The Delorme Way
Chapter 4
Jean's thoughts were racing so loudly they seemed to erase reality. They pivoted him back to the only thing that seemed stable enough—the monks and their singing. But even in those chants the curse crept up like wandering vines. He couldn't remember a thing—except the moment he stepped into the cathedral.
Monks were chanting—as always at this time of day, and in their voices mixing with smoke Jean could find no respite, no solace, no...meaning. He'd come here every day, trying to find God, to pray—but his soul he realized has grown disenchanted, hollow and utterly, inescapably dark.
What if, he thought almost sardonically, there was no holy presence here?
No God, his brain corrected him.
No God.
What if he grew tired of being blamed, cursed and called upon? What if he has left—left them all, the monks, the dying, the doctors and the rotting away? What if he stopped caring a long time ago and sent the pestilence because he honestly didn't know what to do?
But if it was so, did it also mean God was helpless now? And if he was, what would it make them?
We are all doomed.
He didn't realize that last was a moan. A priest hurried towards him, his face a mask of worry.
"Mon fils," he asked, "are you alright?"
Jean looked him square in the eye. The priest was no older than he was, and to his horror, he saw the faintly, sickly roses blooming in the young priest's ribcage.
We are all doomed.
"Yes, mon père," he said, "it's just a headache."
The priest sighed relieved and hurried away. Jean looked at him fighting the desire to tell him—but he knew he'd never be believed. He sank back on the cool floor.
The stone floor was unyielding beneath him, a cold anchor in a world that had ceased to make sense.
"Jean!"
The jagged blade of that voice cut through the drone of the choir. Edouard dropped heavily to his knees beside him, his boots scraping the grit on the stones. He grabbed Jean’s shoulder, his fingers digging into the wool of his cloak with a frantic, trembling force.
"Jean, look at me! Where have you been? Simon has the watchmen looking for you—"
Edouard cut himself off. He reached out, his hand shaking as he gripped Jean’s chin, forcing his face upward into the dim light of the tallow candles. Edouard leaned closer, searching his friend's face for the familiar sharp intelligence, the clinical focus, or even the wild panic of a man catching the fever.
Instead, Edouard recoiled, his hand violently dropping away as if he had touched a corpse. He pushed himself back across the flagstones, his breath hitching in pure, unadulterated horror.
Jean’s eyes were entirely empty.
The gray irises that had spent years scanning medical texts and tracking pulses were wide, flat, and hollow. It wasn't the blank stare of a dead man, nor the glassy film of a plague victim. It was a terrifying absence—as if the soul behind them had vanished entirely, leaving behind two bottomless, dark windows looking out onto nothing at all.
Edouard swallowed hard, forcing his heart back down his throat. He shook his head, a desperate anger rising to master his fear. Exhaustion, he told himself, his hands still trembling as he reached out again. It is just the waking madness of the sleepless. We have all seen it in the wards. The brain simply breaks under the weight of so much rot.
"Come on," Edouard muttered, his voice thick as he lunged forward and hoisted Jean by his armpits. "Up. Get up, Jean. You’re done. I'm taking you home."
Jean offered no resistance. He rose like a straw man, his limbs loose and cooperative in a way that made him feel entirely weightless, as if the hollow space inside his chest had bled out into his bones. His head rolled back against Edouard’s shoulder, his gray, empty eyes fixed on the distant, soaring vaulting of the nave where the smoke gathered.
"The roses," Jean mumbled. His voice was a dry, parched rasp, barely louder than the scrape of their boots on the stone. "The roses... in the ribs. Blooming."
"Quiet now," Edouard grunted, throwing Jean’s heavy arm over his own shoulders to bear the weight. He began dragging him toward the side portal of the cathedral, steering clear of the center aisle where the monks continued their heavy, unbothered chanting.
"Save your breath. The air is foul in here anyway."
"He didn't know what to do," Jean continued to whisper, his breath ghosting against Edouard’s neck, smelling faintly of the vinegar-soaked rag he’d used in the dead-houses. "He sent them because He didn't know... He left us, Edouard. The young one has them. Right in the cage. Three hours... thirty-four minutes..."
"Jean, stop it, for Christ's sake," Edouard hissed, his pace quickening as they hit the heavy oak doors. He pushed through into the damp, decaying autumn air of the alleyway. The twilight was bleeding a bruised purple across the sky, and a wet, biting wind chased dead leaves down the gutter, swirling them into the piles of quicklime.
They never made it to the river. Three alleys away from the cathedral, Jean’s legs simply turned to water. He slipped from Edouard’s shoulder, his knees striking the wet cobbles before collapsing sideways into a pile of rotting autumn leaves.
"Jean!" Edouard dropped beside him, cursing under his breath as he reached out to haul him up again. But the moment his bare palm brushed Jean’s neck, Edouard froze.The skin was like a furnace. The deep, icy emptiness in Jean's eyes had been a mask for a raging, incandescent heat that was now baking through his woolen collar. Edouard pressed two fingers to the hollow beneath Jean's jaw; the pulse was a frantic, erratic drumming, fighting a losing battle against the heat.The fever, Edouard thought, a cold sweat breaking out on his own skin despite the autumn wind. God help us, it’s taken him.With a desperate, adrenaline-fueled strength, Edouard dragged his friend the remaining distance to his lodgings, hauling him up the narrow timber stairs and heaving him onto the narrow cot.For three days, reality ceased to exist inside the small, low-ceilinged room. Edouard did not return to the wards. He ignored Maestro Simon’s orders, ignored the screams from the street below, and stayed. He boiled bitter willow bark, pressed wet cloths to Jean’s burning forehead, and held him down through the violent, shivering fits where Jean thrashed and whispered fragments of old children's songs from Moulins. Edouard watched the groin, the armpits, the neck—bracing himself for the appearance of the black, bulbous swellings. But none came. It was a pure, systemic fire, a mind-breaking delirium that seemed intent on burning Jean out from the inside.
The fire in his blood peaked on the third night. Inside the suffocating dark of his own skull, Jean was no longer in his lodgings. He was pinned to the cold altar of Notre-Dame, the stones beneath him slick with old blood and melted wax.Above him, straddling his chest with a heavy, crushing weight, was the raven-haired woman.Her presence was entirely, terrifyingly palpable. Her skin was a baking, incandescent furnace, radiating a heat that scorched his bare chest. Jean thrashed, his muscles bunching as he tried to throw her off, but she was impossibly heavy, pinning his wrists brutally against the stone. Right in front of his eyes, her bare breasts rose and fell with a slow, heavy rhythm, pressed almost against his face. Jean gasped for air, but her long, sharp nails dug straight into his chest, puncturing the skin, pinning him down into an intimacy forged entirely of despair. She leaned down, her dark hair falling like a shroud around his face, and exhaled a thick, suffocating cloud of rose-scented breath straight into his mouth.
"I've got you, Jeannot..." she whispered, her voice a low, soothing purr.Jean let out a choked, desperate cry, fighting with the primal strength of a dying animal—And the vision violently shattered.The altar dissolved. The raven-haired woman vanished.Jean gasped, his eyes flying open as he hauled a ragged plume of air into his lungs. The heavy weight was still pressing down on his chest, but the dim, gray dawn of his actual room was filtering through the window. The hands pinning his wrists weren't soft or supernatural—they were rough, calloused, and trembling with sheer exhaustion.It was Edouard.Edouard was leaning over the cot, his knees braced against the wooden frame, using his entire body weight to hold Jean down. His face was slick with sweat, his eyes wide and bloodshot with panic.
"...I've got you, Jeannot," Edouard was actually saying, his voice raw, cracking, and stripped of all its usual bravado. "I've got you. Stay still before you break your own damn arms!"
As the words left Edouard's mouth, Jean's mind reeled from the sudden shift. The phrase echoed in his ears, a horrific rhyme to the demon he had just seen. The violent thrashing in his limbs died instantly, leaving him completely limp beneath his friend's grip. He lay there, his chest heaving, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs as reality slowly settled back into place.Edouard stayed frozen for a second, watching Jean's face. Seeing the wild, frantic delirium finally fade from his gray eyes, Edouard let out a long, shuddering breath. The tension drained from his shoulders, and he slowly released Jean's wrists, sinking back onto his heels with a weak, relieved laugh.
"By the saints," Edouard whispered, wiping a hand across his soot-stained forehead. "I thought the fever was going to snap your spine. You’ve been screaming about altars and roses for six hours."
He leaned forward again, extending a hand to gently press his palm against Jean’s cheek, checking to see if the flesh-melting heat had finally broken.But as Edouard’s hand neared his face, Jean froze.The nightmare hadn't completely lied. The scent was still there. It wasn't a trick of the fever, and it wasn't the lingering memory of the raven-haired woman. Rising directly from the pores of Edouard’s skin, thick and unmistakable in the damp autumn air of the room, was the cloying sweetness of blooming roses.
