REMUS' DIARY
SUNDAY
My skin still burns, most likely the after effects of whatever bloody concoction that I had drank in that room. It felt as though my skin was broiling beneath his fingertips and in that moment I thought only of my mother and how sorely disappointed she would be to find that I had died, not from natural causes but from the vanity that consumed me. How embarrassing it would be to find me there naked, pale as my blood had been drained. Molested. I shudder to think.
I kept seeing stars on the ceiling, fluttering between consciousness and a dream of eternal life.
Oh, mother, his breath was something rotten against my skin and I am sorry. I am sorry, mother. So sorry.
Mother, you raised me well to know that desires, carnal as the flesh of man are sins to behold. I wish I could take that moment back and burn it, but I have no fireplace in my house of melancholy. The memory would float, a gloating taunt in my kitchen.
I was stupid to think that S had even a sense of humanity within them, I knew that it was all some cruel joke and that Ferox most likely had everything to do with it— perchance aided by James Potter for he was my first guess but, oh mother there is something more horrendous I must confess.
I saw the bottle of sherry on that table and was knocked distraught by what I thought next. It was disgusting — inhumane and unnatural and yet, once the act was committed I felt a sense of peace.
I felt whole, standing above his body, fingers sweaty with his blood.
Or mine
I haven't a clue. Mine or his, we became one that night. And a part of me died with him.
So in essence, I live with his ghost.
This is not a letter, and I haven't the gall to mail a confession of sin but Ma, I didn't mean to.
Am I justified? As he had imposed himself upon me and defiled me in ways that are not manly and Ma, Mother, why is it that it should be sin that I think of first?
I am rotten, decayed and rotting. I am sin.
In my hand basin lies the shirt I wore last night. I tried to wash it.
The water ran crimson between my fingers and I finally let myself weep. It's still there. I cannot bring myself to touch it and I am sorry for being so weak. Da was right. Is right. Always right. I am a weak boy, and I cannot live. Da was right. I killed myself the moment I walked out that fucking splintered door. Ma, am I sin? Would you think of me as sin? A sinner?
Yes, we are all born sinners but is it our destiny as humans to create sin? One can argue that birth in itself is a sinful cause but then one can ask, Why bring a child into such a wretched world?
I haven't asked for God since I was a boy. After the night, I think it is impossible. What righteous god would want their beloved son to suffer??
What SUFFER you ask?
I CAME TO, ON MY KNEES IN THE ROOM OF MY CREATION. SOAKING MY NEW TROUSERS, SEEPING ONTO MY THIGHS: MY OWN BLOOD THAT HE HAD DEVOURED, SUCKED FROM ME LIKE A BLOODY LEECH
HE HE MY BELOVED CREATURE MY CREATION THAT WHICH TURNED ME INTO A SINNER — NO BETTER THAN HE —
AND WHEN I STOOD, I SMILED. I BORE NO MIND TO THE BROKEN GLASS SPLITTING MY FINGERS OPEN, I BORE NO MIND TO THE SCREAMING OF MY LUNGS AS I LEANED FORWARD, LAUGHING OVER HIS MANGLED, SHRIVELED UP CORPSE. I CRIED OUT NOT IN AGONY BUT IN THE RELIEF THAT I HAD DONE AWAY WITH A SINNER BUT
MOTHER
NOW I REALISE
I am no less a sinner than He. My Creation.
A sinner should not be blessed with sleep, for when the reaper comes in the night he should be faced with the countenance of Hell. Let him be consumed by the darkness and disgrace and let him know.
Let him know
Let
Him know…. he has no soul.
Mother, I ask only of your forgiveness tonight. Only of yours.
MONDAY
I have come down with illness, so I've told Potter, counting my pennies at a shitty payphone. My ailment is the obsessive pacing at the most unholy of hours, wearing down my shittier floorboards.
In my awfully shitty apartment. I've yet to eat, the rusty tap water has become my only friend in these trying times.
Ferox, that bastard, he hasn't visited me. Or written. Or sent anyone to ask for me. It does nothing to ease the suspicion that this is all his game. I've torn through my books looking for some sort of entertainment to distract me from the image of Bart the thing
There is a rope in my trunk, hidden beneath my writing desk.
TUESDAY
During the nights he haunts me. It's almost as if I can feel his nails dancing along my chest, fingertips grazing my stomach.
I look down at my own hands and find myself sick. It's so fucking irrational.
My illness is guilt and it tears at my flesh, the hounds of my conscience.
THURSDAY
The dog was dead. Stiff and rolled over onto its backside. It was swollen around the middle and stank a wretched odour.
I went back, I don't know why I went back. It was long past midnight when I arrived back at 394.
The silence within the building was like death, and it smelt of it too.
Death. Everything is Death.
No light, not even the moon. The mirror was gone. I climbed the stairs to the round room three at a time, almost falling in my haste. I stepped onto the landing, out of breath and grasping the door handle I twisted open without hesitation. I stopped.
Disconcerted.
The door swinging open kicked up a film of dust that settled slowly in the blue-black darkness of the room. I walked into the room, I coughed, the smell of damp mould filling my nostrils.
“Lady?” I don't know why I whispered. I don't know why I expected the lady with the glass eye to materialise out of thin air either, only that after I realised that I had spoken to no-one, I laughed at myself.
The walls were covered in a wallpaper that, with age most likely, was yellowed and peeling. The floorboards were broken and splintered and I stepped over them cautiously.
I couldn't help but laugh again as I turned, taking in the entire room — it wasn't even round. There was no gramophone, no beaded curtains and no fancy armchair that looked like my own. Not even the fucking chandelier.
There was one single door (NO WHITE DOUBLE DOORS?) and I flung it open and the bloody, decaying spectacle that I expected was not there — I doubled over with laughter. Relief maybe? Perchance.
This room was far more dilapidated, the ceiling having opened up to the night sky in parts. The moon illuminated the room.
One bed. A skeleton of a metal cot. A wardrobe. A vanity with no mirror? And piles of rubble. All coated with a thick blanket of silver dust that glimmered in the lines of moonlight.
The room was so fucking depressing. Where the child's cot was, the walls and floor were charred. However, as I made to inspect the unfortunate scene, a creak of floorboards behind startled me and I turned around quickly.
A tall and cloaked figure, eyes like lightning.
We stood there for a few seconds, I teetered on the balls of my feet like a praying mantis. I could not see the face, but I knew it was a man.
“How long have you —” as soon as I opened my mouth the figure leaned backwards and I thought he'd fall, I lunged forward, reaching out.
He was engulfed by the shadows. Stupidly, I stood there with my arm still stretched out.
The divine breath of life.
Not a single footprint in the thick film of dust, I was beginning to wonder if anything was real at all. If I'd just imagine the shade in the doorway.
I went back downstairs, nothing struck out to me other than the most obvious conundrum. That there was no sign of the white haired lady nor my Bartemius having been there.
Walking through the din of the street lamps, I could feel the eyes of the shadow on my back, prickling the hairs on my body and I squinted to see amongst the gatherings of hunched over people who, unlike the last time I had been there, seemed to not notice my presence. I was utterly confused and now rather desperate to see the outline of the dark stranger. I knew he was there.
Watching me like a fucking creep.
I gave up after some time, standing there like a fool with my cheeks heating up in embarrassment as I caught the fleeting eyes of beggars. I shuffled into a small bar, sitting down on one of the shaky stools.
The bar was packed, and stank of piss. I'm sure Ferox would've loved it if not for the folks’ taste for impoverished fashion.
“What you like?” the bartender asked me.
I spoke, mouth dry, “A beer.”
I'd never drank a beer before, and I'm sure the tender could tell. He smirked down at me as he poured my drink.
“Yer just a babe.”
I coughed, clearing my throat and I fished in my pockets for some spare change.
He counted it and nodded, then looked at me with something like pity.
I cleared my throat, “You know what happened to the place across the street?”
The bartender frowned.
“Has it closed down?” I asked.
The bartender put my glass down in front of me and I thought at that moment that he was the most expressive man I'd ever met in my life. He looked at me as though I was an idiot.
“Closed. ‘Bout twenty years ago.”
“How? Are you certain, sir?”
He scoffed — or coughed — I don't fucking know he looked at least 80, every sound he made appeared as though it was about to kill him.
“After the fire. No one bothered fixin’ it up.”
I nodded and he asked “Anything else?”
I shook my head, then left without drinking my beer. It looked like piss.
Ferox would be proud. I said piss twice.
FRIDAY
I went back to work today, before my usual time. I ventured into the archives of the newspaper's basement with the help of Frank, the man in charge.
Based on what the bartender had told me, I found an article dating back seventeen years ago. It took me almost an hour to find the small story. The fire started in the early hours of the morning Corpus Christi Day, 19—. Two casualties. A man and a baby. And take a goddamn wild guess on how many people were injured. One. One near fatal injury.
No names were mentioned, unfortunately, but the police and firemen had stated that they believed the fire was started by an oil lamp. Faulty.
What I found amusing was that the church nearby had added their opinion that it was the intervention of the Holy Spirit, ridding the building of sin.
I think I am going to sleep well tonight.