novelraw Chapter 28: Wellspring Of Sin
Chapter 28: Wellspring Of Sin
A fully loaded, limited-edition Santelan glided into the hospital parking lot and backed into an open space with an effortless smoothness. The night-shift guard walked over to collect the fee, but when he arrived at the driver’s window and leaned in for a look, he found that the car was completely empty.
There was no one in the driver’s seat, nor anywhere at all.
He slapped the thinning patch of hair atop his head, worn thin by too many night shifts. “Lord above,” he muttered. “Did I just see a ghost?”
Alfred strode through the entrance. He wore a blue suit, and peeled off his gloves as he strolled along.
Karon’s room was on the first floor, so it took Alfred no time at all to find the right door. He drew in a deep breath. The five fingers of his right hand rapidly drummed on the back of his left, as if he could calm his nerves by force.
Before he could even steady himself, the door in front of him opened from inside. Karon stood there, most of his hospital gown soaked through at the chest. His face was as pale as paper.
Alfred only glanced at the young man once before instantly dropping to one knee. “Great Apostle, your loyal servant Alfred answers your summons.”
“Enter.” Karon turned around and returned to sit in the chair beside the bed. Alfred entered to find a room steeped in chaos.
The bedding was smeared with blood. More bloodstains dotted the tiles and spattered the wall in scattered flecks. A black cat lay listless on the windowsill. When Alfred entered, it weakly glanced at him. Confusion and reverence twisted together in Alfred’s voice, “Great One, have you been harmed? Is that why you’re in the hospital?”
The question sounded wrong the moment it left his mouth. He tried again, yet it sounded just as awkward, “Great One... are you here because you were injured?”
His second attempt made him want to curse his own wits.
Karon tilted his head, indicating the bathroom to Alfred’s left. “Yes.”
Alfred reached for the mop that was wedged through the bathroom door handle. He pulled it free, and then shoved the cabinet away from the door so that he could push it open.
He found a woman in a nurse’s uniform kneeling before the toilet. Her forehead was pressed to the cold tiles. One arm was stretched out in the direction of the floor. Her body was battered and ruined, not to mention absolutely still.
Alfred’s eyes instantly turned as he opened his Succubus Eye.
The woman was already dead, that much was clear. She had been awakened by the Church of Order’s awakening art, and then bound again with a ward.
But- No. Something is still inside her.
There was another consciousness lodged within the shell. Alfred raised his left hand to cover his left eye.
Then, a few drops of blood slipped from his right eye, much like tears.
His hand dropped back down to draw a clean handkerchief from his sleeve and wipe the blood away.
Inside the nurse was a Beguiler. Alfred took a few steps, exiting the bathroom to look at Karon.
After taking a knife from Tiz, while perhaps Karon’s flesh had not yet healed, his courage certainly had. He met Alfred’s gaze and calmly ordered, “Take her.”
Alfred knelt again. “Great One above, please allow me, on Ms. Molly’s behalf, to offer my most sincere gratitude. I will take her to Ms. Molly and convey to her the Great One’s concern.”
What does that mean? Karon did not understand, but gave a faint nod anyway.
Alfred stepped back into the bathroom. It appeared that the ward was already beginning to fade. The nurse, who had been motionless a moment before, suddenly jerked her head up. Her eyes were completely white.
Alfred closed his eyes. Ten seconds passed. When he reopened them, the white in the nurse’s eyes were already replaced with a blood-red color, and a faint crimson glow began to coil around her. A new seal had been put in place; Alfred’s seal.
Karon watched as Alfred hoisted the nurse onto a shoulder and carried her out of the bathroom.
“Your wound...” Alfred began.
Karon had not tried to hide any of his injuries, nor to conceal his weakness. Still, his voice remained steady, almost indifferent, “This is mine to bear.” After a brief pause, he raised a hand in dismissal. “Complete your task.”
“Yes. Please forgive my presumption.” Alfred carried the nurse out of the room.
Once he was gone, Karon turned to Pu’er beside him. “What did he mean by that?”
The cat had been badly hurt and was quite weak, yet her reflexive sarcasm remained intact. “Great One, why must you ask a cat?”
Karon thought for a moment. He remembered how the night he had left 128 Rhine Street, Ms. Molly had begged him for something. “Pu’er, what is a purified body?”
“Purification is the process of becoming a Divine Servant,” Pu’er explained. “Divine Servants are the foundation of every church. For that reason, purified bodies are officially a church’s body. To be safe, a fully purified body should be at least above the Divine Servant rank, a Divine Seeker’s body.”
“A Divine Seeker’s body?” Karon asked. “Is that easy to procure?”
“Not at all. Every such person is registered with the churches. When they die, the church reclaims their remains.”
“Reclaims?”
“Yes. Because those remains are materials. Useful ones. That’s why it’s nearly impossible to get a Divine Seeker’s corpse from outside of a church, at least through ordinary means. If you kill someone to obtain it, you offend their church and invite terrifying retaliation.” Pu’er paused, then added, “Though that corpse Alfred just carried out actually counts as a purified body.”
“‘Counts’ as one?”
“Because you used your power to awaken the nurse’s corpse. The spirituality lingering within it was stimulated, and then burned out. Unless it’s a special kind of body, such a trigger is irreversible. Like fuel, once it’s burned, it’s gone. Stripping away a body’s innate spirituality and returning it to the soul, that is the process of purification, or at least half of it.”
“Then doesn’t that mean that an Inquisitor of the Church of Order can produce endless purified bodies, as long as they have enough corpses?” Karon asked.
“That’s why I said half purification,” Pu’er replied. “A church official’s body undergoes more than just a baptism. Their soul, steeped in divinity, re-fills their flesh. That Beguiler was sealed within the body that you awakened, and that allows it to serve a similar function.
“If you ignore the option of using an actual church official’s corpse, then to produce a purified body, you need a corpse that has been awakened, had the host’s remnant spirituality fully consumed, and then you need a demonkin in soul-form to fill it.
“It’s similar to how Mary prepares a body. First washing, then cosmetics. You can’t skip any steps.”
“I see,” Karon said.
Pu’er extended a paw. “You seem to have forgotten something. Before he carried that corpse away, you should have had him clean up this ward first.”
“I didn’t forget,” Karon replied, shaking his head. “I was nervous with him here. He’s mistaken me for some great being. If Tiz wasn’t unavailable, and I wasn’t afraid that the corpse would go berserk again, I wouldn’t have called Alfred at all.”
“You really don’t need to worry,” Pu’er said. “I know what he’s thinking.”
“What does that mean?”
“Have you forgotten what I told you earlier? He either believes you’re a true god descended, or a heretical god summoned back into this world. Unless you deny it yourself, you perfectly match with every sign of a heretical god’s divine descent. No matter how much he investigates, he won’t find any flaw in your existence, because you have none, Karon.”
“But I’m weak right now,” Karon said. “Aren’t I?”
“Whether a true god or a heretical god, all who arrive via divine descent need a long time to recover. Initially, they are always weak. Everyone knows that. If not, Hoffen wouldn’t have pressed Tiz so hard to kill you, just the same as me.”
“You, too?”
“Yes,” Pu’er readily admitted. “I’ve always wanted Tiz to kill you, because I know how you arrived, the price Tiz paid for your awakening, and the taboos he violated. As I said, unless you deny it yourself, not just Alfred and Ms. Molly, but all of us will be the same. We all think you’re a heretical god.”
“Why are you telling me this now?” Karon asked. “Are you trying to encourage me?”
“I don’t know,” Pu’er replied. “Maybe it’s just because of that fried fish and pudding you gave me earlier.”
***
At the entrance to the hospital, Alfred stood in the glow of dull yellow lamps, a corpse slung over his shoulder as he met face to face with Tiz.
Shortly after Karon’s call, Tiz had returned from the hospital where he had met with Hoffen. As soon as he had been updated by Mary, Tiz had headed for Karon’s hospital.
His gaze lingered on the body Alfred carried.
“Inquisitor, as an apostle’s attendant, you are neglecting your responsibilities.” Alfred brushed past the old without another word, continuing down the steps.
Tiz hesitated, but did not stop the man. He simply turned around and entered the building.
***
Meow... Upon seeing Tiz step into the room, Pu’er let out a weak, mournful cry, as if she were a pitiful woman on her deathbed.
Tiz ignored her and went straight to Karon. The old man crouched low and opened the blood-soaked gown to check Karon’s wound.
“It split open again,” he muttered.
“I’m still alive,” Karon replied. He could tell that Tiz was genuinely worried.
Only then did Tiz glance around and notice Pu’er, who was also battered and limp. “What happened here?”
Meow...
“Speak.”
“You can ask Karon,” Pu’er retorted.
“He’s wounded and can’t talk much right now. He needs to rest.”
Pu’er quietly complied.
After hearing her out, Tiz nodded. “I’ll check the basement.”
He left the room and went straight downstairs.
The morgue held many bodies. Some were tied to ongoing disputes, while others remained stored in the hospital, unclaimed for the time being. Just as there were always people who ran red lights, not every dead body quickly found its way underground.
An old woman’s corpse sat slumped on a stretcher, her mouth hanging open. There was nothing left inside. She was nothing more than a hollow shell, stripped of all spirituality.
After leaving the basement, Tiz stopped by the nurses’ station and roused the unconscious nurse.
“Did I... fall asleep?” the young woman mumbled, rubbing the back of her head.
“Room three,” Tiz said. “The patient’s wound has reopened. There’s a lot of blood.”
“Ah! Yes, I understand. I’ll fetch the doctor right away.” With the first light of dawn, a doctor arrived with another nurse. They were shocked by the blood they found pooling on both the bed and the floor, yet simply assumed that the patient’s stitches had torn open and his blood had splashed about. They rushed Karon to an operating room and re-stitched his wound.
The anesthesia kept him under until the afternoon. When he finally reawoke, he found himself in a different room. Maina sat beside his bed, her eyes soft with worry.
“Feeling any better, Karon?” she asked quietly.
“Much.” Being stabbed should have been terrifying, but after last night, Karon understood that there were fears that could be outgrown. Compared to what he had experienced, his wound felt trivial.
“It’s all because that night nurse nodded off,” Maina explained. “Nas was supposed to relieve her, but she never showed up. This morning, the supervisor sent someone to her house, but her family said she never came home last night. They’re thinking about calling the police.”
Karon realized a grim certainty: Nas must have been the nurse who had died last night.
The sounds he’d heard from the basement, the sense of something ending, it all made sense now. When the hospital had checked staffing in the morning, they might not have taken Nas into consideration, given that her shift had already ended. She had been considered gone.
By Pu’er’s account, after Karon awakened the body, the last remnants of spirituality had burned out. While Alfred had been collecting her, Karon had forced himself to think of the body as a kind of donation to Ms. Molly, or at least to her organs.
It was the only way to blunt the nausea of his rising guilt.
“By the way,” Maina added with a smile. “Your grandfather handled the paperwork, so you’ll be recovering at home after this.”
“Mm,” Karon replied. Apparently, Tiz had no intention of allowing Karon to remain alone again, not even with Pu’er watching over him.
Where is Pu’er? Karon looked around, but the cat was nowhere to be seen. She must have already gone home to tend to her own wounds.
“So from now on,” Maina announced. “I’ll come by with the doctor every afternoon, to help with your IV and to change your bandages.”
Karon then understood why she sounded so cheerful.
“Thank you,” he said.
“It’s no trouble. Honestly, this will make my work easier. I get to take it easy.”
Of course, such convenience was not free. There would be travel costs, extra fees, and allowances.
“My little Karon, I’ve come to take you home!” Uncle Mason entered the room. At Tiz’s instruction, he had arrived to escort his nephew back home.
“Young Master Karon.”
“Young Master, we’re here to discharge you.” Paul wheeled a gurney in, its wheels thudding across the threshold. He and Ron then took positions at either end of Karon’s body, one of them reaching for his neck, while the other reached for his legs.
Uncle Mason swore, “Damn it! That’s my nephew you’re picking up, not a corpse! There’s a wound in his chest; Are you trying to rip his stitches back open again?”
Paul and Ron exchanged glances, then they both started to laugh. “Sorry, Young Master. We’re better at moving corpses than living people.”
Maina then directed them, and they shifted to a careful cradle position to ease Karon onto the gurney without jostling him.
And so, Karon lay on the same gurney that had carried too many guests before him. He was rolled out of the hospital to see the world from the perspective of the Immers family’s guests. The vehicle waiting for him outside was even the hearse.
In the parking lot, a mother and daughter passed by. “What a shame. So young, and already gone.”
“Yes, and so handsome too. What a pity.”
Karon said nothing, even as Paul and Ron picked him back and placed him into the hearse.
To Karon’s surprise, they placed him in a coffin. “This is...”
Up in the driver’s seat, Uncle Mason started the engine and answered with an obvious grin, “I picked up a new coffin for another guest this morning, and left it here for your ride home. This’ll cause less jostling. You’ll be more comfortable inside.”
Karon remembered all too well how Mr. Mossan and Jeff had clung to each other in the back of the rattling hearse. After a moment’s hesitation, he had to admit the logic of his uncle’s decision. The coffin would indeed absorb the bumps. Its inside was lined with a thick padding that was unexpectedly comfortable. A strange calm settled over him, as if a different peace waited just beneath the lid. There was even a pillow for his head.
Tucked into a narrow recess were a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and a deck of cards.
The hearse headed for home.
Ron leaned on the edge of the coffin to grin down at Karon as he flicked a copper coin from palm to palm. “Comfy, Young Master? I even put in an extra pad, just for you.”
“Thanks.” Karon watched the coin spin through Ron’s fingers. “Ron, what’s that you’re holding?”
“Oh, just something I picked up. It’s just a copper, not worth much, but it feels good in the hand.”
Paul, sitting nearby, scoffed, “Picked it up, huh? He nicked that from a corpse in the hospital morgue yesterday; one of our own guests.”
Ron shrugged. “How’s that stealing? The dead don’t need it. No sense in letting things go to waste.”
He glanced down at the coin, as if fond of it. “Funny thing, though. Ever since I started carrying this, I feel well rested all the time. Went out drinking half the night, yet I’m wide awake now. I just keep it in my pocket. Can’t stand to put it down.”
“Ron, can I see that coin?”
Ron hesitated, his hand pausing above the coffin’s edge. Though reluctant, he passed it over.
It looked ordinary enough, a piece of copper stamped with the profile of a queen. It was hard to tell if she was an actual Swillen monarch, or if the coin had come from some far-off country, or if it was nothing more than a cheap souvenir from an old amusement park.
Karon turned the coin in his palm. A sudden coolness brushed his skin. Something wet had dripped onto him. He looked up.
Ron was drooling. He hunched over the rim of the coffin, his eyes suddenly vacant, his mouth slack with saliva oozing from the corner of his lips as he muttered, faint and hollow, “My money... my money... my money...”