Chapter Text
Guilt.
Unbearable and suffocating.
Guilt, like the resolute jaws of a canine, had sunk its teeth into Norton's neck. Ripping apart what little dignity he had left, tearing into his filthy flesh and spitting out his rotten bones. It coated him like tar, thick and wicked. Sinking into his skin and petrifying him, leaving him to rot.
It was true, he was at fault. His hands, bloodied by greed. The same hands he had used to carelessly bring about death in that manor. At first, bathing in lavish was perfectly exquisite, he had treated himself to things he couldn't have dreamed of. Stale bread turned to juicy meat, velvet and silk replaced burlap rags, and it was all he could wish for. He was living a poor man's dream.
At the expense of a few lives.
Norton shuddered. "It was survival of the fittest; I did what I had to." had become his sinful motto ever since escaping that wretched place.
He did what was necessary to survive. What had he to his filthy name if not his own life? Blaming him would be ridiculous, he knew the others would have done the same. Greedy and selfish, they were damned, all of them, the same as he.
Except for her.
Glowing radiance, a sinless truth in all its perfect, sickening clarity.
Miss. Deross had been the sole individual in that manor he could believe in. She subjected herself to that hell not for money or a prize, but for the truth. To point a gloved finger at the true culprit behind the games and to declare justice, to demand it. Her determination to save the lives of the strangers around her was her wound, kindness, her demise. She was a lamb, soft, white, and pure, and she had inevitably been brought to her slaughter.
And he, the butcher, held her lifeless head, reaping the light from those striking, gentle amber eyes. Crimson soaked wool clung to his clothes, her blood coated his rags and glistened like rubies. Staining them as a hellish reminder, he had killed her.
In her final moments, trapped in that cold, dark cellar, she had pleaded with him. Begging for even an ounce of understanding, of impossible mercy. Fear ridden, pale, and shivering like prey, she still retained that heavenly glow. Golden and pure, drawing him in, as if hope had become visible before him. It hurt him more than anything, more than any explosive or starvation could. He had hesitated— almost. He could have changed her fate, abandoned the manor and ran with her. Running far, further still, until their legs gave out and their lungs burst pink and black in their chests. God, he would have preferred that, would have paid to have it even, but it was too far, too unrealistic.
While Mr. Orpheus and Mrs. Plinius feasted on the spoils of her flesh, raw and tender, Norton had been tossed aside and left to starve. Their bellies were full, and their dirty lapdog had done its work and received its scraps. It didn't take a genius to realize that he would be their next meal.
In the end, he felt little remorse. He didn't feel it while driving an axe through Mrs. Plinius' head, nor did he feel it as the sickening clash of Mr. Orpheus' skull against rocks echoed throughout the wilderness. As their bodies thudded against dirt, heavy, lifeless, and rotten in all their sin, all he truly felt was satisfied. As if he was the one feasting all along.
Leaving a trail of crimson footprints in his wake, he had left the manor with a suitcase full of blood money and a heart full of shameful pride.
And now, he was nothing.
After that experience, he had told himself he would never cower again. Not in fear nor shame nor guilt. He would reap the delicious fruits of his labour and live like divine royalty, adorned in gold. Attended to and cared for like a priceless antique, until he finally succumbed to death, wrapped in silk. Yet here he was, trembling, cradling himself like a child in his own bed.
A sick man awaiting death, soaked in lavish, suffocated by it. His soft sheets provided little warmth, instead they weighed him down like dirt above a coffin, soil frigid, rough, and lifeless. The musk of stale perfume clawing its way into his lungs, though expensive, it's value brought him little comfort. For countless nights he had been restless on his velvet deathbed, haunted by a ghoul with hungry, glassy eyes that watched him sleep. It mirrored his reflection; hollow eyes matched sunken cheekbones and sickeningly thin limbs, fragile enough to break. If anything, he looked like the real monster.
And he heard things— terrifying things. Haunting, hellish whispers in the dark of his room. The cold, sharp, furious hands of the dead crawled into his ears, scratching and biting at his scars. Weeping ghasts blowing frigid carbon monoxide on his thorned skin, their tears; crisp, smoky acid forcing his burns to peel. Blackened petals, rough, dry, and raw, sprouting from his pain. They chanted to him in the dead of night; You did this, you. Not Mrs. Plinius nor Mr. Orpheus, but you, Norton Campbell.
Tonight was no different, the voices taunted him still. Unrelenting, grotesque murmurs letting his sins be known, releasing them into the void like wild dogs. Deafening howls echoing off priceless wallpaper, the walls around him pulsed with hate as if they were alive. The whispers turned to shouts and the shouts turned to screams, echoing off the furniture, rattling silver and porcelain. He shut his eyes tightly and forced shaky palms over his ears as the voices reached crescendo, as if to banish them with only his will. A desperate, useless action to keep the ghasts from crawling into his head and tearing him apart, and for a second— clarity.
A quiet so brief yet heavenly. he could taste it, more delicious than any meal money could buy, more valuable than anything gold or silver could own. A blessedly sweet moment of relief, too good to be true, too sacred to be his.
A new kind of whisper followed this silence, yet it was not devilish, nor did it make his heart ache heavy with guilt. It was sudden, short, and tantalizing. Its voice a fresh chill on his skin, a melody of medicine he didn't deserve to receive. A siren's song in the midst of a storm, soothing his soul from within. It called him, truly called him, not by a monstrous title, but by his name.
"Norton…"
It murmured beneath the wind, barely audible in the stale of his room. He strained to hear it, to grab it, to make it his. To tear it out of the very air surrounding him and wrap himself in it whole. A sweet sound so faint and cursed it hurt his ears to listen. A flawless, melodious tune he didn't deserve to know. A priceless gem buried beneath rock and rubble, he would be the one to unearth it, and it would fix him.
Even if he died trying.