Vicar watched as Winn ceased her tears and dissolved into the walls, her figure rippling out of sight. The headache from the whiskey was gone, as well. Perhaps they'd been connected, Vicar wasn't terribly certain. Now wasn't the best time to sort out whether his visions were a result of an isolated alcoholic stupour (as he hardly ever drank), pure madness, or actual evidence of ghosts.

Was it a good time for anything anymore?

Feeling nihilistic now, Vicar stood, paced about the room. His head ached terribly. Why couldn't he have just hidden in the attic until all of this passed away? How he wished he could have gone back to the times before Gaston was dead, before his library and job were burnt to cinders, before his father had ejected him from the house. Thinking on this, however, only reminded Vicar that there had never been a time his father hadn't visibly despised him, and thus, there was no place in the history of his life he could have gone back to in order to escape the fear his father struck in him.

Fear, that was it. Vicar had never considered that his father inspired fear, but that seemed a good reason for everything Vicar had done since. Fleeing the country was surely inspired by such a strong emotion.

Vicar sat back on the bed. He ran his hands over the wooden boards holding the mattress up. Long ago, Winnifred had lain here, isolated and removed from any hope of friends and family, bound by the sinister hands of the doctor who appeared so mysteriously in her life. To see the bed and the walls and the window, exactly as he had when reading Winn's account, filled him with a most uncomfortable sensation, and he soon turned his gaze back to Gaston's memo book, if only to escape the peculiar feeling.

The memo book was barely the size of his hand. Wondering why Gaston had been in here and how nobody had thought to look in the cold room for any of the late Andrews brother's things, Vicar flipped the book open and thumbed through a few pages. He turned the book over, stalling for a reason he couldn't ascertain.

Sighing and giving the window one last look, Vicar at last resigned himself to inspecting the mysteries that lay within the book. At first, nothing revealed itself. All was as normal as a collection of random notes ought to have been. Gaston's initials marked the end of each segment, all of which appeared related to the various rooms in the house. Beginning to lose hope that this meant anything at all, Vicar made to give up and throw the book across the room, but the very second he made to close the book, he spotted a name that gave him immediate pause.

Radcliffe. It was written in large, bold letters across a single page, underlined and written over until the page was pressed far enough in to damage the previous pages. Vicar didn't know what it meant.

Was Gaston's death somehow connected to the name of the doctor who tormented Winnifred and her friend? There was no other option in his eyes, none at all, for the appearance of the name. Heart pounding, Vicar looked to the previous page for an answer.

    Oct. 1 - Attempted transfusion. Nasty side effects.

    Oct. 6 - Gave in and called doctor. Father would have been annoyed. Vile headache.

    Oct. 8 - Doctor's arrived. Strange bloke.

    Oct. 15 - Feeling worse. Asked around about the doctor. Radcliffe doesn't belong to anybody around here. Igor's hardly a local name.

    Oct. 17 - Doctor doesn't like me asking questions. More medicine.

    Nov. 10 - Very weak. Placed my findings in the latter half. No longer suspect I'll make it past the month. Mustn't let Radcliffe in.

The notes ended there, but what Vicar felt instead of anticipation for the end of the brief story the page told was a nasty, sinking sensation in his gut. If this log of events was to be believed, and the memory of Gaston's demise had been preserved, then Vicar felt he knew exactly how Winn had become an apparition in his house.

Everyone knew Gaston was an eccentric, and odd creature in the machine of God's usually perfect beings. If perfect was war-driven and obsessed with sex, money, and all manner of chemical inhibitors, that is. Having never entertained a lover or any real need to leave his own room, the elder Andrews brother maintained his friendships over the post, and found his own stimulation in the experiments he conducted. Some days, he studied the strength of the human body, or perhaps the various ways it could be manipulated for beneficial means. This was likely what he had been working on during the final days of his life, and quite assuredly why his death had been a laughing matter when Vicar heard the news. Of course, had he known that the doctor was anywhere near Gaston, the laughter would have turned to a violent and terrible fear.

With only a month to live after meeting with the strange Dr. Radcliffe, Vicar suspected Winn's journal would cut itself off rather shortly in the coming entries.

Still, this whole nasty business gave him pause. He flipped back to the page, reread the words over and over. It really couldn't be, that this was the same doctor. How unlikely was it, that the very same person could have been present both in 1885 and 1985? It was ludicrous. Utterly, completely, wholly insane. So foolish was the idea that the same doctor who killed his brother (should the memo truly tell of that fate) the very same who'd silently murdered Evie Thomas' mother and then forced her hand into marriage that Vicar laughed aloud, a stuttered and broken laugh that sounded harsh in the stiffness of the room.

The laugh cut off suddenly. He saw Amelia's bright face for a moment and the group of obsessed men she'd surrounded herself with. Was their goal in studying not to discover the solution for preserving life? No, not preservation, but resurrection. They wanted life to come back, souls or bodies or whatever one wanted to call it to return to the miserable mortal world Vicar desperately wanted out of. Had they somehow found the answer? Well, that made no sense - the peculiar monster that was Igor Radcliffe had nothing to do with his library or the students that inhabited it. The Latin group lived in the bright and lively New York, the spur of better pursuits urging them onward in their budding lives. What oppourtunity would they have had to meet or fall under the spell of the doctor?

A sound filtered up through the floor. Vicar winced; he'd forgotten that there were others in the house, or that he wanted to avoid them as much as possible. Had any of his outbursts given up his location? He waited with a wobbling breath.

The sound shifted, creaked up the stairs by the attic where he had previously hid. Releasing his breath, Vicar smiled nervously to himself. How fortunate was he, to relocate to a room none of the funeral guests would think to look! One of the cousins, no doubt, was knocking at the attic door now. Her soft voice carried across the empty halls like a chill wind. Vicar shivered and hunched himself into the bed before turning his attention back to the small book.

After the last entry and the thick scribblings of Radcliffe, there was quite a long break before the next entry. What a curious journal! Gaston hardly wrote more than a handful of words per entry, but this hardly detracted from the importance of what he jotted down.

On the tenth day of November, Gaston had declared his supposed timeline. On the fifteenth day, he'd set about writing letters to all of the friends that could be trusted to research his symptoms. He would not go willingly into death, it seemed, and this filled Vicar with a wet-eyed sense of pride for his brother. How he wished he'd known of the truth of his brother's failing condition sooner! Wiping his eyes, Vicar squinted at the blurring words and discovered that Gaston had begun hearing noises in the upstairs hall.

    Nov. 16 - Peculiar cold in room above mine. No occupants there in recent years. Radcliffe keeps locked. Must find a way in.

    Nov. 17 - Sickness spread to bones. Broke ankle up stairs. Radcliffe angriest I've seen. Must write to Vicar - he cannot come home.

    Nov. 19 - Snapped wrist rolling out of bed. I've hid from doctor; will try stairs again tonight. Cold has grown stronger.

    Nov. 20 - Unscrewed lock on cold room; window wide open. Only a desk; managed to find a journal. Cold left after I took it.

    Nov. 22 - Running out of time. Must give this to Vicar before he arrives. Do not let Radcliffe in.

    Nov. 26 - Hiding journal in attic; we are not the only ones the doctor has visited. The ghost will not let me sleep.

    Nov. 30 - Vicar arrives tomorrow. Radcliffe left in preparation. He will not leave house until we are all dead. Ghost has been weeping at my bedside. Will never see Vicar again.

The final entry had no date, but Vicar could only suspect with a breaking heart that it was the last thing Gaston had ever written. It was brief, but possessed all of the terror of his final days in a matter of words. Cut hand on paper - no blood. The last will be gone by the funeral. It was a grim finale to Gaton's life, and gave Vicar a worrying sense that he was facing something much more sinister than a doctor with a penchant for isolating family members.

With this realisation at hand, Vicar gasped through the alcohol as he realised the funeral had been today, and Vicar hadn't actually seen his brother since returning to England. Gaston had invited him back home with open arms, that was true, had given him his old rooms back, but he'd been dead the very day Vicar returned to the miserable Andrews home.

"I could have intervened," he said numbly. "I could have seen the doctor, discovered a way to remove Gaston from the house... I could have saved him."

Despite the gravity of the words, Vicar couldn't feel them just yet. He stood and moved to the window. The black lace of the curtain lay limply over his shoulders as he ducked under its feeble cover. Before him, all of the surrounding homes had created a half-circle of untouched land. In the distance, Vicar could just make out the scar in the ground where the river might have once trailed away to safer places. Now, only the thinnest trickle of water trudged along in the night. The moon had been obscured by a sudden rush of clouds. Everything was cast in a moody gray glow, conscious of the light that struggled to overcome it.

Leaning against the grimy pane, Vicar slurred to the expanse of what was once a great estate. "I could have saved him." The words seemed to echo, and he looked behind him to see if the room had somehow closed into a fitting prison. What he saw instead was Winn. Her hair fluttered in an unseen breeze; her cheeks shone with translucent tears. She had been mimicking Vicar's words, wringing her hands and repeating what no doubt haunted her throughout the last of her distressed life.

"I suppose I ought to find out what happened to you, eh?" The apparition appeared incapable of communicating directly, but at least Winn had been able to make contact with Gaston before it was too late. As he looked on at what had become of this once-vibrant soul and no doubt his brother, Vicar suspected he should pick up where Winn's harrowing tale ended, and perhaps learn what would become of him if he was foolish enough to stay in the house.