#Baxter Hanrahan

[spookyspaghettisundae]

Answers Found in Silence

Vincent licked his lips.

The blood tasted like iron, but the vision of the masterful painting before him absorbed his entire attention.

He loved paintings. He loved living vicariously through them. The rush it filled him with whenever his eyes followed every stroke of the brush, paint layered as passionate memories upon canvas, the sheer essence that the artist channeled into creating such masterpieces.

Seeing what they saw. Breathing what they breathed. Imagining what they must have heard at the time. Tasting what they sampled upon their tongues.

Absentmindedly, he licked his lips again, only now realizing how much blood must have sprayed his face upon bludgeoning a man to death. It took him out of his revelry. That taste of iron prevented him from embarking on another journey through the lens of the painting.

Vincent dabbed his lower lip, then inspected his fingertips, ensuring with a glance that it was indeed another man's blood.

He turned to the corpse splayed out on the marble floor behind him, in the middle of a pool of his own bodily fluids. Vincent scanned the dead body with silent contempt. His lip curled into a sneer. He shook his head in disbelief.

"Philistine," he muttered.

The knife that Sir Dorsey Dwyer had held now lay on the shiny floor beside him, underneath a reflective surface comprised of his own spilled lifeblood, pumped out to completion by his heart's merciless beating, throbbing until he had exhaled his last breath.

Dwyer had threatened to do harm with that knife. Not harm to Vincent—but to the painting. An act of aggression he could not tolerate. An act of spite which he would not suffer.

That they would not suffer.

"Yes," whispered his favorite voice. That sweetest voice. "You did well, my love. Revenge for a loved one he had lost, I can always fathom, but what he would have done to the painting never would have—"

"Brought him back," said Vincent, Lord of the Bailyview, seemingly to himself.

Nobody but him could hear the phantasmal companion whose sentence he had finished. He stood alone in that spacious hall, company only to his late colleague's corpse growing cold. Sparing little glance to the bent candelabra which had caved in Dwyer's skull, he turned to gaze at the painting again.

He said, "It is a bit of a bother though. I need to figure out how to get his sorry carcass out of here without getting caught red-handed, or our time together may just be spent in a cell in the Tower."

She stayed silent.

He rubbed thumb and bloodstained fingers together, marveling at the sensation of that warm slick fluid trapped between them. Though rare for him to take another person's life, he rarely felt anything even remotely related to remorse.

Like this painting.

A beautiful portrait of a quaintly handsome man. Staring off to the side through hazel eyes, head crowned by messy hair, garbed in a fancy dress likely donned just for the portrait's painter—or imagined, as it contrasted the rest of his appearance so.

The painter had clearly seen something in the motif of his masterpiece. Felt something for the man depicted on the canvas.

And the painter had been nobody less than the infamous Outer Wall Reaper. The murderer who had kept the city locked in a breathless fear, rendered masses afraid of the killer who stalked its streets by night, picking off people and making them disappear until only mangled bodies surfaced in the slums, organs missing.

And now, Vincent owned this painting, stolen from the Reaper's vandalized home by looters before an angry mob fully thrashed it. The piece of art had found its way into the private collection of this rich and handsome playboy.

"So fascinating," said she.

Orinrya.

"The painter? Or the subject?" he asked.

She rendered a whole aria, carried in the singsong of a single word as she replied, "Both."

He chuckled.

"So rare for us to glimpse what such a pure soul saw as attractive," she added.

"Pure soul?" scoffed Vincent. But he smiled.

"Yes. Just look at the way he painted every single hair on his head. What little attention he paid to the shirt's collar or the bow, while having slaved over the sheen he had seen on this man's skin. The hand that guided that brush also guided the needles and scalpels that took all those lives, in all those cold and dreary nights. The warmth of their blood, steaming in the snow—"

"You're right."

"Hm?"

"I see it," breathed Vincent.

He sighed. Shot another glance at the dead man on the floor, repeating his oath, "Philistine. To think—you almost robbed our world of this masterpiece. The single only painting the Reaper may have ever made."

Dwyer had been out of line; he had had no right to destroy it. Nobody did. The stupid fop had foolishly tried to put knife to the canvas, to slice it to ribbons in a fit of rage upon hearing who had painted the portrait. A petty act of revenge, as if it would have brought back his slain brother, the only wealthy victim whose life the Reaper claimed in his rampage through the slums. Caught with a night worker, no less, adding insult to injury.

And to imagine that a simple painting could have been the object of his impotent rage—no, they would never have suffered such petty revenge. After all, it was not the artwork that had taken his brother's life.

Snatching a gas lantern from the table, Vincent raised it in front of the painting and frowned. Though perfect for the simple sandalwood frame, this artificial light did not do the artwork itself any justice. The long, foggy night had swallowed the sun, and Vincent could not wait to behold the Reaper's artistry again in broad daylight.

In a way, the Outer Wall Reaper had just claimed another life. Even if only indirectly. Vincent smiled at that thought. That he had accidentally become the murderer's own instrument.

Almost as if on cue to disrupt his morbid amusement, someone knocked on the door.

Muffled through the entrance still closed, the butler spoke, "Milord, I heard—"

"It's fine, Perry. Brace yourself as you enter. Sir Dwyer had a," Vincent's words trailed off like these thoughts. He smiled again to himself before he finally finished the sentence. "He had an unfortunate accident."

He never turned around. The doors to the gallery opened and Perry entered. His shoes squeaked as he swiveled and froze in place, staring at the corpse.

"An accident with a candelabra, I see," said the butler with his usual measure of dripping sarcasm. "Looks like the poor chap fell backwards into it. Repeatedly."

Vincent chortled, still admiring the painting. He never understood how Perry found it in him to deliver such deadpan remarks without breaking out into laughter himself.

Their gazes met for a second, and as always, Vincent read no fear in Perry's eyes. They would never harm a hair on each other's heads, and knowing each other's dirty secrets assured mutual silence—or mutual destruction.

"What would you have me do about this mess, sir?"

Vincent clicked his tongue and shook his head.

"Pay no mind. Fetch me everything for some absinthe. I will take care of the late Sir Dwyer myself. And as you recall, he showed up here all drunk off his arse. I don't think anybody knows he even came here. And someone in the constabulary... still owes me a favor. I'll have it all sorted out soon, no worries."

"Despite the recent disaster at your party?"

"Oh, let them all talk. I love being the center of attention. Next thing you know, I'll be the headline of another lurid article," Vincent said, painting a picture in the air with a hand, fingers splayed as he envisioned the printed piece. "Painting me as the Outer Wall Reaper himself, while others rush to defend my name and trip over themselves in fabricating all the reasons why I would never harm a fly."

Vincent arched his brow as he flashed his loyal butler a twisted smile. The same involuntary expression to mark his face whenever he felt like he was winning a game. And he always won the games that people played in the rumor mill.

"I am less concerned about them, milord. And more about how difficult it will be to clean after the constabulary concludes their investigation." Perry raised his nose and stared down at it, gray cheeks reddening.

"Hm. I am terribly sorry about all that, Perry. You have my word; I'll hire someone to take care of it. Now—how about that absinthe?"

The butler emitted a grunt in recognition, bowed, and backed out of the gallery hall again, leaving Vincent alone with the corpse.

And Orinrya.

The door clicked as it shut completely.

"He's such a good friend of the family," she said. "Three generations, and now the old codger's stuck with handling your caprice."

She smiled through Vincent's own lips. He smiled to himself, as well.

"I'm sure he has his own share of amusements," he said. Focusing on the painting again, he asked, "Now, where do you think this one leads? It's just blank around the subject. Well, not entirely blank. There's some color, some suggestion of gloom. I'd wager he painted it just this same winter. But without background—no context. A blind journey. We've never done that before."

"And that's why we will, darling. You cannot resist."

He smiled even wider.

Orinrya was right. She knew his thoughts, reading them as clearly as if he had spoken them out loud, giving them air. She knew his capricious nature as well as he did, or perhaps even better. Knew he could not pass up on any opportunity to explore the unknown. He bored quickly of things familiar and always sought to visit a new horizon whenever it presented itself.

He flopped down onto the sofa with a heavy sigh, his velvety upholstered oasis in the middle of this opulent marble gallery. Surrounded by alabaster statues of ancient deities, and arrays of exquisite paintings that his family had amassed over all these years to plaster the high walls. The lights from gaslit lanterns cast pockets of eerie glow throughout the gigantic hall.

Vincent tapped his chiseled blood-splattered chin as he once more marveled at the craftsmanship that had gone into painting this portrait.

"What do think is his name? Or was?" he asked.

"Eric," she said. Giggled. "He looks like an Eric to me. And still alive, I feel."

Vincent chuckled.

"So, you're picking up on a name with an 'E'. Perhaps Egon? Egon. Hm. What a funny name," he mused.

"Edward. That must be it, for sure."

"How would you know?"

"Call it—intuition," she cooed.

"Or should I call it whispers? The things you hear from the beyond? You never answered, love. You never told me where you came from."

"And perhaps I never will," she breathed with melody, drawing out another smile from him.

The set of double doors opened into the gallery. The butler entered. Empty glasses and sugar cubes in a small metal cup tinkled and clattered until he arrived by the sofa's side. He set the contents of his tray down onto the table by the sofa, one by one, preparing everything for Vincent's ritual.

Before he could seize the bottle of green liquid to pour him a glass, Vincent raised a jewelry-clad hand to stop Perry.

"That'll be all. Thank you," he told him. "I'll take it from here."

Perry nodded, bowed again, and left the gallery, shedding not even a glance in the direction of Dwyer's corpse.

The doors clicked shut again.

"You know you don't need that, right?" asked Orinrya.

"Yes. But I just—I enjoy it too much. I like the taste. I associate it with our study of these pieces. With our journeys."

He chuckled again.

Perching a sugar cube atop the glass with the ornate spoon—and his family's crest of the eagle cut into the silver piece of specialized cutlery—he poured the sweet green spirit into his clear cup. The trickle of liquid tickled his senses.

And he lived for all manner of sensations.

"It is a lovely taste, I must concede," she said. "Particularly this bottle, this make. More than mere resemblance of licorice. Mint. Thyme? And a hint of other worlds. I do understand the appeal, don't get me wrong."

A delighted sigh escaped his throat as he cradled the glass between the fingers of one hand, swirling its contents like fine wine and sampling the drink's scent.

"Other worlds indeed," he said, the smile never fading from his face.

He sipped from the glass. Heat spread over his palate with a pleasant warmth, like a beautiful wildfire consuming the countryside, burning away every hint of iron and blood. He closed his eyes as he savored the aftertaste, and took another longing sip, kissing the glass like he would his many lovers, the men and women he consorted with behind closed doors at his many lavish parties.

"Drink, sweet prince," she said. "I long to see what lies beyond. I wish to meet this man for myself. To see what the Reaper saw."

"Taste what the Reaper tasted," breathed Vincent, licking his lips again, now only tasting the sweet sting of the green fairy, any tang of blood having been relegated into memory.

He focused on the painting. Drinking in the portrait's details. Warm tones made up the complexion of the artist's subject. Streaks and dabs of gray peppered dark hair despite the youthful and symmetrical face. A faint hint of stubble around the small and tender-looking lips and a soft chin.

And such kind eyes. So utterly kind.

What had the Reaper seen? Who was this mysterious subject?

"The killer became obsessed with him," Orinrya whispered. "Watched him from afar. But not like he watched the others."

Vincent sipped more from his cup; his sights fixed on the portrait. The spirit burned his throat on the way down and blood now rushed in his ears.

"Do you think he would have kept him for last? After torching down the entire world, would he have kept him around, do you think?"

"Not for long," she said. "Those kind eyes, he would not have been able to bear them for all eternity. Those eyes, painted thus, they knew not who watched him. What watched him. What monster—"

"Oh, my dear, let us not wield that word lightly," Vincent said.

His eyes fell shut as he drank more from the cup. The cool steel framing its glass made his silky palm tingle.

"Oh, but my dear, he is one of us," she sang.

"Was," said Vincent, breaking out into another chuckle.

Opening his eyes to continue gazing into the soft amber irises of the portrait's eyes, Vincent's vision blurred.

"Yes, was," she chimed in, joining him with melodious laughter in his mind.

"And this—Edward, you say—"

"Yes. Certainly Edward. I see a room. Orderly. Well-organized. Neatly arranged instruments. Cabinets filled with... medicine."

"A doctor?" asked Vincent with a lopsided smile, arching a brow.

"A doctor."

He drank more from the cup. Lost all sense of time as his senses dulled, losing track of how often he repeated the motion—the trickle of green spirit soaked up by the sugar cube, trailing down through the family crest into the cup, and burning in his throat as he sent it to cascade past his luscious lips and tongue.

"Here, in this very city, am I right?"

"Yes, dear. He is near. I feel it."

As his vision faded, his memory soon followed into the hazy mist.

Vincent cradled the bottle. Empty, save for a few droplets. They laughed as its glass shattered somewhere on the floor, no further mind paid to its breaking after jettisoning it away in a languid arc.

"I can almost taste it."

The lingering smell of the spirit occluded his senses further, but he began to smell another sharp substance.

Rubbing alcohol.

"We're getting closer, love," she whispered.

Every time he blinked, his eyelids grew heavier. His vision of the portrait turned into a blob of warm colors in dim light. The kind eyes of the mystery man in the painting—Edward—soon peeled away from that unseen something off to the right side of the image, and the doctor in the painting turned his head to look back at his spectators.

Then he looked out a window. His motions were slow, deliberate.

They felt that he felt watched.

"A busy street by day, just outside that window," Orinrya said.

"A foggy day," Vincent ventured. "A day not long ago."

"Only days around when the Reaper started his spree."

"Oh, how he cherished knowing how this beautiful man—this oblivious doctor—was unwittingly helping him."

"Did he provide the instruments?"

"Or drugs, perhaps?"

"No, just the thing to stab. A precise thing."

"A needle," they both said in unison, their voices blending until they matched. Orinrya spoke through his mouth. "A syringe."

Two voices. Not one.

The lantern's flame flickered but stayed alight. Turned bright blue. The world began to fade.

"Inspiration."

"He inspired him. Oh, he quaffed the nectar of this man's innocence—"

"Watched from afar, even before he started claiming lives—"

"Twisted it into something darker—"

"Something fierce—"

"Oh, the delicious transgression."

The lights throughout the gallery went out, one by one, until all but the lantern sitting on the floor between sofa and the lonesome painting remained lit. An orange-hued island in the middle of a sea of darkness. On one edge, the dapper lordling lounged, limbs drooping lazily off the sides. On the other, the painting.

The handsome man had disappeared from it.

Vincent brushed over his own lips and the numbness had set in. Unable to feel his own fingers, it felt like someone else caressed him, like she had planted there a gentle kiss.

They no longer saw a portrait, but another place. A window into that other location: a doctor's practice. Vacant of people, with shadows flitting about, hints of its owner leaping from one task to another chore, as day and night cycled rapidly, bouncing back and forth.

Meticulously washing his hands in the sink. Examining a sitting patient's eyes. Carefully bringing scalpel to an exposed arm. A laugh to defuse some fear. Blood, dabbed away with cloth in slender hands. A warm and kind smile to match the gaze from the painting, a patient calmed by his gentle disposition.

Oblivious of the darkness that watched him, reaching through past and present and now seeing that darkened room. A solid night, a roiling fog outside the windows. Like one monster once watched, spying from the outside, they now peered through painting, bridging time and space.

Vincent lurched up onto his feet and stumbled halfway on the infinitely long walk towards the painting. Glass shards crunched underneath his shoe, reminiscent of the blanket of snow outside, melting into the flurries of crystallized precipitation which he saw through the painting, falling softly to cobblestone-covered streets outside the practice's window.

Though numbed by stupor, the bumps and ridges of dried paint surfaced in a texture he traced with his fingertips, exploring the picture of the painting. No longer depicting the kind-faced doctor, but his practice, blanketed entirely by night.

"Push, my love. Let us explore."

And Vincent did. Pressed his palm against the painting, and ripples exploded outwards from it, as if he had disturbed the surface of a still pond. The image swallowed his hand and he pushed deeper, until he dove into that distorted image, neither place nor person, stepping entirely through.

As he stumbled again and blinked to orient himself, he stood inside that doctor's practice.

Rocked back and forth as the absinthe did its number on his coordination, barely able to read the handwriting on letters stacked on a desk.

Orinrya whispered through Vincent's lips, "Doctor Edward—"

"Carnaby," Vincent finished himself, slurring the surname in a drunken drawl, erupting into a stupid giggle.

He slapped the paper back down onto the desk and looked about, letting his eyes adjust.

"Do we truly travel to these places, love?"

"Or is it just a jaunt of the mind?" she countered.

"A little escape that leaves the flesh behind?"

He giggled another drunken giggle as he clumsily knocked over objects on the desk, causing them to clink and clatter and a small broken vial to gurgle out liquid. Something black, likely ink.

"Oh fairy, my green fairy," he murmured with the most melody that a positively drunken man could muster.

"This is all us, darling. No fairy needed. Just some added fun for your pleasure."

He pushed through a door, stumbling down dark corridors, and registering the softness of a carpet beneath his shoes.

"But it's so much fun, love—"

Vincent froze.

Bathed in a bright sliver of silver moonlight from a crack between the curtains, a woman lay in bed. A shapely face, heavily scarred, and peacefully resting, eyes closed.

"Oh, here we go again," mused Orinrya. "Be still, your beating heart."

Arms exposed above the sheets, wreathed in bandages, leaving just enough space for Vincent to take a seat at the sleeping woman's side. The mattress and bed creaked underneath his weight.

The scars on her cheek, as disfiguring they were, he saw past them and found a beauty he would have overlooked otherwise. But it was the scarring that captured his entire attention.

"Yet another fancy for you to entertain, love?"

He shushed Orinrya.

His fingers shook with the green fairy's tremors and an enamored fascination. He traced over the lines of those scars, an uneven drawing from a cut inflicted by a blade, that wandered over cheek to nose. Crisscrossing into another scar that ran across the nose, where ridge had broken once. Gingerly exploring the uneven surface of her warm skin where a hound's claw had raked her jaw. Her soft and shallow breath, he felt even with hands so numb.

So focused, so spellbound—

"Careful now," Orinrya whispered.

Vincent whispered back, "Sound asleep—"

"Look," she said. "Look away."

"No, I shall not."

"Look beside her, I say! Look. On the bedside table," Orinrya urged him. The singsong gone, her tone had fallen deathly serious.

That was when his blurry gaze finally came to rest upon it.

A leatherbound tome. Strange glyphs carved into its face.

Another gasp escaped Vincent's throat, all attention for the beautifully scarred woman now blown away.

An authentic tome of magick. He felt it. He felt its thrum. No ordinary book he had ever seen had ever looked like that. It had to be.

The prize he had sought for so long.

"Take me," Orinrya whispered.

No—the tome had whispered that. In his mind. Like her?

Right?

"Take it," she whispered in his mind. "Take it."

His hands trembled—hovered just above the cool leather surface of the book. How he yearned to rip it open and decipher its inscriptions. But his reverence weighed so heavily, the dread of what terrible secrets it may contain, it boggled his mind. His hesitation dragged on forever, mired in a swamp of lost time and a drunken haze.

"Take it," she hissed. Commanding.

His fingers trembled even more as they crept closer towards the edges of the book, keen on flipping the lid and perusing its mysterious pages.

He hesitated for too long.

"What are you doing in here?" a man blurted out behind them.

In the door to the room stood a dark silhouette. The squeak of metal and a clicking sound preceded a lantern going on.

The doctor. This Edward Carnaby. The kind face from the painting, kindness far from its current expression. Glaring at Vincent.

"Who in the blazes are you?" asked the doctor.

Brows furrowed; the moonlight twinkled with fear in the doctor's pupils.

Vincent rose to his feet and lurched towards him, tripping over a chair's leg. He caught himself against a dresser before he could fully plummet to the floor. Laughed, drunkenly.

"Should he see your face?" Orinrya asked. Another murmur in Vincent's thoughts. "Should he remember?"

"No. Yes!" Vincent said, followed by another clipped giggle.

Alibi, he thought. So convenient. If this was even real.

Doctor Carnaby cried, "Get out! Before I fetch a constable!"

The good doctor threatened, yet he took a timid step backwards, back into the hallway behind him. Frightened by the nightly invader in his home.

"Sorry good, sir," Vincent's words lurched as much as he did with his drunken gait. "I must have been confused. Long night—o-out drinking, you see."

"Get out!" repeated the doctor with more force. His voice trembled with terror.

Leaning against the dresser, sliding, and almost slipping as he propped himself up, Vincent eked out a theatrical gesture with his arm and bowed, nearly toppling over in the process. "I'm Lord Vincent Va—"

"I don't care who in the devil's name you are, you are bothering my patient, you drunken lout! Get! Out! " The doctor's fear audibly subsided. He cleared his throat and pointed a finger down the hallway, directing Vincent to leave that way.

He stepped aside demonstratively and waited for Vincent to follow his instructions.

"Yes, yes, yes. As I was saying, good sir, I must have taken the wrong turn—wrong door, you know, it happens," he said with a smile, growing aware of how much less charming he was whenever he was this heavily intoxicated. "Vincent Vance is the name, Lord of Bailyview. Terribly sorry if I broke anything on the way in—"

Doctor Carnaby's face fell through different stages. The dread dropped into fury, and the fury made way for confusion and mild annoyance, with a dash of pity.

"Just leave, please."

"Right," Vincent said, covering his mouth and feigning the urge to throw up, replete with a retching sound.

Carnaby waited patiently for him to step outside, and Vincent obliged. Stared over his shoulder as he turned into the hallway and stopped there—the scarred woman stirred, and more importantly, that leatherbound tome eyelessly stared back at him.

Beckoning him.

He wanted it so badly. Had to peel his gaze from the book. Had to tell himself he'd be back for it. Flashed a stupid grin at the doctor and stumbled forth.

The glow from the doctor's lantern made it easier to navigate the dark hallway, and in the blurry haze where time and space melted into one misty soup, he braced himself against a wall on the way until he pushed through a door that should have led outside. He slammed it shut behind him, more fiercely than he had intended.

But he did not find himself outside on the street, in the cold, where his breath condensed before his mouth, standing in the pale moonlight as it pierced a ring of clouds—but back in the gallery in front of the living painting of Doctor Edward Carnaby.

The doctor glared into the night outside his front door. Poked his head outside to see where his nightly intruder had staggered off to but paid it no more mind. Did not notice a lack of footprints in the thin layer of snow. He shut the door. The lock loudly fell into place.

Vincent leaned against the wall, watching through the painting.

The snowfall of flurries gently drifting down onto the cobblestone-covered streets made him sway again, made Vincent's legs buckle. Hypnotic as it was, it almost fully robbed him of his senses.

He crashed back down onto that comfortable sofa inside his opulent gallery.

"A fascinating jaunt, darling," said Orinrya.

"And a convenient alibi," he replied, shooting another glance at Sir Dwyer's body.

They laughed at the dead philistine.

The blur continued, as Vincent did not recall how he had gotten from the Reaper's painting of Doctor Carnaby in the main hall—to his private parlor.

Slumped into a different sofa, he peered up at the gigantic portrait of himself.

The renowned painter Léon Choffard had spent months completing this masterpiece. A stylized depiction of Vincent's likeness. Though already statuesque in the flesh, Choffard's artistry had lent the portrait a special something that portrayed Vincent as even more attractive than humanly possible—which Vincent regularly and smirkingly attributed to their brief and romantic tryst.

"It truly captures your pleasant face," Orinrya said.

"Thank you, dear."

Silence.

A large clock tick-tocked away from the edge of the room, with everything around him swamped in shadows, two lanterns shedding just enough light that he could study the rendition of his own portrait.

"I wonder," he suddenly said. "What would happen if we entered that picture? Where would it take us?"

Silence.

Orinrya stayed silent.

"Hm, I like that answer. It is intriguing, love. So mysterious. You say so much by saying nothing, you know that?"

She laughed inside his head. A sweet and seductive laugh. He smiled in response.

"Will you ever tell me what you are? Or is that destined to be our perpetual dance?"

She laughed more.

"In due time," she said.

"Like getting our hands on that book."

"Yes, in due time, darling."

"And the woman."

"The scarred one?"

"No. Yes. Her too," he said. He bit his lip, clamped his eyes shut and sighed. "I meant the lady from the new world, that witch-doctor. And all the others in her company. That bandaged inquisitor—oh, how I would like to peel his bandages away and hear all his stories. It's brilliant how all these fascinating people—and things—are all coming together here, all at once."

"Yes. You feel it," Orinrya said.

"Feel what?"

"The quickening."

"What do you mean?"

"Something new being born. Old dreams that are dying, and a new world being birthed before our eyes," she breathed.

Vincent shuddered with a chill running down his spine.

"And what is this new world you speak? You must know. You know so much. I know you know," Vincent whispered, erupting into a crazed cackle over how silly he found his own words.

She smiled. He felt it. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled as a soft breeze swept through his parlor like a ghostly presence. Like soft fingertips that brushed against his lips, not his own. Or perhaps his own, just numbed from the excess of strong spirits only slowly wearing off.

"The real question, darling—what will you do when you bear witness to the reckoning? Will you hold the reins? Or will you pass them off to see what spectacle others may unfold?" Orinrya asked.

The corners of his lips twitched. Both he and she, they smiled simultaneously.

Not gracing her questions with any straight answer, he only returned more questions.

"Are you angel? Or devil?"

Silence.

"Good answer."

He laughed a hollow laugh, eventually mounting into a long and wistful sigh.

Vincent drifted off into a dreamless sleep. And he never yearned for such, as he lived his dreams in every waking moment.

A lingering thought that swam atop the sea of oblivion.

Sputtering awake, the lanterns were no longer lit. Daylight flooded through open doors into the parlor. He still rested in the sofa, sprawled out across it like his own likeness in the gigantic portrait towering over him.

The air was cold and had left him with a painfully stiff neck.

As he shuffled lazily across shiny marble floors, he surveyed the damage he had wrought the night before. The glass shards scattered across the gallery, and the dead body of Sir Dwyer, still left in his own pool of blood.

Work to do. A body to be rid of. A chief to blackmail. A new slew of rumors to seed.

The rich lord took a deep breath and sighed again, rubbing the back of his neck.

He smiled.

"Oh, the woes of pleasure before business," he reckoned.

They both laughed at the thought.

"But that book—"

"Will be ours."

"Its magick—"

"We will wield it," they sang together, dulcet syllables spilling from Vincent's lips.

"Or will you be wielding it, while I soar to incredible heights on your back?" he asked.

And there was silence.

—Submitted by Wratts

#spoospasu #spookyspaghettisundae #horror #short story #writing #my writing #literature #spooky #fiction #submission #gothic #gothic horror #gaslight romance #Victorian #Crimsonport #Tales #Red Coast #Lord Vincent Vance #Baxter Hanrahan #Outer Wall Reaper #serial killer #murderer #painting #murder #Edward Carnaby #Nora Morrissey #doctor #magick #astral travel #teleportation

[spectacletheater]

Spectacle Radio ep.42, 09.15.19 :: Downtown! Uptown! Midtown! Crosstown!

Miguel Piñero (Seeking the Cause) Harvey Matusow's Jew's Harp Band - Velvet Tooth Paste Chantilly Lace recitation (High Spirits) R. Stevie Moore - Chantilly Lace (The Uncle Floyd Show) Perry Monroe - Better Times at the Beach (Killing Spree) Gary Stockdale - Sax Solo (Dance of the Damned) Lew Stone & his Monseigneur Band (Nightfall) Curtis Mayfield - Father Confessor (Short Eyes) Brooklyn Sounds - Chango Santero Perry Monroe - Hugs -Leeza Seduction Theme (Killing Spree) Splendid Recipes - Holiday in Pittsburgh Paris Chant Harvey Matusow's Jew's Harp Band - Carroll - Carlos D'Alessio - Vera Baxter - Kip Hanrahan - score from Pinero The Workdogs - Jane Gone Bruce Smeaton - The Cars that Ate Paris Ghetto Brothers - Ghetto Brothers Power Harvey Matusow's Jew's Harp Band - Clooch Hunt Bruce Smeaton - The Cars that Ate Paris Church Piano Lady - Little Brown Jug (The Cars that Ate Paris) Zamfir - Miranda (Picnic at Hanging Rock) Florence Reece - Which Side Are You On - Bruce Smeaton - The Cars that Ate Paris

#Spectacle Radio #Newtown Radio #film score #soundtrack #public access #Peter Weir #Nuyorican

[ultrasfcb-blog]

European Rugby Champions Cup: CJ Stander try earns Munster draw at Exeter

European Rugby Champions Cup: CJ Stander try earns Munster draw at Exeter

European Rugby Champions Cup: CJ Stander try earns Munster draw at Exeter

Luke Cowan-Dickie’s try and Exeter’s steadfast defence were almost the difference at Sandy Park

Heineken Champions Cup Exeter (10) 10 Try: Cowan-Dickie Con: Steenson Pen: Steenson Munster (3) 10 Try: Stander Con: Carbery Pen: Carbery

CJ Stander’s try earned Munster a 10-10 Champions Cup draw against Exeter after it seemed the hosts’ resolute defence would hold out at a windy Sandy Park.

The Chiefs made 116 tackles in the first half – twice as many as their opponents – and made the most of a rare foray into the Munster 22 when Luke Cowan-Dickie went over to score.

Munster persevered and finally broke through when Stander powered over.

Exeter came close to scoring late on, but broke down in the 22nd phase.

Munster pressure eventually pays off

It was a pulsating end to the match which was a scrappy affair in the first 40 minutes.

The sides only had a penalty each to show for their efforts in that period until Cornish hooker Cowan-Dickie applied the finishing touch to great forward play, two minutes before the break.

There was renewed pressure from the two-time champions straight after the restart. A huge drive from the maul in the 53rd minute should have resulted in a try, but once again Exeter dealt with the threat.

The Red Army went for the jugular again, but this time full-back Phil Dollman produced a superb tackle to stop Michael Haley, who was looking to offload for an almost certain try.

The visitors finally made the breakthrough in the 63rd minute. First, replacements Tommy O’Donnell and Rhys Marshall each had a go at breaking through the final line of defence, before the ball made its way left to Stander, who found the extra metre.

Exeter fall short in final seconds

Chiefs’ Dave Ewers and team-mate Sam Skinner suffered an accidental clash of heads in the build-up to the try and both needed an immediate head injury assessment (HIA).

Munster were hoping to apply late pressure in the final seconds, but Joey Carbery’s kick landed long in the strong wind which earned Exeter a scrum 22 metres from the opposition try-line.

The Chiefs kept the play alive past the allotted 80 minutes, before a forward ball in the 22nd phase of play saw their hopes of a win disappear.

‘Munster will be happier with the draw’

Exeter director of rugby Rob Baxter: “At half-time I would have been happy with two points, but at the end with a couple of dominant scrums I thought we missed an opportunity to nick it.

“However, we’ve got two points and there are a lot of teams who won’t have two points on the board after the first round. Munster will be the happier with two points away from home.”

Munster head coach Johann Van Graan: “Nobody gave us a chance so I’m incredibly proud of the performance. We had chances to win it but so did they.

“They are a very difficult side to play against as they have a great ability to retain possession.”

Exeter: Dollman; Nowell, Slade, Whitten, Cordero; Steenson (c), Townsend; Moon, Cowan-Dickie, Williams; Dennis, Skinner; Ewers, Armand, Kvesic.

Replacements: Yeandle, Hepburn, Francis, Atkins, Lawday, Maunder, Simmonds, Hill.

Munster: Haley; Conway, Goggin, R Scannell, Earls; Carbery, Williams; Kilcoyne, N Scannell, Archer; Kleyn, Beirne; O’Mahony (c), Cloete, Stander.

Replacements: Marshall, J Cronin, Ryan, Holland, O’Donnell, N Cronin, JJ Hanrahan, Arnold.

For the latest rugby union news follow @bbcrugbyunion on Twitter.

BBC Sport – Rugby Union ultras_FC_Barcelona

ultras FC Barcelona - https://ultrasfcb.com/rugby-union/12762/

#Barcelona

#Rugby Union

[spookyspaghettisundae]

The Crow or the Sparrow

Drops of blood and footprints marked the snow, visible in broad daylight for even the worst of hunters to follow with ease. But no sane hunter would dare pursue such a trail. Neither animal nor man had left these tracks.

Claws that had slain countless men and women and children. Walking upon two legs.

A slight limp, owed to injuries from which it had bled, pushing forward, ever forward, lurching, and shambling farther and farther away from the city.

Snow crunched under every light footstep taken by two shadowy figures. In pursuit of their inhuman quarry, they strode across uneven terrain, far away from man-made roads and paths. Garbed in heavy jackets, with trouser legs and boots and coattails caked in the white powder of snow, their slender silhouettes almost blended in with the forest around them when they came to a stop.

Even in broad daylight, the canopy of barren trees that made up the sprawling Blackwood sufficed to blanket it in a dreary, dreamy gloom. Little clouds of condensing air puffed away from the mouths of the two hunters, forming beyond the scarves and tricorne hats that covered their faces, then dissipating in the cold breeze.

One of them looked around, as if confused. The other stared at him, then followed his erratically wandering gaze.

Were they being followed by something else?

“You sense something?” asked the other in a hushed hiss. The sound of her voice sliced through the wintry air like a knife. “Is it here? Watching us?”

“No,” Johnn muttered. “It's—I’ve been here before.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed at him.

“What is that supposed to mean? You’re a bloody bandit that has been robbing the king’s men in this fucking forest for years. I’d be surprised if you hadn’t,” Nora said.

He almost swiveled, glared at her, then swallowed a response.

The two of them breathed heavily, using the brief respite to recover from their forced march through the layer of unforgiving snow.

He finally replied, with a voice that trembled, “The Blackwood is huge. There’re parts no man has ever stepped foot in. Parts no man should ever step foot in, what with the fair—”

“Shut up. Don’t waste breath on their wretched name. Is this their domain? Is that why we’re stopping?”

“No. Like I said—I’ve been here before,” Johnn repeated.

He pointed to a large boulder, now covered in snow, near a fallen tree, where a tangle of gnarled roots stood out from the ground, where a storm had uprooted the ancient tree. A natural landmark, no doubt.

“You can hear the ocean from here, yeah?”

Nora only nodded.

“And the trickle of a brook nearby?”

“No, what—”

“Well, I can, and I know this place. The brook leads to a cave. You have to dive through water for a bit, then you reach a larger cave, connecting to an even larger one. A cove where some slaver pirates used to hide out.”

“So what? Are you thinking he—”

“I don’t know. But it’s where Terry died, and where I killed their captain. And it is giving me the creeps just thinkin’ about it.”

“Then what in the hell is there to give you the creeps anymore? Thought you Merry Lot did all those windbags in,” Nora said, every word mumbled more than the last.

“I killed Shark-Eyes,” Johnn said, the sentence riding on a sigh. “Have the scars to always remind me and can’t taste sugar anymore where I bit my tongue to break his spell.”

“What—he some kind of warlock?”

“How should I know? The unnatural is your specialty,” he quipped.

Nora’s heartbeat picked up speed when she sensed Johnn smirk underneath his bandana.

“All I know is that he is dead, he used to work some sorta black magick, and his hideout used to be ‘round these parts. Now, what do you think the odds are, that—you know, possibly—the alchemist we’re chasin’ is a bit balmy on the crumpet—what are the odds his magick has got something to do with old dead Shark-Eyes and his warlock—warlockery? What do you even call that shite?”

“I call it bad news. Who cares what it’s called?” Nora said, ending her question on a sharp note that left no question.

Johnn pointed past the uprooted tree and the boulder sticking out of the pristine snow. Before he could say something, Nora said, “Fine, who knows—maybe there is a connection. Maybe not. What say you, though—hear me out—you stop being a poodle-faker, we ignore this for now, and we follow the fucking blood trail we’ve been following since bloody Lesterfield?”

She drew her flint-lock pistol for emphasis and tapped the brim of her hat with the weapon’s fine barrel—now adorned with intricate etchings of crucifixes and mystic seals used to exorcise demons. Johnn’s shoulders heaved and then slumped in a shrug, punctuated by another sigh.

“Fine,” he groaned. “But if we end up following this trail into that cave, then…”

“Then what?”

Johnn stammered several broken sentences that failed to connect, prompting Nora to tell him to shut up. She sprung into motion before he could protest, trudging through the snow. He followed.

Their breathing and the crunching of frosted grounds accompanied them for dozens of paces more, as they gained speed and vigor, staving off the cold. The rest of the forest stayed eerily silent. Not even the crows dared to caw that day.

Johnn murmured behind her, “You could wear a dress if—”

“Shut up.”

He did.

Dozens of paces more they followed the trail. Passing snapped branches, here; holes in the snow turned vermillion, where droplets of blood had fallen, there. And always those lurching motions, like the creature sometimes moved on all fours, then on his legs again. Claws had scarred a tree trunk in his path where the alchemist had braced himself and caught his breath. Now long gone—but the huntress could almost smell the ghost of his presence, only hours ahead of them passing through here.

The trickling sound of water grew louder as they hiked, loud enough that even Nora could hear it despite the noise of their march.

The red dots in the snow and the tracks spoke volumes: Nora read immediately how the transformed alchemist, Baxter Hanrahan, had trampled down the grounds around here, splashing himself with the cold and refreshing water. Cleansing his wound.

A singular bullet rested in the brook, water flowing around it where it jittered. The stream of water was not strong enough to carry it away. He must have extracted that from his injury.

Then he had followed the natural path leading down the flow of the brook. Because it had stopped snowing several hours ago, and these trails had been left after the snowfall, she knew they were gaining on the wounded monster.

Standing still and letting her gaze sweep in the direction in which the thin stream of water flowed, framed by the serene, shining and glistening teeth of ice that lined the brook’s edges, the tracks led right into a small, cavernous opening, yawning with a deep darkness that her eyes could not fathom.

Nora clicked her tongue and raised a hand to silence Johnn before he could utter any stupid remarks about having been right. She swallowed the urge to swear up a storm of profanities that could have made a sailor blush.

More than him having been right, she hated the idea that they had to go search a cave for the damned alchemist. More than that even, she hated the idea that this might somehow be connected to another damned sorcerer.

“We’re better off not going in that way,” Johnn said. “Unless you like your gunpowder wet, I suggest we climb down the smuggler’s cove, rather than crawling through the thief’s entrance.”

Clicking her tongue again, Nora shook her head.

Johnn pulled up his crossbow and she could hear the smugness riding on his voice as he added, “Of course, if you chose to use—”

Pointing a finger at his face and then turning her head to follow the gesture with a furious glare sufficed to shut him up again this time. Seeing only his gray eyes sparkle out from in between his hat and scarf sufficed to convey the smugness he found in his small victory. She knew his face too well.

Then that sparkle froze. His gaze hardened. Stared through her. Past her. At something that only now caught the corner of her eye, like the shadow she always spotted at the edge of her vision. Only tangible now.

Within a split second, they aimed their weapons at the third figure; bodily reactions and instincts that happened without thinking. Nora stared down the sights of her pistol and blinked once her gaze met that of yellow, strange eyes. Wide, with a strip of black glistening wet in them, like looking into the eyes of a goat.

Indeed, the two hunters stared into the eyes of a bestial man, whose face resembled a goat, crowned by a harmonious pair of winding horns, a lot like those of a ram. A figure that resembled a man in that it stood upright, though he stood upon hooves for feet. Garbed in layers of thick linen cloth and a dark red robe, frayed around the edges. His clawed hands clutched an old wooden staff, against which he leaned.

Like the two, this goat-man was frozen. In shock.

Nora recognized the sentiment. She recognized the goat-man.

“No,” she said, clipped.

Lowered her pistol and raised an open gloved palm towards Johnn, adding, “Lower your weapon, he is harmless. Well, maybe not harmless, but—not harmful.”

Johnn’s hesitation surfaced in form of the crack of his leather clad finger loosening from around the trigger of his crossbow, but the tension in his defensive posture remained.

“Isn’t it—isn’t he—”

“Not all fair—not all of them are bad, I suppose. Well, at least he isn’t,” she said, peeling her attention away from Johnn and looking back to the goat-man.

The beast-man tilted his head and his intelligent goat eyes betrayed a fearful intelligence as they darted back and forth in between Johnn and Nora. Cutlery and tiny wooden carvings, hanging from threads of twine attached to his belt, clacked, and jingled softly. How he had appeared out of nowhere, without a sound, such a thing only the fair folk could explain.

Goat-man not only leaned on his staff—he hugged it, as if it offered him protection, yet only rendered his appearance more vulnerable and innocent. Johnn finally, audibly, lowered his crossbow.

Nora had rescued the goat-man in this same forest. Slew a vicious witchcrafter who wanted to eviscerate the creature for his innards, for divining secrets or some nonsense.

Over a whole year prior to this day.

Understandably frightening in appearance to most, Nora still sensed the same softness in the fair creature as he stood before them. The bushy hair on his chin swayed gently in the breeze, almost underlining that notion.

He had helped her before—returned the favor—when she escaped from the penitentiary and almost perished in these same woods, injured and alone, at the mercy of autumn’s chill.

The goat-man nodded his head. Stayed silent, as he always did. A greeting, perhaps?

Nora suspected they spoke no common tongue that they could share. They had yet to exchange any words.

But the goat-man pointed to the cave entrance upon which he stood. To where the brook continued to trickle away, flowing into that gaping shadowy hole. Where a greater, more sinister darkness awaited them.

The goat-man shook his head. With purpose and deliberation, he shook his head back and forth, warning them of the danger below.

“We have no choice, friend,” she said, speaking those words with a softness that felt even alien to herself. She, too, shook her head.

They could not speak to one another in words they understood. Not like this. Yet they both understood.

The goat-man turned slowly, carefully, and raised a hand. He pointed one of his long, blackened claws to the trees behind him, following with his own eyes to draw all attention to it. To where the soothing sound of ocean waves lapped against jagged cliffs.

“Is he showing us where to go?” Johnn asked. “I mean, we would have gone there anyway.”

Nobody answered.

The goat-man turned to peer back at Nora. She nodded deeply at him in return.

“Thank you,” she said.

The goat-man tilted his head again and stood still. Watched.

Nora started in the direction he had pointed to. She shot a glance at Johnn and waved at him to follow.

She stopped again as the goat-man descended from the rocks above the cave entrance, approaching her. Not frozen in fear, but unsure what to expect, she studied the goat-man’s every motion until he halted in front of her, standing only one pace away. He looked so old. So ancient. His fur grayed and silvery. And he smelled of pine resin, and campfires, and a unique, strange musk.

From inside his tattered robes, he produced something, held caringly.

As his sharply clawed fingers unfurled, he presented a tiny object in his weathered palm. There rested a small bird, intricately carved from wood. Impossible to recognize what kind of bird it represented, she locked eyes with the goat-man to discern what this gesture meant.

He stretched his arm out further to her, splaying his fingers to the limit, motioning her to take the carved keepsake from him.

Nora took it and closed her gloved hand around it with the same loving care that he must have applied to craft it. She nodded again to express gratitude and the goat-man mimicked the motion.

They withdrew from him and walked on towards the bluffs, where the sound of the ocean’s upset waves beckoned them.

Looking over her shoulder, Nora found the goat-man to be watching them leave, observing their steadfast march to doom. She found herself studying the carved bird in her palm every few steps.

It reminded her of both of a sparrow and a crow. Which—was unclear.

It felt more like a symbol. Like a charm or talisman.

Spiraling, harmonic patterns, mirroring those upon the goat-man’s staff had been shaved into its surfaces and painted dark, also reminding her of the old ways, the old days of the kingdom that only survived in museums and ruins, driven into fading obscurity by the church’s relentless efforts to quell ancient evils.

She eventually shoved the tiny item into one of her coat pockets and when she looked back to where she expected to see the goat-man still watching them, she only saw the slender black trunks of cold and naked trees. He had vanished. As silently as he had appeared in the first place.

Johnn stared at her till she met his gaze.

“What was that about?”

“I don’t know,” Nora muttered.

She trained her eyes on the snowy grounds before her once again. The ocean grew louder with every step, heavier with every herald of the waves. More powerful. Foretelling the danger they knowingly approached. The crunching of snow underfoot ceased once they reached the edge and naked rocks and gravel crackled underneath the soles of their boots.

They overlooked a steep rocky drop to the crashing waves, reaching from one end of the Red Coast to the other as far as they could see. Fog and clouds swallowed the horizon beyond the sea.

Johnn nodded his head to indicate something on the cliff’s face beneath them. A shadow between the rocks. Likely hard to spot from the water, barely visible from their vantage point. Truly, a perfect location for dubious seafarers to hide out.

“Down there. Hard to spot, but that’s where they ran their boats into the cove. We climb down, there’s a natural ledge we can use to enter. Really—watch your step now,” he said.

They did as he foretold. Nora’s hand slipped once, her boot in a different instance, causing a chunk of rocky earth to plummet into the depths, bouncing down the unforgiving cliffs, and disappearing into the waves far down.

But they took their time. If the mad chemist, Hanrahan, was hiding in these caves, then they would execute him sooner or later. Better than tumbling down these jagged stones, breaking bones, and landing in the icy cold embrace of the sea.

Slowly, cautiously, they descended, bit by bit. As Johnn dropped down the final stretch of a few steps, he landed on a rough and natural surface, staggering as he regained his poise, then readying his crossbow and pointing it at something Nora could not yet see from where she clung to the cliff’s wall.

Nora waited before dropping down, ensuring that he had only drawn his weapon as a precaution. He looked up at her and then nodded to confirm she could safely follow. His stern gaze carried the same tension that she felt in her every joint.

Then she followed, descending with continuous caution, until she dropped down herself and landed on the natural ledge with a stifled grunt.

The darkness of the cave here felt far less foreboding and oppressive at first glance.

Broken and shrunken by the ridges that jotted out of the sea in clusters near the cliffs, the waves sloshed more gently at the edge where they stood. The gaping mouth of this hidden entrance overlooked a deep and wide cavern, large enough to house a significant sea vessel.

Standing in stark contrast to how hard it would be to spot the cave from afar, the natural structure opened to almost monolithic proportions. Stalactites hung from a high and vast ceiling like rows of teeth. Very deep inside, far from where they could see, the darkness swallowed the cavern’s depths.

Somewhere, even deeper inside, a small light glimmered. A torch, or a gas-lit lantern perhaps. Its tiny flame danced, distant and forlorn.

Nora’s hand crept to her pistol, then decided against it. Metal rustled against leather as she drew her cutlass instead.

Their quarry was here.

The two hunters exchanged glances and carefully traversed the grounds, weaving in between broken stalagmites and advancing only slowly to prevent any unwanted noise from announcing their arrival. The ocean swallowed the few sounds they made.

Rotten, old wooden planks creaked once Johnn left the rocky ledge and stepped foot onto the hidden pier. He froze in place and waited, as did Nora, both staring into the darkness, letting their aim travel back and forth, expecting their prey to be hiding anywhere where he could pounce from a place of hiding.

Something blotted out the tiny light in the distance for a split second. Just enough that untrained eyes may have missed it. But both Nora and Johnn had noticed. Not a word was exchanged.

The shadows were many. Many blind spots silently stared back at them, unblinking, unmoving. Testing their courage. Nora felt her scarf in between hat and hair growing damp with sweat, colder, and colder as they lurked deeper and deeper into the cavern, until the shadows engulfed them fully.

Hanrahan had ample space and opportunity to hide and hide well. To watch his hunters and gauge the appropriate reaction.

For as slowly as they progressed, their eyes adjusted to the dark. The gloomy twilight of the fog-covered ocean behind them, they crept closer and closer to the tiny light. Entering a meandering, narrow cave, with only the light of the lonesome lantern left as their guide. Just enough to see where they were going, but not enough to discern the depths of branching paths, through which a cold breeze softly whistled, and Nora’s tension grew, expecting the alchemist to attack from anywhere now.

Johnn had taken the lead, advancing with a certainty that reflected his claim of having been here before. He seemed to not notice a roiling fog or smoke that crawled across the well-treaded rock of the cave floors, coiling around their legs like a carpet of misty serpents.

Nora wanted to say something but refused to alert their monstrous quarry to their presence if she could.

As she reached out to grab Johnn’s shoulder, the unnatural fog expanded rapidly, filling the corridors with a thick soup of gray mist, drowning out that tiny light and delving everything into pitch-black. It strangely smelled like honey. Her gloved fingers connected to Johnn’s shoulder.

He slipped from her grip, jolting forward without a word. Tiny rocks crunched under pressure. Something stifled a gasp from her beloved, as if covering his own mouth.

But carrying his crossbow, he had no free hands to do so.

The leather of Nora’s glove cracked again as she clutched her cutlass tightly and withdrew it towards her own body, flipping it down just in case she bumped into Johnn.

In the ensuing silence that draped itself over her, she hissed like a snake, “You will pay.”

The mists swirled as if they obeyed unspoken commands. Unnatural as it was, commanded by sorcery, this fog dissipated, having served its purpose. A presence loomed above, standing atop an elevated platform. There stood Baxter Hanrahan. His humanity long gone, now an abominable creature of unholy proportions.

Hideous lips parted to display rows of crooked, jagged teeth, no longer a maw that resembled a human’s mouth. Garbed only in rags and torn remnants of fabric, most of the chemist’s mutated body stood exposed. In the faint glow of the gas-lit lantern, his skin looked pallid and deformed, thrumming as if disease wracked every limb or multiple heartbeats pulsed inside his chest, bulging with veins and pustules and patches of mangy hair. A third eye blinked upon his shoulder, making Nora’s stomach knot at the sight.

In the clawed clutches of the monstrous creature, Johnn trembled. He had lost his hat and scarf, which now rested together on the stone floor of the large chamber they all stood in. He did not squirm against the iron grip of his captor, whose massive hand clamped down tightly over the brigand’s mouth—the long, blackened claws twitched with dangerous closeness to the artery on his neck. Another hulking arm gripped Johnn tight, crushing his own arms against the creature as it held him, and leaving him no space to wiggle free or fight back.

And the monstrous Hanrahan just leered at Nora. The pistol hanging from her belt weighed heavy against her hip now, and she burned to sling it out. But the creature’s cruel smile said one thing, and one thing clearly: one wrong move, and he would rip Johnn’s throat right out.

Cages made of wrought iron lined the sides of this sprawling cave chamber, where old pirate pickaxes had roughly hewn its walls into shape. The cages all stood eerily empty, manacles dangling lifelessly from their top bars, their floors littered with old straw and stains of human blood and refuse.

Nora sensed the despair of those who had once been kept here and tasted the evil of those who kept them. She raised her blade, but held it sideways, raising her other, empty hand alongside in a clear gesture: to display surrender.

A throaty, baritone guffaw emerged from the monster’s bulging throat. Johnn squirmed now after all, provoking the creature to grip him more tightly. The tips of Hanrahan’s claws scraped against his captive’s exposed skin, drawing out thin rivulets of blood that quickly ran down Johnn’s neck.

Nora removed her hat and tossed it aside. She pulled her scarf down. The smell of sea salt and rust overwhelmed her senses and a quick scan of the room revealed only two exits. The one she had entered from, and one beneath the ledge upon which Hanrahan and Johnn stood, supported by old, wooden, rickety beams.

“I know what you did in the city, Baxter Hanrahan. I know all about you, Outer Wall Ripper,” she said. She clenched her teeth, holding back the anger that welled up from her gut. Good, she thought. It would mask all else. “Like I said—you will pay. If you think taking another hostage will help you, then you have made a grave mistake.”

The creature growled, “I can tell you what I told all before you.”

His voice sent shivers down Nora’s spine, defying her expectations as she had not anticipated such a creature to be so capable of complete and comprehensible speech.

“You will never stop me. You are just human,” he snickered. “You are just—beneath me in every way. Just a woman.”

Teeth still clenched, so hard they threatened to crack, Nora could only imagine how hideous her own grin must have looked now. She would spite this awful creature.

“I have slain ladies, high and low, strong and sickly alike. I have slain men, one of them three heads taller than yourself, and I have sampled the supple flesh of children. You all fight, you all run, you all whimper and beg for mercy, but there is none. You are all game to me. All sport. All walking sacks of organs that can be harvested for a greater purpose. All your suffering amounts to my victorious innovations and to my pleasure.”

Nora kept her eyes focused on the creature, awaiting his first mistake. They always made a mistake. Especially when they talked this much.

Did all monsters enjoy hearing their own words out loud? Vampyria, wolf-men, demons, wraiths, fair beasts—everything she had ever read of in the Bestiarium Nox and seen for herself—they all monologued.

“Yes, yes. Keep talking. There’s not one ounce of this bunk I haven’t heard before,” she said. As the awful toothy grin faded from her face, a melodiously mocking tone entered her next sentences as she rendered them, “We little humans are weak prey for you to play with. Let me guess—you’ll keep me alive for as long as possible, because you have oh-so-much-worse things in store for me. Am I close? I apologize, it is all the same drivel to me. Please do correct me if I’m wrong.”

She shot a lop-sided smirk at the creature and both Hanrahan’s and Johnn’s faces fell simultaneously. One taken aback by the sheer audacity of this short woman—the other surprised and fearful that she was taunting Hanrahan into slashing his neck.

“You know nothing,” Hanrahan snarled. His claws clamped down. Blood refused to exit Johnn’s neck this time, awaiting only the right amount of pressure and pull to slice through his flesh. “What do you know of me? I am like a god amongst men. Alchemy has made me god-like. You are a fool if you’re too blind to recognize divinity in the flesh, staring back into your wretched little soul. Yes, I can taste your darkness, too. You have killed so many that you have forgotten what it’s like to be human, naked in their innocence and justified in their wrath. To one such as you, I am as a god.”

Nora whistled out a sharp tone, just piling on more derision.

“A god you say? You are out of your bloody mind. The last so-called ‘gods’ I met all bled out like the regular jossers who get the tar kicked out of them by sailors in seedy bars. I’ve just had about enough of you petty pretenders. Why don’t you just slash that fool’s fucking neck already and we can get on with this?”

Johnn’s eyes went wide with dread. All air of superiority had drained from Hanrahan’s presence. Only a glimmer of fury remained, reflecting the tiny lantern’s light, now growing into a flame behind the monster’s eyes.

Nora smirked once more and tilted her blade to show the alchemist the sharp edge of her cutlass.

“Come on, you tosser. Let’s see how godly you are after I gut you like a bloody pig.”

The glint on her blade caught Hanrahan’s eye.

This was the moment. The moment she had been building up to.

Time grinded to a halt.

Defying all, she slung out her pistol with her free hand and fired. The flint struck; a cloud of smoke exploded with the bright jet flame shooting out from the intricately marked barrel. The silver bullet might help, but all she needed was the surprise.

Blood sprayed from the platform, splattering the rocky floors, prompting her to sneer, but Johnn had elbowed Hanrahan and broken free from his grasp, tumbling down onto the ground, and coming to rest on his side, chest heaving and struggling to get back up on his feet after the hard landing.

Only little blood pooled beneath Nora’s beloved fool. As he looked up at her, she saw the vermillion dripping from his collarbone rather than his neck, and the spray of blood had come from Hanrahan’s forehead where her bullet had struck.

The alchemist pawed at his own skull to assess the damage, causing the rage in Nora to make way for fear. A bullet to the skull proved insufficient to stop the abomination, and as he saw his own blood in his monstrous palm, his eyes darted up until they locked with Nora's—a fiendish gaze, saturated with murderous intent.

She reacted quickly but not quickly enough. Her empty pistol had yet to clatter against the stony ground when Hanrahan flew at her like a living boulder, catapulting himself at her with unbridled rage. Her hand had gone to grab another pistol from her belt, but the force of a whole horse-drawn cart barreled into her, knocking the wind out of her lungs, and provoking a shriek of pain as she felt ribs crack upon being crushed between iron cage bars and the monster.

In a frenzy of flailing claws and inhuman screeches, Hanrahan quickly slashed Nora’s coat to ribbons, tearing her shirt to shreds and leaving her with countless cuts in a matter of seconds. The blade in her hand sliced as she swung and jabbed and jabbed at the alchemist-monster, barely connecting but forcing him to retreat a few steps.

Pain soared from a deep cut where a claw had lacerated her leg. Nora groaned and one of her knees threatened to give out under her own weight, but she held the blade out in front of her, in between herself and the monster, who now grinned at her again, baring his crooked and vicious fangs.

One wrong move, and those teeth would tear out her neck.

The sadistic smile wiped itself from his face when a barbed arrowhead emerged from his neck. Both Hanrahan and Nora stared at it with surprise, watching blood drip from its pointy tip.

Following its origin, the bolt from Johnn’s crossbow had lodged itself into the alchemist’s neck. Johnn, still lying on the ground, now held his discharged crossbow in his hands, leaned up against a cage, grinning smugly at the monster, his own bloodied teeth on display. That grin also faded when Hanrahan whipped around.

Undeterred by the projectile sticking out of his nape, he grabbed Johnn and tossed him aside like a broken toy, eliciting a pained shout as Johnn crashed into another cage, collapsing as soon as he tried to get back up after smashing his head against an iron bar.

Hanrahan howled in pain, reacting to Nora ramming her sword into his back—and then twisting the blade. He spun around again, shoving her away, thus disarming her with the masterless blade now sticking out of his back.

That throaty and deep laugh repeated itself as Hanrahan guffawed at her. He laughed at their attempts to kill him. His laughter broke and his newfound grin faltered as he choked and coughed, almost sounding human for a moment. Almost pitiful.

Almost.

Giving no quarter, Nora slung out the other pistol from her belt and shot him in the side of the head. The smoke cleared quickly, and something gravelly and menacing emerged from his throat—a furious growl. Blood sputtered from the injury, yet he wobbled only slightly where he stood.

His rage simmered, ready to unleash his full frenzy. Nora could feel it, like waves of heat and hatred emanating from his hulking, deformed body. Up close, he smelled like rotten fruit and excrements and vomit.

She quickly looked around for something, anything, but pulled a silvered dagger from behind her back—it would serve until she could retrieve the cutlass from Hanrahan’s back.

The alchemist ignored her and picked up a small object from the table upon which the gas lantern sat. A metal syringe in his clutch, Hanrahan’s paw dwarfed it. He laughed again, erupting into another hacking, wheezing cough, and then jammed the needle into his own neck. The sickly pale flesh thrummed and pulsed there, and his veins turned pitch-black, like a disease running from the injection and spreading quickly throughout his monstrous body.

The huntress was not going to find out what this meant—the silver-lined dirk in her hand flashed twice, reflecting the small light’s flame as she stabbed Hanrahan twice with quick jabs, trying to circle around him.

But he turned with her and his left arm grotesquely almost doubled in size. The claws tipping his grotesque fingers shot out to twice their length, rivaling Nora’s dagger.

Her heart skipped a beat, and he swatted the knife from her hand. The pain of several cuts on her arm flared up with delay, upon which she clenched her teeth and paced backwards.

Hanrahan continued to grow, all over, hunching over and bracing himself against the floor with his meaty fists, like a gorilla she had seen in the zoo.

“I am not merely like a god,” he spoke, now sounding like four voices spoken in unison, so deep that they threatened to open a yawning abyss straight to hell. “I am god.”

The crossbow bolt lodged into his neck now snapped under the roiling masses of his transforming flesh. The cutlass shot out of his back, clanging as it rattled and rolled across the stone floor. Johnn crawled towards it, but nowhere nearly as fast as he needed to be. His strength waned.

Hanrahan lunged at Nora again, leaving several gaping cuts across her chest despite her attempts to leap back, and causing her to roll backwards across the ground, away from him. The grit and dust burned in the many scratches where stone all chafed against her injured skin.

The dirk had rolled right out of reach.

“Time to die, worm.”

This was it.

Nora steeled herself, ready to finally meet her end. Out of options.

Out of all the places, to die in a dark cave, forgotten by its owners, unknown, unseen, in a haunted place where nobody would find her. Would she join its phantoms?

Hanrahan lurched forward and he arched backwards, raising that hand of lethal claws high above him, ready to bring it down and impale her once and for all. Ready to rip her heart out with the ease his new form afforded him.

Something whipped out at the alchemist. Coiled and wrapped itself around his wrist in the blink of an eye. Something like twine, or ropes. Or rather: vines. Covered in dark, sickly leaves. And thorns.

Thorns everywhere.

He grunted, surprised as much as Nora over this turn of events. He looked from the tangle of thorny vines that bound his arm and yanked at them. Despite his tremendous, ghastly frame, and swollen mass of muscles, whatever had projected these bindings at him proved far stronger. His eyes bulged and he roared like the foul beast that he was, teeth protruding outward and bloody spittle spraying through the air. So loudly he roared that it filled all these caves and left an unpleasant ringing in Nora’s ears.

They both followed the vines to their source, a dark silhouette that stood upon the elevated platforms where Hanrahan had held Johnn hostage, just outside the sphere of the lantern’s faint glow. The flame within the lamp dimmed and nearly went out, as if it tried to conceal the presence.

A woman cackled from there. Awful, piercing, like a fork being scraped across a metal plate. The vines tugged at Hanrahan again, yanking with far greater force, and he stumbled away from Nora, now fully turning to face his greatest foe yet.

The vines constricted around the alchemist’s arm, causing pus and black tar-like blood to ooze out from the grinding cuts. He howled in pain, roared, and thrashed around, grabbing hold of the vine, and then howling yet again as its thorns pierced his fingers when he gripped it. He tugged and pulled with all his might, yanking left, then yanking right, not once managing to counter the unnatural force that had seized him.

And the cackling continued.

Gritting her teeth and stifling her own groans of pain, Nora scrambled onto her side, then back up onto her feet. She limped towards Johnn, who had fallen unconscious with the hilt of Nora’s cutlass buried underneath his hand.

Another tangle of thorny vines shot out from the darkness and enveloped Hanrahan’s ankle. He fought its pull, but it suddenly jerked towards the shadowy silhouette, causing him to lose his footing, dropping him onto his back with such weight that the stony floors quaked.

Nora’s cutlass came chopping down. His incessant thrashing prevented the blow from cutting into his neck, so it shattered his front teeth and hacked into his cheek, provoking more pained howls from his monstrous maw.

Her boots skidded against the floor as she lurched back, right underneath one of his claws swinging at her in retaliation and only narrowly missing her.

More vines shot out at him, seizing that same claw, and limiting his motion. It curbed his thrashing to the point where Nora’s next blow struck his neck, causing a violent crimson explosion to spray her own face.

Hanrahan gurgled, choking on his own blood, desperately attempting to fight back and to utter more inane threats, but Nora continued her dirty handiwork that she had grown accustomed to inflicting upon all these monsters.

The vines multiplied, pinning Hanrahan down and turning the hulking monster into a quivering ball of helplessness. Blow after blow, Nora cut deeper through his neck, until only a deformed spine held body and head together, and even that soon severed after more overhead swings of her cutlass. The same blade that had executed so many creatures before Hanrahan, adding his life to the many it had dulled itself in claiming.

His eyes had lost all light of so-called “divinity”, having made way to terror. And pleading.

No amount of thrashing or resisting helped the alchemist in the end. The vines held him too tightly, joined by more tangles from the platform, restraining his every limb and allowing Nora to end him.

Between heavy breaths and shuddering as she shrugged off the numbing pain, she spat a gob of saliva and blood onto Hanrahan’s twitching remains. The thorny vines loosened, revealing how they had ripped devastating wounds which may have slowly bled out the alchemist, had her sword not removed his head first.

Those same vines now withdrew, controlled by some otherworldly force. They slowly slithered back from whence they came, like leafy, eyeless serpents; rustling and trembling as they moved. Thorns scraped against stone, scritching and scratching.

Still consigned to death, Nora turned to see their source, ready for them to take her next. For whatever abomination had shown such force in stopping Hanrahan, it would have a far easier time in ending her life next.

She winced, clamping her eyes shut to blot out all pain, fires across her body from the dozens of cuts and bruises she had suffered. Blinking, her vision blurred, in part owed to blood flowing into the corner of her eye. She wiped it away with the back of her hand and blinked again.

Wanting to see the face of her killer, she snatched the lantern from the table, where other mysterious metal syringes clanked against each other. She ignored the alchemist’s supplies and raised the lantern high, stumbling forward. The blade of her cutlass lazily scraped across the stone as she lurched forward, mirroring Hanrahan’s final motions. Nora could barely stand.

In days past, that platform supported the slaver captain, housing a wicked little wooden throne upon which he once sat, allowing him to observe his miserable captives in their iron cages.

Whoever now perched upon that platform, Nora could barely make out any features. Though draped in a rugged, dark cloak, the huntress identified a vaguely feminine figure. Devoured by the shadows of a black hood, almost no face could be perceived. Only shriveled, gray skin and chapped lips that had curled into a devious smile. Teeth, rotten and black, glistening wet.

Hands folded serenely before her hunched figure, like a praying woman, and the vines creeping evermore back to her, shrinking in volume, and disappearing underneath her robes, with cloth so deep that no feet could be seen, only fabric sweeping the platform’s wood and the vines slithering into the void underneath the cloak.

“My pretty little birdie,” spoke the hag. A thick accent, one from up north. Raspy, riddled with phlegm, a voice rife with ridicule. “So nice to see my beautiful little monster in full bloom.”

Nora groaned but it spilled over into a clipped burst of laughter.

Another one of these self-indulgent ghouls, she wagered.

“Get in line, witch,” Nora sighed. Truly exhausted, some part of her preferred the thought of instant death over having to hear another monster ramble on. “I’m sure there are a dozen others who all want to take their pound of flesh from me.”

Nora gripped her head and wheezed with another stifled groan. Eclipsing all other pains, numbing all her senses, her head began to throb in agony. That typical invisible knife sliding into her skull again.

The hag cackled once more, sadistic, and amused.

“No, my pretty. I have all I need now, I am quite alright,” replied the hag with unsettling melody in each syllable.

“And just who the fuck are you, now?”

She cackled again in response. Frosthearte never shared her name lightly. Not even to her chosen orphan.

“I am the decay that gnaws at the roots of the world’s tree. I am the curse that haunts wicked men with eternal suffering. I—”

“Oh, bloody spare me already. If you’re going to kill me, fucking hurry it up.”

Nora spat impotently, nearly fell as she lifted her cutlass to point it at the hag. Her cry, more defiant than ever, echoed through these empty caves.

“Come on, then!”

The lips of the hag drooped down, yielding a displeased frown.

“Sparrow, or crow, my pretty. Are you the crow, or the sparrow?”

“Make some fucking sense!”

“Are you the harbinger of death, or the herald of new blood?”

Nora stumbled as soon as she launched her sword up at the hag. The blade’s metal sang as it rang out, clattering across the wooden platform and striking nobody. Nora’s vision continued to blur, never clearing. Blinking again, she saw:

The hag was gone.

“Death awaits you on your path,” whispered the hag.

Nora swiveled, losing her footing, and falling backwards and banging her previously unhurt elbow against hard stone in the process. She cringed.

But no hag had appeared behind her. Johnn lay unconscious nearby, face down in the dirt. Paces away from him, the body of Hanrahan had stopped twitching in his death throes, motionless and devoid of all life.

No hag in sight. Nowhere.

“You must face Death, the pretender,” the hag’s voice continued in creeping whispers, echoing through the halls, and invading Nora’s mind. Riding on that knife of a headache as it sank deeper into her skull.

Nora gripped her head and—unable to escape this hag’s merciless and incessant whispering—curled up into a fetal position, oblivious to all pain as the headache grew so intolerable that it muted the searing agony from dozens of bleeding cuts.

“I will uphold my end of the bargain, and you shall not see me or mine for a long, long time. But the necromancer who dares call himself Death—he shall stand in your way, and you need be prepared. Prepared to put your old ghosts to rest, one last time.”

Nora groaned in pain, almost bridging into an angry shout, but it died in her throat and she gritted her teeth to stave off the incapacitating pain. She wanted to tell the hag to shut up and get out of her head.

The words she spoke made little sense, but the warnings resonated with her.

She knew exactly what ghosts the hag spoke of.

“This is my parting gift for you, my sweet, beautiful monster.”

The last word echoed not only through the cavernous corridors but reverberated in Nora’s thoughts until it reached a deafening crescendo.

Are you the crow or the sparrow?

Those words arrived not in whispers, but echoes inside Nora’s mind. Memories. Older.

Words she had heard spoken before.

She had met the hag as a child. It all came back to her now.

Never forgotten, only buried. Things that made no sense until this very moment.

“Are you a crow or a sparrow?” The hag had sounded so much more pleasant and nice back then.

The weird witch reached out to take the little sobbing girl’s hand. Little Nora’s hand. The little girl who once stood as the sole survivor in a small village, where pestilence had taken all souls to heaven but hers. The hag looked nowhere as frightful then as she did now.

Before Nora even reached the walls of Crimsonport, huddled with the forlorn masses of all the other refugees who sought to escape the Blight, the hag’s willowy hand held hers, guiding her, and nurturing her. Feeding her soup and potions, by the many campfires, providing poisonous words that jaded her from such an early age on.

“They all abandoned you. Not out of malice but borne of weakness. All may crumble under the might of the Blight. All but you, my pretty little birdie. Eat, grow strong. Defy those who wrong you. Trust nobody. None but me. And never surrender. Never stop fighting. Slay all of them and feed the forest soil with their blood.”

I will always be watching you. The shadow in your wake.

How had she survived a plague? Nora’s mind reeled, but the crippling headache blocked the thought from reaching its rightful conclusion.

Curled up into a fetal position, just like when the hag had found her as a child, the body of fully-grown Nora unfurled again, sprawled out as she reclaimed her fading senses. The dim glow from the gas-lit lantern on the desolate table. In this hopeless, abandoned dungeon. The cold, biting air, removed from the wintry outdoors but carrying the smell of rust and sea salt with it. The smell of death all around.

More than anything else, the pain brought her back. The warmth of her own sticky blood. She winced and stifled another groan as she turned over onto her side. And then onto her belly from there. She crawled, dragged herself over to Johnn. Too exhausted to get back up again.

His shoulders heaved softly, rhythmically. Not dead, merely out of it.

Gingerly, she brushed his long, bloodstained hair from his face, curiously absorbed by the old scar that missed his now-closed eye and ran down the length of his chiseled cheek.

Crow or sparrow? Life or death?

Nora resolved to not let those words reach her. To not let them lead her astray. To do as the hag had told, but not in a way she would like. If it was defiance this hag desired, then she would happily oblige.

She refused to play some sinister game. Refused to accept the strict separation of elements thus proposed. Nora’s fingers curled into Johnn’s hair, running through them, until they found purchase on his coat’s collar, which she gripped. She softly shook him. And then again when he refused to awaken.

Seeing opposites aligned, finding together, she would defy such unnatural severance.

Crow or sparrow? Life or death?

Why not both?

Johnn gasped and his eyes fluttered open.

—Submited by Wratts

#spoospasu #spookyspaghettisundae #horror #short story #writing #my writing #literature #spooky #fiction #submission #Gothic horror #gaslight romance #dark fantasy #Crimsonport #Red Coast #Victorian #Edwardian #Nora Morrissey #Johnn Von Brandt #Baxter Hanrahan #magick #sorcery #alchemy #mutation #monster #evil #vampire #demon #ghost #fair folk

[spookyspaghettisundae]

Die, Monster

The thick bank of fog split and roiled where two figures emerged from it. Tendrils of mist clawed at them, barely letting the two men go as they marched with steadfast determination and haste.

As they followed the nightly street, they kicked up tiny flurries of snow. In this artificial valley, devoid of other people, their boots rapped against the cobblestones, creating hollow echoes to bounce between the walls of the buildings all around them.

Huddled up in layers of thick clothing and standing alone by the recessed door of a block’s front entrance, a haggard man’s face gawked out from the shadows at these two men. While he observed their approach, he sucked on his pipe as if his life depended on it, causing a tiny glimmer in its burning bowels to flare up brightly and reveal his presence to them.

As the two men passed underneath a streetlamp, its gloomy light revealed one of them to be a helmeted constable and the other to be a man in black, carrying a large silver cross around his neck. The haggard man blew out a puff of smoke, studying them all the while.

The other two stopped near Hanrahan’s pharmacy and squinted, scanning the haggard smoker with suspicious glances. He locked eyes with them until they averted their gazes and focused on the abandoned shop instead.

Days ago, someone had splattered paint across the front wall and the building’s boarded up windows. The large letters they had slathered onto the edifice read:

DIE MONSTER

The man in black felt a mild sting of annoyance over the lack of punctuation in the painted phrase.

Underneath it, a torn front page from a newspaper fluttered sadly, barely sheltered from the elements where it had been nailed to a board. Its headline, in large bold letters, aimed to grab attention with spectacle, stating:

OUTER WALL REAPER CLAIMS THIRTEENTH VICTIM!

The police constable sneered at the yellowed paper with a glint of disdain for its author in his eyes. The inquisitor by his side snorted and turned to the haggard man, who still stood across the street, smoking, and continuing to watch them with growing curiosity.

“You there,” the man in black’s words cut through the night like angry little growls. “Do you live around here?”

The haggard man blew out another puff of smoke after inhaling from his pipe, bridging the time it took for the two other men to fully cross the road and broach his vicinity.

He nodded to the inquisitor and thrust out a thumb to the door behind him.

“Live right here,” he said.

“And you enjoy smoking outside in the dead of night, in the bitter cold?” inquired the man in black. The silver cross around his neck flashed for a moment in a gleam of light from the streetlamp when he come to a stop, only paces away from the lonesome man.

“Aye,” growled the smoker, then clearing his throat from the phlegm that had fueled that growl. “I like the nip in the air. Could not sleep.”

He sniffled and wiped underneath his nose with the back of his hand, adding, “S'been a long day.”

“Very well. Enough about you,” the inquisitor said with a sharp tongue, scowling at the smoker. “I am Inquisitor Virgil Armstrong, tasked by the holy church with rooting out evil and nipping it in the bud. And my esteemed colleague here,” he said, the last words dripping with contempt as he gestured to the police constable by his side—up close, a veritable giant of a man who frowned at the inquisitor upon hearing those words spoken thus.

The constable interrupted the speech and finished introductions himself, letting the first words roll out with matching contempt as he said, “Constable Todd, at your service. My colleague and I have a bit of a disagreement that you might help clear up, good sir.”

The constable, towering over both, tipped the helmet crowning his long and angular face, but he sported a similarly dour frown to rival the inquisitor’s.

Armstrong’s mustache wiggled as he wriggled his nose, emitting a short chortle.

“Mister Baxter Hanrahan, the druggist whose business closed over there,” spoke the constable, idly gesturing to the closed shop with a curt nod of his chin, “Ever since accusations of him being the Outer Wall Reaper got loud and he just up and vanished—have you ever noticed anything odd about the pharmacy? Any odd sounds or sights?”

The smoking man shook his head and the corners of his lips twitched with a feeble smile.

“I would be lying if I said I believed that bunk, even with the Reaper still at large,” replied the smoker, wiping over his lips with two fingers. “Mister Hanrahan was a true gentleman and a healer at heart—I can hardly picture him doing—no, I cannot imagine him being a murderer of so many souls. Nah, I’m more inclined to believe the rumors about the bandit ‘king’ Johnn Von Brandt being behind it.

Neither the inquisitor nor the constable looked at the smoker anymore. They exchanged a venomous glance with one another. The smoker cleared his throat and grabbed their attention by picking up again.

“Mind, I have heard a sound here and there from over there, but is that odd? No, I’d wager. I think some urchins or other poor folk might have snuck in there to plunder the place or find shelter from the cold. Odd, I think not.”

The inquisitor glared at the smoking man again and asked with a less rude swing to his tone now, “Might you be more specific? About those sounds?”

The smoker’s lips curled to match his frown and his shaven chin crinkled.

“Couldn’t really tell ya, to be perfectly honest. Sounds? Some wood creaking, a thump here and there, often in broad daylight. Haven’t heard a peep all night,” he said. Pursing his lips for a second, he continued, “Normal sounds, I suppose. Wouldn’t call them odd, exactly.”

“And you never thought to report them to the constabulary?” asked the inquisitor through gritted teeth, the air condensing before his mouth in angry little clouds. A furious fire burned in his eyes, as if he had stolen the glimmer from the smoker’s pipe.

The constable clapped a hand on the inquisitor’s shoulder.

“And waste our time when we have plenty of crime to contend with? No, friend, I think not,” said the constable. He clapped him on the shoulder again—firmly and uncomfortably, for emphasis. “I believe we’ve bothered the good citizen here for long enough. Let us investigate for ourselves.”

The constable nodded in wordless greeting to the smoker and swiveled to leave. Inquisitor Armstrong shot another glance at the lawman and then cast his irritated gaze back onto smoker.

“Good night,” he hissed at him.

The smoker nodded, keeping eyes locked with the twitchy man until Armstrong finally turned and followed the plodding echoes of Constable Todd’s footsteps crossing the street to the closed pharmacy.

“Night,” he replied in a quiet mutter once they were out of earshot.

The smoker then stifled a sigh as it escaped through his flaring nostrils, seeing the light in his pipe had gone out completely during the conversation. The cold had seeped into his fingers as they fumbled with his door and he disappeared inside his home.

The other two men returned to the front of the pharmacy. They bobbed back and forth, craning a neck here and scanning the building’s run-down exterior there with searching eyes. Looking for clues of a presence, or an easy way to enter.

Todd nodded to the alleyway leading in between the buildings, diverging from the street. He immediately walked that way. Armstrong joined him and they circled around the block, looking for another entrance into the closed shop.

The backdoor was missing, beaten down and in shambles within the entrance there. Wooden boards partially covered this alternative entryway, leaving gaps large enough for a slender person or a child to climb through.

Wood audibly splintered and cracked as Constable Todd’s meaty hands pried at a board and yanked until it snapped. He discarded the board’s chunks by tossing them into the snow-covered dirt nearby, promptly ripping out the next board with the same detached fierceness.

Having created a hole large enough for himself to enter, he stepped over one of the lower planks he had left intact and entered the building’s pitch-black insides.

The inquisitor unlatched the gas lantern from his belt and its little metal wheel squeaked in the process of him lighting it, then he followed the constable into the pharmacy.

Their breath condensed in front of their faces and the air inside the shop carried a cold so bitter and merciless that it eclipsed the bitter wintry chill outside. Glass shards crunched underneath a boot, floorboards creaked, and the gas-lit lantern cast an eerie cone of light wherever the inquisitor shone it.

The whole place had indeed been ransacked. Shelves on display were conspicuously absent of anything of use or value, and anything less interesting found itself splayed out on the floors as rubbish.

“The many rubes of this city will believe anything. Why are you so persistent about the druggist being the Reaper?” asked the inquisitor without facing the constable.

The policeman poked some books on a shelf with his club and replied without turning, “I have it on good authority that it was, in fact, not the infamous outlaw Von Brandt.”

“Ah, yes,” the inquisitor said with a sneer. “From the mouths of your invaluable sources whom you cannot endanger by disclosing, I trust.”

The constable grunted in agreement to that without warranting any further words.

“Now shush,” hissed the constable. “While I like being wrong about certain things, I’d rather not be wrong about Hanrahan hiding out in here like some sort of wounded animal.”

The stairs leading up into the second story groaned under the constable’s weight and carpets on the floors up top swallowed the hollow thumps of his footsteps. The two men explored the rooms, carefully, one by one, staying within arm’s reach of one another.

The inquisitor noted how the constable’s knuckles had turned white from gripping his club with such force that it looked like the tiny thing would snap in the giant’s hand.

Then he spotted something else—something that captured his entire attention and brought a sly smile to his lips. His eyes followed scuffmarks on the floor, where something heavy had often scraped against the wood but seemingly disappeared into the wall. Almost hidden by a pile of books that had fallen from the empty shelves there.

“See? Nothing and nobody here,” said the constable with a sigh. “Glad to be right, this night.”

Armstrong emitted a short chuckle, incapable of concealing the burst of sadistic glee underneath it.

“Even so, you might have missed the secret room right here, right under our noses, had we not risked taking a look in this ruin,” said the inquisitor. “Look.”

He lifted the lantern so it cast enough light to clearly illuminate his discovery. The constable’s eyes went wide when he followed Armstrong’s directions.

“Well, I’ll be—”

“Come, let us see what the druggist kept hidden,” urged Armstrong, placing the lantern on a table, and looking at the large set of empty bookshelves that loomed above the scuffed floorboards.

The two of them took positions on opposite sides of the shelves and grabbed hold of the heavy bookcase from where they stood. No matter how much they grunted and groaned and wheezed—even with the large constable’s considerable strength—the furniture refused to budge.

After several seconds filled with failure, the inquisitor caught his breath and let his gaze sweep through the room.

“There has got to be a mechanism attached,” he mumbled.

“What did you say?” asked the constable between heavy breaths.

Armstrong offered no reply as he stepped away from the bookshelves, calmly searching his environment for other clues. He then pawed at the bottoms of the shelves, and let his hands glide across the wood, searching for something that felt out of place.

His eyes lit up with fire once more, not furious this time around—but excited. He bared his teeth in a hideous grin at the constable and pulled on a tiny latch where his fingers had found purchase in a dark corner of the shelves below eye level.

Something metallic clicked behind the bookcase and the massive wooden structure silently lurched forward, just by a finger’s width, but enough to provoke the two men into instinctively stepping away from it. A warm and damp air spilled out from the opening, creating a sharp contrast to the debilitating cold of the rest of the shop.

The constable rounded it, picked up his club from the table and stuck it into the narrow gap between shelves and wall that the inquisitor had created, then pushed the bookcase aside, as if it were a giant, weightless door. Metal hinges emitted a high-pitched squeal once the case had fully opened to make way to a hidden chamber beyond it.

Todd stood there, peering inside, and letting his eyes adjust. The inquisitor retrieved the lantern and followed him there, and they stepped inside together.

Shadows danced from the many unstolen objects littering the desks and shelves in this narrow room, untouched by the thieves who had looted the rest of the shop. The inquisitor held his lantern higher so they could see the myriads of items more clearly, all at once.

Many tomes, covers emblazoned with arcane symbols of alchemy and demonology. Vials filled with strange fluids. Pickling jars containing what had to be human organs, warped through the bend of the glass and the ghastly juices they were floating in. Scattered on the desk, around a journal, Armstrong recognized numerous fetishes used in sorcerous traditions from around the known world.

“Occult paraphernalia,” Todd muttered. “As I said. The Reaper is no common man.”

Still holding the lantern up high above him, the inquisitor let his seeking and curious gaze wander across everything in the room, mentally preparing to catalogue every find and either submit them for safekeeping or purging in sacred fire at the local chantry.

Upon seeing another set of eyes in the corner, he froze.

Glowing red like embers, glaring with cold hatred, he could barely discern the shape of the figure hidden in the room in plain sight. A silhouette that had not budged since their entering the secret chamber, watching them, and listening, and poised to attack. Vaguely human. All too monstrous. Limbs grotesquely muscular and claws that resembled little curved knives.

Before he could drink in any more detail, the thing lunged at them and the world exploded into a chaos of muffled shouts, glass shattering, and agonized grunts.

The lantern smashed into the edge of the desk and dried parchment caught fire, spreading quickly.

“Don’t let it bite you!” shouted the inquisitor.

The only thing stopping the creature from ripping a chunk out of Todd’s neck was the club the constable had managed to wedge into a fanged maw, dripping with dark saliva as it spattered into his face. The constable growled and then yelled at the top of his lungs, in pain over claws that had sunken into his sides.

“Off, you whoreson!” he yelled as he managed to throw himself forward with the monster, smashing into the wall by the secret door.

The inquisitor brandished his silver cross in a hand like a weapon, holding it out in front of him and reciting a litany of a dead language.

The creature snarled, unimpressed, locked in a deadly struggle with the constable who shoved him away from himself, prompting another yelp in pain as those claws sliced through skin on their violent way out.

Todd yelled, “Not helping!”

The inquisitor grabbed a bottle of something he hoped to be flammable and hurled it with all his might at the creature, causing a shower of glass and something that smelled like strong spirits to quickly fill the air. Before every shard had hit the ground and Todd tossed a side table at the creature to create some distance in between them, the inquisitor grabbed the burning journal from the table and tossed it at the monster.

It shrieked as it caught fire where the fluid had doused it. The creature flailed around in a panic, snarling and howling. Armstrong identified a semblance of human intelligence in its eyes, flashing brilliantly as it slapped the small flames on its body. And in the brief flashes of burning light, the two men could see that it resembled a man garbed in shreds of what might have once been a gentleman’s attire, as if his limbs and muscles had bulged outwards grotesquely to explode forth from his clothing.

“Gun,” Todd growled, then repeated. “Gun!”

The inquisitor registered with delay what he meant, then shoved his flintlock pistol into the constable’s open hand.

Todd immediately shot the creature in its side and it stumbled outside, tripping and tumbling into the adjacent room outside the secret chamber, with wisps of fire trailing off it and embers fluttering about as it fled, leaving a trail of blood, footsteps slapping against the ground and causing it to thunder with the monster’s tremendous weight as it ran away.

The constable ducked down to grab the club the creature had spat out in its flight and immediately gave chase. The inquisitor snapped out of his momentary shock, still reeling from the ambush, then chased after the constable.

“Halt,” the constable commanded as he charged down the stairs, pausing to cringe and clutch his sides where the creature had injured him. Through gritted teeth he wheezed, “Whoreson.”

The inquisitor caught up to him and knew he had to finish what the constable started, but the giant of a lawman refused to give up easily.

Wood exploded in a shower of dust and debris as the creature burst out through the backdoor from where they had entered. Its clawed feet scraped against the cobblestone and it stopped by the corner of the claustrophobically narrow alleyways.

They all froze when they saw the haggard smoker from earlier standing at the opposite end of the alleyway, with the creature squarely in between them, looking back and forth in between its pursuers, and the innocent bystander who had nothing to do with this.

Its eyes burned with unyielding hatred. Only now did the inquisitor notice the bent frame of silver spectacles, comically hanging from one misshapen ear and a tangle of reddish hair.

Then he noticed the hideous lips parting just enough to reveal a row of blackened, jagged teeth. Despite blood dripping down its leg—from the hole which Todd had shot into it—it smiled.

With an inhuman cackle, it crossed the distance to the smoker with two sudden, feral leaps and pounced on him. Limbs flailed around, thin, and sharp claws glistening wet with reflections that caught the gloomy light from the streetlamps.

The men ran towards the struggle, trying to rescue the smoker, and the inquisitor’s mental image of what was transpiring did not match up with reality. He expected the creature to be hungrily ripping the man apart—

Instead, the constable and the inquisitor froze again, no ten paces away from the creature. It had gotten up to its feet and now held the smoker hostage. The haggard man quivered with fear for his life, his face contorted with dread and his eyes darting between the array of razor-like claws held dangerously close to his neck, and the two hunters, back and forth in what must have been subdued panic.

The constable aimed the pistol at the creature, only realizing with apparent delay that it was useless without reloading. He chucked it aside and it clattered on the hard ground.

“You’re smart, eh? Think that takin’ a hostage will let you get away? You’re one daft whoreson,” growled the constable.

The creature smiled at them, baring crooked fangs that dripped with glistening saliva.

“Not wolf-man, not vampire,” Armstrong whispered behind Todd. “Alchemical sorcery at its worst—he can be reasoned with. I think he understands us clearly.”

“Why?”

The question cut colder and sharper through the wintry air than blade or claws. A stern, surprisingly calm word that escaped the constable’s lips which then clamped shut and formed a thin white line.

“Why did you slay all those people?” asked the constable.

The thing cackled and the hostage in his arms shuddered. Claws on the creature’s feet scraped against cobblestone again as it shuffled back half a step, dragging the helpless smoker with him.

“Because,” it responded letting the world drawl out, sounding like two voices blending into one. “Because I needed their insides.”

A chill ran down the inquisitor’s spine. Not just from hearing the creature speak with such clarity but taken aback by the sinister things it said. By how sadistic it sounded.

“Because I liked seeing the life fade from their eyes,” it continued. To underline those words, it wiggled its thick fingers, letting the claws dance across the smoker’s wrinkled neck until they locked into place and clamped down. Not piercing his flesh with full force, just nicking his skin enough to draw a thin trickle of blood.

“I can almost taste the darkness inside of you,” the creature said.

Its red eyes locked onto the inquisitor and captured his full attention with uncanny magnetism. No sorcery, nothing unnatural about it. Something about the monster’s intense stare—paired with the racing of his own heart—gave him tunnel vision, caused the foggy streets of Crimsonport to blur all around him. Or it was his own dizziness, causing the corridor of the world around him to spin as he could not break eye contact with the creature.

“Would I only be so lucky to taste it on my tongue, as I chew through your innards and feast upon your blood,” the monstrous Hanrahan said. “Why? Why did I slay those people? Why do people hunt foxes in the forest for sport?”

The low baritone of the creature’s voice traveled down the alleyway, piercing the inquisitor’s mind like invasive whispers, resonating with him somehow. The only thing that broke this spell was the creature averting his eyes, locking onto the constable next.

“You will never stop me. You would have more luck trying to stem the tide with your bare hands, you lumbering oaf. You will never stop us. How do you stop the mist? How do you stop the night?”

Through a set of clenched teeth, Todd snarled, “You harm that man, and God will not be able to help you when I get my hands on you. You—”

“You what?” hissed the monster, nicking the smoker’s neck again to draw more blood as a demonstration of its might. “You don’t even have the clout to call me what I am.”

“Monster,” Todd and Armstrong said almost simultaneously.

“No,” said the creature. The wicked smile on its abhorrent face faded. Lips drooped around its fangs, its whole visage contorting with hatred. Then it opened its mouth before replying, its multitude of voices trembling as it spoke with something resembling reverence in saying, “God.”

In a flash of movement, a waterfall of vermillion shot out from the smoker’s neck, spraying across the nearby wall, and splattering onto the thin layer of snow coating the ground. The smoker’s eyes grew wide with shock and disbelief and his knees visibly buckled as he collapsed. But the creature moved with such inhuman speed that it fled down the main street before the smoker even hit the pavement.

The constable and the inquisitor rushed towards the bleeding man, breathing heavily as they paused to stop over where he had fallen. The inquisitor knelt beside him and swatted feeble hands out of the way as the smoker instinctively pawed at him in a useless effort to defend himself from his would-be helper. Armstrong grabbed hold of the man’s neck from both sides, holding up his head as he tried his best to cup his other palm around the spot where heart pumped out far too much blood in rhythmic spurts.

“Get that bastard,” Armstrong growled at Todd without looking up.

The constable rushed away and from the corner of his eye, the inquisitor saw the hulking figure of the creature gaining momentum as it leapt from cobblestones onto a stone wall ringing a house, then jump onto the side of a building where a lantern’s metal screeched as it bent under the creature’s immense weight.

From there, the monster hurled itself up onto the roof of the house and the constable uttered a string of foul profanities as he ran down the street, his footsteps echoing in a much faster staccato than when the two had arrived here to investigate the closed pharmacy.

Armstrong focused on the bleeding man, fumbling around with one hand to sling out a scarf from inside his coat and then apply it to the smoker’s slashed neck. The cloth quickly turned dark, almost black in the dim light here. The smoker feebly clutched at the inquisitor’s sleeves, trembling, and stammering something incomprehensible.

“Spare your strength, man, and shut up—you are holding on for your bloody life by a thin thread,” the inquisitor said. He grimaced and tore fabric from his shirt to reinforce the haphazard bandaging around the smoker’s dangerous injury.

Each motion accompanied by more, growing confidence, he tied a knot around the mess of drenched cloth and looked around to examine the source of footsteps quickly nearing.

The constable returned, jogging back to them empty-handed. The lawman’s face was twisted with frustration and fury.

“Whoreson got away. Moved like fucking lightning across the rooftops,” he said between heavy, labored breaths.

Armstrong nodded, harboring no ill will towards the constable.

“Pay no mind,” the inquisitor murmured, suppressing a sigh to the best of his ability as he surveyed the first aid he had provided the bleeding man. “Weak consolation, but now we know what we’re dealing with.”

He then leaned down over the bleeding man and hissed at him, “If you live, you’ll know best not to tell anybody the truth about what you witnessed this night.”

The smoker’s eyes—still wide with terror and a lingering shock that showed how he still hovered on the brink between life and death—blinked. If he could have nodded, Armstrong sensed, he might have.

“You heard how it—no—how he spoke,” Todd said, interrupting this exchange. “Hanrahan is the pawn of someone else, like I have been telling you.”

The inquisitor paid no attention to this statement, keeping eyes locked on those of the bleeding man caught in the crossfire of their secret war.

“I’ll go fetch more help,” the constable muttered, swiftly jogging off again, swallowed by the mists as they roiled through the streets, devouring all.

By the time the sun rose—or rather struggled to penetrate the heavy dark clouds in the sky—bathing the cold city in a dreary blue twilight. The two men stood by the bank of the frozen river which ran through the city like a frozen vein. Armstrong's shirt still torn, and his cold-numbed hands stained with dried blood of the man they almost failed to save, they watched.

"Will he make it?"

"Probable," said the inquisitor with a short nod.

"Lasting damage," said the constable, not poinitng it as a question.

"Barring a miracle, I doubt he'll ever speak again."

Other members of the constabulary questioned people loitering around by the edge of the river, near where claws had marked the snow-covered ice, gathering statements from the witnesses who had seen the creature murder another person in its frenzied flight through the town.

The trail it had left down the frozen river led right outside the city walls, into the outskirts.

Out of earshot from the interrogations, Constable Todd groaned and then muttered to Armstrong, "Outer Wall Reaper, bandit king, a madman from a local gang, monster, wild animal—rumor mill will churn endlessly on this one."

"We have to ensure Hanrahan won't be back to claim more victims," said the inquisitor. He then enunciated clearly, his voice trembling with a mixture of anger and reverence, hoping to drive the point home as he added, "This is my line of duty, you understand."

The constable looked Armstrong up and down, then answered, "Of course. But I think there is something you are better suited for, what, with your expertise."

The lawman leaned in for a conspiratorial whisper, "I know the right people to deal with Hanrahan out in the wild. No doubt he will hide in the Blackwood to lick his wounds."

"What on earth are you suggesting?"

Todd shrugged.

"There will be a gathering of all the wealthy and highborn at Lord Reinhold Roland's estate come tomorrow eve," Todd said in an equally hushed murmur.

"And what in God's name do you expect me to be doing there? Hobnobbing with pompous aristocrats?"

A lop-sided grin crept across Todd's face before quickly fading and him responding, "A little birdie whispered to me that there's a secret society, some sort of cabal of occultists in their midst."

Armstrong perked up at that.

"You understand where I'm going with this, yes? Yes. See, the people I know who can hunt down and kill Hanrahan, they're less suited for an environment such as Reinhold's mansion. A member of the church who all fear to be an agent of the new inquisition, on the other hand—"

"Who they'll fear too much to refuse entry despite issuing no invitation," Armstrong interrupted him with a sly smile.

Todd nodded.

"As much as it disgusts me to say this—for all the lives he took, Hanrahan is the lesser evil here. We have to divert our resources with cold calculus."

Armstrong clicked his tongue. Shook his head. He narrowed his eyes and now studied the constable, looking up at the lawman's long face, and savoring the rare moment of catching the giant man in a moment of insecurity, triggered by his dismissive reaction.

"One must never distinguish between evils," Armstrong admonished him. "Once you court the lesser of them, you will find yourself in bed with a darkness you can never wash from your soul."

Todd stared into Armstrong's eyes, remaining silent at this statement.

"The people who will hunt down Hanrahan, you said. They do not happen to be the wanted outlaws, Johnn Von Brandt and Nora Morrissey, do they? The ones who, hold on—"

The inquisitor rolled his jaw and then set it with a smirk. 

"The ones who, and let me phrase this correctly," he said, then emphasizing the next word with oozing sarcasm. "Allegedly murdered the bishop, and Earl Tyson, and a bunch of other influential people around the Red Coast?"

Todd pursed his lips. Refrained from answering. The inquisitor understood without any words uttered.

"Tut, what did I just say about different shades of evil?"

The constable's eyes narrowed, and it was him who now clicked his tongue.

"I know evil when I see it, Armstrong. That creature—that thing Hanrahan knowingly transformed himself into—he was evil. The two you call outlaws may be many things you find disagreeable, but evil? They are anything but."

An inhuman howl pierced the heavens, echoing between the valley of brick buildings and the narrows, causing everybody nearby and the two men alike to all freeze, startled. And they all stared down the length of the frozen river. A glint of sunlight pierced the cloudy veil in the sky, breaking over the horizon outside the city walls.

Todd and Armstrong exchanged nervous glances.

Despite what they had just discussed, they both knew: the monster needed to die.

Todd sprang into action, barking orders and rallying his colleagues.

Armstrong clutched the silver cross on his neck for a second, then looked at it humbly resting in his palm. Since arriving in this wretched city and traveling to the countryside beyond its walls, not once had this cross served him. Criminals, corruption, fair folk, and now sorcerers—not one of them feared the Lord's might, nor any hell that awaited them, thought the inquisitor.

What had shaken him the most on this very night was hearing Hanrahan's admission. After the spiraling maze of clues he had followed, Armstrong had always expected to find some shred of humanity to be hidden underneath it all once he peeled away at the surface. To find some motive, something he could relate to, or at least something he could remotely fathom with reason. But all Hanrahan had spoken of was bloodlust.

Joy—a deep pleasure—in carnage itself. Murder for the sake of murder.

Armstrong stuffed the cross into his coat and looked up. Constable Todd waved to him, urging him to catch up. A mental fog embraced the inquisitor's mind and drowned out all noises and shouts resounding around him. The inquisitor's feet set themselves into motion, almost unconsciously, like a machine, following the constable, mentally focused on arming himself with the resolve necessary to end a murderer's life and bargain for his God's forgiveness.

Some monsters, he believed, looked just like men. In joining his secret order, he had vowed to snuff out evil that took the form of creatures of the night. When it came to men whom one might call monsters, the lines began to blur.

But Armstrong steeled himself. Where he had been trained to mete out swift justice by means of fire and steel, he would no longer distinguish between man and monster if the only thing that separated them was the fear of a cross.

They all just needed to die.

—Submitted by Wratts

#spoospasu #spookyspaghettisundae #horror #short story #writing #my writing #literature #spooky #fiction #submission #gothic horror #gaslight romance #Victorian #Crimsonport #Red Coast #Constable Vaughn Todd #Inquisitor Virgil Armstrong #Baxter Hanrahan #Outer Wall Reaper #creature #sorcery #magick #dark fantasy #investigation #occult #abandoned #night #cold #fog #snow

[spookyspaghettisundae]

The Doctor's Dilemma

Doctor Theodore Carnaby washed the blood from his hands. The water running from his faucet enraptured his entire attention—a technical marvel recently installed in his practice. He used a brush to scrub his hands and fingers with methodical precision, taking a painstaking amount of time because the blood clung to his skin like tar.

The sound and sight of water continuously pouring from that metal pipe hypnotized him all the while and made the noise of passersby and horse-drawn carriages from the street outside sound a million miles away.

A sheet of fog suffocated the afternoon sun, dimming it to a small bright spot in the sky and forcing him to illuminate the insides of his practice with gas-powered lanterns. He stopped the flow of water, orchestrated by the subtle little screech of him twisting a valve and letting the cold wet drip from his slender hands, still fascinated by this wondrous new installation.

When he turned to grab a towel, he almost jumped out of his skin. Someone stood in the open doorway of his practice, motionless, and without making a sound. Just staring at him.

“G’d day, sir,” Carnaby said after clearing his throat.

He forced himself to smile out of politeness but it did not quite reach his eyes. For that, his visitor’s sudden appearance had frightened him too much. Carnaby quickly dabbed his hands with the towel to dry them off and tossed it aside before approaching.

The visitor tilted his head and returned the same kind of feeble smile. He pushed back the spectacles resting upon his nose, a pair of round and thin-framed silver glasses. The reddish-blonde hair on his head and a pair of light blue eyes lent him an air of vulnerability and innocence.

“Hello,” replied the visitor.

He lifted his right hand, revealing it to be wrapped in a sloppy arrangement of cloth—soaking up a spot of dark red color where his palm must be.

“I had a little,” said the man. He paused and smiled, now with a genuine warmth to it. It reminded Carnaby of the sun on a beautiful summer day. “Uh, a little accident. This requires a good doctor’s touch, and I heard you’re the best in this quarter.”

Carnaby chuckled and nodded.

“Of course, have a seat, Mister,” he said, letting the words trail off for the patient to fill in the blanks.

The patient smiled again. Something about his expression instilled Carnaby with both endearment and something strange. Something the doctor could not quite put his finger on.

“Hanrahan,” said the patient after a long and awkward pause. “Baxter Hanrahan.”

Mister Hanrahan extended his hand for a shake. Carnaby shot a glance down at it and noted that his patient’s fingers were stained dark, while the hand was not calloused, rather soft and thin. He took so long to study Hanrahan’s hand that he followed up with a nervous chuckle.

“I’m terribly sorry Mister Hanrahan. This time of the year, I never shake hands with patients. Wouldn’t want to spread anything unpleasant,” he told him with a wink and a genuine smile.

Hanrahan emitted a nervous chuckle of his own and then nodded in understanding.

“Please, have a seat, and we’ll have a look.”

Carnaby gestured to a stool and fetched his instruments. They settled down and the doctor unraveled the improvised bandage—it appeared to be a simple set of cloth that Hanrahan had torn from something. Hanrahan winced and hissed as he sharply inhaled.

The doctor noted that reaction and revealed a nasty gash on Hanrahan’s palm. It looked to Carnaby as if his patient had cut himself with a kitchen knife, though the placement for such would have been unusual.

Then Carnaby’s stomach knotted. The injury reminded him of a cut he had inflicted upon himself once—a ritualistic cut to shed his own blood for an attempt at practicing alchemy and magick. Could this man also be an occultist?

As soon as he caught himself staring and pondering for far too long, he asked, “What do you do for a living, if I may ask, Mister Hanrahan?”

“Druggist, I’ve set up shop in the upper city,” he said. “Just opened up this autumn and figured it would only be a matter of time until we met.”

“Oh, the upper city? Why didn’t you see Doctor Manning? Not that I’m willing to give up a potential new customer, but he would have been closer to your practice.”

Hanrahan tilted his head again, though a smile stayed absent from his face. He studied Carnaby from behind the thin glasses of his spectacles. They reflected the tiny specks of gaslight from nearby lanterns.

“I live nearby here, not in the upper city. Had a little accident at home and, uh—truly though, I could never afford living in the upper city.”

Their eyes met and Carnaby found himself staring a moment too long. Hanrahan smiled once more, but it felt forced to to the doctor. The patient then cringed and stifled a groan behind gritted teeth. That was when Carnaby noticed he had squeezed Hanrahan’s hand, lost in idle thought.

“Oh dear, I’m terribly sorry. Are you in a lot of pain?”

“Yes, ‘fraid so. I left it alone for a few days and it’s not healing up well, and, well, it’s pretty deep.”

“May I?” asked Carnaby before getting a nod of consent and them then pushing back Hanrahan’s jacket and shirt sleeve together.

This revealed an odd tattoo on the man’s forearm. It bore clear trappings of occult symbols and alchemical formulae. Carnaby averted his eyes as to not stare at them. But the sight of it burned into his mind and stuck there. It would stay there until Hanrahan left his practice that day.

Carnaby took some time to disinfect the injury, stitch it up, and dress it in proper bandages. He noted multiple instances of Hanrahan suppressing sounds of pain.

“Color me curious, Mister Hanrahan, but—as a chemist, don’t you self-medicate against the pain?”

“I’d rather not,” he said. “I like to keep a clear head. For my work.”

Carnaby nodded in approval, cleaned up, and grabbed a small tincture bottle from a cabinet. He held the tiny bottle of laudanum out to Hanrahan and waited for him to take it. His patient just stared at it and Carnaby could witness the gears turning behind his forehead.

“A few drops of this each night should dull the pain and help you sleep better.”

Hanrahan clicked his tongue and said, “I’m all too familiar with the substance, of course. Truth be told, I’m ever wary about overdosing it.”

On reflex, Carnaby fetched a metal syringe from the cabinet and held it out to Hanrahan in his other hand.

“Three millilitres will do fine as you’re not in a terrible amount of pain, and this syringe has precise measurements you can use to ensure the proper dosage.”

“No, really, I’ll be fine,” Hanrahan said. That sun-like smile returned to his face as he added a heartfelt, “Thank you.”

Carnaby shrugged and returned the items to his cabinet. With his back still turned to the patient, Hanrahan asked him, “That syringe is some beautiful craftsmanship, though. I wouldn’t mind having some of those in my pharmacy. Who made it?”

“Johnathan Hill, a tinker who has a shop right down the street,” Carnaby said.

He escorted Hanrahan out and had his assistant take down notes for the visit. The patient took his leave and they exchanged friendly smiles yet again.

Carnaby’s smile faded the moment Hanrahan turned and walked out onto the streets of Crimsonport. The good doctor ignored some question from his assistant—the words barely reached him through his mental fog, incapable of distracting him or piercing his focus.

He locked himself inside his study and unlocked the bottom drawers of his desk. Then he spent the next minutes flipping through his growing collection of occult tomes. The minutes dragged into an hour, and he dismissed another question from his assistant, muffled through a locked door.

The old leather-bound book in his hands slapped down onto his desk, open to the pages he had sought. He sighed, the chemicals of bewilderment, fear, and curiosity mixing together in his brain.

He knew he had seen that symbol before.

“The Shape of Beasts,” it was dubbed in that particular tome. Part of an alchemical process to transform the body of man into that of a beast. Though the author’s theories outlined the idea that the affliction of lycanthropy may have originally stemmed from archaic attempts at using this magick gone awry, it enabled perfect physical transmutation when conducted properly.

Carnaby did not know what to make of this, but he wondered if he should approach Hanrahan and inquire what he knew about alchemy and the occult. The doctor caught himself pacing up and down inside his office, lost in thought. Walking in circles and his mind racing in the opposite direction had made him dizzy.

He decided against doing anything. Perhaps this Baxter Hanrahan had no idea what symbol he bore; perhaps a tattoo artist had copied the symbol without deeper understanding. Besides, the symbol alone meant nothing without conducting the rest of the ritual—as far as Carnaby understood, the glyphs arranged around the circle only served to remind the alchemist how to administer the reagents correctly.

He dismissed every further thought on the matter and took the rest of the day off, closing up shop. Though the vision of Hanrahan’s warm, sunny smile haunted him for the next few nights. And he regularly caught himself exploring the idea of finally finding exchange with another occultist.

But mostly, the smile stayed with him.

Ever since discovering that magick tome in that awful apartment he had stolen it from and expanding his collection from obscure book traders afterwards, Theodore Carnaby had wondered if anybody else out there had such intimate knowledge of working magick.

Here was an opportunity—a possible companion—and he was letting it slip through his fingers.

Part of him wished that there was complications, or some other incident that would bring Hanrahan back into his practice. Part of him wanted to strike out and find Hanrahan’s pharmacy to meet him on his own time. Part of him was just afraid to find out; afraid to clear the fog of uncertainty.

A week later, a thick bank of mist once more suffocated the streets of Crimsonport. It was early in the morning, well before sunrise, and Carnaby was reviewing notes from observations made with another patient the day before when he felt watched. A shiver ran down his spine and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up straight.

Hanrahan was standing there in the doorway, staring at him again. With that wide warm smile. But his face was pale as a sheet.

“G’d day, Doctor Carnaby.”

This time, Hanrahan’s jacket was a bit torn by the shoulder and overall caked in some dust. The collar of his shirt was disheveled and the necktie a bit loose around the center.

Carnaby’s heart skipped a beat when he saw blood dripping from the fingertips of Hanrahan’s left hand.

“Oh goodness. Please, have a seat, Mister Hanrahan.”

The doctor helped him out of his jacket, rolling up his blood-soaked sleeve, and investigating this new wound. Someone had clawed the outer side of Hanrahan’s forearm. The scratches proved to be deep and Carnaby surmised a woman’s nails to have done this.

With swift and decisive action, he treated the injury while asking Mister Hanrahan about it.

“Just last night.”

“Some woman outside the opium den. I think she was hallucinating.”

“No, I came here because it’s still bleeding. I don’t think there’s any need to report this.”

In between each answer, Carnaby sighed. He felt the burning urge to ask Hanrahan about alchemy. Ask him if he knew. Once done, he turned away to wash his hands in the sink. The marvel of the running water had worn off, especially in light of his inner conflict—the internal debate on whether or not to open up to Hanrahan about magick.

The metal squeak of the valve, the soft trickle and flow of water, and the rhythmic scrubbing on his hands still managed to capture his senses.

Without turning from the sink, he asked, “Do you need more laudanum?”

“No, I still have plenty in the bottle you gave me.” Very close.

Carnaby turned to grab the towel and dry his hands off, but Hanrahan stood right there.

Right next to him.

Stunned, the doctor froze in place and found himself lost in the sparkle of Hanrahan’s deep blue eyes. The natural charm the druggist exuded combined with a unique mystery; the wonder Carnaby felt over whether or not this man indulged in occult practices.

They stood so close to each other that the warmth of Hanrahan’s breath upon his skin mesmerized him. Carnaby’s gut instinct told him to take a step back, but his heart pounded with fury against the inside of his chest, pulling him forward and urging him to lean in for a kiss.

Hanrahan tilted his head in that same strange way he always did and gave the doctor another one of his warm smiles, melting away Carnaby’s ability to do anything.

“Thanks again, Doctor.”

With that, he left. Through the haze of his mental paralysis, it dawned on Carnaby only with delay how wide his eyes must have been and how he had stared after Hanrahan as he left the practice and shot another glance at him over his shoulder. Gone, just like that.

When he snapped out of it, his assistant had already seen Hanrahan off and his most fascinating patient had already left.

The rest of the day flew by in a delirious blur. Carnaby’s mind kept circling back to that moment of attraction and frustration with his lack of ability to act upon it. In between, he barely thought about the clue that hinted at Hanrahan’s interest in the occult.

In the weeks that followed, visits to the opium den, several parties, and some lectures at the university slowly diluted Carnaby’s obsession with the enigma that was Baxter Hanrahan.

He often perished the thought of never seeing him again and considered himself a coward for not seeking his company in his free time. He knew how to find the pharmacy, if he really wanted to.

But he did not. Part of him was afraid.

The press making a big spectacle out of the “Outer Wall Reaper"—a serial killer murdering brothel women in the city’s slums—moved Carnaby to avoid being outside alone too often. It also made him start worrying about Baxter Hanrahan’s safety.

One day, while washing his hands in the sink again, he felt a gaze upon him. The hairs stood up on the back of Carnaby’s neck. Someone stood in the doorway, staring at him.

He turned and expected to see Hanrahan’s smile.

Instead, he beheld the stern face of a police constable. A giant of a man clad in black, the lawman lifted his helmet in greeting. In the reception room behind him, the silhouettes of other figures and a renowned private detective stood out.

In a low, voluminous voice, the constable asked, "Doctor Carnaby?”

The doctor confirmed.

“I need to speak to you about a criminal investigation regarding the murders in the outer city. Have you seen this before?”

The constable’s meaty fingers pinched a metal syringe between them, holding it out on display for the doctor to take in its appearance. The same syringe Carnaby had given Hanrahan.

Doctor Carnaby’s heart skipped a beat.

—Submitted by Wratts

#spoospasu #spookyspaghettisundae #horror #short story #writing #my writing #literature #spooky #fiction #submission #gothic #gaslight #romance #victorian #fantasy #Crimsonport #Doctor Theodore Carnaby #Baxter Hanrahan #The Outer Wall Reaper #serial killer #murder #investigation #occult #magick #alchemy #ritual #mystery #suspense #Constable Vaughn Todd

[ultrasfcb-blog]

European Rugby Champions Cup: CJ Stander attempt earns Munster draw at Exeter

European Rugby Champions Cup: CJ Stander attempt earns Munster draw at Exeter

European Rugby Champions Cup: CJ Stander attempt earns Munster draw at Exeter

Luke Cowan-Dickie’s attempt to Exeter’s steadfast defence had been nearly the distinction at Sandy Park

Heineken Champions Cup Exeter (10) 10 Attempt: Cowan-Dickie Con: Steenson Pen: Steenson Munster (3) 10 Attempt: Stander Con: Carbery Pen: Carbery

CJ Stander’s attempt earned Munster a 10-10 Champions Cup draw towards Exeter after it appeared the hosts’ resolute defence would maintain out at a windy Sandy Park.

The Chiefs made 116 tackles within the first half – twice as many as their opponents – and made essentially the most of a uncommon foray into the Munster 22 when Luke Cowan-Dickie went over to attain.

Munster persevered and eventually broke by way of when Stander powered over.

Exeter got here near scoring late on, however broke down within the 22nd part.

Munster stress finally pays off

It was a pulsating finish to the match which was a scrappy affair within the first 40 minutes.

The edges solely had a penalty every to point out for his or her efforts in that interval till Cornish hooker Cowan-Dickie utilized the final touch to nice ahead play, two minutes earlier than the break.

There was renewed stress from the two-time champions straight after the restart. An enormous drive from the maul within the 53rd minute ought to have resulted in a attempt, however as soon as once more Exeter handled the menace.

The Pink Military went for the jugular once more, however this time full-back Phil Dollman produced an outstanding deal with to cease Michael Haley, who was trying to offload for an nearly sure attempt.

The guests lastly made the breakthrough within the 63rd minute. First, replacements Tommy O’Donnell and Rhys Marshall every had a go at breaking by way of the ultimate line of defence, earlier than the ball made its manner left to Stander, who discovered the additional metre.

Exeter fall quick in last seconds

Chiefs’ Dave Ewers and team-mate Sam Skinner suffered an unintentional conflict of heads within the build-up to the attempt to each wanted an instantaneous head harm evaluation (HIA).

Munster had been hoping to use late stress within the last seconds, however Joey Carbery’s kick landed lengthy within the sturdy wind which earned Exeter a scrum 22 metres from the opposition try-line.

The Chiefs stored the play alive previous the allotted 80 minutes, earlier than a ahead ball within the 22nd part of play noticed their hopes of a win disappear.

‘Munster can be happier with the draw’

Exeter director of rugby Rob Baxter: “At half-time I might have been pleased with two factors, however on the finish with a few dominant scrums I believed we missed a chance to nick it.

“Nevertheless, we have two factors and there are quite a lot of groups who will not have two factors on the board after the primary spherical. Munster would be the happier with two factors away from dwelling.”

Munster head coach Johann Van Graan: “No person gave us an opportunity so I am extremely pleased with the efficiency. We had probabilities to win it however so did they.

“They’re a really troublesome facet to play towards as they’ve an ideal means to retain possession.”

Exeter: Dollman; Nowell, Slade, Whitten, Cordero; Steenson (c), Townsend; Moon, Cowan-Dickie, Williams; Dennis, Skinner; Ewers, Armand, Kvesic.

Replacements: Yeandle, Hepburn, Francis, Atkins, Lawday, Maunder, Simmonds, Hill.

Munster: Haley; Conway, Goggin, R Scannell, Earls; Carbery, Williams; Kilcoyne, N Scannell, Archer; Kleyn, Beirne; O’Mahony (c), Cloete, Stander.

Replacements: Marshall, J Cronin, Ryan, Holland, O’Donnell, N Cronin, JJ Hanrahan, Arnold.

For the newest rugby union information observe @bbcrugbyunion on Twitter.

BBC Sport – Rugby Union ultras_FC_Barcelona

ultras FC Barcelona - https://ultrasfcb.com/rugby-union/12762/

#Barcelona

#Rugby Union