19.

1845...

~ "You boys take this whore, and wrap her in chains. Toss her in the ocean." Lord Blunt barked at Dom and Eames as they stood looking shocked over Arthur holding the dead girl.

"Sir?" Dom asked a little worried.

"You do it! We will not speak of my son's indiscretion again. It's over." He growled.

Lord Blunt stormed out of the little room, leaving his heartbroken son holding his beloved's body.
"Arthur?" Eames whispered. Their cousin looked strange. His face was like it have been carved of stone. A shadow crossing his eyes that made them afraid.
"Do what he says." Arthur said numbly to his cousins. His voice taking on a coldness as he ran his fingers through her pitch black hair. "Take one of the boats and wrap her in chains from the stables. Put her in the water. Put her in the ocean."

~ A serving maid was in the kitchen finishing the last preparations for dinner when Arthur stormed in.

"Wait outside." He barked at her. His voice holding all the power and bitterness of Lord Blunt. The frightened maid gave the Heir a little curtsey and did what he said. She scurried out of the kitchen and left him alone.

Arthur rummaged in the cabinets until he found what he was looking for.

Well he remembered the lecture the old cook had given him when had first found this bottle as a boy. Thinking it was sugar he had tried to eat it. The motherly old lady slapping him hard and making him cry.
"No! That's poison! If it will kill the rats, it will kill you!" She had paddled him for even going near it. The mother in the old woman knowing it was the only way to make a child fear things. Then she had wiped his tears and told him she was sorry and gave him a cookie. She said it would break her heart if he ate that bad stuff and he never touched it again.

With a spoon, he dug into the white, sugar like, rat poison and stirred it into the wine that would be served at dinner. Everyone at the party would drink wine tonight. Eames' parent's, Dom's brother's and sisters. Even his own parent's and sisters. A total of fifteen people would share wine from the crystal canter.

He wasn't sure why his wrath had extended to the whole family. His mother hadn't murdered his beloved. But the family was like a curse. They were like a cross he could no longer bare. They allowed the old Lord to do whatever he wanted and Arthur sought revenge.

The poison melted in the swirl of dark red wine as Arthur stirred it and replaced the top. He stormed out of the kitchen as the frightened kitchen maid curtseyed at him.

~ Hours later, Dom and Eames arrived back at Blackwood. They had sank Ada's body into the dark sea from a small boat. It had been a gruesome, haunting chore that both men swore to never speak of again.

"The summer can't end fast enough." Eames said to his cousin. "No offense, but this family is a bit too mad for my taste."

~ They walked into the formal dinning room to see Arthur sitting at the other head of the table. His posture relaxed as he drank only water. The family were dressed in their finery. All of them sitting or laying on the floor. Their skin pale blue, foam at their mouths, their eyes blood shot.

"Arthur?" Dom asked seeing his sister laying on the floor next to a pool of her own vomit.

Their cousin turned to them.
"Forgot you two were out." He said casually. "I've given the servants the night off." He told him returning his focus to the party of the dead. Lord Blunt had fallen face first into his dinner when he drowned in his own vomit. Arthur smiled at that.

"Arthur, what have you done?" Dome breathed.

~ A storm came in that night. A powerful one that rattled the stained glass windows and made the servants shake in their beds as the acoustics around the castle sounded like a woman was screaming outside. Screams like a woman, filled with rage, was trying to claw her way in.

The surf from the ocean pounded the beach and lighting and thunder struck across the sky in a terrible retribution for the crimes of that night.

~ In the morning, the servants awoke to the family dead around the dinning room table. All of them sitting perfectly before their untouched dinner. A strange and eerie sight as some of the more superstitious staff whispered about the witch the young Heir had hidden in the castle.

The three sons were nowhere to be found as the servants fled. The staff not know that the young men, in reality, had spent the night of the storm cleaning the bodies and positioning them at the table. Looking like they had died suddenly while at dinner. Their bodies still seated and no signs of struggle or pain.

A most bizarre and unnatural thing.

~ The village authorities came and investigated. The three sons telling a tale of that strange girl, Ada, coming to the castle and killing the family with magic before she vanished into the sea.

Rumors about Ada and her dark magic had already made the rounds of the village. It was not hard for the three sons to make the people believe she had killed the Blunt family. Even the doctor overlooked the obvious sighs of poisoning and ruled the strange deaths as unknown, or supernatural.

~ It was a few years before the three sons began to notice things. Arthur had taken a fall off one of his horses while out for a ride. The horse had thrown a stone and plummeted off a cliff. The horse was killed but Arthur had survived without a scratch.

They noticed they no longer got sick or hurt in anyway. They showed no signs of advancing years.

"Perhaps she was a witch." Eames mused in a drunken rage a few years after the storm. "Maybe she did cursed us."

~The servants that fled and never came back after the storm. Rumors ran wild the three sons were cursed. After the sons noticed they were not aging, they had refused to hire more servants and closed off Blackwood castle forever.

~ Arthur had joined the Calvary when the Civil War broke out. Eames went back to London and Dom to New York. In the confusion of war and travel, no one noticed that the three sons were not aging. People minded their own business. Had their own problems. Still the strange story persisted about the castle and it's long dead family.

No one questioned when a handsome young man named Andrew Blunt came back from the war and took up residence in Blackwood. Not hiring any staff and never receiving visitors.

~ As the decades rolled away, they pulled into themselves. Eames married and had children. He watched his wife grow old without him. He watched his children die of war or old age. Dom was likewise fated to watch his friends and lovers fade before his eyes.

The three sons remaining eternally youthful as the world forgot their strange tale of witchcraft and curses.

Present day...

~ "It wasn't I who curse you, my love." Ada whispered. Her lips cold on Arthur's cheek.

"I had to." He whispered back. He had never spoken of what had happened during the storm. Never said the words or apologized. "For what he did to you."

"It wasn't for me that you killed them." She said in a haunting voice. "It was for your own vengeance."

Her voice had blended into the wind and her skin had turned a translucent gray.

"I'm sorry, Ada." He whispered as he tried to hold onto her. "I'm so sorry, for everything."

"I tired to convince them, Arthur." She whispered. "Tried to tell them that with time, you could be absolved. That you could be healed of this darkness that lives within you. That you could one day come home and we can be together again. That was why Dom and Eames have been released."
"Released?" He repeated.

"When you go home tonight, it will be alone. Your cousins will be gone. They have been allowed to cross over with me. Allowed to be with their loved ones again." She whispered in that horrible ghost song.

Her body starting to slip away from his.
"What.. what about me?" He asked trying to pull her back. His voice desperate and angry.
"I tried to save you Arthur." She said. "I tried to heal your heart, but you sent me away. You send me away still. You must remain here."

"Ada, No!" He cried out trying to catch the girl he had loved before she faded away.
"Please!" He screamed as she turned to mist.

"I will come back for you, Arthur." She whispered. "I belong with you, and I will come back."

~ The young Heir sat alone on top of the black waterfall. His heart too heavy to beat properly. He knew he was truly alone now. That whatever black spirit that invaded him the night his beloved died, lived in him still.

A blackness as cold and deep as the stones that created Blackwood Castle.

~ Okay, after reading your input I decided to make it sad anyway. I fully intend for a happy ending. Maybe beauty and the beast thing where her love releases him from the curse, but what kind of bull shit is that?

I also thought about having the witch come out of the ocean and killing the family but then I thought it was better that Arthur did it. It seemed more fitting.

I'm sorry if this made everyone sad, but that is what romantic goth is.

If you like this kind of story, I recomend "The Distant Hours", "We have alwasy lived in the Castle", "Jane Erye", Wuthering Heights" and Poe.~