Chapter #95Faces from the Past by: Seuzz   "Anytime for you, Will." You smile at him, but your lips flutter nervously, and you wring your hands.
This is actually a pretty good chance. Surely it won't take more than a minute to get him alone, knock him out, and copy his memories. You are very curious to know what he's been doing, for Blackwell doesn't seem the type to let a victim get away.
He gestures at the spare bedroom behind you, and with a nervous glance you precede him into it. He closes the door behind when you're both inside. You could just fly at him, but you prefer to give him a short listen first. Besides, he might react badly if you went straight for his body.
"What's going on, Aunt Sarah?" he asks. His face is pale.
"I don't know," you say in trembling voice. "Nobody tells me anything--"
"Where did Grandmother go?"
"Out. She was in the front parlor, meditating--"
"Meditating bullshit. Who was she spying on?"
"I have no idea, Will. She sent Sally out--"
"Why aren't you with Sally, Aunt Sarah?"
"M- me?" Your eyes wander with terror, and you squeeze your hands tightly. "I- I'm never with Sally, she has free run of the town--"
"That's what I mean, Aunt Sarah." He steps up close, and looks down at you from under lowering brows. "I learned a few things when I was with that lowlander wizard, and I can recognize certain signs I couldn't read before. Grandmother and her little birds, for one. Sally and you, for another."
"I-- That's--" You gasp ineffectually.
"And now there's an outsider in town, staying with my Rosalie, claims to be able to change his face. It seems to me that some people around here aren't acting quite like themselves. Rosalie, for instance. Sally, for another." He leans close. "Grandmother," he adds in a whisper.
"Grandmother?" you whisper back. "You don't think Grandmother is-- Oh, no, it couldn't be--"
"She hasn't given me a very warm welcome since my return. She's treating me badly. I haven't done anything to displease her, have I? She hasn't mentioned--?" He trails off.
"No, Will, not a breath, certainly not to me!"
"Was she spying on me while I was in Saratoga Falls?"
"Will, I really ... don't ... know!"
His lips curl up a little at the corner. "Do I make you nervous, Aunt Sarah?"
"Nervous?" Your voice is something between a squeak and a whisper.
"Like Uncle Nate makes you nervous?"
You suck in a little breath. Perfect chance. You hope you're reading it right. "Will, I--" You raise a quivering hand to his face. He doesn't stop you. "I--" You lay it on his cheek. You force your eyes shut. "Hold me, Will."
He puts his arms around you. You put your free arm around him. You bring up the sigil.
He doesn't collapse.
You open your eyes. He's staring past you, eyes bulging. You feel a burning in the palm of your hand, and it rapidly becomes painful. Still he doesn't topple.
You swallow, and pull your hand away. He closes his eyes, and a shudder passes through him.
But before he can open them again you have your hand at his face. Quickly, you murmur words you haven't murmured in many weeks but which you know because they are carved into your very body. You pull at his brow.
A mask comes away in your hand, and the bloated face of Professor Aubrey Blackwell appears. You stagger back as his great paunch explodes against you, and he falls heavily onto the floor.
* * * * *
Well, this isn't really an unexpected development; the suspicion had crossed your mind a few times, but you'd put it aside as an unprofitable speculation. Does Grandmother know? Given his questions for you, and the cat-and-mouse game down in the parlor you'd witnessed earlier, you doubt it. But it will definitely be worth knowing what he knows.
Might be useful too to have his complete imago on file. You kneel beside him and cover his forehead with your hand.
You only touch at his memories lightly, however; just enough to satisfy your curiosity on a few points. So:
Datum: He turned Will Shabbleman into a golem and buried him next to the mausoleum. On a scale of one to ten, your surprise at this is minus two.
Datum: After you rescued him, he used Jonathan Straussler's credit cards, debit cards, and access to various accounts to rapidly lay his hands on-- Surprise at stealing Straussler's money? One. That he got his hands on nearly eighty-five thousand dollars? That's a seventeen on a ten-point scale.
Datum: He raided his own house while the possessed Frank was out and stole Shabbleman's mask, a handful of tools, and a few books. That's a nine, because you wouldn't think Blackwell has that much stick in him.
Datum: He hid out in Saratoga Falls under Shabbleman's face, and even broke into Frank and Joe's one or two times after they burned his house. A six, and that low only because you figure Shabbleman's mask gave him the nerve.
Datum: He came back to Cuthbert under Shabbleman's face. You don't know what his reasons for that are. But he damn well didn't tell Grandmother who he really is.
Datum: He still thinks Frank is possessed by his own anima. You don't know how to score that on the surprise scale. No wonder he's nervous about Joe's suddenly turning up in Cuthbert.
All very interesting, but only in a "Where Are They Now?" kind of way. At the moment, you're more interested in the deduction he had made just a little while ago: Grandmother was spying on Will Shabbleman all the time he was down in Saratoga Falls, and almost certainly knows it was an imposter who returned under his face.
And you're interested in that because it gives you a deduction of your own: Grandmother was certainly spying on Rosalie the entire time she was there too. She would have heard much of and maybe everything Joe said to Rosalie; maybe what you had said to her too.
Did Rosalie know she was being spied on?
* * * * *
Sarah Shabbleman never paid much attention to Rosalie Stewart, but she saw things, with her own eyes, and through the eyes of another. You've only to think of Rosalie and you see them too.
The little girl, trembling in Grandmother's parlor, awaiting her pleasure or displeasure. The little girl, biting back tears as a thin, whip-like cane struck the back of her bare legs, punishment for tiny sins and forgetful lapses. The tiny girl, stiff with terror in Grandmother's lap as she was petted and kissed, waiting for the moment when caresses would turn without reason or warning into smacks. The little girl, stifling screams as she was put in the pit and shut in the dark with the snakes and beetles, simply to learn "what happens to naughty children." The little girl who was given a puppy on her tenth birthday, so she could watch it being drowned in a rain barrel as punishment for a transgression whose nature she was never told. A little girl who was told that Grandmother was always watching her, and always weighing her in the balance.
She didn't have to know that Grandmother was watching. She would have believed it regardless.
You think of the coltish girl that Joe found in Saratoga Falls, and her warm, grave eyes. You look at Blackwell. What would your eyes have looked like, if you had been raised and tortured by him? You doubt they would have looked as calm as Rosalie's.
You raise your eyes at the sound of a bell. The church bells. They haven't been rung to summon the town folk in thirty years, not since the night--
Well, no one knows what it was that escaped. They only found the folks it had found, and those that picked up what was left, and buried them, themselves sickened soon thereafter, and were told to lay themselves in open graves, there to die, so none others would have to follow them.
Now, again, something terrifying is loose in the town, and Grandmother is summoning all her kin and relations, to warn them.
A grim smile twitches at your lips. You are that thing.
You bend over, and knock Blackwell out for another six hours, then put Will Shabbleman's mask back over him.
* * * * *
The town square is dark, and the crowds are a darker mass in the black pit that is Cuthbert. Grandmother will expect Aunt Sarah in the center, with her, in the decayed bandstand. You push through the crowd with feeble apologies. Maybe she sees you approach, and maybe she doesn't, as she leans against her canes, her face close to a microphone connected to loudspeakers. The crowd is silent. You spot Rosalie nearby, and sidle over to her. She pays you no notice. Joe is not with her.
Grandmother gives the laggards another five minutes to gather, and then she speaks.
"I pray you are all here," she says, and her rasping voice booms into the darkness. "But I am speaking to only one. If you are here, you know who you are. There's a boy in the church yonder, praying too that you hear me, and that you'll do as I bid. Step forward, confess your presence, and I will spare you both. Defy me, and that boy in the church will become thin. Very. Thin. I give you ten minutes."
The crowd is silent, and only the wind whispers in the dark. Then, with a small murmur, a dozen figures struggle to the front.
"Not you, you fools!" Grandmother screams. "I'm talking to the lowlander! But mark those there who came forward," she mutters to the man at her elbow.
Everyone will be here, you think to yourself, including Molly at the switchboard. You can slip over there and place the call.
You step a little to the side, and brush against Rosalie.
Could you trust her to make the call, while you distracted Grandmother?   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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