Out for Blood
1032 Words
Austin’s eyes were bare of emotions. He glanced at his older brother and then turned his eyes to the sky.
"Johann…" he whispered and Jerome felt ice in his chest upon hearing the name.
" Austin, it's me Jerome," the older one said, but Austin continued to stare at nothingness.
"Johann," Austin said once more. "Johann permettez-moi de mourir…."
Jerome’s eyes widened.
Johann, let me die…
Austin called him by the name again and he spoke in perfect French— something his brother couldn't do yet.
"What are you saying?"
Fresh tears fell from Austin’s eyes, his orbs devoid of hope.
"Johann, s'il vous plaît permettez-moi de mourir. Je ne peux pas vivre sans elle…" he whispered, and then lost consciousness once more.
"Austin! Hey," Jerome called as he shook his brother, but the latter did not wake up anymore. His head pounding in confusion, he tried to remember what his brother said.
Johann, please let me die. I can't live without her.
For the life of him, Jerome couldn't understand what his brother was babbling about. He sounded like a suicidal person, he thought, and then he frowned as he searched his brother's tear-stained face. Austin had repeatedly called him Johann, the man in his…dream?
Jerome wasn't sure. He wasn't sure about a lot of things either. "You can't live without who?"
====
"Here you are," Sam said as he handed Jessica some files. "That's just about everything that I could get about the curse."
Jessica smiled and nodded her thanks as she scanned the papers with trembling hands. After Hannah’s revelation a week ago, they decided to research more about the murders and the curse, but they haven't discovered much. It was as if the issue suddenly died, and speculations were shut down before they even spread out.
After the m******e in July 1843, it was never really proven who the culprit was. Since Jehan de Lancret was the only one who committed suicide, and he was the best man with a gun, the people had assumed that he was the one who did the killings.
Forensic science did not exist at that time, and since the people were killed using different guns, and Jehan died using his own gun— a pearl-handled revolver, the case remained unsolved.
Julian de Lancret, the remaining survivor of the family, refused to talk about the incident. He closed the estate to the public in the summer of 1850, after firing most of the workers and keeping only a handful.
The deed caused an uproar among the citizens who used to go there freely, but they were not able to do anything about it since the estate was privately owned, and those who tried making a ruckus out of it mysteriously vanished. The issue died completely when Louis-Philippe, the last King of France died on August 26th of the same year.
Nobody talked about the m******e since then, until Julian, the last de Lancret heir died in 1860 due to pneumonia. There were rumors that before the last heir died, he had gone to visit the graves of his brothers and made a vow to protect the land until they returned.
The source of the rumor was not really reliable, but it didn't prevent anyone from believing the hair-raising story of the older de Lancrets rising from the grave. Nobody was sure why or how. They only knew they would come back, and they feared the m******e of years passed would happen again.
Like what happened before, the issue died down after a couple of years. People resumed their lives and the estate was forgotten. Then, in 1864, twenty-one years after the m******e, a young man aged twenty-one, came to the country-side for a vacation.
The new owners of the estate didn't mind visitors back then, so they were free to roam the grounds. James Spencer of England had been such a cheerful kind of guy, but on July 4, 1864, he was found dead in the estate near the spring where the second heir committed suicide. The cause was a self-inflicted gunshot wound on the head, using the same pearl-handled gun Jehan de Lancret had used to kill himself.
As expected, the incident caused an uproar, and the talk about the curse started, most especially, since every twenty-one years after that incident, a young person aged twenty-one would go to the estate and shoot himself or herself in the head, using the same type of gun. Nobody knew how they managed to get ahold of Jehan's gun, since the original had been confiscated by the authorities. But in each death, it would be the weapon used.
Seven suicides after, they didn't bother knowing how or why anymore. They just stopped trying to figure out the mystery, since most people who were curious enough met with tragedy. Some became crippled, some became insane, and some just died in their sleep.
It was as if an unseen force was protecting the mystery of the house and the people stopped messing with it. They just resigned to the fact that a youth would die every twenty-one years as if commemorating the second heir's death.
"The people there are crazy," Caroline voiced out. "Those young people went there— and the people knew something might happen to them but they didn't even warn them not to go."
They were necessary sacrifices, the people thought. The house demanded blood and they couldn't do anything about it nor they would do anything to prevent it.
"But why did they ask me to go there? I mean I'm not twenty-one years old," Jessica wondered out loud.
"Maybe it was fate," Sam answered. "Caro, the people might be irrational and are to blame. But then again, there might be some reason why this is happening."
"What do you mean?"
"Look at the deaths; they are very similar only to Jehan, right? What about Johann? Why isn't there any news about him? The rumor said that Julian mentioned his brothers, so why was it that the unusual things that happened there were related only to Jehan?"
That’s right. All the deaths every twenty-one years were similar to how Jehan de Lancret died.
- Writer
