by Jeff Tidball
Lucy sat alone in the dark cell beneath the Garfield mansion. Its floor was cold and damp but not quite wet. It smelled like dirt and worms. The torch she'd been carrying had lasted for a time - how could she possibly tell how long? - and then gone out unceremoniously.
She'd tried yelling, then screaming.
The torches in the hallway (she could see their faint light through the metal grille in the door) had also gone out eventually.
Lucy shivered, still wearing the dress she'd worn to Professor Cooke's presentation at the beginning of the night. The dress now seemed like it had lasted all summer.
Lucy eventually fell asleep. What else could she do?
* * *
"Wake up, dear," came a voice.
Lucy started awake, jumping halfway to readiness.
The voice chuckled. There was a light visible through the grille - flickering torchlight - and a face. She couldn't see the face clearly. She stood.
"Tell me what Cooke told you," the voice said.
"He didn't tell me anything. This is all a mistake."
"You told Mr. Dart that he told you something."
"Nothing noteworthy."
"Your mentor is mistaken?"
Lucy moved toward the door, the better to see the man to whom the voice belonged. He stepped back, a middle-aged man with a lantern. The man from Miskatonic, from the History Department. "To withhold knowledge from those of greater rank is punishable," he noted.
Lucy swallowed, "Mr. Dart must have misheard me. Or misunderstood."
The man nodded. He turned to leave.
"Wait!" called Lucy.
"We won't forget about you." said the man without turning back to her.
He said something else a moment after that. She thought it sounded like, "Twilight never forgets."
* * *
Lucy slept again. Had it been a day? Two? She began to fear thirst would drive her mad.
She tried screaming again, for help or even just attention.
She slept again.
* * *
Lucy woke to footsteps approaching and a faint light outside her cell. She jumped into a position low and behind where the door would open.
"We're going to open the cell," came the voice she'd spoken to earlier.
Lucy leapt out the door when it opened, grasping for the man, who recoiled, surprised, stumbling.
Lucy screeched, clawing at him, but something thick and black fell over her head and rough hands grabbed her from behind.
A blow fell onto her head.
* * *
Lucy came to in the chamber where she'd first been inducted, awakened by a bucket of cold water. She spasmed and gasped, discovering that she was shackled to the floor.
The Lodge surrounded her, clad in their robes. Dart stood next to Garfield and the man who'd questioned her.
Professor Cooke was dragged in, his face bruised, his arms lacerated. Two men shackled him near Lucy. Three of Cooke's fingers dripped blood where their nails had been ripped off. "He said nothing," reported one of the two.
"The mirror, then," said Garfield.
A pair of cultists produced what Lucy supposed was a mirrors covered in a cloth. They brought it to where Cooke lay. When he saw it, his eyes grew wide. He shook his head with a piteous lament and began to shiver.
"Brother White?" asked Garfield.
The man who'd questioned her - White, apparently - circled behind Cooke and stood there. Cooke threw himself onto the ground, facedown.
"Uncover it," said White. "Hold him," he directed to no one in particular.
While the two with the mirror pulled off its covering, two other cultists jumped from their places and grabbed Cooke, who fought desperately. White stood with his hands clasped behind his back while Cooke was dragged to his knees and the two with mirror adjusted it.
Cooke howled, bellowing louder than Lucy had imagined possible.
Lucy couldn't see into the mirror from where she was shackled, but as Cooke and White stared into it. Cooke's expression went slack and White's eyes opened impossibly wide.
Lucy saw White's hair blow back as though a gale had burst from the mirror, and she saw Cooke's face literally explode outward in a shower of blood and brain. Cooke's body fell limp, and the pair holding him let him fall with a wet thud. Lucy screamed.
After a moment, the wind abated. White looked at Dart, then at Garfield. Then he looked at Lucy.
"He told her of the spell." White said plainly.
Dart's gaze on her was like stone. "Return her to her cell," he said. "She holds knowledge in excess of her rank in our Order. She is sentenced."
"So be it," chanted those circling her, in unison.
* * *
Two strong men hauled Lucy between them down the corridor. She hung limply, her feet dragging on the stones of the floor. The pair turned to the doorway that led into the dungeons-
-and Lucy leapt! She shoved her body into one of the men with all her might, knocking him off balance and down the stairs. She grabbed the other's hair and smashed his head into the corner of the door frame. Then she turned and ran down the corridor and across the parquet of the ballroom.
She gasped great lungs-full of air, every limb trembling from exertion, fatigue, and lack of nourishment. From behind her, she heard shouts of alarm.
She arrived at the main door and threw her body into it. She saw the free air beyond and ran into the night.
