Reflected sorrows

Chapter 5

She stared into the unknown abyss of shadow for a second, contemplating what she had come here for; she had known of the terrors that lay within these empty halls, and the ghosts had haunted her nightmares for days after she had heard a rumour of such a horror existing; but now that its walls lay enclosed around her, she could feel her chest tightening and her sight growing weary and dull. She looked behind, but as before it did not look familiar. It was a strange reality here- if you turned away it was gone from your mind, replaced with a figure of grinning faces and joy emanating from each brick and every crevice. She turned back to her dreary surroundings, hearing the pattering of rain begin outside and the wind howl through the house like a hunter's shot through the air as it sought the prey, its quarry flailing around but knowing it was hopeless. She took a step, but it felt heavy with grief, a great weight upon her shoulders and yet making her feel as if she was floating among clouds, stormy and brooding. Everything had felt this way for a while, she thought- perhaps it was the cruel hand of grief claiming her for his own and feeding off her misery. But the darkness had tendrils reaching out from the shadowed crevices in the precarious walls, and she knew it had to be something more than simply a feeling of grief; it had the cold touch of death, and she gazed into the stormy, seething shadows with terror in her eyes of what the hunter may do when it found her cowering form. She knew this dread was not just grief; not just a candle gone too soon out. Not a brief moment of respite before the world ticked once more and the clocks were awakened from a stale, choking slumber. This dread she felt was almost distant. The billowing smoke flooding from the windows before the owner realises it's too late. It was a distant, potent stench of foreboding, and the tendrils which she saw among the mist were slimy and cold, grotesque in their every movement. This could not simply be a bout of grief set of by a hollowed-out hole festering in her mind. This was a war she had been waging for a while, but only now was the light dim enough to see it.

But, seeing that she had only hours left until she would have to leave once more, looking upon the tilting structure through the eyes of a foreign land, she sighed and carried on and with her two, unwavering hands stumbled upon a door. There, the handrails trailed off, leaving her to grasp for them until she only found rubble that fell into a dark, insidious abyss of lost dreams. She there found a handle of a door, surprisingly warmed by the touch of a hand. Was she not alone here? Did she have an accomplice in her great sacrilege? She shivered at the thought. There, as it turned, a grim click rang out into the cascading stairs and called back to her after a few moments. It called her name. Celeste. Celeste. Celeste. It was incessantly rasping and spoke the syllables in such a strange, somehow familiar accent. Celeste. Celeste Celeste. She slammed the door as she entered and felt the cold hand of death brush her shoulder once more, the syllables of that voice calling her name scraping away the masks of joy that plagued her shadowed existence in sorrow. Here it lay- a room full of mirrors; they bled tears of children with lost hope making them drown in despair, and they spoke her name; the scraping away of her joy was an etching of terror into her mind, the permanent state of horror making her quiver under the gaze of the empty walls. No painting lay here, leaving traces of hope and civilization in its wake. Simply dull reflections of the torn carpets that made her lapse into near malady and wish for the anguish of this dreary night to end. She wished for the fog of dreary reflections to flicker intermittently and fade into nothing. But the light shed was tears of blood shed over the battlefield; and no war can end without a little grief spilling out from the open wound. She felt the torment roaring in her ears; she felt the rush of cascading madness. Then out of the corner of her eyes she saw her. Her. Her. The girl; her grin was insidious as a nightmare, and her teeth glinted in the shadows cruelly. In the pit of her belly Celeste felt potent horror rising like smoke from a bubbling cauldron, and she stared in horror, then took one more glance behind and fled.

1 am. It was time to flee from these drearily ticking clocks; to flee from the mirrors that stretched up onto the highest wall and were looming and dull in their malice, their rims like the bags under the eyes of an insomniac, and their grey reflections echoing insidious dread into her chest, her heart pounding; she could flee. But something stopped her. Something lurked in the silence that the dread left behind; something familiar. And though she tried to ignore it, its gaze was incessant, the untimely hand of death haunting her every move.

 She ran, feeling the potent fumes of the witch's brew inside of her boil over into panic. She didn't have a choice but to run; she took a glance behind her. There lay nothing there but the terrors of grey, ineffably insidious reflections of all her own sorrows. And so, she ran. The land in front of her rolled in a blur of frantic terror. It was grasping for the side of a boat that was sinking and wishing it could just sense the rotting, soaked wood under its palms. Nothing lay but the land writhing and leaving nothing but chaos in its wake; she flung the door open. She had no mercy but the calm among the storm of panic writhing against chains. The door was there, tossed onto the ground like childhood dreams. Then panting, she found herself gazing upon the rain-infested sky, dreary and dull. There lay a decayed snapshot of what was once a door keeping all the nightmarish things inside tossed like a leaf in the wind. Tossed around like the leaves raining from a melancholy sky. She collapsed among the fallen breaths of fire, and the rain poured upon her unrelentingly, but she did nothing to stop it. She lay for a few moments, staring into the vile abyss of dull dreams. Such a night had befallen her, and yet now she saw the frail beginnings of a sunrise etching their presence on a new page. One full of wavering hope. A hope that cold wither within a drop of water falling upon its feeble form, but one that would keep her eyes wide open. But it was dull, a masquerade of truth and deception; hollow mouthed as it was spoken as if it had been carved of all its festering joy. She felt a shiver engulfing her body and peeled her corpse from the ground. All this rain was a melody of despair that she was familiar with; the rain had always been here. The dreamy yet nightmarish thunder that rolled in the distance, searching for its quarry with a glare so full of malice that it terrified her. All of this was normal. Everything was... Fine. Fine.

There stood the door, its black wood slightly ajar. She entered, staring at the door behind her to make sure it was locked. The keys were almost deafening among the melancholy, grim silence that lurked as a relentless dissonance, and she felt their cold mass in her hand. Celeste thought she had been there perhaps for a night, but somehow the memories here were stale, giving of a foul stench of death from all the joyous and merry photos. This... Wasn't right. As she walked up the stairs, the handrails keeping her frail form from falling, she sensed a presence there with her. She knew them. She knew that foul stench of unease creeping over her skin and consuming her ravenous mind with apprehension. But, dispelling it as lassitude, she turned a corner and crept through the corridors, her footsteps making small indents in the damp wooden floors. The flickering lights lit her cold, dysfunctional world in a cold, unfriendly light, like a blinking eye of a monster from the dark. She didn't know what she was creeping away from. The danger was over; but the uncanny sense of home she felt was not something that had lurked in the land she walked before- it was instead a new presence; one of dread and contempt. She felt a shudder crawl over her arms and down her spine, lifting her as swift as a puppeteer through into her bedroom, which had low, sloping walls. She even had to duck under the dripping water coming through the walls, and have the cold droplets soak her clothes as she lay, fatigue claiming her slowly and cruelly, upon the rough sheets. It came slowly, a predator sneaking up on its prey. Too slowly for her to be comfortable among the veils of thin warmth.