Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
“What do you mean, ‘huh’?” Sinclair asked me with a raised brow. I could only stare back at him as my poor fried brain was trying in vain to process every horrible thing that had happened to me in such a short span of time. My day had started preparing for a derby race and had ended in countless deaths, attempted murder on me, and finally the loss of my left arm and the near breakage of my right. And now, my boss wanted to make me a permanent fixture of this horrible place.
“Why…why do you care about me so much? Why do you want me to stay here so badly?” I asked him, on the verge of tears as everything finally came bursting to the surface. It was taking everything in me not to let the tears start flowing out of my eyes. But it was obvious how emotional I was, and Sinclair stared at me with a sense of disgust and annoyance.
“Does the name, William Fairfax mean anything to you, Theodore?” Sinclair asked as he pulled the cigar out of his mouth and sat it down in the ashtray on his desk. I stared at him and tried to push the tears back into my eyes as I wracked my brain with the name he’d asked me about. It did sound familiar, and I had to wrack my brain in thought as to why it sounded so familiar.
“My… great-grandfather?” I asked him, remembering a small memorial that existed for him in my grandparents’ house. “He was killed in World War 1. What does he…” The dots started being connected for me. Sinclair’s father’s death and the strangeness of his associates suddenly all started making sense to me. “Did you know, my great-grandfather?” I asked him, staring at him as his tired hazel eyes stared back at me.
“William was in my platoon during the war and was killed under my command in battle. The entire platoon was wiped out, with me being ‘lucky’ enough to survive unharmed,” he told me, his tired eyes revealing an enormous amount of guilt. It was the first bit of true emotion I’d ever seen from Constantine Sinclair. Reaching into his desk he pulled out a framed photo and handed it over to me.
Reaching a shaky barely functioning arm towards the framed picture, I took it and looked down at it. And there he was, my great-grandfather. And two people down from him was a younger-looking and happily smiling Constantine Sinclair. I looked up at him in astonishment and was unlucky enough to watch as his shadow consumed my severed arm with a satisfied gurgle.
“That’s why you want me to work here so badly?” I asked him, handing back the photograph. He took it and looked down at it. He’d no doubt looked at that picture countless times and it still seemed like it pained immensely to look at it.
“I suppose so. Truthfully I can’t really explain why I desire you to work here so badly.” He sighed, putting the photo back and picking up the cigar from the ashtray to continue puffing on it. “Maybe it’s to ease the sense of guilt I have. Maybe just to try and put that part of my life behind me. I don’t know.” He sighed, breathing out a large puff of smoke from his mouth.
“Sir…I can’t work here. You and your friends, I just can’t deal with them. It’s impossible for me to cope with them. And no amount of money is ever going to change my mind about working here.” I told him, wincing as the throbbing pain in my broken arm was finally catching up to me as the adrenaline began to wear off.
“Is that so?” he asked me, puffing away on his cigar as he stared at me. A sick smile soon spread across his face. “Would you rather that I give you back to Creole? Or perhaps I should feed you to LeBlanc.” Sinclair chuckled as more smoke billowed from his mouth. In the dim light, he truly looked like some horrible dragon ready to blast me with a wall of flame at any time.
“Sir, please. Just let me go. I never even knew my great-grandfather. You don’t owe me anything! I just want to leave.” I begged him. I just wanted to be left alone and just go work at a fast food place.
Sinclair looked at me and tapped the ash from his cigar over by his ashtray. As he was about to open his mouth we both suddenly began to hear piano music. Cocking my head towards the melody’s direction I tried to figure out what it was. It was the same melody that Creole had been playing in the lobby. That familiar tune that I could simply not put my finger on. But as I turned back to look at Sinclair it was clear that he knew the melody as well, because he looked like he’d just seen his entire family been murdered.
His eyes were wide and his pupils the size of peas as he stood up from his desk and just as quickly collapsed to the floor. Clearly both me and Sinclair’s shadow were caught off guard as the always persistent smile that the shadow possessed was quickly wiped away as it quickly rushed over to him.
As Sinclair lay there hyperventilating and unable to stand, I managed to stand up and shuffle my way out of his office. Thankful as all hell that the door was already open since there was no way my hand would be able to turn a knob. Wincing with every little step I took. Walking toward the sound of the piano like it was the pied piper. And just as I suspected it was Creole again playing on the piano.
“He ain’t the only one with tricks up his sleeves.” Creole cackled as he continued to play the melody. “It’s such a beautiful tune. And it helps that Constantine has such a visceral reaction towards it.”
“What song is this?” I asked him, keeping a good distance between the two of us. The voodoo man snapped his gaze over to me, I thought his head was going to fall off with the angle at which he snapped his button eyes at me.
“Why Ted, I’m disappointed that you don’t know this fabulous lil’ tune. It’s In Flanders Fields!” He told me with another cackle as he continued the song. The name jogged my memory as I remembered the famous WW1 song. It certainly made sense that this song with cause that to happen to Sinclair. “I don’t usually like to play dirty, but what are you going to do?” he said with a smile as the melody began to wind down.
“I’m not going to work for you. And I don’t fucking care what you do to me.” I told him, completely fed up and willing to accept whatever horrible thing he was going to do to me. Creole looked at me and the smile slowly faded from his face as the song finally ended. When he was done, he smashed his hands down onto the piano.
“Is that so? Well, that is a shame.” He laughed at me, the kind of laugh where someone is seconds away from losing their shit. And Creole certainly did lose his shit. He picked up his cane from against the piano and with some of the quickest speeds I’d ever seen he whipped it at my head and sent me falling backward right on my ass. Before I could even think of getting up, Creole was already over me, shoving his foot onto my chest and staring down at me with nothing but pure hate.
“So long, Ted. Guess I’ll just have to kill you to piss Sinclair off.” Lifting his cane up and twirling it around his hand, he laid the head of the cane down on the floor like he was about to golf with my head. And that was exactly what he was going to do. I closed my eyes as tight as I could and braced for the incoming swing. But it never did come. Instead, the weight of his foot was lifted off my chest.
“James?! Let go of me!” Creole hissed, as he grunted and tried to get something off of him. Opening my eyes I was greeted with the beautiful face of Dr. Harrison looking at me. He had Creole in a headlock and was pulling him off of me.
“Well done, Doctor.” Sinclair’s voice came, walking over and I was suddenly lifted up from the floor. The pungent smell coming from whatever was lifting me up clued me into the fact it was most likely Sinclair’s shadow.
“Of course, sir,” Dr. Harrison said, letting Creole go and backing away from him. Creole seemed like a wild animal, his yellow teeth sharpened into fangs and it took him a few moments to calm down and regain some sort of composure.
“I’m calling a meeting,” Sinclair told the two of them. Harrison nodded and Creole seemed more pissed off than ever. “We’ll decide what to do with Theodore there,” he said, his shadow draping itself over my shoulder and letting me get a good look at it. It smelled foul, like rotting meat mixed with spoiled milk. It had almost a skeletal face with bright white eyes and a gaping white mouth. The creature slithered down my severed arm and attached itself to me.
“Let me take a look at your arm.” Dr. Harrison told me as he walked over and took a gentle hold of my arm. He put some pressure on my arm and got me to wince as he did it in seemingly every spot that it was broken in. He nodded with a few clicks of his tongue and looked up at me. “That’s broken alright.” I wanted to punch him in his handsome face if that was all he was going to say to me, but luckily enough for me he took off his doctor’s coat and fashioned it into a sling.
“Are you finished yet?” Sinclair asked over to us, clearly annoyed. At first, I thought he was talking to James, but the happy gurgle that came from his shadow meant it was clearly meant for it. It slithered back up my arm stump and made its way back toward Sinclair. In its place on my stump, it left me with an arm made of the same goopy material that it was made of. Now I had seen everything. Bending the fingers felt like my hand hadn’t been moved in forty years.
“What do you hope to accomplish by calling a meeting? Just for us to be deadlocked again?” Creole tsked, taking off his top hat and running his gloved fingers through his mass of black hair. Clearly, he was ready to kill Sinclair at that moment.
“For once, all of us are available for a meeting. We might as well settle it there.” Sinclair told him, blowing a cloud of smoke Creole’s way. He put his hat back on and walked away with a feverish tap of his cane on the polished floor.
“Come. We may as well go to the conference room before he and that freakshow show up.” Sinclair told us, heading down the hall toward an area that was off-limits to most employees. Only upper management was allowed down this hallway and I guess I qualified. I sheepishly followed after them and paid more attention to my new strange hand. The more I bent it the more like my real arm it felt like. Finally arriving at the end of the hallway to the big double doors I was met with, a simple conference room. I was more shocked by that than I figured I would be. To be fair, most of the hidden rooms here were pretty nightmarish so I was expecting something similar with the conference room.
“Theodore, sit over there in the corner and try not to speak. I want this to be over as quickly as possible,” he told me. I wanted to raise an objection but a secondary voice in my head reinforced his point home. It didn’t sound like a man or woman’s voice. In fact, it didn’t even sound like a voice, it was more like a horrible droning noise that I couldn’t stop unless I did what it wanted. So wordlessly I walked over to a chair in the corner of the room and sat down in it. At least it was a comfy chair.
It took maybe an hour and a half for the remaining members of Sinclair’s circle of friends to arrive at the conference room. Creole entered with Garibaldi much to my horror. The two of them laughed it up as they walked over to the other side of the conference table opposite Dr. Harrison and Sinclair. That would explain their deadlock, as they seemed to vote together based on how they were sitting. And the final member was their tiebreaker. LeBlanc walked through the conference room doors on all his limbs. He was soaked to the bone (if he has bones) in blood. And his poor haggard nurse was following him with his wheelchair.
“Good of you to finally join us, Monsieur,” Sinclair told him, as LeBlanc stood back on his four legs, his body cracking and contorting as his rear legs collapsed into themselves and he collapsed back into his wheelchair. “Now we can finally get this meeting over with.” Sinclair slammed his fist down on the table, seemingly his way of using a gavel.
“You want Ted so bad. Why? You never fight over something this much.” Creole was acting like a child who had been told he couldn’t get a toy that he really wanted. And I guess that’s what I was to him. “You’d usually just pay him off and leave it at that.” His smile returned as he and Garibaldi laughed at him for it.
“Yes, because your obsession with your stupid puppet is such a better way of doing things. We needed to revive you on four separate occasions because of that kiss ass. And now you just want to get rid of him and replace him with Theodore? Give me a break.” Sinclair oozed a seasoned businessman in this setting. He reached a hand out and his shadow placed a cigar into it.
“You act like you’ve never needed reviving. In fact, the only person here that’s never needed it is Bug Boy over there,” Garibaldi said with a wide smile. “Of course, that’s calling the kettle black, but still, we’ve all needed reviving from your stupid antics!” My eyes drifted over towards LeBlanc as he sat there, barely seeming to pay any attention to the meeting going on.
“Considering that Ted has worked here for Mr. Sinclair, it’s only fair that he continues in that capacity.” Dr. Harrison spoke up, pushing the glasses up higher to his eyes. Staring at the side of his head allowed me a pretty good sight of just how beautiful he was. And I had to pry my gaze away from him and remind myself of the monster hidden beneath that pretty face.
“He wanted to quit anyway! And you hypnotizing him, ain’t erasing that notion from his mind.” Creole pointed an accusatory finger at the plastic surgeon, who quickly veered his eyes away from Creole and looked down at the table like a scolded child.
“Whatever, let’s just vote on this shit. I have a freakshow to return to.” Garibaldi yawned, leaning back in his chair and balancing it on only the back legs. Sinclair glared at him and his shadow slithered over to the chair and yanked it from under Garibaldi, sending the white-haired ringmaster to the floor with a loud clang. I couldn’t help but snort with laughter at that.
“You’ll sit like a proper person while you’re here, you insect.” Sinclair hissed, slamming his fist down onto the table. “All those in favor of Theodore staying here?” he asked, raising his own hand along with Dr. Harrison. Even his shadow raised his hand in agreement. Though I don’t think his vote counted. “Opposed?” He asked, Creole raising his hand along with Garibaldi who hadn’t gotten off from the floor.
All eyes turned to LeBlanc to see if he was going to break the tie. LeBlanc looked over at his nurse who whispered into his ear. I figured she was trying to explain the whole situation to the creature. I thought I could see the gears turning in his head as his neck turned at an unnatural angle to look at me. The empty black holes in his mask sent a horrible shiver up my spine.
“He stays here,” LeBlanc wheezed out. Much To Creole and Garibaldi’s anger and confusion. I was just as confused as to why the creature in the wheelchair also wanted me to stay. Creole stood up and looked like he was about to lunge in my direction at any second. Only for Sinclair to stand up and meet his gaze eye to button.
“You can’t keep holding this debt I owe you over me forever, Constantine. One day I will be more than willing to pay ya back for everything you’ve done.” Creole gritted his teeth behind his stitches. Sinclair pulled back with a triumphant puff of his cigar and blew the smoke back in Creole’s face.
“I highly doubt that, Charles,” Sinclair said with the biggest shit-eating grin I’d ever seen. Garibaldi quickly shot up and put his arm around Creole to pull him back before the voodoo man could do anything to Sinclair. He pulled Creole back and the two of them left the conference room without so much as a peep from either of them.
“Thank you for your vote, Monsieur. I will be sure to pay you for your vote.” Sinclair turned and bowed toward the wheelchair creature. Who bent his neck backward up against his chair and simply waved his hand dismissively.
“A thank you for the lovely banquet I enjoyed.” He wheezed out, a shrill and fucking horrifying screech coming from somewhere deep within the frail-looking creature. I don’t know if it was a laugh, a satisfied burp, or what it was. But whatever it was, it haunts my infrequent nightmares. His nurse pushed his wheelchair out of the conference room leaving me alone with Harrison and Sinclair.
“It would seem that King Creole has removed my hold over him. Should I reassert control over him?” Harrison asked as they both approached me in my corner chair. I couldn’t help but stare down at my shoes and hope that they wouldn’t see me if I sat there completely still.
“Unless he wants to comply with his fate. What will it be, Theodore? Will you come willingly? Or do we have to force you?” he asked this series of questions like I was a child who was being punished for doing something wrong. I wanted nothing more than to stare down at the floor forever, but that same strange voice from before forced my gaze to look up at Sinclair. His shadow peeked over his shoulder with nothing but excitement and glee.
I realized there that the strange voice was coming from it. Really it was coming from the new arm it had given me. Was this what it was like living with that thing? Constantly having it try to sway your decision-making and its constant flow of words, it was maddening having it for only these few hours. I was ready to rip it off from my stump at that moment.
“N-no,” I answered him, although it was so pathetic it was more like a plea than a response. Sinclair shook his head and motioned for Harrison to take over. On instinct, I quickly shut my eyes to avoid staring into those beautiful emerald eyes. I wasn’t given much time to resist, however, just as quickly as I shut them, they were pried open by that foul-smelling creature who gurgled in absolute joy.
I stared into Harrison’s eyes as he spoke to me. I didn’t even bother to listen to him. If my last shreds of free will were going to be taken away from me, I would least enjoy laying eyes on the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.
Life after my forced permotion was, better than I first believed it would be. Sinclair truly did not want to stay here any more than he had to. And vested in me the full powers as a manager. My new arm was easily hidden underneath a suit and tie with lovely white gloves to match it. Cleaning up after Monsieur LeBlanc took quite a long while. It required a full three months to get St. Mihel back into operation. And when we had a grand reopening, Sinclair presented me as the manager. That was the last time I saw him.
He now only occasionally checks up on me through the very rare phone call. Without his dear friends in the cabal, as he calls it, St. Mihel has once again become a peaceful and lovely country club, with me as its permanent manager. Here for as long as he wishes me to be here.
I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay here. Please come again. If you so choose.