Adeline
A nasty little gothic horror story.
Adeline,
Even forming the shape of your name across the page casts an enchantment. I found this leather-bound notebook you gifted me where I left it on the bureau in the library. Somehow, it has survived, when so many of our books have mouldered. You would weep to see them: the best mildew spotted, the worst mere pulp. The great circular window which so inspired you has warped and let the weather in. Wind hisses through gaps around the rotten frame, telling of the years that have fallen between us.
This evening I walked down the sweeping staircase to the hall, as you did on that night, though I lack your grace. What utter perfection you were, full of expectation for the ball, smiling as I raised my face to drink in the sight of you. I felt it then, like a bitter fog descending — the realisation that time would take you, would intrude on that perfection. It stifled me, suffocated, blocked out your light.
Your dress hangs in the wardrobe upstairs. The delicate layers of pale cream silk and chiffon, once petal smooth, are now ragged like the wings of moths that have eaten it away. I am afraid to touch it, lest it crumble to dust. Would that I could have had it preserved, but nobody would listen to me in those days.
For a moment, I fancied I caught the scent of the gardenia you wore, and it hung about my old bones.
Do you recall how we fell in love with the staircase first? It is now in a state of disrepair. The worn wood of the handrail chafed my palm as I traced its graceful curve. The spiders colonised the place during my absence, embellishing the iron trelliswork with their own complex webbing. Each crack in the wall holds a bulging nest of their babies. Those webbed spheres fascinate me. How determined these creatures are to tread the wheel of life and death, propelling it onwards, blithely feeding their young into death’s slow mill.
I wore your ghost like a garment as I descended. But even your shade could not restore my vitality. If you saw me now — how I am eaten away, what a sack of saggy flesh and bones I have become — you would thank me that you did not suffer the same fate. As I tread the old paths through our house, now the wreck of time’s shadow, I feel the weight of what is lost, and recall what drove me that night. Your foot on the final stair, ready to end that perfect moment. Time crouching in the shadows, waiting to claim you. My hands reaching out. Your neck breaking.
