Ch.11 The Flame in the Eye
Nina was dead. Not a shred of flesh, bone, or blood remained.
Roland held her hand through the night until dawn broke, while servants knocked on the door. His hands were empty.
What followed was chaos.
Yet the one who burned with fury was not his so-called father, Thales Collins, but rather…
Seth Will, the steward.
“Master Collins, do you know what has happened?” The enraged man radiated danger. He stomped heavily into the room, lingering by the bedside before circling around.
With one hand, he grabbed Roland, pressed him against the wall, and choked him.
“The ritual was only one step away…”
His voice cracked with a sharp, overlapping shriek of fury!
In a frenzy, he threw Roland to the floor, yanking at his hair—
“You two bastards…”
“Look at what you’ve done!!”
Though he seemed unaware of the exact nature of Nina’s ritual, he was certain that her sudden disappearance overnight was no escape. The room still held an unspent mystery—this was a ritual, some kind he had never witnessed before.
“Tell me… you little bastard… what your sister did.”
His voice was like the venomous hiss of a coiled snake, his hot, foul breath licking Roland’s face.
“Tell me, Master Collins…”
“I beg you to tell me…”
“Please…”
His mood swung wildly between tenderness and cruelty, a volatile madness that terrified Roland more deeply: he cupped Roland’s face, respectfully kissed the boy’s forehead; then suddenly slapped him to the ground, tensing his body as he ground his shoe into Roland’s face.
But afterward, he knelt down in heart-wrenching sorrow, sobbing as he wiped the blood from Roland’s face and ears with his fingertips and sleeve.
Over and over.
“Why won’t you tell me what truly happened?”
Roland curled up in pain, silent, enduring it all without a word.
“Am I not worthy of a ritual?” Seth’s voice sounded despairing, yet his long nails squeezed Roland’s throat, as if eager to dig in. “Why won’t you speak—what exactly did you two little bastards plot in that room?!”
Knock knock.
A knock at the door.
Roland heard the voice of his ‘father.’
It surprised him a little.
Because he had always addressed Seth as “Sir.”
“Get in here! Thales! Look at what your two children have done!!”
The arrival of Thales Collins gave Seth’s fury an outlet. Seth Will released Roland, stood up with his hands hanging loosely as if discarding a worn-out doll, grabbed Thales Collins by the neck, and slammed him against the wall.
Roland heard a loud thud!
A painting hung on the wall fell.
Ah.
My travel expenses.
“You idiot!”
“Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!”
With every insult, he slammed Thales Collins’s head into the wall again.
But no blood flowed.
The surrounding servants stood silently nearby, their bodies rigid, silently smiling as they observed everything.
Like hollow suits of human skin armor.
“The ritual cannot stop, Thales, you know that! It cannot stop!!” Seth yelled in frustration, releasing the battered old Collins, then glanced at Roland curled up on the floor.
“Take care of our ‘last young master,’” he instructed the servants. “From today onward, Thales, you are forbidden from participating in the ritual. Watch him closely! I will drain his blood! I will peel off his skin!!”
Thales stammered a reply.
Roland then heard the crunching of bones, followed by the footsteps of shoes exiting the room.
Click.
The door was locked from outside.
Silence returned to the chamber.
Roland clutched his head and slowly rose from the ground.
His eyes were icy cold.
Miss Nina would not be wrong.
She would not be wrong.
I will survive…
As she said.
I must believe her…
Endure.
Endure…
He rubbed his eyes, unsure if it was from the steward’s blows, but both eyeballs throbbed painfully, burning fiercely.
In his vision—
Hmm.
In the void, there seemed to drift a small speck of light?
Roland furrowed his brow and groped his way to sit on the bed.
Those ‘white specks’ grew in number.
They connected into a straight, monotonous line, quietly stretching across Roland’s sight.
As he steadied his breath, the line gradually became transparent and vanished.
Roland shifted his body; the wooden bed creaked.
Unexpectedly, with the creak, the ‘white line’ reappeared.
It resembled the pale, persistent waves along a shoreline, spreading around with the creak—slowly, yet revealing every undulation before Roland’s eyes.
Roland sat stiffly. This time, his cheeks ached fiercely, his molars grinding harder and harder against each other.
Creak, creak.
Bang… bang…
Bang bang…
He could even hear his heart cheering loudly, the celebration of his organs weaving together inside his body.
If he was not hallucinating…
He could, see?
In disbelief, the boy slowly reached out his hand, placing it on the bedside cabinet.
He raised his index finger.
Thump.
A tap.
Just like last time.
The white, unfading lines spread from the fingertip. A ring the size of a ring expanded instantly, sweeping the entire room clearly. It followed the contours, blowing away the black fog.
The wardrobe.
The dead rat on the floor.
The excrement.
The gas lamp.
The fallen painting.
The walls.
The ceiling.
Roland trembled with excitement, unable to control himself. That joy was like thunder suddenly breaking through rolling dark clouds, exploding his world into daylight.
Thump.
The white line spread.
Thump thump.
The white line spread.
Like a child, he kept tapping his five fingers on the cabinet, the dull sound carrying years of suppressed joy and madness.
Miss Nina…
Is this the gift you left me?
Several minutes later, Roland realized.
It was not all.
Because his vision became more ‘complex.’
When he tapped, besides the spreading ‘sound lines,’ he could also see lines of floating words:
Words he should not have known, yet strangely understood.
They hovered over every object.
“Dead rat”
“An oil painting rumored to be valuable (travel expenses)”
“Thales Collins’s front tooth”
“A trace of mystery (about to dissipate)”
“Broken floorboards”
Looking down.
“Little blind boy’s hand”
It was like an explanation, drawn from the shared memories between him and Nina.
Roland discovered that as long as he could ‘produce’ enough sound, he was almost no longer blind.
He stood up, excitedly pacing the room, as if white fireworks had ignited his long-darkened world.
This was Nina’s gift…
She had given him a candle that would never go out.