Hell's Eyes

HELL'S EYES

few yards down the hall where he lay. “Don’t move. I’ve sent Postmaster Reginald for Mr. Basil.” “It was here,” he cried wetly, “the creature.” The words were more of a low hiss compared to the wild hysteria in his eyes, but Elsie understood the urgency Mr. Noblémyn had intended them to have. “Are you certain it wasn’t just a trick of the light?” she asked softly. Pity rose in her throat. After such an ordeal, still, all he could think of was the wretched hound he’d drawn over and over again. Perhaps Mr. Noblémyn was truly descending into madness. “Hel...hellhound,” he slurred, his eyes falling shut once more. Elsie started panicking once more. “Mr. Noblémyn, I need you to stay awake, please!” “Has he come round then, Miss Hyacinth?” The assured voice of the town’s herbalist came from behind her. “Uh, yes? Well, he was,” Elsie tried to explain, but it was too late. Mr. Noblémyn had succumbed to the darkness again. “Hm,” Mr. Basil muttered something under his breath. “Did he say anything before falling unconscious again?” Elsie thought back to the moment just before Mr. Basil and Post master Reginald returned. Furrowing her brows, she tried to decipher the mumbled words and make sense of them for herself. “He said something about a creature—a…a ‘hellhound,’ I believe?” “A hellhound? I’ve never heard of such a thing, have you, Mr. Basil?” Mr. Basil remained silent, wracking his brain for a moment as he paused in his examination of Mr. Noblémyn. His heart rate was elevated, his breathing still slightly erratic and not like one at rest but more like one who had just undergone some serious shock or rigorous activity. “For how long has Mr. Noblémyn been talking of such a creature?” Several possibilities came to Mr. Basil’s mind, a few of which he was confident he could cure and a select handful of which he wasn’t altogether certain there was a cure for.

15