Read Crimson Peak: The Official Movie Novelization Online
Authors: Nancy Holder
Tags: #Fiction, #Media Tie-In, #Horror
Crimson Peak: The Official Movie Novelization
Also Available from Titan Books
Book One: Between Desire and Darkness
Book Two: Between Mystery and Madness
Pacific Rim: The Official Movie Novelization
Crimson Peak: The Official Movie Novelization
Print edition ISBN: 9781783296293
E-book edition ISBN: 9781783296309
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP
First edition: October 2015
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Copyright © 2015 Legendary
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, not be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
“Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind.”
—
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
,
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
L
OVE
.
Death.
Ghosts.
The world was drenched in blood.
A scarlet fog veiled the killing ground, then dripped down through the greedy, starved mineshafts into the tortured vats of claret clay that bubbled and gasped on the filthy, bone-white tile. Crimson earth seeped back up through the walls of mud. Allerdale Hall was ringed with brilliant red—a stain that clawed toward Edith’s bare feet.
But that was the least of her troubles.
Hell’s own child was coming for her. Implacable, unstoppable, a creature fueled by madness and rage, that had maimed and murdered and would kill again, unless Edith struck first. But she was weak, coughing blood and stumbling, and this monster had already claimed other lives—other
souls
—stronger and heartier than hers.
Snowflakes blinded Edith’s swollen cornflower-blue eyes; red droplets specked her golden hair. Her right cheek had been sliced open; the hem of her gauzy nightgown had soaked up blood, rot, and gore.
And crimson clay.
Limping on her injured leg, she moved in a slow circle, shovel raised as her chest heaved to the rhythm of the machine that had been built to plunder the earth of treasure. A clanking contraption that might still serve as the means of her destruction.
The sound pounded in her ears as she braced herself for the last battle. Nausea rolled through her as her heart skipped a beat. Sweat beaded on her forehead and her stomach clenched. Her bones ached and throbbed, and she could barely walk.
Everywhere she looked shadows loomed, red on red, on red. If she did survive, would she join them? Would she haunt this cursed place forever, enraged and afraid? This was no place to die.
Ghosts are real
.
That much I know.
She knew much more. If only she had pieced the whole brutal story together sooner, heeded the warnings, followed the clues. She had uncovered the truth at a terrible cost, but the ultimate penalty now awaited her and the one who had risked so much for her sake.
Behind the snow and scarlet gloaming, she caught a flash of running feet. Her grip on the shovel was slick in her clammy grasp. Her ankle throbbed and she was freezing, yet her insides burned so fiercely she expected smoke to plume from her mouth.
She backed up, whirled around, eyes searching, breath stuttering. Then time stopped, and her heart froze as she caught sight of a blur of sodden fabric, and bare feet sucking at the red muck as they came at her. The sharp blade, fingers smeared with blood, the fury that wielded it. Death was no longer coming.
Death was here.
And her mind cast back to how it was that she, Edith Cushing, had come here to fight it.
Once upon a time…
“For now we see through a glass, darkly;
but then face to face: now I know in part;
but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
—
1 CORINTHIANS 13:12
T
HE FIRST TIME
I saw a ghost, I was ten years old.
It was my mother’s.
* * *
It was snowing on the day they put Edith Cushing’s mother in the ground. Large wet flakes wept in a leaden sky. The world was colorless. Dressed for deep mourning in a black coat and a hat that framed her stricken white face, little Edith leaned back against her father’s legs. The other mourners wore black top hats, heavy black veils, ebony coats and gloves, and jewelry wrought from the hair of their own beloved dead. The living folk of Buffalo owned entire wardrobes of fashionable ensembles designed for weeping and tossing clods of earth and rose petals on freshly dug graves.