Chapter 8
VIII
Gunnar and Ophelia lay on the sordid sheets beside me, their limbs a tangled geometry of spent skin and salt. Gunnar sprawled on one side, frantically inhaling. Ophelia lay on the other, her leg draped over my hips.
She was streaked with the cooling red of the kill, yet she seemed intoxicated—exhilarated by the blood. She giggled and rolled onto her side.
I was exhausted. They had passed me between them until my joints felt unmoored. My hair hung in clumps where their hands had seized it, and Ophelia moved against me, drawing her pleasure until it shuddered through her.
Then she lingered, her fingers slipping inside me, curling and pressing while my hands scraped against the bedframe.
She enticed, stroked, and teased, driving me relentlessly toward the edge until my body betrayed me for the hundredth time.
My raspy moans broke into a loud cry that shook the room.
Shame flooded me. I had never screamed like that before—never had an orgasm hit so deep, or so raw, that it stripped me of whatever was left of my humanity.
They didn’t drink from me. Tonight, they had someone else. It had only been two nights since I buried the sweaty man Ophelia brought home.
They went out together after sunset. Ophelia wore one of Sylvie’s thin floral sundresses—entirely wrong for the tightening cold. To compensate, she threw Sylvie’s trench coat over her shoulders. The clothes fit her perfectly.
Now that I was no longer their food, I wondered what would become of me. In this house, to be useless was to be forgotten, and to be forgotten was to be buried.
Gunnar turned his head slightly when Ophelia said, “I want to see Agatha have a drink. Agatha, go on. Try.”
I stared at her. She wanted me to do what?
“Now, Agatha.” She nudged me with a sharp flick.
I rose slowly, trembling.
I approached the corpse, frozen in the shape of its last moments. I knew I had to touch it, but I couldn’t.
The wound was a raw, messy cavity. Their teeth had shredded his neck to mince.
His head tilted at a grotesque angle, barely held in place.
It reminded me of how they’d left Sylvie.
Broken and discarded. The metallic stench caught me in its fist. “Try it, Agatha,” Ophelia said. “Before it goes cold.”
I lowered my face to the wound.
Now.
Do it.
Just fucking do it, and they’ll leave you alone.
My lips brushed the torn flesh, slick with blood. I tried to draw from it, tentative at first. Sinew shifted, tough and uneven, the taste of iron so wrong, yet strangely addictive. Something loose caught between my teeth, a shred of skin. It was gelatinous and warm.
I realized too late.
The piece was worming its way down my oesophagus.
I gagged.
The small amount of blood I had taken came up with bile, and when there was nothing left, I kept retching, unable to stop.
Ophelia laughed and clapped her hands, delighted.
Gunnar watched from the bed, his expression unreadable. Then he got up and left, his naked body a formidable, silent shadow moving through the room. He didn't reach for his clothes, leaving the door hanging open as he disappeared into the hall.
I was in hell.
Under Ophelia’s eye, I dug the grave—the third one, counting Sylvie. The pit came out shallow. The ground was stubborn, and they no longer seemed to care if the rot was found.
This time, I felt nothing but numbness. The man whose blood I had tasted meant nothing to me. He was merely a waste to be disposed of. Leftovers for the earth and its inhabitants.
Ophelia hovered at the edge of the pit.
“Where’s your family?” she asked.
I was mildly surprised when she spoke. I kept digging, concentrating on the soil. She waited a moment, then pressed on.
“You don’t speak to them? Are they still alive?”
She allowed the question to hang in the air before moving past it with a shrug.
“Mine are long gone,” she said. “And you know what? I don't feel a thing. They were the ones who sold me to that man . . .”
Her face twisted, a sudden flash of old hate breaking through.
“Robert,” she spat his name out like it was a mouthful of putrescence. “He was awful. And he deserved everything—everything!—he got.”
With a soft motion, she reached up to fix a stray curl of hair, surreptitiously wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.
“It was a transaction for my parents. You see, they were rich people. They wanted a son to inherit it all, to continue the business. But they got me. A daughter. To them, I was just a stepping stone to the heir they longed for. So they married me off for profit—to combine the dynasties, as per my father’s toast at our wedding.
My husband raped me the very first night.
And though I didn’t resist him, he beat me senseless. I was only eighteen.”
I wondered why she was sharing her past with me. Why did she suddenly feel the urge to show that side of her, the part of her life where she was a victim? To connect with me better? To garner sympathy?
But it was difficult to feel sympathy for her. She'd used her trauma to carry on her own dynasty of blood and murder.
“I tried to be good for him,” she continued.
“I truly thought I was doing something wrong, because he just kept at it. Then, after a year, I finally struck back. I hit him with a cast-iron skillet. He died on the spot. And they committed me to an asylum.” Her voice shifted, losing its hysterical edge.
“And then he got me out.” Her chin lifted in the direction of Gunnar’s room.
I couldn’t tell if she was grateful for the mercy he’d provided or resentful for the life she now led.
But I was too tired to indulge in the search for answers. I could barely stand. “You need to hurry,” she said at last, glancing toward the horizon where the sky had begun to pale into a sickly, translucent gray.
I rolled the body into the grave; it hit the bottom with a muffled thud. Clumps of soil followed him, indifferent.
It had to have been over a month since they locked me in. Trees that had been bright with autumn were bare now, exposing mottled limbs. Nearby, Ophelia admired the hydrangeas that had long since gone brown and rotted on the stalk.
I jolted awake, certain someone had screamed directly into my ear.
Wake up!
The demand still echoed in the stagnant air. I could swear a man was in the room—a presence that wasn't Gunnar—but I couldn’t decipher any unusual shapes in the sinister shade.
The blood I’d consumed had to be poisoning me.
I rolled onto my side and only then realized I wasn’t chained.
In her haste to finish before dawn, Ophelia had forgotten. This was my chance.
A sliver of light slipped through the cracks in the boarded window.
Daylight.
Heaving, I realised they’d kept me drained and spent, until I succumbed to exhaustion, not waking until night. I was never meant to be awake post-dawn.
Looking at the ray of daylight brought a sharp, splintering headache that only fueled the nausea.
I lurched over the edge of the bed and vomited.
Bile, streaked with a secondary thread of blood, dribbled to my feet.
I stared at the mess, fully expecting the rest of my insides to follow, but the upheaval began to recede.
My stomach gave a couple more agonizing twists before settling into a bruised calm.
I forced myself upright, but my body failed me. A sharper wave of sickness hit, and I collapsed, striking the floor hard.
God help me, I prayed, though I did not believe in God any longer.
I lay still, listening, hoping I had not roused my captors.
Somehow, I found a fraction of strength left in my limbs. My arms trembled as I braced myself against the wall and moved slowly down the hall, careful to avoid any creaking underfoot. I didn’t know where they were.
Each step was an effort, my whole body shaking, but I kept moving. The hallways seemed longer than I remembered, narrowing into an eternal corridor of torture.
When I reached the staircase, reality warped. The first step was a plunging descent, the pitch too steep. My legs shook as I lowered myself onto the first one, my fingers digging into the scarred wood of the railing. Breaking my neck would have been a mercy.
But the environment was easier here; intrusive streaks of light no longer irritated my eyes.
Every few steps, I stopped and listened, straining for any sound that shouldn't be there.
Centuries seemed to pass as I descended, bracing myself against a fall.
My heart hammered as I neared the bottom. The front door was close—the only one unboarded, the only way out. I could almost taste the freedom.
I could almost feel the sun and the wind against my skin. But at that thought, my throat squeezed painfully, and a spasm ripped through my body. Nonetheless, I reached the door, my fingers trembling as they closed around the knob.
The lock clicked open.
For a moment, I couldn't believe it. If I could make it outside, nothing else would matter. I would run until my legs failed and my lungs burned, until I collapsed into the grass. I would run until my body gave out.
And if I died, at least I would die free.
I pushed the door open, and a dull, gray light swept into the hallway. It was smoother than I had imagined, yet it struck me like a physical force, searing my retinas and wrestling my skull until I was driven back into the shadows of Whitmore House.
I raised my hand to shield my face, but the light poked between my fingers, almost taunting. What vigor I’d felt melted away as I was consumed by relentless exposure. I tried to step forward, but I trembled violently.
My vision wouldn't adjust. Quite the opposite—the longer I looked, the brighter the light became, expanding into a vast, unforgiving white.
The open space beyond stretched too far, too wide. Hollow. I feared I might step into it and be taken, drawn out into something without edges. Every inch forward demanded more than I had left to give.
Panic coiled low in my gut, spilling out roots from my spine.
Every instinct urged retreat. And then, I was lingering on the precipice of in and out.
Dark and light. Captive and free. The day barely brushed my toes before my body rebelled through some unknown force.
Every muscle screamed with a pain I hadn’t known could exist. Every nerve ignited as if the light itself burned me from the inside out.
I gathered myself, tried again, dragging one foot forward, then the other. The world outside tilted and spun, and then, the doorframe rushed to meet me.
I wanted to collapse, to crawl back into the narrow corridor and bury myself in the shadows of this filthy house. I wanted to claw the door shut. I wanted to sink back into the small, stagnant safety I knew.
With a shuddering sob, I let the door click shut. The terrifying vacuum of the outside was gone. I dropped to the bottom step, knees drawn up and arms wrapped tight, crying until my chest burned.
I had been outside at night—digging graves, burying the dead.
Why was the daylight so unbearable?
I was a rabid animal at the water’s edge—dying of thirst, yet unable to drink. My freedom sat just beyond the door, but my body had been rewired to choke at the sight of it.
This was how Ophelia found me.