The Devil's Mistress

Chapter 1

She woke up in cold sweat like every other night. It was a routine for her to wake up every night at 3 am at the sound of the gunshot which had woke her up eleven years ago when she was ten. The same gunshot has kept waking her up every night after that and every subsequent nights in the years that came.

Calysta knew it was pointless trying to sleep once more, because rest of the night would a blur of visions which were a nightmare to her and tossing and turning which did nothing else other than crumpling the bedsheets. The housemaid who came to clean her villa twice a week smiled meaningfully at her after doing the laundry but she did not even bother to rectify her mistakes.

Calysta got down from the bed and took up the case of the violin which was kept on the chair with great care and love. It was her mother’s violin and she although had several more pairs but this was the only one which loved to play. And every day at this ungodly hour she played only one piece which she knew was the piece she had mastered playing.

It is a solo piece claimed to be one of the best written by Giuseppe Tartini by Tartini himself but like him and her mother Calysta also knew that it was just an inferior reproduction of the original one which the Dark Lord had played with his instrument. But she had no other option but to play the piece as it was because she hadn’t have had fortune to listen to the original one.

As she struck the chord and the music started coming out of the chords, Calysta felt her pain ebbing away into nothingness and she kept on playing the same piece in loop over and over again until her arms started aching with immense pain. The physical pain kept away her mental agony to some extent.

After sometime she stopped playing the music finishing the piece with an elan which only she could have mastered. When the music stopped reverberating through the empty villa, Calysta could hear the sound of a single pair of hands clapping as if it was meant as an appreciation for her solo performance. But she knew that she was alone at home and she herself had double locked all the doors and only a few errant windows of the villa were open. The clapping stopped as suddenly it had started and Calysta thought it was nothing else but a figment of her imagination probably because she had been out of human contact for too long.

Calysta looked out of the window and found that the eastern sky had taken a mauvish red hue and was slowly turning red, Aurora was charming the eastern sky once again with her beauty, just before Apollo took the reins of his golden chariot and galloped in the sky. She was mesmerized by the beauty of nature after long when suddenly she heard someone walking through the halls. This time she could not think it to be a figment of imagination. It was absolutely real, Calysta took the half burnt lamp on the bed-side table and dashed after the sound in the hall where she could find no one. But the walking still continued and so she followed it without thinking twice and she reached a corridor which she did not even know it existed. The walking sound continued crunching on the gravelly path behind the locked door. If the door was locked then how could anyone cross the door and she started banging the door with her full might, trying to open the lock when without any extra effort or preamble the door opened wide.

Calysta was scared out of her wits now at what was happening inside the house and then she tentatively stepped out of the door. She was not outside her villa, she was standing outside her own home infront of the garden, looking at the mound of dirt which had been scooped to create a hole in the ground. She was wringing her hands scared to go and look at what was inside. Calysta knew what she would see, she knew that it was her mother lying inside with a single bullet shot in her heart by herself. Her white wedding gown stained and ruined in red blood, but the peace on her face only showed that her mother was sleeping peacefully as if she would wake up the next moment.

But this time the scene was a bit different. This time her mother’s eyes were open and they were looking at her as if she knew that Calysta would be coming to find her, her hands bloody and she had a key round her neck attached to the chain she always wore and a letter clutched in the other hand as if afraid that someone would come and snatch it away from her, prying it away from her fingers. The dark bags of grief underneath her eyes were still existent and the revolver was lying in her lap. Calysta was afraid to touch her but there must be some reason that she was back to her mother’s grave after eleven years. Calysta carefully pulled out the envelope from her hands and before she open the letter, her dead mother from the grave spoke up in a cold voice,” You are nothing but a worthless girl for giving birth to whom I had to lose the chance giving birth to any other children. I could not bear your father a son for you, b***h. Get out of my sight or I shall claw out your pretty face and….”

Calysta could bear no more and let out a blood curling scream and lost her consciousness.

She regained back her consciousness in her own room and opened her eyes looking at the housekeeper who came to clean her room. The woman was looking at her with concern in her eyes and when she saw that Calysta had woken up, she started, “Miss, you were in your backyard, lying in your nightgown unconscious. I don’t know if you have caught the chill at this time of the year. I must say it was very careless of you to go outside without any protection and that too alone.”

Calysta said, “I was holding something in my hand, did you keep it somewhere?”

“Yes Miss, it was getting wet from the mist on the grass. I have dried it and placed it on your reading table. But how did you reach the backyard Miss? It is locked and the door is still locked when I checked.”

Calysta gave a wan smile and said getting up from the lying position, “I would have said you the reason if I myself knew it. Can you please bring me the letter?”

The housekeeper who was a plump woman nodded her head still perplexed and went out of the room and brought back the letter to her. Giving her the letter she said, “If you need anything, just call me once and I will be here.” Calysta nodded at her request.

When the woman went out of the room she opened the envelope very carefully and took out the thick vellum paper which she recognized immediately as her father’s crest and started reading the letter which she again recognized to be her mother’s handwriting. The things that were happening were definitely out of anything normal and if thought carefully defied every logic.

The letter read:

“ Dear Calli,

I have always told you that it was not my choice to marry your father.I had never wanted anything else more than fame in musical field but women have not deemed to be great enough to be deemed worthy enough to earn that accolade.

I must say that there except you I had got nothing more from this marriage but today I found something else which will not allow me to live anymore. Remember Calysta,you are a very precious gift and will always be so but I am very sorry that I cannot be with you anymore. Never show anyone that you are my daughter and if possible never try finding out the reason of my death.

Remember one thing but, you can find treasure only where people do not look for. Only that treasure can make your life more meaningful.

I shall always love you more than anything in this world.

---Your sorry mother

Gemma.”

Calysta did not know what to make of the vision she had, of her dead mother speaking from the grave and now this letter where she was almost speaking in riddles. This was something which had baffled her. She lay back on her pillow because the pounding in her head had not stopped. Her father had not seen her when she was born because she was a girl and after that the doctors had pronounced her mother incapable of giving birth to another child. She had seen her father always busy in his work and sometimes he would visit her mother’s room at the dead of the night. Calysta could hear her mother’s muffled cries of pain and the sound of belt slashing her mother’s soft skin, while she clutched her toy and lay awake in the nursery. Her mother would not come out of her room for a few days after those nights and she was not allowed to see her. It was very brutal for Gemma, her mother but she could do nothing to help and she wanted to take away her mother from anything but this torture which she endured. But her mother did not give her that chance even to do anything to lessen her pain. She went very far away before that.

She needed to see a psychiatrist very soon. Because the speed at which her mind was deteriorating had no other explanation other than her brain stopping to function normally and obviously a series of disorders were on rise inside her mind. She was thinking of asking her housekeeper to give her the address of the local doctor when the telephone started ringing in the living room. Calysta got up and reached the living room to find the housekeeper already had picked up the call and turning towards the door with the intention of probably calling her. Calysta smiled at her and picked up the receiver,”Hello?”

“Hello Miss Calli, this Frederick your father’s butler.”

“Yes Freddie, tell me. What is the purpose of your call today? Did my father summon me?”

“Miss, my name is Frederick. And no your father did not summon you because he is not in a position to do such a thing anymore. He is not with us anymore Miss,” said the voice from the other end.

Calysta did not know how to react, from the time she had learnt to sense everything around her she had started to hater her father’s guts and always had wished for him to die so that the world would get rid of another cruel man. But today when it had happened really, she was not sure about how she felt.

“I shall take the first flight I find available,” She replied after a long pause.

“That would not be necessary Miss. The tickets are already booked and have been sent to your mail. Please reach here as soon as possible. This estate has no one left except you to take care of and if you do not arrive soon enough it does not take long for vultures to swoop in,” said Freddie.

“ Everyone is bothered about the estate except me, like it always has been. I do not know what more you want to say at this moment but please keep your thoughts to yourself. I shall be there as soon as I can,” said Calysta keeping down the receiver.

The housekeeper was standing at the doorway waiting for her to say something, but before that she said,” My father is dead. Please pack my bags, I need to leave as soon as possible.”

She herself was surprised by the dispassionate tone in which she spoke of the death of her last living relative.