Chapter 8: The Whispering Gallery
The pain in his shoulder was a bright, hot coal lodged deep in the joint. Every hurried step down the narrow servant’s corridor sent a fresh spike of agony through his collarbone. He cradled his left arm against his chest, the right hand instinctively checking his pocket for the lancet. Still there. Its presence was a cold, small comfort.
The plain hallway gave way to older stone. The modern sconces were replaced by iron brackets holding thick, guttering candles that wept wax onto the floor. The air changed. The lavender perfume vanished, utterly. In its place was a damp, mineral chill, the smell of deep earth, and something else—a sharp, electric tang like after a thunderstorm, mixed with the coppery scent of old blood.
The walls were no longer plastered. They were rough-hewn stone, slick with moisture. And they were painted.
Faded frescoes, peeled and blotched with mildew, stretched into the gloom. He slowed, his breath fogging in the cold air, and forced himself to look.
The images were grotesque. They showed figures in poses of agony or ecstasy—it was hard to tell which. Bodies were intertwined with twisting vines that seemed to grow from their own spines. In one panel, a row of people stood rigid, their faces blank as artisans chiseled at their limbs, refining them into smoother, more elegant shapes. In another, a crowned figure with a featureless, smooth face—a clear precursor to the porcelain masks—presided over a ceremony where kneeling subjects were having their eyes carefully plucked out by attendants.
It wasn’t ancient. The style was a strange, dissonant mix of classical technique and modern surrealism. And the clothing of the figures, though stylized, hinted at eras spanning centuries, all depicting the same ritual.
This was the主人’s gospel. His manifesto, painted on the walls of his underworld.
A wave of nausea rolled through him. This wasn’t a new obsession. It was a tradition.
A rustle to his left made him jerk back, the lancet halfway out of his pocket.
It wasn’t a servant. A heavy, moth-eaten tapestry depicting a hunting scene bulged, and a face peered out from behind it. A human face, pale and smudged with dirt, eyes wide with a terror that mirrored his own.
“Don’t… don’t scream,” the face whispered, voice cracking. “It’s me.林晓. From the poetry reading after dinner. You talked about Li Bai’s喝酒 alone under the moon.”
陈子轩’s heart hammered against his ribs. He remembered. A quiet art student who’d offered a surprisingly sharp critique about the romanticization of solitude. He lowered the lancet a fraction. “林晓? What are you doing here?”
“Hiding. They got赵明远.” 林晓’s words tumbled out in a frantic, hushed stream. He pushed the tapestry aside, revealing a shallow alcove behind it. He was still in his party clothes, a rumpled silk shirt, but one sleeve was torn, and a dark stain spread across the cuff. “I was looking for a bathroom, got lost. Ended up in this… this gallery of wet clay. Smelled like a dentist’s office and wet dog. I hid behind a pillar.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I saw the管家. He wasn’t… empty anymore. He had this… focus. He was carrying赵明远.赵明远wasn’t fighting. Just dangling, like a sleeping kid. The管家 took him into this side room. The door was open for a second.”
林晓’s gaze went distant, haunted by the memory. “The walls… the walls inside weren’t walls. They were… frameworks. Like hat racks. But they were made of… bones. Vertebrae. Human spines, all linked together. Dozens of them. And they’d been wired with little gold filaments and crystal drops, like… like they were chandeliers. Sconces. The light came from inside them.”
He finally looked back at陈子轩, his eyes begging for disbelief. “They’re using us for furniture.”
The description clicked into place with a sickening finality. The “peace” the主人 promised. The “perfection.” You weren’t just made serene. You were broken down into components. A spine becomes a light fixture. Keen sight might become a lens. A pleasing voice, a component in a music box.
“We have to get out,”陈子轩 said, his own voice hoarse. “The main gates are watched. There has to be another way. A service entrance. Something.”
“There’s a draft,” 林晓 said, pointing a shaky finger down the flickering tunnel. “It comes from further down. Smells like… leaves. Actual outside air. But it’s past the workshop. I heard sounds. Metallic sounds. And… whimpering.”
The choice was non-existent. Stay here, and the管家’s methodical search would find them. Go back, and it was the ballroom. Forward was the only direction left.
“Stay behind me,”陈子轩 said, which felt absurd given his throbbing shoulder and makeshift weapon. But林晓 nodded, falling into step like a shadow.
They moved quickly, their shoes slipping on the strangely slick stone floor. The frescoes gave way to rougher tunnel. The electric, metallic smell grew stronger, coating the tongue. The whimpering林晓 had mentioned became audible—a low, steady, exhausted sound, punctuated by soft, wet clicks and the occasional clear, musical ting of a small hammer on metal.
A doorway stood ahead, a arch of darker stone. Light, a stark, clinical white, spilled from it, cutting across the filthy floor.
陈子轩 crept to the edge and peered around the jamb.
It was a long, high-ceilinged room that looked like a cross between a surgical theatre and a sculptor’s studio. Workbenches lined the walls, cluttered with tools both medical and artistic: bone saws next to rifflers, syringes beside pots of glaze. In the center, under a cluster of those spine-chandeliers burning with a cold, blue-white light, stood two figures.
One was the管家. He was methodically cleaning a set of slender, razor-sharp gouges with a white cloth.
On a stone table before him lay赵明远. He was shirtless, held in place by leather straps. He was awake. His eyes were open, tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on his temples. But he made no sound now beyond that steady, shattered whimper. His mouth was slack.
The top of his spine, the cervical vertebrae, were exposed. The skin had been peeled back with a precision that was itself a horror. And the管家 was… etching. Delicately, with a fine-tipped electric tool, he was engraving intricate, swirling patterns directly onto the bone. Each pass produced that soft, wet click, a tiny spray of mist, and the scent of ozone and cooked calcium.
“The substrate must be prepared before the embellishment,” the管家 said, his voice flat, lecturing to an empty room. Or perhaps to赵明远’s trapped consciousness. “The master wishes a filigree pattern on this segment. It will catch the light beautifully.”
陈子轩 felt 林晓 stiffen beside him, a choked gasp catching in his throat. He clamped a hand over林晓’s mouth, pulling him back from the door. His own stomach churned, a sour rush of bile hitting the back of his throat. This was beyond murder. This was perverse curation.
They couldn’t help赵明远. Not now. Not without being caught and strapped to the next table.
The draft林晓 had mentioned was stronger here, coming from a wrought-iron gate at the far end of the workshop, left slightly ajar. Beyond it was utter darkness, but the air from it was undeniably fresh, carrying the distant, impossible scent of pine and night.
It meant crossing the open end of the room, directly in the管家’s line of sight if he turned.
They had to time it with the sound of the engraving tool.陈子轩 held up three fingers, meeting林晓’s terrified eyes. He counted down.
On one, they moved.
Two quick, silent scurries across the open threshold. The electric tool zinged, whined, clicked. They flattened themselves against a workbench laden with half-shaped lumps of wet, grey clay that felt horribly warm.
The tool stopped.
The管家’s voice echoed. “The symmetry is off by point-two millimeters on the left incisor. Unacceptable.”
He was talking to himself. Or to the room. They heard him set the tool down with a soft tap and pick up something else—the sound of a fine sanding block on enamel.
Now.
They ducked and scrambled, reaching the iron gate.陈子轩 grabbed the cold bars. It protested with a shrill, metallic shriek that sounded like a damnation in the silent house.
Every sound in the workshop ceased.
They didn’t look back. They wrenched the gate open and threw themselves into the darkness beyond.
The door slammed shut behind them with a final, echoing clang. They were in utter blackness, running blind on uneven ground, the clean, wild air of the forest ahead now their only guide. From behind the gate, they heard no shout, no pursuit.
Only the deliberate, unhurried sound of tools being placed back on a metal tray.
Click. Ting. Click.