Evaline | L. Lioncourt ✔

[28] Recluse

Days passed into months, months into years and he no longer remembered whether the years lapsed into decades or even centuries. He was entrapped in his solitary confinement, unable to leave the ruin because his lover was buried underneath and he could not bear to part with her. 

The last time he had done so it had taken her life and even though she was no longer with him, he refused to accept it as he stayed close to her grave, mourning her death.

Once again fate had brought him to the same curse from which he had tried his best to escape with help from the sweet maiden who had promised never to forsake him. Yet death had snatched her away from him and he was once again left alone with the curse of eternity looking above.

But all her promises, her sweet words, her gentle kisses and her adoring touch haunted him, binding him to that decayed mansion for he could not forsake her after all that she had meant to him.

Pastel grey clouds tainted the night sky, reminding him of the dense clouds of smoke that had polluted the streets after the townsfolk had burnt his house down with the two inside.

And yet the whole of that town had burnt along with it afterwards, lit up on flames by none other than Lestat himself. Torn between grief and vengeance, right after Eva's death, he had set the town on flames. The tavern, the houses as well as the people who had accused Evaline of being a witch... All of them reduced to a rubble of blood and embers.

Just like his own self. 

And when he had returned after burning the place down to ashes, he had been terribly weakened for he had been burnt already and inflicting the flames over the vast town was no easy task for him. He had been so weakened that he had dropped to the ground beside her, telling her that he had taken revenge from those who had brought distress upon them.

But it could not bring her back and all his words received no answer. Before the sun had risen, he had buried her in a grave he had dug out himself and remained close to her until the beams scorched his body and he had to take refuge inside the decayed mansion.

Lestat was drained of all his strength and so he could not venture out of his retreat as days passed and then turned to years even. He had no idea that a century had drifted ever since that night when he lost Evaline.

***

He was sitting by her grave in the garden, his fingers gently raking through the soft mud hoping against hope that her hand would reach out for him and take his own in her loving grip. His eyes lifted up to the moon and the clouds, the darkness of the night washing over him entirely.

And he could have stayed out much longer, for he ached to be somewhat closer to his Evaline, if not for the ear piercing cries that erupted. The honking of loud horns and the deafening noise of the helicopters flying above shattered his calm and he stumbled inside, burying himself deep in the armchair that was still placed in that room, shielding himself from the clamor.

He had no idea how much the world had changed and he had not an inkling what was the cause of the abrupt noises for he had never stepped foot out from the ruin ever since the day he had buried Evaline in the garden. 

A century had passed since that day and it was the year 1988; spring had spread its wings over New Orleans but for Lestat, the time did not move and the only season he had known was that of haunting loneliness.

The noise faded eventually but he still held his head in his bony hands, his skin the same sickly pallor that Eva had first seen him as and he curled deeper inside the rotting sawdust, praying for the tormenting voices to stop haunting him.