Page 130 of Mortdale

And then Agnes’s screaming stopped, as did the wind, bloodied tears dripping down her face as she lowered herself to her knees on the broken shards. She rocked back and forth, humming a soft, hoarse melody. The same I’d heard that night at the well. The same melody I heard in my nightmares every night.

Exhaustion lulled me to the floor. I relented, letting the pale three-headed Lady of Death in the distance hold my hand and gently guide me to what was to come.

I rolled on my side. My cheek was pressed against the shards, blood and weakness coating my vision. The air was thick with an old scent of cloves, and I was no longer scared. I was safe. I was warm. I belonged to someone. And I was thinking of him as I inhaled one final breath and watched Agnes grab a piece of glass and slit her throat.

Chapter 26

Willow

The nightmare was empty. It was silent and hollow. The old orphanage was quiet, its halls haunted as I dragged my naked, cold feet down its corridors. Cobwebs had settled on every nook and cranny, every edge and slope they could find. The spiders crawled over every inch of space, twirling over my toes, stumbling against the furniture, pacing in a dizzy haze as I stepped out into the quadrangle. The three-headed pale lady stood at the gates—past, present, and future staring at me.

“Am I dead?” I heard the wind ask in my stead.

The pale lady didn’t answer. The pale lady wouldn’t answer. She only backed away, vanishing into the winds with my past, my present, and my future.

Willow, a familiar voice called in the distance, and the ravens stirred, floating in a vortex above me.

I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t recall why that voice was so familiar to me. I couldn’t understand why it made my heart ache, why my fingers had sunk into my chest, nails drawing blood against my skin.

Ghostly hands gripped me by the back of my neck, sliding up until fingers tangled in my hair. And then the familiar echo whispered in my ear. Honey.

My feet slipped over the rocky sediment as I ran, following that echo into the belly of the barren woodland covered in charred leaves and dark feathers. A quiet stir in my chest forced me to glance back at the orphanage, and a sudden warmth bloomed against my eyes when the phantom of my young self forced a bright smile on her sunken, bruised face, waving at me.

I could suddenly feel the weight of my lungs as I inhaled and exhaled when a whirlpool of darkness sucked me in it.

Heaviness had settled at the back of my skull, making my head feel like it weighed as heavy as stone. My pulse rocked steadily against my breastbone, vibrating down to the tips of my toes. The warmth of tears sliding down my cold temples made me shiver, and I pressed my face to the silken pillow and smelled vetiver and bergamot.

A sting behind my eyes made my eyelids hurt to peel them open. Dark silk sheets. Burgundy velvet-draped curtains. Copper brocade wallpaper. My Hell was a familiar one. But it wasn’t the devil who laid across from me. Nor was it death.

I blinked a few times until his face sharpened. His phantom, a dark mirage conjured to haunt me, laid there at the other end of the pillow.

“Are you real?” I whispered with my mouth still half pressed to the silken surface, salt and sorrow on my tongue, and a taste of longing smelling of cloves settling in my throat, making me sick.

“Only sometimes,” he said, resting a hand against my face, his thumb brushing the surface of my lips so very gently. “Only when I’m with you.”

Burying my face against the pillow until my vision grew heavy from suffocation, I sobbed, teeth aching, ribs breaking, skin burning. I sobbed as he pulled me against him, as he gently pressed a kiss between my eyes with a possessive finality—how could death have me if he had me first?

I sobbed even as I pressed my face against his palm, inhaling him until I could feel my lungs burst.

“You came back to me,” he whispered.

“I heard your call,” I murmured, sinking against him and closing my eyes again, freefalling into another nightmare. No…a dream.

I love you, his voice echoed, as the brightness swallowed me in.

When I woke up again, someone else was sitting at the edge of the bed beside me. The fear I’d imagined him when I’d woken lingered, but not as strongly as the scent of cloves being burnt in the distance, not as strongly as the faint taste of whiskey I licked off my lips, or the feeling of the tie wrapped around my neck, or the other ones wrapped around my wrists.

I ran my fingers over the dent in the silk sheets, still holding the shape of the harsh contours of his body. Blinking the haze of the morning sun out of my eyes, I pushed up on an elbow. My mouth parted with a gasp when I recognised the dark curls. “Ethel?”

She swung around, her eyes red and her cheeks wet. “You stupid hag!” she yelled, smacking my shoulder repeatedly until Arthur hauled her off me. She kicked and screamed at the air. “Let me go, you ridiculously strong leech!”

“Told ya’, my name’s Arthur. And stop writhing, witch. Or you’re going to hurt yer wee self.”

“Art, it’s okay,” I said, pushing myself up against the bed and lifting a hand in her direction.

She launched at me, sobbing as she wrapped her arms tightly around me in a suffocating hug. “Why would you do that?”

“I was going to die anyway.”