The woman didn’t answer but gestured for Milly to come in.
Milly hesitantly stepped into the beautiful mansion. It was nothing like she had expected. Milly admired her reflection in the polished brass candlestick.
Clarissa turned around and gestured Milly to follow her down the dimly lit corridor. They walked into a gleaming white room. The doctor turned to look at his guest. He didn’t say anything at first but stood with his mouth open.
‘Hi,’ Milly started. ‘I need your help. I believe that my husband may have been responsible for a murder. I panicked and got lost then I ended up here.’
His eyes darted down to her wedding ring, his slight smile turning to a scowl. ‘I am sorry to hear of your troubles, dear one. What is your name?’ His voice was as cold as his pale blue eyes. His lips were thin, his nose was long and pointed, resting on it was his glasses. He may not be anything special, but Milly could tell that he was once a handsome man, just withered with age. At forty, the doctor looked skeletal and pale from spending too much time inside.
‘Milly,’ she said. Her voice was as sweet as honey. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. How had no one brought her to him yet? Surely, she must live in the area? One or more of his skinners had kept her alive for their own gain, which was breaking the rules. Any woman with beauty was to be brought to him if seen in the forest.
‘Do you live nearby?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘I live in the forest; well, literally on the edge of it, actually.’
He sighed. ‘Strange. I haven’t seen you around. So tell me what happened.’ He sat down and patted the seat next to him. He looked at his daughter. ‘Make the lost lady tea.’
The doctor turned to her, looking deep into her eyes. ‘Tell me what you saw.’
Hesitantly, he stepped through the trees into the trapping blackness, with only the moonlight shining through the gaps in the branches to light his way. It was a dangerous place for him to return. He had just missed the falling blackness by minutes that time. Night time was when the spirits were most active, and how many souls had he given to the forest’s hands in the last five years? Eighty? Ninety? He’d lost count after the first thirty.
He walked as silently as he could, careful not to tread on any branches. He kept his breaths shallow and quiet as he walked the familiar route to the clearing. If Milly had become lost in the forest, perhaps gone to look for him, then she would be in trouble.
Either a skinner would have had her, throwing her soul to the hungry grasp of the demon’s forest, or the spirits had called to her heart, luring her to her death. Or worse, she had somehow come across the mad doctor’s mansion.
Reaching the clearing, the knot in his stomach thickened. She wasn’t here.
The branches cast shadows to the ground, like a thousand hands grasping out into the night. He walked to the tree where his last victim was cut. Her body was still there, the smell of decay already gripping the air surrounding her.
On the ground, he saw his knife.
‘No! How had I been so careless?’' he whispered. If Milly had come looking for him, then she could have happened across the body and seen the knife.
The realisation washed over him painfully. Had she found out the truth?
He walked the route to the mansion. If there were no sign of her, then he would return to the cottage and look in the village the following day, he decided.
With every step, he hoped that he’d see no proof of Milly being there. He pushed on, checking each tree and the ground for any sign of her.
Before deciding to return home, he spotted something hanging from a branch. He grabbed it and examined it carefully.
It dropped to the ground as he saw the blood splattered brambles. The material was the same from the cloak he had given her as an anniversary gift. The gift he paid for using blood money from the murders.
Peering out from the trees, he looked at the mansion.
If she were in there, he would have killed her already. But it had not been that long since he left there. Perhaps she had only just arrived or maybe she turned back?
The mad doctor didn’t scare him as much as his ugly daughter, Clarissa, did. She would kill Milly in a second. The stories he had heard of Clarissa from the other skinners swam through his mind.
She was a jealous woman. As a child, she had been beautiful apparently. But she always wanted more beauty. She was evil; she’d never let someone as beautiful as Milly live. Then when she turned ugly, no man wanted her. He had often wondered if the doctor was using the body parts to create a husband for Clarissa, someone who could see past the ugliness.
***
The doctor held Milly’s hand as she cried into a handkerchief. ‘I just didn’t think he was capable of that kind of evil,’ she blubbered.
He nodded sympathetically. ‘What will you do?’
She shook her head and cried harder. ‘I don’t know.’
Clarissa sat across from them, her gaze locked on Milly. Milly shifted uncomfortably. The doctor spoke with kindness. ‘You can stay here with me, if you want to. I can protect you from all evil.’
Clarissa scoffed; it was the first noise Milly had heard her make all night.
The doctor shot her a warning look and looked back at Milly. ‘I promise to keep you safe. My wife died many years ago. It’d be good to have another woman around.’
Milly looked at him tearfully. ‘In what way would you want me?’
Clarissa pushed the tea toward Milly, urging her to drink it. She picked it up but dropped it as a loud bang resonated through the mansion. Someone had slammed the front door. The cup lay in bits on the hard floor, tea everywhere. The doctor let go of Milly’s hand and grabbed a pistol from under the counter.
Tom barged into the room. He looked at Milly reproachfully, then at the doctor, and then at Clarissa. ‘Glad you found my wife. Milly, it’s time to go home.’
Milly stood up, throwing her cloak off. ‘You’re a murderer. I saw you; well, I wasn’t sure it was you, but then you left your hunter’s knife behind. You skinned that poor woman. How could you do something so evil? Were you ever going to do that to me?’
Tom dropped to his knees, tears brimming in his eyes. ‘I would never hurt you, my love. You are my everything. My beautiful swan.’
Clarissa stood up, walked over to him, and kneeled in front of him. ‘She doesn’t love you anymore, Thomas,’ Clarissa whispered. He had never heard her speak and jumped backward. ‘But I do.’
‘No,’ he shouted. ‘Milly, it’s not what you think. It’s him,’ he said, pointing at the doctor. ‘Well, both of them. Obsessed by beauty. Taking people's body parts. Trying to create some sort of … monster. They are the sick ones. I just do what I am paid to do.’
Milly turned to the doctor. ‘Is this true?’
‘He’s mad,’ the doctor said. ‘I have never seen this man before in my life. The bodies I hold here are ones that are found dead in the forest from suicide or murder. This is a morgue, Milly. We just get the bodies ready for burial. I would never hurt anyone.’
‘He’s lying,’ Tom shouted. ‘Please don’t believe him.’
Milly walked forward. ‘It wasn’t him I saw skin an innocent woman. We are done.’ She threw her ring on the ground. Tom cried as he was dragged from the house by the doctor and Clarissa.
Milly sat alone by the fire crying.
She hung her head. How could I have been so stupid?
Clarissa watched Milly over the following weeks grow more and more attached to her father. He didn’t kill her, to Clarissa’s annoyance, but he really seemed to love her. He stopped experimenting on bodies as much so he could spend more time with Milly.
Her father was slipping slowly into sanity, and that scared Clarissa more than anything. She remembered his insane days.
She’d be crying by the fire. It was almost midnight in late spring, yet another suitor had turned her down.
No man wanted her, not even the stable boy.
&
nbsp; When she was young, she was beautiful, but as she grew older, her obsession with beauty grew as quickly as her beauty fell away from her. Obsessed with having a better nose, she chopped at it, trying to distort it in any way she could. She would see a woman with beautiful blue eyes and try to inject blue ink into her own eyes. Her father’s skills had saved her from blindness, but it made the brown look duller, and her eyes had a glazed, distant look to them.
Then she saw a woman with the most luscious lips. Clarissa then tried to stretch her own lips, but instead, they tore, and went out of shape. Scars now covered her once thin yet pretty pink lips.
The uglier she got, the more she tried to fix her mistakes. Continuously chopping at body parts, she ended up killing the woman she had envied who had the beautiful blue eyes. From the constant stress and work, her hair had turned grey in places. She barely ate, giving her body a skeletal appearance.
After her mother had died, her father put all of his attention into Clarissa, devastated at what she had become.
As a wealthy doctor, men should have been lining up at their door with marriage proposals for his daughter, but no man came.
The other women in the village mocked her for her appearance and threw stones at her. They laughed and laughed, and at night, Clarissa would cry until she eventually slept.
The man she once longed to marry had married another woman, one with such beauty and charisma. The woman, however, had a great sadness in her eyes. She didn’t marry the man she truly loved and had a hole in her heart.
Clarissa spent a lot of time in the forest. Mainly because the animals did not judge her.
Late one night in the depths of the forest, she came across a man named Vanity. He said he was a demon and wanted to rid himself of his suffering.
He said he would give his soul to the forest, giving Clarissa the power to get revenge on all the beautiful people who had mocked her. In exchange, she must simply make sure that any beautiful woman or man who ventured into the forest died so that he could have their souls for his own.
He gave her the gift of immortality, and a potion that would give one other that gift too.
When she went home that evening, she spiked her father's wine with the potion, and he too became immortal.
For years after, she killed those who wandered the forest but eventually grew tired as too many went there. Her father hired men to do the job for them and bring them body parts.
He promised Clarissa that they would find a way to build someone from the parts of the most beautiful people. However, no matter how many parts he had, he could never make it come alive.
Clarissa never told her father the truth. That she wanted to take the body parts and put them on her. So he could rebuild her. She knew he would never agree, so she kept quiet, waiting for her opportunity.
Years passed, and the doctor slipped further into madness with each death, each failed body, and grew sick at the sight of Clarissa. She had turned him into a monster.
He used to look at her with love and compassion. She was his only daughter, and he saw past the ugliness. He always called her his little duckling. Sweet, innocent, and beautiful in his eyes.
Now, she was not that. Now, she was as ugly on the inside as she was on the outside.
She was nothing but his ugly duckling.
Milly walked into the kitchen that evening and went to make a cup of tea. Clarissa blocked her way. ‘I will make it,’ Clarissa offered.
‘Oh, thank you,’ Milly cooed, and went back to the oversized living room to sit with Frank. Her intelligent, protective Dr. Frank.
‘Why wouldn’t you tell me your name for so long?’ she asked.
He looked at her honestly, his beautiful Milly. ‘If I told anyone my name, it would mean giving them my heart. It makes me vulnerable.’
‘How so?’ she asked.
He drank his tea and sat back in front of the fire. ‘A spell my daughter placed on me. She wanted me to love her only and never wanted another woman to come into my life who I could love as much as her. Clarissa was the only person alive who knew my name.’
‘Until me,’ Milly said and gasped. ‘Frank, I love you too. I never thought I could love a man as much as I do you. You're beautiful on the inside; I just had to peel back the layers to see that,’ she teased.
A knock on the door interrupted them. ‘Who could that be at this hour?’ Milly asked and got up to answer the door. A man was standing there with a plastic box.
‘Here to see the doctor,’ he said and pushed past her. He walked over to the morgue, and Frank followed him.
‘Stay here, baby. I’ll be out shortly. It’s just business,’ he said and kissed Milly on the cheek.
She pretended to walk upstairs, but once they were out of sight, she snuck down the corridor and listened through the door.
‘I’m no longer involved in these deals,’ Frank said.
The man replied angrily. ‘You cannot drop out of this now. We have a deal. I bring you body parts. You give me the gold. This is my only income. If you say no, then I’ll just have to skin you.’
Milly jumped away from the door, holding her hand over her mouth.
‘Hey,’ Clarissa said. Milly jumped again and turned.
‘You frightened me,’ she admitted.
Clarissa smiled. ‘I have a habit of doing that.’ Clarissa walked into the living room, and Milly swiftly followed.
‘Clarissa?’ Milly started, standing in the doorway. ‘What did happen to Tom? I know you said you took him back to the village, but he hasn't come back. I'm glad, but I thought he would try to see me—’
‘I always did like Tom. He’s very handsome. His eyes and hair are on my soon-to-be husband.’
Milly slid down the door framed. ‘What?’
‘We killed him.’ Clarissa shrugged and sipped her tea. ‘Father hasn't been the same since you arrived. For the past hundred years, we have lived together just fine. We were close to finding a way to make it work. Find a way to make the monster become human. And I was close to finding a way to make myself beautiful for good. That face Tom brought to Father was perfect. Of course, Father wanted to use it for the monster, but I stole it. I intend on doing my own face transplant. There are ways of doing it now; did you know? Ah, you've got to love modern medicine.’
Milly’s face drained of all color. She remained sitting on the floor, trying to process the evil that she had just heard. ‘A hundred years? How is that even possible?’
‘A spell. I made a deal with a demon. I'm in charge of the forest. I call them to their deaths. It all works! Then you came here’—Clarissa grew closer to Milly— ‘and ruined everything. Father is looking more and more human by the day. He looks …’ She spat the last word. ‘Happy.’
‘Tom is dead,’ Milly cried as she realised the severity of what she had done. He was never coming back, and it was all her fault. She had shacked up with the devil.
‘And me? What will you do to me?’
Clarissa smiled. ‘Nothing. Don’t get me wrong, I hate that you’re beautiful, but it’s okay. If I kill you, Father will mourn you and try to do good in your memory. If I keep you alive, he will turn good by your spirit. But if I feed you the same potion we took, giving you immortality, then you will slowly slip into madness, like we did. You’ll be just as mad as we are, and Father will be Father again.’'
Milly looked over at her empty cup. ‘When?’
‘I tried to poison you at first, but you dropped the cup. Then as I saw Father’s love grow stronger, I decided to make you like us. It was the only way. You’ll feel it soon.’ Clarissa laughed maddeningly. ‘The whispers of the dead clog your mind, driving you insane. The bloodlust, the need, the anxiousness. The itchiness.’ Clarissa laughed harder. ‘It won’t take long. I slipped it to you days ago. I just have to sit back and wait.’
Milly tried to run, but she couldn’t leave the house.
‘You’re trapped,’ Clarissa said from behind her.
‘Then I would r
ather die,’ Milly said, grabbing a knife from the kitchen. Clarissa watched as Milly stabbed herself repeatedly, but nothing happened. No blood. No sweet release of death.
‘Father has hated me for so long. He once loved me. Milly, you’re going to bring my family back together. You are going to make us happy.’
Milly tried everything, but nothing worked. ‘I’d stop if I were you. You’re ruining your pretty blue dress with the knife.’
‘You’re mad!’ Milly said exasperatedly.
Clarissa laughed. ‘We are all mad here.’
They all smiled and laughed as they sat around the fire, playing cards. Milly had indeed grown insane, as Clarissa had said.
The monster, which Milly had helped build, had come alive. Clarissa wore the face of the woman Tom had killed in the forest. Clarissa and the handsome monster sat together, holding hands.
Milly looked at his hair and eyes, Tom’s eyes, and sighed. They now looked into Clarissa’s with longing. She reminded herself it wasn’t him and looked over at Frank.
They danced around the table gleefully to the most beautiful melody any of them had ever heard. Clarissa froze and looked over at the door. ‘They’re here.’
Milly gulped, and Frank grabbed his axe.
They had come. The ones who promised to free the forest’s souls. To kill Clarissa, who had become the embodiment of Vanity. They could hear their whispers.
Two men, Robin, and James, and two women, Snow and Alice.
The souls escaped, flying into the sky. Frank and Milly felt the release of the cuffs of evil, which they had not even felt prisoner too until now.
‘What have we done?’ Milly asked, gasping for air as all of the murder she had committed washed over her. ‘What have you done?’ She looked over at the women and men.
Snow smiled. ‘We freed you.’
They sighed. ‘We can't kill him. He’s innocent. He holds the souls of the victim’s body parts he wears. If we kill him, their souls will remain here. Lost forever.’
Frank stepped in front of the monster. ‘No, he is my creation. I will look after him. It is the least I can do after all of the evil I have done.’
Into Wonderland (Haunting Fairytales Series Book 3) Page 12
