Reflected sorrows

Chapter 27

The door murmured a woebegone greeting in the shadows, welcoming her with a tear welling and falling into the lakes that were scattered over the ground like tears, blood-stained and cruel. It smiled but, in the light, there was a hint of sorrow, a tainted smile that held daggers; daggers coated in the ash of life that remained, scarlet and lingering behind after every glinting smile and every murder left unsolved and forgotten, dwelling in the tears that the welcoming hand of decaying wood cried – it welcomed her into the halls, making them seem somewhat more labyrinthine and complex, capturing her in their long arms of woe, reaching far into the shadows in an attempt to perhaps scare her away; in an attempt to call her back. She felt those strings around her neck once again, dragging her back, but she turned back to the door. She was meant to be here, she sensed it in the dull light that pooled over her skin, and over the lakes of despair that all the ceilings wept as she passed. They seemed to gaze upon her with sympathy, sighing in the winds that blew through from the door. In their tears there was a potent, forlorn menace that drew her closer. Closer. Closer. Something lay within, trying to get out, and uttering a vile melody of grief through a curtain as silent as the widow's veil. It called out at every turn, another tear falling to the dank carpets making the stale air seem colder. It scratched at the walls, echoing through the vivid labyrinth; it spoke her name. Celeste, Celeste, Celeste... As if it were choking out every word through a haze of grey ash spilling from a shattered heart. It was sorrowful to see her, its woe echoing in the etchings of malady in the walls. They cried seas for her return, and yet the light never gazed upon her, it simply smiled but never saw her through its veil of darkness. The blood lay thick in its glinting crimson tint, as if a war was unleashed upon the outside world, and she would only get a glimpse of what the ceiling wept over, of what the branches, waving insidious goodbyes through the flames, glimpsed and gazed upon in glee, smiling with teeth vile and green.

She felt it then, a sharp tug at her neck as the cold crystal beads around the noose dug in with ice holding its hand against her skin, watching it pale as a shiver as cold as death itself trickled down her spine like the blood of the murdered child, left forgotten and mourning for its own death; it trickled over the sun-lit ground, pooling and pouring over the branches, coating the tree branches in an ominous light that animated their thin frames and made their leaves tremble with the force of the guilt that was passed ruthlessly onto their hands, unwillingly tying them to endless anguish and torment of voices that called out in their head. That guilt hung over her, potent as the gleam of that rope pulling her back towards the mirrors. The shadows. The terror that lingered in her eyes now. The fraying ends never seemed to tear, despite the trembling bones of the trees as the blood poured over them in a veil that tainted their sight. The bones clattered under the pressure, falling outside as she heard their cries of agony, the screams that carried in the wind as they fell, shattered and buried like long lost memories of joy. But the ends of the rope never frayed, forcing her to move as slow as the ticking of a clock through the endless ocean of winding hallways. It held the walls in its grasp, sending something from a shelf in the distance cascading to the ground in a dull, monotonous crawl. Everything slowed under the watchful eyes of that string, just barely holding all the puppets it owned in line. They could so easily run, forcing the eye to shift for a moment, but they would always be found, strung up as an example and lashed by the crimson now drowning out the darkness with its gleaming light, its lantern among the shadows. It made a movement, and it was like once again a thread briefly flashed through the air, a mere breeze. And just like that the threads were gone. They were tossed aside, and the shattered pottery was left to linger on the ground like a reminder of the ash that could gather around you without anyone noticing.

It fell like a veil over the winds that swept through the halls, or the crawling of the clock within her. Tick. Tock. And then it halted; she waited but it was stopped, the hands seeming to rewind, sending rasping melodies through the labyrinth. It crackled like the fire as it burns, and the ashes were simply the embers floating through the air. Her footsteps were the ticking as hours went back, every cog and stone trembling and quailing in its position, precarious and unsure, wavering. It all fell deathly silent, like the fog had rolled in over the house and claimed the walls with its vile tendrils of dwindling hope. A footstep. An hour went by, and she glanced out the window, but saw nothing but crimson engulf the night as the wolves' noses crept after their prey. And they lit the ashes in a cruel melody – like a lullaby that you knew from when you were a child, ringing in your ears and bursting the barriers of time to greet you after so long – as if that melody were an old friend, waiting at the door as you opened it. The dust that had settled mingled with the scent of grief that fell over the area where the ashes lingered. It engulfed the world around her as the urn was placed by her hands into the shape of what it had been once before – there lay on the pottery a name, it was written in a woeful hand, as if the writer of it had wept bitterly and cried and cried and cried and cried as the corpse's ash fell into their hands. It read Lucille. But... They'd spoken. In that park. In that nighttime chill; Lucille. She felt a lingering guilt at the thought, hoping it would turn to the ashes before her, grey and stale. But it was an incessant cloud looming over her. Lucille... Lucille... The name was her eternal torment.