Reflected sorrows

Chapter 15

Her footsteps a tempo among the incessant deluge that threatened to pull her away from the puppeteer strings that lay hanging limply from the mansion's windows, unused and weakened by neglect, she heard Lucille's begging voice calling for her.

"Come back!" And she simply stirred from her haze of melancholy.

"Hey... I understand. It must be hard to live alone now that she... she's gone."

She fled from the voice, its melodies scraping her eardrums and crawling into her mind like undead soldiers rising from the battlefield as she tried so hard to contain them – she heard every moan of anguish claiming a piece of her, the boat of her sanity beginning to decay and wither, unfurling like a fern in the depths of an underworld, with no light to sustain its joy; there was no sunlight to colour its leaves, so it grew pale and weary. A single breeze could kill it, watching it perish in a moment and simply cackling. She turned, tolerating the scraping on the walls within that melodic and yet unbearable voice, and spoke to the figure sitting on the swing, starting to get up and greet her. It suddenly seemed a silhouette; as if those eyes were once again bleeding ink; ink as black as night. The apparition flickered between the previous face and the glaring horror that lay nestled among the torrents of rain.

"Viviane has a message for you before you go – she said that she wanted to wish you the mercy of God. I never really believed in Him... But you know, if we could meet again soon, that would be great. My sister said she'd pray for you over the next week; and my brothers,"

She needed to just say something – something to deter that voice echoing incessantly in her mind. She could hear that whisper of a beseeching, kind soul, and the ink fell more and more, trickling into a river. Something was wrong – those eyes were an endless hallway into which she'd often got lost. But it dragged her closer. And she hated every moment. The head tipped sideways. Sideways and backward so that the body was jagged, and the eyes seemed to follow her. "That's... Nice... Of them."

It was all she could utter before a darkness consumed her vision.

It started at the edge, a shadow over her gaze like a frame over the edges of a painting; but this was no wood or gold leaf painted oak. It was withered and seething, a fog that crawled over her vision. And it slowly devoured her with tendrils that seeked her gaze down to the centre. She was the quarry. Their footfall in the dark was soft and pattering like raindrops as she stumbled, hearing murmurs that echoed in the chambers of her weary soul. Celeste... Celeste... She had it too... I thought she'd survive... Celeste... It sped up; the dark tendrils knew her scent like rabid wolves frothing at the mouth, their glares menacing and sickly – they simply stood there. They simply stood and watched as their mouths opened, tentacles of a strange crimson liquid dripping out and into her vision casting darkness into the spot they touched. And yet still their entrails spilled over her vision like ink, shattering it with vigour and splashing over it a seething white wax that scorched her eyes – they stung, casting anguish into her mind and spreading the inky darkness over every corner. The pattering of rain mocked her, and still the darkness reached into every crevice like a twisted disease, crawling in a disdainful army and blinding her, leaving her limp corpse to lie still in the rain. A ragdoll abandoned by a child on a bench as they left, forgotten but never having forgotten the agony of being forgotten.

She opened her eyes, but they were held shut by something. Someone. They were forced closed by a cold hand that smiled upon her anguish and made sure to speak whispering winds of secrets long forgotten into her ear, with their cruel tongue made sinister by the scraping sound hidden in every syllable, every word. And then she forced them open. Every sound appalled her world, making it shudder and quail, and the land she lay on was almost ice, a shiver running down her spine, she saw a skeletal face pulling her by a half-rotten hand, the bones clattering against each other with every movement. The eyes she saw were hollow, and they burned with detest but also... A twisted kind of love. Among the abhorrent complexions, their eyes were torches, and the deep, marshy brown colouring felt, familiar. It didn't feel right – she shouldn't be able to see this. Their complexions were mauled by gaunt figures, and leeching from the pustules were gaping rivers of crimson and black, staining their familiarity an uncanny shade of tainted grief. They all looked upon her in a kind of uncanny sympathy. As if they were all sitting in a cavernous jaw of a creature and all suffered anguish. As if the winds were simply the breaths of the sinister creature, and they knew that the teeth would bite her too. That they would sink deep into her flesh, and she would suffer as they did. The trees were the creature's vile taste buds, a grotesque shade of viridian that was almost sickly. And there she stood once again, scrambling over decaying carpet to find her necklace, cold as a noose around her neck, and to see the single door before her. The figures had gone – they were simply apparitions in the night, and she could see a single piano standing in the centre, a gleaming tooth taunting her closer.

The noose was heavy around her neck, and as she stood, she felt the weight of its heavy rope judging her every step – she hung over thousands of waiting crimson faces, all disdainful and furious; they glared with insidious rage at all she did as she wandered past the piano. Somehow it was difficult to pull herself away from its tainted notes, difficult to think without the cruel melody, high pitched and wailing like the cries of a child; it was there tempting her, but she pulled back on the strings. She was not stuck in the threads of a spider's web, or caught in a sticky, oozing river with torrents of rain pouring over her like that judge's hammer on the table in front of them. She tore free and felt tears welling under her gaze as she turned, seeing the hands of an uncared-for small child in every single note – the paintings heard the music that the mansion etched out of every single layer of skin, every single bit of hope drained by the hands that caressed it with love, like a parent warming their child's heart, and yet only freezing their stone-cold gaze in the coldest blanket of snow. She detested the sensation of that cold, grey hand against her warm skin, sliding against it as if in a different dimension and only able to cruelly taint her hope and take it for itself. It held the noose around her neck, pushing the crystals of death and mortality tight against her frail skin, leaving dark imprints withing her heart. She knew her mother had worn this; she remembered that hand that she held unwillingly and dragged away, unable to let go. It bore chains slick against both their arms like the chains of a prisoner, a spider drawing closer to its prey and drooling as it got closer. She was caught and unable to escape, and her heart, a simple stone ornament, hardened by melancholy and frozen by years held within walls that seemed empty, was dragged out into the open, blood the colour of claret trickling from its crevices.

This... wasn't right. The walls glimmered with the same crimson, and the carpets were suddenly gone, replaced by bare stone that was cold beneath her feet. Something was wrong. Her vision was tainted by a veil of crimson fog that clouded the edges, and there, in the painting, skin pale yellow and hair unkempt, was Lucille. She could recall the face as if it were her father's. As if her ocean-blue eyes were suddenly melting into a river of marsh water, and the small spot on her face was drowned in inky crimson blood. The image shuddered as she trembled, and slowly the fog receded. She was left to wander the mansion, with its labyrinthine halls, all over again. With a hand unsteady and worn down by lassitude, she stood up and pushed the piano stool, the cold clammy wood stale and dry under her hands, back under the instrument of torment. She couldn't bare it as the music came back to her. She couldn't bear to think of what she'd done to deserve this- the noose was tight around her neck, gemstones glimmering with a sinister grin as she sensed with her hand the rough rope against her neck. Why did her mother have to die? Why did this mansion always remain forgotten by everyone but her. That wasn't supposed to happen. But she supposed they just didn't want to remind themselves of anyone who had lived there. Most were just scared away by the stories of malady lying untold within. She took meek steps through the halls, still unnerved by the vision of the walls crawling with blood, and just sighed with despair; this place always called her no matter what. Something about back home was off. Someone was missing; but no one had lived in there but her, despite the scattered memories that didn't feel like hers, like a sibling once so young now cold and unwelcoming, that depicted her mother and father. The ability to recall anything came in waves, like threads along a tapestry telling her life slowly decaying and withering to thin lines.

The doors that welcomed her were arms around an old friend, embracing her as she entered, and the paintings were uncannily silent at her arrival. They had eyes that stabbed her with trenchant glares, gazes so hazed over by a sickly white that they were almost inhuman- everything else was too perfect. The clothes too accurate. The extravagant wig of the queen that watched her climb the stairs with a sickly gaze almost a hive of living bees in a forest. She couldn't shake those eyes. They were acrimonious and yet they should've been so dull. They were eyes depicted in strokes of a brush. There was something human about them in that moment, the stare of the tormented souls that may have dwelled here. She smelled stories in the air like tangible webs of malady being spun swiftly and delicately by the hands of a sewer; a single soft toy held fingerprints of previous owners before previous owners before previous owners. She climbed one more set of stairs, her footsteps an unrelenting rhythm of anguish mocking her, and then knew she was there. She felt it as a shudder before she trembled at the sight of those dull walls. Mirrors were a blanket of malice, reflecting her face in the dim light over and over until it seemed she could breathe the same air. She would not scatter away like a frightened child from a looming adult in a dark hat. This room called her.