kuro fanfic: the devil in the flask [4/12]
Disclaimers: I do not own.
Ratings/Warnings: M. Flat-out M for mature (as well as explicit) scenes, gothic themes, disturbing and occasionally gory imagery, and all-around delicious Kuroshitsuji darkness. Makes references to characters all across the map of manga, anime, etc.
Pairings: Sebastian/Ciel, Ciel/Lizzy if you squint later, Sebastian/everyone, and too many others on the side that don’t really make a difference
Summary: we can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy in life is when men are afraid of the light - a family of witches, they say, where the crosses are turned upside down by invisible hands and ravens are sacrificed to the devil, where incest and tragedy and murder prance hand in hand with noble responsibilities and otherworldly elegance, where the man is sighted most often in the company of the current heir of the Phantomhive legacy, the young Earl left a vast estate of enviable value: and that is the boy Ciel Phantomhive
Posted on FF.net here or below:
⌈ the devil in the flask ⌋
chapter four
THE DEVIL IN THE FLASK
†††
Such griefs with such men well agree, but wherefore, wherefore fall on me?
†††
8. and he won
It was on the 31st of October in 1886 that Rachel Phantomhive died.
There was a masquerade spinning through the gaily-lit reception hall of the manor when she drew her last breath, spooky costumes and Carnival-inspired masks galore as for the first time seemingly since October of the year before, the Phantomhive house was bursting at the seams with successful festivities.
Ciel Phantomhive was almost eleven years old, and when he followed his mother to her upstairs boudoir where she preferred to take some air instead of in the ladies’ lounge outside the ballroom, he was crying. Fat, endless tears rolled down his face to swell at his chin and then drop to the floor, cold already. He was quite the princely sight in his freshly-tailored suit (modeled after a young Alexander III of the Russian tsars) and imported Venetian mask, golden military tassels and dark suitcoat with the light blue sash and silver pin. A black patch covered his right eye. He even had a little stiletto at his hip, and Rachel had been laughing with her sister and friends over how endearingly perfect he looked in such garb, dark and noble and despotic, perhaps even a little seductive, but an eleven-year-old was not capable of such complexities, was he?
In the ballroom, Phantomhive confections were set up on delicate silver tiered platters near the ice sculptures.
“My angel, what’s the matter?”
In the upstairs boudoir, Ciel’s voice quavered on his lower lip like the tears did on his chin and he looked so exquisitely terrified and sad at the same time, Rachel found it beautiful. She held out her hands to gather her son to her bosom, but she froze in place when he whispered:
“The devil played at chess with me, Mamma…”
A maternal protectiveness fired up within her. She squinted at him imploringly, heart jumping to her throat. “Ciel, what do you mean?”
Ciel gawked at her, as if he hadn’t the strength to explain. Then the tears infected his face again and he grimaced, so lusciously, moaning with all the feel of a desperate apology: “I said, the devil played at chess with me, Mamma, and he won!”
A sudden chill drained the air of every emotion but fear. Ciel was sobbing loudly into his hands like he hadn’t since he was a very small child, but for a moment all Rachel could hear was the pounding of her pulse in her ears. Her hands shook. Chords of alarm clamored in her heart. She remembered Frances saying, That child, there’s something dark about that child, like the imminent danger of brewing storm clouds… She took not a step towards her son before her ears rang and she realized why the room was so cold.
The man.
It started out like a sighting of any other phantom, an ambiguous shadowy form from the corner of her eye. But then the man materialized behind Ciel swiftly-quite simply a shadow and then with the blink of an eye, standing there as solidly as ever. He was so vivid, he could have been a real human form and not condensed supernatural energy. She could see the twitch of his linen collar. She could see the crests on the winking silver buttons of his suit, the shine of the dark hair beautifully framing his face. She saw the faint dimples in his pale cheeks as an innocent smile curled at his mouth, but that innocence was a mockery, because his ruddy evil eyes danced with silent laughter and Ciel was the perfect image of helpless misery as the man’s arms slithered so sensually about him from behind, seemingly a tall lover’s embrace from over the shoulder.
And without a twitch of the lips or a whisper of sound, as if the voice were simply implanted within Rachel’s mind, the man said very clearly: He’s mine…
Rachel felt something snap in her like a lock finally turning to the right key.
“Get away from my child!” she screeched, and for the first time in all her life she felt like a witch as she flew forward and tried to free her son from the wraith’s hold.
“Mamma!” Ciel wept, tears and snot dirtying his precious face.
The man didn’t even try to be scary, as if he didn’t find Rachel a worthy enough opponent. Like a cat playing with a mouse, he let her try over and over to yank Ciel away from him, but each attempt was a failure. The man slapped her across the face. He shoved her like a man should never shove a woman. She lunged at him and he was suddenly on the other side of the room, still holding tight to her sobbing angel.
Rachel felt as though she were going mad. Malicious whispers seemed to swirl around the room from no perceptible mouths. Disorientation descended, mercilessly. Everywhere she turned was the man with her son in his arms, but when she moved in that direction they were gone again. The boudoir became a dizzying cage of unendurable confusion, ghost after ghost appearing in the corner of her eye only to flicker away the moment she turned to face them. Some she recognized. Some were clear. Others she screamed to see, either because she’d never seen them before or she couldn’t see them but for a black indistinct shape. Phantom footfalls rushed at her. Invisible beings knocked on the walls. The windowpanes began to rattle and faces pressed to the glass from outside. They appeared and then vanished one after the other until Rachel covered her eyes and screamed like a lost child, unable to physically keep up with the ghastly assault and having lost sight of her son in the onslaught of haunts.
Downstairs in the ballroom, the All Hallows Eve masquerade spun through the night.
“I don’t want this anymore!” Rachel shrieked. “I don’t want it, I’m not a witch, I can’t endure it, give me my angel, I’m leaving this house, I’m leaving this family, he’s not yours, he’s my son and you can’t have him and I know you’ve already corrupted him, you’ve dirtied his fragile little body and you’re a despicable, pathetic being, and you’re not worth half as much as this family makes you believe you are-”
The words liquefied into a violent, wet cough as dark scarlet burst from Rachel’s lips. She choked on it, panicking, and the room fell abruptly still and silent as if in respect of her sudden affliction.
The man stood at the closed boudoir doors with Ciel still in his arms, and both of them wore such forsaken expressions it absolutely tore Rachel’s heart in two. The man, his eyes longing and lonely, and Ciel, his face shining with the sticky tracks of dried tears, and more blood bubbled up in the back of her throat and gushed from her mouth, staining the front of her beautiful powder-blue gown. Droplets splattered the pearls at her neck. The sound of blood hitting the floor was a wet slap.
“No, Rachel…” the man said, with condescension so gentle it was almost nonexistent, as if placating a hysterical child, “you don’t understand at all.”
Slowly, Ciel removed the patch from his temple so that his violet eye, scarred by the pentagram, was visible again. His stare was empty, not hypnotized but cold and blank as if he’d been broken.
The man smiled, so pleasantly. It was a noxious sort of beauty. He stood now with one hand on Ciel’s shoulder, but the worst part was that despite his obvious air of dominance it seemed natural as though Ciel willingly succumbed to it. “You see,” the man whispered over the echo of music from the ballroom downstairs, “Vincent made his move in our special game of chess a few months ago, but I never had a chance to make mine before Ciel moved a piece of his own-out of curiosity, of course. And I found myself in a most delicious predicament… Either I sacrifice my rook, or I take the opposite queen. What do you think I did, Lady Phantomhive?”
Lady Phantomhive. The forged formalities were revolting, travesties of elegance in this moment of life and death.
The last thing Ciel saw in his mother’s eyes was the cold dark light of understanding. The horrors were finally real to her, then, her denial crumbling with all the majestic ruin of a tower falling until all she could see were the bare bones of the truth. She knew in her final seconds exactly what Sebastian did to her son, exactly what Sebastian did with her son, exactly what Sebastian wanted, and exactly what Sebastian could do. And she knew that Ciel had willingly opened himself to it all.
Shame and guilt scalded Ciel like a cold white flame.
Blood ran from his mother’s eyes. It began to run from her nose. She seemed to choke, her eyes bulging, and she staggered from daybed to French table with blood pouring and her breath wheezing as if her lungs were beginning to deflate. It was a ghastly sound. It etched itself into Ciel’s memory as he watched in wide-eyed horror. Thick rivulets of blood left clotting, flaking tracks as they streamed down her cheeks. It was grisly. It was nightmarish. He’d never noticed how frail and pretty his mother had really been until now, as she tumbled to the floor and blood turned her golden curls and pale gown and dainty hands a dark claret. She became the image of manic desperation, a grotesque mannequin saint from Satan’s own repertoire twitching and crawling across the floor, trying to speak, trying to call out and reach for Ciel where he stood with Sebastian’s hand on the back of his neck across the boudoir from her, and Ciel felt he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move. He was frozen, and the guilt and the terror were going to crush him slowly and painfully.
He watched. He watched as his mother bled out as if Sebastian were puncturing each of her most vital organs with a slow deliberate finger one at a time until finally, gray-faced and trembling violently, she collapsed not far from Ciel’s feet and her eyes rolled back in her skull.
The silence rang in Ciel’s ears.
Blood had splashed across the gleaming toe of his shoe and it was beginning to pool, slowly but surely, closer to his feet. He took a step back, breath coming in short urgent gasps. Was it an asthma attack? A panic attack?
“Pick me up,” he whimpered, gesturing for Sebastian without once removing his eyes from the blood staining the floorboards. Sebastian obeyed, hoisting Ciel up and placing him atop a satin-lined footstool nearby.
Rachel Phantomhive was lifeless on the floor, blood soaking towards the spotless back of her powder-blue taffeta gown. Her hair cascaded about her shoulders, flaky red already beginning to coagulate in the carefully curled locks. Her fingers were curled, limp and unmoving.
The boudoir felt oppressive suddenly, sepulchral, smothering and suffocating like a tomb. His mother lay sprawled in her own gore as inert as an abandoned marionette, which certainly was what she had been in her last moments of life. The cloyingly sweet metallic stench of blood was already beginning to pervade the air.
Ciel avoided the mess as he stepped down off the stool.
He replaced his eye patch, and ignored the fact that Sebastian followed him like a puppy as he made his way out of the boudoir and back down the hall to the main stairs.
There were clusters of people in the vestibule, lamps and chandeliers ablaze and the smell of tobacco smoke strong. Footmen in old-fashioned white wigs were cleaning cloaks and outerwear in the coat room. Servants hurried to and fro, like flies buzzing over a carcass. In the reception hall, between the widest of windows there was a small-scale mural, paled moldering tempera scenes of fairies and nymphs in their natural homes of woodlands and pastures while gods and angels danced above the painted clouds, all of it so finely detailed and fantastic. And it was a perfect high-class din, the doors open on the vestibule and two happy roars becoming one great chaos as like the creatures of the fairy world on the panels in the ballroom tonight this was a crowd of more vivacious creatures than usual, a more dangerous taxonomy of men and women in glorious costumes and fine masks-devils, ghouls, kings, queens-an expanse of velvet and silk, delicate lace, sparkling jewels, the liveried servants gliding through with silver trays of wine and champagne and other tasty things, their powdered hair like sails as they drifted through, ships on tumultuous waves. Burlesque dancers hung on ribbons and swings near the magician’s stage in the corner. All manner of grotesque and macabre things were on display: skulls and jack-o’-lanterns, painted roses, death photographs, black candles and preserved insects.
It was going on eleven o’clock when the body was found.
Ciel was sitting on the upholstered loveseat under the goliath Rembrandt of Henry Marin Phantomhive in the ballroom, with Lizzy asleep against his shoulder (much to Aunt Frances’s dismay, of course) and the taste of sherry quite evident in his crystal glass of negus. Wendy and Peter had already gone off to bed. Hannah waited patiently for Ciel to confess he was too tired to remain downstairs any longer, but of course nobody was going to force the son of Earl Phantomhive to retire before he wanted to. The music was still going, violins and keyboard, and the dancing had just gotten more frivolous and risqué, and the two boys who found the body were named August Prescott and Lesley Portman, one Phantomhive cousin through blood and the other through marriage, the two of whom had been searching for a private room in which to sneak some drunken kisses safely.
At first it was thought a murder mystery had begun and there was a wave of cheers and excited voices when the boys hurried downstairs to tell the chamberlain. The theme of the ball was, after all, The Masque of the Red Death, and something had to be done until the witching hour when the Phantomhive ghosts were rumored to show themselves, which was what all the guests were waiting for anyway.
And Ciel watched solemnly as a frantic conversation went on between his father and the chamberlain and Uncle Clause. Panicked gesticulations, pinched expressions, all too far away for Ciel to hear what they said but he watched the color drain from his father’s face and he watched his Uncle Clause grab his arm and run with him from the ballroom, and he watched the chamberlain hurry to fetch Madame Red.
So they’d found her.
The sweet anticipation of a murder mystery began to lean towards hysteria amongst the guests as gossip spread quickly that it was a real murder mystery, not something staged-and it was entertaining, actually, seeing the fear light from face to face spryly, until the pleasant din of the ball became outright chaos of the worst sort, and still Lizzy slept through it all against his shoulder.
Drastic measures were taken to calm the guests. Vincent Phantomhive and Madame Red pleaded with the spirit Grell Sutcliffe until finally Grell temporarily possessed the corpse of Lady Phantomhive so that it might be washed up and led downstairs to show the guests it was all a wonderful joke. But Grell wasn’t the most powerful spirit and so Lady Phantomhive appeared droopy-eyed and dazed, led along as if witless by her husband and sister. “She’s had too much to drink by now!” Madame Red laughed, as Vincent returned the lady upstairs for bed, and Ciel was still in shock as nonetheless gossip continued to rage. What a ruse! and I truly believed she was dead… and some guests actually fled the manor before finding out the lady was “still alive”. Stories of the ball-whether told by those who believed Rachel Phantomhive died that night or those who thought she died a few days later and the whole thing had been a clever act to spice up the masquerade, mere tragic coincidence-would later travel far and wide back in London, eventually sparking a brief and decidedly pointless investigation into the Phantomhive family by Commissioner Warren under accusations of poisoning.
And at three o’clock in the morning during the All Hallows Eve masquerade when Vincent Phantomhive doused the lights and let his tears flow freely in the dark, the ghosts of the house came out to play and the delighted screams and cries of surprise echoed through the halls. Wasn’t this the reason anyone attended the Phantomhive balls, the potential for the sickly fascinating? The guests loved it, this “Atonement party” where they sat together around circular tables and had gypsy cards read to them and saw the raven sacrificed another year. “The Phantomhives have the best entertainment,” praised those who were oblivious, while those who understood muttered below their breath, “Dashwood would be envious.” Of course there were also those who could not sleep a wink afterwards and departed at the crack of dawn, whispering together on the train back to London, “We’re never going to the Phantomhives’ October masquerade again!”
And at three o’clock in the morning during the All Hallows Eve masquerade, Ciel Phantomhive was curled up in his four-poster bed crying miserably, having surrendered to the cold black sorrow and anger for all that he had unwittingly done-but he’d banished Sebastian from his side and so he cried alone, with Sebastian watching as if through a window so crestfallenly from his side of the mirror.
---
The chronicles of the Phantomhive family will be continued shortly…
back to chapter three ††† on to chapter five
Ratings/Warnings: M. Flat-out M for mature (as well as explicit) scenes, gothic themes, disturbing and occasionally gory imagery, and all-around delicious Kuroshitsuji darkness. Makes references to characters all across the map of manga, anime, etc.
Pairings: Sebastian/Ciel, Ciel/Lizzy if you squint later, Sebastian/everyone, and too many others on the side that don’t really make a difference
Summary: we can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy in life is when men are afraid of the light - a family of witches, they say, where the crosses are turned upside down by invisible hands and ravens are sacrificed to the devil, where incest and tragedy and murder prance hand in hand with noble responsibilities and otherworldly elegance, where the man is sighted most often in the company of the current heir of the Phantomhive legacy, the young Earl left a vast estate of enviable value: and that is the boy Ciel Phantomhive
Posted on FF.net here or below:
⌈ the devil in the flask ⌋
chapter four
THE DEVIL IN THE FLASK
†††
Such griefs with such men well agree, but wherefore, wherefore fall on me?
†††
8. and he won
It was on the 31st of October in 1886 that Rachel Phantomhive died.
There was a masquerade spinning through the gaily-lit reception hall of the manor when she drew her last breath, spooky costumes and Carnival-inspired masks galore as for the first time seemingly since October of the year before, the Phantomhive house was bursting at the seams with successful festivities.
Ciel Phantomhive was almost eleven years old, and when he followed his mother to her upstairs boudoir where she preferred to take some air instead of in the ladies’ lounge outside the ballroom, he was crying. Fat, endless tears rolled down his face to swell at his chin and then drop to the floor, cold already. He was quite the princely sight in his freshly-tailored suit (modeled after a young Alexander III of the Russian tsars) and imported Venetian mask, golden military tassels and dark suitcoat with the light blue sash and silver pin. A black patch covered his right eye. He even had a little stiletto at his hip, and Rachel had been laughing with her sister and friends over how endearingly perfect he looked in such garb, dark and noble and despotic, perhaps even a little seductive, but an eleven-year-old was not capable of such complexities, was he?
In the ballroom, Phantomhive confections were set up on delicate silver tiered platters near the ice sculptures.
“My angel, what’s the matter?”
In the upstairs boudoir, Ciel’s voice quavered on his lower lip like the tears did on his chin and he looked so exquisitely terrified and sad at the same time, Rachel found it beautiful. She held out her hands to gather her son to her bosom, but she froze in place when he whispered:
“The devil played at chess with me, Mamma…”
A maternal protectiveness fired up within her. She squinted at him imploringly, heart jumping to her throat. “Ciel, what do you mean?”
Ciel gawked at her, as if he hadn’t the strength to explain. Then the tears infected his face again and he grimaced, so lusciously, moaning with all the feel of a desperate apology: “I said, the devil played at chess with me, Mamma, and he won!”
A sudden chill drained the air of every emotion but fear. Ciel was sobbing loudly into his hands like he hadn’t since he was a very small child, but for a moment all Rachel could hear was the pounding of her pulse in her ears. Her hands shook. Chords of alarm clamored in her heart. She remembered Frances saying, That child, there’s something dark about that child, like the imminent danger of brewing storm clouds… She took not a step towards her son before her ears rang and she realized why the room was so cold.
The man.
It started out like a sighting of any other phantom, an ambiguous shadowy form from the corner of her eye. But then the man materialized behind Ciel swiftly-quite simply a shadow and then with the blink of an eye, standing there as solidly as ever. He was so vivid, he could have been a real human form and not condensed supernatural energy. She could see the twitch of his linen collar. She could see the crests on the winking silver buttons of his suit, the shine of the dark hair beautifully framing his face. She saw the faint dimples in his pale cheeks as an innocent smile curled at his mouth, but that innocence was a mockery, because his ruddy evil eyes danced with silent laughter and Ciel was the perfect image of helpless misery as the man’s arms slithered so sensually about him from behind, seemingly a tall lover’s embrace from over the shoulder.
And without a twitch of the lips or a whisper of sound, as if the voice were simply implanted within Rachel’s mind, the man said very clearly: He’s mine…
Rachel felt something snap in her like a lock finally turning to the right key.
“Get away from my child!” she screeched, and for the first time in all her life she felt like a witch as she flew forward and tried to free her son from the wraith’s hold.
“Mamma!” Ciel wept, tears and snot dirtying his precious face.
The man didn’t even try to be scary, as if he didn’t find Rachel a worthy enough opponent. Like a cat playing with a mouse, he let her try over and over to yank Ciel away from him, but each attempt was a failure. The man slapped her across the face. He shoved her like a man should never shove a woman. She lunged at him and he was suddenly on the other side of the room, still holding tight to her sobbing angel.
Rachel felt as though she were going mad. Malicious whispers seemed to swirl around the room from no perceptible mouths. Disorientation descended, mercilessly. Everywhere she turned was the man with her son in his arms, but when she moved in that direction they were gone again. The boudoir became a dizzying cage of unendurable confusion, ghost after ghost appearing in the corner of her eye only to flicker away the moment she turned to face them. Some she recognized. Some were clear. Others she screamed to see, either because she’d never seen them before or she couldn’t see them but for a black indistinct shape. Phantom footfalls rushed at her. Invisible beings knocked on the walls. The windowpanes began to rattle and faces pressed to the glass from outside. They appeared and then vanished one after the other until Rachel covered her eyes and screamed like a lost child, unable to physically keep up with the ghastly assault and having lost sight of her son in the onslaught of haunts.
Downstairs in the ballroom, the All Hallows Eve masquerade spun through the night.
“I don’t want this anymore!” Rachel shrieked. “I don’t want it, I’m not a witch, I can’t endure it, give me my angel, I’m leaving this house, I’m leaving this family, he’s not yours, he’s my son and you can’t have him and I know you’ve already corrupted him, you’ve dirtied his fragile little body and you’re a despicable, pathetic being, and you’re not worth half as much as this family makes you believe you are-”
The words liquefied into a violent, wet cough as dark scarlet burst from Rachel’s lips. She choked on it, panicking, and the room fell abruptly still and silent as if in respect of her sudden affliction.
The man stood at the closed boudoir doors with Ciel still in his arms, and both of them wore such forsaken expressions it absolutely tore Rachel’s heart in two. The man, his eyes longing and lonely, and Ciel, his face shining with the sticky tracks of dried tears, and more blood bubbled up in the back of her throat and gushed from her mouth, staining the front of her beautiful powder-blue gown. Droplets splattered the pearls at her neck. The sound of blood hitting the floor was a wet slap.
“No, Rachel…” the man said, with condescension so gentle it was almost nonexistent, as if placating a hysterical child, “you don’t understand at all.”
Slowly, Ciel removed the patch from his temple so that his violet eye, scarred by the pentagram, was visible again. His stare was empty, not hypnotized but cold and blank as if he’d been broken.
The man smiled, so pleasantly. It was a noxious sort of beauty. He stood now with one hand on Ciel’s shoulder, but the worst part was that despite his obvious air of dominance it seemed natural as though Ciel willingly succumbed to it. “You see,” the man whispered over the echo of music from the ballroom downstairs, “Vincent made his move in our special game of chess a few months ago, but I never had a chance to make mine before Ciel moved a piece of his own-out of curiosity, of course. And I found myself in a most delicious predicament… Either I sacrifice my rook, or I take the opposite queen. What do you think I did, Lady Phantomhive?”
Lady Phantomhive. The forged formalities were revolting, travesties of elegance in this moment of life and death.
The last thing Ciel saw in his mother’s eyes was the cold dark light of understanding. The horrors were finally real to her, then, her denial crumbling with all the majestic ruin of a tower falling until all she could see were the bare bones of the truth. She knew in her final seconds exactly what Sebastian did to her son, exactly what Sebastian did with her son, exactly what Sebastian wanted, and exactly what Sebastian could do. And she knew that Ciel had willingly opened himself to it all.
Shame and guilt scalded Ciel like a cold white flame.
Blood ran from his mother’s eyes. It began to run from her nose. She seemed to choke, her eyes bulging, and she staggered from daybed to French table with blood pouring and her breath wheezing as if her lungs were beginning to deflate. It was a ghastly sound. It etched itself into Ciel’s memory as he watched in wide-eyed horror. Thick rivulets of blood left clotting, flaking tracks as they streamed down her cheeks. It was grisly. It was nightmarish. He’d never noticed how frail and pretty his mother had really been until now, as she tumbled to the floor and blood turned her golden curls and pale gown and dainty hands a dark claret. She became the image of manic desperation, a grotesque mannequin saint from Satan’s own repertoire twitching and crawling across the floor, trying to speak, trying to call out and reach for Ciel where he stood with Sebastian’s hand on the back of his neck across the boudoir from her, and Ciel felt he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move. He was frozen, and the guilt and the terror were going to crush him slowly and painfully.
He watched. He watched as his mother bled out as if Sebastian were puncturing each of her most vital organs with a slow deliberate finger one at a time until finally, gray-faced and trembling violently, she collapsed not far from Ciel’s feet and her eyes rolled back in her skull.
The silence rang in Ciel’s ears.
Blood had splashed across the gleaming toe of his shoe and it was beginning to pool, slowly but surely, closer to his feet. He took a step back, breath coming in short urgent gasps. Was it an asthma attack? A panic attack?
“Pick me up,” he whimpered, gesturing for Sebastian without once removing his eyes from the blood staining the floorboards. Sebastian obeyed, hoisting Ciel up and placing him atop a satin-lined footstool nearby.
Rachel Phantomhive was lifeless on the floor, blood soaking towards the spotless back of her powder-blue taffeta gown. Her hair cascaded about her shoulders, flaky red already beginning to coagulate in the carefully curled locks. Her fingers were curled, limp and unmoving.
The boudoir felt oppressive suddenly, sepulchral, smothering and suffocating like a tomb. His mother lay sprawled in her own gore as inert as an abandoned marionette, which certainly was what she had been in her last moments of life. The cloyingly sweet metallic stench of blood was already beginning to pervade the air.
Ciel avoided the mess as he stepped down off the stool.
He replaced his eye patch, and ignored the fact that Sebastian followed him like a puppy as he made his way out of the boudoir and back down the hall to the main stairs.
There were clusters of people in the vestibule, lamps and chandeliers ablaze and the smell of tobacco smoke strong. Footmen in old-fashioned white wigs were cleaning cloaks and outerwear in the coat room. Servants hurried to and fro, like flies buzzing over a carcass. In the reception hall, between the widest of windows there was a small-scale mural, paled moldering tempera scenes of fairies and nymphs in their natural homes of woodlands and pastures while gods and angels danced above the painted clouds, all of it so finely detailed and fantastic. And it was a perfect high-class din, the doors open on the vestibule and two happy roars becoming one great chaos as like the creatures of the fairy world on the panels in the ballroom tonight this was a crowd of more vivacious creatures than usual, a more dangerous taxonomy of men and women in glorious costumes and fine masks-devils, ghouls, kings, queens-an expanse of velvet and silk, delicate lace, sparkling jewels, the liveried servants gliding through with silver trays of wine and champagne and other tasty things, their powdered hair like sails as they drifted through, ships on tumultuous waves. Burlesque dancers hung on ribbons and swings near the magician’s stage in the corner. All manner of grotesque and macabre things were on display: skulls and jack-o’-lanterns, painted roses, death photographs, black candles and preserved insects.
It was going on eleven o’clock when the body was found.
Ciel was sitting on the upholstered loveseat under the goliath Rembrandt of Henry Marin Phantomhive in the ballroom, with Lizzy asleep against his shoulder (much to Aunt Frances’s dismay, of course) and the taste of sherry quite evident in his crystal glass of negus. Wendy and Peter had already gone off to bed. Hannah waited patiently for Ciel to confess he was too tired to remain downstairs any longer, but of course nobody was going to force the son of Earl Phantomhive to retire before he wanted to. The music was still going, violins and keyboard, and the dancing had just gotten more frivolous and risqué, and the two boys who found the body were named August Prescott and Lesley Portman, one Phantomhive cousin through blood and the other through marriage, the two of whom had been searching for a private room in which to sneak some drunken kisses safely.
At first it was thought a murder mystery had begun and there was a wave of cheers and excited voices when the boys hurried downstairs to tell the chamberlain. The theme of the ball was, after all, The Masque of the Red Death, and something had to be done until the witching hour when the Phantomhive ghosts were rumored to show themselves, which was what all the guests were waiting for anyway.
And Ciel watched solemnly as a frantic conversation went on between his father and the chamberlain and Uncle Clause. Panicked gesticulations, pinched expressions, all too far away for Ciel to hear what they said but he watched the color drain from his father’s face and he watched his Uncle Clause grab his arm and run with him from the ballroom, and he watched the chamberlain hurry to fetch Madame Red.
So they’d found her.
The sweet anticipation of a murder mystery began to lean towards hysteria amongst the guests as gossip spread quickly that it was a real murder mystery, not something staged-and it was entertaining, actually, seeing the fear light from face to face spryly, until the pleasant din of the ball became outright chaos of the worst sort, and still Lizzy slept through it all against his shoulder.
Drastic measures were taken to calm the guests. Vincent Phantomhive and Madame Red pleaded with the spirit Grell Sutcliffe until finally Grell temporarily possessed the corpse of Lady Phantomhive so that it might be washed up and led downstairs to show the guests it was all a wonderful joke. But Grell wasn’t the most powerful spirit and so Lady Phantomhive appeared droopy-eyed and dazed, led along as if witless by her husband and sister. “She’s had too much to drink by now!” Madame Red laughed, as Vincent returned the lady upstairs for bed, and Ciel was still in shock as nonetheless gossip continued to rage. What a ruse! and I truly believed she was dead… and some guests actually fled the manor before finding out the lady was “still alive”. Stories of the ball-whether told by those who believed Rachel Phantomhive died that night or those who thought she died a few days later and the whole thing had been a clever act to spice up the masquerade, mere tragic coincidence-would later travel far and wide back in London, eventually sparking a brief and decidedly pointless investigation into the Phantomhive family by Commissioner Warren under accusations of poisoning.
And at three o’clock in the morning during the All Hallows Eve masquerade when Vincent Phantomhive doused the lights and let his tears flow freely in the dark, the ghosts of the house came out to play and the delighted screams and cries of surprise echoed through the halls. Wasn’t this the reason anyone attended the Phantomhive balls, the potential for the sickly fascinating? The guests loved it, this “Atonement party” where they sat together around circular tables and had gypsy cards read to them and saw the raven sacrificed another year. “The Phantomhives have the best entertainment,” praised those who were oblivious, while those who understood muttered below their breath, “Dashwood would be envious.” Of course there were also those who could not sleep a wink afterwards and departed at the crack of dawn, whispering together on the train back to London, “We’re never going to the Phantomhives’ October masquerade again!”
And at three o’clock in the morning during the All Hallows Eve masquerade, Ciel Phantomhive was curled up in his four-poster bed crying miserably, having surrendered to the cold black sorrow and anger for all that he had unwittingly done-but he’d banished Sebastian from his side and so he cried alone, with Sebastian watching as if through a window so crestfallenly from his side of the mirror.
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The chronicles of the Phantomhive family will be continued shortly…
back to chapter three ††† on to chapter five