Nightmares of Winter Dreaming

Prologue (Or Rather, the Beginning of Bad Things to Come)-5

After a bit of persuading (and plenty of manipulations with her red pouch charm), Dr. Fimkins left them alone. The first thing Flit did was to make sure the door to the yet-to-be-ready exhibition room was properly locked.

"What the f**k was all that about?" asked Flit, as she gripped the key tightly in her hand.

"You know what it is." Byrd had regained his composure.

"No, I don't!"

"Flit, you felt the vestigial pain and anguish. The unspeakable horrors."

She looked away to the far end of the corridor. Downstairs, people were happily moving about in awe and fascination. Museums tended to do that to some people.

Byrd continued, "There were two new cases, you said?"

"Housewife shopping in Marylebone and a cab driver in Vauxhall," her voice quivered. "Haemorrhaging from mysterious scratch marks all over their backs. No obvious causes. No apparent connections between the two."

"And victim number one?"

"He's alright, doctors patched him up and just had him discharged." Flit looked worryingly at the door. "That's a lot of pain in there. You think it leaked out, formed into ...”, she paused. “... formed into something else altogether and is now running wild in the streets of London?"

"Continuing to leak." Byrd corrected her. "It's a source of very dark vestigial energy."

"You sound like the bloody narrator of a Ghost Hunter podcast." She stopped. The dead were now talking to them, in a manner of speaking. They both felt the sudden stirring from behind the locked door. Vestigial energy crackling together and weaving in and out of each other.

“It’s an infection ...," Byrd gasped. “Don't move.”

She felt it - profound suffering, and deep inside herself, sadness. She felt like weeping. She wanted to know more.

Unseen, each of the objects carefully arranged inside the room seemed to broadcast unspoken words and messages meant to be felt rather than heard. They compelled and beckoned.

She took a step forward, glassy-eyed and mute.

"Flit, no!"

It was too late. Flit unlocked the door and stepped into the darkened room, receptive and waiting for energies long dead to speak to her.

She wanted to hear their stories. She needed to: nothing else mattered.