MAD. MAD. MAD.
Just like my mother…
“No,” I breathed, shaking violently. “NO!”
I turned to Sylum again, tears blurring my vision. “Make her stop lying,” I pleaded, my voice breaking. “Please… please just tell the truth.”
But he only stared at me, devastated and helpless.
And that hurt worst of all.
Dearest reader,
If you’re wondering what happened next, I fear my memory is lacking. I recall only vague, fever-blurred images—hands lifting me, voices murmuring above my head, the sensation of being tucked—almost lovingly—into my bed.
At some point, the doctor arrived, though whatever he said to Sylum has slipped into that well of forgotten things my mind refuses to draw from.
I cannot tell you how long I lay suspended in that strange, soft darkness. Hours? Days? Perhaps years lived and lost inside a single dreamless sleep. But the moment I clawed my way back to waking—my nightmare began anew.
I learned then that Isolde had departed which was a small blessing. She left without ceremony. Without farewell.
Apparently she could no longer risk her good name, nor allow it to be entangled with mine. Those were the words she left behind, dripping with the kind of cruelty only aristocrats can make sound polite. In truth, reader, I do not blame her. If I had the option of abandoning myself, I might have done so as well.
Nelly, sweet Nelly, sat faithfully by my bedside day after day, wringing her hands and pleading softly for me to eat. To drink. She brought broth, bread, and tea steeped mild enough for a child. Eventually—I obeyed.
I always watched her prepare my tea. I always watched with my own eyes as she combined the herbs, assured that no poison was added.
And that was when my worst fear was confirmed.
Nothing changed.
I still saw the walls melt and move.
My dreams, when I slept, were horrifying and cruel.
Elizabeth’s muffled cries still tormented me from the walls.
And reader… nothing is so terrifying in those moments of half-sanity when you must finally admit to yourself that perhaps you have been insane all along.
Even more damning—Sylum avoided me entirely.
Not an argument. Not a confrontation.
Only heartbreaking silence.
I asked about him often, my confusion and guilt colliding, but I was given only clipped answers of his whereabouts and activities.
If you, dear friend, find your faith wavering—if you begin to suspect the cracks in my mind run deeper than I admit—I cannot fault you. For at that very moment, even I began to wonder whether the echoing footsteps I followed were real… or simply the sound of my own sanity retreating.
‘I trembled not so much at the peril of my soul, as at the creeping conviction that I was no longer within the guidance of my own reason.’- Poe
—L
Chapter 24
The morning light was thin and anemic. Too pale to be comforting, too dim to chase away the shadows that clung stubbornly to the corners of my room. I sat curled in the window seat, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders, Poe, leaning in attentively from his perch on the windowsill.
In my lap lay a small, time-worn volume of Edgar Allan Poe’s tales, the spine cracked, the pages feathered by age. It was one of many I had requested brought up in my confinement since I knew it was Poe’s favorite.
