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The rain came down in thick sheets on the windowpane, no pit pat, no- this was a choking downpour that would rend the outside world wet and soggy for months, marring the roads and making them unfit to travel. Not like such a thing mattered, after all- nobody ever visited accross the moor. In the evenings it was simply the calls of lonesome beasts and creatures, the howls of wolves perhaps, as they wandered- looking for thier lost kin. They were lucky to ever find them in all actuality. The moor had it's own secrets, the mud that blended so well in the heather was suffocating, suctioning on anything that would manage to step in it. The only sign of such a thing could be heard now at those rare moments when the chilling screams echoed accross the plains as a moor pony had found itself stuck and fighting death's cold fingers lacing over it's body through the muck.
Celeste sat on a bench next to the windowsill, her gray blue eyes mirroring the melancholy skies stretched out lazily overhead. She was clothed in the finest things that could be afforded in those days. From head to toe she was expensive fabrics and delicate lace, she looked like a doll, a pretty, delicate doll. Her black hair pulled up from her pale, unhealthy face. Her posture rigid as she kept her gaze on the forbidden outside world. She was different from most people, she couldn't walk. Her legs bound up in metal braces- keeping her confined to the manorhouse. Her parents could come and go, explore the grounds around the large, foreboding building if they wished- though there wasn't much to look at, overgrown weeds and untended buildings. For people with so many fineries indoors, they paid little if any money on servants to tend for anything. The entire building was a coffin, everything inside it dead or dying, gathering dust and age rapidly. Even young Celeste was grown far past her age. She was mature for a child of thirteen, she never smiled. The dreary gaze of the child would follow imaginary spectres and beings, she'd even occasionally speak to them, but other than those moments she was silent. Deathly silent.
Though the girl's eyes looked through the windowpane, her mind was far elsewhere, enraptured in some picture... she knew what it was- she had requested such a thing to be shown to her. What she hadn't expected was what it brought her... in asking the spirits about the house how she would die... she brought thier predictions to morbid life.
Her eyes saw it, a spray of blood and the crunching of bone, her body falling silently into a mass of torn velvet, silk, and lace. She wouldn't be given time to scream... but plenty of time to weep, weep for the corpses about her- for the fallen from what she had brought to life, from what she had seen.
"Celeste!" a crisp, clear voice like a bell rang through the expanse of hallways, snapping the youth from her vision. "Roland and I are going to go check on the horses, is that okay with you?" she almost seemed to be requesting permission from her words themeselves though her tone read she would go anyways. It was simply informing the child that she would be gone for a period.
The doll nodded, her gray eyes looking towards the doorway which lead to the hallway, her eyes resting on a portrait hung on the wall, a stoic figure of a man dressed in a suit, his eyes like hellfire in thier darkness. It sent shivvers up Celeste's spine. "Okay, Aizabelle!" she called in response as she started rolling her chair out of the room, cautiously eyeing the art before she started making her way down the hallway, past millions of scrutinizing eyes that seemed starving for the warmth of life, watching the slim young woman... waiting to pull her into death and take her warmth.
The autonomy of her life ever droning as she wheeled herself into her luncheon room, her noontime meal laid out before her. Gray porridge made as it always was, crystals of brown sugar lacing the edges and a silver spoon splunked into it's warm mess. The richness of their life shown in the way everything was presented, the dishes made of intricately designed china, the silverware etched with delecate roses like those of the springtime that seemed to never come. Celeste shook her head at the display, she wouldn't eat the porridge, atleast not now. It was too crowded to eat, it would be too rude to show how live you were in a room filled with so many disdainful dead.
Her eyes wandering from each spectral essense that was only faintly shown in her vision, she could see them, and they could see her- though she sometimes wondered who was perhaps the ghost here? The possibility that she herself was dead and watching all she could see of the living was a thought that occurred all too often.
"What...
if I was...
the ghost?
and they, were the living?
What if I...
was the haunt in thier home?
She shook her head, such a thought was madness, but a churning, itching madness that the mind couldn't shake. Even now, as the drunken sky darkened prematurely, bringing an early night over the land she called her prison- though she had been told it was to be called home. She heard the laughing and the opening of the grand oak doors as Roland and Aizabelle- her parents- reentered the house, muttering something about the replacement costs of this or that.
Celeste shook her head, though she didn't dare close her eyes- the shimmers in the air around her, the ghosts, they were restless. Her vision. Her unearthly talent and sight, it would come true...
tonight
Her eyes could only faintly catch the glimmer of the angelic figure of death moving as shadows over the rain soaked lawn, she smiled as the ghastly being explored the premises, traveling along after it's vessel to carry out it's duty. She brushed a loose lock of her ebon hair behind her ear as she looked down the hallways, already thinking through what was to happen in order for her to meet the end she had been predicted to have, to die in the bloody heap with her parents... she had seen it coming. The figure of the killer ready to take his final victim... it was all too perfect. She would get the last assurance that all these years locked up in her own personal hell, she was the one alive... she would get to finally be assured truth and be assured of her existance.
tick...
tick...
tick...
Hours passed in slow progression, creeping like coagulating blood through a wound, losing force as the heart died. The mansion silent as death continued to explore the premises, poking it's vile head into every corner and scanning every window with bloodshot eyes as it's rancid breath left mist crawling over the windowpanes. "Not much longer..." she muttered to herself, a villianous smile creeping over her face. Those who kept her here, they would go first.
A chilled scream.
The first step to this end.
The footsteps rang heavy on the stairs, running up, up, Aizabelle ran, her green eyes wide with terror as her persuer closed in, his eyes burning with madness and devoid of humanity. Slaughter. Kill. Crush. That's all that could be read from the being, Aizabelle had to escape the damnation that only a vicious animal like such a form as the thing could bring.
Celeste laughed, hearing the chase come closer, ever drawing nearer to herself and her chair. Her throne. "Yes, mum dear... all this pain, and quiet... all of it, it's almost over..." she whispered.
"I'll give you money, anything! Leave them alone!" Roland's deep voice came as he tried any ploy he could possibly think to use in order to save this family. "We mean no harm to you! Please, try listening to some reason!" he shouted, his tone growing more desperate with every syllable.
Thud.
Another scream, again- it was Celeste's voice ringing down the hallway.
Thud.
tick...
tick...
tick...
"Celeste... you beckoned us to come... don't you wish to see our face?" came the voice, sounding every bit as normal, as casual as someone coming over for brunch on a sunday morning. Familiar, warming as it spiraled through the ear and into the brain.
Slowly, with an eager glint in her eyes, Celeste rolled down the hallway, her wheelchair silent on the hardwood floor as she saw the scene, the grooves in the wooden plankinfs turned into channels for the blood. There, standing with his front tinged dark red was her savior, "Yes, I beckoned..." she said, her voice calm, young, clear as a silver bell in the cold snowy air.
The stranger nodded, but didn't make a violent move towards the girl- instead he bore a smile.
"This isn't what they told me!" her mind went sharp, her eyes dull and she missed the blur of movement as the knife came down- missing her completely. Instead she tumbled to the ground, her chair dislodged and accross the hallway, out of her reach. She looked up and the figure, the being she had called to end this... was gone. "Come here and finish it!" she bellowed, "Come back!" her shrill voice echoed through the dusty building, the torrent of rain continuing to crash down over the surrounding area, the empty, lifeless moor listening tiredly to the rage of the girl who lay sprawled on the floor amongst the dead.
The moor ponies stopped, as did the wolves, thier ears attentive to the anger of the misty gray eyed being who was now curling herself into a ball, protecting herself from the silence of the place, from the monotonousness that clung greedily to the air, closing her eyes from the judging, longing eyes of the portraits that watched her with hunger. She was alone now, finally alone. She smiled, a slight trickle of laughter dripping like bile from her lips. Nobody lived on the moor, nobody except that small household, it was a place for hermits to live, it was where they lived, the small family in thier manor. No, it was a coffin. The entire building was a coffin, everything inside it dead or dying. Like Celeste... left without her chair, no means to escape the crippling silence, she was unable to walk, unable to escape- and with no rescuer, this was how things would be.
tick...
tick...
tick...
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