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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Mar 12, 2022 10:27:07 GMT -5
13 - The End
Kate's finger drummed impatiently on the dashboard, harder than she had intended. The cold was making her clumsy, twitchy, and she couldn't stand it. After a while the sound of her own tapping began to irritate, so she placed her hands into the pockets of her overcoat, and waited.
There was a thick frost, harshly engulfing the trees visible through the windscreen. It was several degrees below, and tiny droplets of ice were beginning to crawl their way up the surface of the window. She couldn't bare to wait here much longer, but the alternative was colder, and riskier. She didn't want to be seen, especially not by somebody like Robert. Kate was uncertain about what she was doing, and she did not want anything to shake her fierce determination any further.
Kate sighed, and closed her eyes for a moment, trying to steady herself. In the absence of light she almost began to feel warmer, detached from the world around her, but perhaps that was just her imagination. She began to chew her lip once more, thoughts of all she had learned swirling around in her head. No, in fact, she hadn't learned anything. Only heard. She needed to see the truth for herself.
Something knocked against her window.
Her eyes jerked open, jumping, her heart felt like bursting, and she saw Jenkins standing by the window. She sighed, and opened the door to the car. It was an effort to heave herself up now, and she used a hand to steady herself.
'You're late.' she said, breath fogging the air between them.
'Sorry' said Jenkins, 'It took me longer to get here than I'd expected.' He sounded out of breath, as though he'd been running for a long time. Kate took a look at him, and saw that his clothes were rugged and dirty. His face was pale, with dark circles under his eyes.
'Are you alright?' she asked him
'I'm fine,' he stuttered. 'Just haven't been sleeping well.'
'Well, truth be told, neith have I. Come on, we should get going.'
Kate turned toward the house, and began to walk briskly up the length of Irving Close, Jenkins following behind her, struggling to keep pace. Kate checked around her, but the street was quiet. It was early morning, the light only just beginning to break over the horizon. Hopefully they would not be disturbed.
Together they walked up the long and jagged path toward the house, neither saying much to the other. Kate could hear her own heartbeat pulsing in her ears, growing steadily louder. When they reached the front door she stopped, and waited for Jenkins to catch up with her. He was limping, slightly, bent over one leg.
'Are you sure you're alright?' she asked again
'Yeah' Jenkins gave a stiff nod. 'I'm fine.'
Kate nodded back at him, turning towards the door. It was large and robust, made from wood painted green, peeling and flaked. Hundreds of eyes adorned its surface, each one cracked as though tiny hands had scratched away at it's surface.
She made to reach for the handle, but she felt a hand on her shoulder.
'Wait' said Jenkins, his voice almost breathless. 'Are you sure that we should be doing this.'
Kate sighed. 'Yes, Jenkins, I'm sure.'
'It's just, after what happened last time...'
'I need to see this for myself.' said Kate, 'Damn the consequences.' she bit her lip again. 'I'll be fine though. Tom knows I'm here, at least, if anything goes wrong.'
Goes wrong. The memory of Daniel's body, hanging from the tree, deep cuts where his eyes should have been.
'Why are you doing this?' Jenkins asked, articulating her thoughts.
'Because I need to know what happened, more than anything else.' And with that she pushed open the door.
A long dark corridor confronted the two of them, dust hanging unbidden in the air. Kate walked into the house without hesitation, and she noticed Jenkins reluctantly followed.
'Don't you remember the one about curiosity?' he asked her.
Kate smiled back at him, and gently pushed open the door at the end of the corridor. Behind the door was a cross between a study and a library. There were several tables and comfortable looking chairs, and the walls were lined with books, each more ancient than the one that came before. The books had spilled over from the shelves and were piled on the tables, and in some places the floor and chairs. There was a film of dust over everything, except for the pile of books nearest the chairs. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, with a coronet of green candles encircling the outside. But the most interesting thing about the room was the portraits.
To have them described to you was one thing, but to see them in person was something else entirely. The eyes stared at her, almost threatening. Everything inside her tensed as she looked at them, the person inside her kicking uncomfortably.
'salsa.' said Kate. 'It really is disturbing in here.'
Jenkins stood in the doorway, hesitant to cross the threshold. Kate moved around the space, trying to avert her eyes from the paintings. She noticed a pile of papers sat atop a desk, and two initials dotted in the corner.
''E.F'.... These notes, I think they might be Ellingtons.' She began to look through them. The writing was at first delicate and considered, but slowly became more and more detached and illegible. 'She's talking about her father, and her research. Where he went wrong.'
Jenkins was still in the doorway, studying her from a distance. 'And where did he go wrong?'
'Look what she says here.' Kate walked over to him, showing her the page as she read. "My father says that he has found what he has been looking for all these years, a way to commune with the quiet world. I do not think he is correct, I think he has found something else. The answer to a question that we were never meant to ask."
Kate felt a prickle on the back of her neck, and she glanced towards the portraits once more, eyes staring back at her. She folded the pages and put them in her pocket.
'When you came here with Detective Summers, where did you go next?'
Jenkins pointed to a staircase in the far corner of the room, and Kate headed in its direction. As she began to ascend it her thoughts struggled with each other, a voice of reason trying to keep herself calm.
They found themselves on a long landing. There was a row of rooms on one side, and to the others a small window, caked with so much dirt as to cast a yellow glow over the two of them.
'Where is the dining room? The one where you saw the bodies?'
Jenkins pointed again, his arm oddly stilted, to the door at the far end of the corridor. Kate proceeded onwards, the floorboards creaking heavily with each step. Her breath was catching in her throat, her head feeling lighter and lighter as she opened the door.
The dining room held a large table that was mostly empty, excepting a single candle in its centre and a thick layer of dust. There were small marks and lines over the dust, and several handprints, so small they might belong to children. The table was shaped like an oval, with the chairs positioned at regular intervals, almost like eyelashes. Over by the far wall there was a large opening, leading to stone spiral steps, heading downwards. Kate could feel the coldness of the air below against her skin.
Kate walked over to the staircase, and peered down into the room below. There was light coming from below.
'I'm going to go take a look.' she said to Jenkins. He merely stood there, at the other side of the room, looking paler than ever.
She could feel the muscles in her legs shaking as she took each step carefully, almost resisting every instruction to move forward. The cold and her nerves together made her entire body shake, and it was a relief to her when the stairs ended.
There were a series of bright and powerful lights set up on stands around the room. These were modern, clean, new. A bed lay in its centre, with some medical machinery off to one side. The walls of the room were filthy, in stark contrast to the cleanliness and whiteness of everything else. There was blood on these walls, and some strange black substance. And then Kate noticed two long chains, hanging from hooks embedded into the wall. The chains ended into a pair of shackles, sat comfortably on the bed.
Kate heard a sound behind her, and she turned to look back up the stairs. Jenkins was there, looking paler than ever.
'What is this place?' Kate asked, almost rhetorically.
For a moment there was a silence between them, like the drawing of a deep breath, before Jenkins spoke.
'It's your room.'
The voice was thin, cold, piercing, echoing from the stone of the wall, around and around, playing deep inside her brain.
The next moment Jenkins began to shake, like some kind of seizure. Kate stood transfixed as his whole body began to convulse, and his skin began to flake, huge pieces falling around him. The skin started to shed from his body in great sloughs. There was a great sound, like the tearing of paper, as loud as to be inside her soul, and the rest of Jenkins fell away, as though he had never even been there.
Kate found herself unable to scream, bile rising in her throat, she fell heavily to the floor. For a moment she tried to catch her breath, and she looked up to where Jenkins had been with dread.
She pulled herself down the steps on all fours, her long nails scratching against the floor. The ruin of her eyes stared at Kate, the blackness searching her. Her face looked almost stretched, the features still that of a little girl, but somehow aged. There was blood falling from her eyes and down her dress, and as she reached the bottom her face stood level with Kates.
Her name was Emmeline.
--<--
Everything was vague, as though she was in the depths of a dream. The sensations around her were distilled by hazy torchlight, only fleeting shapes casting themselves around her. There was someone moving, close in front of her, but she could not tell who, or why, nor how close they were.
Her ears were ringing intensely, like a buzzing, humming, gnawing away at her sides. She tried to shake her head, loosen the sound from herself, but it was too heavy, as it was not her own.
When she moved she heard the sound before she felt it, something dragging around her, and then she could sense the metal ringlets clasped around her arms dragging them down to the floor. She looked down, and could see them around her wrists, like thick black snakes binding her down, standing clear against the white milk of her skin. She was naked, and she could feel it now, the cold of the room beginning to force its way inside her.
She looked up again, and found the face she had seen before, clearer now. She recognised it from somewhere, but she couldn't quite place it, not yet.
Suddenly, there was a sharp pain, and she looked down to see a needle, something being injected into her swollen belly. Kate could see the syringe was full of something black, shining against the light, and then it was gone. Into her.
Kate tried to speak, but her mouth seemed to have forgotten how to open. Instead she looked at the person before her, studied the face. It smiled back at her, almost mockingly, and then there were sounds, footsteps, scraping against the stone. Kate turned to look, and saw someone. Her heart began to beat faster, recognition crawling it way across her mind, and then she heard a voice.
'How is she doing?'
And then the figure in front of her replied. 'She's awake again, but I've given her another injection.'
'That's good.' said the man who had just entered, and he moved close, and then Kate could see. It was Tom, he was here, she was going to be fine. She tried to open her mouth again, to speak, to say his name, but her words seemed to be gone.
Tom looked at Kate, their eyes locking for a moment, and then he moved in front of her, placing his hands on her stomach. They were warm, so warm against the cold of her body that it almost burned her. She could feel his thumb moving gently back and forth, caressing her. It was their child in there, something they had made together.
'We don't have long to wait now.' said Tom, his eyes looking toward the other figure. 'And then we'll know if all our efforts were worth it.'
The figure moved towards Tom, arms moving around to embrace him, and there was a sound as they came together, lips moving against each other, Tom's hand still on her stomach.
Kate tried to move again, to force herself up, but her body felt so weak, her arms and legs like dead weights to her. She tried to speak, to be understood, but instead a groan urged its way from her throat.
'Shh' hissed Tom. 'Don't try to speak. I'm sure you have many questions.'
'Don't bother' said the woman. 'She'll be dead soon anyway, you don't owe her anything.'
'That's not true Erin.' Tom shook his head, and he leaned down and placed a kiss on Kate's stomach. 'We owe her everything.'
Erin turned away from them, and began to busy herself with some of the medical equipment in the corner away from them. Erin. Erin from the research department, who had always seemed so kind and helpful.
'You see, Erin and I are running a little experiment. We're trying to continue my fathers good work. He and the rest of the Inhumane Society, they wanted to find that next step. The key to humanity's evolution. They found a creature, something from beyond this world, and they tried to understand it as best they could. They were able to study it and take samples, and from that they were able to....experiment.'
The ringing in Kate's ears was beginning to intensify, but it was not cutting out the words. Instead it made them echo louder, deeper inside her head, like someone shouting from the centre of her brain.
'They made mistakes however. First they tried to experiment on children, but the effects were pitiful. Then they began to manipulate a child in utero, which although more successful, merely resulted in our guest over there.'
With a slight nod, he indicated to the stone steps down which he had descended, and Kate could see the haunting figure of Emmeline, still standing where she had been when Kate had lost consciousness.
'But what we are doing here is something far greater than that. What you carry inside you is pure, unfiltered. I have been injecting you every night, in your sleep, and soon our project will reach its final gestation. A full symbiosis between humanity and the great unknown.'
Erin walked back over to them, and Kate felt the cold pinch of a needle inside her again
'I love you so very much, Kate. That is why I'm giving you this honour. In fact, I'm almost jealous of you.'
The world around her began to fade again, the colours of Toms face drifting away before her.
'You will be the mother to the next step of humanity.'
-->--
She was alone, in the darkness.
Kate could not see anything around her but shadow, could feel nothing except the cold and the damp. There were no sounds down here, except for her own breathing and stifled moans.
Perhaps it had just been a few hours, or perhaps longer, maybe even days, she did not know. She simply lay there.
As time passed, whatever they had injected into her, it was beginning to fade. She couldn't speak, however much she tried. It seemed like too much effort. But slowly her thoughts were beginning to grow more and more cohesive.
Tom.
Everything he had said to her had been playing on a loop inside her head, like a recording, the words repeating over and over, etching themselves into her consciousness, yet still she could not understand. How could this have happened? How could he do this to her?
He had always been so kind, so loving towards her. But now he seemed so different, as though he had changed. Perhaps whatever had happened to Jenkins had happened to Tom as well.
No, of course not. Whatever had happened to Jenkins, as inexplicable as it had been, it was different. Jenkins had seemed weak, almost frail. Tom had seemed the opposite, almost as though he was emboldened by what was happening.
So had this always been the truth, and she had never seen it?
There was a noise, sudden, cutting through the air above her. Her heart began to thrum rapidly in her chest, as she tried to sense what direction it was coming from.
It was gone as quickly as it had appeared, the remnants cascading around her eardrums, the memory of them fooling her as she tried to understand what she had heard. It was a cry of some sort, but beyond that it could have been anything. A shriek, a scream, a cry of pain or pleasure.
The only thing more disquieting that the sound was the absence of anything that followed.
Kate strained, trying to catch any sound or whisper coming from the rest of the house, but there was nothing. Her heart continued to pound quickly, she could feel sweat sliding down her arms and legs, shivering. She did not know what was coming, and that was perhaps the worst of it.
For a moment she began to think there would be nothing else, no more sound, but then there was a noise, a sudden creaking and a rush of air, and then light flooded all around her.
Kate's eyes watered from the pressure, so long unused that they did not know quite what to do. She was disgusted by the sight of her pale flesh below her, milky white, goosepimples covering her. She could see her wrists had become bloody, chafing against the restraints. And when she looked at her belly, her comprehension deserted her again. The surface of the skin had turned to dark grey, and the centre was almost black, oozing.
In averting her eyes, Kate saw the person standing at the top of the stairs. It was Emmeline, still in the same old-fashioned dress as before. The ruins of her eyes stared blankly at her. Kate saw that her long, talon-like fingers were dripping with blood, and she was clutching something in her hands.
'Do I not scare you?'
The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, the girl's lips unmoving when she spoke. It reverberated inside Kates head, whispering intimately.
No, thought Kate, not anymore.
'Not even after what happened to your friend?'
You can hear me?
The girl nodded slightly, and began to walk down the stairs, carefully and controlled, as though every movement was difficult for her.
What did you do to him? What happened to Jenkins?
I needed somewhere to hide, somewhere I would not be seen. So I used him.
How did you do that? How did you....possess him?
I carved out his soul, and sat in his heart. And when I no longer needed him, he simply faded away.
The girl was level with her now, her face unreadable.
And Tom, you're using him as well?
Emmeline shook her head
You are not blind, yet still you cannot see. He is evil, and he has brought you nothing but pain.
Emmeline raised her hand, to just in front of Kate's face, small droplets of blood dripping from between her claws.
But I will stop it, everything. I have already put a stop to him.
She opened her hand. There were two pairs of eyeballs within, sat innocently on the girls palm.
Why?
Because he is the same, the same as all of them, the same as Armstrong and the rest of his Society. Since the dawn of time man has been blessed with curiosity. They want to find the truth and discover the unknown. But they could not accept that these things are unknown for a reason. There are secrets that should not be discovered. Knowledge is not something to be contained within humanity. It remains outside of it, beyond the veil. Draw back the curtain, and it will invade your mind and corrupt you. I had to stop them, all of them. They do not understand.
Emmeline reached out with her hand, and placed it on Kate's belly. Her fingers were long and sharp, like razors, but somehow they felt comforting resting on her skin.
What have they done to me?
The same thing they did to my mother. They tried to make something good, but instead they created a monster. I can't let it happen again.
Kate looked once more at the eyes resting in Emmelines hand. She could seem Tom's piercing blue stare, looking up at her. Then suddenly they dropped, falling to the floor, and the hand came towards her. She didn't resist, didn't try to move away. The fingers scratched against her, digging into the flesh of her face, raking down across her eyes as the voice echoed deep inside her head one last time.
I can't let you live.
She felt her eyes fall from her face, the warmth of the blood falling down her cheeks like tears. There was no pain, not at first. Her belly began to ache, whatever was inside of her squirming, restless. But she did not feel restless. She moved her head automatically, to try and see, but she couldn't, not anymore.
Instead, she laid her head back down against the bed, her heart beating faster than ever. There was nothing she could do now. The thing, whatever it was that was growing inside, it would die with her, and that was good enough.
There was the sound of Emmelines footsteps, retreating up the stairs, and then nothing.
Kate lay in the darkness, feeling the last breaths drifting against her lips, in silence.
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