‘You see, you can’t help it! It calls to you, drawing you in-’ said the entity cut off suddenly.
Lillian looked sharply towards him; he seemed to be having an internal dilemma.
The entity looked with unseeing eyes straight through her, momentarily distracted by someone or something else; probably Evelyn. She watched in fascination as he held a one sided conversation.
‘You promised that she would be mine. NO! I will most certainly not be taking orders from you anymore. You nearly damaged her with that stunt of yours. Do not ever presume to use my mind against me like that, ever again! I don’t care who you are. I take my leave of you.’
Lillian tested a theory, ‘I don’t think Evelyn will take too kindly to that tone of voice. She does not accept rejection easily.’
The entity swung his head back in her direction, and smiled, ‘I’ve had her in my mind for more than half a century...’ he sounded pained.
‘Though I can empathise with your situation, I find my emotions waning at your hands,’ said Lillian firmly.
‘Fair enough, but at least I don’t have her in my mind anymore. You can’t begin to fathom what it’s like to share your mind with another. For one thing, there’s never any privacy. Not to mention, I’ve been her puppet all this time...’
‘Believe me, I know exactly what you mean,’ said Lillian.
‘Of course you do,’ he said coldly.
‘What do you mean by that?’ she asked, as anger stirred within her.
‘You know perfectly well to what I’m referring,’ he said, emphasising his point in a cold, acerbic tone.
‘I’m afraid I really don’t,’ said Lillian.
At least she didn’t have to deal with Evelyn, and she could teach this shade a thing or two now that he had discarded Alexander’s body as well.
‘Really? I’d like to see you try. You would be mistaken if you think that this is my only form. I admit it; the other coffin was mine...’
Lillian swallowed, and looked down at the sleeping figure. How was it possible that it was her laying there? She could not dispute this, not with the evidence before her. She watched his ghostly hand stroking her hair lovingly.
‘Get away from me, don’t touch me!’ said Lillian, as her hand passed through the entity’s hand.
He stood before her coffin looking lovingly down into it, before meeting her fiery gaze, a thoughtful expression on his face, ‘Well, at least you now accept that this is your body laying here.’
He began to disintegrate and then disappear before her eyes. This was an all too familiar sight to her. It was the effect of using too much energy; the entity could not hold onto its form.
Suddenly finding herself alone, she wondered how long he would be gone for. But Lillian had never been one to wallow, so set her mind to the more pressing task of actually getting out of the room. It was circular with a high ceiling and there were no obvious entrances... Had the coffins been portalled in... she wondered.
Lillian began to examine the stone walls in the hope of coming across a secret door. She hit the wall hard in frustration, and screamed as she felt the pain shoot through her hand. An idea began to form in her mind and once rooted it wouldn’t let go, demanding she see it through to its conclusion.
She looked at herself in the coffin: her hair was long but how had it not lost its colour or lustre? It was still beautifully golden. She was taken aback to find herself wearing the white dress she had died in. How had it not burnt to ashes... she wondered. It looked fresh and in no way faded after all these long years.
Lillian looked at her hand in the coffin but it was turned in. Slowly and gingerly she reached in and turned it over; her theory proved correct, there was indeed blood on it. Anything that happened to her ghostly form also happened to her corpse. She was about to drop it out of fright, as her own hand slowly started to disappear before her.
She screamed and stepped back, and would have collapsed if it had not been for the strong arms suddenly supporting her. Someone was whispering by her ear.
‘Just go with it. It’s not so bad, after the first time. Breathe...’
Lillian didn’t know who it was and frankly she didn’t care; what mattered most was the horrifying vision of her missing hand with only the stump of her arm remaining. Her eyes were drawn towards the body in the coffin; the hand started to curl and uncurl, and strangely she could feel the sensation, as if she were connected to the body. It must be me controlling it — it’s my corpse, after all, with that final thought, her eyes fluttered closed as she lost consciousness.
Lillian came to after a few moments, and slowly opened her eyes. She was lying on the floor with her head propped up on someone’s legs.
‘Finally! I was wondering how long I’d have to wait — it seems to be a speciality of yours,’ said the voice derisively.
Lillian’s eyes snapped open, and she tilted her head and looked up into the beautiful emerald eyes that she’d never thought to see again - not in this lifetime, anyway. She laughed, and it sounded unbalanced.
‘Not really the reaction I was expecting after all this time, love,’ he said.
She got up quickly, her mind still reeling from the person before her. She nearly stumbled but he caught her, and her hands came to rest on his arms.
‘Elisedd?!’ asked Lillian in disbelief, not trusting herself to hope that he too had survived the fire which had consumed them both.
‘Well, I could say in the flesh, but that sounds a tad crass. Remember the empty coffin? Well, I couldn’t very well spend my whole eternity in it, now could I?!’ asked Elisedd sarcastically.
‘But how is it even possible...? We died, so how did you come back?’
‘The same way you did, when you decided to abandon me!’ shouted Elisedd.
‘I... I didn’t even know that you had survived... If I did, I would have torn this world up looking for you!’ she pleaded.
‘Once, I believed in you... But you left as soon as you saw your chance at life. Left me, trapped here, alone... Evelyn revealed the truth to me when she saved me!’ said Elisedd.
‘Saved you?! More like she condemned us to death! Don’t you know, she’s the one behind our downfall. She orchestrated the whole thing!’ said Lillian, shaking with rage. A fire burned deep within her core, and it had Evelyn’s name written on it.
‘More lies! I admit she is not my first preference for a companion, but she was the only one!’ said Elisedd, his own eyes burning with his inner torment.
He gripped her arms, and he felt strong; he was alive. ‘What exactly did Evelyn do to bring you back? After all, the dead can’t rise again...’ said Lillian doubtfully.
‘Quite. That’s one thing you’ve got right. The dead can’t, but the living...’
‘No. We died!’ said Lillian, shaking uncontrollably.
‘Are you certain...?’ asked Elisedd seriously.
‘But the pain... it was unbearable, I felt each moment. It’s scarred into my psyche. How could it not, when... I watched the fire consume you...’ she said quietly.
Looking deeply into her eyes, he said quietly, ‘I know, love. I watched you die as well... You were the last thing I saw before... Well, you understand.’
‘What- what happened after- afterwards?’ stuttered Lillian, finding it difficult to speak past the constriction in her throat.
‘You mean, after we died?’ he asked gently, and as she slowly nodded, he continued, ‘I was in the worst pain imaginable... my skin felt raw and bloody. I remember screaming, I was out of my mind. I could feel the last vestiges of my sanity slipping, when suddenly, a blinding violet-green energy ripped me from the fire just as it covered my entire body. By the way that was the last time I saw you... just as the fire burned you out of my view...’ said Elisedd, frenzied.
She watched as he shivered and trembled at the horrendous memories, and his eyes held a glazed faraway look. She brought him back to the present by encouraging him to go on. ‘Afterwards, what can you remember?’
she asked cautiously, not wanting to cause him any undue harm.
Once more he focused on the woman before him, My beloved, he thought, mockingly. I died for her and she left. Just left! with no more thought of me, and not once did she look back...
‘I awoke in this chamber!’ he spat; his prison really. He had been locked up, and let out occasionally when it served Evelyn, and even then only under her control. How he hated that woman with a passion. When the day finally came, and it would, that she stood before him, powerless to control him, then he would love to repay her in kind for saving him... he thought darkly, his eyes murderous.
Lillian ripped her arms out of Elisedd’s grip as his hands painfully dug into her arms. She knew that if she were to look at her body in the coffin, then it too, would bear the same angry red marks that were on her arms.
Elisedd mentally shook himself out of his manic state. He tried to calm himself down but it was not without tremendous effort. He looked at her apologetically, ‘Sorry, love. I was lost there for a moment.’
He looked as if he were ready to kill someone, she thought uneasily, as he walked determinedly to her coffin.
‘Don’t worry, love, it wasn’t you I was thinking of,’ he said quietly. A gentle look came into his eyes as he gazed tenderly down at her in the coffin. ‘How does this feel?’ he asked, over his shoulder.
Lillian was taken by surprise as a comfortably familiar sensation came back to her as she felt him gently massaging her arms where he had unintentionally hurt her. She closed her eyes hoping to block him out, but it proved in vain.
‘Open your eyes, Lillian,’ he said softly.
She felt a hot breath upon her face, and reluctantly opened her eyes. He was close, too close for her liking.
‘Some memories don’t fade with time but become more vivid...’ said Elisedd, his eyes smouldering with an inner fire.
He looked at her wonderingly and took another step towards her, smiling knowingly. He was amused, when just as his hand would have caressed her cheek, she stepped back, so that he only brushed it with the tips of his fingers; but it was enough, as her eyes widened.
Lillian turned abruptly away from him. He was not making things easy for her...
‘I’m not going anywhere, love. I have always been right where you left me...’
‘I suppose Evelyn was here to greet you,’ she said. Her emotions were fighting within her. She would not go to him, it was too late...
Elisedd huffed in exasperation behind her. Lillian was sorely mistaken if she thought that he’d intended to spend eternity alone. He felt her emotions as fragments of her thoughts beat at him; she was just as confused as him. Where did they now stand within each other’s lives?
You are not a coward, she rebuked herself ruthlessly, as she forced herself to face the man she had once loved above all others. After all, they had died in each other’s arms.
Elisedd’s gaze locked with Lillian’s; he could drown in those soulful violet eyes. ‘I stood as a shade before Evelyn, and she showed me our bodies. How peaceful we looked lying side by side,’ he said, indicating the coffins. ‘At her behest, I got into my coffin, and sunk easily into my body, my soul returned to its earthly abode.’
‘Your body accepted you back, but then what happened to me?’ asked Lillian, wondering why she had not ended up here as well.
‘You’re getting ahead of yourself, love. Before I could awaken as a human once more, Evelyn performed a ritual while I was still trying to adjust to my body. I could not stop her!’ said Elisedd angrily.
‘What ritual, what did she do to you?’ asked Lillian, stepping close to him and shaking him desperately by the shoulders.
You still care, love, even if you don’t say it aloud, thought Elisedd in wonder.
‘She transferred her blood by making a small incision in my hand, and then did the same with her own before finally joining our hands, and speaking words which I no longer recall.’
‘You must have slept for a couple of hours while the conversion happened,’ stated Lillian matter-of-factly.
‘I suppose you would know, after all. I dreamt that I was lost in a midnight world without end, and I kept calling for you, but was met with silence. The only thing keeping me going and saving my sanity was that when I awoke, you would be before me. Alive. I never believed in miracles before... my Lillian, alive and unhurt with me. How stupid of me!’ he said acerbically, his pain evident in his voice.
Lillian could tell him of her own nightmare world, but only if and when he was ready to listen, then she’d recount what she had been through.
‘I awoke as a half demon but you were still asleep. I called your name and shook you but to no avail. Fear took a hold of me as I thought that Evelyn had not been able to save you. I asked her, grief stricken, what had gone wrong. She replied that you had not chosen to come back, and that your soul had decided on a different path,’ said Elisedd coldly, reliving the pain and misery of it all over again.
‘Contrary to what she told you, I in fact did not choose a path for myself — it was chosen for me, and by our great granddaughter of all people, even if it was an unconscious decision at the time. Admittedly, she was fighting for her own life then,’ said Lillian, uncertain of how he’d react to this monumental revelation.
‘What did you just say?’ he asked in disbelief; after all, it could very well be another ruse on her part.
Lillian was silent as she waited for him to accept the truth. A truth she had carried alone for far too long.
‘Our daughter?! Lived... still lives?’ he asked tentatively, as it finally sunk in. This was more than he could ever have hoped for, but he was anxious of the answer that awaited him.
‘She lives, and has a daughter, as well as a grandchild,’ replied Lillian, as tears hung on her eyelashes.
Elisedd fell forward, the grief of being separated from his child and first love proving too much for him to handle. Lillian caught him, and they slowly sunk to the floor. He felt her arms around him, just holding him, as she waited patiently; it brought back bittersweet memories.
‘What happened to you?’ he asked, after they had spent some time in companionable silence. He gently disengaged from her and sat opposite.
She felt as if he were drawing away from her again, and hugged her cold body as a faraway look came into her eyes. ‘I awoke in our great granddaughter’s body; though I was unaware of her identity at the time. It’s taken some time to piece the puzzle together. I had wondered why my soul had chosen a random human, and that too on Earth away from Demon World.’
‘What became of our daughter?’ asked Elisedd eagerly, shuffling closer.
‘Seventy years ago I left Angelique with your family...’
‘My family...’ said Elisedd in wonder. ‘Our treasured Angelique, I’ve often wondered through these long years of what might have become of her, and imagined the life she might have lived. I know you understand as I do, how it feels to never see our child again...’ said Elisedd, with tears sliding down his face.
She leaned towards him, and wiped his tears away gently. Tears streaked down her face as she could no longer hold back the floodgates of her own grief. Elisedd was the one person she’d share this with, no one else.
Elisedd gently wiped Lillian’s tears, reciprocating her kindness. She let him, and for that he was grateful. He would not have been able to bear it had she turned him away in his grief.
‘Do you know of what became of my family?’
‘I thought Evelyn would have told you,’ she said, shocked.
‘I have spent more than half a century shut up in here looking after you. Waiting for your soul to return...’
She wanted to look away but his intense gaze captured her. How must it have felt to be down here in this miserable existence... to be caged, and never having a chance at life; cut off from everyone and from the world.
Lillian grabbed his hands and held on for dear life; or so it felt to her. ‘Nobody knew of what became of us. Ever
yone, including both our families, thought that we had died.’
He squeezed her hand painfully, ‘Did we save them? Please, tell me we didn’t die for nothing!’ he pleaded with her. He would go mad if she told him otherwise, and he was barely managing to function as it was.
‘We did,’ she replied, and he sagged in relief.
‘Show me everything that you have seen so far, that way I’ll know the truth,’ demanded Elisedd in a firm voice; he would not accept, ‘no’ for an answer.
‘Close your eyes. Journey with me, merge your mind with mine...’ she said wearily.
Elisedd obliged as he held her hands, and let his mind gently drift towards hers. He shared her memories, re-lived her horror. No! it could not be. Evelyn had lied to him. He wept for Lillian, who had been confined to their great granddaughter’s mind. He saw her fight valiantly for Rowanne when her life had been in danger, only to be shoved back into her mind once it had passed. Finally he knew his great granddaughter’s name!
‘Who is this Alexander?’ asked Elisedd.
‘He is actually, or to be more precise, he was, the next heir to Demon World,’ replied Lillian, amused by the thought that the Knight family seemed to have a penchant for royalty; demon royalty... And Rowanne was no exception, whether she knew it or not.
He continued to share her memories, and learnt that Alexander had given up everything for Rowanne.
‘I like him, he is a perfect match for our great granddaughter,’ said Elisedd. ‘So, he’s a half demon now, and will age after willingly given up his immortality. At least he can grow old with Rowanne,’ he added as an afterthought.
‘Elisedd, you’re a half demon, so why haven’t you aged?’ Lillian wondered what had stopped his aging process; he still looked the same age as when he had died.
‘You know, at first I thought it may have been because we had not really died. Evelyn had pulled our bodies out of the fire, and brought them down here, and sort of froze us in space and time.’
‘What are you talking about? The pain was real enough!’ reiterated Lillian, shocked at his revelation; she didn’t know how to take it.
Demon World Page 55
