Descent Into Madness (35 page)

THIRTY-SEVEN

June 26, 2013

Evening

I
s that the amulet, then, you know… what she’s clutching on to?” Judith asked.

“I guess so,” Wesley replied. The three of them had read the contents of Bree’s bound papers, and then reread them upon waking the next night.

              “Was this her farewell, then?” Colin’s voice cut the tense silence eating at the room.

              “I guess so,” Wesley whispered. He leaned against the cracked mantle, his shirt catching on the stone. There was a scuffing noise as he shifted loose. He held the manuscript to his chest, protecting it. Too many memories pressed against him, he thought, and too many secrets. 

              Chicago’s chaotic nightly symphony – the traffic, the people and the lights – existed beyond the study; beyond the marred mantle and the leather back chair; beyond the frightened fledgling caught in a conspiracy and a man with a second lease on life. Humanity sprinted below with careless abandonment, and the all-seeing eyes housed in the State Street penthouse above were for once unconcerned. 

              Colin stood from the sofa and smoothed his jeans. “I told you I heard a voice,” he said and then walked out onto the balcony.

              “What voice?” Wesley asked, following him. He peered over the railing and then turned his back to the hustle and bustle.

              “From the hospital.” Colin watched the traffic below. “The female voice I told you about; the woman who was with Bree when she turned me.”

              “Dad, there could not have been anyone else with you two,” Judith said, easing her way out. “We have been over this.”

              “You were not there,” he replied without turning.

              “Neither were you really,” Wesley reminded him. “You were on death’s bed.”

              Colin dropped his head, letting his chin graze his chest. His hands clutched the railing.

              Judith reached for his shoulder but he shrugged her off. “Bree wrote that the woman was there. Sr. Veronica! She called her that, yes?”

              “Yes,” Wesley whispered.

              That name seared through the pages held against his chest, through his ecru polo, and into his ashen skin. He had suppressed the memories of Sr. Veronica helplessly dying and longing for her friend. Surrounded by her betrothed kin, in her heart Sr. Veronica was alone without his sister. He remembered hearing Bree’s name and rushing to the convent, hopeful. There lay this face, a face from his childhood, clothed in a black veil. She had reminded him of Bree before he had tainted her with the curse. Sister Veronica’s soul was ready to escape, but her heart yearned for comfort. He had provided that. That – after all these years – was his secret. That was his curse.

              “Death, grief, it is a trickster, Wesley,” said Aleksandra from the Study door, her jean bottoms soiled from the previous night’s journey. She had slept beside Bree, unable to leave the matriarchs side. She smoothed her twisted auburn hair and loosely piled the strands in the back of her head. She secured them with a clip from her pocket as she walked onto the balcony.

              “We are all tricksters, are we not?” Aleksandra asked. “That is what we do? We paint ourselves, walk amongst the living. Parade and prance for them, adore them. Then we slay them.” She walked to the ledge and peered over it, staring at the smooth ribbon of traffic trickle past.

              “Watch the river of ants, Wesley. Watch the self-centered, mindless herd scurrying about their finite lives, always fearing what they cannot see. They worship money and nothingness, beauty and pride. They pray to hypocritical gods. They are puny and worthless.”

              “Where is this coming from?” asked Wesley. “You have always cared for humanity. We all care for humanity.”

              “We are monsters!” She howled as a summer breeze blew through her hair. “We hunt them and feed from them.”

              “My love,” Wesley whispered. His head drooped and his fingers wrapped tighter onto the iron railing until they appeared to merge – flesh and metal, married together. “I never thought this day would come, not for you. Not to us.”

              “Wesley, what is wrong?” Judith asked from the opposite side of the balcony. She edged closer to Colin. And Colin edged closer to her, the one reaching out for the other.

              “Aleksandra is slipping into the veil. Just as Bree did,” said Wesley. He reached forward.

              “You are wrong, my love,” she hissed. “So wrong!”

              “Losing Bree and then reading her manuscript, it has been too hard on Aleksandra,” Wesley said, turning to the others. Crimson tears pooled in his eyes, and his voice quaked. “We have no other choice.”

              Wesley and Judith made preparations while Aleksandra holed up in Bree’s room. Two weeks passed and Aleksandra remained, unmoved and unfed. Wesley watched from the doorway as she spoke and sang to Bree. Nights belonged to her voice, and Judith began leaving at nightfall to escape Wesley’s maddening pleas and incessant humming.

              “Do not despise me,” Wesley would beg from the doorway, but Aleksandra’s eyes never turned from Bree.

              “My love,” he would whisper, always edging closer until the singing ceased. He would leave when the sobbing started, though – her pain gnawing at him. She never glanced his way. Not once.

              And it ruined him.

              “I cannot do this,” he finally told her, storming into the room as she sat stroking Bree’s arm. “Aleksandra, you may not speak, but please listen. I cannot watch you fade; I love you too much to see that happen. I no longer know if you can love, if you… feel. And I no longer care. It does not change how I feel about you, how I have always felt about you. I remember when Bree first brought you to our house in Russia. You were so young, so bright and blunt. Such a spit fire,” Wesley said as he slid to the ground, reclining on the door jam. The door creaked as his legs stretched past and out into the hallway, but Aleksandra’s sight remained fixed on Bree.

              “You were a child, this red-headed braniac. That was all,” Wesley remarked. “Then suddenly you were breathtaking. You were everything – intelligent, witty, and gorgeous. I had lived a lifetime to find you. Now I’m losing you.”

              He clutched the bottom of his shirt and wiped the blood tears from his face. Then turned to see she had still not turned to face him.

              “I see, my love, that I have already lost you.”

              Aleksandra grew weaker the longer she refused to feed. Weakness inflamed the bitterness and desperation betraying her resilient façade. Her arms – once entwined with Bree’s – became fixed until she wished to move them. Judith tried moving a settee in for Aleksandra to recline, but it went unused. So were a chair and cushion.

              While Aleksandra bled tears for her mother, Wesley wept for his lover. He ached for moments to come, and longed for the tender moments of the past.

              “I reminisce on England now,” he told Judith one night, as they sat discussing the particulars. “After reading Bree’s manuscript,” his voice quivering, each syllable bubbling slowly to the surface, “These memories of Aleksandra and me, before Bree discovered our affections, they are vivid once more.” His eyes closed, resisting the tears, “And now I’ve lost her. Our past has reawakened, and those memories are all I have.”

              “She won’t sleep forever; Bree eventually woke,” attempted Judith, pushing aside the map to the Norwegian safe house.

              “Not everyone wakes up, Judith,” admitted Wesley as he traced his fingers over Bree’s name on the manuscript below. “And those who do are never the same.”

              “We have to move her tonight.” Wesley stood, walking to the door.

              “We can leave another night, Wesley,” Colin offered.

              “No, the longer we avoid this, the harder it will be in the end,” Wesley admitted.              

              Aleksandra’s torso laid slumped over Bree’s stomach, her arms clutching to the matriarch’s garments. Wesley entered – catlike and precise – grabbing her waist, trying to pry her off Bree. Aleksandra moaned weakly and thrashed her head side to side. He tried again, clutching her shoulders. He pulled back, but she did not budge. The moan turned into a piercing wail, which rattled the windows three rooms away.

              “Let go!” He hollered over the screeching, but it continued.

              “Let go!” He commanded. His grip on her shoulders tightened as he tried pulling her again. Despite her emaciated state, she was still unmovable, but the wailing ceased.              

              Wesley’s bloodstained eyes beheld Aleksandra’s auburn hair cascading down her back. He bent down and brushed a stray lock behind her ear – as he always did before they fell asleep. He could not imagine the turmoil existing in his beloved’s mind, but he knew it was his duty to protect her. Wesley leant forward and kissed Aleksandra’s forehead; she winced in her weakened state. “I am sorry for this,” he said, leaving the room.

              Aleksandra moaned as Colin and Judith entered.

              Judith barked, “Centuries of emotion does not weaken our strength, Aleksandra.”

              “We have recently fed and are stronger than you,” replied Colin, wrapping his arms around Aleksandra’s waist.

July 9, 2013

Midnight

              “The air tastes of,” Aleksandra’s raspy words pierced the silence. She raised her head, stiffening against Colin’s back. “No,” she howled, fighting with the wild Norse waves crashing against the coastline for attention. “Wesley,” she pled, “please, do not let this be!”

              The moon hung high in the Norwegian sky that night. A spattering of clouds haunted the sky, their wispy tendrils snaking grey fingers around the moon, dimming its brightness. Each wave below smashed into the shore, carrying Aleksandra’s turmoil with their salty crescendos. The breeze blew, carrying the aroma of smoked stockfish and gasoline from that day’s whale watching tour.

              The Lofoten Island inlet had changed little since Bree’s internment. Bree spared no expense maintaining this dark secret. She owned the inlet and structure, and hired a man to restore the outer façade to its original condition, despite her reluctance to return.

              The others had promised not to return either. The memory of forcing Bree to sleep, of leaving her here to face uncertainty alone, was unbearable. For Wesley, though, entombing his wife, his lover, was proving impossible.

              “Wesley!” Aleksandra called. Colin held Aleksandra’s arms behind her back. She thrashed against him but was too weak to pull away. “Colin, let me go!”

              “We have no other choice, Aleksandra,” said Judith, placing a soothing hand on Aleksandra’s shoulder. She quickly withdrew it when Aleksandra bucked against the touch.

              “My love,” whispered Wesley as he walked closer to her, cupping her face. “Oh, my love!” he lamented. His eyelids quivered, closing; his brow furrowed. When his eyes finally opened, a misty, rose veil covered his sight.

              Wesley gestured for Aleksandra’s release, and her limp frame fell into his arms. He held her; he reveled in her coldness, and smelled the orange blossom perfume in her hair, holding on to the scent as if he could ever forget it. He ran his arms down her back, the spine’s ridges bumpy beneath his touch. She collapsed into him, melting into his cotton polo. Her cheek rested against his neck, her lips softly kissing his chin. This moment was perfect, he thought – perfect and bittersweet. How many such moments had they lived, had they squandered, he wondered, and would never have again.

              “If there were another way,” he began, his voice teetering, “I would clutch it.”

              “To think of a future without you, all I see is a bleak, foreboding blackness. When I read Bree’s pages, of that life before you existed, it was surreal. To think there was a time before
we
existed, before I loved you, even before I needed you. I can no longer fathom that, Aleksandra. Loving you has completely erased my past. Nothing before you is worth remembering. Yet still, I do not see that I have another choice, my love.” He held her tighter, inhaled the aroma of orange blossom and held it, savoring it, before releasing her essence into the night air.               “As much as it destroys me, I must let you go.”