The last chapter, yay! I know I said tomorrow but I had some extra time this morning. Kaoru's going to do some exploring, and just everyone knows, a tantō is a dagger. The five headstones are for his four wives and one for Haru. I really love Sano at the end of this chapter! Please don't forget to tell me what you think, especially now that we're done!
-Mia21
The wild weather that night suited Kaoru's mood perfectly. Sleet and freezing rain pelted against her bedroom windows, and sharp cracks sounded as trees split from expanding ice in crevices. Great boughs, weighted down by their crystal coating, fell with crashes. In the morning, Kaoru pulled back the heavy brocade draperies to squint out at a scene from fairyland – breathtakingly, painfully lovely. The forest around the abbey was of diamonds, every last twig and blade of grass encased in its own glassy shell.
Naomi came in to help her dress. Just as she finished, a bellow sounded from the library downstairs. Enishi shouting Kaoru's name. She knew eventually she would have to face him, so she headed downstairs. He loomed in the doorway, peering down the hall. He turned on his heels when she approached. Evidence of his rage – two shattered vases – lay near the wall where he had smashed them.
"In Shizuoka once, I experienced an earthquake. Buildings buckled and split. People ran, screamed, stumbled, their faces contorted with fear. Last night, I stayed up watching the ice fall in shining sheets. I listened to the cracks and crashes. Not as stimulating as the earthquake, but still it is exhilarating to view nature's destructive force."
"How very compassionate." Kaoru muttered.
Enishi whirled around. "What did you say?"
Kaoru shook her head. "Nothing."
He turned back to the library windows. "Now this morning, Bah! I have business in Kyoto and cannot get there. Business that concerns you. I cannot bear to have you unhappy with me, so I will tell you that I plan to visit my lawyer and rewrite my will, leaving everything to you. You shall be an heiress, if I can ever get out of here. This inactivity drives me mad!"
To find something to do to keep them both busy that morning, Kaoru asked if Enishi would read to her from Matsuo Bashō's book of poetry.
The ice dripped away as the weather warmed the next day. Wanting something to amuse herself, Kaoru went out for a walk. Sitting on the stone bench in the garden, she ripped at her fingernails with her teeth. 'Perhaps it won't be all that bad,' she tried to tell herself. 'Perhaps I won't hate every moment of the rest of my life.'
The next morning, a knock sounded at her door.
"I'm bathing," she called.
"I need to see you right away. I am about to leave for a few days."
Kaoru climbed from the tub, dried herself off, and slipped into her dressing gown, preparing herself to face him nerve by nerve. She opened her door to find him standing there.
"I'm leaving, heading to Kyoto as I told you. I shall give you my keys again, with the same stipulations."
"Thank you. And goodbye." Kaoru said, surprised that she had forgotten how heavy his keys were. He opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and left. After he was gone, Kaoru sat down to think and slowly realized that these keys and Enishi's absence offered her her best chance to escape, as she knew that her initial feelings were right, there was something wrong here. She also knew she must think, it would be a mistake to run hysterically.
It was easy for Enishi to attract women. He was so handsome, could be so charming. Because the devil himself wouldn't come equipped with the traditional horns and tail, he must be attractive and charismatic in order to reel in his prey. She knew Enishi didn't anticipate the fate of his wives when he had married them and believed each time he had married, he had hoped for a pleasant future.
Takara had planned to flee with her lover. Perhaps Enishi had discovered them in the act, and this caused him to take leave of his senses. Even as she thought this, she dismissed it – the seeds of insanity must always have been present from birth. Perhaps they had sprouted after his little son died, and then, with Takara's betrayal, the monster took over. He had watched and waited and then pounced.
Shiori allegedly had succumbed in childbirth, but Akane was away when it happened. It was her husband and not birthing that killed her. Kaoru would never know what had set him off – with his lightning-quick mood changes, it could have been anything.
The accepted story was that Rika had killed herself, but no one had seen it happen. Rika and Enishi had fought often. It wasn't surprising she had lived only a year – by now Enishi was adept at ridding himself of brides.
Ayano had lived with him longer. Enishi took her away to a "healing spring" to improve her health, but she had returned to the abbey a corpse.
'What if I could find the bodies of Takara and her lover?' Kaoru thought. 'Then I would have proof of their manner of death.'
If the bodies weren't buried in the woods, the most obvious hiding place for them was the locked-up chapel in the locked-up churchyard. Kaoru already knew she could be brave, and this was something that needed to be done. She dressed warmly, picked up the key ring and her tantō, and without a backward glance, left her bedroom.
She went down the corridors, down the back twisting stairs and then out the music room door. She picked her way down the weaving, sinuous path to the chapel yard, the blustery wind making the trees sound as if they were in mourning. Again, she moved the tattered vines covering the yard wall before inserting the key in the lock. Kaoru was surprised when it opened smoothly, as if it had been recently oiled.
The yard was tangled and overgrown so completely it was hard for her to make out the five granite headstones. The windows of the chapel were boarded over with thick planks held by many nails. Enishi may have done it to protect valuable stained-glass windows – or perhaps he wanted no one to see inside. 'He might also have wanted nothing to get out.' Kaoru thought, and shivered.
She struggled through to the iron-shod doors of the chapel, placed the key in the lock, and turned it. Again, this door opened smoothly. An unwholesome odor greeted her, a mix of mildew, fungus, and decay.
In the ancient chamber, slender columns twined with sculpted garlands soared upwards, the paint on the sculptures still bright. Blackened wood pews faced a richly carved altar, while a door behind it led to what she guessed was some sort of storage room. 'Something might be hidden in there.' She thought, and started up the aisle.
Kaoru did not need to go that far. They lay behind the altar and stretched out on the first pew and against the wall – all that remained of six people. Enishi had not buried his wives in the churchyard, she neither knew nor cared what he had buried in their place. He had wanted these women to suffer the final degradation for defying or displeasing him: to lie exposed.
In his arrogance he hadn't even bothered to hide the bodies. Maybe he came here sometimes for little visits.
No flesh remained on the bones but some hair clung to skulls – on four a blackish shade. The clothing had fared better than the flesh. Stained and discolored kimonos told her which skeleton was which.
Shiori lay stretched out on the pew, her child in her arms. The babe had mummified, parchment-dry skin over bones. Perhaps it had been born dead, setting off Enishi's maniacal rage.
Rika and Ayano lay piled together near her, as if their bodies had simply been dumped. Of course, they had died elsewhere and been brought here.
Takara and another skeleton lay slumped behind the altar. The extra was the kendo instructor Takara had supposedly run off with. Enishi had somehow lured them to the chapel and killed them here.
Kaoru wanted to claw her eyes out, yet she could not stop staring. She turned back towards the door, thinking she ought to go find someone to show this turmoil to, and saw Enishi's manservant, Jiro, in the opening, his face wreathed in a grin. She just had time to give a shrill scream as the door swung shut.
Kaoru realized she had made a deadly mistake; she had left the keys in the lock.
As she struggled to get a grip on her terror, she began searching for a way out. The once-lovely stained-glass windows were shattered low down but intact higher up. Gouges and scratches marred the stout, firmly nailed boards behind the windows.
"Did you and your kendo instructor do that Takara?" Kaoru asked, then chuckled. Now she was talking to corpses. She shrugged, thinking, 'I am going to die.'
As she searched for a way out, Kaoru wondered what would move him in their final confrontation. Reminders of her humanity? Of his? Of his former fondness for her?
Kaoru sighed then, thinking like him was impossible. He was mad. His madness encompassed a terrible selfishness with neither compassion nor empathy, a terrible anger, a terrible possessiveness, and a terrible lust for blood.
She dug at the plaster walls and rammed the boarded windows with wood fallen from the roof. Hours passed. As the temperature grew colder, Kaoru knew it must now be night. She lay down on a back pew and tried to sleep some, she didn't want Enishi to return and her be weak from no rest. She spent the next day trying again to find a way out. It must have been late afternoon when a key rasped in the lock.
"Kaoru," a voice hissed, not Enishi. "I stole the keys from Jiro. Hurry, you must go quickly! Now. He is back."
Naomi. She stood in the chapel doorway.
"Wha-" Kaoru began.
"I am the cousin of Ayano Yamamura. Always when we were children, I took care of her. She married that man and I could no longer take care of her, but I could come here after she died to learn the truth - "
She trailed off, her body giving an odd twitch before she fell to the ground. Enishi kicked her body out of the way.
"She was clever," he said, entering the chapel. "I would never have guessed. I had thought Ayano had no close relatives. Families are inconvenient."
He faced Kaoru, the light from the open doorway making his hair gleam so he appeared to have a bluish halo about his head. His eyes held her frozen.
"I was so anxious for you." His tone was light, conversational. "I had expected a warm welcome after my absence. But no, you were not in the house awaiting me. You were here, and with what strange company."
His tone drew her back to pleasant evenings with a congenial companion. As she listened to his deep voice she could almost forget who he really was. But she did not forget. She stood wary, ready to leap out of the way if he lunged.
Instead, he walked up toward the altar, his shoes crunching the debris on the floor. He surveyed what lay up there.
"I watched the faces of these whores as I thrust my sword in, and it was beautiful to see the light leave their eyes as the life oozed from their bodies."
"Enishi, please." Kaoru whispered.
"Yes, that is what they all said." He began, stepping back toward the door. "Poor Kaoru. First insisting on having things your way while always being so curious. Then your clandestine meetings with that wanderer. Why couldn't you leave things alone?"
"Enishi," she said quietly, calmly. "You don't need to hurt me. We'll leave this place and be married, and start traveling. I'll never tell anyone what's here. We can both forget all about it."
He stared at the floor as if he were actually considering, then looked up, shaking his head.
"No, it's gone too far for that. Come here. I don't want to chase you down. I'll do it quickly."
As he moved closer to her, she reached out and shoved at him, then used her tantō to slash down his shoulder and arm. For one moment he stared at her in shock, then clapped his hand over the wound and laughed. He leaped towards her, but lost his footing on a bone and slipped. Kaoru dashed past him to the open door, then outside towards the nearby forest. Dripping, hanging vines clung wetly, and she slipped on slimy leaves. As she ran, she could hear Enishi calling.
"Kaoru, come here now. I will not hurt you. It is as you said – we will be married and travel."
Chocking back a sob, Kaoru continued running. She paused for a breath in a clearing when he entered it behind her. He gave a pleased little laugh to find her standing there, while Kaoru tensed to fight for her life. He took one step towards her, then another. A loud clang and a crunch sounded. Enishi screamed. The glitter in his eyes was quenched, replaced by pain and bewilderment. He gasped and shuttered, twitched and trembled. He had stepped into one of his own traps. At last he stopped struggling and sank to the ground.
"Kaoru. You must help me." He rasped.
"I don't dare."
"Do you think I would grab you and crush your neck? While I am thus? No, I won't harm you if you'll get a branch and wedge the trap open. Yu can go free." 'How like him,' Kaoru thought. How like him even now to continue talking, to continue to try to ensnare her with his words.
"I'll send someone for you." Kaoru said, turning and running towards Bella Vista Estate. When she arrived, it was to find a tall man with spiky brown hair sipping a glass of something cold on the front porch. Kaoru assumed it was Kenshin's friend Sano.
"Help me, please!"
"What is it?" He asked, standing. "What's wrong?"
In her hurry to explain through her lingering panic she babbled nearly incoherently. "Enishi – he killed his wives – all of them, and my maid Naomi. I stabbed him and he chased me and got caught in one of those traps. He's bleeding to death."
"Is he now?" Sano asked. "Well, good. He isn't going anywhere, then."
"Shouldn't we send someone for him?" She asked.
He shrugged. "Don't see that we have to. Good riddance, I say. But if it bothers you, I can send a servant into town for the marshal." Kaoru nodded and let him show her inside. She was shivering convulsively, even though Sano's home wasn't cold. Suddenly she realized that she was grieving, for herself and those Enishi had killed and for everyone in the world, even for the man who lay dying, caught in his own trap. She grieved for what he should have been.
Kenshin's voice said from behind her, "Are you cold?"
She whirled around to face him, shaking her head. "No, just relieving what happened."
He came forward and took her hands in his. "Will you tell me?"
He listened quietly as she talked, but emotion worked on his face. When she was done, he shook his head. "In each instance you managed to do what you had to do. You're a strong woman. And stronger because of the scars that you now carry. How could I not have known what was going on? How could I have left you to fight alone?"
"You had no idea what he was. Neither did I, and I was with him for months. No one really knew. We all did what we thought best at the time with what we knew."
"So what will you do now?" Kenshin asked.
"Assuming he told the truth, Enishi's will should leave me as the only person who receives, well, anything. I plan on using some of the wealth to open a kendo school on the grounds and teach my father's style. Turn it into a place that does good. It would really mean a lot to me if you stayed as well."
Kenshin smiled somewhat shyly. "I would like that."
Before them, Kaoru could suddenly see a whole world of possibilities opening up, which made her incredibly happy. She had survived a nightmare, and was now ready for a life of pleasure, doing what she loved, which included Kenshin. She wasn't sure when she had developed these feelings, but only knew that after being faced with marrying Enishi, she would move on only if she were truly content, and she knew she was with Kenshin.
Ok, the end. What did you think?
-Mia21
