Castle of the Damned | ✔

Chapter 11: The Metamorphosis of Thomas Lacroix

Heat and darkness permeated the night, and Odessa Renard was getting increasingly uncomfortable where she sat.

While the world cooled down past one in the morning, the summer days grew increasingly warmer regardless, and the black, thick clothes Dess wore made her feel like she'd been trapped in an oven. It made staying still and quiet in the bushes outside Thomas Lacroix's castle harder than she wanted it to be. But if she took some layers off now, Lacroix would see her movements and storm out screaming he'd skin her alive again. A situation like that had to be avoided at all costs.

Dess had a good feeling about tonight, though.

She'd spied on Thomas Lacroix for months now. So much time spent sneaking around his property like a shadow, a ninja, a veritable master of stealth. The cover of night always aided her in that endeavour. The castle itself had a couple large windows, giving her excellent opportunities to study and observe.

She'd learnt a great deal about the castle's young millionaire owner that way.

He picked his nose when he thought no one saw him. He talked to himself occasionally. He had a certain fondness for Asian foods and dishes she hadn't tried even once in her life.

And sometimes he disappeared.

There was a subtlety to those disappearances; nobody would notice unless they'd subjected the man to systematic observation and critical scrutiny. Of course, discrepancies didn't creep into Lacroix's evening routine every night Dess was present. After dinner, he usually made phone calls, probably work-related, and in the quieter hours, he'd sit with a book or his laptop before going to sleep.

Sometimes, though, he went upstairs. To watch TV, Dess wanted to believe. But if she was honest with herself, she didn't buy it.

He had to be doing something else.

Dess couldn't say she knew Thomas Lacroix, but she'd been familiar enough with him as a person. When he'd first come to Saint-Vincent-en-montagne, he'd visited Madame Gauthier's bakery almost every day. He'd been a pleasant customer: cheerful in a subdued way, never loud, but always in a good mood and down for small talk. Small talk wasn't even close to Dess' area of expertise, but Lacroix's air of calm amusement had made it bearable. And during one early morning conversation, she remembered, the man had mentioned he hardly used his TV.

So what did he do on those nights where he didn't show his face for hours on end? Where did he go when he made his way upstairs at eleven in the evening, only to come back down and turn the lights off a good three hours later? Dess had seen a figure move away from the property on one of those nights, unaware of her presence. Though she'd only seen that person from a great distance, she'd thought it had looked like Thomas Lacroix. Had he left the castle? To do what? And how could he have left when his castle's only entrance was the front door, the one Dess had had her eyes on ever since he'd gone upstairs and out of her sight?

Something wasn't adding up and Dess knew it. Lacroix's strange disappearances only strengthened her idea that something was very, very wrong. The past and the present, the stories and the deaths...

The legends did say disaster always came for Saint-Vincent when someone lived within the castle's walls.

L'histoire est vouée à se répèter.

But she couldn't be sure. Stories were stories and they didn't prove the castle was a wicked place, or Thomas Lacroix a wicked man. Suspicion alone didn't have any substance to it. Dess couldn't accuse Lacroix of anything major before she found a way to confirm her theories. But if history was indeed repeating itself, she'd find proof of it in Maddison's journal.