Page 64 of Shadows in Bloom

My glasses slip down my nose as perspiration builds. So cold…Why am I so cold?… I shove them up, my hand shaking so hard, I knock my lenses with the heel of a dirt-caked palm. Smudging them.

Another hisssss, and I swear, just for a moment, I catch a faint echo of that tinkling laugh.

I grit my teeth against a cry. Please, God. Please. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please.

The snake winds closer, flicking a pink forked tongue at me. Frozen with terror, all I can do is shake my head, and choke back whimpers.

I screw my eyes shut. Hold my breath.

Please God, have mercy on me.

There’s another low, whistling hisssss, followed by a stirring in the air, and the faintest brush of something scalding hot and scaly against the side of my hand. My body locks on a flinch, and I bite back a yelp, holding as still as humanly possible.

What could be seconds or an eternity passes.

And then I hear a rustle of leaves, followed by the tittering of birds.

My eyes fly open, and I whip my head around, brows knitted in confusion. The fog is gone. The darkness has lifted some. That terrible hissing, nothing but a haunting echo in my mind.

My gaze drops to where the tail end of a black snake slinks into the bushes.

Blinking rapidly, I push up my glasses and climb to a shaky stand.

No longer obscured by fog and shadows, I can make out the break in the trees up ahead, and just beyond, the dark gray spires of St. Agatha’s poking out into the overcast sky.

I slump in relief.

Brushing the dirt from my palms and back of my skirt, smoothing it out, I hike up my bag and all but run toward freedom. Not once taking my eyes off the white limestone castle with its slate roof gradually coming into view, blotting out the pale sky like a beacon calling me home. Back into the Lord’s light.

I emerge from the woods not unlike how I entered—only this time I’m a fumbling, sweaty mess as I scramble over the crumbling stone wall that cages in this corner of woods. Save for where it ascends to the highest point of Hollow Hill—the peak from which this town got its namesake, and where the founding family resided like gods overlooking the valley.

Turning, I traipse backward through the small field separating the school from the woods, trailing my gaze past the trees, and up the jagged steps of a cliff, to where a pitch-black Victorian gothic cathedral sits like a stain against the sky on the very top. Twice as large as St. Therésa’s, and much older.

In fact, it’s the only surviving structure from when the first settlers laid claim to this land, after a mysterious fire swept through at the turn of the nineteenth century, destroying over a dozen buildings, and killing nearly all the descendants of the town’s founders.

Save for one man—Astaroth Hollow—who mysteriously disappeared not too long after the fire.

Ever since, it’s been property of the church. First turned into a sanitarium for those infected with the white death—tuberculosis—and then later, and as it stands today, a facility for diseases not of the body, but of the mind.

Of the spirit.

The Tormented…

“Oh, Winnie…” a voice echoes, one that’s all in my head this time—I know it is—and I slam my eyes shut, my steps halting to a stop.

Go away.

“Winifred?”

With a vicious snap from my thoughts, I whirl around, stumbling back when I see that I’ve reached the school. A sweeping look around has a frown furrowing my brow, as I take in the groups of girls of all varying ages, scattered around the grounds of St. Agatha’s. Laughing and talking amongst themselves as they wait for the doors to open

And Trinity, my… friend, for lack of a better word… She stands not even a foot away from me, head cocked inquisitively. Her smile is tremulous at best, her cornflower blue eyes wary with a mix of judgment and concern. “What are you doing?” she asks with forced lightness.

“I—” With a shake of my head, I press my lips together.

“You were just…standing there,” she tells me, “staring off at that freaky castle.” She shudders, wrinkling her nose like she smelled something bad.

It’s not a castle…

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