But a Walking Shadow- Chapter One

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Chapter One

‘O mother; mother! What have you done?  Behold, the heavens do ope, the gods look down, and this unnatural scene they laugh at.’

Coriolanus Act 5 Sc 3

It came again.  That horror.  How could I have thought that it had gone forever?  Desperately I resisted and struggled, a crushing weight on my chest grinding into me as I tried to cry out,

‘Help me! Help me!’  

 The words crackled from my lips as bony fingers tightened on my throat, choking my breath from me.  My eyelids seemed glued together, and no amount of effort could prise them apart.  I was paralysed, and unable to move. My whole body trapped by some unknown suffocating presence.  Hysteria rising and rigid with fear, I clenched my teeth, agonisingly struggling for my life.  Over and over, I tried to convince myself that it was only that familiar childhood nightmare, only now there were no words of comfort and reassurance from a caring mother.

At last, I prised my eyes open and saw what I most dreaded.  That grotesque figure’s demented bloodshot eyes staring into mine.  The hideous thing cackling at me, laughing insanely.  A monstrous gargoyle, crouching, grinning and salivating in the gloom.  The slime dripping down in globules from his cavernous mouth. I screamed out loud and as I did so, the skeletonal fingers released their grip and the monster faded into a transparent shade, the weight lifted and I was free.

  Shaken I leapt from the bed and frantically looked aroundbut there was no one there.  I was alone in an unfamiliar half furnished cold and dirty room.    Shivering with cold, I caught sight of my white face in the mirror, a phantom in the dawn’s early light.  Beads of perspiration trickled down my face and I scrubbed them frantically away, leaving salty traces on my lips. I brushed away the damp hair that clung to my face, only to find that the strands were imaginary wisps and I desperately tried to rub away the invisible hair that stuck to my wet skin.   Shuddering and gasping, I realised that the nightmare that had haunted my dreams in childhood had just been laying dormant, waiting to return.

Confused I looked around at the unfamiliar surroundings, trying to make sense of it all.  Then I remembered.  This was Stoneleigh. I had passed an anxious night in a room in my dead sister’s home.  The glorious, ornate building full of riches, where she had lived after her marriage to Roland Fitzroy.  The grand, castellated building that I left only five years ago, which last night had greeted me with horror and decay?

 The torn pieces of the letter lay on the floor and as I reached out for them, a stabbing pain shot through my arm.  A deep bloody scratch showed through the ripped folds of my sleeve where I had caught it on the tangled branches, as I had made my way in the moonlight. Instead of the welcome I expected, I had to find my way through the overhanging branches that obscured the path that led down to the entrance.  Tripping and ducking through the bushes of the landscaped garden that was now so unrecognisable, the area so run down that if it was not for the turrets in the distance I would have thought I was in the wrong place.

Although still in my outdoor clothes, I shivered with cold. What had possessed me, Aphra Devereaux, to travel here from Paris?  My frozen fingers toyed with the pieces of the unsigned letter that had led me to this place of dread. Who was that large woman in the bright pink dress that had opened the door?  Why had Roland greeted me with such fury and shoved us both with such force that this woman and myself fell in a crumpled heap on the marble steps?  I could make no sense of it.  What had happened to change everything?  The picture of him cursing me so vehemently was imprinted in my brain.  Why had my dead sister’s husband been so frightening and unrecognisable?