The dark ichor of the creature dripped thickly into a pool. I stood, petrified, before the creature as it bled from the wound I inflicted upon it. Issuing from it came a low ominous growl, so low, in fact that I had to strain my ears to scarce hear the beast’s voice. My state was of a terror that no normal emotion could describe well. I felt no fear toward the injured creature, yet an ominous feeling overwhelmed my overtaxed mind to a point that all I could fear was the sepulchre surrounding me. I knew also of another creature approaching from my behind but also, I felt no fear toward the creature that my mind imagined with huge claws and fangs that could tear me apart in a mere matter of seconds.
My trip to such a detestable place started as many would presume only of insane curiosity of the queer dark room of the ancient house, I had acquired just a few days prior. I had come across the fortune of the house as I was the last hobbling remnant of the noble family of Traelien –of which I shared but little blood– which I was then told had far ties to the also doomed family to which the house belonged. I found my heritage purely by coincidence of a close friend of the family noting the comparison between my known heritage and his far knowledge of the far departed branches of the family which no longer held much of the blood of their common ancestor. He forbade me leave the country that I had hence been on holiday to and accompany him to the old house of which my ownership was in question.
When I first laid my eyes upon the place, I felt any ill will leave me. The trip down the secluded path was damp and dark and I soon found myself drenched in sweat despite the altitude of the place and my relatively light apparel. The entire time we travelled, by foot, for no horse’s carriage would have cleared the suffocating trees, I felt rather irritated by the prospect of inheriting what I had henceforth presumed to be a dump. My suspicions were further irritated by the speech of my companion who told me what must have been the full life of my far shared relatives, starting with the first of the splintered branch and following the trail of inheritance only vaguely mentioning if there had been any more to keep the name and heritage and vaguely again mentioning the dates of death for these other spurs. I had stopped listening by the fourth layer of succession and, instead, spent my time trying to imagine the despicable place that I would soon be thrown into occupation of. Images that came to me were that of large gothic houses with caved in ceilings and collapsed arches, dilapidated masonry, and pestilence running about what remained of the flooring of the great entrance hall. At once my suspicions were averted when I saw the first peak of the roof peer through the net of trees. The tile which coated the spire looked as clean as the day it was placed without a visible mar in the shell. The sight disappeared a second later and my demeanour again turned to the negative. The spire, I reasoned with myself, was only a small part of the overall building and maybe my guide through the forest would only upkeep the minute section for his own abode for he made it clear that he had taken residence after the place was gifted to him by the last heir to the line.
By the time we reached the end of the forested road the sun, which had been at mid-morning when we left the small village, had reached just past noon and cast a warm light upon the beautiful house that I beheld from the precipice of the valley it was nestled in. I could not tell whether I shared the gasp of my companion for his sigh was more audible than mine. I had been preparing my sentiment that I could not accept the building and found that my reaction took any ability of speech from me, leaving me with my rehearsed speech echoing in my head. He ended my reverie with a small and inconsequential question that held to me a heavy reply, “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Aye, that it is.” I replied, I would accept my inheritance.
At length I stared at the magnificent beauty that would soon be mine and imagined the things within that I could boast about to my peers back in the city. The magnificent baubles that lined the halls and the fine dinnerware that would inhabit the magnificent dining hall. Just the luxurious furnishings of the place alone would be well worth the amount that it would take to travel the world several times over. Everything was as I had imagined it, rich tapestries hung along the walls and satin curtains obscured the windows that overlooked the lands which I too was to acquire. The woodwork of the interior, ornately carved from wood of premium grain ran up the sides of the large chamber I entered. The wooden beams seemed to stretch to the heavens then curved slightly to finish their ascent and reach their zenith as a grand archway. Three of such arches supported the ceiling of the vast chamber. The proportions of the room too were of grandeur stretching nearly half the length of the house and raising several floors as to make, in effect, two separate buildings connected by a rooftop terrace. The two wings of the place were furnished in different styles but held the same air of affluence and power. One, simpler, with less wall hangings and ornate decorations instead showed its wealth through the wonderful engravings on the solid dark wooden walls, would have housed the kitchen and laundry as well as the numerous smaller rooms of the residence of servants. The other was furnished with vases from the deepest, most reclusive parts of the jungle, jewellery from the most affluent jewellers of Switzerland, tapestries painted by some of the most famous artists of the previous era, several of whom still managed international fame, and the rooms too were furnished lavishly with silken drapes and sheets, elaborately embellished trunks and dressers as well as the frame of the bed itself adorned with golden highlight that I doubted would be fake given the rest of the house’s frivolous decoration. All of which urged to tell me that this is where, once, a large family would each have a room alone with enough space to house half of the nearby village if the need arose and feed them in the dining hall whose size threatened that of the grand entrance hall. My guide led me to several of the largest rooms which had housed guests from around the world including several extremely wealthy ambassadors on their trips across the country. My guide failed to tell me which ones, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to look it up myself, that was what such a large library, which occupied the western front of the house with three levels of bookshelves filled with centuries of knowledge rarely disturbed, was meant for. The tour ended on a large flight of steps which wound around the base of a large tower, the zenith of which ended in the spire I had seen earlier through the trees. I remarked, quite breathlessly as we reached the chamber at the top, that the stairs were nicely carved and in such a manner that one, even heavily taxed with the journey upwards, could lift their foot high enough to clear the step before them. From the windows of the three-room unit, you could see far over the lush green countryside, the size of which made me giddy with anticipation. My guide again said, “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
To which I replied, “That it is, that it is.”
I was content to sit there at the top of the tower and study the contours of the French hills and map them for further discoveries. Ere long I would again yearn for that sight just to keep me moving through this terrible prison I found myself in. At length I conversed with the man of the nature of the land which he assured me was not disputed by any neighbours and that as soon as I signed my name it was all mine and for my posterity. Alas but my posterity only stretched to my son who I feared wouldn’t find himself a woman decent enough to carry my genes. Every girl he appealed to turned him away on account of his mental disability which turned his word into stutters of sound and allowed him no respite whenever he spake to any other than me or his mother which had died a few months before my acquisition of my inheritance of tuberculosis ere she gave to me another child on which my name could be carried.
I was so stricken by her death that I found the sight of any woman of any sort of beauty repulsed me. My son, I cared for wholly, which garnered sharp comments from my common man who would chortle, “Why would you, a man of power and talent, trifle yourself with a woman’s work when there are plenty to do it for you. You are wasting your time on that child anyways; from what I hear he has no longer than a fortnight to live yet. It is in your best interest to forget that miserable wretch and wed yourself a new wife so you can put your mind to more important topics.” To which I would offer a differential humph and walk away. From behind me I would hear other mean-spirited words trailing behind me; none of which ever caught up to me.
As I watched over the green fields of the neighbouring estates, I felt it would help my son greatly with his random fits of screaming, which I knew naught how to fix, to look upon my newly found estate. It was certainly calming but my son’s mind wasn’t like any one that I, nor had any of the physicians I had taken him to, knew of. The serenity of the scene was interrupted by my new friend, it turns out we have a lot in common, began to get antsy to get the deed signed I agreed as the coming dusk gave the once verdant fields a deathly pallor and I couldn’t suffer myself to continue to watch night come from such a high place and nothing to light the passage down urged me on. He lifted the trapdoor for me, and I descended before him. Ere we reached the bottom the light had faded to the moonlight which did little to illuminate the dangerous steps, and I stumbled forward, bracing myself against the far wall in the case that my foot may slip.
The two of us safely reached the foot of the stair and made our way to a more accessible study supplied with parchment and ink. The man whom I had followed in retrieved the document from a drawer fastened by a lock and handed it to me while he sought for a pen to write with. While he was occupied, I spied several passages on the deed that seemed queer enough to inquire about them. One of which was a statement that, should the dominant line be resurrected, I should immediately cede my claim to them and if my lineage should come to an end the house and lands be returned to the man or another of his lineage who, as it was described, managed the families affairs in death as his father, grandfather and many others before him did and would see to it that the mansion be turned over to the next closest relative of the family. When I inquired about it the man shrugged his shoulders as he rifled through the same pile of papers for the third time in a desperate search for a writing utensil so that I could sign into my name the lands and several other properties outlined in the document. I passed a quick glance around the room and found a pen on the desk partially obscured by a sheaf of loose parchment. I presented my discovery, and he dipped the pen in the ink, handed it to me and pointed out where I would sign. I signed my name, and the man scooped up the document, careful not to smear the fresh ink and inspected the signature. I inquired and he stated that I had a very similar signature to those of the other previous owners of the house. Once the ink on the document had dried, he put it into a document case and walked me to the door.
At the door I told him my wish to stay in the house overnight. He looked at me like an insane man might at a potato then nodded. “Just watch out for the ghosts. They don’t tend to like newcomers.”
We both laughed lightly at this, and I told him farewell. I still had a smile on my face as I closed the door behind him, but it soon drained as I looked, and only just noticed the strange presence of something else in the room with me. I turned to the open room and shuddered at the thought that there were likely, though I rarely play with the idea of the supernatural, ghosts within the house as no good old house doesn’t have a resident ghost. I called out comically for anyone who was there to show themselves and laughed lightly at my own foolishness as I walked out of the room to one of the smaller servant’s chambers for it matched with my previous abode better than that of a chamber the size of a London barroom.
The bed, although it smelled faintly of mould and age, the sheets were surprisingly fresh, and the bed was firm but comfortable. From my spot of contemplation, I had a clear sight of the night sky from a small window propped in the top corner of the room and the moon which shone its daemonic light through said window unto the floor giving the regal carpet a hazy grey pallor. Disgusted by the seemingly deathlike quality that hung about the place where the light struck, I threw my sheet up into the niche upon which the glass for the window was mounted. Successful in my attempt to kill the light which irked me, so I was able to allow sleep to quickly take me over.
As I dreamed, for I dreamt a lot that night, I saw queer lands of the future. Of what I saw they had carriages without horses they called automobiles which they loaded with petrol to sustain movement. I saw the results of what the inhabitants call the upcoming Industrial Revolution which are ghastly with black smoke hanging thickly over the city of London staining the macadam streets black as death. I saw kids out in the streets begging and stealing for coin that the adults couldn’t give. I saw whores out in the streets trying to seduce men that no longer held true to promises of God, offering sexual intercourse for a few pence apiece. The world I saw was truly terrifying and yet only a few decades away.
I woke from the nightmare to find that the sheet I had stuffed firmly in the sill of the window had come loose billowing wildly in the draft which emanated from the now ajar window. The sheets near translucent quality inhibited the light yet that which permeated the fabric induced in me a sense of horror hard to describe with words. The ghastly pallor which had once just been the moon had been cut down and replaced with a colour that caused shivers to rack my bones. The moon still peered into the room and seemed to be looking at me. For a second, I felt I had gone mad, that my visions of the future were the delusions of a madman, that everything I was seeing was just foresight, given by the Devil or God I know not which but I wished they hadn’t come to me. I broke down into tears at the foot of the bed and began praying for my sanity. My prayers must have been answered or that just the calming ritual of prayer allowed my brain to rest, I currently favour the latter for after what I have seen in the depths below the house I have begun to believe that there is no God for no god I believe in would allow such atrocities to live alongside pure spirits and damage them, turning them into deranged madmen to do their bidding.
After my fit had ended, I closed the window tight and stuffed my pillow within the window. With my bedsheets I left the room which had been touched by immoral spirits and opted for a more central room without an aperture for daemonic spirits to enter. Once I located the correct room, I found sleep again easy to acquire. Again, I dreamt, but of more light subjects which continued to soothe my soul but yet there was ever present this lurking fear of the house I had currently taken residence.
When I woke again, the room I had taken was still dark but beyond the door bright sunlight shone through the hall and again illuminated the brilliance of the place. I at once reluctantly left the place to get my stuff at the hostel I had previously slept in. I paid the lady, old, with spiderwebs of wrinkles across her face but a kind smile and fair complexion, with a small trinket I had brought from the house. A small carved figure of American origin depicting a spirit animal of some savage race out in the Amazon that would sell well anywhere they wouldn’t shun it for conversing with the devil. The lady thanked me, and I left by carriage for the sea town of Montpelier from which a ship would depart to Livorno and a carriage ride would get me to Florence where I could complete my business so I could return to my son in the care of my dear wife’s family.
The entire ride to Montpelier I felt the pull of my bag back towards the house, I also felt the pull of my soul back to that place. The pulling that also persisted through my sleep that night and again during the day as I stood on the brink of the ship crossing the small part of the Mediterranean Sea. The stiff salty air helped bring my spirits up but soon nothing could return me from the sinking of my spirits. By the time we arrived in Florence all I could wish for was to see the beautiful house again. I conducted my business there and the next day I was back in France, the day after that I arrived at the steps of the house yet again. On my return trip I felt my soul lighten and my bag lose weight with every step forward.
I spent that night in the house I now owned and suffered from no other dreams that night. Again, the next morning I reluctantly left the house and headed back home to London. Before I left the small village nearby, I made a reservation for the trees leading up to my new house to be trimmed back far enough that a horse and carriage could comfortably fit down the path. As I rode the carriage out of the village, I suffered again from the depression of my soul but not as severe a sense that I had endured in those long hours in Italy. For three more days I travelled across the country and reached the other side by dusk four days from my departure. The next day by noon I arrived at my old abode, gathered mine, and my son’s belongings and sent them to the dock while I retrieved my son. My dear wife’s sister felt that suddenly moving my boy would upset him, but I argued that it may be the cramped city that caused his condition. She argued a bit further but eventually let me go with the boy.
He was unnaturally quiet on the trip across the English Channel. I believe that salty air too soothed his sick mind and invigorated his soul. He was of an unusual temperament on the land trip across the country, quick to annoy, and hard to settle. Any small thing, from a bird singing outside the carriage to an unusually rough bump in the road. His threat of bad temperament increased as we neared the house that my soul pined for. As we approached the trail that led to my house my son’s temperament of soul became increasingly irritable to a point that he was wailing for the majority of the ride from the small nearby village. No matter what I tried to do he wouldn’t cease, and I found that our driver too was getting crotchety at the insufferable wailing. Even I at length grew tired of my son’s wailing as it increased in vigour with every furlong we travelled. By the time we reached the aperture in the thick forest cover that led to my new abode I couldn’t suffer my child’s screaming, and I took my handkerchief and stuffed it in his mouth. He bit down on my hand, but the fabric kept his teeth from tearing my skin slowly he resigned to silence, but I could easily tell he was still troubled by the upcoming house which struck me odd for I had instantly fallen in love with it. The perfect angles of stone marvellously upkept, and the walls spotless of any mar or erroneous workmanship filled within me a hole that had ceased to exist for nigh as far as my memory could span. That hole that was unknowingly filled when I first set eyes upon the beauty and that threatened to pull the stopper of my soul keeping me in the sane world and away from the pits of agony, fear, and grief that had appealed to me as a child.
At the sight of the house as we emerged my son began to wail again. He pointed and blubbered but naught of what I heard I could translate into English. In fact what he spake of sounded like that of the chants of pagan savages and soon I became ensured of this when our coach came to a sudden halt and the driver, to whom I am blessedly thankful of for enduring my son’s condition for as long as he had, turned to me and told me straight, yet pleasant in the manner that the French way of speaking is, in his best English to get out and that he didn’t like the talk of savages near him, especially in such a hallowed place as we were in. When I pressed him to ask what my son was speaking of, he quietly refused to elaborate further as he helped me with the bags.
My son continued to whine as the bags were unloaded and whined still when I bade our driver farewell as the carriage left us nigh on twenty metres from the foot of the stair of the house that my heart yearned for. My son stood staring in meek horror at the house while I ferried the bags, the number of which I was for sure had doubled during the trip, by him. He made no notice of my curses as I tripped over ruts that had lain where they were for hundreds of years or more and struggled with the increasing weight of my packages.
At length I managed the prodigious accumulation of junk and came back, at last, drenched in sweat and smelling odoriferous, for my son who hadn’t shifted an inch, except to bring his thumb to his mouth and subconsciously begin chewing upon it. I slapped his hand away and he looked at me with the same expression he offered the house and said, barely above a whisper, “I don’t like the windows.”
At his comment I gave him the courtesy to look toward the windows he mentioned. They all were of similar shape and craftsmanship. Starting with perfect squared edges at the bottom they bowed out slightly, by design, before coming to a peak similar to those shared by the arches in the entrance hall. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary other than one, rather high up, had been cracked by what I presumed to be of heat. My mind thought nothing of it at the time but in my spare time, of which I had a lot of after the hectic few days it took to become settled, it irked me in a way that nothing else that I found queer, or that any passive onlooker would find strikingly odd, such as the busts of seemingly archaic and pagan gods, some of which may have been created before Rome had conquered this part of their empire, or the paintings of misfortuned children with odd shaped heads and noses that bared likeness with none else in their family. None who would visit the house would make any notice of the cracked window nor of the other imperfections that I had begun to notice since I had resumed residence. Several doors bore small scuffs near the bottoms that I couldn’t remove without risk of destroying the varnish, paint in some rooms looking as if they had started peeling even though, a month prior, the paint looked as if it had only dried moments before. These small errors took a toll on me as I contemplated their reasoning as well as my son’s continued worsening.
Since the two of us had taken residence both our minds have been corrupted by the solitary lifestyle, I think. My son’s temperament continued to worsen and the only place he wasn’t a constant nuisance was at the top of the tower where his screams could only be strained to be heard even in the darkest, most silent of night. I thought to send him back to London but to do so would be to admit that those self-righteous pricks were right and to do that would take more a toll on my mental health than dealing with the incessant screaming would, so I suffered through it as I did the loneliness of being in such a vast manor with not a soul to speak to. I had not enough money to hire myself a servant nor had I any reliable way to reach the small village and make acquaintances with the local folk so I resolved to make the house my object upon which I could pass the time. I wandered the lush halls and investigated the well-furnished rooms but even that would not fill the gap between morning and night. It was thus that I tarried myself with brain teasers. Some of which I made up myself and yet I cannot think of the answer to it even after long days of driving myself near insanity. It took me a short time to rid myself of the silly things and I began what I entertained to be a small garden that I could grow food on but any plant that managed to sprout promptly died within a fortnight.
It was thus that I found myself at the dilemma of the window. I knew that I could order the glass with a trip to the village, but I had grown weary of leaving the house except by the dead of night and even then, letting the place out of my sight for more than a minute would invoke in me a sense of severe longing that no affair could overwhelm. The only time I managed to leave my residence was only when my supplies of food were getting deathly low, and I reasoned that I could order my glass then. However, none in the village would come into the house to replace the glass from within nor would any be willing to come close enough except by hefty fee which would leave me to do the handiwork myself. That would require me being able to get to said window and be well versed enough in the workings of the frame the glass is set, and the tools to replace it without shattering the sheet into millions of pieces. Thus began my search of the house, during which I found the room which no natural light would reach, nor would any flame penetrate.
I stumbled across the queer room while on my third day searching the house for a way to the attic, which I had managed to narrow the location of the window to. The door was ever so slightly ajar and disguised well enough into the wall that I never would have noticed it otherwise if not for the draft that blew through the crack as I walked by that day. As I felt the chilled air cross my path I halted immediately and pinpointed the place from which the airflow had come from. A small slit in the crown moulding alerted me to the presence of some hidden passage. There were two others in the house that I had managed to discover, one that led from the library and dining rooms and one that connected several of the most prestigious bedrooms to an unwilling tool shed down by the far reaches of the property. Both of these however were situated on the first floor. Though this one I had discovered smelled rankly of unnumbered years of decay, a smell that could only come from a crypt beyond the bedrock below our feet yet this aperture to the passage was located on the fourth and final floor of the manor that I loved so dearly.
I curiously opened the door to be meeted, not only with an increased draft of the noxious perfume but an accompanying scream from my son in the tower room. I stumbled away from the invisible gas leaking into the hall I had been searching when another scream of the same magnitude as before brought to my attention that something was amiss. I hurried through the maze of halls to another landing I had found to the tower while I searched for the cursed window. I rushed up several dozen stairs yet to reach the zenith but as I crawled through the hatch, I was stunned back under the wooden barrier by a shriek so loud that my ears rang with retort for numerous seconds before my hearing returned to me. I dashed out of the trap door and into the room in an attempt to see and apprehend my son before another ear-piercing shriek could be issued. On that particular venture I failed because the moment I broke cover I was sent to my knees by a sound that any term yet defined would be hard pressed to properly describe. I was set on the floor reeling as I realised that my son was no longer in the room, I had left him in. As I stumbled to my feet, I searched the room again and faintly heard another issue of that horrible sound over the ringing in my ears. When the room refused to turn up evidence I turned to the three windows poised at the north, south, and west walls of the tower. It was from the western orifice that I spotted my son clung to the spike at the top of the tiled roof of his abode. I begged him to come down to no avail. Each time I tried to reason him down he screamed back and clutched the pinnacle of the tower, scrambling further up with each utterance.
I strained my voice above his bellows but to no avail; he heeded not my word but instead continued his insufferable wailing. His voice cut through the terrible gusts of wind that swept my hair to and fro atop my head. I, at length, gave up with my useless quarrelling with my son and, with great difficulty, managed my way out of the window and on the slippery tile that was used as roofing on the steep pitch. More than once on my scramble to the top I felt my feet slip from under me and, if not for several well positioned mars of the otherwise pristine surface I would have been on my back in the courtyard below me; probably sprawled across a bush with several thorny branches plunged through me. Also, upon my ascent I noticed how the beautiful valley that the house resided in had, since my acquiring of the mansion, turned to decay and rot with several diseased trees, which I had never before seen, leaning over the green lawn killing the grass below with their shade. Once when I risked a glance below me, I noted that upon the precipitous roofs of the palace had amassed, in shocking amounts, piles of leaves and filth. This I all but dismissed when I reached, finally, my son, whose squalling had calmed to several whimpers and hiccups, had realised his location and clung frightfully to the zenith of the roof.
At length I reached my child and, with a tentative hand, reached out to him urging him to take it. However, the boy at the end of my hand was unwilling to follow me back down the roof and to the room below. I petitioned him but my son refused to let loose his grip on the tiles and follow me down. Instead, it was imposed upon me to force my son out of his death grip, which further required me to finish scaling the ever-increasing gradient to its zenith and pry his fingers one by one from their white knuckled hooks around the edges of the tiles. Once one hand was free it clung to me in a similarly tight grip upon the back which constricted my shirt around my neck making it, if it wasn’t hard enough to breathe from my exertion as well as the rare air that surrounded me, harder to breathe. Further, this, expanding my problematic situation, made it all the more difficult to continue with my most bothersome work of freeing my son from the tiles he embraced so tirelessly. Eventually I got enough of the fingers of his second hand free that he released his grip from the tile and, though for a second I thought he would fall, wrapped his newly free hand around my waist; hugging me tight enough to squeeze air from my lungs while he readjusted his other hand which had been pulling at my shirt to assist in squeezing the air out of me. For a moment I felt a bit faint but quickly reinvigorated myself for the return journey and, with a shout, I began my descent toward the aperture I had emerged from with my son tightly wrapped around my back blessedly, for once, he was not screaming at the top of his lungs but, instead, passively staring at the scenery as if enthralled by the prospect of being so high above the rolling hills. I chuckled lightly at the prospect myself but when I lost my footing on a loose tile all will of laughter abruptly left me while I righted myself and didn’t return until I was safely within the room at the top of the tower.
As I lowered myself into the window at last, I fell to the wooden flooring wheezing from my exertion and gasping for oxygen within the thin, abnormally cold, air. My son, without hesitation, dismounted and ran to an adjacent window to continue peering at the beautiful, lush countryside as if nothing abnormal had happened. I regained my breath slowly. Long enough it took me to begin breathing at a normal rate that my son had tired of the view and had immersed himself in some other fancy so that when I was right to stand, he was running circles around me shouting sounds that sounded reminiscent of language but far removed from any spoken language that I had the privilege of knowing. I named it Charlese in his honour and humoured him when he began speaking directly to me in that tongue which, to the closest description, sounded like a gargled mixture of Latin and some pagan voiceage of late Germanic dialect. From where in the child’s imagination, he drew inspiration for the language I haven't a clue but, in some odd fashion it worked quite well. After a well needed rest I tired of his constant jabbering in that foreign language, some of which sounded like a repeated message, and felt the need to explore the dark orifice in the wall I had discovered before my son’s prompt interruption.
When I reached the spot, I found that the door had closed itself. In an irksome manner I found that my memory wasn’t as great as I had professed it to be, leading to maybe an hour-long search of the wall for that damned door. When I found the thing again, I made sure that a mark was left on it so I could find it and resume my inspection at the earliest the next day for, after my long inspections of the palace, and my exciting interlude atop the tower I had lost all interest in further searching the dark annals hidden beyond the portal. Instead, I let myself lay at ease for the last waning hours of daylight watching over the countryside from one of the top floor apartments which I proclaimed to be solely my room should any guest wish to stay a night in the near future.
I awoke, stiff, in the armchair I had been sitting in before I nodded off, from a frightful dream in which some daemon in a slender form descended from the moon and approached me whispering in my son’s dialect something I vaguely felt had something wicked to do with me. I had reached my feet before I fully realised I was awake nor my surroundings. I dashed toward the window I saw before me and stared fixated upon the daemonic glows sent from the moon upon the garden below and the thin white figure that slid, snakelike, through the hedges and out of view. I found my senses after staring at the spot in which it had disappeared from sight for the majority of four minutes. I shook my head clear of sleep and glanced toward the moon which I found, oddly enough, to only be a sliver of the moon and that the daemonic light I had perceived be naught, but a fanciful illusion brought about by a vivid dream. I, again, stared briefly at the spot which I could have sworn to be the last place I saw the daemon from the moon and could, barely within my powers of perception, make out the vaguest movement of what could only be made by a very large, slim figure before it was gone an instant after it had shown. I shivered slightly before grabbing a gown to wrap myself within as I started a flame in the grand fireplace found centre of the house. Once the flame was hot, I had completely forgotten what had transpired only a mere few minutes prior.
The chill was from my bones by the first peek of the sun from the horizon and I felt well enough to begin my exploration after a quick breakfast. While I ate, I noticed that everything was abnormally quiet and that, even though by the time the sun had enshrouded the full eastern side of the house fog hung eerily about the ground in a way that reminded me of a cemetery I grew up near back in England. It was very rarely a day that the place wasn’t enshrouded in miserable fog or being cascaded upon with insufferable rain. I had spent long periods of time wondering why it was that this one place managed to keep around it such a terrible gloom that I forever associated with graveyards.
I shrugged off this premonition and began promptly searching for the mark I had left upon the secret hatch to destination unknown. I reached it with a lit lantern in one hand and a blunt hammer in the other. My reasoning of weapons was not that I may need it for defence but rather to tear out hindrances to my exploration. I found that I didn’t need it for that day’s trek which was primarily down stairs deep into the earth. It was several hours after my lantern started to wane before I began to head back up empty handed and exhausted.
When I reached the top of the stairs the light had begun to wane from the sky. This was going to be a long trip, far longer than I had ever anticipated and so I started preparations for a week-long venture into the vast depths. I spent most of the night packing salted meats and breads alongside more oil for my lantern, several vessels of water and wine to sustain me for my extended trip and utensils with which I would write notes on my travel. I also left a note for any circumstance that may arise during my venture stating as follows:
I leave that if, under any circumstances, I may not be able to meet with whom this is left, I should be sought in the tunnel that leads below the house. The entrance to which is marked on the furthest edge of the fourth-floor east corridor. I plan to leave on the sunrise that this letter is to be marked and have supplies necessary to sustain me for a week past departure. Should it happen that I have not returned by that point I hearken you to send, at your earliest convenience, a party of men to return me or recover my remains should the worst outcome come to occur.
Signed A. Willingscraft
11/5/1780
As I finished my notes, I found that the blessed sun had begun to surmount the trees that encapsulated the manor I had grown to despise. I stared at the beauty of the sun that I knew I wouldn’t be seeing for a rather long sum of days and absorbed the warmth of it for as long as I could bear to wait before gathering my supplies and heading toward the passage.
Before I plunged into the fathomless depths below the house I felt, for a second, a milling in my stomach which urged me to not follow my curiosity and rather let the question sit unanswered. I suppressed that ill feeling with another glance at the coming morn and plunged headlong into unknown territory. However adventurous I felt in starting my descent it quickly left me with only the feeling of intense loneliness that the darkness refused to allow me to rid myself of it as each step further increased my distance from civilization and closer to whatever my conscience feared below me.
I would surmise from the remaining amount in my lamp that by the time I had reached the last stair the sun that I had left at dawn had finished its arch and now rested below the horizon though I barely felt a couple hours had passed in my exalted state. At the foot of the steps, I took my first rest and had a portion of meat and a couple swallows of water. Once weakness that had settled since I took rest had left my limbs, I continued on down the faintly damp, stone carved passage which led me further still into the earth.
I feel it would be safe that I covered two kilometres before sleep drug my heavy limbs to the ground. I snuffed my flame and positioned my pack as an impromptu pillow while cursing myself for allowing something as simple a luxury as a blanket to slip my mind.
The time I slept, I cannot tell you how long for I know not myself, I was wracked with horrid dreams of the so-called future and beyond even the industrial revolution I was tortured with visions of war and famine and explosives capable to level entire buildings. My dear city of London, raised by said explosions, destroyed by the horrid Nazis and the place where I kept abode being used as a secret meeting place of a French resistance before too being lain to rubble.
I woke without much of any feeling and, beyond fumbling with the matchstick to light my lantern I did nothing but walk for the entirety of the next few days. By the third night of my stay below the house I had found myself muttering in Charlese to myself about things which my brain refused to comprehend. While I walked, I also made small notes of the environment which, in its ever-unchanging dismal decor, gave my mind something to rest upon as my feet plodded along. What I noted, primarily, was that on a couple days the ground seemed to slope upward, and the decor of the walls ceaselessly issued a presence of doom that I felt I couldn’t bear much longer. Several times I had passed a thought of turning back but my determination to find anything within the crypt kept me from succumbing to such thoughts and instead I forged forward along the unending path.
When I woke on the fourth day my body was stiff from the floor and weak from my prior day’s adventuring. My brain too was weak as well as my soul. Everything about me only portrayed abysmal causes and dismal conditions that further strained my condition. I was stretched so thin mentally that before me in the solid darkness I fancied I saw the ghastly figure of some spirit dancing across in front of me. I dismissed it as a figment of my imagination and set forth in preparations of heading back when I noticed that I had conserved my rations better than I could have expected and opted for one more day of travel before being forced to turn back. I stumbled to my feet and, with the pack, half empty, resting upon my shoulder, I forged further into the darkness.
It was about halfway through my fourth day of travel when I sensed the tunnel opening to a large room. It took me another hour to reach the room and upon stepping within I had enough to satisfy my urge of determination but urges of curiosity and discovery followed in its place. It was under such obligation that I searched the purpose of the room which, to any other traveller it would have been easy to discern but, to me, the purpose eluded me until I was staring at the skull of a corpse that I had strewn about when I tripped on its resting place. I recited an abridged version of the final rites as I collected this person’s remains and replaced them in their rightful place.
It was such of my condition that even after such a simple task, as that which I had just finished, had me exhausted beyond reason. I sat beside the coffin I had replaced and spent many minutes wheezing in the thick air for breath that continued to elude me.
It took me longer than I would admit to gather my senses after I fell asleep unexpectedly in the sepulchre but as I blundered about in blind panic, I knocked my lantern over and broke the vessel holding the oil necessary to my escape of the horrid place. I screamed in rage once I found out what I had done and tried to fix the vessel to no avail. I was left blind in the abyss of malleable twilight, with only my other senses to provide safe passage to the exit.
Of my senses there was little to help. Sight was useless in the total absence of light. Taste was equally useless as the entirety of the place tasted of damp and death. Smell in a similar manner had no help for me in the completely foreign environment in which everything to my inexperienced olfactory system smelled of the same darkness, dampness, mould and death. Touch came in sharp retorts from my shins, and I couldn’t stand the slimy texture of the walls. Finally hearing, though my strongest sense in the situation, helped little in the cavernous sepulchre which my ears only felt the ruminous thrumming that echoed about it unceasingly. Instead, I had to rely primarily upon the hidden sixth sense which I could best describe as the sense of being.
I felt, on numerous occasions, when I left my body to move about the room freely, while not trying to sense anything but instead let the ebb and flow of the energy around me lead me around obstacles, that this sixth sense let itself into my being for a moment before I began to think about it and I, with immediate accuracy barked my shin upon one of the lids of the caskets strewn about the dark cavern. With a low curse each time, I would carefully step forward with my hands about and try again to enter my sixth sense. It was in such a manner that I crossed the room to an aperture opposite me.
For whatever reason I didn’t question whether this was the portal I had entered from but, in an attempt to get out of the wretched room, I took it. I spent a time, incalculable in the darkness, feeling the wall in order to gain my bearings of which I realised that my corridor sloped up and that the design of the walls closely matched that which I observed upon entering so any question of this being my escape wasn’t anything that vaguely crossed my mind. Another thing that I forgot in my exaltation was that I had, at some point in crossing the room, dropped the contents of my bag leaving me with a handful of crumbs that had amassed in the bottom of my sack when I stopped what I later determined to be two hours hence. My disappointment crushed my soul beyond what I had thought to be liveable. I stared at the small group of crumbs in my hand for a length of time before I realised I could see said crumbs.
I then stared about me for the source of light and found that it surrounded me in a wraithlike orb. Light seemed to emanate, not from an outside source, but from my being. To test my hypothesis, I discarded the crumbs and approached the wall just to find that the light I could see didn’t translate on the wall which remained to be black with sombre highlights where the darkness couldn’t further deepen. I spent some time looking within my bag with dismay before, too, discarding it, feeling it would just get in my way later.
So, with my small radius of light, I forged my way forward until my legs could no longer support me; at which point I slept for the fourth time within the dungeon. I used the few moments before sleep could overtake me to write a few notes on my condition which follow as thus:
Of my travel, my third day must be the worst. It was, upon stumbling across what I come to remember only as that room, that I began to fall upon misfortune. My lamp was knocked askew and my oil ruined. Without light I stumbled about the place finding that it is far more difficult to stand up when you don’t know how high the ceiling is from you even if it is moderately high. It was during my excursion in the dark that I happened upon the sixth sense when all others failed me. Only when one is unable to consider using it does it come to one in need. Depending on where you find this, if you are confused by my mention of a room you have yet to come across I have come the right way, if not then I feel you will soon find my body in some degree of decomposition as during my blundering about in that room I lost my stores of food which would, at my estimates have lasted me another five days. I fear the room so much that I refuse to return to get my sustenance and despite my three-day long journey ahead of me I feel I could rightfully make it if I were to be going in the right direction. Of my direction I lost it within that wretched maze of coffins. And since I have naught a way of returning it. If I am doomed to be going in the wrong direction, I pray God let me out of here as quickly as possible.
Signed A. Willingscraft
15/4/1780
From the time I woke I dreamt again of what lies beyond humanity on the scale of time. After what I could only assume was more of those explosives, they dropped in Asia being used to level the countryside and put an end to humanity and many other mammalian organisms. What remained when the toxins of the explosions dissipated were meek plant life and only the most resilient of reptiles and insects. Over the thousands of years, I was allowed to view, I watched the evolution of gigantic ants and even bigger reptilians closely resembling the millions of years removed ancestors. Once the new life gained dominion again a queer spacecraft took light on the surface and, I’m appalled to relate that more human beings were dumped off to be left to fend for their own. Three times this happened before the number of survivors was satisfactory to the overlords. From there I watched an abridged version of history with only a few differences between our reality and the dream remaster.
When I woke, with a frightful start, at the second coming of apocalypse I remembered my position as did my stomach which complained greatly at my neglect of its needs. Needs that I need not remind you I had no way of providing. Ignoring my stomach, I started off at once up the hall unaware of some creature tailing me at a silent distance.
For several hours I walked until I tripped over a set of clawed gouges. Once I noticed my cause of disruption, I investigated the floor nearby and found that a trail of them led to an adjacent passage, slightly larger than the one I was in. It was also when I was on my knee examining the gouges in an attempt to satisfy my curiosity of what creature had made such mars to the solid stone that I noticed the shallow breathing of an animal near me. I could tell by the claws that this was no domestic creature, nor did the hideous rasp of its breath tell me otherwise. I stared at it in the darkness beyond the ethereal light that surrounded me and, I doubt it greatly even though I would swear it, I felt the creature’s thoughts as if they were my own. The foreign thoughts of a mindless beast. Thoughts that barely went beyond kill and quiet. I thought of the creature’s simplicity of mind and a question occurred to me of whether I could control this creature with my mind through the link. Then came a dilemma, If I were to attack this creature it would possibly anger it or, as it hadn’t seemed to notice that I was privy to its thoughts, risk losing this valuable connection and alert it to my knowing of its proximity.
My final decision came when I realised I was almost certain to die and this creature would, either way, with its claws offer quicker, more sufferable death than the grip of starvation would. I probed the creature with the demand it come within my sight. The creature reacted in a way that I never would have expected from any dumb animal of its nature, it talked back. It sent, with equal force, a demand that I lay open for its consumption and, unlike my probe which was formed by words, formed itself in a series of pictures.
A demand from such a lesser creature angered me. In my lessened mental state, I was unable to hold back my emotion, and I dashed toward where I thought the creature was. I was correct in my aim, but my imagination largely overshot the size of the creature causing my attempt to grasp its course, oddly enough, white fur. While I absorbed the information, I could observe I noted that the thing’s eyes were nearly non-existent; rather it decided to drive further into its hearing and neglected its eyes. Further from what I saw it had a large fore half with two highly muscular fore paws complete with a full hand of finger sized claws and a pitiful rear with spindly legs whose only purpose, that I could discern, was to stabilise the front half.
After my first failed attack the thing jumped with a lithe grace that any feline would envy and faced me with a bared snout full of teeth, not for tearing but more so for crushing. I shiver at the implications as I dashed at it again. The thing snapped its snout up as I passed but my oddly increased intuition provided a long enough window to avoid it and still catch the fur at the nape of its neck. I grasped its form finally and straddled it in an attempt to force it on the ground. However, those fore paws did more than tear flesh and in an instant, I was sent onto my back. Briefly I felt the presence of its mind brush against mine in a gesture that I perceived as, good job, before I shoved it away.
I was stunned for a moment after landing and in that time the creature covered the distance, I reckon about ten feet, that it threw me and had me pinned before I could react. Luckily, before the crushing jaws could smash my head like a gourd, I acquired a sudden burst of strength which I used to offset the monster and again gain the upper hand. This time, however, I threw the dog to the wall and felt satisfaction at the subsequent yelp as it bounced off the wall. I also didn’t give it any time to recover and picked up its hefty build and threw it, with as much strength as I could muster, at the opposite wall. This retort was the sound of something cracking and even more satisfying, the lack of any vocalisation from the monster.
I kicked it to make sure it was done with and continued on my walk. Oblivious to the fact that I had again strayed from my path and onto another tunnel beneath the house, I walked with a little hop in my step until the reappearance of the creature stopped me in my tracks.
I watched as the thing’s blood oozed from a tear in the skin above its right shoulder and dripped onto the floor below. I strained myself to hear it but there was an ominous growl emanating from its direction. At this point I was more stupefied about its reappearance than I was scared of its capability of destroying me or that of another of its kind approaching me from behind. What really scared me is that the quality of the tunnel had decreased as it had shrunk, unbeknown to me, as I had travelled down it.
The surmounting terror of the realisation I was lost along with the fact that there were alternate routes which had allowed my enemy to outpace me sent me into a fit of pitiful sobbing and shrieking which held my nemesis at bay.
At length my voice gave way to pitiful grunts and whines which held no further impact on the creatures around me. The injured creature stalked closer to me, as did the other, but they walked past me, oblivious to my presence. It came to me the realisation that I was being fought over, that I was no more than an injured prey for the true alpha predators to fight over. Once this came to my endlessly tormented mind to write my final letter while they fought.
As I sit here no more than the prey of another creature whom I must watch fight another of its creed for the rights to me I feel no longer afraid of death, in fact I now welcome the reaper with open arms. I feel there is no more I can do in this world locked beneath the house that stole my heart and soul, twisted it and sent it back to me deeply scarred. I hope my testaments I have left here with me can be of use to someone who may find my remains. If the need still arises of the inheritance of this place, I forbid it be given to my son, rather I wish for him to be sent back to his grandmother with another note enclosed here. The house should go back to the man who gave it to me and should he not be found, to one of his heirs. Should they refuse it the place is to be left abandoned and unused for I feel it will be of great importance in the future. Of my other possessions they can be given to my son if he wishes for them or can be sold by the one who finds this note. This is only reasonably applicable if this note be found within a reasonable time after my death and before proceedings have begun.
Signed Arthur Bartholomew Willingscraft
17/5/1780
Epilogue
Found after death this is a compilation of notes written by the late Arthur Willingscraft in the days leading to his death. Liberties have been taken to make a cohesive story but have been run over with the remaining family, of which there is only one to note, Arthur’s grandson Michael.
Author’s note
It has been a task to fill in the missing pieces of the story and extremely interesting to see how well this man’s delusion wracked brain could foretell with great accuracy. It was also extremely difficult to sift through the pain of this man as the realisation dawns upon him that he would never get out and comes to the reality of the fact. Though in the catacombs below the house there were no signs of the creatures he described and yet his descriptions were written so vividly he could have only believed they were real.
His body was found three months after his note was addressed and, on his lap, a nearly empty bottle of ink sat by his limp, emaciated hand, still liquid in nature, to his right, a pen notched in his hand. On his lap were the last words he wrote.
Though my strength fails me. I have hope finally of rescue. A light, beyond the edge of the passage. I see the beautiful light. To you who come, watch out for the dogs. Though they spared me,
He never finished his thought and died minutes before his rescuers found him. This is the epitome of tragedy. Had he managed to last a day longer he would have been saved but alas he lived in the darkness, only twenty feet from his escape for two months slowly dying of hunger, feeding off of his own body to live one more hour at a time.
His son, was as his will stated, sent to his grandmother in London but the man he had signed the document for had vanished from sight and nothing could be found of him or his family, so the house was left as it was, vacant until its destruction during WWII.
Though I highly recommend you check out the notes yourself I do warn you that they get far worse than what I have depicted here. It is definitely not for the faint of heart or even some of you stoics out there. It surely got to me, and I had naively thought I had read it all; that it wouldn’t affect me but I’m willing to admit that I still, in the darkest of nights, get hit by emotion and cry throughout the night.
I would like to thank everybody who helped me with my research, finding the original copies for reference, and with the publishing and formatting. Without your help this project wouldn’t have seen the light of day.