The Inabilities of The Heart

Chapter One

The Inabilities of The Heart

Chapter One

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~two hundred years later~

"Alright, kids. Go and get used to the new house. You father and I have some errands to run." Mrs. Carstle told her two children, Andy and Tessa.

"Right. Bye mom!" Tessa waved at her parents as they drove away.

"I CALL DIBS ON THE BIGGER BEDROOM, DON'T YOU DARE DENY IT!" Tessa immediately shouted and ran past her older brother, into the gigantic Carstle manor.

Andy didn't care. He liked smaller spaces, anyway. His fifteen-year-old sister, however, needed all the space to fit her huge personality. (Not that it was a bad thing.)

While Tessa was upstairs unpacking in the Carstle family's new home, Andy decided to do as his mother had suggested and explore the whole entire home.

And so he did.

It was stunningly glorious. A four acre, grassy backyard, three gardens just waiting to be full of plants, and, there were four stories to the whole entire house, not including the cellars.

The cellars.

Andy at last found the door to it. His mother had warned both him and Tessa, to not go down there... claiming it was dangerous...

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"Your great-great-great grandfather was a man named Dr. Andrew Carstle. Yes, Andy, you were named after him. And Tessa, you were named after his wife, Theresa. Well, Dr. Carstle was a bit insane. He was always trying crazy new things. In Madam Theresa Carstle's old diary entries, she describes that he was able to create something much like a television screening once. Anyway, his experiments and projects began to get out of hand. He would be sneaking out late at night, claiming it was for the sake of one of his little "experiments." He kept the door to his laboratories constantly locked as well. But one late evening, Theresa picked the lock, and went downstairs to the cellar, where she found human body parts and clockwork pieces, all ticking madly. And she found some manuscripts written down in some old, unknown language. Theresa screamed and fled back up the stairs, but remembered to re-lock the doors behind her. And then several weeks later, she left Dr. Andrew Carstle. She went to the police and told them of the Doctor's witchcraft. He was arrested and hung. Theresa was several weeks pregnant at the time though, so yes, you are definitely descendants of a possibly insane scientist. No one has any idea what happened down in that laboratory though... And no one dares go down... Tessa, Andy, listen to me right now: do not "accidentally" venture off into the cellars of the new house at all costs, do you hear me?"

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Andy had nodded his head in agreement, but only paid half of his attention to what his mother said. He was intrigued by this, greatly. Andy always had an interest in "dark" things. Horror films, dark forests, Edgar Allen Poe's writing, hauntingly beautiful music... You name it, Andy was interested in it. Which was part of the reason the family had moved- he was constantly bullied, due to how he dressed in all black, dyed his hair black, and his interests.

Andy was a brooding poet, and needed inspiration. He set off down the creaking, dark stairways. When he reached the bottom, he noticed something strange, which caused him to drop his iPhone on the cement ground. (He had been using it to light his way in the dark.)

Written on the walls, was something in glowing light- he couldn't tell what it was, the language was foreign. But these were words, no doubt. Words. Words that glowed like fire. Words that burned when one brought up one's hand to it. Words that lit up the whole bottom cellar room.

Words, written where no one had set foot in over two hundred years.

And, despite the fact that no one had set foot in the room in over two hundred years, everything was intact. No part of the wooden walls had rotted through, mysterious liquids in containers and flasks still bubbled vividly, and not a speck of dust covered anywhere in the room at all.

And in the center of it all, was a table. Covered in a white sheet.

Something was under it, that was for sure. Andy drew off the sheet.

All he saw was a body, which he deduced was female, due to the fact that it was wearing a white and black wedding-style gown, and had brown curls which stuck out from under the veil which covered its face.

Andy immediately pulled the veil off of the figure's face.

He observed it closely for ten seconds. Black lips. Stitched face. No breath emanating from the nostrils. Obviously it was a dead body. But, there were cogs at the arms and a ticking noise, like clockwork, where the heart was. Parts of the body were automaton, parts of it were dead.

But everything else, except for parts of the young woman lain on the table, were kept intact.

Andy thought for a moment, then had an epiphany. He realized, that as repulsive as it sounded, someone had taken dead, female body parts, and conjoined them with cogs and springs, so it resembled a real body. Ah! This must've been the experiment his great-great-great grandfather had been working on, that caused his wife to leave him! The one Andy's mother had warned him about.

Andy realized he had been holding his breath for the past two minutes, and sharply let out a puff of air, which came it into contact with the... Thing's face.

It's eyes flashed open, followed by multiple whir-click noises, and the creature sitting up.

Its arms hung at odd angles, and its neck and upper body turned strangely.

"Doctor!" The creature reached its arms out towards Andy.