Reflected sorrows

Chapter 10

The room before her was dully lit, leaving a brooding mist to fill the darkness with tendrils of terror and melancholy – she did not know just what lay inside. She could see a little shadow reflecting in every mirror, a doubt lurking in every dreary reflection. She cast her gaze around, afraid that something lurked within these walls. It was just a little idea. It was a perception, almost, or so it felt. But the fog of melancholy seemed oppressive. The seed of terror grew slowly at first, lit by nothing but the stormy sky seeping in through cracks and pouring sparingly in through windows in an uncontrollable torrent. It grew mere leaves. For moments it seemed to have stilled, as a frost gathered on its leaves. But then the flames were fuelled by paranoia more and more. The door creaked in its ancient hinges- the windows let in a howl of wind as potent with sorrow as the call of the lone-walking wolf. And the leaves sprouted out from the stalactites that held them; they shivered and sprouted branches which crackled and burst into flame. She breathed through rugged tongues, gazing in her fear at one single reflection. A figure loomed within there, and at first, she felt panic rise as potent as a witch's crooked brew. But then an uncanny flame of recognition lit in her eyes. That figure had yellow skin, sickly yellow, and sores coated the face, making it seem grotesque to the eye. But those eyes, which sat among a gaunt complexion, held the gaze of someone she knew – someone she had loved. She took a few steps back, hoping it was just smoke and mirrors, with tears crawling down her face instead. But the figure remained placid, unperturbed. Phlegmatic. How... This wasn't possible. She tried with all her fear to make a scream etch out of her lungs. But she felt her tongue seize and she heard a faint breath. She looked back to the mirror, and then to the door, and then to the mirror once more. To the curtains hanging, bare-threaded, from the windows. To her reflection once again. And instead of the haunting figure there lay a note;

Come and play; it's been a while – I still know your face, though you never bothered to see mine. Never bothered to check through that putrid door.

She shuddered. That hadn't been there before. She checked for a pen. A trace of ink on the ground. A single drop of ink to suggest that the tendrils of grief were only an illusion. But there was only a piece of paper, thin in her hand as she went to pick it up; it let out a vile scratching sound as horrific as the rasping voice of a wandering spirit. It was almost too thin to be made by a human; it seemed familiar, however, uncanny and unnerving – and how neat the handwriting was, almost too neat and thin tobe anyone else but one person; but she couldn't remember them, their face was an etched, crude drawing on a decaying tree. She should know; the writer knew her. She just needed to meet them. Terror mounting to an inescapable boulder rolling once more down a hill as a weary shadow tried to catch it, she screamed and ran for the door. But she shuddered. It was gone; it was simply an apparition. She stepped through the doorway into a cavernous hall and saw two luminous, blank white eyes at the very edge. When she looked back, they were gone, simply a trick of the light. Where had the stranger gone? Who were they? What were they? A shudder trailed down her spine.

She sensed a panic rising within her with furious torrents and stamped down on its writhing form among the darkness. It receded like the gums on a rotting tooth, surrounded by smoke that curled around. But it began to lap back at the sand and grow back. She glanced at the walls, but in this room the walls were empty of anything she could glimpse the outside world through. Not a single mirror; they were a blank sheet of paper; a story that was never written, remaining phlegmatic in a dark cellar to rot, haunted by cruel tendrils of ink that reached through the page like cracked skin. There should be something. A... Perhaps a lantern. Perhaps a smile; a kind smile like a hand held out to a drowning sailor in a storm. But there were no candleholders upon the looming walls. There was nothing but insidious, perfect brickwork that mocked her bewilderment; it did not care for her grief, the source of which she could not recall. She wandered through the halls, fixing her gaze upon the single barricade of bricks at the end, precariously balanced as if in a haze of lassitude. It called her name. Celeste. It had a hushed, kind tone, but an undertone of beseeching dread that she'd ignore it. She cast away the whispers. And yet, like apparitions, they whispered still; a long-forgotten melody of memories once so joyfully recalled. Celeste. It was so rough yet so smooth. It had abrasive undertones of malice creeping at every repetition, ready to grasp her by the neck and choke out of her all the secrets she kept hidden. She turned left and right, but she could not see a figure, fleeting and swift, by her ear. She could not see anything but dank walls, bleeding clear crimson blood haunted by sorrow. And still they continued incessantly. Cel- a cough rang out and the voice was heard no more, its rasping tones now unheard. It knew her name. A name she could just barely recall. And the wall at the very end looked upon her face with glee, its gaze feigning sympathy with simply a thin veil of disguise. She was mad, it mocked. She was foolish, it cackled.

"Get away!" She yelled into the empty cavern, "Get... Away..." A tear cascaded down her face mournfully.

She wept silently and wandered toward the precarious, ever so slightly tilting wall, and cast her glance across every surface – but this was a dead end among a labyrinthine mess of hallways. It mocked her as she turned to the door she had only just gone through with sinister cackling. And with an unnerving silence it slipped shut; no one would notice but the spirits she felt crawling under her skin at every moment. No one. And so she slipped past surreptitiously and let nothing be known. She found the previous room just exactly as she had left it, but something felt wrong now that the voices were gone, like trying to recall a dream; she couldn't place what, but perhaps the windows were too high. Perhaps it was... The wind. The wind was sucked from where it had once howled in ineffable anguish, swirling and writhing within moonlit chains. And she felt the absence of those voices as if they were dear friends; she should go home, she decided. Get some proper sleep; but these halls had her in their grasp of incessant melancholy and held her close, whispering cruel secrets in her ear. She turned the lock and walked right through into a cavernous hallway; it was strange to be back here. She knew what she was going to see next. She recognised that door and fled towards it at a dreary pace. She counted steps; one and the lights on the walls flickered a little – had there been those before? She couldn't recall. Another and the room was dim. Another and she could hardly bare the oppressive silence, so she screamed into the untamed wilderness. She screamed with all her tearing voice cords and all the strength she still had to give; and then she walked, placid, up to the door with tears creeping down her face like vines and brambles, leaving cuts that stung.

Strange, she wondered, though it was distant, she knew that door should be locked. That door should be locked from the outside; she glanced around, bewildered. Was she mad? Was her mind falling victim to the endless, brooding schemes of this foreboding mass of writhing walls, stained with downcast crimson ink? She could not bear it any longer. With only a gaze cast behind, she looked upon the door, the handle a dagger in her hands bearing guilt and guilt and guilt and remorse piled upon a mass of sorrow and regret. It was ice that stung her hands as if it were manacles around every limb and chains around her wrists and around her beating heart. She opened the door and at first let it lie askew – she waited for a silence to fall like an oppressive veil of a widow's dress over the halls she walked, and yet saw none. And yet felt only a clear gaze of detest over her and her fumbling hands. She grasped the handle tight once more and clung to the fact that she was going home; she would return to a cold, rat-ridden house, where malady festered, and regret clung to a single room that she would never dare spare a glance for. Men, women and children may walk outside with umbrellas in a far distant land, the sky blue and the smiles lurid and fake, but she would return to a house she couldn't bear to step foot inside. A bed as hard as rock as a void consumed her. Here she was alone, and here she remained. Perhaps a friend might've left a note wrapped in coarse and untouched paper. But maybe they'd forgotten. A small part of her hoped they had.