Swallowing the hard knot in his throat, Vicar looked up from Winn's journal and visibly shivered. Cold be damned, her revelations had given him an insurmountable sense of dread, much like the feeling of falling into a pit far too deep to ever crawl back out of. He looked down at the journal for a moment, eyes roving back against the names that Winn had scrawled in nervous haste. The names of his past family members were not things Vicar had either cared much about, nor taken much time to memorise, so the name Cartier was as foreign to him as it had been to Winn and her benevolent neighbour. Still, it was the name after, the name of the child, that interested him: Atticus. How often had she written of him, painted a picture so vivid of the kitchen boy in her journal?

Struck with a sudden urge, Vicar rose and padded across the halls until he came to the dark, staring walls where Gaston's room had been. There, lining the black wallpaper, were the faces he'd absently stared at his entire childhood. One painting in particular stood out; the bright auburn hair, the deep scowl, the sunken eyes. It was Atticus, wasn't it? My, what, great-great grandfather? Something far back, but close enough that Vicar could even see some of himself in those haunted eyes, or was it his brother he could see? Vicar hadn't looked in a mirror in quite a long while, he realised, but he was sure he and Gaston shared enough similarities that their resemblance to the other men in the family was striking. If this didn't look the very spitting image of the most recently dead Andrews man!

Vicar reached a finger up to the paint and rubbed a gentle finger over the dust, wondering how Atticus had gone from the heir of an estate, his future and inheritance hidden from him under the guise of being forced a servant, to a melancholy face on the wall. Surely, that was a sign of better times, if he'd been allowed a face with the rest of the family, but given the dark nature of his expression, Atticus' fate seemed far too ambiguous to be sure.

A thump sounded above him and he jumped, finger pressing too hard into the painting and leaving a dark indent in the dust. He stilled his trembling finger and mouthed an apology to the painting. You silly fool, he thought, until another noise rumbled the floor. Was it the stranger lurking in the house? There should have been no animals, no people above him. Only the attic he had spent the night in was higher up than the hall that Gaston's room glowered in (though there were several of the small attics scattered around the house, none of them were large enough to hold more than a lantern and a few books and nobody in the family ever remembered they were even there half the time).

Nervously convinced that if someone, good or bad, was in the house they surely wouldn't be in the attic, Vicar made his way to the stairs, pausing only for a few trembling seconds before he ascended.

There was, he sighed in relief, nobody waiting for him. He settled on the chest where he'd found the fateful journal and put his head in his hands. As he rubbed at his face, he heard another sigh. He was the only one in here, wasn't he? There was a tense second before he raised his head, fully expecting the doctor to be grinning at him from the shadows, but what he saw instead wasn't really much better.

Arms wrapped around her sides as though keeping warm was Winnifred. She shimmered in the light of the snowy window, her skin rippling in its bluish hue. Vicar couldn't have been drunk now, he was completely sure of it, so why could he still see the ghost? Moving carefully (he didn't know if she could see him, but he didn't want to risk frightening her), Vicar crept forward, taking a few steps at a time until he stood in front of Winn. He reached a hand out and brushed it against her arm, watching as her skin broke apart like the dust on the painting of Atticus.

She heaved another sigh and lifted her swirling hand to wipe away an unseen tear. "I tried," she whispered, her voice breaking in her American accent. How strange it was, still, to hear it! She reminded Vicar of home across the sea, before all the fires and deaths. It was comforting accent, and came with all the pleasant memories of the library at Pendragon-Hall, all the chatter of students on their way to classes, making small talk about their lectures and their romantic fancies and letters from home.

It broke Vicar's heart to hear it spoken in such a miserable way.

"You haven't failed yet, Ms. Peterson."

"I tried, and what good did it do? I may as well have stayed home." She drifted closer to the window and peered out of it, spectral tears falling and floating away from her silvery cheeks. "The old man was right."

"Right about what?"

Vicar was certain of it now - the ghost could not hear him. What a curious thing indeed! All of the books he'd read, all of Gaston's bedtime stories, all of the theories of the Latin Club, and not one of them could have prepared Vicar for being ignored by a ghost. What a sentiment, he smiled sadly to himself. To think, I'm on the run from a generational murderer, some supernatural curse made flesh, and I'm saddened that a ghost won't acknowledge me! Whether she paid him any attention or not, Winn still had more to say, and she continued to murmur and mumble at the window. He watched her in hyptonised interest for a moment, until she said something loud enough that gave him a nasty start.

"I must write it down! I cannot let anyone forget his secret." She shook her head, hair fanning out around her as though underwater. It occurred to Vicar for a second that her hair was not tied back, as she so often wrote about it being, but then he felt a sting of panic when Winn's words filtered into his distressed mind.

Her journal! He didn't have it with him, somehow. Where had he put the thing? Hadn't he carried it up the stairs? Vicar closed his eyes and tried to remember, but all he could see was the painting of his long-dead relative in the dusty darkness of the hallway.

Feeling keenly that it wouldn't be a good idea to leave Winn in the attic, he nevertheless turned and ran from the room, stumbling as his foot caught the top step. He shuddered to think what would happen if he lost the damn thing, or worse still, if the stranger in his house found it first. As he sprinted across the hall, foot wincing where the glass had cut it, his mind raced and blinded him to nearly everything that wasn't instinctual. Had he been paying any attention to where he threw his feet, he would have seen the shoes, haphazardly laying on the floor. Even as his ankles caught on them and his vision swam, he didn't notice the things, laces splayed onto the cold, wooden floor like little snakes waiting to bite. Only when his head hit the ground with a nasty crack was his eyesight aligned with the things. Realisation dawned on him, but then everything went dark and Vicar knew no more.

Someone was singing when Vicar awoke. It was a familiar song, something out of his early childhood. He lay still a while and listened, straining to remember where he had heard the melody before. Was it a lullaby Gaston had sung, before his health restricted him to his room? Vicar closed his eyes and saw his brother, dressed in red, leaning over him, brushing his hair back and humming. Nothing will hurt you, his whispered, not while I'm alive. Yes, it had been a song of his, but where had he heard it from? The sound brought to mind images of angels, of what he suspected his mother had looked like.

A scream of wind broke the song up and startled Vicar fully awake. The sudden movement sent a thrum of pain through his head and he gasped aloud, clutching his skull through wet hair. Why was his hair wet?

He realised he was outside, sitting in the garden bed, or what once was a garden. Now, it was only rotting stakes and far more snow than he would have liked to be sitting in.

"Don't worry, you didn't sleepwalk." Vicar gasped so hard he began to choke, lips turning as blue as the frozen trickle of a river at the edge of the property. Hands, surprisingly warm, touched him, wrapped around his chest and pulled. All at once, the coughing ceased. Vicar did not want to turn and see who it was that had moved him out here, who had watched him unconscious, who had touched him. He wanted to close his eyes again and be back in his library. He wanted to pick up another book and grow cross at the markings a student made in the margins. He especially wanted to see Amelia and Bobby and Henson and all the rest, chaotic and loud and full of life.

Vicar did not want to be home anymore.

"Aren't you going to say hello?"

"I... I already have, haven't I?" He waited a moment, but the presence behind him did not move. The hands had already left, but he could still feel the prickle on the back of his neck, the slight breath brushing his skin. All that he knew was conjecture, but Vicar found himself confused why this creature needed to breathe at all.

He turned. The weight on his heart was heavy, heavier than the entire house, pushing him into the earth. At last, he found himself facing a man so familiar, Vicar could hardly begin to place where he'd first laid eyes on him.

"Hello, doctor," he said quietly.

"Hello, Vicar." The doctor smiled at him, red lips curling like the pages of all those books when the fire kissed them. "Did you miss me at all?"

"What... what is your real name?"

"I asked first, Professor Andrews." The doctor stood and held out a hand. "Come, let us walk. Your brother wouldn't want to hear what we have to discuss."

"My brother?" Vicar looked quickly down at the dirt and paled. Was Gaston in the garden, like all of the long-dead wives of the monster that held his hand out?

"Mm. It was a request of his, you know. How fitting! But," the doctor said, baring his teeth in a horrific grin, "we have business elsewhere, and much more important things to speak of."

Vicar had no other choice. Where would he have gone, anyway? Winn was haunting the various rooms upstairs, his brother was already buried in the ground. The funeral, he realised with an almost overwhelming sadness, was over. He hadn't been given the chance to say goodbye, not really. He resolved himself and followed the doctor inside through the old kitchen door. The murderer leading him along had stopped him from saying goodbye, not a noisy funeral, not any of the hennish relatives who'd pleaded with him to come downstairs. Nobody but the doctor.

They walked into the dining room and sat at the table, the chandelier creaking slightly. Vicar stared and felt his stomach quiver. Winn's descriptions of the doctor had done the man justice; he was just as curiously repulsive as she'd written down. Eyes, dark and darting, narrow and cruel, sat in the shadow of his brow, two spiders waiting carefully, patiently for their prey. His mouth was a hard line, but how plump his lips! They were a terrible, wet red, dark and thick like the hide of a berry. Vicar suspected they could have been cut with a knife and still show no signs of damage.

If Vicar hadn't known anything about the doctor, he would have said the man was beautiful, in a violent sort of way. Winn was predisposed to dislike this Igor Radcliffe (if that really was his name) and had thus declined to mention the doctor's features this way, but Vicar knew those cruel lips had seduced many an unwary victim to an early grave.

The doctor smiled again and clasped his hands under his chin. "It's time we caught up, Vicar. How have you been since the fire?"

With a start and a nasty feeling in his throat, Vicar remembered where he'd heard the lullaby in the garden from - the library, in the back of the shelves, where the strange figure from the courtyard of the university had sat. He was nearly a shadow, so quietly did he lurk in the grand room, and at first, Vicar had not noticed him, but after his fateful meeting with the young man speaking of Justine and de Sade, Vicar began to see those headphones, that dark hair, those piercing eyes every day.

The very same eyes gazed back at him almost fondly, and Vicar could hear the song once more, could see images of the library, of falling asleep again, of hearing the screams and the shelves collapse, and the fire roaring around him.

Realisation grounding him, he sat back in his chair and began to speak.

Vicar

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