My knees crack against cold, damp stone with a ferocity that sends cobwebs of pain spiking to my hips. Skin tears across my palms with my fumbling attempts to keep my face from following suit.
But all that is there and gone, momentarily dulled by the bubble of nausea climbing bitter to my throat. The space between my ears pulses, heavy with a fog that has me blinking to focus.
I see the altar before my gaze catches on the polished cross. My head snaps up to the twin shadows falling over me, caging me between them.
I’m in the chapel.
Kneeling between the coffins of my sons.
Several floors beneath where I’d been outside Lenora’s door.
I scramble up on weak knees and stumble back like distance will make the reality bearable. Like maybe that scene had been a dream and I’d fallen asleep … here? I would not be here. Since having them brought to the house, I have been unable to be this close. I would not have come to stand before their rotting corpses.
So, this must be the nightmare.
“Must be hard to see your handiwork up close.”
The quiet clink of metal.
The subtle plop of something dripping into a steady puddle.
The room dulls at the edges, sharpens around the coffins.
I dare another shuffling step away but remaining exactly where I’d been.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
Almost like windchimes, but thin and distant. I know the sound. It’s so familiar, yet I don’t understand where it’s coming from. Even sweeping the room, there are only shadows. Thick and black with trims of indigo and crimson. The latter bleedsin with aggression. It soaks through all the others like blood through water.
And still the chime continues, rattling somewhere I can’t see.
Something gurgles. Wet and choking. Thick liquid being forced down a seizing esophagus.
Swallowing.
Choking.
Choking.
Swallowing.
The metal pieces clink.
I brave another attempt to step in retreat and remain exactly in place. I take a glance back, searching for the door, but the chamber is sealed. No way in. No way out. wall upon wall of shadows congealing like a living soul.
“What do you want?” I bite through gritted teeth.
“We want to know how it feels to kill your own flesh and blood … for a pretty pussy.”
I don’t dare glance at the coffins, but glower at the cross. The wood slick with sweat.
“I didn’t kill my sons.”
Drip.
Plop.
Choke.
