INFINITY | the infernal devices

𝟑: 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐎𝐓𝐓𝐄 𝐁𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐖𝐄𝐋𝐋 𝐈𝐒 𝐀𝐍 𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐋, 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐂𝐀𝐍 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐒𝐀𝐘 𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐖𝐈𝐒𝐖𝐄

∞

In the dream, Elizabeth lay once again tied to the narrow brass bed in the Dark House. The Sisters leaned over her, clacking pairs of long knitting needles and laughing in shrill high-pitched voices. As Elizabeth watched, their features changed, their eyes sinking into their heads, their hair falling out, and stitches appearing across their lips, sewing them shut. Elizabeth shrieked voicelessly, but they did not seem to hear. 

The Sisters vanished entirely then, and Aunt Harriet was standing over Elizabeth, her face flushed with fever as it had been during the terrible illness that had killed her. She looked at Elizabeth with great sadness. "I tried," she said. "I tried to love you. But it isn't easy to love a child that isn't human in the least... ." 

"Not human?" said an unfamiliar female voice. "Well, if both of them aren't human, Enoch, what are they?" The voice sharpened in impatience. "What do you mean, you don't know? Everyone's something. These girls can't be nothing at all... ."

Elizabeth woke with a cry, her eyes flying open, and found herself staring at shadows. Darkness clustered about her thickly. She could barely hear the murmur of voices through her panic, and struggled into a sitting position, kicking away blankets and pillows. Dimly, she recognized that the blanket was thick and heavy, not the thin, braided one that belonged to the Dark House. 

She was in a bed, just as she had dreamed, in a great stone room, and there was hardly any light. She heard the rasp of her breath as she turned, and a scream forced its way out of her throat. The face from her nightmare hovered in the darkness before her—a great white moon of a face, its head shaved bald, smooth as marble. Where the eyes should have been there being only indentations in the flesh—notas if the eyes had been ripped out, but as if they had never grown there at all. The lips were banded with black stitches, the face scrawled with black marks like the ones on Will's skin, though these looked as if they had been cut there with knives

She bit back a scream of horror because it seemed quite rude to the person in front of her. Instead, she screamed for her sister. "Where's Tessa? Where is my sister?" Elizabeth demanded, backing away slowly.

"Miss Gray." Someone was calling her name, but in her panic, she knew only that the voice was unfamiliar. The speaker was not the monster who stood staring at her from the bedside, its scarred face impassive; it had not moved when she did, and though it showed no signs of pursuing her, she began to back away, carefully, feeling behind herself for a door. The room was so dim, she could see only that it was roughly oval, the walls and floor all of stone. The ceiling was high enough to be in black shadow, and there were long windows across the opposite wall, the sort of arched windows that might have belonged in a church. Very little light filtered through them; it looked as if the sky outside was dark. "Theresa Gray—"

"Elizabeth." Elizabeth corrected instinctively, it was normal for people to mix them up. "of course, I am sorry. It was not our intention to frighten you." The voice was a woman's: still unfamiliar, but youthful and concerned. 

"I'm not frightened, I am mere, um, surprised that's all." Elizabeth managed to try to cover the fast beating of her heart and the panic flooding her veins. She was sure if she didn't calm down she would have one of her anxiety attacks.

She breathed in, her body shaking despite her attempts to conceal it.  She could see now. She was in a storeroom whose central focus was a large, four-poster bed, its velvet coverlet now rucked and hanging sideways where she had dragged it off the mattress. Tapestry curtains were pulled back, and there was an elegant tapestry rug on the otherwise bare floor. The room itself was fairly bare. No pictures or photographs were hanging on the wall, no ornaments cluttering the surfaces of the dark wood furniture. Two chairs stood facing each other near the bed, with a small tea table between them. Chinese screen in one corner of the room hid what was probably a bathtub and washstand.