Chapter 72 Two Voices

Chapter 72 Two Voices
Beatris

I did not know how long I had been in the coffin.
Minutes. Hours. The dark had swallowed time the same way it had swallowed light, leaving nothing but cold wood beneath me and cold air above and the sound of my own breathing growing thinner with each pull.

I was going to die here. The thought came simply. Quietly. The way truth arrives when you are too exhausted to fight it.

I was going to die in a coffin beneath Alexander's house, the same way Catherine had died beneath Alexander's house, the same way Clara had been hidden beneath Alexander's house, because that was what happened to girls who tried to leave.

I lay still.

The wood was cold against my back. My hands rested at my sides, throbbing where the splinters had torn them. My face stung where the stone had cut it in the street. My knees ached. Everything ached.

I closed my eyes, even though it changed nothing.

Then the whisper came.

"...Beatris..."

I flinched so hard my shoulder struck the side of the coffin.

"No," I breathed.

"...Beatris..."

The voice was closer than before. Not outside the coffin. Inside my head. Inside the dark itself.

Something about it stopped me. It was different.
Not the same voice that had led me to the trapdoor. Not the same one that had whispered under the couch or pointed me toward the ring.

This voice was softer. Older. Heavier with something I could not name. And then I understood. This was not the same voice.

There were two.

One had been guiding me, pulling me toward the ring, the chamber, the truth buried beneath the house.

And this one, this one wanted something else.

It wanted me to remember.

"...remember..."

"I don't want to remember." I pressed my hands over my ears. "I don't want any of this."

"...you are home..."

"That's not true."

I shook my head wildly against the wood.

"I'm not her. I'm not Eudora. I'm Beatris. I'm just Beatris. I'm nobody. I'm nothing to him. I'm just a girl he stole and I want to go home."

The voice went quiet. And then I realized what I had missed. I did not know which voice to trust.

One was guiding me. One was pulling me. One belonged to something that had lived in this house long before I arrived, and the other belonged to something that had perhaps never been alive at all.

And I could not tell them apart. The frustration hit so hard it burned.

"I don't know which one of you to believe!" My voice cracked against the wood. "I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. And I don't care anymore. Do you hear me? I don't care. Just leave me alone."

Silence.

Then the other voice came. The first one. The familiar one.

"...ring..."

I flinched.

"...ring..."

My jaw clenched.

"Shut up."

The words came out raw. Angry. Louder than I expected in the tiny space.

"Shut up. Both of you. Just shut up. I don't want the ring. I don't want your voices. I don't want any of this. Do you understand me?"

Both voices stopped. Just like that. No fading. No trailing off. They simply ceased, as though I had slapped them out of the air.
I lay there, breathing hard, waiting for either of them to return. Neither did.

The quiet that followed was worse than the voices had been. Heavier. More complete. As though the only things keeping me company inside this box had been the whispers, and I had just sent them both away.

I pressed my hands against the lid above me.

"I didn't mean it," I whispered.

"I'm sorry. Come back. Please."

Nothing.

Only silence. Only dark. Only the ache settling deeper into my bones with every breath.

My mind drifted toward Alexander.

I had never believed he could do this.

I had seen the hunger. Seen the blood. Seen the bodies hidden beneath his house. I had known he was dangerous, known he was cruel, known he was capable of things no human should be.

But this. This was different. This was personal.
He had looked me in the eyes and said I'm sorry and then locked me inside a coffin as though I were already dead.

And if he could do this, If he could put me here and walk away without looking back. Then he could do worse. The way he had done worse to Catherine.
The thought cut through me so sharply I nearly stopped breathing.

Catherine had written about being locked in the west wing. About punishment. About isolation. About the cold ways Alexander made women understand they belonged to him.

But she had never written about a coffin.

Which meant either she had never been put in one, Or she had never lived to write about it.

My chest tightened so hard it hurt. 

A sound cut through the silence, the door. Heavy. Iron. Opening somewhere beyond the coffin. I tried to sit up. My head struck the lid.

Pain exploded through my skull, sharp, concentrated exactly where the stone had torn my skin in the street. I cried out before I could stop myself, pressing both hands against the wound.

"Who's there?" My voice came out thin and desperate. "Who's there? Please let me out."

Nothing.

"Please. Let me out. Alexander…Alexander, please. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Let me out. Please."

No one answered. Then the coffin moved. I froze.
It was slight at first. A shift. A tilt. As though hands had gripped the sides and begun to lift.

My stomach dropped.

"No." I pressed my palms against the lid. "No, no, no. Stop. Please stop. Where are you taking me?"

The coffin lurched. It rose. Higher. Tilted. Then it dropped.
The impact sent pain through my entire body. My back struck the wood. My head struck the lid again. My teeth cut into my tongue and blood filled my mouth.

Then I heard it. Water. Not above me. Around me. The sound of liquid rushing beneath the coffin, filling whatever space surrounded it, rising.

I screamed. My fists hammered against the lid.

"Let me out! Let me out! Please!"

The wood groaned beneath me. Something warm and wet began seeping through the cracks at the bottom of the coffin.

I reached down. My fingers found it. Thick. Warm. Sticky. Too thick for water.
I rubbed it between my fingers, trying to understand, trying to see in the dark what my hands already knew.

Then the smell hit me. Metallic, Unmistakably blood. I screamed so hard my throat tore.

Then the lid opened.

Light flooded in, sharp, violent after so long in the dark. I threw my arm over my eyes and gasped, my chest heaving, my whole body shaking.

I looked down at myself. Nothing. No blood. No liquid. No stain on my clothes or my skin.
I looked around.

The coffin lay exactly where Alexander had placed it. On the stone platform. In the same narrow room. The same iron door. The same cold walls.

Nothing had moved. Nothing had changed. A vision. Or a nightmare.
I could not tell anymore where one ended and the other began.

A shaking breath tore out of me. Then I looked up. A woman stood in front of the coffin.
Behind her, Mrs. Elara. And behind Mrs. Elara, two broad shouldered men I had never seen before.

The woman looked down at me without expression.
I stared back at her, trembling, bleeding, barely able to hold myself upright inside the coffin.

My eyes moved from her face to Mrs. Elara's to the men behind them.

And I understood.

Mara had told me that the worst part of Crimson Hill had not come yet. She had been right.

Because Alexander was never going to give me another chance to escape.