Cultwick: The Wretched Dead

by J. Stone

  Timidly she sat in a chair, while Gwen and Deckland stood opposite her, staring. She nervously began to move some of the various foods on to her plate, and under their watchful gaze, slowly took a bite from one of the cinnamon buns. She could not remember ever tasting anything so wonderful, though she acknowledged that it could have been partially influenced by her memory loss.

  “Mmm,” she said, swallowing the sugary bread.

  Gwen allowed herself a small smile before leaving to take care of some chores, as Isabelle continued to try more of the foods. Isabelle had her fill of the food, occasionally looking up to note Deckland still staring intently at her. She stood from the chair, the legs screeching against the wooden floor, as she rose. The noise attracted the attention of Gwen, who returned to check on her.

  “All done, ma’am?” she asked.

  “Yes, thank you, Gwen,” Isabelle replied.

  “What would you like to do now, Mrs. Sloan?” Gwen asked.

  After she thought for a moment, she answered, “Perhaps you could show me around the house?”

  “I’d be delighted, ma’am,” the maid replied. “Let me put these things away, and I’ll give you the tour.”

  Gwen soon guided Isabelle through the mansion, still trailed by the imposing Deckland. The home had a massive library filled with all manner of books ranging from ancient mythologies, futuristic stories, real-life dramas, and it even had back copies of the Cultwick Chronicle. At the back of the mansion was a large pool, though when she saw it, the surface was covered by a rigid, blue tarp due to winter. Throughout the tour, Isabelle counted no less than seven bathrooms and twelve bedrooms, noting most of them to be absent aside from placeholder furniture. Finally, Gwen showed her to a closed door at the opposite end of the house than where they had started.

  She told Isabelle, “Master Sloan’s office is through here--”

  Deckland, however, stepped forward and harshly said, “This room is off-limits.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Gwen replied. “I’ve served Master Sloan for years, and he’s never--”

  “I said it’s off-limits,” Deckland repeated, positioning himself between the women and the door.

  Isabelle looked to Gwen who leaned her head backward and swallowed. “It’s alright, Gwen,” she said. “I don’t need to see it. I think I’ll just go find something to read in the library.”

  “Very well, ma’am,” Gwen replied.

  Isabelle left to go back toward the library, while Gwen went about her other business. Deckland, meanwhile, continued to shadow the amnesiac, until she found a book and sat in a cushy, red, club chair. She sat there, pretending to read the book she had selected, while Deckland stared intently at her. She thought on the events that had transpired, since she woke up, trying to piece everything together in a way that made sense with her absence of memories. Something, she decided, wasn’t adding up how she would expect.

  Deckland, it seemed, wasn’t following her to keep an eye out for her. Rather, he appeared to be keeping an eye on her, as if she wasn’t to be trusted. Isabelle concluded that he was hiding something from her, though she also feared that her memory-absent mind might have created a paranoid delusion. Once Owen returned from his visit in town, she would simply ask him and see what he had to say about the topic. If what he said made sense, she would leave it be, but if it didn’t, she intended to investigate on her own. Isabelle bided her time, until Owen returned from his visit in town several hours later.

  “My dear,” he stated, joining her in the library. “How was your day?”

  “It was well,” she replied, noticing a long, flat package held under his arm.

  He extended it to her, adding, “I picked something up for you, while I was out.”

  “What is it?” she asked, taking it from him.

  “Open it,” he answered, as a smile crept across his face.

  Isabelle placed the box down on a nearby table, tugging the ribbon strands off and away from the parcel. Once they had been removed, she separated the top section of the box from the bottom. Inside, she found thin, crinkly white wrapping paper. Pulling that aside, she saw a shimmering, green fabric folded over itself. Placing her fingers inside the folds of the fabric, she lifted the item from its container, allowing it to unfurl. It revealed itself as a slinky emerald-colored dress with a deep brown ribbon tied in a bow across the waist.

  “Do you like it?” he asked.

  “It’s lovely,” she replied. “But what is the occasion?”

  “You’ll need something to wear to tomorrow’s celebration,” Owen commented.

  “Celebration?” she repeated.

  “Now that you’re healthy and back where you’re meant to be, I thought we should mark the occasion,” he explained.

  “What do you mean, ‘Where I’m meant to be?’” she asked.

  “Just that you’re back with me after that dreadful accident,” he replied.

  “Oh, right,” she said. Owen smiled to her and began to walk off, but Isabelle hurried in front of him and asked, “Do you think it would be possible for that man to stop following me? He gives me the creeps.”

  “Konstantine?” Owen inquired, furrowing his brow. “Did he do something to you?”

  “Not really,” she replied. “It’s just… it seems a bit strange for him to follow me everywhere.”

  “It’s for your protection and assurance my dear,” he said. “I didn’t want you to be alone after your accident. I feared you might still be scared and unsettled.”

  “I don’t even remember this accident,” Isabelle replied. “How could it scare me?”

  “Regardless,” Owen said in a rougher tone. “I think it’s in your best interest to not be alone right now.”

  He again began to walk away, but before he could she asked, “What’s in your office?”

  Turning back to her and narrowing his eyes, he repeated, “My office?”

  “Gwen was giving me a tour, but he wouldn’t let me in there,” she explained.

  “Well, that’s probably for the best,” Owen said. “Like I’ve explained, he is just looking out for your best interest. I have been trying to track down the men that assaulted you, my dear. He didn’t want you to have to relive that experience, I’m sure.”

  When he went to leave again, she didn’t try to stop him. She looked down at the gown draped over her hands, shimmering in the light of the library’s electric bulbs and felt disconcerted by the answers her husband had given her. The truth, she thought, would certainly reside in the office she had been restricted to visit.

  Isabelle attempted to go about the rest of her day without raising any suspicions from either Owen or Deckland. When night finally arrived, she retired to the room she had awoken in that morning. While she changed into a nightgown, she was joined by Owen. He quietly crept behind the changing screen and leered at her, as she slipped off her clothes. She didn’t realize that he was there, until she had already undressed and turned back to get the nightgown.

  She flinched when she saw him staring at her. His face was still and calm except for a slight curl at the edge of his lips, but his eyes greedily traversed her naked body. She instinctively attempted to cover herself with the gown, but he stepped forward and halted her.

  “Nothing I haven’t already seen,” he commented. He placed his hand just above her hip, at the small of her waist. A wave of fear suddenly swept over her, and her skin crawled at his touch. “I thought you’d be ready to join me in our bed tonight.”

  She attempted to smile to conceal her sudden disgust for him and replied, “I’m still pretty tired from the accident. Maybe it’s best if I stay by myself for now.” She took a step away from him, allowing her to slip the nightgown over her head and cover herself. When it had passed down past her face, Owen was nowhere to be seen. She leaned around the changing screen in time to see him exit her room and slam the door behind him.

  It was several minutes before Isabelle’s heartbeat slowed and the panic left her sys
tem. A husband shouldn’t frighten and repulse his wife, she thought to herself, now convinced that something wasn’t right. She still could not put her finger on what exactly was wrong, however.

  She flipped off the electric bulbs scattered about the room and laid down in her bed. She turned to her side, so that she could watch the light peering in from under the door and waited. Every few minutes she saw a shadow walk past her room - her heart skipping a beat each time. Owen, she hoped, had given up on any further advances for the night.

  Though her intention had been to stay awake, she found that she really was quite tired from whatever had put her in such a condition. She soon found herself amidst a dream, sitting in a dark, windowless room. The chair she sat in was quite unusual. Leather straps wrapped around the armrests and bound her hands in place. Her ankles were similarly shackled, as was her forehead. Blinking her eyes several times, she tried to focus on her surroundings.

  In front of her were two men talking. She could make out neither man’s face, but one wore a long white coat, like a doctor. They were discussing something, but the sounds they made were too muffled for her to make any sense of. The other man soon left, and the one in white approached her. He leaned in close to her face and said something, but she still could not make it out. His face too was a blur, but she could distinguish it enough to see a wicked smile curl across his face. There was a brief pause before a sharp pain erupted at the back of her head.

  Isabelle awoke in a sweat and grasped at the back of her head. Ripping the bandage from her neck, she crept her fingers across her skull, trying to find evidence of her wound. When she finally found the scar, it wasn’t what she would have expected. If she had fallen, she expected that the injury would have been uneven, but the wound across the back of her head was a perfectly straight line etched along the base of her skull.

  She took several deep breaths and allowed herself to calm down a bit before throwing the covers off and standing. The light under the door had vanished, and she moved based only on memory. Next to the bed, she found a mobile electric-powered lantern in the shape of a candelabrum. Though it was too garish for her tastes, it would suit her purposes nonetheless. She flicked the switch at its base, illuminating the room in a flickering light and emitting a soft whirring noise from the motor. She picked it up and walked to her door, opening it only a crack.

  Peering out through the slit to see if anyone was still watching her, she eyed the hallway, but she found no one outside. Isabelle then fully opened the door and walked through, closing it shut behind her. The lantern barely lit the hall, but it would be enough for her to find her way back to Owen’s office. She quietly snuck through the corridors, getting lost a couple times in the maze of a home, before ultimately arriving at the closed door leading to her destination.

  Twisting the knob, she attempted to push open the door but found it to be locked. For whatever reason, she had not even considered the door would be inaccessible to her. She looked around for any sign of a key, but nothing seemed obvious. She looked up, however, and saw the glint of metal just above the doorframe’s ledge.

  Isabelle reached up and found a cold metal key resting there. She smiled to herself at her minor success and then slid the key into the door’s slot. The scraping of metal on metal was louder than she would have preferred, but the door unlocked regardless. She opened the door and then placed the key back atop the doorframe, where she had found it.

  Inside, she found a desk, bookshelves, and another closed door. Sitting the lantern down, she began her search at the desk, opening its various drawers and littering it contents out on the hard wooden top. Nothing particularly caught her eye, but there was certainly nothing there about her accident, so she moved on to the bookshelves. Pushing the books aside and opening the cabinets at the furniture’s base, she found nothing of interest.

  Suddenly and without any logical explanation, she knew she wouldn’t find what she was looking for in that room, but rather in the next. She moved to the unexplored door and opened it, pulling it toward her. There were a series of stairs leading down into a dark basement below. She picked up the lantern and moved slowly down the steps with a sense of dread and trepidation.

  Somehow, she knew exactly what would be down there in the dark. As though she were stepping into her dream, she saw the metal chair with leather straps at the ankles, wrist, and head. The sinking pit in her stomach dropped even further at its sight, and she felt a wave of despondency wash over her. Her eyes fell to the floor, and she knew that she had been there before.

  It was then though, that she saw a table in the corner with a bit of metal reflecting the light of her lantern. She approached it and found a metal bracelet sitting on the tabletop amidst a pile of bloody clothes. Instinctively, she picked it up and slid it down her wrist. When it stopped to rest on her arm, she felt a slight prick followed by a warm sensation emanating from its location. From the room above her, she heard a noise, but before she could turn to look, there was a smack to her head, and everything went black.

  Chapter 14. Fiona and the Assassination

  To fulfill Newton’s vision of the funeral, Fiona decided to send her new sister, Amelia, to deal with the empress at her home in the Sovereign Tower. The young pyromaniac that had been brought into the hive of Fiona’s mind was ideal for such an endeavor. Fiona had made something special out of the patients from Bedlam Asylum; the sisters, as she called them, were quite different from her normal pets. In the exchange of blood, the sisters had been given unique gifts of their own.

  When Amelia was a child, she accidentally started a fire that claimed her mother and father’s lives. She was shipped to various community homes and foster parents, but she never felt comfortable after the loss of her parents.

  After entering early adulthood, Amelia began to search for a way to fill the void left by their deaths. She found an abandoned warehouse and set it ablaze. Watching the fire consume the building reminded her of her loss, but filled her with warmth all the same.

  Amelia’s obsession with fire had carried over into a physical manifestation allowing her to fabricate constructs of fire at will. Fiona had only permitted her to test it in the dank sewers until that point, so both Amelia’s controlled mind and Fiona were looking forward to seeing the ability in a more practical setting.

  In an attempt to more easily get Amelia close to Empress Arkmast without raising too many concerns, Fiona allowed the pyrokinetic to change from her asylum clothes. Amelia chose a dark orange dress that nearly matched her curly orange hair.

  Amelia entered the Sovereign Tower with relative ease, passing by bureaucrats and office workers going about their workday. A dark marble with white streaks running through it covered the floors of the first level, and white pillars braced the tall ceiling. The base of the tower was open to the general public of Cultwick, but the elevator that went to the higher floors was under guard by a small team of corpsmen. With the help of the pyrokinesis she had developed, Amelia started a fire inside the guard’s nearby desk.

  All but one guard rushed to inspect and deal with the fire. Amelia charged the one corpsman that remained behind, hitting and shoving him into the empty elevator. The unsuspecting and distracted corpsman bashed his head against the floor of the metal box, while Amelia stood and pressed the button with ‘21’ etched into it.

  She then turned her attention back to corpsman on the floor and kicked off his helmet. He was a very young soldier and not entirely unattractive to her, but he stood in her way. Amelia knelt at his side, tore open his shirt, and pressed her hand to his bare chest. A radiating heat began to spread and disperse from her fingertips, flowing into his body.

  He woke with a jolt, as she burned a copy of her handprint into his chest. The heat had seared her hand as well, and beneath the crisp flesh blood dripped from her into his open wound. His mind joined Amelia’s inside Fiona, as her hand’s skin knit itself back together. The young man’s name was Ronald Lowe. He had been a relatively innocent and kind man
throughout his life, and Amelia felt a twinge of regret that was repressed by her dominator, Fiona. Such concepts were no longer of use to her or to her plans.

  Ronald stood and readjusted his shirt just as the doors of the elevator slid aside. It opened to a long hallway that was brightly illuminated by a combination of candles and electric bulbs. Amelia closed her eyes and strained her mind, focusing on each little flicker of flame. When she reopened her eyes, each of the candles had been extinguished and the hallway grew noticeably darker.

  Amelia and Ronald walked through a series of unguarded halls, guided by the corpsman’s knowledge of the layout. They soon arrived at a large door with two corpsmen standing guard, who Ronald charged and infected.

  Meanwhile, Fiona had sent several of her pets through less conventional methods of entry. Clamoring through the heating and cooling vents of the building, one pet dropped with a screech from the ceiling of the room the empress was in. The action, however, didn’t prove very useful, as the pet was quickly killed by the same corpsman that had hindered her plans in Pendulum Falls, Silas Skinner, except now his arm was hanging in a sling due to the rod she had placed through his collarbone.

  Fiona sent a couple more pets into the room from the various vents spread around the room, and soon the doors to the hallway swung open. Amelia, Ronald, and the two guards that had been posted outside entered the room.

  “Mr. Silas! I still need you to complete my collection,” Fiona forced Amelia to say. “Does that boo-boo I gave you hurt?”

  “You?” he asked. “You died! I killed you!”

  “I can’t die, you silly!” she replied.

  Amelia cracked a smile and held up her hand. A ball of fire roiled just above her palm, growing larger as each second passed. The empress, Silas, and the other two watched, as Amelia pushed her hands forward. The fireball plunged across the room, causing the group of four to quickly move aside, splitting into two groups of two.