The Exorcist Doctor

Having decided to at least hear the children out, Vivi and Jin followed all of them farther east through Wraithpier.

This was a part of Wraithpier Vivi hadn’t seen before. The crowded fish markets thinned out first, and then the shouting followed. Fewer fishmongers leaned over canal railings calling prices, and fewer boats drifted through the waterways carrying crates packed with ice and twitching catches. Even the bridges became narrower and less maintained—relatively less maintained, at least—which told Vivi this district was one of two things: either it was a cemetery district where people came to die, or it was just a normal residential district.

She was leaning more towards the latter, though. Wraithpier seemed the kind of ward to just dump its dead into the water.

Squat houses leaned and sagged over the canals, their walls patched with sailcloth, rusted plates, and old sections of boats. A few families had carved doorways directly into the hulls of grounded vessels, turning them into cramped houses with nets hanging from their windows. Since the canals here were much narrower, only smaller rowing boats could pass through here, so children sat on the docks with their feet dangling just above the water, while older men repaired their nets in chatter. It was a much more ‘relaxed’ atmosphere this district had going on, which Vivi quickly grew to appreciate. The hustle and bustle of the main markets was fine, but not… ideal for her heart. And ears. And eyes.

Eventually, the children led them across a final bridge and onto a broad scrap-island surrounded by stagnant canals. A large building stood in the middle, set apart from the nearby houses by a collapsed fence and a yard overgrown with pale marsh weeds. Vivi might once have called it a manor if not for the crooked sign hanging over its entrance, where the faded outline of an apothecary bowl could still be seen beneath years of peeling paint.

The place had clearly been a clinic. Or at least, it’d tried to be one. The building was also wider than the homes around it, with three sagging floors and rows of cloudy windows facing the canals. Sections of the outer walls had rotted away and been replaced with more stitched sailcloth, while a broken balcony leaned above the entrance, supported by two wooden beams that looked suspiciously like ship masts. Rusted bells hung along the roofline, though none moved despite the wind.

Rebus—the oldest boy of the group, and the boy who’d held all the money at first—stopped at the front steps and turned around, staring at the two of them.

“This is our place.”

Vivi looked at Jin. Jin looked back at her, then gave one small nod.

They followed the children inside.

The main atrium that was probably once the clinic’s waiting hall was larger than Vivi expected, though much of the space had been filled with old mattresses, torn blankets, fishing baskets, and tables made from doors balanced over crates. Many faded anatomical drawings remained pinned on the furniture, their corners curled by moisture. The walls, as well, still held rows of empty medicine shelves, and rows of benches had been lifted, turned up onto their sides, and arranged into cone-shaped tents with cloths draped over the gaps for those who wanted their personal spaces. It was certainly no Heartcord Clinic’s prayer hall—and the leaky holes in the ceiling meant a Vile Eater wouldn’t sit here even if they could drag one here—but it still looked a cozier place than most.

I don’t think I’d mind living here.

… For long, of course.

But it was the children, and not the atrium, that made both Vivi and Jin stop in their tracks as they stepped in.

Dozens of them were scattered all over the place. Some played with carved fish bones around an overturned bucket. Others lounged against the walls, sharing scraps of bread or repairing torn sleeves with fishing lines. Three younger children slept together beneath a pile of old nets, their arms wrapped around one another for warmth, and near the center of the atrium, several boys had pried open sections of the wooden floorboards and dropped fishing lines directly into the canal beneath the building. Judging by the noisy, thrashing buckets beside them, they’d caught more than a few fish for an early lunch.

It’s… an orphanage?

A poor, broken, improvised orphanage, but an orphanage all the same.

The children who had led Vivi and Jin here scattered immediately. They were the older ones, so they started fussing over the younger kids, passing out bits of food, adjusting blankets, and whispering reassurance to those who looked wary by the new arrivals. Only Rebus remained before them.

“... What is this place?” Vivi asked softly.

Rebus rubbed one shoe against the floor. “This here's where all th'kids stay. Th'ones whose mums and dads got swallowed.”

Vivi looked around the atrium again. There had to be more than forty children here, perhaps fifty if some were upstairs in the more private rooms.

“Swallowed, you say?” she murmured.

Rebus swallowed. “This place… belonged to Miss Umbrage. “She was th’doctor ‘round here. Treated people who couldn’t pay much, and she let kids stay if they’d nowhere else t’drift. Me and some of th’older ones have been living here for ages, but…

“What happened to her?”

“She… caught somethin’,” Rebus said slowly. “Nasty fever. Seven months... nah, eight months ago, I think? She said she'd never seen anythin' like it, and none o' her medicines could kill it, so she sailed out to th'other wards lookin' for help from other doctors. She said she’d be back in a week or two, but… never did. ‘Twas like ‘poof’, and she just vanished. But she’d never do that to us. Never.”

Vivi and Jin exchanged a glance.

“We tried lookin’ for her ourselves, and we waited. Asked every soul what'd listen, but nobody'd seen hide nor hair o' her,” Rebus continued, tilting his head at the atrium behind him. “Clinic soon died without its doctor, but we stayed. Didn't have nowhere else t'berth. Then more little ones started driftin' in, said their mums an' dads vanished too, so... we kept 'em. Since then, we’ve been tryin’ t’find someone who can help us find her—and everyone else who went missin’—but nobody’d even give us some time outta their days. You’re the first.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Vivi’s chest tightened.

Most of the children looked exhausted. Their clothes were damp, their cheeks were thin, and several seemed to have eyes swollen from crying. A little girl clutched a man’s coat around her shoulders despite it being far too large for her in the corner of the atrium, and… for one, strange moment, Vivi thought of her old bedroom in Vharnveil.

She’d complained to her mother once that she couldn’t sleep because the winter curtains were the wrong shade of blue.

“... Listen,” she started gently. “There’s an orphanage down in Blightmarch called the Sallow Hearth. There are beds, gardens, teachers, and food for all of you. The air’s clean as well. If you go down there and tell the scary men in hand masks what’s going on, I’m sure they’ll—”

“Your teacher and all of their parents,” Jin interrupted bluntly, looking squarely at Rebus. “Were all of them sick before they disappeared?”

Rebus gulped. He looked nervous speaking before Jin, which Vivi understood. Jin was enormous, pensive, and currently staring at him with the same expression he used when inspecting a wall for structural weakness. Vivi instinctively felt like whacking Jin on the head, but Rebus only hesitated for another second before nodding.

“I… I think so. Most of ‘em had coughs and weak legs and bad lungs. Why?”

“All of them were probably taken by a bad, bad man called the Breeder,” Jin said plainly. “He kidnaps sick people and turns them into artificial Myrmur Hosts.”

“Like… the parasites?”

Jin knelt until he was at Rebus’ eye level. “It’s good you reached out to us, then. We’re working with some people to catch and kill the Breeder, and I sense none of you give a damn about going to some cushy orphanage while we do all the hard work figuring out where he is. In that case, what do you have for us to work with?”

For several seconds, Rebus only stared at Jin.

Then he spun around and ran, rushing from child to child, whispering urgently into their ears. Most of the children still looked at Vivi and Jin warily at first—they were strangers, after all, and armed strangers at that—but their eyes widened one by one as they heard what Rebus had to say, and suddenly, everyone was standing and running. They hurried into side rooms, crawled beneath their mattresses, opened their old cabinets, and climbed the stairs to the upper floors, as though they were… looking for something.

Lots of somethings.

Soon, the children returned carrying small cloth sacks, tin cups, muddy jars, and pouches stitched from pieces of net. They crowded around Vivi and Jin, shoving their money towards the two of them.

“You can have mine!” a boy shouted.

“Find my mum!” another boy shouted.

“My brother too!”

“My dad never came home!”

The voices collided until Vivi could barely understand them. Rebus pushed through the crowd last with a heavy sack held against his chest, and he was evidently struggling beneath its weight, but he refused to let anyone help him. When he reached Vivi, he held it toward her with shaking arms.

“This… is all… Miss Umbrage had,” he wheezed. “Please… help us find ‘em all.”

Vivi blinked down at the sack of coins.

So did Jin.

“... I don’t mean money, you brats,” Jin muttered. Then he whacked Rebus’ head, making the boy yelp and lean away. “I meant information. Do any of you know anything about a fat, old man in a lab coat? Do you have drawings or photographs of your parents? Did anyone leave notes? Patient records? Anything at all connected to the missing people that could help us find them?”

The children looked at one another. Most shook their heads. Poor families rarely owned portraits, after all. Vivi had grown up in a manor where every hallway contained paintings of relatives nobody liked, but here, a family might live and die without leaving a single image of their likeness behind.

Then Rebus’ face lifted.

“Ah! There’s… that!”

Several older children seemed to remember something at the exact same time, and without so much as another word, they all rushed upstairs to the second floor. Vivi and Jin waited while feet pounded overhead, doors opened, and something heavy scraped across the floor. Moments later, Rebus sprinted back down carrying a framed picture with two other children flanking him.

“We’ve got a picture!” he said, waving it towards them. “Miss Umbrage made us stand for one every half-year, whether we liked it or not. Said we'd wanna remember one day. Reckon... reckon this'll help you?”

Jin took the frame carefully, and Vivi frowned as she looked down at the picture beside him.

The image showed the clinic’s atrium in better days. The shelves were full, the walls weren’t full of holes, and dozens of children stood crowded around a seated woman in a physician’s coat. Rebus and the other children aside, the woman looked….

Familiar.

“Wait,” she murmured. “That’s…”

Gael squinted up at the picture as he lounged across the warehouse office’s sofa.

“... Yep. That’s the crazy ant lady I fought in Bleakhearth’s catacombs alright.” After another few seconds, he tossed the picture frame back at Vivi. She barely caught it, so it rebounded out of her hands and into Jin’s arms instead.

“I knew it,” she whispered, eyes widening as she turned to look at Gael. “I didn’t recognize her immediately because she looked so weak the last time I saw her, and she’s healthy in the picture, but… it’s her. So Miss Umbrage really was kidnapped by the Breeder.”

“Uh-huh. Good work. It’s kinda a lead, I guess.” Gael cracked his neck, then folded both arms under his head as he sank deeper into his sofa. “So? What are those guys doing here?”

Vivi glanced behind herself. Rebus and half a dozen older children stood packed inside Gael’s office, wet shoes muddying the floor while they stared at him with varying mixtures of fear and hope—more fear than hope, presumably. The rest of the children were smart to remain behind when Vivi had told them she was going to bring them to a Raven. Only these few had insisted on coming..

Still, Rebus alone mustered his courage and stepped forward, clutching the straps of his oversized coat. “You know Miss Umbrage, then? You saw her proper? D’you know where she is now?”

Gael shrugged. “Not exactly. If your teacher’s still hanging around the Breeder, we might accidentally reel her up in some of the deepwater lakes we’ve been frequenting… but luck’s not really been on our side, you see. We’re good at fishing anything but Myrmurs.”

At the mention of fishing, Rebus and the other children immediately turned their heads on a swivel, looking out the window. Outside—plainly visible beyond the warehouse platforms and surrounding railings—the Heartcord Fishing Company’s enormous metal vessel sat anchored in the canal.

“... That’s your fishing ship?” Rebus asked, eyes still glued to the windows.

“Yep.”

“It’s trash. ‘Course you can’t reel up any Myrmurs with that.”

Both Vivi and Jin paused.

For his part, Gael turned his head slowly towards Rebus as well.

“Say what?”