The Lost Deaths: Novella part 1 to 3

Hi guys!

As those on Royal Road probably know already, the site is running a bi-yearly community magazine contest (you can see the details here: https://www.royalroad.com/blog/73/happy-new-start-of-the-community-magazine-contest ). January's theme is "Dead Men tell the best tales." 

The prompt resonated with me due to some stuff in my personal life, and I long had an idea of an experimental story which I wanted to do, but was pretty sure wouldn't be too marketable. I thought making it a short story/novella would let me both scratch that itch and help drum up attention for Dungeon Wreckers' launch later that week.

So this is the first half of the novella, with the other part coming up around Thursday I think. It's written in roughly the same style as Blood & Fur and Underland, so I think many of you will appreciate it.

Happy reading!

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Part I

A long time ago, a fool told me that humans were only equal in death. 

A feeble lie. Death wasn’t fair. It wasn’t even random.

As I watched my friend Pierre open up the tomb and my fellow orderlies place old Henry’s coffin in the hole, I figured that I should have seen it coming. The man had no rich relatives to pay for more expensive treatments that could have slowed down dementia’s deadly grasp, and neither did he possess a strong constitution that would forestall the creeping hands of age and disease. Father Benoît simply said his time had come when he gave the final sermon, but the truth was that Henry Nelson couldn’t buy more for himself. He was a poor lonely man who had died a lonely death. 

Even his final resting place felt like an insult. Portenoire’s graveyard always lacked space for its dead residents, so Pierre had two corpses dug up and then rearranged the plots to fit Henry between them. It was cheaper than paying for yet another extension. 

“This is a pitiful day, Laurent,” Germaine said with a cigarette on her lips. While most alienists looked in a hurry to kill their lungs with that smoke stick, Germaine was older and shrewder than most at the age of sixty-two. She had decided to take her time. “He was with us for nearly twenty years. Can you imagine?”

“No, I cannot,” I replied. I had only been a part-time orderly at the Portenoire Sanitorium for a year. Director Rochard had agreed to house me in exchange for my service and proved most… accommodating about my research. 

“Well, he couldn’t even remember his own name in the end. Age and insanity do not make a good combination.” Germaine shrugged, a look of sadness flashing behind her glasses. “I’ll miss him.”

I believed as much. Henry had been something of a bizarre pillar for Portenoire’s community as one of the oldest and most well-behaved patients. Most of the staff attended the ceremony. They’d even taken Agnès out of her cell for the occasion, though she was strapped to a wheelchair to prevent an incident. She had always been strangely fond of the old man. 

However, I didn’t see anyone from outside the asylum. Henry had no relatives as far as I knew, nor any friends to speak of. If he had any, he had either lost them to time or when he burned down his own bookshop during the Siege of Paris eighteen years ago. Enough people died then that the courts had him institutionalized for the rest of his life after the newborn Third Republic reestablished order in the streets. 

Henry didn’t leave anything worth fussing over either. His personal belongings mostly included the clothes on his back and that blank book he obsessed over even in the depths of his dementia; a gift which I inherited. 

“Are you set on taking that memento with you, Laurent?” Germaine asked him after we left the graveyard behind us. She eyed the black, featureless book under my arm. “Henry died cradling it.” 

“It would feel disrespectful to throw it away,” I replied. “Besides, I need a new notebook.”

Germaine scoffed. “Most would rather spend a few coins at a bookstore than use a mad arsonist’s last possession.”

“Most don’t live on a student’s stipend.” I’d earned a study grant from the Ministry of Public Instruction by virtue of my merits and results, but the amount was a pittance. “I would rather spend my money on other acquisitions.”

“Another censored book?” Germaine asked, which earned her a scowl from me. She had unfortunately guessed right. “Are you researching that spiritualism nonsense to better debunk it? Or do you truly believe in that quackery?”

“I do not,” I replied with a small smile. “When sufficiently analyzed, magic will stop being quackery. Instead, we’ll call it science.”

“An elaborate way to say that yes, you do believe.” Germaine didn’t hide her disappointment. “I cannot fathom why such a brilliant and rational student entertains those pseudo-theories of conmen.”

“I don’t believe it’s all smoke and mirrors.” I’d gone through one such unexplained experience in my youth, which inspired me to study science. “I think there is indeed an invisible force around us that we cannot observe with the naked eye, but which has a tangible impact on reality. I simply need to develop the right tool to measure it.”

“I don’t see how old alchemical books will help you with that, but suit yourself.” Germaine gave me a small nod as they approached the menacing gates of Portenoire’s east wing. Great walls of gray stone loomed menacingly over us, while statues of angels stared down from the brick roof. “Your next shift is in an hour.” 

“I know,” I replied politely. “Will I see you at the Universal Exposition?”

“Of course you will, dearie,” she replied with a warm smile. “I wouldn’t miss our Revolution’s hundredth anniversary, nor spitting on that ugly metal tower disfiguring our city.” 

I was personally impressed with Eiffel’s work, but Germaine was too stubborn for me to change her mind. I had the feeling its inauguration would be the exposition's highlight. 

The year 1889 promised to be most memorable.  

I thanked Germane for her time and left her at the facility’s double doors. The likeness of the Virgin Mary carved on them hardly made the place feel welcoming. The artists chose to portray her with a pitiless frown instead of a smile, likely to remind patients that disobedience would not be tolerated. Neither could she alleviate the howling screams of the madmen trapped in the basement. I’d heard a few orderlies complain about the noise wearing them down mentally, but they only inspired pity from me. Those poor souls were begging for a cure I couldn’t provide yet.

Patience, Laurent, I told myself as I walked past the guest lobby and ascended one of the five marble staircases leading to the upper floors. A few more years and I will have completed the world’s first dementia treatment. Patience. 

Director Rochard had been kind enough to provide me with a room on the first floor next to his own office, though it didn’t differ from the average a patient’s quarters: a set of walls, a pair of metal-framed beds with old musky mattresses, and a single window protected by simple blinds. I at least enjoyed my own wardrobe and desk, though I mostly used the former to store his books. 

My latest acquisition, a copy of the Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, lay on my desk between a human brain preserved in resin—extracted with the director’s permission for study—and my homemade “orgone detector”: a cluster of hollow copper tubes connected to a central silver pipe, and from there to steel wires connected into a Baudot telegraph keyboard. The grimoire was open on the first page, where I’d stopped upon finding a familiar owl sigil and an irritating statement. 

‘Validated by the Bureau des Moeurs du Ministère de l’Instruction Publique.’

That awful call sign appeared on every alchemical and occult treaty I’d managed to track down; a mark which I’d grown to associate with censored texts and missing content. How did the government expect scientists to do their jobs when they allowed bureaucrats to interfere with their work in the name of outdated morality? 

I closed the door behind me, sat at my desk, and barely had time to settle when I heard a sharp clink.

I looked at my orgone detector. Its telegraph had started printing dots on its paper strip. 

This was new. Had I triggered it by sitting down? I stood and watched as it continued to type. Could it be…

My eyes fell on Henry’s book. I held it close to the detector’s tubes. The steel wires began to vibrate, and the telegraph punched holes at a faster pace.

“Fascinating…” I muttered to myself. Franz Mesmer and Reichenbach had theorized about the existence of an invisible force linked to life, which they had called animal magnetism and odic force respectively. I preferred the term ‘orgone’ myself, since I only ever detected traces of it in living organic matter. 

Why would my detector react to a book of all things?

Was its paper somehow imbued with its late owner’s spirit? That seemed far-fetched, but I hadn’t seen the detector react to any other object like this.

Henry kept the book close for as long as anyone could remember and reacted with distress whenever it was taken from him. It wasn’t anything special, just a black and featureless journal devoid of any writing whatsoever. I never saw Henry write anything in it, if he still retained the ability while deep in dementia. 

Taking the journal and putting it to use had been my way of honoring his memory. I wasn’t close to Henry—I only ever changed his bedpans and fed him now and then—but the man cared enough about this book to clutch it during his last moments. It had value for him, even in the throes of his madness. 

Had this emotional attachment somehow rubbed off the document? If so, then it could prove to be a phenomenal breakthrough. 

I opened the book’s first page to find a single sentence written in Latin. 

I only reveal the truth to my master. 

I frowned and flipped the page. Shock hit me as I saw the next pages scribbled over. Most words were written with various handwriting styles in alphabets I could not understand, but the latter parts revealed a series of names closed by a strange sentence.  

Johannes Kepler

Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar

Jean-Philippe de Beachamp

Ali Puli

Comte Manuel Bellamarre Soltikoff 

Edwin Soltikoff 

Catherine Soltikoff

Alphonse Horace Soltikoff

Henry Nelson

The old master is dead, may the new master live forever.

I scoffed in disgust. I didn’t recall Henry ever writing anything in this book. Was this a prank from a fellow orderly? That dimwitted brute André, perhaps? It would have been his style, but I doubted he was bright enough to know about Johannes Kepler. Whoever did it, writing down Henry’s name and crossing it out after his demise felt disrespectful. 

I flipped to the next pages only to find them all blank. I knew I should have dismissed these writings as a prank, but my detector’s clicking noise continued to arouse my curiosity. 

“I only reveal the truth to my master…” I murmured, eyeing the empty space below Henry’s name and a wild idea crossed my mind. I took my fountain pen and then signed with my own name.

Laurent Valmore. 

The machine’s typing intensified with each letter I wrote. By the time I finished, the telegraph hammered the paper furiously. I stared at my name on the page for a moment that seemed to stretch on forever, with my device’s noise alone breaking the silence. 

Then words suddenly appeared below my signature, written in French with pale red ink. 

The Lost Deaths: A Guide to Murdering Mortalities

I gasped in shock and surprise. I could have sworn they… No, no, my eyes did not deceive me. These words were new, fresh. Either I’d gone mad or a force had indeed responded to my action. 

I looked back at my detector, whose paper roll had run out. The wires and tubes vibrated at an intensity I’d never witnessed before. This was it—a genuine supernatural phenomenon. Something was here, in my room, speaking to me through the book; perhaps the late Henry himself.

Unable to contain my excitement, I flipped the pages and swiftly froze in shock at what I found.

The drawing of a horrifying monster stared back at me. It was a vaguely arachnid abomination of viscous crimson slime carried on spindly legs, with two horns sprouting from its faceless head above a set of calculating bloodshot eyes. The sight of them filled me with an unease whose source he couldn’t explain. A description written in French accompanied the drawing. 

The Red Terror

Death by the color red, who drove primitive men to frenzied violence with the sight of their own blood. Devoured at the dawn of humanity by a Qlippoth spawn of Ialdabaoth, Father of the Blood, before its banishment.

My jaw clenched as I flipped to the next page. I swiftly found another drawing instead of answers, this time representing a spiral of numbers that made my head spin. Its description was equally ominous. 

The Final Equation

Death by mathematics, a servant of the Hecatomb of Dementia. Slew those seeking to understand the secrets of the universe by reducing their brains to ones and zeroes. Destroyed on October 24th, 1601 in Prague by Johannes Kepler with the Silent King’s guidance. 

I kept going, each page revealing monstrous entities called ‘Deaths’ slain across the ages. Was this book a demonic bestiary of some sort? Yet I didn’t find any mention of Hell or Heaven, only a list of ‘Mortalities’ which had never killed anyone. I counted dozens of entries, each described in lurid detail.

The mystery further deepened once I reached the end of this twisted gallery. The last two entries, which described some kind of awful bird wearing a plague doctor’s mask and a faceless human wrapped up in scrolls written in German, caught my eye. 

Featherbane

Death by feathers and quills, a minor Mortality in the service of the Hecatomb of Predation, whose touch caused fatal allergies to the weak of constitution. Slain by Henry Nelson during the Ankou Society’s assault on his library in Paris, January 5th 1871. 

The Prussian Litany

Death by German language, a minor Mortality in the service of the Hecatomb of Dementia. Murdered men with words that filled their brains with blood. Slain by Henry Nelson during the Ankou Society’s assault on his library in Paris, January 5th 1871. 

Both descriptions mentioned the late Henry Nelson, and the date during which he set his bookshop on fire with his customers still inside.  

I didn’t recall ever hearing of an ‘Ankou Society’ though. The book implied Henry hadn’t been the arson’s culprit, but some kind of defender fighting these ‘Mortalities’ during an ‘assault.’ Strange, very strange indeed.

I flipped to the next page only to find it blank, and then the next hundreds afterward. Barely a fraction of the book contained illustrations, as if the rest of the entries were missing; or perhaps, waiting to be written.  

I considered my options for a long time. The book had said that it only showed the truth to its master. I’d unlocked its secrets by signing my name. 

What if I simply asked it for answers?

“Who are you?’ I wrote on an empty page, half-heartedly expecting a lack of response. 

My orgone detector let out a droning noise louder than ever before. My words faded away… only to be replaced by new ones written in pale red ink. 

“A practical guide to immortality, so that men may live forever in defiance of Deaths great and small.”

I was too stunned to move for a moment, but then quickly recovered. I’d been wrong. I had assumed a spirit inhabited the book, but the document clearly referred to itself as an intelligent and independent entity; one whose existence triggered the orgone detector. 

A wild idea crossed my mind, one that threatened to undo all that I knew about science and life in general; a discovery greater than Darwin’s own discovery of evolution.  

“Are you alive?” I asked the book. 

And it answered with a simple yes.

“Are you possessed by a ghost or demon?” I inquired next. “An angel mayhaps?”

“No,” the book replied. “I have always been The Lost Deaths and served no other purpose than for which I was created.”

So this… thing existed as a living book. It wasn’t a ghost or demon, but an impossible lifeform created with purpose. My heart pounded with excitement and wonder. Was it a unique case, or merely a specimen among many hidden in libraries? 

I had so many questions, and so little ink. 

“What are these creatures you mention in your bestiary?” I asked the book. “Demons?” 

“They are the Deaths that were destroyed, freeing the world from their grasp and hunger. Many more remain. So long as a single one survives, the lives of men will end.” 

I read the response twice. Deaths, as in creatures, plural. Multiple forms of death preying on mankind and yet mortal themselves. The concept sounded absurd in my head, but then again, I was talking to a living book.

“How do you destroy a Death?” I asked. 

“With magic,” the book answered simply. 

How could two simple words carry so much weight? They struck me like a bolt of lightning. Magic. The very thing I’d devoted so much time to studying, the esoteric truth denied to me for so long was at long last within my grasp. 

“How do you learn magic?” I asked out loud.

I could have sworn that the pages chuckled as I wrote down those very words.  

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Part II

What happened after death? 

The question had long bothered me for years, and philosophers since the beginning of humanity. All religions, from pagans to monotheists, put forth their own unprovable theories. 

Would the illusion of separation from an uncaring universe simply end? Would individual consciousness fade into a greater whole? Would their soul remain to reincarnate into a new shell or transcend into a heavenly respite? Was there even such a thing as a soul? For all of the Bible’s proclamations of Jesus’ return, I had yet to see any case of a living man returning from the unknown beyond. The truth was, nobody knew whether or not death was truly the end. 

It wasn’t that I hoped religion was wrong, quite the contrary. The knowledge that there would be something to look forward to after life, that my consciousness would remain in this universe, that everything that made me me would endure, was infinitely preferable to the idea of… blinking out. 

That thought terrified me to my core. The mere possibility that all my experience, all my knowledge, joys, fears, and regrets would simply cease to exist while an uncaring universe moved on was most unsettling. 

The Book of the Lost Deaths hadn’t yet provided a rational answer to those questions, but it might remove the need for men to ask them in the first place. If it spoke the truth. 

I looked on as Mr. Devereaux read the book under a lamp’s glow. The street was nigh empty save for the both of us and a few lowlifes. The good and respected people of Paris already avoided the Belleville quarter for its poverty and insalubrity, and retreated with the sun to abandon the night to drunks, prostitutes not fancy enough for Montmartre, and ruffians. Few police sergeants bothered to visit this part of town, let alone intervene. 

This made it the perfect time and place to arrange a meeting with Marcel Devereaux, one of my book fences—and whose name I strongly suspected to be an alias. He was a man of impeccable taste and dress, with a neatly trimmed mustache flecked with silver, carefully combed hair folded under a hat, and the kind of tailored suit I would have expected from a well-born gentleman rather than a professional criminal. His green eyes flickered with amusement as he flipped through the Book of the Lost Deaths’ pages. 

“This is quite the odd book you’ve brought me, my friend,” he said upon closing the manuscript and returning it to me. “The flax paper used for the pages fit the methods used by pre-Islamic civilizations in the east, but the quality would indicate it was crafted yesterday.”

“Would you believe me if I said it was likely centuries old?” I asked.

My fence scoffed. “I would call you a liar, but color me intrigued. Where did you find this?”

“It comes from the library of Henry Nelson.”

“Nelson… from the fire during the siege?” Marcel stroked his chin. The mere fact that he found the name familiar surprised me. “I thought the Bureau had confiscated all of his acquisitions over the last decade.”

I squinted in his direction. Mr. Devereaux didn’t need to tell me which Bureau he was referring to, and their mere mention spoke volumes about the illegal nature of the late Nelson’s bookstore. “I didn’t know he was famous.”

“I wouldn’t call him famous… more like a near-forgotten curiosity. I’d heard rumors that Nelson trafficked with Russian mystics, African witch doctors, and other people of ill repute. Some collectors paid good money to put their hands on books that didn’t burn with his library, only for the Bureau to take them back.”

My eyes widened slightly. Henry Nelson was a book-seller and a collector, most of which had burned with his library. Could his occupation have been a front to gather occult grimoires and other artifacts? That would explain why the Bureau confiscated his work.

“I suppose an empty notebook did not seem worth the effort.” I could imagine why, since Mr. Devereaux didn’t mention the Death entries. I only reveal the truth to my master, the book had said. It showed clueless readers only what it wanted them to see. “I would like to learn more about Nelson, since some of his contacts might still be alive. Could you gather information on my behalf?”

“Yes… but not for free.”

I frowned. I’d feared as much. “How much do you want?”

“That will depend on the work required of me. Maybe a few francs, or a service to be decided at a later date.” The man’s smile had all the sweetness of rancid butter. “I’ve heard that you’re a well-regarded student at the Sorbonne and already assisted a teacher in a surgery.”

“You are well-informed.” Of course this kind of person investigated those they worked with. The wrong or clueless customer risked exposing them to authorities. “Do you require my skills?”

“Not yet,” the man replied. “Maybe not ever; but there might come a time when I will knock on your door and ask for your assistance. Should that time ever come, you will assent to my request and you won’t ask questions.”

In short, he would either ask me to participate in a crime or assist in a similar enterprise. I was wary of agreeing to that kind of bargain, but I had little choice. Trustworthy contacts were few and far between in our field. I didn’t have the luxury of haggling. 

“Very well,” I consented. “A favor for a favor.”

“A pleasure then. I will come back to you once I learn more.” Mr. Devereaux coughed. “I must issue a warning, however. If you fly too close to the sun like Icarus, you’ll only get burned.”

I smiled. “That’s not the moral I took from that tale.”

“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow at me. “And which lesson did you learn from it then?”

“That men could fly if they put their minds to it.”

He chuckled, and I watched him disappear into the darkness of Belleville soon after. I hoped he would prove true to his word. The asylum was legally required to disclose an inmate’s death to the authorities as soon as possible, and if my suspicions were correct, then it was only a matter of time before someone came to investigate Henry’s demise. 

I did not leave Belleville yet, however. I had another reason to set our meeting here, as the Book of the Lost Deaths had promised me a ‘dark miracle’ if I waited long enough. 

And so did I, for the Lord knew how long. I stood in the cold near the streetlight, waving off whores and drunks alike, keeping to the shadows. I couldn’t tell if I waited for hours or minutes, but I eventually sensed the Book of the Lost Deaths faintly shuddering in my hands in what could pass for trepidation.  

I heard the sound of horse hooves hitting stones. 

I turned to look at a black carriage advancing on the road. It looked normal at first glance, almost ordinary, but that illusion lasted until it passed under the light. My heart pounded so hard in my chest that I thought I would have a stroke. 

This was a coach of the dead. 

The two horses pulling it were little more than walking corpses with sunken eyes, their hides stretching over fleshless bones. I had no idea how they could pull anything without collapsing dead on the ground. The coachman himself looked no better, with pallid skin and the bluish fingers of a dead man. His hat barely hid a set of black holes devoid of life where the eyes should have been, and I could hear his vertebrae hiss when he turned to stare at me. 

I wasn’t the kind of mind to be easily frightened, but I found the sight so unsettling that I avoided the coachman’s gaze. The carriage continued without pausing for a few meters and then stopped to take a drunkard waving at it with a bottle. 

I dared to take a peek at the vehicle. Its surface was black and its interior was hidden behind windows adorned with crimson curtains. I didn’t see any joints linking the wheels to the rest of the structure, as if the entire vehicle formed a single whole. If the drunkard noticed that detail—or the corpse-like driver for that matter—he didn’t show it and opened the door wide enough for me to catch a glimpse of the inside. It seemed normal at first glance, with four passenger seats… except for one small anomaly.  

The door had teeth for locks. 

By the time I realized what kind of abomination I’d stumbled onto, it was already too late. The drunkard had walked inside and the door closed on him. The corpse-horses carried the carriage away into the dark soon after with a condemned passenger. 

I’d always believed in the supernatural, or rather, in phenomena that science could not yet explain, but that… that thing defied nature itself. I’d faced a true monster of legends, and no one noticed. None of the ruffians in the street so much as blinked at this crew of the dead. This entity hid its true nature from them all, while I’d been blessed with the truth.   

I opened the Lost Deaths and wrote the question burning on my mind: “What was that creature?” 

“The Coach-Eater,” the book replied. “The lesser death by carriage, servant of the Hecatomb of Misfortune. Such is the beast whose blood you must obtain if you covet the power of a Chassemort.”

A Chassemort? A death-hunter? I supposed it would be an appropriate title for someone following this book’s guidelines. It called itself a guide to murdering Mortalities, after all. 

Nonetheless, why would I need this creature’s blood? I didn’t even have to write this question before the book answered it for me. 

“I have opened your eyes to the hidden truth, but to step through the threshold of true magic requires greater dedication and sacrifice. To refine your body into that of a sorcerer and connect to the Web of Life, you must undergo the Nigredo: the blackness and putrefaction that comes from feeding on death itself.”

I’d read enough censored alchemy books to recognize the word Nigredo for the first step in creating the legendary Philosopher’s Stone, a device said to grant immortality. However, the Lost Deaths spoke of refining my body instead of a substance. 

“This is but the first step of a long journey, isn’t it?” I wrote into the book. “Do you expect me to become a Philosopher’s Stone?”

“Like any other substance, the human body and mind can be perfected,” it replied. “True immortality will only be achieved once all Mortalities will have been exterminated, but imperishable youth and immense power are nonetheless within your grasp.”

I could read between the lines: I had to seize the power of magic from this demon the same way Prometheus stole fire from the gods. 

I wasn’t foolish enough to take the book’s promises of power and youth at face value, but if half of what it said was true… nay, I was simply too curious to turn back now. I had taken a peek behind the curtain and now craved to see more. 

“How do I kill this creature?” I asked the book. “You said I required magic to kill death. How can I do that if I can only gain magic by slaying it first?”

“A lesser death like this one will perish like any other beast, through guile or strength.” 

“I would have preferred detailed steps,” I retorted. 

Its answer disappointed me. “I am a guide to immortality and hunting down Mortalities, but the path I offer is fraught with peril. I will not teach my secrets to an unworthy master. The Coach-Eater’s death, thus, I demand as proof of your skills.”

My jaw clenched in frustration. “What of your former master’s inheritance then? Or this Ankou Society you mentioned?”

“All will be revealed once you undergo the rite.”

I snapped the book shut. I was tempted to threaten it with burned pages to force it to reveal its secrets, but I had the intuition it would backfire. A magical artifact capable of altering the perception of others could easily slip through my grasp at any point. I couldn’t let this one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn the truth about death slip through my grasp.

Moreover… to be honest with myself, I would have hunted down that Coach-Eater for free anyway; both because a monster like that one shouldn’t exist in the first place, and because its mere existence drove me to intense curiosity. 

The hunt was on.

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Part III

I spent my days studying how to save men, and my nights figuring out how to kill a monster. 

I had never hunted an animal in the past—if I could call a man-eating carriage an animal—but I approached the matter like a biology class: first I would investigate my target in order to learn its habits and behavior, and then I would exploit them to lay a trap. 

When it appeared the night after I met Mr. Devereaux in Belleville, I immediately noticed that its coachman had changed. In place of the previous driver stood the monster’s last passenger, now a pallid corpse with black and empty holes for eyes. It didn’t take me long to figure out the awful truth. 

Tonight’s meal would become tomorrow’s lure. 

If I wasn’t already willing to destroy the Coach-Eater, then that fact would have sealed its fate. 

I thus spent the better part of the week visiting Belleville after my studies and working at the asylum to observe the creature from afar. Mr. Devereaux didn’t try to contact me, so I had all the time in the world to dedicate myself to this task. 

I quickly noticed a behavioral pattern. From what I could observe, the Coach-Eater only stopped once a night to pick up a client along an unchanging itinerary across Belleville. I’d first assumed that it had to rest somewhere to sleep like an animal, but as far as I could tell it simply appeared and vanished out of thin air at dusk and dawn respectively. Did it somehow slip through an invisible portal to whatever nightmarish realm spawned it? Or did it simply move to another city around the world to prey on a fresh new street filled with victims? 

I could not tell, and that frustrated me. 

Moreover, The Coach-Eater did not leave any evidence of its depredations behind. A living being should expel indigestible pellets of bones, clothes, or metal. Not this creature. Whatever way that monster consumed us humans, it destroyed everything in the process. 

Only its victims’ faces remained to be worn on the next night. I suspected that the driver was little more than a lure or puppet, since I’d never heard it speak to its victims. The corpse would at best nod or move the horses’ reins, but the stiffness of the gestures leaned towards the mechanical; like a dog wagging its tail. 

I couldn’t tell whether the change in driver was the creature’s crude attempt at changing its disguise to avoid being recognized, or a sign that the poor sods’ corpses were actually becoming parts of that infernal coach; and for once, I wasn’t sure I wanted an answer to that question. 

It did not kill immediately though. The coach’s windows offered me a peek of the cabin inside; so while the darkness of night obviously limited what I could see during that time, it let me catch a glimpse of its occupants. The victims showed no sign of distress for a few minutes until the monster took them to an isolated, narrow alley at 20th Arrondissement’s Frontier. I’d managed to climb onto a nearby building’s roof to observe it from above. 

The Coach-Eater’s curtains always closed once it reached the area, and the cabin was always empty when they opened up again. 

I… I was very much tempted to warn the victims each time it stopped to pick someone up. I tried to prevent a man from boarding it on the third night by striking a conversation before he could climb onto the Coach-Eater, but the creature quickly responded by driving a few steps forward and taking another person instead. 

It was then that I realized that the monster never stopped for couples or families. It only went after isolated individuals and fled from any groups, perhaps for fear of attracting too much attention; and if it couldn’t find a suitable catch on a given night, it would simply move on and leave empty-handed. The narrow alley where it consumed its victims was also coincidentally almost always deserted late at night. 

That kind of stratagem could only mean one thing.

This otherworldly predator possessed the gift of intelligence. 

I steeled myself and stuck to mere observation after that. If the entity had the ability to think and I began to catch its attention by denying it its meals, then it might learn to identify and avoid me. I would only have one chance at taking that Coach-Eater by surprise and I couldn’t waste it. 

I told myself that those deaths were a small sacrifice to gather the information required to put down the creature for good. If the Coach-Eater had been stalking our capital’s streets for years and consumed a victim each day on average, then its body count was likely astronomical. Adding seven lives to the tally today would be a cheap price to spare a thousand tomorrow. 

Moreover, the Book of the Lost Deaths implied that slaying this creature would put an end to all coach-related deaths across the world. I had no idea how this would even work—the prospect still sounded absurd in my head—but simply reducing the risk of coach-related accidents at all would spare countless lives. These few victims were a handful of martyrs in the grand scheme of things. 

It wasn’t like I could inform the police either. The Coach-Eater left no traces of its activities, and it only preyed on people unlikely to be missed. No one would believe me, nor care. 

Which left me with a simple question: “How does a lone man kill a living carriage?”

I knew I would only have one shot at the task and it would likely require more than an axe. Failure would likely cause the creature to either change its behavior or warily move on to another hunting ground. I had to ensure its utter destruction in a single attempt. 

The obvious solution would be a bomb set in the alley, but beside the fact that blowing up a street would get me labeled as an anarchist and promptly guillotined, I had no access to effective explosives on a medical student’s budget. 

Moreover, such detonation might only impair or faintly damage the creature. Carriages were built to last nowadays. If I considered the cabin like a beast’s gullet, then the Coach-Eater’s insides would likely be its most vulnerable part. 

Should I use poison? This would have worked on an animal, but the Coach-Eater clearly did not follow the normal rules of nature. It didn’t produce waste from its victims, so it might not even have a digestive system to speak of. 

Which left only one surefire solution, which would require lowering the Coach-Eater’s vigilance and avoiding making a scene that would lead to my arrest. The best place to do so would be the narrow alley where it killed its victims, but it would never let an outsider approach it there. 

The attack would have to be carried out from the inside by a passenger. 

Which begged another question:  “How does a lone man survive killing a living carriage while inside its gullet?”

Whatever method the Coach-Eater used to kill its victims only took a minute at best, and it locked the doors leading outside. This left only a very narrow window of opportunity if the executioner expected to survive. 

I… I guessed I didn’t have to do it myself. I could pay some money-hungry chap to proceed with the operation and… supervise… 

…

No.

No, no, definitively not. That was a dangerous trail of thought. I studied medicine to save lives, not take them. Watching the Coach-Eater’s feeding habits to study it was one thing, but willingly sending a fellow human being to their death was a line too far. 

Besides… besides I had no guarantee anyone foolish enough to take such a deal would actually follow through with it. I would have only one chance to kill the Coach-Eater, and that was what the Book of the Lost Deaths asked of me. 

This was my test. My ordeal. My chance to prove my skills.  

I would have to do it myself. 

—---

It took me three days to prepare and Germaine’s cooperation before I felt confident enough to strike. 

No… no, that was a lie. I was about as nervous as a condemned man facing the guillotine, and I would rather have waited another week to gather more information. Alas, every passing day increased the risk of someone spotting me. I couldn’t risk a Belleville local reporting my description to an area linked to a set of mysterious disappearances. 

I still had no news from Mr. Devereaux either. I was starting to wonder if he had skipped town or forgotten about my request.

In any case, I mustered up the courage to show up that night. My scarf and heavy coat suffocated me. The weight of the tools I hid underneath the latter exhausted me. I’d never been more accurately aware of my lack of exercise than tonight. I was no Heracles coming to challenge the Nemean Lion to a wrestling match, but a Ulysses about to confront the Cyclops.  

I had left the Book of the Lost Deaths at the asylum for Pierre to open up should… should I not return. My gravekeeper friend appeared puzzled by my request, and I hoped he wouldn’t have to learn of its true significance. 

I heard hooves stomping on the pavement, and then my blood went cold. 

The Coach-Eater stepped out of the shadows, its eyeless driver staring into the distance with empty eyes filled with starless darkness. It moved for the streetlight on which I waited with the steady and casual stroll of a predator about to pick an easy prey. 

I looked up at the driver, and the image of my eyeless face staring back at me from atop the coach immediately struck me. Fear overtook me, and my knees weakened. Every fiber of my body was telling me to run away, to abandon my plan and save myself.

I clenched my fist to suppress my trembling fingers. I had dealt with enough inmates suffering from panic attacks or worse to know how to anchor myself. Latin phrases usually worked wonders for me.

Dum spiro spero, I told myself. Memento viviere. 

I dared to raise my hand, and the Coach-Eater stopped right in front of me. Its door-maw opened to reveal a facsimile of a cabin and lock-teeth which only I could see. 

I took a deep and long breath, then stepped inside. Two red couches awaited me within the cabin, alongside a set of narrow windows barely large enough for a man to slip through. I barely had time to sit before the door closed behind me.

The couch was as red as it was rough. Its texture was of a leathery sort, but a bit too moist to the touch. It didn’t take me long to identify it for what it truly was. 

A tongue.

Alea Iacta Est, I told myself when I heard the teeth-lock creaking and trapping me inside. Alea Iacta Est.

“Bring me to the Rue de la Réunion,” I said. The Coach-Eater began to drive across Belleville in response. I knew from prior observation that it would pretend to follow the correct itinerary at first so as not to arouse its passenger’s suspicions, but it would inevitably subtly deviate and bring us to its killing ground. 

I had no idea how the creature perceived things from inside its cabin, so I erred on the side of caution. I had to beat it at its own game; pretend to be a normal passenger the same way it mimicked a coach until I could spring my trap. 

I grabbed a cigarette and a match from my coat, both of which I borrowed from Germaine. She mocked me mercilessly for trying out smoking after I admonished her about it often before, but I had no intention of taking up the activity. This poison’s mere taste almost made me puke. 

But I now had a fuse. 

I took a moment to observe my surroundings. There was no clear frontier between the glass windows and the wooden door, nor the red curtains; all of them melded together harmoniously like spots on a canvas of skin. As I suspected, there was no way for me to open the windows without the use of force. 

I looked through them and swiftly recognized the narrow walls of a dark alley tainted with piss and alcohol spots. I had spent enough time in Belleville to identify my location. 

My time was up.

My hand moved under my coat and brought out a bottle filled with a dark and murky substance of my own creation. I opened it and then carefully spilled it over on the couch in front of me, the floor, the walls, and part of the doors while leaving myself a safe path to use. My potion stuck to everything like a thick glue. 

I quickly sensed my seat shuddering beneath me. The Coach-Eater was starting to grow suspicious, but it was far too late to make a difference.

The Bureau had done a good job of censoring alchemical treaties, but information always slipped through. It had only been a matter of cross-referencing morsels of truth with my own chemistry classes to figure it all out. 

The Byzantines guarded their Greek Fire formula so tightly that their invention was now lost to time; but I daresay I was quite proud of my imitation. 

“I hope this hurts,” I said aloud. 

I tossed my cigarette into the substance, and then there was light.

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Next Part

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A/N: and that's all for now. The other half should arrive later this week.