The Aftermath

Chapter sixteen

Jessamine rushed out of her mothers room not being careful to shut the door quietly. She knew that she had to go to the library to look for her mothers novel. Rushing into the library Jessamine couldn't remember where she had originally found the novel. It appeared that luck was on her side as Edith must have left it out on the small table next to the window the last time she had look at it.

Jessamine quickly walked over to the little table and picked the book up. The cover was black with a single butterfly underneath a door way that seemed to be surrounded in raised spikes. The spine of the book had been broken from the multiple times Edith had read it.

Knowing that someone could walk in on her reading it she decided it would be Safer to take the book back to her bedroom so she could read it privately. Carrying the book under her arm back into her room she tried to hide it out of the way. Quietly Jessamine entered her room and lay across the bed her skirts spreading across the thin silk bed sheets. Opening the book Jessamine had no idea what was in store for her.

She bolted upright and slipped out of bed. As she crept across the chilly floor, the floorboards creaked and the rustle of silk caressed her ears. She was not wearing silk. Cook had told DeWitt that Mama had been laid out in her finest black silk gown, and that her skin had turned just as black in the hours before she died. Cook had used words like "revolting, ghastly. A horror." She had been speaking of her mistress like a monster. Of Mama, who had been so beautiful, and smelled always of lilacs, and loved to play the piano. Who told her the most wonderful stories about plucky princesses who thwarted evil sorcerers and the princes who adored them. Who promised Edith that her own life would hold a "happily ever after" with a man who would build her a castle—" with his own two hands," she would say, smiling very dreamily, then add, "like your father." But now, as Edith stared into the gloom, she couldn't keep that Mama in her mind's eye. Her thoughts kept returning to the monster, the horror, and she wondered if the shadows kept shifting of their own accord, or if that was the play of snowflake silhouettes on the wallpaper. She looked from the wall to the end of the hallway. It was not quiet there. The air seemed to flutter, and then to thicken. Her blood chilled as a shape began to emerge from the gloom—a figure cloaked in shadow, floating at the end of the hall. A woman, swathed in once-fine black silk now tattered like the aging wings of a moth. Was it just her imagination? A trick of the light? Edith broke out in a cold sweat. It's not there. It's not. She's not. Her pulse raced. It was not gliding toward her. She was not. With a gasp, she turned away and darted back toward her bedroom. Her skin prickled and her cheeks felt hot. She tried to listen but could only hear a roaring in her ears and the thud of her bare feet on the carpet runner. Edith did not see the thing that was trailing after her as she ran, or feel the skeletal fingers of a shimmering hand as they caressed her hair. Moonlight shone on finger bones, revealed a quicksilver glimpse of a tormented face, flesh eaten away. No, Edith did not see. But perhaps she sensed. A shade. A spirit compelled by inextinguishable love to return, by desperation to speak. Gliding, with the rustle of silk, and the clack of bone and withered flesh. Edith saw none of that as she scrambled under the covers and clung to her bunny, quivering in terror. But seconds later, as she turned on her side, she went absolutely rigid with shock. She felt the decaying hand wrap around her shoulder, smelled the damp earth of the grave, and heard the desiccated lips, a hoarse distortion of the voice she had known better than her own as it whispered into her ear: "My child, when the time comes, beware of Crimson Peak."

Crimson Peak. This is what her mother meant when she said Crimson Peak, she was referring to a story she had written about ghosts and her dead mother warning her about a place called Crimson Peak? Jessamine didn't understand how this had anything to do with Allerdale Hall or Love. Reading this novel seemed to be the key to figuring out what her mother meant.

Jessamine realised that it was probably better to send some of her belongings to the manor early as she didn't want people finding some of the toys and trinkets she had made and she also decided to put this novel in the box so she could read it while she was there.

She got out a medium sized box with her entails 'J.C-S' written on the side in the finest calligraphy she could manage and proceeded to pull up the floorboard under which she hid all of the trinkets she had made. Her favourite one was a little man who would swallow a miniature golden ball and then be able to retrieve it again in a cup he was holding.

After carefully placing in all of her inventions Jessamine placed the floorboard back to its original stance and continued putting in the Crimson Peak novel before sealing the box up.

Jessamine walked out of her room, down the staircase and then out of the house taking the carriage to the post office in which she got the mail man to make her box a first class delivery addressed to 'J.C-S. Allerdale Hall, Cumberland, England'Before setting off again Jessamine bought some more calligraphy paper and left for the house knowing that she needed to get home before anyone noticed she was missing.