The laughter echoed in the darkest hours of the night.
It came gradually, a sound rising from nothingness, distant and fading. A sound of growing intensity, penetrating the silence rather gently, like a predator carefully approaching the prey, like a phantom slowly emerging from the mists. Until it rang true and loud, shattering the false peace which had once lingered in the bedroom.
And it was triumphant. Terrible. Blood-curdling.
Celysiel opened her eyes abruptly, panting. Why was unclear to her. One pillow still lingered in her embrace, where it had been positioned just before merciful sleep had claimed her. For a moment, confusion reigned upon seeing the large bed on which she was resting, rather than the floor of the basement in the Highlands. She released the soft object slowly in her attempt to rise, only to realise that alarm had heightened her pulse and senses alike to a nauseating point. She sat there in an attempt to control her breath, remember.
She did not hear the laughter.
Voices. Those were greeted unexpectedly. No, this was not right. Her gaze wandered to the constantly door of the bedroom, eyes thinning. Who could be there at this hour? For what reason? She left the bed unsteadily, surprised to realise that her legs were trembling as she stood. There was a pressure in the atmosphere, something she could not define, but perhaps her rest had been poor. Perhaps. Perhaps.
The wall would provide the desired stability if her body was still weary, it had to. The elf reached for it, making her way towards the door. A step had barely been made when she finally heard it. The laughter. A weak thing now, yet all too familiar. But no, no, it could not be. Her mind was numb from slumber. A nightmare had perhaps tormented her. A nightmare now forgotten, nothing more.
Another step was made, though as soon as it was achieved, her worry was increased. Something moved into the dark corners, a figure, slender and hunching. Little did it matter that when she turned towards it, it vanished. Her peripheral vision would always catch it again moving, raising talons, fading. Was it a trick of the darkness? But it had to be. Perhaps her recent ordeal, the months in self-imposed exile had taxed her mind more than she had realised. It had to be so. It just had to be.
And the voices. Voices still. They were becoming louder, a true cacophony. What was happening beyond that door? Who was there, how many? The disharmony made her stumble forward, meeting the door. Celysiel managed to maintain balance and lean against it, sending her fist on the surface. It ached. Her head. The voices. So many of them.
"Surveyor?" she uttered, but her own voice was a weak whisper, failing to call out. The others remained. At times fleeting, fading, only to emerge for once more like bodies drawn from the depths of the sea. It hurt, by the Sun how much it hurt. Celysiel took a deep breath. The shadow in the corner moved again, but she did not turn to it this time.
They were all around her, the voices. Oh, what a fool she had been. They were not of a conversation at all.
Something was wrong.
Her fingers reached for the door, seeking to open it.
The voices stopped.
A suspicion of the laughter echoed for mere fragments of time.
The door opened, just a slit to peek through.
She recognized the familiar figure seated on the couch, exactly where he had been expected to be found. No, there was no cacophony, she could look at him freely. "Sur-" she tried to repeat, but as her body was about to move forward, a sharp whisper echoed in her mind, the eldritch voice carrying it known to her as well as her own name. A warning.
It was then that she truly started seeing. At the wall danced more shadows, adamant to evade her gaze as if they were nothing more than a mirage. By the couch, bottles were discarded. If the inner beast within the girl however, the one valuing order, would have otherwise rushed to collect them, it was now immobilized by fear. A new, low sound reached her ear, so distinctly different from every experience noted in this peculiar night. For it was real.
She could not hear the re-educator's voice well enough to discern what he was uttering so quietly, yet a sense of wrongness gripped heart and Heart alike. It mattered not how much she wished to approach him, for she could not. Inexplicable terror had frozen her in place, stealing the control of her own body.
It was close, he had warned her. Yet consumed in the petty shame of the last days, she had not heeded those words, not truly.
Had she truly awakened from a nightmare, or was she locked into one?
"Sur-" she tried again through the slit of the door, the sound barely audible. An attempt to move forward was made. Mercifully, her body did obey after a while, though rather stiffly. Not that it mattered. She did not manage to approach him. She did not succeed in calling out to him.
The laughter returned.
It was louder than ever before, as if it had not been reduced to her mind alone. As if it was coming from every wall, every object, every breath made in the outside world. Mocking. Victorious. The laughter of the mirrors. Instead of moving forward, Celysiel fell against the wall and closed her eyes. It could not be back. She had defeated it before. She had willed it away, she had won. For the sake of a kinder reflection, she had won, it could not be.
Yet it was there, cruel and dreadful, as if amused by the vain attempts of the one that could defy it no longer. Onto the walls, into the corners, the shadows took the shape of the woman in the tattered dress and the cracking skin. The throne of shards. The white eyes. The laughter. Always the laughter.
She ran to the bed, her fingers digging into the sheets in a crazed manner. They were pulled free along with the blanket, resulting in the pillows falling on the floor. She did not even notice, not into that frenzy. There were two great enemies in that house, two that she had not dared touch until now.
The mirror in the bedroom was the one to be covered first. She stood behind it, careful not to ever glimpse at the reflection, before tossing the blanket on it. The one in the bathroom proved to be far more challenging, given its height. The attempts to toss it without gazing at the glass were desperate, often futile. With every failure came a new wave of anguish, a new shiver, more mocking from the other side. Until at long last, the fabric rested on the terrible item that was meant to feed the vanity of some, open the gateway of terror to others.
The laughter stopped.
Celysiel looked around, panting for once more. Gone were the shadows and the cacophony, gone the mad things that stirred in the corners. Mind games. This was all it ever had been. Yet even they had their weak points, even if often only temporary.
A sudden wave of exhaustion washed over the elf, threatening to bring her to her knees. It was a tempting prospect, to simply succumb to weeping, surrender to the sweat weakness and the tender embrace of passivity. It was not really an option. Her fingers embraced the locket, not for the whisperer within, but for the weak substitute of a memory. Cold and metal. It was not far now.
Celysiel exhaled, then closed her eyes. No, it was not a single memory, but several. An anchor to sanity. She followed it, steps leading towards the house's main chamber. Propriety and the fact that she was not presentable in the white of her sleeping gown mattered not in this hellish night. She approached the coughing and whispering figure, placing herself not by his side, but amidst the empty bottles that lay by the couch, her back leaning against the furniture.
Silent, she simply remained there. It was the only company in the presence of whom she dared to place herself, the only company she could also offer. And so she closed her eyes as the low voice spoke in the tongue of all things foul, while the memory of cold and metal was generated through the locket. There she would stay as if it would offer either party any comfort. Enduring the dark night which embraced the Surveyor's abode so tightly.
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