A New Estate - Crimson Peak

Chapter Forty Two

My body was encased in the burning cold of the clay as I was pulled under, the air immediately stolen from my lungs.

Somewhere in the receding open distance above me I could hear panicked yelling and barking that seemed to be retreating, though it was just as likely that my senses were getting skewed as I was pulled under and my depth perception was progressively getting warped.

I felt heavy but it was difficult to distinguish if it was purely the clay bogging down my clothes or if Lucille had wrapped herself around me with a vicelike grip and her malicious intent added weight to her.

It was most likely both, though I wouldn't be able to confirm visually how great Lucille's grip on me was unless I opened my eyes and that was not going to happen.

Ever since I was young, I had despised even the thought of water running into my eyes while bathing. It was something I grew up ever cautious of and even now, despite the life or death situation I found myself in, I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Merely being submerged in water made my closed eyes feel uncomfortable, I didn't wish to experience what clay was like if water was already a terrible enough thought.

Not that it mattered.

Would I see anything beyond the blood river which created the illusion of Crimson Peak?

Did I really want my last sight to be nothing but a morbid symbolic red?

My lungs were beginning to burn and light dots started prickling the back of my tightly clasped eyelids.

Everything felt wrong.

Numb and distant, yet also high and alert with both the need to fight and give up.

So, this is what it was like to die.

It was unlike anything I could have possibly imagined from the stories I had read.

Even the fear of drowning didn't live up to the reality of it.

They always said that your life flashes before your eyes when faced with mortality, but I instead found that my mind was running with regrets and the thoughts of things I could never fulfil.

I'd never see my youngest brother find his first love.

I would never see either of my younger brothers get married.

Nor would I see my parents be soppily affectionate goofs with one another again.

Had I ever told Robert that, although it had only been a couple of months, I believed I loved him?

A tight squeeze around my waist lurched my stomach.

I came so close to opening my mouth and take in a needed breath at the added pressure, my body begging for air it would never receive.

From somewhere deep inside me, the fear and desperation to live kicked in and I somehow managed to find a small ounce of strength to struggle against her.

Briefly full of hope despite the knowledge of nothing prevailing.

Gaining the strength to wrestle against Lucille was fruitless when I was already fighting for breath and both she and the clay were encasing me tightly.

I felt that the more I writhed, the more the dots behind my eyes danced and the lighter my already cloudy head felt.

Even with my eyes closed, I could tell that I was fading and soon I would most likely be dead, to join her resting place in this vat, unhappily lingering forever as life continued without me.

Lucille's bony grip tightened further and the pointless thought of how deep the vats were flickered through my head, as if any spatial awareness was important or helpful.

All that mattered was that I was slipping faster and the further I got, the more I accepted that soon enough the burning in my lungs would be a thing of no meaning. Maybe I would go faster if I took in a gulp of clay, my mouth was already proving difficult keep clamped.

Perhaps I was always destined to become a lingering spirit of Allerdale Hall.

Maybe Lucille wished me dead so that she could use my body as her own vessel, one with which she could continue her torment.

That thought alone repulsed me and though it wouldn't matter to a dead woman, I was not willing to let her use my image for the nefarious plans she failed to execute in her own life.

If I was going to die, she would have to pry her disgusting body off of mine first to use it.

Were I lucky, my spirit wouldn't linger so I wouldn't have to bear witness to it should she succeed.

With one final push through my ever-dulling senses, I wrapped my arms and legs around my anchor, the last touch and embrace I'd experience before I lost everything.

After an indeterminable amount of time being suspended in nothingness, from somewhere in my fading conscious, I managed to faintly register a presence moving through the clay.

No, two.

I had barely picked up on the second waves of motion when a dull pressure was added onto my shoulders, one either side tapping up towards my neck and back down before each took a handful of my blouse sleeves and pulled.

A strange voice in the back of my head protested to the pulling, the acceptance of my fate cemented in a haze of jumbled and ever darkening thoughts.

I didn't struggle, I hardly had the strength to, so instead I remained motionless as I was lifted, clinging tightly to Lucille's bones as if they alone were cementing me in reality.

Unless I was lying to myself and this sensation was my soul leaving my body.

From another foggy distance the sound of garbled and faint voices emerged, a chorus of yelling and grunting.

The shouting barely got clearer as my head breached the surface of the clay and the cold air of the mines hit the substance that clung to my skin and hair, chilling it all over again.

As instinctively as a baby being born, once I was free, I took a deep breath of now foreign air that both my lungs and throat disliked, resulting in my chest burning and tickling which I attempted to breathe through with repeated deep gulps.

Through my sputtering, I could hear muffled yells of instructions along with the scuffing of hurried feet.

"Use this to clear her face, make sure nothing gets into her mouth."

That voice I could barely recognise as being George.

"We'll have to get her out of those clothes and warm her up," added another, who I believed to be Alexander.

"Yes, Jonathan, I leave that up to you."

"O-oh, okay, sir."

Once my cough had subsided just enough, I attempted to speak and call out for Robert through my sore throat and breathlessness, only to be hushed by a soft hiss and a cloth wiping over my face.

"Don't speak, Mam," Jonathan said so softly I could barely make him out through the clay, "Robert is here and you'll be fine, believe you me that we'll make sure of that."

"Hille," barked Ben, there was no mistaking his authoritative tone, "extract that body off of her and bundle it up, Jon, don't forget to clear her ears out too."

Both men gave affirming noises and got to work, rather hastily from what I could feel.

With their jobs needing me to remain still and calm, as well as the lack of energy from the danger I had just been in, I took this time to let the haziness take over and relaxed as my senses gradually returned.

My heavy head drooped to one side as a cover was placed over me, a warmth above me just barely creeping through which aided in the tiredness winning over the need to take action and instead, I found myself losing my fight to stay awake as Jonathan wiped the clay from my eyes.