Chapter 57: chapter 57

Already, I can feel the atmosphere here change. The Central District was warm, welcoming, and brightly-lit. The Old District, though, while it LOOKS the same, with street torches flickering brightly, wide, clean streets, and the occasional guard patrol, feels… cold. There’s a chill aura surrounding the area, a pervasive and ingrained feeling of wrongness.

There aren’t even any drunks or homeless people on the streets or in alleys, which clues Dana in to just how eerie the District feels. She scoots a little closer to me.

“y’know… I never really noticed how creepy this place looks at night… I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling right ready to leg it ta the Jacks…”

I blink, and she amends. “This place makes me wanna run to the toilet!” she even looks a little pale.

I take her hand, squeezing it for comfort, and she squeezes back, as I use my mini-map to lead her towards our destination.

It takes about thirty minutes of wending our way along the thoroughfares and streets, before the map marker pulses. I look at the wall in front of me. It’s… decaying and crumbling, but still stands tall, the husk of its former glory still clinging to it. The wrought-iron gates are closed and locked with half a dozen chains, but the leftmost gate, its intricate inscriptions worn away until they’re completely illegible, hangs, sagging and buckled inwards, whatever blow that forced it open a century ago still evident.

I reach out, rattling the gate a little, wincing at the clanking and shriek of padlocks and rusted hinges protesting. “Well, I don’t have a key… I don’t suppose you’ve got any skill with lockpicks?”

Dana sighs. “Wings, my love. Use your wings.”

“Oh. Oh, right. I DO have wings, don’t I?”

I pull Dana close and beat my wings a couple of times, getting enough lift to push off with my legs, hopping over the wall in more of a high-jump than true flight. Landing on the other side of the gate, I set Dana down and take her hand again, as we stare up the overgrown, winding path up towards the bulky, looming shadow of the Sleeping Manor.

The path, ominous and unkempt though it is, holds no surprises, and the wide double-doors of the manor-house stand open. There are signs of forced entry on the wood; deep gouges and depressions from long-ago weaponry striking the weathered, half-decayed timber. I step through the open doorway, into the hall. Moonlight shines through the broken windows above the doorframe and to each side. Dana starts, “when you said this was a haunted house, I-”

The whole world seems to wobble, just for an instant.

“…. You what, Astie-?” I turn to find out what my girlfriend had meant to say.

 

She’s gone. The doors are now closed behind me, as if they’d been shut the whole time. But I know. Neither of us had touched the doors. Something ELSE has closed them…

I draw my new mace, holding it in front of me as I slowly advance into the centre of the antechamber. There’s a prickling, cold sensation at the base of my neck, and I can feel the tiny neck hairs rising, standing on end.

I murmur, “Radiant Light!” and my wings start to glow. That’s better. It’s a little harder to be scared with some warm, golden light to brighten the surroundings.

There’s a pair of swooping staircases leading up to the first floor, with doors to rooms around the room’s upper level, and there are three hallways on the ground floor. One opposite the front doors, and one each to the right and left. Dust lies thick on the floor, ancient footprints marring the powdery surface, cobwebs hanging, thick with the remnants of prey and yet more dust.

I take another step, and a small voice whispers, right behind me.

“A new friend…. Here to play… do not run… here you stay…”

I whirl, but there’s nothing behind me. The voice had been so close, I could have felt breath on the nape of my neck… but I hadn’t. Whoever had whispered should’ve been close enough to touch….

I inch my way towards the left passage, before ducking into the hallway and creeping my way down its length.

 I dip into the first room I come to, looking around. The door’s fallen into pieces, and there are long-dried spatters on the floor of something dark that I don’t really want to think about. The shelves are collapsing under the weight of years, but still bear the burden of rotting grey cloth and folded fabrics. This must have been a linen cupboard, once.

Leaving, I make my way down the hall, peeking into every room I can, to investigate. This room looks like the cleaning closet, this room a bathroom, and this… the servant’s quarters. Cots lie in pieces, heaps of rotten wood and bedding, with more dried, dark spatters on the walls and floor. There are bones littering the floor, too. Three yellowed skeletons in the rags of simple retainer’s clothing. One, apparently male, is pinned through its ribcage to the floor by a rusted, crude-looking sword, a dagger clutched in its bony phalanges. The other two, both servant women judging by their decaying dresses, are huddled together in death, with the larger skeleton almost sheltering the smaller.  I pause, murmuring, “Lord Elif Thade, may you have shepherded these poor souls into your realm…”

I leave the room, making my way back to the entrance hall, tiptoeing across from my position on the left to the right side of the room. What horrors lie in wait down this path, I wonder?

 

The room closest to the atrium is a playroom, wooden blocks with carved letters on each face, the paint faded and timeworn. The husk of a teddy bear, patchy, mildewed fur and glass eyes in a rotted heap. Festering pages that have long-since lost their bindings.

I leave the room, moving on, finding another bathroom, another cleaning closet, and an internal well. The water smells stagnant and fetid, and the webs in this room are huge, thanks to the swarms of flies and insects. I pull the door closed and return to the main hall. I can either head down the final hall on the ground floor, or head upstairs.

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The voice comes again, right at my ear. “Don’t go back, only stay…. You can’t leave, you’ll be sorry if you try.… ”

I shudder, whirling again, and my eyes widen. Nothing’s behind me, but, at the window, out in the ruined garden between the house and the wall… something is looking in at me. A middle-aged woman, her eyes bulbous and red from weeping. She’s paler than any living being could ever be, her lank, tangled hair framing her face. Her hand, long claw-like nails extending from each finger, presses against the glass, as she leans in, no breath fogging the panes.

My eyes widen, and I back towards the split staircase. From somewhere below, an awful howl rings out. A cry of such venomous hate and loss and unrestrained resentment that I can feel my heart skip several beats. I hurry up the stairs as quietly as I can, doing everything possible to keep silent.

The upper floor matches the layout of the lower floor. Three hallways, one left, one right, and one central. I’m closest to the central hall, and dart for it as the window below cracks, the sound of breaking glass disturbing the silence. Snatching a look, I turn off my Radiant Wings, letting the darkness deepen. The spectre outside is NOT outside anymore. It’s pushing its way through the window, the leaden strips binding the glass in place freezing and shattering, the glass blued with an unearthly chill, as it drifts through, clad in a tattered, ethereal gown, crimson spattered down its chest and side. It lets out a wail, slowly turning its head from side to side, hunting for me.

 

I sneak my way down the upper hallway, a door ahead opening as I approach. As unnerving as that is, I don’t have many options. Plucking up my courage, I step in through the door into a vast, open space, two levels high, with a narrow staircase that leads up to the upper floor. Tall bookshelves line the room, standing in in neat rows, books strewn across the floor and trampled, shelves splintered and smashed.

There’s a small door at the far end of the library, leading into a study that looks like it’s been ransacked. There’s a really sturdy desk, with piles of decayed paper, and a ledger, somehow untouched by the mark of time. It’s open, and the pages are filled with cramped, neat handwriting, a dried-out inkwell and broken, crushed quill scattered near it. I approach, circling round to look at the ledger. The front is blank, and I turn a few entries back. A few more, then pause.

A warm day. My dear wife gave birth to our firstborn child. A daughter. She has her mother’s strength of will, and when I felt her pudgy little hand grip my thumb, I understand what my brother must have felt when his son was born. This little girl, MY child, is the most precious thing in this world.

 

I blink. This must be the diary of the man who owned this place. He had a wife and daughter, too? Those can’t have been those skeletons down in the servant’s quarters, can they? I keep reading.

A dark, rainy day. The physicians have confirmed the worst. My beloved daughter, my darling Dorothea… Will never see adulthood. A sickness, one that was thought to be a minor cough, has taken root in her lungs. She’s sleeping, while my wife prays to every Lord and deity she can think of. And I… I have one course. I will send for every wiseman, cleric, healer, physician, sage, or learned elder I can find. All I have that matters is my family. Wealth and status means nothing. If anyone can save my daughter, they can have everything. I don’t care what it costs, I MUST NOT fail her…

 

I pause, swallowing. The little girl got sick? That sounds bad. I turn over the page and keep reading.

 

Winter has come and gone, with no positive change in Dorothea’s condition. She has, in fact, gotten worse. Rumours of the war in the South are flying into the city every day, and each seems to contradict the last. I must admit defeat. My desire to save my daughter still lingers, but… I must face the truth. My Dorothea is dying. I have resigned myself to seeking ways to ease her passing…

 

I keep reading, feeling a pang of sorrow for the family that lived here.

 

I fear this will be my last entry. War has come to the capital. My daughter lays abed, her breathing ragged and feeble. She is too weak to even open her eyes… the last thing I can do, as her father, is to take up my sword, rally my guards, and buy enough time for her to expire in peace.

Gods, give my daughter that, much, at least…

I, the last lord of this house, Lucien Trevalli, will not let one invader pass the threshold while I still have strength to fight.

 

I close the book, before shoving it into my inventory. A wail comes from somewhere on the ground floor, and I exit the study, then the library, making my way further. I come across a corpse, lying on its back. It’s desiccated and rotted down to the bone, wearing what was once a gorgeous gown. Scattered pearls and a few small gems are strewn across the mouldered carpet.

“Her mother? It kind of looks like the clothing the spectre was wearing…”

I study the position of the body. It looks like she was trying to stand between one of the doors at the end of the hallway, her arms out, before being struck down in a single blow, stabbed through the heart. I murmur a prayer that she never felt the blow that killed her, before stepping around the body and approaching the door. It opens at my touch, and this room… is untouched, like not even those ancient assailants from a century ago had the heart to disturb it.

There, on the bed, lies a small skeleton. Wearing a long nightgown. The  size of the bones, and the general build… she was about fourteen, maybe fifteen….

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