4

A deafening crash shook the second floor causing the chandelier to groan and shudder as if it were a beast being awakened by the noise.

“Aisling?!” I cried out her name, not knowing whether it had been her I heard or someone else, but urgency licked at my heels and propelled me up the stairs towards what was now a cacophony of screaming and thundering. The walls seemed to shake around me with each new and terrible sound. As I propelled my way up the stairs, it got louder and louder until I reached the top step and, suddenly, it stopped. The silence was almost unbearable after such a malevolent commotion.

“Where are you?!” I cried out to the voice that had been screaming, unsure what I was actually going to be able to do once I found them—but knowing I had to help. The hallway was dark aside from the orange flickering glow emanating from the sconces on the wall. All the drapes were shut and the darkness in the hall made it seem as though it was the dead of night, rather than the middle of the afternoon. Though the temperature was cool, the air felt thick and musty, and a shiver raced down my spine leaving a trail of gooseflesh raised along my arms, despite my sleeves. My heart continued to rattle against my ribcage so hard I swore I could hear it.

Multiple doors lined the hallway but only one at the end was wide open. Despite my own fear I moved quickly toward it. It was a bedroom and, thankfully, more sconces and lanterns were lit brightly inside so I could see much better than in the hall. There was a smell in this room that I recognized immediately. I began to breathe through my mouth instinctively as my eyes watered. It was putrid and sulfurous and slightly sweet. Decay. It blanketed the air of the room like a fog. I had seen no signs of what could have made the enormous crashing noises while I had made my way to this space, but the evidence was all around me here. Not one single piece of furniture was left untouched in this room.

There was debris everywhere. A writing desk against the far wall was upturned and scattered papers littered the floor, dark splotches of splattered ink drying on the wall behind it. The drawers of a substantial wooden wardrobe seemed to have been yanked out with extreme force and whipped across the room. Its doors appeared to have been thrown open so hard one was nearly entirely off its hinges. A trunk that I was sure had been resting elsewhere was open and upside down in the middle of the room, its belongings pitched around it. The large four-post bed was the only piece of furniture that remained unmolested, and it was occupied.

I tried to swallow the knot in my throat and take a step towards the bed, glass crunching beneath my boots as I attempted to pick my way through the wreckage.

“Hello? Is anyone...” I trailed off, not knowing how best to finish my sentence. There? Yes, evidently. Alive? I wasn’t so sure. I narrowed my eyes, rapidly blinking away the tears that continued to fill my eyes due to the acrid stench in the room. It grew stronger the further I went. The small shape in the center of the bed rustled, and I choked on a startled shriek.

An almost imperceptible voice croaked from the body of Agatha Warren. I could see her frail figure more clearly now. She was turned away from me, curled pitifully around herself like a small, frightened child. Her gray, almost white hair was long and matted around what may have once been a braid. What had happened to this poor woman? I lifted my skirts and half-clambered onto the bed far enough to be able to reach her. As gently as possible, I rolled her so that her back lay against the mattress and I could see her better. Bile rose from my stomach as I looked upon her face, and I swallowed thickly to force it back down.

Her body was covered in innumerable painful, bloody boils that appeared to have blistered and festered continually on top of themselves. Her face was gaunt, the already decomposing flesh was a gruesome yellow hue, and her eyes searched blindly for me with milky pupils. I forced myself not to gag as the stench that permeated her and threatened my composure. I had seen animals in various states of decomposition before, but never while they were alive.

“How long have you been here? How long have you been like this?” I choked out quietly, my hands shaking as I reached out to brush the hair off her face—and then abruptly stopped when I realized it had all but fused to the abscesses beneath. Her arm shot out from under the blankets with impossible speed and the movement shocked me. Her fingers found my wrist, and she squeezed tightly, digging her long, overgrown fingernails painfully into my skin. A shrill breath left her cracked and bloodied lips as she moaned.

“You came, you sweet, stupid girl. ”

The words left her throat in a tangled mess of strained groaning and painful coughing. Blood began to trickle from the corners of her mouth.

“Mistress Warren!” I cried out, and tried to pry her grip from my skin. She was incomprehensibly strong. Much more potent than any old woman had the right to be, even in a healthy state. “Please let go! I-I-I only want to help!” I stammered out, my voice high and frightened.

“There is no…” She was cut off by a fit of coughing, her whole body convulsing from the violence of it. Blood sprayed from her mouth and splattered across the lap of my dress. “You can’t,” she spat venomously. “You can’t! You should not have come! ” Her fingers squeezed hard enough into my flesh to draw blood from the sharp crescent peaks of her nails through my sleeve. I exhaled in surprised pain and scrambled backward away from her and off the bed.

I clutched my wrist to my chest. “ You sent for me!” I bit back in alarm.

Her body shook as if being wracked with bone-shattering coughs again, a terrible wheezing sound filling the room. It was sharp and discordant, and the hair rose on the back of my neck. I finally recognized it as laughter. It tumbled from her ominously into the stale air, and her white eyes looked through me and almost seemed to focus behind me.

“It tires of me,” she croaked painfully. “You are so young and beautiful. What a shame.” Her split and bloodied lips twisted into a smile that almost looked… relieved?

“There is nothing to be done now. I have served my purpose. It takes what it wants.” Her body tensed, and it looked as though every muscle in her had been pulled taut all at once. She howled in agony and repeated:

“It takes what it wants! IttakeswhatitwantsITTAKESWHATITWANTS!”

Over and over, the words tumbled out of her, booming impossibly loud from her tiny frame. Her body vibrated, teeth gnashing while her head shook violently from side to side until it stopped entirely, and I feared she was gone. The silence seemed to echo and a new eerie sickness washed over me. The room and the woman were unsettling enough but now it felt like there were unseen eyes on me. At a glance I knew it was only the two of us in the space, but I could not help but feel the overwhelming sensation that someone or some thing was watching me.

Agatha’s head snapped towards me unnaturally and her blank eyes bored into mine as if truly seeing me. “I belong to the house,” she said. Her voice sounded abnormally clear and almost untouched by age—nothing like it had just moments before. “I belong to the house,” she stated again matter-of-factly.

“ And so do you.”

Her deafening wail split the room, and her back arched as if she were being gripped and yanked in half by the spine through her stomach. Her body created a perverse imitation of a triangle before it was released and thrown back against the mattress. A finallabored breath left her lips.

Agatha Warren was dead.

Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes and felt like ice as they streamed down my hot cheeks. Though my body was ablaze with fear, my feet seemed nailed to the floor, and I began to shiver in a cold sweat. Adrenaline coursed through me, and I could not catch my breath.

“And so do you.”

The Manor seemed to tremble around me, vibrations coursing through the floor and into me through the soles of my shoes. I wanted nothing more than to run from this place but my feet wouldn’t listen. My body was rigid, paralyzed with fear. I opened my mouth to scream when Agatha’s body was lifted from the mattress in a sharp, unexpected movement. In death, her neck no longer supported the weight of her head, and it swung limply as her body was suspended in the air like a marionette being wielded by an invisible puppeteer.

Unable to run, I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out her bloody and contorted figure, willing this to be a nightmare. But something that wasn’t quite a voice, whispered in the back of my mind. An eldritch darkness dug its claws into me and forced my eyes back open. What had once been Agatha was now standing before me, lifeless eyes mere inches from my own. I was unable to hear if the scream that was building in my throat managed to escape over the thunderous beating of my heart in my ears.

What was left of Agatha cracked, her spine curling backward, bones audibly creaking until they finally snapped as her limp head grazed the floor behind her. The stretched and decomposing flesh of her stomach split open, blood and viscera seeped from her and pooled beneath the floating body. It was as if she was being turned inside out. Her mouth remained twisted open and unmoving in a permanent scream, and I swore I could hear her voice reverberating from every corner of the room. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

It repeated again and again as she writhed in front of me until the streams of blood were thin, and all that was left of her was a deflated cadaver of skin and dust. I watched in horror as what was left of the body was released from the force that held it, and it slammed into the pool of gore below, violently enough to coat both me and the wall behind me .

I blinked the blood from my eyes, clearing them as best as I could while still being unable to move. When I was able to refocus, Agatha’s body was gone, the blood seeping down between the floorboards as if it was being absorbed by the Manor until nothing remained but the stain. Terror gripped me, forcing me still as my heart thumped painfully in my chest. The disturbing thought that was not my own echoed within me loudly, tattooing itself onto my psyche.

You belong to me.