Crimson Peak: The Official Movie Novelization (29 page)

She staggered, and he sustained her, holding her in an embrace very like a waltz… a dance of death. Night’s candles were all burned out. He had drawn not a moth but a butterfly to his flame, and she hovered on the brink of annihilation.

“I will take you to McMichael,” he told her quickly, seriously, honestly. “He is still alive.” He nodded as if to make sure his words were registering, and Edith was overwhelmed. Alan! So Thomas had found a way to spare him?

“You can leave through the throw shaft. I will deal with Lucille,” he promised.

At the eleventh hour, a hero. Not a knight in shining armor, but someone who had finally seen the light. Who had ever said that love was blind?

They got in the elevator, she leaning against him. It was almost over. They had to get Alan to a doctor as fast as possible, and the village was far away. But with Thomas on their side, his chances were ever so much better.

He looked at the pen in her shaking fist and his face changed suddenly. “Wait. You signed the papers?”

“I don’t care about that,” she said. “Come with us.”

“No. It’s your entire fortune,” he insisted. And she understood that he believed his sister would outlive him, and plunder her wealth, and then kill her. His fear frightened Edith; in this haunted house, was Lucille somehow indestructible? Immortal?

“I will get them back,” he said. “I’m going to finish this. Stay here.”

She could do little to disobey; she was too tired, and she needed to rest. She leaned against the back of the elevator and watched him dash off. At the last, a reformed man, a redeemed soul. And Alan alive—these were mercies, blessings. Hope was real. She would cling to hope.

M
Y LOVE
, T
HOMAS
thought, as he walked into Lucille’s room. He saw the destruction of her entomological specimens, the mayhem. In that decaying house, Lucille had catalogued species like a delicate god; he had built toys. She had laid traps and snares; he had retrieved their wounded doves.

How did I ever think this was right?
he asked.
How did I not see that we are monsters? How could I justify my love for my own sister?

Pain.

Terror.

Torment and cruelty, and never knowing when they would be visited upon him. Such abuse as no child should ever have endured, and no one to stop it. No one but Lucille, who suffered for the both of them. It was the least he could do; she had told him that over and over again. Whatever she wanted, the least. What she wanted was for the mine to reopen and the house to be made whole again. To triumph over the squandering of their fortune, the sullying of their name.

She had loved him beyond all reason; she had assumed that other women would, too. They had. And they had died for it.

Lucille wasn’t in the room, but the bank papers were. They had spilled all over the floor. He spotted Edith’s signature page, transferring every penny she owned to Sir Thomas Sharpe, his heirs and assigns. With a shaky hand, he set his knife down on a small table and began to gather them up. He knelt down, head bowed, as if begging the universe to accept his atonement. Then he threw the papers into the fire, an offering to the fates.

There was a heap of accumulated ash in the grate. A large amount of paper had already been burned, and he wondered what it was.

Then he saw, and his jaw clenched. It was Edith’s novel, and he could only assume that Lucille had burned it out of sheer spite. The first three of his wives—Pamela, Margaret, Enola—brother and sister had been kind to them, had doted on them as they sipped their poisoned cups of tea and slipped away, slipped away. Lucille had monitored their mail and, of course, the only letters that had been allowed to reach the post were requests for money. No one inquired after them, at least that Thomas knew of.

Thank God Alan McMichael came
, he thought. He prayed that the doctor would survive. A man like that would be good for Edith. Of course he, Thomas, would let her go. Their marriage was legal in the sense that he was not a bigamist, as Carter Cushing had assumed—for the simple reason that Lucille had murdered Pamela Upton. As divorce was so uncommon in England, and they hadn’t reported Pamela’s death, he and Lucille had forgotten to account for the Civil Registry. He had married Enola in Italy and Margaret in Scotland. Incestuous adultery could easily be laid at his door, but it was far more likely that Edith would be freed through widowhood, for he
would
swing. If he could spare her that scandal by other means, he surely would.

A shadow stepped from the corner and for one moment he thought it was one of the ghosts Edith had seen. But it was Lucille, his own black phantom, and blood coated her bodice. His eyes widened in shock.

“What the devil are you doing?” she demanded in a shaking voice.

More blood soaked into the fabric. He reached for her.

“Lucille, you’re injured.”

She brandished the knife at him. At
him
. Her eyes jittered but her jaw was set. He knew that look. What it meant. It was a look that meant she could kill, and would. But kill
him
?

“Stay where you are. You burned them?”

“She will live. You’re not to touch her.”

Her lips parted as she held out the knife. Her look cut him as sharply as if the blade had found its mark. “You’re
ordering
me now?”

“We can leave, Lucille. Leave Allerdale Hall.” They could free themselves of this horrible curse—

“Leave?” she echoed, as if she couldn’t understand the word. He wouldn’t have been able to either, before Edith had spoken to his heart. Given him hope. He felt as if he were looking at their world through different eyes. He stared at his sister and partner in mortal sin, and he swayed, dizzy and thrilled and terrified. There could be redemption for them. They were standing at the edge of a precipice and for the first time in his life, he grasped that they could soar high above Crimson Peak. Wings weren’t just for butterflies and moths. Gargoyles could have them, too.

“Yes,” he insisted. “Think about it. We have enough money left. We can start a new life.”

She gaped. “Where? Where would we go?” She was listening to him. Perhaps believing him. Considering the possibility that he was right. That they could make it happen.

“Anywhere. We can leave it behind.”

“Anywhere,” she said, testing out the word, groping toward the prospect like a blind woman. Standing beside him on that cliff, defying death.

He was elated. They were saved. There
was
hope.

“Let the Sharpe name die with the mines. Let this edifice sink in the ground. All these years holding these rotting walls together. We would be free, Lucille. Free of all this. We can all be together—”

“
All?
”

He realized only then what he had said. And that he had said exactly the wrong thing, at exactly the wrong moment.

“Do you love her?” The agony on her face stabbed him through the heart. He remembered all the times she had taken the cane, a slap, staring at him as tears rolled down her face, bearing the brunt, loving him. There was more pain on her face now than in all those times combined. He didn’t want to hurt her. But to free her, to give her a life, a real chance, he had to be cruel to be kind. It was the same thing that Carter Cushing had demanded of him, and he knew, unfortunately, that he was good at it.

Beyond that, he must quell her rage, for Edith’s sake, and Alan McMichael’s survival. Lucille had withstood torture at the hands of their parents. The blood on her dress was no guarantee that she could be stopped from doing anything she set her mind to. And that included seeing their plan through to the end.

By killing Edith.

They spoke at the same time:

He began, “This day had to come.”

And she, speaking over him like someone drowning out horrible news that, once uttered, could never be retracted: “Do you love her? Tell me, do you?”

“We’ve been dead for years, Lucille. You and I in this rotting place… with an accursed name. We are ghosts.”

Lucille’s face drained of color. Blood loss, shock, disbelief. “Do you love her more than me?”

“But she is life.
Life
, Lucille. And you won’t stop her.”

Her breath was hitching. He felt as though he had just pushed her off the cliff, and she was falling.

“You promised—
we
promised we would not—that you would not fall in love with anyone else—”

Falling to her death.

He delivered the death knell:

“Yes, but it happened.”

* * *

Yes, but it happened.

The watcher moaned, exhaling its poison into the heart and mind of the last of the Sharpes. For the brother was a Sharpe no longer; he had renounced his name, his legacy… and his curse.

So the house reserved its love for the sister, the murderess, the one who would serve and love evil for the rest of her days. Who would not waver from filling the halls and walls with ghosts. And it whispered at her to
do it, do it—

And with a shriek, she stabbed her brother in the chest. He tried to grab the knife but she slashed at his arms and hands, wildly. Clay oozed through the floorboards and the ghosts wept crimson tears in all their prisons of Sharpe misdeeds and malefactions as the prison bars shut again. No more free than the puppets and dolls in the attic, to be wound up again and again and again.

“Is this how it ends?” the sister screamed in the throes of anguish. “You love her?
You love her?
”

Hate him
, it cackled.

* * *

Thomas looked down at his belly as blood poured from it; out of his mouth came the faintest sound—a discreet surprise, a quiet, nearly casual sigh:

“Oh, Lucille…”

She stabbed him again, almost as if she had to prove to him that she had meant to, weeping half in rage and half in pain.

The pain was so great that he went numb, which was more than he deserved. He had done this… to her, to them. To all of them. Still, he tried to save her from ripping him apart, because he must save her, and Edith, and the doctor.

“No, no, stop, please. I can’t…” He trailed off.
I can’t
, the litany of his life.
I can’t
, and so she had been forced to. He had turned her into this.

The look on her face. Would it be the last thing he ever saw? He knew that all she wanted now was for him to be silent, to stop looking at her. He hurt everywhere; the numbness was gone, and every blow, slap, and kick that she had endured for his sake hit him full force. Engulfed him. He was bobbing in a boiling vat of crimson clay, and torment sucked him down toward a scarlet hell.

With a shriek she drove the knife in one final time; it lodged itself firmly into his cheek, almost to the hilt.
That
he felt, and he staggered as he moved away from her. He shuffled a few steps forward. He dislodged the knife, though the effort cost him, and he sank wearily down into a chair. Everything was growing dark.

In the distant recesses of his mind, he heard the lullaby she had played for him through the years. He remembered their child, a poor, sick little thing, born of a very sick love. Enola, how she had rocked that baby. Lucille’s bitter tears.

She could not lose her other child: him.

We can’t live in the mountains,
we can’t live out at sea.
Where oh, where oh, my lover,
shall I come to thee?

Then he heard the melody transformed into the Chopin waltz he had danced with Edith. Holding the candle; the light had flickered but was not extinguished.

Oh, Lucille, Lucille.

“I will… it will be fine,” he promised her. “Or… I… the things we do…” He gazed at her and for a moment he thought he saw the sun. But it was an illusion; dark moths circled Lucille’s head, and his vision began to fade as he gazed into her eyes. What could he do for Edith now? How could he save her? For he must. That was the only way he could go on.

“Oh, sister, you killed me,” he murmured.

Then he saw a white light, and in it…

L
UCILLE HELD HIM
and in her mind he was so little and scared, she but two years older, and she sang to him as she played the piano: