Spectral Sins

Chapter 02

Silenter than the shadows and the breeze, she stood on the grand wide staircase of the greeting hall, where everybody waited with bated breaths for the arrival of her stepmother's nephew, while the giddy maids flurried everywhere—some listening to the outside sounds, with few brave ones sticking their faces close to the fogged windows to peek out.

In the astir manor, she was once proud to call her home, life continued on as all lived, loved and laughed, grew and met people both old and new, blissfully unaware about the bhoot inhabiting with them, while she—she remained as she was, where she was, with no place to go, nothing to do, and nobody to be.

Perhaps it was why winters held a terribly precious place in her lifeless heart, for it had witnessed her life and her death; and thereby provided her hope of her memories prior to her demise returning to liberate her from this bond of undead.

It was only after great denial that she forced herself to accept the truth of what she'd become, for sleep evaded her and the violence of frost refused to pierce her; remaining unchanged for the last fourteen years, she often felt blue for inability to sleep simply meant no escape from idle constance and emotional fatigue.

"I think I hear the coach wheels!" A maid squealed to the one standing beside her, as stepmother rushed to the grand door of the house and had the servants pull it open, and true to the maid's words, horses trotted into view while pulling the coach; her father stood tall and regal beside his finery draped wife, as Ahan stepped forward on his mother's other side, towering over her.

The coachman held open the door of the fancy coach, and bowed slightly as a man-only a few years older than Ahan, stepped out with his back rod straight in a prideful stance, while his sherwani and the jewels around his neck and gems-enclosed fingers spoke volumes about his family's fortune.

A smile lit his sunkissed, well-formed and bearded countenance as he approached his aunt-her stepmother and touched her feet in respect and then her father's, hugged Ahan-who reciprocated his cousin's warm gesture, and proceeded to exchange more words of gratitude with them.

She sighed, turning her back, intent on returning upstairs, and casted a final glance at the happy scene of a happy family, and instantly noticed the man-Dev staring directly at her, almost as if he could see her, but she quickly banished the impossible thought at once.

After three hours of counting birds and the fifteenth time of having lost the count, she huffed—deliberating joining the occupants of the house as she had already been distracted from her laze by their festive mood; besides, she could feel her chamber teasing her with memories she could not recall-rendering her a stranger in her safe haven while unremembered nostalgia sought to rack her.

She entered the dining room in the middle of an animated conversation, while they were finishing their elaborately laid lunch; and circled the dining table, from behind Dev to her father seated at the head, to Ahan beside her father where she used to sit, to her stepmother occupying the opposite head chair to her father's, and ending her stroll near Dev—

"Would you like to join us?" Dev asked, interrupting his conversation with Ahan, and turning to her as he stared straight into her eyes, leaving no doubt regarding the direction of his gaze and the intended recipient of his question; he smiled, hoping to ease her flustered self—but she only looked incredulously at him.

She directed her stare to her father, hoping beyond hope that if Dev could perceive her perhaps her father could too, but he stared at Dev and then at the space of his nephew's fixated gaze, unseeingly; she could not ignore the stab of disappointment as she saw the gradual understanding of her ghostly presence dawn upon him, as he stiffened to a statue while still staring into the place she was-unseeingly.

She turned her attention to Ahan, but his reaction was no different from her father's, as he too froze in spot-pale and haunted, neither seeing nor perceiving her.

"To whom do you ask dear?" Her stepmother questioned Dev, playing the graceful hostess while neatly folding the napkin and setting it aside on the table, not glancing in the direction of Dev's gaze even once.

Unable to bear the unseeing expression of her father and the terrified pallor of Ahan, she fled the dining room into the corridor which she had traversed uncountable times and which lead to her room; despite her strict caution she had allowed herself the hope to finally be perceived by her father or at least Ahan, all for the extraordinary sense of the oddity named Dev, and at that moment she could not decide if he was sent to her as a blessing or as a curse.

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