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Ernest prowled the confines of his room, driven to a fever pitch by the revelations Ethel had thrust upon him. The battle to retain his composure was Herculean as he forced out a terse note to Jack: "It's urgent. Get here now."
Once the missive was in the hall-boy’s grasp, he felt the adrenaline ebb, allowing him, not peace, but at least a semblance of collected thought. The gnawing twist was that he found himself unable to despise Reginald, despite being unshakably certain of the man's baleful sway over his life. Another idol had crumbled; yet here it lay—like the relic of some desolate deity in barren sands—magnetic even as it lay in ruins.
Succumbing to an impulse he couldn't resist, Ernest flipped through his collection until he confronted the stern visage of Reginald—the mentor, the comrade. Impossible; such darkness couldn't lurk beneath that surface. No malintent could dwell behind those eyes; they were the eyes of a visionary, a raving sage. Yet... studying it closer, Reginald's face distorted subtly before him; an insidious little wrinkle marred his mouth—the serene godlike poise morphing into an impish smirk of duplicity. Despite this eerie change, fear didn't grip Ernest. He knew what haunted him now—it could be faced. Fear was only truly fearsome when unseen and enigmatic, skulking from shadows—it could drive poets mad and turn warriors into quivering children.
Plagued by these thoughts, Ernest acknowledged that diving into Reginald’s documents would have to wait for dawn’s light as the night had worn deep; any moment now, he anticipated Reginald's approaching tread. Nightly rituals were meticulously performed: securing his bedroom door with lock and barricading it with a chair for good measure—rigging a contraption linking the door handle to an ornate Chinese vase, a souvenir from Reginald himself: one jostle and it would crash down in warning.
Though slumber seemed a distant prospect, he crawled under covers. Almost instantly, exhaustion cast its dense shroud over his senses—the tribulations of daylight too much for his frail vessel to bear without respite. Habitually tugging at the blanket to shield his ears—a futile gesture—he was enveloped by sleep’s oblivious depths.
A profound sleep held him captive through the night until an intrusive knock—a sound from leagues away—tugged him from the depths. It was Reginald's manservant with news that breakfast awaited—an ordinary summons back into a reality that was anything but ordinary.
Ernest stumbled to his feet, his hands instinctively reaching up to rub the grogginess from his eyes. The sight of the makeshift barricade he had erected at his door crashed into his consciousness with the force of a freight train, dragging last night's surreal horrors back to the surface. The room remained untouched; a silent testament that none had dared to intrude upon his slumber. A wry chuckle escaped him as he took in the childish fortress - it was like stepping back in time to when he'd construct similar defenses against the imagined monsters under his bed.
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Yet with daylight streaming through the windows, Ethel’s whispered vampire stories were reduced to nothing more than ludicrous fairytales once again. But there was no denying the tangible proof of Reginald’s eerie sway over him - and Ernest's resolve hardened like steel. He vowed to unearth the truth by sundown, clinging onto Ethel's cryptic words like a lifeline: "thought is more real than blood." It became his mantra, and he was sure that somewhere within Reginald’s labyrinth of deceit lay shards of his own self, waiting to be reclaimed from that insidious spectre of dreams.
An encounter with Reginald was the last thing Ernest needed – not with his thoughts ensnared in this web of dread and suspicion. He could almost picture it: one accidental glimpse into those abyssal eyes would shred his sanity, leaving him wailing like some poor lost soul in an asylum. So he dressed with painstaking care, dragging out each motion in hopes of dodging Reginald's unnerving presence.
But as fate would have it, their paths were destined to cross. Reginald seemed unusually anchored to the breakfast table that morning, savoring the final drops of his coffee with maddening leisure. It was precisely at this moment that Ernest stepped into the room, just as Reginald lifted his gaze. His host oozed a kind of pedestrian warmth, as if benevolence itself had taken human form and settled upon his features – yet Ernest saw right through it. To him, Reginald’s face was now a mask; behind its benign smile lurked something twisted and malevolent, sending icy prickles down Ernest’s spine.
"Running on the late side today, aren't we, Ernest?" His voice was as smooth as butter, not a hint of accusation, just calm observation. "What's the poison this time? Prowling the streets or hammering out poems? Both'll rot your guts out in the end." With those words, he let loose that eerie grin that flickered at the edges of his lips - a ghostly echo of the Mona Lisa's ambiguous smile. Now though, Ernest saw right through it; saw the sly deceiver and the shadow of something darker lurking beneath.
The sight of that face became unbearable, like a splinter in his mind. His legs turned to jelly, an icy sheen of sweat coated his skin. He crumpled into a chair, his body quaking as he dodged the other's stare like bullets.
Reginald finally got up to leave. Oh, how deceptive appearances could be. Gazing upon him, you'd think he was the epitome of vital force - a real-life embodiment of power and raw ambition - like some majestic tiger-cat crafted from muscle and sinew, both awe-inspiring and terrifying in his relentless hunger. And yet nobody could be certain if this wasn't just illusionary might, a parasitic sham. If what Ethel believed held any truth...well then, Ernest had been robbed far more profoundly than he could fathom. Since if those allegations bore any weight, it was Ernest’s very essence coursing through Reginald's being; his creativity stoking the fire behind those lips.