Four

Amelia stared with wan displeasure as the sable carriage summoned itself down the cobblestone path. It halted to a whispering stop, horses skipping angrily as the black door hissed open. Goulds hopped out of the door and swapped Annika with a look, striking his fingers on the metal frame. "Tick-tock blondie..."

Amelia mewed goodbye to Annika, trying to stifle out the silvery tears. It was unnerving seeing her leave...kind of like seeing Mamma leave. Would she ever return? Would she end up dead like Mamma? Would she end up as a Brain? There were times when she pictured just the four of them; her, Annika, Mamma, and Pappa somewhere at the beach, enjoying the placating foamy waves, the golden sizzling sun, and the crooning birds as they sat and laughed without worrying about anything, especially the Brains. Amelia could already taste the cool tropical breeze, the tangy splash of what they used to call smoothies tickling her tongue, see the purple scar-torn sky as the golden sun began to set, and hear the colorful anecdotes told by her parents.

But two of them were already dead. And the third one was soon approaching its bitter end as the fourth one waited, sequestered, afraid, and heartless until it too would join the fray of death, just like the countless others in Paradise. Could this be her fate, Amelia wondered astringently. Or were her thoughts jerking her down a dark winding path?

Annika tugged out the bag of gold, which Amelia took hesitantly. "You will be back, right? To help me with the training?"

Annika kissed her little sister's forehead, stroking her haunting white blonde hair. "Very soon."Amelia smiled wanly, unsure of how to measure very soon. Then as soon as she had blinked, the elder sister had disappeared behind the carriage and it rolled down the winding path toward the entrance gate.

Amelia's eyes glazed curiously after the gate. Somehow the wind seemed a bit more spiteful, and the blissful acreage of Rennington shewed a bit more creepier. A hollow feeling permeated through Amelia's stomach and drew black vines that entangled her heart. Deciding to idle away her time at the library until she figured out what to do, Amelia walked back up the road to Rennington Hall. Mounting up the gray stone steps she saw a group of juveniles talking, kids that would've been around her age. When they saw Amelia, their mindless twittering abated and they just glared at her as if she was some foreigner invading their space. The tall gangly kid with parted dirty blonde hair was the most displeased, Amelia got the sense that he seemed to be the leader. He carried a sporty appearance and without the smudged look, he had a pretty fair face. He wore an obsidian black scarf wrapped cooly around his neck and Amelia noticed that the rest of the flock either had black scarves or black shawls.

"Let's floor it, you guys. It's getting too crowded here..." said the sporty kid as the flock tailed after him.

Amelia grunted, feeling a brusque shoulder push her aside. It was from one of the girls in the group who sneered as she turned to look back. Amelia rubbed her shoulders, frowning. What was going on? Did she do something? Did she look at them funny? Surely she must've done something...

Amelia followed the steps and entered the arched door. The library was a lambent stomach of a room that stood in the entrance hall of the building. It was festooned with the usual candle fire and had small shiny wooden tables planted in different areas. On both sides of the room, it bolstered an armlike pillar attached to stairs that spiraled up to the second and third floors like a snake slithering up a pole. As Amelia treaded further, past the vacant librarian's desk, she became deluged by a sea of books all of which were encased in shelves that stretched infinitely to the black space hole that was the ceiling. There were so many bookshelves that they seemed to make a leering maze of their own. There were a few kids who seemed to brush shoulders with Amelia as they idly moved along their path. And there were about a handful of them that were sitting alone, stone-faced, reading a book.

A spawn of voices reached Amelia's ear.

"It's Helvete's Mark, not Helve's Mark," said a familiar bossy voice. "Honestly, Zenias, why do I even bother."

"You know, you can be a little hurtful sometimes."

"Ok...and your point is...?"

Grinning, Amelia stalked to one of the tables in the back standing against the lee of the towering bookshelf. Slipping into one of the seats she said, "Am I interrupting?"

"Amelia!" The girl with the dangling earrings stood up, her Middle Eastern complexion glowing, face frozen with inexpectancy. "I was wondering when you'd pop up again!" Responding to Amelia's curious gaze at the boy, she said, "This is Zenias. He's an old—well, I'm not sure I'd call him a friend—ok, alright. He's an annoying friend of mine. Zenias, this is Amelia."

"Hi," said Amelia, brightly extending a hand out to Zenias.

Zenias, a thin-faced boy with snowy white hair and an ill-ridden red nose, gaped at her hands, unsure of what to do with it. He wore a gray shawl over his black and white long-sleeve t-shirt. Coupled with his snowy hair, it gave him a dismal style. He already possessed an ill posture but anticipating an amiable handshake from a girl seemed like it would do him in. His eyes glazed back on Amelia, feasting on her appearance. "Right...erm...nice meeting you too? I'm Zenias."

"I know," Amelia said awkwardly.

"Right," said Zenias, looking away.

Amelia and Audrey looked at each other and giggled silently. Amelia's eyes zoomed in on the cherry nose."Herregud! I like your nose. You kind of look like—"

"Phineas Cage?" Zenias stole a peek at Amelia and in a low, sepulchral tone he said, "He's my brother. Don't tell anyone I told you though."

"They come from a family of seers," Audrey said pedagogically. "Hence the white hair and strange aloofness."

"It runs in the family, honestly," Zenias said woefully. "All the way to my ancestral father Gideon. And not all of them have white hair, it's pretty rare in the community, and for good reason to as it's usually an omen that they're the ones to die the quickest."

"It's true," Audrey said approvingly, earrings tinkling. "I've read about it in Pernicious Prophets of the Middle Ages. Besides, seers are pretty rare nowadays. They're a hidden commodity in the modern age."

"That's so cool!" Amelia said, unsure of what commodity meant. "Well, you guys look identical."

"Yeah, I get that a lot," an eidolon of misery permeating across Zenias's face, "even though he has eight years on me."

Audrey patted Zenias on the shoulder and with sardonic ease, she said, "Don't worry Zenias, we both know you're immature, you don't have to be ashamed of it. The closet is wide open if you want to let it out."

Zenias stuck two fingers out as Audrey chortled.

"So what are you guys doing?" Amelia asked.

"We're trying to read up on a Helvete's Mark. I heard one of the kids mention it earlier and I couldn't help but poke in."

"I don't know why that bilge catches your eye," said Zenias. "It's completely made up. I'd focus on more important zombie studies, we've got our first class any minute now."

Audrey glared at him and forced an icy smile. "You're completely made up. I think the mark might have something to do with the Brains, and none of the books I've looked up so far have given me any detail," she said as she lazily flipped through the pages of a black leather-bound book titled Occults through the Ages.

Amelia bit her lips, her heart gaining weight. Would she be able to trust Audrey about the ominous dreams of the zombies? Would she be able to understand that the mark was an inauspicious pentagram stamped on the Brains's head? What would it matter, she herself hardly knew the symbology of the mark. Suddenly a voice that wasn't her own escaped. "My sister mentioned it when we were in the Collector's room," said Amelia. "But she never really went into full detail about it."

"Bullocks," whimpered Audrey. "So how are you enjoying Rennington so far?"

Amelia was forcibly reminded of the boy who had snubbed her earlier. "The weather is nice here, so it's ok. Aside from the strange food, of course."

"It gets stranger," said Zenias grinning ungraciously. "You should try the gorgonot, the heart soup, or the eyepie."

"Eyepie?" Amelia said uncertainly, thinking back to the raw hand that Annika had eaten earlier. "You guys don't actually—"

"Don't listen to him, I'd love to show you around, honestly. You haven't seen the extent of Rennington. I love your hair!" Audrey jumped up, expertly coursing her fingers through Amelia's scalp.

"Erm...thanks?" Amelia said awkwardly, smiling feebly. A rosy tint blossomed around her cheeks spreading across her face. She genuinely hated compliments, it made her feel like she was boasting. And Mamma had always warned her about boasting. According to her, it came from a sense of pride, and pride was the root of all evil. "It's not as long as my sister's. Annika's hair is far more prettier than mine. She's far more prettier...erm...why did you ask me about my zodiac?"

Audrey gave a shoddy smile, her chestnut eyes fidgeting, her crescent earrings dangling urgently. "Well, I like to read people. My mom was an astrologer and believed that the movements of the planets and the emotions they carried with one another correlated with the humans on Earth. You see, everything is mysteriously connected in the grand scheme of things to bring a harmonic balance to the universe. Studying people helps unlock that mystery."

"Sounds like a load of guesswork to me," Zenias said confidently. "I don't see how me being a Scorpio makes a lick of difference."

"Look who's talking, prophet boy. How'd the meeting turn out with your sister, Amelia? You know, with Vog?"

"It was ok. Vog creeps me out though, I think he likes young girls."Audrey let out a cynical giggle as Amelia continued. "He was going on about some disappearances and nudged Annika to check it for him with a bribe. She's gone now, she left with the Collectors, but I'm not sure when she'll be coming back."

Audrey and Zenias exchanged tacit glances. A sickly pallor chalked Zenias's thin face.

Amelia noticed their guise in silence. The air was stark and unmistakable. "You guys know something about it, don't you?"

"Well, we're not really allowed to poke in," Audrey said, returning to her seat. "Hobbes tells us to leave it to the adults, he's pretty adamant about it even though he couldn't lift a shoe to save his life. But there have been some faces that we haven't seen in a while. Molly Flannigan and the Delaney sisters are just a few names that I can pluck up, I've known them for a while. They were zombie hunters in training, just like us, but they haven't shown up for weeks."

"They're quite the enigmatic figures of conversation around here, " Zenias uttered, in a tone of antipodal calm.

"I hope they're alright," said Amelia drearily.

"Hoping and being are worlds apart," said Zenias. "This thing has been bubbling under the surface for a while and it's got everyone in a hot seat." He suddenly changed the topic, as if the conversation afflicted him. "Audrey tells me you're Swedish...is it true?"

"Ugh." Audrey drew a side-eye.

"Umm...yeah."

"Hmm," said Zenias. "What's the best and worst thing about being Swedish?"

Amelia looked desperately toward Audrey but she simply shrugged. "Erm...I'd say the holidays if not the healthcare, if you're in Sweden, of course. As for the worst, hmm...Jantelagen I guess."

"What's Jantelagen?" Zenias said at once.

"It's a law in Sweden that bashes individual thought and expression to promote social unity—Mamma told me about it years ago. It's an awful thing, and it honestly makes life incredibly boring."

"Interesting," said Zenias. There was a dreamy inebriated look on his face. "I wish I could go to Sweden and see what you people are all about."

"Why?" Amelia said modestly. "We're not that interesting. We're very cold and distant, we prefer being left alone, and we're incredibly boring."

"You're not boring," said Zenias.

Amelia smiled awkwardly. "What?"

"What?" said Zenias, removing his lingering gaze on Amelia.

Audrey got up, chuckling. "Come on, let me show you around."

They exited the library and walked down the gathering cobblestone path to Midas's Mansion. Their footsteps clicked hungrily on the ground as they brushed past a bunch of listless faces. Up ahead, past the uproarious swirl of people and carriages, they could make out the paunchy outline of Vog escorting a young round-faced girl out the mansion door. Once the girl had been thoroughly egressed, he jauntily stalked over to his statue and started bowing down to it. Amelia could've already imagined the eerie twinkle that was in his eye as he sat crouched in obeisance.

"This is Midas's Mansion, as you've probably figured out by now. If you wish to visit Vog (I don't see who in their right mind would)"—Audrey gave Zenias a considerable glance—"or have any questions for him, this is probably the best place to be." said Audrey.

"Why does he do that?" Amelia asked. "Like...bow down to himself?"

"Because he's a self-centered prick," Zenias said savagely.

"That and because that's just the norm he was raised in. Back in the days before Paradise fell to the Brains, it was pretty commonplace to see people worshipping themselves. It was a sort of fashion."

"Or you can just say it how it is" said Zenias, a bitter undertone brewing. "He likes to get busy with underage girls, allocate jobs that he's too lazy to do, and then stroke his own cock to his image after a hard day's work."

Amelia stared, unsure of whether to feel bad for the man or not. "What does allocate mean?"

"To give out," Zenias said as an aside.

"You guys read a lot of books."

"Most of us don't have much else to do with no TV, cellphones, or celebrity gossip," Audrey said, with a plaintive scratch in her voice. She looked at the ground. "Sometimes I wonder what it's like having those things. You know, actually being a kid? Not having to worry about if a Brain is going to eat you the next day. Not having to constantly think about death..."

The three kids swapped looks. There was nothing that could be said to alleviate the bleak reality that they were in. Who was to say, with swift confidence, that in a few years, they would all still be alive?

They flocked to the next point of interest in the tour. Strolling past the snakelike path they entered a new wide open space, portraying a vista of what appeared to be a cobblestone plaza. The area was environed by German-styled houses, a few old-looking Gothic churches with high pointed towers that poked the sky, and some crouched antiquated stores wrought of stone and visaged with dusty awnings and creaking slats by their windows. In the middle of the plaza was a small acreage of a garden teeming with verdant luscious plants and winking flowers. Ornamented in the center of the garden with utmost grandeur was a prodigious celestial sphere, wrought of black metal, with a model of a star tucked inside of it. It was the most majestic sight Amelia had experienced since walking into Rennington Court. She hardly noticed the ant-like activity of kids and teenagers playing around the area. Topping off the dreamy majesty, palm trees cropped themselves into the plaza in sparse areas, effusively facing the orange splash of morning light that radiated the place.

"And this is Witch Park," Audrey said lazily. She had clearly outgrown the effusive nature of the park. "Playground and hang out spot for most kids around here. The rest are usually in the Hall."

Amelia gushed. "Cool." Despite the beauty of the park, there was a slight bewitching undertone that Amelia couldn't quite seem to explain. And before she could identify it, she had already forgotten it. Perhaps this was what this place was most adept at, making you forget about the dreary humdrum of things and letting you escape in bliss, unbidden.

"Hey look, It's Miccay," said Zenias engagingly. Amelia snapped out of her beautiful daze and saw a mask of a boy with a prolate face, crumbs of freckles, and buck teeth emerge from the plaza. "He's kind of a troublemaker around here. But he's funny..."

He was being carried on the scruff of his neck by Hobbes, his stark red-haired semblance trailing after him with delicious glee. "Walk faster! My legs are getting bored...I don't think Mrs. Kauffman is going to appreciate a late apology, especially from a brat who paints fake blood in people's houses. What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking wow wouldn't it be funny if she thought it was real blood?" Miccay uttered coyly. "Clearly it's flown over your head."

Hobbes shoved the boy's head even harder. "You invaded someone's property, that's a mandate violation. If I had it my way, you'd be expelled from this premises—"

"Yeah, like you're head boss," said Miccay. "Don't sweat it though, I'll be sure to put my name in next time we have an election. I pinky promise."

"—you'd be discharged from this premise immediately," Hobbes pummeled on fiercely, giving Miccay another shove. "So be grateful Mrs. Kauffman wasn't willing to press charges."

Zenias waved at Miccay upon the wake of his arrival but the boy merely frowned as he passed the trio, Hobbes's cloak billowing after him in the midst of his angry stride.

"Poor Miccay," Audrey said.

"He'll be fine," Zenias muttered, lowering his hand.

They continued to walk down the gathering path of the park, staring fondly at the induced flowery activity. Next to the central garden stood a stretched-up black lamppost, and underneath it, staring quite intently at them was a stoic purple-robed figure. She was a young woman, framed in her early thirties, composed of a ghostly pale face, wide witchlike eyes of pastel blue, and glistening oily black hair that fell to her shoulders. She wore a rather austere, emotionless expression that effortlessly accompanied her medium-like eyes. And just like Audrey, she bore earrings, but they were ominously blood red and refused to dangle as much. The woman was rubbing her fingers, fiddling with a golden ring, such a resplendent ring that would've made a man such as Vog tweak his eyes in envy. This, Amelia thought to herself, was surely a woman who dealt profoundly with magic.

"Who's that lady? That lady over there?" She didn't dare point.

Amelia was burdened to see Audrey frown as she said, "That's Delephine Hex, one of the teachers here. She's a bit of a mystery, prefers working alone ya know." Then Audrey leaned into Amelia. "Reputation has it that she deals a lot with dark magic…Satanic magic, if you know what I mean. But that all stems from rumors.

"Well whatever's truth or fiction, I wouldn't her teaching me." Zenias shuddered.

Amelia couldn't help but agree with Zenias, but there was something in the way that Delephine woman looked at her. As if there was some knowledge that she wished to impart to her, knowledge that would make her understand. 

Amelia sensed they were approaching one of the Gothic churches beside her and it was there she saw the boy and his cronies again. The same begrudging boy with parted hair, a sporty look, and a high attitude. They were standing reposed on the steps of the church, calmly chatting. Predictably the sporty boy was the only one with his hands in his pockets. His eyes narrowed as he saw them approach.

"Hey you guys, I'd like for you to meet Amelia Bergstrom," Audrey said to the group in a projected genial manner. "She's new around here."

Audrey's introduction was greeted by a frosty silence. The group stared, blinking like a bunch of uncertain crows. A few extended a show of happy smugness. But all of them were riveted upon the sporty boy's reaction. He was oddly subdued, carefully indifferent. But the pain in his eyes was unmistakable.

"Really?" said Audrey, incredulous. "That's how you guys are going to treat a human being?"

"It's ok, Audrey," Amelia said in a false show of blithe. In truth, her heart was clearly entrenched in pain. "I really don't care."

"I said," Audrey repeated forcibly, voice tremulous, looking as if she was about to cry. "I'd like for you to meet Amelia Bergstrom. Please give her the fucking greeting she deserves!"

"I'm sure Amelia Bergstrom can perfectly greet herself," the sporty boy said smoothly. Buttery laughs soon followed his words, like crows cawing in approval.

"Good one," said a russet-haired boy flanked directly behind the boy's right. A curly-haired mixed kid and several others nodded in agreement.

"Eat shit, Adriah," said Zenias, face scrawled with contempt as Amelia bawled out of the group. Audrey miserably ran after her.

"I don't get it," said Amelia, a few minutes after the abysmal encounter at the church. They were now approaching a black bench, one of several that surrounded the central garden. "Why don't they like me? What did I ever do to them?"

"They're just jealous of you. Don't worry, they'll get over it," said Audrey consolingly. But she didn't quite meet her eyes when she said that and she spoke as if she was trying to hold something back.

"Who are they anyway?"

"The one who they all grovel to is Adriah Innsmouth, his father was a skillful zombie hunter who was best friends with Jonathan Jovem," said Audrey ruefully. "The other ones behind him were Cepher Inkheart and Jerulemon Ulzaar. You saw them, the mixed kid and the gangly brown-haired kid.

"He thinks that just because his father was in close circles with Jovem, it gives him a certain degree of privilege," said Zenias.

"Don't sweat it, they'll warm up to you eventually," said Audrey. "Hi, Sabrina!"

A round-faced girl with bright blue witch eyes and gushing red hair sat sedately reposed on the bench in front of the spherical ornament. She gave Amelia a bewitching, calculated look before turning to Audrey and forcing a sophisticated smile. "Hello. I see you've brought a friend."

"This is Amelia Bergstrom, daughter of Astrid Bergstrom. She's kind of a new thing around here so I just thought I'd show her around," said Audrey. "Amelia, this is Sabrina Nightcraft."

Amelia gave Sabrina an uncertain look as she waved hello.

"Well Amelia," said Sabrina with somewhat of a sarcastic, biting tone, "go easy on me for a while and maybe you might just be in my good books. We don't usually get a lot of new people around here, so you're quite the sight."

"Am I in your good books, Sabrina?" Zenias asked. Sabrina remained coldly silent as if an annoying wind was buffeting her ears. "I guess not." Zenias returned to his usual air of gloom.

"You're related to Astrid?" said a girl who had been humming a low morose tune next to Sabrina. "She was always nice to my mother." She had a type of restless face that could outshine any sloth, a blonde half-up French braid, and appeared incredibly timid as if one small poke could cause her to break into tears.

"Oh, that's Regina Minor," Audrey said to Amelia, "Please go easy on her or I'll make you cry." She turned apologetically to Regina and said, "Sorry Regina, I hardly noticed you for a second there."

"That's ok," Regina said airily. She had a slow, unassuming parlance. Amelia felt a strong urge to hug her.

"Are your brothers still alive?"

"Yeah, they'll be starting sentinel work two suns from now since they already graduated last cycle and all."

"I'm so happy for them! I hope they do well."

Suns? Cycle? Amelia plucked these words with acerbic interest.

"Class is starting soon," Sabrina said portentously.

"I know," said Audrey. "I wish I knew what we were learning."

"Most likely the basics of zombie hunting. We shouldn't be doing anything too advanced since we're just starting out."

"Makes sense. Well, we'll see you guys later."

The point in their tour led them down a steep stripped path in between two churches that led to another cobblestone-paved opening. This area was a bit smaller than the park and it presented a large teepee-like model of sticks encircled by baseball-sized stones. The strange scene reminded Amelia of some type of ritual like the one she had seen with Annika when first entering Naaman.

"This is the Rite of Jubilee. It's where we hold the Ceremony of Jubilee every seven moons," said Audrey.

"It's just Jubilee," said Zenias. "We rarely call it that, the dribble that Audrey just said."

"I was giving her the formal name just in case it came up, nitwit," Audrey said hotly.

Zenias nodded glumly. "Whatever.'

"What is Jubilee anyway?" Amelia asked.

"It's a ceremony that celebrates and gives memory to those who died during Black Night. It's a required event for all residents."

"It's also for zombie hunters that have died recently as well," Zenias added colorlessly. "We burn that teepee of sticks to represent their renewed spirits that will continue to live on."

"Oj," said Amelia. "Has there ever been anyone that hadn't shown up?"

"Miccay," Zenias chuckled. "But only once. They starved him for three days and threatened to kick him out if he did it again."

"That's an awful thing to laugh at, Zenias," said Audrey rebukingly.

"He had it coming, didn't he?"

Audrey rolled her eyes.

The trio winded back down the path toward Rennington Hall.

"Hey Audrey, what did Regina mean by suns and cycles?" Amelia asked as the gothic frame of Rennington Hall began to poke into view.

"Well with industrial society gone, we don't necessarily rely on weekday calendars anymore do we? So we've simplified things into suns, moons, and cycles." Audrey said."A sun is a day, a moon is a night, and a cycle is a year. We don't need to organize the days in such a cookie-cutter fashion and personally, I like it this way, it's very prophetic.

"What about a week?" Amelia asked.

"That's a constructed social system," Audrey said cooly. "Who was to say that seven days had to be a week? Why not thirty? Or sixty? Or a thousand? So we did away with that."

"But the Bible talks about the seven days when God created the earth and how he rested on the seventh day. Wouldn't that be part of what we know creates a week?" Amelia thought back to what Mamma had taught her about the Bible's teachings.

"Well, again that's subjective. Not everyone that is alive believes in the Jewish God or even if the story of creation was a real thing. We can see the sun and the moon, so this counting system is foolproof."

"Then what about a cycle? Is that still three hundred and sixty five days?"

"Yes, because it's objectively marked as a full revolution around the sun."

"Interesting," said Amelia.

"We also don't use time," Zenias added. "It's pretty pointless. It's either morning, day, or night."

Amelia chewed on what Regina had said about her mother. She was starting to notice a theme. "Audrey?"

"Hmm?"

"Are your parents still alive?"

"No, they died years ago. Zenias's too, he was here before I was."

"And I've been withering ever since." Zenias bemoaned.

"Ok then, so does that mean that this neighborhood is full of orphans?"

Audrey snorted. "You're catching on to this now? Come on, I've got to show you the second and third floors."

"We're not supposed to be on the third floor," Zenias said breathlessly.

"Yeah, well we can split the difference later, Zenias. We're only showing her around."

They swept back into the entrance of the library and fled up the spiral stairs that led up to the second floor. The second floor was a long eerie stretch of hallway limned with the usual lambent candlelight and organized rather dully with a line of cookie-cutter doors. The doors were numbered in stencils and reminded Amelia of a certain place that she couldn't put her finger on.

"This is the second floor, where we sleep."

"And this would be able to fit all kids?" Amelia uttered uncertainly.

"Well, we share bunks and the rooms are enchanted to grow bigger if it's accommodation that we need. Come on..."

They finally ascended up the third floor. It was much like the second floor but there were sparse candles on this level which gave it a lonely abyss-like feeling, and Amelia got the impression that no soul ever opened the doors. As the hallway loomed darker to their right, Amelia could hear the imminent pat pat patting and pounding creaks of a certain door. Several disconcerting rasps pealed the air, it was all too familiar for Amelia. They arrived at a magnificent portrait that showed an impressive image of a sullen aged man in a gray suit standing in an abandoned office. He was erected in front of an oblong desk and in his hand he held what appeared to be a black cane. Everything about this man was gray, from his hair to his suit to his steely expression. He was completely devoid of mirth.

"This was Nolan Rennington. He was a lawyer and the original developer of Rennington Court back in the days before Black Night. He had intended this building to be an asylum but over time it grew to be just a residential building."

"An asylum?" said Amelia with an air of intrigue. The stencils were starting to make a bit more sense now. "But why would he want to build an asylum?"

"Because he was a madman," said Zenias.

"No one truly knows, but I have a theory it was because he wanted to study the minds of the mental patients and hear their stories. With the information that he siphoned, he might be able to create a universal remedy for all crazy people. But if the remedy didn't work, they would have to spend their eternal days here, locked in these cages." said Audrey.

"That's the most tragic theory I ever heard," said Zenias.

Audrey shrugged. "It's something. Anyway, like I said, no one really knows why he wanted to build an asylum, the man was a hermit and very mysterious. He preferred to be left alone. In his later years, however, feeling as if he had no other purpose in life, and estranged from society, he ended up killing himself in his office. The same office that Vog is in now."

"Oj. Did they ever find his body?" Amelia asked.

"Yeah, and they preserved it, somewhere underneath this building."

Amelia shuddered as Zenias looked at the floor, incrementally more cheerful.

They moved on to the next portrait. This one was a bit bigger and it portrayed a tall figure with gleaming white blonde hair, adorned in a muted brown travel cloak. He possessed a heroic stature and had a haughty look on his face as he valiantly held the hilt of his sword. If he had been a few years older, Amelia imagined, he could've been her father in another universe.

"This is Jonathan Jovem. The most legendary zombie hunter in all of Paradise. He's notoriously known for not having been bit once while maintaining a five thousand kill streak." said Audrey.

"Wow," said Amelia. "Then how did he die?"

"He was assassinated," said Zenias darkly. "Poor guy didn't see it coming, probably got caught up in all the glamour if you ask me."

They reached the final door at a barricaded wall at the end of the hallway. The stertorous noises became more apparent. They opened the hissing wooden door and found themselves in a room fraught with a noxious fishy smell that brought Amelia back to an antediluvian evil. The dim natural light caused the black room to birth a blue bruised shade redolent of a cold attic in the middle of winter. Up ahead, a colony of lifeless mask-like figures hung dangled in the air against the blue bruise horror, flies bussing around their scenic corpse. Amelia gasped. Across the room, there were cages upon cages of groaning, rasping creatures with blanched rotten faces and red gleaming eyes. They all carried the bright wounded mark that Amelia was all too familiar with, Helvete's Mark.

"This was where they had kept all the mental patients," said Audrey.

They traipsed along warily skirting the dangling dead bodies.

"Why did they hang them?" Amelia asked.

"Blaire did it. He finds fascination in toying with death," Audrey said grimly.

Amelia crept slowly toward one of the bodies and discovered a letter in its hand.

Dear Trissa,

I don't know how long I'll be in here but I hope you're alright, my dear. There will be better days coming and I just hope I can come to you safely. I've been hearing words of an infection or some disease going on, but I haven't caught it in God's name. Love you like the birds love the sky.

— Lloyd.

Amelia couldn't help but feel a brimming sadness for the Brain. Then she found what appeared to be a notebook lying near one of the rattling cages. The Brain stared at her with quaking rage, thrashing his body against the bars, shaking it fiercely with his unnailed fingers. She picked it up and started to read.

Dear Lord,

I hope these people are faring well. I've been seeing visions of total destruction coming their way. But they won't heed my warnings. Whatever happens, I hope you can repose mercy on this dreadful city. They don't understand the wicked deeds that they've done and the end of their ways.

—Your humble prophet, Duluth.

She showed the notebook to Audrey and Zenias. "Something terrible was already prophecized to happen to Paradise."

"And that thing was Black Night..." said Audrey knowledgeably, narrowing her eyes on the page. "It makes sense now. This Duluth guy must've been one of many prophets to warn these people of their destruction. After all, they were incredibly wicked and full of themselves."

"Duluth Aberdeen was a good friend of my father," Zenias snatched the notebook, the better to get a cleaner view. "But he ended up getting his head chopped off by an edict from the Council of Naaman. They hated Duluth's words, feared them even, so much so that any supporters were automatically executed. They must've sent Duluth to this asylum to shut him up."

"Now there's just one question that remains," said Amelia hopelessly.

"Yeah?" Audrey looked up.

"What could've possibly happened on Black Night to cause the people to turn like...that."

The three kids nervously stared at the rattling cage, soaking in the horrendous sight of the Brain. The red devilish eyes were lost and betrayed behind that cadaverous mask.

Suddenly a stentorian striking of a bell tore through the cold blue bruised air.

"It's time for class," Audrey said quietly.