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meriguild · 4 months ago

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Time of Death

Von Raben’s chapel has always been warm. Despite the damp and the cold that infects the rest of the manor, creeping in like a horrible mould to even the deepest parts of the house, the chapel is a sanctuary. The air smells bittersweet, it is always bone-dry, and there is a certain warmth, indeed, that comes from the stained glass; rays of rich amber and red flood the whole of the room when the sun begins to dip below the horizon.

It has long been my favourite (I might say my only favoured) place in the house. For each night when we first arrived in this place—the first week, I should say—I slept on the chapel floor. It was not particularly comfortable, as I often only had a pallet of cushions separating me from the stone ground. I would wrap myself in two down blankets: that being, the one from my chambers, and the duvet from the nursery. The mistress had asked me on the third night why I would forgo sleeping in the queen-sized bed, carved of lush Italian mahogany, in the south wing. I told her it was because I felt God in that chapel. In truth, it is not that He was present there, only that His absence is so very stark in the rest of the house that it felt divine, at the time.

And I mean it, the rest of the manor is a Godless thing. I have said it since the beginning, and I stand by this now. The attic, particularly, is a testimony to this. It is a cavernous creature, and its old bones creak and sway in the night, in the constant rain that has overtaken the valley each and every day for decades. In the almost year we have lived here, I have never once seen a clear sky, nor a sunny morning. No, it has always been the pitter-patter of rain, the roil of the eastern wind, the fat clouds of acrid fog that it brings with it. It was, from the first day on, as it is now: dark, wet, freezing, Godless.

I’m not sure however Lady Crowe grew so infatuated with this place. Twice, in those months she was with child, she had spoken of the Corr Valley and its lofty crown jewel, set sturdy in brick and lime: The Von Raben Manor. I took these mentions to be driven by a sort of hysteria. After all, Angelica’s pregnancy had not been kind, and Heather’s birth had not been easy. She began to fall into bouts of mania in the days leading up to the spring, and for a period of time, she had experienced what the physician referred to as postnatal hysterics. These strange behaviours had apparently subsided shortly after Heather had weened from her mother, but still, Angelica spoke of travelling to this place. She convinced Lord Crowe—who in fairness is not at home often enough to care where “home” is—to buy the land, renovate the manor, and resigned herself to raise her daughter in the belly of Von Raben.

I attended, of course, for a nanny is only needed where there is a child of that sort. Unlike the rest of the Crowes’ staff, I did not immediately voice any complaints about the house or grounds. The scullery maids, however, are a trio of gossips, susceptible to folk tales and frights of fancy. They quite hastily deemed the house to be haunted, and spoke very animatedly about the topic whenever they were able, conversing in an infectious manner that made one want to continue listening.

Thusly, fables of all manners abounded rather quickly among the servants. None were quite like the others, and certainly, none were the truth. But they made merry the cold nights, if enough brandy was passed around, and created a sense of camaraderie amongst the staff. I could not say, at first, that I believed any of them. However, they made their mark on my temperament. The storytelling formally ended two hours past midnight, when the cleaning staff had to attend to their nightly duties. This was most often the time I chose to depart, for Heather was wont to take her nightly bottle thirty minutes later.

As such, I was frequently left to wander the halls of the manor alone late at night. I walked from the servants’ quarters to the kitchen, where I would warm a bottle of cow’s milk with a drop of laudanum. I would then hurry to Heather’s nursery, quiet her to sleep, and put myself to bed. All of this I did guided only by the light of a candle. These long walks through empty, darkened corridors did wonders to spark the mind. Nearly every night, I felt as though there were eyes following me as I moved and worked. I would see shadows from the corners of my sight, and my heart beat wildly with paranoia. This extended very much into my dreams, which soon became harrowing.

I didn’t remember the nightmares, not at first. I would wake with a start, but without memory of what had frightened me so. This went on for some time, worsening by the day. By wintertime, I became afraid to even lay my head on the pillow. Sleep began to elude me. I would spend the nights in the nursery at first, managing a few hours in the rocking chair beside the crib. But within a few weeks, the dreams followed me, even as I watched over the baby.

It was nigh a month to Christmastime when Angelica first noticed the weariness of my countenance. Heather had gone down for a nap some hours beforehand, so I made myself busy by delivering some freshly warmed linens to the master bedroom. The rain had frozen into snow, and the chill had sharpened its fangs to gnash at the windows and floors, nipping naked toes and reddening noses where it bit. The last thing any of us wanted was for Lady Crowe to fall ill, especially before she was to receive guests for the holidays.

Angelica had done her best to make the house feel celebratory all through December, so much so that she hadn’t made it halfway through November before she ordered us to decorate. So, throughout the winter of 1878 (which I daresay, was the last happy time among the Crowe’s household), a grand evergreen stood in the drawing room. It was a fir imported all the way from America, decorated with all sorts of baubles and lit in candles, overseen by a porcelain angel perched on the highest bough. Garlands of winter flowers and dry oranges decorated every available space, and everything that came out of the kitchen was perfectly festive. In truth, it was much like dressing a corpse in their best clothes before a funeral. The scent of simmering wassail felt akin to the sweetness of dry roses scattered over a shroud, doing their best to cover the stench of rot. But it was no doubt more pleasing than the emptiness, somehow opulent in nature, that consumed the manor in less joyful times.

The master bedroom was no exception to this decoration. Porcelain dolls dressed in carolling clothes had been unearthed from storage, and behind Angelica’s dressing screen there stood a mountain of presents for her daughter, cleverly hidden from plain view. I knocked thrice before entering and only waited a few minutes before Angelica appeared at the doors. She threw them open with an enthusiasm rare in this house, a jolly smile on her face. “My dearest Rosemarie,” she greeted, “what perfect timing you have! I was just going to ring for a maid, but you are far better suited for this task; come, come!” she grabbed at my arm as she said this, and dragged me into her bedroom with a swift tug.

“My Lady,” I managed to say, and closed the doors behind me. “I’ve just come with some warm blankets for you.”

“And I shall take them with the most gratitude. But hurry to my vanity, and tell me what you think.”

I set my load of laundry on the corner of the bed, thinking with some remorse that they would cool before Angelica made use of them. “Think of what?” I asked her, taking up my skirts as I followed her to her dressing table. Laid across it was a gown, cut of a rich scarlet taffeta that flashed gold in the light. Two sets of jewels sat on its bodice, one of pearls, and one of rubies and glittering white gems.

“I’m picking out my wardrobe for the visit,” she explained shortly, “I usually wear the pearls, but these are new, and must admit I am searching for an excuse to wear them.”

“Then wear them,” I told her. She took up the necklace, and held it against my throat. She examined it carefully, and I imagined she might have been deciding whether or not it would be gauche to receive guests wearing such jewellery. “For what occasion is this gown?”

“Christmas dinner,” she answered, and smiled at the necklace. “So I think it is appropriate to wear something so extravagant.” Her eyes moved from the rubies to my face, and her smile readily disappeared. “Oh,” she said, immediately, “Miss Heathcliffe, are you quite well? I find you…paler than is usual, I think.”

I recall forcing myself to smile, and noting the way my lips crackled when I did. “I feel very well, My Lady.”

“Are you sure?” she asked and took me by the chin. “You look as though you haven’t slept in weeks. Is it Heather? Perhaps we should clear the chimney in her room, make use of it—”

“Your daughter is sleeping well, I assure you,” I said, prying Angelica’s gentle hands from my jaw. I held them between mine, and told her with the most earnestness, “And I am quite alright.”

Angelica sniffed, whirling away from me, her hands ripped from my grasp. “You know, you’re a rotten liar,” she said. “It is, in part, why I hired you.”

“It’s nothing dire,” I said. “Only a bout of insomnia. It will pass.”

“We have plenty of laudanum in the medicine cabinet,” she told me, “You might make use of it.”

I pressed my lips together. I, at this time, was not fond of the stuff. I cannot say that I am fond of it presently, though, only that I look at it with a great deal less scrutiny than I did that night. I stared at it for several minutes as I made the Heather’s night bottle later on, weighing the boons, and eventually resigned myself to ten drops on a pressed cube of sugar. I did not partake in it until after Heather was fed and fast asleep, but sure as the stars in the sky, it lulled me into sleep, and my dreams were mellowed. In fact, I might say that was the first, last—only—night which I slept soundly in many months. But bodies are weak; the small amount of medicine wore off rather quickly, and I was forced to increase the dosage I took the longer I relied on it.

I thought this to be a miracle, nonetheless, for I was sleeping better than I ever had, so long as I ignored the grogginess I faced in the morning, and the great difficulty of waking up to tend to the baby. Still, I felt rested enough as Christmas came ‘round, and even deigned to join the other staff once more for some hearty drinking the night before. Rather than ghost stories, on that evening, we told holiday fables. An account of Krampusnacht, now twenty days past, accompanied passages of Dickens and the newfangled American publishings of Alcott.

I am among one of the only servants able to read aloud, so I did most of the storytelling on Christmas Eve. As a girl, I had attended finishing school, and was rather prideful of my literacy and animated narration. You might imagine it would bring me great joy, then, to be given such an opportunity. But as the night wore on, I found that the air about me grew cold. I shivered, as if taken by a fever, and as I spoke, I was acutely aware of the strange feeling filling my arms and legs. It was that of stiffness, not unlike the stiffness of a corpse, and it came with an aching pain. A sweat broke on my brow, and for a moment, I was very sure that I was dying. I slammed the book shut with such force that it clapped, and had to hurriedly excuse myself to tend to the baby.

Thoroughly drunk, though, I was only able to stumble back to my room, and I passed out shortly after I managed to climb into bed. It was this night that I was first faced with the visions that would then torment me. I account it to my not taking a sleeping draught that day, but I am in truth not sure more laudanum would have chased away the dreams forever. But this was the first time I saw her, truly saw her, and it filled me with such a horror. I witnessed her, in a perfect likeness, in that cavernous attic, hanging.

I had not known then that these visions would worsen, and soon, I did not only see her body. I witnessed the tying of the noose. I saw the very moment the madness overtook her, and other such monstrous things; by the time the New Year had come to pass, I had, in truth, even seen her rotting corpse in my dreams. Laudanum no longer chased away the nightmares, rather, it made them more vivid.

I can recall it, now, in perfect detail. At first, it came to me in whisps, like cotton blotting over the darkness of my dreams. A widow, nestled deep within her web, spun in haste to house all overflowing grief that came from an empty bassinet; perhaps, she had also had intents on raising her child here, but I never saw a baby. Only the chest of unused childrens’ clothes, shrouded and perfumed as if they, themselves, were a grave. Von Raben had been decidedly emptier, then. Yet to be refinished, it was all bones and creaking wood. The haunting groan and sway of the building in the wind was worse when there was no asbestos to muffle it.

The widow was once, perhaps, a fine lady. Her clothes were always well made, hand-stitched of fine silk and wool, but they were worn and ill-fitting. Split shoulder-seams, unhemmed skirts, moth-bitten stockings, and sun-bleached fabrics: everything which I witnessed spoke of a taste, once refined, that could no longer be afforded. She drank from chipped crystal, and the wine was always cheap. She was equally matched, in her disrepair, to the gaping maw of the manor, which seemed to cradle her with all the love of a mother. I wonder what happened to her—to this day, I admittedly know very little of how she came to be this way.

It is difficult, to explain my interactions with her. For when I witnessed her, she somehow understood she was being observed, an inexplicable feat that lent a distinctly voyeuristic air to my visions. Her hollow eyes would meet mine, as if she wanted to make sure I was watching. By the end, she was a dead woman on two feet, and the memory of her gaunt face is forever burned into my memory like tintype, as silvery as she was colourless, save for an ever-present smear of crimson over her mouth. It always seemed as though she had a square of blood-stained linen tucked into the edge of her bodice, ready to cough into—spitting herself to death.

And there was always a madness about her, a bitterness, a heavy hatred of something. It was confounding, an infectious anger that spun like a dark, swirling sea behind her eyes. It had a strong current, one which gripped me by my very being and dragged me under. It became suffocating, it was suffocating, it is suffocating.

I saw her everywhere. Her silhouette in the fleeting shadows at the end of a corridor; the sound of her body dropping from the rafters in the steady drip, drip, drip of snowmelt creeping in through the ceilings. I saw her in the looking glass, when lack of sleep stole away the pinkish hue of my cheeks. There were bruise-violet rings beneath my eyes, an ever-present haunting punched into my visage—God, I was starting to look just like her. I wondered if she could see me, from wherever she was, as I rotted away. Was she gladdened? Did her anger tinge into sick satisfaction when she witnessed my ruin?

Long gone were the nights passed entirely in bed. The dreams took unto them a repetitive quality, in which I would watch from the window in the attic, back pressed against cold, stained glass. She would climb up a bed, one carved of an eerily familiar Italian mahogany, and perch herself upon the highest point of the four-poster frame; crouched like an animal, a vulture watching still and silent from the dark. She would stare at me. She would grin this sickening, sharpened smile as she tied the rope about her neck, knowing I could not force my eyes to flee from her sight. And then, she would pounce. Her body morphed from the twisted carapace of illness to the still repose of death. And then, the rafter she’d tied her noose about would snap, and I would—

Wake. The clock on the stairs would croon its call of night, the toll of a death bell, one, two, three, without fail.

I began to wander throughout the nights, taking to the darkened hallways in lieu of rest. I found, at this point, that sleep did very little to invigorate me. I still woke with sandy eyes that begged to shut out the dreary light of midwinter, with aching hips and ankles and vertebrae. There formed a fiery pain in the side of my neck that flared whenever I lay down, and finding that a final reason to avoid bed, I walked. And often, I found myself back in the chapel, and I looked upon the one spot of warmth in this carrion, and I begged God for reprieve, and what would you know; he never answered.

Still, I sat often among the pews, gazing up at Christ on his cross, and I prayed like a madwoman. Sometimes, I heard the tap of house-shoes on the stone. Angelica happened upon my quiet sacrament, every now and again, and she would wait in the door of the chapel, watching me, as I watched her. Most nights, that was all she did, before she would walk back to her own chambers. I always hoped she forgot about what she saw. But I knew Angelica better than that, and it seemed that she used to know me better than anyone; so of course, one night, she decided to approach me, and pleasantly inquire, “Having trouble sleeping?”

I did not answer her immediately. I had my hands clasped before me, bearing the breath of my frenzied words— “and banish her from my sight, allow me to see this demon no more, please, God, make her leave me alone—”

Angelica placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. It halted my fervent prayer, but there was still a crazed nature about me, widening my eyes and chilling my blood into ice. I turned sharply and met her gaze, and was so thoroughly rattled to be reminded there was warmth and softness in this house. “How long has it been since last we spoke?” I asked her, tongue unbidden; for I could not recall when last I had even seen Angelica. There was not a time before the widow, not anymore, my entire waking life had become her death, her spectre, her maggot-filled—

“Four days,” Angelica said. “You’re lucky that Heather has met your path more recently than I,” she scolded, but I could not remember seeing my charge all that recently either— “You look like hell.”

“I am living in Hell,” I told her, though it was quiet and unremarkable, for she did not mention the quip. She was right, of course, and my body informed me of its current state of emaciation with a painful cramp in my gut. I had lost a grand sum of weight, in those first months of winter—a stone or two, at least, which had loosened my clothing from my skin so dramatically that my corset no longer felt restrictive. Fine silks, ill-fitted, hissed a voice in the back of my head, that same frigid whisper that taunted me before the mirror in the washroom. Eating had become a feat of great stress. The spongy texture of bread was somehow evocative of festering injuries and soft flesh, and the bones of quail suddenly seemed far too human to break apart. “You shouldn’t be awake, My Lady.”

“Nor should you. And yet, here we are, very much awake—funny, how those sorts of things work.” Angelica sat down beside me and set a package swathed in a kerchief on my lap. I thanked her, then with trembling fingers, I untied the knot of fabric to unwrap what seemed to be a handful of dried, red plums. I stared at them, and on that square of plain white, the fruit looked so distinctly like droplets of blood. Like the linen tucked into the widow’s bodice.

Suddenly, I started, wincing back from the offering of food like it, itself, would hurt me. Plums tumbled from the tops of my legs to the ground to patter round my bare feet like coins dropped from a purse. Angelica made a hissing sound through her teeth. “Rosemarie, what on earth has gotten into you?” she asked me. “When was the last time you slept? Christ, when was the last time you ate?”

“I know not.” I drew in a shuddering breath, looking down at myself. My hands were trembling, fingers twisting into the soft cotton of my nightgown. “Christmastime—I–I think, I don’t…”

“...Miss Heathcliffe, it’s nigh February. Surely, that cannot be right.”

“Maybe not,” I muttered. “Has it truly been so long? What’s the date, ma’am?” My voice had been thready. I wondered if I had spoken at all, in the past few weeks, because it felt so very foreign to do.

“Why, it’s the 28th of January, haven’t you…” Angelica took up my hands, uncaring of the way I flinched. “Rosemarie, are you losing time again?”

“Again?” I asked. I refused to meet her eyes, keeping my gaze fixed on the tops of my knees. They were scuffed—when had that happened?

Angelica let out a long sigh, aired with a resigned sort of melancholy. “I suppose that answers that.”

“Has this happened before?” I did not wait to hear her answer, for I knew what she’d do, she’d look at me with that bone-deep disappointment only a mother was able to muster, and she’d say yes. Rather than weather that shame, I dropped to my knees, and began to gather up the plums. Some had rolled under the carpet which ran straight down the cathedral’s aisle, wedged in a ripple under the rug. I took it up by the corner and flung it back to reveal the stone beneath and the three pieces of fruit hidden from view.

“Just after Boxing Day,” She told me, and I could hear the frown around her words. I tucked each plum back into the kerchief, twisted it into a loose knot, and placed it back on the pew. Then I returned to the aisle, intent to replace the rug, but gave pause. My eyes found the worn engravings of two grave-stones, cut to fit between the tiles; for corpses, deep underground, somewhere, somewhere, somewhere—

“Marigold Blaire,” I read aloud. Bereaved Wife, Beloved Mother, it said, 1655-1679. And a stone below it, half the size, Lily Blaire, 1678-1678.

The Widow, the frigid voice told me, and a chill seized my entire being. Look there, Ro, she was just your age. Gooseflesh bloomed over my arms. No third headstone commemorated a Lord Blaire. This somehow felt just, for in Marigold’s seeping anger, I had been imbued with a deep resentment for her ever-unseen husband—a man I assumed to exist, of course, though he had never shown himself to me in my dreams, not even in traces. I dropped the edge of the rug, suddenly disgusted with the chapel. Her body is in there.

No part of this home seems to escape her anger. Not even this place of divinity, which I had hitherto found to be a place of comfort, knows peace. The whole house is as sick as she was, as I am.

And so, on this hallowed this morning, I am vindicated. Knowing there is not a spot in this house that is pure, that is clean from her misery, her anger, her loss. The entire place is infected, spitting itself to death, and I do not wish to be here when Von Raben finally croaks. I refuse to let it take me, too, I refuse to become Corr Valley’s next Marigold, I refuse–I refuse–refuse—God, I’d rather burn in hell than spend my death in the belly of this beast, because I will die here, I know it, I know it.

I can no longer bear to look upon the chapel, knowing that she wastes away beneath the floor. I cannot bring myself to sleep in that bed, but I think only of the dead babe whenever I enter the nursery, and the attic—

Nowhere. Nowhere is sacred. It is as it always has been. Godless. So long as Von Raben stands, Marigold shall haunt the valley, and who’s to say I am the only one being tormented? Perhaps I am only one of many servants that had been run mad in this place. Lady Blaire lives within each of us, for all I know, and we are all infected, we are all cursed, we are all in misery. It is cruel. This is what she wants, to ensnare as many of us as she is able, and to drag us down into this cruel fate, to make us as miserable and angry as she is.

I won’t let her.

And so, as I make my final pilgrimage to that cursed attic, I smile. I smile, because I know she will lose. She shall not entrance me any longer, nor shall she take the other servants, God forbid, she will certainly not take the Crowes with her. It has become plainly apparent to me that the rot festers in the very bones of Von Raben, for that was what had ensnared Marigold’s ghost in the first place, was it not? This place is mouldering from the inside out. There is only one way to stop such an infection, so I have heard, and that is to destroy it at the source.

The candles scattered about suddenly seem far warmer. They, I know, are suited to my task, and shall purge this place of sickness better than I ever could. All I need do is tip the tapers over as I wander by; all they need do is consume. I listen to the whoosh of flames as they take their meal, devouring cotton and wood and insulation as though it is the heartiest of meat. At times, they get greedy, sinking their teeth into the hem of my nightdress and clawing their way up my body; chewing at the coil of rope in my hand. I am forced to remind them that they may not have me, not yet. I bear their burns with little consequence, now, patting out the fire as I dash to the attic.

Much of the furniture in this place has become familiar to me. The oak chest of Lily’s grave, the pile of books marked with M. Blaire on the first page, the broken rafter that bore her corpse. It looks friendlier, all lit up in gold and red, as flames run up the bones of the house to their apex. I gaze upon the stained glass window which I had become so acquainted with. It disgusts me as much as anything. I take up a book—a copy of De Martelaersspiegel, bound in green and chewed away at by moths—and hurl it at the window. The sound of its shattering fills me with a sick satisfaction, and the sudden flux of air emboldens the fire. Sweat pools on my brow, and breathing becomes difficult. But I did not come up here with the intent to breathe, so I pay it all very little mind.

I knot the rope around a rafter yet untouched by the blaze. I pray it will hold long enough. Because burning to death hurts, this, I know. But I am still, perhaps, naive enough to think that the dead do not feel pain.

I coil the other end into my very own necklace of rope. It settles against my throat.

Shards of glass bite into my feet as I teeter on the edge of the windowsill, heaving one last breath of fresh air. Blood trickles from the wounds, but I cannot feel them anymore.

The clock chimes its weary toll, one, two, three, a shaky noise in the blaze, brass cylinders wobbling in the heat.

I wonder if my grief is as strong as hers.

I tip forward.

(The dead do, indeed, feel pain.)

#fiction #spilled ink #writeblr #my writing #gothic #horror #I’m desperate to hear people’s thoughts on this #getting back on tumblr bc I can’t hold back the short stories

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