The Immortal Chronicles | | b o o k 2

15. utter dread

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IMMORTAL CHRONICLES : BOOK ONE : attus sally

. . .

 There were plenty times Attus Sally couldn't remember due to whisky-induced blackouts, but this was different. He didn't just wake up with a headache, because it was accompanied by so much more. Hangovers and heartbreaks were never a good combination, and Attus could hardly believe he had accomplished just that.

That morning—afternoon, evening, whatever the time happened to be—he was so disoriented that he didn't recognize the room he laid in. He pressed a hand to the rug, and slowly began to familiarize himself with the pattern, and the furniture, and told himself, This is home.

It took him a while to realize that he hadn't woken up on accident. A noise sounded in his ear, three times, followed by someone's voice. "Sally! Open the door!"

With a pounding head and aching limbs, Attus rose to his feet with the help of the couch beside him. Across the room, he heard the echo of something thumping against the floor, and his eyes met Oren's. The pup tilted his head, sharp ears jostling to the side.

The pounding on the door didn't stop, so he hurried out of the room, and taking a second to gather his bearings, he realized that he was in the reading room. Miriem spends hours in there, he thought, but barely spent another second on the subject before unlocking and opening the front door.

The daylight utterly blinded Attus until the person on the other side of the door stepped inside and shut it behind him. "Good gods, Attus. Honestly, what's the matter with you? Why didn't Miriem answer?" It was Mose, and he was talking as if Attus was hard of hearing, not hungover.

He pressed his palms to his temples and squeezed his eyes shut, unknowingly stepping away from Mose and back up against the nearest wall. It took him a moment to say anything, at least, until Oren snapped him out of his trance with a chaotic bark. "Miriem isn't here," he said at last.

"What? Where is she?" Mose demanded, still talking horrifically loudly. He'd seen Attus drunk enough to know when he was suffering from a headache, but rarely did he ever encounter a heartbroken Attus, distraught and falling into the spiral of an existential crisis.

He smeared the back of his hand over his cheeks and eyes before responding, voice stuffy. "She's gone. Someone took 'er—killed 'er—I dunno, Mose, I dunno."

Attus refused to break down, but that didn't stop the tears from falling soundlessly past his eyelids, and making his distress wholly known to his friend. Mose stepped up to him and placed a hand on his shoulder, giving him a gentle shake to keep him in his right senses. "How could ya know?" he asked.

Clapping his friend on the shoulder, Attus guided him towards the stairs, and up to the second floor where the table in the hall was put back in place, but the contents of the room were just as Attus left them. Oren kept to the first floor, whimpering as the two men left him on his own to enter the dusky bedchamber. Attus refused to enter, and left Mose to explore on his own. He could barely look inside without wondering what exactly conspired in there, so he turned his back on it all.

Mose cursed under his breath as soon as he entered, and after a minute or two of silence, he finally found the words to speak. "How long ago do ya s'pose this happened?"

"Haven't a clue."

Silence cloaked them again, and Attus heard some shuffling, like Mose was going through table drawers until it all ceased. "Get in 'ere. Ya gotta see this," he commanded, and the urgency caused Attus to push away any reservations in facing the room. At least he wasn't alone this time, set loose to his own imaginative horrors.