Chapter 4: It Wasn't the Ice

FEAR

As she found a comfy spot on her chair, she had lost her grip on the glass, making it fall to the ground, breaking and shattering to a thousand tiny pieces. Emily's eyelids had readied to give up as she felt rest circulating all over her body. She drifted off into her peaceful land of dreams and for once, never had this 'Emily' ever felt nor thought that the idea of death would be so inviting, unknowing she was never going to feel what tomorrow might have been like.

Later, though fear was still held captive in the hearts of the two young 19-year-old twins, they had no choice but to fulfill their duties and serve food to the guests in the mansion by dinner. Getting up from their beds so unwantingly, they treaded carefully, weary to keep a keen eye for any funny shots someone might try to pull off as they both headed to the kitchen to prepare dinner.

After cooking whatever was on the menu for that evening, they hurriedly placed all the dishes on the metal food cart, creating a few clanging noises as the expensive porcelain plates hit against the cold metal surface of the food cart, and rushed it towards the dining area. The aroma of freshly cut meat, steaming hot roasted chicken, and all the great meals you could have ever imagined filled the long empty hallways as the twins speedily trot along the velvet carpeted floors of the corridors.

However, by the time the twins had sharply turned the last corner to the dining room, they found themselves following behind Victoria as she was now nearing the dark brown mahogany doors of the dining room, and across her, from the other end of the hallway was the infamous Dr. Adam Roscoe.

It seems they've all just arrived outside the doors at the same time. Everyone except Emily. Or "Emily" rather, since she was, after all, a fake. They all glance at each other, establishing eye contact, and as if to pass on a signal, Victoria nodded and placed her firm grip on the large cold golden door knobs installed securely to the heavy mahogany wood, and slowly, she pushed the doors wide open, creating a loud eerie creak in the midst of their unsettling silence.

CREEEAAAAK

The door was wide open, a gush of wind caressing gently against their skins as the cold evening breeze blew past them from the huge window facing north that was still kept open up until this time. It was seven o'clock, the night was wide and the skies were clear, the light of the bright moon seeping in through the thick curtains, trying to dance around what now was a huge dark room.

The lights had mysteriously been turned off, contrary to how they remember they left it - which was on, and as if on cue, everyone had tensed up. As Victoria tried to feel for the walls and navigate herself through the dark room, she sensed a figure of something positioned by the now cold fireplace.

Looking for the light switch and turning it on immediately, Victoria tried to quickly adjust to the sudden brightness that had blinded her and see what that figure was. Only, when the lights had finally shone throughout the room and mixing in with what little illumination the moon had preciously offered through the curtains, it wasn't a 'what' that caught everyone's attention, but rather a 'who'.

By the now dead and unlit fireplace, warmth lost in the cold air, sat comfortably a lifeless "Emily Von Geisler". Shattered pieces of glass decorated the spot beside her, along with a few sips' worth of rum and remnants of what once was ice. She seemed so peacfully asleep, like a resting child in the middle of the cool night; but as they approached closer, the doctor - Roscoe - took the initiative to conduct a little check up on her for verifying purposes.

As he lifted his hand, index and ring finger gently closing in the gap between his skin and the side of Emily's esophagus, his face paled into a look of fear, eyes wide and mouth hung open. His reaction was more than enough to tell the rest of the company how Emily had turned out. "She's gone." the doctor uttered as gasps of knowing disbelief and fear escaped the others' mouths.

Shocked, Victoria took a step back, Samantha froze in her spot, and Damon looked furious. "Alright, aright. What the actual fuck?!" Damon let out, emphasizing the last word, fury more than evident in his eyes as his face had slowly been blushed with the beautiful colour of his crimson blood rushing up to his cheeks in retaliation.

"Language, young man." the doctor recoiled.

"Don't 'young man' me! One of you monsters are clearly insane! What did she even do to you? Why would you even- ugh damn it!-"

"Damon, calm down!" Samantha pipes, trying to keep her infuriated twin placid.

The doctor just stares at him with cold hard eyes as he pegs to open his mouth carefully and reply, "One of us 'monsters', you say? Hasn't it ever occurred to you that perhaps, miss Hughes' idea might actually be right? That there really might be someone else on the island? Don't get on your high horse now and start being all self righteous blaming me for her death, Mr. Pear, because if anything, you just might be the next victim!" Roscoe snapped at Damon, not a pint of mercy present in his low husky voice.

Perhaps the stress was getting on to the two boys. Yes, maybe. - But a single death couldn't have been enough to make a man so stressed that he goes crazy and murderous, - Victoria had thought.

"Hold on a minute now, 'next victim'? You're the one that needs to listen to your own words, old man, or you just might go ahead and sell yourself out. I didn't say you  were the one that killed her. I said one of you."

"I-"

" 'I' what? Go ahead, kill me next! Let's see what happens when you-"

"Damon!" Samantha cuts in, voice raised just a little pitchier than how she would usually have herself. "What is wrong with you tonight? Always so on edge! Please, calm down! This is in no way how we should treat guests!"

Samantha steps forward and, "The two of you, if you will," she says, facing towards the doctor and Victoria with those innocent apologetic eyes and a dash of sweet plea lacing her voice, "why don't the two of you have dinner before the food gets cold." she suggests, trying her best to be curt and polite. The doctor lets out a little grunt before the two guests finally comply and leave Emily by the fireplace for a while as Damon angrily storms out the dining room.

It was a weird and unsettling notion, to be honest - for the guests to eat some scrumptious meal in the same room as a person who had just been murdered, but the pettiness and emotions of the earlier argument-esque overpowered any denial for this motion and the guests proceeded anyway.

Samantha served the food alone and all throughout their dining. The silence blanketing the guests accompanied by only the occasional clanging of their silverware against fine porcelain. Soon however, Victoria decides to break the reticence to sound by asking a question directed to the doctor who was sitting conveniently across her with Samantha standing quietly by his side, pouring him a glass of iced wine,

"So um, Doctor. How do you think did umm, well, 'Emily' die?" Victoria tried to ask, obviously a little unsure of whether or not it was a ducky question to raise. The doctor took a while to answer, chewing quietly, eyes fixated on his meal, a semi rare steak making a home in the doctor's mouth and the red meat sinking into his brains.

With this lack of an answer, Victoria immedietly regrets asking, trying to focus back on her dinner instead, but as the doctor finishes chewing, swallowing, and taking a quick drink from his wine, he clears his throat and finally replies, "It was obviously some sort of poisoning. Something in her drink, I presume." he says with absolutely no hesitation and his sureness evident in his voice too.

The topic seems to pique the interest of both girls and Samantha nerves herself to ask as well, "What makes you say so, sir? If it was a sort of poisoning in her drink, I assure you my brother and I would have had absolutely no way to put in some sort of toxin, sir. The rum was new when we served it for luncheon."

"Indeed it was," the doctor agreed, "but it wasn't the rum that posed a problem. I drank that same rum as well, and as you can see, I am fully awake and clearly alive. Hence, I strongly believe it was nothing but a successful attempt at the old 'poisonous-ice' trick. A criminal like that imposter would have most likely been someone with a habit of drinking well, just like most crime holders at the moment, hence becoming an easy victim for literally the oldest trick in the book.

"When she drank a number of glasses, the same ice which held the poison would have most likely melted and mixed in with her drink, leading to her slow and painless death." Roscoe explained simply.

"But wouldn't that just have been a bold assumption?" Victoria raises. "I mean, there could have been a possibility that the imposter wasn't a drinker. And furthermore, we all had ice in our drinks, so why was specifically only Emily poisoned?" Victoria's attempt to help in this little investigation was.

Indeed her ideas are good and the doctor seemed pleased by this, but it made him just a little perplexed as well. "Yes, that seems to have been bothering me too, dear. It was indeed a gamble to think she would have a drink like that.

"Maybe she was just unlucky to have taken the wrong pieces of ice, as wild as that may sound, but perhaps there really was another way too. Though, this is as far as my knowledge takes me for I am, afterall, a doctor and not a detective." Roscoe finishes, taking his last sip of cold wine and halting his efforts to draw a solid conclusion as if to avoid it.

No one bothered to pry on the subject much longer as the guests continue to dine and soon, they would have had finished their unsettling meals by the end of their brief silence.

After so, joined by Samantha, the three decide to carry Emily off to her room, hearts forcefully steeled to face this sort of unforeseen situation and they tucked her in as if she were to sleep so soundly in her bed, but only never to wake again.

Emily stays still, pale and cold, lying under her blankets - what a peaceful image it was. The two guests head back to their quarters and Samantha goes back to the dining hall to clean up and bring all the dirty dishes back to the kitchen for a wash.

Aside from Damon's outburst, tonight's dinner was rather more calm than expected. - Samantha thought to herself, considering they had already lost a person in just their first day on the island. She quickly finishes her work and goes to her shared quarter with Damon as she sees him sitting on his bed, playing with a tennis ball - throwing it up and catching it with a hand again and again, eyes trailing it so actively up and down and up and down.

Damon greets his sister but doesn't apologize for his earlier behaviour. It was already around ten in the evening and Samantha was tired so there wasn't much for an exchange of words between the two. The twins had gone to sleep right away and in what seemed like a snap of a finger, it was already the morn of Tuesday. Their second day on Dawn Island.

***

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