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re-1124c41 · 11 months ago

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The ward was nearly silent. Outside, beyond the closed door, there were quieted sounds of machinery and voices, of trolleys rattling by and footsteps dutifully following them. With the window cracked open, there was a soft breeze rustling the sheer curtains and tickling over his arms. On the bedside stand, a whiteboard and marker sat next to a vase of flowers and several well-wishing cards.

There was a low hum of the monitor on the other side of the bed, a near imperceptible drip of the fluid in the IV bag feeding into the catheter at his elbow.

A gentle knock on the door, before it creaked open and someone peeked inside. It was enough to stir him from dozing into wakefulness.

He wouldn’t have recognized the man, if not for his hat and his suit. Something painful in his heart clenched as the visitor stepped quietly into the room. He tried to swallow, opened his mouth to speak as the man approached, but no sound came. The bandage at his throat was too tight, the injury too painful, to even utter a greeting.

“Good evening, Desmond.” Skulduggery Pleasant said softly. His face was a sloping sort of oval shape, with wide brows and light brown hair combed back. “I hope I’m not intruding.”

Desmond sighed and let himself deflate back into the pillows. He shook his head a little, and Skulduggery nodded.

“I’m very sorry for what happened,” Pleasant said sympathetically. “I hope the prognosis, however, is a positive one.”

Resignedly, Desmond nodded and reached for the whiteboard his wife had left at his side. He scribbled a short message, the catheter in his arm and the medication in his system making his handwriting sloppy.

They say I’m lucky. He wrote. They say it missed my jugular. Apparently I’m concussed too.

“Then I promise to keep this as brief as I can. You need rest if you’re going to make a fully recovery,” Skulduggery said sagely. “I wanted to see you, to make sure you are going to be all right.”

Desmond used the hem of the blanket he was tucked into to wipe the board clean. It left a black smear and residue on the cloth, but he didn’t care – he was already writing again.

Thank you for coming. I think I’m concussed.

“Yes, that is quite apparent, yes.”

Have you seen my wife? I’m worried about her. I don’t want her to be mad I missed Alice’s dance recital.

“I spoke with Melissa earlier, whilst you were in surgery,” Skulduggery replied gently “She’s not mad, she just very worried about what happened to you.”

The next question took Desmond a moment to put into words; finally, it felt best to take the most obvious approach.

Where is my daughter, Skulduggery?

Skulduggery was silent as he considered the question. Almost too quiet, Desmond felt, for comfort. He couldn’t have been certain, and he put most of it down to the concussion and the amount of hallucinogenic medication he was on, but the memories of the incident were…

Terrifying. They were awful, horrible memories that he wished, more than anything, were just conjuring’s of his badly bruised mind.

Skulduggery reached into the collar of his white shirt and a moment later, the face he was wearing shifted and melted away, receding back to reveal the polished white skull underneath. Desmond watched the process with fascination – once, the whole ordeal had frightened him. But now it was more of a morbid curiosity. Where did all that skin go?

“She is safe,” Skulduggery said eventually. He sat on the edge of the hospital bed, looking down at the hat in his hands. “She…she asked me to come and see you.”

Please bring back my little girl, Desmond found himself scrawling the words without a second thought. Please. I need to see her.

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea right now,” Skulduggery replied gently. “She is going through something beyond anything I’ve ever witnessed, and until we know what we’re dealing with and how to make things right, I’m afraid that it’s better if she stays at a safe distance.”

Desmond could feel the tears dripping down his cheeks. His hands were trembling and there was nothing he could do to stop them. So it was real. The feathers, the screaming.

The blood.

Skulduggery reached over, somewhat awkwardly, and put a gloved hand over Desmond’s. “I am sorry, Desmond.”

Swallowing back more tears, Desmond scribbled again.

What will happen to her? Is she a monster?

“No,” Skulduggery said quickly. “She is…changing. There are things happening greater than you or I, and she made choices – she took the brunt of the forces at play to protect those she loved. For the greater good, but it has caused her a lot of change, and suffering. She never meant to hurt you.”

Can you protect her?

Skulduggery was still. “I can try.” He cleared his throat, and stood. “I’d better go, and leave you to rest.”

Wait, Desmond’s silent plea caught Skulduggery’s attention as he waved a hand to stop him leaving. I need to ask something of you. Please.

“Anything.”

He hurriedly scrawled his request, having to backtrack and smudge out a few mistakes along the way, but finally, he turned the board back to the skeleton.

You must have something magic to make people forget. I don’t want my family to be burdened by my daughter’s disappearance having anything to do with my situation now. My Stephanie is not to blame. Please, there has to be something you can do to make us forget.

For a while, Skulduggery seemed to think on it. Then he replaced his hat on his skull, reached into his collared shirt, and a new face, different to his previous one, flowed up over the bone. This one had black hair and deep-set eyes.

“I might have something that could work. You’ll need to give me a day or two to modify it, and there’s no guarantee it will even be successful as it’s untested on erasing events after the fact. But I can try.”

Desmond nodded along, before scrawling again. Let me be your test subject.

“I wouldn’t want to expose you to any possible side effects, Desmond,” Skulduggery began, but Desmond waved him away, and pointed at his scribbles again. Defeated, the skeleton wearing the false face sighed. “Very well. Give me some time, and I’ll be back.”

-:-

It took longer than a few days – in fact, it took nearly two and a half weeks, but true to his word Skulduggery returned. It was the morning that Desmond was being discharged, finally able to go home with his bereft family. Melissa was still tearfully speaking with the police, Alice clinging to her side and her hand clasped tightly in Desmond’s as he sat beside them in a wheelchair.

The next thing he knew, Skulduggery was stepping through the big automatic doors into the hospitals main foyer. It was the walk that gave him away; so purposeful, so dignified. Relief washed through Desmond at the sight of the skeleton detective – although, he was a little cloudy as to why he was so relieved. Since his concussion had eased and he’d regained a little more of his senses, he couldn’t quite grasp the details of that conversation he’d had two weeks ago.

He had had to erase all the things he’d written on the whiteboard – the doctors theorized it would likely take a few months until his vocal cords healed well enough for him to speak again, and even then, it would likely mean another few months following that in speech therapy.

“Edgely’s,” Skulduggery greeted them all kindly, and Melissa just about threw herself at the detective in a rage, demanding answers. How dare he be so absent when their family was so distraught? How could he live with himself when Desmond nearly died and Stephanie was gone?

Her grief came out so venomous, it felt sharp to Desmond even though it wasn’t aimed his way. He hated when things drove his beautiful wife to such fury.

Skulduggery was pressing something between his hands, saying words that didn’t quite make sense to Desmond’s ears. Suddenly Melissa stopped her wrath and listened, confused. Alice was squeezing his hand tightly, completely wrapped with the words Skulduggery spoke. Something about a mugger, with a knife, hiding out in Grimwood. That sounded like it made sense, Desmond’s addled mind decided. Someone who hadn’t meant to hurt him, just tried to rob him and it all got out of hand so quickly, someone with enough remorse to call an ambulance before fleeing the scene.

Stephanie’s panicked eyes were fading from the picture. Like an oil painting that was having something new painted over the top. She wasn’t gone – well, she was, but she had gone on a case. Off saving the world again. Different colours changed the shape of the scene. A blurred face hidden by a dark mask. The flash of a blade, painted over claws covered in blood. That’s right, wasn’t it?

Whatever was in Skulduggery’s hands was glowing a beautiful soft lavender, brightest at its core. Desmond marveled at it as the skeleton’s deep voice seemed to captivate even the police officers standing around them, two of them no longer trying to physically restrain Melissa from attacking Skulduggery. Her eyes were clouded, uncertain. Then they cleared, and she was nodding along like it was all perfectly simple.

All of a sudden it was over, Skulduggery pocketing the thing he’d been holding onto. He was here to wish them well, to bring them his deepest condolences once again about the horrible mugging gone wrong just the other day. That they were doing everything in their power to track down the person responsible and bring them to justice.

Relief was the first of many things Desmond felt. Thank goodness Skulduggery had come to see them, to reassure them they were going to be safe. The skeleton detective was saying something about posting someone on guard around the Edgley house for a few days, just to be sure. Grimwood had already been locked down and safe guarded against any other potential intruders. They were on the case, hunting down the mugger so that this would never happen again.

Everything was going to be all right. Desmond gave his little girls hand a squeeze, and she looked down at him and smiled. He couldn’t crane his neck back very far without putting painful pressure on the healing wound across his throat, still heavily bandaged, but she reached down and wrapped her arms around his shoulders in a big hug.

Shortly after, they left the hospital, Desmond successfully discharged and sent home with a lap full of painkillers and anti-inflammatory medications. A follow-up appointment scheduled with the doctor for next week to check on his throat injury. Melissa drove them home in a subdued silence, Alice in the backseat staring idly out the window. Skulduggery had given him a plain white envelope when they had parted ways with the detective in the parking lot, and as the girls had been fussing about getting all of Desmond’s things from his hospital stay packed into the boot, the skeleton had passed him the envelope with the instructions that it was only to be opened when he contacted Desmond that it was safe to do so.

Desmond was still confused by that instruction. Why wouldn’t it be safe to open the envelope at any other time? Why did he have to wait? Surely, he reasoned with himself, if Detective Pleasant had said so, then it was to be done.

And then their eldest daughter vanished. Stephanie had disappeared, as if into thin air, barely a week later, with no trace or sign left behind. Grimwood was completely deserted – even the blood on the pavement outside the front entryway had been power-washed clean. Where he’d had that run in with that mugger, where his injury had occurred.

The heartbreak was immeasurable. He felt like he’d rather the pain of his throat being slashed all over again, if it would stop the pain and sorrow in his heart. Oh, how Melissa and Alice cried. There were many nights of lost sleep in the following weeks, many visits from the police and many more from Skulduggery, promising that everything and anything that could be done to find their first born child would be done. But their beautiful dark-haired daughter was gone.

Still, Desmond held onto the envelope, like whatever was within it held all of the answers to the universe, answers he somehow knew he wasn’t ready for. Answers beyond his comprehension of the world.

But curiosity won out eventually. It didn’t take all that long, really, for Desmond’s resolve to wear thin. He lasted several months, lasted through many trips to the doctors and through many sessions of speech therapy. Through the long days of bereavement and through the many hours of holding his sobbing wife, of cradling his youngest daughter until she cried herself to sleep. The envelope sat in the back of his sock drawer, where he’d forgotten about it many times already; some times from the outstanding circumstances and some times because he had thought it such a good hiding place, surely no one would find it. Until he had come across it in search of a pair of socks with no holes in the heels, and he had remembered. And the curiosity had started chewing at his mind again.

Finally, one night when Melissa had gone to fetch Alice from a slumber party that their daughter had wanted to come home early from, Desmond took the mystery envelope and taken a walk down to the pier. It had been one of Stephanie’s favourite places to spend her teenage years, if he was remembering right. It gave him some comfort facing the prospect of opening the envelope he’d been made to promise he wouldn’t dare peek into until he was told he could.

He had considered calling Skulduggery, to double check if it really was all that serious that he not open it, but had reasoned that if the sly detective really hadn’t wanted him to look inside it, he wouldn’t have given Desmond the envelope in the first place.

So he sat on a rock, running his thumb over the white folded piece of sealed card, and tried to imagine what was inside.

Then, he slipped his thumb under the seal, and gingerly tore the envelope open. Into his hand fell a long, dark grey feather, speckled with white. It was beautiful.

The night of the incident came flooding back to him, almost knocking him right off the rock he’d perched on. Getting out of the car at Grimwood several months ago now, hearing the sounds of pained cries and retching. Seeing his eldest daughter, blood and dark matter running down her arms, vomiting into the plant pot on the front step by the door. The panic in her eyes, the way her teeth bulged and grew sharp. The thudding in his chest as he felt so torn – to run screaming from the horrible scene, and to run closer, to bundle his baby girl up into his arms and try and protect her.

The way she’d shoved him away, the strange gurgle he made, echoing in his ears, as his breath suddenly went all strange and something hot went running down his neck and stained his shirt. The way he’d fallen back against the car, the way Stephanie had been screaming and crying. She had fallen to her knees in front of him, blubbering and saying she was sorry, she was so sorry -

The sirens overhead, waking in the ambulance. Opening his eyes to the ward after the emergency surgery. Who had called the ambulance? The tears as his wife and daughter came running in on the heels of the doctors.

Desmond was shaking. It was a splash of salty sea-spray over his face that brought him back, found his feet under him. Somehow he’d stood up in his shock, stumbled right to the edge of the pier, still clutching the feather, as if he were ready to cast it into the sea.

Oh, he remembered now. The conversation with Skulduggery. He had wanted to forget, and he had ruined it. Whatever the skeleton detective had done, Desmond had gone had ruined it for himself. Oh, you stupid man.

He took a step back, let himself plonk back down onto the rock, and held the feather close. He couldn’t stop the sobs as they shook his whole body. His daughter had turned into a monster, and now she was gone. And he would have given anything to forget all over again.

#mercy a writes #sp roll the bones #desmond edgley #skulduggery pleasant #mercy a's art #mercy a sketches #tw: blood #tw: body horror #valkyrie cain #alice edgley #melissa edgley #tie-in to the main Roll the Bones story

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