No. It’s wrong. That isn’t why.
I pace my room. Follow the square of carpet in an infinite loop around the bed much too empty without Lenora. I tried. I crawled in and lay watching my reflection judge me from above.
She shouldn’t be alone.
There are hundreds of things that could go wrong if I’m not there to protect her. I should be there. Even if I have to sit outside her door until morning. Be close enough.
The crimson haze drifts when I stalk back. It creeps along the edges of the mirrors, the sharp bends in the room corners. Always just out of sight when I turn. But never quite fast enough.
I don’t know where it came from. The voices. The noises. They hadn’t been there before but they’re here now. Cutting. Biting.Unspooling my thoughts. Putting words where there hadn’t been before. They keep whispering.
“You let them die.”
Metal bits rattle as softly as a breeze through wind chimes. Distant, but right in my ear.
“How do you live with yourself?”
Because I didn’t.
I wouldn’t.
I loved my boys.
“Liar.”
I need to check on Lenora. It’s been too long. What if she hurt herself? What if she needs me?
The red haze drifts away when I turn. The metal pieces clink.
I ignore both as I hurry to the door in only my slacks. The chill of the manor scuttling across my naked torso means nothing as I hurry to find the woman holding my sanity.
My feet clap on cold stone. Darkness crawls through the corridors, oppressive without a light, but this has been my home since birth. I know every inch of it.
Except that room.
The chamber with the cobwebs and musty hint of dried blood. Everything about it was wrong.
Too dark.
Too cold.
Its very existence held an energy that shouldn’t exist.
But it was Lenora at the top of that incline, balanced dangerously on a jagged structure of stones, inches from a black void. One slip and she could have died. Either fallen to her death or been attacked by whatever creature lives in that hole.
“Did you see the mirror?”Lenora’s question rings in my ear.“Did you see the shadows?”
I’m not a doctor. I don’t understand the stages of grief or the necessary process to overcome them. My solution had been to run. To throw myself into work and ignore everything else.
But Lenora deserves better. She deserves to be properly loved and cared for. She needs every bit of help I can get her and I will. Whatever she needs.
Only, I do see them. Now.
I see the shadows. The hazy mist from my periphery. Maybe it’s a side effect of her delusions. Maybe it’s my brain’s way of trying to repair…
Her scream rips through the house. A serrated blade cutting through silence and my sanity, high and broken. A howl of something that sends a shiver down my spine, hooks into my gut and yanks.
I’m already moving. Feet pounding across creaking boards before I can pause to think. My heart pounds with all the possibilities, all the chaos and horror I’m about to stumble onto but determined to reach her at all cost.
