Chapter Text
- Allerdale Hall
Disclaimer: I do not own Crimson Peak it belongs to Guillermo Del Toro, who I am a huge fan of him and of Tom Hiddleston. I was actually inspired to do this by friends and of several other classic works, and I have a special love for gothic Victorian stories. I hope you all enjoy it. And I do also give so much credit to Daphne Du Maurier, and her incredible work with Rebecca, and a bit of My Cousin, Rachel, for there’s so many similar parallels between Manderley and Allerdale Hall, and Rebecca DeWinter and Lucille Sharpe.
I had dreamt of Allerdale Hall, ever since I had left it behind, and all the ghosts within it. Both living and the dead.
Not a day goes by when I regret ever coming there…and never was I more happier than when I had finally left that place behind.
Yet even now I find myself thinking about it more and more.
Especially now as I’m laying beside my husband, who sleeps beside me undisturbed. The same as our two children, who sleep soundly in their nursery.
A third is soon to join them…
And it is a blessing that they are oblivious to the storm going on within my mind, and who I find myself thinking of.
I feel cold as I rise from our bed and slip out of the bedroom, moving towards the nursery. A force had compelled me to go and check on my children, especially my only daughter.
Elisabeth. Beth. My sweet Bess.
My daughter.
His daughter.
Ours.
And yet so loved and cherished.
I had been filled with so much fear when carrying her and labored over her. It was my dearest hope that she would be healthy and well.
James assured me that she would be…
Once she was placed in my arms, I looked at her face as her eyes slowly opened and gazed into her eyes, and all fear and doubt alleviated.
My Bess was perfect, and had grown so much, already twelve, and soon she would leave the nursery.
I opened the door and looked through to see my daughter and son sleeping soundly. My son, Claude is curled up next to his sister in her bed. I beat back my old fears and smile at the sight. My children are nothing like those monsters and never will be.
They sleep soundly as I move to tuck them in under the thick blankets.
Elisabeth’s soft hair falls slightly over her shoulder as she snuggles deeper into the bedding and curl around her brother.
They would be nothing like them ever…
And whilst I knew that they would never leave me, at least my family would never know them, or of the accursed Allerdale Hall. Or of the Sharpe family.
Not Lucille.
Not Thomas.
My endless torment.
And I still cannot figure out which of them I hated and despised more.
Who was the murder? The monster.
One of them had tried to kill me, and I don’t which one of them wanted me dead. Lucille tried to kill me. Thomas tried to kill me. One of them did. Who?
Did she?
Did he?
Why?
I knew that I could look at Elisabeth and not see remnants of my past involving that place or either of them.
I no longer thought of Lucille.
But it was Thomas’s shadow which loomed over me so heavily.
He was my own ghost, my hidden shame, my torment, and my longing. For I could or have not longed for anything so dark and melancholic as him.
And in these dark hours, it was only now I could admit this to myself, but never in the light of day, to myself, or to others.
Nor would I ever speak of him…