She was simply tempted at first; she was a wild animal tempted into her cage, cooed by mocking voices but deterred by the shadows. She was a cowering lion faced with nothing but bars to keep her from the cold that seeped through her fur – and the room knew it. It knew that its windows, one in the centre of the wall and one that was placed strangely on the side wall, depicting nothing but another room, with a single bar sideways across the glass, that was shattered on one side like a mask of a smile hiding a secret no one should know – the room knew it was absurd and mismatched, strange yet beckoning – it knew she was simply a child outside a new house, waiting for a rushed voice in a high pitched and derisive tone to hush their fears and push them toward the ravenous, insatiable beast that lingered in the dark. The room knew it all and the nature outside was simply the voice pushing her towards the tendrils of shadow reaching into her heart and savouring the crimson etching out of the cracks and the thumping footsteps echoing within. It was rugged as the beast comprised of shadows itself, unkempt by a hired gardener who had quarters in the dank, insidiously cold basement; they had grown like entrails flowing onto a battlefield from bullet holes, the shattered windows simply letting the nature overflow into the carpets, already decaying, and consume any flesh left on its trembling bones. The moss grew as swift and unnoticed as a disease throughout a house – the walls and the breeze blew it toward a father smoking a pipe, and his skin began to wither, pale and yellow as he lay on a hospital bed, shivering with a haze spreading over his eyes like the haze of adulthood blinding him to the joys he had once felt so vividly. Alone in a room full of strangers. And the wife, ring around her finger still despite the death, had a veil draped over her eyes that deafened her to the weeping souls she had once known. She was deafened to the tears and the hands, soft and delicate, of the girl placing the crystals of the necklace the mother wore onto her own neck, the disease crawling on and leaving a single seed of the plant of perishing souls on a single crystal.
That was all there was. There was nothing to be afraid of. Just moss. Just moss and carpets and withering memories that she hadn't ever had and calling souls in her mind – or was that just her heartbeat making her delusional and the grief of her sister's death making her wracked with intense malady and despair. She wandered in, an animal baited inside the cage by a strip of meat that glimmered with feigned food, the joy of consuming it snatched away as the door closed. That sound of the door slamming shut was the floor letting go beneath her and the water trickling down into the pit as the rope was tightened more and more around her throat. She gazed around dreamily – there were just mirrors placed on a blank wall, the wallpaper had long ago rotted to stumps of bone and the frames were overcome with black mould creeping up them, vines up a brick wall mocking her with disdain in her eyes; like the sewers had called the rats forth and then simply cut off their heads in the name of entertainment. All the light was focussed on her – the reflections had all eyes on her – some felt as if they were hers, on something so close to her face and yet... Not her. Something was off with the proportions... Or the hair – or perhaps it was just the light – in some the eyes seemed dark, but that could easily be- and she shuddered then. One of the reflections was not her. It was not her. It was not her. It was not her. It was not her. It was not her. It was not her. It was moving. It was moving. It shivered as if woken from ice and just broke a mould, its placid face now visible away from the mask of perfection. Then as she saw it, she shuddered. Its hands trembled a few moments later – its face had sores dotted around like raindrops, and they just rained and rained and rained, the pipes eventually bursting to spill inky crimson blood over the pale face – the skin was flaky as parchment paper. And as the silhouette moved against the light, she saw it move. She saw it move. It looked at her. The mask returned. It was her. It was her. It was her.
She turned and left, quailing with terror and trembling in her bones – her skin seemed to dangle from a knife edge, a single sheet, with footfall disdainfully cackling. The door whispered truths to her as it closed, the whimpering of the child still within as she fell back onto the floor, seeing her weeping form rocking back and forth. It was her. It was her. It was her. It was her. It had been so much like a memory she couldn't recall. It... That skin wasn't hers and that hair... It was as dark as her sisters, but thinner, the skin pale. No, it hadn't been someone else. It must be simply smoke and mirrors speaking to her in tongues she only understood subconsciously, the mind's eye of a child murmuring to her through the haze of common sense she thought she must have already learnt by now. It had been her. It had been her. And it was her. It was her murmuring these twisted words – it was her whimpering as if a belt was before her in the hands of a parent with blazing, cold eyes. It was her. It had been her. It was her It... Was her. She rushed down the stairs, the halls seemingly mapped inside the cavernous mind she crawled through. She could wander the labyrinthine halls with no problem – something about that unnerved her.
An eerie sense of calm began to consume all feelings of paranoia and frantic searching, and she stood, her vision hazy as if it were summer once again, and pollen flew swift as a wing of a bird through the sky around her. As if joy were flowing in rivers. But that wasn't close – it was far, far away, like the silhouette of the mansion had been; it had been a figure of twisted pleasure, creeping closer as she crawled toward it with hope in her eyes – a hope long distinguished by the shadows that the thin, crumbling walls bore; it could have been a simple haunted mansion, but she still went closer, didn't she? She had abandoned the one room that called her – remorse began to trickle into the chamber of her mind, cries echoing into the chambers of rotten wood and torn carpets. But that room sent shivers down her spine and shudders through her corpse. The thought that the light could move a figure so monstrous through the halls like a marionette puppet with jagged limbs cast in careless directions. No light moved dolls so that they could walk alone, without a child's imagination to lift them. It didn't make sense. It was her. It was her. It flickered. It shuddered and quaked and left a shattered glass showing that girl crawling out of a mould that was slick against her skin – she fled, the memories reigning anguish over the darkest corners of her mind and letting the monarchy of order perish with glasses of red claret in their limp, inert hands. She just had to run. She bolted down the stairs, past the banisters that towered above the steps like the rib cage of a beast that had breathed her in. Everything was a looming shadow that had ravenous, sinister eyes, with daggers within every glare they gave her. It was all around her. The shadows that held her here were covered in a layer of grime and vile memories that she wished wouldn't cling to her skin. The creature was finally breathing out and she could see a light in her mind; the door was open, and the chains were weak and frail after so long being taut and cruel. But the light felt as if it were a jack-o-lantern. It was a false hope. A stale hope.
She hadn't left the door ajar... Or at least she didn't think so, and the path seemed now to have graves dotted over every crevice and grass that had long ago dried and perished in a sun that was no longer there to warm the sands. Everything was coated in a veil of grief, slick in the clouded, stale light – and it was eerily silent. Not a laugh to be heard. Not a smile to be seen. Not a lantern to burn her eyes with the kindness it exuded as a distraction while her shadows consumed her. Nothing. Nothing but a path she had not before wandered. It was strange; an exit should have a draught breathed in eternally from the outside and rain should batter the doors until there was nothing left but dim planks. This was surely false; she couldn't see a piano stool grinning at her or a single key begging her to sit before the rope and watch as her corpse fell to the ground in a limp heap of memories she had forgotten – she somehow missed its calls and its smiles flashed before the dagger strikes and the blood pours out. She missed the paintings and their eyes that glared at her from every moment, and the rugged nature was vacant; this couldn't be an exit. This door was almost too perfect from every angle – the planks were untouched by the wind that writhed away from a creature that insatiably tried again and again to grasp its throat, or the rain that fell over the land. What was this door to lead her to? She cast her mind away and closed the door, wishing it didn't hurt so much. Those graves shouldn't be there. But it was just a look. A look. A glance into what she could have. Her eyes seeking the grey, brooding clouds, she watched as they ominously rolled in, a foreboding crackle of thunder rippling through the bare skeletons of trees. The clouds were the first grey hair flowing through the river of youthful joy, and their calls were gently ominous. They moved soundlessly through the sky, footfall swift and cruelly thin. Their hand was placed around the forest like a noose, the fog receding into the skeletons as they decayed into mere scraps and ashes for the poorest of weeping eyes to see, despair growing from the seeds they took down with them.
She cast her gaze down, away from the painting of melancholy, and saw nothing but a descending flight of stairs that she could barely see to the bottom of, and she froze. There was light – there was just a dull, stale glow but the dark cyst below bled apprehension from its pores and ink flowed down the stairs from its scars. It was sickly. But the light beside her was the apparition of a candle that had one been a burning flame, now simply a trail of smoke climbing up from the ashes of light. The shadows below felt warm and welcoming, deceitful and cunning in every glance aside but some part of her knew it was true – safer – full of a multitude of eyes that called her name with a spring in their step, almost as if they were children. With trembling bones, she climbed down the stairs, sticking close to the snake's scales as she clung timidly to the banisters and gazed into the abyss of shadows. The scales slithered away with a tongue that whispered her name. Celeste... Cel- She leapt back, alarmed. She tried to scream but nothing came out but a whimper. What had happened?
YOU ARE READING
Reflected sorrows
TerrorA lost, grieving soul enters the jaws of an insatiable beast, where the eyes of uncannily well-preserved paintings reach for her weary, lonesome corpse like crows. This mansion has no history to be felt or heard; it's as if the rooms are hollow and...
