𝘿𝙚𝙖𝙙 𝙂𝙞𝙧𝙡

Joy tickled the twins like a pair of ballerinas attending their first dance recital—a happiness that surfaced with each rare occasion that their father might feel particularly tolerable that day. Only they had never attended a recital, much less one with him in tow. Annabelle, being the most affectionate of the two and, quite frankly, the one who ofttimes curbed Gascoigne’s wrath, was a bundle almost too sweet to stomach. Calmed and still, she looked like a deflated birthday balloon—the weight of her lashes comparable to the gravity threatening to pull her knees to the floor. She did little else but trace the embroidery of her father’s garb in soothing strokes. Isabeth, however, fought the sleep, her swollen, weary eyes moored to dark silhouettes shifting back and forth in the lightless kitchen. From over Gascoigne’s shoulder, past Mabel, she could almost make out the shape of a woman: a tall figure with a tremendous ball gown. She appeared to be weeping, bent over like a toppled Γ whilst cradling her face in her palms. Only there was no face to hold. Her head had been lopped off at the throat. The macabre presentation didn’t disrupt Isabeth’s concentration. She’d witnessed worse things. Like the time her pet rabbit, Mopsy, wriggled loose from her cage and got her leg snared between a stone crevice constituting one of the manor’s many hearths. The poor creature squealed and screamed, flopping and kicking. In Isabeth’s frantic, near-petrified state, all she knew to do was pull. Pull and pull, trying to free her floundering Mopsy from the mouth of a roaring fire, until white fur bled red and skin and tissue shredded from bone in thin, fibrous filaments. With a quarter of the hapless bunny torn from its attachments, Beth hurled back onto the floor, a gush of blood and intestines slopping like leeches across her nightdress. That had nearly been three years ago. Still, the memory of warm wetness seeping onto her belly stuck with her like time hadn’t aged it. Nor did time interfere with Isabeth’s readily accepted role as troublemaker. No, not troublemaker. But rather, fearless valiant—an adventurer of sorts. It had been her idea to elude Professor Crow tonight, and even now, at the risk of her father’s fury, she’d do it all over again. “A magic trick?” Annabelle inquired earnestly, her mitts wadded into tight fists, rubbing her eyes. The shrill sound of her sister’s voice pulled Isabeth from her dark reverie. Both maidservants had gone. It was now just the three of them and the ghosts looming in the hollow hallways. “Magic trick?” Beth repeated. “What magic trick?!”

Hesitancy lapped the first few droplets of courage building within the girls’ bellies, but Annabelle’s tentative approach was the first to leap for her father’s embrace. “Mind your step,” the keeper called after her, and without another moment’s delay, Isabeth followed suit, the two draping Gascoigne’s shoulders in separate pairs of silken sleeves. Clinging to the ill-tempered warlock like they hadn’t seen him since early spring. Such a sight was a fresh breath of air, even for a hardy old hag. The creases in the old woman’s forehead softened with her eyes, and her expression settled for something a little less dry. For much of her life, Eleanor Grimshaw had only known servitude. Her father was a poor man, and her mother perished with the scourge that plagued the entire northern half of France just eight years after she’d been born. At age sixteen, she met Yusuf Carcassonne and his wife, Cornelia Carcassonne—the first two to have the chateau built back in 1700. Where Gascoigne considered himself old, Ms. Grimshaw was ancient. For a long time, she’d watched children, and their children’s children, grow to renew their family’s namesake. Feeding, clothing, and caring for each familial generation until they could dictate lives of their own. Well before her current master even became a thought in his mother’s mind. “Can we sleep in your bed tonight?” Annabelle had her face buried in the crook of Gascoine’s neck, her breath a gentle gale against skin as pallid as hers. Isabeth, on the other hand, kept her chin perched atop his opposite shoulder, both still clutching him tightly. “We’ll promise to behave…” The two appeared utterly fatigued, their father’s presence and lullabied vow having soothed them into submission. In the midst of all this, a new pair of heels came clapping down the hallway from which direction Eleanor was facing, and with them, firelight glinting from a handheld lamp. “Mabel, clean all of this up for me, will you, please?” The newly-arrived redhead idled there for a moment, her brows stitched with worry, not a single rumple appearing on her youthful canvas. Having heard the recent commotion, she glanced worriedly at the girls, then at the muddled mess on the floor. "Quickly, now,” the eldest keeper urged. “Y-Yes, of course, Fräulein! Right away.”

The intrusive sound of ceramic fragments pealing across the floor sent a small cloud of dust billowing through the air. The noise rang loud and far, amplified by, what had been for decades, desolate passageways and deserted chambers. Both twins flinched as scalding hot liquid dappled their exposed ankles, spurring them to stagger back two steps before they exchanged a knowing glimpse. The disquiet on their sun-starved faces meant they knew they were in trouble, and just when the silence became a sliver too much to bear, they pleaded beneath their father’s snarled sneer. “Don’t let Scrapbeak take us.” “Please, papa?” “He’s going to unstitch us.” “And stitch us back together,” they finished simultaneously. “Nonsense,” a voice cut in from behind the girls, old eyes snatching a peek at Gascoigne’s galled guise. It was Ms. Grimshaw—one of the eldest keepers in the manor and something of a surrogate to the offspring. There’s no telling how long it took her to get here. She’d come hobbling from the stables occupying the distant tip of the chateau’s west wing with nothing but moonlight pouring in from floor-to-ceiling windows to guide her…only to wind up amid a standoff between father and daughters. “You two should behave for Professor Crow. He travels a long way to provide his services.” Each Annabelle and Isabeth clung to the old crone’s linens, their hands gripping for purchase against her worn, tarnished garb. Ms. Grimshaw stilled, seemingly adapted to the desperation in their cadaverous countenances, before her disappointed gaze settled back on Gascoigne. If there was one person in this entire death trap who could challenge her Master’s misdeeds towards his children, it was her. “Now, all this babel I’m hearing—are you up again, sending your father into another fit? Look at the mess!”

The antique doorknob rattled and popped free from its mortise, only for a mess of locks and two identical heads to peer out from the slim opening. Four eyes scanned the corridor outside their bedroom while two sets of ears tuned to the creaks and groans of the chateau’s gurgling bowels. None of the halls were lit during this time of night, but that didn’t discourage the curiosities of two audacious adolescents with an interest in the dead. From the time they were pulled from their mother’s belly to the time now, most had considered them a peculiar pair. Consequently, being peculiar attracted attention—far more than they had hoped—but none seemed quite as intrigued, nor as fascinated, as the family practitioner. Professor Crow was what the townsfolk called him, but the twins had unique monikers they stood by. Sawbones and Rotwurst were of a few, but Scrapbeak seemed the most prevalent given the Doctor’s hoard of shiny metals. When asked where he accumulated his collection, the girls would shiver. The dead offer many gifts, my children, he’d say. It was enough to explain the noises they’d hear in the early mornings before the sun rose—the scratching and digging in the courtyard tombs all a sign of Professor Crow’s endeavors in search of new trinkets and treasures. Father always told them not to meddle, and, to their indifference, they obeyed. So long as they weren’t strapped to a medical bed and fed serum through a needle or sliced open at the front to have their innards poked and prodded. They’d very nearly come close to that two nights prior when the doctor had last visited, and tonight, he appeared again, provoking yet another game of hide-and-seek. “Not that way,” Annabelle whimpered before gripping her other half by the arm. Isabeth backpedaled, and the two veered to the right, heading straight for the scullery. Scrapbeak wouldn’t think to look there! But that hope withered as a shadow darker than the rest swelled around the end of the hallway.