White Roses, Black Doves

A hunger through time-20

The process of moving into the decaying mansion was a relentless exercise in dust and shadows. As the movers hauled crates of modern furniture into the foyer, the contrast between the sharp, clinical edges of the new world and the rotting, Victorian bones of the old was jarring. Yet, for Perceval, the physical labor was secondary to the invisible tugging at his chest.

His feet seemed to have a mind of their own, pulling him away from the tasks Lucy assigned and up the creaking, grand staircase. He found himself standing before a heavy oak door that seemed to pulse with a low, mournful vibration. When he turned the brass knob, he felt an immediate, crushing weight, as if the air in the room were made of lead and grief.

It was a bedroom, preserved in a state of arrested decay. He walked to the bed, his fingers trembling as he brushed the moth-eaten velvet of the mattress. An agonizing, soul-gutting sadness ripped through him, so sharp it left him breathless. He felt an ache of longing for a woman whose face he couldn't quite see, a hunger for a phantom warmth he had never known.

"This is where it happened."

Perceval jumped. Lucy stood in the doorway, her silhouette sharp and unyielding. She moved into the room with a predatory grace, her eyes tracing the floorboards where the blood had long ago seeped into the wood.

"It was a murder-suicide, Perceval," she said, her voice devoid of sympathy. "In the 1800s, this young couple married. The groom was a madman, a rake. He strangled his pregnant wife to death in this very bed on their wedding night, convinced the child wasn't his, and then hung himself. A jealous, pathetic rage consumed him."

The moment the lie left her lips, something inside Perceval’s skull fractured.

It wasn't a memory; it was an intrusion. He saw the library, the smell of old parchment, the way a woman’s eyes—the most beautiful, soulful eyes he had ever encountered—looked at him with total, shattering devotion. He felt the phantom pressure of her lips against his and the warmth of her hand against his cheek.

She was mine, he thought, the truth colliding with Lucy’s story. She was carrying my child, but that doesn’t make sense. I’ve never seen that woman before and I’ve never been a dad. These things, these feelings I would know within my core.

He clamped his jaw shut, his knuckles white as he gripped the bedpost. He sensed, with a sudden, primal instinct, that he had to lie to the woman in the doorway. Lucy was watching him with a gaze that felt like a predator gauging the thickness of a trap. He feigned a shudder of disgust, turning away to hide the sheen of tears in his eyes.

"How horrific," he murmured, his voice strained. "Let’s... let’s leave this room closed, Lucy. I have no desire to dwell on ghosts."

As they retreated to the hallway, a sudden, sharp crack echoed from the bedroom. Perceval spun around to find a heavy, tarnished silver frame lying face-down on the floor, knocked from a side table by no visible hand.

Lucy didn't stop, her footsteps fading toward the kitchen, but Perceval ducked back into the room. He knelt and flipped the frame.

His heart stopped. It was a photograph—or rather, a daguerreotype—of the woman from his vision. Dark, flowing hair, eyes filled with a depth of love that made the modern world feel like a monochrome sketch. She was breathtaking. She was his, he knew it, he felt it deep in his soul, but she wasn’t. How was that possible?

He didn't think; he panicked. He pried the image from the frame and shoved it into his wallet, pressing it against his chest as if to hide the evidence from the very walls. He recognized her—he knew the way she blinked, the way she smiled, the way she smelled and tasted—but the impossible question burned like acid: How do I remember a life I never lived?

He hurried out of the room, oblivious to the faint, ethereal hum that seemed to follow him, a whisper of static that felt remarkably like a lover’s sigh.