Chapter Thirty-Three
ELODIE
The odour of the Drunken Lion Pub clung to my skin like rot as I scrubbed the floor with an overused cloth. The heat swelled, thick as smoke, as it wrapped around my limbs. I was burning.
At the counter, Tony lounged with a cigarette wedged between his lips, Nat whispering furiously into his ear like she was feeding fire. My knee slipped into something warm and sticky, and a wave of nausea rolled through me.
“Elodie.” Tony’s voice sliced through the haze. “How’s your mum?”
My throat closed around the answer.
“Tony,” Nat chided, chewing on her bubblegum. “She died a week ago. Remember?”
Tony frowned. “Shame.” He stood and walked toward me. My body stiffened. A warning crawled across my skin.
I wasn’t supposed to be here.
“That woman,” he muttered, dramatic pity in his voice. “I would have taken good care of her. But she didn’t want it. And now look…”
I clenched my fist, my knuckles whitening.
“What a waste, eh, Dougie?”
I didn’t see Dougie’s reaction. Red bled into my vision.
Then black. The room warped. My breath thinned.
The pressure behind my eyes pulsed. My fingers numbed.
I could feel the thin ice wall built within my body; it was luring me to break it down with whatever I had.
Black veins filled my vision, spreading like escaped ink.
The pub vanished as the floor disappeared under my feet.
I was in the mausoleum. Cold stone. Echoing silence.
My eyes scanned the familiar crypts, then settled on a long mirror.
A girl with bellowing nightshade hair gazed back at me from the other side.
Her eyes were void of emotion, and her lips moved, but no sound came out.
None that I could hear. Her eyes widened with fury when she realised it as well.
Her hands struck the mirror, and it shimmered.
Where glass should have been was now silver liquid, swirling in the air as she stepped through.
I stumbled back, dashing against the damp crypts.
Still, she didn’t stop. Her hand touched my cheek, cold and clammy.
I winced away, but she leaned into my face, her dark hair dancing as if it were on a honeymoon with the wind.
“Fall,” she ordered.
My brow furrowed.
“Fall!” she screamed before slamming me into the wall. Again. Again. I tried to lift my arms to push her away, but they were numb as if something was anchoring them. She pushed me one last time and the ground vanished beneath me.
I fell backwards into nothing.
“Fall.” Her whisper echoed after me. “And fear the eyes that shimmer like fire.”
I gasped for air, reaching for the tea on my nightstand.
My heart pounded hard in my chest as I sat up in the bed, my hair damp from the nightmare.
The girl’s words replayed in my head. Fear the eyes that shimmer like fire.
I gulped down the tea like I hadn’t tasted water in days.
The Belladonna coursed through my veins, warm and slow, like a lullaby hummed from inside my bones.
My breath steadied. I pulled the Tales of Thornhill onto my lap and searched for a story I remembered reading.
The Tale of the Great Monster’s Return.
They say the Monster walks again.
Not as a beast. But as a human, with fire in its eyes and silence stitched into its shadow.
A creak. Then—
Knock. Knock.
I stilled, turning my gaze toward the door. The sound echoed, too loud for the hour. I climbed out of bed, my feet pressing against the chilled rug. My fingers closed around the doorknob. I hesitated, my heart rattling like a caged bird, my nightmare still vivid in front of my eyes.
When I gathered myself enough to finally open the door, all that greeted me was the hollow, empty hall. The drumming of my pulse was deafening as I leaned out into the hallway, letting the darkness wrap around me.
She stood at the end of the hallway, blurry and see through enough to catch a glimpse of the grandfather clock towering behind her.
The ghost from my room. The one who couldn’t speak, but tried to warn me about the passageways.
The hairs on my arms rose. Her face remained hidden by the shadows, but I could feel her watching.
Then she moved, vanishing behind the corner.
This time, I didn’t hesitate. I trusted that what she wanted me to see was important.
I took a candle from the wall, the flame jumping to life and flickering wildly as I followed her with haste. The air in the hallway clung cold to my skin as the scent of tallow and old wood smoke settled around me.
My steps were soft, careful, yet sounded loud like a drum in the suffocating quiet. The rug muffled most of my weight, but every creak of floorboard beneath it made me flinch.
Turning the corner, I was greeted by even more darkness. The hallway stretched ahead was completely unlit. The candles lining the walls were cold, unburned. I would’ve found it comforting if not for the ghost wandering ahead.
She drifted forward in a straight line, like she was following a memory, leaving dried leaves and frosted blue petals in her wake.
The corridors grew stranger with each turn. Less familiar. The wallpaper here had peeled into curled scrolls, paint blistering in patches like wounds. The air grew heavy, moist, tasting faintly of mildew and iron.
I followed the scent of lavender and her shimmer.
Her gown caught even the faintest kiss of light and threw it back in shivering silver.
We mounted a turret staircase, the stone steps slick with condensation.
My hand wrapped around the iron rail, cold enough to sting.
The next hall narrowed, its walls pressing in on either side.
My candle guttered. My breath echoed louder than my footsteps.
Then the ghost stopped.
She hovered in the corridor’s centre, still as bone. Her hair drifted slowly around her, undisturbed by any wind. I froze too, my pulse thudding in my ears.
CRASH.
A trapdoor flew open above her head, and I startled, a sharp gasp leaping from my lips. A folded ladder spilled down like a tongue unfurling from the ceiling.
The ghost turned slowly, her gaze holding mine. Then she raised her arm, her eyes tired, like it cost her everything to stretch her finger—long and delicate—and point at the hole.
I swallowed and stepped forward, reaching for the ladder. The wood groaned under my hand, and I hissed as a splinter slid under my skin. I sucked at the blood and climbed, each step heavier than the last, the air thickening as I rose. My heart hammered inside my rib cage.
At the top, I lifted the candle through the trapdoor, its flame flickering in the stale air. The attic breathed dust. Thick and unmoving. Even the shadows seemed layered, like they’d been sleeping undisturbed for decades.
I placed the candle down and stepped onto the floorboards. They groaned beneath my weight, brittle with age. My breath made soft clouds in the cold. The scent of mildew, mothballs, and something faintly metallic—like dried blood or old hinges—hung heavy around me.
Shapes emerged in the low light. Collapsed boxes, twisted piles of fabric, forgotten toys—gatherings from across centuries, left to rot.
Portraits with slashed canvases lined one wall.
A grandfather clock stood lonely beside a small round window, stripped of its hands.
Next to it, a tall mirror draped loosely with a black cloth, as if someone had tugged it away just to steal a glance at themselves.
In the far corner, a wooden chair rocked gently, as if someone had just risen from it. Beside it, a rocking horse—its paint flaking like skin, one glass eye missing—waited in silence for a child to play with it. My candlelight bounced across glass and lace, catching broken things suspended in time.
I stepped around a sagging trunk and my eyes dropped onto a carved chest. It was familiar, its wooden surface etched with faint ivy echoed the one Preston and I had found in the tunnels.
I touched the rusted lock, and it clicked softly, broken long ago.
When I lifted the lid, a cloud of dust puffed into my face.
I coughed, my eyes watering, the taste of it clinging to the back of my throat.
Bedsheets. Folded, their once colourful patterns faded by time.
I sifted through them, the fabric coarse and dry beneath my fingers.
Nothing. No keys, no clues. Just linen. A sigh slipped from my lips.
What was I meant to find? I turned too fast, and my foot caught the edge of a box.
I tumbled backward with a crash, the contents scattering.
Books spilled across the floor, loose pages fluttering in the candlelight like startled birds. The air filled with even more dust.
And a photo. The frame worn by time. The glass shattered, the shreds gleaming in the warm candlelight.
I knelt between the papers, the floorboards creaking under my weight, and lifted it up.
A girl and a woman in her mid-thirties stood side by side, holding hands like they were going on a walk.
Their clothes weren’t formal, but they were far too elegant to be from this decade.
The girl wore a wool coat with a Peter Pan collar and ribboned shoes.
Her dark curls framed her face, the front pinned back with pearly barrettes.
The woman stood tall in a belted tweed skirt and a cream blouse with soft ruffles at the throat.
I turned the photo around.
Esmée and Lilian Thornbury
I blinked, my lips parting. I turned it again, studying the figures with different eyes.
Their hair, their smiles, the way even their eyes curled upward in motion.
And the way they held each other—like nothing in the world could ever push them away.
I saw it now, the Mum I knew, in this barely ten-year-old child.
It was faint, but it was there—in her soft gaze and dimples.
Lilian. She too looked so different. It was hard to believe that this woman, beaming so widely, was the Lilian I knew. She still smiled, even now, but it never quite reached her eyes. Not the way it did here, in this moment locked in time.
I shifted on the sleek boards, and a book slipped from the top of a nearby stack. A single sheet fluttered free and landed at my knees. A name, written in thin, curling letters, the ink barely clinging to the page.
Esmée Th—that was all the moths had left. But I recognised my mum’s handwriting in the way she arched her E’s.
I put the photo aside and opened the book the name had escaped from. Paper scraps fell out covering the floor around me in mutilated words. I stared at them, trying to will sense into the chewed pieces.
The wheels spun in my head. Monster. Reate. Kness. Oulless. Soulless? Y mothe. My mother? Or was Y part of a name? Lia. That sounded like a name as well, but it could’ve been so many things. Monster reate knees soulless lia my mother.
I felt so close to something, like if I just stretched my fingers some more, I could scrape the surface.
A loud thump came from below. I stilled, like a fawn facing light. Dust settled slowly back to the floor as silence rushed in behind the sound. I gathered the papers into a rough pile, tucked them back into the box, and grabbed the candle, moving fast toward the trapdoor.
I knelt at the edge, holding the candle above the drop like an offering.
The dark waited below, still and yawning.
My pulse thundered in my ears. One step.
Then another. The wood creaked under me as I descended the ladder.
The attic door felt heavier now as I pushed it closed above me; the click of it echoed down the hall like a nail being driven into a wall.
A giggle echoed from somewhere behind me, twisted at the edges.
I whirled, facing thin air. The candlelight trembled as if shaken with fear.
My chest rose and fell, my breaths shallow.
I took a hesitant step, unsure of the direction, when the giggle came again.
Closer this time. Almost right beside me. A child.
My heart slammed into my ribs. It’s just in my head.
I’m alone. I chanted it like a shield. But was I?
I couldn’t help but think of the orphans Lilian had adopted.
Not every one of them might have reached adulthood.
Some could have died here. The manor was ancient, and a hundred years ago child death was more common. Something brushed against my back.
Then fingers—warm and soft—clenched around my arm.
I jerked back, slamming my elbow into the void where someone should have been, but my arm didn’t land.
It was caught.