Page 137 of House of Roots and Ruin
I felt faint.
There was a sharp sound of movement behind me.
I turned in time to see one of the garden’s statues pick itself up from the earth.
It was almost a giraffe, a great hulking beast, teetering on spindly, knobby legs. Each footstep shook the ground like thunder. Thick spikes ran down its spine. Its muzzle was too long, like a crocodile. It had eight eyes.
They scanned the garden with a horrible, cunning intelligence and when they caught sight of me, I wanted to sink into oblivion.
Despair overwhelmed me as I cowered before the creature.
I watched as its jaw unhinged like a snake, readying to devour me whole.
Unable to run, unable to move at all, I closed my eyes, praying for a quick end.
But nothing happened.
When I opened my eyes, the statue had returned to its spot, nothing more than stone.
“It was just the poisons,” I tried to reassure myself. I breathed in more of the laurel.
Magenta blood rained down from the trees, staining my flesh. I could feel the hot substance sink into my skin, tainting my insides.
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” I murmured as the pond began to boil, festering with swarms of unseen beasts. A strange hum reverberated through the clearing and I swore I could see the air around me shape into waves.
I fell to the ground, unable to stop the shivers racing through me.
It was cold, so very cold. Wind whipped by me, laced with snowflakes. They grimaced at me, their impossible faces filled with rage. The trees lashed out their arms, like drowning men flailing to be saved.
I tucked my knees up to my chest, trying to make myself as small and unnoticeable as possible. The wind’s howling stopped, though the trees still danced in its madness.
Then there was a new sound.
Footsteps approaching from behind. Soft as a silken whisper, they tiptoed through the grass, making their way closer to me.
I scrunched my eyes shut.
If this was my end, I did not want to witness it.
Cool fingers cupped my cheek and a gentle voice murmured soothing sounds of comfort.
“Oh, come here, dear heart.” The voice was as familiar as the hands that scooped me up, stroking my hair with fingers long dead.
With an incoherent cry of gratitude, I threw my arms around the ghostly form of Eulalie and wept.
“You’re not real. You can’t be real,” I repeated, my cries muffled in her layers of nightclothes. Eulalie had died in the middle of the night, falling off the cliffs beyond Highmoor and smashing into the surf below.
Shelookedlike a ghost, soft edged and illuminated with an inner glow. Her coloring had been drained away and she existed only in shades of gray, flickering oddly in the now-moonlit forest, like a cuttlefish struggling to remain camouflaged as a predator approached.
“I’m as real as you need me to be,” she said, tightening her hold on me.
My heart pounded in my chest so hard that it felt bruised and raw.
“Eulalie isn’t a ghost,” I protested. “She’s been in the Brine for years.”
She cupped my face with mottled hands, silencing me. “I hated being trapped anywhere in life. Why should death be any different?”
Her easy smile took my breath away.
