The Call of the Beachwick

Chapter 3: A Mother to a Mother

In the darkness of night, hell welcomed Aurelia with its cruel arms. In the haunting realm of her dreams, she found herself trapped within a steam-filled chamber. Its walls closing in with an ominous hiss. Frantically, her eyes darted along the encroaching walls all while the room transformed into a relentless cascade of clinking gears and glinting gold coins showering down from above. Desperately, she cried out at the top of her lungs. Over and over, she screamed, but her feeble pleas were drowned out by the metallic cacophony, that only intensified the suffocating deluge of emotional damage and physical constraint.

With each passing coin and grinding gear, scorching heat enveloped her, burning her flesh as if the very room itself were fueled by her anguish. Boils erupted all over her skin. Scars multiplied like twisted tattoos etched into her being. As relief continued to eluded her, Eliza's malicious laughter reverberated inside the room, insidiously echoing from unseen corners, while refusing to release its grip on her tortured psyche. Her haunting words, spoken at the train station, morphed into a chilling mantra that pierced the air, gradually gaining steam, "I'll never forgive myself. I'll never forgive myself."

As the last of the gears started to cover her face, the floor gave way sending her into a free fall. When Aurelia landed, a new nightmare emerged. Here she found herself deep in the mine shaft facing a new foe: Kesi dressed femme fatale. A velvet red gown clung to her, tightly laced, by a bodice accentuating dangerous curves beneath. As her daughter closed the distance, the layered skirt of her gown flowed like a river of blood, each step echoing through the cavernous expanse with a symphony of whispers and gears—a haunting prelude to an impending reckoning. With each step, a wry smile grew on Kesi's face, momentarily obscured by a single finger raised to her ruby-red lips.

"Embrace the shadows, Mother," Kesi taunted with an unsettling calmness. "The night hungers and you can only delay its feast for so long."

Aurelia tried to reason with her, but her attempts were swallowed by an impenetrable silence from the back of her throat. With silence came panic, and with panic; desperation. Even the weight of her arms and legs felt like stones in the oppressive atmosphere. Each advancing step Kesi took tightened the invisible noose around the room, and beads of sweat traced a silent descent down Aurelia's face unable to look away.

Suddenly, a glint of malevolence flashed in Kesi's eyes. With a deliberate motion, she drew a device of fused brass gears, cocked back by a hammer and a trigger. While Aurelia was sure she had never seen anything like it, its purpose was quite clear to her: it was her reckoning; an instrument of impending doom. As Kesi meticulously began to pull the trigger, Aurelia watched in paralyzed horror as her own hands illuminated with the fiery red glow. An instinctual surge overcame her, a force that transcended the invisible bindings that held her captive. Reacting without conscious thought, she lashed out, delivering a powerful smack against the beams that held up the mine's wall.

The resounding impact acted as a catalyst, sending shockwaves through the tunnel. In response, the earth itself rebelled. Rock and dust cascaded from the ceiling, burying Kesi beneath its unforgiving weight. As the dust cleared, the horror of what Aurelia had wrought upon Kesi's mangled form finally allowed her to find her voice with a scream that tore through the stifling air.

"No!" she cried falling to her knees.

In the wake of her desperate cry, the nightmare deepened. Its darkness swallowing everything in an unsettling cloak of obscurity. Desperately, she flailed at the pile of rock in front of her hoping to unbury Kesi's body, only to find the area void of anything at all. Her hands clawed through the phantom rocks, fueled by an agonizing need to reverse the cruel course of events. Yet, to her dismay, the void before her remained steadfast, devoid of substance or solace. The more she groped at the abyss, the more prominent the emptiness became, leaving only an echoing vacuum.