The Cult of Romeo

IV. The Three Sisters of Fate

Beatrix huffs playfully. "Was this a life lesson hidden in a story, again?"

I smiled quietly to myself. "Yes."

"Explain it to me."

"You understand it already," I said because she did.

"Just explain it, Charlie."

I pulled and spun the rings on my fingers and thought carefully over my words.

"It means that though you believe you failed Elijah that night, it's not true. You could not have helped him because the sisters had already made their decisions and that was merely fate playing out as it had been weaved to do. Sometimes, our threads intertwine with another person's and it pulls. When we make friends, when we have a family - that's the sisters weaving us together. When somebody passes away who was weaved into us, it hurts. You lose a piece of your art and sometimes somebody else's thread is only a small part, while other times it creates the whole picture. I don't think grief ever stops hurting, you just get used to looking at the bigger picture without their thread in it."

"That's beautiful," Beatrix murmured sleepily. She had turned off her lamp by now and my eyes strained to adjust to the darkness well enough to see her. "Do you believe in fate?"

"Go to sleep, Bea," I instructed.

She didn't answer.

I sunk back into my pillow with a slight frown as a thousand stories of the past came tumbling back into my mind, making it difficult to think. Through the moonlight that filtered in the curtains, I managed to make out the crevices of our room. My old camera collecting dust on the vanity caught my eye, left there from the moment I lost passion in photography and instead turned to self-destruction. Thinking of photography made my hands shake and I tucked them in beneath my back to stop the tremors.

A light knock sounded at my dormitory door before something slipped under the crack at the bottom. It was a piece of white card that caught my attention swiftly. Carefully and quietly not to wake Beatrix, I went to the card to read it.

I picked it up between my fingers and brought it to the window in order to read the blocked letters through the dim moonlight that peeked through the trees.

'Meet me in the dark room at midnight - Khaleel.'

While I wasn't stupid enough to believe that Khaleel Rahim had sent me this letter, I wasn't any less curious as to find out who it really was behind it all. The writing looked like that on the notebook and I couldn't be sure, but perhaps the mirror too. I didn't wake Beatrix to show her what I had found, she would have told me to report it and that was one thing I didn't want to do.

The killer was underestimating me and I didn't much appreciate it. The only thought I had while waiting for the clock to tick by to midnight was that if I were to die tonight, at least I would be able to settle my mind first and identify the killer at last.

I slipped out of our dorm at 11:55 pm, with enough time for me to get from the right-wing of Burton Abbey and to the dark room. Hopefully, I would solve the mystery while there. My mind raced and I couldn't help but get excited. It might have been a stupid idea but I had survived stupider. Once again while roaming the corridors, I thought of the apparent ghosts here and how Jackie Keller would now be a part of that list. I thought of the future, which seemed fuzzy and so out of reach now, and the past that slowly seeped into my mind like a poison, corrupting my thoughts.

I wondered that if I died tonight, would my name be remembered at all? Or would I slip through everybody's fingertips like thread?

The red lights were on in the dark room creating odd shadows along the walls. They moved slowly, slithering along the floor and across my body. Empty pictures were pegged from wall to wall and I crept along the floor, careful of any other person present. My hands shook and I tried to swallow the fear that had begun to choke me. The smell of vinegar was consuming and dizzying. 

The clock on the wall ticked past slowly. It anchored but also made me impossibly aware of how painfully slow time was trickling away. The thought that someone else was in the darkroom frightened me and I refused to look at the darkest corners where the red light barely touched, just in case. 

One thing I knew for definite was that Khaleel wasn't here. However, after a moment, I did find a photograph pegged on the line that wasn't blank like the others. There was red ink on it and my eyebrows furrowed harshly. The picture developed steadily, revealing only faint colours to begin with. I pulled the photograph down and turned it around. In red ink, it read:

THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS HAVE VIOLENT ENDS

Another Shakespeare quote.

My breath was stuck in my throat, trapping me, making me cold. 

Carefully, I turned it around to see the developed photograph and gasped.

Taken shakily through a window from an outsider's perspective, was Khaleel and I sat opposite one another in the library from yesterday. We were deep in conversation, one person's eyes never leaving the other. It was too far away to make out exact expressions but even looking at the photo made my stomach turn. It was an obvious snapshot into a personal moment, a complete violation of our privacy. Just the thought of somebody taking this made my skin crawl.

Though we had caught somebody listening in yesterday, it didn't feel as cold as this did. Someone out there had photographs of me, to keep, to watch, to touch.

In a dark red pen, written so recently that the ink still smelt fresh, were too thick crosses. The colour dripped down the photograph like blood from a gash. One cross through my face and the other through Khaleel's.