The Ghost of Winn Peterson

35. Vicar

Winnifred's journal in hand, Vicar had snuck successfully back into the attic, squeaking nearly every step on the way up in his haste to get away from the bedroom. How nobody heard him scamper like a rat was beyond him, but he couldn't spare any thoughts on the matter. He had to finish Winn's story if he was to discover what was in his house and waiting to kill him. Surely, Gaston's notes weren't the beginning of the horrors hiding in wait.

Vicar, as much as he thought he was understanding, was still confused. Why a doctor? What about their house attracted a man of medicine, if he truly was that? He trembled to think about the doctor, still skulking about the halls, scheming in the aftermath of Gaston's demise. One would suspect a murderer to flee the scene of his crime, but Vicar felt uneasy about the current circumstances. If the doctor really was the same as the one who haunted Winnifred and her wounded friend, then he couldn't trust anything but his instincts. This man was like no other. 

Pushing aside his thoughts for a moment, Vicar buried himself in a corner beside the stained-glass window, the glow of white from the snow giving him an ethereal light source. It hypnotised him for a few glorious minutes before he was able to shake himself loose from its hold and fall down to the pile of random excess that cluttered the attic. It was time to make up for lost hours sleeping. He opened Winn's journal and stared at her recollection of Evelyn's brief journey out of the house.

When he had finished the entry, Vicar was struck with several things: one being that it was entirely possible to leave the house without being killed by the doctor out of rage. The second was that there were other families who knew of the doctor and would very likely have evidence of his life on the street where the Andrews house sat. It was quite peculiar to hear Winn refer to it as the Radcliffe house (had Vicar's family not possessed it for hundreds of years?) but regardless of who claimed ownership of the place, the doctor had no real control. At least, not yet in Winnifred's narrative. He trembled to consider how the story ended. Her ghost had rippled before him, had sobbed at her old window, had it not? She had died, in the end.

Well, of course Winn Peterson had died. She was a disabled creature who'd lived a hundred years ago. Even if she hadn't been plagued by health complications, it would have been a miracle if Winn was somehow still alive. The real question, he considered as his hands absently roamed around the trunk of oddities beside him, was how she perished. Was it at the hands of the doctor? She would have been the perfect specimen - how alike she seemed to Gaston, then! Aside from Gaston's more concerning quirks, Vicar could see a similarity between his eccentric brother and the exuberant Winnifred. While Winn hadn't been scientifically inclined, she still wanted to leave her mark on the world despite her failing health. She reminded Vicar all too well of his brother, always coughing and grey and withered, but no less excited about his studies and experiments. Was it that eagerness to fight, despite the shitty hand dealt them, that the doctor approved of? Vicar didn't know if the doctor had killed Winn the same way Gaston's horrific memos had described his own demise, but Igor Radcliffe wanted Winn. There was simply no other reason for him dragging her into the miserable walls Vicar was currently coiled inside. 

Unbidden, memories of his brother filtered into his thoughts. The age difference between the two had always placed Gaston at a sort of advantage in a way Vicar couldn't explain to anyone. He hardly knew how to think of it himself. There was an impression that Gaston was hardly ever there, he supposed. When Vicar had been little, too little to remember anything concrete, he could see his brother dancing from memory to memory in the devil costume he'd worn, but the costume had only one day of use. 

"I wish I kept a journal," he grumbled, fingers grasping the pen case he found the first hour of his attic-based wailing the day before. He pressed the pads of his fingertips to the grooves in the wood and continued his mental exploration.