Chapter Ten
Lenora
The hush is deafening.
A vacuum pulling the very thump of my heartbeat from my chest so there is nothing but the endless void of such impossible silence. Yet the chamber breathes. The air itself shifts with every step I drift closer. Around me walls pull and coil, a shifting beast unwinding from an eternal slumber.
But what a beauty.
Even as every nerve in my body seizes with the fear of what I sense hidden in the shadows, my feet resume their path along the mosaic of stones. My body follows the pressure just behind my navel to the halo of light glinting … everywhere.
Candles. Long, tapered stems in the deepest black arranged with no direction throughout a chamber so beautiful it cinches around my heart. Cavernous arches, carved columns, balcony and towers. A gothic wonder right beneath our feet. I think it, even as it all makes sense.
Smooth, flat layers of marble rise in tiers up at the center of the room. A collection of stairs that end at a flat base with a gleaming box carved from onyx and wood at its middle.
But it’s the sight beyond it, beyond the candlelight, beyond the kneeling depictions of death with cloaked heads bowed in submission.
A throne.
No.
I ascend the stairs, round the stone altar. My feet disturb centuries of soot.
Grit.
Blood.
Layers that cake the underside leave prints in my wake. But I never take my eyes off the top where the steps end and the real reason for the room comes into view.
A wound.
An aberration rising from the scarred granite of the wall like an implant being rejected or swallowed. But it clings with no foundation. No wood or stone. A wall of congealing shadows. Living. Pulsing. Drifting along the spiraling edges. Soaking into glass.
And in the center of it all, I stand. Mesmerized.
Eyes wide. Searching for a reflection and only falling deeper into absence and feeling that void stare back from the other side.
Everything in me tells me I should be terrified.
This thing is not natural. It’s without question evil.
That is the very reason I don’t flinch away.
Evil doesn’t announce itself.
Evil is subtle. A snake offering an apple. Unassuming and sly.
But this thing is trying so hard to push me away, it only lures me closer. My fingers barely tremble when I lift to touch.
“Lenora!”
I flinch at the sound of my name. The crack of it echoes across the chamber with a wrongness that doesn’t belong.
Marcus is at my side, eyes dark with a fury that mirrors the grip he forms around my hovering hand.
“What the hell are you doing?” he snarls, wrenching me away, pulling me back.
“What is it?”
Eyes still clouded with anger lift from my face to take in our surroundings. I expect him to know, but the confusion as he pulls me to him makes me think he had no idea this existed either.
“Protège-moi du mal.” The soft prayer whispers off his lips before he adds in English, “We need to leave.”
He’s dragging me down the steps. Away from the thing in the mirror.
“Wait…” I protest.
“No, you will not come back here. Whatever this is, it’s evil.”
So, he feels it, too.
I turn my chin back over my shoulder to find the tendrils swirling faster. Agitated. There is restlessness in the motion, an anger I can feel warming against my skin like the rising of the sun.
“Marcus, wait,” I try again.
He’s dragging me past the altar. My feet slip on stone with every effort to pull free. His hold is crushing. My bones are rubbing together beneath the grinding of his. The pain has me crying out.
“I will not,” he announces. “Don’t look back, Lenora.”
Behind us, thick, congealing darkness spills down the steps. In a world that made sense, I could believe it’s a shifting of light from all the candles. A pressure change in the room.
But the descent is too precise. Too focused. It slithers at our heels, moving too fast for shadows.
Then we’re back on the other side of the curtains, facing a long row of stone angels who haven’t moved, yet I swear are breathing.
I grip Marcus’s fingers, throat tight with a fear that is all encompassing.
“Stay close,” he mumbles, eyes fixed on the statue nearest us.
“Did you know about this place?” I ask as we walk at a brisk pace in the direction of the stairs.
Marcus shakes his head. “I don’t even know how we got here, or how to get back.”
The last part is mumbled beneath his breath, like he hadn’t wanted me to hear it.
He nudges me up ahead of him, staying close against my back as we ascend to the top.
I do glance back once, just to see if the shadows are still behind us, but the passage is empty, the angels still and solemn.
Once again, the drapes appear to be no more than a cluster of shadows collected across the wall.
Neither of us speak as we resume our trek back in the direction of the main part of the house. None of the corridors look familiar. Every bend is a strange path that leads somewhere else in the house.
“Marcus.”
“We’re close,” he promises, fingers firm around mine. “I remember this painting.”
The painting is of a bald man in a bowler hat screaming while his face melts. It’s a horrific depiction I don’t remember. But I’d been too busy trying to escape him. I hadn’t been studying the artwork.
I do, however, keep a catalogue returning. I tell myself it’s so I never wind up in that strange room with the winding shadows, but deep down, I know that isn’t true.
The voice, the coiling tendrils, they came from that … crypt. From that thing in the wall. Maybe if I could go back and study it, I might understand why I’m the only one who can see it. At least, I think I am.
“Did you see it?” I ask, glancing up into the face of the man focused on his task.
“See what?”
“The mirror in that room.”
Marcus’s head tilts to mine. “What mirror?”
“It was up against the wall at the top of those stairs. You didn’t see it?”
To his credit, he seems to give it some genuine thought before shaking his head.
“I only saw the hole you were about to walk into.”
“Hole?” That didn’t seem correct. It was definitely solid. I think, at least. “Did you see the shadows?”
Marcus stops walking and faces me. “That place was covered in shadows.”
It’s my turn to shake my head. “Coming out of the mirror.”
His brows furrow. “There was no mirror and I didn’t see any shadows coming out of one. I saw a hole, and you, about to walk into it.”
I shouldn’t. Honestly, I should let it go. He’s beginning to look at me like I’ve lost my mind. But I have to know.
“Do you hear scratching at night … from inside the mirrors?”
He’s quiet too long. Too still. His eyes are a steady focus of someone carefully gathering their thoughts before voicing them. Even when his chest and shoulders lift with his deep inhale, I know he thinks I’ve lost my mind.
“Are you hearing scratches from inside the mirrors, Lenora?” he asks instead.
It’s a trick question.
He doesn’t so if I am, obviously, I need a doctor. A professional who will pack me full of drugs until I’m a zombie who needs to crawl just to get to the washroom. I can’t do that again.
“At night, I sometimes hear something…” I mumble.
His observation remains steady, but he replies softly, “The house shifts in the colder months. It makes the walls creak. Sometimes, the mirror edges rub.”
Of course.
To a sane person that is the most logical explanation. So, I nod.
We find our way out in absolute silence. I know he’s worried. He thinks I’m unstable. He’s no doubt contemplating getting someone to come see me. A therapist perhaps. Someone I can tell all my feelings to and tell them about my boys.
I don’t want that. A stranger won’t understand. They’ll judge and pick apart the best years of my life.
No. I don’t want help. The only thing that will make me sleep at night is the complete annihilation of the Duval family. I will not be satisfied until I have a perfect collection of eyes.
But I must wait.
I need to let Marcus plan and assess. I need to be patient.
I don’t want to be patient. I don’t want to wait.
This gnawing feeling consuming me from the inside isn’t getting smaller.
It’s a cancer spreading from my center to claim every inch of me until I am sure to suffocate on it.
Even as I understand, as the logical part of my brain reminds me this needs to be done right…
I want them dead!
I want them flayed alive with a hot knife and fork.
I want to hear them choking on their blood.
But I can’t push. I can do nothing but wait and swallow down gallons of murderous rage while they continue living their lives in blissful ignorance.
There is no memory of reaching Marcus’s bedroom. I simply blink and we’ve arrived and he’s pushing the door open. My gaze swings to the mirrors, searching for a change, searching to find that thing from below lurking in one of the corners.
It’s only the room and my face glowering back at me. Even my reflection meets my gaze with a hunger I fully understand.
Still, I allow myself to be led into the washroom. I let myself get placed on the edge of the tub while the water is adjusted. I watch Marcus move with purpose gathering towels and filling the rising basin with a generous amount of soap.
When he leaves, saying something about getting clothes, I push to my feet and move to the wall of mirrors facing the sinks.
I don’t see any shadows. Nothing moves. But I stare into my own face. Into the dark eyes I got from my mother and the riot of untamed curls that never stays confined to its braid.
“What do you want, Lenora?”
I think the words or they’re whispered into my head, but I don’t cower from them this time. I don’t blink. I barely feel a damn thing when I answer with the full weight of my venomous hatred.
“Blood.”