Ever After

by Odessa Gillespie Black

  “This has to be difficult for you. You cared for her once.” A pang formed in my stomach. Slight jealousy, slight pity.

  “Yes. Until I learned she was sleeping with her own father. At that point, I knew she was capable of anything except loving me. Like everything else, she bedded him to mold and manipulate every situation to her own liking.” Colby’s eyes focused on me in the dark.

  “You’re right. She needs to be in an asylum,” I said. “It’s just so sad. I feel like Father deserves a spot right beside her.”

  He kissed my forehead. “I know.”

  A noise made outside jarred us from the embrace.

  “Colby,” someone whispered.

  Colby hugged me. “That’s my cue. I have to go now. Your father is on his way back in. As far as I know, he still thinks Grace and I are being married tomorrow. One more day and we’ll be free. You’ll be my wife.”

  The prospect sent shivers down my spine.

  He slipped out of my arms and out the door of the closet.

  Instead of following him out, I felt through the darkness, pressed a panel, and slipped into the room behind the secret meeting place. My mother’s room.

  Sitting primly in front of a vanity, Mother allowed a dress maid to brush her hair. Her dancing eyes found mine in her mirror.

  “You’re flushed,” she said with a knowing smile. “I take it your meeting went well.”

  “Maybe.”

  Mother dismissed her maid with a wave of her hand, and when the door was closed, she straightened her skirts. “You’ve agreed to marry him?”

  “You arranged the marriage. What other choice did I have? Should I not come down the staircase, he’ll have to marry her. I’m not letting her win.” I ran my hand over her silk bed covering and took perch at the foot of her bed.

  Long brown hair cascaded down her back, and her red lips pouted in my direction. “Oh, don’t act so wounded. You knew this day was coming. I just knew it sooner than you. Colby will be a wonderful husband. If you don’t forgive him, you are going to end up like me, married for convenience only to find your husband is a drunk or worse. I know you were hurt when you learned of Colby falling into the grips of your sister. He repented, gave his heart to the Lord, and turned from that life, and your sister. He was sincere.”

  Blazes of the moment I’d learned Cole’s hands had grazed someone else’s skin invaded my mind. A blur of Colby chasing me up a bank as he yelled apologies at my back, my skirts rustling in the spring breeze, saddened me. I’d wasted so much time in anger.

  “Don’t let history repeat itself, Annabeth.”

  I turned to leave.

  “I expect you to appear at the top of the patio steps tomorrow at two sharp. And when your sister shows in a wedding dress, I need you to act surprised, but back away from her,” Mother said.

  “I know. Because she’s dangerous.” I wished I could go back and tell myself to run, to hide, but it was done.

  The vision flipped. The next day I was in a room on one of the highest levels of the house. From the window, a sea of white flowers covered the rear grounds. Men, women, and children floated to and fro, visiting with family they hadn’t seen in years. Pressing my dress to my fluttering stomach, I smiled.

  In black coattails, smiling and laughing, Colby stood with a group of guys I thought I recognized.

  My heart was too big for my chest.

  “Do you know who you’re marrying?” came from behind me.

  The white wedding skirts swooshed as I turned.

  Our seamstress? I didn’t need alterations.

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand your question.” I backed toward the window.

  “Colby’s father has forced his family to live in poverty.” She moved closer.

  “But Colby’s father didn’t have means to live any other way,” I said, my mouth a desert.

  “No. Eli left a life of riches to flee from me. He married that poor wench and now he’s miserable. My dowry could have added to his money, and we would never have wanted for anything. Now I have to make him pay.” A haggard veil lifted off her face, and she was young again. Her hair became brown with only a silver streak. Pale, deep-set wrinkles filled in with firm, youthful skin. Her eyes were most troubling of all. The old, almost bluish-gray irises deepened to green in a supernatural flash.

  I screamed and stumbled toward the window.

  The witch scooped her arm around my waist.

  I tried to pull free from her, but she dragged me backward toward the French doors leading into the hallway.

  “Eli will know hell. I thought killing everyone and everything he’s ever loved would be the way, but making them suffer sounds more gratifying. I’ll start with his son.” She looked over her shoulder. “Grace?”

  I flailed and jerked but was no match for her. Her young arms held me fast.

  Grace stepped out of the shadows in the hall and turned to me with her whole body.

  She was adorned in a wedding dress, her hair looked to have been lived in by rats. Rouge and lipstick smeared her face in ridiculous streaks. Her eyes narrowed at me.

  “What did you do to my sister?” Fear ached in my stomach. No matter what she’d done, she was still family.

  “Grace is as she’s always been.” The steel band of the witch’s arms cut off feeling to my hands. “None of you have appreciated her inner beauty. Her true worth.”

  “When you were born, you took everything that was mine. No one was as good as Annabeth. No. No one ever would be. You took Mama, Daddy, the room that used to be mine, though there were countless others. They even gave you my bed. I loved that bed. I slept so well. And I took so many to it.” Grace eyes glossed over as she touched up her tangled hair with an absent hand, but she came back and her cold, evil eyes landed on me. She pointed her finger at me, inches from my nose. With hate raging in her voice, she said, “Now, you’ve taken the one thing I ever truly loved.”

  “Grace, we’re going to get you help. Please. No one has tried to purposely hurt you. You’ve been so lost. You’ve been acting out.” My heart slammed against my chest.

  “I know the help you planned for me. The asylum?” Grace cocked her head. “I’ll die before I let you have him or end up in that horrid place. I have found help. My only friend will take us forward now. I will have the life I deserved. Yours.”

  “Let us begin,” the old, young woman said.

  “Grace, listen to me. You don’t have to do this. This woman is crazy.” The witch twisted my arm up my back. The pain took my breath.

  She chanted.

  “Because you stole your sister’s love

  I darkly send you on,

  to the arms of countless lives,

  an eternity alone.

  His memory will ever haunt you,

  dwindling over time,

  making you forget this life

  and slowly lose your mind.”

  The witch finished her chant and tossed me into my sister’s arms.

  “I love that little addition,” Grace said in uneven tones and pitches as her laugh rattled my ears. Grace stared into my eyes. No humanity left.

  “You’re both insane,” I whispered as Grace’s nails dug into my arms.

  Grace may have been weak mentally, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t wrench myself free. Grace gasped and giggled as she stared past me over my shoulder.

  I turned. Behind me, the witch had ripped the tender flesh of her palm open with a jagged knife. The witch jerked my hand out and placed the knife over the white tender skin of my forearm.

  “I mark you with a moon to carry with you through all eternity.” She slashed a long, razor-sharp fingernail down my arm, then mixed her blood against the wound.

  I cried out, tearing my arm from her. It appeared only to be a long cut, but the blood rose to the surface in a C shape.

  Dragging me toward the window, Grace laughed.

  “You meet, the curs
e is triggered. This should be an interesting game,” the witch said.

  “You won’t be there to see it.” I shuddered, cold fear wrapping around my body.

  “Oh, my dear, yes. I will,” she said and her body literally fell to the floor like a dress she’d worn, a useless piece of clothing. Her presence slapped into me. The witch’s cold soul entered the front of my body and exited my back. Grace’s grip grew stronger.

  “We will share in the view,” the witch’s voice whispered behind me, close to my ear.

  Grace jerked me to my left out the fourth floor window. We landed with a sickening thud. Searing pain in the base of my neck followed by black nothingness took me.

  In a transparent mist, I stood over two bodies donning wedding dresses as the scene at the front of the house filled with people.

  A woman in long skirts, a lacy neckline, and an umbrella from the wedding party stumbled upon our twisted bodies first. She screamed.

  Though the bodies were unnaturally crumpled, Grace’s hand was locked in Annabeth’s. And on her face a triumphant smile contorted her broken features.

  The smile of a madwoman.

  The woman still screamed. I don’t think she ever stopped.

  White-clad people made their way in a wave toward the scene. Gasps broke out over the grounds, and whispers and sobs followed as the girls’ mother, forgetting her mother-of-the-bride’s dress, threw herself over the bodies.

  The crowd spread for Colby to make his way through. Sorrowful glances landed on him from all the guests.

  Colby’s face didn’t twist. His eyes went blank as he stared at the bizarre angle of Annabeth’s head.

  “Annabeth will be devastated.” Colby’s voice was hollow. He stared at the two bodies as if he didn’t have the first clue as to who they were.

  An old woman came to Colby and brushed his cheek. She started to whisper something to him but turned her head away. Two older men took him from the lady.

  “It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay,” they kept repeating, holding his shoulders to support his weight.

  “We’ll reschedule the wedding for another day. Annabeth will forgive me, and all will be well.” Colby was oddly detached, not taking his eyes off the bodies.

  He didn’t see it.

  Or his mind wouldn’t let him grasp it.

  “Colby, I’m sorry. That’s Annabeth. Annabeth and Grace,” one of the guys said, pulling him around to stare into his eyes.

  Colby wouldn’t turn his head to take his eyes off the bodies. His voice was hollow. “We can put the flowers in her hair, and she’ll smile again. I know she’ll smile again. I know I can make her smile. She’ll forgive me. I know it. I know it. We’ll put the flowers in her hair.”

  The guy shook Colby, who slid to the ground in a crumpled heap, sobbing.

  Then, in a flash, Colby began slinging fists. They connected with a few of the guys who tried to console him.

  Men held him back and pulled him into the house as others brought sheets out and laid them over the bodies. Women tended to the distraught mother. People bustled all over the property in a panicked frenzy.

  The scene fizzled out and faded back in to Colby lying on a bed with Annabeth’s dead body in his arms as she would have been in life, but her head lolled unnaturally to the right. Colby stared up at a white ceiling, tears flowing freely down his cheeks.

  Grace’s body lay covered to her neck on a bed beside them.

  He muttered something as Annabeth lay curled in his arm. Just as if he were waiting for her to wake any moment. With an absent hand, he brushed her hair off her forehead and over her shoulders.

  “You’ll never have her. You’ll never have her.” A taunting voice sounded from everywhere and nowhere in the room.

  Colby shook his head and buried his face in Annabeth’s hair as the taunting worsened. “I’m not crazy.”

  “No, of course you aren’t. You’re perfectly sane. I’m the crazy one. Remember? You were going to lock me up and throw away the key. Now you have to live with me for the rest of your lives.” Grace laughed.

  “Go away,” Colby said.

  Grace continued to taunt him.

  Colby slid Annabeth’s body over gently and placed her into a respectable final resting position. He jumped from the bed and hovered over Grace’s remains. In a rage, he jerked the sheet from her face, put both palms down on her bed, and bowed his head. He lifted his chin defiantly, clenched his fists, and left the room.

  In minutes, two men rolled in a box.

  Colby entered behind them, his face set in incensed stone.

  “Put. Her. In. It.” Colby’s nostrils flared, his fists clenched and unclenched.

  “Mr. Rollins will have our hides,” one of the men said, shaking his head, backing away.

  The other stared at Grace and then back to Colby.

  “She deserves whatever you have in mind, Master Colby,” he said. “You don’t know how many times she visited my room at night and shamed me into unspeakable acts.”

  Colby closed his eyes and shuddered.

  The undecided man looked to Grace. He was quiet.

  “I know where Marshall Rollins stashes money. I’ll give you both fifty dollars. Put her in the damned box.” A vein popped out on Colby’s forehead. The men rushed to do his bidding.

  The vision flashed forward to the men and Colby sliding the box out of a wagon with glass windows on the sides. It was parked on the wooden slats of the bridge over the pond.

  The two men left Colby.

  In seconds, he had the lid off the box. With anguished cries, he repeatedly slammed a rock into the coffin. Blood splattered him, but he didn’t stop until Grace’s face was unrecognizable. The vision flashed forward.

  With one powerful shove of his leg, Colby shoved the coffin, of which was now tied shut with rope, into the water. With his whole torso covered in blood, he watched it bob and sink. Air bubbles filtered to the top of the murky green water.

  Two grotesque, female hands stuck out of his pockets.

  He’d lost his mind. He’d sawed her hands off.

  “Such blatant disrespect for my body after death. I’m surprised at you, Colby. If you’re going to act like an animal, you can become one. Let’s see if you can control him or if he controls you.” Grace stood behind Colby on the bridge.

  The vision flashed forward again.

  Colby hammered so many nails into the door it would be impossible to open from the outside. Taking a gun propped against the bed, Colby walked toward the closet.

  He sat down, said a prayer, and held the gun between his legs, using his toe to pull the trigger. Gray matter and bloody bone splattered all over the white dress hanging on the wall. The gun slid into the hole the bullet made, and Cole stared down the barrel, his eyes bloodshot from crying.

  There would be no more tears.

  Not in that lifetime, anyway.

  * * * *

  The memories released me. Gasping for breath, I pulled the skirts of the wedding gown up and searched for a pocket I somehow knew would be there.

  Hands shaking, I started for the door.

  It was time.

  Chapter 21

  My pulse raced as my gaze swept the large reception room. No matter what vase, chandelier, or tapestry anyone placed in that room, their extravagance would pale to ash in contrast to the spot at the end of the stairs where my gaze crashed to a halt.

  Dark, wavy hair landing at his cheeks. Muscles straining the seams of his shirt. And low hanging jeans.

  The chandelier above his head lit the room in electric light bouncing off a thousand prisms, but he shined brighter than them all. He stood with his back to me, his broad shoulders squared, his thumbs hung in the loops of his jeans.

  I adjusted my corset and took a deep breath. I could think of nothing more to say other than, “I can barely breathe in this thing,” to announce my arrival at the top of the stairs.

&nbs
p; Staring straight ahead, Cole lifted his head. His breathing sped as I descended.

  We were so in tune with each other, I heard his heartbeat thunder in my ears as I came closer.

  He turned and took me in. His eyes glazed over with a far-off look.

  “The library keeps archives dating back to the late 1800s. Colby’s disappearance and death was documented in 1879.” I clenched my skirts and took two steps down.

  “In 1892, a man showed up at the house, worked there for a month, and then died unexplainably. It was recorded as a suicide.” Two more steps down.

  “In 1907, a young man shot himself behind the barn. Another suicide.” Three steps down. Cole’s eyes widened.

  “In 1938, another man who worked the fields died unexplainably. According to the owner, Eliza Rollins, he was a recluse, always staying to himself in the cottage, never interested in the opposite sex. His body was found at the pond, but it looked as though he’d poisoned himself.”

  Cole took a step back as I came to the last two steps.

  “In 1978, Ava Rollins, beneficiary of the late Eliza Rollins, reported a construction worker’s tragic death. He had fallen from the roof or fourth floor, no one knew which.” After two more steps, I stood in front of him on the vestibule floor. “And now you’re back again.”

  His jaw dropped, but nothing came out of his mouth. He diverted his gaze.

  “But you can’t be the real Colby. The real Colby would never have let me go.”

  “There’s only one thing I want more than you right now.” He raised an intent green gaze to meet mine. He shook his head, a war in his eyes. “Your lives to be complication free, simple, with no involvement from me.”

  “That’s not living.”

  “I’m not good for you. You’ll die if we try to be together—”