The Tell-Tale Heart of Madness 3

CW: as much violence as in te original "Murders in the Rue Morgue"

Chapter One: The Night She Rued the Day She Knew
           

Madame L., hurried home as fast as her aged and arthritic legs could move her. She told herself the noises she made were from the exertion of the brisk pace, punctuated by spurts of actual running, and not from the increasing terror she felt, that threatened to freeze her lungs and fix her to the very spot. Menace was everywhere, in every face and every shadowed alley. There! Didn’t that man just look at her with assassins’ stilettoes in his stare? And the woman pushing the infant carriage, didn’t she have features like a fish, dead of emotion, and so very pale? Madame L. actually leapt over a shadow spilling out of one doorway because she was sure she saw it curl and flex, a monstrosity, reaching for her.  When she finally reached her own residence, she fumbled with keys that seem to leap from her numb fingers, going everywhere but into the lock. When she finally got the door open, she slammed it again, as soon as she was inside, turning every lock and deadbolt, even barring the door with a thick oak board.  An utter sense of exhaustion pulled at her, but she mounted the stairs to the apartment she and her daughter shared, and once inside, locked that door, too. “Cammile! We must leave this place! We are not safe!”

“Mamma?” came the sleepy voice in the bedroom.

“Wake, child! Grab only what you can carry and cannot leave behind! We are not safe, and our lives depend on us going very far away, as quickly as possible!”

“But, Mamma, why? This is Paris, and no one cares if you tell fortunes.”

“Don’t you think I know this? I do not have time to explain. I saw something at the Lady’s house that I should not have. A letter, a terrible letter. And ever since, I have not ventured from the house, but that I feel cruel and evil eyes upon me. When I went to her again, earlier today, there were Gendarmes there, as well as ill-looking men that looked at me as if with recognition. I ran before they could ask me their questions. But I know the look of murder in men’s eyes, and we are not safe. I stopped at the bank on the way home and requested they bring us all our savings. Once we have that, we will hire a carriage to a boat, and that boat to anywhere that is far from here. Now go and pack!”

Madam paced the floor of the apartment she shared with her daughter. Fretfully pulling on the fingers of one hand with the other, she swore softly to herself, “Damned LeBon, where is he? He knows I wait for him! Damn him, and damn banks that take so long to give a person their own money! And damn that I ever read that damned letter! And damn Madame L’Espanaye and damn me for telling fortunes!” She fell to her knees, “Oh God, oh Jesus, please protect us!”
            When the knock came at the door downstairs, she let out a scream, she almost immediately muffled. “Who is there?” she said to the door, trying to sound brave, and not succeeding.
            “Madame, it is Mssr. LeBon, from the bank. I have what you requested. May I be allowed to enter?”  After some moments, and the sound of deadbolts thrown, and locks turned, the door opened enough to reveal part of the woman’s face. She looked at him, but mostly her eyes darted here and there, as if she expected menace in every shadow and passerby.

            “Here, give it to me.” she reached out her hand. Once he handed her the satchel, which took both her hands to hold onto, she kneed the door closed, nearly in his face.

            “But Madame, you need to sign…” But all he heard were deadbolts, locks turning, and bars being set across the door, “the receipt…?” Though he knocked again, and again, the door went unanswered and, eventually, he returned to the bank.

            With a strength borne of nervous energy and fear, Madame L. carried the bag upstairs, where she returned to packing only what was essential to her and her daughter, then further getting rid of less essential things. We must travel light, she thought, we must move fast.  She nervously eyed the corners of the room, save for the two she had been able to add plaster to, until they were no longer corners, with their sinister angles. She does not clearly remember doing this, nor why, but it seemed very important. But that was but two corners, and this room held so many of them. Too many to stay. “Will you hurry please?” she yelled to her daughter in the next room.

            Her daughter came out of her bedroom with a bag packed. “You are rushing me! “

            “You are moving too slow!”

            “And you both are too late anyway…” said the tall, pale man, with the almost sunken eyes and a cruel, jagged blade held lightly in his hand. But that was not what made the two women scream with fear, well past hysterical. It was what lurked behind him, and the noises it made that were not of this world. Afterwards, as the man delicately picked his footing through the wreckage of the furnishings, he bent at the old woman’s body and, using his blade, cut her throat and then slashed her several times. Meanwhile, the nameless horror that was the man’s companion, stuffed the daughter’s body up the chimney, upside down, using appendages of its body that were a little like arms, covered with little mouths.  Then, together, they walked through a door that wasn’t there before, and wasn’t there after they closed it behind them.