#67

A gaze secretly hiding in my inner chamber.

The sensation of someone watching me while holding their breath is palpable even while asleep. So on the night I received the letter, I may have tossed and turned, unable to fall into a deep sleep due to that gaze. I had a strange dream. A dream that seemed meaningful yet completely meaningless at the same time.

“I’m sorry, my lady.”

I was sitting in front of a floating table. The kitchen maid I had seen during the day bowed her head to me in the darkness where one could not see an inch ahead. It was quite eerie how only her complexion gleamed white in the pitch-black surroundings. In the dark space where I couldn’t tell where the ceiling or floor was, I looked down slightly from straight ahead. The neatly severed head of an old man was placed on my plate.

“What is this?”

I retched with my hands on the table. The head, which looked as if it had been roasted in an oven, was so well-cooked that the greasy juices that had dripped down from the crown had soaked his white hair and clung to it in patches. His usually vicious snake-like eyes were hidden by half-melted eyelids.

And the sight of huge, devil-like horns curved on either side of his forehead is particularly vivid even now, after so much time has passed. As if trying to make some delicious decoration on those hideous horns, the ridges carved by countless knife strokes looked as if the wrinkles of an emaciated old man had been cut and covered with skin.

“I don’t want to eat it. Please, take it away.”

“Please believe me, my lady. It was a mistake.”

The maid who had killed the old man on my behalf apologized repeatedly, not knowing what to do. Feeling like stomach acid was about to surge up, I covered my mouth with my hand, and the deeply bowing maid ran away crying. Though she was clearly running, her back view, which didn’t change distance from me, flowed down like ink in place.

Black, a silence that rang sharply in the back of my head. Though there were no signs of change, I was soon standing in the middle of the central hallway.

I knew.

That one end of the hallway led to Johannes’s bedroom, and the opposite end led to Henrik’s bedroom. In that long corridor stretching out to the left and right, I struggled briefly, but intensely.

After a short hesitation, the choice was Henrik. The moment I made that decision, the bedroom entrance, like a massive cloud of smoke, suddenly filled the space before me. Not particularly surprised, I slowly reached out and pulled the doorknob.

On the far side of the inner chamber lit by a single candle, I saw Henrik’s back.

A back with all limbs severed and gone.

Henrik was barely sitting with his torso, angular only at the shoulders, draped over a chair, his arms and legs missing. As I walked up close behind him with heavy steps, Henrik, who had placed a blank sheet of paper on the desk in front of him, turned to look at me with a vacant smile.

“I want to leave a written record of where you’ll be staying from now on, but I can’t write anything. You see, I’ve gone blind. Look.”

He seemed to be pointing at his eyes, though he had no arms or hands. His face, with several fine wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, had only gaping eye sockets. The poisonous green eyes seemed to have been completely eaten away.

“You’re strange. Are your eyes the issue right now?”

I shook my head, exasperated by his pitifulness. Given that the old man had just been served as the main course on the table, Henrik’s bodily condition was actually not much of an issue, but I suppose in dreams, one doesn’t really know what’s stranger than what.

At any rate, it was a situation advantageous to me. Without any intention of waiting further, I was about to put my hand on his shoulder to offer to write for him if he couldn’t do it himself. Bang!

“Ugh, ah, uuugh…”

With a long groan, Henrik suddenly toppled from the chair. His bedroom resounded deeply. Henrik’s short, stubby body, like a leech, floundered pitifully on the floor.

Just as Johannes had done on that night long ago.

Long bones burst through the severed surfaces of Henrik’s forearms and thighs, sprouting anew. Henrik’s brown hair burned in blue flames, and where his hair had risen as ashes, brilliant golden hair emerged.

‘He’ breathed rapidly, like a newborn not yet fully stripped of its placenta, writhing in the mucous membrane. That face, staggering as if about to bend forward at any moment. That gaze, hot and transparent like ice heated by fire, looking back at me, somehow distant as if moved from one end of the earth to the other. My Johannes stood there.

Like a devil.

I couldn’t move an inch. Johannes, seemingly unsure of his own body, stroked his bare face and forearms several times, clenched and unclenched his fists repeatedly, then smiled faintly and said to me.

“…Can you wait just a moment? I think I can hold a quill now.”

It was in Henrik’s usual tone. As insignificant as dust and as heavy as if lying on the ground. But I rushed to Johannes. I embraced his neck. I buried my nose in the nape of his neck and inhaled deeply the scent I had missed to death, like an elixir of life. Tears flowed ceaselessly.

“You don’t need to write anything down.”

I told him.

“It’s not necessary.”

“…Why are you suddenly like this?”

“You’re all I need.”

“…”

Johannes was silent for a long time, seemingly perplexed. A long silence during which the heart pressed against this chest beat wildly. His hands, which had been hanging in the air as if lost, slowly found their way up my sides to my back. I shook my head vigorously while clinging to his neck. No.

“Not the back. I don’t want to. I don’t want to show it.”

“You seem to have forgotten… I’m blind, you know.”

Brushing off my refusal with a smile like Henrik’s, he hugged me tightly and lifted me to his height. He leaned his cheek against the back of my neck, now securely and firmly attached. A deep, low laughter circled around that area. My tears, gushing out like water from a deep well, soaked his hair ends and collar completely.

“I was in so much pain…”

Finally feeling at ease, I rubbed my eyes against his ear.

“I know.”

He constricted my back like a vine.

“I missed you so much, I thought I would die…”

“I know.”

The response was like a collapsing tower.

I stepped down from my position. I held his cheeks in these palms and looked up into his eyes that supposedly couldn’t see anything. I stood on tiptoes and kissed his lips.

His eyelids, which had been half-open until I approached, slowly sank. He responded to me. Like gentle water that flows in and slowly soaks when this flesh is immersed.

“…Johannes.”

I called his name as I unfastened his collar.

“No.”

Johannes denied. Yet he could hardly take his lips off me. His breath, desperately burrowing into my mouth, was almost like a flame.

“Johannes.”

“Don’t call that name.”

“Johannes.”

“No, Yvette. Please.”

Johannes shuddered as if in pain. My arms were hot axes. Only then did I firmly pin down both sides of his neck, which was trying to escape recklessly, and whispered like a sob. Johannes.

“Don’t call me that, Yvette, don’t do this…”

Rumble. In that distant dream, I heard a sound like a drawbridge lowering from afar. It was the sound of the old man returning.

Looking back, it seems that the noise, more than the gaze I felt while half-asleep, was what started to bring back my consciousness that had been buried as if devoured by deep sleep. Sharp nerves sprouted in my mind that had been dead asleep. Almost simultaneously, I felt through my body the vibration of one side of the place where I was lying slowly sinking.

Someone was at the edge of the bed. Heavily.

I couldn’t even open my eyes, but I sharply realized the fact that the old man had returned in the middle of the night. It felt like I had swallowed a thornbush in my throat.

Ah, that old man. Please, just don’t call for me.

Even in my half-awake state, I secretly prayed, instantly wishing for death. My spine stiffened and my legs tensed, like someone who had discovered a viper coiled around their arm while sleeping. I couldn’t even guess when I had fallen asleep or how long – or how short – a dream I had, and only the warmth of Johannes that I had grasped in my arms in the dream lingered acutely.

It was quite a while later that I opened my eyes slightly, puzzled by the lack of movement despite the vivid gaze looking down on me, which I could feel even through closed eyes.

What I saw through narrowly opened eyes was pitch black. As I pretended to be asleep, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.

The person sitting at the edge seemed to turn towards me.

The presence that stopped just short of my nose was clearly a person’s hand. That hand, which paused just before touching, returned to its original place as if it simply couldn’t go through with it. I couldn’t move an inch, feeling utterly nauseated, but quietly.

“…Yvette.”

‘He’ called me.

My heart sank completely. At that first call, I thought I must have misheard. My name, which I hadn’t heard for over a year, sounded unfamiliar to my ears. Could it be that I still haven’t woken from the dream?

My mind was in utter chaos, and I even doubted if I had finally gone mad. He shouldn’t be here. Could it be an auditory hallucination? Ah, yes. I must be fabricating lies out of desperate longing. However.

“Yvette.”

Johannes called me again. I couldn’t breathe. My eyes opened involuntarily.