Chapter 17: Virtues
The two-storey building with the blue walls and round windows at the left side of the road was so small it could be mistaken for an ordinary home, but a sign above the entrance revealed that this was Stepford Day Care Center. Matt had reached it after footing it north on Nathan Avenue for about five minutes.
He walked up the small flight of stone steps to the double doors with peeling white paint and stepped inside.
The floor was covered by a milk-white rug. He was in a short hallway that opened into a large room farther on. Small children's raincoats hung on hooks on the right wall. There were still little drops of water on the coats, as if they had been outside in rainy weather just a few minutes ago.
There was a door in the left wall, "OFFICE" written on the plate. Matt stepped into the room to have a look around. It was narrow and depressing, with a few pamphlets for the day care center placed on the desk. There was another virtue card lying amongst them, "Charity" written on it.
After slipping the card into his pocket, Matt left the office and tried the doors to the children's toilet and employee's cloakroom in the other wall, but they were locked. He then proceeded down the hallway to a large room with toys scattered on the floor. Boxes with dolls (not the monsters, just ordinary dolls) were lined up at the wall.
Matt walked across the room carefully, trying not to step on the toy-cars and plastic-babies resting on the rug.
There were eight completely out of place paintings hanging in a straight horizontal line on the south wall. Like the paintings in the library's Otherworld exhibition hall, they looked very old, like they could have been made in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. "But why the hell would there be works of art like these in a day care center?"
Seven of the pictures depicted various virtues, while the painting at the middle, which was twice as high as the others, depicted the familiar lady with the red gown. Of course, the caption read "God". The other paintings (there were three to the God's right and four to Her left) had rectangular indentations in the bottoms of their frames, where their captions were obviously supposed to be seated.
"So I have to solve another puzzle like the one at the library, except this time it's about virtues. That's really fucking splendid. But I've only got three cards … oh well, the rest must be around here somewhere," Matt mused.
A spiral staircase at the west wall led to the second floor, but Matt would rather check out the rest of the floor he was already on before going up there.
He walked through a doorway to the left of the stairs into a room with a huge, open, rectangular chest placed in the southeast part. It was made of smooth wood and contained lots of coloured plastic balls. A sloping black tube protruded from the north wall a few inches above Matt's head and ended just above the sea of plastic balls. It was obviously a small slide for the children, probably beginning in some room on the second floor. Matt remembered how he had loved these rides back when he was a kid, too.
The three windows in the west wall offered a boring view of the forest outside and the paintings hanging between them were pretty vacuous. There really wasn't anything interesting in the room, except the door in the south wall. "The Only Door that lEAds To Holy redemption" was written on it in blood. Matt grabbed the knob, turned it, pulled and pushed, only to come to the conclusion that the door was either locked or barricaded on the other side.
He turned around and noticed another card lying on a windowsill. This caption read "Faith". He added it to the collection of virtue cards in his pocket and then left the room to go up to the second floor.
The spiral staircase ended in a large room with a small plastic seesaw, three tables and six benches. This was probably where the kids and employees could eat their lunch.
Matt stepped through a doorway and entered a small room in the north-west corner of this floor. Curtains decorated with lots of dancing pink rabbits prevented the light from seeping in through the windows. There was a round hole in the south wall where the black chute leading down to the pool of coloured balls started.
Matt pulled the curtains aside to discover a "Hope" card that had been hidden on the windowsill and an odd symbol, three circles inside two bigger ones, scratched into the pane.
With hope resting in his pocket amongst the other four virtues, he walked across the dining room to the employees' toilets. The two tiny rooms were situated in the south-east corner, opposite the room where the slide began.
He stepped into the men's room first. It was cramped and smelled like – surprisingly enough – old cheese. There was nothing interesting there, so he moved on to the ladies' room, where another horribly misspelled message was scrawled down on the mirror:
the end of the jurney whill take plaice in Robbie's Circus in the amyusement park. until than, remember yur monsters purpose that is almost no longer nesessary
"Robbie's Circus? The end of the journey? What the hell's that supposed to …"
Interrupting his thought, a Doll was suddenly lowered behind Matt. Apparently, it had been lurking at the ceiling for a while, the puppeteer waiting for the right moment to attack.
Matt saw it in the mirror, turned around and fired his shotgun before the creature embraced him. The puppeteer let out a sad sigh, dropped its strings and, judging by the footsteps that came from somewhere above the ceiling, slowly shuffled away.
"Well, this place is just full of pleasant surprises, isn't it?" Matt thought, glancing at his hair in the mirror to check if recent events had caused any unwelcome colours to emerge. He then ran his eyes over the dead body of the Doll. The two last caption-cards were lying on the grimy floor next to its distorted head – he was sure the cards hadn't been there when he first entered the room. Maybe the puppeteer had dropped them through the ceiling's cracks along with the strings when it gave up the fight?
The words "Justice" and "Temperance" were written on these cards. Matt picked them up and slipped them into his pocket. "Now I just need to get back down to the paintings and solve the puzzle …"
A thick leather bound book was lying on one of the tables when he entered the dining room again. It looked like an encyclopedia or something, opened at some pages about swords:
… of exceptional virtue and strength, spiritual and physical. In art, the sword is the attribute of justice and wrath personified – and of St Paul who called the word of God "the sword of the spirit".
The two-edged sword is specifically a symbol of divine wisdom or truth, notably in Revelation where it protrudes from the mouth of Christ (1:16). Buddhism, too, uses the sword as an emblem of wisdom cutting through ignorance, and the Hindu god Vishnu is shown with a flaming sword of knowledge.
The flame-like shape of the two-edged sword also links it with purification. Purity is implied by the biblical cherubim who, with a flaming sword, guard the way back to Eden (Genesis 3:24) …
"I'm just wasting my time reading this," Matt muttered to himself and backtracked to the row of paintings on the first floor.
He began with the painting at the far left. It depicted a young woman pouring water from one stone pitcher into another. Matt was bewildered for a few seconds – then he realized what she was probably doing: "Diluting wine …" He inserted the "Temperance" card in the indentation in the bottom of the frame and continued to the next picture.
Another young woman was standing at the middle of the canvas, holding an oval gilded mirror out in front of her and staring at her reflection. Serpents slithered around her feet. First, Matt thought this was a depiction of vanity and narcissism, but he soon understood it had to be symbolizing self-knowledge and wisdom and placed "Prudence" in the indentation.
The last painting to God's right showed a woman carrying a basket of flowers. A small model of a ship was placed on her head like a big, clumsy hat, and a black chain was hanging from it, with an anchor at its end, resting next to her feet. Matt inserted "Hope" below her.
The first painting to the God's left depicted yet another young woman, holding a chalice to her lips with her right hand and a silver cross clutched in her left, standing inside a circle of lit candles. Matt inserted "Faith" at this image.
The next one depicted a smiling woman holding two baskets filled with fish and bread out to the pale, skinny people surrounding her. Not hesitating for a second, Matt placed "Charity" as the caption.
Last but one, the next painting showed a woman wearing only a gold helmet and shield, forcing a huge lion's jaws apart with her bare hands. "This is getting easy," Matt mumbled and put in the "Fortitude" caption.
The last picture was the classic symbol of justice: a blindfolded woman holding scales in one hand and a sword in the other.
After Matt had inserted the last caption, the big rectangular part of the wall with the God painting silently swung back. He stepped through the narrow opening and into a dark corridor.
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A/N: Short and boring chapter, I know, but I think it made a nice contrast to the bunch of plot revelations that was chapter 16. Kenshul: What's wrong with the haunted mansion? He he, it's one of my favorite parts of SH3. Shortey: Well, I don't think I'm that good with drama and tragedy, but there might be little flashbacks in future chapters. Anyway, the monsters and weird events themselves are like twisted versions of Matt's memories … Oh, and I –so- ripped off "Symbols and their meanings" by Jack Tresidder for the part where Matt read about swords' symbolism. It did show Amamet in a somewhat new light, though, don't you think? TINW, -E.P.O.