19. NINETEEN
NINETEEN
BETRAYAL
.I broke into a run, heading toward the direction I’d thrown the stone, but just as I neared the line of trees, I slammed into something hard and invisible.
Angrily, I raised my fists toward it and pummelled it until my frustration faded away. Feeling along the resilient surface, it seemed no more substantial than jelly, yet I was helpless to penetrate it. The realisation weighed my heart down.
I gazed longingly at the serene landscape so tantalisingly near yet so impossibly distant.
Once again, my anger surged. I wouldn’t let them win!
I pushed myself to follow the boundary as far as I could.
Perhaps there was a gap, an overlap somewhere that like an unevenly stitched seam, might provide enough space for me to squeeze through.
By the time dusk settled, I’d walked in a full circle. I was back looking at the manor as it glowed in the distance, ablaze with lights. Exhausted, hungry, and thirsty, I had no choice but to return though I felt more apprehensive with each step.
***
I found myself moving with the leadenness of a sleepwalker as I approached the Moonspire gates and made my way past the creepy statues and toward the rear doors of the Manor.
Though I stepped into welcoming warmth and the appetising aromas of food, the sadness I felt weighing my soul drowned out any other emotions.
I wondered how the lights had been turned on as everyone had left hours before. It was a question I couldn't be bothered to answer, though it planted the seed of whether I was actually alone or what I saw was yet another prop for the next scene of the play.
Overcome by fatigue, I decided to eat something later and instead go rest in my room.
My legs barely carried my weight as I made my way upstairs.
The tapestries lining the wall had shifted, but I couldn’t focus long enough to care.
It wasn’t until I noticed the faces, women I had never seen before, turned toward me.
I paused, feeling the eerie sensation of being watched creep over me.
Reluctantly, I approached, almost afraid of whom the faces might be, but I found myself irresistibly drawn to them.
Inscrutable eyes watched me from behind the most exquisite masks of finely beaded gold brocade, black jet and mother-of-pearl, iridescent crystals and rainbow-coloured feathers.
I longed to touch the masks yet was afraid in case I awakened something beyond an image on a tapestry.
Keeping my eyes averted from the walls, I rushed to my room, where every light was ablaze.
A familiar scent lingered in the air, and as I opened the doors, I sensed that someone had just stepped out of the room.
At the end of the corridor, soft footsteps faded into silence, too light to identify, yet too real to ignore.
There were people here. The maids, the servants, or was it those creepy Ecliptuari guards?
My skin prickled with paranoia, and I kept turning my head, as if expecting someone to leap out from the wardrobe.
I glanced toward the darkness encroaching from the balcony doors.
The drapes billowed gently in a mild breeze, but the phantom shapes of the sheer fabric unsettled me.
I felt uncomfortable being alone in my room. I lacked the strength to
***
I looked out through the balcony doors and up at the stars.
I couldn’t stop thinking how I missed my life.
I missed how Terry my neighbour’s scruffy little cat would appear at my window every morning, crying for milk like he paid the rent.
I missed how old Terry would stomp up the path after him, muttering
“Ye wee shite, get back here,” Like he was a spoilt lump of fur.
I missed the farms, the sound of tractors grumbling awake before the sun was even up, the way the fields smelled of cut grass and diesel and that awful morning manure.
Jimmy the farmer used to swear and say, “The dung is good for yer lungs, lass,” every time I complained. I even miss that. God help me.
And I missed my dad. My real dad. One minute he was there. The next he was gone. Mum never talked about him. It was the one thing that shut her down, the one question that made her eyes water. She said the past hurt too much to look at. So, she didn’t. But Dennis never held back.
“You don’t want tae end up like your faither,” he’d say shaking his head like the thought alone was tragic.
“The man went aff his head ”
And the more I heard it, the more it stuck. What if I was like him?
“What if this being taken was what happened to him too?
All I ever knew was what they told me, after the fire, after Mum’s stroke, he was “locked away for his own good.” But I never remembered that version of him. Not once. Not the madness. Not the danger. Just the absence.
I crawled into bed without bothering to undress, surrendering to the darkness before my thoughts could catch up with me.
.