The dream coiled around Genesis like a boa constrictor, squeezing his senses until the waking world dissolved.
One moment he'd been sinking into fitful half-slumber amid the main hall's huddled forms...the next, oppressive gloom swallowed him whole.
He found himself standing in a chamber clawed from solid obsidian.
No doors, no windows - only an inky vastness pressing in from all sides with tangible weight.
"Hello?" His voice barely cleared his lips before the word slithered away, consumed by the void.
Then, like a lantern piercing a dank cavern...a feeble moan drifted through the murk.
"Gen...esis..."
He whipped around, following the piteous thread.
There, shivered and fetal against the unyielding murk, a body took shape.
Crimson trickled in thick streamlets from its form, puddling in viscous spirals.
Genesis inched closer against his better judgment.
A tangled mass of raven tresses obscured the figure's face, but something achingly familiar radiated from her trembling, naked outline.
"Jezebel?" He tried to keep his tone measured, but the name wavered with dismay.
Her head lolled towards him, and what remained of her face came into gut-churning clarity.
Jezebel's once haughty features were reduced to a death-mask of suffering, flayed skin hanging in ribbons over exposed musculature.
Yet her remaining eye bored into him with feverish desperation, glistening with tears that leaked crimson down her ruined cheek.
"Genesis..." she mouthed again in a thready rasp. "H-Help me..."
A shudder gripped him to the core.
Even in this nightshade hellscape, the plea rang out with shocking authenticity.
Gone was the mocking seductress, the temptress who had taunted him to no end.
All that remained was naked, primordial terror.
Jaw set in a hard line, he crossed the remaining distance and crouched beside her savaged form. The reek of gore and worse things made his nose burn.
"Jezebel, what have they done--"
"PLEASE!" She thrashed with startling violence, nearly toppling him backwards.
A glistening stump jutted from the ruin of her left wrist, flailing spasmically. "Don't let it...IT take me! I can't...I can't..."
Broken sobs shook her ruined frame, each one shredding what remained of her withered throat.
Yet Genesis could not tear his gaze away, transfixed by the sight of such mutilation. This...this was true suffering laid bare.
"Who?" he managed through numb lips. "Who has done this unholy butchering?"
A massive shadow engulfed them both as Jezebel's remaining eye blew wide with revitalized horror. Slowly, Genesis turned to face the encroaching gloom...
...and found himself jolted back to reality, ripped from the nightmare world with bone-jarring force.
His eyes snapped open, body convulsing upright amid a tangle of sweat-soaked sheets as a hoarse shout tore from his throat.
"Jezebel!"
The others stirred like agitated hornets, gasping awake with starts and whimpers of their own. A few recoiled skittishly at Genesis's anguished cry.
"Father, what's--"
"Are we under attack?"
But the priest was already clambering to his feet, blankets pooling forgotten around his ankles.
His gaze swept the hall in panicked calculation before finding the doorway to the eastern chambers.
Jezebel...
With a snarl of mingled dread and righteous fury, he was sprinting towards the exit, bare feet slapping the polished floorboards.
Distressed shouts echoed from behind, but he paid them no heed.
He barged through them corridors like a man possessed, every rattling breath sawing from his heaving chest.
At last, the dreaded door loomed ahead, innocuous oak stained with menacing might. Genesis twisted the iron handle, then flung his weight into the unforgiving portal when it refused to yield.
Once...Twice...CRACK!
The wood splintered in an explosion of sawdust, the smell of oiled metal and something burned and rotten assailing his nostrils as he staggered through.
One pale, immaculate arm curved over her head - the other simply...ended in a stump of mangled meat and splintered bone.
Her left hand was amputated.
Genesis fell to his knees beside her, every rational synapse screaming for him to recoil from the sanguine destruction.
Yet some deeper drive propelled him on even as he cupped her ravaged face in trembling hands.
"Oh Jezebel...my poor, errant soul. What fresh hell has the Joker wrought upon you?"
Behind him, Genesis heard the others skid to a halt in the ruined doorway, voices raised in shocked exclamations.
But their hubbub fell on deaf ears as he gently lifted Jezebel's savaged body, cradling her tattered dignity against his chest.
His gaze hardened to flint as he peered beyond her, towards the reeking darkness lurking in every festering corner.
"...for by all that is sacred and holy, I will see this masquerade of evil undone before it can despoil another soul in its insatiable hungering."
Genesis didn't need to search for the Joker's latest handiwork - the scrawled message leered from the far wall in gruesome, dripping crimson.
"The Joker strikes again. Jackpot."
He swallowed hard against the lump in his throat as his gaze traveled downwards towards the adjoining riddle, each word seemingly inscribed with mocking flourish:
"I am a trinity of divine grace,
The unseen presence in this place.
Three in one, yet indivisible,
My power limitless and invisible.
Who am I, this spectral guest?
In your heart, I find my nest."
A crude snicker dragged his attention away from the macabre calligraphy.
Pierre stood silhouetted in the splintered doorway, his lips peeled back in a grim of revulsion.
"Fitting riddle for an unholy butcher like yourself, Father," he spat in a thick Francophone snarl. "First Ezequiel, now the seductress...how many more must be sacrificed upon your bloody altar?"
Genesis opened his mouth to counter, but the clatter of reinforcements drowned out his protest.
The other tourists crowded in behind Pierre like a river of pale, horrified faces.
A few strangled gasps and cries of dismay echoed off the chamber's vaulted ceilings.
He slowly rose to his full height, Jezebel's mangled husk cradled with incongruous tenderness against his chest. The woman's solitary eye had slid shut, her mouth frozen in a silent "O" of anguished release.
"My children," Genesis started in a soft baritone, "I know this ghastly sight must shake you to your very cores.
To be honest, my own spirit cries out at such a blasphemous tableau."
He stroked back a matted tangle of Jezebel's hair, allowing the wrecked beauty of her face to emerge amid the mask of gore.
"But whether you believe these truths or not, I had no hand in this depravity.
In fact, I am bound by the Lord's edicts to pursue her - and Ezequiel's - salvation with every fiber of my being.
Even now."
That last ragged statement hung in the air like a lead weight.
No one so much as shifted as Genesis held the morgue-silent collective in his steely stare.
Finally, he spoke again in a resonant tone that shattered the hush like a slap across the face.
"This fiend, this 'Joker'...he plainly seeks to sow distrust and schism amongst us.
But I stand before you all to declare that I WILL NOT SUCCUMB TO THEIR PROFANITIES!"
His cry echoed through the derelict chamber with a righteous fury.
Pierre flinched as spittle spattered his cheek.
"If you so choose," Genesis continued in a calmer timbre, "then by all means, confine me to whatever pit you see fit.
Separate me from this investigation that has cost two souls already.
But mark my words, brothers and sisters..."
His gaze flicked meaningfully towards the congealing riddle.
"...whoever this 'Joker' truly is, whatever unholy agency allows them to mock the Holiest of Trinities...their desecrations shall not go unanswered.
Not while breath yet warms these bones."
No arguments rose up to meet his proclamation.
Genesis gave a solemn nod and shifted Jezebel higher in his grip, wincing as more of her blood streaked across his robes.
"Then I shall make preparations to lay our sister's soul to rest.
Once the proper rites have been observed...do with me what you will.
I am at your disposal."
The group parted before him with no further protest.
Genesis walked the gauntlet of their stunned, fearful silence, his steps ringing like the solemn toll of consecrated bells.
Only once he'd reached the central foyer did he permit himself a shuddery exhalation, Jezebel's glassy stare burning a hole through his composure.
He gently lay her upon the floor, hands lingering for a reverent caress before turning away.
Let them make of this horror what they would. He could only place his faith in their collective reason...and continue searching for the truth that eluded them all like a vengeful specter.
An hour's hard labor later, a fresh mound of overturned earth lay in the mansion's basement. Piles of withered blooms and pungent offerings surrounded Jezebel's crude cairn in a semblance of dignity.
Genesis wiped his brow and headed directly for the manor's stygian cellar without preamble. This entire charade was quickly becoming as inescapable for him as the ancient foundations entombing them all.
A rusty cot and battered writing table awaited him in the flickering gloom.
He sank onto the cot's stained, musty mattress, the stale air choked with mold and ash and disuse.
After toeing off his oxfords, he reached into his tattered satchel for a Winston pack of cigarettes.
"'In your heart, I find my nest,'" he murmured around the first scalding drag, watching the smoke wreathe and dance. "So...the Holy Spirit.
The answer to that sinister riddle.
He plays at blasphemy most foul with his riddled breath."
A bitter chuckle escaped into the pervasive dimness.
"Very well, lost little Joker.
If you crave an exorcism, by all means...bring your monstrous house of cards tumbling down upon me."
Propping his heels on the desk's pitted edge, he closed his eyes and leaned back against the stained bolster.
The cherry's lurid flare was the sole point of light in the reeking cellar.
"This dank little pit feels quite cozy, actually.
Takes me back to fond childhood reminiscences of my father's disciplinary attentions."
Genesis sighed out a cloud, tasting the smoke's charred tang with one last, twisted smile.
"So by all means, sniveling wraith...do your worst.
I've stared into the abyss before and simply...blinked."
Most of them won't make it out alive.
The words rattled through his mind, an indisputable truth.
Calamity's curse hung over them all now - that invisible noose tightening with each breath.
Genesis pictured the others trapped like goats in a baying flock, huddled and bleating their confusion to one another.
Without his guidance as the shepherd, they were painfully exposed, as good as slaughtered by whatever unseen malice stalked these damned halls.
And the others with their... Abyssal gifts.
The Joker wouldn't simply dismantle them - no, he'd seen the hunger in those crimson runes. The depraved bastard aimed to make a feast of them.
A thin cloud billowed between Genesis's cracked lips as he exhaled, dissipating rapidly.
Poor Jezebel, so ripe with potential, only to be reduced to a mutilated afterthought scrawled on the wall.
Like a butcher's fleeting artistic impulse beside the squalid reality of his craft.
They'd been violated, defiled in the most wanton blasphemy he could fathom.
But worse - they'd been made examples of the depths to which the human soul could be dragged and broken.
Rendered into macabre object lessons of weakness, of fragility, of the inescapable foolishness in believing oneself deserving of grace or dignity or...
...redemption.
"Your malign riddles lay bare all too plainly the malice you serve.
You dare not speak of salvation or deliverance, for yours is the barrister's tongue, twisting grace into mockery in service of your true, profane master."
He paused, exhaling thickly. "You are the doubter's whisper in the garden, the tempter who would unmake the righteous works of the Lord to elevate Man as his own unraveling deity."
"Well hear me, serpent - you faced expulsion once before, and so it shall be again. For here and now, your corruption has taken root in flesh as willing as it is deceived."