Chapter IV
Cassandra
The door slams against the wall with a deafening bang, yanking me from sleep. He’s back.
My heart hammers against the cage of my chest, stomach twisting into tight knots as fear suffocates my insides. Every aching muscle locks, bracing for impact. My body curls into itself, flinching from the anticipation of knowing what’s to come.
I don’t mean to make a sound, and yet a soft whimper laced with dread slips out. But the blow I’m waiting for never comes.
There’s just an eerie, unnerving silence. A stillness in the air makes me realize that something isn’t right.
With small, slow movements I inhale, not wanting to alert Clayton to the fact that I’m awake.
There’s a strange scent. Almost like a candle burning mixed with the fragrance of patchouli, but that’s impossible because I never burn candles.
Not since the last time, when Clayton found perverse entertainment in holding my hand over the flame.
I still recall the smell of my burning flesh, like charred meat.
When I close my eyes, my screams from that night echo in my head.
Slowly prying open one eye, I risk a glance, despite the chaos in my mind yelling that it’s safer to keep them closed.
My body violently jerks as my hands fly to my mouth, muffling the beginning of a scream. A shiver runs down my spine, eyes widening with horror at what I see.
A man towers in the doorway, almost hunched over from his height, blocking all light with his abnormally broad shoulders. He looks like a dark, ominous shadow. Glowing, red eyes stare right at me. Like death itself is gazing upon me.
Not Clayton. Not Clayton. It’s someone else. Something else.
“Are you the devil?” My voice cracks, soft and broken.
My head swims with confusion and anxiety as I take in the room around me, trying to process that, somehow, I’m no longer in my home.
Heavy velvet curtains cover the tall windows.
Candles flicker in an iron candelabra, casting shadows against the stone walls.
The air is thick from his presence, something old and evil.
The man steps into the candlelit room. This time I can’t stop the gasp, sharp and panicked. Every instinct screams that there is something very wrong with this person. If I had any sense, or ability, I would run.
His skin strains over bone, pulled so tight it looks ready to tear, with cheeks caving inward as though collapsing.
His ghostly-pale face is marred with flecks of discoloration, thick black veins squirming beneath the surface as rot slithers through flesh.
Darkness sinks deep around his eyes, burrowing into the sockets like something diseased.
Sickness clings to him, whispering that death has already claimed him.
His mouth splits open, indistinguishable from a gruesome, weeping wound, dark-red blood bubbling down his chin. A leering, predatory grin stretches across his face, as if my fear entertains him, and that’s when I see it.
Each tooth is carved to a deadly point, sharpened to tear through meat and bone like an animal.
“Worse.” He rasps in promise, his words thick with something cruel, and almost hungry.
He steps forward. Slow. Deliberate, as if he’s waiting to see what I do next. Heavy boots thud against the stone.
Panic wrenches me into action as I scramble further back into the bed, clutching the thin blanket to my chest in a weak attempt to shield myself from what’s standing at the footboard.
I want to disappear beneath the covers, to vanish like a child waiting for the morning to chase monsters away.
Yet my body betrays me, shaking, frozen beneath the weight of something ancient and diabolical.
This is no man. This is a monster.
Understanding dawns on me with a startling and alarming clarity. This is the monster that I accidentally wished for—the monster of Rose Falls.
“No,” I whisper. A horror consumes me at the thought of what I’ve done in asking for this beast.
I want to scream, to push him back and keep him away from me, but all I can do is shake, as helpless as a lamb going to slaughter. Although I know death would be a gift, a kindness, I still fear it, no matter how much I desire it.
As he moves to sit on the edge of the bed, I bring my legs closer to my chest, ignoring the soreness that comes with the movement.
I have to get away. Make myself smaller.
Hide. And yet, I can’t stop staring at him.
He’s just so…big, muscles straining underneath his dark clothing.
His hand alone would cover my entire face.
He’s unlike anyone I have ever seen before.
“Your sorrow beckoned me, a desperate hymn from one in need of saving. I answered your pleas—not as your angel, or your savior, but as your eternal ruination. My wicked little prayer. To me you are bound.”
Beneath the deep growl of his voice, there’s a softness that I don’t expect. An almost affection. It catches me off guard, leaves me to stare wide-eyed at him in disbelief. Everyone else––my parents, Clayton, the town––has taught me that I’m unlovable.
While my mind is momentarily distracted, wondering if I should fear him, his hand cups my face. My eyes involuntarily flutter shut at this unexpected moment of tenderness. It’s a feeling I have never known. He cradles my cheek as if I’m something precious. Breakable.
I am breakable. Please handle me with care.
My body softens under his touch despite his horrifying appearance.
My thin nightgown does little to cover the bruises sullying my body. The blanket I clutch can’t cover what he already saw—that I am broken, no stranger to being hurt.
His gaunt hand is like ice, but all I can feel is warmth radiating from his presence, a strange kind of twisted safety. It’s as if my body subconsciously knows something that I don’t. I’m drawn into his touch, my heart settling in my chest.
If he treats me gently, with reverence instead of rage, if he ruins me softly, perhaps I’ll allow him to take everything from me, if that’s what he wants.
My eyes trace over his strange features, seeing his unnaturally long, pointed ears, taking the opportunity while my heart is still to see who the demon of town whisperings is.
The stories say that his crumbling castle carries a curse, and all who come near it vanish, never to return.
Clayton rarely lets me leave the house, not unless he’s escorting me somewhere, but even then, he prefers to lock me away.
I don’t pay much attention to the warnings about the monster.
An unknown threat isn’t a concern, not when I live with the devil himself.
For now, I can forget about Clayton and his hard hands and even harsher words. For a moment, I can pretend that this creature is my knight in shining armor, who has saved me from my tower and answered my prayers. He told me that he wasn’t an angel, but he could be mine.
“I claim you, flesh and soul forevermore,” he vows fiercely. I feel his previous softness flee as his blackened talons cut into my cheek. It is a reminder that I shouldn’t forget what he is—a monster.
And yet, even when faced with a beast, I am conflicted. Do I truly wish for this god of death to use me as he pleases, based on a wishful dream that perhaps I can find a way out of my living nightmare? But if this vile monster doesn’t kill me in some gruesome way, then Clayton surely will.
My chest tightens, dread weeping through my ribs as nausea coils in my stomach.
I have to get home. Oh god. Tears prick in the corners of my eyes, my chin wobbling as the tremors shudder through my body.
I know with certainty in this moment that I am more scared of the man, the supposed love of my life, waiting at home than this monster. Clayton is going to kill me.
The monster’s fingers grip my chin, and I’m forced back into my body, blinking past the blurriness and into the present.
My tear-filled hazel eyes hold his red, and I watch as a blackness infects the whites like a deadly virus.
His spell entraps me as I watch the redness whirl around in circles with a dizzied gaze.
My jaw slackens, my body swaying softly to the side as if I’m hearing music.
There are no thoughts. There’s only him.
The room flickers like it’s amiss within space before beginning to undulate.
The creature duplicates, becoming ten, his terrifying, wide grin pushing me to the point of vertigo as he spins around me.
My stomach lurches as the movements get faster and faster, like I’m stuck on an uncontrollable ride destined to crash.
All I can see is shades of red. Carmine, scarlet, maroon twist together in psychedelic waves as everything shifts, objects morphing into bright patterns that rotate and mirror each other, folding over and over, over and over until everything drops.
I feel myself plummeting.
Instead of crashing into the bed, I fall straight through the ground, arms flailing, too fast to scream, just like Alice falling into Wonderland.