Ripples of grief

Chapter 29

When she went to sleep, she wanted to wake up, stumbling among the broken, shattered dreams and skeletal silhouettes, almost drowning in that demoniac glare. And when it haunted her, it seemed to drag her closer to that lake, a deep, abyssal grave – she always wanted to wake up, to leave to run, and when she did, it never felt right – a reflection of what the world was meant to be. Just as someone who is drowning gasps for air, reaches for that light, she yearned to reach that. And yet there was nothing to wake up from as the house began to shudder with sobs once more, wracked with agony. Life is a race toward an exit, she thought, an end to the rivers of sorrow that haunt you, drown you in thorns; that silence is cruel, that silence is benevolent. And that light lures you out, no matter how long you stay within the confines of the reflection of shadows. At every step toward the door, Romey felt that serpent tighten around her throat, but she was closer now, closer at every step. A crackle of hope in the air she began to breathe, and it was almost as if a candle was lit, and the light flickered; lain dormant so long under choking vipers of shadow, before a single, smiling, disdainful breath of the wind rushed past. The murmuring light stayed dim, hope still a quiet footstep that cast a long evening shadow across the ground. A pulse starts off so slow, so subtle, but then it speeds up as fear breaks through, or life courses through your veins after it lies for so long as a carcass river. A murmur – then a yell, a cry, deafening in its terror, as if the stitching on the horizon began to writhe. She had to leave, she realised as a shudder left the house trembling in woeful sobs, wretched, wavering sorrow. She had to leave the flitting shadows and torn figures, threads loose, golden threads glinting with what she couldn't have. She had to leave. That veil at the water's surface wavers, as much as you can try to hold your reflection clear in the lake that towers above. For it's when the noose falls that the surface ripples, and the malice echoes in ripples of grief. That veil is so delicate, all it would take was for it to fall, and the light to be less bright, shadows a mere comfort. It tentatively lifted with placid terror as the air let the light cry out in agony.

And in encouragement the wind smiled, a great creature looming above with jaws full of sharp teeth, shaped almost like scythes that death carries – it was just the sight of the hysteric widow, dancing flame and still water where there should be roaring waves – across the lake there were no ripples, no fragmented moonlight scattered in the cold, cold canvas. Only the wind's cruel smile as she looked back to the bloody windows, tainted by crimson panes of shattered glass. That had been his room; their son had so much life ahead, and yet despite life being so still, still as the lake before her, it had sped by in every fleeting heartbeat until that blade reared its menacing complexion, the final thorn – some branches were smaller than others, and that, the one that had slept in that room, was just unlucky. Caught up in the forming river of blood and sorrows. He had breathed his first breath in there. She tasted his last in the wind's crooked smile, laced with death's scythe. The beak of that stone eagle still left a scratch on the fabric of that veil as it picked him from the river. What she'd really wanted in coming out here was a light. A candle; something to drown out the figures among the feathers of crows – there were almost puppets when the darkness grew too loud, too oppressive, too unbearable; there were always things you couldn't see, as if there were a newspaper cast over your gaze. All it would take was a single flame, with a singing voice calling out to her, whistling then bellowing sorrow in the same moment of clarity. That was all it would take. But it could bellow sorrows lamented over and over in the same breath, and she supposed that darkness had been her friend. Home. Despite the dull threads, the spirits that haunted it – it was home. A light feather drowned in ink. That light of hope had given weight to feathers, that of lead. Lead held in a sickly child's hand. And just as in the gloom there were figures shrouded, hidden, veiled, somewhere the crows still lurked, cackling at her blindness – mocking it. They lay somewhere in this tangle of threads, through which there were grey needles piercing it. Perhaps they lay somewhere there, tainting the wind with that malicious, bittersweet smile of death, a reminder that where there is light there is shadow.