The Plan
To read from the beginning, go here.
All of this, the cannibalism, the lies, the temporal sorcery, all of it, naturally left me with the problem of how to survive until I could implement my plan to murder Uncle Daman. I knew from what I had witnessed, and Uncle Daman’s degenerating health, he must be planning his wickedness soon, but beyond that his timeline was his own. Unwilling to simply wait for him, I opted to not be in the McDowell manor at night, claiming to have had a change of heart and searching for poor Jakob. I grabbed the rapier from my fencing lessons and a flintlock from a wall-mounting, empty but suitably intimidating should I run into trouble on the streets of Dunhill. It was during this time that I began to inhabit a tavern of questionable repute, The Serpent & Wren, finding in its rumormill more dark tales of my family and others of Dunhill’s high society.
In the days it took me to prepare my plan, Uncle Daman and his closest staff became suspicious of both my newly cheery attitude and my nocturnal roamings. I maintained these for as long as I could until Uncle Daman found me eating a quick meal in the dining hall. We had stopped taking our meals together long ago and while I been carefully watching him of late, it was only then that I noticed how gaunt he had become, his once heavy flesh hanging off him in flaccid folds.
Never one for delayed gratification, Uncle Daman spoke before he even sat. “You are very gay of late.”
“I have a bright future ahead of me,” I lied.
This falsehood sharpened my uncle’s eyes upon me and he quickly replied, “How so?”
I set down my utensils and looked him in the eye as if discussing the most seriousness of intent. Which, I suppose, I was. “I have applied to the Greymoor Academy.” I spoke of the famous institute of higher learning that sat in the highlands north of Dunhill. “I hope to start at the new semester.”
This was only a few weeks away and I could see the impact this timing had upon Uncle Daman. I don’t know what reaction I was expecting, but he did his best to appear considerate until a coughing fit seized him. When he was done with those exertions, he gathered himself and replied, “I suppose it is time for you to leave the manor.” The dodgy bastard.
“You are still my ward, of course, and will require my permission and support.” He leaned back in his chair, still comfortable in his perceived superiority over me.
At the implication that my purported escape route might be denied, I let the falsity of my cheery facade fall away. “You would stop me?”
“Not at all,” he said without hesitation. “I will have Charles and Gildred prepare us a celebration. A feast for your send off.”
I thought of a young man, Chester, I had met at The Serpent & Wren. Out of a strange sense longing asked, “May I invite any others?”
Uncle Daman blinked at me in what might have been honest surprise. “You have others to invite?” It was only then that I truly realized how much effort my uncle had gone through to keep me hidden away and how little contact I had with the outside world. Thinking twice, and rather quickly, I said, “No.”
“Well, then, I’ll have the servants set about it for this evening.” And with nothing more to indicate he was planning my murder, Uncle Daman rose from the table and left.
A few hours might have been a difficult amount of time to ready things on my end, but I had been putting my own plans in place. The most difficult remained, though, and I found that Uncle Daman and his closest servants’ moving to and from the subterranean laboratory made getting there without being seen quite tricky. Certainly not impossible, though, and I slipped down unnoticed to make my own final preparations.
Under the inside lip of the cauldron I stuck a razor with spirit gum, putting it out of sight, but even so I had selected the blade’s color to match that of the pot’s iron, blending to near invisibility unless one knew where to look. To the braziers close to the cauldron I added a liquid of my own chemical concoction that would remain inactive until the sconces were lit. In my time surveying the laboratory, I had gather a rough idea of its dimensions and had been able to calculate the interval between the lighting of these fires and saturation of the room in the prevailing smoke. God bless the maths.
My task complete, I moved to make my way back out, when I noticed the blood-stained table that Jakob had been laid across. Whatever spirit of his remained there halted me, and I stared fixed at it. How many boys had Uncle Daman brought here to meet the same fate? Had he simply not been able to have his own children, so made grist of the many orphans of Dunhill?
I put these thoughts aside and left as surreptitiously as I had entered. I flew to my room, laying out several suitcases as if already preparing for my departure to Greymoor, flinging clothes about as if the idea led to an uncontrollable exuberance. In truth, I took the time to inspect the clothing I had readied for this evening, having added a layer of inconspicuous padding around my wrists and ankles in preparation for what was to come.
The dining hall, as always, was as cold as the rest of the manor. I wondered if I would ever get that chill out of my bones, or if Uncle Daman’s plans would make it permanent.
Even though I was the supposedly the celebrated guest, I arrived before him. He entered with a speed that belied his gray, paunched skin, disheveled thinning hair and jaundiced eyes. He spoke briefly with false happiness at my acceptance to Greymoor. Despite his insalubrious appearance, I could see that charm that had taken him across the Empire and past the state matron that had brought me here. His teeth, though, remained bright and white as he flashed them in a smile that made me wish a simple, brutal murder could be how I ended this. But I knew this would only bring Dunhill’s Blackcoats, and my own execution, so I returned his smile and waited.
Uncle Daman commenced the meal with a toast. Standing at the opposite end of the hall’s long and lonely table, he raised a glass, launching into a lengthy and pompous speech, beginning with, “Ah, but you were only a forlorn and lonely lad when you came to me, Cole.” He continued by boasting about everything he had provided for me and how it had led to me begin a fine specimen of a young man. Listening to him, I could only feel that I had not changed much since my arrival, still covered in the shroud of grief that I’d arrived in.
This sadness stayed upon me until the food was brought. There, in physical form, was my largest gamble. While I fortified myself against what I believed to be the anesthesia that I was certain Gildred had added, I knew this was my escape’s biggest risk. What if I were to eat and never awaken?
I steeled myself and hoped the long distance of the table would conceal my consternation. I raised a glass to return the toast but found myself tight-lipped as I always was, my anger and fear warring inside me. Uncle Daman took this as my usual reticence to engage and allowed Charles and Gildred to continue serving us without further comment. As I slowly began to eat, wondering which bite might be my last, Daman spoke about Greymoor, his peers that had studied there, and asked what part of its curriculum was of particular interest to me. When I felt the wave of unconsciousness begin to take hold, I found my fear slipping away, replaced by a gratitude that, no matter the outcome, I would never have to listen to Uncle Daman’s self-serving blather ever again.
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