Chapter 29:
It felt as if I had only been able to lay my head down for a few mere minutes before I was suddenly awoken by a terrible scream. My whole body jolted awake and I sat up to find that I was sitting on a cold, clammy floor. It was incredibly dark, so much so that I had trouble telling whether my eyes were truly open or not. I was terrified to move, terrified of what Cauchemar Roi had in store for me. I sat there, as still as unmoved water, when suddenly the very same scream rang through space and pierced my ears. This time, however, the scream felt familiar, as if I'd been tormented by that very scream once before. Again, the shriek rang through my ears, causing me to turn my body in its direction. The scream continued its agonizing bellow, breaking my heart with every cry. I began to recognize the voice, it was Loveday. These were the screams Robin and I had heard the day we received the letter and Uncle Benjamin had been kidnapped. The day and a scream I'll remember for eternity.
"Loveday!" I cried out into the pitch darkness, "Loveday! Can you hear me?!" I stood to my feet and held my arms out in front of me to try to guide myself as I walked through the dark and empty space. The screams grew more intense, more intense than I even remember them, and now it wasn't just Loveday's screams, more screams of terror joined in with hers. It was unbearable, but I forced myself to continue and told myself that it was only a dream. The screams joined together in this torturous symphony and I struggled to move, being so distracted. I forcibly held my hands over my ears to block out the noise, and screamed back in terror, falling to my knees. "Stop, stop! Make it stop!" I screamed, and suddenly there was a vacuum of silence. My hands fell to my side, as I stood to my feet, unmoving.
A force then threw me back to the ground and I found the scenery around me shifted in a flash. I was suddenly in the very same dungeon I'd been in the very first nightmare I'd ever had. The premonition of my uncle's kidnapping. There was a small, tender light facing me but far away enough that I couldn't make out the silhouette of a figure in the light. I was terrified, but I slowly moved closer to the figure, to make out what it was. As I got closer and closer, my heart sank deeper into my stomach. The figure was that of my Uncle Benjamin, who'd I'd been desperately longing to see for days now, yet as I saw him my heart shattered. This isn't how I'd ever hoped to be reunited with him after what felt like years but had only been days. "Uncle Benjamin!" I screamed as I ran toward him, kneeling to his level, but kept at a distance due to the cell walls that separated us.
He was shackled to the wall his arms were held back by chains and his knees were scraped against the floor, desperately trying to hold himself upright. His body was lined with dirt and sweat, his hair fell against his face, sopping wet. His eyes were covered by cloth, but his head hung so low there was nothing for him to see other than the dirt floor.
"Uncle! Uncle, it's me, Maria!" I cried as I reached my hand out for him through the cell wall, but couldn't touch him, "We're coming for you! We're coming to rescue you, I promise! We'll get you out of here soon!" He responded to nothing I said. His body simply trembled and all I could hear from him were soft whimpers. I watched in silence as my heart tore in two. This man wasn't my uncle, not the honorable uncle I'd known and grown to love. This wasn't the man who'd been recently engaged to the woman he loved so dearly. This, the man before me, was a broken man and I didn't recognize him anymore.
Tears spilled out of my eyes and we cried together in silence. I'd questioned whether if this display in front of me was real or not, but even if it wasn't, the dread I felt was overwhelming and I couldn't help myself to weep before him. "Uncle…uncle I promise we will find you and get you back home, to the manor, to Loveday, to me, back to the life we're going to start, all of us, together." Yet again, no response.
I cried for a bit longer, quietly weeping before my beaten and bruise uncle, but something else within me started to stir. I was beginning to no longer feel sadness and anguish, rather I began feeling rage and anger. Fury began an uproar within me, and I once again looked up at my poor uncle, now utterly determined to do whatever I must to free him. I stood to my feet and with a snarl, I screamed out, "You bloody bastard! How could you do this to someone?! Let alone an innocent man! What is it that you want from us?!"
There was silence, not another sound rang through the dark dungeon other than the small whimpers of my Uncle Benjamin. "Some Nightmare King you are," I spat, "Won't even face a young lass like me, what kind of man are you?!"
A dark, twisted voice then rang through the space, "Why is it that you care for this man?" The voice seemed to ask genuinely, with no malice or ill-intent in his cantor. I felt the need to respond, so I said in a softer voice, "He's my uncle…my blood, my family," seeing as this was my first verbal interaction with this man, I saw this as my chance to understand more about him, "Does family mean nothing to you?" I egged him on.
"No actually, it doesn't," He answered frankly, "Not anymore, not since they turned their backs to me."
I let his words sink in, most likely this man was once a citizen of the Moonacre Valley. If his family turned their backs to him, maybe this family still lives in Moonacre Valley.
"I couldn't possibly imagine why such a family would turn their backs to a man willing to kidnap and beat an innocent man," I said, further egging him on to reveal more about his situation.
"No Merryweather is innocent. Not even you, Maria." He spoke bluntly, almost with no emotion entirely, "You must all pay for the crimes of one another."
"Crimes?" I asked, quicker than I would have liked of myself, but I was desperate to know more.
"Yes…you'll learn soon enough. You'll come to understand the reasoning for all of this, in due time. For now, it's time for your punishment to continue." He spoke and immediately I let out a shriek as I was dropped through the floor and onto a blanket of white snow. The chill pierced my bones and every muscle within me shivered, due to both my fear and the cold. I struggled to stand to my feet for every move was that painful. I screamed into the sky above me, "Come back and face me, you coward!"
"…Maria?" I heard a soft voice whimper behind me and whipped around to see Robin standing on a frozen lake. He trembled with his arms wrapped around himself, desperately trying to hold himself steady. My heart stopped, "Robin!" I shouted and began to trudge through the snow, trying to urgently to reach him, "Robin, stay there! Don't move!"
"Maria, I-I c-can't," He began to slightly wobble back and forth as if he was about to faint. "Robin! Robin, stay awake! I'm right here, look at me!" I shouted, trying to get him to stay upright.
"Maria, I-I l-love…" He began to whisper but as soon as I neared the edge of the frozen lake, he fell over, landing chest-first onto the thin ice. The ice then began to crack underneath him and his limp body plunged into the freezing waters below him.
"Robin!" I screamed after him, and ran straight onto the ice, desperate to save him, for it all felt so very real. I began to hear the ice cracking underneath my feet, every step bringing me closer and closer to the freezing waters below, but I didn't care. "Robin!" I yelled once more reaching my hand out in front of me, and just as I did, I felt straight through the ice, sinking into the icy waters. The chill pierced like daggers into my body and I let out a scream from underneath the water, allowing water to seep into my mouth and eventually my lungs. I began fading out of consciousness, unable to breathe and unable to do anything other than sink further and further into the abyss. As I looked at the sky above me, feeling as though I'd never see another sky like this again, the figure of a tall unrecognizable man hovered about me, watching me as I drowned. This was him; I was sure of it. This was Cauchemar Roi, and his nightmarish abilities were no longer fables to scare young children, they were very real and they were dangerous.
