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ALCHEMY OF MONSTERS
KALLUM
The marshland surrounding Hollow’s Row is haunted.
But it’s not ghosts or ghouls that roam the tall grass, or monsters that cling to the eerie swamp trees.
This wetland is haunted by pain.
It’s a ghostly whisper of agony breathed through the barren, twisted branches as it curls up spines and raises hair from flesh. It’s a mourning specter dancing to the rhythmic drumming that imbues the muggy air. And it’s the blood-red moon hanging above the bleeding wound of this land.
With every stroke an artistic slash of heartache delivered with purpose to paint the crime scene.
The dark energy buzzing through the sodden field grips the task force members as the science begins; the deconstruction of art and melancholic beauty to analyze and strip that which cannot be defined.
Pain.
It haunts us all.
As a scholar, I rarely praise literary works, but I’d be as banal as Wellington if I completely disregarded the works of a few select novelists in their alchemical pursuit. Such as William Godwin who—though his philosophical contribution was largely as a political theorist—explored Hermetic themes of immortality and life extension.
There is little wonder, then, that Godwin was the father of the renowned Mary Shelley. The intertextual links between father and daughter’s works are undeniable once you uncover them.
The desire to escape death.
Monsters and their makers.
In Godwin’s gothic tale ofSt. Leon, our main character is determined to obtain the philosopher’s stone and the elixirvitae—the alchemists’ elixir of life. But along his journey to acquire such coveted gifts, he finds himself becoming weak and isolated.
The moral of the story is a theme as old as alchemy itself: When we achieve superiority over humanity, we in turn become exiled from it, as obtaining everything we desire is a descent into a solitary abyss.
In the end, stripped of the very thing which gives him the hope, the very will to live, his immortality becomes a death sentence.
Oh, the fucking irony.
Love is nothing if not punishing.
Above the crown of spotlights, where the black and twisted branches of the marsh trees claw toward ominous clouds, cosmic debris flickers across the early morning sky. It’s an arrangement of eerie and lovely that sets the perfect backdrop for Devyn’s newest display.
Her very own work of art, a lonely cry into the abyss.
Her pain lashes out in all its fury, her pursuit for her coveted stone raising the question of whether she’s the maker or the fiend.
Goddammit. Once Halen sees this, there will be no convincing her to leave Hollow’s Row.
Devil’s hour is when wicked deeds are done, and I can attest to this, all my darkest, most nefarious deeds whispered to me in the pitch of night. As I stare at the scene, the flurry of activity trying its damnedest to wake the dead, my mind delves to my own solitary abyss.
No one wants to be alone.
The ungodly hour calls for a devil, and I plan to deliver.
Jaw clenched tight, I roll the pad of my finger over my thumb ring, nose wrinkled at the boggy scent in the air. I spy Dr. Keller amid the reeds and wonder how difficult it would be to make this nuisance disappear. The pounding on my door started just before three a.m., the urgency of a new crime scene demanding the expert on call to the FBI.
I stand behind the bobbing yellow caution tape, breathing in the flavors of marsh water and decay, deciding which way to direct them.
Unlike the previous ritual offerings, where select organs and body parts were put on display, Devyn has taken a more creative approach in her staging of the body. The corpse of a woman has been adorned in fresh deer skin, blood of the animal coating her flesh. Alchemical symbols mark her skin. Bone-white antlers protrude from the crown of her head, circled by a ring of ivy.
The severed, deformed ears and black thread stitched across the sunken eye sockets establishes the victim as one of Devyn’s higher men.
