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JACOB: Sure. The closer the better. Any other news?
CASSIUS: Only a room I found with a bunch of doctor equipment? Bottles with organs inside? Scalpels, knives, a steel table, most looked old
I’d thought some of that was antique. Maybe Charity would know more about antiques. From her file, the woman seemed to have had more dead-end career paths than a magician who made balloon animals.
JACOB: Send pics of the room and contents
CASSIUS: Yes. Will do
The phone I’d given Charity was likely going to be unnecessary, since I was here.
CHARITY
As instructed, I wore the yellow sun dress with the collar but not the cuffs, with no underwear except for a yellow bra with little yellow daisies decorating the translucent lace. The doctor must have bought clothes for me while I was locked up at the first house. One of the island cars was waiting out front, a white one painted with red flowers, but before we left for the beach, the doctor took us on a tour of the tower that adjoined the house.
“A small tour, since looking in every room is tedious,” he told us.
Cassius leaned in and brought his mouth to my ear. “I found your phone in your coat pocket and brought them both to the bedroom. The coat’s in a closet there.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“Keep it secure from now on. Don’t fucking lose the phone again.”
I huffed and gritted my teeth. It was his fault I’d lost the coat and the phone.
I was betting the room full of knives and a dissection table would not be one of the ones shown. It was suspicious as fuck, now that I’d had time to think about it. I’d have to get Cassius to show me some other time when the doctor was otherwise occupied. What he’d described had to be a dissection table, what with it being steel and having a drain hole. I’d seen those before, having done a year of university with the aim of becoming a veterinarian. I’d found out my stomach and mind disqualified me from watching anything still alive bleed. Suturing and cutting animals was therefore anofrom me, and dead people blood was only a tad less horrifying.
Injections into my own flesh had never worried me much, even if I bled. My mind was a labyrinth of weirdness. Which only begged the question: what if the doctor’s mind was a maze, too? No normal doctor would get a thrill from cutting up people. He had a dissection table! Make that, he probably had one of those tables.
He might just be a kinky sadist who kept his kinks confined to hurting living girls for consensual fun.Mightwas the key word.
“You’ve seen the dining room and most of the interesting rooms in the main house, so I’ll show you the tower. The library is there.”
“Was this a hotel or something?” I was curious. History had a way of sinking its claws into me, and this place reeked of it.
“Before World War Two it was a holiday place for the British and the rich from Europe. So yes, it was a hotel.”
That was why the tens of rooms.
“The island was bombed in WW2, and another tower was hit and collapsed. You’ll see the remains at the beach.” He turned away, and I barely caught the next few sentences. “Quite a few people were inside, and they died. I’ve never had the heart to excavate and reconstruct.”
I caught sight of his face, and he looked saddened, yet that wartime disaster had happened decades ago. “Was it your family who owned the island, back then?”
“Yes.” He grimaced. “I inherited the island.” Then he walked us into a wide square area scattered with low tables and comfy upholstered armchairs, though most were stacked to one side. A carved column was a central feature, and a stone staircase spiraled up beside the outer wall. “The library is above.”
As we climbed, at each new floor we emerged onto a small landing, with an arched door before us, and a new section of the stairs to the side and climbing higher. Narrow embrasure windows let in light. The electric-powered lights were off, and at night this place would be dark as hell—assuming Hell turned off the flames, that is.
The stone walls seemed thick enough to withstand a few centuries of abuse.
Had anyone ever had to defend this place and fire arrows through those?
It was cool in here and smelled of dust and ancient things.
“How old is this tower?” I asked the doctor, on the way up to floor three. He was ahead of me, while Cassius followed. My dress was short, and I was sure the view of my panties-less ass would be revealing.
“Sixteenth century. The house is an addition. The architecture borrows from everywhere…I’m told.”
The outside of the house had arched stonework reminiscent of Cyprus or Egypt, but the ironwork balustrades on upper balconies had seemed Greek in origin, and then there were those columns at the rear entryway—one of which he’d tied me to. Were those Roman? Greek? The house was a pastiche too.
