Chapter Three, Ortega
Clive remembered his own words.
I am a drunk no longer.
It was getting late. Clive should have been on the train ten minutes ago, but there was more for him to do. The caretaker for the other three months, Ortega, a tall chestnut haired man in his late forties with lines all throughout his face from either smiling or frowning too much was leading him around the dungeon area, a burning torch in one hand. Clive was also carrying one, as he didn't trust the darkness around him and he wished to be protected. They were going down a long corridor with jail-like cells passing them on either side, the sound of dripping water and the smell of mould and dried blood prominent to his senses. Once or twice Clive could have sworn that he had seen a bone or two lying down within the vagueness of a cell half obscured by shadow, but dismissed the sighting as merely his mind playing tricks on him. He was liable to do that, sometimes.
I am a drunk no longer.
(Kaitlyn? Oh gods, what did I…)
"There's seventy eight cells in here, not counting the large one at the back. Each cell needs to have a torch burning on either side of the jail bars, that'll give the place enough room to see by. Ain't nothing worse than coming down here and breaking your neck on a slippery stair, just because you couldn't see where you were going. Don't worry about having to go inside any of those cells by the way, you can leave them as they are, unless you're an overzealous cleaner or anything. Frankly, I wouldn't step into one of those unless I absolutely had to, don't wanna get three hundred year old monster turds all over my boots. This is the vacant block. The monsters are on the other side of the Heaven. You know you're supposed to feed them?"
"Yes. Once a day, except on Sundays when it is twice a day." Clive would have nodded silently, except that Ortega was in the lead and he would not have seen the act anyway. Mostly, his thoughts were elsewhere. Somewhere far away. Clive needed a drink.
I am …
(It was years and years ago, back when Kaitlyn was just a little blonde-curled toddler, the perfect image of a baby girl. She had been playing with blocks near to where Clive had been working on his Filgaia theory, pages spread out all over the table. Years and years of hard, thankless work. He had been drinking something strong while he was organizing his notes, it helped him to think better, however he had been doing this for awhile and he was actually quite tipsy now, enough to know that he was drunk. Catherine had popped her head into the room to say that somebody was at the door for him, and when Clive took that call and returned… when he did that…Kaitlyn had found the scissors and had turned most of his portfolio into a family of thin paper dollies, tattooed all over with carefully inked and thought-out words. She was smiling proudly, the act of creation a new and enthralling one to Kaitlyn's little life. The rest of the papers were scattered all over the floor, cut into ribbons by the scissors in the girl's tiny hands. She must have made them into confetti and then thrown them up into the air, to watch them fall like snow. Like snow. She looked up, beamed, and then said something to her daddy, though Clive for the life of him couldn't remember what it was. She had probably asked if he had liked them or not.
He sunk to the floor quickly, sitting indian-style at the low table at which Kaitlyn was doing also, knocking over the dregs that had still been left in his whiskey glass onto the floor. His voice, slow and slurry, his breath reeking, he reached his hand out, hovering over Kaitlyn's own. "Kaitlyn… what did you…"
She pushed the biggest and most well-made paper dolly over to her father's side of the table, grinning. "I made it just for you!" She said.
From those words something deep and hot hatched within him, nurtured and nourished by the drink. Intense hatred for the girl instantly sprung from inside him, like a leopard leaping from a bushy cover, and his large hand closed into a fist over hers. Clive smiled as a reaction to the anger, his whole mind foggy and not all there. With all the strength in his arm possessed, he brought his fist down hard on Kaitlyn's hand, a punishment for wrecking years and years of work. He hoped it smarted, hoped she wouldn't be able to use it for a day or so, that would teach her a lesson all right.
What he didn't expect to hear was the quiet frail crunching sound of something small and brittle under his fist, the sound like he had stepped on a roach or a large spider of some sort, but the limb underneath his hand had twitched all at once from the force of the hit, a spasm of pain, and now it felt remarkably different under Clive's palm, like he had mashed it straight out of its shape. Sobriety cut through his mind like a laser, the adrenaline wrenching the obscuring fog out of his mind. Clive understood.
For a brief, yet eternal second, Kaitlyn's happy smile had frozen on her face, her eyes bright and wide, her small little baby teeth showing in her grin. In a year or two, she would start losing them soon. It looked like her mind had had trouble comprehending the pain and she had gone perfectly still, all the colour and life draining from her face until she looked as while as a linen sheet.
"Kaitlyn? Oh gods, what did I…?"
The little girl's scream could have broken glass. Clive yanked his hand away and saw there was blood on his palm, noticing as he stood up, that his hand was shaking violently, fiercely, as if it had known exactly what it had done. Kaitlyn had snatched her hand back and was cradling it against her little body like it was a wounded animal, her long pealing shriek degrading down into hysterical cries. Clive stared, dumbfounded. Catherine had also cried out behind her as she had been attracted to the room from the scream, roughly shoving Clive aside as he had been in her way. The drunken man couldn't keep his balance and he fell against one of the chairs, missing and smacking the back of his head against the wooden armrest. Clive saw stars for a moment and moaned out in pain, bringing his bloody hand around to rub the back of his head.
Catherine was cradling the damaged infant like she was a tiny baby again, trying her best to stop Kaitlyn from screaming her lungs raw. Her little hand had been squashed by the force of Clive's fist, the tiny fingers broken and looking like flattened cheese sticks. They hung limply from a palm that had been bent forward a little from the broken inner bones, thinner and floppy, like a plain pancake. It was slowly starting to swell and turn bright red, a small cut gained from the metal of Clive's wedding band oozing a few droplets of blood down the gap between her thumb and index finger.
Clive didn't know what to say. It felt like somebody had removed him from his own world and had placed him into the false world of another, where his little daughter shrieked and screamed and cried and the fault was all his. "Catherine…" Clive murmured, speaking low and confusedly, "I…"
She turned around and glared at Clive, then he immediately knew that Catherine hated him. He was too messed up, too struck by the happenings of the past twenty seconds to even consider what this might mean for himself as her husband, all he could do for the moment was stand in his own reeky atmosphere of liquor, his years of work in shreds all around him, and by his little daughter who was crying in pain and fear for him. For Clive, that really hurt him the most. Ten minutes later and they were at Cheville's house down the road, where Kaitlyn was treated, and Clive had spent that night hiding out at the local inn. All because he was-)
Not a drunk no longer…
The doorway to the large cell was tall and wide, four times the height of a man and broad enough to fit a sandcraft in lengthways, the tough irons bars as thick and as the branches of a strong, supple tree. There didn't seems to be a doorway or a lock to this particular holding cell, as if the prisoner inside was never to be let out under any circumstances. Two large pyres were burning on either side of the cell, somehow creating a minimal amount of smoke. It must have been specially prepared wood, Clive reckoned, for it to burn like that. This place must have stored a precious kind of something for the duke to protect it this way. Ortega stoked each of the pyres quietly for awhile, minimizing the embers and maximizing the flames and the light.
"You gotta keep these ones burning most of all. The darkness makes all the monsters edgy but this one will panic and break free if all the fires go out. I dunno what it is exactly, I wager it's some kind of fire-breathing dragon myself, but it hides so close to the back of the cell that I ain't never seen its face before. You don't have to worry about feeding this one, it doesn't eat, or it doesn't need to eat, from what I've noticed. Ten years I've been stoking this fire and I haven't given it anything to chow down on, but the thing is still alive."
"That is impossible." Clive stated, "Every living thing requires sustenance to live. It is a proven fact."
"Well, I don't know about you, college boy, but I know what I've seen and I'll continue to believe what I've seen." Ortega replied with a knowing grin. "Just keep everything nice and bright and the monsters fed. The Duke'd be pretty upset if one of his precious little 'collection' was to die." He emphasized the word 'collection' with the middle and index finger of each hand, then laughed. Clive obligingly smiled at Ortega's horse-like braying. "A torch will last twenty-four hours down here," The caretaker explained, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, "The pyre six or seven hours at the max. You'll have to come down here at night and relight the fires, it'll help if you keep a pile of faggots and tinder down here to save time. Use one of the cells for that. The woodshed out the back of the Heaven has more than enough material and pre-prepared torches for you to use, so don't worry."
"Excuse me," Clive said, "But may I ask you a question?"
Ortega was warming his hands on the burning pyre, for it was exceedingly cold down there in the dungeon. "Yeah, what is it?" He asked, enjoying the heat from the flames.
"I do not see how the Duke Begucci could allow his wife and family to live in such a dangerous place as this, so infested with monsters and cut off from the rest of the world. I know it is vastly hypocritical for me to mention this, what with my own impending intentions, but I do not feel that that was a responsible thing for him to do."
The caretaker eyed Clive strangely, raising one eyebrow. "Boy, I don't know what you're talking about," He answered, "The Duke's widowed. Has been for close to eight years now."
Clive placed his left hand against his elbow and then used his right hand to adjust his glasses, having slotted his torch into a rung in the wall a short time ago. "That makes no sense. He mentioned his family to me while I was upstairs in his office. He did not use past tense there to describe them, so I am perplexed."
Ortega removed Clive's torch and held onto it firmly, gesturing for them to return the way they had came. The caretaker took the lead once more and Clive followed him, awaiting Ortega's reply. By the light of the fire the older man wiped at his face with a pocket handkerchief, removing soot and slight perspiration, despite the area being so cold. "I'm not supposed to talk about that to folks." He muttered in a low voice, "But because you're gonna be an employee too, I think it'd be alright to slip it to you, though I was paid hush money to keep it a secret. What do you want to know?"
"The duke…" Clive said quietly, "What happened to his family? Why doesn't he acknowledge the fact that they are dead?" He leant over to the side a little, a strange movement he made whenever he was asking a question he wished to know the answer to. It didn't make much sense to Clive, but Cain Begucci did seem to be a bit of an eccentric at heart, as most noblemen were. Perhaps there was more to that man then Clive had originally assumed?
"Lets' see…" Ortega closed his eyes momentarily in order for him to dredge up the correct memories, ducking a large cobweb at the same time without having to look and notice that it was there. Clive was less fortunate and walked straight into it, muttering quietly and pulling the silken strands from his hair. Ortega found his voice and began. "It was about eight years ago, I think, when the duke first got the idea into his head to close the Heaven down in winter to attract bigger crowds in the spring.. Us employees had to pack up and piss off for three months, but the duke decided that he and his family would stay here and guard the fort. It was his home, after all, he wanted to stay. I reckon Cain just didn't want to leave his investment, he loves this hole in the ground too damn much to let the winter have its way with it."
"That sounds reasonable." Clive inputted, disentangling himself from the cobweb, trying not to drop behind the other man's steps. He checked his watch, he was now twenty minutes late. He hoped there would be a train late enough for him to catch, and he also briefly wondered what Kaitlyn and Catherine were doing right now, then he focused back on the man he was currently following. "Do continue, please." He added faithfully, interest in his tone.
"Well, they got their affairs in order and held the fort through the winter. I remember the duke sayin' it would be easy, it was his home and his family, that it was a normal arrangement. I remember the wife and two daughters. Beautiful, they were. Both of 'em were blonde and cheery, always happy, I dunno where the hell they got that trait from, but they were the nicest girls you ever did chance to see. Their mother was the opposite, a gorgeous grade A knockout, but you couldn't worm two words outta her without it being completely fucking depressing. Understandable, when you remember that she's gotta fuck that uppity duke all night long. They was a pretty weird bunch altogether, now that I think about it."
Ortega lit a cigarette, using the fire from the torch in lieu of a lighter. He turned around and offered the green-haired man one, but was politely turned down. The old caretaker continued. "Anyhow, when spring came and the Heaven was reopened on the first day, it weren't more than a few hours before the police were contacted and they hauled the duke away. They think he went nuts that winter, took out a hoe from the garden shed, sharpened the edge, and hacked his wife and kids to pieces with it, sometime when winter was at its peak, according to the autopsies they made. The duke was charged and all that, but it's easy to get a slap on the wrist in court when you pull the right strings and sneak money to the right people. Cain pleaded insanity, which you know is probably true, and now he's back here in his Heaven, as happy as he's ever been."
"My word…" Clive breathed, "Now I understand what he was referring to when he mentioned cabin fever. His mind must believe that his wife and daughters are still alive, locked into place by that traumatic event." He smiled despite knowing that it was a terrible thing to do. "So I suppose he really is the immoral duke now. Oh, I should not say…"
"The biggest shame was them two little girls. It weren't right, just wasn't time for them to go. Beautiful things, they didn't deserve to die. Kind enough to bring food down and befriend an old bastard like me. You don't see people of that ilk no more, let me tell you."
"I understand." Clive agreed, though also thought that Ortega didn't look that old. "They are becoming increasingly rare these days. My own daughter Kaitlyn, she is an angel. She-"
(She had screamed and screamed and cried and feared when daddy had made her hand hurt on the inside, on everywhere…)
"The doctor knows this. She knocked over my typewriter and it fell on her hand."
Liar.
"It was an accident. I didn't know what I was doing."
LIAR!
"She… is the best thing that ever happened to me." Clive finally finished ponderously, with diminished zeal.
Ortega grinned. "All dads say the same thing and I think all of them are telling the truth." Clive nodded, the two of them now ascending a staircase. "You be careful down here this winter, you hear? This is the first time the Heaven's been closed down since the duke snapped, let's not have it happen again." He pushed open the dungeon-like door that led to the main level of the Heaven. Sunlight streamed in through the small barred windows. Clive felt much more comfortable here, less vulnerable, because there were people up here too, fighters, spectators and aristocrats.
And yet, a translucent wave of anxiety washed over him in response to Ortega's words, the older man warning him not to make the same mistakes that the duke had. That would not happen again, Clive was sure of it. He pictured the two little girls and the beautiful wife. There was no way a sane man could hurt their family like that. Clive swallowed hard. How hypocritical.
God, Clive needed a drink.
