The Vault

16.

That was the last straw.

The sight of Caleb in a strange, trance-like state while muttering maniacally to the wall was too much, and once Officer Hennings had restrained him, Alice headed straight to her room and packed her things.

Something was seriously wrong with that vault, but she did not care to find out, it had already taken too much from her.

It was fortunate that Hennings was so much stronger than the doctor, because he had to use every bit of that extra strength to drag him up those spiralling steps while he was kicking and screaming.

Slamming down to the muddy corridor floor, Caleb struggled and squirmed with his hands tied.

"I need to be in that vault!" He yelled incessantly, as if he was possessed, but it was on deaf ears, Alice had already gone straight upstairs in fear, and Officer Hennings, had no sympathy.

Grabbing the cuffs shackled to the doctor's wrists, Hennings hauled him up off the floor causing the metal to cut sharply into his gentlemanly wrists.

Throwing him over his shoulders, Hennings battled his way down the corridor and outside, before slinging the doctor into the back of his wagon. Usually the correct procedure would be to bag the criminal's head, but he would take extra delight by letting the whole village see that nobleman Caleb Kelston had been arrested.

As he jumped up into the driver's seat, Alice quickly scampered outside.

"Please, take me to town with you," Alice panted as she gripped a shoddily stuffed, overflowing suitcase.

"Don't you want to stay here? We'll be back to start searching for your father," Hennings said bluntly, forgetting she had even been in the house.

"My father is dead, I saw it clear as day. I will not stay another moment in this place, there is something sinister inside it." Alice answered.

Hennings shrugged in reply, he didn't really care, he'd got his man and if she was happy to leave it, then he was happy to avoid spending hundreds of hours searching the vast woods. "I think you two have been reading too many of those fantasy books," Hennings replied. "Come on then, get up."

She was used to being helped up and escorted everywhere by gentlemen, but this man was far from that. Throwing her case up into the front seats, she did her best to clamber up the shabby, mouldy, wooden steps.

Hennings shouted as he cracked the whip on his horse causing the birds spying from the trees around them to scarper in a panicked-frenzy.

Alice took one look back at the tall, gloomy raise of Templeton Manor that was loomed over them in the distance. The sky behind it had begun fading into a dull, dusk, navy-blue night, that matched the suffocating tranquillity of the opening in the woods. It was totally silent apart from the quiet, incoherent whisperings from the doctor who was hunched in the back corner of the cart.

She furrowed her brow in concern before turning back. It was as if he didn't notice she was even there.

Riding through the village, Hennings made sure to make as much noise as he could to gain the attention of passers-by. From loud shouts of "H-yah!" as he noisily, and needlessly cracked the whip on the poor horse, to more blatant, "Make way, police coming through!" cries, by the time they had made it to the station, the whole village had followed them to see young Caleb Kelston hurled from the back and into the mud.

Regally stepping down from the front, Alice pulled her dress up to avoid it getting covered, and hastily went to leave, but a strong arm pulled her back by the wrist.