Page 31 of One Last Regret

I am trembling now. “Excuse me?”

“The other night,” she explains patiently. “You were in a trance. You came downstairs and playedVie Apres a la Morton the piano. You were whispering the spirit’s name while you played. Annie.”

I rise slowly to my feet, my entire body shaking. “You lie,” I hiss.

She blinks. “You… you didn’t know? I thought… You seemed so calm. I thought you were experienced with trances.”

Before I can reply to her, the music starts again. The damned hellish composition that the universe insists truly is at the center of all of this nonsense. Philippa shrieks and makes the sign of the evil eye as she scrambles to pull an amulet out of the folds of her dress.

Perhaps Philippa is right, and my experience gives me the calm I feel now. Perhaps I am simply so disturbed by her claim about the other night that nothing else can disturb me right now. Whatever the reason, I leave Philippa there and stride boldly into the room, intending to tell whoever’s playing the piano to knock it off. Or perhaps I’ll smash the instrument and have done with this.

I step into the living room, and all of my strength leaves me.

Gabriel sits at the piano. His eyes are opened, but the whites are rolled back into his head. His lips move soundlessly, and his fingers fly over the keys with exceptional speed. He’s playing the song, but somehow even faster than the already breakneck pace of the composition. The movements progress in a whirlwind, and when he reaches the end, he repeats from the beginning, a frenzied, cacophonous sound that makes the piano seem like a living thing.

It's not his playing that freezes me, though, but the apparition standing next to him while he plays. A tall woman with a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder, the other hand turning the pages of the music—how thehelldid that piece leave my bag again?—and staring down at him with dark, empty eyes.

This isn’t real. This is a dream. I’m in my bed having a nightmare. At any moment, I’ll wake, covered in sweat, feeling nothing but the vestiges of my own nightmares.

The apparition turns to me. My jaw grows slack, and I feel my mouth drop open, but I can’t tell if I’m screaming because I can hear nothing over the sound of the music.

The creature—I can’t bear to call it by my sister’s name—smiles at me.

Then Etienne rushes past me. He steps boldly to the piano and tears his son off of the bench. The apparition vanishes, and Gabriel begins to shiver uncontrollably.

“Get blankets,” Etienne says. He lifts his head and repeats, “Mary! Get blankets! Philippa, quit blubbering and make some tea. Now!”

I blink and rush upstairs, nearly colliding with Josephine and Amelia, both of whom rush downstairs calling Gabriel’s name. My breath comes in quick, short gasps, and I have to use every ounce of my willpower to keep from bursting into tears.

I have been plagued with visions like this for years, but they only arrive when I dream, never when I’m awake, and never so vividly. Never like they’ve plagued me here.

But it can't be real. It can't be that my sister's ghost, or a demon in her image, or a voodoo zombie, or whatever the hell this is… It can't be real. There must be an explanation for this. I can't—

“Mary! The blankets, damn it!”

I jump and rush into Gabriel’s room. When I walk inside, a soft cry escapes me.

The walls are covered in drawings, ostensibly by Gabriel’s own hand.

Every single drawing has an image of my sister on them, the ghostly, pale version of her, staring at me with empty, soulless eyes, her lips split in a mocking grin.

The grandfather clock chimes the hour, and I rush headlong from the room. My sister’s mocking laughter chases me as I run downstairs.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The next morning, we all sit silently at breakfast. The events of the night before have left all of us shaken. Josephine is stiff as a board. She looks toward the parlor, and when the grandfather clock chimes the hour, she flinches, spilling her coffee. Etienne looks exhausted. His face reminds me of my own father’s near the end, when he didn’t even have the energy to be angry anymore.

The children are similarly affected. Amelia stares down at her plate, her lips pushed out in a frown, her shoulders as stiff as Josephine’s. Gabriel’s eyes seem somehow wider and darker than usual. The rest of him is pale, and he seems smaller somehow, as though a part of him has been sucked away.

Philippa enters the room with a pot of coffee. She glances at Gabriel, then shivers and pours the coffee for each of us from as far away as she can. When Gabriel turns toward her, she flinches and looks down at the floor.

“May I have some water, please?” he asks.

Philippa nods once, then rushes from the dining room. She returns a moment later with a glass of water. She sets it in front of Etienne, then runs back to the safety of the kitchen.

I hand the glass to Gabriel, who thanks me in a slightly bewildered tone.

We complete the meal in silence. I should really start some sort of conversation with the children, at least, but I can’t bring myself to speak. My own memory of the night before is among the more terrifying of my entire life, and while the sunrise has convinced me that demons and ghosts still don’t exist, the other option is that I’m losing my sanity for the second time in my life, and that’s not encouraging in any way.

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