OPHELIA: Chapter 53
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 53
Getting into her vehicle, she attempted to call Stefan again. If she were to really die there today, she needed to hear his voice, one last time. Just once.
“Ophelia,” his voice caressed into her soul as he picked up after the first ring. She bit in her sob but the hurt was present in her throat, her voice ached as she spoke. All she wanted was a life together with him. A simple life. A life far away from all this madness, but it kept following her and following her like a hungry wave aching for destruction, and just when she thought she was away from all of it, it began swallowing all those that she loved and cared about, leaving nothing but despair, guilt, and pain behind. “Lily?” Stefan called out to her again, snapping her out of her thought. He had said something before, about being in the presence of the lawyer.
“Stef,” she breathed softly into the phone, “Can you sing me that old French song you used to hum when we were younger? I never knew the lyrics.”
“What is this about? I don’t-” He suddenly stopped as he heard the rustling of leaves intertwined with air, the song of wind whishing into the speaker of a phone while in a car, “Tell me you’re safe right now.” He pleaded,
“I am.”
He paused in silence.
“I’m at Vivian’s and we’re just having a beer wondering when you and Charlie would be back,” she lied in a soft sobbed laughed. “Do you know, when all this is over, let’s move to a little town in Italy, nothing too big or fancy. We can have a little chaton too. It’ll be just the three of us, soaking in every sunset and even if I’m not there you do that and never miss me. Promise me.”
“Lily, where are you?” He breathed, his heart breaking by the second as he felt her lie through the tone of her voice. He didn’t want to look at her location on his phone. He already knew. “Please don’t.”
“I just want it to end, Stefan.” She cried and tears finally began flowing freely down her cheeks, “I just want it to end.”
“And it will, I promise you Ophelia, it will. Just give me a little time. I’m here with the lawyer, there’s a way. Please trust me. God, turn the car back around and come back please.”
“I trust you, I do. I do, but there isn’t any time. She’ll be dead if we wait. No one is dying anymore. No more deaths. I’m too tired of so many. I want them to stop. I need to try at least.”
“Reviens-moi, s’il te plait,” he pleaded.
“Je ne peux pas.”
“Je t’en supplie.”
“I love you,” she said before disconnecting the call.
A sudden thread snapped within her heart. She knew if she stayed any longer he would have convinced her to turn back around. He always had that effect on her. She hated the way he sounded, the pain in his voice. He knew exactly what she was going to do. Before he could have stopped her, she turned off her location and switched off her phone.
The newly built club wasn’t that far of a drive from where Sebastian’s hotel was. There was something hauntingly eerie about it. Death loomed the air as if it was a widowed woman standing nearby to collect her soul shortly. Although, newly built and freshly painted, there was this oldness to it. An odd feeling which soaked into her skin and danced in shivers through her bloodstream. Ophelia kept the gun, hidden firmly at her waist. There was no guard at the large doubled front door. Monsters don’t need protection anyway. The corridor was narrow and almost claustrophobic to a sense. The further she walked in, the tighter the space seemed to her. Perhaps it was her mind playing games with her. The path felt never-ending, her steps felt suddenly slower. As she walked in deeper into the building, the light behind her dimmed. She felt eyes of a harsh reality stabbing into her soul. The stares felt as if it came from those which were long gone and wronged. She wondered at that moment how many poor dead girls had been taken and killed at this very place. Her stomach suddenly flipped and she would have thrown up with the thought but she hadn’t eaten for the day to even do so. Sebastian could have been right. This could have been a trap. She could have been walking to her death this very moment. Part of her knew an end was coming, yet she wasn’t sure whose. And then again, how could she trust Sebastian? After everything he was the biggest liar to her.
With a deep breath, she pushed the thought away and turned at the corner when she felt someone suddenly push her against the wall and muffled her mouth.
“Don’t scream,” he warned.
She was about too when she soaked in his features and stopped.
“Sebastian?” She whispered with his palm still over her mouth. A flicker of confusion sprouted within her. He stood towering over her, his hair still slightly damp from before. Had he been following her? But why?
“I know you don’t trust me,” he began softly, “You have every right not to, but I’m asking you just that.” He looked at the door to the right side, “You see that door there? You walk in there alone and you have no chance of helping the girl.”
Her eyes filled. She wasn’t sure why. Perhaps because there was a chance that the girl was still alive. Perhaps because… she couldn’t even finish her thought. Ophelia knew she needed to be cautious. She couldn’t trust him.
“Why are you helping me?”
His expression fell. There was something oddly raw about this look in his eyes. Something distant, confused, searching. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. His voice broke as he said that. This was such a different Sebastian she was seeing. So different that not even he understood himself.
“I’ve been given a narrative that now I’m not even sure what’s true anymore.”
She scoffed sadly, aware that his words could just be another lie. “Why would you suddenly even believe me if you always knew everything to be fake?”
“Because I want to believe you more than I want to believe my father,” he frowned deeply, whilst his voice remained hushed and his faced remained close to hers. The softness of her skin and the sweetness of her scent was something he’d never forget no matter how much he tried. He questioned himself now if all what was fake had been real at any point in time to him. “We’re so lost in this lie that we forgot to live.”
“Then let this girl live for us. Let her mean something was real.”
“I never hurt you.”
She nodded while keeping a firm hold onto his eyes, “I know.”
“Then trust me this time.”
With that, he held her softly by the arm and pulled her gently along with him. Through the door was an elevator. A sudden coldness drifted through the thick solemn air.
“How many girls died in this place?” Ophelia asked.
“Too many.”
“You could have stopped it.”
“It’s not that simple,” he frowned, “It’s one thing to have an opposed idea to a person but not to a society. Especially not one like this.”
This place and these people belong in hell she thought.
Just as the elevator’s door opened, the grip around her arm tightened.
“I need some money!” An old man demanded as he stood before a group of men before him. Faces she knew all too well, some new, some old, some shocking; like majority of the police department. Some not; such as the sheriff and father Greywood. Nearly all the males of the town were sitting in this room. Most except Charlie, Stefan, and his father it seemed. A sick feeling rolled within her stomach. No woman was safe in this very town.
The old man turned as the speaking voices hushed as they saw her. The old man’s eyes widened. A drawn-out sickly version a man she had remembered from her past. Jame’s father.
Sebastian’s expression turned cold and he pushed her onto the floor. Her knees hit the solid flooring, almost shattering the bones. “I found her lurking through the hallway.”
**
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