Chapter 3 Sullen
Sullen
“We held meetings here. From the mundane to the marvelous, there is nothing this hotel hasn’t seen.” The man from the tunnel, the one who tried to tempt me to leave Karia behind, roams dark eyes around the second floor venue.
It’s a small room that seems even more so due to the black walls and same color marble flooring.
There are black velvet armchairs and couches, a round, low table in the center of the space, and a wall of windows, which gives us our only light, the curtains spread apart like an animal flayed for vivisection.
Sanford Rule, my grandfather, is seated closest to the window, one ankle bent over one knee in his formal, disheveled attire.
If it wasn’t for the fact he looks as if he’s spent years underground, I wouldn’t believe he is the man who whispered in my ear down in the tunnels. Yes, his voice is the same, slithering like a serpent, but I assumed my grandfather was dead.
And this man’s words come back to me. The things he said when he tried to get me to leave Karia behind.
“I warned your mother, when she met him in college. I tried to tell her there was something dark inside of him. I knew what his father did, the title he was passed down, the one he would never bequeath you, and truly, it is a mercy. Anyone within Writhe is cursed, Sullen. Do not forget it.”
I knew what his father did.
Of course he knew.
It was… him.
When did he ever warn my mother? I grew up believing I had no other blood relations aside from my mom and Stein. My memories are distorted from years of agony, but I don’t recall a grandfather, a grandmother, anyone else at all. It was always me alone, then me with the animals, then… nothing.
As if he can read my mind, worm his way into my brain, Sanford Rule—how he formally introduced himself before he left Karia and I to change, then follow him down the dark corridor to here—trains his dark gaze on mine.
Beside me, dressed in black sweats she took from the Emporium and wearing my high-collar black shirt—the one I couldn’t find when I packed my own things there—Karia stiffens.
We are seated next to one another on a small velvet couch, her thigh pressed against my own.
My hair, like hers, is still dripping wet, and I changed into a dark hoodie, dark pants, dry socks, the white, damp bandana still around my throat.
But despite the clothing, I am not any more comfortable, and I have the vicious compulsion to wrap my arms around her and never let her go.
With her in my shirt, so loose and long on her smaller body, I feel something I don’t think I ever have before.
It’s hard to explain, like a craving to claw my nails down her back, mark her in me so everyone knows she’s mine.
I don’t move, though. Not under Sanford’s scrutiny. Stein always knew how best to threaten me; with something happening to her. I won’t give Sanford the same advantage, although I am sure he knows what I would do for her, considering I did not abandon her in the tunnels.
“If you think Writhe is bad, Sullen, you should have seen the people who dressed up in finery while they wore the devil beneath their skin, here in this very room.” His fingers dig into the cushions of the chair, bones and tendons flexing beneath wrinkled flesh, but he doesn’t look away from me.
“My grandfather bought this building from a descendant of Burbank Gates, allegedly.” Sanford laughs, and it sounds like crisp newspaper balled inside a fist. “He killed all of his family that we know of, so I suppose the seller could’ve been stretching the truth, but it’s documented Gates did frequent this place.
I could’ve sold it when it was passed down to me, but I grew up here, and I wanted to keep it. ”
“Why?” Karia asks beside me, her tone low and angry. I feel her knee press further into me as she leans forward, her hands balled into tight fists in her lap. “Why would you want anything to do with that man?”
I don’t look away from Sanford as he turns his attention to Karia. My pulse throbs against my temples and I want to claw his eyes out for looking at her, but I grit my teeth and I say nothing.
“I was fascinated with him,” Sanford says softly, and he does not sound ashamed of the truth.
My skin crawls. I feel itchy beneath my hoodie, my bare hands pushed into the pocket of it. But I keep quiet.
“I read The Scientist several times as an adolescent, and many more when I became an adult. It was similar to Frankenstein, save for the fact it explained the creation of the monster, which Mary Shelley never quite managed in any detail.”
“Why would you want to… do something like that? To…” Karia trails off, taking a shaky breath. I feel her glance at me but I can’t meet her eyes. I know what she wants to say. What she won’t, because she hopes to salvage my fucking feelings.
Why would you want to create something disgusting, like Sullen?
My face feels flush, sweat forming beneath my arms, but I do not move.
“There is tremendous pressure, maintaining an organization like Writhe,” Sanford says, and he sounds more fierce than I have heard him thus far, all while he stares at the girl pressed up against me.
“You would have no idea what that’s like.
Neither you nor your parents rank so high.
” His dark eyes narrow, nose pulling back into a wrinkled snarl as he stares at her.
The image of a skinned rat comes to mind, and I try to control my breathing. To not lunge for him now, for daring to look at her this way.
“There is pressure for greatness, success, numbers, money, all achieved by murder, sex, drugs, crime.” He leans forward, eyes flashing as his suit tightens around his broad shoulders.
“I imagine you have been pampered and spoiled and fawned over your entire life. You spend the money Writhe rakes in but you don’t put in the blood to earn it.
If there was even a chance at immortality, at having enough lives to do everything needed without fear of death or vulnerability, I wanted to know about it.
The Scientist, The Principles of Poetic Séance, these gave me hope that this was not all in vain. That I could—”
“It seems to me as if you were a coward,” Karia interrupts, her voice strangely calm and sharply cold.
I turn to stare at her: Straight spine, lifted chin, her blue eyes focused fully on Sanford.
“You couldn’t achieve all you needed to, all you were responsible for, so you looked for a cheat code.
Is that it?” She tilts her head as she asks, as if she’s deeply invested in the answer to her question, and I have the chaotic, strange desire to laugh, where moments ago I only wanted to strangle the life out of Sanford fucking Rule.
“I never bit the apple,” he says slowly, after a moment of silence.
I turn to face him again and subtly lean towards Karia. She is not alone in this, and if he stands from that chair in a show of coming towards her, he will die right here in this room.
It is my mess.
She will not pay for it.
“I read the work, but I didn’t initiate any proceedings. Anywhere except in my mind, anyway.” He cuts his eyes to me. Something shifts in his face, like a shadow crosses over his countenance. “I contemplated beginning an experiment on your father.”
I bristle, wanting him to correct that term, but I do not speak. He doesn’t deserve my words. He’s already gotten too many of Karia’s.
“I thought about hurting him very many times. He was surly, stubborn, strange, smart. And even as a child, he left destruction everywhere he went. Dead animals, pinned insects. Why do you think he never destroyed your secret labs, Sullen?” He lifts his chin, attempting to gaze down at me as he leans back in his chair.
“Why do you think he never stopped your illegal deliveries or confiscated the creatures you took back from your walks? You think he didn’t know?
You think he didn’t harbor some sort of twisted hope you would be just like he was? ”
“How the fuck would you know about those labs?” Karia snaps.
He doesn’t look at her, but I’m grateful she asked the question. “I was given insight to many things as I awaited my own punishment in the tunnels.”
“Punishment?” Karia presses as Sanford stares at me.
“For being weaker than my son.” He smiles coldly my way, revealing a full mouth of straight teeth.
“He started with what he believed was a lesser sentence, of course. His tendency toward cold, quiet violence escalated when Juliet…” For the first time, emotion that is not bitterness or madness or rage shines through.
He closes his eyes for a moment, his lips pulling downward, tugging on the skin around his mouth.
The name is not familiar to me. But none of his words are.
He clears his throat, that familiar, newspaper-crinkling sound echoing through the room as he glances down at his lap, two frail legs pushed together in the chair.
“My wife died on these grounds.” He does not look up.
“She fell from the thirteenth floor window. They weren’t always made with those kinds of things in mind.
Or perhaps Gates enjoyed the idea of death so close, if he had anything to do with this hotel’s construction.
Her scream echoed through the corridors.
We had a suite there for a Writhe gathering.
I was meeting with my Duo, but I ran, as soon as I heard the noise.
And there he was…” He closes his eyes again, lines etched deeper into his face.
He takes a shaky breath and does not look anywhere but inward.
“Stein, standing at the half-open glass, peering down. When I called his name from the doorway, he turned to me, and I heard Juliet’s body break at the same time his impassive face curled up into a smile.
” He finally opens his eyes, a haunted expression staring back at me. “He was eleven, then.”