Descent Into Madness (21 page)

TWENTY

A
fortnight passed when I received word that Wesley and Aleksandra would be returning. Aksel followed them by three days.

              The house was off-kilter with their return. The once silent halls bustled with life again. The air, no longer stagnant, and the rooms alight, received a reprieve from the blackness. Spring was around the corner, not a week off, and everything and everyone was thawing from the long winter’s frost. All except for me, that is.

              Time was a mirage passing before my eyes, wavering and fading as I moved through it. I clung to my ghosts, to a melted image in a painting, to a worn robe hidden in a cedar chest. Life shifted about me, while I hid in shadow. I watched them – Aleksandra and Wesley, the city – from behind misery’s lonely veil.

              Wesley recognized what I could not, and told me it was time: time to sleep.

              I resisted.

              A year passed while I wallowed in my melancholy. We tried returning to Greece, Aksel and I. The magic was gone, though— the olive trees were no longer aromatic. There was a tint of sadness in the rolling tides of the Aegean, and an unsettling feeling followed me along the shore.

              Another year in Paris transpired as I dipped my toes in the Seine night after endless night. The magic of Paris, that indescribable essence that flitters throughout the city enhancing the rich culture, was a vague, muted blur of colors and people and sounds. Nothing made me smile there. Nothing made my ears perk with enjoyment. It became pointless – dipping my toes in the waters, walking the Parisian streets at night. No matter how desperately I tried capturing the innocence of this place, I failed miserably.

              The night before we left, eager to return to my familiar rooms in England, I ventured toward the Notre-Dame Cathedral. Commoners filtered eagerly in, climbing the 387 steps for evening mass. I stayed below, sitting on the steps, watching the herd of people file past. They were penitent, they were guilty, and some of them were lost souls.

              I was downcast, staring at the cracks in the aged stone step, when mass bell rang. The heavy doors closed with a bang. I stayed this way until the familiar scent of linseed oil and lavender bled through the air.

              “Why are you so lost?” Sr. Veronica’s innocent voice asked.

              “I do not know,” I admitted. My eyes reached the hem of her black habit, and followed to meet her glare. We were in the abbey, alone, in our corner beneath the third station of the cross. This is where we met in secret, night after night, after everyone had gone to bed.

              “You need sleep, Bree.”

              Sleep. Her words echoed in the silent air that followed. My head bowed to hide my emerging tears. She took my hand in hers. Her skin was soft and warm and her touch gentle.

              “That is what Wesley said, that I should sleep. I do not even know what that means! Not anymore.”

              “He knows; you should listen to him,” she whispered. “Close your eyes and sleep a long uninterrupted sleep.”

              “I cannot,” I told her, rebelling against the idea of finding the peace I so desperately needed.

              “You must,” she said, “and you will.”

              “How?” 

              She melted into the surrounding shadows as I glanced up. I reached for her habit, but it turned to mist – my greedy fingers slipping through the shimmering vapors. Stragglers still climbed the cathedral’s steps as the mist cleared my eyes.

              Returning to England, we found the house deserted, the staff relieved of duty, and a solid layer of dust blanketing the furniture. Aksel busied himself with rehiring staff and dressing the rooms, even the ones we rarely used. Wesley and Aleksandra’s whereabouts were unknown, but it was common, after all, for our kind to wander.

              Months passed, and they had yet to return when the indwelling blackness swelled. The stars, bright in their sky, constant and unyielding in their presence, burned my eyes. The cicada’s song, once a lullaby, now pierced my ears until they bled. The genteel summer rains that once tinkled at the windows, captivating my thoughts, now stung at me incessantly until I rallied against them -- standing beneath their showers, cursing their existence. How dare their refreshing droplets cleanse the night, but not cleanse me?

              It was that musky soil – the smell of England’s earth after the rain. It would greet me when I awoke. The moist peat filled my nostrils and triggered memories I wished to keep buried – forever. The reminders of purity and promise lay within each village. Each young woman appeared as I once did. Their lives blessed in a gilded fantasy. There was no threat of death looming over their pristine futures.

              That is how the madness consumed me – watching their pleasure.

              Raged seethed beneath my calm exterior, and anger and sadness bled together, molding me into that which I feared: a monster. A truly haunting, terrifying, horrid creature, of which I had read of in books and swore I would never become.

              The countryside became a playing field as I mercilessly slaughtered cattle, tossing them into trees with my thoughts, flipping them, drowning them. The drunken men exiting the tavern in the bleak hours before dawn were of no match for me, either. I hoisted their fattened bodies, slowly dying in their alcoholic graves, into the balmy summer air and fed from them, tossing their dazed

remains into the sewers. Wallowing in filth, they sobered only to face another night of my wrath. No one was safe.

              There were nights I witnessed the destruction I brought; I felt my victim’s pain as I drank from them, but I was powerless to stop. I was but a soulless vessel, void of empathy, void of compassion. My humanity – that iota of it remaining from my former life, the ounce I clasped tightly to throughout the centuries – leeched away as the fullness of this dark curse invaded me.

              For months, I was this monster, laying siege to nearby towns. People began to fear, began to suspect, and began to question.

              Then it all stopped as quickly as it began.

              “I burned it down,” I told Aksel, returning home on that last night of that life. “It is nothing but ash now.”

              “You burned what down?” He had been reading by the fire. My words punctured his innocent ignorance.

              “The village.” I stared into the burning flames, but I could not feel the warmth they produced. “It is gone now – all of it.” My hand waved over the fire, the flames stretching to kiss my fingertips.

              “The village?” he asked. “You burned it down?”

              I sat next to him, rubbed at my knees as I drew my legs up into the chair. I ran my fingers through my hair, releasing the ash that collected there as it fell like dust onto my dress. Ruby tears fell unhindered and rolled down my ash-smeared cheeks.

              “Bree,” he whispered, “What did you do?”

              “She called me a monster,” I told him, staring into the fire – dazed by its radiance.

              “Who?”

              “The child. The innocent little babe.” Her cheeky face, plump and young, emblazoned itself on my mind, imprinting itself there for eternity.

              “Bree,” he said, clutching my hand into his own. “What did you do?” he demanded.

              “I did not kill her, I swear!” I broke from his grasp and fled the chair, hiding in the corner, sitting on the cold floor as a naughty child would. “I’m not a monster!” I spat, the chandelier rattling in the darkened room.                

              The village flames were visible from the French windows and I watched him turn toward them, surveying the madness. Forever slipped away as he watch the landscape beyond burn before he turned to me, walked over, and grabbed my shoulders, hoisting me off the ground.

              “What have you done?” he demanded.

              “I was hunting and she saw me,” my haunted voice quivered. “When I found her watching me feed from her father, I told her she was having a nightmare. She screamed.” Releasing me, he turned again to watch the fire burn.

              “I do not know what happened, Aksel, but I was possessed with a burning rage, and then desperate panic. It ate at me so, that rage; I have never experienced a feeling so consuming and exotic,” my eyes closed with the recollection.

              “I picked the child up and threw her, far, and into the river. Villagers scrambled to the shore. Oh, I heard them coming, even as I watched her splash into the murky water. She was alive but her body sank to the bottom. People emerged from their homes, from the taverns, and started searching for me. I watched them with their torches, combing the countryside, the city streets, the alleyways.”

              “I hid in a house by the shore. It stood empty,” I recounted with vagueness in my voice, “I went to an oil lamp sitting on the mantel, picked it up, and threw it onto the bed. Then, as I watched the thatch mattress catch aflame, I turned toward the dying embers in the fireplace, renewing their golden swords to fight in my war, Aksel. Then, I caused those flames to twirl and twist and reach high until they spilled out of the fireplace; I commanded them to destroy everything.”

              “Bree,” he said turning toward me. “Please tell me this is not true.”

              “It is,” I continued. “Then I fled and watched as villagers scrambled to extinguish the burning cottage. I spread those flames until the village burned. I watched as women and children fled, as the men desperately tried to squelch the flames. I watched as boats sailed into the waters, moving south to the next port, carrying people and belongings. I watched as people fled into the countryside, blending in with the shadows.”

              “Bree, you should not have done this,” he began.

              “Why?” I asked. “They are humans, Aksel – mortals! Mortals! Have you forgotten how powerful you are, how beautiful? We masquerade and exist in shadow, while they relish the sun and pretend to be omnipotent. But, they are
not
omnipotent, Aksel, we are! We are gods.”

              “We are dust if we do not leave now,” he told me. He grabbed at my dress but I moved away. “Now,” he urged. “They are whispering your name, Bree. Someone saw you leave the village. They are coming for you.”

              We both heard a band of villagers marching from the distance that night – their torches bleeding into the darkness as they marched toward our estate.

              Aksel called for the servants; told them we were leaving and to tell the villagers we had not been home that evening. Then he held on to me, led me through the French windows onto the cool English grass, and told me to close my eyes. And I did.

              Before our feet left ground, though, a voice broke through the far off screams.

              “What has happened?” it asked. “Mother, what did you do?”

              My eyes opened to see Aleksandra. Wesley was descending, his eyes concentrating on mine; his jaw set and his lips pursed. 

              “She burned the village,” Aksel told them. “I am taking her away from here before it is too late.”

              “Mother!” her voice quaked.

              “Let us go,” Wesley said. “Now, we must hurry. They are close.”

              Together we fled into the stars, my eyes concealed in Aksel’s chest, oblivious to our destination. 

              There was a familiar aroma when we landed— clean ocean waves and earthy peat. The air was cold, just as I remembered it being. We had returned to Norway.

              The entrance to my Lofoten Island home was in the distance, its door still barred as Aksel and I had left it. Overgrown trees and shrubbery obscured it from normal view, but it still stood – a prison awaiting me.

              “Why are we here?” I asked them.

              “You need to sleep now,” Wesley told me. “You have no choice.”

              “I do not know how!” Rocks scuttled off the overhead cliff face with my reply. “You talk of sleep, of finding peace – she talked of this too, but I do not know how! I do not seek what cannot be found, foolish brother.”               “Who talked of this, mother?” asked Aleksandra.