Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 93412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Abaddon needed to get out of here. He stormed past a four-poster bed and grabbed the handle of the heavy wooden door, but it wouldn’t budge even when he leaned his weight back and tried to tug.
“Hey, it’s probably locked… stop or you’ll alarm her,” Gabriel said, but with his voice coming from far away, Abaddon only unclenched his hand from the handle when the boy touched him.
At least he wasn’t yelling at Abaddon anymore.
“It’s dusty in here, so she probably doesn’t let the staff in either. You have the lockpicks?” Gabriel asked as if he didn’t notice the small empty cages which had housed animals years ago. Abaddon could almost smell their blood.
Right. The lockpick.
He wiped sweat from his brow and was about to reach for the right tools when Gabriel hid behind him with a quiet shriek. Abaddon’s blood ran cold when he too noticed a figure resting under heavy bedding, but the complete stillness of it unwound some of the tension in his muscles.
Some parents gave their children toys. Some offered them ultra-realistic sex dolls in an attempt to prepare them for whatever life they’d envisioned for their offspring.
“It’s… not a person,” he muttered, turning his gaze away from the explicit scene painted above the headboard.
“The fuck is it then?” Gabriel approached the bed with his eyes wide.
“Just… a mannequin.”
“Did she… want to think you were still here?” The disgust was clear in Gabriel’s voice, but he wouldn’t dare pull away the covers, which was for the better. Abaddon didn’t want to see the dead glass eyes look back at him.
“No idea,” he muttered and kneeled by the door, but the tremors in his hands made the job of unlocking it all the harder. “Don’t want to know.”
“And you lived here?” Gabriel asked like a drill set on piercing Abaddon’s skull through the ear.
Abaddon’s chest was ever heavier, but he shook away the shadows trying to sneak out from the back of his mind like tentacles and opened the lock. “I don’t know.”
The revulsion on Gabriel’s face told him everything he needed to know about the boy’s attitude to this place. In truth, he wanted to leave this terrible dusty room as well. It should be burned to the ground so no hint of the vile things that had happened here was left.
Classical music reached their ears as soon as they walked into the corridor. Like in Father John’s office, all of the walls, and even the ceiling were covered with wooden panels, bookshelves, and art, but while most of the pictures in public areas of the house were much less explicit than the grotesque paintings in Adam Benson’s room, Abaddon still didn’t want to see them.
Gabriel reached for his hand, like so many times before, but then pulled it away at the last moment, leaving yet another sting under Abaddon’s skin.
“How should we do it?” Gabriel asked in a voice that barely carried any sound.
A soft glow came from way ahead, where the hallway opened onto a spiral staircase that would take them to the first floor, but despite his hatred for the shadowy interior, Abaddon felt as if his feet were frozen to the wooden panels. “I… I’ll break her neck… or something?” he said while his stomach squeezed in revulsion.
“I still have the knife from Father John’s office,” Gabriel mumbled, but that was that. With the world becoming a blur around him, Abaddon put one foot in front of the other, like the stupidest of horror movie characters. Only doom awaited where the music originated, and yet that was where they were going, like moths to flame—
“Burn their wings,” Mother says impatiently when he considers what to do with the poor moth trapped with a pin. She hands him a lit match with a tense expression. “You either burn it, or hold the match until it sears your fingers. The choice is yours.”
He hesitates and drops the match to the floor as soon as the flame licks his fingertip. A whine leaves his mouth when Mother exposes his forearm and traps his hand against the desk before putting a lighter to his skin. Soft body hair catches fire.
The next time, it was the moth that suffered.
Abaddon stalled, resting his hands on his knees as he bent over, trying to fight the increasing nausea. Gabriel stood by, and eventually put his hand on Abaddon’s back. None of this made sense. He’d been born in the ground. Created to end the Keys and protect the innocent boy.
He couldn’t be Adam Benson. He was Abaddon.
“I can go first,” Gabriel whispered, and only now did Abaddon notice that the boy was already holding the bone dagger.
Its smooth surface reflected the warm glow coming from downstairs, and in such gentle hands it would be merely a toy. No, Abaddon needed to deal with Benson himself. That was his purpose here, and he wouldn’t allow Gabriel to stain his pure conscience!