Vindicta: The Story of a Vengeful Spirit

Chapter VII

"Madam, have you considered that your daughter's mad spells may have been the cause and not just a correlated event?" Dr. Letum asked.

Lady Banquesta almost felt insulted—of course she had considered that. It seemed as if most doctors nowadays gave the most useless advice. She wanted to scream at the doctor as she did the last one, but Dr. Letum seemed to be the only one that she could hire as the rest seemed strangely unwilling to work for the Banquesta household.

"Yes," she replied calmly, "I have considered that this may be the case. Bella had a lot going on lately, and the case of what exactly motivated her to perform such actions was not yet solved."

"Have you heard the theory that hysteria may be contagious?" the doctor asked.

"What does this have to do with anything?" Lady Banquesta snapped. "I asked you to fix my maid and now you're quizzing me on my physiology knowledge?"

"Madame," Dr. Letum said defensively. "In this field we must make sure that family members or caregivers of out patients recognize signs and are able to identify the causes of the illness and—"

Without letting him finish, Lady Banquesta rose and left, muttering. If only she dug a little deeper, she would have known that there was never a proven theory that hysteria is contagious. She would also have known that letum means death and ruin in Latin.

...

It was almost like when Dolores had her mad spells when Bella was curled up in the corner of her bed sobbing and wailing. Except with her, it was not just an act. Waves of hallucinations and delirium hit Bella like a truck—hard and abrupt. It was just as Dolores had claimed: the image of Mona burned into her retinas as if it were a scene that she herself had witnessed.

"She was telling the truth," Bella muttered repeatedly, "she was not mad! Dolores! I believe you!" And the onlookers would stare at the woman in pity, shake their heads, and walk away. Dolores also thought that Vindicta may have gone slightly too far, but when she asked the spirit, she was told that there was no turning back at this point of madness.

Multiple times Bella tried to do unnamable deeds, either in a mad daze or purposefully, and although Dolores stopped her all the time, the young mistress figured that it was only a matter of time before her maid would actually succeed. The most recent attempt was when Bella shattered a drinking glass and attempted to harm herself with the pieces.

Presently, Dolores opened the door to check on her maid. It had become one of her daily routines to prevent Bella from taking herself out. It was not that the life of that maid mattered, but Dolores figured taking on this duty could reinforce her reputation as a little angel, and anything else happening in this place may arouse suspicions.

Bella was still there, sitting on the chair in the corner of her room, staring into space and rocking herself back and forth. She paid no attention to Dolores when the door opened, as if she couldn't see anything at all. Sometimes, Bella would pitifully whimper and mutter something under her breath, but other than that, she stayed silent and stared into space.

After checking up on her, Dolores silently closed the door and was about to head back into her room when she heard two other maids whispering about something that she found very interesting.

"I'm thinking of quitting," said the first maid, whom Dolores remembered as Sarah. "This place is cursed."

The second maid, Tina, nodded in agreement. "First Mona, then Dolores, then Bella. And we don't even know what happened to Mona!"

"Have you heard?" Sarah asked. "Master Banquesta may be coming home."

"What? When? For how long?"

"I heard that he will be coming in a week, but I don't know how long he would be staying; he comes and goes, you know."

"This is such a bad time for him to visit," Tina mused. "With the death of Mona and the sudden madness of Bella, there wouldn't even be someone to organize his homecoming party!"
"I agree, but I heard the only reason that he would return was to attend Mona's funeral."

The maids both shook their heads simultaneously in a sad manner, then went back to their duties. Dolores, however, was ecstatic. This was the perfect time to finish her plan and let Vindicta have what she wanted. They could take away everything that belonged to her father right in front of his eyes, and she could also wipe off Bella then. At this thought she heard the infuriating sound of her mother calling her name. She bounded toward it, almost skipping.

"You know your father will be returning next week from his business trip," Lady Banquesta said, not looking at her daughter in a rude way that Dolores was already used to.

Jonathan Banquesta, whom many would call Master Banquesta, was always on some "business trip", and Dolores spent most of her life without him around. When she was younger, she used to be saddened by this, before she realized that the "business trips" were just affairs at which point she became disgusted.

Her mother sent her out of the room after she spoke, and returning to her room, Dolores heard commotion coming from downstairs.

Bella's room.

She rushed down the stairs as fast as she could, pushing through the crowd of some other maids to enter the room, only to find it empty. For a moment, she felt a sting of panic in her stomach, another plan that would come to fail, and she was almost out of them, but she forced that feeling down.

A window was left open—how stupid had that been—and when she leaned through that window and looked down, she could see a dark patch on the grass below, with a rough outline of a body.