Veiled Light

Upon my arrival, I was taken aback by the splendor of the manor. Mapperton’s house lay at the center of a large field, surrounded by a dense white pine forest. The warm light of the autumn evening shone through the trees, casting great shadows. No shadow, I noticed, fell upon the house. The fields, or what I could see of them beyond the row of statues that lined either side of the drive, were perfectly golden, leading down to a lake by the east garden. I was met by my host as I approached the front doors. I had corresponded with Vanessa often in the weeks leading up to my visit. She had written to me then for the first time in eleven years, giving condolences after the passing of my brother. As our correspondence grew, however, time seemed to blend until it was nearly no time at all that we had been apart. As I stepped out of the car, I was nearly tackled by Vanessa. I have never been the hugging sort, but even in our youth, she had never been one to let that get in the way. Grabbing my hand, she pulled me toward the house. As we entered, she hung my coat on a coat rack and called for her valet to take my bags. “We’ve given you the master bedroom, it’s just upstairs, the second hall on your left. You mustn’t leave your room at night, once you go up you’ll see that certain sections of the floor are weak. Nicky, he’s here!” Vanessa’s brother Nicholas appeared at the top of the stairs, looking quite disheveled. “Well, you’re in a state,” she reprimanded. “Come down, I’m taking him on a tour!” Nicholas walked slowly down the stairs. He had, it looked, just woken up. I turned to tell Vanessa that we needn’t go now, we could wait for him, but she was never one to be patient. So we started down the hallway with him in tow.

“Come come,” she said, walking briskly and playfully ahead. “You must see the gardens. They’re the absolute highlight of this old house. Isn’t that right, brother mine?” I turned to look at Nicholas, surprised to see that he was no longer following. He had stopped, I saw and was gazing into a looking glass, one of many that lined the hallway. I started back to catch his attention when I felt Vanessa take hold of my sleeve. “Don’t,” she said. “He is prone to headaches, and talking to him will do more harm than good. He will come out of it by dinnertime.” She spoke with a kind of caring authority. “Come along now, you must,” she announced, returning to her bright manner. “You’ll find that we keep the most beautiful herbs. You’ve heard that I make my own teas? They’re the absolute highlight of the neighboring town.” She led me out the east entrance and down a small path, and I found myself once more surrounded by statues. “There’s a gorgeous spot, just around this next hedge.” Vanessa skipped forward. “We had a minister here, do you remember him? Dragged us to this place every Sunday, and made us read from those horrible little books with the long words. Then he would leave, and mother would sneak out with the communion wine. I did love the crackers, though. Tasted a bit stale.” She talked so fast, it was difficult to keep up with her. We emerged from the path, and on our right there lay a small monastery, just large enough for a family like theirs to attend a private Mass. “Of course, Nicky and I haven’t had the time, and the old priest died, I think, a few years

back. It’s just sort of sat here since then.” She paused, then swung open the doors. “See for yourself.” It was immediately evident that the church had not been kept up. Overcome with plants, the stained glass windows were smashed and the cross had fallen from the altar. The benches were slowly crumbling, and the silver candlesticks were weather-worn to black. Lining the walls were the stations of the cross, ornately carved. My eyes lingered over the images. Once white marble, cracks formed by years of neglect had since been filled with the twisting vines that I had climbed so often in my youth. Twisting, even upon the holiest of images. Decorating the cross with their suffocating mockery of life. “God doesn’t visit here

Abby Neubert

anymore.” I turned around. This line seemed, somehow, out of character for Vanessa. She was standing by a window, looking out. Even in the sunlight, her bright dress looked pale and gray. “Vanessa?” I asked. She remained with her back turned, studying the broken window. “God doesn’t visit here anymore. We broke the windows. We let him escape, and he’s never coming back. God doesn’t even visit her anymore.” Slowly, as though it were the hardest thing she had to do, she turned to me. I don’t remember her face, just the floor, and the pews as they rose around me. Then everything went black. *** Awaking to a sheet of purple all around me, I glanced up to see Vanessa’s anxious face looking down at me. We were, it seemed, on the grass outside. “What did that, I wonder? Have you eaten enough? I must get the mold taken care of there, it is simply a hazard.” She spoke, addressing me but could tell she was talking to herself. When she saw that I was awake, she broke into a smile. “Good, you’re up! Someone had a little fainting spell, it’s lucky you didn’t hit your head on anything. Do you think you’re okay to walk? Do you need a drink? All that travel, and here I am dragging you around… Nick! Damn, where is that boy when you need him.” “ I’m fine, Vanessa, don’t worry.” I sat up. I really did feel fine, which was strange. “Look, I can walk. Really, I’m okay”. I stood and helped her up, and we walked back to the house. She promised up and down that we would finish the tour tomorrow, insisting I rest before the evening. I can’t imagine what we discussed over dinner. It could have been the return of my fatigue (I had not rested well), but the evening was, and remains, merely a composition of shifting images and laughter. I recall the wine the most. Nicholas, who deigned to join us that evening, ate nothing. As he was reaching for… something, the nature of which escapes me, his wine glass tipped and shattered on the ground. Time seemed to slow, nearing a stop, as the glass hit the floor. The wine spread across the Persian carpet, leaving a dark red stain that remains in my mind, even now. That, and Vanessa’s expression. As a servant came in to clean, she was once again laughing, and I wondered if I had imagined it. I had never seen such rage on a human face in my life. As we adjourned into the parlor for the evening, I decided to ask about the statue. In the entrance hall of the house, on a small table adorned with lilies, stood a marble bust of a maiden. The features were beautiful and intricate, rivaling (in my mind, at least) even the Greeks. The designer had, however, carved a rather curious detail; a stone veil obscured the eyes. It was clear to me that this person, given the prominence of her position in the household, was of some importance, and I decided then that I must find out who she was. The story I received in response was truly shocking. Vanessa was at first reluctant to tell it, but because Nicholas was largely tuned out of our conversation, she eventually gave in. As it was relayed to me, the bust was of an ancestor of theirs named Elizabeth. She was a noblewoman from France, who had commissioned Arryn Hall to be built as a wedding present for her daughter. On the night of her daughter’s wedding, her husband carried her across the entrance to the house, then proceeded to lock her away in the east wing. She was allowed no contact with the outside world while her new husband relieved her of her inheritance. One day, after having called on the house because her letters had not been returned for some time, Elizabeth had barely entered the house when she was knocked out cold by her son in law, and buried alive under the floorboards. It was said, said Vanessa, that when he was finally arrested and they found her body, she had been mere inches away from clawing herself out of her grave. Her spirit, though she no longer remembers why, wanders the grounds of Arryn Hall at night, searching for her son-in-law to exact revenge. “Mother and father always told us that, if we were in trouble. ‘Don’t leave your room at night, or Lizzy will get you’. To this day, can you believe it, I won’t leave my room at night!” Laughing, she took a sip of her tea. “Oh, it was just stuff and nonsense of course. Old floorboards, you know, but every damn time... Nicky, do you remember?” She smiled over at him. I was startled when he replied, he was so silent that I had forgotten he was there. “I…” He paused, seemingly perplexed. “I don’t recall. The story seems familiar enough. Was it mother and father, though, who told us? Never leave your room…I thought… ” He grasped, but the memory evaded him again. I turned to Vanessa, thinking it best to digress so as not to upset him further.

“Oh Nicky, you’re just drunk.” Feigning a patronizing glance, she stood and took his hand, pulling him toward the living room. “Come, it will never dwell on unhappy things.” Ever one to take her own advice, she released his hand and twirled out of the room, and after a time we heard the opening chords of a waltz. When these repeated, twice or more, I don’t recall, it was clear to me that she wished not to play, but to dance. “We shouldn’t keep her waiting,” I laughed, in what I thought would prove a futile attempt to engage with Nicholas, “or we may be subject to this well into the night.” “True,” he replied, “She isn’t one to be denied an opportunity to dance.” His lighthearted smile returned, but behind his eyes lay a primal confusion, as though he trembled on the verge of some great truth but lingered, innocently, on the precipice. She danced with her ghosts. I awoke the first morning of my stay, unable to say where the thought had come from, but I knew it with my whole heart to be true. My tour truly began on that first day. Nicholas was in his room; I would soon learn that we rarely ever saw him before 12. Vanessa took matters into her own hands, then, to reacquaint me with the grounds. After 11 years, she said, I was likely to forget some things. Looking back, I should have tried harder to remember. Perhaps I wanted to forget, to avoid memories of what had happened here. Even if asked now, by Vanessa, why I responded to her letters after all these years, I couldn’t have given her a real answer. Days passed in the manor, and they faded into weeks. We lost any sense of the outside, sat high above the common people in our own world, of lush velvet and sauvignons. I thought no more of the maiden, only of my friends. Only of Vanessa. Of our world, our future. A World that even then, I knew was destined to collapse. And collapse it did, like a star, on the morning of that final day. I awoke in a sweat. Something had come over me, an unshakable feeling of terror, as though the seven devils of hell themselves were shaking me. A shadow passed my door, that of Vanessa. I jumped to the doorway, hoping to call out to her, for her to assuage me of my feelings. She was dressed, though it barely registered in my mind, unlike herself. Her purple gowns seemed to have faded, to a deep and stormy gray. She turned, and I stood paralyzed. Her face covered in a veil, I realized even in my semi-lucid state that this was not Vanessa. This did not feel like Elizabeth either, however. This was something else entirely. We stood there, together, for an age, me and the woman. She radiated love; it drew me to her like a moth to the sun. She was, I would realize in the aftermath, the opposite of Vanessa. In some Newtonian way, she was equal and opposite. Anger and desperation inhabited her body, but this was her soul, pure love and kindness, abandoning itself after years of torment. What Vanessa possessed now was poisoned, a suffocating form of control mistaken for care by those who didn’t know better. By me. I feel as though I would have stood there forever, perfectly content, had the scream not broken me away from her gaze. I turned, the fear of this morning coursing through me once again. Half conscious of my movements, I seemed to float down the stairs and into the entrance hall. Vanessa cradled Nicholas in her arms, his blood staining her dress. She was surrounded by a black pool, her and her brother. I stared, in shock. “Look at him,” she said, raising her eyes to me. “It’s so perfect. He’s absolutely perfect, and splendid, and empty. A lovely hollow shell that I can nurture, and love, unconditionally. And he will love me. He wanted so badly to sleep, but he’s awake now. You will wake as well. We can be together, be like this, forever.” She reached out a red hand, in it lay a small letter opener. “We loved you. I love you.”

I looked down, and back at Vanessa. In her eyes lay decades of loss, grieving, longing, and betrayal. In them burned the purple fire of madness, and as I met her gaze, they filled with tears. “Goodbye then, my darling.”

Epilogue

Grief is a strange process. In the aftermath, I had run from the room, leaving Vanessa and Nick lying together on the rug, featureless and expressionless, covered in their mixed blood. I didn’t leave the house after their deaths, I simply wandered from room to room like a ghost. I nearly emptied the wine cabinet in the first two days. I could never bring myself to look at them again, I had nearly drowned myself in tears the