A New Estate - Crimson Peak

Chapter Thirty Five

Thomas remained in a singular spot; his eyes cast down towards a particular area at the end of the bed as if he was concentrating intensely on something I couldn't see.

Finally, after a too long pause, he looked at me with a familiar saddened smile.

"This is the spot where I took my last breath."

I looked towards him with a confused frown, trying to ignore China's nudging at my arm as she cowered into my side, fearful of another slamming door.

"Are you not mistaken? We found you in that chair."

My eyes briefly flickered to the aforementioned furniture, Thomas' hollow gaze following my own to lay on the stained floor underneath the wooden legs.

That marking was all that remained of him within the manor now that his body had been removed, which was a depressing thought, that a man could be reduced to nothing but a mark on the floor within his own home.

"She moved me."

I turned my head back to him.

"'She' being Lucille?"

Thomas nodded in affirmation.

"She said that it would be undignified for me to die on the floor."

"As much as I detest to agree with a psychopathic poltergeist, Lucille has a point."

"Whether she had a point or not, it would have been her fault if I had."

Pulling away from Robert, I sat up and turned fully towards Thomas, one of my arms wrapping around China as she continued to cower into my side.

"I feel as if you're stalling, Sir Sharpe."

He looked at me in mild bewilderment, evidently as surprised by my straightforwardness as I was.

"I suppose I am," he conceded.

"I would rather you didn't and started to explain."

"Of course, it is the least I could do."

Thomas eased himself onto the bed, almost uncertainly as if he didn't think that he would be able to sit upon a physical object despite interacting with other things beforehand.

Once settled, he placed his hands in his lap with his eyes trained onto the floor once again.

"I didn't want any of this to happen," he said, "I just wanted to move on, to leave this place."

He looked at me over his shoulder, his sunken eyes swimming with sadness.

"I believed that I had, once Edith..." He broke off and I didn't fail to notice the hiccup and crack in his voice at her name, "once Edith had seen to Lucille's end, I felt an elation, I truly thought that I would pass over when I left her."

"But you were evidently wrong."

"I was, as I was about Lucille having left as well."

My heart ached for him, seeing him sitting there so vulnerable on the edge of a bed made of dust and lost time, but I also couldn't deny the facts that I was aware of.

"Did you truly think you deserved peace?" I asked slowly, stroking behind China's ears to settle my nerves, "you may have been a pawn in Lucille's games, but for years you were still her accomplice."

"Undeniably so, but she was all I had."

Thomas paused for another moment, looking away in what I could only assume was shame as he squeezed his hands together.