Nocticadia: A Dark Academia Gothic Romance

“I feel … fucking great,” Barletta said. “Aside from sleeping most of the day. Turning into a bit of a night owl lately. But other than that, I feel better than I ever have before. Why is that?” He shoveled in a mouthful of eggs, his appetite as hearty as that of the tiny intruders which had undoubtedly begun to settle in to his gut. The yellow pallor of his skin had already warmed to a healthy shade and even in his disheveled state, he appeared in better condition than when I’d first captured him.

“The organism growing inside of you doesn’t like a filthy home. It happens to be very particular about where it lays roots.”

“Can you not say that? It’s gross. Don’t like thinkin’ about that.” After only a few hours of agonizing detox, he’d become more compliant, even pleasant. It was amazing how manipulative feeling good could be. Barletta had probably lived a good chunk of his life in chronic pain, due to his vices, and now they were gone. He likely didn’t have so much as a headache right then. “How? How does it clean?”

“It produces a toxin, a very powerful toxin, that eliminates competing organisms and incites the mechanisms to repair cells. Lucky for you, the liver is the only organ capable of regenerating, so the toxin enhances the growth factors that increase cell division, resulting in rapid repair.”

Eyes wide, he shook his head and snorted a laugh. “No idea what the fuck you’re talking about, but whatever it is, is working. I ain’t had one craving for drink. I don’t feel all the pain. No shakes, or the urge to puke. Nothin’.” He shoveled in another bite of his breakfast. “Can taste again,” he said around a mouthful of food. “Smell. I ain’t felt this good since I was a teenager. I don’t even care to drink.”

“Of course you don’t.” Elbow kicked up over the top of my chair, I casually watched him devour his breakfast, feeding the parasites that would soon emerge from their tiny cocoons and wreak havoc on his body. “The toxin itself produces chemicals that essentially control the part of your brain that craves alcohol. Alcohol would be detrimental to all the work it’s doing inside of you. It tells you that you no longer need it, and your body responds.”

“What, like … mind control?”

I smiled. “Exactly.”

Halfway to his mouth, he paused in eating, staring off with a thoughtful expression. “Then, how are these worms so bad, if they do so much good?”

The urge to stifle a laugh tugged at my throat. “Because they are parasites. It repairs your liver to feed. It cleanses your blood to feed. It uses your body to feed, and when it’s finished, it will discard you as a used-up corpse.”

His thoughtful expression sobered into something more serious. “Ain’t there some kind of medication for it?”

“Not yet.”

“But that’s what this is about, right? You’re working on one?”

“More, or less.”

“So, I’m gonna die?” he asked, as if just catching on.

“Eventually.” I shrugged. “You were dying, anyway. Little by little. Every day. I’d have probably given you a year at the rate you were going. If that.”

Frowning, he chewed slowly, as if tasting the bitter truth in my words. “You don’t, uh … you don’t strike me as a killer. So, why are you doing this?”

I leaned forward and rested my elbows across my thighs. “Because, like the parasite inside of you, I am only interested for my own selfish gain.”

Brow flickering, the man looked like he was about to break into tears right then. “I got kids, man. A family.”

“You don’t give a shit about your family,” I said without a speck of empathy. “If you did, you wouldn’t have hurt them.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt my son.” His words shook out of him on a defensive snarl, and his eyes shone in the light of the naked bulb overhead. “It was an accident.”

“I don’t mean to kill you, either. It’s just a consequence.”

“Then, why don’t you just let me go?”

A stab of pain struck my skull, the ringing in my ear sharp and intense, and I stumbled backward, teeth clenched while I waited for the agony to subside. Blackness crawled into my vision like shadows swallowing up the light. Sound faded for distant laughter.

“Let me go!”

“The crooked army is coming! C’mon!” My brother, Caedmon, drags me by the arm down the long hallway of the cellar. Perhaps the scariest place in the old mansion that once belonged to my grandfather, and his father before him. According to stories I’ve heard the nannies and maids tell, my great-grandmother’s bones lie somewhere in this house, and I’m certain it’s down in this cellar.

The sticks we gathered from outside to use as swords scratch across the cement floor behind us. We pretend an entire horde of the infected is after us. The ones we call the crooked men, who walk with a twitch in their step and enjoy the taste of human flesh.

I follow Caedmon through the halls, laughing as I try to keep up with him and keep from getting eaten by the invisible monsters with glowing eyes.

The laughter dies away to a creepy quiet when we turn the corner to another hallway and come to a screeching halt before a cracked door. One that’s usually locked.

My father’s office and laboratory.

It is forbidden to enter, but maybe one peek won’t hurt.

“Father will be angry if we go inside,” Caedmon says beside me. He’s only three minutes older than I am, but he acts like he’s the boss all the time.

“Father is always angry.” I step toward the door, using my stick to push it open. “Have you ever seen him smile? I certainly haven’t.”

A grip of my shoulder stops me in place.

“Devryck, don’t. Let’s go.”

I wrench my arm from his hand. “Don’t be such a chicken,” I say, twisting back toward the door, but the darkness there brings me to a stop, and I’m a little ashamed to admit, it scares the bejesus out of me.

“What is it that you want from inside? I’ll get it.”

“I want to see her.” The only picture of our mother lies in Father’s desk drawer. I’ve seen it a mere handful of times in my life, as my father sometimes enjoys tormenting Caedmon and I by showing us how beautiful she was. She died giving birth to the two of us, and therefore, my father has crowned us—specifically me, as I was the latter to be born—as her murderers.

“What’s the point, Devryck? We never knew her. And we never will.”

The irritation of my brother’s words scratch at the back of my neck, and on a whim, I dash into the dark space.

The temperature feels as if it’s dropped ten degrees, the air brushing across my skin like a ghostly whisper. From what little light streams in through the cracked door, I catch the shimmer of glass jars lined on shelves. Ones that hold strange-looking creatures suspended in fluids. Skulls and books fill the space between the jars. More books sit in neat piles on counters and the floor. Silver tables gleam with cleanliness. My father is a stickler for neatness.

The room is hundreds of years old, with a morbid history. My great-great-grandfather was a renowned doctor in the early 1900’s, known as the Beast of Bramwell Estate. He was arrested for the very gruesome experiments he performed on prostitutes looking for abortions. The stories terrified me growing up, and I often had nightmares about him, which kept me out of the west wing of the mansion where his portrait hangs beside the other Bramwell men. His crimes plagued two generations of our family, up until my grandfather helped to develop a vaccine against a virus, saving thousands of lives. My father says that was when we finally crawled out from under the Bramwell curse and were once again respectable.

I want to be like him someday, my grandfather. I want to do something incredible and save lives.

Father’s office lies past the laboratory, and as I venture closer, I turn to find the closed door of the refrigerator. The body fridge, where the dead are stored.

Sometimes, men bring big bags that they carry down to this laboratory. Sometimes, I spy and catch them pushing carts of bags into the fridge.

“Bah!”

At a rough shake of my arms, I let out a scream.

Caedmon belts out a hearty laugh.

I hammer a punch into his shoulder, earning nothing more than a grunt from him. “Asshole!”

While rubbing his shoulder, he laughs again. “Should’ve seen your face!”

Attention returning to the fridge, I nod. “Do you think there are bodies in there now?”

“Probably.”

I stare at the gleaming, silver surface, on the other side of which could very well be a dead body. “Have you ever been curious what they look like?”

“No.”

“Not even a little?”

Caedmon groans with irritation, and at a nudge to my arm, I stumble a step to the side. “You came to see a picture. Look at the picture, and let’s get out of here.”

“Why are you so scared?”

Eyes trailing over the room, he snarls his lips. “I hate this laboratory. This office. I hate everything about it.”

“Father says his work is going to save lives.” I want to believe that. Truly. But I know my father’s true nature.

“Only good men save lives, Devryck. Father isn’t a good man.”

With another nudge from my brother, I keep on in my intended task and round the perfectly tidy desk to the other side of it. Clicking on the desk lamp sends a reflective shine across the spotless desktop. After running my hands across it, I open the drawer beside me. A picture frame lies tucked within, and I lift it out to an image of the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Eyes a fiery amber, hair as black as ink, there is no doubt where Caedmon and I inherited our most notable features.

In the photo, she’s looking over her shoulder, a bright smile on her face, her eyes sparkling in the light. It made sense why my father loved her so much. Why he obsessed over her.

She was an incomprehensible light in his darkness.

“What are you doing in here!”

At the sound of the furious voice, my muscles jerk in fear, and I drop the photo.

Clattering against the wooden desk, it sends tiny shards of glass scattering over the shiny surface. My mother’s photo dislodges from the frame on impact.

Panic rises up into my throat, as I lift my gaze toward the man standing in the doorway. Perhaps there was a time when he was handsome, worthy of my mother even, but right now, he embodies the very essence of a monster.

Brows pinched to fury, eyes blazing with madness, he stares toward the mess I’ve made. “What have you done?” he growls through clenched teeth, just like a monster.

“He didn’t mean it, Father!” Caedmon pleads on my behalf, but I know it’s no use. “You startled him!”

In what feels like no more than a blink, he storms across the room toward me.

I should run, particularly when I feel Caedmon tugging on my arm, but my muscles are frozen in place, eyes fixed on my mother.

Caedmon lets out a cry as, in my periphery, the monster pushes him out of the way, sending him backward into the wall.

Something flashes at the corner of my eye, but before I can make out what it is, an intense pain strikes the side of my head. Jagged light flickers behind my eyelids. The room tilts. An unyielding force strikes the other side of my head.

Caedmon screams.

Everything turns black. Quiet.

So quiet, I can hear the thud of blood pulsing in my ears.

I blink my eyes open.

My father is standing over me, holding Caedmon by the arm, as my brother claws at his grip. “If it’s the dead that fascinates you, then you will sleep with them tonight.”

The darkness slinks back into its shadowy corners, the view opening to my surroundings. I glance around at all the jars. Ears and fingers, and other bits of meat I can’t identify, all suspended in fluid. The specimen closet, situated beside the corpse fridge.

“No! No, please!” Intense ringing blasts inside my ear, as pain strikes my skull again. Eyes clamped shut, I grind my teeth, clutching either side of my head.

The light shutters with the slamming of the door, and as I lurch for it, I hear the lock click from the other side.

“No! Please! Don’t leave me here!” Warmth trickles down my leg, the smell of piss burning my nose. A cold sensation, like ice crystals crawling beneath my skin, slithers from my neck down to my fingertips, a thick numb throbbing in my hands, and when I lift my arm to wipe away tears, I can’t feel anything. Not my skin, nor the closet’s rough floor beneath me. Only an agonizing tingle lingers with the pressure. “Father! Please! Help me!”

Caedmon’s screams echo through the door, growing distant. Distant.

Until all is quiet.

“Hey. Hey! What the hell’s going on? You okay?” A familiar, but unfitting voice for my memory invaded my thoughts, yanking me back into the present.

I blinked out of the void and found myself on the gritty concrete floor where I must’ve collapsed. “Do you give a shit?” I asked, pushing to my feet. Dizziness hooked my brain, jostling my field of view for a moment, and I stumbled to the side. Fuck. I hated coming out of these dreams.

“Yeah, I give a shit. You’re my meal ticket. I’m guessing the only person that knows I’m down in this shithole.” He leaned back against the wall of his cell, watching me compose myself. “So … your father, he made you sleep with them corpses?”

“What?” Had I verbalized the memory? I’d only ever had them alone, so I wouldn’t have had any awareness.

“You were talking kind of spacey. Said your brother and you were playing where you shouldn’t’ve been. Your father hit you.”

Hit me was putting it mildly. It so happened, he’d struck a very specific part of my brain, consequently dislodging and activating a latent congenital prion disease. Zigliomyositis was the technical term for it, or Voneric’s Disease, as it was more commonly known–a rare condition only seen in an exceptionally small fraction of the population. Incurable and unstoppable in its destruction.

Rubbing my temples, I breathed through my nose, banishing the mist of confusion still clouding my head. “He was like you, Mr. Barletta. Terrified of anything that might challenge him. He was weak. Impatient. Utterly detestable.”

“Ain’t there a small part of you that cares about your old man, though? Even if he knocked you around, you still give a shit about him, right?”

I snapped my eyes open, the acerbic response sitting on the tip of my tongue and begging to be said. Instead, I swallowed it back, mostly for the sake of my blood pressure. “To answer your question, yes, he did make me sleep with the corpses. I spent the night hearing things. Whispers through the walls. Whether it was my father trying to scare the ever-loving fuck out of a twelve-year-old boy, or something else, I suppose I’ll never know.”

Barletta stared off toward the center of his cell. “My old man was a hothead, too. Always flying off with his fist.” He tapped a finger against the side of his head. “Used to say my brain was made of stone, as many times as I got hit and got back up.”

“You and I have nothing in common.”

A pathetic shame darkened his eyes as he glanced at me and to the floor. “Yeah. I guess not.” He fidgeted for a moment, seemingly deep in thought. “My death … it’ll help someone?”

I shrugged. “Perhaps. If nothing else, it will give me a better understanding of the toxin, so I can save lives.”

His brows came together, and he didn’t bother to look at me when he asked, “Is it painful?”

“Yes,” I answered in a flat tone. “But no more painful than what you’ve inflicted upon others.”

He flinched and covered his face with his palms. Without the alcohol shielding him, I imagined his guilt was eating him alive faster than the worms hatching in his belly. “This is fucked, you know? The way I am … the way I feel. I could really turn shit around. Do better with my life.”

“Yes, I suppose in some alternate universe you could’ve. Unfortunately for you, I found you first.”