I stand before the dark glass of a window pane beyond which lays the night, my reflection hollow like a ghost as I stare into my own eyes. Distant and soft, yet loud as thunder, is the tick of a grandfather clock that has haunted its own dusty hollow for a hundred years. All those seconds and minutes and hours and tears.
The drapes are dark purple, crushed velvet folds gray with dust. The railings they hang from are the crux of cobwebs, some of the dead spiders that wove them casting ugly shadows in the light of flickering candles.
"Are you still there somewhere?" I ask softly.
Tick tock. A nine and a drunken fox.
A gust of wind. A brief glimpse of a flurry of dead leaves, a few rasping against the glass. It's late October after all. A season of change, some say, yes.
Yes, they do. Even when winter ends if you're clever you're already worrying about the next. Life in it's venemous little shell, don't you know? You do, don't you?
I glance down at the shattered fifth, a crush of shards that glint wetly like knives and razors and teeth, thirsty for blood every one, and shiver.
-
I sit in my idling Lincoln in the driving rain, the hulk of my old decrepit mansion looming in the rearview, silhoutted by a flash of lightning. A second later came the thunder, shook the car. The clock read 3:04.
Quote the raven nevermore. Someone had said that once...who was it? I can't remember for a second, then his name comes to mind and I realize I've become his kind.
I put the car in drive. At the end of a cobbled driveway a quarter of a mile long is an arch gate, emblazoned with the letter T. It stands for Trent, though in these later days the only word I can think of is traitor.