Hanbury Manor was cut apart by his shouts.
William wasn’t in the safety of a bed, shut away in Robert Thomas’s room. No. He faced a familiar door… a door far from the room he should’ve been inside.
He was stood on the top floor of Hanbury Manor, so close to the attic door that the wood brushed the tip of his nose.
Stumbling backwards on panicked feet, he hit the banister, cracking fragile wood against his hip. If it weren’t there, he would’ve tipped over the edge and fallen.
The space around him was bathed in obscurity. His eyes, filled with tears, strained to look around him to make sense of his location. Behind him, a window revealed ominous clouds coating the night sky. He was at a height, and the realisation made him stumble back on numb feet.
How did he get here? More importantly, why?
William’s heart was in his throat. It beat so viciously it choked any attempt to breathe, let alone scream again.
Silver light burst to life as lightning split the sky outside, casting the landing in a stark glow. It revealed every detail of the empty space. Movement caught in the corner of his eye. Something was behind him. A flash of shiny red as lightning caught on the material urged vomit to claw up William’s throat.
Slowly, he turned around. His hands balled into fists, and that was when he heard it. Breathing. Deep, raspy breaths, like the person was struggling to fill their lungs. But by the time he faced the door, there was no one to be seen.
Relief lasted but a moment. Fear dwelled long after.
“Out!”
William spun back to the staircase, the blood rushing from his head, making him dizzy. What he saw before him was unlike anything he could imagine.
A man hung, suspended in the air, directly before the grand window. Their face was blurred by shadow, but the flash of lightning highlighted their figure’s outline. William couldn’t move. He couldn’t release the sorry whimper that stuffed his larynx. All he could do was look upon the floating apparition, bile scorching his throat.
In a single moment the person’s head bent to the side, their neck snapping, the sound enough to snatch William out of his state of shock.
William clamped his eyes closed as he screamed. His soul tore apart as all his terror gouged out of him. Fear coiled beneath every inch of his skin. It crawled among him as though spiders lived inside his veins and bones. He dropped to his haunches, gathering himself in a ball and covering his head with his hands as if that would protect him from this nightmare.
“I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming,” William sang to himself, refusing to open his eyes. “It’s just a dream. It’s just one big fucking nightmare.”
And yet, as he spoke his manifestation aloud, he could still hear the crack of bone and the rasp of ruined lungs.
It could’ve been seconds, or hours, before a set of heavy hands grasped for him. Soft, warm and real. The touch came so suddenly that William’s initial reaction was to fight. Blindly, he threw out his fists, battling away the hard figure that accosted him. His body shook, his ears roaring with the rush of blood, that he almost missed his name being called.
“William, it’s me. It’s – ouch, that was my nose…”
William continued to fight against the force until solid arms wrapped around him. The more he did, the stronger they became. This was it, he thought. This was the end. If that horror didn’t murder him, his own reaction would.
In one last attempt, William was drawn into the protective embrace of a warm body, a soft hand drawing down the back of his head.
“Go away,” he bellowed through the bubbling expanse of fright. “Please, just leave me alone!”
Still, the arms held on firm.
“It’s Edward. Look at me and see. I’m not going to hurt you.” The response partially penetrated through William’s boundaries, but not enough to calm him completely. “You’ve just had another nightmare. It’s okay. Ipromiseit’s going to be okay.”
There was a kind brush of a mouth against his clammy forehead, followed by the vibration of that promise repeating over and over, seemed to finally calm him. If but a sliver, enough for William to stop resisting and open his eyes.
William found himself face to face with Edward, his piercing brown eyes and full lips. The mass of hair stuck up at awkward angles, a bead of sweat rolled down his temple. William opened his mouth to speak, but the urge to vomit down Edward’s chest was so sudden that he clamped his lips together.
“What in thehellhas happened?” Edward asked.
Even if William wanted to answer, he couldn’t.
“I heard you scream,” Edward continued, breathless, face flushed. “I came up as quick as I could. Are you all right… are you hurt or something?”
William nodded, then shook his head, then nodded again. He couldn’t explain what he’d seen except that it must have been some wine-induced nightmare. In all his life, he’d never sleepwalked, and in the space of hours, he’d done it twice. Except this time, he didn’t remember following anyone. One moment, he’d been paralysed on Robert’s bed; the next, he had woken outside the attic door.
