The Constable and The Crow: Chapter 5 - 7
Mar. 18, 2016The Constable and The Crow: Chapter 5 – 7
Author’s Note: This is a work of fan fiction, written to pay tribute to both the video gameBloodborneand the visionary author H.P. Lovecraft. I in no way seek financial gain from it, and the settings, concepts, and some of the characters within remain the intellectual property of From Software and Sony Entertainment.
Prior installments in this series:
The night that followed rested me not one second from the exertions of the preceding day. Petr’s howling, yelling and bashing reached a frenzied crescendo of such force that I felt the ceiling would surely collapse. Worse, the sickly popping sound I had heard the night previous continued well up until the dawn. It was this latter emanation that struck a dread terror into my very soul; it’s monotonous suckling sound forcing me to completely doubt my previous diagnosis of a plumbing issue. It was almost certainly organic in nature and of ill intent, I was sure. Once, in another of my periodic flashes of concern for my fellow man I made to ascend the staircase again, but it was this hollow popping that made me turn straight back around and return to my chambers, without even approaching the door that I was sure was forming the only barrier between myself and some abysmal truth.
The next day, bleary eyed and unrested, I resolved to seek out Valtr to request assistance in resolving this issue. For I could not stomach another night like that one, and I did not feel assured of the compliance of whatever law enforcement the shadowy healing church or the blood drunk, crazed militiamen might provide.
I found the constable lurking in the same hovel, imbibing his ale and spitting into his bucket-hat-spittoon. Wearily pulling up a bar stool next to him, even the scrape of it’s legs against the dusty floor was enough to jangle my nerves to breaking point. I ordered a blood vial for the first time, feeling that I needed something stronger than alcohol to remedy my woes. Valtr clearly didn’t approve, but to his credit he listened with intense concentration to my tale of neighbourly hell as I rambeliningly told it, pausing only to gulp down the iron-tasting blood which was to become my poison, in a multitude of unimaginable ways.
“Well…” he said after I had finally finished. “It would seem you have an issue… very well. Tonight I have to attend…business, but tomorrow- we will cleanse your dwelling and solve this mystery!”
Although I did not fully comprehend his words I was grateful, and spent the day in his company consuming several more vials of blood.The irony was not lost on me that having spent my youth avoiding the constabulary at all costs, here in this foreign land I was becoming near dependent on one of their number for both kinship and protection from horrors!
By the day’s end I am sorry to say I was feeling most intoxicated, and in no mood to spend the night in my dwelling where I felt the sounds from above would drive me beyond insanity’s gates and into an abysmal mental void. Thus I descended to the lower quarters of Cathedral Ward to seek a lady of the night. In a blood drunk stupor I ambled down the gaslamp street in a thick fog which had descended upon the town, feeling little care for the shuffling shapes of darkness that I brushed aside as my unexpected lust drove me forth. My fear of such night creatures had all but faded; nay, in my stupor I nigh on imagined them to be my kin.
Finding the door of a known wench of such a disposition I rapped on the wooden portal and was beckoned within. Amele was a conventional beauty for sure, but it should be said here that my natural disposition was unintimate, that is I had until this point felt an aversion to matters of the purely physical, and had in my previous life shunned female companionship. My innate shyness had always sat at odds with my nascent criminality, and I would as a matter of choice avoid the eyes of the pretty ladies who frequent the streets of my homeland. Why, my youthful self would have found the very idea of taking a lady of the night to my bed chamber to be positively abhorrent!
But this night I was as if one of the beasts of the field, aided both by the bittersweet intoxication of the blood and Amele’s skillful guidance. She boasted that she had the royal blood of Cainhurst within her, like several of those ladies of that profession of Yharnam who had fled the quarrel between their clan and the healing church. Royalty disguised as skillful witchery, she guided me to places unforeseen on blood red satin sheets.Yharnam now truly embraced me.
After our exertions were done, I fell into slumber’s arms I had fallen between Amele’s legs. But sleep was not to bring peaceful salvation, for my dreams were of a fitful sort that I wish upon no living man or beast. I found myself in a vast, twisted landscape, adorned with baroque gravestones and poisoned lakes. Crustacious, slimy beings crawled along the fetid earth and the outlines of immense antiquated castles could be glimpsed in the distance, against the roiling blue and orange clouds of a turbulent sky. The atmosphere dripped with dread, and I fancied beneath hollow winds I could detect the sound of an infant’s cry, a sound that followed me beyond sleep and into the waking world when I awoke beside Amele’s pale sleeping form in besweated sheets. On my honour, I cannot say that that infants cry has ever truly disappeared from that night hence.
The afternoon hence I met with Valtr in our usual watering hole. After we had taken of our respective poisons to steady the nerves, we proceeded unto my dwelling in Central Yharnam to plot our fateful deed. En route, it was obvious that something was afoot, for the number of militiamen had doubled; nay, tripled beyond their usual numbers. The specimens out that evening were hairier and more blood drunk than usual, emitting blasphemous mutterings and seemingly grabbing any object that might conceivably be considered a weapon, be it pitchforks, wooden panels, iron spikes or butcher’s cleavers. Amongst them were disheveled looking church doctors and more heavily armed individuals sharpening barbaric looking contraptions that could only be the product of a most homicidal brain.
As we passed through the square that sits beyond the gates that lead to the central thoroughfare a preacher in rags that might once have been church garb was holding forth a bizarre sermon to an enraptured group of militiamen. I caught only a snippet of audible words in his diatribe:
“Here we stand! Oh citizens, here we stand… feet rooted in the earth…but the cosmos is so very near us…so very near us, perhaps right above our heads! Don’t you see? The sky and the cosmos are one!”
At this last statement he thrusted his hands skywards and the giddy crowd repeated his last statement in a raptuas chant.
“The sky and the cosmos are one! The sky and the cosmos are one!”
As we scuttled past a hastily erected bonfire beyond the gates I timidly enquired to Valtr as the the meaning of this surge of activity.
“Aye…” he chuckled. “It is the hunt tonight. Vermin, everywhere.”
And following this he elaborated no further.
Upon arriving at the dwelling we were forced to hang back out of site momentarily, as none other than Tiber the mute was just at that point entering the building. He looked even more fretful than usual, indeed he looked as one marching to his very grave. The gaping wound on the back of his hair festered in the setting sunlight, hair and blood plastered together in a grim fibrous pattern.
Once he had ingressed, Valtr and I cautiously assessed the building. Noticing that Petr’s top floor shutters were open to the elements, Valtr devised a plan of sorts; at a designated hour he would ascend the building by means of the iron shutters that clasped it’s facade, and I would break through the door to Petr’s room from the interior. Thus we would have two angles of attack, and be better placed to deal with whatever horrors we would be sure to encounter within.
That decided, we set our pocket watches in time and bade farewell. Valtr donned his helmet and proceeded to dissipate into the gathering mob.
I ascended to my room and awaited the dreaded time of action. As the hours passed, the sun descended and a gibbous moon ascended in it’s place. The sounds of the street increased in volume, and I could hear shouts, screams, the whinny of horses, and slashing, screeching nigh on murderous sounds emanating from the streets. I was convinced a festival of murder must be taking place on the streets that night, it’s reasons I was either oblivious of or would not allow myself to comprehend.
My dear reader may have assumed this orchestra of slaughter right beyond my walls would drown out Petr’s doings from the chamber above. But no, as that bloody night encroached his ravings began as if by clockwork, along with the suckling sound that was now my life’s bane. But tonight..no longer! I resolved this to myself whilst drinking down the dregs of a blood vial I had sequestered from the drinking hovel earlier in the day.
At last the hour of our engagement came, and I arose from my bed, blood drunk, lust satiated and inflamed with a wild curiosity and impulsiveness that I imagined matched that of the aspiring hunters this minute creating havoc in the streets beyond these walls.
Picking up an iron balustrade I had looted earlier to serve as a battering ram, I once again climbed those creaking stairs to Petr’s door, beyond which the sounds of hell itself could be heard: Petr’s awful cries, the ever present popping and suckling. And somewhere in the background of my mind, the ever present infant’s wail.
Now mad with the blood I swung my fashioned device at the door, which it hit with an awful crash but held fast. Beyond the door, the intense discord only rose further. I swung again, roaring with the passion of the swing and a mighty crack was heard as the door splinted. A dread screaming forced it’s way through the buckling door as I swung again, and this time it imploded, swinging off it’s hinges as I roared and swung into the room.
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This is damn fine writing!
Thank you!
Made for excellent reading on my journey home from school!
