Page 34 of When Bones Whisper
With a hiss, the voice slithered back into her mind.
Run before he drains you. Flee through the gardens while they are distracted.
She wasn’t sure if it was her own internal voice or something more nefarious, but it was becoming harder to shut out the noise.
“Stop!” She pleaded aloud, her voice swallowed by the silent corridors, which responded only with a ghostly echo. Slowly, shelifted her gaze to the shadowy end of the narrow corridor lined with locked doors and oil paintings.
The color faded from the maroon wallpaper, transforming it into the identical, charcoal-colored, baroque paper found at Lovett Manor. Above the paneling, cobwebs glistened over portraits as their expressions warped. Blood leaked from their dark sockets, trickling down into the bottom of the frames as their painted mouths opened in silent screams.
As she stumbled backward, the candle's flame flickered, turning an angry blue, before disappearing in a pillar of smoke.
You are losing your mind. Just like your father. You can end this now, before anyone gets hurt.
Footsteps dragged on the carpet behind her, sending an icy chill deep into the marrow of her bones. Holding her breath, she slowly turned her head at the touch of an icy hand on her shoulder and the whisper of a breath against her ear.
A scream ripped from her sore throat as she ran, feeling her way through the dark, her fingers tracing the cold chair rail. The library should have been this way, but the manor’s layout was an endless maze of narrow corridors.
Footsteps pounded behind her, the sound of her father’s harsh tone ripping through the air from the night of the massacre.
“Get back here you bastards!”
The sound of his voice froze the scream that was about to escape her lips. She jerked her head around, but there was nothing there. The scream of her sister yelling her name still rang in her ears, along with the unsettling memory of Alice grabbingher hand and ushering her into the bedroom, oblivious to the fact it would become her final resting place.
You should have died with her. You let her die. You wanted her dead, so you could take it all.
“No! That’s not true.”
With a deep breath, she shook her head, eyes clamped shut as tears fell down her cheeks. When she opened them again, everything was back to normal, and she hadn’t moved an inch despite recalling running.
Wide-eyed, she glared at the doorway to the library, the scent of burning firewood and parchment carrying into the corridor as the flame of her candle danced shadows around her.
What the…
She was losing her mind.
The pain in her side throbbed deeper when she took a step forward, as if something was tugging her back. It was only when she finally reached the door and saw Nathaniel inside, sitting on the sofa facing the fire, his back to the door, that she understood why.
Something did not want her near him.
Breathless, Charlotte watched him flick a page of his book with his left hand, while swirling whiskey in a glass with his right.
“Don’t linger in the doorway,” he said, closing the book in the middle. “Come in.”
When she got closer, she noticed the title—The Scarlet Letter.
“You didn't hear anything?” she asked, setting the candle down as the fire’s flickering light wrapped him in shadows.
He glanced over his shoulder. “What is it I am supposed to have heard?”
“I mean, anything out of the ordinary.”
“Only your heartbeat,” he said, and her brows pinched together. Surely, he would have heard her scream, her pleading with the voice in her head to stop.
Unless none of it had happened.
“Why?” he asked and she bit her lip. If he knew what had just happened, then he’d think she was insane. While he wouldn’t lock her away like most would, in some asylum somewhere, he would surely strip her of any freedoms she had left and contain her to her room, maybe place bars on her window.
Perhaps he would be right to do so.
