Chapter 7 #2
The third room was smaller, its walls bearing faded pastoral scenes that must have once been cheerful and had become, with time, something considerably less so.
Lambs danced in a field and shepherdesses watched them with expressions of placid contentment—all of it muted to the color of old memories by years of disuse.
Their flat painted eyes tracked me across the threshold with a persistence that was obviously my imagination but felt, regardless, like surveillance.
I pulled that door shut more quickly than the others.
A fourth room held storage, covered furniture creating strange silhouettes in the dark, shapes that my exhausted mind turned into things they were not, before resolving into the ordinary geometry of forgotten things.
I moved further down the hallway, into the narrower branch of the corridor I had not yet explored, where the lamp scarcely reached and the shadows were correspondingly deeper and more committed to their work.
Four more doors revealed much of the same—rooms that had perhaps once been happily occupied, now devoid of any sign of human life.
I stood in the hallway with that certainty settling through me in cold increments, and tried to decide what to make of it. Unless there was another staircase that led to rooms I was unaware of—which I was almost certain there was not—Agnes had lied.
The knowledge made me wonder how many other things she had told me that might be untrue.
I turned back toward my own corridor, toward my room and the temporary safety it represented. My steps slowed as I passed the rose door. The one room I had not checked. I paused, my hand rising toward the handle before I had consciously decided to reach for it.
Open it, the voice said, eager now. See what he’s been hiding from you.
My hand shifted closer despite my resistance.
It was cool beneath my palm when I finally touched it.
My heart pounded so hard I could feel it in my throat, in my temples, in my fingertips where they gripped the rose.
Before I committed to the decision, my hand was already turning the handle, controlled by a force beyond my own will.
It gave without effort, the mechanism sliding from its place.
It was unlocked.
I held my breath as the door swung inward with a soft creak.
Yes, the voice breathed with satisfaction. Finally.
I hesitated on the threshold, blinking against the darkness.
The room beyond was lit only by a dying fire in the hearth, its flickering glow barely illuminating the furniture.
The air smelled of roses, sweet and cloying, but beneath it, I scented the first sour note of rot waiting patiently for its cue.
I should have turned around and fled back to my room as any sensible woman would, but my feet were already carrying me forward across the threshold.
It was clearly a bedchamber, that much I could make out—a four-poster bed with heavy curtains, a vanity with its mirror reflecting firelight, a wardrobe standing open to reveal articles of clothing in various shades that seemed to shift in the unsteady light.
I spun around the room, a strange sense of familiarity winding through me, though I could not account for the reason.
Then I froze.
Near the far window, silhouetted against the glass, stood a woman.
My breath caught in my throat, and I stumbled back, bumping into the door behind me.
She had her back to me, her posture elegant as she arranged flowers in a crystal vase on a small table.
Her movements were smooth, suggesting she had completed the act so many times that it was thoughtless.
Her hair fell in waves down her back, and she wore a cream colored nightgown that seemed to absorb the firelight rather than reflect it.
I stood, anchored to the spot near the doorway, my mind reeling with confusion. Surely it could not be Dr. Ambrose’s wife… Agnes had said she had died and spoken of her in the past tense with such finality.
But who else could it be?
“I am so sorry,” I muttered, “I did not mean to intrude. I thought—I was looking for Hawthorne. I will just—”
The woman continued arranging flowers as if I had not spoken. Her hands drifted among the stems, adjusting them delicately, creating a composition that was somehow both beautiful and unsettling.
“Mrs. Ambrose?” I tried again, taking a hesitant step closer. “I am terribly sorry for disturbing you. I am Camellia Reed, your husband’s new assistant. I was told—”
I snapped my mouth closed, frowning. What was I going to say? Oh apologies, I was told you were dead?
She still said nothing, gave no acknowledgment whatsoever of my presence or my words.
Perhaps she had not heard me, too absorbed in her task.
Surely she had, though. The door had creaked when I opened it.
The floorboards had groaned beneath my feet.
She should have turned—startled or offended or at the very least curious about who had entered her private chambers uninvited.
How could Agnes have lied about something so fundamental, claiming Dr. Ambrose to be a widower when his wife stood here, clearly alive?
I took another step closer, drawn forward by my own foolish curiosity. “Excuse me,” I said, projecting my voice across the small space between us.
The woman’s hands continued their work, unconcerned by my increasingly desperate attempts at communication.
Touch her, the voice urged.
I hesitated, every instinct screaming that this was wrong, that I should leave and never speak of what I had seen, but I could not bring myself to turn away.
I closed the remaining distance between us, close enough now to see the flowers she arranged were dry and wilted, the blooms that remained intact had withered and rotted at the edges.
“Can you hear me?” I asked, my voice unsteady.
I reached out, my hand trembling as it hovered over her shoulder. I stretched my fingers toward the fabric of her nightgown—and passed straight through her. I jerked back so swiftly that I nearly tumbled over my own feet.
The woman spun around, her movement sudden and violent after such stillness. My eyes ran the length of her, pausing on her face.
My throat closed, my lungs refusing to draw breath, rendering me speechless.
Where her eyes should have been, pools of ink filled the sockets, hollow and sunken, like staring into a fleshless skull.
Her skin was ashen and sickly, dark veins running beneath it as though she were a corpse that had been preserved but not quite properly.
Her lips were blue-tinged, and I watched, unable to look away, as her mouth opened slowly.
Blood oozed from the corners, thick and dark, trickling down her chin in rivulets.
The flow increased, spilling over her lips, dripping onto her nightgown and turning the fabric a deep crimson.
Her jaw came unhinged with a distinct cracking sound, her mouth opening impossibly wide as something emerged from within.
A thin, green tendril pushed past her bloodied lips, unfurling like a new shoot seeking sunlight.
The vine was delicate at first, almost beautiful in its obscenity.
It continued to grow, sliding from her throat with wet, organic sounds that made my stomach lurch even as I leaned forward, captivated by morbid fascination.
It slithered down her chin, following the path the blood had carved, wrapping around her neck with the lazy confidence of something that had claimed her body long ago and had no intention of leaving her.
The tendril was almost luminescent in the dim light, threaded with darker veins that pulsed and writhed beneath the surface.
More vines followed. They spilled from her mouth in a grotesque bouquet, some thin as thread, others thick as my finger, all of them moving in a slow cadence as they wound down her body, coiling around her arms and her waist, spreading across her nightgown until they covered every inch of the fabric.
The vines claimed her until she was transformed into something that was neither woman nor plant but some ineffable fusion of both. They pulsed gently in time with my own heart, the hypnotic beat drawing me forward.
Then she reached for me. Her fingers stretched out impossibly long, the nails chipped and blackened. The vines had grown under her skin as well—dark green lines visible through the translucent flesh of her palms.
“Help me,” she whispered, her voice distorted by the plant that filled her throat. “Please… help me…”
I took a step back, wanting to flee. Every nerve in my body demanded me to do so, but I could not stop staring at her face—at the blood, the vines, and decay all woven together so exquisitely that it held me transfixed.
What had happened to her? How had the vines taken root within her?
She’s perfect, the voice said, pressing so hard behind my eyes that I squinted in pain.
I backed away, terror overriding every other impulse as I turned toward the door—and crashed directly into something solid and unyielding.