Phantom Bride

by Cach, Lisa

  The air around her began to condense, and the growing darkness started to form a mass in front of her. Le Gayne!

  A trembling horror rose from her bowels as she got slowly to her feet. The darkness became a massive, hulking figure, vaguely human in shape, looming above her and blotting out all sight of the sky. She gaped up at it, bare of defenses. A voice from deep inside her told her that she deserved this, that there was no use fighting it any longer. Woding was not her star-promised fate. Le Gayne was.

  “Is it you, le Gayne?” she whispered to the shadow, her voice hoarse with fear.

  It shifted, then pulsed as if breathing, but there was no answer except the sense of impending violence permeating the air.

  “What do you want?” she cried. “Haven’t you done enough to me already?”

  The shadow suddenly expanded, its sides stretching out and around her in a diabolical embrace. She spun around, and saw the walls close behind her, trapping her within the cloud of darkness. Swallowing her.

  “How many times do you have to kill me?” she shouted at it. “Must I suffer at your hands forever?”

  The shadow began to swirl around her, slowly at first, then faster, and as it spun it shrank, closing in on the space where she stood, the sound of wind loud in her ears. She felt the vast, cold darkness of it only inches away, blowing by her skin, catching her hair in its currents. It was a malevolent presence, full of hellish secrets and tortured thoughts.

  Terror rose up in her throat, making it impossible now to speak, and she wrapped her arms over her head and crouched down on the ground, tucking her head down on her knees, whimpering.

  It came closer, the cold blackness reaching its fingers through the crooks of her arms and bends of her knees, finding each crevice and opening, worming its way through to dig into her flesh, reaching inside her as if to grab her bowels and rip them from her. She felt it find her face, like dead hands touching her, and she remembered that she had done the same thing to poor Dickie in the beer cellar.

  She remembered stuffing peas up his nose, and pulling him out of bed. Biting Leboff on the calf. Putting the male maid’s cleaning bucket in the tunnel for Sommer to trip over. Spying on Woding in his bath and bed. Accidentally scaring him off the wall as a child and nearly causing his death.

  She remembered appearing to her brother Thomas, and setting in motion the confrontation with le Gayne that had caused both their deaths. She remembered her wedding night—oh, God, her wedding night. And before that, locking le Gayne in the storeroom and refusing him food or water. Luring him to the stream, and having Thomas strike him with a pot.

  She remembered throwing her wine cup at Thomas, and leaping over the table, threatening him with a knife.

  Her mind went back, and back, and back, recalling unkindness after unkindness, each act motivated by her obsession with her own needs, whatever the cost to others.

  She moaned in an unbearable agony of self-awareness.

  It had all led to destruction. Herself, dead. Thomas, dead. Le Gayne, dead. Clerenbold Keep a pile of rubble, as well as Maiden Castle. She had thought she was fighting for her survival, struggling to live, but all she brought was death, to herself and to others. Her blood and theirs was on her own hands, not le Gayne’s.

  She threw back her head, opening her eyes to the blackness, feeling tears of guilt and shame trickle out the sides and down her temples. Evil had been done to her, but even more, she had done evil to others. The cloud was not le Gayne; it was her own foul self. It was every violent and selfish act she had ever committed, every dark thought, every wish for harm to befall another.

  The shadow was every trace of evil that had touched her life from outside, and that she had drawn from the depths of her own dark soul to meet it. It had come to take her to the hell that she so richly deserved, and which had been waiting for her for nigh on five hundred years.

  She closed her eyes in surrender, wanting the evil to take her and claim her as its own, to give her the punishment that she deserved but had been seeking to escape by clinging to the edges of the mortal world. For centuries she’d clung to the promise of a falling star for love and happiness, even after her own actions had brought about her death.

  Cold and darkness sank into her, robbing her even of her illusion of breath, reaching toward her heart. This was it, the end; death had finally come for what remained of her. Let it! It was what she deserved!

  As her mind began to go black she conjured an image of Woding’s face, wanting in this final moment to cling to the one good thing she had had, for however brief a time. She sent a prayer heavenward that he would find someone to love, find joy, have children, unlock all the puzzles of the universe if that’s what he wanted. With all her soul, she wished him happiness.

  The cold that had been so steadily advancing through her body stopped. She did not notice at first, her awareness focused all on Woding, on holding his image in her mind and feeling for these last seconds the love that had grown in her heart.

  The cold began to retreat, slowly, then more rapidly, draining out of her limbs like water. The howling sound of wind died away.

  All became quiet, the only sounds those of the insects in a nighttime garden. Slowly she opened her eyes, almost afraid of what she would see. The shadow was still there, but smaller now, no longer surrounding her. It stood in front of her, no larger than a man.

  Serena rose unsteadily to her feet, watching as the shadow grew yet slimmer, taking on the slender form of her own self, tendrils of shadow hair lifting in the breeze. She reached out her hand tentatively, and the shadow mirrored the movement until they were touching fingertips, sisters of light and dark. Serena jerked her hand away from the cold touch.

  “You needed me once,” the shadow said bitterly. “But look at you cringe from me now. I am part of you. The strongest part.”

  Serena shook her head. Her heart, filling with a new understanding, knew that was untrue. “You would have taken me to Hell if that were so. You’re not the strongest part: you never were. Love was always strongest, only I let you convince me otherwise.”

  “Love would never have kept you from starving,” the shadow sneered.

  “I would have died a better death from starvation than I got from you.”

  “Love will buy you nothing. Alex doesn’t want you. No one wants you. You belong with me, and with others of your kind, like le Gayne.” The shadow came closer, its toes touching coldly against Serena’s, its otherworldly breath shivering against Serena’s skin. It stank of corpses. The eyes of her shadow self were empty wells of blackness, seeking to pull her in. “You cannot escape me.”

  Serena closed her eyes and felt the warmth of her love for Alex inside her, a warmth that, at last, expected no return and made no demands. She opened her eyes and gazed straight at the shadow. “I already have.”

  The shadow snarled in denial. “I’ll always be a part of you.”

  Serena felt a shiver of truth to those words, but she knew now it was her own choice how large the shadow loomed inside her. The shadow was le Gayne, and Thomas, and herself—it was all she regretted, and all the sins she could not bear to admit were her own. It was every tendency towards violence and cruelty, unleavened by compassion. “Why after so many years on this mountain did you try to take me only now?” Serena asked.

  The shadow did not answer, its empty eyes narrowing. It took only a moment for Serena to find the answer herself. While she was alone here, she had not changed, and this evil had been happy to watch her punish herself with loneliness and hatred. When Woding had come and brought a ray of light to her dark heart, however, it hadn’t believed her worthy of something brighter.

  But she was.

  Serena turned and looked at the cherry tree that was so near to dying. Only one main branch still lived. She did not need her shadow to tell her that her time here was almost over. She knew it in her buried bones, just as she knew that she need no longer fear moving on from this world.

  Serena turned back
to the shadow. “I love,” she said. “For the first time, I know love.”

  The shadow drifted apart like smoke in the wind.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Serena sat very still as Dickie approached the fireplace, bucket in hand. It was early morning, and most of the household was still asleep. Dickie’s morning chore was to clean out the fireplaces of accumulated ashes and lay new fires. She had chosen her ambush accordingly, in the dining room. The morning sun was barely over the horizon, yet this room with its many windows and cream plaster walls was already lightening. It seemed the least ghostly of places that he would go on his rounds.

  He moved nervously, no doubt having heard of her exploits in the garden the day before. He had likely spent a sleepless night.

  “Good morning, Dickie,” she said to him in a voice he could hear, trying to sound cheery and harmless. “Looks like we’ll have a lovely day, doesn’t it?”

  He dropped his bucket, spinning around, his eyes searching the gloom. His eyes finally found her, sitting very still in one of the chairs at the table.

  “I’m sorry; I did not mean to startle you,” Serena said calmly, her hands together on the tabletop. She had run her fingers through her hair and braided it into a thick— albeit messy—rope down her back, in hopes she would look a little less wild, a little less frightening.

  “Your pardon, miss,” Dickie said uncertainly. “I did not know there was anyone in here. Breakfast will not be served for a bit yet.”

  He must think she was a family member, or perhaps a lady’s maid to one of the sisters. “I came to talk to you, Dickie. I wanted to say how sorry I am for the way I’ve treated you. It was most unkind of me, and I wouldn’t be able to rest without offering my apologies.”

  “Your pardon, miss?”

  She sighed. This was not easy. “I am the one who put the peas up your nose, and pulled you out of bed. I scared you in the beer cellar.”

  His eyes about popped from his head, and a queer squeaking sound emerged from his throat. “You’re the ghost?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  He grabbed a poker from near the large fireplace and brandished it at her like a sword. “Don’t you touch me!”

  “I’m not going to,” Serena said. “I’m here to apologize for treating you so badly.”

  “Don’t think I won’t use this,” Dickie said, slashing the poker through the air. The barb at the end caught on the carved back of a chair, gouging into the wood and knocking the chair over backward. Dickie yanked at the poker, casting frantic glances at her between tugs. “I can take your head off with this!” he said, his voice screeching up two octaves. The poker remained stuck.

  “You don’t need to be afraid of me. I won’t hurt you.”

  With a final, full-body tug from Dickie the poker came loose, the sudden release surprising him. His arms came up and he lost his grip on the poker, the metal rod arcing up over his head and behind him as he staggered backward.

  Serena watched, stunned, as the poker flew up and thwacked the mounted caribou across the snout. One eyeball came loose, falling with the poker toward the floor as the entire head creaked, twisted, and then pursued its fleeing eyeball to the ground. The poker hit first, its clanging quickly dampened by the whump of stuffed caribou.

  The eyeball rolled slowly across the wood floor, its passage the only sound in the now silent room. It came to rest against Dickie’s shoe.

  Dickie looked from the eyeball up to her, and gave a little moan. He was trembling all over.

  “I’m sorry for all I did to you,” Serena repeated. “Please accept my apologies.” She pushed back the chair and stood, and, walking very slowly so as not to further distress him, she left through the door, opening and closing it as a normal person would.

  The children would be going nowhere near the garden, so she sat on the bench in the corner bastion and waited. Fretting mamas or no, a sunny late-October day would draw them outside. She had seen before how the boys liked to play Defender of the Keep here, and how the girls took up housekeeping in the small stone guard shelters.

  A few of Woding’s sisters and brothers-in-law went by, but she remained out of sight to them, content to wait. It was past noon when her patience was rewarded, and she heard the first piercing shrieks of children.

  She checked first for maids watching them. There were two, young women dressed in drab clothing. They were engrossed in their own conversation, not much interested in the children, and eventually took a seat at the edge of sight, on a bench in one of the other bastions. Serena let herself become visible. Her hair was not only braided, but knotted up behind her head. She wanted to look as unlike before as she could.

  The children avoided her at first, with the natural avoidance of little ones for a silent adult in the middle of their accustomed play space, doubtless wishing heartily that she would get up and leave. Eventually a pair of girls came close by her, heading for the guard shelter that looked out over the valley.

  “Would you like to hear a story?” Serena asked.

  The girls, perhaps aged eight and nine—Serena knew she was not good with children’s ages—stopped and stared at her, little frowns marring their smooth brows.

  “It’s about this castle, and about another one across the fields out there, crumbled now to nothing and hidden in the woods.”

  “Is there a princess?” the slightly taller of the two asked.

  “You might say so, and there are several princes, some good and some bad.”

  “All right, then,” the girl said, and without hesitation sat herself down at Serena’s feet. Her companion followed suit.

  “Are there others who might want to hear the story?” Serena asked them.

  The older girl gave an exaggerated sigh, and got up from her place on the paving tiles. “Michael! Louisa! Penelope!” she hollered, making Serena wince. The girl had a strong pair of lungs. “Gertrude! Mary! Sarah! David!”

  There was fussing and place-changing, and much running back and forth to gather other cousins. The boy who had been in the tree slowed his steps when he saw her, stopping several feet away. Serena smiled and gestured to him, then turned her attention to the others, counting on his curiosity to drag him toward the forming group. A few of the others gave her funny looks, but they had seen her for only a moment, and her hair had been loose, wild, and doubtless the most memorable part of her appearance.

  She saw the boy resume his movement forward, finding a place at the edge of the group. He looked around at his cousins, but with them so blatantly unafraid Serena knew that he would not dare to let out a shriek and be called a sissy for it. Any boy who would climb for the medallion while others watched was proud of his courage.

  It was not long before the lot of them were settled around her, fascinated—even the oldest, although that girl tried, unsuccessfully, to look superior to what was going on. The lure of a story had not lost any of its power over the ages, Serena realized. They were as avid as if they did not have a roomful of books at their disposal.

  The gossiping maids looked over once from their bastion but apart from the absence of shouting, they found nothing amiss with the children’s activity, and went back to their conversation.

  “I know you have all heard the legend of Serena, the ghost who haunts this castle.” Serena said carefully, speaking slowly so they could understand her despite her accent. “I know you may have caught a glimpse of her in the garden yesterday. What I want to tell you is the real story of Serena Clerenbold: how she lived, how she died, and all about her time as a ghost.”

  “She murdered her husband!” Louisa put in.

  “Did she?” Serena asked, raising an eyebrow at the girl. “Perhaps the truth is different than you expect.

  “Serena lived in a keep across the valley, with her four brothers and her father,” Serena began, “and from them she learned the way of warriors.”

  She told the entire tale with little of it censored. It took a long time to get to the end of the story,
which included everything that had happened in the garden yesterday. She looked at the boy from the tree while she told much of that, trying to make it clear to him that it had been an unfortunate mistake.

  “So that’s the truth of the ghost of Maiden Castle,” Serena concluded.

  “So where is she now?” one of them asked, a cute little girl of maybe six, with blond braids.

  Louisa elbowed the girl and rolled her eyes. “Where do you think, nitwit?” she said. “Who do you think has been telling us the story? Don’t you see the scar, and the way she’s dressed?”

  A smart girl, Louisa, Serena thought, although apparently with the disposition of her mother.

  The eyes of the children turned back to Serena, as the youngest who had not figured it out for themselves now realized who she was. Unlike Dickie, they showed no fear, looking more curious than frightened.

  “You’re a ghost?” a boy asked.

  “I am,” Serena said.

  “Prove it!” another little boy shouted.

  She smiled wickedly, then made her head disappear. The children gasped. One of the braver girls sitting near her stood up, and to the hooting encouragement of her cousins inched her hand toward the space where Serena’s head should have been. Serena popped her head back and snapped her teeth at the little girl’s fingers.

  The girl shrieked, then laughed in delight. “Again!”

  The other children all clambered up and pushed to get close to her, many little hands reaching out to touch her. Serena stood and let them pass their hands through her arms, through her skirts, through her hair.

  The boy she had frightened in the tree inched his way toward her. She held her skirt up to the side, making a curtain, and nodded toward it. He gave her a dubious look, then sucked in his lips, narrowed his eyes, and barreled through it. He turned once he’d come out the other side and looked up at her, surprise and a growing confidence on his face. She wiggled the skirt in her hand in invitation, and he ducked through it again, laughing this time.