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Life has often felt a bit dreamlike, since meeting her.
Even more so since the farewell.
There are sudden catching moments now, waking up with a blink and an urge to check the calendar. Not a dizziness, or a feeling of faintness, but rather of displacement. That expected extra step and the jolting discovery of unforgiving floor.
Was this what she felt like, day in and day out? The effect of the ether she so detested.
'-I want to remember this-'
And Annabel wants to forget.
“Ah."
An intake of distress across the table, familiar and also so unaccountably unexpected.
Had she truly been expecting...? She has been daydreaming again.
"Dear me." Her father, mumbling into his paper. "It seems there’s been a fire...”
"Oh?"
Sitting here and sipping tea in the supposedly proper quiet of their sitting room, with her father's words as the only real sound, Annabel does her best to actually hear him.
The insanity of it. Struggling to hear a real voice as the echoing yells of a mad woman go on ringing in Annabel’s ears.
“What fire, father?”
The fire in that voice and oh, how beyond all reason, it still burns her.
'This was real, I know it was-'
'Visit me again-'
“On one of the Vandernacht estates, love.”
Cold.
Amazing really, how abruptly one can catch a chill even at this time of year.
Annabel pauses. Frowns. “An estate. Not a railway building?”
Her father turns the page, briskly perturbed.
“No no, a house it seems. He did mention a spot of trouble, you know, but I hardly guessed it might be so serious. That cottage with the spinster…”
That house.
First it was only in there, this dreaminess, trapped in such a strange place with the maids all cringing away from this kind, bleary-eyed woman, shuddering at her every swaying move. Children, frightened of wind in the trees.
And that had been a strange but fitting thought as well, shut up inside where no tree should ever be, where one could never really grow. Watching this woman slowly stir and look about her, slowly set back her shoulders. A weeping willow rising into the shadow of an oak. A gaze both as distant and piercing as the flickers of blue sky between tangled branches. Those strange strands of white winter in her dark hair...
…weren’t spinsters meant to be old? Annabel had always thought them so.
She had met a young woman of about her own age instead, wheeled in on a chair like an old madam, weighted down with more than years.
A woman pale as death, plainly baffled. And yet always watching keenly whenever Annabel glanced her way. Always somehow, strangers that they were, knowing her.
Contradictions and puzzles, oh how Annabel loved them.
That was why, really. That was all.
Nothing more.
Her father is still speaking.
“… the entire place up in flames- such a quaint property too, wasn’t it love? Such a pity.”
They kept Lenore locked up in the attic when she wasn’t receiving visitors. When she wasn’t with Annabel, her only remaining visitor.
Annabel and her last visit. Tearing the façade away.
A ragged and roughly done effort, not her best work. Desperate. Like Lenore when-
'I tore the blasted wallpaper off once. Rather upset the whole lot of them in the doing of it, I’m afraid.'
'Really, pet? Whatever for?'
When it all become just that little bit more too much.
'Well… it was more than a bit dreary to stare at day in and day out. The most aggravating flower pattern. I’ve no idea what was in their heads picking that room for me in the first place. Honestly, what use is there in reminders of things like flowers when one never steps outdoors? Or steps anywhere at all, for that matter?'
What is the point of a hand so near to yours that you don't dare hold, or an acquaintance you will never see again?
'The flowers are there so you might look at them, I would imagine.'
Like a wife, she had not said then.
Not yet.
And had not needed to say, not when Lenore already replied anyway, without even knowing it.
'Trust me, Annabel Lee, I do assure you- the bare wood underneath was far more interesting.'
If Lenore would just put on a mask for once.
'Oh I'm sure it was, I trust you and your judgment of wallpaper implicitly.'
'Do you? Even when I, I sound quite mad?'
If she would just hide that fury, the only truly mad part of her at all.
'Always, pet. Never doubt it.'
If Lenore would only be patient she might be let out of that chair, out of that damned room, past that locked door and into the rest of the house.
'A bit of a mad thing for you yourself to say.'
Who's fault that, when she was maddening to look at?
'Well, but I do! Trust you, that is. And if you don't, then, you'll just have to trust my own judgment a little too, now won't you?'
When she was nearly always beyond infuriating.
'Pfft..'
'Wh- Lenore don't laugh! Really, pet- I meant no joke by it!'
No, it's true enough, a sentiment worthy of laughing at. Madness is not done away with by learning to mimic an upstanding lady or from gaining a change of scenery. She's tried those herself. Actual madness cannot be cured.
'I-isn't that why I'm laughing, Annabel? Trust the woman who trusts a madwoman... Dear Lord...'
But Lenore could be.
She might even be let out of doors again from time to time. Stretch those overly long limbs. Reach up and brush the low handing leaves and branches of the odd tree or two. Likely burning instantly in the sun with that delicate artistic complexion of hers, not that she would care, or think to take a parasol.
If only she would listen to Annabel now, follow the strategy, take the opening and play her part... she might live happily enough in the quiet freedom of spinsterhood. Might find that her dratted family wasn’t such a great a loss after all. Might dust off the piano more often, and find she has a liking for her own playing even with no one else to hear. Might laugh, even without Annabel there to spark it, even without Annabel there bearing witness to the breathless change it brought over her.
She might yet win this one game-
Or.
If one were to leave dreamland aside for the moment, there is the little matter of her house burning down to consider.
“And,” a quiver in the dark surface of steaming Earl Grey, the reflection of her own eye, “the girl?”
Annabel keeps her voice calm, layers it smoothly over thudding pulse. Really, no point in a fuss. The news is old already. Already set in newsprint.
No point referring to Lenore by name either. Her father wouldn't know it.
She might, ever so briefly, hate him for it.
“Hmm,” her father studies the page, a sympathetic burr to his hum. “Upstairs in bed at the time, I’m sorry to say. Poor thing. She must be the one death listed so far, though they don’t say her name." And of course neither does he. "Just a note of a relative of theirs who was residing there, and most unfortunately didn’t make it out before… well.”
Annabel sets down her teacup gently. “That is a pity.”
Had they tried to reach her, she does not ask.
Silly question. Utter fancy.
It would be death to climb up through all those floors of a burning building, into the smothering smoke and away from any hope of escape. Utter madness.
Besides which, Lenore’s hip pained her so- had pained her so. She was so prone to swooning besides. Even if she had been awake and downstairs, who’s to say she could have limped her way outside? With help, perhaps yes, but to stay in a burning building with a madwoman prone fits of violence, known for lashing out physically at the most inoffensive things in her world, wall paper of all things, who would risk-
I would have.
Annabel folds her shaking hands. She observes, with mild interest, that shock at the news is likely now setting in.
Her father hums. “It was night, small mercies. Likely she was asleep and never knew a thing about it.”
To slip from sleep to death should sound peaceful. Her father means it to be reassuring.
Lenore would have hated it.
Lenore, losing spectacularly at games with a sharp eye and edged smile while watching Annabel, as satisfied as if she herself had won… Lenore slowly walking with her despite the pain, Lenore with a limp and no walking stick, no cane. That horrifying understanding creeping in, watching this woman, seeing her relish each limping step while clinging to Annabel's arm. Such a simple thing, a turn about the room together. A chance which no one else had bothered to offer her.
Not, of course, Annabel being reminded of her own father setting her up in parlor after parlor, she his darling daughter so good at silly games, clever enough to show off but never clever enough to respect. Intelligence as a trick and momentary topic of conversation. Nothing more.
Just a mind to be locked up and forgotten about after marriage, unneeded.
Only a body broken and not worth bothering to mend.
Now, long neglected, to see how each step was a struggle, and how much taller Lenore stood for facing it.
And how absurdly strong she’d seemed, when she fell. As Annabel broke the news of their last moment together. As Lenore begged not to have ether brought, begged to keep the pain, grasping at every last horrid scrap of them that she could reach.
It was…
‘No!’
Had been.
‘No, I want to remember this, please.’
Hopelessly stubborn of her, really.
She always fought to the end in their games. Had fought. Never had she tossed up her hands in surrender. Never bothered a jot for saving face or pride. Never let their game end until Annabel took her win decisively.
Smiled always, watching Annabel’s hard earned triumph.
So to die unknowingly of smoke inhalation?
Oh, she would hate an end with no fight in it. Despise it, no matter how inevitable the result truly had to be.
But Annabel does not want think of Lenore fighting for breath and stumbling blindly through flames, no one there to catch her. The picture is clear to her. Lenore’s furious, desperate grimace.
The death mask is a living thing before her eyes.
Well of course it is. I’ve seen it before, haven't I? I put it there, on her face-
And Lenore is a dead woman now.
Dead in her bed, dreaming, with only Annabel’s morbid parting words to keep her company.
Lies.
Not lies.
The lies had been everything up to then. Every moment between them an act.
‘Could you write me a song, Lenore?’
A suggestion meant as random challenge, obviously, a way for Lenore to pass the time without visitors, nothing more.
Nothing more.
A sigh. Her father’s sigh, tired.
“She had little to look forward to in life, I suppose. Off with her dear brother at last.”
Said without ever having heard her play. Said without ever seeing her smile, leaning into her side and feeling those sure movements of ivory hands on ivory keys, and how Lenore relaxed a little more into each song as the afternoon whiled itself away between them.
Listening to music recitals has often bored Annabel, no amusement save catching the odd wrong note or missed beat. She thinks now that she might never really have been listening.
Either that, or Lenore truly is…
‘Mm. You’re an unusually talented musician, you know.’
….was, an undiscovered talent. Hidden first by her brother’s outshining life, and then, infuriatingly-
‘Musician? Hardly. An accompanist at best.’
-lost under the overwhelming shadow of his death.
‘Now, why would you say that?’
Unseen, even by herself.
‘Well, because it’s true. I only learned so I could accompany Theo. He was the real musician.”
Madness.
Had her brother never told her? The ‘real’ musician- he had heard her, played with her, surely known that ‘accompanist’ was just a word for a duet where only one half will be ever named?
Lenore, she shaped- had… had shaped… simple melodies so they dragged Annabel’s mind fully under her skin, to every shift and prickling point of contact. Thoughts, usually endlessly running, cut off by a hard struck note and then set softly adrift the next moment, following the way Lenore breathed along to the music, breathing life into it, until Annabel was breathing along with her to another lingering note.
Paper rustles. The harsh sound brushes fading melodies away.
“Perhaps now that family can be at rest.”
Said without malice by her father, fully with sympathy… for the father and mother of a ghost and a dead son.
Lenore, a haunting spinster in the attic. Unheard. Better off dead. For herself. For everyone else.
Annabel reaches out and sees her fingers touch the paper’s edge, folded there on the sitting room table between them. The feeling of it doesn’t come to her. Her voice, speaking softly and with perfect evenness, is strange to her.
“Might I read it for myself, father? If it’s not too shocking.”
Shocking enough already, apparently.
“Hm?” He shifts in his chair, suddenly awkward. “Oh of course love, you did get on well with her didn’t you? Yes, yes go on then.” A touch of bluster, her father ashamed of having spoken so boldly, at having forgotten her visits for a moment in his own surprise. “I’m sure… well, I imagine there should be a proper notice at some point. Though the, ah, funeral will likely be very quiet. I shouldn’t expect an invite.” This said slightly hushed. Bracing. Sympathy for her, now, his poor curio of a child.
As for Lenore?
If there is a notice published, reminding the world of Lenore’s existence even if only to announce it’s end, Annabel will be very much surprised.
She would not be surprised at all if the only attendants to Lenore’s burial were the requisite priest and grave diggers.
“Thank you.”
She smiles, can be forgiven for it being small and not very convincing, and closes her fingers around the paper. She stands and does not sway. Murmurs.
“I will be in my room for a little while, I think.”
Without her voice catching.
Her father’s muttered agreement follows her out of the sitting room.
She wonders, climbing the stairs, if she really is all that very sad after all.
Surely, if she was, she aught to be crying for her dead friend? It must look rather sad, she supposes, the sight of her clutching the newspaper to her chest in this way as she gained the next floor and slipped down the hall.
But truthfully, it really was only to make sure the dratted smooth newsprint didn’t slip from her numb fingers and scatter all across the fancifully patterned rugs. Just a practical, necessary precaution.
Nothing more.
Just like her friendship with Lenore had been.
It was nothing to cry about. Not those shared hours, or that painful insight into a house she could only ever dream of sharing. Not those final parting words either.
She sits in her room and reads the article that does not include Lenore’s name and she sheds not one single tear over any of it.
She puts on the mourning colours regardless.
“Ah… Wearing black, love? I wouldn’t think it very…”
Her father is, of course, somewhat shocked by the sight of her at dinner. The change. Perhaps he thought a few hours would do.
A smile soothes him. Her words, calm and rational as ever, even more so.
“It’s for that poor girl, father. Mr. Vandernacht’s daughter. We were friends you know. It would be strange if I didn’t.”
Her father need not worry. His darling daughter is not drowning in despair or in danger of any hysterics herself, his little plan- her plan really- to become better acquainted with powerful new friends has not doomed her to an ironic attic of her own.
He is still, however, a bit slow on the up take.
“Well, yes, to be sure.” Soup is served, and her father inspects his utensils rather than look at her. “It’s just that I’m not sure her family would want word being spread of, ah.”
“Oh you know I wouldn’t do such a thing.”
She’s found he likes things better when he’s told he knew them all along. Poor, simple father.
“If anyone enquires, I’ll only say that a friend of mine was ill for quite some time before she,” a pause to sip politely at her wine. “Succumbed.” A careful blotting of lips, trembling, but her hands are steady enough now. “A distant friend. Someone I only saw rarely. No one they would know or have any reason to ask further about.”
Truth is the best lie of all.
The soup, she notes dully, is not particularly appetizing tonight.
Her father frowns at his own plate, also not eating. Worrying yet in spite of her words.
“The season,” a mutter almost to himself. “It isn’t so very long. Annabel, love- I would hate for you to miss out.”
Her, miss out?
A mad urge seizes her, to upend her plate and glass and see if the stains spread exactly as she anticipates that they would, and Annabel smiles it down, down, down into the emptiness of her damningly un-pained chest.
“Three weeks, father.” She promises him. “One week of full mourning should do, I think, for someone I knew but,” what better truth than a lie? “who I did not know nearly so well enough.”
True enough.
It had been the terror thrumming under that last visit, that she might glimpse even one piece more of Lenore.
So terrified had she been of seeing more than she could bear, that the equally dangerous mistake had been made instead. To open her fool mouth and say more than she meant. More than she had ever said aloud. To speak for a moment as if she was the mad woman screaming, and not Lenore.
Lenore, the actual mad woman, come down from the attic to stand at the window with her and take hold of her with pallid hands stronger than they had any right to be. Lenore calling her bluff, upending the rules of the game everyone was meant to play, and listening to Annabel’s ravings over needlepoint without interruption like they compared to a forgotten room, an unhealed hip that could in fact support her weight, hours trapped under a tree with the corpse of her dead brother pinned atop her, to anything those damned unflinching eyes had already seen.
Lenore, staring as if Annabel’s bout of insanity was the single most rational thing she had ever seen.
Homemaking somehow logically an equivalent to death, that earnest fear in Lenore's face as she heard Annabel say it, stricken as if there was a knife being held to Annabel's throat. Lenore-
Dying. Truly dying. Not very long afterwards.
Annabel Lee finishes her tasteless soup. She smiles throughout dinner.
She declines, apologetically, the traditional evening bout of chess that her father is always happily, exhaustingly resigned to losing.
“Some other night, perhaps?"
"Oh yes, to be sure- and you will be sure to, well, keep yourself busy, won't you love?"
"Of course, father. I have needlework to do.”
Not even a lie.
Nor even a misuse of the truth this time.
Black gloves would a bit too much, for such a distant friend as she had been. Too much even for one doing her best to show respect to the memory of a dead relative of her father’s very new, very well-off friend.
No, her white gloves will be perfectly adequate. With just a touch of black stitching added, small, tasteful. To be noticed without being shown off.
She picks through the sewing basket gingerly. Muses to herself, “Black roses maybe-”
The shattering of glass as a door shuts solidly behind her.
A memory like a ghost.
“..No.”
How quick the impression had flashed in her mind’s eye as she walked away. Pieces all falling depressingly into place. The vase on the table behind Lenore, on that upper landing from where she had looked down upon Annabel, furious, betrayed and refusing it. Refusing to let Annabel quit the game without that final decisive move. Lenore’s voice, cracking and horse. Challenging her.
'-visit me again, Annabel!'
Promising her.
'I don’t care how long it takes!'
Gloriously and righteously furious with her.
'This was all real, I know it was real! How dare you say otherwise!'
Knowing her, far too well.
"We... we are... we were... friends.'
Lenore, breaking glass like she broke rules, her irrational distaste for having nothing but flowers to look at driving her blindly into action, as always. A madwoman insisting she knew what was real. Lenore giving a promise not knowing she would break it.
They didn't have forever. The dream ended.
Their next visit took too long.
Annabel smooths her finest gloves down across her knee, needle unsteady, finger already bloody.
“…simple scrollwork should do, I think." She decides.
Sees, for a horrifying instant, the open pages of sheet music and the sunlight gilding Lenore's arm as she reaches up to turn over the next measure.
Annabel blinks the phantom away. "Or, no, maybe…" Her eyes are utterly clear, despite how searingly they burn. "...a vague suggestion of something floral, for propriety's sake.”
Lenore would hate that. Would have, hated...
Dear God.
Annabel Lee wishes she could cry.