Leavitt Stafford and the Awful, Terrible, Not Very Nice Plan.

Chapter the Thirty-Sixth: The Miasma

Content warning: vivid imagery of corpses decomposing

The neighbour of Dr. Rupert Stephens, a certain Mrs. Cheltenham, did not much care for the cantankerous man. Day after day, the buffoon would scream imprecations at her whenever her hound, Ada, would bark at the postman, and he would never listen whenever she told him that she tried her very best to silence the cur. The pompous fool was beyond reason. Mrs. Cheltenham wondered how he possessed the audacity to declare that he was a god-fearing man when he would behave in such a ghastly manner. Surely the only appropriate place for this dreadful man was Hell!

Mrs. Cheltenham had, in recent days, noticed that there was a peculiar absence of shouting emerging from the household. She thought to herself that perhaps the man had finally been felled by a heart attack. Though she was not one to celebrate the death of her fellow man, and though she ordinarily condemned such behaviour, she thought, "Good riddance," to herself, and she continued about her day, pleased that the man of medicine was not going to terrorise her for the raucous nature of her hound, or for any other matter beyond her control.

One week after the final bout of incomprehensible shouting she had heard emerging from the household, Mrs. Cheltenham began to grow worried. This was not a result of the absence of Dr. Stephens... for where was the maid? Every day, the maid would dash about her errands, but Mrs. Cheltenham had neither seen nor heard anything of her in a week. This may not have been a mere heart attack. If the maid had not emerged from the house within a week... could this have been a murder? Perhaps that explained why the curtains had remained closed for an entire week, unless Dr. Stephens had somehow known that he would meet his demise shortly due to some other reason, perhaps a dreadful illness of some sort.

Mrs. Cheltenham made her way towards the household, making herself appear purposeful so as to not arouse suspicion, and she knocked on the door. No response. Several crows soared through the overcast skies, their harsh caws causing the clouds to cover their fleecy ears. Something was most certainly amiss...

Into the back garden Mrs. Cheltenham crept. As was the case with the front garden, the grass was growing slightly unkempt. The maid would have never allowed this to happen; she was very particular about how things appeared, though this was likely a result of Dr. Stephens' insistence on perfection.

Mrs. Cheltenham, on a whim, looked about for an entrance to the household. Within moments, she had noticed an open window. Towards the open window she dashed. She did not even so much as looking about her surroundings to ensure that nobody would spy her and consider this behaviour suspicious, but alas, through the window she tossed herself. She tumbled into the closed curtains spectacularly.

Within moments, she noticed a dreadful stench, a stench which was dreadful enough to cause her to gag. She was not sure she wished to continue this search. Her legs, however, carried her across the corridor and towards the source of the foul odour. Through the gloom of the house, the chandeliers having long since burnt to nothingness, she discerned nothing but shadows. She feared she would find herself tripping over a corpse cloaked in this darkness.

The stench was growing more and more potent. Even as Mrs. Cheltenham held her nose, she could taste the rancid bitterness of the air. She feared this miasma would cause her disease. If it would cause her disease, however, there was nothing she could to to prevent it by this point, and so she plunged herself into the midst of the darkness.

Nothing could have prepared Mrs. Cheltenham for the sight she witnessed once she had turned the first corner. There, upon the ground, was the maid, drenched in a puddle of fetid blood which had then dried out and encrusted her hair and torso. Maggots began to bury their way into her countenance, tainting it with a putrid darkening, and giving it a texture more ghastly than the bubonic plague. Her stomach seemed to have burst open, soaking her dress and causing her innards to bulge against it. From every cavity, a rotten soup of bloodied disease seemed to leak forth. Mrs. Cheltenham fought the urge to scream. Vomit was rising quickly, attempting to rid her body of the miasma which she believed to be inhaling in copious amounts, but no amount of vomit could rid the air of the overpowering malodour of this horrifying sight.