Slutty Yorick

Always looking to the past ~ A journey into the lives of Sir Thomas and Lady Lucille Sharpe.

[MATURE AUDIENCE ONLY: Trigger warnings apply]

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Chapter 6 below:

CRIMSON PEAK REVISITED

Chapter 6

Thomas and Lucille watched in fascination as the pebbles
vanished into the mucky depths of the ravenous mud, the crimson red clay
swirling in the depths of the pit, enveloping the stones they had dropped into
it from above. It was almost like a living thing in its hunger, trapped beneath
the earth but ever-awaiting an offering. With a shudder, Thomas moved back from
the edge and turned away; Lucille took his hand as they walked back toward the
house.

Mother was away yet again, and the siblings welcomed her
absence even though the heat was oppressive. Left to their own devices and
longing to escape the drunken insults hurled at them by the butler and cook,
the children had taken to the outdoors. Lucille had found several new specimens
for her collection of insects: beetles, butterflies and crickets, all carefully
tucked into her jars. They had watched a spider spin its web and ensnare flies
and gnats, and had a long conversation on nature, with Lucille expertly quoting
her current study of Jean-Henri Fabre’s volumes on entomology. In truth they
could hardly be called children now; Thomas was passed his twelfth birthday and
just beginning to gain his height, while at fourteen Lucille was already
dressed as a young lady, enjoying the solidity of her corset stays supporting
her straight back and emerging slender figure.
She had noted with some satisfaction that she was developing breasts,
and her form was more curvaceous than Mother’s; they reminded her of
half-remembered visions of her beloved Theresa. She would often stand naked in
front of the nanny’s old mirror touching and exploring the newness of her
changing body with the same clinical detachment she had for her specimens.

As expected, the butler and cook had abandoned their posts
as soon as their minimal requirements were fulfilled, no doubt off to drink
into a stupor; as for Finlay, he was likely asleep under a tree somewhere. The
baking had been done in the relative cool of the morning, at least; it was no
great effort to dine on a bit of cheese and bread for repast. Although the
day’s activities had been leisurely and pleasant, Lucille felt tired and
cramped and they were both flushed and dirty from their hike, so after a simple
cold meal, they retreated to the attic to wash off as the sun set and the air
began to cool.

“It’s too hot for a long soak,” Thomas complained. They both
enjoyed lingering in the washtub with heated water, but it took so long to fill
from the tap and heat the many pails on the coal stove. He supposed that there
was a certain appeal to just sitting in cooler water in the basin, but he
debated whether he could be bothered to fill it rather than just strip and
sponge off.

“You’ll enjoy the soak better,” Lucille pointed out. “Come
on, then; I’ll help you fill the tub. You wash up first, and then I’ll do.” Ignoring
her aching back, Lucille took up the pail as Thomas set out the metal tub.

Gallantly Thomas insisted on taking each pail to the tub for
her, and Lucille watched with admiration as Thomas poured in the water again
and again. He had grown quite tall, not yet as tall as she and certainly not as
tall as Father had been, but he was showing the signs of becoming an imposing
height in the years to come. Fortunately he was far more graceful than either
of their parents, and had a promise of great charm and attraction evident in
his manner. Watching his movements made something flutter inside Lucille; she
could barely contain her love for her brother when she saw him like this.

Thomas noticed her observation and smiled, setting down the
pail and closing the tap. “Go and change
your clothes; I won’t be long or dirty the water too greatly,” he advised her,
kissing her cheek affectionately.

She nodded, turning away and unpinning her long braids. She
couldn’t resist glancing back as Thomas shucked off his garments and sank into
the tub with a happy sigh. The tinkling sound of water droplets as he washed
away the dust and sweat was like music to her as she walked away, unfastening
all the many buttons, laces and hooks of her own clothes.

She removed the outer dress easily enough, shaking it out
and draping it over a chair, and inhaled deeply as she loosened the tight,
rigid stays from her ribcage and slim waist. Letting her petticoats drop in a
cloud of starched linen, she stepped out in her chemise, tugging the sticky
fabric from her damp skin. She wrinkled her nose, disliking the scent of
perspiration and…something else—Lucille looked down and gave a startled cry at
the brownish-red streaks on her clothes and fingertips. Blood!

Had she been injured? How was it that she was bleeding?
Frantic, she tore off her clothes and ran her hands over her skin. There was no
puncture or wound to be found, but there were smears of fresh blood on her
thighs.

“Lucille?” Thomas stood in front of her wrapped in a rough
bit of toweling, still wet and with a concerned look on his solemn little face.
“I heard you cry out.”

Oblivious to her nudity, she held up her hand to him. “I’m
bleeding,” she stated, voice quivering.

Thomas stared at the stains with sudden fright. “Are you
injured? What happened?”

“I don’t know. I don’t feel any harm, I’m not in pain, but
there’s blood, fresh blood…” A sickening feeling washed over her as she
considered whether she had poisoned herself inadvertently. It would explain her
cramps and backache, but it didn’t seem the same as what she had observed in
their parents. Perhaps she was just ill?

“Are you certain you haven’t cut yourself? Maybe a scratch?”
Thomas asked desperately.

She shook her head. “I would have felt it, surely.” It
wasn’t a large amount of blood, but it was more than a mere scratch, and still
flowing; she felt the slow trickle of it on her leg. With a deliberate
disregard belying what she truly felt, she traced the red trail with her
finger. A sudden lightheadedness made her shiver.

Thomas took her by the arms, steering her toward the sofa.
He grabbed another of the towels, urging her to wipe away the blood and staunch
the flow. He pulled the blankets from their beds, wrapping her in one and
himself in another, and set her down. “Wait here,” he told her. “I’m getting
some brandy. It will steady you.”

Lucille started to protest, then realized that Thomas was
probably correct, and there was no-one in the house to stop them, anyway.
Thomas returned bearing the bottle triumphantly, offering it to her. She screwed
up her face at the smell of the stuff, but took a mouthful right from the
bottle. Coughing and gasping, she handed it back to him. Thomas took some
himself, sitting beside her.

“Oh, that stuff is horrid!” Lucille exclaimed, even as
tingling warmth rushed through her and her cheeks flushed a rosy pink. There
was a similar effect on Thomas, but he boldly took another sip before setting
the bottle down on the floor. He lifted
one corner of his quilt and pulled her closer in a hug, holding her silently for
some time. She cuddled him, the warm solidity of him a comfort.

“Lucille?” Thomas asked quietly in the shadows of the room.
“You aren’t going to die, are you? You wouldn’t do that; you wouldn’t leave me
here alone, would you?”

“No, Thomas,” she reassured him. “It’s not that bad.
Besides, I’ll never leave you, not ever, just as you would never leave me.”

“I never will,” Thomas promised with childish passion. “I
love you, Lucille. I love you more than anything or anyone else in the entire
world.” His gentle fingers traced over the scars on her back, deep crescents
between her shoulder blades that had come from one of the beatings Lucille had
endured in his place; they reminded him of moth wings.

Lucille smiled sadly at him, caressing his cheek with her hand.
“And I love you, Thomas. You are filled with nothing but innocence and
perfection and love, darling brother. All we have is our love; nobody can take
that from us, not ever.” Perhaps it was
the effects of the brandy or whatever was happening to her, but Lucille was
suddenly drowsy, lulled by the soft comfort of their embrace and proclamations.

“It must be dreadful to not have love,” Thomas commented,
owlish and a bit tipsy. “It would be worse than death, I think, never to know
love. Do you think our parents ever have known love?”

“I doubt it,” Lucille replied. “They certainly haven’t any
for us, nor, I believe, did they ever have love for each other.”

“Do you not pity them their lack? It must be so terribly
morbid.”

“Father cannot feel anything at all now,” Lucille pointed
out sleepily. “Nor can he do anything else to harm us. No, we have all the love
we need from each other, brother; we will share it together, forever, just the
two of us.” Gently she kissed his eyelids and held him tighter. They curled
against each other, naked beneath the covers in the dark, and surrendered to a calm,
quiet, dreamless slumber.

There was a moment when she arrived that Lady Beatrice
Sharpe thought the house had come alive like some demonic beast and swallowed
the few remaining occupants. Her uneven, hobbling footsteps echoed through the
grand entry and her calls for the servants and even the children went
unanswered as she wandered from room to room. There was bread not more than a
day old on the kitchen table, however, and the cooking fires weren’t cold
enough to have been left for long. None of the few remaining silver spoons were
missing, and they were untarnished, laid in the drawer neatly. With great
effort, Beatrice made her way up the creaking wooden stairs, placing her cane
on each step and gripping the carved bannisters, rather than take that
confining contraption of a lift Sir James had insisted on installing for her.
She disliked the thing on principle, and found it too loud. The house was never
quiet, not completely, but it was quickly apparent that the butler, the cook
and that odd fellow, Finlay, were nowhere to be found. Quite cross at this
lapse in service and weary from her long journey back, she made her way up to
the attic.

At first she questioned what she was seeing: the
water-filled tub, surrounded with discarded clothing, and the bundled forms of
her children, huddled beneath the blankets on the sofa, locked in a naked
embrace, the decanter of brandy squatting by the sofa leg. The two of them were
sunk in an intoxicated stupor, disheveled and smiling beatifically in their
illicit repose in the afternoon light. Lady Beatrice staggered forward, and her
boot caught on Lucille’s discarded shift. She kicked at it; the smears of dried
blood on the folds of cloth lay spread out in front of her.

Enraged, Lady Beatrice gave a furious bellow and lurched
toward the pair, tearing off the covers and swinging her cane. Thomas tumbled
to the floor, screaming as the blows struck bare flesh; he clawed at the blankets
and curled into a ball trying to shield himself from the onslaught. Lucille
threw herself over the writhing mass, disregarding the blows raining over her
own body, shrieking at the punishing figure of their mother. “Don’t hurt him!
Mother, please, stop! Stop; don’t hurt him!”

Beatrice spied the blood-stained towel as it fell from
Lucille’s legs, saw the streaks on the girl’s thighs, and renewed her
onslaught, hurling condemnations and curses at them both but mostly directed at
her son. “Rutting animal! Sinful, wicked creature! You evil, incestuous
bastard, you’ve assaulted your sister! She’s ruined, ruined, you lustful brute!
You rabid dog! I’ll beat you to death for this!”

“Mother, STOP!!” Lucille rose up and grappled with the vengeful
woman, tearing the cane from her hands. Sobbing, Thomas crawled away, clutching
the covers over himself. “Thomas has done nothing to me! He is innocent, I
swear! I swear it!”

Beatrice’s eyes were wild and accusing as she glared at
her naked daughter. “How dare you interfere!” she raged. “Do you imply that you
invited this upon yourself, girl? Shameless slut! Bloody little bitch! You
would do such repulsive things beneath my own roof and claim to be innocent?
Oh, you will suffer for this, the both of you! Give me back my cane; I’ll beat
the wickedness out of you!”

Lucille pushed her away, going over to her miserable,
blubbering brother, trying to calm and sooth him. Her head was pounding like it
would burst, and every part of her ached. She sensed that there was fresh blood
on her legs again, but she didn’t care. She barely had time to veer back as
Beatrice slapped her, raking her hand and the large ring on her finger down her
daughter’s face from her forehead and catching her upper lip in its descent.
Lucille cried out, clapping her hands to her face in pain, momentarily blinded.
Beatrice shoved her through the doorway, slammed the door shut, and locked the
wailing Thomas within the nursery bedroom.

Somehow Beatrice had retrieved her cane. With an
unsuspected strength, she grabbed Lucille’s arm and pushed a hastily snatched
nightgown at her. “Cover yourself up,” her mother ordered as she marched her to
the elevator and called the contraption to them. Shoving the girl inside it,
they rode to the middle floor, going to Beatrice’s bedchamber in a tense
silence. Beatrice sank onto the high backed settee, setting her daughter in
front of her. “I don’t know where those miserable servants have gone, but at
least we are spared the shame of this without witnesses,” she spat angrily.

“There was no shame, Mother,” Lucille protested.

“You can stand in your own filth and nakedness before me
and say that?” Lady Beatrice retorted. “I am not blind, child!”

“Thomas didn’t do this to me! How could you think that,
Mother; he would never hurt me, nor I him. I-I just found the blood, I wasn’t
even in pain…he wasn’t even near me; he was bathing…”

Lady Beatrice groaned. “You were discovered unclothed,
asleep in an embrace, girl. Do you think I’m a fool? This wickedness has gone
on long enough; the two of you should have been separated long ago and would
have been, had it not been for your father ruining us.” She stared at her
daughter with an undisguised revulsion, as if Lucille was to blame for it,
also. “I have spent this time away in securing Thomas’ placement in school, as
would be proper. Almost too late, apparently! He is to attend a place in
Whitehaven and board with my sister, Florence. As for you…I had intended to
make a lady of you, but I think perhaps you should be sent to a convent,
instead. I don’t want you here or anywhere in my presence; you sicken me.”

Lucille’s knees buckled at this news, and she pleaded
with her mother. “Oh, no, please, you can’t part us; not from my beloved
brother! We’ll die without each other, we need each other!” she burst out. “I’m
sorry, Mother, I am so sorry; I know I am ugly and wicked, but please, please
let us stay! Or, send me to Whitehaven, also; I can be good! I can learn to be
a lady—Mother, please, I’m begging you!”

“Get up, girl, and cease this pathetic emotional display
at once!” Lady Beatrice demanded. “My decision is final, and the matter already
settled. I’ll overlook this outburst as a symptom of your new hysteria, but if
you are to be a proper lady, you must keep your emotions in check. You’re not
going to die; that blood is merely the start of your monthly courses. You’re a
woman now, and will have to endure this each month, or else submit to a husband
and suffer childbirth.” Lady Beatrice took up her cane, but only to assist in
rising from her seat. “Now, it has been a long and tiresome journey, and I wish
to bathe and rest. Help me and then go to get cleaned up…in the kitchen, mind you!
I don’t want you anywhere near your brother. Let him stay locked up there for
now; I’ll show you what is necessary for your condition and you will attend me
for the rest of the day.”

Wearing only her nightgown with a sanitary pad pinned to
her underclothes, Lucille steadied herself and tried to ignore the muffled
sounds of her brother’s crying from upstairs as she drew a bath for her mother,
assisting the woman into the steaming water. Much to her dismay, Lucille
discovered that they had slept through the morning into the afternoon; mother
had sent her to the kitchen to prepare food for tea. Her stomach growled,
having missed two meals. Her head felt like it was wrapped in cotton wool; the
deep scratch on her face stung. It hurt to eat, so she merely broke off bits of
bread and nibbled on them as she busied herself in the kitchen.

Bitter hatred bubbled up insider her. She cursed her
meekness, her fawning for her mother’s nonexistent affection. She railed
against Mother’s cruelty; it was intolerable, and she simply couldn’t stand it
anymore. What that horrible woman had suspected them of–! What did she know of
love, anyway? Thomas’ words came back to her, and she agreed: better dead than
not to love.

Unblinking, Lucille wrenched the bone cleaver from the
butcher block and walked up the staircase to the master bathroom.

Mother sat up in the bath in alarm as Lucille strode in.
“What on Earth are you doing?” she exclaimed.

“I won’t let you do this,” Lucille said calmly. “We love
each other, Thomas and I. You cannot separate us.”

“I most certainly can, and I will! And what do you mean,
you love each other?” the lady asked suspiciously.

“You won’t. We are inseparable. I love him, and he loves
me. You’ve never loved anything or anyone in your entire life, not Father, not
even your own children. You are as stupid and cruel as an old sow farrowing her
piglets, but I won’t let you hurt him or me ever again.” Lucille advanced
forward, gripping the cleaver without hesitation and raising it over her head.

“Monsters! The both of you are monsters!” Lady Beatrice screamed,
her eyes wide in horror. Lucille swung the blade down and buried it deep into
her skull, nearly splitting it in two as blood and gore exploded from the gash,
and then pried it loose, stepping back. The screams drowned in a gurgle of
blood-choking moans, and the body twitched and jerked, splashing the water
around in a crimson tempest. Lucille sat nearby and watched as her mother sank
back, eyelids half-closed over her glazed eyes, blood cascading like waterfalls
into the darkening bath water until she stopped moving.

Lucille felt nothing as she stared at her mother’s
murdered body, except maybe a ribbon of relief. It had been no more difficult
than killing a pig, actually. Taking the cleaver to the sink, she rinsed it and
her hands off, pleased to see that she had not soiled her gown. Moving like an
automaton, Lucille left the room, taking up mother’s keys from the vanity. She
descended the stairs through the kitchen to the basement, pried up one of the
flagstones, dropped the bone knife on the muddy soil beneath it, and laid the
tile back down. Using the elevator to ascend to the attic, she unlocked the
door for her brother.

“Lucille, your face!” he exclaimed as he saw the ugly
scratches left by Mother’s ring.

She shrugged. “It’s nothing; it hardly hurts. It doesn’t
matter, anyway. Mother is dead,” Lucille
declared, helping him into a nightshirt. “Come see.”

Hardly believing it to be true, Thomas allowed himself to
be led to the bathroom. He nearly fainted at the sight of the slaughter within.

“Do you think she had a soul, Thomas?” Lucille asked
serenely. “I wonder. Let’s watch; tell me if you see it. Maybe the moths will
come and fly it away.”

Thomas stared at Lucille, horrified. He didn’t see
anything like what he had after the collapse of the mines; no crimson smoke
rising from the corpse, no haunted pleading; it was still and empty like a
slaughterhouse carcass. “There’s nothing, Lucille.”

“I find that not at all surprising,” Lucille remarked. “Shall
we hold a vigil?”

The two siblings sat in silence until it grew dark and
they couldn’t see anything in the humid, dank room. Finally Lucille stood, stretching, and left
the room hand in hand with her brother. He followed her lead up to the attic, watching
without comment as she lit the lamp. “It will be all right,” she promised him.

Thomas shivered. “I don’t want to stay here, not
with…that. And what will happen when Finlay and the others come back? What will
we tell them?”

Lucille stared at him, considering. “Yes, I agree,” she
replied at last. “We need to leave. Get your shoes and coat; I’ll pack us some
food and things. We’ll walk to the depot and go to London. If anyone comes here
and finds us, we’ll say robbers broke in and we hid up here, and ran for our
lives as soon as we could. Surely they’d believe that.”

Thomas nodded in agreement; it was a good story. No-one
would doubt that he at least was scared; nothing else could have convinced him
to flee into the darkness of Crimson Peak. Lucille donned her own coat,
wrapping a scarf on for good measure, and pulled on dark stockings and boots.
She shoved a few loaves of bread and other bits of food into a sack, and they
were off hand in hand, rushing forth from Allerdale Hall toward the dirt road
to the train depot near Farlam, eighteen miles away.