Then came the laughter again, closer this time, echoing through the maze until it was everywhere and nowhere all at once.
And that was when I saw her.
At the far end of the row, half-devoured by moonlight, stood a woman in a tattered wedding gown. The satin clung to her in wet, clotted patches, the train dragging behind her like a funeral shroud. Long, ashen hair obscured her face, dripping—water or blood, I could not tell.
The night seemed to still around her.
“Elizabeth?” I faltered, my voice strangled.
Her head tilted slowly, unnaturally, her hair parting just enough for the moonlight to find her eyes.
Black.
Hollow.
The radiance of an opium-dream.
Poe screamed overhead, a sound so piercing it cleaved the silence.
The woman began to move toward me.
I scrambled to my feet, the hem of my gown tangled and torn around my ankles. My breath came in sharp, ragged gasps as the earth seemed to move around me.
“Poe?” I called, my voice breaking.
He circled wildly above, his cries shrill and disjointed, panic threaded through every sound.
“Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed by an unseen censer!”
The garden was no longer still. The hedges began to ripple and twist, the shadows along them lengthening into grotesque shapes that writhed and breathed. The gravel beneath my feet pulsed as if something would reach beyond the ground at any moment.
I turned down another path, but the way bent upon itself, closing like a throat around me.
The laughter rose again, softer now, almost tender, as if mocking my fear. It came from everywhere at once—from behind the walls, from beneath the earth, from the very air I breathed.
I stumbled, catching myself against the rough branches, my fingers scrapingon thorns. The scent of blood mingled with the heavy perfume of the flowers, sweet and rotting all at once.
“Please…” I begged, pressing a trembling hand to my temple. The world swam, blurring at the edges, my vision swelling and contracting like lungs breathing. “Please stop...”
The hedges shifted, parting slightly before me as if yielding to an invisible hand. Poe swooped low, his wings cutting the air in frantic arcs.
“My Lenore!” he cried.
His voice was a warning and a plea, but my legs would not obey. I turned slowly and there she was.
Elizabeth stood only a few feet away now.
A blade glinted in her hand, catching the faintest slip of moonlight.
“No,” I breathed, staggering backward. “You’re not real. You’re not…”
Her lips parted. What came out was a voice both living and dead. “Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly…”
My breath seized.
She took another step, bare feet soundless on the gravel. Then she whispered, in that same impossible tone. “Save only through the weakness of his feeble will.”
My body trembled. I screamed, stumbling over the uneven stones. My heel caught in the hem of my gown, and I fell hard onto the earth. Pain detonated at the back of myskull in a hot, blinding burst. The world spun violently, collapsing around the edges.
