Chapter Twelve
CHAPTER
Twelve
“Jane!” Terence’s bellow pierced into her emerging consciousness as he gave her shoulders another shake.
Everything was a blur as the sounds of the world returned to Jane in ebbing waves.
All she could discern was a muffled whimpering, but she came to eventually recognize someone—though there may have been several people all at once in a cacophony of syllables and weeping—calling her name.
None of them were the demon, yet they all were.
The floor beneath her was of wood, not flesh; the walls were periwinkle-blue and bookshelf-brown, not infection-red.
She couldn’t register it fully until she felt the heat of a hand touching her, cupping her cheek, pressing against her forehead. She tried to open her eyes and was met with the bleary gray light of early morning.
She was still in the conservatory, and, despite the haze of her vision, she saw two figures huddled by the door.
Mrs. Foster was watching with her hands clutched over her mouth as she tried to stifle the emotion that threatened to break its usual rigidness, and Ms. Hudson just gaped, the color otherwise flushed from her ruddy cheeks.
Terence was kneeling before Jane, his hair disheveled and face pale as he continued to touch her, patting her cheeks and shaking her shoulders in an attempt to rouse her.
Again and again, he called her name, each time becoming clearer and less like the demon’s gurgles as she was lured back into the world of the living.
The stench of blood hung heavy in the air, metallic and bitter.
He muttered under his breath before he gathered her in his arms, sending a jolting ache up her left leg and a whimper from her lips.
Though the thought crossed her mind lazily, a string of terror weaved through her as she wondered where all the meat, all the blood, had come from, and why or how it ended up in Terence’s cellar. Whose body had been down there? And how many?
Where had the beast gone? Why was everyone just standing here? Didn’t they know they had to flee?
Jane whimpered again, unable to speak proper words.
As Terence carried her, she wanted to wriggle free.
She feared that he was bringing her to the cellar to add her to those piles of meat, perhaps as punishment for her disobedience, and was to throw her straight into the beast’s awaiting maw.
Or maybe he was bringing her to lay before the idol, a totem of the flayed-faced demon in her nightmare, to butcher her for its amusement.
Its gurgling cackle bubbled in her ears, burning hot with petty hate.
Her pulse raced through her as he brought her to the washroom, as he and the two women stripped her bare and dipped her into the steaming bath, as they mended her leg with thread.
Even as Terence set her in bed, she whimpered, speech slurred as she wailed about the beast, begging for him to let her leave and to keep the beast away.
All she could remember was seeing something vaguely resembling pain pinching his brow as the darkness swallowed her whole once more.