Alex Grecian - Devil's Workshop

He blinked away a tear and smiled. And, after a moment’s further reflection, he turned the doorknob and entered the kitchen.

Fiona looked up when she heard the door open. The coverlet was soaking in a basin, and she hoped salt water would lift most of the worst of the stains. Her mind had already turned to her father and Claire upstairs, thinking about what they would need, and so she assumed that it was Constable Winthrop entering the kitchen with water, even though she knew that he was in the parlor rooting through Claire’s sewing basket for a spool of red-colored thread.

Of course, it was not Rupert Winthrop at the door. The man who entered the kitchen was thin and bald and he was wearing a very nice suit. But his jaw was badly bruised, purple and green, and his lips were puffy, and his eyes were wide and staring. Fiona glanced at the card of sewing needles on the table in front of her, then she saw the scissors and she grabbed them, but the bald man was already moving across the kitchen. He took hold of her arm just above the elbow and snatched the scissors out of her hand. He dragged her to the pantry-only four or five steps, there was no time for her to break free of his grip-and he shoved her inside.

It all happened so quickly that Fiona was still stunned. Later, she thought of several things she might have done: stomped on the stranger’s foot or clawed at his wide, madly rolling eyes, perhaps even slapped his tender bruised jaw or grabbed the scissors back from him. But she did none of these things in the moment.

As the pantry door closed on her, she did manage to scream: “Rupert!”

Then she was alone in the dark.

Cinderhouse heard a commotion down the hall, like someone dropping something. He kept the fist that held the scissors tight against the pantry door, holding it shut, and reached with his other hand for a low chair that was just within arm’s reach. It had a basket-weave seat and an embroidered back, all bright yellow and shiny blue, and he tipped it up and shoved it under the pantry’s doorknob.

Footsteps outside in the hallway, someone answering the girl’s scream for help. Cinderhouse opened the scissors, looking over the blades with an experienced eye. They were very much like the scissors he was accustomed to using, nice and sharp, hardly used and never dulled.

A man in a constable’s uniform, presumably Rupert, a policeman in another policeman’s house, lurched through the kitchen door as Cinderhouse swept his right arm through the air in front of him, left to right, a magnificent gleaming arc. One of the scissors’ twin blades sliced through the flesh of Rupert’s throat and a gout of blood erupted across Cinderhouse’s face and chest. It leapt from Rupert to him as if it had been waiting for him, longing for him. He smiled and bared his teeth and felt the warmth of the other man’s blood on his lips.

Rupert clapped a hand against his throat and stopped its joyous rush. The blood bubbled out and over and through his fingers like a rill over its rocky bed. It flowed down the constable’s arm, soaking his cuffs and shirtsleeves and jacket. His other arm hung down at his side, his fist clenched tight around some small thing.

But young Rupert was still able to talk. The scissor blade hadn’t severed his vocal cords and he still had a tongue, lucky devil. And, as he talked, he continued to move forward, pushing Cinderhouse back against the long wooden table in the center of the room.

“Miss Fiona?”

The girl was banging on the pantry door, but the chair held. Rupert began to turn toward the noise, but his free arm was still held out at an angle, forcing Cinderhouse down and back, his spine bending at an uncomfortable angle against the table’s edge. He fumbled for the scissors, but his hands were wet with blood, and he felt the blade, possibly the same blade that had snicker-snacked through Rupert’s throat, slice into his right index finger. He couldn’t see how deep the cut was, but he dropped the scissors on the table. He fumbled with them in the sticky pool already growing there and found the loop at the end of one blade. He stuck his first two fingers through the loop, ratcheted the blades apart, and drove one of them into Rupert’s thigh.

Rupert didn’t seem to notice. He continued through his turn and staggered toward the pantry. One arm still hung down at his side, the other bent up, his hand loose at his throat, his blood pumping sluggishly now, as if it had lost interest in the whole affair and was preparing for sleep. Rupert put one leg forward. .

“Fiona?”

As if he had forgotten who Fiona was or why he should care.

He put out the other leg, that side of his trousers sopping with whatever blood had been left over for the lower half of his body, the cheap fabric there puckering and clammy. His foot hit the floor without the force of his body behind it and he stumbled and caught himself, one hand, the fist still bunched, against the pantry door.

The banging against the other side of the door stopped.

“Constable?” Her voice was muffled and distant.

“I’m. . Fiona. . I’ll do that.”

And Rupert fell forward toward the door and bounced off of it, reeled away into the kitchen. Cinderhouse, free from the table, leapt upon the constable’s back and drove him to the floor and stabbed him in the back. And stabbed him again and again, and his teeth gnashed and ground against one another, and he brought the scissors down again and through the thin fabric of the constable’s uniform.

And again.

Rupert stopped moving, stopped trying to crawl across the slimy red kitchen floor with Cinderhouse on his back. His hands scrabbled one last time in the syrupy blood, and then he let go of his last breath. Cinderhouse felt it go, felt himself sink down against Rupert’s rib cage. Rupert’s fist opened up and a spool of red thread rolled away from him, red against red, leaving a lopsided trail until it bumped up against a table leg and stopped.

The banging on the other side of the pantry door started up again, but Cinderhouse ignored the noise. He stood and set the blood-slick scissors on the tabletop. He listened for any other sound in the house, for anyone else who might be coming to see what had happened. He heard a woman scream, once, and felt a moment of blind panic, thinking that Jack had somehow followed him here, but the scream had sounded far off, and no one was approaching down the hall beyond the kitchen. He and the girl and the body of the policeman seemed to be alone.

He examined his finger where it was cut. The two edges of skin and flesh gaped apart, smooth and even down the middle of the finger, all the way to the first knuckle. He could see blood welling up and out, but couldn’t tell how bad it was. The finger was already covered with blood, dripping with it, some his, some Rupert’s.

He pulled the sopping white coverlet out of the basin of water on the table and wrapped it around his hand and gasped. He had forgotten that the little bitch was soaking the thing in salt water! He sat heavily on the chair against the pantry door and felt it creak beneath him. Salt water in the basin. A trap for him. She was a crafty girl, and comely. A valuable prize to be had. After he had finished his business.

“What did you do?” Her voice soft and frightened behind the door. “Where’s Constable Winthrop?”

Cinderhouse pursed his lips and looked around the kitchen. Perhaps there was notepaper and a pencil somewhere in a drawer or a cabinet. But even if he found it, even if he wrote a note to the little girl and pushed it under the door to her, she wouldn’t be able to read it in the dark. Still, he stood and paced about, twisting the balls of his feet so as not to slip when he walked through the smeared and pooling blood. There was no notepaper, but he did find a key on a shelf in the cupboard closest to the kitchen window. It was tucked up against the side and he took it out and looked it over. He walked back to the pantry door and tried the key in the keyhole under the knob. It was a perfect fit.