OPHELIA: Chapter 27
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 27
They found her cradling the young dead and decomposed corpse near her chest. Her clothing now muddy and soiled in its entirety. Stefan couldn’t even look at his little sister without feeling like a failure- without feeling sick to his stomach. He sat with his silent mother near the fireplace as she stared intently into the flames lost in a memory and devoid of emotion. Her face paled and eyes went dead. Her frail hand within his felt thin and fragile. She was so often full of life, full of answers, full of opposing him and yet here she was, here they both were, in agreement of in synced pain. His, a sisterly loss while hers no words could be put to explain.
Ophelia sat on the edge of her bed after Rosie helped her up to the room, encouraged her to take a shower, and gave her medication to calm her nerves. Her mind had been flashing back to the body. The memory was a haze regardless of it being only last night, only a few hours ago. What was the time? Her eyes darted towards the clock which hung above the center of the wall. It was midday and yet the hours felt like nothing, like an empty fog washing across them. The manor fell into a heavy poisoned slumber of agony. She had remembered Charlie prying her away and up from the dirt floor while Stefan stood before them in a silent shook. She dreamt of such strange things, Sebastian and Diane and Terilla and Elaine walking along the hallway aimlessly, she dreamt of Elaine’s words which lingered in her head. I wasn’t always blind.
Ophelia looked at the missed calls from Sally on her phone. Sally Manson was the only piece of normalcy she had in her life. A half she wanted to cling onto while the other half she wanted to protect and tuck away forever. The last thing she wanted was to get her new and only friend involved and in danger. Walking out her room, she noticed Elaine at the tip of the staircase about to head to her room.
“Un enfant malheureux,” she whispered to herself and walked into her room, leaving the room door open behind her.
“Elaine,” Ophelia called, and followed behind.
At this point she wasn’t even sure what to ask only that she knew that she was desperately in need of some answers. “How do you do it?” Her voice softened towards the old woman before her who now was brushing her fingers over a dusty photo album. “I was afraid of you,” Ophelia continued a bit hesitant, “You frightened me as a child.”
“People often fear what they cannot understand,” Elaine smiled.
“Then help me understand.”
“You think me terrible.”
“No,” Ophelia frowned. “There are far more terrible things than you out there.”
For the first time in her life, Elaine turned to her with a softened, yet understanding, expression. “I do not disagree.” She opened the album and glided her fingertips across the pictures. “Come see.”
Doing as she was told, Ophelia looked down towards the photos.
“Tell me what you see.”
A younger Elaine with vibrant red curly hair which cascaded down the arch of her back like a river stood delightfully along with a youthful Diane in many photos. A group photo suddenly caught her attention. Elaine stood offering a tray of tea to a group of young men, her glowing smile was faded as her sister sat beside one of the men along with another young woman who seemed to be in bright spirit. To the side of the photo, stood a maid with her head slightly tilted down. She looked somewhat like Vivian. Of course, it wasn’t her. Perhaps a relative, she thought. Amongst the men, she recognized Diane’s husband and Father Greywood. Elaine certainly wasn’t visually impaired in these photos.
Elaine caught onto her silence. “You seem to be in question.”
“What happened to you?”
She smiled, “There are far more terrible things than me out there.”
Ophelia closed the album, confused, and sat on the cushioned rocking chair as she tightened her eyes together to rid herself of a threatening headache. She had one brain aneurysm surgery already, she certainly didn’t want to put herself through another.
“Your mind is clouded, child. The answers which you seek are right before you.”
“The Sheriff and Father Greywood attacked me at the fair when I went in search of Florence.” She scowled.
“Ah the father who preaches what he never follows,” Elaine chuckled, “Trou du cul.”
Ophelia smiled softly at her blatant expression.
“And yet, you don’t think he nor the Sheriff are part of Claire’s murder, do you?” Elaine observed.
As she said those words into thick air, Ophelia hadn’t realized how true she had been. As much as she might have thought it were, there was something twiddling at the back of her mind saying otherwise. Telling her to look harder. Scolding her in its silence.
“I don’t,” Ophelia admitted as she peeled back the dead skin at the edge of her finger. And yet, Monty’s death was personal.
“You have to ask yourself,” Elaine began as she lit a lavender candle, “What is it that you truly want? Do you want justice or revenge?”
“Why can’t they be the same?”
“Because one, my dear, is a little viler.”
“I’m not a monster,” Ophelia whispered to herself.
“You were a little girl Monty brought into this house in his arms who was half beaten, bruised, orphaned, in pain, muddied, with blood leaking from between the legs. It took you days to walk, to speak, to eat. Do you remember? So a monster?” Elaine smiled, “Perhaps you have every right to be.”
Ophelia remembered. She remembered every second of her PTSD. The days were too long and her soul had been so tired. And no matter what she did she never felt the same after that day. This was the first time Elaine and her had any sort of sympathetic conversation. She had wondered before opening her mouth to speak if she could have trusted Elaine and yet doing so somehow aided her to organize her thoughts a bit and for that she was glad.
**
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