Chapter 34 - Regression
Carlisle closed the door of his study, heart and mind aching from the tomb-like silence in the house. Sinking into the soft, red leather chair behind his desk with what he was certain if he were still human, would be classified as a stress-related headache, he closed his eyes and searched his mind once more for an answer. Walls of books, every medical journal imaginable, along with top of the line computers that placed knowledge at his fingertips and still, there was nothing that could solve this puzzle.
Three days prior, Alice had withdrawn into herself, becoming more and more like the young girl he'd first encountered so long ago before the healing of blood changed her body and seemingly mended her fragile mind. Yet now, it appeared that becoming a vampire had only served as a band-aid.
As a man of science, Carlisle documented all of the transformations he'd created with exact precision, documenting each detail from the last beat of their hearts until the time they opened their eyes to a new world. He'd chosen each of his children carefully. Even Esme was a challenge, for beyond her broken body was a mind unhinged.
Modern medicine would have called it post-partum depression and plied her with magical pills. One hundred years ago, there was no cure for depression, save the demeaning acts of masturbation brought forth by doctors who would have labeled her mood swings at the end of her life as hysteria. Edward had been a slight impulse, but was crucial to Esme's survival and his own should she choose to leave. Becoming a vampire and again a mother seemed to have reversed the damage left behind from her human life. It was for those same reasons he created Emmett for Rosalie.
Briefly, his thoughts turned to Edward again. The boy proved to be complex, stubborn and selfish, but then again, he thought... aren't we all? Bella Swan would be the key to Edward's submission. Carlisle already knew she would become the most extraordinary creature of them all. If only his son had not insisted they leave for a bit so that she could be human for a few years longer. The more time that passed by, he had reasoned, would give her a wide range of human experiences, therefore transitioning her into their family with ease. Whether or not Edward was right, he could not say. Only time would tell.
Alice was a different story. Clearly she was gifted, Carlisle had ascertained that from knowledge he'd first learned at the knee of his sanctimonious, witch-hunting father. People- including his own parents- feared what they could not see, taste or touch. The premonitions she experienced had nothing to do with witchcraft or dark magic. It was her pure, open mind that allowed such images to come in. Because she believed and continued to believe, her brain pulsed like a gateway for psychic abilities.
The abuse she'd suffered at the hands of her family and by doctors who thought themselves gods of reason among men, served to damage her emotionally. Electric shock and water immersion compounded by an era that almost exclusively treated every ailment with cocaine, forced her to retreat inside of herself. The mind, he thought, is a beautiful thing, in that it shuts down in times of duress. Little Alice Brandon, deep in the dungeon of an asylum masquerading as a mental health facility, folded up her dove white wings, her young mind's way of protecting itself from the war being waged by outsiders.
For the last week, Alice Cullen had regressed to that frightened, unaccepted child. It was the middle of the night on Thursday when her mouth opened wide, issuing a hollow scream, a banshee call demanding the dead to rise from the grave.
It was the last sound she had made.
Since that night, Edward had been rendered mute, sitting across from his sister, dissecting each image or errant thought in her brain without emotion.
Jasper pleaded with her, while Esme brushed the soft curls of her hair with a mother's loving hand. As a physician, he did what he could, but there was no litmus test for an emotionally disturbed vampire nor anyone to turn to. The Volturi would have dealt her the hand of death.
While Carlisle Cullen, renowned Doctor, loving father and husband, sat in his expensive office chair contemplating, the state of his house was rapidly deteriorating underneath his very nose.
Edward alone knew the reason for Alice's haunting scream. He was there with her when the vision came, hard and fast, quicksilver in motion, dipped with the stain of crimson.
At first they were fragments, broken snapshots, blurred and crimped. Then quite suddenly, the images became clear. His love, his life, his Isabella lay dying on the cold forest floor while he stood over her, thick blood coating his teeth, dripping from his lips and staining the pristine white collar of his linen shirt.
Tears, clear, shimmering drops of diamond, ran in rivers across her cheeks. Her once rosy lips, now devoid of color while her body, broken, battered and abused faded slowly away with the setting sun. The soft melody of her heart slowed. Blood gurgled in what had once been a beautiful swan-like neck, now jagged, its smooth skin torn to shreds.
Devoid of life, devoid of color, Edward smudged her white lips crimson, while watching Bella's creamy skin turn translucent. Warm, mahogany curls spread over the moss. Snow White in a glass coffin, hidden deep within the trees, laid bare on a verdant carpet of green. Death not by poison apple, but the monster that lay coiled within.
Edward hummed, soft and sweet, a precious lullaby as she slept.
Thousands of thoughts crossed Alice's mind. For hours he'd watch, faces fading in and out of her consciousness, memories and childhood dreams. A small girl, shimmering laughter and an elfin face, tiny hands cradling dollies and pouring pretend tea.
Alice stared in the mirror, dressed in better than rags, while her sister combed through her long silky hair, whispering words of affection and promises of protection. A saint disguised in the body of an eight year old.
Images of Bella, faded and blended with a woman who lay bleeding on the kitchen floor. A young Alice kneeling over her mother's body, a young girl shattered and retreating deep inside herself. The dungeons of the asylum, the kind doctor who saved her from the clutches of brutality. All these images interlaced with Beth and Bella until the women became one entity.
Then, vampire eyes awakening to a world of sorrow. Bright, shimmering lights bathed in both madness and hope. Alice would find her sister. Alice would create a new Beth.
Just as Edward was sure to kill her.
On the third day, he rose from the hard-backed chair opposite her, retreating to the peaceful solace of the snow-capped mountains.
One thought, one woman whose image was seared on his heart and mind consumed him so that he was unaware of the other who quietly followed, hiding herself in a soft blanket of white. He paced, raged and cried, all the while calling out Isabella's name.
Then sinking to his knees, Edward's voice became clear and distinct. Malice and selfishness pervaded his senses.
"Caius promised her to me if I'd serve only him. It's a small price to pay to save her life. Alice will have her sister, I will have my wife."
Then he stilled, his back ramrod straight with unflinching resolve. "It's the only way. The wolves have infected her mind, poisoning her against this life. Once she's changed, she will see, she will understand."
Rosalie backed away, blessing the wind for obscuring her tracks. Edward's voice carried on the wind, his mind spinning plans like a spider sitting on its web. "Rome... we'll feast upon the wine-sodden and Paris... the blood of the french sweet from sugar." His gleeful words, an appetite for and roadmap to certain destruction shaking her to the core.
In her mind, Rosalie began to form a plan.
Returning to the house, she was barely able to meet the eyes of her distraught family. Their suffering was not enough to atone for the sins committed in the name of love. By her own admission, Rosalie was no angel. Selfish yes, a killer? Most definitely. Though never once since opening her vampire eyes had she tasted human flesh. Four deaths, wrought by her own hand, seeking vengeance for her own battery and rape, left to die in the gutter while rats feasted on her decaying body.
Carlisle had wakened her to a new world in the hope that she would love his son. Rosalie would never love Edward nor any other man. It was only when Emmett crossed her path that something in her changed. He altered her permanently and it was because of him that she continued to live this pitiful existence, trapped by the unspoken threats of a family who claimed to love, but Rosalie grew to hate within hours of the change. Emmet was the price they paid for her silence, but he too had grown weary of this existence and wary of this fallacy.
As she slipped down the hallway, he caught her eye, motioning for her to join him. She said not a word, instead listening intently to the conversation taking place in Carlisle's office.
Quiet murmurs from Esme, Carlisle's eager agreement that perhaps the time had come to involve Bella and see if perhaps she could reach Alice if all other attempts failed. As she listened, Rosalie smiled. Her so-called father had bought them time.
Real fear did not set in until days later, when upon entering Alice's bedroom she found a notebook. Every page, each line filled with scrawling cursive, joining the inscribed names as one.
BethBellaBethBellaBethBethBethBeth...
The ink blurred together, the tip of the pen spattering it with force, pockmarking the pages amid the heavy slashes of disjointed writing.
That was the day Alice disappeared, nowhere to be found.
That afternoon while their family searched, Rosalie and Emmett slipped off quietly into the Alaskan wilderness, crisscrossing the country to obscure their trail. The ties that bound them had broken. Small fissures turned into a vast canyon, forever severing the connection of family. It was the beginning of the search and rescue of Isabella Swan.
It was also the day that Edward Cullen decided to plant the first seed of doubt, certain he would win this war.
Isabella would be his once more.