Session 38: What Do You Mean You Don't Speak Latin?

Mid-winter fog clung to the iron gates of Charenton Asylum, turning every lantern’s glow into a jaundiced smear. Long after respectable Paris had surrendered to sleep, the investigators slipped once more inside—five lonely silhouettes trailing Nurse Paul Mandrin, whose pockets now jingled with freshly procured wine money. Mandrin’s cigarette ember pulsed like a nervous heartbeat while he ushered them through silent corridors toward the administrative records hall.

Beyond a warped wooden door waited an archive vast as any ossuary, row upon row of filing cabinets exhaling the odour of dust, wax, and ancient paper. Per Oskarson’s gloved fingers skimmed rusting drawer-casts in search of Fenalik’s trail, yet centuries of loose documents lay heaped in mad profusion: admission slips from the July Monarchy wedged beside Napoleonic death ledgers, ink faded to the colour of dried rose petals. With Arthur Zorba misreading every curlicued date as a street address and Viola Sutcliffe scattering folders in hopeful desperation, the effort soon collapsed beneath its own entropy. The monstrous past had buried its secrets well.

Accepting defeat, they followed Mandrin toward the asylum’s private wing. Here the walls gleamed in fresh paint; vases of cut lilies masked the colder scents of chloride and age. But Delplace’s treatment chamber—its transom glass still starred from some forgotten impact—broke the illusion of comfort at once.

Within sat a chrome-trimmed chair crowned by a wreath of leather straps and dangling electrodes. Walter Lake crossed himself as Claire Corning knelt to study the apparatus. She saw at once the story etched into copper and char: insulation melted, wires blister-black, the fuse bypassed by raw wire. Someone had driven a river of current through the machine, far beyond humane intent.

Arthur’s soldier’s eye traced scraped floorboards and overturned stools, then fixed upon the sheared bolts where restraints once anchored. No blade had sliced those straps; they had been torn away—ripped clean by will or frenzy no human muscle could muster. A scorch mark licked the back of Delplace’s physician’s chair, final witness to whatever convulsion unfolded here a week before.

Per voiced the thought all had dreaded to name: the unknown patient Delplace sought to awaken had broken free, empowered—or perhaps sustained—by the very lightning meant to cure him. As Mandrin swallowed hard, the dull tip of his cigarette trembled. Moments later he pressed a brass key into Arthur’s palm and fled, vowing never to set foot inside Charenton again.

Alone now, the investigators descended to the morgue. Ten metal drawers waited in the chilled gloom; only two contained the sleep of ordinary deaths. Ledger lines recorded Delplace’s own body arriving at dawn and departing before noon for discreet burial—but nowhere did an unidentified corpse appear. The stranger had left no husk behind.

Upstairs, Viola’s lock picks whispered against the door of the acting director, Leroux. Inside his tidy study they found a journal entry penned with calm finality: Delplace, electrocuted by misadventure; no police summoned for fear of scandal. Not a syllable about the man without a name. In crumpled boxes outside, Delplace’s papers yielded one marginal scrawl—“inconnu” scratched beside a private-wing room number, since scrubbed clean and re-dressed for the next paying invalid.

The investigators exchanged weary glances. Somewhere beyond these walls a being of prodigious strength and uncertain design now walked Parisian streets, fragment of a deeper centuries-old horror still unfolding. Yet nothing more could be unearthed before dawn. They quit the asylum and sought the hollow refuge of their hotel.

Sleep offered no mercy.

Claire Corning woke to a breath of January air and saw mist boiling across her ceiling, coiling downward in silent tendrils. From its centre formed the outline of a man stretched thin by starvation, parchment skin hugging every rib, hands ending in nails that curved like sickles. Twin eye-sockets glimmered with a cold mirth as it whispered through lips long since desiccated:

Invenies reliqua, et te remunerabo, aliter animam tuam ruminarabo.

Find the remaining pieces, and I shall reward you, else I shall ruminate upon your soul.

The thing’s talon traced the length of Claire’s bare forearm, an icy line of promised ruin. She flung an ashtray; metal passed harmlessly through swirling vapour. The apparition chuckled—a sound like dry leaves underfoot—and the mist streamed out through the open casement, leaving only the echo of forbidden Latin and the taste of old graves in the room.

Somewhere in the labyrinth of Parisian alleys, the stranger—and whatever force now spoke through him—gathered its strength. And in the predawn hush, each investigator lay awake, listening for the scrape of claws upon the threshold, knowing that Charenton’s secrets had slipped the leash of stone walls and locked ledgers to hunt beneath an unsuspecting sky.