Madness At Noon {COMPLETED}

The Caretaker of the Gentleman 4/5

I should be afraid. I should be shaking in my sneakers, passing out on the sidewalk, running away screaming and frothing at the mouth. Instead, adrenaline rushes through my veins as I rest my hands on my knees, panting, having just run across three provinces to get here.

Here.

Apartment 57.

My own erratic imagination puts bolts of lightning flashing over the tall, brick building, living gargoyles roaring and snapping their great teeth at intruders, and a hundred-foot gate made of charred human bones and skulls. I start to giggle, probably giddy from oxygen deprivation. Or temporary insanity.

Here!

I am actually standing in front of Mistress Noon's apartment. With a key. I should throw the thing in the gutter and thank whatever unlucky star I was born under that I had at least a scrap of common sense in my brain.

But...

But...

I can't.

Like a child in a haunted chocolate factory, I can't wipe the stupid grin off my face even as I face certain slow and painful evisceration.

This may be my most foolish confession, but I have always wanted to see Apartment 57, to be invited in. Just to... see. I am sick of rumors telling me how awful the world is. Yes, I am well aware that Mistress Noon is the worst of the worst, bloody murderer and psychopath, yadda yadda yadda.

Isn't it human nature to be just a little bit curious about how someone like her lives? To pull back the curtains and see what really goes on behind those four walls, rather than being told by a storekeeper who is the wife of a guy whose cousin's best friend's friend's neighbor's sister swears she saw something truly unspeakable and so then proceeds to tell the entire world and get fifty bucks to go on the Alan Brick Show.

On the outside, Apartment 57 looks like every other building on this block. Tall. Old. A little worn and cracked with skeletal vines trying to creep up the north wall. Nothing screams Evil Mistress of Mayhem Lives Here!

There is nothing to fear, at least not on the outside. Noon isn't even here. And I had been invited. The imprint of the key is pressed deep into my palm from having gripped the object so hard in my fist on the run here. The letter is still in my pocket.

This is it, Dawn, I tell myself. The house is almost most certainly booby-trapped or set to explode the moment we step on the doormat, but at least we'll be able to check this one off the bucket list and, really, isn't that what life's all about?

Biting my lip, I march up the five cracked marble steps, insert the key into a very ordinary brass keyhole, and turn the lock. The door swings open. No dead bodies lurch out to rip open my skull and eat my brains. No screaming ghouls or ghosts. No howls of demons or tortured victims coming from a secret basement. Just... silence. The hall light is on, bright and inviting. A vase of slightly wilted roses sits on a small table next to an open closet. The closet is filled with fur coats and a large assortment of hat boxes.

Feeling the lump that is my pistol tucked into the waistband of my jeans – my birthday present this year from Triston – I take three deep, slow breaths and walk inside, closing the front door behind me.

"Hello?" I call. My voice echoes.

No response.

Where is the child? Where is Cheshire?