Nocticadia: A Dark Academia Gothic Romance

“Ah! Damn it!” Barletta held up his hand, shielding himself from the flashlight I shined through the bars at him. A silvery glow reflected from his eyes, giving him an unsettling appearance, one common in those infected with Noctisoma.

“Tapetum lucidum.”

“What?”

“It’s what makes certain animals appear to have glowing eyes.” I lowered the flashlight and took a seat in the chair just outside of his cell. “Humans, of course, don’t have this. But the organism is nocturnal and requires it.”

With the heel of his palm, he rubbed his eyes, groaning. “I can’t stand the light. It hurts.”

“You no longer need it.”

Lowering his hands, he stared off, a troubled look twisting up his expression. “I don’t want to see the things I’ve been seeing lately.”

“What kinds of things?” I hiked my arm over the back of the chair, already knowing what he was going to tell me.

“My son.” Blinking hard, he seemed to choke back tears and cleared his throat. “The blood from his skull,” he said, gesturing to his own. “He came to me last night. It was like a dream. A fucking nightmare.”

“Hallucinations are common. The organism sometimes uses these images to manipulate you.”

The sadness in his eyes from moments ago darkened to dread. “You mean I’m gonna be seein’ my son like this again?”

“Yes. Guilt is a wonderful manipulator.”

He stared off, the slow furrowing of his brow indicating the news troubled him. “You said a while back that you’d reveal the why of all this. Why me?”

“I did say that, didn’t I?” I sat forward and rested my elbows on the tops of my thighs. “Perhaps it’s best to revisit the story of my childhood. After all, what good is a reveal, a twist, if it has absolutely no impact.”

Crossing his arms, he shook his head. “Did I wrong you, somehow?”

I let out a mirthless laugh. “Yes, Mr. Barletta. You absolutely wronged me, but we’ll get to that soon enough.”

“That night with corpses. Is that what messed you up? Why you took me off the streets to watch me go through this shit? You got some kind of trauma that you need to take it out someone else?”

Messed me up. Abusers had such a warped view of reality. Unamused with his accusation, I didn’t bother to answer the last question. In fact, every muscle in my body fought not to reach in through the bars and strangle the life out of him right then. It was only the consolation of knowing what was coming to him that settled my thoughts. “That night would be one of many. My father had effectively found a means to scare the shit out of me, and he used that power every chance he got. Until I eventually became as dead inside as those corpses.”

“Didn’t you have a mother lookin’ out for ya?”

“My mother died giving birth.” My brother and I only had Hannah, the maid. And because she was older, and my father had no interest in fucking her, she was the only one who stayed.

A vision of Hannah gently rubbing my back during one of my episodes somehow brought to mind Lilia in my office. Her gentle movements and caring eyes. Her delicate hand in mine. There was something about her–so genuine and real.

I’d hated that she’d seen me like that, on the floor. Helpless, as the pain wracked every muscle in my body like a jolt of white-hot flames. It was as I came out of it, when her blurred out face had sharpened into view, and those blue-green eyes watched me with worry and panic, that something had shifted inside of me, rousing an inexplicable ache in my chest. Yet, all that had come to mind in that moment were the words of my father whenever I’d had an episode as a boy.

“You were always the weaker one.”

“Pathetic.”

“So, how did I wrong you?” Barletta’s voice snapped me out of my musings.

The answer slipped on the fringes of my mind, but I refused to dip my thoughts into those dark and murky waters. Not yet. A swelling ache throbbed at my temples. Inky blackness slithered into my consciousness, and once again, I fell prey to the memories.

“Tell me who laughed at you.” Caedmon sits on the edge of the bed, staring at me, as I stare out the window.

I was sent home earlier that day when a headache struck. My whole body froze with it, and I ended up pissing myself in front of my classmates. “All of them.”

“Then, I’ll punish them all.”

I don’t respond, just keep staring out the window.

“What did the voices say to you?” he prods.

I sometimes hear them when I’m locked away in that closet. Strange voices that whisper secrets. Promises of death. “I don’t remember now.”

In my periphery, Caedmon reaches for my hand. “You’re cold.”

It’s only the realization that he touched my skin that breaks my staring. Not that I could feel it. I feel nothing in my hands or arms, not since the night my father struck me in the head.

I yank my arm away, repulsed by the lack of sensation. It’s an unnerving thing to watch someone touch you, yet feel nothing. “I have to leave this place, Caedmon. We have to go far away from here.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Far away, where he can’t hurt us anymore.”

“Or perhaps you should stop inciting his anger. Every day, you test his patience, Devryck.” He quickly looks away, knowing damn well that my punishments have never once fit the crime. Father has always been harsh with me. Doesn’t matter what I do, how hard I try to stay on his good side. He hates me. He always has, and Caed knows it.

“I had two headaches today. Doctor Meinsh says they’ll get worse.”

Caed snaps his attention back toward me, that pathetic and all too familiar look of worry in his eyes. “And the spasms?”

“I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. I thought I was dying.”

His lips peel back to an angry snarl. “And, so, what’s he doing about it?”

I’m the one who turns away this time. I stare out on the yard below my window, watching a hawk swoop down on a smaller bird. “There’s nothing he can do. Someday, they’ll get so bad my heart will stop. I don’t want to die in this place. In this house.” Panic washes over me, and I curl into myself, trembling as the fear grips me. “He’s going to put me back in that room with the corpses again. He’s going to make me sleep in there! I need to get out of here. I need out!” I rub the top of my head raw. “Death is coming for me, Caed! He’s going to get me!”

“Hey.” Caed wraps his arms around me, but I push out at him, thumping the heel of my palm against his chest to break his embrace. “Shhhh. It’s okay, Dev,” he whispers, trying to settle me. “The next time he throws you in there, I want you to say a word. A powerful word, okay?”

I still in his embrace and breathe hard through my nose. “What word?”

“Impervious.”

“Impervious?”

“Yes. It means nothing bad can hurt you. Ever. When you feel like Death is coming for you, you say that word. Death can’t touch you, then.”

“You’re sick.” Once again, the sound of Barletta’s voice broke me from my memories. “That’s why you’re doing this. Something made you sick.”

“Not something. Someone.” I paused for a moment, wondering how much I should divulge to a complete stranger. Didn’t matter, really. The man would soon succumb to infection, and all our conversations would slip into the void along with him. “I have a rare genetic disorder. It’s called Voneric’s Disease. It remains dormant until late in life. Unless triggered by trauma.”

“The whack to your head. Your old man triggered it.”

“Yes. Every day I live with the risk that it will seize up my heart and I’ll go into cardiac arrest.”

“If it’s genetic, does that mean your brother has it, too?”

“Had,” I corrected.

His brows flickered, and he shifted where he sat on the cot. “He’s no longer alive.”

“No, he isn’t.” As many years ago as it was, the anger still clawed inside of me, begging to be cut loose. “And no, not every child is affected by the disease. But as I said, we’ll get to that soon enough. I suspect you’re probably starving right now.”

“I am.” He eyed the dish I’d placed beside the chair when I first arrived. “I’ve been craving weird shit. Like … rare meat.”

“Noctisoma utilizes iron to produce the proteins that create physiological changes. Your reflective eyes, for example. It depletes the iron in your blood, and you will crave it.” I removed the silver platter lid from a plate of rare steak, potatoes, and green beans that I’d had the chef at Darrigan Hall prepare for me. At the bottom of the cell bars was a small door, through which I slipped the food to him.

With a frenzied excitement, he yanked the plate toward him and lifted the thick slab of meat with both hands, consuming it like an animal. Blood dripped down his arms, the meat rare enough that it probably bordered on carrying a potential foodborne illness. Not that it mattered. Any bacterial infection he might’ve otherwise suffered would’ve been swiftly destroyed by the Noctisoma, who didn’t much care for competition.

As he plowed through his dinner, I shoved a small cup of water into his cell, which he quickly swiped up and swigged to the point of an obnoxious slurp.

“Why so little to drink? I’m thirsty,” he said, handing it back to me as if I had any intentions of giving him more.

“Your brain is telling you that you’re thirsty.”

“My fucking lips are dry as a bone.” He shoveled in a forkful of potatoes, and I grimaced, watching it slide down the corners of his mouth onto his plate, from where he scooped it up again.

“Yes, I suppose they are. The parasite wants you to move toward a source of water so it can eventually kill you. In fact, if it didn’t require your healthy organs to grow, it’d be perfectly content living inside of you underwater.”

He paused his abhorrent eating and stared off for a moment. “Fucking hell, every time you tell me about this thing, I get more freaked out. Is this gonna be like one of those Alien scenes, where it pops out of my chest?”

“It won’t be pretty, or pleasant, but nothing quite so theatrical as that, no.”

Gaze lowered, he shook his head as he scooped up some of the green beans. “It’s fucked up,” he said around a mouthful of veggies. “I feel like I’m in the best shape of my life right now. Like I could run a goddamn marathon.”

I shrugged. “You probably could.”

“But that won’t happen right?” He speared another round of green beans onto his fork, not bothering to look at me. “You don’t plan to let me go after all this.”

“No. I don’t.” Why lie to the guy, or sugarcoat the inevitable? “I need the organism growing inside of you, and I intend to harvest them when you die.”

“What for?”

I rubbed my fingers together, but only the uncomfortable tingle of pressure there prickled my skin like tiny jolts of electricity. Again, I found myself thinking back to Lilia’s hand in mine. How the prickling sensation had marked her gentle caress. “So that I can feel again.”

“What, like you can’t feel anything? At all?”

“No. It’s like being trapped inside a corpse.”

He snorted a laugh and shook his head, diving into his mashed potatoes again. “Must drive you nuts.”

I ground my teeth while watching him, something dark twisting my guts. “It drives me.”

He must’ve picked up on the ire in my voice, as he glanced up and rolled his shoulders back. “These worms are the cure?”

“No.” I pushed up from the chair and stuffed my hands into my pockets. “Their toxins are the cure. Unfortunately, they’re not easy to manufacture in a lab. It takes a fresh human body.”

“Am I the first you’ve … you know, infected like this?”

Gaze lowered, I paced. “No. There was another before you.”

He ran his tongue over his teeth and tapped his fork against his plate. A plastic plate, after the little mishap with the bottle he’d thrown at me. “How long you think you can get away with it?”

“I suspect until I do something foolish and get caught.”

“I can see you’re no fool,” he said with an air of disappointment. “Can I ask you a favor?”

I stopped pacing. “No.”

“It’s nothing big. Just some pencil and paper. I’d … I’d like to write a letter to my sons.”

Of course I wouldn’t allow it, not even if I read the damn thing before mailing it off. He didn’t deserve forgiveness. He didn’t even deserve to ask. Yet, it might’ve served as a bargaining chip later. “I suppose I can accommodate this one request.”

“I’d appreciate it. You know, my son has seizures. Since he was little.”

“Yes. I’m aware.”

He let out a shaky breath and dropped his gaze to the plate again. “You think I caused ‘em?”

“I’m not his physician. I wouldn’t know. However, you’ve certainly not made things better for him.”

The silvery glint of his eyes wavered with what I imagined were tears. “You won’t hurt them, too, will ya? My wife and my sons?”

“I have no reason to harm your family. I don’t hurt children, like you.”

He flinched and swiped at his nose. “You know, this sobriety thing? Really fucking sucks.”

I waited a few more minutes, watching him shovel in the last bites of his meal.

“You gonna finish your story?” he asked, pushing the plate back through the bars of his cell. “Still curious to know what all this has to do with me.”

“Next visit,” I promised, and I swiped up his plate before heading back to my office.