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Annabel’s house wasn’t safe. Though it was deep in the woods, shrouded in twilight, it could still be invaded. She had told her father that he was welcome any time. She was coerced, of course, but the power he held remained. Her only solace was a decent-length flight away, over the dark woods and the bones of a rotted town. There, down a lane that was once opulent, was a pond. Formerly, the summer home of the Vandernacht family had overlooked it, proud and sullen. There was nothing watching her now - no one dared enter the area. It was haunted. Not by ghosts, though the locals often thought it was, but by memories. And, Annabel supposed as she swooped down to the banks of the pond, by her.
The water was eternally murky, stained by the sins of its past. Even the moon dared not reflect in its surface. Annabel let out a slight shriek as her musings caused her to flub her landing, forcing her to wrench herself out of a careening nosedive. Once she shook herself out, Annabel transformed, and, after checking to ensure that no one was around, she dove into the water. The pond’s depth was deceptive, hidden both by its size and the darkness of the water. It enveloped her, submerging her out of view of the stars that gazed down upon her. She kicked forward - downward - into the abyss. It didn’t take long for her to find it - decades of experience had drilled into her an innate knowledge of the path.
The coffin that she had thrown into the pond had rusted over time. She could feel it under her fingers as she grasped the edge of her tomb, ripping it open with unnatural strength. Her very own sepulchre, eternally shadowed by the rotted flesh of her past. The only place where she could get away from her father, from the echoes of Lenore that whispered to her sluggishly in her long-dead veins. She climbed inside and shut the lid. Down there, in that perfect darkness, she was alone.
That was, except for the presence of her mind. The Hunter’s eyes, almost like her Lenore’s but tinged slightly green at the edges, opened before her, turned fiery with accusations. Annabel screamed, then choked as the stale breath in her lungs ran out. Down there, in her sepulchre, no one heard her. No one saw her eyes widen in terror at something she could not truly see. She was as alone as she could be. But Annabel Lee Whitlock had not truly been alone in over a century.
Though she alone resided within the tomb under the pond, her ghosts had slipped through the same cracks in the coffin that let the stagnant water envelop her. Perhaps, if she was still alive, tears would flow from her rose-colored eyes, but the only thing living in the abyss was the burning memory of a madwoman, of a lover long-dead, of Lenore . Still, it was all she had. And so she laid there, her arms crossed over her chest and her hands gripping her biceps, in the pitch. It was the only place that was safe.