Old-Fashioned, or Another Story With Ghosts

Chapter 19. Memory is awake and the blood is shed

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The dream ended up at once, as somebody switched it off.  A sound? An omen?

There was darkness around still, even with the eyes opened. Panic flooded upon the mind for a moment - but then the rectangular shape of the window appeared from the thin air, and the rustle of the leaves in the November garden told it was all fine. Nothing bad happened. Just there was something to do before getting back to sleep... why is the room so spacious?
Does not matter. James should have arranged it. Silly James. So upset after encountering with his cousin. So eager to keep his word to her... and never believed she cared not.

...just now she needed to go and find... what?
She understands when she sees.

The shadowed figure of a plump woman in a plain dress left the room as silently as she was a night shadow indeed.

A few moments later the same door opened again letting out a young man whose bare feet stepped on the old parquet quietly but were totally flesh and blood. He crossed the corridor with no lights on and slapped downstairs looking in front of him, not under his feet. Like if he was blind.

There was glaring light from under the study door. 

She smiled and walked closer on her tiptoes trying to feel the mood. It was always fine to come to him if His Grace was alone. She never knew anybody of such a sweet temper and such a genuine smile. She loved him just because it was him. But loved his genuineness above all other qualities.

Something dropped and cracked in the study. She shivered throwing herself to press the ear to the door, trying to hear through the loud heart beating. So loud, it was, and something was wrong, oh so wrong...

Then the gunshot reaped the silence of the house, and she started to shake the door calling for  her James, shouting for her James.

The door slammed opened sending her straight on the floor, her shoulder bursting in pain. The dark figure was only a silhouette against candlelight, and there was the gun in his hand.

And dark spots on James' shirt in the armchair behind him. 

She screamed but no sound came out.

The figure briskly walked towards her. She crawled back pushing herself away along the parquet floor with her feet and elbows, but she had no time, she knew it already, and yet she pushed and crawled, and the strong hand caught and dragged her up, and she cried again scrambling, stretching, her hair dropped upon her eyes, she wanted to see the face but it was just the pull of dark circles instead of a man's eyes.
He hissed when her fingernails left deep marks on his neck and pressed her to the wall by the throat strangling, too strong for her to take away his arm...

And suddenly she was calm again. 

She stopped jerking and thrusting, and she dropped her hands staring into the darkness.
Poor, poor fellow lad, she thought. So sad to never know love and warmth and care.
Her fingers slid upon something at his belt. Something sharp and thin.

Poor lad, he might be. But he still took her James from her, the kindest of all. 

She was not kind, though. 

So she dragged the sharp thing, and stroke, and stroke again somewhere, with all power left on her fogged head with no air to breathe. 

She was not aware if he screamed. It could not be her to scream, though. She could not scream, or stand, of feel, or think any more... and she could not remember where she was heading to after all.

Maybe, it has to deal something with the roses in the autumn garden?..

Greg woke up from the scream. There was something strange about it, and it took him a few long moments  to find out he was not in the bed but half-laying on the wall in the corridor near James' study. His butt was freezing, his throat hurt as hell, and something was squeezed in his palm.

There was no air in his lungs. 

The scream stopped leaving, floating away from his head like a bad dream.

Next thing he saw was James leaning to him in his perfectly fit pyjamas, holding the palm on his left shoulders with something soaking under his fingers wetting the fine fabric.

It was blood. 

And the blooded piece of broken china in Greg's shaky hand.

***