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A Tooth for an Eye: Part Two
- A Tooth for an Eye: Part Two -
The Green Man Inn was the only such establishment in the entire village of Eldbrooke. It had always been a quiet establishment... save when the locals got rowdy, but even then, people mostly settled their disputed between one another without having to get the law involved. Yet, in a short span of time not one but two members of the local law enforcement militia... known to pretty much everyone simply as the Guard... had found their way to the doors of that establishment. The young investigator by the name of Isaac Williamson, who wore the attire of a wealthy scholar but who in secret acted as an agent of the Guard... though not so secretly any longer, since by now the whole town had learned of this... was in a great hurry to meet with his commander, the formidable Sergeant Blake, who awaited to speak to him at the inn. Both men had purchased rooms there for at least a week, though neither planned to be there for that long, barring anything overtly serious coming up that might keep them longer. Blake Datson... was not a very handsome man! He was large, muscular, and gruff... with a slicked back mane of rather quickly thinning light brown hair, and a smile that was more like a slash across his face. It was never a proper smile on the best of occasions, and in truth he always looked angry. When he did smile, as he so did now... it was frightening to see. And this was twice now, that Isaac saw him do so! Blake had thick sideburns, and was clad in his finest leathers... his uniform armor looking spotless and well maintained. But when Blake spoke, it was always with a deliberately pompous tone that it seemed like he was doing deliberately and did not perhaps normally speak that way. He said to Isaac, the moment the young man walked into the room: “Well, I thought by the time I got here you'd have something to report but I also have something to tell you about. Let me hear your news first, though, as it may shed some light on a thing that's been bothering me.” and Isaac told the Sergeant everything that had happened so far. It was a lot for the gruff man to take in, and at last Blade said in reply: “A gauntlet made with fang-like teeth, you say? Well, there's one avenue left to investigate: the first victim's remaining family. His name was John Beckman, I don't think I told you before. His wife and daughter live in the house just south of the inn. Perhaps they might be able to tell you who John was involved with. Could be relevant!” Isaac said in response to that: “Especially if, like Doctor Geiger, he had actually known the killer.” Blake stated in answer to that: “Exactly. If you find anything out at all, come back and tell me right away. With both of us working in the area, we'll close this case in no time at all. Oh, one more thing before you go! I want you to be careful. I've got a bad feeling this time that I can't quite put my finger on. Real bad.” and in a cheerful manner, Isaac stated: “I'll be careful. I'm just going to ask some questions. Who knows... they may even turn out to be as helpful as Alice Drake was! I'll be back before you know it.” Off Isaac went.
The Beckman residence was not in the sort of state that the investigator was expecting to find it in. As Isaac entered the house, for the front door was already wide open when he got there, he saw much to his utter horror a trail of blood and small child-sized bloody footprints. He followed the blood to an alcove off of the dwelling's main living room... and in the large alcove was a large bed, evidently belonging to John and his wife. The bed was straw, but of a finer quality than the straw beds of the inn's rooms. And it had several comfortable enough looking pillows and blankets upon it. One half of the bed was pretty much splattered with blood, and nearby there was an open book lying on the other side of the bed. It so seemed to be a book of children's stories. Only the wealthy could afford books, and only those of noble blood often had the learning required to read them. The Beckman family was more than they seemed! Following the blood trail back into the living room, it ran toward the fireplace on the room's other side, where all was very dark... save for the faint dying glow of the hearth. There was a shape on the floor in front of the fireplace, and Isaac dreaded to look and see what it might be. He lit a candle that he got off of a nearby end table, and saw depressingly that the shape was the dead body of John's wife Linda. He had been told her name by Sergeant Blake just as he had run off to get here. Just in time, to find all this.
The woman had died in horrible agony, her throat clearly torn open in the same manner as those who had perished like this before her. It was difficult for Isaac to imagine anything more ghastly than all the gruesome sights he had been witness to since coming to the village of Eldbrooke. This, then... was after all the source of the blood trail! And the smaller, child-sized footprints had clearly stepped in the blood and afterwards gone off to a different part of the house. Rats were feasting on the slain woman's corpse, their nibbling being sickening for the young man to hear. She had been stripped of all her clothing long before the murder, for her clothes were thrown about here and there... and there were marks on Linda's arms that had very obviously been made by adult hands. An adult man's hands to be precise, since upon inspecting the body closer... it seemed that before she was killed at last Linda had been savagely raped. The fingers of the hands were not large though... if the marks were anything to go by. “Artist's fingers.” said the investigator to himself. “Not a large man by any means, but clearly a strong and brutal one.” he muttered. Part of his process was speaking to himself, for Isaac was an eccentric sort of fellow. It was time to follow the child's footprints to see where they led. The trail of those ended at the wooden door to a small bedroom, a child's bedroom the young man noticed when he opened that door and stepped on inside. Within, were two dead cats whose faces had been flayed of their flesh and fur. House cats. This was sick! Someone had not simply raped and murdered that woman... they had clearly killed, and then mutilated, the family pets as well. The child's footprints were scattered all about this room, and there was a child's bloody hand prints too... those being found on things all throughout the room, but most horribly about the necks of the two cats. A wash basin was in the corner, filled with bloody water, and a cloth towel was next to it, covered with a child's bloody hand prints just like everything else seemed to be. The blood on the towel was smeared a bit, as if the child had wiped their hands upon the towel in an effort to get the blood off of them quickly. The towel was damp with water, too. There were many piles of children's clothes pulled out of all the closets and drawers... and a picture was starting to form in the investigator's mind as to what happened here. He muttered to himself: “Either the daughter discovered her mother and the two animals like this and panicked, then sought to wash her hands of their blood... or, and this is also sadly likely, she had a hand in their deaths and sought to wash her hands in order to cleanse them of the blood she had helped spill. Either way, after washing her hands, and probably also her feet, she changed her clothes in a hurry and left. Her body is not here, so I can only conclude from this that unlike her mother she was not murdered.” But that was not all there was to find! Scattered all over the floor between the bodies of the two dead cats was the pages of a children's storybook. When Isaac examined the torn pages, he recognized the story they once told: “Beauty and the Beast.” he said, finding a single page from that story which was less tattered and torn than the rest had been. Even back in those days, there was a variation of that story told by the peasants to delight or horrify their children. Evidently, this particular story had a profound effect on the Beckman daughter. There was now nothing at all left to do at the Beckman residence... so Isaac hurried back to tell Sergeant Blake what it was that he had seen and found there. He clutched tightly in his hands, the surviving page that he had retrieved from the little girl's room. The moment he got back to the inn, and rushed into the Sergeant's room, he said: “Linda Beckman is dead and there is no sign of her daughter to be found there... just some hand and foot prints belonging to the child, but it seems that she washed her hands and feet before deciding to change her clothes and run off. She could be anywhere! These killings though, they are getting more terrible each time. Sergeant! Not only was Linda's throat torn, but she was raped as well. And there is a detail that I recall from the crime scene, that is even more sickening... she was disemboweled after she had been slain, and I had almost slipped in her entrails when I examined her body. Also, the two house cats were strangled and their faces flayed. It looked as if the little girl was the one who strangled them. Blood was from one end of the house to the other! All I found in the way of evidence, was this page from a torn up storybook in the daughter's bedroom. Perhaps... you might make something out of it?”
Blake looked the page over and read it aloud, for he had been taught how to read by his father, who in his day had learned how to do so during his time working as a scribe: “Beauty and the Beast, it seems to be! A curious tale, eh? Let us see here... 'If you will but stay with me, sweet maiden, then the mad in me shall not die as was my curse. But rather, with your kiss I will be a man once again!' I think, there must be a reason why this storybook in particular and this page most especially was singled out by the killer. He, or she, wanted us to read this.” Isaac mused upon this a bit, and then remarked: “But it is hardly an uncommon tale... so many children are familiar with it, after all! However, this page was the only one I found which was left intact in any way that was fully legible and not in fragments... so, I do wonder...” And Blake gave it a bit of thought before suggesting: “If the killer is indeed a man, and the rape of the mother seems to suggest strongly that the killer is... then think about it, Isaac! This page has to him, I would wager, a special meaning. He clearly must think of himself as a monster, and probably feels the guilt of his crimes. Perhaps he even feels helpless as he does these unspeakable things! Who knows the reason why? The point is, he believes that he can't stop himself unless a maiden falls in love with him. Oh my God! That is why you couldn't find the little girl.” Isaac then said in a horrified tone: “He likely forced her to kill her own pets and then kidnapped her! But she's only a child... why would even such a madman, even the worst sort of criminal, think someone so young could fall in love with him? He must be totally insane.” The Sergeant then explained the possible reason: “The girl, her name is Emily by the way, would be guaranteed to be a maiden... like in the story. The trouble is, we don't know how he may be thinking beyond that. What's his definition of love? Because of this, we can only assume she is in a very great danger. We have to find them, but we're running out of leads faster than we're running out of time! If she refuses him, what's to stop him from doing with her as he clearly did with her mother? I'd not like to think on that too deeply.” but Isaac was persistent, and insisted: “Sir, there must still be one person at least left in the village who could help us! I mean... who haven't we spoken with or met with yet? Surely we've not exhausted every single possible avenue.” Blake gave the matter some thought, but seemed terribly worried as he suggested: “There is one man who might know something. It seems that a certain recluse who lives on the southern outskirts of town... hasn't been seen or heard from since pretty much immediately before the first murder took place. His name is Godfrey Atkins, and there are three possibilities with him: he could be another victim, he could be involved, or he could be the killer. So, I want you to go and find out for me.” Isaac was ready and willing to do as asked. He stated: “Very well. I will go and check it out as you wish. Maybe we'll get lucky and locate the killer before Emily becomes another victim of his madness. I just hope she's not hurt!” And with that said, he strode off purposefully from the inn, but soon began to feel a wave of dizziness and nausea. He had not eaten or drank anything in so many hours! And he had not slept, either. Isaac walked back into the inn... and ordered some food and a bit of drink to take the edge off of how he was feeling. “You look horrible!” the innkeeper said as he took the man's orders and saw to it that he was served as was needed. The investigator imagined well that he must indeed look quite a fright! He had not even so much as shaved since setting out on his way to the village, and could feel on his face quite a bit of a beard that was beginning to grow in. He did, at least, take some time to wash up and keep himself clean, and see to any other needs here and there. But he had, even so, become quite sleep deprived and had basically rushed from task to task without giving a care to his need for rest. The killer was not resting, he figured... so why should he? But the killer was resting in between committing his crimes... he had to be! And he mused about this a bit as he ate until he was full again, and slaked his thirst with first water and then a bit of cider. It was chilly out, on that day... or rather night, or rather early morning. He no longer cared what the time of day was! Once he so felt a bit better, he walked out of the inn and began to make his way south towards the Atkins house. It was easy enough the follow the directions the locals gave him... and, Blake had been helpful too in his own gruff way. The sun was coming up, and it was dawn already. Had it been one day, or several days?
Something felt strange about the passage of time in this village... or, perhaps it was the lack of sleep that was finally beginning to wear at Isaac's sanity. Either way, he crossed the small wooden bridge to the south of the village square, which so took him over a wide stream that flowed in a snakelike manner through the village, along its' southernmost sections. The great wooden palisade walls that surrounded the entire village extended even beyond that stream, and deep into the deepest woods and forests to the south far beyond the young man's sight. His mind began to wander, and he imagined that the walls had been built to keep something in those woods... from escaping into the surrounding lands outside of the village's boundaries. Some terrible beast out of old legends and children's tales! He prayed to God that such a creature did not await him at the Atkins house. The house lay at the end of a winding dirt road that branched off of the main road that ran through the village, and the grounds on which the house did lie were wild looking and untended. The house looked to be the oldest one in all of town, and it was a large but somewhat inelegant looking manor house... clearly the dwelling of a minor nobleman. But one who, it seemed, had little regard for the state of the place. The trees all around here grew taller than they should have been allowed to grow... and the grass was high, and filled with wildflowers. An old stone well sat beside the house, and when Isaac looked within the well he saw that it had dried up long ago. It should have been taken apart and filled in, but it was left just as it was. Piles of fresh pumpkins sat by the doorstep of the front door to the manor house, and some had faces carved into them. This, was often a custom among certain rural communities that celebrated the ancient pagan Samhain festivals... but oft with Christian trappings added to them. There had been many of these carved pumpkins all through the village, so it was not too strange to see them here as well. And old broken wheelbarrow sat next to the pumpkins, and it was likely they were not brought hither using it. Piles of wood which had been cut and chopped sat heaped about a good distance off, by a small grove of trees... and the ax with had cut them, sat embedded in one of those pieces of wood, rusted to uselessness with age. The house was of stone as well as brick in its' foundations, and its' walls were quite imposing looking. Unlike the thatch roofs, of the other houses, homes, cottages and dwellings of Eldbrooke... the roofs of this decaying mansion had quite the distinct look of being not too much unlike the roof of the village's church... all of wood, and of tile work as well. Likely the roof was supported inside the building by high rafters and great beams, and all of this having a look that said this place was meant to be a work of art as much as it was ever a place where someone once dwelt. It seemed increasingly unlikely that anybody still lived here! And if they so did, they had to be quite mad in order to do so. For who in their right mind would neglect lands of such beauty as these, and leave so great a house to fall into decay? The windows of the manor were all dark, and nothing could be seen of what was within. There was a path that ran deeper into the forest, which was just behind the manor house, and the trees of that forest had grown right up to just behind the back walls of the mansion. The foundation was cracked in places, as were some of the walls, and there were tiles that had fallen from the roof. If there had ever been any servants to tend to these grounds, there did appear to be no sign of them either. Isaac felt fear grip his heart as he approached the front door... and it looked to be the only door... to the manor house. He knocked, and then knocked several more times. As he knocked the last time though, his mind began to reel from dizziness... and he slipped into a state that was unconscious, succumbing finally to his lack of sleep. It was a dreamless sleep, and he had a feeling of movement... of being moved... whilst in that state. Someone was carrying him somewhere. And, ere long dreams did come to him, but they were horrific dreams and filled with terrors that he knew he may never be able to fully recall upon waking. There were screams, and shrieks, and inhuman voices within eldritch landscapes filled with bizarre, alien things that flitted here... and there... and nothing of what he beheld made any sense to him. He tried to scream, but something slithered into his mouth and he could not even speak, let alone scream. Tendrils bound his arms and legs, and clawed hands held open both of his eyes, and he saw a demonic face and form glaring at him, laughing at him. Mercifully, he awakened.
He awoke upon the black and white floor tiles of a dining room floor. He was, evidently, somewhere within the manor house, for everything looked elegant and yet also quite run down. The table was long and rectangular, in the middle of the room, and there were many ornate wooden chairs set around it. A great many of the chairs were smashed, and some were knocked over. Four of them remained intact, a small number consider there were at least ten such seats in all originally. Upon the table were piles of broken dishes and plates, but two plates remained perfect and were next to two chairs that had been so arranged as to be right next to each other. In the table's center was a vase filled with withered flowers. The room was dimly lit with candles and torches that sat in sconces on the walls, and there were several musical instruments in one corner of the chamber. A beautiful golden harp, an elegant looking lute, and several flutes along with a set of drums. On the far side of the room from where Isaac got to his feet, he could see a roaring fire in the hearth of a great stone fireplace. Next to that was an old bookshelf, and it at first appeared that the books were fully intact... until the investigator went to touch them. As soon as he tried to open any of the books, they crumbled apart in his hands. There was a sense of decayed and decaying beauty here... a comfortable couch, sat on the floor in front of the fireplace, but its' coverings were all in tatters and looked exceedingly old. A pile of wood sat near the hearth, but there were spiders and other insects crawling in the pieces of wood that were there. An empty closet was broken open, and nothing was contained within it, but the closet itself was of exquisite craftsmanship. There were potted plants, but the plants were long dead. And, there were folding screens from the far east that had faded images upon them that could no longer be seen clearly. Various carpets and tapestries, and paintings too upon the walls... but all of them so old that they were faded, their subjects impossible to determine. The air smelled somewhat musty, and the walls were thick with dust and cobwebs in many places. Rats did scurry in some of the corners, and the whole place felt like a tomb. Yet, someone clearly was living in t his place still! There was a large black dog with glaring red eyes which emerged from a nearby hallway, but when Isaac went near it the animal vanished like a ghost, which startled him. He walked down the hall, and spotted a light coming from one of the bedrooms that were just off from it. The light came it appeared from many candles which illuminated a spacious bedchamber. The walls of the room were of brickwork, and were painted a very pale light shade of blue that had faded to the point where it looked a lot paler than it should have. There was soft carpeting covering the entire floor, decorated with a floral pattern, though in places the carpet was torn quite a bit. Next to the door, to the left of it... was a rather large walk-in closet containing racks of children's clothes on one side and racks of adult's clothes on the other. A series of bookshelves filled part of the wall to the left of the closet, and further along that wall, the left-most wall of the room, there was a large desk on which was sat a massive tome that appeared to be a journal of some kind. Nearby was an inkwell and a quill that was set into it. The journal was new, and the writing within it was in Latin. A slender black candle sat next to it, and was burning dimply in comparison to all the other candles in the room. The right wall of the room was filled with dressers and a great many shelves and display cases that contained all manner of bizarre looking curios. There were crystal balls, carved wooden ritual wands decorated with feathers and which had crystals mounted into the tips of them, small sharp looking ceremonial daggers covered with ancient runes, tiny figurines and statues of a great many pagan deities, copper bowls and even several human skulls that had been made into lanterns and fitted with candles within them. There was on the far wall from the door another set of display shelves filled with more objects of... from all Isaac knew of such things... a dark occult purpose. Before those shelves was a makeshift shrine set up using two tables covered with a fiery orange and red altar cloth. The shine had on it several statues of ancient Greek goddesses, and also the image of a large seven headed dragon clutching in its' claws a jeweled scepter. More occult objects decorated the shrine, as did many crystals and two more wands as well. Next to the shrine, against the right wall of the room on the farthest end of it, was a comfortable looking bed made for two. One not of straw, but much finer.
It was covered in warm blankets, and clean sheets, and had soft pillows and cushions upon it as well. And sitting upon the bed, holding a small doll in her slender hands... was a little girl who looked to be about eleven years old. She had a strong resemblance to the murdered woman, Linda... and could only have been her daughter Emily. The little girl had dark brown, almost black hair, and she had big eyes of the darkest brown that just like her hair almost appeared to be black. She was even paler than all of the other villagers, her skin a bit more yellowish too, and her ears were slightly tapered. Linda also had odd ears like that, but Isaac dismissed this as perhaps a deformity that was passed on in their family. He had seen worse deformities in his time! Her soft freckled face was angelic and sweet looking... with full lips that seemed to be pressed into a kind of pouting smile. She wore a pair of baggy looking trousers that were made of vibrant red silk and looked like the kind of pantaloons that women and girls wore a lot in the middle east. Tucked into them was a silk blouse with short puffy sleeves, which also had an eastern look and design to it. The blouse was richly and delicately embroidered along the collar, which came up to just below the girl's neck. She looked elegant, refined, and somewhat exotic dressed this way. All of this told Isaac something profound... the man who had given her that outfit had to have gotten it whilst in the Middle East, and so it was likely that he was or had been a crusader knight at some point in his past. Whether or not, that man was the master of this manor... remained to be discovered. The little girl was wearing a pair of soft red slippers with somewhat turned up toes, and was rocking back and forth upon the bed nervously when she noticed that Isaac was looking at her. She said unto him, her voice as light and sweet sounding as one might expect, from her appearance: “Why... are you here! Come to thus arrest me for pulling out my father's throat with Godfrey's glove? If you knew how cruelly father treated me, you would not blame me for ending his wretched life. Why not just... walk away?” and she spoke at that moment as if she were far older than her years portrayed. Isaac looked at the child shocked, his face a mask of utmost horror as he said: “But, I thought perhaps Godfrey Atkins was the one responsible for the death of your father! No, I see it in your eyes... you are the one, aren't you?” and she then stated in a rather imperious manner: “I'm almost twelve, I'm not a little girl any more! Father beat me one time too many, and all mother did was watch and scream at me as if I was to blame. Godfrey said he was lonely, and that he'd give me the power to end Father's cruelty on the condition that I stay with him forever and love him, like Beauty loved the Beast. I killed the doctor too, because he was going to tell.” Isaac could not believe what he was hearing, and asked: “Emily, are you really telling me the truth? Are you certain that Godfrey is not the one responsible, and that perhaps it is not that you are merely covering for him? Tell me!” Which caused the little girl to fly into a rage. She threw her doll across the room, and stared hatefully at the young investigator, declaring: “Tell you what... the pretty lie that won't upset your view of the world and its' children? I did it. Deal with it! Know what else? I have made love with Godfrey... just like a grown woman. He taught me so many things! But I was all too willing to learn them. I am a maiden no longer. Does that surprise you too, with your fine sensibilities? He is a kind and gentle man, and a good and equally gentle lover too. When it hurt, he helped me get through it and said that for the first time that was normal... and when I bled, he cleaned up after me and helped me get through it. For a monster, as you think him to be, that is awfully rare I would say! He's at the old stones right now, off in the woods behind the house, performing the ritual that needed to be done.” Isaac did not like the sound of that at all. He asked Emily: “What ritual? He's got the gauntlet, hasn't he! What are you two up to out here, anyway... there's more to this than revenge and mad childish lust.” and, that was when Emily said it at long last: “He's bringing my sister back to life... with the blood Simon Drake's teeth have absorbed. Yes, I had a sister until father beat her so bad she died. I was only five at the time, and she was fifteen. So pretty, she was like an angel! I swore that I'd avenge her death someday. The stones are out back, as I said, and I've got the only key to the old gate that is set into the palisade wall deep in the woods. You can't get to the stones except through that gate. Do you want the key, or not?” Her smile was a cold one.
Isaac thought about the whole situation deeply, and then offered: “If, Godfrey confirms your story for me, then I might consider... I'm not sure... but I can promise you that I won't hurt him if he doesn't try to attack me first.” and Emily threw the key at him, her anger still raging within her. “Help us! You know, that you will... I know that you will. You have to, since no one else ever will or would seek to. Get out of here and go to the stones! I will not move from here. This is my throne, my little kingdom in which I am the princess. Can't you see how beautiful everything is here? My king will return to me, and neither you nor anyone else will ever stop us from having a happy ending to our story.” She started to sing and to hum to herself after that, wrapping her arms about herself and clutching herself tightly whilst staring off into space. Isaac said to her as coldly as she had smiled at him before: “You are clearly mad, child! But your lover's state of mind might make all the difference in how I solve this case. I must talk to him, and find out.” But she was no longer listening to him. She was singing, over and over again: “The king, shall come into his kingdom. I the princess shall be queen! I the queen shall share his reign. My darling king shall come, shall come into his kingdom. A kingdom free of hurt and pain!” Isaac tried to get that haunting song out of his head as he left the manor house, finding his way out of it after nearly becoming lost amid its' maze-like halls, chambers and rooms. He kept hearing the barking of a dog, but that faded once he reached the mansion's main door and exited the place, shutting the door securely behind him. It was clearly a haunted, accursed place! But that was not his present concern. He went around the back of the house, and ventured down the path that ran behind it, deeper and deeper into the woods. It was well towards the afternoon already! How long had been asleep for when he passed out? Long enough, it thus seemed, that he felt strong and clearheaded once again. He reached the place where the palisade wall of the village ran through the woods at the southernmost point of its' boundaries, and there was a very old gate there... a wooden reinforced gate that was much smaller than the main gate that leads into town on the northern side. He used the key that Emily had thrown at him, which he had luckily caught, and thus unlocked it... pushing it open, much more easily than it had been to open the main gate into town when he first arrived. On the other side of that gate, the forest grew a great deal wilder, deeper, ever darker... and the ground more swamp-like and marshy. There was a layer of fog and mist about the ground, and at some point Isaac felt his feet get wet when he waded across a small stream that babbled its way as it wound through the woods of this domain. He soon came to a place where high cliffs stood encircling a small stretch of barren looking ground in the middle of a great ancient grove of mighty trees. All about the grove, the ground looked frozen from the first frost of the year. It looked to be an early winter... but why was the frost only in this place, and not anywhere else that he had noticed prior to coming here? It all seemed so unnatural to him! And there, in that awful place, he saw the stones that Emily had spoken of. Tall, ancient looking standing stones from another, bygone age. They were massive, gray, and felt as if they might have been giants towering over him as he approached. There were two shadowy figures to be seen standing in the middle of the circle of stones... but, so thick was the fog and the mist nothing of them could be made out even this close. So he walked closer, and closer, and he did so the fog and mist parted at last, revealing a man and a young girl standing there. The man wore a black, flowing robe that had a hood which was drawn back from his face... the robe was very different from the sort worn by the town priest, and it was of finer and softer quality by far, with red trim. About his waist, the man wore a wide red sash belt tied with a neat bow at his side. He wore thick fur boots on his feet, and looked to be in his mid to late forties. He was average of build, with the same pale skin with a yellowish tint to it as everyone else in town had. He had piercing grayish blue eyes... and small lips... with a bit of an aquiline type of nose, though not a large one by any means. He had long dark auburn colored hair, that was shot through with gray, and the hair at his temples was white. He had a neatly trimmed beard, and that too so appeared to be shot through with gray, as well as white in places. Despite this, he had a remarkable sort of youthfulness to his appearance, and looked far younger than his years because of that. It was bizarre!
The strange man's eyes were almond shaped, and his ears were slightly tapered. Apparently, this type of deformity... if that is what it was... did not seem to be confined to just one family in this village. Also the man had no eyebrows, and it was then that Isaac looked at the man's hands. He had delicate looking, slender hands with artist's fingers. This was indeed the man who had raped Linda Beckman... though, it was no longer in any way clear to Isaac if he had been the one to kill her, or if it was Emily who had in turn murdered her own mother following the rape. Worse still! The little girl may have aided him, and watched as he had his way with the woman, with the two of them working together to murder her after that was done. None of those scenarios was a pleasant thought... and all of them showed just how sick, how depraved, the pair truly were. Standing in front of the peculiar man, right across from him in fact... was a beautiful looking fifteen year old girl. The girl looked just like Emily, but she was older of course and had much darker hair, which was of a raven black color. She was dressed in clothing that looked a bit old and tattered looking, as if it had lain the ground for a long time... the outfit she wore consisted of a pair of full, dark blue knee-length trousers over which she had on a most delicately embroidered tunic of the same color which came down to her upper thighs. The tunic was belted with a beautifully woven sky blue sash belt that was tied with a neat, tiny bow at her side. Her feet were bare and muddy, and her skin appeared to be covered in dirt, which she was hastily wiping off whilst staring wildly about her, as if she were seeing the world for the very first time. The girl exclaimed loudly: “How grand it is to taste the fresh air of life once again... rather than the cold earth of the grave that has been my bed for so very long!” and behind the girl was an open grave which appeared to have been quite deep. The girl looked to be healthy, well, and her body was decently proportioned for her young age... with shapely hips and fine breasts, at least one of which was quite visible due to her tunic having fallen apart down to below her left breast. She had clearly crawled out from her grave, where of old her father had buried her, in all likelihood never expecting anyone to learn where it lay. But somehow, this man... this sorcerer... had at some point discovered the location, and intended to see that this was done. The man smiled at the girl, and said to her: “It is good to see you alive and well once again, Ophelia! At least this time, your father cannot take you away from me by killing you, as once he did. My first love! My... soulmate. Are you at last ready to join your sister, at my manor house? She too, has become my bride, and awaits you and I there quite eagerly.” and all Isaac could do was stare, his mouth open, his mind barely able to reason or comprehend the truth of what played out before him. Isaac asked the man who he was, and what had so been done with the weapon made from the dead man's teeth. The man thus replied: “My name, good sir, is Godfrey Atkins. And, it has been done... Ophelia Beckman lives once again! The gauntlet that had so been fitted with the dead murderer's teeth is destroyed utterly. Now we can all breathe easy.” But Isaac was still in a state of surprise at this turn of events. He declared: “Dear God! This cannot be... how have you brought that dead girl back to life? Only God can grant such miracles.” Godfrey chuckled a bit, and then answered, his voice Isaac noticed as being soft and sweet sounding as he spoke: “When her father buried her here, he knew nothing of the power in this place! He merely thought it a fit monument to his cruelty. No one in Eldbrooke knew of the deed; John Beckman, simply told them that his daughter had run away. I saw him bury her, out here, behind my home... and it cost me an eye to that monster's cruel crossbow in order to see it!” He then pointed to his left eye and tapped on it. It was a false eye, one that he had ordered be made in order to replace the one that he had lost. It was of remarkable craftsmanship and, in truth, was the most realistic false eye that Isaac had ever seen in his young life. Isaac remarked: “He was probably trying to kill you, for spying on him!” and Godfrey explained: “He thought precisely, that he had killed me! Most in this community, knew not if I was alive or dead out here half the time as it was. Yet I survived, and swore on that very same day to avenge all of John's vile injustices. You can never imagine, the hatred even his own children bore for him... and, for that banshee of a wife, whose only virtue was those children she had given birth to. She was a horrible and selfish person, otherwise.”
Isaac then asked Ophelia: “Is all of this true, girl? Your sister is mad, but I cannot tell for certain what exactly it is that has claimed her fragile reason so very brutally.” and so the resurrected girl explained to him: “She watched me die at our father's hands, as she heard our mother laugh whilst I breathed my last and all because they had discovered that I had fallen in love with Godfrey, whom they hated because he had grown wealthy during his time adventuring in the Holy Land with his Templar brethren. He used to be a knight, you see! These are all my final memories... my father's breath upon my face, reeking of ale, whilst mother sat there, laughing over and over again, just laughing, as everything went black and I did never awaken after that, until now. I could hear Emily crying, crying, crying, as I was beaten to death!” Isaac admitted to her then: “John ruined many lives in this community by that deed. I'm starting to feel as if I'd like to kill him, myself! Perhaps his death was justice of a kind, but what of the doctor? Please Godfrey, tell me honestly why he was killed! Just how deeply were you and he involved in all of these matters?” to which Godfrey said: “Emily wouldn't let him blackmail me, and I couldn't allow him to be ruining our lives for money. Do you know the sort of man the 'good doctor' was? He would torture and murder the occasional patient during surgery, if by their death he could profit. He robbed graves just to find bodies to experiment upon, kept skulls for study, and subjected living individuals to horrific sorts of tests in order to see what the limits of the human capacity for pain might be. He took advantage of female patients and threatened not to cure their ills if they told. He was, in short, an unspeakably evil and quite inhuman sort of man.” Isaac then reasoned: “Alice Drake, must not have known her former lover's true nature. But did you not ask Doctor Geiger to rob Simon Drake's grave to get his teeth?” and the reclusive sorcerer answered, stating: “That is not true. Emily spied him digging that particularly old grave up, and later that day she was playing by my house... and I heard it from her as she talked to some imaginary friend or another. I asked of her what she was doing near my home and she asked if it would be alright for her to move in with me. I said I was lonely, that I felt like a lonely beast, and I wept. In truth, I have known more sorrow in my life than you can imagine! But back to the events of that day, not those of my life. Emily wept as well, and then she replied that she could be my beauty and give me reason to feel like a man again, if only I could deliver her from her monstrous parents. I promised that if she would but love me, then I would see her father brought entirely to justice. None of this was ever, to be truthful, about revenge! It was always about real, true, honest justice. But things can change. It soon occurred to me how as John was prominent in this village, no normal sort of justice would be possible with him! So that evening, I went over to see the doctor, to ask why he violated Simon's grave just as Emily had said... it was then that I caught him doing an arcane ritual involving blood. Geiger boasted to me that the ghastly gauntlet he had created would grant him the power to raise the dead, but that it still lacked a place of sufficient magical energy to see such a spell completed. It also required more blood... far more than he could give it! Knowing this would bring evil upon the village, I struck the doctor and took the bloody gauntlet from off his wrist. Then I ran off. Once I got home, I gave the gauntlet to dear Emily and told her to do whatever she wished with it. I told her nothing about it, though. I retreated to my home, to wait, knowing securely what the gauntlet's dark influence would do. I received a letter, I think you know from who, sometime after John's death. It was from the doctor! He threatened, that he would go to the Guard about my theft of his 'property'. How insane! You know what his threat against me led Emily to do. So, now that you know the full truth of all these matters, what are you going to do? The gauntlet is no more, so there is not a thing to link anyone to the murders. Ophelia is back, and not a single person other than us knows that she was ever dead to begin with. Ophelia, you have as well thus heard all that has transpired!” Isaac said to the young girl: “You were the first true victim in all of this. Ophelia, whatever you want, that is what I shall see done. That is the only justice we can hope for now! And the only justice any loving God could hope to accept.” Ophelia looked deep in thought for a good length of time, and then something came to her mind and she appeared to be of delighted spirits indeed.
Ophelia said excitedly: “There is evidence enough, with Godfrey and Emily's testimony, that Doctor Geiger created the murder weapon. As to our parents' deaths, my sister and I will say that there is a sick and depraved killer still out there at large. I will pretend to have 'escaped' this killer's captivity. I want Godfrey to be named mine and Emily's proper guardian, and then all will be well with me. We can after that be able to live together... and love each other... as we like. No one will ever be the wiser! That way, my love and I will be together forever... and no one shall ever part he and I again.” Isaac was happy to think of this turn of events. He declared: “There is no other alternative, that I can see... save this course you offer, Ophelia! A lynch mob such as the one which slaughtered Simon Drake is not what this town needs to see ever again. Just one thing I want you to promise me, Godfrey! Treat your two 'brides' with love, and make both of these girls happy.” and Godfrey said reassuringly: “I have been alone, and it was worse than any hell! Ophelia had been alone in the ground, so we understand one another. Emily, in her madness, has been lonelier perhaps than either of us. Together, the three of us may heal and make a life for ourselves where love, not brutality, guides and nurtures our lives. I wish you well, stranger!” and so Isaac left the pair there in that ancient place, and prepared to deliver his report to the Sergeant. It would be the biggest lie he ever told. He could not wait to tell it! Back at the inn, he told his commander all of what Ophelia had suggested for him to say. The truth, would have been impossible for any sane man to believe anyway. Sergeant Blake then said: “I'll send someone, to take Godfrey's statement... and that of the two girls as well. No sense poking around here longer than that, though. By now... Doctor Geiger's murderer must be long gone, from this area. Too bad, we had so many false leads... looks like no one in this town was guilty of anything but bad cooking. The food at this inn! Dear God.” Isaac then saw fit to remind the Sergeant: “The doctor was still guilty, sir. Don't forget, he did rob that grave! When we find the murderer, we'll have to ask him what the connection to the doctor was. I'd like to be put in charge of that investigation, myself.” And this delighted Blake, who said in a pleased tone of voice: “Then let's be talking about your promotion! We'll make you a full-fledged Lieutenant of the Guard. With your skills, you might even make Sergeant yourself before you know it. That's where the real money lies, especially these days! Now then... of course, we'll need to have records at your disposal, and that will require us to give you full access to the document chambers of the Guard Hall. Can't make you Lieutenant and not be having you with the records. Glad to know someone as good as you is on our side! Let's go now, Isaac. Another meal at the Green Man, and I'll be turning green myself. Ha!” No one ever did discover any of the truth of what happened that year in Eldbrooke. No one ever will. In the end, it was written off as an unsolved case, and people eventually forgot all about it. One day, the records caught fire and all of the documents burned. They always thought, it was accidental. The secret of Emily's madness was hidden so well, that only Isaac recalled it. “Coming Sergeant!” Isaac had said when he followed Blake out the door of the Green Man inn that day. The young investigator made a good lieutenant in the end. But as the years went by, he thought a lot about what he did in order to save the life of those two girls and that strange man. Was his choice right or wrong in the eyes of God? Isaac personally believed it was right... and he hoped at the end of that twisted fairy tale, that those two beauties and their beast did indeed live happily ever after. As for whatever it was that had transpired at the ruined keep that loomed above the town, no one ever did learn what had actually happened within its' walls. It became yet another peculiar mystery that was somehow connected to the legend of the Knights Templar. But something far stranger than all of those things took place a decade following the destruction of those documents... by chance, a group of guardsmen journeyed to Eldbrooke in order to check in on things there, only to find that there was no town there, at all. It had simply vanished, as if it had never existed to begin with! However... the ancient circle of standing stones remained, and sometimes it seemed as if within it there opened a weird portal to another world, or some other plane of existence that was parallel to this one. There, within that other world, the Elvish sorcerer humans knew as Godfrey Atkins knew bliss with his two Elvish brides.
The Green Man Inn was the only such establishment in the entire village of Eldbrooke. It had always been a quiet establishment... save when the locals got rowdy, but even then, people mostly settled their disputed between one another without having to get the law involved. Yet, in a short span of time not one but two members of the local law enforcement militia... known to pretty much everyone simply as the Guard... had found their way to the doors of that establishment. The young investigator by the name of Isaac Williamson, who wore the attire of a wealthy scholar but who in secret acted as an agent of the Guard... though not so secretly any longer, since by now the whole town had learned of this... was in a great hurry to meet with his commander, the formidable Sergeant Blake, who awaited to speak to him at the inn. Both men had purchased rooms there for at least a week, though neither planned to be there for that long, barring anything overtly serious coming up that might keep them longer. Blake Datson... was not a very handsome man! He was large, muscular, and gruff... with a slicked back mane of rather quickly thinning light brown hair, and a smile that was more like a slash across his face. It was never a proper smile on the best of occasions, and in truth he always looked angry. When he did smile, as he so did now... it was frightening to see. And this was twice now, that Isaac saw him do so! Blake had thick sideburns, and was clad in his finest leathers... his uniform armor looking spotless and well maintained. But when Blake spoke, it was always with a deliberately pompous tone that it seemed like he was doing deliberately and did not perhaps normally speak that way. He said to Isaac, the moment the young man walked into the room: “Well, I thought by the time I got here you'd have something to report but I also have something to tell you about. Let me hear your news first, though, as it may shed some light on a thing that's been bothering me.” and Isaac told the Sergeant everything that had happened so far. It was a lot for the gruff man to take in, and at last Blade said in reply: “A gauntlet made with fang-like teeth, you say? Well, there's one avenue left to investigate: the first victim's remaining family. His name was John Beckman, I don't think I told you before. His wife and daughter live in the house just south of the inn. Perhaps they might be able to tell you who John was involved with. Could be relevant!” Isaac said in response to that: “Especially if, like Doctor Geiger, he had actually known the killer.” Blake stated in answer to that: “Exactly. If you find anything out at all, come back and tell me right away. With both of us working in the area, we'll close this case in no time at all. Oh, one more thing before you go! I want you to be careful. I've got a bad feeling this time that I can't quite put my finger on. Real bad.” and in a cheerful manner, Isaac stated: “I'll be careful. I'm just going to ask some questions. Who knows... they may even turn out to be as helpful as Alice Drake was! I'll be back before you know it.” Off Isaac went.
The Beckman residence was not in the sort of state that the investigator was expecting to find it in. As Isaac entered the house, for the front door was already wide open when he got there, he saw much to his utter horror a trail of blood and small child-sized bloody footprints. He followed the blood to an alcove off of the dwelling's main living room... and in the large alcove was a large bed, evidently belonging to John and his wife. The bed was straw, but of a finer quality than the straw beds of the inn's rooms. And it had several comfortable enough looking pillows and blankets upon it. One half of the bed was pretty much splattered with blood, and nearby there was an open book lying on the other side of the bed. It so seemed to be a book of children's stories. Only the wealthy could afford books, and only those of noble blood often had the learning required to read them. The Beckman family was more than they seemed! Following the blood trail back into the living room, it ran toward the fireplace on the room's other side, where all was very dark... save for the faint dying glow of the hearth. There was a shape on the floor in front of the fireplace, and Isaac dreaded to look and see what it might be. He lit a candle that he got off of a nearby end table, and saw depressingly that the shape was the dead body of John's wife Linda. He had been told her name by Sergeant Blake just as he had run off to get here. Just in time, to find all this.
The woman had died in horrible agony, her throat clearly torn open in the same manner as those who had perished like this before her. It was difficult for Isaac to imagine anything more ghastly than all the gruesome sights he had been witness to since coming to the village of Eldbrooke. This, then... was after all the source of the blood trail! And the smaller, child-sized footprints had clearly stepped in the blood and afterwards gone off to a different part of the house. Rats were feasting on the slain woman's corpse, their nibbling being sickening for the young man to hear. She had been stripped of all her clothing long before the murder, for her clothes were thrown about here and there... and there were marks on Linda's arms that had very obviously been made by adult hands. An adult man's hands to be precise, since upon inspecting the body closer... it seemed that before she was killed at last Linda had been savagely raped. The fingers of the hands were not large though... if the marks were anything to go by. “Artist's fingers.” said the investigator to himself. “Not a large man by any means, but clearly a strong and brutal one.” he muttered. Part of his process was speaking to himself, for Isaac was an eccentric sort of fellow. It was time to follow the child's footprints to see where they led. The trail of those ended at the wooden door to a small bedroom, a child's bedroom the young man noticed when he opened that door and stepped on inside. Within, were two dead cats whose faces had been flayed of their flesh and fur. House cats. This was sick! Someone had not simply raped and murdered that woman... they had clearly killed, and then mutilated, the family pets as well. The child's footprints were scattered all about this room, and there was a child's bloody hand prints too... those being found on things all throughout the room, but most horribly about the necks of the two cats. A wash basin was in the corner, filled with bloody water, and a cloth towel was next to it, covered with a child's bloody hand prints just like everything else seemed to be. The blood on the towel was smeared a bit, as if the child had wiped their hands upon the towel in an effort to get the blood off of them quickly. The towel was damp with water, too. There were many piles of children's clothes pulled out of all the closets and drawers... and a picture was starting to form in the investigator's mind as to what happened here. He muttered to himself: “Either the daughter discovered her mother and the two animals like this and panicked, then sought to wash her hands of their blood... or, and this is also sadly likely, she had a hand in their deaths and sought to wash her hands in order to cleanse them of the blood she had helped spill. Either way, after washing her hands, and probably also her feet, she changed her clothes in a hurry and left. Her body is not here, so I can only conclude from this that unlike her mother she was not murdered.” But that was not all there was to find! Scattered all over the floor between the bodies of the two dead cats was the pages of a children's storybook. When Isaac examined the torn pages, he recognized the story they once told: “Beauty and the Beast.” he said, finding a single page from that story which was less tattered and torn than the rest had been. Even back in those days, there was a variation of that story told by the peasants to delight or horrify their children. Evidently, this particular story had a profound effect on the Beckman daughter. There was now nothing at all left to do at the Beckman residence... so Isaac hurried back to tell Sergeant Blake what it was that he had seen and found there. He clutched tightly in his hands, the surviving page that he had retrieved from the little girl's room. The moment he got back to the inn, and rushed into the Sergeant's room, he said: “Linda Beckman is dead and there is no sign of her daughter to be found there... just some hand and foot prints belonging to the child, but it seems that she washed her hands and feet before deciding to change her clothes and run off. She could be anywhere! These killings though, they are getting more terrible each time. Sergeant! Not only was Linda's throat torn, but she was raped as well. And there is a detail that I recall from the crime scene, that is even more sickening... she was disemboweled after she had been slain, and I had almost slipped in her entrails when I examined her body. Also, the two house cats were strangled and their faces flayed. It looked as if the little girl was the one who strangled them. Blood was from one end of the house to the other! All I found in the way of evidence, was this page from a torn up storybook in the daughter's bedroom. Perhaps... you might make something out of it?”
Blake looked the page over and read it aloud, for he had been taught how to read by his father, who in his day had learned how to do so during his time working as a scribe: “Beauty and the Beast, it seems to be! A curious tale, eh? Let us see here... 'If you will but stay with me, sweet maiden, then the mad in me shall not die as was my curse. But rather, with your kiss I will be a man once again!' I think, there must be a reason why this storybook in particular and this page most especially was singled out by the killer. He, or she, wanted us to read this.” Isaac mused upon this a bit, and then remarked: “But it is hardly an uncommon tale... so many children are familiar with it, after all! However, this page was the only one I found which was left intact in any way that was fully legible and not in fragments... so, I do wonder...” And Blake gave it a bit of thought before suggesting: “If the killer is indeed a man, and the rape of the mother seems to suggest strongly that the killer is... then think about it, Isaac! This page has to him, I would wager, a special meaning. He clearly must think of himself as a monster, and probably feels the guilt of his crimes. Perhaps he even feels helpless as he does these unspeakable things! Who knows the reason why? The point is, he believes that he can't stop himself unless a maiden falls in love with him. Oh my God! That is why you couldn't find the little girl.” Isaac then said in a horrified tone: “He likely forced her to kill her own pets and then kidnapped her! But she's only a child... why would even such a madman, even the worst sort of criminal, think someone so young could fall in love with him? He must be totally insane.” The Sergeant then explained the possible reason: “The girl, her name is Emily by the way, would be guaranteed to be a maiden... like in the story. The trouble is, we don't know how he may be thinking beyond that. What's his definition of love? Because of this, we can only assume she is in a very great danger. We have to find them, but we're running out of leads faster than we're running out of time! If she refuses him, what's to stop him from doing with her as he clearly did with her mother? I'd not like to think on that too deeply.” but Isaac was persistent, and insisted: “Sir, there must still be one person at least left in the village who could help us! I mean... who haven't we spoken with or met with yet? Surely we've not exhausted every single possible avenue.” Blake gave the matter some thought, but seemed terribly worried as he suggested: “There is one man who might know something. It seems that a certain recluse who lives on the southern outskirts of town... hasn't been seen or heard from since pretty much immediately before the first murder took place. His name is Godfrey Atkins, and there are three possibilities with him: he could be another victim, he could be involved, or he could be the killer. So, I want you to go and find out for me.” Isaac was ready and willing to do as asked. He stated: “Very well. I will go and check it out as you wish. Maybe we'll get lucky and locate the killer before Emily becomes another victim of his madness. I just hope she's not hurt!” And with that said, he strode off purposefully from the inn, but soon began to feel a wave of dizziness and nausea. He had not eaten or drank anything in so many hours! And he had not slept, either. Isaac walked back into the inn... and ordered some food and a bit of drink to take the edge off of how he was feeling. “You look horrible!” the innkeeper said as he took the man's orders and saw to it that he was served as was needed. The investigator imagined well that he must indeed look quite a fright! He had not even so much as shaved since setting out on his way to the village, and could feel on his face quite a bit of a beard that was beginning to grow in. He did, at least, take some time to wash up and keep himself clean, and see to any other needs here and there. But he had, even so, become quite sleep deprived and had basically rushed from task to task without giving a care to his need for rest. The killer was not resting, he figured... so why should he? But the killer was resting in between committing his crimes... he had to be! And he mused about this a bit as he ate until he was full again, and slaked his thirst with first water and then a bit of cider. It was chilly out, on that day... or rather night, or rather early morning. He no longer cared what the time of day was! Once he so felt a bit better, he walked out of the inn and began to make his way south towards the Atkins house. It was easy enough the follow the directions the locals gave him... and, Blake had been helpful too in his own gruff way. The sun was coming up, and it was dawn already. Had it been one day, or several days?
Something felt strange about the passage of time in this village... or, perhaps it was the lack of sleep that was finally beginning to wear at Isaac's sanity. Either way, he crossed the small wooden bridge to the south of the village square, which so took him over a wide stream that flowed in a snakelike manner through the village, along its' southernmost sections. The great wooden palisade walls that surrounded the entire village extended even beyond that stream, and deep into the deepest woods and forests to the south far beyond the young man's sight. His mind began to wander, and he imagined that the walls had been built to keep something in those woods... from escaping into the surrounding lands outside of the village's boundaries. Some terrible beast out of old legends and children's tales! He prayed to God that such a creature did not await him at the Atkins house. The house lay at the end of a winding dirt road that branched off of the main road that ran through the village, and the grounds on which the house did lie were wild looking and untended. The house looked to be the oldest one in all of town, and it was a large but somewhat inelegant looking manor house... clearly the dwelling of a minor nobleman. But one who, it seemed, had little regard for the state of the place. The trees all around here grew taller than they should have been allowed to grow... and the grass was high, and filled with wildflowers. An old stone well sat beside the house, and when Isaac looked within the well he saw that it had dried up long ago. It should have been taken apart and filled in, but it was left just as it was. Piles of fresh pumpkins sat by the doorstep of the front door to the manor house, and some had faces carved into them. This, was often a custom among certain rural communities that celebrated the ancient pagan Samhain festivals... but oft with Christian trappings added to them. There had been many of these carved pumpkins all through the village, so it was not too strange to see them here as well. And old broken wheelbarrow sat next to the pumpkins, and it was likely they were not brought hither using it. Piles of wood which had been cut and chopped sat heaped about a good distance off, by a small grove of trees... and the ax with had cut them, sat embedded in one of those pieces of wood, rusted to uselessness with age. The house was of stone as well as brick in its' foundations, and its' walls were quite imposing looking. Unlike the thatch roofs, of the other houses, homes, cottages and dwellings of Eldbrooke... the roofs of this decaying mansion had quite the distinct look of being not too much unlike the roof of the village's church... all of wood, and of tile work as well. Likely the roof was supported inside the building by high rafters and great beams, and all of this having a look that said this place was meant to be a work of art as much as it was ever a place where someone once dwelt. It seemed increasingly unlikely that anybody still lived here! And if they so did, they had to be quite mad in order to do so. For who in their right mind would neglect lands of such beauty as these, and leave so great a house to fall into decay? The windows of the manor were all dark, and nothing could be seen of what was within. There was a path that ran deeper into the forest, which was just behind the manor house, and the trees of that forest had grown right up to just behind the back walls of the mansion. The foundation was cracked in places, as were some of the walls, and there were tiles that had fallen from the roof. If there had ever been any servants to tend to these grounds, there did appear to be no sign of them either. Isaac felt fear grip his heart as he approached the front door... and it looked to be the only door... to the manor house. He knocked, and then knocked several more times. As he knocked the last time though, his mind began to reel from dizziness... and he slipped into a state that was unconscious, succumbing finally to his lack of sleep. It was a dreamless sleep, and he had a feeling of movement... of being moved... whilst in that state. Someone was carrying him somewhere. And, ere long dreams did come to him, but they were horrific dreams and filled with terrors that he knew he may never be able to fully recall upon waking. There were screams, and shrieks, and inhuman voices within eldritch landscapes filled with bizarre, alien things that flitted here... and there... and nothing of what he beheld made any sense to him. He tried to scream, but something slithered into his mouth and he could not even speak, let alone scream. Tendrils bound his arms and legs, and clawed hands held open both of his eyes, and he saw a demonic face and form glaring at him, laughing at him. Mercifully, he awakened.
He awoke upon the black and white floor tiles of a dining room floor. He was, evidently, somewhere within the manor house, for everything looked elegant and yet also quite run down. The table was long and rectangular, in the middle of the room, and there were many ornate wooden chairs set around it. A great many of the chairs were smashed, and some were knocked over. Four of them remained intact, a small number consider there were at least ten such seats in all originally. Upon the table were piles of broken dishes and plates, but two plates remained perfect and were next to two chairs that had been so arranged as to be right next to each other. In the table's center was a vase filled with withered flowers. The room was dimly lit with candles and torches that sat in sconces on the walls, and there were several musical instruments in one corner of the chamber. A beautiful golden harp, an elegant looking lute, and several flutes along with a set of drums. On the far side of the room from where Isaac got to his feet, he could see a roaring fire in the hearth of a great stone fireplace. Next to that was an old bookshelf, and it at first appeared that the books were fully intact... until the investigator went to touch them. As soon as he tried to open any of the books, they crumbled apart in his hands. There was a sense of decayed and decaying beauty here... a comfortable couch, sat on the floor in front of the fireplace, but its' coverings were all in tatters and looked exceedingly old. A pile of wood sat near the hearth, but there were spiders and other insects crawling in the pieces of wood that were there. An empty closet was broken open, and nothing was contained within it, but the closet itself was of exquisite craftsmanship. There were potted plants, but the plants were long dead. And, there were folding screens from the far east that had faded images upon them that could no longer be seen clearly. Various carpets and tapestries, and paintings too upon the walls... but all of them so old that they were faded, their subjects impossible to determine. The air smelled somewhat musty, and the walls were thick with dust and cobwebs in many places. Rats did scurry in some of the corners, and the whole place felt like a tomb. Yet, someone clearly was living in t his place still! There was a large black dog with glaring red eyes which emerged from a nearby hallway, but when Isaac went near it the animal vanished like a ghost, which startled him. He walked down the hall, and spotted a light coming from one of the bedrooms that were just off from it. The light came it appeared from many candles which illuminated a spacious bedchamber. The walls of the room were of brickwork, and were painted a very pale light shade of blue that had faded to the point where it looked a lot paler than it should have. There was soft carpeting covering the entire floor, decorated with a floral pattern, though in places the carpet was torn quite a bit. Next to the door, to the left of it... was a rather large walk-in closet containing racks of children's clothes on one side and racks of adult's clothes on the other. A series of bookshelves filled part of the wall to the left of the closet, and further along that wall, the left-most wall of the room, there was a large desk on which was sat a massive tome that appeared to be a journal of some kind. Nearby was an inkwell and a quill that was set into it. The journal was new, and the writing within it was in Latin. A slender black candle sat next to it, and was burning dimply in comparison to all the other candles in the room. The right wall of the room was filled with dressers and a great many shelves and display cases that contained all manner of bizarre looking curios. There were crystal balls, carved wooden ritual wands decorated with feathers and which had crystals mounted into the tips of them, small sharp looking ceremonial daggers covered with ancient runes, tiny figurines and statues of a great many pagan deities, copper bowls and even several human skulls that had been made into lanterns and fitted with candles within them. There was on the far wall from the door another set of display shelves filled with more objects of... from all Isaac knew of such things... a dark occult purpose. Before those shelves was a makeshift shrine set up using two tables covered with a fiery orange and red altar cloth. The shine had on it several statues of ancient Greek goddesses, and also the image of a large seven headed dragon clutching in its' claws a jeweled scepter. More occult objects decorated the shrine, as did many crystals and two more wands as well. Next to the shrine, against the right wall of the room on the farthest end of it, was a comfortable looking bed made for two. One not of straw, but much finer.
It was covered in warm blankets, and clean sheets, and had soft pillows and cushions upon it as well. And sitting upon the bed, holding a small doll in her slender hands... was a little girl who looked to be about eleven years old. She had a strong resemblance to the murdered woman, Linda... and could only have been her daughter Emily. The little girl had dark brown, almost black hair, and she had big eyes of the darkest brown that just like her hair almost appeared to be black. She was even paler than all of the other villagers, her skin a bit more yellowish too, and her ears were slightly tapered. Linda also had odd ears like that, but Isaac dismissed this as perhaps a deformity that was passed on in their family. He had seen worse deformities in his time! Her soft freckled face was angelic and sweet looking... with full lips that seemed to be pressed into a kind of pouting smile. She wore a pair of baggy looking trousers that were made of vibrant red silk and looked like the kind of pantaloons that women and girls wore a lot in the middle east. Tucked into them was a silk blouse with short puffy sleeves, which also had an eastern look and design to it. The blouse was richly and delicately embroidered along the collar, which came up to just below the girl's neck. She looked elegant, refined, and somewhat exotic dressed this way. All of this told Isaac something profound... the man who had given her that outfit had to have gotten it whilst in the Middle East, and so it was likely that he was or had been a crusader knight at some point in his past. Whether or not, that man was the master of this manor... remained to be discovered. The little girl was wearing a pair of soft red slippers with somewhat turned up toes, and was rocking back and forth upon the bed nervously when she noticed that Isaac was looking at her. She said unto him, her voice as light and sweet sounding as one might expect, from her appearance: “Why... are you here! Come to thus arrest me for pulling out my father's throat with Godfrey's glove? If you knew how cruelly father treated me, you would not blame me for ending his wretched life. Why not just... walk away?” and she spoke at that moment as if she were far older than her years portrayed. Isaac looked at the child shocked, his face a mask of utmost horror as he said: “But, I thought perhaps Godfrey Atkins was the one responsible for the death of your father! No, I see it in your eyes... you are the one, aren't you?” and she then stated in a rather imperious manner: “I'm almost twelve, I'm not a little girl any more! Father beat me one time too many, and all mother did was watch and scream at me as if I was to blame. Godfrey said he was lonely, and that he'd give me the power to end Father's cruelty on the condition that I stay with him forever and love him, like Beauty loved the Beast. I killed the doctor too, because he was going to tell.” Isaac could not believe what he was hearing, and asked: “Emily, are you really telling me the truth? Are you certain that Godfrey is not the one responsible, and that perhaps it is not that you are merely covering for him? Tell me!” Which caused the little girl to fly into a rage. She threw her doll across the room, and stared hatefully at the young investigator, declaring: “Tell you what... the pretty lie that won't upset your view of the world and its' children? I did it. Deal with it! Know what else? I have made love with Godfrey... just like a grown woman. He taught me so many things! But I was all too willing to learn them. I am a maiden no longer. Does that surprise you too, with your fine sensibilities? He is a kind and gentle man, and a good and equally gentle lover too. When it hurt, he helped me get through it and said that for the first time that was normal... and when I bled, he cleaned up after me and helped me get through it. For a monster, as you think him to be, that is awfully rare I would say! He's at the old stones right now, off in the woods behind the house, performing the ritual that needed to be done.” Isaac did not like the sound of that at all. He asked Emily: “What ritual? He's got the gauntlet, hasn't he! What are you two up to out here, anyway... there's more to this than revenge and mad childish lust.” and, that was when Emily said it at long last: “He's bringing my sister back to life... with the blood Simon Drake's teeth have absorbed. Yes, I had a sister until father beat her so bad she died. I was only five at the time, and she was fifteen. So pretty, she was like an angel! I swore that I'd avenge her death someday. The stones are out back, as I said, and I've got the only key to the old gate that is set into the palisade wall deep in the woods. You can't get to the stones except through that gate. Do you want the key, or not?” Her smile was a cold one.
Isaac thought about the whole situation deeply, and then offered: “If, Godfrey confirms your story for me, then I might consider... I'm not sure... but I can promise you that I won't hurt him if he doesn't try to attack me first.” and Emily threw the key at him, her anger still raging within her. “Help us! You know, that you will... I know that you will. You have to, since no one else ever will or would seek to. Get out of here and go to the stones! I will not move from here. This is my throne, my little kingdom in which I am the princess. Can't you see how beautiful everything is here? My king will return to me, and neither you nor anyone else will ever stop us from having a happy ending to our story.” She started to sing and to hum to herself after that, wrapping her arms about herself and clutching herself tightly whilst staring off into space. Isaac said to her as coldly as she had smiled at him before: “You are clearly mad, child! But your lover's state of mind might make all the difference in how I solve this case. I must talk to him, and find out.” But she was no longer listening to him. She was singing, over and over again: “The king, shall come into his kingdom. I the princess shall be queen! I the queen shall share his reign. My darling king shall come, shall come into his kingdom. A kingdom free of hurt and pain!” Isaac tried to get that haunting song out of his head as he left the manor house, finding his way out of it after nearly becoming lost amid its' maze-like halls, chambers and rooms. He kept hearing the barking of a dog, but that faded once he reached the mansion's main door and exited the place, shutting the door securely behind him. It was clearly a haunted, accursed place! But that was not his present concern. He went around the back of the house, and ventured down the path that ran behind it, deeper and deeper into the woods. It was well towards the afternoon already! How long had been asleep for when he passed out? Long enough, it thus seemed, that he felt strong and clearheaded once again. He reached the place where the palisade wall of the village ran through the woods at the southernmost point of its' boundaries, and there was a very old gate there... a wooden reinforced gate that was much smaller than the main gate that leads into town on the northern side. He used the key that Emily had thrown at him, which he had luckily caught, and thus unlocked it... pushing it open, much more easily than it had been to open the main gate into town when he first arrived. On the other side of that gate, the forest grew a great deal wilder, deeper, ever darker... and the ground more swamp-like and marshy. There was a layer of fog and mist about the ground, and at some point Isaac felt his feet get wet when he waded across a small stream that babbled its way as it wound through the woods of this domain. He soon came to a place where high cliffs stood encircling a small stretch of barren looking ground in the middle of a great ancient grove of mighty trees. All about the grove, the ground looked frozen from the first frost of the year. It looked to be an early winter... but why was the frost only in this place, and not anywhere else that he had noticed prior to coming here? It all seemed so unnatural to him! And there, in that awful place, he saw the stones that Emily had spoken of. Tall, ancient looking standing stones from another, bygone age. They were massive, gray, and felt as if they might have been giants towering over him as he approached. There were two shadowy figures to be seen standing in the middle of the circle of stones... but, so thick was the fog and the mist nothing of them could be made out even this close. So he walked closer, and closer, and he did so the fog and mist parted at last, revealing a man and a young girl standing there. The man wore a black, flowing robe that had a hood which was drawn back from his face... the robe was very different from the sort worn by the town priest, and it was of finer and softer quality by far, with red trim. About his waist, the man wore a wide red sash belt tied with a neat bow at his side. He wore thick fur boots on his feet, and looked to be in his mid to late forties. He was average of build, with the same pale skin with a yellowish tint to it as everyone else in town had. He had piercing grayish blue eyes... and small lips... with a bit of an aquiline type of nose, though not a large one by any means. He had long dark auburn colored hair, that was shot through with gray, and the hair at his temples was white. He had a neatly trimmed beard, and that too so appeared to be shot through with gray, as well as white in places. Despite this, he had a remarkable sort of youthfulness to his appearance, and looked far younger than his years because of that. It was bizarre!
The strange man's eyes were almond shaped, and his ears were slightly tapered. Apparently, this type of deformity... if that is what it was... did not seem to be confined to just one family in this village. Also the man had no eyebrows, and it was then that Isaac looked at the man's hands. He had delicate looking, slender hands with artist's fingers. This was indeed the man who had raped Linda Beckman... though, it was no longer in any way clear to Isaac if he had been the one to kill her, or if it was Emily who had in turn murdered her own mother following the rape. Worse still! The little girl may have aided him, and watched as he had his way with the woman, with the two of them working together to murder her after that was done. None of those scenarios was a pleasant thought... and all of them showed just how sick, how depraved, the pair truly were. Standing in front of the peculiar man, right across from him in fact... was a beautiful looking fifteen year old girl. The girl looked just like Emily, but she was older of course and had much darker hair, which was of a raven black color. She was dressed in clothing that looked a bit old and tattered looking, as if it had lain the ground for a long time... the outfit she wore consisted of a pair of full, dark blue knee-length trousers over which she had on a most delicately embroidered tunic of the same color which came down to her upper thighs. The tunic was belted with a beautifully woven sky blue sash belt that was tied with a neat, tiny bow at her side. Her feet were bare and muddy, and her skin appeared to be covered in dirt, which she was hastily wiping off whilst staring wildly about her, as if she were seeing the world for the very first time. The girl exclaimed loudly: “How grand it is to taste the fresh air of life once again... rather than the cold earth of the grave that has been my bed for so very long!” and behind the girl was an open grave which appeared to have been quite deep. The girl looked to be healthy, well, and her body was decently proportioned for her young age... with shapely hips and fine breasts, at least one of which was quite visible due to her tunic having fallen apart down to below her left breast. She had clearly crawled out from her grave, where of old her father had buried her, in all likelihood never expecting anyone to learn where it lay. But somehow, this man... this sorcerer... had at some point discovered the location, and intended to see that this was done. The man smiled at the girl, and said to her: “It is good to see you alive and well once again, Ophelia! At least this time, your father cannot take you away from me by killing you, as once he did. My first love! My... soulmate. Are you at last ready to join your sister, at my manor house? She too, has become my bride, and awaits you and I there quite eagerly.” and all Isaac could do was stare, his mouth open, his mind barely able to reason or comprehend the truth of what played out before him. Isaac asked the man who he was, and what had so been done with the weapon made from the dead man's teeth. The man thus replied: “My name, good sir, is Godfrey Atkins. And, it has been done... Ophelia Beckman lives once again! The gauntlet that had so been fitted with the dead murderer's teeth is destroyed utterly. Now we can all breathe easy.” But Isaac was still in a state of surprise at this turn of events. He declared: “Dear God! This cannot be... how have you brought that dead girl back to life? Only God can grant such miracles.” Godfrey chuckled a bit, and then answered, his voice Isaac noticed as being soft and sweet sounding as he spoke: “When her father buried her here, he knew nothing of the power in this place! He merely thought it a fit monument to his cruelty. No one in Eldbrooke knew of the deed; John Beckman, simply told them that his daughter had run away. I saw him bury her, out here, behind my home... and it cost me an eye to that monster's cruel crossbow in order to see it!” He then pointed to his left eye and tapped on it. It was a false eye, one that he had ordered be made in order to replace the one that he had lost. It was of remarkable craftsmanship and, in truth, was the most realistic false eye that Isaac had ever seen in his young life. Isaac remarked: “He was probably trying to kill you, for spying on him!” and Godfrey explained: “He thought precisely, that he had killed me! Most in this community, knew not if I was alive or dead out here half the time as it was. Yet I survived, and swore on that very same day to avenge all of John's vile injustices. You can never imagine, the hatred even his own children bore for him... and, for that banshee of a wife, whose only virtue was those children she had given birth to. She was a horrible and selfish person, otherwise.”
Isaac then asked Ophelia: “Is all of this true, girl? Your sister is mad, but I cannot tell for certain what exactly it is that has claimed her fragile reason so very brutally.” and so the resurrected girl explained to him: “She watched me die at our father's hands, as she heard our mother laugh whilst I breathed my last and all because they had discovered that I had fallen in love with Godfrey, whom they hated because he had grown wealthy during his time adventuring in the Holy Land with his Templar brethren. He used to be a knight, you see! These are all my final memories... my father's breath upon my face, reeking of ale, whilst mother sat there, laughing over and over again, just laughing, as everything went black and I did never awaken after that, until now. I could hear Emily crying, crying, crying, as I was beaten to death!” Isaac admitted to her then: “John ruined many lives in this community by that deed. I'm starting to feel as if I'd like to kill him, myself! Perhaps his death was justice of a kind, but what of the doctor? Please Godfrey, tell me honestly why he was killed! Just how deeply were you and he involved in all of these matters?” to which Godfrey said: “Emily wouldn't let him blackmail me, and I couldn't allow him to be ruining our lives for money. Do you know the sort of man the 'good doctor' was? He would torture and murder the occasional patient during surgery, if by their death he could profit. He robbed graves just to find bodies to experiment upon, kept skulls for study, and subjected living individuals to horrific sorts of tests in order to see what the limits of the human capacity for pain might be. He took advantage of female patients and threatened not to cure their ills if they told. He was, in short, an unspeakably evil and quite inhuman sort of man.” Isaac then reasoned: “Alice Drake, must not have known her former lover's true nature. But did you not ask Doctor Geiger to rob Simon Drake's grave to get his teeth?” and the reclusive sorcerer answered, stating: “That is not true. Emily spied him digging that particularly old grave up, and later that day she was playing by my house... and I heard it from her as she talked to some imaginary friend or another. I asked of her what she was doing near my home and she asked if it would be alright for her to move in with me. I said I was lonely, that I felt like a lonely beast, and I wept. In truth, I have known more sorrow in my life than you can imagine! But back to the events of that day, not those of my life. Emily wept as well, and then she replied that she could be my beauty and give me reason to feel like a man again, if only I could deliver her from her monstrous parents. I promised that if she would but love me, then I would see her father brought entirely to justice. None of this was ever, to be truthful, about revenge! It was always about real, true, honest justice. But things can change. It soon occurred to me how as John was prominent in this village, no normal sort of justice would be possible with him! So that evening, I went over to see the doctor, to ask why he violated Simon's grave just as Emily had said... it was then that I caught him doing an arcane ritual involving blood. Geiger boasted to me that the ghastly gauntlet he had created would grant him the power to raise the dead, but that it still lacked a place of sufficient magical energy to see such a spell completed. It also required more blood... far more than he could give it! Knowing this would bring evil upon the village, I struck the doctor and took the bloody gauntlet from off his wrist. Then I ran off. Once I got home, I gave the gauntlet to dear Emily and told her to do whatever she wished with it. I told her nothing about it, though. I retreated to my home, to wait, knowing securely what the gauntlet's dark influence would do. I received a letter, I think you know from who, sometime after John's death. It was from the doctor! He threatened, that he would go to the Guard about my theft of his 'property'. How insane! You know what his threat against me led Emily to do. So, now that you know the full truth of all these matters, what are you going to do? The gauntlet is no more, so there is not a thing to link anyone to the murders. Ophelia is back, and not a single person other than us knows that she was ever dead to begin with. Ophelia, you have as well thus heard all that has transpired!” Isaac said to the young girl: “You were the first true victim in all of this. Ophelia, whatever you want, that is what I shall see done. That is the only justice we can hope for now! And the only justice any loving God could hope to accept.” Ophelia looked deep in thought for a good length of time, and then something came to her mind and she appeared to be of delighted spirits indeed.
Ophelia said excitedly: “There is evidence enough, with Godfrey and Emily's testimony, that Doctor Geiger created the murder weapon. As to our parents' deaths, my sister and I will say that there is a sick and depraved killer still out there at large. I will pretend to have 'escaped' this killer's captivity. I want Godfrey to be named mine and Emily's proper guardian, and then all will be well with me. We can after that be able to live together... and love each other... as we like. No one will ever be the wiser! That way, my love and I will be together forever... and no one shall ever part he and I again.” Isaac was happy to think of this turn of events. He declared: “There is no other alternative, that I can see... save this course you offer, Ophelia! A lynch mob such as the one which slaughtered Simon Drake is not what this town needs to see ever again. Just one thing I want you to promise me, Godfrey! Treat your two 'brides' with love, and make both of these girls happy.” and Godfrey said reassuringly: “I have been alone, and it was worse than any hell! Ophelia had been alone in the ground, so we understand one another. Emily, in her madness, has been lonelier perhaps than either of us. Together, the three of us may heal and make a life for ourselves where love, not brutality, guides and nurtures our lives. I wish you well, stranger!” and so Isaac left the pair there in that ancient place, and prepared to deliver his report to the Sergeant. It would be the biggest lie he ever told. He could not wait to tell it! Back at the inn, he told his commander all of what Ophelia had suggested for him to say. The truth, would have been impossible for any sane man to believe anyway. Sergeant Blake then said: “I'll send someone, to take Godfrey's statement... and that of the two girls as well. No sense poking around here longer than that, though. By now... Doctor Geiger's murderer must be long gone, from this area. Too bad, we had so many false leads... looks like no one in this town was guilty of anything but bad cooking. The food at this inn! Dear God.” Isaac then saw fit to remind the Sergeant: “The doctor was still guilty, sir. Don't forget, he did rob that grave! When we find the murderer, we'll have to ask him what the connection to the doctor was. I'd like to be put in charge of that investigation, myself.” And this delighted Blake, who said in a pleased tone of voice: “Then let's be talking about your promotion! We'll make you a full-fledged Lieutenant of the Guard. With your skills, you might even make Sergeant yourself before you know it. That's where the real money lies, especially these days! Now then... of course, we'll need to have records at your disposal, and that will require us to give you full access to the document chambers of the Guard Hall. Can't make you Lieutenant and not be having you with the records. Glad to know someone as good as you is on our side! Let's go now, Isaac. Another meal at the Green Man, and I'll be turning green myself. Ha!” No one ever did discover any of the truth of what happened that year in Eldbrooke. No one ever will. In the end, it was written off as an unsolved case, and people eventually forgot all about it. One day, the records caught fire and all of the documents burned. They always thought, it was accidental. The secret of Emily's madness was hidden so well, that only Isaac recalled it. “Coming Sergeant!” Isaac had said when he followed Blake out the door of the Green Man inn that day. The young investigator made a good lieutenant in the end. But as the years went by, he thought a lot about what he did in order to save the life of those two girls and that strange man. Was his choice right or wrong in the eyes of God? Isaac personally believed it was right... and he hoped at the end of that twisted fairy tale, that those two beauties and their beast did indeed live happily ever after. As for whatever it was that had transpired at the ruined keep that loomed above the town, no one ever did learn what had actually happened within its' walls. It became yet another peculiar mystery that was somehow connected to the legend of the Knights Templar. But something far stranger than all of those things took place a decade following the destruction of those documents... by chance, a group of guardsmen journeyed to Eldbrooke in order to check in on things there, only to find that there was no town there, at all. It had simply vanished, as if it had never existed to begin with! However... the ancient circle of standing stones remained, and sometimes it seemed as if within it there opened a weird portal to another world, or some other plane of existence that was parallel to this one. There, within that other world, the Elvish sorcerer humans knew as Godfrey Atkins knew bliss with his two Elvish brides.
Published 25th Nov 2022
Author's Note
“A Tooth for an Eye” is based upon a medieval murder mystery video game that I created back in 2006, using the tool set that comes with the Neverwinter Nights PC game. I published the completed game on the Neverwinter Vault under the name Chaos_Theocrat. This is a vastly expanded version of the game's entire story, and follows the canon ending of the game, as opposed to the alternate ending, with various additions to the plot and a new final scene that adds one last twist to a tale filled with many dark twists.
All writing remains the property of the author. Don't use it for any purpose without their permission.
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29th May 2023 2:49am
Great medieval murder mystery story for sure! It kept me on my toes, and guessing how things were gonna turn out, all throughout it. By the time I finished with reading Part Two, I was blown away by how great the story was... and how you wove the mystical elements into it so perfectly and yet in a low magic, dark and gritty, realistic kind of way. One of the few stories that made me feel sorry for the villains... but if you think about it, they weren't really villains at all in the end. Another work of genius form you my love!
5th Jun 2023 11:50pm
I am happy you enjoyed reading this one, Chloe! It was great to go back and revisit this old game I made so many years ago and expand it into a full written story like this... and be able to add details and elements that were not in the game, but which I had always envisioned as being integral parts of the story. This is definitely the most definitive version of this story now... and is both a great stand-alone tale in and of itself as well as a very good companion piece to the game I created. Yeah, I decided to keep the magical elements to a minimum here compared to what was in the game, and emphasize more the dark, gritty, realistic aspects of the world in which the story takes place. Especially given that this is a story set against a historical fiction backdrop. It just made sense to keep that history in mind as I was writing this and bring it to the fore on occasion when it was needed to do so. The result was perfect, once all was done.
The villains were not the true villains after all, and when all was through... there were good reasons for things to turn out for them the way that they did. This is how it was in the game too, and part of the twists towards the end. I am humbled that you consider this a work of genius! Thank you so much, sweetie pie, for the glowing praise. I love you so much! *Smiles* :)
The villains were not the true villains after all, and when all was through... there were good reasons for things to turn out for them the way that they did. This is how it was in the game too, and part of the twists towards the end. I am humbled that you consider this a work of genius! Thank you so much, sweetie pie, for the glowing praise. I love you so much! *Smiles* :)
