Darksome Devouring - Part 2
And then he woke up.
Before the high iron gate, chained and fastened with a padlock to which he didn't have a key, Muraki paused. He shouldn't have come here; he knew that. He hadn't been back to this house in four years. It had once bourn his family's name, but after Saki's death he had put the property up for sale and now it had no name at all.
Muraki had never expected the house to sell. The bloodstains had been washed away, but the ghosts and the rumors of murder – parricide, fratricide – remained. Still, the house had been a constant in his dreams, and he hadn't thought it would look any different than the home he had left behind. But the paint had been weathered black as a bruise; the broken windows were jagged like shattered edges of bone.
"I'll be waiting for you," The Corinthian had said, baring three sets of sharp ivory teeth. "At the end of the world."
Muraki had not slept again the night before – not after waking from the dream with his hands clenched in the sheets and cold sweat burning his eyes – but he wasn't tired. He wasn't trembling either, as he reached up to take hold of the crossbar that ran along the top of the fence; he boosted himself over, dropping into a crouch on the garden path.
The weeds licked at his calves and overgrown branches tugged at his hair as he went towards the house. It had taken most of the day to get here; it had been early when he had left, and already the sun was low in the sky.
"Christ, Muraki what time is it?" Oriya had asked him that morning, stifling a yawn behind his hand. "Are you going somewhere?"
"Home. I think... I'm going home."
"What? Muraki..."
"I'll be back. Tonight, or maybe tomorrow. I just have something to take care of."
Then he had left. He had missed a quiz in his anatomy class, and a chemistry lecture. Oriya would be worried, would fall asleep on the sofa or at the kitchen table over a cup of cold coffee, waiting for him to come home.
It didn't matter; he'd had to come here. There hadn't been any other choice.
The front door was locked, but it hung brokenheartedly from rusty hinges. A single kick knocked it open, and Muraki stepped inside the empty foyer. The air smelled of rotting wood and abandoned didn't know who had come after he had gone, to move the furniture out, tear up the carpet and strip the pictures from the walls.
"Are you here?" he called, but the dark corners swallowed his words and the silence that moved in to fill the gaps they had left was absolute. For a moment, Muraki wavered on the threshold of the house and considered abandoning this whole thing.
Then he drew a deep breath, leaving the yellow light of day behind as he moved further inside. "I came all this way. So don't disappoint me."
He had never thought about madness before, but now, as he started up the stairs of an empty house, the idea fluttered briefly across his conscious. If you lost your mind, could you feel it? Would you know?
He had forgotten something in this house, left it behind all those years ago. Maybe it had been so long now that he no long knew how to feel anything but the lack of it.
A hallway ran perpendicular to the top of the stairs. He hesitated a moment, and then took the branch that led into the north wing. The room at the end of the hall had been his mother's, and the walls were lined with shelves on which her dolls had been arranged like spectators in a coliseum. There had been more than 200 of them, and he remembered walls that oozed silk like water in a cave. All those blind, distant stares.
He had found her in this room, poisoned. Her dead eyes like the eyes of a doll.
There was a gnawing, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, but Muraki ignored it as he pushed against the door. Hinges stiffened by rust fought him, and he had to throw his shoulder against the wood, so that when the door swung open it was all at once, with a scream of metal.
He stumbled inside.
Slowly, Muraki looked up, running his gaze over empty shelves plastered with dust and cobwebs. The only window had been boarded shut, but the last of the daylight leaked around the cracks, throwing long shadows across the floor.
The room was empty. Empty, save for...
His palms were damp with sweat as he started forward. On one of the shelves against the far wall, he caught a glimpse of something emerald buried in the shadows. It was a doll, with dark hair and black eyes; just one of the dozens that had once filled this room. It must have been left behind. Somehow, it had been passed over when the house had been cleared.
It wasn't until then that he realized he had been holding his breath, and he let it out in a quiet sigh. He picked the doll up, tilting it to the light to see it better.
Behind him, the slamming of a door broke the silence.
Muraki jumped, the doll slipping, forgotten, from his grip.
And then there was an arm around his waist, a wide hand pinning his wrists together, pulling him back against a strong chest. There was the cold kiss of a knife at his throat.
"Hello, hello?" The words were a soft purr against his ear. Muraki bit his lip. He didn't struggle, couldn't have struggled if he had wanted to, because he knew that voice. Knew it keenly and suddenly, like something remembered from a dream.
"Well," said The Corinthian. "What have we here?"
