Chapter Eleven | What Beasts We Are
It seemed to be a garden, almost. One that grew stone rather than flowers, marked by a pillar rising crookedly within the centre of the courtyard, surrounded by crumbling headstones and the everpresent stench of blood.
That same red fell from her fingers to patter silently against the ground below, a steady drip, drip, drip that was unnoticeable above the heavy handed crunch of Gascoigne's axe, echoing wetly as it crashed into the pile of meat below him that once was a person.
His clothes were smeared with crimson and chunks of flesh that quivered with every swing of his arm, spraying yet more viscera across the so-called Tomb of Oedon, as the signage along the wall so proudly stated.
And a tomb it was, filled with graves and corpses alike, each one steadily more unrecognizable either due to beasthood or the maddened butchering of what Catherine now knew to be a Hunter, well and truly blood-drunk.
The stones in her pockets jingled as she adjusted the grip on her blade, hands slippery as they grasped for purchase at the cloth that wrapped round the spears handle, cloth as soaked in blood as the man standing before her. Her fingers trembled at the sight of him, knuckles worn and feeling as though she couldn't clench them tight enough to bear the massacre she had stumbled upon.
Not quite stumbled upon, she thought, seeing as she had sought the man out. Come to save him, she hoped, though now she realized that she was much too late. Many years too late.
How long had Gascoigne hunted? How long had he wandered these streets with that axe in hand and proudly slew the monsters that lurked in the dark? How long had he been on the brink, until this one final moment in which his mind came crumbling down, only a ghost of his once - perhaps kind - self to be found?
Catherine didn't rightly know. What she did know, was she feared him.
She feared him more than the Cleric atop the bridge, a beast in all but origin and too simple, too off to be considered as monstrous as what this man had become.
Because there was still something left, something quiet and fearful that lurked in the recesses of his mind. How she could see teartracks laying pale ravines through the filth that marred his features, creeping out from under the sodden bandages that lay snug across his eyes.
A part of Gascoigne, who he once was, lay dormant. And by the gods of her home and Yharnam, she feared it.
And then he sniffed at the air, nose crinkling as a low growl slipped from his lips, chin raised ever so slightly from the ghastly display before him.
"Ah… smells so sweet, doesn't it?" he growled, a low grating murmur that slunk across the graves to just barely whisper at her ears, cloying and broken. "There's beasts you see, all over the shop." Gascoigne pointed at her with his axe, steel glinting in the moonlight. "You'll be one of them, soon enough."
"Gascoigne, I…"
Could she even try reasoning with him? To try and pull him from the brink? Catherine's gaze tracked across the graveyard, lingering on the pale shine of jewelry, gleaming proudly across the neck of a butchered woman atop the nearby stairs.
A brooch, red and lovely, stained ever moreso by the blood that had poured from her throat.
"Oh," she uttered.
Catherine's grip tightened over the haft of her spear, unable to drag her eyes away from the horror and pain that had seared itself upon the woman's face - jaw hanging loose, hair torn from her scalp and a ragged cut splitting her chest in twain.
Those poor girls.
She barely had a moment to shout before Gascoigne had leapt, crashing into the ground before her and tearing up stone with a low sweep of his axe.
Spitting at the debris, Catherine fired off a reflexive stunner, the bright red (too bright, blood and cut gems - ragged flesh) of it splashing over his chest like fireworks, sparks scattering across the earth.
The spell cast its glow across the tomb, stark light shining horribly off his mangy flesh, unshaven face marred with blood and contorted into a hideous scowl. She nearly flinched at the sight, blood running cold and hand faltering as Gascoigne hardly stumbled through the charm, axe continuing to rake up stone like some sort of macabre plow.
Gascoigne grinned at her as he pulled his other arm into a lock, blunderbuss cracking loudly and sending Catherine backwards, body peppered with wounds from the makeshift buckshot.
Quicksilver, she had learned it to be. Mercury, blood, and steel blended into a bullet that can tear through near anything. So, it tore through her, spraying the ground beneath her back in bright red, her pained shout echoing across the tomb.
Her shout was interrupted as Gascoigne's axe planted itself between her jaw and skull, cleaving her head nearly in two from one joint down to the next, opening her face into a gaping, bloodsoaked grin.
She choked on the pouring blood, shards of her teeth falling to the ground with a clatter as he pulled the axe out of her face, a dull squelch and the steady patter of blood marking its release.
Catherine gurgled in amusement at the way her gaze tilted, vision blurry as he took the rest of her head off, blood pouring from her now open jaw like wine from a toppled cup.
Her time moving from the Dream to the Tomb was hurried, a vial already at her nape as she stepped from the lantern. The bloodlust it brought was tantalizing, the rush sending sparks down her back and setting the hairs littered across her neck on-end.
Gascoigne had to die.
His wife lay dead, marred and bloodied and cheeks still carved with tears of betrayal (or was it resignation?). His children would likely be next, one missing and in Catherine's mind, dead as well. The other, the little girl, so relieved to have anyone - even a stranger - help her, that she broke into near hysterics, extending her trust wholeheartedly.
Catherine knew that kind of trust, that kind of fear. She'd have seen it in her own eyes when being told to sit down next to Janice and listen to her stories. She'd have seen it in her own eyes that thunder-stricken night on a barren rock, when Hagrid had swept into her life and carried her away from the tiny little world she had always known, one of neglect and ideations that still plagued her to this day.
She would be damned if she failed that girl.
When Gascoigne set eyes upon her for the second time, he flinched, gaze cast to the ground and searching among the corpses at his feet for hers.
"A dreamer… eh?" he seemed to wonder, a grin spreading across his face that told of death, one she had already experienced at his weathered hand. "So it was the moon, then, that sweetness."
"You're blood-drunk Gascoigne. Please, we don't have to do this," she begged, though a part of Catherine knew it was useless.
He simply rapped his axe gently against his temple. "I need to save them, save them all, lest they turn into beasts. You see it, don't you? You're a hunter, you know what I speak of. I'm giving them what they want, what they need."
"Even your wife, your daughters?"
Gascoignes movements were jerky as he shuffled towards her, arms twitching and his head rolling about as though it were strung to a wire. "Better this than have them tear each other's throats out in the coming weeks."
Catherine shot him in the head.
His neck snapped backwards as blood sprayed out behind him in a misty arc, a low moan of pain slipping from the man's lips as he stumbled, grasping at the tombs nearby for purchase. With a sickening crack, he pulled his head back into place, a gaping hole in his cheek leaking blood like a faucet, and his jaw hanging loose under the shattered bone.
"Look, a beast," he growled, almost imperceptible through crumbling teeth and a swollen tongue.
With a crack, he exploded. Clothes torn by shifting muscle, face bursting as the blood finally took over, fur exploding across his neck as the flesh beneath turned to leather. He seemed stuck, caught halfway between true beasthood and some broken remembrance of a man.
She'd never seen one of them turn before. She'd thought it a gradual process, something that slowly chipped away at their sanity until naught was left but a hungering for flesh.
It seemed it could happen in an instant.
The sight of him stung her eyes, much too terrible a creature to behold. Not for any lack of understanding, but for what she knew (or imagined) him to once be.
Hunched back, clawed hands, and a mouth that clove his head in two, distended jaws filled with a splayed array of teeth that poked out from among their brethren as though the crooked headstones that littered the tomb.
The scream that left his throat was pained, just human enough to make Catherine falter as he buried his arm in her chest.
So she found her way back, again and again, whittling away at his sordid flesh and carving through the misery that now cloaked him. Each trip seemed to wear on her, how she could feel new scars etched across her skin, tugging at her mind.
A thought struck Catherine as she ducked beneath another swing of his arms, one that had often whispered at the back of her mind but instead turned its words and attention toward the beast she now fought.
Just as the thought came to her, her arm was raised, a noxious green collecting silently upon the tip of her wand.
"Avada Kedavra," Catherine uttered, the word sparking something deep and hateful within her, the magic itself carrying a vibrant, glorious cold as it passed through her arm. The green seemed to burn even brighter, and she could feel a piece of herself escape as the spell crashed against Gascoigne, barely staggering the man as he continued charging forward.
So, that wouldn't work.
The blood fuels him, just as it does you, the voice inside her stated, the sound of its (her?) speech almost amused. My people and I are not so easily swayed, extending to those held in rapture by our blessing. Do you not dash about as though a rabbit, now? Swing as though some muscled brute to be displayed in a house of fancy? Souls are not torn when bound to the blood, not unless one wills it to be.
"Shit." She ducked beneath a swing, dragging her blade along Gascoignes thigh and almost whimpering as the blade caught on tough flesh, a sharp tug pulling the teeth through.
He's stronger.
Much stronger, she found, as his open palm crashed into her shoulder, shattering the bone and sending her flying across the tomb.
Catherine crashed into a tombstone, a pained shout escaping her as she slumped to the ground, body aching and her left arm close to useless. She scrabbled at her waist for a vial, downing it in two quick gulps as Gascoigne turned to charge at her.
Still staggered by the blow, she barely flinched out of the way as he careened past her, smashing into the monolith at the centre of the tomb. It tilted even further at the impact, the soil beneath churning as the roots that anchored the tomb in place shifted. Gascoigne roared, beating his fists against the ground, before plucking a nearby headstone from the earth. His shoulders strained against his coat, seams tearing as he hefted it up to waist height, before hurling the block in Catherine's direction.
She barely had a chance to blink before her brains were splattered across the earth, skull crushed and thick ropes of sinew pulled from her neck, stretched out beneath the bloodied stone.
Catherine shook her head upon returning to the dream, blinking the sight of one tonne of stone careening towards her away. "Fuck."
And again, she returned, a head on her shoulders and mind addled with bloodlust - a vengeance borne from the broken whisperings of the gods blood that now tainted her soul and a determined echo of her old self, screaming aloud to save that poor girl.
Not so old, she remembered. Perhaps a few weeks at most, but enough all the same.
A lot can change in that time.
"Gascoigne!" she roared, stepping into the Tomb once more, the sound that leapt from her throat animal and wild.
With deft hands she flipped open the music box, praying that it just may do something, rather than have her broken once again in some unimaginable way.
Her fingers caught at the handle, gears spinning and tines clacking melodiously as she turned it over and over, a quiet tune spilling forth over the din of staring corpses and grinding teeth.
Gascoigne screamed, some primal part of him - some small sliver of humanity hidden away - bashing its fists against the gates that held it. It was awful, frightful, so packed with misery that even the stones would weep could they hear it.
His knees seemed to lock, once so surefooted and now careening about the Tomb as though a drunkard, heavy steps bearing the weight of the memories that now plagued his shattered mind.
Catherine leapt, the little box tucked against her breast as she pressed her spear into his belly, the blade greedily ripping through his entrails and bursting out the other side.
Her spear was not dull when she had cut his thigh. She'd just been hesitant.
Stuffing her wand into the open wound, Catherine worked her wrist and whispered, "Confringo."
A blasting curse wasn't something that could be so easily ignored, even by the most magically resistant of creatures. An explosion was an explosion after all.
Gascoigne was no different, his chest inflating comically before Catherine found herself awash with a mess of steaming viscera, chunks of bone stuck to her cheeks and her ears ringing so loudly that she thought she might go deaf.
Stumbling backwards, she collapsed against the nearest grave, elbow propped against the stone as she stared at the waist and legs that once was Gascoigne - blood pouring from the gaping, spiderwebbed mass of flesh, an indiscernible pile of gore and pulped muscle spread out across the courtyard.
A wretched sob crept from her throat, thick with nausea and a creeping sense of finality.
The Tomb stunk of rot, the fetid stench of shit and piss strewn about the makeshift arena and coating the rotting corpses that lay resting outside their tiny, ornamental homes - dug from the earth by the hooked claws of the creatures she had long sown upon the bridge.
The sight was Yharnam, true and proud. A concentrated swathe of destruction and all things unholy to be found in this ailing city.
Her heart hammered in her chest as Catherine drew herself up, clumsily stepping through the pool of gore and forcing her aching knees to drag her up the stairs toward the waiting gate and the corpse that was prostrated on the roof before it - a brooch wrapped round its broken throat.
Catherine groaned in pain as she hopped down to the top of the building, stooping down on one knee to remove the brooch.
The chains were sticky with blood, cracked and flaking in places - miniature petals of rusty ochre fluttering away as she flipped the clasp, delicately lifting it from cold flesh to place it in her pocket next to the music box - just as quiet, just as still as the nest of bone and flesh that housed the womans naked heart.
With her entire being, Catherine cursed Yharnam, cursed the Church for bringing a curse this vile upon its own people. The Cathedral Ward was upon her, and she would find the Church, find them and tear the answers from their bloodied hands.
She would make them choke on the misery they had wrought.