Walking down the stairs to get to the lower ground, Vivian made her way to see where the boy had been put up. Though the little boy wasn"t a prisoner, he was made to stay here by the council providing him with a roof over his head until the judgment was pa.s.sed. But the boy"s only living last relative had pa.s.sed away in an unknown mysterious death that there was no knowing what happened to him. With the way, Mr Senielton had accused of the boy to be partaking in something awful and inhuman, she wanted to talk to the boy which she hadn"t gotten the opportunity to do so.
Yesterday she had found the boy to be alone and wrongly accused but today with the turn of events her judgement wavered in her mind. The couple she had met had spoken how some of the families still prayed to the dark, wors.h.i.+pping evil and it was possible that the Walter"s had done it too but they boy was young and what reason would one have to take their own families lives? And he was barely twelve or thirteen.
She heard a pair of footsteps behind her, turning her head she saw it was Maximillian who had followed her.
"Going to meet the boy?" he asked catching up with her.
"Do you know where he is?" Leonard had dropped the boy in here but she didn"t know which cell room it was. Coming to see the end of the wall on the floor, she heard Maximillian speak,
"The boy must be placed in the dungeon ground."
"But that"s where the bodies are preserved," said Vivian to see the man smile, his bright blue eyes peering down at her.
"Indeed that is where the bodies are placed but there are also two spare rooms which have been built. Let me go fetch the keys and meet you down there," he said turning around to go back up leaving her alone. Vivian looked at both the cells on her left and right side that had prisoners put inside them. The room was dark, darker than the rest of them with no windows. One of the details she noticed here was that difficult and the listed prisoners were put far away from the exit with no windows or light with only the fire torch that lit on the walls. On the other end of the long corridors, one would find the windows built for people who had committed low crimes which included from robbery to the one"s causing nuisance to people.
Going down the underground bas.e.m.e.nt, Vivian stood in front of the locked grill door where one needed access to enter inside.
Hearing the footsteps, she saw Maximillian who was closely followed by the vampire doctor, "Here are the keys," said Maximillian jingling the keys up in the air.
"Master Gibbs, you cannot steal things which aren"t yours! Haven"t I taught you-" Murkh was cut off by the blue-eyed pureblooded vampire who offered him a sweet smile.
"You taught me well, Murkh. I am merely implementing what I was taught."
"You do not steal from your teacher!" Murkh gave a troubled look. Maximillian Gibbs was taught by the doctor? No wonder both of them appeared to be odd compared to the rest of the people she had met, thought Vivian to herself. Murkh had pa.s.sed down his peculiar characteristics to Maximilian who had turned out stranger than his mentor, "As proud as I am that you stole my keys and I am extremely proud that you took it without my notice until I found out, you could have directly asked me for it," the doctor went on to complain when the gate to the floor was unlocked by the other vampire.
"What is the fun of asking you when I can whisk them away. Here," he raised his hand which had the keys for Murkh to take it away. Vivian followed Maximillian who took her to the corner of the whole ground where it had two doors. For a second, the man gave a look at both the doors before jerking his head to the left door, "He"s in this one. If you will do the honours, doctor," he stepped away for Murkh to come forward and open the lock of the room. Pus.h.i.+ng the door wide open, Vivian caught glimpse of the sleeping boy on the small bed of the small room.
Very slowly, Vivian approached the boy. Both Murkh and Maximillian stood at the door until Murkh went to do something else as he had to look at a body which he was testing as the next subject.
When Vivian came to stand next to the bed, she heard Maximillian warn her, "You should be careful what you touch, Lady Vivian. Not everything is harmless. You saw what happened up there," she could see the boy who had his eyes closed who seemed to be in a deep sleep.
"What do you think happened up there, Mr. Gibbs?" she had wanted to know but he was as clueless as any of them who now gathered around the cell room.
"It is hard to say."
Continuing to stare the boy who"s back was turned to face them, she crouched down before sitting on her knees. Raising her hand, which wavered just like her mind with questions, she pushed the boy"s s.h.i.+rt to take a look at the mark she had seen in the courtroom. The devil"s mark which was a crescent-shaped semi-circle that had two lines marked at the lower ends marked on the boy"s back.
Wanting to sate her mind with the questions that had bubbled for some time now, her fingers touched the mark, running them along the curve until she came to the two lines were one of them had a subtle b.u.mp. Her brows knit together and she ran her finger over it again while also making sure she didn"t wake the boy up.
Maximillian who had been standing at the door, leaning the side of his body saw the girl stand up and step out of the room, hearing her ask Murkh a wet cloth with which she came back. While on her way back to the room, the pureblooded vampire glanced at the boy who laid still in the bed which was odd considering he didn"t hear the inhaled and exhale of air nor the beating of the heart.
Walking to the bed, the man gave the boy a suspicious look before turning the little human"s shoulder to sleep flat on his back when he noticed the decayed face which had turned dark.
"Lady Vivian, this boy is dead or should I say has been dead for some good time," he declared when Vivian came to stand next to him, who gasped softly as her eyes fell on the little boy.
Vivian looked at the boy wide-eyed. Her lips that were parted, no words came out of it.
"He doesn"t appear to be dead since for a few hours but rather in terms of days," she heard Maximilian speak beside her. He went to look at the eyes that were closed, pulling the eyelids to have a look and then the face.
"Can you please fetch Leo for me, Mr Gibbs?" she requested.
"I will ask Murkh to get him. I cannot leave you with a dead body alone. Especially not after what happened up there. Give me a few seconds, " he gave her a bright smile to disappear out of the room.
A shudder threatened down her body when she looked down his neck to find the veins that had popped out, making it more prominent on the skin. He was really dead as when she placed her full open hand on his chest, she couldn"t feel the beating of his heart in there. First, it was Mr Senielton who died in a bizarre mysterious way no one could guess and now the boy had died. What was happened in here? Had it something to do with cell rooms or these buildings that were haunted? Her belief in the existence of ghosts and spirits only deepened at the thought of the possibilities.
But why kill the boy? It was something she didn"t understand and the only way she could find out was to read him.
Not waiting, she held the dead boy"s hand in hers which took time for her to read before she was teleported in time to look at the boy where she could hear the boy"s cries. As the smoke cleared her vision, she saw the boy whose hand she currently held was tied at the stone bed with a few people surrounding it.
"Stop crying already, my child," the woman who stood at his head cooed at him, "You"re going to be just fine, "Come now turn your back so that we can start the ritual," said the woman. It was a quiet forest which was away from the town they lived in and as Vivian saw the boy turn around, a man pa.s.sed right next to her whom Vivian identified him to be the father. His two sisters stood at his side but there was something that bothered Vivian when she looked at the older sister.
"Ariel, come here. I need you to cross the mark as the ritual is going to affect you," said the woman. Picking up a sharp knife, she carved something on the boy"s back making him screech out in pain, "One more word of cry and I will seal your lips for good. Now shut up. Don"t forget that what you are doing now is for your sister and for our sake and your sake."
"M-mother, it hurts. Pl-please s-stop," the boy cried, pleading for his mother to stop carving his back with the ritual they were doing.
"This is your punishment for costing us today"s customer. We had the man but you had to spoil it," his father placed a hot pot which had hot coals burning inside it. Snow bed covered the ground of the rest, making it known that it was a recent event that had taken place and not something too far in the past. The wind was cold and stronger than the days she lived in, air breezing through and whispering which moved past the trees in the forest.
The four elders who surrounded the boy began whispering spells while the boy cried silently before a piercing pain made through the boy"s lips. The mother of the boy, picked up a rock that laid next to her feet to smash it right over his head once and twice and several times until the boy stopped moving.
"What else is in there? I don"t see any changes as of yet," the mother wiped her face which had bloodstains, "Do you feel anything? Oh, wait-" she stopped talking. Vivian"s eyes fell on the elder daughter whose face had begun to change as if she were shapes.h.i.+fting and taking a better form with her features turning delicate. The three of the family members looked at the girl in awe until she had completely morphed into a newer look.
"You look beautiful, sister!" the other girl came to gush at her as she stared at her older sister.
"This is perfect!" clapped the mother with glee, "Now all you have to do is find the right man and remove us from the debt. With the rest of the ritual, we don"t have to worry about anything. Think about the right man, dear," advised the mother as the scene began to s.h.i.+ft to another one. This time she was inside a house where the lights had been blown out.
At first, she saw nothing, it was a quiet peaceful house where Vivian"s first guess was that the family who resided in here were sleeping. Hearing a utensil drop on the ground with a loud clatter, her eyes moved in the direction of the sound to see the mother of the boy on the ground. The woman gasped for air, her hands reaching the ground to escape when the boy appeared behind her with a knife in his hand.
It made Vivian confused, then to realize it wasn"t the boy in living but the boy had come back to kill his entire family. She saw him follow his mother, his mother begging for mercy but with the way he looked down at her, sadness in his eyes there was nothing in there for his mother who had killed him herself for the sake of money.
Going to her, the boy sliced his mother"s neck like he had killed the rest of the family while saving his mother to be the last one before the scene started to smoke and bring back Vivian to her present. With her hand still holding the boy"s hand, she immediately retreated it back in fear that the ghost might still be in there.
Her heartbeat increased, the sound reaching her ears. Her eyes continued to look at the boy with closed eyes, his body leaving out a faint odour of death which increased in time to indicate that death had visited him much longer than today.