Thank you all to everybody that reads this. I never thought I would get to this point. I hope you enjoy this chapter. Although I don't believe I should, I know some people can be sensitive, so this chapter gets darker than anything I've ever written, so be warned, this will be a dead Dove do not eat chapter of the highest caliber.
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It was a lawless town, in truth. Carmelita Lundelville was fully aware of the fact that the Cormiers would hang one way or another. Still, it was her capricious, childish nature to want things immediately and want them done in her own way.
She didn't want there to be a trial, though there was no danger of the Cormiers being found innocent in any way, not with the accusations that she had already concocted against them for such a long time. She wanted them to hang, burn, or simply die that very night.
Though she had a lawless, vengeful sense of right and wrong, she still had a keen way of knowing what the rules were in a place where there seemed to be no rules. She knew she couldn't just barge into the Cormiers' home with her papa, guns a'blazing, and shoot them all down and have Alastor weep over their corpses.
No, that would be too much, and she feared, above all, social condemnation. So she would do what she did best: pull the strings she knew needed to be removed for the Cormiers to die swiftly and brutally before her own eyes. She used the people of the town to her advantage.
She had already unwittingly set her plan in motion when she had begun (unnecessarily) screaming after Alastor had punched her. All her servants had rushed in, flabbergasted, just as Alastor was running out.
She wasn't sure what she would do just as Alastor punched her, so she kept screaming until she figured out what her game plan would be, pretending to be soothed by the many people flocking around her. She didn't want Alastor to burn - she wanted him all to herself.
And it would be even sweeter to know he would be truly powerless. So, as the servants seated her on the lounging chair and managed to calm her down, she puckered her face and began to cry. Despite her wails, her words were clear. "I… it was Alastor. But it wasn't him! I know that sweet boy.
He started talking about how… how those awful people he lives with were making some - some sick plan to hypnotize the town with their voodoo! You know, no one has ever trusted them with that kind of sorcery - why! Come to think of it, I've never seen them in church," and with that, she cried a bit more and accepted a handkerchief, preparing herself for her next words. Before she spoke again, someone immediately suggested going to the sheriff and having the Cormiers arrested immediately. "No! Who knows what might happen to Alastor then?
I tried to reason with him, but he… oh, I'm just confident they already hypnotized him! No, we must rescue Alastor before the Cormiers even know we are onto them. Delina," she said, addressing the housemaid who she knew to be the biggest gossip. "Have Violet and Felix come here immediately. Tell them it's an emergency.
We have to get as many people here as possible, and without the Cormiers knowing a single thing about it, rescue Alastor as quietly as can be," she said, now broadcasting the horrible purple swelling that had begun in her lower jaw for everyone to see. Delina nodded and immediately set off to do her mistress' bidding.
The news spread like rotten, ill wildfire, and with Carmelita there to tame it, she convinced everyone that heard that everything must be done with the utmost silence lest they risk hurting Alastor. Alastor, known fondly throughout the town due to Carmelita insisting on his incorporation into society, was absolved of guilt just as Carmelita was, and by the end of it, it was as if the Cormiers themselves had gone straight into the Lundelville house and hurt her themselves.
Throughout the afternoon, she held the audience with everyone she had a closer relationship within the town, flaunting her wound like a badge of honor, dishonestly chastising herself for 'not seeing their wickedness fast enough' and having everyone comfort her, telling her she could not blame herself for the evil deeds done by others.
In short, she was thriving. When her father arrived later that afternoon, she told him everything, kneeling and kissing his hands, imploring that he help her save Alastor from those devils. Her father, usually a calm, somewhat dead-brained man, was immediately inflamed at seeing the mark on her face, and it was only through her constant wailing and her assurance that they would soon rid the town of evil that she managed to dissuade him from going directly to the Cormiers and killing them himself.
By eight in the evening, a full-on, old-timey mob had descended upon the Cormier home, over three dozen people crowing before the house - angry men that jumped at any opportunity for violence and dramatic women that wanted to see any sort of scandal happen before their eyes among the hordes of Carmelita's friends and acquaintances.
The women fluttered around, wringing their hands and wiping their foreheads as if this were such a stressful occasion for them, but despite their act of stress, if one looked more closely at them, you could see the cruel, base anticipation in their eyes. Pistol in hand, Carmelita's father stepped before the gathering crowd and shouted for the Cormiers to leave their hiding place and face him.
But the store was silent, the only lights burning upstairs. Carmelita's father repeated his request that they should come outside, but soon enough, the blood-thirsty crowd grew tired, and someone (a random man who actually knew nothing of what had happened but wanted to partake in the action) threw a brick through the store's window.
That was the first stone-throw of chaos. As if in wordless agreement, the store was broken into, and the men rushed into the shop's darkness, some even uttering something like battle cries as they made their way into the vacant space. Upstairs, all the lights had gone off the moment the brick hit the window, and the only illumination now came from the dim outside light, which didn't do much in showing them where they were.
In the darkness, the previously riled-up men settled into an eerie silence, waiting for anything and everything to come at them, their various forms of weapons poised and at the ready, the sweat beading around their foreheads and collecting in the air with a most unpleasant, earthly scent. Carmelita's father was grateful she had persuaded him to go with a mob.
Still, as the seconds wore on, nothing moved, nothing even made so much as a squeak, and the only audible thing was the men's hard breaths, the thrill shooting right through them as they waited for something to happen. The dead silence and steadiness lasted meager moments before Guidry opened fire on them from upstairs. Several men fell to the gunshots, which were coming at an alarmingly rapid speed, and the women who lingered outside yelped and squealed as all hell broke loose within.
The faceless, adrenaline-pumped men began stomping towards the stairs to where Guidry stood with his revolvers, a shadow that they couldn't quite properly aim at without shooting some of the other men. But the moment they approached even the foot of the stairs, something trapped them, like a massive magnet, and the heavy stones that had always hung from the ceiling started to launch themselves at the men's heads. The terrible sound of skulls cracking open and blood hitting the floor mingled with grunts and screams from the women outside and the men within. "They usin' witchcraft!" The men that were stuck bellowed as they ducked and tried to move out of the way of the falling stones. But Guidry had set up only a limited amount of traps, and the hordes of men weren't dissuaded. Instead, they were even more eager to get up to the man that had been attacking them.
They were soon able to clamber up the stairs and grab Guidry from the staircase, punching him, kicking him, doing everything that they could despite the fact that it almost felt like the man slipped and escaped as a shadow would. Guidry didn't make a sound aside from the occasional grunt as the men took hold of him and beat him to a pulp.
As they did so, however, the men that had lingered at the front of the shop, either too cowardly or waiting for their turn at 'bravery,' began feeling something nipping at their feet.
A second later, as they were dragging a bleeding Guidry down the stairs, the men standing around walls and in corners began to scream. The others around them tried to help them, but when they looked at them, it was as if their very skin had turned charcoal black, consumed by the shadows they had been standing next to. "Get him outside!" They screamed, fearing that the shadows would begin to expand and swallow them, too. "Wait, the woman!" Mr. Lundelville exclaimed amidst the chaos. "Where's the Cormier woman?!" He shouted as they dragged Guidry across the store.
Once they had made it outside, Mr. Lundelville rushed out after them, took a torch from one of the women, and went back inside to look for Mrs. Cormier. The fire kept the pooling shadows that wanted to envelop him at bay, and with his heart in his throat, he rapidly searched the house for Mrs. Cormier. When he made it upstairs, he opened every room, but no one was inside.
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Alastor's fingers were bloody from scratching and pounding at the door that the Cormiers had locked from the outside when that first brick had been launched through the window.
He had been screaming and begging them to let him out, to let him help them even if they were suicidal, that whatever they were going to face, they wouldn't have to face it alone, and even as the gunshots and screams began, he wouldn't relent, but after a while his screams became unintelligible, and he was left wailing at nothing, his fingernails risen from their beds, leaving trails of blood running down his hands. As he heard the sounds of Guidry being carried off and the gunshots subsiding, he finally sunk to the floor, defeated, his sobs making his whole body shake.
He heard a faint, preoccupied miaow coming from behind him, and he looked back to find Harry cowering in a corner, looking horribly distraught. They had even saved the cat. It was too much to bear, and though Alastor tried to use his powers, even unearthing his discarded wand from the pillowcase, it was all useless.
Just as he was going to pet Harry, and try to get him to be less afraid of his raving owner, the door to his bedroom slammed open. Alastor worked his way forwards but stopped dead in his tracks as he saw who it was. Mr. Lundelville's red, distraught face was looking around the room hungrily, and for a moment, Alastor was even afraid of him; so frightening was the bloody stare he had.
But the man stared right past him, scrutinizing the room that he saw as empty from top to bottom. It didn't take long for Alastor to realize that the protection spell that they had cast in his bedroom was not just to keep him in but also to keep other people from seeing or even hearing him.
His cries had fallen only onto Harry's ears, and no one, possibly not even the Cormiers, had heard his desperate calls. Maybe it was best if the last thing Guidry heard from him wasn't his wails and pleas. Mr. Lundelville waved his torch around to make sure there was nothing hidden in any cranny of the room. Still, it was so small there wasn't much room for speculation, so he promptly examined the kitchen, and Alastor could hear as different things shattered, the man positively looting as he wound his way around the house.
At that point, Alastor wasn't sure whether they had found Mrs. Cormier yet, though he thought he had heard Mr. Lundelville screaming about finding 'the Cormier woman.' But who knew? Maybe he was looking for him so that he could flay him right alongside his parents.
Dissatisfied, Mr. Lundelville kicked a few pieces of furniture and then exited the home as quickly as he could. When Alastor tried to leave his room, the invisible barrier remained despite the fact that the door had finally been opened. He kicked at it incessantly until, out of nowhere, it gave way.
He couldn't have known the reason, but outside, in the street, Guidry was being beaten, and he finally lost consciousness, breaking all the spells he had put in place. Mr. Lundelville emerged onto the street just as that last kick delivered Guidry into unconsciousness.
He halted the man that was kicking him and ordered them to put Guidry into an upright position. He slapped him around as if Guidry were a dying fish, but the man had been beaten up so bad they had put him to sleep for good. "If he doesn't wanna wake up like that…." Mr. Lundelville uttered, holding his hand out to Carmelita, who held a torch in her hand.
She silently handed it over to her father, who waved it around Guidry's face before starting to burn his right cheek. In a second, Guidry regained consciousness, screaming. "Oh, good, you're awake," he said drily, delivering a kick to the man's groin as Guidry continued to scream.
He removed the torch from his face and handed it to another person nearby, unaware that Carmelita had wandered off. Mr. Lundelville knelt closer to Guidry, who was propped on his knees, barely held upright by the men who were clutching his arms. Their faces were leveled. "Now, where's that wife of yours?" He asked. Guidry looked at him through one eye, the other completely shut due to some kick or punch.
His good eye was struggling to stay open as blood from his scalp trickled into it, and he was incapable of wiping it off. He looked feral, and instead of actually saying anything, he spits right into Mr. Lundelville's face. A general gasp came from the crowd, and Mr. Lundelville stepped back, still looking composed, his face completely screwed up in disgust.
He slowly produced a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the spit from his face before kicking Guidry in the stomach, then in the face. The men holding him staggered back with the force, and Guidry spat out some of his teeth. "I'll ask you one more time!" Mr. Lundelville bellowed, his face turning the color of beetroot. "Where is that nigger bitch?!" He delivered another blow.
Unbeknownst to him, Carmelita Lundelville had seen something flash by the house. As her father tortured Guidry, she spotted something like a shiny, golden object glinting in the sunlight that wasn't there. Like a woman possessed, she slowly made her way towards it, right by the alley between the store and its neighboring building. She didn't seem to notice any of the commotions, and as people were too preoccupied trying to catch a glimpse of what Mr. Lundelville was doing to Guidry, they didn't mind Carmelita as she swept past them like a ghost.
She worked her way towards the glinting object that only she was able to see, unthinking of what she was doing, and as she strayed from the crowd, she didn't realize how close she had gotten to the Cormiers' home. Mrs. Cormier awaited her in the corner, smiling wickedly through the tears that she somehow couldn't stop from pouring down her face. But she would kill Carmelita, and that would be enough. She watched as the Lundelville girl made her way towards her, her eyes completely unfocused, and when Carmelita neared her, Molly unsheathed her knife and took her by the arm.
Carmelita, snapped out of her haze by the sudden shock, uttered a single cry as Mrs. Cormier held the knife to her throat, completely prepared to press down and slide it right through that awful girl's veins. But Carmelita's cry hadn't gone unheard, and Mrs. Cormier hadn't realized that while she had been busy trying to grab Carmelita's attention so she could hypnotize her and kill her in silence, a man had been stalking her, biding his time so that he could attack her.
She barely scraped Carmelita's throat before the unknown stranger pulled her back by her dress. He wasn't counting on Mrs. Cormier's surprising strength, and though she dropped her knife in the shock of someone grabbing her, just as she was about to get her vengeance, she managed to claw Carmelita's powdered face.
The Lundelville girl cried out once again as she fell down. Her dress and hands dirty from the ground, Carmelita skittered away like a rat and then picked herself up before calling for help. "I got her! Help me; I got her!" The man clutching Mrs. Cormier exclaimed, struggling to keep her in his arms by himself. Immediately, two other men rushed towards them and helped him contain Mrs. Cormier, who was now crying without consolation.
That had been it: her one and only chance to kill Carmelita, and she hadn't been able to do it. She wailed and screamed as if she was being tortured herself, and the men, together with Carmelita, made their way to where Mr. Lundelville was beating the life out of Guidry. Catching sight of his daughter's face, Mr. Lundelville rushed forwards to her, asking if she was alright. "I'm alright," Carmelita said, her voice coming in ragged. "But kill her, daddy. Kill that nigger whore," she snarled, looking at Mrs. Cormier savagely as she was being brought before them, still struggling as if she could save herself.
His nostrils flaring, Mr. Lundelville nodded to his daughter and pushed her aside gently. "Make her kneel," he commanded very simply, and in a moment, the other men had kicked Mrs. Cormier's legs, and she toppled to the ground.
She looked at Guidry for just one second, the only second she got before Mr. Lundelville pulled out his revolver. "I'm sorry I couldn't-" she began telling Guidry just as Mr. Lundelville put a bullet through her head. It had taken Alastor some time to get past the many entrapments Guidry had set up around the house so that neither the men that came to take them nor Alastor could make an escape, but he got out just in time to see Mrs. Cormier executed.
He was already running towards her when Mr. Lundelville pulled out his revolver and stopped dead in his tracks, uttering a single no that he thought had been internal when he saw the back of Mrs. Cormier's head burst open. The scream caught the crowd's attention, and they all turned to look at Alastor, amazed. "Alastor, don't-" Guidry called, his voice muffled from both his physical and mental pain, but a man swiftly kicked him in the mouth and silenced him.
Alastor, looking at Guidry as he trembled, started running towards Mrs. Cormier's corpse, but two complete strangers immediately held him back - or maybe he had seen the two men at some point in the Lundelville house. He couldn't remember now.
It didn't matter. All he could see was the fallen figure of Mrs. Cormier, the ground soaking up the unnatural amount of blood that was leaking from the gaping hole in her head. "Papa, we got her. Let's make it quick," Carmelita whispered in her father's ear.
It seemed that despite her evil nature, even the murder of Mrs. Cormier had been quite a bit for her to stomach, and it was doubtless that her bloodlust had been all but sated. After Guidry was killed, that was. "I will end this," Mr. Lundelville said, loud so that everyone could hear. "But first, confess," he ordered Guidry as he turned towards him and aimed the revolver. Guidry was only looking at Alastor, love, and pain making his eyes brim over, his tears falling seldom despite everything he was going through.
"I confess. To everything," he whispered in his ragged voice. "No! He's lying! He didn't do anything-" Alastor screamed, struggling. "Quiet, now, Alastor! You've been hypnotized," Carmelita interrupted him, her eyes flitting towards the crowd, still anxious to keep Alastor alive and to herself. "You confess to hypnotizing that young boy, planning to infiltrate this town with the devil and hurting my daughter?" Mr. Lundelville demanded, his hand steady. "Yes, yes, I confess to everything just… please. Please kill me," he choked out, lowering his head, incapable of looking at Alastor any longer. Alastor, his throat feeling like it was stuffed full of cotton, kept waiting for the resonant sound of a gunshot to come.
It never did. Mr. Lundelville lowered the revolver. "It's not my judgment you're going to face. It's the town's," he said very simply and nodded to the men holding him. As if in unison, all the people gathered there pooled around Guidry and began kicking him, punching, scratching, doing anything that they could to any part of him they could get ahold of.
In short, they were pulling him apart. Even the men that had been holding Alastor dropped him as they moved forward, trying to get their own bit into Guidry's death. Alastor himself was desperate to get to Guidry - to do what? Save him? Somehow pull him out of the tumult and stop all those people from murdering him when he was already on the threshold of death? In truth, there was no logical reason for it, there was nothing that he could do.
And yet he still tried to push forward, tried to get away from all the surging waves of angry people, but by the time he was able to get to him, it was only because they had grown bored of kicking a dead, trampled body.
The crowd dispersed even quicker than it had gathered, and Alastor was left kneeling before a body that no longer had eyes discernible, whose usually strong arms were now almost deflated, and the skin rose in certain areas. The corpse that had once been Guidry Cormier had its neck twisted to an unnatural angle, and it would've been impossible to recognize his face due to the degree to which it had been marred. And so the boy knelt there, beside the corpses of his guardians, his eyes unfocused, his hands seeming to reach out somewhere - where they would be reaching out, god only knew, for at least Guidry's corpse had nothing to really hold onto.
The strangest part was that the boy wasn't crying, and though his eyes were glazed over and seemed as though they would leak tears at any moment, they never did. His lower lip trembling, he looked at Guidry's corpse for a long while before crawling over to Mrs. Cormier's, the woman who he had loved as a mother, her fine, beautiful face completely vacant. In its center is a bullet. She looked troubled. He sat behind her and cradled her head in his lap, parting the stray hairs from her sweated face.
She looked horrible. He kissed her despite the blood spatter on her forehead and rocked her back and forth as if she was a distressed child. He looked as if he were losing his mind, finally. After the corpses in the Cormier home had been taken by the crowd, the only people that had lingered to witness the boy's actions were the two Lundelvilles, who watched him a bit farther away, their lips pursed, the only people remaining after the rest of the crowd had left like an audience after a show.
"It must be a shock," Carmelita told her father with a sigh, dabbing the scratch marks on her face with a white, flower-embroidered handkerchief. She wasn't bothered with the marring of her face, and she thought that the scratch marks, which would surely heal, together with the punch, would make her martyrdom and self-sacrifice even clearer to anyone that asked her, and at the end of the day, she would have a courageous, incredible tale to tell.
What she would relate to other people would have nothing to do with the savage, unlawful carnage that had actually taken place. Carmelita's father looked at her questioningly. "Are you sure that what you're saying is true?" He asked her. "You're really gonna vouch for that boy?" Carmelita looked at him with some shock.
"Why, papa, you know him! And that awful nigger confessed to having hypnotized him," she stated. Her father made a face. "Can we be sure he's not still hypnotized?" Carmelita was now struck, trying to find a reason as to why he wasn't. "Oh, don't be ridiculous, daddy.
He's just in shock. I want to help him," she said quite convincingly, looking at him pleadingly. "Alright, alright," he consented, still looking wary, "but if he so much as" "He won't," she said, batting her eyelashes at him. It wasn't unlike the conversation Alastor and the Cormiers had had about keeping a pet some weeks ago.
Boldly, Carmelita suddenly stepped forward to where Alastor was cradling his dead guardian. She knelt beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. Shocked, Alastor looked at her with his wide, glassy eyes. "How are you doing, sugar?" She asked, but he couldn't reply to her, not yet. Within him, the whole world was spiraling out of control. He felt something surging inside him, the same thing he had felt surging inside him for quite some time, which he had tried to stifle or control, put reins on.
And he was mourning, his pain was too much to bear, and even if he had had the willpower to keep whatever was happening to him from completely taking over his mind, he wouldn't want to. He needed the change to happen. He needed Harry to die within him, and in his eyes, there weren't just two dead bodies strewn on the floor.
He lay dying right there next to them, and as Carmelita touched him and began talking to him, he finally bled out. It all seemed simple, then. It would all be simple. "I want you to come back home with me," she said. "Papa and I will take care of you, no matter what. I will take care of you," she insisted, looking at him with insincere empathy.
The pale foundation on her face had moved where Mrs. Cormier had scratched her, like a mask she had barely managed to crack. "Yes," Alastor breathed, his face still frozen in its look of complete and utter shock and pain.
Carmelita nodded at him, trying to contain her unbridled excitement. "Come, let's go home," she told him, shooting a disgusted look at Mrs. Cormier's body. Although Alastor looked at her, he didn't really look at her, and he just nodded. "Yes," he said again as he allowed her to help him up, untangling himself from Mrs. Cormier's corpse. "Carmelita," he suddenly said as they reached his father. "Yes, sugar?" "I need to get my things," he said, looking over to the Cormiers' store, now as dead and empty as they were.
Carmelita cast a fleeting glance at the empty building. "Right now?" "Yes, I… I don't want to go back there later," he told her, his voice and gaze still vacant. Carmelita nodded understandingly, and she and her father stood in front of the store as Alastor went back in since neither of them dared set foot in it again. Alastor made his way up the stairs quietly and went into his room, where Harry was still miaowing, clearly distraught.
Alastor ignored him completely as he went to the corner of the room and looked at the blue suit Mrs. Cormier had made him. He stared at it for quite some time, as if hypnotized, and then decided he was too dirty to put it on.
He went into the bathroom and rinsed himself off of the Cormiers' blood as best he could, stripping so he could get everything out, down to the last bit of grime he was able to reach without fully bathing. Then, he went back into his room, took the garments, and went over to the full-length mirror that was propped in Cormier's room. Seeing the empty room of his guardians hurt more than the suit did. Gazing around it for a bit, much to his surprise, he found a neat little envelope sitting on their bed.
The envelope had a single word written: Alastor's name in Mrs. Cormier's loopy hand. His birthday present. He would later put it into his coat pocket, feeling something heavy moving inside it, but he didn't open it, and he wouldn't do it, not then.
He very slowly unfolded the clothes and, one by one, as Mrs. Cormier had taught him to do, put on the shirt, the pants, the blazer, and finally, the tie. When Guidry had first taught him to tie it, he thought he might spend an entire lifetime and never get the mechanics of it right, but he could do it just as Guidry had done. Meticulous, precise, the image of the exact steps Guidry had taken was clear in his mind.
In fact, everything was clear in his mind, clearer than it had been for months, even years, and he could see everything plainly and as it was, with no limitations to what his mind could know, recall, or even imagine. He tightened the bow around his neck, put on Guidry's best shoes, which were still a little too large for him, and looked at himself in the mirror. He didn't expect to see the man materialize in the mirror because he knew that he now looked too much like him, despite the coloring.
The man would never appear before the mirror again because Alastor had replaced him completely. Taking a deep breath, Alastor went back to his bedroom, which now felt like it had belonged to another person from another time.
He shoved his hand into his pillowcase and produced his wand and the black orb that had brought him here. He pocketed the items and then moved towards the books that were stacked in the corner of his room, about to leaf through one of them in search of a specific spell.
But he stopped dead in his tracks, realizing that what he wanted to know was right there in his head, just as clear as the knowledge of the bowtie had been. He pursed his lips, took Harry under one arm, the kitten grateful for the sudden touch, and emerged into the living room kitchen.
He looked around for a bit, staring at the counters where, not so long ago, Mrs. Cormier had taught him to make jambalaya; the stool where Guidry always sat, rolling his cigarettes and then smoking them out at length, taking each drag deeply before tossing the butt in the flames of the fire, which now burned so low it was about to die.
As he looked around, he remembered what Mrs. Cormier had told him about voodoo, and he was now certain that it was the same magic that he knew but in a different form. And he knew something else (he didn't realize it suddenly, for it seemed that the information had always been there in his brain, waiting for him to access it), and it was that he could merge the two forms together as they were actually one. He raised his hand, and as he did, the dying embers in the fireplace roared to a new life together with every candle around him.
The flames reached so high they touched the ceiling and sputtered onto the wooden floor. The place caught fire in no time. As if it were no more than a casual thing for him, Alastor adjusted Harry beneath his armpit and walked down the stairs to where the Lundelvilles were waiting for him.
The swelling fire that had begun licking up the Cormier's house, the cat under Alastor's arm, and the suit was not mentioned in the silent walk back to the Lundelville house. They only walked, blood-streaked and tired (at least, the Lundelvilles were tired), Carmelita holding onto Alastor's available arm. No one said anything when Alastor put the cat down on a random street, kissed it softly on the head, and continued walking.
The only words that were uttered were when Mr. Lundelville asked Carmelita whether she would like to see a doctor about the scrape on her throat and the scratches on her face, but she only shook her head and told him she would allow the servants at their home to tend to it and would only go to the doctor tomorrow when she had had her rest. As was predictable, the Lundelville house was silent, and there were only one or two maids there, the ones who stayed overnight, who immediately took to tending to Carmelita in the living room.
The atmosphere was almost strangely calm after the tumultuous events of the evening. As his daughter was being patched up, Mr. Lundelville walked up to Alastor. "You doing alright, boy?" He asked. "Yes, sir," Alastor answered politely. Mr. Lundelville looked him up and down. "These the only clothes you got?" "Yes, sir," he repeated, still looking ahead with that staring look of his. "Well, that's no problem at all. We'll get you some clothes - some proper clothes in no time," he said and gave him a pat on the back. "Oh, that won't be necessary," Alastor told him. Mr. Lundelville frowned. "What do you mean?" And with that, Alastor finally cocked his head towards him and gave him the most terrible smile the man had seen in his entire life.
Before he could say anything else, Alastor clapped his hands, and all the lights in the room were snuffed. Carmelita and her maid gave a startled cry, and Mr. Lundelville stepped back, startled. "Alastor," he warned, but he was unable to conceal the fright in his voice. "What's wrong?" Alastor asked, but his voice didn't come from where Mr. Lundelville thought it would. Instead, it seemed to come from… well, it seemed to come from everywhere. "Alastor, what are you doing?" Carmelita cried, clutching her maid in the darkness. No answer came. "Daddy!" She called out. "Daddy, come to my voice. I'm scared!" She waited for a second, but again, no answer came, only silence.
Whimpering now, Carmelita barked at her maid to light the candles again, but they saw something glowing in the dark before the woman could even attempt it. They looked at the faintly bright spots, trying to decipher what they were, before realizing they were two eyes. "Alastor!" Carmelita cried out, not knowing who to call now. But the only thing she got in return was a serrating, horrible laugh that resounded throughout the house. A second later, Carmelita Lundelville lost consciousness.
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When Carmelita awoke, she was sitting at the head of the dining room table, her hands bound to her chair. The dining room itself was beautifully laid out as if they were waiting for some special guests to arrive for dinner: the candles were flickering softly, a gentle tune was coming from the record player in the corner, and even the table had been set with the cutlery all in its right place.
The next thing she became clearly aware of was pain. She tried to scream, but when she attempted to open her mouth, the pain intensified, the source of it coming from her lips, which Alastor had sewn together with a thick black thread. She could feel the slimy blood leaking from where he had pierced the needle through her skin.
Her eyes brimming over with tears, she struggled against her binds, but it was no use. "You know," came Alastor's voice from the other side of the table, his eyes down as he twirled a sharp knife in his hand, admiring it, his posture perfect in that pristine blue suit of his.
She had always thought he looked so dashing in it. Alastor's voice, however, didn't even sound like his voice - it was older, somehow, more high-pitched, darker. "I always hated the sound of that god-awful voice of yours," he said with a little sigh.
Carmelita moaned, and just when her tears fell, she suddenly caught sight of something besides her on the table. She blinked her tears away and saw that her parents were tied and gagged, knocked out cold on either side of her. She started screaming again, as loudly as she could, with her lips still closed. "What was it that you said to me again?" Alastor asked, completely aloof, putting down the sharp knife and lifting a cleaver, weighing it in his hands.
Carmelita saw that he had an array of knives and weapons displayed on the other end of the table. Her heart fell further down her stomach. "That you'd feed the Cormiers to me?"
He continued, inching over towards her father. It felt like that threat had been spoken years ago when really it had been just that afternoon. "Well," he said, hovering over her father and getting so close to him he was breathing down his neck. He gently propped the man's hand up on the table and splayed out his fingers. "I suppose that makes you a better person than I am," and with that, he lifted the cleaver and brought it down on the man's fingers. Carmelita tried to open her mouth and scream, but another wave of pain struck her as her father's finger sprayed out blood, and he jolted awake, groaning through his gag. He thrashed around violently, but there was no use. Alastor held the finger to his eyes, examining them.
He suddenly shook his head as if displeased with the finger. "No, no, this simply won't do. Dirty fingers. I can still the crust of Guidry's blood under his nails," he flung it aside carelessly, and it landed with the tiniest thud on the floor. Alastor casually walked towards Carmelita's mother, humming a little tune to himself. "Now, her," he said, licking his lips as he also spread her hands out, looking at the two impotent Lundelvilles with growing pleasure. "I just know your dear mama hasn't worked a day in her life.
Oh, just look at those hands! Clean, spotless, and not a blemish on them. Wonderful!" He said, laughing in that terrible way again. He brought down the bloody cleaver on two of the woman's fingers. Now Carmelita's muffled cries were joined with her father, then with her mother's, who promptly awoke. Alastor took the two fingers and licked them, a shudder of delight going through him. "Now, I will need you to participate in this, Miss Lundelville.
I'll remove those stitches from your mouth - but if I do, you have to promise not to scream," he indicated, his smile widening unnaturally as he set the two fingers on the plate before the awakened Mrs. Lundelville, who was screaming at the top of her lungs. Still, despite the intensity of their combined cries, it wasn't too loud. "If you do scream, I'll have to keep on taking fingers. Mommy or daddy - you can choose." He neared Carmelita. "Nod, if you understand." Carmelita nodded, and with a snap of his fingers, Alastor removed the stitches, though the wounds remained. He could see her fighting against the urge to scream. It was a wonderful sight. Alastor sat on the edge of the table, smiling at Carmelita, expectant.
What would this wretched excuse of a woman have to say? "Alastor," she sobbed, trying to fight through the pain. "Please, just let me go. I'll do anything." How predictable. "Anything?!" Alastor exclaimed with quite some delight, clapping his hands. "Why don't you start by answering me this: what do you think is the tenderest part of the human body?" Carmelita frowned, struck by his answer.
"I-" "Now, think about it well, or you won't be able to go." "I don't know!" She sobbed, rocking forward in her chair. Despite all her big talk, she was folding quite easily, he saw with some disappointment. "Well, that's not a real answer, is it?" He asked and swiftly turned back to Mrs. Lundelville to cut off another of her fingers.
The pinky, this time. That old bitch would never be able to stick it up presumptuously for tea-drinking ever again. Carmelita let out a little scream, crying hysterically now. "Crying won't do you any good, Carmelita Lundelville! Answer the question, or daddy over there become one thumb short." "The - the thigh!" She finally spouted through her tears. Satisfied, Alastor let the cleaver drop, laughing. "Excellent answer! Now, I'm prepared to make a deal, let you out of here with all your little toes and fingers." "You said you'd let me go if I answered," she choked out. "Oh, no, no, the answer was just the first part of it.
See, not all of you are making it out of here alive," he told her quite calmly. "If you agree to my deal, two of you will be let loose by the end of tonight." Her eyes filled with fresh tears as she heard. "You will choose one of your dear, dear parents, and I will let them go. The other, I will kill and feed them to you. As you so eloquently put it before," he said, as if he were just offering to sell her a bottle of perfume. Carmelita screamed at the top of her lungs, about to call for help, but with another snap of his fingers, the black thread was back on her lips, and she tore the holes wider in her screams. She curled up into herself with pain. "Don't be foolish.
If you don't accept the deal, I'll just kill you all right now!" He said, unflustered, laughing at the lot of them. "And believe you me, it's quite tempting," he said, his voice dropping low, almost like a snarl. He licked his lips. "Now, I will hear your decision, but you had better not scream again, silly girl." He snapped his fingers again, and the thread was off. "Papa. Spare my daddy," she gasped without hesitation, looking at her father wildly.
It was morbidly satisfying to Alastor to see her mother's look of betrayal, even more, satisfying than cutting off her fingers had been. "Very well, then. Now, mommy dearest!" He said, turning to the screaming woman. He waved his hand towards the end of the table, and from it, a pair of scissors and a sharp knife came floating into his hands.
He moved Mrs. Lundelville's chair and positioned her before him, taking the scissors and ripping apart her skirts as she tried to wobble away. Unfortunately for her, the chairs were too heavy to topple over (silly rich people with their heavy chairs), and Alastor had bound her too tight to move even an inch.
Carmelita started screaming again when Alastor began slicing the upper part of her mother's thigh. With a deep, dejected sigh, he muffled her again as Mrs. Lundelville's even louder screams filled the room. When he had got a good, long slice off of her, his hands slick with her blood, he held it up triumphantly.
He was trying not to cut any major artery that would have her quickly bleed to death, but he really had very little anatomical knowledge. "Here we go!" He exclaimed excitedly and then proceeded to make the slice of meat hover over a candle flame. He twirled it over several times until it looked a little whiter, and the skin was slightly charred. "Think of it as thigh flambé. I know how you like your fancy things, Carmelita dear." he then set it down on a plate, cut it into bite-size, and skewered it with Carmelita's fork.
He removed the thread from her lips and told her to open up. Carmelita, as was predictable, held her head away, trying to get away from the fork where Alastor was offering her her mother's cooked flesh. It didn't even smell that bad, Alastor thought. "Now, now, Miss Lundelville, this was part of the deal. Open up, or I'll have to start opening up, daddy over there!" He told her with a chuckle. With tears in her eyes, Carmelita opened her mouth to admit the fork.
She took her own sweet time before she started chewing and then finally swallowed it down. "Ha! At this rate, we'll be here all night," Alastor told her, though he didn't seem displeased. He reached with his fork over to get another piece of the thigh. Ever so slow, Carmelita having outbursts of disgust and desperation at times, the slice was finally consumed.
Then, Alastor set to work with Mrs. Lundelville's other thigh, and promptly he had taken a slice from most places of her body, all the people at the table crying the whole time as Alastor chuckled and moved at his ease, lost in his sick, peculiar tasks. Never a dull moment. At some point, Mrs. Lundelville started to look far too weak from all the blood loss she had been suffering - besides, she had never been a very healthy woman, to begin with. "Hm, looks like she won't be holding out much longer…." Alastor commented, ruefully shaking his head.
One could never say he had really been rude throughout the ordeal. "Please," Carmelita croaked from behind him. "I can't eat any more of… of her," she said with another cry. "Well, if that's the case, we should be moving forward to dessert!" Alastor flicked his hand out, and in a moment, a skewer was flown to his fingers. Before anyone could realize what he was about to do, he plunged it into Mrs. Lundelville's eye socket. The screams that ensued were sweet as could be.
He arranged the eyeball neatly atop the skewer for optimum comfort while eating and made a mental note to clean off the crusted, dry blood that had accumulated on his hands before he got to the really good stuff.
The eyeball was properly skewered. He didn't even bother making a show of 'cooking' it atop a flame and just popped it in front of Carmelita's mouth. "No, no, no, no," she kept saying, looking sick. "Oh, come now, Carmelita! You've had worse things in that mouth of yours, isn't that right?
And I'm not just talking about that filthy vocabulary - quite unseemly from a girl like you - that you used today! Don't you remember all those afternoons we spent together?" He asked, passing the slimy eyeball over her face. Carmelita shot a horrified look over at her father. "Oh, you can't possibly think your parents didn't know about your particular taste for young flesh, Miss Lundelville! That's why they deserve all of this just as much as you do! Is that why you don't want to eat your mama?
Is she just not as tender as all the little boys you're used to?" "Stop!" Carmelita exclaimed. "You don't really think you're in a position to command me anymore, do you, Carmelita? Now, open up…." Through cheeks flamed with shame and embarrassment, Carmelita shut her eyes and opened her wounded mouth to bite down on the eyeball. Alastor managed to move just out of the way before she vomited violently down her dress. "Well, that sure is a way to make room for dessert!" Alastor exclaimed through barely-contained laughter. "
I'll be back in a jiffy for our grande finale," he said, wiggling his fingers at them mystically as he backed out of the room. Before he did, however, he bound Carmelita's lips together again. In the bathroom, as he scrubbed and scrubbed to get the hard blood out from under his fingernails and between the crevices of his hands, Alastor chanced to look at himself in the mirror. The slightly crazed look, the too-wide eyes, the disheveled hair, the mouth that couldn't remove itself from its perpetual state of near laughter.
He looked insane, and that wasn't even mentioning the amount of blood on his skin and suit. No. No time to back out now. No time for weakness. He finished cleaning himself and used the water to smooth down his hair. He found it was rather irksome that he hadn't been properly presentable throughout the ordeal. But no matter, no matter. When he arrived at the dining room once more, he found Mr. Lundelville toppled over, trying to wriggle about. What a fool. "What a feat of strength!" Alastor remarked sarcastically, not even bothering to set him upright.
Let him wriggle on the ground like the worthless worm that he was if that suited his fancy. "Now, where were we? Oh!" He said, displeased as he noticed Mrs. Lundelville's eyes shut, now completely silent save for a few moans, the black hole on her face where her eye had been looking nowhere. "We should hurry it up lest mommy here dies on us, hm? She's tough, this one - I'd think you, Carmelita, would've already fainted at the very least!" He said with a laugh and then worked his way towards the other end of the table, carefully selecting a few tools. Carmelita eyed him silently, dreading what he would do next.
After choosing his tools, Alastor casually went up behind Mrs. Lundelville. "I'm very glad you made space for dessert, Carmelita. You see, I'm no expert on this, but when I asked you what you thought the tenderest part of the human body would be, and you answered 'thigh', I couldn't possibly agree. You see, in my opinion…" he said, taking a scalpel and running it through the length of Mrs. Lundelville's head, "I think the tenderest part must be the brain. I may be wrong, of course, but you'll have to let me know," and with that, he started scalping Mrs. Lundelville, who immediately passed out without so much as a whimper. After scalping her roughly and imprecisely, it took Alastor quite some time to be able to penetrate through her skull, and by the end, her head was a mess.
He was so concentrated on his work that he barely even heard Carmelita's desperate, muffled screams. In the end, the top part of her skull was finally cracked open like a particularly tough walnut, and when he looked inside to her brain (thinking it would be funny if her head were empty), he was unexpectedly pleased.
There was something so hypnotizing, so morbidly pleasing about looking into someone's brains, as if everything that they had done wrong, every thought, every bad trait, could be found in that strange, spiraling mass, the curls of which always led to a certain path, much like… well, much like a spiral. It hypnotized you, and it kept you looking. It was downright magical.
Though he hadn't planned it, Alastor took a knife and fork, and after cutting off a small part of Mrs. Lundelville's brain, instead of giving it to Carmelita.
He had been right - he didn't even need to taste the thigh to know. It was so tender, so incredibly good. He couldn't have possibly imagined it would taste as it did. What was more, he felt that everything he had thought he had seen in her brain (that was, her malignant tendencies, her terrible deeds) was felt as he chewed and chewed. What a particular taste! And he was sure it was particular to Mrs. Lundelville, too - did all people have their own flavor? He wondered.
He cut off another piece and this time held it to an open flame, carefully cooking it on both sides before popping it into his mouth again. "Well, I do think raw is certainly better. I actually believe I've read something about raw brains being good for your health." He went over to Mrs. Lundelville as if she were no more than a steak and hacked at her again. "Come, do tell me what you think," he said, offering the morsel over to Carmelita, unstitching her mouth. She rejected it. "Stop! She'd die, can't you see?" She pleaded, "let us go!" Irritated, Alastor slapped her across the face, seething.
It wasn't unlike the first time when he had punched her, but now it was even sweeter because he could not and would not feel remorse. Or consequences. "You know what the deal was, Carmelita! Now eat it, or I'll shove it down your throat!" He roared, his voice suddenly shifting into that of an animal's. Carmelita started crying again, and Alastor took a deep breath, shutting his eyes. "Forgive me," he said sweetly, returning to his usual, polite, and composed self. "I always want to be just as courteous as you've always been with me.
Now, open up," he instructed as if speaking to a toddler. With the tears streaming down her face, Carmelita chewed it and swallowed it down with as much pain as she had all the other parts. "What do you think? I personally think it could do with some lemon," he commented.
But Carmelita gave him no response, only hung her head, defeated. Well, that was no fun. And now Mrs. Lundelville truly was dead, so there would be no point in keeping up the game they had been playing for hours now. "Very well, I suppose we are done with your mother now." Without another word, he went over to Mr. Lundelville and propped him upright. Hopeful and expectant, Carmelita raised her head and watched him, delighted, as he began untying her father. There was silence as Mr. Lundelville's ties came undone.
As was predictable, he immediately lunged for Alastor, but the boy quickly side-stepped him. The man lurched forward and started to help Carmelita as Alastor skittered a few paces away, a knowing smile on his face. Before Mr. Lundelville had figured out the first knot, Alastor clenched his fist and, under his breath, uttered a single word Crucio.
Mr. Lundelville was immediately flung up almost to the ceiling, screaming in complete and utter agony. Carmelita started screaming, too, and the sounds of the two of them screaming mingled with Alastor's hysterical laughter, sounding like music pulled straight from hell. "Stop! You said you'd let us go!" Carmelita pleaded as her father writhed in the air, his inhuman screams piercing through the lot of them. "Of course, I will let you go!" Alastor bellowed through the screaming, "and then we can all meet up again in Hell!" he said with a cackle. "A fair deal to make, I think!" In truth, Alastor didn't know how long the Cruciartus curse would take to crack Mr. Lundelville, and he had expected it to go on for at least an hour before the man's brain had snapped, but all in all, it couldn't have taken more than twenty minutes for him to be rendered a blubbering fool, twitching and writhing. Alastor broke the spell and, without saying a word, headed over to the kitchen.
The two maids that had unfortunately been in the Lundelville house that night were bound and gagged, and they started squirming and screaming when Alastor walked in. Reminding himself of all that he had read about hypnotism in the voodoo journals, he looked each one of them in the eye and repeated the same words, hoping that he was doing it exactly right. No loose strings.
He had actually considered hypnotizing Carmelita into eating her own mother with relish but had decided against it - what would be the fun in forcing her into it when he could have her fully conscious and screaming? Where would be the satisfaction, the justice? "It seems that witnessing the Cormiers' murders was too much for poor Carmelita to bear… she unexpectedly snapped - torturing her mother in front of her father's eyes. He, too, snapped at seeing the sight of his own daughter eating his wife. Then, she ran away - why, you're just lucky she forgot all about you two and ran away, god knows where.
But to be honest, you're not all that surprised. After all, they were a rather strange… even incestuous family. You could tell they were depraved after all the suspicious young boys Carmelita had lured into the house…." With that, he returned to the dining room, sedated a screaming Carmelita with a knock on her head, and dragged her out of the house.
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The bodies of the Cormiers hadn't been touched, much as Alastor had predicted. It couldn't have been past three in the morning, and though getting the two corpses and Carmelita's passed-out body out of town had been no easy feat, once they were on the outskirts, where there were nearly no people, the floating bodies trailing behind Alastor were easier to maneuver unseen.
As he walked, making sure his magic didn't falter, and none of the bodies hit the ground, Alastor's mind was almost a complete blank, the only thing in it being his one-track determination to get the bodies to the swamp, as far into the wilderness as he could. It didn't prove to be very hard, though it took him a few hours and a lot of energy.
By the time he got into the thickest, mushiest part of a swamp, right before it had become untreatable, Alastor collapsed onto his knees and, without having the mental energy to think it through, started digging into the dirt with his own two hands.
Maybe his lack of determination and the weakness he felt was also due to the fact that he had been lugging his guardians' corpses around for the past hour or two and had been unable to look at their pallid, dead flesh. He dug and dug and dug with surprising strength and speed, and soon enough, he had two shallow graves.
Trying not to look at them properly, he maneuvered the two corpses into the graves with magic, now too physically weak to actually heave them in there himself. He threw dirt on them and covered their toes, feet, arms, and torso, but when he got to their faces, he felt his determination wavering. It was the exact image he had already had twice in his visions - the Cormiers, buried, the blue light of the evening making their dead, vacant faces look almost celeste. He stopped. He remembered.
Mrs. Cormier's tale of her dead infant, the way it'd come back barely human. He was suddenly certain that she had done the ritual correctly, that she had done everything she had had to do to bring her baby back - he could feel the same desperation that she had felt at losing a lost one.
She had sacrificed a human being to get her love back, just like he was about to do. He remembered how they had described the thing that had come back to them - charred and inhuman, a beast that was barely alive, barely conscious. He didn't cover their faces. Instead, he dug a third grave. He knew nothing would bring them back. He knew it deep in his heart as he dug his fingers into the soil once again. Besides, what would he bring them back for?
For them to discover how he was now a murderer - a cannibal? For them to still be stuck in this town forever, to face certain second death? They would probably kill themselves a second time if he had dared to bring them back. But he wouldn't. Instead, if they couldn't come to him, he would go to them. He remembered what Ren had told him, how he was the kind of person that didn't understand death, that had a hard time accepting it.
He had been right. He dug and dug and dug, now remembering Adelaide's words, all the visions and predictions swarming back to him like terrible, melancholic bees. When everything had gone wrong, she said, he would go back to the swamp, and in the swamp, he would stay.
The realization that his guardians were irrevocably dead and that he would soon join them did the opposite of pitching him into despair. Instead, the knowledge brought him a queer sort of peace because he knew it to be right - it was what they (the visions, Adelaide, even the Cormiers) had tried to prepare him for. Now he would never run the risk of having to feel remorse for everything he had done; he would never face judgment again and would never have to feel pain and grief again. Just as he was finished digging his Alastor-shaped grave, Carmelita woke up.
She immediately began to moan and to stand up. Alastor said nothing, just kept on digging where he thought the grave was too shallow. Somehow, Carmelita deliriously thought he hadn't heard her waking up, and she began slowly crawling away, her hands and feet still bound together, thinking she could make an escape. Alastor reached out with one hand, and an invisible force dragged a screaming Carmelita back to him.
It wasn't hard for him to position her right in front of the grave's opening, and, holding her in front of him as she weakly struggled in his grasp, he whispered in her ear. "I will bind myself to the earth. And your blood with seals me."
He took out the knife he had tucked into his pants and unceremoniously slit her throat, serrating it like a man-handled Thanksgiving turkey. She gargled and choked for just a second before flopping to the ground like a dead fish.
Alastor silently lifted her body and threw her away deep into the swamp, far away from where he and the Cormiers would rest. He didn't want her to be anywhere near them. Without much further ado, Alastor tucked himself into his grave and found that he didn't even have to stack up the dirt on himself. The earth gave way beneath him and swallowed him whole, just like it had in his visions, except this time, he didn't fight, didn't struggle, he only welcomed the darkness.