✔ | PAINTED IN CRIMSON | T. SHARPE

epilogue

❝We'll claim the skies
as we rise and rise,
we soar above the shores
we left behind.❞

───────

EPILOGUE | DREAM CATCHERS

Ghosts are real, that much I know.

I saw the first when I was six and I had no idea that the man I had seen in the workshop of an old house was one, let alone that I was going to help him to stop her wicked sister from repeating the same atrocities they had teamed up to commit in the past. But, there was a price to pay. She left but took two more lives with her, one of those lives was my friend's. After all this time I still think about him, I do it almost every day and wonder what would it be like to still have him in my life. I still remember the look in his eyes when I held him in my arms. I can feel the anger and helplessness invading my body again just by thinking about it.

Something as small as a kitchen knife ended it all for Lucille, it only took three seconds and a rush of adrenaline; we returned home with bruises and wounds, our bodies covered in them, they've healed pretty good though you can see a couple of scars here and there. But it's the scars you cannot see that are taking longer to heal, they're in our minds and it's hard to live with them. But, I am not the most affected.

Tonight, I'll go to bed knowing that again I'll wake up to my husband's screams in the middle of the night. Although we are safe now and we know that nothing can harm us, our dreams remind us of the terrors we had to face. They will live burned in our subconscious and nobody knows when or if those nightmares will leave.

Today, I sit on the warm sand and stare at the ocean, its calm waves kiss the shore, each time getting closer to my spot. My feet are half buried in the sand and my arms pull my knees close to my chest. The maritime breeze blows and I can feel the salt on my face as well as I can hear the peculiar and so like home bunch of laughs behind me.

I turn around and I see Nicholas, his hands are placed on my shoulders and then he wraps his arms around me as he squats down.

"What are you doing here so lonely? We were wondering where had you gone," he says, placing a kiss on my cheek, "we need another player," he looks over his shoulder and smiles to himself.

"Just came here to think," I smile and he nods.

"The tide is rising, and it's lunch time. Let's go inside, alright?" Just as he finishes the sentence, a pair of sea-blue eyes peek over his shoulder, "Hey, there you are buddy!" Nicholas exclaims and takes the two-year-old in his arms, making him giggle out of control when he tosses him up and down, "You coming, baby?" He asks and I hum an answer as I get on my feet. They start to walk and I follow them. I stand there for a couple of seconds and my eyes fall on a bright red ball in the chubby hands of a blonde little girl, she smiles and nervously scream when she sees her dad run towards her warning her 'I'm gonna catch you!' repeatedly. And I smile.

Our family will always be peculiar, a name with a dark story that we can't erase —no one can— it will remain.

The fact that some day, when they are old enough, we'll have to tell our children this horrendous story frightens me. Sometimes I wonder if is it really necessary to tell them, but a part of me feels like it's the right thing to do. And that would explain a lot, like why dad has panic attacks or why mum cries out of the blue even in the nicest day.

I see the three of them smiling, the kids giggle and I know it's time for me to stop thinking about it. I realise that this is paradise and that Allerdale Hall is nothing but an abandoned place. The mansion has begun fall apart, and someday there will be nothing. Some people will remember and some others will forget, others will be curious and others won't even care about it. It doesn't matter, because when the house doesn't exist anymore and when the ones who stopped story from repeating have finally parted, when our hearts have finally given up, the hill will always be painted in crimson, every winter, as remembrance of the people who lost their lives in the house on the hill, the house on Crimson Peak.