Chapter #52Something Special in the Blood by: Seuzz   You scrutinize the canes thoughtfully, carefully. They're made of hickory wood, but not only of that hard, sturdy material. Grandmother fashioned them herself, infusing them with her blood, making them magical.
Her blood. Her essentia.
The old witch had magical talents and magical instincts, but little learning. She had no notion of theory, only knew that her blood--the blood of the Shabblemans--gave her power.
It's her power in the canes, so they will not obey you.
You'll have to do something about that. And The Still is the place to start.
* * * * *
After lunch you walk over to the church and descend into the basement. The Still hangs malignantly from the ceiling. You study its pipes and tubes and chambers, using Grandmother's own memories to guide you.
She didn't build it, and it's been a partial ruin for most of her life. But--
The needle goes into a victim. The fluid is drawn into that pressure cooker. Two tubes lead from it: a small one leads up into the ceiling, while a much larger one leads to the huge glass chamber. The latter is an evil-looking swirl of curves and bulbs that your eyes can barely take in; and your mind rebels from contemplating it too closely. From there large metal pipes lead to the three steel tanks. Each of them, in turn, has a kind of faucet hanging from the far end. It's from these that the tanks can be flushed.
There's a lot more to it than that--many wires and valves and dials, and there's that wooden console box in the corner. That's the device that connects the whole diabolical apparatus to the organ upstairs. You go back up the ladder to examine the latter.
It's a pipe organ, a thing even more complicated than The Still itself, and all the more complicated for being attached to the thing in the basement. It's a kind of control board for The Still, and Grandmother has used it in the past to flush the contents from the tanks. She has no idea of what the stuff is that comes out, but has always saved off the contents.
Sitting on the organ is a kind of hymnal: a manual for using the organ. Grandmother never uses any but the page of music it is opened to, for she only knows that it works to flush out The Still. And now that machine contains the remnants of four people: Frank and Joe Durras; Rosalie Stewart; and Grandmother herself. You've no idea how much The Still can hold, but you know it keeps its victims' fluids segregated, for Grandmother has used the machine on more than one person before prior to flushing it. It works on a "first in, last out" principle, so you know whose fluids will come pouring out with each action of the organ.
* * * * *
It takes the whole afternoon to draw off the tanks, and you do it with Nate's help: Upstairs, you work the organ controls while he draws off the fluids into some of Grandmother's special glass bottles. You'd need his help anyway, for some the bottles are very heavy: two of the tanks discharge a glowing fluid, but the third squirts a heavy, gray, viscous paste that must be incredibly dense, for each bottle it fills weighs at least a hundred pounds. You have Nate arrange them in four groups of three bottles each, and after you've dismissed him you label each bottle with the name of a victim: "Frank Durras"; "Joe Durras"; "Rosalie Stewart"; but you leave the last batch blank, for you are not going to put Grandmother's name on them. You lock up the church as night is falling, and return to the Big House to let Will Shabbleman out of the box.
"You've lost all credit with me, boy, after that foolishness with the Minotaur," you tell him afterward in the parlor. You're lounging on the sofa, one leg lazily crossed over the other, arms spread out, taunting him with the loveliness of the girl he can no longer claim for himself. "Only that credit stayed my hand with Beater and Biter."
"Yes, Grandmother," he says. He looks very drawn, and he is still twitching from his time in the box. But there's a gleam in his eye; and there looks like the faintest shadow of a smirk at his lip.
"But I've one last task for you before we consider your future. The boys whose skins you so foolishly fed to the Minotaur, they would have left certain items down in the lowlands. We want to leave nothing that might draw interest up here. Go back down to Saratoga Falls, and bring all their things up here. I want no sign left of them for others to follow."
"I don't know what all that might be," he objects.
"Then take this with you." You hold out the mask he'd been wearing. "In that, you won't miss anything."
"When do I leave?" he asks as he takes it.
"No time like the present, boy. You do yourself no credit here."
* * * * *
That mission will get him out of your hair for a little while, but you still need to find a way of dealing with him permanently. Oh, sure, maybe you could trap him under a golemized mask. But your resentment of him is such that you'd like to do more to him. That will require some experimentation.
You rise early the next morning and return to the church. Joe, when he came out to Cuthbert, had brought one useful little device with him, and you're eager to try it out on the fluids you'd drawn out of The Still.
It's that little golden disk he had used to test "Melody Weiss", the one with a little silver bead that slides over its surface. It's a kind of essentia detector. Though it doesn't work at long ranges, it is very good at close quarters in confirming the presence of alchemically charged essentia--the kind of stuff that gives you (and which gave Frank and Joe) their magical powers. You are wondering if Grandmother had any of that special juice inside her.
Once you've got the church door locked, you swipe your face until you bring up Joe's form. Kinky, you think to yourself, for you're still in Rosalie's clothes. But there's no time to enjoy the feel of the dress against your (male) body, and trot down into the basement, to kneel beside the jars.
First in, last out. That would be Frank Durras. You maneuver the silver bead over the golden surface. "Maneuver it"? The bead practically leaps to the symbol confirming that one of his bottles contains the magic stuff. You shift over to the second group of bottles: Joe's stuff. Your skin prickles as you work. You're in Joe's form, and it feels weird--even a little creepy--to think that these bottles contain the disassembled metaphysical constituents of the guy whose imago you're wearing.
You stop short at that thought. That thought was Joe's own, and it suddenly makes sense to you. You press the disk against the bottle with the golden fluid: Yes, that's his essentia. The bottle of thick, gooey, heavy paste? That will be the substantia. The skin that got left behind will be a remnant of his imago. And that would make the third bottle, whose contents glow like a liquid, radioactive metal-- Is that his anima? You glance up at the ceiling: You're going to have to look through that hymnal very closely, but you suspect the hunch is correct.
So that's Joe and Frank accounted for, in all their metaphysical pieces. You shift over to the last group, the ones that contain Grandmother. But no matter how you manipulate the disk, the bead steadfastly refuses to slide down the groove that would confirm she had alchemically charged essentia. Instead, it wants to point back at you yourself. No surprise, since you also have the same kind of stuff.
You sigh, but don't give up. For the sake of completeness, you tackle the last batch of stuff, the fluids drawn from Rosalie. The bead quivers and slides and--
You almost drop the disk. Rosalie?
You try again, and it turns up the same result. As with Joe's and Frank's bottles, Rosalie's indicates the presence of special essentia.
You frown. Could you have gotten the sets mixed up and mislabeled? Could Rosalie, that shy, foolish slip of a girl have actually had the makings of a Stellae inside her?
You puzzle over it for a long time, and then give it up as a profitless lot of speculation. Whether it was Rosalie or Grandmother, it hardly matters. The fact is that you've a third set of special Stellae stuff in your collection.
You switch back into Rosalie's form, and sit cross-legged for a very long time, meditating on what to do, and how to do it. Do you use Will Shabbleman as a test subject? He's expendable; indeed, you'd very much like to get rid of him, and victimizing him in a series of experiments would be a pleasant way of doing it.
But your resentment is also such that you're tempted to save him for after you've finished your experiments, to use against him the results of what you hope to learn.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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