Quiet.
The blizzard finally left them. Even then, it was no use. The snow had piled too high, keeping them trapped. The wagon would never be able to cut through.
By the time enough snow melted, it would be too late. Alan was fading by the hour. Edith, crippled and feverish from poison, was fated to follow him.
Her only hope was Thomas. He was still on their side, promising them an escape. Repeatedly, he had promised her. She had placed her faith in him back then, but her faith had faltered when day after day she woke up still trapped inside the house, and with more poison inside her.
Would this be another empty promise? She was so faint. Would this be the last time she woke?
But then, he returned to her at long last, after grueling labor and toil. He hadn't eaten, slept, nor changed clothes, his last good coat in ruins. Red stained him up to the knees, his arms too and even his face. It was not a flattering look, and with the shovel, Edith retracted violently at first sight, pale with fright.
Thomas gave a bitter smile. He supposed that should have been the proper reaction to one's murderer. Carefully, he set the shovel down at his feet to show he meant no harm. He had come to fetch them. Their ride was ready.
Edith's expression slowly changed.
She wanted to believe, but she held herself back until she could see with her own eyes what Thomas had done.
The front door opened.
There it was, a strip of red cut through the white, a cleared path. At the gate was not a wagon but a sleigh, engineered and assembled by his own hands in the late night. Where a wheel would not turn, these blades would slice.
The horses reacted when they drew near, then calmed. Thomas helped seat both of them inside the sleigh. There was just enough space for two, shoulder to shoulder.
Edith was dizzy. She inhaled the unpolluted air. They were outside the house. They were finally leaving that damned house. Hopes that once seemed so precarious, so daring, were no longer so.
Alan, her dear friend Alan. She reached for his hand, and he gave her a light squeeze in return, plus a tired smile to accompany. Still here. Still fighting. The tides had finally turned in their favor.
After checking all the reigns, Thomas stepped back. They were all set.
Edith was so overwhelmed, she never noticed how Thomas was looking at her. The excited smile. The sad smile.
Only as the sleigh started to pull did fear hit Edith again, but not for Alan this time. She looked back, searching for Thomas. She found him standing at the mansion gate, watching her. The clay made him look so terrifying, red with sin. But his eyes, they remained blue. They were human, and vulnerable, and impossibly sad.
This experience had changed him, however, and there was something else there now too. It was the look of acceptance.
He may be forever trapped in this ghastly house, but if she were free… maybe that was enough.
It was enough.
The fear inside her trembled, turning to panic, not of him anymore, but for him. The idea of him surrendering to defeat. Of him simply… vanishing.
Did it have to be this way? Was it not possible to bring him with her? Her lungs burned with a need to call out, to say something. But what? What was there to say?
Her heart wept at the answer.
Nothing.
There was nothing to say.
It was too late anyway, the sleigh already pulled from view.
Dark thoughts entered her mind then, the image of Lucille. Had Edith only stabbed one more time. One more puncture… bled her… extinguished her… would her death have freed him? Would it have cleared away all this madness?
Without his sister left to bind him… was it still possible for him to be hers?
Edith covered her mouth to fight back the all-familiar nausea. This experience had changed her as much as it did Thomas. Her mind was spiralling.
Alan. She focused on Alan. Her anchor.
Weakly, she pulled up the fur blanket over him, to shield them both from the winter. The movement caused something to slide down.
A wooden box. The money. Thomas had made sure that was not forgotten. There was something else there too, tucked by her feet. Papers.
She recognized them immediately.
Her novel.
Lucille had burned her manuscript in spite, feeding it into the fire page by page. But Edith… Edith had not written by hand since her arrival in Allerdale Hall, not since the typewriter Thomas had excitedly given her on their first night. Her new work, her revised work, had gone unnoticed on her workstation.
Her work had always gone unnoticed. By the people. By Lucille. But never by Thomas, who went lengths to make sure it was not lost, that this precious piece of her would be returned.
He did always love her writing.
He won't ever get to read the ending, she realized.
The ending.
No, no, he had to read the ending.
She thought of the noble oak tree, of his jubilance as he flipped the page. How much her words had entranced him, filled him with the desire to know, to know where the story would go, where it would end.
He doesn't know.
He won't ever know.
Consumed by despair and delirium, Edith reached out and pulled. The horses reeled back.
"Edith? Edith!"
A tumble. Edith's body slammed into the snow. She barely noticed, on her knees, then her feet, then her knees again, half-crawling, half-climbing her way back to Allerdale Hall.
"Thomas. Thomas!"
She stumbled again, her body pushed to its limit. But she was undeterred, numb to the cold, deaf to Alan's calls.
"Thomas!"
She cried his name, repeated his name. She needed him to hear her, to come to her.
"Thomas!"
Come to her. She needed him to know the ending. Doesn't he want to know the ending?
How could he just accept it? That awful draft. So thoughtless, so naive, so unsatisfying. How could he stand it? When the beginning was so good, felt so breathlessly good, exhilarating for them both.
She was about to fall again when someone caught her.
"Tho-m-mas," she cried with happiness, clutching onto his arm with all her she strength. He was here. Not too late after all. Not too late.
"Edith, what—"
"I'll b-be back," she told him, staring his eyes, forcing him to look into hers. "Wait for m-me, I'll be back. I'll be b-back."
Her teeth chattered violently beyond her control. She could hear her own madness. She didn't care. She just needed him to understand, tightening her hold. For God's sake, understand.
He always had been able to, even when he pretended otherwise.
So understand… she thought, falling, fading. She imagined it was into his arms, caught at the end of an eternal descent.
Reunited.
.
Thomas crossed the threshold back into Crimson Peak. And Edith… far away.
His heart was drumming. If his future had been uncertain before, it was even more so now.
Would it be violent? The villagers bringing weapons and fire, his heart pierced by knife, his neck snapped by rope.
Would it be lonely? Lost in the darkness and distance, unseen and unheard, claimed by the cold and starvation.
Would it be karmic? Two monsters born together to die together, twisted apart by their own lunacy and betrayal.
With Edith gone, whatever act of bravery he upheld was ripped from under. His body trembled, as he nearly collapsed on the stairs. Terrified. He was terrified.
No longer did he delude himself to be a man behind the mask a monster. He was a monster behind the mask of a man. Their mother would attest to that. The skeletons in the vats would attest to that.
Lucille had tried to tell him, every time he eagerly pulled her onto another voyage, another sight of the world. Just to raise capital, she had reminded him. Allerdale Hall was still their proper home, their safe refuge, the world they had to keep from sinking.
Yes, yes, he had replied, but look at the ocean. Look at the colors, Lucille!
So hard Lucille had tried to warn him, to keep them hidden, protected. Yet, so hard he had tried to pull her to see the lights with him, the colors. Sabotaging her efforts. Exposing them both.
Lucille's hair had come loose, her clothes loose, her frightening spirit free and in the open. Her own bindings gone, only to be replaced by the world's, belts pinning down her arms and legs, forcibly strapping her down to the wheelchair.
His sister had finally awaken, her eyes bloodshot with rage.
Two monsters.
Red, both of them. Red. Red. Red like the house, the soil, the blood of their victims.
What future was there for them except a pyre, their miseries burned away with their sins.
His heart drummed.
Wait for her.
Wait for her return.
All his life, Thomas was nothing more than an automaton, moving in accordance to a script prepared by others. He only knew what previous writers told him.
But Edith, she was a wordsmith, the creator, the bringer of fates. She could see more than him, always able to see more.
So what was this future she could see that he did not? This future that warranted her return back to this hell, this hell she had fought so painfully to escape. A future where he might be able to see her again, and how desperately he wanted to see her again, even for a moment.
Thomas was a dreamer to the core, grasping for hope in the most hopeless of places.
What a hopeless place, black moths bursting with his sister's scream.