This was some kind of medical office. Silver tools gleamed in the light from my lamp, lining the wall behind a metal table with holes on the ends to drain liquid from the working surface. Jarred and bottled bodily fluids and parts graced the shelving unit beside where I stood at the door, packaged in much the same way as the more mainstream spell ingredients upstairs. Two shelves of books sat above the containers, and beside the table was another bookcase, full from top to bottom of journals and cordoned off by a white curtain. In one corner sat a cage, the size you would use for a large dog if they needed to be kept put for a while.
I had a bad feeling the cage hadn’t been used for animals.
“This is creepy as fuck,” I murmured to myself, finding a doorstop and shoving it firmly beneath the door to keep it open.
If I got locked in here, I wouldn’t need a ghost to kill me. I’d die from a panic-induced heart attack.
Off to my right was another door, but I didn’t move to it yet. Instead, I scanned the spines of the books and pulled one off the shelf.
I nearly dropped it.
The cover was splashed with a dark substance, faintly sticky and coppery smelling. It wasn’t the deep red of blood, more of a cool dark blue. Likely blood from someone or something not like us witches and humans. I shoved the book back on the shelf, picking up a different one.
No bodily fluids stained this book, except for the sticky black fingerprints I was leaving on the leather cover. When I flipped open to the title page, a familiar name stared up at me. Dex Moran. My gut churned as I glanced over my shoulder at the room again. Picking up a different book, I opened it. Dex Moran. Another. Dex Moran. To be sure, I opened a fourth book and their name made me gag.
Whoever used this underground lair was a fanatical follower of Dex Moran. Whether it was my Uncle Felix or someone else, the ominous feeling made sense now. The ‘inhuman creatures’ Moran talked about in their books had been experimented on here. Dissected, sometimes, if the body parts were any indication.
I lost control of my stomach at that thought, rushing a few steps to the side to avoid puking all over the books. I heaved onto the cage, instead, tears leaking from my eyes at the sheer horror of what I’d found, and the discomfort of being sick.
When I’d rid myself of everything in my stomach, I stood to my full height on shaky legs and wiped the back of my clean hand across my mouth. I didn’t want to know what was beyond door number two, but if I didn’t check, I’d always wonder. No one would still be alive down here — with the rust and the dust, they couldn’t have had a visitor bringing them food. But would there be bodies? Bones?
I ignored it for a moment longer, grabbing the first journal off the top left corner of the bookcase. From the first page, none of the words made a lick of sense. They were coded, and likely coded a second time to be sure. All I could glean anything from were the pictures. A smiling woman with light brown hair starred in the first few. Then there was a blurry picture of a newborn baby. Blank pages followed, like the author had been waiting for the right time to add more notes.
Had the baby died? Was that why the notes had ended?
Even knowing the likelihood was low, I chose to assume the baby and mother had escaped the clutches of the experiments, and gone on to live long and healthy lives.
Halfway through the journal, a new person was pictured, and the notes started anew. A female orc, pictured beside a metre stick to show how small she was compared to the average of her species. I didn’t flip through to the end of her notes. Part of me didn’t want to know, and the sick person who’d done these experiments might have included pictures of the subject’s manner of death.
I grabbed the next journal, and the next, and the next, seeing face after face etched in terror. A mother and son. An elderly elf. Twins, holding each other’s fingers because it’s all they could feel of each other in different cages. Then I stumbled across an image of a woman, eerily familiar.
Sucking in a breath, I tried desperately to read the words, but the code was far too complex for me to wish it into breaking.
A pixie woman, small as a human child like all pure pixies were, with straight grey hair and a bulging pregnant belly. She was bigger than she should be, too big. I didn’t turn the page, because I didn’t want to know what she’d looked like as the pregnancy had progressed. Her delicate features reminded me of Waylon, and he wasn’t a pure pixie, which I hadn’t even thought was possible.
Apparently, cross-breeding a pixie was only possible via horrific experimentation.
I stopped with the journals.
There was no way for me to decode them before dying, and considering the ghostly guard of the staircase, I no longer thought any clues were hiding in the basement. In fact, it was more likely he’d known exactly how terrified of ghosts I was, and assumed I’d never find my way down here. This was a dirty little secret, whether he was the mad scientist responsible or not.
Making my way over to the other door instead, I pressed my ear against the wood. No sounds came from the other side. Magic tickled against my senses, but wasn’t strong enough to be a trap.
No lock stopped me from opening the door right up, so I steeled myself and pushed down the handle. It didn’t open. I frowned and tried again.
The door didn’t move a single centimetre, which made no sense. There was no deadbolt, and if the other side was padlocked the door would have moved a little before stopping. But it didn’t move at all. It was like pulling on a piece of lead too heavy to budge from its place.
Curious, I hefted my hammer in my arms and tested the theory bouncing around in my head. Swinging the head down against the wood, the force ricocheted through my arms and into my skull. Not a dent, only the muffled sound of metal hitting wood.
Someone had spelled this door to ensure no one went beyond. I hadn’t the slightest clue why they would do that when this room had been open past the initial ghostly guardian, but I wasn’t keen on finding out at the moment. This medical chamber of horrors was bad enough. There couldn’t be anyone alive down here, so I didn’t need to feel obligated to save them. I wasn’t capable even if there were people to be saved.
At this rate, I wouldn’t be able to getmyselfout of Hadley House, let alone anyone else.
My heart was heavy when I backed away from the door. “You can’t do anything about it,” I said, checking every shelf in the room one more time in hopes I’d find something useful. “You’re going to get out of here, and when you do, you’ll tell the Hallowed Council about this place. They can sort through this mess. One archive specialist can’t be expected to do much more than that.”
No matter how many times I said it to myself, I still felt guilty, the ‘what ifs’ bogging me down. By the time I made it back up the endless flight of stairs, I’d worried my lip raw from the thoughts. Stepping into Felix’s bedroom, I smiled at how Abraxas was still curled up under all my now-cooled heated blankets. The cute moment was followed by the searing pain of an arrow through my chest.
I barely cried out anymore, the pain so familiar. I only sighed.
