Chapter Text
The shop is dead.
No, seriously.
It passed away when the old man failed to return. With no other options, with no other route or idea or even desire to do anything different; you took over. It, contrary to what it seems, was not done wholly out of mawkish devotion. There was just no other job you would be able to manage. Not that anyone would hire you, anyway.
The village is quiet like death, and you don’t even technically live in it, so the shop is just eerie. The boards creak, everything moans, and groans, and complains like the wind hurts to bear. Because it would otherwise be silent, wood-cries were deafening.
It is dark as hell, you don’t know why, the candles are on the counter. But, regardless, you are seated on one of the rickety old stools that is more disgruntled than the rest of the furniture due to your weight on it. You cannot shift your ass half an inch without it squealing at you, and so you are almost perfectly still if you discount the lazy way you run a brush through the gun’s barrel.
There is not a lot going on in your head, honestly. You swear.
You swear.
The gun is not picked up by what little moonlight pours through your dusted window, but you know the feel of all of them. And so you know which one it is.
The villagers don’t have a better gunsmith. Okay, so that is perhaps a lie, they definitely do, but they don’t have a better cheap gunsmith. You are the equivalent of a dirty brothel girl, selling out, and instead of flashing tits you flash prices and unsanctioned modifications. You don’t just do guns, you do wood, you do trinkets, you do lots of shit.
Because the old man went and left and it is all you can do.
You need to live…for reasons undisclosed even to your own mind.
You unwisely cross one leg over the other, making the stool bemoan its poor fortune. Your hands work at cleaning the barrel, it is a slow sort of thing—in part because of the fact that you, in general, are slow and in part because you are meticulous. You are not a gun freak, but you need to perform as one if you want to sell. You can spend all night and part of dawn just on this one revolver, and you might if you fancy.
It is because it’s so quiet that you hear the footsteps outside of the door.
The shop closed five hours ago, and even when it was open your customers (if you even want to call them that) were sparse. There isn’t anyone really vying to get in line besides rats and dust bunnies.
You keep cleaning, because if someone has come to steal they will be disappointed, and if they have come to kill you the ancient wooden door and your disassembled unloaded firearm are not going to stop them.
They draw closer and you can hear their breathing, whether because they’re just breathing loudly or because you’re hyper focused remains undecided.
You can open the door and it would break their nose. You can do anything besides sit on your tired stool and shove your brush down the barrel of your gun.
You do not think of how quickly you can find one of the shotguns. You do not think of the dagger in your boot. You do not think of guns or blades or defense.
You think you are ready for nothing.
A note slips through the mailslot in the door. There is the sound of someone racing across packed snow and into the distance and you finally put the gun down.
You place your palm against the wall for balance and shuffle along until you reach the door. You stoop with some difficulty and your fingers find smooth parchment.
You return to the stool and fumble around for a match, and finally you light one of the candles.
The envelope is sealed. The seal is stamped with a crest. It is the crest that shoves the animalistic side of your brain towards hysteria.
You find the aforementioned dagger and use it to cut through the wax. You unfold the letter from the envelope and the sudden and completely unbidden urge to scream washes over you.
It cannot be said whether or not you do.
***
You have been lame for years. This is not a new development.
Something had gone wrong somewhere, you have some hazy memories of a time where you walked smoothly but in the interest of circumventing unnecessary regret you had mostly evicted them from your head.
However, you have never not been sick. It was mostly a lung thing, the physician thinks. And you think that even if it wasn’t he would not have told you otherwise.
It is the combination of your inadequate leg and the Lung Thing that makes your trek to the castle unbearable.
The castle itself, you allow yourself honesty for once, genuinely makes you uncomfortable.
In part, fuck that, in whole because it is massive and it would not be out of place to see bodies speared atop the claws of the spires or blood dripping from the teeth of the battlements. It erupts from the mountain and lingers over the village like a bad mood dressed in black stone. Sections of the extended structures stretch heavenward and actually disappear beyond the thick layer of clouds, adding to the imposing nature of it all. There is something acutely meant to remind you, as well as every villager, that you are quite literally, beneath the countess and helplessly miniscule in the grand scheme of her.
You, personally, think that if you were going to have a god complex, it is better to be a bit more subtle about it.
But then again you are a partially deceased invalid with anemia so boldness has decidedly not been an option for you.
You limp your way up the cleared pathway that leads to the castle gates, armed with your satchel, the cane you needed to keep your balance, and a disease. There have been healthy people that walked through these gates without shit legs that did not return, so you are set about fifty meters behind the metaphorical starting line.
It is with some level of apprehension that you approach the tall iron gates and paw at them with your spare hand. They give way with your prompt, because who would miss out on supper walking in of its own free will by leaving the gate locked?
Romania is cold, the air is thinner than you are and you have walked further than your body was engineered for. Needless to say, you are disheveled, panting, and all-around in position to volunteer for a cold drawer in the morgue by the time you can find the coordination to rap your knuckles against the heavy castle doors.
There is shuffling from the other side. Then someone yells. Then someone screams. Then something shatters. Then the door is opened.
Across those sequence of events, that all occurred within about five seconds, you have decided to make peace with death. Because it is all you can do.
As opposed to being met with fangs, claws, or cadavers there is a scrawny woman clad in a maid’s uniform that is splattered with blood down her front and somehow managing to look more agitated and frazzled than you.
She offers you a tentative smile and you struggle with the coordination of your lips to make it less hostile. Whatever she sees on your face makes the smile drop wholesale and after an awkward pause in which you tell yourself go home three times, she says: “So.”
“So,” you echo, shifting your grip on your cane and ignoring a screech that comes from within the castle’s interior.
You stare at each other. In an uncomfortable and expectant way. And you do not like this.
“Move?” you ask, because you are stupid.
The maid is taken aback by this—visibly startles and recoils like you had just snapped your teeth at her—but regains her composure and steels her gaze on you. “Why are you here , miss?”
You flip open your satchel and rifle quickly through to find the letter that had been slipped through last night. The accompanying envelope had been burned, but the letter survived, albeit scarcely, enough to be read. You do not recall attempting to shred it, but something in you remembered to leave it mostly intact.
You hold it out towards the maid and yank your hand back before your skin can meet hers as she takes it.
She reads over it quickly and hungrily. You wonder vaguely if she will catch the discrepancy in your being here.
After a moment she glances from the letter to you, and then back to the letter, and this continues for several moments until she finally steps aside and ushers you within. “I will show you to the opera hall.”
Castle Dimitrescu is a monster outside and within.
You have never held even the slightest interest in it. You had not feared it openly, but it had unnerved you just the same as any other villager, it was a looming threat that hung atop the mountain and addressed only in rumors and hissed through grapevines. You had heard the whispers, because that is the only way anyone knew to speak of it. You know this castle’s demons. You all know the skeletons, because they had never been bothered to be tucked into closets.
There is no need to hide when you can crush everything that would challenge you. That is absolute power.
And you were as much a sheep to be slaughtered as anyone.
There is only one piano tuner in the village. And there is only one person who would ever think to care about having such an frivolous instrument looked after these days. So when she calls, you come barking.
Because it is all you can do.
From the moment you step past the doors, you are consumed and digestion begins. Everything about the castle weighs heavy on your soul, and you feel like a weight has been placed onto your heart and shackled to your shoulders.
Once the doors are shut behind you like a promise, there is little external light. That is the first thing you take note of. The further in you go, the less frequent the windows and what windows remain are barred by curtains. Everything is hot and shimmering flame, which is a relief to your cold-flushed skin. It does not make you feel warm , however. More like you had been told to pick between an icy death and a fiery one and had a penchant for heat.
The concern is that the ambiance is now terrifying.
You feel hunted. You feel wary. You feel small.
Which is the desired effect, you think, but that knowledge makes it no more pleasant to be burdened with.
The castle is everything homes in the village are not, and the luxury makes you ill by nurture, and perhaps to some degree nature as well. You would be in awe if you were not so high-strung.
However, the most unsettling thing is the air.
Everything is crushing you. And the air is so thick , such a contrast from the rest of the mountains that you are sputtering quietly as the maid leads you through the labyrinth of corridors and hallways and—most awfully—stairs. Your humble walking stick clicks across tile and falls blessedly silent on carpet, it feels a crime to make too much noise. The scent of the house is sickeningly strong like something poisonous fighting with everything it has to appear welcoming and the effect has clogged and weighed you down.
In conclusion, the change in environment is not good.
But you have not been struck dead, so ten points to you.
When you reach the opera hall, you have just about worked through your remaining energy reserve, or so you think.
Because once you step within, you have a momentary pause before you fall helplessly in love.
She’s beautiful. And she steals your breath away in the instant you set your unworthy gaze upon her.
For the brevity of a moment, you forget yourself; you forget the maid, the castle, the fact that you are a lamb within a monster den, and you stumble as fast as your wrecked leg can carry you to the piano.
You, unthinkingly, drop to your knees and nearly contemplate prayer.
Mahogany? No, no, it’s rosewood, you conclude running your hand around the outer build. Spruce for the soundboard, likely, that would be best. Gold (Gold! The insanity of it to your commoner eyes!) is accentend and embellished in elegant designs around the lid and stand. You do not touch this, out of superstition and ingrained instinct. You are juxtaposed to the instrument—it is worth more than several of your lives—but you are weak and hopelessly infatuated, and must touch some part of it for risk of madness.
You are trepidatious as you lift the lid, tender, gentler than you have ever been. Your pulse quickens to your own ears and you feel your heart struggle vainly behind its bony cage.
Your breath hitches and you repress a gasp. The keys are ivory. Real ivory.
You are in conflict about it, but it is such a delicious struggle. Your teeth come down harshly on your lower lip.
“I have lived for you,” you breathe out. “I have lived my life, a thousand pasts and a million futures, just for the chance of meeting you—and yet still I am undeserving.”
You caress the leg of the instrument and are ready to make this room your altar when the maid loudly clears her throat.
You whip your head around to fix her with the full force of your discontent, the effect is lessened somewhat when you have to readjust your glasses up your nose. “You may leave us, now.”
She does the recoil thing again, only this time you have snapped your teeth at her. She lifts her hands in some sort of surrender and backs herself up the stairs once more.
“Collect me in one- apologies, two hours,” you say, turning back to face your beloved. “She has not been seen to in some time.”
You despise piano tuning, actually.
It is another of those very meticulous and tiring things, and your misfortune lies in the fact that you are particularly adept at meticulous and tiring things.
Your skill-set is niche and somewhat ridiculous, but it is circumstances like these that might see you through the winter. The countess promised her usual sum in payment for your work, which is to say, you’ll be set for the next year if you can make it out of the castle. That is how it always worked with the old man, and now that he’s gone you have no one to split the reward with.
Funny how that thought brings a chill down upon your spine. It is the incorrect reaction, you remind yourself. You will be doubly richer and so, logically, there is no reason to mourn. Logically…
You set your mind into routine and begin your work, gingerly testing the keys and shuddering at the sound. It truly is too good for you.
It has been roughly two years since the last tuning, but it had not been your work. The old man was a good teacher, very good, but you were better — your reverence grants you talent, it is the boon he never had. He saw no God in the strings and hammers (only in that woman ) and that was his shortcoming.
You would flay your tendons from your twisted bones before committing sacrilege. You would pluck each of your teeth from your rotten jaw before failing this task. You would maneuver your own large intestine to strangle your wet and pitiful heart. You would-
You shake your head and it makes you dizzy, but has the intended effect of shutting your inner monologue up. There was no need for theatrics while you worked.
Your ear is perfect, you had refined it through…methods better left vague, but perfection nonetheless. And so you are keenly aware of what needs to be done. It is the execution where most struggle.
It has been forever and a year since you have gotten a chance to work on something so lovely, the tiny upright back at the shop has seen war—despite everything you have done in maintenance.
You feel unfaithful to it after your sudden and overwhelming infatuation towards this new, brighter, prettier, and better kept polished wonder.
You are still reeling about the ivory.
You tuck the tuning hammer between your teeth while you isolate your first key with the mutes, and it is when you pull away that you realize something is wrong.
You are a creature of habit, when you settle into normalcy you settle . The village is quiet, your shop quieter. You have lived there longer than you can remember, and you have adapted into it well enough. Everything is soft there, and so the castle’s intensity has left you wound up and tightened like a spring.
It is your keenness to sound that allows you to hear the whisper of fabric behind you.
You do not move, because the hairs on the back of your neck have risen to attention and as a prey animal you have been allotted the intuition of knowing when you are being watched.
The gaze is nearly a solid thing, and you are all taut muscle and dilating pupils beneath it. You are conscious of the presence behind you, and you understand all at once that you are in danger should you move. There is no reason behind that line of thinking, but you know it to be truer than anything.
Your heart attempts to crash its way from your chest and in the process sends a cacophony down to your wrists, your neck, and into the reverb drums of your ears. You do not risk the desperate, doggish breaths you suddenly feel the need to take, for fear of it jerking your body. Instead you take in your environment, this time under a defensive lens.
You have no traditional weapon to speak of on your person, so that’s scratched from your list. Your cane is an arms-length away, lunging for it now would accomplish nothing. Running is terrifying for obvious reasons, whatever is behind you is close and you have no way of knowing how fast it is. The hammer in your mouth is so small the only way you’d damage anything is if your attacker fell out in laughter on the floor and allowed you to pelt them with it. There is a vase on a table, it is closer than your cane. If you are quick enough-
There is a hand on your neck there is a hand on your neck there is a hand on your neck there is a hand on your neck there is a hand on your neck.
It is cold and gentle and awful and you set your jaw as every muscle in your throat tenses. The tuning hammer threatens to chip one of your teeth as the force of your tightened jaw comes down upon it.
You are drooling around it now, spittle falling from your prone tongue as you fight against turning and biting the hand. You have never wanted your teeth to meet flesh more across the entire two decade span of your life.
It is the sheer violence of that thought that recalls you back into the situation. You will not be biting anyone. It will be your end.
The hand finds a few strands of your hair and pulls them. At first gingerly, testingly, before finally yanking the strands and likely the follicle free of several. You suck a breath in around the hammer.
You are going to bite someone. It will be your end.
It is when you come to terms with this that the hand retreats.
You somehow know its owner to be gone as well, and cautiously, you turn to find nothing more than an empty space behind you.
***
You are unsettled the remainder of the time you work.
It distracts you from your usual precision, and you are horrified by this.
When the maid returns to gather you from the opera hall, you are unsatisfied with your failure. The piano has been tuned to the old man’s standards, which you had been able to meet since you were twelve
Which is to say, usable, but not perfect and therefore a failure.
You cannot stay any longer with it, nor in this castle, however. Your love for the instrument supersedes your self-preservation in theory, but your idiot heart will not quiet enough for you to focus. This is the most you will be able to manage.
The maid has since been removed of blood splatter, her prior frazzledness having been replaced now with carefully masked apprehension — and you now understand the way she had seemed to attempt to bar you from entering the castle instinctually.
You are nearly out of the door when she spins to face you.
“Do not return here, miss.”
She says this through a clenched jaw and so quietly you nearly do not hear her.
“They speak of you,” she continues. “I fear what may happen should they grow any more curious. If you receive another summons, run. Run as far as you might be able, but I bid you not return to this castle.”
“They?” you ask, knowing the answer.
“The countess and her daughters, miss.”
You hum. “One touched me.”
The maid pales and you watch her shudder. “Then all the more reason for you to stay away.”
And then you are shoved out and the door is slammed behind you.
You stand there for a moment, your brain working around the information—placing it into files and drawers, and then you start back down the trail.
Your body is once more plunged into mountain air and the distinct drop in temperature sends your head throbbing. You clutch tighter to your cane.
The castle vineyard is barren with the arrival of fall and dappled with snow. You, for some reason, cannot imagine it any other way — there must be a way to harvest grapes that thrive in shadowy winters because color seems so extraordinarily out of place here.
To be fair, though, all of the color in this part of the world seems to have been siphoned, like someone had painted a bleak overlay over the skies and rivers and dragged anything too saturated to slaughter.
You haven’t ever been particularly attracted to shows of flashiness, so the monotony of the mountains feels more welcome than you figure it should.
Scarecrows have been left leaning in no particular order, clearly being battered in snowfall and wind. They are ominous and largely disconcerting and when you step closer to examine one you realize why:
They are corpses.
They are corpses.
They are corpses.
They are harrowing corpses with empty eye sockets and graying leathery skin and open mouths with rotting teeth and maggot holes and the sour infectious scent of bile and exposed flesh.
Skin sloughs from muscle, muscle from bone and you are sick sick sick sick-
You do not immediately retch, but you have doubled over, and your mouth and eyes are pooling. When you glance up through the haze, you recognize who you are looking at.
You know him from the still distinct wrinkles about his mouth, from the thinning patch of blonde hair still atop his head. You see the glittering chain of his pocket watch still hanging from his trousers. His scoliotic spine is still familiar, even if part of it now is bared to you, having been pushed up and out through his skin like a serpent paused in shedding old skin—the vertebrae glistening with snow. The friendly curve of his arm has been made jagged and legs are not meant to bend that way .
One blue iris has been turned a murky gray with death-glaze; the other is gone. A crow is perched on his shoulder and stares at you heartlessly.
The old man had been called away, and you knew he would return. He never left you all that far behind.
You do end up retching when the crow tears away at his last eye.