OPHELIA: Chapter 24
Blurb
Elizabeth Lockwick wants one thing… to ensure Ophelia remains dead.
For years she’s weaved a life seen through rose-coloured glasses in idyllic Vermont with her husband Sebastian Lockwick, an alluring man with a broken moral compass, whose intent lies in protecting his wife. However, apart from her unorthodox understanding of Sebastian’s dark and gritty hidden nature, she finds herself slipping away from her sanity in maintaining this picturesque life.
After receiving a gruesome gift from an unknown sender threatening to expose her, she finds herself haunted and possibly hunted by her buried past.
In order to make things right for herself and ensure that her secret is hidden, she reluctantly travels back to her sleepy small hometown in Wisconsin. A town where young girls seem to be mysteriously disappearing. There, she reunites with the dysfunctional Pierre-Louis’, a French-American family who sheltered her in their manor in her time of need.
With time slipping away, she struggles with her guilt and a dangerous affair and realizes that perhaps Ophelia wasn’t dead after all these years.
Elizabeth suddenly finds herself caught in a game of cat and mouse, unsure of which she really is this time and who she can trust.
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Chapter 24
Ophelia.
Ma Chérie.
Rosie’s voice tangled like spiders into her ear. A loud buzzing sound trickled around her. A faint siren fading slowly and all at once her senses came back. She sat upright into Rosie’s arms as Charlie knelt beside her along with a uniformed woman holding a first aid kit.
“Let me dress her wound first and then we’ll take her outside and she can make her statement.”
Ophelia groaned as the woman wrapped the cloth around her forehead. “You’re lucky he found you. You would have lost a lot of blood here.”
“Oh ma chérie, thank goodness I’d called Charlie here. Thank goodness he found you.”
Charlie looked at her intensely and worried. “What happened?” He asked and nodded to the nurse to leave when she was finished. They all sat still inside the house of mirrors with the entrance now blocked to prevent the children from entering.
“Did- did you find Florence?” She stammered and attempted to stand.
Helping her up, he frowned. “She’s around here. We’ll find her. they’ve blocked off all the entrances. You may need to make a statement on what happened to you. The wound you sustained on your forehead wasn’t just from a fall.”
“No.” Ophelia pulled away.
“Ma chérie, he doesn’t mean right now. When you feel better.” Rosie tried to reason.
Ophelia scowled, walking up to Charlie, inches apart. “Can I trust you, Charlie?”
“Lily…” he exhaled, hurt. “I hope you do.”
“Then we can’t take this to the Sheriff. Nor can we trust Father Greywood.”
“What?” Rosie gasped.
“They were here. So, I ask myself what two grown men are doing in a place like this together.”
Charlie’s frown plastered on his face and a wash of anger flinched within his eyes before walking out. “I fking hate this place,” he muttered. His anger was justified. Imagine you work in a place to protect its people most of your life and it then turns out that the real monsters are the ones who claim to be protecting the people.
Ophelia walked out with Rosie. Officers crawled the place like ants in search of Florence. Walking away from Rosie, she went near to the carousal when suddenly someone pushed her from behind. Staggering forward, she held onto one of the horses and caught her balance. The woman walked swiftly in front when a strange man pulled her to the side.
Following the woman, whose back frame looked like Florence’s, she found herself in a secluded corner. Florence stood in her purple silk robe and battered hair before what looked like a homeless man with a dirty smile and hands grasped onto her elbows.
“She’s not here,” Florence sighed tiredly and a hint of unease drifted through her.
“Come with me and I’ll show you,” the man insisted.
Ophelia shouldn’t bear to watch this sorry and helpless state Florence was in. This certainly was not the Florence she knew.
“Why don’t you show me instead,” Ophelia voiced, walking up to the man, and pulled his hands away from Florence.
Before he could have opened his mouth to say another word, she punched him in the face. “Don’t touch my mother.”
“B*tch!” He staggered to the ground and grabbed onto her ankle but she kicked him away and walked briskly way with Florence towards the crowd of people. Her head ached, her ankle ached, her hand ached. Her body felt weak as she walked with Florence, almost faint. Charlie suddenly caught up to them. Everything went black.
Deep shallow breaths undid her plastered eyelids. Elaine sat silently on the chair near the bed with a book on her lap. Stefan’s bed. “I told them to bring you in here as you seem to like it in here quite a lot.” She smiled tauntingly. Ophelia pushed herself upright and massaged the temples of her head.
“I didn’t know a blind woman could read,” she retorted, causing her to chuckle.
“My dear, although I am, my other senses are heightened. I wasn’t always blind, you see.”
Pushing herself off the bed, she walked towards the door. “So, I’m supposed to believe you read with your ear now?”
Ophelia stood at the entrance, looking towards the half-opened door to her bedroom. Nelly. She swore under her breath as Elaine laughed. “Diane got rid of her.”
“What do you mean she got rid of her? What did she do to the girl?”
“How am I supposed to know?” She smiled. “I’m blind. I saw nothing.”
Swearing under her breath again, she ran through the hall, down the flight of stairs and towards the entrance of the manor. Diane couldn’t be this monstrous to hurt the young girl. Ophelia’s heart sunk to the floor of her feet feeling a dabble of guilt lick at her conscious. She wasn’t thinking clearly. Had she been she should have just let the girl leave the manor. She could have taken her out of here herself. Why wasn’t she thinking? Why didn’t she act better? Regret filled within her. Pulling the heavy front door open, she came face to face with the one man she’d never had expected to see here. And somehow, her soul dropped to the floor.
Sebastian.
**
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