by Lani Lenore
Stepping forward, he moved into the first open area that was not guarded by a sheet. Around him, the white cloths hung, limp and lifeless. It was to his most astounding luck that in the first area, there was a desk. A lantern had been left there, lit—which made him suspicious that someone was there, hiding away from him. It didn’t matter. Who were they to him? What was another knot on the head?
Adam approached, noting how many papers and books were spread across it. Some presented diagrams of things he couldn’t begin to interpret. There were sheets filled with long and complicated formulas, and there were diagrams of human bodies on the walls. What was this man? Some sort of scientific genius? Irving had said Baltus had been caring for Anjessica in her pregnancy. Adam disregarded everything that he didn’t care about and went directly to looking for a journal.
Beneath the light of the lantern, one book was open. The pages were blank, but there was a quill lying across them, and there was a date written there in fresh ink.
It’s as if all this has been laid out for me to find… He pushed that thought away. That was absurd. Why would they want to give away their secrets?
The date noted there was September 8. Adam could only guess that this was today’s date, and an entry had not yet been made. Today had not been eventful? His fingers searched through the pages, finding the entry which he believed corresponded to the day he’d woken up here, and he began to read.
September 5—I woke them up today. Both of them. The female first, and then the male. We put them into the rooms and left them to rise up on their own. Things have been set into motion, and not a moment too soon. I caught Luci trying to drag the girl off her table just last night. Put a bruise around her wrist. I must not tell Irving about this, for we cannot do without Luci now, and he will want to be rid of her for fear of jeopardizing our plans. I have made the rules clear to her, and have no doubt that she will obey. Now all there is to do is wait.
September 6—They came to us today at dinner. The old alchemic techniques with the stones worked. They behave normally, and only know what they need to know. They have no memories, and they think that is abnormal. But it is normal—and acceptable. They woke up, they found their names, and they believe.
They had dinner with us tonight, and one would never know a difference in them. They behaved properly and were able to carry on conversation without any motor or mental dysfunction. There is, unfortunately, a small flaw. After mere hours, the male, Adam, is exhibiting signs of suspicion. Too soon? According to Irving, any at all is too much, but I say that it cannot be helped, considering his host. The female, of course, is perfect, as I knew she would be. My dear Celia, my ultimate achievement. In the end, she is the only one of them that matters. If things go as planned, we can dispose of Adam once he serves his purpose, if we so desire.
Already they have become attached to one another. We try to keep them apart, but it only pushes them closer—as expected. They communicate through the hole in the wall. We lock them in and shut them away and they want to be near each other even more. Oh yes, I can see that this experiment will be productive. I give success a week at the longest.
To say that the words blew Adam’s mind away may have been understating. The passages seemed vague, though no doubt they made perfect sense to the writer, who knew the secrets behind the words. Adam flipped back through the notes. Many dates had been skipped, sometimes having a gap for a month at a time. He searched backward, scanning passages until he came across something that seemed meaningful to him.
January 9—It’s certainly not time, but I woke the male up today—the one I call Adam. I didn’t let him come to himself fully, for we still have not harnessed the power of the crystals. I do not believe he will have a memory of this incident. I would not have woken him at all, but Anjessica has become obsessed. She wants to use the man in order to impregnate herself. I told her that she is not compatible with this task—that she cannot hope to deliver what she wishes—but she will not listen. She wants this for Irving, to please him, and she will not listen to reason. After weeks, I consented. I woke him up enough to respond to her, and of course, he performed. He was made to be particularly sensitive to sexual arousal and activity, and I must be pleased with that, on my own part.
I only did this because I know that since Anjessica has been satiated, she will leave me be, but I am beginning to have trouble keeping Maynard away from the girl. He just stands over her flesh body, staring. One day he will touch her. I know that. But though he is the Sculptor, she was not made for him. He will ruin her. I may have to move my work to a different chamber—somewhere more difficult to get to.
Oh, one more thing: I think I have finally decided on a name. I think I will call her Celia. It is such a beautiful and delicate name. It was my mother’s name.
Adam thumbed even further, his mind swimming, and he searched through the passages until he found something else that caught his attention. It was dated two years earlier.
March 21—Irving wrote a letter to the Brethren today in order to announce our exciting discovery. All of us have been trying for years, but WE have finally done it. There has always been an order of things, and believers across the world have worked so hard to accomplish this task in order to fulfill the will of God. Finally, we have triumphed. We—the LaCroixs—can claim to have fulfilled the highest sacrament of all:
Man, in time, will learn to create man.
We—I—have done it. I found a compound that, with the proper combination of elements, can be converted to flesh. We keep them suspended in fluids, and after nine months, they can be birthed as fully formed adults. Maynard is a skilled artisan, and he chiseled the body from the black stone, but I gave it life. Her name is Margot. She is not the first of our efforts, but she is—I think—the most believably human. She can be taught to speak, and with any luck, to have her own thoughts. I know she is imperfect. But with more practice I’m sure that we can consider ourselves truly successful. Of course, Hugh has to be removed. He would never allow this in his house. Even though he is the one who originally had the chapel built, he has never agreed with the religion that Irving brought back to us. But I think I may find an even better use for him. My hopes are high. In just a few short years, we will know whom we worship. The Hallowed will be born!
Adam stepped back from the journal, feeling dizzy. He was spun by all that he had read, shocked by what it implied and refusing to believe what his logic was insisting to be the truth. It was not possible; it just wasn't. He wasn't willing to accept that he—
Someone's here.
Raising his head, he saw a figure standing in the passageway where he'd entered, and though he'd expected it to be Baltus, it was not. The maid stood there, staring at him unabashedly, and he wasn’t sure which she was—but then he saw the little smile.
“There you are,” Luci announced. “What is it that you have found, young sir?”
Within Luci’s arms, she was holding her sister’s limp body. She supported Margot’s weight with ease, as if she weighed nothing. Dark blood was splattered over Luci’s apron, was covering Margot, and Adam could see that the twin’s head was crushed.
“What have you done?” Adam asked, not near as shocked as he should have been.
“I am cleaning up my mess,” Luci said simply, bending to place Margot’s body at her feet with loving care. “The hallways should be clean.”
Luci stepped around her sister’s body and came closer to Adam, but what he had just seen could not compare to what he had read. As he looked at Luci now, he knew the truth about her. She was certainly different, as he’d expected. By what he could decipher from the journal, Luci and Margot were not sisters at all, but copies. Luci was made after Margot, to look exactly like Margot, and at these thoughts, everything was thrown into perspective.
“You’re not really a twin, are you?” he asked, refusing to go further than her in his own mind. Luci and Margot were false humans created by the LaCroix family, but…
Luci look
ed at him, wearing her little smile, as if she had nothing to hide from him. It was true that she didn’t; not anymore.
“Neither are you,” she said, and the words rolled over him with an icy chill. Before he could ask what she meant, she turned her face from him and began to walk away. Without announcing her intentions, she stepped behind one of the curtains, and Adam could only flee or follow. He did not want to flee.
Adam passed beyond the curtain and saw the maid easily. She was simply standing in the middle of the room with her back to him. In front of her was a long table, the perfect length for a man to rest upon, like was used for operations. On that table was a body.
There was a man lying there, and Adam’s heart shook with fear. This man before him had many wounds, all bloody across a brown jacket with a hood. The hood was pulled up over his face, and an image hit Adam. He remembered what Celia had told him about the hooded man who’d slain Maynard—how he had no face and how he’d been shot but had not been killed. Apparently, the girl had misinterpreted something, because this one was not moving. He must have been dead.
Unable to help himself, Adam stepped past Luci and reached for the hood, aiming to reveal the truth. The sight of the face beneath made his heart speed as not even Celia could do to him.
“Christ,” he yelled, then lost his breath. He lurched back, immediately touching his own face to feel its features. His nose was still there, wasn’t it? And his lips and chin? They hadn’t been borrowed?
Luci’s words finally made sense. He wasn’t a twin either, but the man on this table had his face. It was different in many ways—the skin was deathly pale, and there were many scars across it, causing the face to be distorted. There was no hair on his head or face, and his neck and cheeks were covered in dark veins that showed through the skin. Yes, very different—imperfect. But Adam recognized himself.
“He is broken,” Luci said with a shake of her head, completely untouched by this and unaware of what Adam was feeling. “But you are not like him in that way. Yet, with the proper tools, he can be fixed. My sister…I am not sure about.”
“What—?” Adam started, but his thoughts would not form any coherent question. “What in hell…?”
It was true, and he had to face it. The words in the journal, Luci and Margot, and now this man before him… Margot was not human; she was created by man—Baltus LaCroix. Luci was a copy of Margot, also created, but later. She was different and better—more like a real person. Luci had many of her own thoughts, but still she was not perfect. Not perfect enough to satisfy the expectations of the Sacraments. This man here was made as well, and Adam himself had been—
I was made from the same design. They made me to look like their patriarch, Hugh LaCroix.
Adam felt tears pressing at his eyes. He thought he would vomit, but instead, he clenched his eyes shut and put his hands to his head. How could he absorb this, let alone accept it? All this searching for who he had been and he hadn’t been anyone at all. He wasn’t even real! Now that he had come to know the truth, he did not feel any better about the lies, the imprisonment, the perversion. Though all of it made sense, he felt no relief. They should have left the house sooner, and that way, he would have never had to know.
How will I be able to tell Celia this?
He felt a tear trail slowly down his face, illustrating his pain—and swiftly he felt a finger catch it. He opened his eyes to see Luci stretching out her finger to the tear he’d shed, and she pulled it back as a perfect droplet, guiding it to her own mouth, tasting the salty moisture.
“You are unhappy,” she said in response to the taste, but Adam no longer had the will to hate her strangeness.
“So…there was nothing before this?” he struggled to say. “There aren’t any memories to recover.”
The words made it real, and he had heard himself say it. He felt more pain inside him than he’d ever thought possible. How could a man be allowed to feel this way? What he wouldn’t have given for ignorant bliss!
But there are still questions to be asked, came a thought from his subconscious. There were pieces of this story missing, and he had to have them. Accepting this, he bit back on his emotion, and he was done with it.
“What about the woman in the cage?” he asked, refusing to look at Luci but also neglecting his brother on the table. “Who was she? What about Hugh LaCroix? They expect me to take up his mantle and be the head of the family in his place?”
Luci looked at him with what he thought to be a slight notion of sadness. Could the puppet feel emotion?
“I will show you,” she said simply, though he didn’t know what she was intending. He only followed her when she turned.
Once again, Adam became conscious of the terrible smell. He’d forgotten it somehow—in the midst of all the recent attacks to his feeble, manmade brain—but now his sensory receptors had alerted him with a vengeance. Perhaps he had guessed that the smell was coming from the body on the table, but he felt now that this was wrong. The smell seemed to be coming on stronger as he followed Luci away from the body and into another portion of the room. They passed behind another curtain and to Adam’s surprise, behind it was a door.
The dark-haired maid did not waste time opening it, and when the seal was shaken, foul air rolled out with a sigh. Adam coughed once, holding his breath for moments at a time. The aroma of decay did not seem to bother Luci at all. She pressed on. The man followed her into a darker place where four steps led down to a sunken floor. It was cold here, and there seemed to be a low fog hovering over the stones, as if that were possible. Adam stepped down, and that was when he saw the chair.
In the middle of this dim space, there was a single chair placed—and like the operating table he had seen previously, the seat was not empty. A skeletal form was sitting there, feet on the floor and arms draped across the rests. The head was leaned back and tilted to the side just a bit, as in some great pose of relaxation.
Luci stood by, saying nothing. Adam couldn’t say that he was not afraid—he was—but fear had little importance now. Knowing what he had to do, he stepped toward the body. He knew now that a body was all it was.
The man in the chair had been dead for weeks perhaps, and it was no accident. His wrists and ankles were bound to the chair. His eyes were covered with a blindfold. There was a strange bruise on his forehead.
This man had not been young, and though rot had taken much of him, Adam knew his identity.
This is what they have done to you, is it? Is this what it is to be a lord? At least you died on your throne.
Hugh LaCroix had been put out of the way, like the journal had said. Adam breathed in the smell, convinced that it was the aroma of his own death.
Will I die this way when they tire of me?
He could have asked—Luci was standing right beside him, after all. He should have, but she had spoken up first.
“If it is your wish,” she began. “I will help you to escape.”
The words excited Adam’s ears, and he looked away from the body long enough to focus on the maid standing there, gazing up at him attentively. Had she truly offered him this?
“If you would take the girl with you, that is your own choice,” Luci went on emotionlessly. “If not, I would be glad to dispose of her for you.”
“She comes with me,” he said instinctually, hoping to make that clear, though he wasn’t sure what he was willing to do. He wondered if he believed that Luci could get them out of the house. Free them?
“Why should I trust anything you say?” he asked, cutting her with a firm gaze. “How do I know you aren’t leading me on? Letting me into the master’s room was one thing, but this? How can I believe that you would do this?”
Her face did not change, and he had not expected it to. However, there was something shining behind her eyes.
“I would do anything for you,” she said flatly, as if it was the simplest thing in the world. It was pure devotion that he saw coming through her eyes as she said this—an odd
sight.
Can I do this? He wondered. Is it safe?
How can I not take this chance? We have to get out.
Luci waited for him to sort through his thoughts, as if she understood that it was difficult. He did not need too much time. He knew what he must say.
“Tell me how then,” Adam insisted. “I want to go immediately.”
Chapter Eighteen
Anjessica sat by herself in the dark. She twisted her hair around her fingers until it was merely a wad of knots and tangles, trying to ignore the growing discomfort in her abdomen.
Tears began to gather in her reddened eyes as she chewed on her lip absently. She fought the urge to end her own life, as well as the life of the thing inside her. She could cut her wrists, let her veins run dry and it would be easy—preferable—and yet she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Though she had taken on this burden simply to please Irving and it was sure to mean her doom, she had grown to care about the monster in her belly. Whatever dark thing was inside of her, she loved it with a mother’s love.
She thought back on everything that had happened, everything that she had heard them say, and it all seemed so ridiculous now. How could she have believed it, and more importantly, how could she have twisted it so? She had only been desperate—desperate for the love of a husband who was too preoccupied to touch her or even look at her. All for his blessed Sacraments.
I wonder if he even realized that the child couldn’t be his, she thought, darkly amused. He hasn’t spread my legs in ages.
Anjessica winced, clenching her teeth, but it was not the thought that pained her. It was as if sharp knives were cutting into her womb. The creature was digging in. It wanted to be free. Taking shallow breaths, it was with great effort that Anjessica pulled herself from the sofa and got to her feet.