Page 162 of The Seven Rings
“We didn’t leave that on. What do you see?” Her pulse began to pound as she walked to her dog. Astrid, she wondered, at the piano, ready to play her sad song?
The clock would soon chime three. Dobbs would stand on theseawall. Carlotta would weep in the nursery. Molly would die in pain, alone in her room.
Braced, she walked to the doorway. The room, the air in it, seemed to throb like a wound. Nothing there, no one there.
But something…
Then the portraits changed.
Instead of a wedding gown, Catherine wore a thin robe over a thin nightdress. Her skin turned a cold shade of blue. Marianne, her hair matted, her nightgown wet with sweat and blood, stared sightlessly. Beside her, Agatha’s eyes bulged. Raw scratches scarred her throat. Blood, her own blood, smeared her fingers.
Lisbeth, gown in tatters, red welts raw on her body, stood with wilted flowers falling from her limp hand.
Clover, God, Clover, naked but for sweat and blood, her face stripped of all joy in death. Johanna, her head turned to an impossible angle, mouth lax, eyes filmed, her gown splattered with blood.
None wore a wedding ring.
The wall where she hoped to hang Astrid creaked open, and bled.
“It’s not real.”
But it was real, she thought as her stomach clutched and roiled. Because all of that had happened. All of that had been real.
From the piano came a dirge, a crash of notes and chords booming through the room, banging inside her head, her heart.
In the wave of cold air, ice-tipped air, she saw her breath stutter out.
The doorbell bonged, the same notes as the piano, so the music of death and grief ran through the manor.
With horrified eyes, she watched the faces of the brides melt into skulls while their bodies decomposed.
I gave them this. The voice whispered, close, so close, Sonya felt the breath of the words on her shivering skin.
Death, painful death, a bitter end. I twisted their joy into sorrow so deep there is no bottom. So I will with you.
Something vile began to spill out of the paintings, pool on the floor, then stream like a river toward her.
Run, or meet that fate.
She might have. She might have snatched up her trembling dog and fled to Cleo. And in that moment of terror and revulsion, might have dragged Cleo out of the house.
But the clock struck three.
The house went still. For one long moment, all went quiet. She felt the warm trickling back, pushing against the cold so that a mist rose in the room.
Behind it, the portraits were as they’d been painted. Brides in their finery, wearing their rings, holding their flowers.
She jumped when the music started. Not the dirge, but Astrid’s nightly song. Breathless, in wonder, she watched the keys depress and release, but saw no one.
Yoda seemed to as he hurried to the piano, sat at the stool, thumping his tail as he looked up.
Knowing he’d be safe now, she walked back to the front door. She opened it again.
No Dobbs on the wall. She’s already jumped, Sonya thought. Already thrown herself on the rocks to escape the hangman’s noose, to seal her curse with her own blood.
“A painful death and a bitter end for you, too. I’m going to find the way to make it stick. I’m going to rip those rings off your murdering fingers.”
Clover dug back with Curtis Mayfield with the Impressions and “Keep On Pushing.”
