Chapter 3 - The Doctor's Confession
The howling wind rattled the windowpanes, but inside the cabin, the silence was heavier than the storm.
Dr. Arthur Vance sank into a wooden chair near the hearth, holding his trembling hands out toward the flames. Gideon did not offer him coffee, nor did he put away the iron poker. He stood leaning against the kitchen counter, his cold eyes fixed on the doctor with an intensity that made Vance squirm under his heavy woolen vest.
Rosalie pushed the porcelain bowl toward the center of the table, keeping her eyes locked on the physician. "Start talking, Doctor. Right now. Who put what in my husband's head?"
Vance sighed, a long, rattling sound that seemed to pull years of accumulated guilt out of his chest. He looked up at Gideon, meeting the rancher's unblinking stare with deep sorrow.
"Twenty-two years ago," Vance began, his voice barely audible over the crackle of the fire, "Gideon wasn't the owner of this ridge. His father was. And the Rook family owned the mineral rights to the entire northern valley before the railroad surveyors even set foot in Coldwater."
Rosalie frowned, glancing sideways at Gideon. In the town, people only spoke of Gideon as a sullen, isolated giant who inherited land he barely managed. No one had ever mentioned mineral rights or a family empire.
"There were men," Vance continued, gesturing vaguely toward the southern lowlands, "men who wanted those titles cleared out. They couldn't buy your father out, Gideon. He was stubborn as an iron post. So they found another way."
Gideon's jaw tightened so hard a vein thundered at his temple. He reached for his slate and wrote furiously, shoving it across the table toward Vance.
The mining company. The men who bought the sheriff's silence.
Vance nodded grimly. "They didn't want to kill him outright—too many questions. But a crippled, deaf heir who couldn't manage his own estate? That's a different story. They used a field laboratory run by a disgraced eastern naturalist who was prospecting out here. They called them 'cranial parasites'—specimens bred in the damp mine shafts of the Rockies. They entered through the ear canal during childhood sleep, feeding on nerve tissue, destroying hearing, and slowly eroding a man's mind until he became docile, compliant, or mad."
Rosalie felt a chill crawl down her spine that had nothing to do with the winter draft. She looked back at the small, dark creature resting in the bowl. "And the doctors in town? When Gideon went to them for help?"
"Bribed," Vance said bitterly, lowering his head into his hands. "Or terrified into silence. I was young then, Rosalie. I suspected the truth, but when I tried to look closer, my clinic was burned to the ground, and a warning was left on my desk: Some ears are meant to stay deaf. I lived in cowardice ever since. I watched Gideon grow up isolated, branded as half-mad by the very town that stole his birthright."
Gideon pushed away from the counter. He walked slowly toward the table, his movements heavy yet deliberate. He picked up the slate, wiped it clean, and wrote a single sentence that made Vance flinch.
They thought I was broken forever. Why did it move tonight?
May you like
Vance looked up, his eyes wide with sudden, dawning horror. "Because they aren't dormant forever, Gideon. They have a lifecycle. And if one matures and drops out... it means the colony inside the mountain is waking up."
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