Reflected sorrows

Chapter 7

She could see no sunlight even though the sun was rising, scorching the land around her in arid, incessant heat. She could see no moonlight, though all her senses knew she should be able to taste the smell of night air fading and feel lights coming into the dark. She should have felt so many things, and yet everything was distant but the footsteps entering the cavernous chambers of this accursed place- it was a palace for the spider that spun webs of malady, and tangled many unsuspecting preys into a trap, simply swallowing remorse and welcoming them with a sly smile. It was homely to all those who dared touch its spikes, and disturb its hard, phlegmatic outer shell of dismissal, but to those who walked away it showed no mercy. She felt its arms around her, and glanced behind her to see the sun, even if only once, but already it was creeping shut, silently signing her demise and then slowing, almost to a complete stop. There it accelerated and slammed in the wind, taunting her with shadows that leached at her sanity and fuelled her fire of madness. It felt cruel against her skin as she took tentative steps towards those stairs once more, and slid her hands along the vile, slimy scales of the banisters. The snakes trailed away and then she climbed one more set of stairs. But that was it. One more then a turn, then a straight path back to the rooms of terror, and the mirrors scattering menacing lights across the floor, shining as dull as twilight among a mist of paranoia that crept over the skin and air of the brickwork. She found herself unable to stop, and she writhed against her own body, willing it to halt in its exploration and set her free from its icy chains. She willed it desperately to lay still and breathe in the shallow air, but it did not- it was relentless. It did not halt, and instead stayed at the same pace. Every second was a knife driving into her chest making it hard to breathe. It got harder and harder until it felt like she was choking in a sea of crimson blood; but her outer shell was calm. Stoic. Not even flinching through her torment. She writhed and writhed but it was no use. Her body was lifted uncannily, and her footsteps were called unwillingly down the hall; her limbs were limp to her prayers. So she cast her gaze around, but no one heard her screams, and so she soon fell silent among a sea of dull carpets, seeing only the stairs she needed to climb and the banisters that mocked her.

Those eyes were everywhere, sick with disdain to point of shallow breath and numb, insidious malice, and she saw only the mockery that danced inside those milky gazes. They laughed and cackled among the restless walls, their glares a scent that lingered in her mind as she lay among these walls. She saw their frames first- the wood was dark and brooding, with rivers carved into it intricately with calamity in mind, but instead tainting them with malady and disease. It was infested with leeches and sucked dry of life, and yet this wood was alive; it had a pulse, a breath, and voices rasping and whispering from its echoing chambers; its chest full of breath sank and rose in a dull rhythm, but it unnerved her to the core. It did not feel kind in the slightest- it felt stale and fake, a masquerade of hidden faces and a corpse falling to the ground. It was alive and yet its voice was cold as death, sending a shudder down her spine and tainting her every thought with dread. But this wood was alive. She was sure of it. And perhaps it itself was the mask. The cover- the veil coating the cold-blooded murderer's smile as the corpse fell; that's what the eyes were. Death- pale and unwell in their malady and yellowed. They gazed at her in this state of mania. She knew this was something she had done; she had brought this upon herself and now she would never cool the stares of pity from their source of hate and detest. Then there lay something among it all. She ran past the painted sorrows and yelled out in the dark; someone had to be here, someone. Instead, there lay simply a statue. A statue with downcast eyes and features frozen in time.

Its hair flowed in deep, shadowed ravines, full of mystery and horrific things no man should ever see. It lay in untidy swathes over the shoulders and seemed to call her name. Celeste. Celeste. Celeste. Her name, and yet it felt unfamiliar while spoken in this uncanny tongue. She cast her gaze down the hair, then fought up the river once more to reach the eyes. That cold glare. It felt like death scraping away at her slowly and cruelly. It was nothing but sorrow, and a thick curtain of gloom covered all in an air of mystery. She wished she could just see past the veil and reach into the caverns of the eyes. But they were empty apart from a single speck of black in the centre, the only drop of colour among an ocean of weeping grey and sapphire. A boat in a sea, so easily tossed around in the waves and storms of life. So often sacrificed. And the eyes, too, called her name. Celeste. Celeste Celeste. She swallowed a scream as the shallow voice began to fade, being spoken in a deathly tongue before fading off, and the blank, dreary eyes of the statue moved to face her. They were blank. Hollow. She tried to scream but nothing came out. She tried to move but her feet stayed firmly on the ground, as if she herself were a statue. She turned away to see something other than that blank stare, but the statue was gone- disappeared before she could give it another glance.