by Cross, Amy
Tomorrow the bells of the church shall ring out, and I shall finally be married.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Owen - Today
“Vanessa!” I shout, clattering down the stairs with no regard for the pain in my left leg. “Say something!”
I drop to my knees next to her. Now that I'm closer, I can see that her neck isn't as badly twisted as I'd feared, and her eyes are shut. Reaching down, I gently nudge her shoulder, and then I press two fingers just below her jaw, trying desperately to find a pulse.
She's alive.
Barely, but she's definitely alive.
“Vanessa!” I hiss, pushing her shoulder again. “Wake up! We have to -”
Before I can finish, I become aware of a hint of movement nearby. I turn and look up the stairs, and to my horror I see that the veiled bride is slowly making her way down toward us. Her white dress appears almost blue in the moonlight, and she's too clear and distinct for me to fool myself. She's real.
“This isn't possible,” I stammer, but she's still coming and finally I realize that I can't just sit here and wait for her to arrive.
I look down at Vanessa's unconscious face.
“You have to wake up!” I tell her, even as I hear the stairs creaking next to me. “Vanessa, please! You were right, we have to get out of here!”
She starts to stir, but she's clearly still groggy. Looking up the stairs, I see that the bride is now halfway down, and for a moment I can only stare at her veil. There's a hint of something under there, of a face staring back at me, but I quickly realize that I have to get Vanessa to safety. Since she clearly can't walk, and since I can't exactly carry her with a damaged leg, I get to my feet and grab her arms, and then I start dragging her through to the study.
Even this is almost too much, but I push through the pain and finally I collapse as soon as I've got her into the next room. Reaching past her, I slam the door shut just as the bride reaches the bottom of the stairs. At the very last moment, just as the door swings shut, I see her turn to look at me. Just before the door blocks my view, I'm able to see an outline of her features beneath the veil, silhouetted against the light from the dining room.
That wasn't a normal human face.
It was more skeletal.
“Vanessa!” I shout, shaking her again, desperately hoping to wake her. “We really need to get out of here! You were right! I'm sorry I didn't believe you, but you were right about this place!”
She mumbles something under her breath, before slowly turning and opening her eyes.
“Can you hear me?” I ask. “The bride is -”
Suddenly I hear the door-handle being turned. I lunge forward, holding the door shut as the handle rattles a few times, but I know this won't hold the bride for long.
“What happened?” Vanessa whispers, propping herself up on her elbows. “Owen...”
“She tried to kill you again,” I stammer, as I realize I can hear a faint, guttural growl coming from the other side of the door. “You were right the whole time! Katinka Ashbyrn is -”
“Move!” Vanessa yells, suddenly grabbing me and pulling me away from the door.
Turning to look back, I'm shocked to see the bride stepping through the wood. The veil is still covering her face, but now she's close enough for me to see the dark hollows of her eyes.
“The window!” Vanessa stammers, getting to her feet and pulling me past the desk. She struggles for a moment to slide the window up, but finally she gets it open. “Owen, we have to get out of here!”
For a moment, all I can do is stare at the bride as she steps past the painting. Finally, however, I turn and start helping Vanessa out through the window.
“You have to go first!” she hisses.
“Are you insane?” I reply, pushing her halfway out. “You're the one she sees as a threat.”
As soon as she's on the other side, I start clambering through the window. I hear a hissing sound behind me, and I turn to see the bride reaching to me with her left hand. Startled, I fall back and crash down into the bushes beneath the window, and Vanessa quickly helps me up. Still, even though she starts pulling me away, I can't help standing and staring at the window as the bride comes closer and closer.
“Is it really her?” I whisper. “You see her too, right?”
“Move!” Vanessa yells, pulling me away. She's limping, and the fall clearly hurt her, but I guess like me she's pushing through the pain as she starts dragging me around toward the front of the house. “We're going to go to the nearest town and then we can figure out what to do next, but I promise you one thing. We're never, ever going back inside that place!”
Hobbling along next to her, I glance over my shoulder, but now there's no sign of the bride. Deep down, I know it's unlikely that she's simply given up, but for now at least she's nowhere to be seen.
“Wait!” Vanessa says suddenly as we reach the corner. She turns to me. “Did you bring my keys?”
“Your keys?”
“For the car, dummy! They were on the kitchen counter!”
I shake my head. “I didn't even think.”
She looks toward the front door.
“We can't go back in there for them,” I tell her, looking through the nearest window and seeing the empty kitchen. “Come on, you can't be serious! You know she's still in there somewhere.”
She hesitates, before turning back to me. “The kitchen's right here, and the counter's by the window. If it's not locked and we can slide it open, I can reach in for the keys!”
“But that's -”
“I'm gonna give it a try,” she continues, stepping past me and heading to the window. She pauses for a moment, peering inside to double-check the brightly-lit room, and then she starts jiggling the window in an attempt to make it slide up.
After a moment, against all the odds, she succeeds.
“I'd rather drive away than walk along those dark country roads,” she tells me, reaching to lean inside. “There's no -”
Suddenly the bride screams, appearing from thin air inside the kitchen and lunging at Vanessa. I pull her back at the last moment, and the bride has already vanished by the time we thump down against the gravel.
“I think that plan's gone south,” I point out, helping her up. “Maybe she's stuck in the house. Maybe she can't actually leave Ashbyrn House.”
“This way!” Vanessa gasps, grabbing my arm and leading me across the lawn. We're both limping, which means we can't move too fast, but at least we're getting away from the house.
In fact, I'm starting to think that maybe the bride really is confined to the house. As we make our way past the pond, heading in the direction of the main gate in the distance, I glance over my shoulder to double-check that there's absolutely no sign of the bride coming after us.
“I see her!” Vanessa hisses, stopping suddenly.
Turning, I see to my horror that the bride is ahead of us on the lawn, calmly stepping closer through the moonlight.
“This way!” I shout, pulling Vanessa around the other side of the fountain and toward the house's back garden. There's a wall at the far end, and I figure we can climb over and reach the main road, and then we can make our way into town.
Suddenly I see the bride again, stepping toward us through the darkness.
“She's going to cut us off,” I stammer. “Whichever way we go, she'll always be there. I think she's trying to drive us back into the house.”
“Why would she do that?” Vanessa asks. “She just drove us out of there!”
“Then what does she want?” I reply, trying not to panic. “If she only -”
Before I can finish, a bell rings through the midnight air. Vanessa and I both turn and look toward the trees, and sure enough the ruined church is picked out in a sliver of moonlight. The bell rings again, sounding louder and crisper, and a moment later I turn and see a hint of shock in Vanessa's eyes.
“There's a story,” I start to tell her, “about -”
“A bell
that rings every night,” she replies. “Yeah, I know about that.”
Turning, I see that the bride is no longer on the lawn. I look around, but she seems to have vanished entirely, although I have no doubt that she'll appear again if we dare to go the wrong way.
“What does she want with me?” I whisper.
“I don't think we have any choice,” Vanessa mutters, turning and looking toward the church. “I think we're going to have to find out. And whatever it is, I think she wants us to go to the church.”
We start making our way across the lawn, heading cautiously toward the line of trees that stands between us and the church. I desperately want to stop and go to the gate, but I know the bride will appear if I dare. Even now, glancing over my shoulder, I feel certain that she must be watching us from somewhere. Either that, or she's already waiting for us at the ruined church.
“You know,” Vanessa says after a moment, “this is where Katinka Ashbyrn was going to get married. Right here, in the house's grounds.”
“No kidding.”
“And she died right there,” she adds, looking back toward the pond. “She drowned.”
I follow her gaze. Just as I slow my pace, however, I spot a faint figure standing on the pond's far side, and I realize that it's the bride still watching us. She looks barely real, shimmering in the moonlight.
“Maybe we can make a run for it,” I whisper, turning back to Vanessa as we reach the trees and make our way around the far end. Seeing the ruined church ahead, I feel a shiver pass through my chest. “This is insane. We're doing exactly what she wants.”
“We don't have a choice!”
“Of course we have a choice,” I reply, stopping and looking around, trying to think of the quickest route to the boundaries of the property. If we can get off the estate, perhaps we'll be free. “That way!” I add, looking toward the trees on the far side of the clearing. “There's another wall. We just have to climb over.”
“I don't think that'll work, Owen!”
“We have to try!”
Gripping her hand, I start leading her away from the church and over toward the trees. My heart is pounding, but so far there's no sign of the bride and I'm starting to feel a faint flicker of hope that we might actually manage to get away. In fact, deep down, I'm already convinced that once we're away from this madness, we'll figure out a perfectly rational explanation for everything that's been happening tonight. There's no ghost. Ghosts don't exist. Any supposed ghost is just a figment of our imagination, and -
Suddenly there's another scream, and the bride lunges at us from the shadows between the trees.
Startled, I pull Vanessa back, but the bride has already faded into the air.
“I think she's made her point,” Vanessa says firmly, turning and leading me toward the remains of the church. “We don't have any choice. She wants us to go to the church, Owen, so that's what we're doing.”
Realizing that there's no point arguing with her, I follow as she heads down the grassy verge. Finally we reach the ruins of an old stone wall, and we step into what must have once been part of the church. The wrecked tower rises high above us into the night sky, and the whole scene is bathed in a glow of calm moonlight.
“I don't see her,” I whisper.
“She wants something,” Vanessa replies. “We just have to figure out what. Maybe then she'll be at peace.”
“I guess she can't just tell us,” I point out. “That'd be too easy.”
“If the bell-tower was over there,” she continues, “then that part at the far end must have been where the altar stood.”
She leads me that way, and we both have to limp as we pick our way between the crumbling stone piles.
I can't help looking over my shoulder, just in case there's any sign of the bride, but she seems to be leaving us alone so long as we stay within the confines of the ruined church. The bell hasn't rung for a few minutes now, which seems odd since once it starts it usually rings several times in a row. Glancing around, I can't even begin to imagine what the ghost of Katinka Ashbyrn could want us to do here, but finally we stop at the far end of the ruins.
“Here,” Vanessa mutters. “The altar must have -”
She stops suddenly, before crouching down as if she's spotted something on the ground.
“What is it?” I ask.
She reaches under one of the stones, and after a moment she pulls out a battered old book.
“A bible,” she whispers, holding it up so I can see the cover in a patch of moonlight. “It'd old. Really old.”
She opens it to the first page, where there's a patch of faded handwriting.
“Katinka Ashbyrn,” she continues, before looking up at me. “This must have belonged to her.”
“There's no way it's been out here all this time,” I point out. “She died, what, a century and a half ago? A book would have been destroyed by now. It would've rotted away.”
She flicks through the pages. “It's very well-preserved,” she mutters after a moment. “Very well-thumbed, too. I'm going to hazard a guess that Katinka was a deeply religious woman. Either that, or she wanted to keep up appearances.”
“That's great,” I reply, “but did she really go to all this trouble just so we could find an old bible? Do you think she wants us to bury it with her, something like that?”
“It's possible,” she continues, “but -”
Suddenly the bell rings out again, and this time it doesn't stop. Over and over again, far faster than before, it rings again and again. Turning, I look up at the ruined tower, but there's still no sign of the bell itself. After a few seconds, realizing that the infernal sound doesn't seem to be stopping, I turn back to Vanessa.
“Well this is great,” I point out. “What -”
“Look!”
She points past me, her eyes filled with horror.
Turning, I'm shocked to see the bride standing at the far end of the ruined church, next to the remains of an arch that must have once formed the main entrance.
“Oh no,” Vanessa whispers, getting to her feet as the bells continue to ring and the bride starts making her way slowly toward us. “Please, no, I have to be wrong about this...”
“What's is it?” I ask, turning to her. “What does she want?”
She looks down at the bible in her trembling hands, and then she looks over toward the bride.
“You,” she stammers, her voice trembling with fear. “She wants you , Owen.”
“Me?”
I wait for her to explain, but she seems too shocked to say another word. After a moment, she looks back down at the bible.
“That's impossible,” I continue, trying not to panic as the ghostly figure comes closer. “I was alone in the house with her for days! Weeks, even! If she wanted me, she could have killed me at any moment.”
“She doesn't want to kill you,” Vanessa replies. “Owen, she wants to marry you.”
“You're...”
I pause, convinced that she must be joking, but then I turn and watch the advancing bride. The bells are still ringing, and with a slowly rising sense of fear in my chest I begin to realize that this feels like the start of a wedding service.
“That's why she's been making the bells ring!” Vanessa gasps. “She's been trying to call people to the church so she can finally get married!”
“To me?” I stammer incredulously.
“To anyone! I don't think it matters, not really. If you'd bothered to read the history of this house, you'd know that in life Katinka Ashbyrn was immensely proud. She married for status, not for love. She married because she thought it was the right thing to do, because she cared about how she was seen in polite society. You're a writer, Owen. You're a landowner, too. You took on Ashbyrn House and opened it up again after it had been abandoned for so long. I guess, as far as Katinka is concerned, you'll make a fine husband.”
I take a step back as the bride gets closer. This time, instead of screaming at us, she stops nearby at the spot wh
ere the aisle would once have ended, and then she slowly gets down onto her knees. She's still clutching her flowers and the veil is still covering her face, but I think maybe Vanessa is right.
Katinka's waiting for me.
“You have to do this,” Vanessa whispers.
I turn to her.
“We don't have a choice,” she continues. “Owen, please... I can't even begin to explain this, but I think you have to do what she wants.”
“You want me to marry a ghost?”
“Not particularly, but I think she's pretty keen. And I don't think it's a coincidence that we found her bible here.”
I shake my head. “Vanessa, please...”
“Look at her,” she continues, clearly terrified. “Owen, she died more than a century and a half ago. Think of all the people who must have lived at Ashbyrn House since it was built. As far as I can see, only one of them stayed here after death. If you ask me, that means she must really, really want something.” She pauses, before looking down at the bible. “I don't know what a woman from the Victoria era would think about being married by someone like me, but it looks like she doesn't care enough for it to matter. She just wants to be married. Maybe then she can finally rest in peace.”
“This is insane,” I point out. “Vanessa...”
“Just kneel next to her,” she tells me. “Let's get this over with.”
I shake my head.
“Owen, please,” she whispers, leaning closer to me, as if she hopes the bride won't be able to overhear us. “Maybe it'll be enough. Maybe it'll satisfy her. If you have a better idea, I'd love to hear it, but personally I'm all out.”
I hesitate for a moment, trying to think of something else we can try, but finally I turn and look down at the bride. She seems to be waiting patiently, with the veil still covering her face, as if she's certain that I'm going to give her what she wants. The thought is sickening and terrifying at the same time, but I think maybe I need to give Vanessa's idea a try.
The bells are still ringing, peeling through the night air.
Finally, even though I'm trembling with fear, I kneel on the cold grass. My leg is throbbing with pain and I can feel the broken sections of bone grinding together, but I figure I have to do this. The bride is still looking straight ahead, but moonlight is streaming down and I can just about see her dark silhouette hidden beneath the delicate lace veil. Now that I'm so much closer to her, just a couple of feet away, I can see that the shape of her face seems damaged, as if she has no nose and no cheeks.
