Midnight's Song (39 page)

Beeti sifted through the
bottles, reading none of their labels aloud. It seemed that she
already had something specific in mind. After a few minutes of
searching through the crate, Beeti curled her fingers around a dark
blue vial that quickly found its way into her pocket. The name
didn’t matter, nor did its contents. All that seemed to matter to
her were a few small words printed on the back:

WARNING: INTOXICATION AND
HALLUCINATION MAY OCCUR WITH MISUSE

Right then, Emily came
back into the room with towels and a new glass of water. Beeti
discreetly hid the bottle from view and slipped it into her apron
pocket. She smirked for a moment, standing up in place.
Grandmamma’s expression was weary, but it was no less distressed.
She knew exactly what her daughter must have been about to do, yet
every time she tried to open her mouth to get out a word it was
completely futile.

“Well, I suppose I’ll leave you with
Mother now,” Beeti jovially told the maid. “I’ll be retiring for
the night. Goodnight to your both.”

Beeti got up and left the room,
Grandmamma so frustrated that she was now in tears. Seeing the
tears pouring down her cheeks but unable to know their cause, Emily
wiped them away gently. She softly patted her on the hand as a
comforting gesture, completely unaware of anything that Grandmamma
was trying to communicate that she had seen or heard.

“It’s alright Lady Abilene,” she
softly told her as she patted the towels over the wet spots on the
bed. “I’m sorry about the mess later, but I’m here for you now.
There’s nothing to worry about.”

Oh, but there was. Still
unaware of the truth, Emily had hoped her words were of some
consolation. Now it was evident that there was something else going
on. For a moment, Emily stopped wiping with the towels and froze.
The woman’s eyes said everything.

Meanwhile, I had long since collapsed
onto my bed and fallen into an immediate, deep sleep. I had hardly
enough time to change into my bedclothes before drifting into
unconsciousness. It’s a wonder that anyone would have been able to
wake me at such a time as this – being nearly comatose – but, magic
never really ceases to amaze.

Only but a few minutes into my
slumber, I found myself awakened by the strangest, most harmonious
noise. I opened my eyes and sat up in a complete daze, almost as if
I was sleepwalking. It was a feeling of sleepwalking, yet I wasn’t
really tired at all. Almost involuntarily, I stepped out of bed and
slipped on a pair of satin slippers.

Conveniently enough, there was a thick
velvet cloak hanging just beside the door that I quickly draped
over my shoulders. Something in me knows that it must have been
there for a reason; because in all honesty I was clad only in my
under-slip and I probably wouldn’t have thought to put it on any
other way.

“What on earth is that
sound?”

It continued
calling, sounding almost as if it was a symphony. Yet, it wasn’t
quite a symphony. It wasn’t quite a song. All I can say is that I
know that it was certainly a
call.
My feet carried me down the hallway to the door
that led into the servants’ quarters. At first I didn’t do much at
all, my body acting almost as if it was on
auto-pilot.

I reached the door and
turned its knob. On the other side of the door was a lantern. I
took it into my hand and found myself winding downward on an almost
endless pathway, slowly regaining my consciousness with each step
as I realized that I was climbing downward without knowledge or
reason into an unknown world.

In the manor, Beeti
had already retracted to a place that anywhere
but
her quarters. She had been
planning on how she might go through with this, knowing that she
would have the Magistrate’s blessing regardless. Poison in tote,
she found herself taking a seat in the dark room beside the
sparsely-visited grand staircase.

Strange things had seemed to happen in
this room…this event being strange nonetheless. Beeti was here for
a reason – a dark reason. She was here to meet someone, yet in the
last 24 hours no one had come or gone from the Devereaux Manor. You
see – this wasn’t an ordinary meeting.

She took a seat and
reached underneath a small, makeshift table that had been placed
there for the purpose of this very meeting. She slipped her hand
into a secret compartment at the bottom of the table and pulled out
a large, leather book. It was my book – the one that I had used to
help piece together my mystery and by now had nearly forgotten. She
cracked it open and dug her fingers in between its pages until she
found a card that was tucked in between what had
seemed
to be but a
single page of the book.

Beeti pulled out the card and held it
up in the dim candlelight. A gloating smirk rolled across her face
when she read its unspeakable words, for these were truly the key
to getting what she wanted. The act she was about to perpetrate
seemed unthinkable, but after months and months of utter spite
against me; Beeti’s goodness had been completely eaten away. These
words were the only way she could consult with her great schemer,
the grand mediator who was going to help her achieve everything
that she had always wanted. You see, these words were no simple
passage or poem.

The words on the
card were a
spell.

As Emily cared for
Grandmamma far down the halls, she couldn’t help but take notice of
the fact that Grandmamma wouldn’t stop crying. Since she couldn’t
form words properly, my grandmother reckoned that this was her only
chance to stop her daughter. She could sense what her daughter was
doing before anyone else could – and she was
not
going to let herself be
powerless to it. Despite the fact that she was frail, she didn’t
cease her attempts to tell Emily what needed to be
done.

“Milady,” Emily told Lady
Abilene in concern, “are you alright?”

For about 10 minutes now, Lady Abilene
had been crying non-stop. She couldn’t move her hands, but now she
had mustered up just enough strength to weakly move her mouth. As
she struggled to move her jaw and mouth the words, Emily realized
that Grandmamma must have seen or heard something grave. There was
danger in the air, and now she could sense it.

BEETI,
she seemed to be mouthing. She mouthed the word
three or four times, after that moving herself to take in enough
air to vaguely outline it for her with sound. “
B-ee-ti!
” She finally expelled, the
first word she’d said all day long. In shock, Emily
froze.

“What about Beeti? Is she in
trouble?”

“
N-no,”
she murmured again.
“
Danger!”

After those two
words, Grandmamma lost all of her strength and collapsed even
further into her pillow. Though the description was vague, it was
enough to make Emily realize that she needed to find Beeti. Not
because Beeti was in danger – but because she now sensed
that
I
was.
Emily’s eyes were suddenly averted to tray on the top of her crate
and her suspicions heightened.

Somehow, she was
able to keenly notice that the once-orderly array of medications on
the top of the tray was discombobulated. It was disorganized beyond
what it had been when a few of the bottles had been
ever-so-intentionally knocked over. No – this was different.
Exactly how Emily saw it or sensed it, I still have yet to
understand. But she saw that these bottles were more than just
disorganized – they had been
tampered
with. When she went through
them all again she compared them to an inventory list that was
situated at the bottom of the crate. If there was a bottle missing,
this list would surely tell her which one it was.

After a few moments
of reckoning, she found that one bottle
was
in fact missing. It couldn’t
have been an anomaly, either – not with
this
kind of a medication. She did a
tally once again, then again after that just to be sure. At first,
she was in disbelief. Then, she was in denial. After those two, she
almost found herself in hysteria. The drug that had been taken was
one of the most potent and dangerous of all when misused or abused,
and for many it was a drug of choice for that
reason.

“No,” Emily shook
her head in disbelief. “She took the
darclooxide!”

At the same time, I continued down the
stairs as if I was in a waking dream. The way was steep, but I had
a light to guide me that was so bright that I was unusually content
with it. Even though I made my way alone, it also felt as if I had
someone guiding me down the steps softly. The steps became caverns,
the wooden boards soon becoming damp stone steps. Yet, in the cool
underground I felt shrouded by overwhelming warmth.

I continued downwards
until one single moment in which I realized what was going on. When
I did, the feeling of warmth and the sight of my guiding light
vanished. My intoxicating daze faded all at once. I took note of
the corridor surrounding me and was terrified.

“Hello?” I meekly called out, my
exhaustion catching up to me at this time as well. I heard a small
sound – perhaps a small drip or a creak in the cellar – and
panicked at the sudden thought that I was being followed. “Is there
anyone here?”

In the next second,
I had panicked so severely that I lost all of my inhibitions and
started mindlessly running down the slick stone stairwell. The room
was dark now, and as hard as I tried I couldn’t turn my lamp back
on. Before I had started running, I desperately felt around the
base of the lamp to see if there was a switch, button, or knob that
would turn it back on. Oddly enough – there
wasn’t
one at all. It was as if my
blind faith and euphoric calm had caused it to light my path. Now
that those were gone, the single inclination of doubt in my soul
had caused it to remain dark.

So now, I was
running. Running like a mindless chicken down a stairwell with no
railings, no grip, and not even a wall on the left side. Even
though it would seem more like I was about to run
into
the abyss on the
left, in my mind I was most certainly running
from
it.

By God’s grace, I reached
the bottom of the cellar unscathed. Though, when I reached the
bottom, the steps were slippery enough to cause me a slight fall.
When I stopped at the bottom, there was absolutely nothing to hold
on to – and just like that I ended up toppling over face-first onto
the ground. No bones were broken, but I did bust my lower lip. I
had quit my lip-biting habit long ago, I realized as the familiar
blood leeched onto my tongue.

I caught a glimpse
of a lit corridor just a few feet from where I was standing. It had
almost seemed to appear there in just these last few minutes. I got
up and hurried toward it. Now the ground beneath my feet was dry,
and the torch-lit pathway actually gave me a bit of warmth. Before
I knew it, I found myself standing before a great towering wooden
door. Something in me knew to push my way through – I was
drawn
to.

When I opened the doors I found myself
standing in a torch-lit courtyard. I looked upwards and saw that
there was a vast, spiraling ceiling looming above my head. It was
just barely lit by the torchlight until the lights faded into its
towering immensity. The room was silent, and I was completely
alone. On every wall there was a long, rectangular mirror – but as
close as I came to them I still saw no reflection. I came close to
them and investigated them in every way that I could have, but was
left perplexed until a single noise broke the silence I was
shrouded in.

“If you’re looking for a
reflection I don’t think you’ll have any luck. That’s not a
mirror,” a voice came from behind.

“Aurelian,” I told him,
hypnotized. “It’s you.”

While I was presently away from the
family, great events were beginning to unravel in the house. No one
had yet noticed I was gone, and Beeti had retreated to the room I
was confined to on the day of my unfortunate humiliation. She held
a dastardly card in her hands, holding it up to a black candle so
that she might read its spellbinding mantra. As she recited the
words, she began burning the card over the flame. This was the way
that Magistrate had told her she would be able to get what she
wanted – and this was the way that it would certainly be
done.

“
Come to me, O Great
Power!

I summon thee this very
hour

I summon thee to come to
my aid

To carry out a deed of
fate.”

As Beeti continued, it became evident
in the room that dark magic was at work already. The card burnt up
in the oddest, most peculiar fashion. With every line that she
chanted, that part of the spell on the card burnt up and
disappeared. The fire did not consume it all at once, but what
somehow controlled by the speed at which the spell was read. It
continued to burn at this speed and in this fashion until the very
moment that chanting stopped. Beeti continued: