Page 67 of Once Upon a Midnight Dreary
Victoria remained rooted in place, staring at the door, her heart in her throat.She tried the knob.Though it turned, the door didn’t seem to want to budge.After several minutes of trying to push it open, she finally put her shoulder into it, turned the knob and shoved with all her might.
With a groan, the door opened.
She released the knob as she peered into the room.Darkness peered back.The air was musty and stale, as though the room had not been opened in years.She took a tentative step, pausing in the threshold.When her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw a room of horrors.
An altar in the center, stained with a dark substance that could only be blood.Something rested in the center.A shape she could not discern.Black candles scattered about the room and around the altar, a few burned down to the nub.Strange symbols were carved into the floor, the altar.And next to it, an open book.
Moving closer, she saw the book first on the table.The yellowed pages with faded ink were splattered with circles of long since dried blood.Bile rose to her throat.Something evil happened here.Something desperate.Something dark.Turning, she was close enough to see the object resting on the altar.
A knife with a curved blade.Discarded.As though forgotten.
Cold settled around her.A warning she was all too familiar with.She clutched her elbows, shivering.She had to get out of here.It was wrong to come here.Wrong to look for answers that were better left as secrets.
When she turned toward the door, she yelped surprise.
The woman blocked her exit.She was no longer a wraith.She was fully formed.Her black eyes stared at her with a hatred Victoria felt.Her long hair hung loose around her face.Her dress was tattered, old.Her skin held a deathly pallor.
“What happened here?”Victoria asked, her voice quivering.Her breath pluming.
Lenore’s gaze landed on the altar.“It was supposed to bring her back.”
“What was?”Victoria resisted the urge to glance at the knife, the open book.
“It failed.I failed.She didn’t come back.”Lenore moved closer, her gaze fixed on the altar.
The words slipped into her mind, cold and slick.An incantation.To bring back the dead.Her stomach turned to ice, the air thick in her lungs.Of course it had gone wrong.How could something so unnatural ever go right?The thought barely formed before the ghost woman’s black eyes lifted, locking on hers with a weight that pinned her in place.
“He tried to stop me,” she continued.“He didn’t want to bring her back like I did.He didn’t love her as much I as I did.Because she wasn’t his.”
Victoria shook her head.“That can’t be true.”
“Not his.Mine.”
Instantly, Victoria thought of her father’s journal—that Gabriel was Lenore’s second husband.Understanding dawned.
“But surely he loved her like his own,” she tried to reason.
“He tried to stop me.Tried to make me bury her in the dark.She’s afraid of the dark.”
Lenore slithered closer.The air dropped another few degrees, making Victoria shiver.
“But now the price must be paid.The debt is due.It wasn’t supposed to be you.It was supposed to be someone else,” she said.
Victoria didn’t understand what that meant.
Lenore’s face turned from calm and serene to something grotesque and terrifying.A mask of horror as she charged toward Victoria with her hands outstretched.
Victoria jerked sideways, crashing into the wall and knocking the book off the low table.It landed on the floor with a muffled thud.She skirted around the altar, her eyes on the door as she tried to avoid the apparition.
Lenore swiped for her, but missed.She hissed, frustrated as Victoria stumbled toward the open door.The moment she approached, it tried to close but she dove, putting herself in the threshold just as it slammed on her.With a cry of pain, she shoved it open and staggered out of the room.
Behind her, Lenore’s frustrated scream.The walls shook.A crack split the floorboard as Victoria stepped into the hall.She tripped.Her ankle twisted, her foot turning over, and she crashed to the floor.
Lenore was on her in a second, snarling.Her icy hands landed on her as she tried to drag her to her feet and back into the room.Victoria cried out, the pain searing through her.But her voice wasn’t the only one crying out in pain.It was Lenore’s, too.
With a hiss, she stumbled backward into the open doorway.Mist fogged around Victoria.
“You’ll pay for that!”Lenore shouted.
