Jane Eyre/ Sixth Sense.

A&A/AU

Ariadne is a young governess with unusual gifts of seeing the dead.

When she arrives for a new position at the home of a troubled Mr. Cobb, she can't imagine what horrors await her.

~ The Demon that is Dreaming ~

1.

~ 1880 ~

~ I felt my broken heart shift and make noise inside of my cold, unfeeling chest.

How could anyone else not hear it? How could they not hear the noise it made when my fragile body moved as the train jarred over the tracks?

My heart sounded like broken china; carelessly packed in a box, with no regard for it's safety or preservation.

It clanked and rolled in my cavernous chest making such noise, it's a wondered it didn't drive me to madness.

The train charged ruthlessly ahead and my seat jostled and lurched as if I were on a stage coach.

'clickity clack, clickity clack.' went the train.

My china plate heart was in pieces and made dangerous sounds of more breakage yet to come on this journey.

As was becoming my practice. I covered my ears and let my world fall into silence. My mind reaching back to memories when I didn't have this dead, broken thing sitting uselessly inside my chest.

~ I could never be counted as normal. Ever since I was very young, people suspected there was something wrong with me. They were not hesitant to point it out either.

In a society of valued manners and politeness, it was shocking how those manners were forgotten when faced with something as alien as me.

Thus, when you are ready made not to fit in, you don't fit in.

I was abandoned by my parents at a girls boarding school when I was ten. There, the other girls were merciless and cruel. I spent many hours alone, reading and drawing.

I became an introvert as a means to protect myself.

Truth was, they had every right to be fearful of something like me.

The other girls could sense I wasn't like them, and they were afraid.

See, all this time when I was so alone at school, I was never really alone.

It's laughable to think those times when I was reading or drawing by myself, I was without company. I doubt if I had ever truly been alone.

I've seen them, these specters, ever since I could remember. Most of the time, they are lost. Young soldiers, looking for their way home. Confusion written plainly on their faces as they wandered former battle fields.

As a young child, I had made the mistake of telling my mother about seeing these apparitions. I would describe and draw men with wounds to their bodies no one could survive. I also knew things, about our neighbors that no one could know. Things about their past they had kept hidden. Things these spectators would whisper to me.

Their voices keeping me company.

I could tell by my mothers frightened face, I really was speaking to the dead.

They had to be dead. No other thing made sense other than they were dead. Trouble was, they seldom knew this. Or they were so filled with rage they refused to let go into whatever afterlife awaited them.

As soon as they knew I could see them, they never left me alone.

They would taunt me at night. Pulling the blankets off of the bed I shared with my sister and screaming at me. My family had no idea why I couldn't sleep through the night any longer. Why I was so afraid all of the time.

It was this fear that forced me to go dead inside. I learned to shut them out for the most part. Ignore their cries and pretend not to see them at all. That way, I could be counted as normal.

At seventeen, after many years in school, I left for work as a governess to a family of girls in Boston. My family seemed to have disregarded me and my unusual ways long ago, and I found I was at liberty to do as I pleased.

I enjoyed the move and vocation. The family was obliging and took my hidden, sullen nature to be a mark of good breeding and schooling.

In the years I had lived in Boston, I had begun seeing a nice young man name Tom. We talked often of marriage and a family of our own. It was a happy and hopeful time in my life. Doomed for heart ache in the end.

Boston wasn't much better as far as seeing the dead again. It was an historic city. One filled with activity of the present and past. I saw all kinds of people in places where they once lived and worked. All of them wandering around; searching for something.

I ignored these people, as was my practice, until the day one of the daughters under my care became... infested, for lack of a better word.

The girl, Laurel, always well behaved, started to act very odd. She ate ravenously and started to use bad table manners. She would start to go into hysterics and cry all night.

At first, I didn't see it. Didn't see exactly what was wrong with her. I should have, with all my supposed gifts. Yet, it wasn't until late one night, I heard strange whispers. I went to check on her, following the whispers into her room. That was when I saw the creature perched on her shoulders. Like a gargoyle, roosting on some Gothic church, he sat on her. His red, glowing eyes peering maliciously at me as he knew that I could see him.

"What are you doing here?" I shouted at the creature in a voice that wasn't my own.

The demon became enraged and took flight out of an open window.

Laurel was sent crying to the floor screaming that I was a witch. I ignored her cries as I firmly latched the window shut and looked out at the inky blackness.

Out in the darkness was an army of red eyes. All blinking back at me like bright coals.

The girl became better, although I was struck with a strange illness for several days. I vomited routinely and started seeing the phantoms everywhere. All of them wanting to touch me with their cold hands.

Another strange condition, that haunted me after the incident; I'm always cold.

No amount of heat from a stove, warm weather or coat can cure it. My hands are like ice and I doubt I will ever be warm again.

The family became suspicious and sent me out of the house. Not even Tom would speak to me as the story of the girl and my second sight speared like wild fire among the household and beyond.

I had only one friend in the world now, an elderly school teacher named Miles.

We had met at a book shop and routinely spoke of interesting things. I found him to be a lovely gentleman who I felt I could trust.

He had heard what happened with young Laurel and asked if I might meet a colleague of his, a Mr. Dominic Cobb, of New York.

"It's a delicate matter, Ariadne." He told me as he promised me employment as a governess to Mr. Cobb's young children.

"How so?" I asked as he wrote out a bank note to cover my train fair and lodgings.

"I think I'll let him explain it." Miles said as he saw me off at the station.

I hardly had reason to hope for a better life with this mysterious position. My heart, was so wounded just now.

I had no family, not money and no friends. I never felt more alone then I did traveling on that train knowing everyone had turned their backs on me.

A part of me wanted with wither away and die.