If this chamber was meant to resemble the conservatory, then the walls tapered down into its doorway where the muted glow of two eyes peeked around a black corner. Then, crawling on its hands and knees, emerged what Jane could only describe as a demon.
She choked on a cry as the thing skittered toward her, closer and closer. It had claws that glinted with the same golden sheen as the many too-tight rings upon its crooked fingers and dug deep to grasp fistfuls of fleshy floor. Its wet breathing rattled between ribs that writhed within a smoldered chest.
Jane couldn’t move, whether because of fear or pain or the inability to find a secure hold on the fleshy surface she was curled upon, she did not know. As desperately as she wanted to flee or hide, she failed to summon such strength into her limbs. She was held prisoner by terror. She shook, hair slick and plastered to her brows with sweat and blood.
The demon’s body was covered with red, flayed muscle that bubbled with burns, boils, and decaying bits that hung on thin threads of flesh. Golden rings pierced its nipples and a rigid phallus, and from the piercings wept blood and gold. A fine, thick, burgundy-colored veil embroidered with golden tassels was draped over a head that was misshapen. Elongated in the shape of a muzzle, with the muted glimmer of sickly yellow eyes peering at her through the fabric.
A chill entered Jane’s blood and a sizzling energy struck her bones.
It resembled the idol in the parlor room.
“Jaaaaaane…” The demon gurgled again, its voice androgynous but dreadful in its croaking intonation, and Jane wished for it to never utter her name, let alone speak, ever again.
Such a wish was denied as it groaned, quick and harsh, “Jane!”
Its breath filtered through its veil to disturb her hair; it reeked of carrion and sulfur.
Even when she tried to hold her breath, the sweetly bitter stench pried its way into her mouth, her nostrils, her very bloodstream.
A hand, red and raw, shimmering with a layer of pus as though freshly burned, raised slowly, and Jane held a breath as she prepared for it to grab her.
And she almost wished it had as it instead grasped the tasseled edge of its veil and pulled it back, taking with it pearly strings of raw fluids and strips of burnt infection.
Somethingnearlycanine screamed at her, its flesh flayed off to reveal a living infestation of a face. Golden teeth ground against one another as gilded puss oozed from between them. More pus leaked from the slits of nostrils that ran the entire length of its snout to the ridged dome of its cranium, the sockets that loosely held bulging, asymmetrical eyes, and the piercings decorating bony arches of its cheeks and brows.
A tongue, long and serpentine, unfurled from its jaws as it gurgled out another, “Jaaaaaaane!” Gold bubbled in foam at the corners of its maw, from which dripped viscous saliva.
Slowly, the tongue inched toward Jane. Its movements were languid and winding, like those of a serpent—the very onethat tempted Eve.
She at last found the nerve to scream.
With whatever strength remained in her limbs, she gave a yell and slashed the knife outward. As hot liquid spurted on her hand, the creature retracted with a piercing shriek.
When she opened her eyes, golden fluid stained her arm and a wriggling nub of tongue sizzled between her feet. The stank of singed meat surrounded her as the floor in which her pin-knife touched, too, began to steam, smoldering like flame kissed by ice.
The demon screamed as it reared up on its knees, thrashing its head and sending gold to spatter across the meaty room.
“JAAAAAANE!” The demon’s howls shook the organ-room as it clawed at its face, opening more wounds that cried gold. “Jane,Jane,JANE—”
CHAPTER
Twelve
“Jane!” Terence’s bellow pierced into her emerging consciousness as he gave her shoulders another shake.
Everything was a blur as the sounds of the world returned to Jane in ebbing waves. All she could discern was a muffled whimpering, but she came to eventually recognize someone—though there may have been several people all at once in a cacophony of syllables and weeping—calling her name. None of them were the demon, yet they all were. The floor beneath her was of wood, not flesh; the walls were periwinkle-blue and bookshelf-brown, not infection-red.
She couldn’t register it fully until she felt the heat of a hand touching her, cupping her cheek, pressing against her forehead. She tried to open her eyes and was met with the bleary gray lightof early morning.
She was still in the conservatory, and, despite the haze of her vision, she saw two figures huddled by the door. Mrs. Foster was watching with her hands clutched over her mouth as she tried to stifle the emotion that threatened to break its usual rigidness, and Ms. Hudson just gaped, the color otherwise flushed from her ruddy cheeks.
Terence was kneeling before Jane, his hair disheveled and face pale as he continued to touch her, patting her cheeks and shaking her shoulders in an attempt to rouse her. Again and again, he called her name, each time becoming clearer and less like the demon’s gurgles as she was lured back into the world of the living. The stench of blood hung heavy in the air, metallic and bitter.
He muttered under his breath before he gathered her in his arms, sending a jolting ache up her left leg and a whimper from her lips.
Though the thought crossed her mind lazily, a string of terror weaved through her as she wondered where all the meat, all the blood, had come from, and why or how it ended up in Terence’s cellar. Whose body had been down there? And how many?
Where had the beast gone? Why was everyone just standing here? Didn’t they know they had to flee?
