment. So untouched and yet as if something lurked in the corners of her mind to leap out and torment her with its rasping voice; she let herself glance at every small detail, the dreary melancholy of this place was accompanied by a sense of unease, and she felt a tingle of doubt at every sharp turn- there was, over there, a mirror. A mirror; so why was it so... unfriendly? It felt so cold, like a chilling hand spreading a tranquil sense of foreboding over her limp, puppet-like corpse. It did not feel as it should. The room had an unrelenting chill to it, piercing her coat's warmth and plucking it from her arms, suddenly making her realise just how alone she was in such a cavernous space- she had not known this chill for such a long time. It was a wintry chill, despite the season of spring having just passed, and the fiery red blazes of Autumn just beginning. She coughed, a ripple of conflicting torrents passing through the potent blanket of dust left to accumulate. She turned to the mirror once more, dread pulsing through her veins, a far outcry from her hesitant anticipation that she had left with- a few more moments of silence followed. One moment. Two. Then, with eyes that protested with all their will, she turned to the mirror once more. But the girl who she saw there was not her. It had dark black hair, with eyes hollow as death but with a horrific flame burning inside. She leapt back, letting out a terrified screech that was silenced only by the footsteps of another. She didn't dare to even look back as she cast her gaze away, dread festering in the corners of her mind where it was dampest. But when she looked back, the girl was gone, replaced by a pale face that was almost unmistakably hers.