Part 31: Man-Eat-Man

Previously in the Vines Inquiry— After surviving the shattering windows in McCroy’s, the gang witnessed Richard, sr.’s resurrection. He once again had performed a ritual to claim Feenuín’s Taste. Harlow was able to get in touch with her mother, promising she was okay even though Lillian had suffered some kind of hand injury.

The gang made their way up to the Big House to prep for their own ritual. Upon arriving, Blevin greeted the manor with reverence while Harlow and Frank wondered what happened to the person that drove a Parks Dept. truck up to his childhood home.

According to Blevin, it couldn’t hurt the gang to be in the same location as a previous ritual in order to “encourage” another one. He pretended to stoke the fire—large like the one in Richard’s office with stone lions on the mantle—while visually cataloging every detail.

Frank had let the whole razor wire trap story slip as soon as they’d taken off their shoes in the entryway and it had piqued Blevin’s fervor. He and Harlow hadn’t even planned on un-booting, but then the librarian did it “in reverence” and they felt like jerks…It was a whole thing.

“Could we maybe go see the wire—.” 

“Blevin, no!” said Frank. Also, I don’t know if I could navigate back to that room…He stared at the fire while Harlow paced. 

“Now we wait? To, you know.” She drew a line across her neck with her finger. “Do we draw straws, or?”

“A pros and cons list could be a good idea,” said Blevin. “Only one of us can get a Gift at a time. It wouldn’t not make sense to make sure it the most capable person, the most learned…”

“No, no. You don’t get to act like you do and double-negative and then start throwing around words like ‘learn-ed.’”

“I just want the Gift to be in good hands!” 

“Speaking of.” Frank pointed towards the fireplace, oddly proud he’d been able to identify them so quickly.

In the fire-lit room, Rosalind’s bruised flesh had flowed right into the shadows. Its mottled texture obscured in the fluttering gradient of burning logs. One was still caught in each of the lions’ jaws, the wrists pierced through stone teeth. Jagged edges of bone and sinew stuck in towards the flames from when she’d had to break them off.

Eyes bright with fascination, Blevin took a closer look and marveled at the stone features. “There’s a little lever,” he said, giggling while he flicked the switch up and down. The lions’ mouths opened and closed. Open. Closed. Frank could see the green-veined glint of alkaline jade at the end of the lions’ fangs. More of that odd stone his family had mined since they landed on Carlisle.

“We don’t have to do that, right?” said Harlow. 

“You don’t have to do anything,” said Frank. “I’m gonna be the one ritualizing. My mess, etc. etc.”

Harlow pursed her lips like she was about to argue, but couldn’t summon even a polite refusal. “Sounds like a plan. We should lock the doors. You know I don’t run in general, so I def don’t wanna run for my life from your mother. She stopped liking me when Dick and Stella broke up and now she’s had years to fester.” 

Frank rubber her shoulder. “Oh, babe. I’m not sure she ever really liked you all that much.”

She sneered, shut the twin doors that led to the foyer and set their brass bolt locks in place. The skinny metal rods slid home easily, docking into ports drilled into the wood floor and a catch above the doorframe. Harlow locked a second door off the parlor that opened to a downward staircase. A third door, one of the manor’s signature swinging gateways, had no lock. She batted at it, pawing like a frustrated cat. 

Before an eerie silence could take too firm a hold, Frank spoke up. He knew in situations like this—where madness was the only path they’d left themselves—you had to keep moving. Otherwise it was already over, like when he decided to get off the train in Times Square rather than waiting for the local line. If he let himself pause too long, suddenly he had matinee tickets for Aladdin and was ordering the pre-show prixe fixe at Bubba Gump.

“My dad did his throat both times, so safe to say he’s a fan of Taste.”

“Not if you ask the velvet drapes in here,” said Harlow.

“My mom got the hands. Someone got the lungs. That’s Breathe and Feel. Which ones are left?”

Blevin reached into his backpack and pulled out Grandpa Rochester’s recruitment book. “Traverse, Protect, See and Hear.”

“See, eyes. Hear, ears.”

“Traverse…feet?” suggested Harlow. “Legs?” The boys nodded. “That’s it. I need a drink before anyone loses a limb.” The boys nodded again.

Three drinks later, any passerby looking in through the windows (surely minutes away from freezing to death) would never guess they were wrapped up in a demonic plot. 

“No, no, no. It wasn’t the same as Entrapment!” pleaded a sloshy Frank. “The wires, like, sprang out at me and they were all sharp. And I was wearing a vaguely-festive sweater. I was not equipped with a catsuit.” 

He and Harlow laughed while Blevin tried to be subtle taking notes. Frank hiccuped, his second vodka battling with his third, just as the radio cut in. They’d turned it on—a hulking wooden box shaped like a cathedral set beneath one of the windows that looked out onto the manor’s circle drive— when the first started pouring, but so far, no Call.

“It’ll be nice. Tunes. Carols. Christmas,” said Harlow. “Plus, last time the Call came through the jukebox. Let’s give the ole girl a leg up.”

It was mostly static, but as minutes turned to hours, there was no amount of liquor on Carlisle to ease the growing anticipation.

Harlow adjusted the knob, trying to find a signal. Finally, clarity.