This A Portrait Is Worth a Thousand Words (my Work in Progress about a protagonist cross-dressing as a gothic heroine only to find himself caught in a gothic horror story involving his ancestor and childhood heroine) freebie story was the result...
The wind blew off the edge of the cliff, rustling through the trees. How impossible it was to see anything in this darkness!
Perhaps that made it the perfect night for a murder.
One had happened on this very spot, perhaps more than one. It shouldn’t have bothered the murderer. He regarded most human beings as sheep. The one he’d killed had been another murderer, the latest in a series of murders. Only this one had been special. This victim he’d truly cared about, perhaps the first he ever had.
I shivered and closed my eyes. It was just another legend about this bluff, like tales of the desperate and lovelorn throwing themselves off the cliff. If I thought about it, the killer had been just another pathetic soul lured to make a sacrifice on this spot, only his sacrifice had been another, not himself.
Chaos, death, spray, so many lives ended here on this eroding cliff, not far from Hartford Hall. Perhaps this was why Elizabeth Hartford had chosen this spot to conduct her rituals. She could draw on the unseen forces here to channel her power, if you believed in such things.
I wasn’t sure what I believed in, but the longer I stayed at Hartford Hall, the more I wondered how much truth lay buried in the gothic tales which so thrilled nineteenth century readers, tales which were mocked and savoured by a critical, yet avid public.
I was one of them, only I’d found my own tale, my own family, my childhood heroine. Only she was as tarnished with reality and secrets as this bluff. If I stayed here long enough, I might be tarnished as well.
I’d longed my entire life to come here to Hartford Hall where Elizabeth once lived and studied things many would never dare. To turn back now would be to admit I was unworthy of being her ancestor. It meant I was unworthy of her.
Some places and people were worth getting tarnished for. Elizabeth Hartford was one of them.
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