The Unchaste

The Failed Resurrectionist

When she told him of this deep, dark terror that had haunted her since her arrival at Sliverdale; Delilah had hoped, not without reasons, that he would at least try to understand, if not believe, this cynical chimera of her mind.

If she was going mad somehow, which was a possibility she didn't try to deny_ then he could have at least consoled her for her ecphronia, her insanity. He could at least have kissed her because she needed his pity. A part of her demanded it.

But that would not have been him then.

His spine uncurled, he straightened_ stiffened but did not turn and look the way her trembling finger pointed. Could he see her too? That hunched, pale figure standing in the darkest corner of the room, staring straight into Delilah's soul with such elegiac eyes, rimmed with deep scarlet and the thick, extensive lips, pressed in a mournful cleave.

So like the woman in the painting but unlike anything Delilah had seen before here.

That thing had always, always stood in that corner of room, since the day Delilah had arrived. Day and Night. With him or without. Walking when the moon walked. Sometimes, she stood besides Delilah's bed, staring down at her all night. Sometimes, her cold fingers would touch Delilah_ hand and throat, neck and breast. Where she touched, she burnt Delilah.

Sometimes, that entity even smiled at her_ a smile that was far too wide to be human and that left Delilah trembling for hours at the end.

A half sneer had come over Lord Richard's face, which she hated, by the time Delilah's eyes floated back to him. She gasped in horror at the throaty moan that came from that dark, distant corner of the room, but couldn't tear his eyes from him.

Did he not hear that infernal wail now echoing in the room? Was it her alone, cursed to be haunted?

"That wo-woman..." Delilah began.

"You have gone quite mad, I suppose." He interrupted with rude impatience. "To be talking as if your mind is falling off in pieces. Have you heard yourself Delilah?"

Not herself, but she certainly did hear him. Delilah's shoulders curled inward as if she had taken a blow on her gut. "Don't say so, please... you are being unkind."

But there sat the man, who claimed on loving her but would hurt her in ways no other could, and would continue to do so, given every chance she found herself at his mercy. His brow furrowed in vast disapproval, he grabbed Delilah's arm and wrenched her into a standing poise.

"You are the one being unkind, Miss Eves, not I." He hissed in her face, a changed man suddenly. The man they talked about when reckoning Richard Winter, not the man she knew. "Allow me to show what you have become and you, yourself, have done this to you."

He dragged her until she was standing in front of a jagged panel of the glass at the window, shattered and dark, the night black on the other side of it_ feebly recasting her dim shape.

Delilah was thinner than ever, dark shadows running under her eyes as if she had not slept for years while that was all she had done these past few days. Her hair hung sheenlessly around her head, her cheeks sunken. Her eyes hollow. Fearful. Wet with torrent of tears.

She looked morbid!

Yet, instead of observing herself better, Delilah's eyes travelled to that corner in the reflection_ where the pale woman usually stood in the room.

She backed off in horror.

Madame DeGranville still was in it, in the darkened reflection_ unlike a hallucination that wavers against science and logic. Not in the corner, but the entity was right behind Richard's reflection. So close to him that Delilah screamed.