What Lies Beneath

Chapter Twenty-Three: A Death to Remember

Silence once again overtook the large house that night. Only the sound of sharp whispers coming from the attic were heard by any animal or insect that may have been outside the window or living in the old boxes.

It was a little after one in the morning, but that didn't seem to bother the two elderly women. Things were not going as they had planned, or so Gwyneth thought. They had told the children that they would call 911, but they never intended to.

After the guests went to their rooms for the night, Gwyneth made her usual rounds and offered each one of them a calming cup of tea. Unfortunately, instead of a soothing drink, the guests received tea laced with sleeping pills.

While the inhabitants of the house slept Gwyneth and Agatha went to work.

Gwyneth cleaned up the blood-stained dining room and the trail of blood that led back to the shattered mirror. Agatha oversaw the disposal of Delphine's body.

To keep herself as far from it as possible, Gwyneth asked to remain in the dark on what Agatha did to the body.

The rest of the night was filled with despair and memories from a distant, but unforgotten past.

When they had both completed their respective tasks for the night, they adjourned to the attic where the disagreement began.

"This is wrong, we can't let this happen again!" Gwyneth tried to keep her voice as low as possible, but the anger that had enveloped her since dinner was still raw.

"You know why we have to keep going. It's only right that we fix our mistakes."

"By making more? How is that right?" Gwyneth turned her back to Agatha and stared at the mirror on the wall in front of her. It was shattered, half of its pieces were missing, but it still portrayed her image.

"It was an accident." Agatha's open hands slowly turned into white knuckled fists and her thin lips disappeared from sight once again.

"How can you say that? It wasn't an accident. Don't you remember whose mirror this was?" Gwyneth could feel the cool tears rushing down her hot cheeks.

"That doesn't matter now. None of it matters. We came back here to finish what we started, and we are not leaving until we do!" This time Agatha didn't even bother trying to whisper. She didn't care if the whole house heard her. She was not leaving until she got what she came for.

"How can you say that it doesn't matter? A girl is dead. That poor girl." Gwyneth's knees buckled, and she fell to the floor. Her eyes, which were now fixed to the dusty wooden floorboards, began to fill with more tears. She hadn't cried this much since the first time that this had happened.

Agatha watched her old friend as she sobbed on the floor with a sadistic grin plastered on her face. Then in a movement, not even she could have predicted, she was kneeling next to her. "I know that it's hard, but we have to keep going. Otherwise all of this will just keep happening. You wouldn't want that, would you?" She tried to make her voice sound soft and comforting, but there was still a hint of manipulation dancing around in it.

"I know, you're right. We have to keep going."

Even before Paul had his first nightmare about the house or even received his invitation. He had a dream that he was flying on a plane. Destination, Connecticut. He didn't know why he would go to Connecticut, but he knew that it was important. So, the first evening after his dream he bought a plane ticket.

It wasn't until his second dream in which he saw death, that he knew why. The plane ticket was set for him to leave the following morning after his second nightmare.