Willow Mansion

Rose's P.O.V

"Why are you so cold?!"

I could hear Byrn grieving from down the hall. He sounded exasperated. His words, even through the distance, still kept an un-diminishing tone as though all the hope in the world had been extinguished. I had just woken up to random screaming. I'd first thought it was the house moaning, but then I'd made out Byrn's voice amongst the yelling. I pulled the covers up and stared at the door. What if someone had broken into the mansion?

My breath became shallow and I shivered even though I was under the covers. Byrn's words travelled again to my ears and I realised that something was wrong. I pondered leaving my room and helping him.

I lifted the duvet up and slipped my bare feet onto the cold wooden floor. Every step closer to my door was a step closer to uncertainty. What could be happening? Was he hurt? Was his brave exterior really only a shell? I turned the door knob and peeked out down the hall. Byrn's words were louder here.

"No, no, no."

I took a deep breath before leaving the safety of my room. Opening that door would mean anything could happen; goblins could launch themselves at me, vampires could eat me. I could have gone back to bed, but then without Byrn to help me I was going to be powerless. There was nothing else for it, I had to help him. My stride increased and I got to his door before another wave of niggling doubt hit me. What if this was a trap? I'd be walking straight into it. What if he was a monster in disguise?

I breathed deeply.

"Rose, stop your bloody thinking and open the fucking door!" I said sternly to myself. It gave me the final confidence to open the door. I could see Byrn tossing violently in his bed. He was having a nightmare, I realised.

"No, no, it wasn't my fault. I didn't mean to. Your blood was just... so nice. Ha ha ha," Byrn's body rippled with the eerie sound of high pitched laughter, echoing from his lungs. I clutched my ears away from the ghastly sound of inhuman laughing. I watched as the Byrn's body, writhed around in the noise. It scared me, the laughter more than anything, the monstrosity of how evil he sounded. I could barely bring myself to step closer until I realised that if I didn't, it would never stop. I stumbled over to Byrn's bed and forced my hands onto his shoulders, I shook him gently. Suddenly he was wide awake and I was finding it hard to breathe. I looked down and Byrn had clasped my throat, he was squeezing quite hard. My air was going, how ever much I tried to gulp the feeling away.

"What are you doing in my room?" He bellowed, looking me in the eyes. I gasped and he loosened his grip slightly.

"You were screaming."

Byrn's P.O.V

The rage drained out of me, I could almost feel it seeping through my pores and into the darkness of my room. In its wake, a wave of despair threatened to engulf me. Despair and shame. Every time. Every first night.

Why was I plagued so? Common sense dictated that one hundred and thirty years would be long enough to forget one event, one person. I had never possessed much common sense after all.

I finally noticed that Rose was trembling beneath my fingers, afraid, afraid of me. And why shouldn’t she be? I suddenly released her from my grip as though she had burned me, withdrawing my hand quickly. She simply stared at me, eyes wide and shining in the moonlight. Waiting for my reply, a reply I didn't know how to give. And she was afraid of me.

If only she could have felt the terror that I did.

I realised how ridiculous this situation would appear to a stranger. They would see me, sitting bolt upright with the pale sheet half covering me. I pulled at the sheet reflexively, apologetically, and knew I must look pathetic. I could feel the tears on my cheeks and knew from experience the mess my hair could get into during nightmares. Byrn, gentleman, vampire, so-called seducer, murderer – shaking and frightened from nightmares. And then there was Rose. She had backed away from my bed while I had been thinking, but only a little. She was wearing one of the nightdresses I kept stocked in the spare room and I wished fervently that I had never kept them. With her eyes so wide and fearful yet her stance so brave, she was a distant echo of my worst memories….and my best. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders and she appeared childlike for a moment. Beautiful but like a porcelain doll, never to be touched and frozen forever…

I felt sick suddenly. What right had I to take a creature so innocent and taint her so? What kind of monster had I become?

"Byrn?" she spoke softly but her voice didn't waver. She blinked and the spell was broken. She was no child. And she deserved an explanation.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly, my voice much less steady than I had hoped. "I'm sorry for waking you."

She shook her head in dismissal. "It's okay. Are you alright? You sounded really…"

My mind filled in the gap. Frightening. Inhuman. Bizarre.

"Heartbroken," she said at last and I sat stupefied. "Upset. What were you dreaming about?"

I blinked at her a few times, owlishly. Finally I shrugged. "Nothing... important."

"But you were screaming," She insisted, "It sounded pretty important to me."

"Just a nightmare," I heard myself say, knowing it sounded false. "You get nightmares, surely?"

"Well, yes, but I've never woken up and tried to kill someone because of it."

I gave her a half smile, "Ah, but I have seen enough terrible things to make your nightmares sound like fairytales."

It was an awful explanation, not really an explanation at all and I knew it and she knew it too. I wasn’t ready to tell her about those memories. I would most likely never be ready. Marianna was my nightmare, and mine alone.

Rose turned as though to leave but stopped in the doorway. "Who was cold?" she asked quietly. "You were saying 'why are you so cold'."

Something within me broke. I clutched at my hip bone under the covers hard enough to draw blood. "I don't remember," I whispered. She nodded as though she understood and then left the room, leaving me alone with the darkness, the memories. I felt as though the air around me was full of people, jostling to be heard, to be pitied, to be given justice…ghosts fighting for my attention. But I had thoughts for only one.

I lay back against the pillows and raised my hand to my face, my fingers now covered in my own blood. I closed my eyes and slowly licked them clean, tears once again running freely. I felt like a monster. My tears threatened to turn to sobs and so I got out of bed swiftly and silently. I padded across to a large chest in one corner of the room and opened a drawer in the side, from which I withdrew a photograph.

The frame was silver, dull in colour now, worn. One half of the photo was covered by a white silken handkerchief, tucked under the frame. The other side showed a young man of eighteen. It hadn't been the fashion then to smile so his expression was sombre, yet life and joy glittered in his eyes, even now. He was wearing an ill fitting suit that nonetheless suited him well. His skin was pale and stretched taught over high cheekbones. Dark hair hung in light waves to his shoulders, unruly and unkempt like a boys.

I smiled a little. I had been a boy then. I may look the same other than an even paler complexion and the scar at my throat but I was so much older. I doubted whether my eyes showed anything but pain anymore. My fingers lingered over the handkerchief and then withdrew. I would sleep no more tonight.

Sighing, I left the room and walked silently downstairs. Morning would come. Until then, I had a whole library at my disposal. By the early hours of the morning I was lost in a world of someone else's making, memories suspended.

For a few hours, I felt alive.