Dear reader,
I am sincerely regretful for the huge hiatus which overtook this fic for four months. I actually had this chapter written but not typed since November, but had to take some classes in October in order to receive certifications for my job. Upon their completion in later December, I thought to get back to writing, but something just...stopped me from doing so. I'm not sure what exactly, apart from the fact that while I love writing my stories down on paper, I hate typing and editing them.
But here is the chapter at long last, and I have another on paper, ready for the dreaded typing and editing. Don't worry. It won't be another four months before you see it. My time is no longer consumed by typing assignments for online courses.
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Chapter Four: The Secret Ingredient
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The demon slipped through the second story window like a phantom. His feet made no sound as he stepped onto the bare hardwood floor, a feat which he took particular pride in considering the initial difficulty in gaining a discreet entry into the building. When he'd finally seen that like most businesses, the bakery served as the family's home, he'd had to wind his way through a connecting alleyway behind the store. This was also an act which required stealth, for what would people think at seeing a man steal into an alleyway in daylight? They'd think him a criminal, naturally.
After sneaking past an obligatory drunkard who lurked in the alleyway, Sebastian nearly gave himself away at the distraction of a seek and elegant black cat who sat on a crate grooming her delicate paws. It took all of his willpower to tear himself away from the lovely creature, and from there he spotted a possible entrance. Above the crate was a window which sat slightly ajar. At last, Sebastian allowed a smirk. Foolish humans, always so assured of their security just because the sun was shining. Ensuring that there were no windows opposite his hopeful entry point, and with one last glance at the beautiful feline, Sebastian leaped deftly onto the narrow outcropping above. The landing was perfect, pressing his back flush to the brick and allowing just enough room for him to jiggle the flimsy latch that held the window in place. There was a small but audible click as the latch popped loose, and the window swung gently outward. There was no one else within sight save the cat and the drunkard, so he felt he was in the clear.
Or so he told himself, until he looked up after brushing off his sleeves to find himself face to face with a young boy wielding a rather large knife.
"Ah," he said. So the room belonged to the girl's brother. Wasn't that just lovely? "Russel, was it not? Good morning."
"Good morning," the boy replied politely, brandishing the knife as though it were a much larger blade. "I've never seen a butler try to rob a house before. Not in broad daylight anyway. Doesn't your master pay you enough?"
Ah, there it was, that assumption of criminal intent. Sebastian held his hands high in surrender before bowing deeply at the waist.
"I am compensated fairly. Breaking into a home for robbery is an ill advised practice indeed," the demon said. "However, I can assure you that I have no intentions of robbing your home. Which is quite lovely, by the way."
For indeed it was, the visible space being sparsely furnished but clean and tidy. The wood beneath his feet shined with well-maintained polish, and an aroma of warm, slow-baking bread filled the air. Quite the cozy environment, he thought.
"No?" Russel challenged, a cheeky tone that reminded Sebastian all too much of the boy's sister. "Then why else, good sir, would you be entering a home in the middle of the day after nearly breaking the window from its hinges and lurking in the alleyway for a full five minutes?"
Damn it all, but Sebastian was tired of meeting young boys with too-shrewd insight. It was enough to have to cope with such attitudes from his own master, but now this baker's son was doing it too? He feared he'd never find reprieve.
He had an excuse on his lips already, however. With a pleasant, almost overly cheerful (and in Russel's eye, slightly constipated) smile, he spoke.
"I confess my methods leave questions about my integrity, but in truth, when I met your sister earlier, I felt an intense need to know her better."
"So take her to lunch," Russel countered. "Stop by and chat with her at work. Bring her gifts and ask her about herself. What you are doing is uncouth, sir, and actually somewhat creepy."
The boys' tone was intense, defensive, and Sebastian detected just a hint of jealousy there. Hm. The boy was surprisingly protective of his sister.
"Further," the boy continued. "If you've come to gander at her underthings, I fear I may have to remove your eyes."
'Very protective,' Sebastian smirked. Judging by the lad's rigid and furious stance, he believed he might actually follow through on that threat.
"Do forgive me," he implored. "I didn't intend to portray myself as having ill intent. I merely found myself so drawn to your sister—"
"You said that already," Russel cut him off. "And again, I say it is uncouth."
"And I assure you that I am not here to commit atrocities. Indeed, I had hoped to inquire about the lady's history from a direct source. That is to say, you."
"Me?" Russel gave the very same eyebrow quirk of sheer disbelief that the butler had seen on the Fortescue female.
"I still don't believe you," the lad said. "However, it's better that you ask me instead of papa. So I will tell you about her, if in exchange you swear to leave my room and enter the bakery as a normal customer would from now on. And no public displays of affection, should anything come of your inquiries after my sister."
"Those are fair terms," agreed the butler. "I accept."
Russel nodded and sat on top of an old oak chest which sat at the end of the bed. He shared this room with his sister, for while the business was prosperous, the family had little use for frivolity. Not to mention, that was how the house had been built two decades prior, and there were only two bedrooms to accommodate the family. He had shared the room since his birth, but this would only become a problem later in life as the Fortescue children grew up (and indeed was already looked upon by some as indecorous). It was an issue which, along with Amelie's antisocial tendencies, the family's patriarch hoped to solve by marrying her off. Russel, on the other hand, was a bit less pleased with the prospect of his sister moving away, and did not care that the other boys of London teased him for his "sister complex." He might seem exasperated with his sister's overly affectionate displays toward him from time to time, but she was the only female figure in his life, given that the very act oif his birth had killed their mother.
Really, he felt he had no one to blame in regard to his attachment but himself. Indeed, he blamed his killing of their mother for a lot of things, such as why Amelie preferred work to socialization, milk to wine, and the scent of freshly baked bread to fancy perfume. Perhaps if she'd had a mother figure, she wouldn't be so set on assuming responsibility for the business. It was a problem, really.
Just the same, because of his affections for his sister, and because of the overwhelming feeling of suspicion he felt in regard to this so-called suitor, Russel Fortescue was determined to protect her from any would-be wooing.
There he sat, upon a chest containing books on anatomical studies and the processes of decaying bodies (along with a few hand-me-down dresses), to prevent the butler from snooping. Holding the knife across his lap, he set to work blackening his sister's name.
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The mortuary cellar was even darker than the rest of the place. And if Amelie was not mistaken, some of the spiderwebs were thick enough to ensnare a medium-sized human being. She shuddered, not because of the space's cold air, but because she would swear to her grave that one of the spiders within the silk ramparts had waved at her as she passed...
Really, would it kill the man to keep a lit coal brazier or two in the place? Then again, given the unpleasant dusty air of the space above, that may well result in a roaring inferno if one ever got knocked over. It reminded her of a fire that had occurred a few years prior at a rival baker's home. What had the woman's name been? Lowell, Loveless...Lovett? At any rate, a brazier had been knocked down in the kitchen which, heavily dusted with flour, went up in flames within seconds.
Just as well, though.
The place had been incredibly shady, the proprietor an utter nutcase. And then there were suspicions about the ingredients, the pies being of an incredibly disgusting texture, and the filling was certainly no meat Amelie had ever tasted before...
The baker pulled herself from her thoughts as her steps led her to a long, rectangular slab of polished wood. In fact, there were four total, all of them housing human-shaped mounds covered in white cloth. At the sour smell that rose from them, Amelie knew she had reached her destination. She set the candle on the corner of one slab and set her basket at her feet. Carefully, she grasped the corners of one sheet and slowly peeled it back.
The inhabitant was young indeed, seeming a mere few years older than herself. Barely a stubble of beard growth pushed through on his chin. His eyes were closed in a rather peaceful manner. There was, as the others had stated, not a hair out of place on the man. Any of the blood he'd been drowned in had long since been cleaned away. The corpse was pale, still, and quite naked. Briefly, she wondered how much more of a social outcast she would be were she to confess that her first sight of the opposite sex's body was that of a dead man.
Deciding that because he was dead and this encounter could hardly be considered intimate, and thus not counting, Amelie brushed some of the man's hair away from his forehead.
"Poor fellow. You were much too young for this," she mumbled wistfully. Her eyes caught sight of a dark mark just behind the man's left ear. Curious, she turned his head aside in order to get a better look. There, behind the shell of the ear was a tiny, distinctly etched fish symbol in black ink.
"Strange," she said, but gave it little further thought. Instead, she returned the man's head to its previous position and picked something out of the basket at her feet.
It never really mattered what the treat was that Amelie used in her revivals, so long as it was something she'd made alone. She found that her ever-popular eclairs were best for the duty, because the chocolate melted in one's mouth just enough that it gave her time to interrogate the dead whilst they licked the ganache from their hard palate. It was a basket full of such that Amelie had carted to the Undertaker's abode, and one such pasty that she held aloft in her hand. She gently opened the man's jaws (which didn't actually happen so gently as she wished due to rigor mortis), broke off the corner of the eclair, and dropped it in. Then she picked up the candle and waited.
It took only a few moments for the effect to kick in. Before the candle had even melted any new wax, the jaw began to work, the mouth closed, and chewing noises could be heard. A moment after that, the dead man sat up to regard the girl with the eclair.
"My but that is delicious!" the dead man complimented. "I don't suppose you have any more?"
Amelie held up the rest of the pasty for him to see.
"I do indeed, but perhaps you could answer a few questions for me first?"
"Of course, of course. But why, may I ask, are we sitting in the dark?"
"Don't worry about it. I simply find myself in desperate need of purchasing firewood," the baker lied. "Tell me, what is the last thing you recall doing?"
"Well, I believe it was yesterday—it had to have been yesterday, I was just locking up for the night when I heard a rancor outside."
Amelie tore off another bit of pastry, licking the filling which leaked onto her fingers. She offered the piece to the man.
"What then?" she asked. "What was the cause of this rancor?"
"I wasn't sure where it was coming from at first, but after a few moments I heard more noise, coming from my office upstairs."
"But you said the noise had come from outside of the building. There was a louder rancor upstairs though?" the baker offered another piece.
"I grabbed for my pistol behind the counter and made my way upstairs. The door was banging against the frame, but that wasn't the noise I heard. The rancor was from within"
Another piece of eclair vanished.
"What lay in wait behind the door?" Amelie asked. "An intruder?"
"The noise was horrible, like some slimy, flopping mass. I could see something writhing in the dark, outlined against he light of the window. The whole room reeked of fish, and I could see the outline of a man in a long overcoat."
"The man," another bite made its way into the dead man's gullet. "Who was he?"
"A noble, I think. Yes, in fact I recall his voice was quite familiar. It was that of the man I had spoken to at the opening of my business. Insisted that if I was to have a loan, I'd have to get this awful mark behind my ear. Strange fellow."
"Do you remember what happened then?"
Amelie had no clue what he was talking about. They were like this, sometimes, lucid but vague and incoherent. Most of the time they barely seemed aware of her presence, simply answering her questions as though under compulsion to do so. It infuriated her to no end.
"He reprimanded me, told me he'd already given me enough of a chance. He said that my luck had run out. Then that...thing on the floor rose up and came at me. I felt something slimy, tendrils sliding in my nostrils and throat. I could taste copper, something thick and rancid. Might I say, young lady, that this tastes far better. And then I—"
Amelie quickly handed over the last bit of eclair to cut him off. It was far kinder to let him finish the treat before he could remember how horrific his death had been.
"Alright," she soothed, helping him lie back down. "That's enough. You've clearly had quite an ordeal. Rest now, and don't think on it anymore."
The man was about to lay his head back, but he became fully aware of his state of undress, having only recently been autopsied. As Amelie tugged the sheet up to tuck it just under his armpits, he fixed her with a curious, ashamed sate.
"Why am I naked?"
As soon as that question passed his lips, he went silent once more, mouth freezing open in inquiry. His head fell back onto the slab with a dull thud, and the baker sighed. Hopefully the other three would have more useful information.
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The demon butler was quite amused at the young boy's disdainful, distrustful glare.
Over the last ten minutes, the boy had feverishly imparted him with every bit of negative in formation he had about his sister.
"She has no friends," Russel had informed him. "She only owns hand-me-downs, and she never regarded proper manners very highly. She has an inordinate fondness for cheese and spends all her earnings on cook books. And she hits me, sir. Some mornings when I'm not quite awake enough to focus, she throws day-old rolls at me."
The last point was delivered with such indignation, such righteous bitterness, that Sebastian cracked a fang-bearing grin.
"And do these rolls hit their mark?" he asked teasingly.
"Every time," the youth admitted. "My sister's aim is impeccable, and she is ruthless."
"Perhaps she would not throw them so often if you were more diligent in your duties?" Sebastian goaded the boy, and also made a note to try such methods on the servants back at the manor when they slacked in their own chores.
"I..that is, she..." Russel was at a loss. "She has nothing talentwise save her cooking."
"Ah, but for many men, a fine meal is all that is necessary to enter into an agreement," Sebastian flashed his fangs again. The boy shuddered, though he had no idea why, or that the sentence had more sinister connotations than he was thinking.
"Tell me about the types of books your sister reads," the butler urged. "As you said that is where she invests her earnings. Cookbooks, were they?"
Forgetting that this was where he would give his sister away, and perhaps fueled by annoyance at having hot cross buns hit him in the forehead daily, Russel spewed the facts in earnest.
"Not just cookbooks, sir. There are others and they are...disturbing. Murder mysteries and scientific tomes. Have you ever seen the diagrams in those, sir? They're far too detailed. I even know what the gallbladder is for due to her showing me. And those others, publications on disease and death. It's morbid, sir, not a hobby you'd want a wife to have."
As soon as the boy finished his burst, his fists balled in excitement, he realized exactly what he'd done. A slow, insightful smile spread across the butler's face, and an inhuman flash flickered in his crimson eyes.
"Fascinating," the demon said. "Please, tell me more."
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Amelie sighed as she sat back away from the third body. Her basket felt far lighter now, containing only two more eclairs. These men hadn't been overly useful. Well, they could have been, but it would be hard to piece the information together in a believable way. So far, she'd learned that they all had the fish mark behind their ears, each had a connection to someone called Baron Dulac, having each taken a loan from the man for purposes of starting their businesses. The men had also made mention of some figure called Dagon.
Her best guess, based on conjecture, was that the Baron was in some sort of cult, for the second man had said that Dulac had the fish mark on his forehead (though he hid it with a messy and unfashionable hair style). This mysterious nobleman also had control over some sort of tentacled fish-like creature, though none of the dead men had been able to identify it by name. Could this creature be some sort of exotic pet the Baron had imported from the Orient? Was Dagon the name of it? She recalled seeing a tentacled creature from the sea once. If she remembered correctly, it was called a squid. But was it even possible to keep a squid on land?
And with the way the men had spoken of Dagon, the name seemed far more sinister, with a fell and inhuman purpose. The second victim had described him as "a being from beyond the stars," a god of sorts in more esoteric underground circles. Amelie had little knowledge of cults or occultism, so she was having a hard time stringing their stories into something plausible.
Was it even possible for a being from another world to exist? For nightmarish creatures to wrestle grown men to the ground and horrifically drown them with its own bodily fluid? As far as she knew, there were no creatures which expelled blood unless injured. She shuddered in revulsion at the thoughts which were too numerous.
Then again, she was the one who revived dead men with eclairs. So anything was at least plausible, if not impossible, she supposed.
Now how to explain the matter to members of "normal" society?
Hopefully, this last victim would offer some more concrete answers. If not, all she had to offer to the child Earl was a detail about a fish tattoo.
Sucking in a breath, she withdrew another pastry and parted the victim's jaws. Just as she'd dropped in a morsel, the door to the shop proper opened.
"Miss Amelie?" the Undertaker called in a singsong voice.
Cold fear seized at her heart and her eyes shot wide open in horror as the dead man began to stir.
"No! No no no nononono!" she chanted in a fierce whisper. Amelie could hear the mortician's footsteps growing louder as he descended the steps. Panicked, she snatched up the rest of the eclair and viciously began to stuff it into the man's mouth. The newly-resurrected gentleman, while initially thrilled at the deliciousness, began to choke and sputter as he tried to push the hysterical baker off of him. He was surprisingly strong, actually succeeding in shoving her back against another slab and dislodging the pastry into his hands.
"That was entirely uncalled for!" scolded the undead.
"I'm aware and I do apologize, but I also must insist that you return to being dead!" Amelie delivered the rapid-fire string of words, grabbed up the fallen pastry, and launched herself at the man. She had just managed to pin him down and stuff half the eclair into his mouth when all of a sudden the light got brighter and a grinning visage appeared not three inches from her face. Amelie froze, and the man chewed furiously.
"This is not what it looks like!" she all but screeched.
She realized just how terrible it must seem, her hair mussed and skirt bunched up around her knees, face flushed in exertion as she straddled a man who was supposed to be dead.
"Necrophiliac," was the term they'd use when they referred to her in the bedlam house.
Undertaker held aloft a bright oil lantern, the waxen light illuminating his features eerily. His grin died for just a second as he took in the scene before him, the frantic baker and the dead man chewing on a pastry. Then, the lantern nearly went out as he literally fell over laughing.
Amelie didn't know quite how to react to that.
She climbed off of the man who, still chewing, paid her no mind. She straightened her skirt and smoothed back the strands of red hair that had tumbled across her face.
"I shall have to leave the country," she declared sullenly. "I will have to give up baking forever, change my name, work in some printing press..."
Undertaker's clawed hand on her shoulder halted her nervous ranting. Amelie gulped and met his eyes (or at least, she stared at the space where his eyes should be).
"Well now, that is a quite unique talent! Who knew your bakery's claim to fame was actually true?"
The man wiped a bit of drool from his lips, his shoulders giving a post-laughter twitch.
"I..." Amelie struggled to form a response. She decided that changing the subject might work. "Ahem. I found a small fish-like marking behind each man's ears. Do the names Dulac or Dagon have any meaning to you?"
Perhaps if she kept pretending that the cat was out of the bag, Undertaker might forget what he'd seen?
"They do indeed," the mortician said, playing along. "Baron Dulac is well known in the underworld of London as a fanatical occultist, an avid member of the Esoteric Association of Dagon. Dagon is...their icon of worship, so to speak. Now tell me, Miss Amelie..."
Amelie gulped as Undertaker shifted his head just slightly, enough for his thick bangs to part the tiniest amount. She saw a flash of vibrant chartreuse, a color that made the face seem as though it belonged to someone else.
'So he does indeed have eyes,' she thought. And what a mesmerizing pair they were, too.
"How did you wake Mr. Greenwood here?" As quickly as it had appeared, Undertaker's fiercely serious countenance was gone. The bangs, along with the goofy and toothy grin were back in place. Amelie blinked fiercely, then with no small amount of shell shocked bewilderment, giggled and held a finger to her lips.
"Old family recipe," she said.