Page 27 of One Last Lie

Fog wraps around the woman, and her eyes stare into mine with a fright just as great. Her jaw is slack, but her lips remained pressed together, as though she fears the scream she’ll release if her lips part.

It’s not this that frightens me, though. It’s the other figure in the painting, the one whose porcelain-white fingers caress the shoulder of my doppelganger almost lovingly.

This figure is as bright and ghostly as the other’s is gray and bleak. Its face betrays no emotion even as it turns its head to look down on the frightened woman.

I realize as I look at this figure that I expected its eyes to be red, like the vulture’s in the painting of the grounds.

Instead, two empty black holes draw me into the abyss.

The next thing I know, I’m in my bed with the covers pulled over my head, and I’m sobbing uncontrollably.

I try to tell myself that I just woke up here, that it was just another nightmare, but I can still hear my footsteps pounding down the hall, can still hear the door slam behind me, can still feel those porcelain white fingers burning into my shoulder, and I know that what I saw was nothing so harmless as a dream.

CHAPTER TEN

I don’t sleep the rest of the night. I wait until six to head downstairs, not because I fear waking anyone else—if they were going to wake, they would have done so when I slammed the door to my room behind me—but because I fear that if I leave before, I’ll encounter the ghost of my sister, and if I do that, then my sanity will be forever lost.

Paolo is not up yet, but that’s all right. I don’t think I want to talk to anyone right now. The children don’t wake for another hour, and a moment to myself drinking coffee and watching the sunrise filter through the window should center me enough that I can make it through the day without collapsing further into madness.

Am I mad? I would have insisted that wasn’t the case, but after yesterday, I’m not so sure.

Except it isn’t just yesterday. From the moment I arrived here, I felt the evil of this place. The trees that look like skeletons, the house that screams its silent hatred of me as I approach, the family that regards all visitors as threats and lives in fear of its own matriarch.

I recall a line from a novel I read as a girl. In it, the author describes a house “not sane” that held darkness within.”

This house holds darkness within. That room…

But there’s no way that could be us! That could not be my family. How could they have known?

How could I have known? How could I have dreamed of the same forest, the same fog, the same ghost with its hand on my shoulder, the same damned holes where it’s eyes should be?

What in God’s name is happening to me?

“Mary?”

I flinch, nearly spilling coffee on my burnt hand.

“Sorry to startle you,” Cecilia says. “I figured you’d be here. You’re always up so early. I wanted to see how your hand felt.”

“It’s all right,” I say.

I manage a smile, a miracle considering my current mental state, and say, “How were the children yesterday while I was gone? I realized I never asked.”

“Concerned about you. Poor Samuel was beside himself. He kept asking if I knew when you’d be home. He was so relieved when you walked in. Well, you remember that part.”

I offer a more genuine smile as I recall the embrace the youngest Ashford gives me. Some of the terror that grips my heart recedes at the memory.

“Yes. I’m so grateful for his affection.”

She sits in front of me, and I remember my manners. “I’ll bring you some coffee.”

Doing something as mundane as serving coffee causes the fear to recede even further, and I feel almost normal when I sit down again.

“I hear we have you to thank for our dinner last night as well,” Cecilia says, “Paolo was practically floating on air.”

“Yes, well, the children can’t live on boxed macaroni and cheese forever, can they?”

She laughs. “No, I suppose not.”

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