- El Milagro Bakery - Upper floor -
El Milagro Bakery was a relatively new shop in Jericho; Helen Duval and her daughter Jean Duvall had moved to the small Vermont town just a few months earlier from their home in Massachusetts, leaving behind their old home and their popular family business, a bakery that prided itself on offering the best homemade desserts in the whole county; Helen had even won several baking competitions.
Such as the famous apple pie competition at the Topsfield Fair. Sadly, the good times don't last forever; the strained relationship with her husband reached breaking point almost a year ago; the arguments, the shouting and the lack of affection over the years had taken their toll.
The legal battle for custody of their daughter was long and strangely expensive for Helen; Irvin didn't want his daughter, he didn't give a damn about her, she'd bet he didn't even know when her birthday was.
So why did Irvin fight tooth and nail for custody? He wanted something he couldn't get by normal means.
So, when the opportunity arose to fulfil her ambitions, he seized it: he proposed a deal to the mother – the trademark, her recipes and, as the icing on the cake, the bakery she had worked so hard to build from scratch – in exchange for full custody of her only daughter.
Helen accepted without a moment's hesitation; she could give him all that and more, if it meant never seeing her now ex-husband's face again and keeping what she considered more precious than her own life: Jean.
"That bastard!"
Helen woke up suddenly in the middle of the night, sat up and whispered through clenched teeth; she wished she could have screamed to express her deep hatred for her idiot of an ex-husband, as she recalled his face in her dreams—or rather, in her nightmares; she didn't scream for the simple reason that her daughter and her friends were fast asleep just one door away from her.
"I'm glad Jean has managed to settle in… especially considering what happened a few months ago."
Helen covered her face with the back of her hand and rested her head on her soft pillow; that incident when her daughter had gone missing was the worst thing she had ever experienced in her entire life, worse than the immense pain of giving birth, worse than when Irving's mask of the perfect husband had cracked and, with it, her heart.
'Making friends and wanting to get out of the house is the best thing for her; she pretends she doesn't mind not having a father… but I know it hurts her more than she lets on… Enough now, Helen!'
Holding all those thoughts inside would only make her feel sad, so she had to stop; a depressed and apathetic mother was the last thing Jean needed right now.
"It's ten past midnight, too early even for me."
It was a few minutes past midnight, as her alarm clock displayed in bright red numbers.
"Perhaps... *Gulp*... I haven't used it in ages!"
New thoughts came to Helen's mind as she saw the half-open drawer of her bedside table; the stress of looking after a child, running a business and managing the household finances had built up over the months, and she needed to let off steam.
"But doing it now? With the girls asleep! That's a bad idea."
She reached out and pulled the drawer fully open; it was a shame that, before she could begin, a red light, like that emitted by wax candles, caught her eye.
It shone right into her eyes; at first it was a point of light, then it turned into a strip, and soon a square formed by lines of light appeared on her ceiling.
"This is a dream…" said Helen, blinking several times and dropping the object she was holding onto the floor. "Wow, wow, wow!"
Helen exclaimed as she saw slender, tiny fingers emerging from the crack in the ceiling; frightened, she crawled across the bed and hugged her legs to her chest.
"Jean! Is that you?!! What on earth is going on?!!!"
"Right, there's a bed underneath! Mum, it doesn't matter!"
Jean was surprised to see her mother right below her as she peered through the chalk door; it was a very strange situation from the start, so the young woman didn't bother to point out how odd it was that her new chalk door, which she had drawn on a wall, led straight to the ceiling of her mother's room.
Helen stood up on the bed and, although she was a tall woman, she couldn't reach the ceiling.
"Jean! What on earth is going on?! How did you get up there?!!"
"Catch Ellie first!"
Said Jean loudly and pushed her friend through the chalk door; the shadow she'd seen walking down the corridor behind her had vanished, but that didn't make Jean feel any safer, not without William by her side.
"What's happened to her? Is she all right?" Asked Helen as she grabbed Ellie's legs and saw she was unconscious.
"You really do love asking questions, Mum! We'll talk about that later!!!"
Said Jean irritably; her mother's panic and constant questions only increased Jean's desire to get out of the pale man's room. By the time Cassie and Ellie had been laid on Helen's wide bed, the chalk door was beginning to close of its own accord.
Jean threw herself carelessly through the small gap that remained before it closed completely.
Helen grabbed hold of Jean, but the force of the impact sent them both tumbling backwards onto the bed.
"That was a close call!!"
A few strands of Jean's hair had become caught in the chalk door; as it slammed shut, it snipped them off and dropped them into the girl's open palm, and she breathed a sigh of relief; a moment later and she might well have lost a limb.
- The Pale Man's Hall -
Black Phillip's screams filled the Pale Man's banquet hall; his cries of pain, accompanied by spittle, splattered across the room and echoed off the ancient, weathered walls.
The immense Grimm, with fur as black as night, was fighting a goat just as large, which stood upright on its two legs; its long, curved horns left deep scratches on the vaulted ceiling.
One of those mysterious, tiny mushrooms he kept in the pouches at his waist had caused the great goat-beast to grow to the point where it could touch the ceiling with its horns.
Although Black Phillip was a match for William in size, the lineage of a beast of doom, cruelty and ferocity such as the Grimm was not easily overcome; increasing his size did not make his fur any tougher.
The Grimm's silver-coated fangs tore through the now thicker muscles of the arms with which Black Phillip was shielding himself; his long retractable claws had ripped open his belly and his entrails, still warm, spilled out at his master's feet.
"You're useless…"
The pale man shouted in indignation and fury as he witnessed the swift defeat of his immortal companion.
"You're an immortal! You've lived for hundreds of years and devoured tens of thousands of people!" cried the pale man, waving his arms about. "And all that just to end up murdered by a child!"
The suffering of the Lord of the Witches of England was so great and painful that he could not, nor did he wish to, pay any heed to the ravings of that sack of skin at his feet.
"If I have to go, I'll take you with me… BAAAA!!!!"
Black Philips raised one of his enormous hooves and, with a stomp that splattered blood across the walls, crushed half of the pale man's body.
With his enemy's troublesome hands no longer blocking his path, William ripped the windpipe from his throat in a single movement, with a single bite.
The billy goat shrank back to his normal size, seven and a half feet tall.
*Spit!!!*
William cast aside his elegant image as a well-bred gentleman as he spat with revulsion onto the floor; although he could—and indeed did so every time he shifted form—rid himself of all traces of his prey from his muzzle upon returning to human form, this time he felt a strong loathing for the blood of Black Phillip and Ruuttus.
"Two out of three done… only you remain."
William turned his gaze towards the creature crawling across the floor; its bare skin was being scratched and cut by the small shards of glass on the floor, but the pale man didn't seem to mind.
The flames in the fireplace, with their macabre shape resembling the mouth of a deep-sea fish, flickered feebly and listlessly, threatening to die out at any moment.
''Is the light fading?... Perhaps it has something to do with your current state, Pale Man.''
'Goodness! He really is a monster in human skin,' thought Bruma as he looked at the state of the three immortal ancients, not daring to say it out loud, not with William standing beside him.
"What's happened to the girls?"
Asked William as he pulled up his long-sleeved T-shirt and looked at the long black line running down his ribs; the veins around it had become visible through his pale skin. It was the wound Ruuttus had inflicted on him; his venom had stained his veins a deep black.
(A scar of this hunt... Enid's going to be angry with me when she sees me.)
"They are all safe; they passed through the chalk door drawn by the girl named Jean."
Bruma floated in the air and replied in a clear, high-pitched and respectful tone.
"My lord, will you not put an end to his suffering?"
Bruma felt a certain pity for the ancient creature clinging to a pile of small, tattered, dried-out leather shoes, heaped in a small mound near a cracked pillar.
Trophies, mementos, or simply uncleaned remains of the dinners of yesteryear enjoyed by the pale man in his glory days.
"I do not know how his death will affect this place; I shall wait until the very last moment to fulfil my hunting pact with Princess Moanna."
William made his way towards the left-hand wall after replying to Bruma, towards the set of three doors embedded in the limestone wall, each small door situated within the mouth of a creature carved into the rock.