Page 7 of Demonic Delights

No statues.

No clutter.

And the walls are grey, and the floor is made of very dark wooden planks. There is the familiar chandelier hanging from the ceiling, but instead of the smashed lightbulbs, it boasts lit black-wax candles oozing darkly, their flames impossibly still.

I must have gone mad. That’s it! A psychosis! It happens to people, doesn’t it, especially under duress? And I’ve had a stressful year, no doubt about it. What Wilson did could have severely detrimental effects on anyone’s mental health. There’s no shame in that. Therapy and medicine can fix that. Absolutely nothing’s happening here that could not be rationally explained ...

All thoughts vanish from my head at what I see in the mirror next. My lips part in a mute scream, my legs finally buckle underneath me, and I crash to the cold, hard floor.

This can’t be!

No ...

No!

NO!

4

ROXANA

Ikeep telling myself that it is to placate Silas after yesterday evening, and not because I want to procrastinate, or better yet, avoid writing my next book altogether, that I’ve decided to play the good wife for the night. I’ve cranked up the thermostat so I can wear the red bodycon dress Silas likes without getting cold. I’ve set the table and taken out the ornate brass candelabras, heirlooms passed down from Silas’s grandmother. Or was it a great-aunt? In any case, I’ve equipped them with fresh candles and lit them. Spaced evenly on the table, they’re currently the main source of light in the room, along with the fluorescent strips underneath the kitchen cabinets.

The ground floor of our house is open plan. An archway leads from the antechamber to the kitchen, and our long rectangular living room runs parallel to both, with the unnecessarily large dining table that Silas insisted on connecting them. And even though Silas had the whole house refurbished when he first moved in, equipping it with no flair modern furniture—something I would have never agreed to had we already lived together—the hardwood floor is original, as evidenced by its many scratches and irregularities. Silas hates these, but I think they give character to our otherwise characterless home.

I’m prancing around the kitchen barefoot, putting a tray of homemade Yorkshire puddings into the oven and transferring veggies and potatoes into serving dishes.

I take the wine out of the fridge—wondering if Silas will notice that the bottle’s already half empty—when the candle flames flicker and shadows dance across the ceiling almost as if in a sudden draft. I set the bottle on the butcher-block counter and turn to the side to get the corkscrew out of its drawer. And that’s when I notice the looming shadow in the archway, imposing and completely motionless.

“Silas, is that you?” I ask uncertainly.

I am unsettled, because even though I recognise his silhouette—I would recognise it anywhere in the world—it is very unlike him to enter the house silently and without announcing himself. Besides ... he stands differently. Taller and firmer, with his shoulders squared broader, as if his posture had not been the least deformed by years and years of hunching over papers to be graded.

“You’re just in time. Dinner’s almost ready. Since we didn’t have one yesterday, I made roast beef. With Yorkshire puddings, your favourite,” I chirp, the sound of my voice shrill when contrasted with Silas’s silence, oppressive like a descending storm.

He doesn’t reply. He just stands there completely still, watching me, his face concealed in the shadow of the antechamber. But its intent glare is perceptible regardless on a subconscious, visceral level.

“Silas? Is something the matter?”

He steps inside the kitchen, finally, and dim though it is, light floods his face, familiar and unfamiliar at once. It’s as if some of its well-ingrained, fatigued lines had been smoothened out only to be replaced by different ones, ones that are like the slashes of a blade, carving a cruel grimace onto his face.

“Silas, what happened?”

In a surge of panic that I would’ve never thought him capable of inciting in me, I ransack my memory for something that I could have done to anger him. But I come up with nothing. I didn’t cheat on him, I never once spent any significant amount of money without his permission, I haven’t been anything but an exemplary little wife to him. What then, did he get fired? Can he get fired when he’s on tenure?

A sharp smell of burnt batter stings in my nostrils, and I make for the oven to take the Yorkshire puddings out.

“Leave it.” A low, gravelly voice stops me in my tracks, its cadence flat and foreign, but its timbre one I’d recognise in my sleep.

“What?”

“I said leave it,” Silas repeats, stepping closer to me.

I resist the urge to back away from him.

“Silas, you’re scaring me.”

“Good. Terror is the correct reaction to me,” he says, and the corner of his mouth twitches in something almost, but not quite like humour.