So, this story has been up for a year now and has been nicely reviewed. It brought me much joy in the writing of it buuut... the one thing I cannot stand when reading other fanfictions are plot holes, bad/incomplete grammar, and missing/misspelled words. When rereading this story, I found plot holes, bad/incomplete grammar, and missing/misspelled words, prompting me to go back and fix what I and some reviewers didn't like. I added more detail, but kept the overall story. Enjoy!

An Occurrence at Allerdale Hall

By N. Vera

PART I

Chapter One

Allerdale Hall

Cumberland, North Yorkshire, England

Edith did not walk so much as collapse in a forward direction as she aimed herself toward the staircase, aware that Lucille still lived. The stairs canted crazily and she knew she would not survive a second fall. She had to live, she had to stop them. If she could have set the house ablaze she would have, and died inside if it meant that Thomas and Lucille would be destroyed.

And then she saw him coming at her, and she tried to scream. Thomas held out his palms in a gesture of innocence, surrender. "Edith, wait!"

She only hesitated because she was too wobbly to move.

"You cannot take the steps," He said. "You have to use the elevator. Come with me."

She raised her pen, her weapon as his face blurred and her lips curled to a snarl. "You lied to me!" She hissed.

"I did," He confessed, holding open his arms.

"You, poisoned, me!"

"I did."

"You told me you loved me!"

"I do!" His voice cried desperately, surrendering hands shooting out to take her shoulders. His face snapped into sharp focus and she saw the truth: He did love her. He had, and he loved her still.

She staggered, and he steadied her, holding her in an embrace 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. "He is still alive." He nodded as if to make sure his words were registering. Edith was overwhelmed. Alan! So Thomas had found a way to spare him? "You can leave through the throw shaft or a secondary the miners made to get in and out without using the elevator. I will deal with Lucille." At the eleventh hour, a hero. Not a knight in shining armor, but someone who had finally seen the light. Who ever said that love was blind?

They hobbled into 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. "Wait, you signed the papers?"

"I don't care about that," She said, "Come with us."

"No. It's your entire fortune," He insisted, face darting from her to his sister's bedchamber. Edith winced, but understood that he believed his sister would outlive him, plunder her wealth, and then kill her. His face 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."

He had that look upon his features, that narrow eyebrowed, single minded look that always befell him when he was working on his harvesting machine. No! Edith thought, Lucille will hurt him! Break him and keep him in the master bed like she did with their mother and with me. "Thomas!" Edith panted, reaching out to him with her free hand.

He rushed to her in the elevator, having to reach around her waist to pull her entire body upright so that his lips could swoop down and collide with hers. Edith kissed him, her dark knight, with a fervor that she had only bestowed upon him once, in a cramped room that smelled of sawdust and mushrooms. He kissed her back with the same passion of that moment long ago, a moment stolen from his lover Lucille and gifted to Edith his wife.

The only thing that disrupted their tenderness was the elevator jolting downwards, the cords giving slack and carrying them to the bleeding heart of Allerdale Hall.

Thomas looked around in a panic, seeing Edith's hand with its golden extension fall from the elevator lever, the fingers of her other hand laced into his shirt partly due to her instability and her tired eyes warm, the other part to keep him with her as they descended.

"What are you doing?" Thomas nearly screamed. "Your money! Edith, Lucille will squander it!"

Edith shook her head, "Hang it, Thomas! Come with us, come with me!" He hesitated, eyes rolling up to the hood of the cab. "I need you." Edith confided, making him look down to her. "I need you in my future."

He inhaled, then pulled her into his chest and arms, his chin resting on the crown of her head. "They will hang me." He whispered. "I will be hanged for what I have done."

Edith held him tighter, her tears seeping into his shirt. She would think of that later. For now, the most important issue was getting out of this godforsaken house.

Darkness surrounded them as they descended into the damp, dank clay mines oozing at the sides with claret colored muck. The elevator stopped at its usual two feet before flush and Thomas jumped out, turning back immediately to sweep Edith off her exhausted feet and rush her down the aisle of vats bubbling with clay to a shadowed corner where Edith could see the vague outline of a man crumpled and…

"Alan! No!" Edith squirmed in Thomas's arms and he let her down slowly, careful with her broken leg. Edith limped to the faint outline of her childhood friend, scanning his body for signs of life and severity of his wounds, even if she did not know what to look for. She fell to her knees as best she could with her broken leg and grabbed his shoulders, pulling him from the bone white tiles and making his head loll. "Alan…?" The blood under his armpit had congealed, and his skin was frigid to touch. His eyes were sealed shut, but the breath from his nose came hot and slow. Edith whirled around to Thomas who stood behind her a short distance away. "He's alive!"

Thomas exhaled, obviously relieved. "Can you walk on your own?"

"I can manage."

"Good. Wait here, I will open the shaft and carry him out to the stables." He turned his heel and rushed to a far corner where the darkness enveloped him like a hand over a candle.

Edith turned back to Alan and shook him gently, doing her best to rouse him. "Alan! Alan, can you hear me? Come on, pirate! Wake for me!"

His eyelids fluttered and his lips murmured something incoherent. Then, "Edith?"

"Yes, Alan. It's me."

"Sir Thomas…"

"He's going to help us, Alan. He's gone to open the shaft and help us out-"

The elevator rattled and moved upward to the house. Thomas shot into view as though he were one of the specters of his wives, eyes wide and chest heaving. His eyes met Edith's at the same time: the elevator was answering Lucille's summons.

Without words, Edith wobbled to her feet as Thomas attacked Alan's free, uninjured arm and threw it over his shoulders, hoisting Alan to unstable feet. Edith hobbled to Alan's other side and doing likewise to help support her friend, finding that in such a position she could move faster because she was supported.

Then she looked up and saw a staircase more frightening than the one she had dared to think to descend earlier. A long flight of wooden stairs ascended to a clean white opening, but not before the clay walls stained the wood supports and the stairs, giving Edith the impression of an esophagus and they were the tonsils to be removed. "We must climb it?"

"It leads closer to the stables than the front door." Thomas panted, giving her a look as though he was equally enthused as she was of the prospect of carrying a half dead man and very sick woman up a flight of stairs. "Besides, I used to use this shaft to escape Lucille on occasion. She does not know it is here, or that I've used it."

They moved as a broken unit, their eyes fixed upon the opening like moths to a flame. Only this flame would not burn them. This flame meant freedom, a doctor, and a guarantee that Edith would never have to see the inside of Allerdale Hall ever again.

"Stay with us, Doctor McMichael." She heard Thomas whisper to Alan. "Edith needs you. She still needs you to rescue her."

Edith used as much of her good leg as possible, but it was painful to ignore her bad leg as she felt the bone bounce in and out of place, and even more so with every stomp required to keep it in place. The stairs, She thought, Once we are away from the stairs, I'll be fine. But getting up these wretched stairs, though.

Perhaps if they were all in good health, the walk up would not have been a worry. But as two of them were nowhere close to being considered healthy, the climb took a lifetime. Edith kept looking around, straining her ears to listen for Lucille. They heard her at one point, her shrill voice screaming out from the clay vats, "Thomas! Thomas!" But the man in question ignored her, gritting his teeth and moving Alan forward through the dank crimson throat to the outside. Finally, they reached the steel grate that sealed the opening and Thomas urged Edith to open it. She hobbled, nearly falling on her face, to the latch and slid it back, pushing herself with all her strength forward so that the grate swung open with a great whine.

The bitter wind was first to greet them, slapping Edith's face with strands of her own hair and claws of ice. Immediately, Edith longed for a coat and shoes, but such was an impossible yearning. She whirled back around, biting her lip to keep her teeth from chattering.

Alan jolted with sudden vigor, bright blue eyes blinking in the muted sun. "Stay calm, Doctor McMichael," Thomas told him. "We're not safe, yet."

"Edith," Alan nearly moaned, "You have, no shoes."

"I'll be alright, Alan." She rushed back to him, helping Thomas pull him from the steep downgrade that could swallow them back up again if they were not careful. They hobbled together, faster now that they had no pressures working against them except for the bitter wind, toward the stables. The ground was covered in snow, yet a ring surrounded the house like a halo, a great bloody halo of claret colored clay seeping up and emphasizing their steps.

Edith felt a pull upon her back, a great touchless pull that seemed more electric than physical. Carefully balancing Alan and her wounded leg, Edith turned around to the house.

A figure stood on the front steps, clad in a white nightgown and olive green housecoat stained with blood on the chest, black hair floating around her shoulders: Lucille.

"Thomas!" Edith shrieked.

He whirled around, clutching Alan close, and his face contorted with sheer terror. "Let's go! Now!"

Lucille burst into a run, knife in hand.

They hobbled faster to the stables, Thomas kicking open the doors and frightening the horse. He shoved Alan onto a pile of hay and ran to the tall beast, cooing and coaxing it to settle and calm enough to fasten it into a harness. Edith rushed to the barn doors and swung them closed on the cantering woman, pulling the bolt into place. She stepped back, knowing that the doors would have to be opened to get the carriage out, but that mattered little at this point. For now, they were safe.

Lucille banged on the doors, screaming obscenities at Edith and Thomas before switching to lover-like coaxes to Thomas, begging him to admit her. Thomas ignored her, occupied with the harnessing of the horse to care about his sister. Edith looked around the stables she had never been inside. It was made of stone, providing them good cover from the outside wind, but chilling them even further than an icebox. A great stone oven stood in the heart of the stables, but it seemed like ages had passed before it had seen fuel for a fire. Edith also noted that this stable could have held up to six horses and three carriages if they were the basic two to three seater carriage that Thomas was busy readying. On one corner, the one with the necessities for the current horse, Edith spied two woolen horse blankets and rushed to them, throwing one over Alan and one, a thinner one, over herself.

Edith gasped, sweat catching up with her slowing heart. Her feet were sore from walking in the snow and caked in claret colored mud to the ankles, the hem of her nightgown red as well. Thomas's boots were covered in red and snow, his fingers bright with Alan's blood and with the cold. He worked furiously, doing all that he could and as fast as he could to harness the nervous horse.

"What the devil are you doing?!"

Edith's heart stopped and she whirled around, seeing Lucille march in from one of the horse entrances to the back of the stable, eyes focused on Thomas. Alan shifted, seeing his murderess before him. Lucille tore her gaze from her brother to her victim, then back again. "You were supposed to kill him!"

Thomas dropped the latching reins and approached her. "Lucille, you're injured."

She brandished her knife at him, him of all people. Her eyes glinted, but her jaw was set. He appeared to know that look. Edith watched them from Alan's side, did that look mean she would kill him, too? "Stay where you are." Lucille hissed at Thomas.

Thomas drew himself up to full height, the tall handsome knight and master of Allerdale Hall. "They will live. You are not to touch her."

Her lips parted as she held out the knife. Edith looked to Thomas, he seemed physically hurt that she would threaten him. "You're ordering me now?!"

"We can leave, Lucille." He said softly, begging. "Leave Allerdale Hall. We can free ourselves from this horrible legacy-"

"Leave?" She shook her head as though the word was as foreign as Greek.

"Yes, my love." He breathed. "Fly away from here. Wings are not just upon butterflies and moths, my sweet. Gargoyles can fly away, too. Don't you want that, Lucille? Don't you want to start over again?" He took a step forward, Edith brooked no argument though with each pet name he called her she felt like she had been stabbed.

"Think about it," He continued. "We have enough money left. We can start a new life."

Her knife lowered a fraction. "Where? Where could we go?"

Edith's heart skipped a beat. She was considering leaving.

"Anywhere you like." Thomas smiled, "We can leave it all behind."

"Anywhere," She dropped her arm, eyes on the straw on the ground. She repeated the word as though the prospect were holding her from jumping over a great precipice.

Thomas appeared elated, doing all that he could to keep from jumping through the roof. Edith straightened, too. There was hope that she would let them go.

"Let the Sharpe name die with the mines. Let this edifice sink in the ground." He swept his arm toward the direction of the house. "All these years of holding up the rotting walls, all the time and money and lies spent keeping it up. We would be free of it, Lucille. Free of all this horrible business. We can all be together-"

"All?"

Edith felt like she had fallen into a frozen lake, and by the look of it, so did Thomas.

Lucille turned murderous eyes on Edith, the grip on her knife tightening. "Do you love her?" She shrieked, raising the knife once more whirling back to her brother.

The agony upon her face was excruciating. Lucille seemed to realize now that the heirloom garnet ring on her wedding finger meant nothing. She was not married to Thomas anymore in his affection than if by law. Edith had stolen him away with her love and defiance and wild imagination. "After all I've done for you?" She screamed, "I've taken the cane, his riding crop! I gave you my body, my child! I killed for you! And you…!" She could not make herself say the words. "Do you love her?!"

Fear was etched in every inch of Thomas's face, but his voice was unwavering. "This day had to come, Lucille."

"Do you love her?" Lucille screamed. "Tell me! Do you?"

Thomas lifted his chin, his affection gone. "We've been dead for years, Lucille. You and I in this rotting place… with our accursed name. We are ghosts."

What color was left in Lucille's face drained away like an hour glass. She shook her head, eyes moving up and down his body. He was a stranger to her. "Do you love her more than me?"

"She is life, life, Lucillle." He looked to Edith, eyes filled with hope, then turned back to his sister. "And you won't stop us."

Edith swelled with pride. Her dark knight, her godsend.

"You promised! We promised we would not—that you would not fall in love with anyone else!"

They knew she was unstable. They knew she would not reserve herself from falling over the precipice. But Thomas spoke the gospel of his heart anyways, "But, I did."

At first, Edith thought Lucille had gone into shock by the way she looked horrified, but didn't move an inch even to breathe.

When she flew at Thomas, no one saw it for it happened in the pause to blink, but everyone saw what she did. Her knife was lodged in Thomas's chest, stopped by bones. He stared at her in shock, unable to comprehend what she had just done. Lucille jerked her knife from his body and hoisted it over her head to repeat the motion.

Edith flew at her, knocking her down with all her might.

"Edith!" Alan and Thomas shouted.

They wrestled for the knife, except Edith's vision kept waning and focusing at random intervals making it even harder. Lucille struggled with Edith's body weight on top of her, the knife having been knocked out of her hand with her fall. Thomas ran to the sliver of bloodied metal, wincing as he bent to pick it up. With the knife securely in hand, Thomas pried Edith from Lucille, receiving for it a flurry of punches and scratches to his face and hair. Edith attacked her, pulling Lucille from Thomas to focus on her.

I'm the one you want! Edith thought, Not him!

Lucille grabbed a handful of Edith's hair with one hand, turning her back on Thomas, and stabbed the nail of her thumb into Edith's eye. Edith screamed as Thomas threw her off from Lucille. Freed from her distraction, Lucille clawed at Thomas's face, drawing blood upon his cheekbone and pulling a tuft of hair from his scalp, searching desperately for her knife.

Thomas gave it to her, blade first, into her stomach to the hilt.

Lucille's scrambling stopped, her pale face going paler. She lifted her blue eyes to her brother who yanked from her the knife. "Thomas?" She whimpered.

Edith jolted nearly out of her skin and moved her working eye to her left leg where Alan had crawled across the stable floor to aid in her fight, but now was there to comfort her. "Are you alright?" He panted.

Edith moved to wrap herself around him. "It's almost over, Alan." She whispered. "It's almost over."

Thomas stepped away from his sister lover, his eyes cold, his face sad. She looked up at him, her lips begging his love. He gave her none, even when she whispered again, "Thomas?"

He gripped the knife and raised it, cutting it across her throat so that a gushing crimson line formed. He dropped the knife, grabbing her shoulders as she fell and laid her back as she gargled and choked on her own blood. He held her close and from his own throat a tender baritone sang the lullaby Lucille liked to play on her piano and sing into his ear.

"Let the wind blow kindly
In the sail of your dreams
And the moonlight your journey
And bring you to me
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?"

Lucille panted, wincing in his arms as life drained from her.

Edith could not help but feel herself ache for the tenderness displayed before her as Lucille's body slackened and her head lolled onto Thomas's shoulder. Though her eye throbbed terribly, she cried softly with Thomas as he rocked his sister in his arms, pressing his cheek against her forehead, continuing the lullaby as tears coursed down his face. Edith let him mourn; all that he had known, his protector, his provider, now lay dead in his arms.

She stood, coaxing Alan to his feet and guided him as best as she could to the carriage, pushing him in, and making sure he was warm with his rough, wool horse blanket. She felt a touch caress the small of her back and turned, seeing Thomas behind her, tears falling slowly.

"Oh, Thomas!" She flung her arms around his neck.

He was warm, his tears salty, but he was alive and willing to help them leave this blood-stained land. "She…" He whispered, "She loved me… so, very much."

"We all do Thomas." Edith told him. "We drive ourselves crazy for you."

"Why?" He faced her. "Why do you love me so much?"

"I don't know, Thomas." Edith whispered. "Someday we'll figure it out. Together."

"Edith," Alan called from the carriage.

She tore her gaze away from her husband back to her childhood friend. "We are coming, Alan!" She looked back at Thomas, noticing a shadow cross his face for a moment, before disappearing into his raven hair.

"Get in the carriage," He whispered. "I'll get the horse. Tuck yourself up warm."

Edith obeyed, hobbling to pick up her thinner horse blanket and wrapping it around her shoulders. In minutes, Thomas slid the bolt of the stable doors open and led the horse and carriage out into the snow. Shoulders hunched, chest stained with blood, he shivered in the cold as he moved slowly back to the driver's seat next to his wife. Edith thought that he looked relieved to be free of his sister's control, and almost happy to be owning up to his indiscretions. When he seated himself to take the reins from her, she held on, forcing him to look at her. She wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, hugging him tightly and sliding the reins onto his lap. He touched her chin, rubbing his thumb against her jaw.

Slowly, he cast his eyes down, took the reins with a warm squeeze, and flicked them, sending the carriage forward into the snow. Edith did not dare to look back, though she had a strange longing to. That ugly, decaying house that allowed leaves and snowfall into it's foyer, the rotting walls of everything but the Master Bedroom as though blatantly telling her that everything within was a lie. They passed under the entry gate, reading the iron letters that spelled out "Allerdale Hall" backwards.

They couldn't go back, now.

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