Page 52 of The Flesh Remembers
Late one evening, as the clinic’s flickering lamps cast long shadows across the mouldy corridors, Eleanor found herself drawn to a neglected wing rumoured to house the personal archives of the clinic. She slipped past old shelves and ragged curtains, following the faint stench of musty parchment and dried ink. She wasn’t sure what she would find here, and most likely useless to her current situation. But yet, Eleanor felt compelled to investigate further.
At last, she entered a cramped records room, its walls lined with dusty wooden shelves that sagged under stacks of ledgers. By candlelight, she spied a locked chest half-hidden behind a wooden cabinet. With trembling resolve, she forced it open, the padlock rusted enough to yield to her gentle prying. Inside lay journals dating back 15 to 20 years belonging to Lord Alistair Blackwood.
Her heart hammered as she lifted the topmost volume, the cover inscribed with a filigree monogram: A. B. Another bore an elaborate crest that matched Lord Blackwood’s personal seal. Carefully, she gathered a cluster of diaries, each promising a window into Blackwood’s previous experiments in the West Indies, where he had learned these necromantic arts and what had become of those subjects he had used for his purposes.
Retreating to a lonely corner, Eleanor lit extra candles and began reading. The diaries proved more than mere medical logs, they were lurid chronicles of unholy unions, sexual extremes, and monstrous reanimations that rivalled even the current mania:
“The First Attempt”: Blackwood described harnessing occult rites with newly dead lovers, scrawling details of twisted orgies where participants used binding spells and sexual bloodletting to anchor lost souls. He boasted of “devouring one another’s essence” under the moon, believing this “amalgamation of lust and sorrow” would birth a living corpse.
“The Crimson Birth”: Another entry recounted a monstrous birth after a pregnant woman was forced into a necromantic coupling. The diaries described her agony as she was bound to an altar, with chanting cultists drawing sigils on her belly in blood. The baby emerged part-living, part-decayed, screaming with unnatural lungs. It fed on raw desire, devouring participants in its frenzied infancy before it was finally destroyed.
“Orgiastic Resurrections”: A half-forgotten diary entry detailed an extended orgy lasting days, where cultists engaged in depraved acts with one another and reanimated corpses, believing their climactic energies would breathe permanent life into the dead. The ritual ended in chaos as the reanimated cadavers turned on their summoners, hollow, maddened eyes filled with rage. Survivors noted how the “flesh amalgamations” screamed in half-human voices as they disintegrated into putrefaction.
“The Flesh Cycle”: This grotesque entry told of a “chosen sacrifice,” a young man bound to an iron slab while a semi-sentient corpse consumed his flesh in stages. The diary recounted his cries of agony and ecstasy, describing how his body writhed as his life force transferred into the undead being. Survivors recorded that the reanimated creature emitted a sensual aura so potent that cultists willingly threw themselves at it, offering their bodies for its pleasure until their deaths.
“The Sacred Defilement”: The most disturbing account detailed a ritual involving an entire family coerced under threats of damnation. The patriarch was forced to violate his daughters in front of the cult, their screams echoing in the chamber as they became sacrifices to “sustain the lineage of resurrection.” Blackwood described the daughters’ eventual blank-eyed submission as the necromantic power overtook them, their flesh marked with sigils that glowed faintly in the darkness.
Eleanor's breath wavered, each line pulling at the fragile thread of her composure. Scenes from these diaries burned her mind’s eye: candlelit basements where men and women, half-crazed with necromantic delirium, performed unspeakable acts upon corpses in attempts to siphon erotic energy into them. Her stomach churned in revulsion, yet she couldn’t stop reading. The parallels to her present ordeal were terrifyingly apparent: James was not the first success, only the next in a lineage of ravenous, half-living fiends.
A tremor of heartbreak and cold dread coursed through Eleanor: James was no singular miracle. Others before him had been forced into partial reanimation by these same methods, dark orgies, sexual blood-rites, emotional extremes offered as necromantic fuel. However, those revived corpsesturned monstrous, devouring or terrorizing the cult before self-destructing in hideous ways.
Eleanor’s cheeks burned at the explicitness of these accounts, the stark descriptions of participants who endured such extremes and actively yearned for them; she recognized that same mania in her present environment. A memory of James’s savage kisses, the moans of novices, and Lord Blackwood’s twisted ceremonies flashed through her mind.Are we all doomed to repeat the same cycle?
In what appeared to be the most recent journal dating back about three years, Eleanor was shocked to find that they had attempted a resurrection here, in London, before her and James. Blackwood and Fairfax had not mentioned anything about it when they had discussed the particulars of the process with her. Indeed, even Marian had kept silent about the failed attempt. This hurt her particularly as she had felt that she and Marian had a special kinship, especially after what they had shared the other night.
Shaken by the diaries, Eleanor found her thoughts drifting into dangerous territory. She could no longer dismiss the parallels between the erotic rituals described and her interactions with James. That night, alone in her chambers, she replayed every forbidden touch, every fevered whisper. Her hand trembled as she reached for her flesh, imagining James’s hands tracing her form with a precision both horrifying and intoxicating. Her desire warred with her revulsion, a maddening spiral that left her trembling and hollow.
The diaries had unlocked something within her, a hunger she didn’t fully understand. Could it be that her love for James was more than devotion? Had she, too, been infected by the necromantic aura that surrounded him? Each new thought only deepened her resolve to complete the ritual. If this hunger consumed her, so be it.
She refused to yield. Her obsession might be the lifeline to saving James from that same monstrous path. She thoughtI would harness the next ritual,even if it demands an unthinkable sacrifice.She recognized the same savage mania in herself that had fuelled so many attempts before, but her love felt unassailable. If the diaries were a cycle, she would break it.
Night pressed heavily against the clinic’s tall windows. In the distance, thunder rumbled, foreshadowing the cataclysmic final date that Lord Blackwood had promised. Once a modest team of medical hopefuls, the staff now lurked in shadowed corridors, pupils dilated, breath feverish, enthralled by the creeping mania that had consumed the building. Rumours of sacrifice hung in every whispered conversation, fuelling an undercurrent of excitement and dread.
Eleanor wandered the halls, a thin robe over her frail form, each step accompanied by the faint hum of galvanic energy coursing through the walls. She recalled Blackwood’s diaries, accounts of savage attempts at reanimation, of once-gentle souls turned monstrous. The horrific story of Rebecca and her dead husband, known only as “subject A.” Would she and James end up like them? Would James become a feral monster that would violently murder her and drink her blood? Eleanor even wondered silently if she should put an end to everything, including James. Perhaps they had all lingered too long on the precipice of madness, and now was the time to turn back. But would she have the courage to do it? She’d have to destroy James and with him any thought of happiness for herself. She might as well dig a grave for herself if that was her plan.
Yet despite the swirling horror and unexpected doubts, her heart still clung to James. Despite their earlier attempts at reanimating other corpses, none of those poor creatures had managed to cling to life for longer than a few days to a few weeks. James had remained the exception. His life forceemerged stronger after each ceremony, although he had not yet become entirely whole. There was still a disturbing lack of humanity in his eyes at times, and the pale gleam of death in his skin was still so cold to the touch. Eleanor hoped, even prayed, if she dared utter God’s name in this depraved place, that this time would be the last and that James would finally be whole.
She rounded a corner and nearly collided with Lord Blackwood, who stood leaning against a pillar, cloaked in the gloom. His gaze swept over her with a predatory curiosity. “Eleanor,” he said softly, “your tension is palpable.”
She stiffened, remembering how he’d orchestrated the deviant ceremonies. “I’m searching for James. He… roams again.”
A sly smirk curled his lips. “He roams, leaving staff and novices stumbling in awe or prey to his undead allure. Every cry and moan echoing from dark corners only amplifies the galvanic field. We are closer than ever to unleashing the final rite.” He stepped closer, voice dropping. “But do not forget: I still guide the strings. The night’s festivities will ensure James’s reanimation is unstoppable.”
Eleanor felt her pulse hammer, disgust, and reluctant gratitude mingling in her chest. She had no illusions about Blackwood’s manipulation; she thrived on the mania, on the twisted power derived from others’ submission. Yet she needed him. With a curt nod, she was determined to slip past him and continue the search for James before he stirred more chaos, but Blackwood grabbed her by the arm, his fingers digging into the tender flesh.
Eleanor felt the pendant at her throat grow hot and felt the pounding rhythm of it increase along with the pounding of her heart. But this time, it was not in fear but anger. She wasn’t certain, but she felt the pendant was drawing it out of her, focusing that anger and turning it into a primal rage shehad never experienced before. Eleanor had been sure for some time that the pendant was changing her somehow, at least while she was wearing it, but for the first time, she felt it was positively changing her.
“Let go of me, you disgusting fiend!” Eleanor hissed at him in a voice she barely recognized as her own. She jerked her arm from his grasp, and before she could even realize what was happening, her hand was sailing through the air and landing squarely across his stunned face. Eleanor had slapped Lord Blackwood, and she wasn’t sure who was more shocked by that fact.
Blackwood appeared too stunned for words and merely stood there dumbly staring at her in a mixture of shock, anger, and fear. But Eleanor relished this anger that coursed through her body now. If forced to wear this pendant, she could make it work for her.
“Don’t touch me again, Lord Blackwood. I am not some little frightened maid quivering in the corner. And I am nothing like Rebecca, and I do not intend to end up like her or allow you to destroy James as you did her husband.”
Blackwood tried to hide his gasp of surprise at hearing Eleanor speak those names. He had been so determined to keep Subject A and the failure of that experiment from her.
“Now, how did you find out about that?” He asked, the velvety coldness returning to his voice. “Let me guess, the little nurse with whom you’ve been having a little rendezvous? If I had known she was so talkative, I would have made better use of that mouth of hers.” He chuckled, leaning back against the wall, his hands slipping into the pockets of his velvet coat.
You are truly vile," Eleanor spat, her voice trembling with fury and disgust. "I found your journals in the east wing. The failed experiments and horrors you've created are beyondcomprehension. All this time, I thought the atrocities were confined to the West Indies. But you carried them out here, right under my nose. Why didn’t you tell me about the previous experiment?"
