#Doctor Theodore Carnaby

[spookyspaghettisundae]

The Doctor's Dilemma

Doctor Theodore Carnaby washed the blood from his hands. The water running from his faucet enraptured his entire attention—a technical marvel recently installed in his practice. He used a brush to scrub his hands and fingers with methodical precision, taking a painstaking amount of time because the blood clung to his skin like tar.

The sound and sight of water continuously pouring from that metal pipe hypnotized him all the while and made the noise of passersby and horse-drawn carriages from the street outside sound a million miles away.

A sheet of fog suffocated the afternoon sun, dimming it to a small bright spot in the sky and forcing him to illuminate the insides of his practice with gas-powered lanterns. He stopped the flow of water, orchestrated by the subtle little screech of him twisting a valve and letting the cold wet drip from his slender hands, still fascinated by this wondrous new installation.

When he turned to grab a towel, he almost jumped out of his skin. Someone stood in the open doorway of his practice, motionless, and without making a sound. Just staring at him.

“G’d day, sir,” Carnaby said after clearing his throat.

He forced himself to smile out of politeness but it did not quite reach his eyes. For that, his visitor’s sudden appearance had frightened him too much. Carnaby quickly dabbed his hands with the towel to dry them off and tossed it aside before approaching.

The visitor tilted his head and returned the same kind of feeble smile. He pushed back the spectacles resting upon his nose, a pair of round and thin-framed silver glasses. The reddish-blonde hair on his head and a pair of light blue eyes lent him an air of vulnerability and innocence.

“Hello,” replied the visitor.

He lifted his right hand, revealing it to be wrapped in a sloppy arrangement of cloth—soaking up a spot of dark red color where his palm must be.

“I had a little,” said the man. He paused and smiled, now with a genuine warmth to it. It reminded Carnaby of the sun on a beautiful summer day. “Uh, a little accident. This requires a good doctor’s touch, and I heard you’re the best in this quarter.”

Carnaby chuckled and nodded.

“Of course, have a seat, Mister,” he said, letting the words trail off for the patient to fill in the blanks.

The patient smiled again. Something about his expression instilled Carnaby with both endearment and something strange. Something the doctor could not quite put his finger on.

“Hanrahan,” said the patient after a long and awkward pause. “Baxter Hanrahan.”

Mister Hanrahan extended his hand for a shake. Carnaby shot a glance down at it and noted that his patient’s fingers were stained dark, while the hand was not calloused, rather soft and thin. He took so long to study Hanrahan’s hand that he followed up with a nervous chuckle.

“I’m terribly sorry Mister Hanrahan. This time of the year, I never shake hands with patients. Wouldn’t want to spread anything unpleasant,” he told him with a wink and a genuine smile.

Hanrahan emitted a nervous chuckle of his own and then nodded in understanding.

“Please, have a seat, and we’ll have a look.”

Carnaby gestured to a stool and fetched his instruments. They settled down and the doctor unraveled the improvised bandage—it appeared to be a simple set of cloth that Hanrahan had torn from something. Hanrahan winced and hissed as he sharply inhaled.

The doctor noted that reaction and revealed a nasty gash on Hanrahan’s palm. It looked to Carnaby as if his patient had cut himself with a kitchen knife, though the placement for such would have been unusual.

Then Carnaby’s stomach knotted. The injury reminded him of a cut he had inflicted upon himself once—a ritualistic cut to shed his own blood for an attempt at practicing alchemy and magick. Could this man also be an occultist?

As soon as he caught himself staring and pondering for far too long, he asked, “What do you do for a living, if I may ask, Mister Hanrahan?”

“Druggist, I’ve set up shop in the upper city,” he said. “Just opened up this autumn and figured it would only be a matter of time until we met.”

“Oh, the upper city? Why didn’t you see Doctor Manning? Not that I’m willing to give up a potential new customer, but he would have been closer to your practice.”

Hanrahan tilted his head again, though a smile stayed absent from his face. He studied Carnaby from behind the thin glasses of his spectacles. They reflected the tiny specks of gaslight from nearby lanterns.

“I live nearby here, not in the upper city. Had a little accident at home and, uh—truly though, I could never afford living in the upper city.”

Their eyes met and Carnaby found himself staring a moment too long. Hanrahan smiled once more, but it felt forced to to the doctor. The patient then cringed and stifled a groan behind gritted teeth. That was when Carnaby noticed he had squeezed Hanrahan’s hand, lost in idle thought.

“Oh dear, I’m terribly sorry. Are you in a lot of pain?”

“Yes, ‘fraid so. I left it alone for a few days and it’s not healing up well, and, well, it’s pretty deep.”

“May I?” asked Carnaby before getting a nod of consent and them then pushing back Hanrahan’s jacket and shirt sleeve together.

This revealed an odd tattoo on the man’s forearm. It bore clear trappings of occult symbols and alchemical formulae. Carnaby averted his eyes as to not stare at them. But the sight of it burned into his mind and stuck there. It would stay there until Hanrahan left his practice that day.

Carnaby took some time to disinfect the injury, stitch it up, and dress it in proper bandages. He noted multiple instances of Hanrahan suppressing sounds of pain.

“Color me curious, Mister Hanrahan, but—as a chemist, don’t you self-medicate against the pain?”

“I’d rather not,” he said. “I like to keep a clear head. For my work.”

Carnaby nodded in approval, cleaned up, and grabbed a small tincture bottle from a cabinet. He held the tiny bottle of laudanum out to Hanrahan and waited for him to take it. His patient just stared at it and Carnaby could witness the gears turning behind his forehead.

“A few drops of this each night should dull the pain and help you sleep better.”

Hanrahan clicked his tongue and said, “I’m all too familiar with the substance, of course. Truth be told, I’m ever wary about overdosing it.”

On reflex, Carnaby fetched a metal syringe from the cabinet and held it out to Hanrahan in his other hand.

“Three millilitres will do fine as you’re not in a terrible amount of pain, and this syringe has precise measurements you can use to ensure the proper dosage.”

“No, really, I’ll be fine,” Hanrahan said. That sun-like smile returned to his face as he added a heartfelt, “Thank you.”

Carnaby shrugged and returned the items to his cabinet. With his back still turned to the patient, Hanrahan asked him, “That syringe is some beautiful craftsmanship, though. I wouldn’t mind having some of those in my pharmacy. Who made it?”

“Johnathan Hill, a tinker who has a shop right down the street,” Carnaby said.

He escorted Hanrahan out and had his assistant take down notes for the visit. The patient took his leave and they exchanged friendly smiles yet again.

Carnaby’s smile faded the moment Hanrahan turned and walked out onto the streets of Crimsonport. The good doctor ignored some question from his assistant—the words barely reached him through his mental fog, incapable of distracting him or piercing his focus.

He locked himself inside his study and unlocked the bottom drawers of his desk. Then he spent the next minutes flipping through his growing collection of occult tomes. The minutes dragged into an hour, and he dismissed another question from his assistant, muffled through a locked door.

The old leather-bound book in his hands slapped down onto his desk, open to the pages he had sought. He sighed, the chemicals of bewilderment, fear, and curiosity mixing together in his brain.

He knew he had seen that symbol before.

“The Shape of Beasts,” it was dubbed in that particular tome. Part of an alchemical process to transform the body of man into that of a beast. Though the author’s theories outlined the idea that the affliction of lycanthropy may have originally stemmed from archaic attempts at using this magick gone awry, it enabled perfect physical transmutation when conducted properly.

Carnaby did not know what to make of this, but he wondered if he should approach Hanrahan and inquire what he knew about alchemy and the occult. The doctor caught himself pacing up and down inside his office, lost in thought. Walking in circles and his mind racing in the opposite direction had made him dizzy.

He decided against doing anything. Perhaps this Baxter Hanrahan had no idea what symbol he bore; perhaps a tattoo artist had copied the symbol without deeper understanding. Besides, the symbol alone meant nothing without conducting the rest of the ritual—as far as Carnaby understood, the glyphs arranged around the circle only served to remind the alchemist how to administer the reagents correctly.

He dismissed every further thought on the matter and took the rest of the day off, closing up shop. Though the vision of Hanrahan’s warm, sunny smile haunted him for the next few nights. And he regularly caught himself exploring the idea of finally finding exchange with another occultist.

But mostly, the smile stayed with him.

Ever since discovering that magick tome in that awful apartment he had stolen it from and expanding his collection from obscure book traders afterwards, Theodore Carnaby had wondered if anybody else out there had such intimate knowledge of working magick.

Here was an opportunity—a possible companion—and he was letting it slip through his fingers.

Part of him wished that there was complications, or some other incident that would bring Hanrahan back into his practice. Part of him wanted to strike out and find Hanrahan’s pharmacy to meet him on his own time. Part of him was just afraid to find out; afraid to clear the fog of uncertainty.

A week later, a thick bank of mist once more suffocated the streets of Crimsonport. It was early in the morning, well before sunrise, and Carnaby was reviewing notes from observations made with another patient the day before when he felt watched. A shiver ran down his spine and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up straight.

Hanrahan was standing there in the doorway, staring at him again. With that wide warm smile. But his face was pale as a sheet.

“G’d day, Doctor Carnaby.”

This time, Hanrahan’s jacket was a bit torn by the shoulder and overall caked in some dust. The collar of his shirt was disheveled and the necktie a bit loose around the center.

Carnaby’s heart skipped a beat when he saw blood dripping from the fingertips of Hanrahan’s left hand.

“Oh goodness. Please, have a seat, Mister Hanrahan.”

The doctor helped him out of his jacket, rolling up his blood-soaked sleeve, and investigating this new wound. Someone had clawed the outer side of Hanrahan’s forearm. The scratches proved to be deep and Carnaby surmised a woman’s nails to have done this.

With swift and decisive action, he treated the injury while asking Mister Hanrahan about it.

“Just last night.”

“Some woman outside the opium den. I think she was hallucinating.”

“No, I came here because it’s still bleeding. I don’t think there’s any need to report this.”

In between each answer, Carnaby sighed. He felt the burning urge to ask Hanrahan about alchemy. Ask him if he knew. Once done, he turned away to wash his hands in the sink. The marvel of the running water had worn off, especially in light of his inner conflict—the internal debate on whether or not to open up to Hanrahan about magick.

The metal squeak of the valve, the soft trickle and flow of water, and the rhythmic scrubbing on his hands still managed to capture his senses.

Without turning from the sink, he asked, “Do you need more laudanum?”

“No, I still have plenty in the bottle you gave me.” Very close.

Carnaby turned to grab the towel and dry his hands off, but Hanrahan stood right there.

Right next to him.

Stunned, the doctor froze in place and found himself lost in the sparkle of Hanrahan’s deep blue eyes. The natural charm the druggist exuded combined with a unique mystery; the wonder Carnaby felt over whether or not this man indulged in occult practices.

They stood so close to each other that the warmth of Hanrahan’s breath upon his skin mesmerized him. Carnaby’s gut instinct told him to take a step back, but his heart pounded with fury against the inside of his chest, pulling him forward and urging him to lean in for a kiss.

Hanrahan tilted his head in that same strange way he always did and gave the doctor another one of his warm smiles, melting away Carnaby’s ability to do anything.

“Thanks again, Doctor.”

With that, he left. Through the haze of his mental paralysis, it dawned on Carnaby only with delay how wide his eyes must have been and how he had stared after Hanrahan as he left the practice and shot another glance at him over his shoulder. Gone, just like that.

When he snapped out of it, his assistant had already seen Hanrahan off and his most fascinating patient had already left.

The rest of the day flew by in a delirious blur. Carnaby’s mind kept circling back to that moment of attraction and frustration with his lack of ability to act upon it. In between, he barely thought about the clue that hinted at Hanrahan’s interest in the occult.

In the weeks that followed, visits to the opium den, several parties, and some lectures at the university slowly diluted Carnaby’s obsession with the enigma that was Baxter Hanrahan.

He often perished the thought of never seeing him again and considered himself a coward for not seeking his company in his free time. He knew how to find the pharmacy, if he really wanted to.

But he did not. Part of him was afraid.

The press making a big spectacle out of the “Outer Wall Reaper"—a serial killer murdering brothel women in the city’s slums—moved Carnaby to avoid being outside alone too often. It also made him start worrying about Baxter Hanrahan’s safety.

One day, while washing his hands in the sink again, he felt a gaze upon him. The hairs stood up on the back of Carnaby’s neck. Someone stood in the doorway, staring at him.

He turned and expected to see Hanrahan’s smile.

Instead, he beheld the stern face of a police constable. A giant of a man clad in black, the lawman lifted his helmet in greeting. In the reception room behind him, the silhouettes of other figures and a renowned private detective stood out.

In a low, voluminous voice, the constable asked, "Doctor Carnaby?”

The doctor confirmed.

“I need to speak to you about a criminal investigation regarding the murders in the outer city. Have you seen this before?”

The constable’s meaty fingers pinched a metal syringe between them, holding it out on display for the doctor to take in its appearance. The same syringe Carnaby had given Hanrahan.

Doctor Carnaby’s heart skipped a beat.

—Submitted by Wratts

[spookyspaghettisundae]

The Scent of Failure

The sun glared on a bright day near the end of a suffocatingly cold winter. The many buildings and streets of the city of Crimsonport teemed with life. A horse-drawn car thundered over the cobblestones. The driver reined the horses in and they neighed as the wagon came to a halt.

From its side door emerged a man in a dark coat, carrying a small black bag. He combed his hair down with a fine hand, but the curly mane popped right back up into the unruly shape his rough night had given it. He placed his hat on top of it and barely straightened the collar of his shirt while giving a curt nod to the driver in parting.

With a pleasant sharpness, the fresh air stung Doctor Theodore Carnaby’s nostrils. He rounded the wagon just before it took off with the crack of a whip and the clopping of hooves. The chatter of passersbys in the vicinity reached his ears but remained unintelligible to him. His head still swam from his recent visit to the opium den.

Approaching the entrance to the house on Miller’s Street, he looked the quaint and narrow row house up and down. Broken thoughts spun around and clouded his mind, distracting him from the task at hand.

Doctor Carnaby waited. A minute or two since he had rapped upon the door for entrance, feeling like eternity, passed. He had filled the time with a haphazard attempt at discerning the smell of his own breath, and reminiscing about his encounter with a curious lady dressed in men’s fashion.

He took a deep breath and exhaled sharply. The fresh air carried a hint of upcoming spring and worked wonders on his spirits. He had work to do.

The door opened by the hand of a short elderly woman in her sixties, by the physician’s estimate. Missus Gillis cracked a smile at Doctor Carnaby, from which a few front teeth were missing. She looked otherwise to be in good health and possess good posture.

“Oh, you are much younger than what I had imagined, Mister Carnaby.”

He removed his hat and returned the smile with a brief introduction.

Missus Gillis allowed him inside, closed the door behind him, and guided him past the narrow stairways leading up.

Something unpleasant hit Carnaby like a slap in the face. His nostrils flared and he could not prevent his face from wrinkling in disgust. A terrible smell lingered in the air here and reminded him of rotten eggs. Or rotten cabbages. The awful combination of different stenches blended together while remaining just faint enough to defy definition.

Carnaby paused and pointed up at the stairs.

“I gather there are other parties living in this building?”

Gillis looked back at him and nodded. When she smiled this time, it did not reach her eyes.

He could sense the awkward air between them—she expected him to pose another question about the smell, but he remained silent about it. He then gestured to the door at the end of the entry hall.

“Shall we?”

They moved on and entered the Gillis residence proper, a simple flat on the ground floor. Carnaby spent the next half hour tending to his patient, William Gillis. The doctor identified two issues plaguing the elderly man—a case of bronchitis and influenza coming together to weather William.

All the while, Missus Gillis watched with hawkish attention, posing questions. Carnaby was used to this and performed his work with the patience of a saint, displaying diligence and professional swiftness that appeared to impress her.

All the while, he tried to ignore that smell. Although its strength in the hall outside the flat proved to be far greater, a faint reminder of it lingered in the air, even in the couple’s flat. Carnaby’s work and dedication distracted him well enough for the time being, taking his mind off of the smell itself.

The clock tower’s famous bell ringing pulled him out of everything and reminded Carnaby that he had more patients to visit that morning. After giving Mister Gillis some instructions and a prescription, Missus Gillis quickly ushered the doctor out the door.

Outside the flat and between it and the building’s front door, the smell hit Carnaby’s nose in full force. It reminded him of something in between the smell of a barn and—now that he thought of it more carefully—a morgue.

Before reaching the front door, he swiveled and asked. He had to ask.

“Excuse me, but what is that—that, you know?”

She stared intently into Carnaby’s eyes. Something about her expression struck the doctor as grim, but he could not quite explain why.

“That smell? Oh, I don’t know,” she said. Then her voice lowered into a whisper before adding, “Our upstairs neighbor, Gregory Gardiner, bless his soul. I am not one to judge personal hygiene, for he has always been a lovely neighbor. Quiet, always keeps to himself.”

Carnaby looked past her, up the stairs. Just shadows. A darkness loomed above the steps. He felt watched and once she had stopped talking, things had turned so quiet inside the building that he could hear Mister Gillis cough through the walls and someone talking outside on the streets.

His chin crinkled and he gave Missus Gillis a feeble smile, wishing her a good day.

Only after leaving and hearing the door click shut behind him did it occur to Carnaby—Missus Gillis’ hands had been balled into fists during their last exchange. Everything added up to leaving an unsettling feeling within the doctor’s stomach.

He walked to his next home visit, hoping that the fresh air would clear his nose and mind of that damned smell.

It lingered far too long for comfort, and wondering what might have caused it continued to resurface and occupy his thoughts for a while.

Doctor Carnaby had forgotten about it come next week when he visited Mister Gillis once more. Upon Missus Gillis admitting him into the entry hall, he paused again.

The smell had not gotten worse, nor had it gotten better. Carnaby reckoned last time that it reminded him of rotten things, but this time it reminded him of raw sewage.

Missus Gillis turned when she noticed he had paused once more in the hallway. She gave him that smile again—the one that never quite reached her eyes. Unlike all the other smiles she gave the good doctor for his work and earnest care, this one puzzled Carnaby. He could not make sense of what she meant to convey with it.

“How long has this been—”

“Just a few weeks,” she replied, cutting into his word.

Ever fiber of her, every limb had stiffened with tension. Carnaby clicked his tongue and nodded. They must have gotten used to the smell by now.

He mustered a feeble smile and gestured to the door to the flat. Missus Gillis led the way once more.

In his peripheral vision, Carnaby saw someone standing in the darkness atop the stairs. Discerning the gaunt, frail figure of the person sent a shiver down his spine, even though he could see little more beyond a silhouette and thin fingers curled around the banister above.

He blinked and looked up, disbelieving that the fingernails he had seen were pitch-black like tar. But the hand had already retracted and the mysterious figure melted into the shadows. This made the doctor shiver again.

Carnaby shook off the eerie sensation, shook his head to match, and followed Missus Gillis. She already stood by the open door to her flat and stared at the doctor. Judging by her eyes, she had noticed that Carnaby witnessed something odd. The tense air about her remained, and she stiffly directed him to enter.

The smell’s potency waned inside the couple’s home, but the doctor could have sworn that it had grown stronger than it was last time he had paid William Gillis a visit.

In a spot above the room in which Mister Gillis rested in his own bed, the ceiling had developed an odd discoloration—a dark spot, like mildew spreading. Carnaby wondered if it had been there last time and he had simply not noticed it, as the sunlight flooding the room shone brighter this day.

For now, he paid little attention to the spot and focused on his patient. He communicated his assessment to both Dorothy and her husband: William was recovering gradually and the doctor had no serious concerns regarding his health. By the time he visited them again next week, William should be fully cured again—hell, he might as well visit Carnaby in his own practice.

On the way to the door, Missus Gillis knocked over a vase and it shattered. Shame about the old relic, Carnaby thought. Not only had it looked like something from the far east and valuable, but quite pretty. The woman scurried to clean it up and Carnaby offered to see himself out, which she greeted with gratitude.

Almost having forgotten about it and gotten used to the smell himself, a foul stench struck him again when he exited the Gillis flat. More powerful than ever before. Carnaby closed the door behind him and gagged upon trying to catch his breath.

Just by the door leading outside, he heard a faint groan from upstairs and stopped dead in his tracks. The cold fingers of dread tickled the back of his neck and skull as he looked back over his shoulder, peering up the stairs. No figure to be seen, he stared into that darkness.

Part of him would have felt a strange sense of relief to see that slender figure there, but no such luck. The absence of any person around unsettled him even more, and some part of him considered leaving to fetch a police constable to investigate.

Something was wrong here.

He weighed his oath to do no harm against the possibility of intruding on someone’s privacy. Meanwhile, the aromas of rotten eggs and feces assaulted his sense of smell. How in the blazes could the Gillis’ ever get used to such a stench? He nearly lept out of his skin when a door upstairs slammed shut.

Taking that as a cue, Carnaby left without further action.

Again, his personal life and work kept him busy enough to push the experiences in that building back into the darkest recesses of his mind. They did creep up on him one night when he whiled away his time in the opium den. In a quiet moment of sobriety, the image of that slender figure and those spindly fingers crossed his mind. He broke out in a cold sweat and pushed the memory back down, as deep and far away as he could.

A week later, Missus Gillis summoned Carnaby back to their home. Contrary to the doctor’s predictions, something was wrong—William was bed-ridden again. Immediately upon reading her letter, a palpable dread overcame the doctor. He remembered that foul smell and the vision of that figure atop the stairs. He had hoped in his heart of hearts to not have to go to that damned house ever again.

Thick clouds hung low in the sky on the day he made his visit to the couple’s home again. A mist rolled through the streets. Tiny needle-pricks of drizzle amidst the cool spring air pelted Carnaby’s exposed skin.

Arriving outside the building, his hand froze before he rapped his knuckles against the door. His stomach knotted and his heart raced. Strange apprehension overcame Doctor Carnaby. He felt like something awful was about to happen.

Instead of knocking, he tried to open the front door.

The lack of resistance meant it was unlocked. The handle turned according to Carnaby’s will and the door swung inside.

And there it was again. That terrible smell. The most powerful it had ever been.

Carnaby covered his mouth and nose with a hand and nearly choked on it. His breathing turned labored because he tried to keep it shallow. In his mind, there was no doubt—he smelled death.

He stood by the entrance, frozen with fear. No figure stood up there, though he expected the silhouette to appear before him. Every single fairy tale and scary story he had ever heard shot through his mind like lightning. But he refused to give those superstitions any quarter.

Just when he closed the door behind him and took his first step towards the Gillis’ flat, he heard a faint groan from upstairs. And then again.

Louder this time.

Just like the awful smell reminded him of the worst his work could offer, he recognized the tone—the dark and bone-chilling melody—of those groans. They reflected pain and suffering. His heart pounded to a mad, deafening beat.

He had to do something.

So he did. He crept up the stairs, careful as not to make a single sound. Midway, one of the steps creaked underneath his shoe and caused all the blood to drain from his face. He broke out into a cold sweat that took him back to that night in the opium den when he remembered the eerie figure from here. He expected the gaunt apparition of Gregory Gardiner to spring up in front of him and stare at him.

Moments dragged on like molasses and he started to feel ridiculous, though not one bit less afraid.

Carnaby continued his ascent, arriving outside the door to a flat on the second floor. The smell was much worse up here and clearly wafted from that door. Around its cracks, the carpet and wood on the floor had developed the same dark discoloration which the doctor had seen on the ceiling in the flat downstairs.

He began to second-guess himself and almost turned around. Almost, had it not been for another groan. It came from behind that door and being this much closer allowed Carnaby to recognize it as a woman’s voice. His concern and courage trumped the dread that kept him from proceeding more decisively.

Gagging again, he stood in front of the door to Gardiner’s flat. He knocked at it.

Instead of someone opening up, another groan erupted inside. Louder. This time, he heard a word in it, though the door muffled it too much for him to understand its meaning.

The doctor gripped the handle with a clammy hand, shivering as he found it deathly cold against his skin—colder than the air outside.

He twisted it and the door opened a crack, light as a feather. He let go, afraid that something might jump out at him. Carnaby stiffened as the door swung open and revealed a ghastly sight. A thin, emaciated body lay on the floor inside, sprawled out. A shirtless, skinny man whose skin had turned a pallid, unnatural gray; and fingernails rendered black with filth. The man lay face down and a tangle of greasy hair concealed his face.

Carnaby hesitated to enter, though part of him felt the urge to check on the man and see if he was alright. The smell of death was omnipresent in here and overpowering and deep down, he knew.

He knew this man was dead.

The next groan startled the doctor and he wondered how many inches he must have jumped off the ground upon hearing it. It came from a room, deeper inside this flat. Despite Carnaby’s expectations, the pallid body on the floor did not spring into motion. It did not budge. It continued to lie there, still, like a corpse.

The doctor crept through the room, giving the dead body—of what he presumed to be Gregory Gardiner—a wide berth. He stared at the corpse, squinting and desperately trying to discern what conditions had eaten away at the man’s skin. Finally, he had rounded it and reached a bedroom.

The smell shook Carnaby to the core and he coughed up bile from his stomach. At first, his mind failed to make sense of what he beheld. The sheer stench dominated everything: excrements, urine, vomit, and rotten flesh.

Something like mildew blackened the walls of this chamber from their bottom edges; but more prominently, strange, arcane symbols marked the walls—painted in dark red or black, drawing all of the doctor’s attention, causing his eyes to dart back and forth over them, unable to make sense of what they meant.

On the center of the bed’s mattress lay a woman—though Carnaby refused to consider this a human being. She looked like a rotten corpse, with weeks of decay having ravaged the remains. Flesh sloughed off of bone like melted cheese.

Milky-white eyes turned, glazed over, and he felt her stare upon him. She groaned at him and lifted a skeletal arm. Chains and shackles held back the wrists of this horrifying thing, tied to the bed’s frame. Feeble fingers pointed at the doctor. Words like sand, like a rasp running over wood, poured out under a groan, in the weakest whisper.

“Kill me.”

Carnaby nearly threw up on the spot. The world spun around him and dizziness nearly made him lose his consciousness. Darkness closed in from the edges of his vision and he braced himself against a wall to prevent himself from falling. But his hand touched something cold and wet and slick and the doctor nearly screamed.

He stumbled into a dresser and his hands came to rest on the damp pages of a thick tome. Splayed open, many of the strange symbols that adorned the walls in blood were mirrored here, littering the pages on display inside this book.

The doctor’s vision blurred and he could not decipher the strange glyphs and between the sketched symbols. He struggled to keep his eyes open. Instead of keeling over, he grabbed that book and clutched it till his knuckles turned white. Later on, Carnaby would have no explanation for why he did that—by taking the tome, he acted upon a strange instinct he would never understand.

“Take me,” whispered the book. He imagined that—Carnaby thought. For it was neither the corpse-woman in the bed, nor was anybody else present who could have uttered those words.

“Kill me,” the corpse-woman said again.

He regretted looking back up at her and staggered back out of the bedroom. He shielded his eyes with a hand as to not have to look at that abomination again. His nose burnt with the horrid stench. Every fiber of his body wanted to escape.

Carnaby slapped the book shut and curled an arm around it as he fled the flat.

The doctor nearly fell down the stairs on the way out, holding on to the banister and sliding down a few steps. He stumbled all the way outside, emerging onto the cobblestone-covered streets, wondering for a second if he had even bothered to shut any doors behind himself.

The stench remained. He cared not for the funny looks that pedestrians gave him while he staggered forth. He just needed to get away from that awful smell. His head throbbed with the sounds of people and life in the city, now louder than ever before in his life. The way to the safety of his practice and home turned into a blurry haze and he could barely recall the rest of that day.

Yet more days later, upon studying the ancient book, Carnaby would learn and understand more. He bathed extensively and burned his clothing to rid himself of the stench, but the memory of it continued to haunt him. He sometimes thought he smelled it when eating or drinking tea.

The book contained instructions for magick rituals. Alchemy. A scholar and scientist at heart, Carnaby figured that Gregory Gardiner had been experimenting with the animation of a corpse. Whose, he had no clue.

Gregory must have done something wrong in the process. The source of that stench was not just death.

It was failure.

—Submitted by Wratts