His Crimson Rose
Disclaimer: I do not own Crimson Peak nor any of Guillermo del Toro's wonderful characters. However I do claim all the original ideas shared within this fic.
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Synopsis: Though lovely, every rose has its thorns. Alan and Edith return to America in hopes of a fresh start, while Allerdale Hall sits (mostly) vacant for the first time in decades with only the wind rushing through its ramshackle walls. Yet, even for ghosts, there is life-both bitter and sweet-after Crimson Peak.
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It was such an incredibly strange sensation.
The heat in the ship's boiler room was clearly intense. Sir Thomas Sharpe knew that for sure. The air around him glimmered in the red light raging from the fully stoked boiler. Sweat absolutely poured from every inch of the filthy men shoveling coal nearly non-stop into the endlessly hungry blaze that acted as the digestive system of the enormous craft. Yet, Baronet Sharpe could not feel a thing. If anything, he felt cold - or was it numb? He wasn't certain. He supposed that it was just the feeling of Endless Death persisting in him.
But yes, for now, it remained an incredibly strange sensation, he thought once again. Like watching a moving picture, he could observe everything without sensing anything beyond what he could see and hear. He had been watching the activities in the boiler room of this trans-Atlantic steamliner for what he guessed might be about three hours at least, but then his sense of time passing did not seem to be what it had been anymore...
He had learned the men's names, listened as they sang parts of songs until the heavy soot in the air tired their lungs out, and watched as they rotated on and off breaks. Every inch of everything was shrouded in layers of black dust, but here and there posters of pin up girls and cheap prints of landscapes, edges furling from the heat, had been smudged clean. On their breaks, the men slumped on a couple crates in a corner and stared blankly at the dirtied images. One pulled out from his ragged collar a chain that hung from his neck a dull metal medallion, probably of St. Michael – Thomas had seen them over the years on Irish immigrants and some of the continentals he and Lucille met in passing in Europe. Another repeatedly unpocketed and fingered a heavily yellowed, tattered photo of a solemn looking woman and three unsmiling children – his mother and siblings? A sister? Or perhaps his own wife and children back on land somewhere?
Well, it really didn't matter, because Thomas couldn't ask, and if he could, he did not have reason to know.
In fact, Thomas Sharpe the Ghost did not really have any reason to be onboard the ship at all. What am I doing? He was tiring of asking himself the question.
After leaving Crimson Peak, he had floated all the way to the depot where he and Edith had been snowed in together, just the two of them, that fateful night he had fallen hard for her. There he had drifted about for a while, observing things and people, as was fast becoming his primary activity. Thomas was hovering nearby when after a while Finlay drove into town on his horse drawn cart. As Thomas watched him, he remembered Finlay as his most faithful employee, the groundskeeper who had kindly also provided help with Thomas' machine, even though it was not really part of the job description. He had even been genuinely excited with Thomas a few times when they had made progress on the clay extractor. Still, the memory of Lucille's coldness against Thomas' own elation the day that the extractor finally went into full operation still burned Thomas as much as his thankfulness for Finlay still resonated with him too.
"Weel, boys, t'was a good hunt t'day," Finlay had pronounced to several men standing beside where Thomas was perching at the time. The old groundskeeper leapt down from the cart seat with the strength of a much younger man. He strode with an extra bounce in his step around to the back end of the cart, followed by the other men and Thomas.
Undoing the ties on a large piece of tarpaulin covering a large mound on the cart, Finlay had thrown back the material to reveal a pile of animal skins, fox and raccoon among them and some carcasses of pheasant and duck with them. One of the men whistled at the site of Finlay's haul.
"Seems ye got lucky wi' th'old Sharpe place fin'ly, Finlay," the whistler observed.
"Ye... Ay still cannae believe what those two was a'doin' up there..." Finlay replied, shaking his head sadly, and Thomas almost could remember what it felt like to have his stomach curl with sickening disappointment.
"But the new Lady Sharpe, at least she cared t'provide for this ol' man," Finlay continued gesturing at himself. "T'think it, she managed to travel back 'cross th'sea with tha' doctor, all wounded as they bo' was, and then she still had t'presence o' mind t'ave 'er solicitor send a letter t'allow me 'n' me son t'continue huntin' the property as long as I vowed t'keep watch o'er the Ol' Place – n'er t'enter mind yeh, the letter was strong in tha' instruction! – 'n' post signs closin' the house t'any 'n' all trespassers." Finlay seemed inclined to emphasize the last few words for the benefit of his audience, lest any of them or their boys get the funny idea of going up to check out the old estate. Though Thomas could not know it since he had not been outside of Allerdale Hall very long since his death, Finlay's warning was mostly unnecessary - most people normal people with with even half of a mind would likely heed the stories for generations that the place was haunted would go nowhere near it.
"Ye' she seemt like a good'un, tha' last Lady Sharpe. T'think she was afooled by them Sharpes, but then we all was, wasn't we?" Finlay sighed and then commented on going on his way to talk to the trader. Then, he had lead the horse with the cart further into the depot with the other men. Thomas was sure they would later go to the pub that was also in the depot, as he knew Finlay was apt to do over the years.
Thomas had found himself touched that Edith had bothered to remember Finlay after she left England. Allerdale Hall had been the man's whole living since he was a boy. In the more recent years, Thomas had felt guilty has he had progressively been forced to cut back Finlay's monetary allowance, but he also knew that in seasons when the wildlife thrived on the property, Finlay would be able to do well enough from the hunting and fishing. This was only enhanced by the fact that the groundskeeper was the only one Lucille ever permitted Thomas to allow on the property. And here, Thomas had not taught Edith a thing about managing the estate or how he had dealth with Finlay, and yet she had made a plan for the groundskeeper's livelihood... but then of course that was Edith – gently observant and quick of wit, exactly the things that he had begun to love about her. He realized that she must have been watching his movements more than he could have guessed in her short, tumultuous marriage to him.
Their marriage... He had just begun to love her... Edith.
Oh, Edith. To think he had once chided her, even in farce, for not being an adequate observer of life and love. Funny that an eternity of observation should now be his punishment, he thought drolly to himself as his awareness returned to the belly of the steamliner.
What am I doing? The thought echoed within in him again, as the late baronet stared into the boiler's raging flames.
"What are you doing?" suddenly came a woman's voice. The accent was distinctly American but still cultured in its intonation, as it shattered the expanding loneliness that had marked Thomas' death since he had left Allerdale Hall.
"Are you talking to me?" he asked, sounding more nonchalant about the question than he had expected.
"Why, yes," the woman said. Her emphasis on her wh's was awfully pronounced, Thomas thought absently, though he was starting to find it more fascinating that he was actually having a conversation with someone other than himself for the first time in many weeks.
That was when Thomas Sharpe noticed that he was really conversing with only half of a someone: the woman was visible only from her head down to her waist, where she appeared to be leaning out of the blackened boiler room wall. She looked to be wearing an evening gown of dark crimson silk covered in darkly shimmering beading that clustered at an enticingly low-cut bodice. A slightly over-large lavaliere dangled from her neck, and she puffed at a cigarette stuck in a long, thin gold engraved holder balanced carefully in her slender fingers. The wisps of cigarette smoke disappeared even more immediately than regular smoke as they wafted around the shining brunette curls piled atop the crown of the woman's head. Heavy looking diamond drop earrings glittered, frostily adorning the space at the sides of her sharp jawbones. She looked barely 25-years-old with skin smooth and pale as porcelain.
The boiler stokers continued to shovel their coal undisturbed. Clearly they were not at all aware of Thomas and the woman coming out of the wall.
"So you can see me?" he asked curiously. He should have wondered how she had found him there, but that question suddenly did not seem as important.
"Yes, and you should not be here," she replied, and looking about, she gestured for him to follow her through the wall.
Thomas glanced back once more about at the boiler workers who had been keeping him company for the past hours and drifted after the American.
Together they swam through wall after wall with the woman glancing here and there each time they passed into a new corridor, until finally they broke through on an upper deck. Nonchalant, the woman did not bat a lash as they emerged from the center of a card table where two young couples played an animated game of whist. Sashaying, she led the way through the lavishly decorated drawing room to a set of cushy-looking settees done up in crimson and gold brocade.
Coming to a stop, she came to rest on one of the settees, and after drawing on her cigarette, flicked the ash over a tray on the coffee table. Still mystified at meeting this pretty stranger, Thomas stood a few paces from the table and watched as the bits of ash quickly evaporated before hitting the ashtray.
"So you are like me, then?" he commented, speaking to her for the first time since they came up from the lower decks.
From under unusually heavily made-up lashes she looked up at him seductively, and the sadness in her eyes spoke volumes. "Oh yes – imagine: drowned to death at sea, I made quite the splash," she joked darkly, and motioned for him to sit.
"We may be on the Other Side, but we needn't behave like barbarians, the way I see it," she explained, with another puff of her smoke.
Remembering himself, the late baronet sat. He felt very under dressed, suddenly missing his collection of matching cravats, vests and dinner jackets, no matter how dated most of them had become of late. What a strange feeling to miss such things out of the blue like that! He hadn't had any reason to think of them in so long. However, now sitting in his whitened, disheveled house clothes drenched in washed out blood in front of this woman dressed to the teeth in evening wear, he felt nearly naked.
The American seemed oblivious to his sheepishness though, if it even was obvious. "You know, you shouldn't hang around those lower floors like that," she said. "There's a poltergeist that ranges around there. An absolutely mad one, that one. No one you want to run into, I would say. Not to mention you look rather new..." Thomas must have looked confused, as she then gestured around her face.
Unthinkingly, Thomas' white hand went to the wound on his cheek, and he realized she was referencing the ethereal blood ceaselessly leaking from his face. "Oh, yes, I wonder what gave it away," he replied in a lightly ironic tone, though it was really apropos of nothing as it wasn't clear how she knew he had died recently.
"Yes, that, and your projection is quite faint. You did not die around the ship, did you?" she asked, and Thomas felt a little uncomfortable under her slight prying. Still it had been a while since he had last spoken to anyone.
"No, it didn't happen here... My name is Sir Thomas Sharpe, Baronet. I don't believe I have your name yet?" he ventured.
"Oh my, how could I forget? Margaret Ashby of Newark, New Jersey, United States," she flashed a smile, putting out her hand, which he took and bowed his head gently at the introduction.
"How long have you been at sea, Miss Ashby?" he asked, with a light attempt at levity, since it was clear neither of them were here on any kind of ordinary pretenses.
"Margaret's fine – and about two years now. I watch the calendars aboard the ship. Passes the time in some ways," she smirked at her private joke that she shared with him. "And you, Thomas, if I may?"
"Certainly, niceties can be such a bore," he replied. "I boarded earlier at Southampton."
"Where are you heading?" asked Margaret, her fingers on her non-smoking hand playing over her lavaliere now.
"I'm not quite certain," Thomas answered, his mind returning to the question he had been asking himself before. "Was just wandering I suppose, when I wound up on the ship."
The pretty American's look turned knowing. "Then, following someone perhaps?" she probed, observing him again from under her dark lashes, and an unbidden a chill ran through Thomas' ghostly form. Without thinking, he dropped his gaze from Margaret's penetrating look.
"Didn't realize it, did you?" she chuckled. "It happens, I've learned that not everyone stays bound where they died. It usually has something to do with following a survivor. Your form is weak since you haven't tethered yet."
"How do you know-" he started to ask before she jumped back in with the answer.
"I talk to everyone. That's even what they used to say about me when I was alive. 'Social Butterfly, Margaret'. For me, I died on this ship a socialite, and now, I think that's what's kept me here. No reason to leave – I was always happiest in this kind of environment, endless mingling and people watching. What more could I ask for to fill this void of time?"
"Then you're not resentful? That you died?" the words tumbled out of Thomas before he could give it a second thought.
"Oh no, I would have rather not died, of course" she replied casually, watching as little o's of ghostly smoke she had just exhaled disappeared on the air. "But I fell over all on my own – walking the decks in the dark, all alone, after too much champagne is not recommended, you see," she smirked. Then turning, she lifted the curls that gathered at the back of her neck to reveal the evidence of a lethal gash at the top of her spinal column. "Hit the rail on the observation deck below. Died instantly, body lost at sea. I didn't even know a thing. When I came to, it took some time for me to even remember what happened," she finished with a dismissive wave of her cigarette through the air.
"What about you, Thomas, are you 'resentful' of your death?" she asked, bringing the topic back to him.
"I don't know... I would think I am. I had finally found something, someone, that I wanted to live for, but there was someone who did not like that..." he answered trailing off.
"And they killed you for it?" Margaret continued.
"Yes, but at some point, I think a part of me knew that was the only way I would be free of that person, the person who snuffed it all out for me," Thomas replied sadly. His thoughts hadn't been this cohesive in a while, and it was starting to hurt him to think of it again.
"Oh my," Margaret spoke softly after a moment. To his surprise, she reached across and patted his knee in sympathy. "There, there. But you know, you're right. If you know how to look at it properly, this is a sort of freedom," she indicated, removing her touch from Thomas' knee and gesturing about them. "Going anywhere you want – all on your own - talking to anyone you want, well as long as you don't mind that they're dead," she laughed, and the sound seemed to sparkle in Thomas' perception like the earrings glittering from Margaret's ears.
"I suppose you're right. That person would not have approved of this at all," he laughed softly in spite of himself.
"Oh well, whatever, whomever you are following, Thomas, I hope that you can find some rest from it," Margaret said, seeming more sincere now. She sighed breathily then. "Speaking of rest, even us ghostly girls need our beauty rest," she smiled wryly though a slight sense of melancholy slipped through around her eyes in the way she looked at him.
"I bid you adieu, Sir Thomas, and thank you for this meeting," Margaret said rising from the couch. Thomas looked around and noticed that the passengers had all gone and servants were going around tidying and lowering the lights.
"Indeed, you as well, Miss Margaret," he rose from the settee, bowing his head gently to her again out of habit when she stood from her seat. With a playful curtsy, she drifted up and away through the low gilded ceiling of the room, leaving Thomas to ponder his position once again all on this own.
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Note: Hey all, it's been a long time, but it seems I still can't stay away entirely from these stories I started. Hope you all enjoyed this chapter that came into my head after such a long time. Peace ~ Origamikungfu.