Death
Christine was warm. And although she had come to realize that she had returned to consciousness, the heaviness of her eyelids refused to lift. She felt no need to force them to open, but as she rested easily, the golden glow behind them slowly turned to pink, and then to red, and she realized she was perhaps far too warm. Pulsating heat beat against her face and her entire body felt unnaturally cocooned in stifling bulk. She shifted where she lay and moved to lift a hand to her eyes as she wanted to open them, but found her arm caught in twisted cloths. She whimpered and was greeted by an answering throb of pain from the very back of her skull. What had happened? Where was she? The last thing she remembered…
She opened her eyes immediately and saw fire. Real fire. She gasped, then winced in pain and tried to move her arms again. She knew what fire meant! He always came to her through the fire!
She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head against the tender pain, and she turned her face away from the fire before she let her eyes open again. And then, as she did, she found herself in Erik's drawing room. She was bundled in blankets and lying on his black, leather sofa that had been moved from its usual position by the wall to stand directly before the fireplace, which was ablaze. She was uncomfortably warm, and yet she shivered as she heard noises coming from the kitchen. They were quite ordinary, commonplace kitchen noises. Erik… Erik must be in the kitchen.
Christine twisted to sit up and grimaced once more at the ache at the back of her head. It took her several moments, but she managed to work one of her arms free from the blankets, and she brushed back sticky strands of snarled hair from her hot forehead. Why was the couch so close to the fire? She glanced about and saw that Erik's chair too had been drawn near the hearth. A very large book was abandoned upon its seat. Had he been reading there while she slept? So near… She could still hear his soft sounds in the kitchen.
Her exposed bare arm felt cold now as she stared at that book. Its hundreds of browned pages pursed around a leather bookmark near its center. She leaned forward to edge it off the seat into her lap, and was momentarily startled by just how heavy it was. With her one hand, she pulled it open to an arbitrary page. It took her several moments of looking in confusion of illiteracy before she understood it was upside down. She righted it, but as she stared at the large pages filled with tiny text, she still could not make out a word of it, for she realized it was written entirely in German. She pulled the book closed again and glanced at the title. The only word she recognized was "und." Her fingers delicately traced the long and unpronounceable embossed words before moving to the top of the book's cover and digging into the small space where the pages were split by the bookmark. She pulled it open again, this time to the page Erik had marked, and looked down.
She found herself face to face with a face that could hardly be called a face at all. The drawing was so lifelike that she was almost uncertain for a moment whether or not it was a photograph. But this tome was certainly not quite modern enough for photographs. And yet it was unlike anything she had ever seen in life. A cadaverous head stared out at her from the page with two round eyeballs enclosed by lidless sockets and bound only to the webbed muscles that lined the skull by dark veins. Black nostrils gaped in a nose that was half gone, and a lipless mouth of crooked teeth grinned at her from sparse gums that had been shaded with the greys of death itself.
Christine's mouth dropped open. This face was a human face. A dead, human face… but without the skin! She covered the image with her hand and turned away in disgust for a moment, but only for a moment, before she turned back again and leaned down to peer at it all the more closely. Where was his skin? Why had Erik marked this page? She turned the page quickly and was met with columns of endless indecipherable text. She turned another page. More text and a table diagram that made no sense to her. She began flipping through the pages one after the next as quickly as she could with one hand while simultaneously trying to work her other arm free from the many blankets that entangled her. Suddenly, she stopped. More illustrations. The two facing pages open to her were gridded into eighths and each box contained different, yet equally-gruesome heads, each turned from every possible angle. One had no skin or eyelids like the first and the nose was completely missing. Another had fully closed eyelids but no trace of a bottom jaw. The pockmarked flesh of the cheeks hung down in uneven folds. Another in profile was flattened in the back almost cubically where sparse strands of hair hung limply from the scalp. Yet another's skull was carved open and the brain fully exposed in every rendered detail.
She turned the page. There were more. The smallest of whimpers rose from Christine's throat, but she made no move to look away from the row after row of exposed muscles, bulging eyes, jutting bones, and furrowed brains, each underlined by a wretchedly incomprehensible caption.
"Christine." Erik's voice came at her sternly from behind.
She dropped the book quickly to her lap and turned to see him standing in the doorway. In one of his hands, he held a bowl from which steamy vapors rose before him to shroud his black mask. She gasped, and the yellow light of his eyes flashed once through the steam before he slowly set the bowl on a table by the wall and began to approach her.
She turned back to face the fire and quickly fumbled with the blankets to cover her bare skin again.
He came around the couch and stood between her and the fire, regarding her silently from above with his arms folded.
She kept her eyes downcast and neither of them spoke. She thought it strange that he studied her so and did not question her on how she was feeling or anything of the sort… But then, all at once, the events of the previous night in the laboratory came flooding back to her recollection. Her head snapped up and she met his eyes with an expression of utter shock.
He relaxed slightly in his stance and gestured to the book in her lap. "Schädelabweichungen."
She blinked and shook her head slowly. "I don't understand…" Did he think the book was the only cause for her reaction?
He sighed softly and knelt before her, shifting the book in her lap. "Abnormalities…" He flipped through a couple pages.
It took her several breaths before she managed the voice to speak again, unsettled by his response… Lack of response…
"Of… Of the face?"
He looked up at her quickly, then down again and turned another page. "Of the cranium."
She followed his gaze to the diagrams he found and said softly, "Oh…"
He looked at her again. "One day, Christine, your curiosity will kill you."
She met his eyes and stammered something that was not even a word to which he only shook his head and sighed again.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"This." He tapped a picture with one of his long, white fingers.
She glanced at it and began to tremble. It was the open view of the top of a man's brain.
"She had an abnormality," he continued.
"She…" Christine tugged her blankets a little more tightly about her and silently wished Erik wasn't between her and the fire just then.
He looked to her again and said with soft exasperation, "You wanted to know why she died."
She did not look at him, just nodded, and kept her eyes fixed on that drawing.
His fingers moved across it to the edge of the opened skull, and he went on. "Like this. A malignant growth."
"A…" Christine shuddered.
Erik turned the page to a drawing of a man's head in profile where not only the cap of his skull was removed, but so was the entire side, leaving revealed all the tendons and nerves that ran to the spine.
"You will, of course, forgive the fact that this is a man. Scientific researchers do not regularly make a practice of carving up little girls. Even German ones. But, like this." The tip of Erik's thin finger traced an opaque shape along one artery. "Not exactly alike, but you understand the concept."
Christine shook her head, her face paling. "No… No, Erik… I don't understand. I don't understand."
He turned the page to another drawing that showed the same face from a different angle. He spoke very slowly. "Such a growth could cause hallucinations or schizophrenia or even eventually cut off the flow of blood to the brain. It is how a stroke is caused. Sometimes it can be fatal."
Christine tore her gaze from the staring eyes on the page to meet Erik's. "She…?"
"It would have been a sudden death, Christine."
"I…"
"She might have simply fallen into the river and been washed into the ducts that lead to our lake. Or someone could have deposited her there. I have sometimes found the strangest of things washed into my lake. She would have been dead before she had the chance to swallow any water."
"She… She just… died?"
"It is not uncommon," he said softly. "It's just that she was so young… It had not even occurred to me."
"But... But who would drop her into the river? Even after she was dead? How? Why?"
"Christine," Erik said with very firm gentleness. "That is an answer I cannot discover for you."
She lowered her eyes and felt the sting of tears. She lifted a hand to wipe at them before they could arrive as she desperately scanned the ghastly drawing for any other sort of answer it might hold.
Erik remained silent for several sympathetic moments before he moved to close the book.
She grasped at the edge to stop him. "No…"
He hesitated. "Christine, you should not look into my books. I should not have left it here near you."
"I want to see," she breathed and turned the book back into her lap as Erik released it reluctantly. She turned a few pages. "All these men…"
"Quite dead," Erik said softly, as if it would assure her.
"Yes…" she whispered. She continued to turn pages of text until she found more pictures. These faces had skin, but they were sunken with the age of embalmed corpses and their abnormalities were more apparent to her as they existed on the surface as twisted malformations. She leaned down to look more closely, then turned the page to find the same four faces, but now with their skin removed. The great round eyes were uneven in their sockets and the nostrils gaped back into the bridge of the nose. Each of them was missing many teeth and the gums were shrunken almost to nothing against the shriveled muscles of the jaws. She turned the next page. Now they were missing their eyes and most of their muscles and left with gaping holes of mouths and noses in drawings that showed just how deeply their cranial abnormalities were rooted.
Though she was still warm, Christine shivered, and she lifted her face to look up from the skulls to meet Erik's eyes. He still knelt before her and was watching her very closely. She exhaled, and then carefully, so very carefully, she lifted one of her hands to his mask.
He moved, just slightly, but he did not stop her and the soft light of his eyes that were made visible by the shadow cast by the fire behind him, remained locked with hers.
Christine's fingers brushed the smooth surface of the mask, and as they moved to its edge, her breath caught in her throat at the feel of the fineness of his hair at his temple. She hesitated then, waited for him to object… But when he did not, she slipped her fingertips underneath and removed his mask.
The taught skin of his forehead furrowed where his brow should have been in what could have been confusion or concern as Christine took her time to set the mask upon the book before looking to his face again. Certainly she had looked at his miserable face this closely before… He had been even closer last night, when her head had cracked against the wall, leaving her with the dull ache she could still feel. But she had never truly seen his face until now. She did not gawk or gape at it, she merely studied it. And her expression was not one of curiosity, but one of need.
She lifted both her hands again and placed them so lightly on each of his gaunt cheeks. The soft tips of her fingers pulsed with the very hesitance of their movement, and Erik's eyes narrowed as she pulled a little closer to him. His eyes… She stared deeply into them now, for she could actually see them. His actual eyes. And they reflected every fleeting snatch of the firelight that beat off the walls of the room. Her fingers became surer of themselves then, and they very slowly began to roam across his sunken flesh. They crept up to trace the corners of his eyelids… Then they fluttered to probe lightly at the nose he did not have… And then they moved to trail so tenderly across what he could best call his lips…
Christine and Erik exhaled simultaneously and she could feel his soft breath against her face as he surely felt hers. He wasn't moving… So still… Frozen completely in time. She leaned all the closer to him and her own lips parted.
He tensed and she barely noticed the cushion of the sofa move under his hand where it gripped its edge.
She took another breath and her own forehead almost touched his… And then, so barely, she whispered, "Death…"
Erik's eyes flashed almost blindingly and he pulled away from her touch, snatching the mask. It was on his face again before she realized it had happened.
"No!" Christine gasped and pushed her blankets aside to reach out to take it back from him, but he caught her by the wrists and forcefully kept her hands away.
She winced at the pain of his grip, but he either did not notice or did not care, for it only grew tighter.
"Erik," she pleaded.
He pushed her hands back and stood abruptly, taking the book with him.
She shivered and looked down, realizing only then with the shift of the blankets that they were all that was keeping her modesty as she was not wearing her nightgown. She pulled them more tightly about herself and turned her face against the cushion.
"I… I have been having dreams," she whispered. "About the Angel of Death."
Erik turned to the mantle. He dropped the book on top of it and then only looked down into the fire.
"The Angel of Death comes to me… when I am a child…"
"Christine…" he sighed tensely.
She stared at his back for a very long moment as her hands twisted at the material of the blankets before she spoke again:
"Erik… Why did you undress me?"
"Your nightgown was wet," he answered irritably. "In that freezing room… I tried to wake you." He glanced at her over his shoulder. "I found you on the floor."
She shivered again. "I… I locked the door."
"I unlocked it," he said shortly. She stared at him in pained confusion, and he shook his head then went back around the couch. "If you do not have pneumonia, it is a miracle."
She turned where she sat to watch him cross the room. "I…"
"You do not have a fever."
She gave a small nod as she watched him retrieve the bowl he had left on the table and mix it briefly with the spoon without looking up.
"I assure you, you were sufficiently blanketed before I removed your wet nightgown."
She nodded again and saw fresh steam rise from the contents of the bowl as Erik stirred it back to life.
He lifted his head to look across at her and gestured. "I put it there to dry."
She looked and saw it draped neatly near the fire, most likely quite dry by now. But it was not alone. Draped just as neatly alongside it was her fringed, white shawl. She stared at it in fixed disbelief until Erik's black shape obstructed her view. She lifted her face to look at him, and she trembled with much more than cold now.
He glanced at her shaking and then at the strong fire so near to her, then back to her again before saying with pensive grimness, "Perhaps you do have a fever."
He set the bowl conveniently upon the mantle and then leaned over her. "You should take a hot bath."
"No!" she gasped too quickly. "No!"
Both of Erik's hands clenched, but he spoke with complete comforting calmness, "I took care of the mess you made of your bathroom."
"I…" Christine could not even speak, so she only shook her head with frightened violence, tears spilling from her rapidly reddening eyes.
Erik stopped, startled by her reaction, then he knelt before her again and lifted his hands, but did not quite touch her.
"Christine…" he said in attempt to calm her, but incensed concern was betrayed in his tone.
She continued to shake her head, managing to say, "Please!"
He hesitated another moment in perplexed alarm, then took her by her blanketed shoulders and pressed her back against the cushion to still her.
She gaped at him with wide eyes, but her shaking ceased at once.
He stared at her very closely, his gaze roving over every aspect of her face in search of an answer before he released her shoulder and said, with utmost respect, "Forgive me…" And then he placed one of his cold, long, thin, white, and skeletal hands upon her forehead.
She did not react other than to continue to stare at him as her eyes grew all the wider.
He kept his hand upon her brow for several long moments before moving his fingers to her lower eyelid, pulling at it very gently to examine her eye and then did the same to the other. He then moved his hand to her neck, seeming to ignore her hair there, and marked her pulse silently.
She shivered again.
He withdrew his hand as gently as he had placed it there and sat back where he crouched.
"Oh, Christine…" The sadness was unmistakable in the music of his whisper.
She lowered her eyes and once more felt that sting of tears. Her own voice trembled as she spoke, "The Angel of Death comes for me in the night… Through the fire. And I am a child and I trust him. I want him to come for me. I… It excites my child mind. I…" She shook her head, unable to go on.
"You cannot stay here anymore…"
Erik had spoken so softly that she was not certain she heard him correctly. She looked up to him again.
He shook his head and added, more firmly, "It is making you ill… All of this."
"Erik…" she whimpered.
"You must go back home Christine. Where you can rest free of nightmares and free of death. Of all kinds."
"I…" she protested only weakly. "Please…"
Erik stood to retrieve the bowl and spoke with soft command as he handed it to her. "Take this while I draw you a bath. We will go back upstairs as soon as you are dressed."
She only nodded and accepted it, unable to speak, and then he was gone.
The gentle steam that rose from the bowl wisped at her senses. She did not recognize the mixture of herbs, but she consumed it obediently and once she had, she could not deny the warmth with which it filled her. She reached to set the empty dish upon the nearest end table and for the first time noticed her dressing gown was laid out for her across the back of the couch. She glanced in the direction Erik had gone, but the door to the Louis-Philippe room was closed. She rose to her feet and one by one unwrapped the blankets from about her, then hurriedly put on her dressing gown. She looked to the door again. It was still closed. Her hands and feet felt cold and so she moved closer to the fire and remained there until Erik returned again.
"Come, Christine," he called to her with what felt like almost too much kindness.
She turned to see him, then slowly moved around the couch to join him at the door to her room, but once there, she froze mid-step.
She clasped her hands to her breast and shook her head. "No… I can't… I don't want to take a bath."
He studied her before gesturing across the threshold to the Louis-Philippe bed, and speaking, again with too much kindness, "Why don't you lie down, Christine."
"No," she whimpered again as she stared through the doorway into the room for another moment before turning and looking up to him. "I'm cold…"
"A bath will warm you…"
"Please!" she cried as her hands twisted at the ruffled lace of her dressing gown. "Please don't make me go back in that room!"
"Christine," he began again, his kindness shifting to disapproval.
"Erik, please!" Her hands shot out, and she clung to the lapels of his jacket desperately, moving away from the doorway. "I can't go back in there! She's… Please! I don't want to go home, I don't! But I can't go back in that room again! I can't!"
He stared down at her for a startled moment before gently removing her from his person.
"Would…" He paused, in thought. "You will take a bath in my room."
She shivered and nodded quickly.
He took a hesitant step back from her. "The heat has been on for some hours… The house should be back at its usual temperature soon."
"A… A bath will warm me." She nodded with no assurance whatsoever.
"And then you will go home," he said with final determination.
"I…"
He did not let her object. "I am taking you back up." He turned then and crossed to the door of his own room.
Christine shivered again and did not follow him, but instead very slowly looked back through the doorway behind her. Why was she so afraid of this room now? She had slept in it for weeks. And it looked so normal to her at the moment. The bed was made neatly, the lamps were high… She took a step to the door, and peered in further. The lamps could not just go off unless someone turned them off… There was no way. And even if they could, if she left the door open…
She stepped into the room. Nothing happened. She glanced over her shoulder to the drawing room, then took another step further inside. All was silent. Erik had drawn her a bath. He said he had tended to the flooded bathroom… She looked to the open bathroom door, lit up from within by those electric lights that glowed now with flawless constancy. She took another step toward the bathroom door. She saw a towel was lain across the carpet just outside the door, and her toes curled at the remembrance of stepping there the night before.
She moved all the way over and put her hands on the frame of the bathroom door, leaning to peer inside without stepping on the towel. Dense steam was wafting from the bathtub, filled with the foam of salts that rose above its edge. She could smell those salts even from where she stood, but she did not dare approach. A soft plink echoed against the marble walls as a single drop of water escaped the faucet. Christine shivered again. She wanted to withdraw, but her gaze was transfixed by the gentle billowing of the transparent steam. It was all that moved in the pretty portrait of a most unthreatening bathtub. Christine sighed softly. The soft effervescence of the foam was just barely audible to her. Another plink sounded, momentarily drowning it out. She smiled very slightly to herself. The steam above the foam was gradually becoming still. But then, all of a sudden, the foam itself was not. Christine distinctly saw it abruptly surge and begin to churn. She jumped and stepped upon the towel in the doorway. Cold wetness sank through and pierced the flesh of her foot.
"No!" she choked and immediately fled the Louis-Philippe room, not stopping until she was once more before the blazing fire at the other end of the drawing room. Her hands pressed to her face and her fingers clutched at her hair as she tried to catch her breath. She heard a soft sound. Jumping again, she turned quickly and saw that her white shawl had fallen from where it had been draped to the floor. She stared at it, then at her nightgown, which remained where Erik had placed it, then back down to the shawl. With a shaking hand, she bent to pick it up again. The soft fabric was cold to the touch. She reached with her other hand and picked up the nightgown. It was quite warm from the heat of the fire. Christine shook for but a moment before thrusting both articles onto the floor, and then she ran straight for Erik's room.
She closed the door quickly behind her and leaned against it to catch her tremulous breath.
"Erik?" she called too softly.
He was nowhere that she could see, but she heard the distinct sound of running water coming from his bathroom around the corner combined with a softer sound of a strange musical melody, the origin of which she could not pinpoint. She continued to shiver. It was much colder in Erik's room. She glanced about hesitantly and stepped away from the door. The funereal décor never had done much to put her particularly at ease, but she felt quite a bit more comfortable knowing that Erik was just around the corner doing something so commonplace as drawing her a bath. Christine pulled her dressing gown more tightly about herself and moved past Erik's coffin quickly to linger near the organ. A drawer in the table behind the bench hung half-open. She hesitated for a moment as her eyes fixated, and then she approached it and gently slid it into place. She paused for another moment, then with fluttering fingers, took its knob and pulled it back open so that she could peer inside.
"Christine."
She released the drawer and turned about to face Erik.
"Do not forget what I have told you about curiosity."
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
He regarded her silently before turning to go through the double doors from which he'd emerged. She followed him this time, and tried not to reveal her curiosity as she looked about. She had never been through these doors before. She entered what would seem to be a very ordinary and immaculate gentleman's dressing room, save for the fact that it was adorned with the same dark colors of the previous room.
Erik gestured to another set of double doors at the opposite end of the large room. "The bath is through there, dear Christine. As you insist upon not reentering your room, I will retrieve your clothing and leave it here for you, then I will close the doors. Take all the time you like… But do not fall asleep."
She nodded, but continued to keep her arms folded tightly across her breast, her hands clutching at the ruffles at her throat.
"If you fall asleep," Erik continued, "I will not know to wake you. You do not want to drown in your own bathwater."
She nodded again, more slowly. And he seemed reluctant to leave her, but then he turned and left without another word.
She glanced about the dressing room once more to take it in before she moved to the bath. Of course, there were no mirrors. The bathroom itself, she was impressed to find, was even larger than hers in the Louis-Philippe room. The tone of the marble was much darker and the fixtures carved with gravity, but it still appeared most comfortable.
The bath was waiting for her and it looked exactly the same as the one she had abandoned in her own bathroom. Vapors of steam spiraled from fizzling foam, the scent of which seemed to calm and refresh her at once. Slowly, still shivering, she removed what she wore and approached it. Carefully, she bent over its edge and with a tentative hand parted the foam so that she might see into the water. The steam clouded her vision, but she saw nothing unusual. Nothing to frighten her. She straightened and glanced over her shoulder about the room. Nothing at all to frighten her.
Her shivering had increased significantly, for now she was wearing absolutely nothing except the small silver necklace wrapped about her wrist. And it too was cold. So she stepped into the bath and sank into its warmth. She had already completely forgotten Erik's warning not to fall asleep…
That is not to say that she intended to fall asleep, but sleep must have claimed her, for the next thing she knew, she was forcing heavy eyelids open again. Someone was there. She gasped and rubbed at her eyes, but only succeeded in splashing water into them, obscuring her sight.
Through the endlessly rising fog of steam, the fire of two glowing eyes flashed as a tall, black, faceless shape bent over her.
She tried to sit up, but her hands slipped on the wet surface of the bath and for several choking moments, she was completely submerged. She managed to rise again. He was there still. She gasped for air. He was holding the blade. In the clear light of the bathroom, the staff of his blade twisted in his cold, skeletal hand. And then she was underwater again and the light was gone.