by Daniel Caet
I was in a dark, closed and extremely cold place. My body tried to move but something held my wrists limiting my movements. I looked around carefully and saw that I was in a kind of colossal cave of which I could not see the ceiling. Someone had tied me to one of the walls of the cave with what I could now see were enormously thick chains. I wanted to scream for them to let go, but I seemed to be alone in the cave. My attempts to release the chains were useless, and when I tried to use my powers I found that somehow it was as if I had been deprived of them, as if they had emptied me inside. Suddenly, a light at the back of the cave caught my attention. From the way it illuminated I could see that the cave was huge, bigger than I could imagine from my position. The light slowly approached until it was close enough for me to see that it was a small oil lamp, and its carrier was none other than Liliath.
“You. What is all this? Let go of me right now!”
“I recommend you do not waste your energies. No matter how hard you try, you will not be able to break those chains,” she said, bringing the light to my face. “I understand that you have no idea where we are.” A cynical smile filled her face. “It's really ironic. This cave was created by one of your brothers, the archangel Uriel, as a prison for demons.”
Uriel's name made my senses alert. Uriel had been the first exile from the heavens. Created as an archangel he had always opposed the destruction of demons because he considered them part of my father's creation. Instead, Uriel preferred to lock up those uncontrollable demons as a warning to everyone else. I imagined that he should have created that prison for that purpose. Unfortunately, his way of dealing with demons was not very popular among the other archangels who argued that a devil's actions could only be stopped with his death and extinction. Uriel was left alone and decided that he could not continue to support his brothers, so he left the sky without any of us having known more about him in eons.
“I can see on your face that you know who I'm talking about,” she continued. “What you probably do not know is that this prison is not just for demons. The characteristics of the material with which it is built make the power of any creature of supernatural origin completely nullified.”
My mind began to see why Liliath had brought me to that cave and how stupid and easy to fool it had been.
“You know, Helel? Your nature has always intrigued me. An angel, made human and yet you are not human at all. In fact, I was not sure if this prison would work with you, but it seems that even though your body is human, your nature really is not.”
I tried once more to find the energy in me to break those chains, but my effort was in vain. Liliath was right. I had never wanted to be completely human, and then I found that this was going to be my condemnation.
“By the way, I did not tell you that the cave does not work with humans, so my powers are still intact.” With a slight movement of her fingers she made deep cuts in my chest that began to bleed profusely, the pain was terrible. “I love it, it turns out that when it comes to pain you are completely human!”
“I do not know what you want from me, Liliath, but I assure you that when I get rid of these shackles I will make you pay for all the pain you have caused me, our children and your whole family.”
Her laughter echoed throughout the cave.
“You are truly fun. Let me explain a few things starting with what I want from you. I want you to disappear from my life, I want to finish what I started three hundred years ago, I want to be able to continue with my existence without the burden of a jealous husband who tries to disrupt my plans. I do not think it's too much to ask, really.”
Her face showed a rage that I knew well. A part of me was glad to know that, at least, the time I had spent trying to chase her had been a painful thorn and decided to try to use that to my advantage.
“I see you have not been able to forget me. Has it created many problems with your lover having your husband permanently present?”
“Lover? Do you mean Arpasetaj? Please, do not make me laugh, I got rid of him centuries ago,” she said with a laugh. “He was just a means to an end. As soon as I started having control of the demonic clans I made him disappear.”
The tremendously cold way in which she said it made me realise that in the creature before me there was nothing left of the Liliath I had known. Or that perhaps that Liliath never existed. That creature was capable of everything to achieve power and it was clear that her ambition had no limit.
“In the end it seems unfair that neither you nor my family understood the sacrifices I had to make to get where I am. Please, I even had two of your tadpoles! By the way, you will explain to me what you did with them because it is obvious that they have not been with you.”
I felt my heart stop at that moment. Her words suggested that she did not know what had happened to Narmesh and Niel either. All this time I had believed that she was responsible for their disappearance, but if she really did not know it was me who had been lost three hundred years.
“But ... one moment,” she said, approaching me and looking at my face that was completely broken. “You do not know what happened to them either, right?” Her laughter resounded throughout the cave. “I cannot believe it! Let me guess, you thought it was me who had them, right? Ah, Helel, you are so innocent! Did you really think that those bastards mattered to me in the least? I wonder what would become of them. Not that it matters, of course, by now their bones must be dust, but it would have been nice to know if any of them got anything out of me.”
The derogatory way in which she talked about our children made all the rage inside me come out and with an immense cry that resounded throughout the cave my body pulled with all its might the chains that held me. The walls of the cave trembled slightly, and some stone fell to the ground, but the chains did not move from their place.
“Enough!” she shouted turning to look at me while a sling of energy hit my body provoking a huge pain. “I do not have time for your nonsense. Your story with me ends here, do you understand? Do not worry, I will not kill you. Your destiny will be to spend the rest of your days here locked up, in darkness and cold, only with your memories and with the guilt of those who have died for you. And considering that by now you will have realised that what remains of your angelic nature makes you immortal, this sentence will be very, very long.”
Without letting me answer, her hand threw the lamp to the floor and the last light illuminated the empty space where she had been. The darkness filled everything straight afterwards. With all my energies I shouted her name that resounded in the cave without receiving any response except that of the most absolute silence.
Ghosts
Becca turned the last page of the book desperately wishing that it was not the end, but there was nothing else. She looked at the time and realised that she had spent the whole night engaged in that story she could not understand. All this would have been perfectly normal if that book had an author, if it was complete and above all, if it was not written with her own blood. She had no explanation for practically anything that was happening to her in the last days, but the only certain thing was that it was happening. The book was not a fantasy, it had not been created by her mind, it existed, she could touch it and she could read it. The Becca she knew would have dismissed that story as the fantasies of a not so talented author who tried to tell the story of Lucifer as if it were a cheap novel, but something inside her shouted that there was much more than that. Although she did not know why, she felt the need to know more. Somehow, within herself she knew that this story was important to her even though she did not know how it connected with the rest of her existence, and the only person who could explain why was the one that had sent it to her, her father.
She got up from the bed and opened the curtains. The day was cloudy, sad, but the amount of light that entered through the large window helped her recover some of the energy lost due to the sleep deprivation. She got into the shower and the warmth of the water comforted her greatly. She looked at her hand a
nd saw that the cut that had been made to read the book did not look as bad as she had initially expected; it was not too deep, and it did not bleed even though it hurt to touch it. In the shower her mind organised the day minute by minute. She would have breakfast with Charice, and she would tell her then that she needed to go to Glasgow to sign papers at a solicitor's office, all related to the immense fortune she had just inherited. Charice would undoubtedly insist on accompanying her, but she intended to tempt her with a visit to a spa one hour in the opposite direction. If she knew anything about Charice, it was unlikely that between a solicitor and a spa she would choose the former. Then she would take one of the cars from the house and drive herself to Rowhill Manor, the hotel where she hoped to find out something coherent about her just arrived father.
The plan went exactly as she expected, except for one small detail, Charice insisted on accompanying her and even the temptation of the spa could not dissuade her. Becca did not know if Charice suspected something or if she did it just to not leave her alone, but the fact was that it put her in a complicated situation and she was forced to explain her true intentions. Obviously, she did not intend to tell Charice anything about the book, the blood and everything else, but instead she sold her the idea that she wanted to meet her father in person and that was the first necessary step, something Charice understood even if she did not share the idea.
“Look, honey, I am not the one to lecture you about family love when I barely see my father beyond the compulsory festivities, but I want you to be prepared for what you can find. This gentleman, Lord or not, has taken twenty-five years to find you and, even then, he has not bothered to introduce himself, but he has done it through a lawyer,” she said, still looking at Becca, assessing the reaction to her words. “You have every right in the world to be excited about the idea of having a family, but have you considered that maybe he does not want to meet you?”
“It has nothing to do with the idea of having a family,” Becca answered. “In any case, it's the opposite. I think that after those twenty-five years I have the right to some explanations and those explanations must be given to me in person, don’t you think?”
“That sounds better to me,” said Charice, smiling. “For a moment you scared me, I thought you had an attack of papitis absentis. If what we're going to do is to fuck him well, then I am much more on board.”
Becca could not help but laugh. It hurt to not be able to tell her friend the whole truth of what was happening to her, but Charice's pragmatic nature would not have been able to understand it. In truth, Becca was not sure that anyone in her right mind could.
The way to Rowhill Manor was half an hour longer than expected because, despite the sat nav, Becca got lost twice; but finally managed to find the place. If in the photographs the site had recalled Duncan Hall, as they approached it, Becca realised that the size had nothing to do with her house, it was much smaller. It was evident seeing the structure that the building had seen better times and the large neon sign located at the entrance of the property did not help much when it came to first impressions.
They left the car in one of the visitor car spaces and entered immediately. The owners had internally reorganised the hotel so that the dining room occupied the old hall of the building which was reached by a large wooden staircase from the rooms, so the reception was not, as it would have been expected, in the grand entrance of the hotel but in a side entrance relatively difficult to find. Upon entering, a small wooden counter with a plump girl in her twenties who served as a receptionist was the only welcome.
“Good morning, welcome to Rowhill Manor, can I help you?” the girl snapped too willingly and rising as if by spring.
“Good Morning. My name is Rebecca Engels and I would like to know if you could tell me where to find Mr. Daniel McGregor.”
The girl's face went pale.
“Daniel McGregor? Do you mean that he is one of our clients? Let me look at the …”
“No, no,” Becca interrupted. “Excuse me, I think I've explained myself horribly wrong. We're looking for Daniel McGregor, Lord Daniel McGregor. I have seen on your website that this was the McGregor's old house and that the current members of the family still have links with it and I thought maybe you could tell me if you know him.”
“Would you wait a moment?” said the girl as she walked away with a face that made Becca think she was going to call the police.
“I think she thinks we're crazy, honey,” Charice said, reading her thoughts.
After a couple of minutes, the girl returned accompanied by a somewhat older and considerably thin woman.
“Good morning, I'm Mrs. Martindale, the hotel manager, Sarah told me you had a slightly peculiar request,” she said with a conciliatory smile.
“Good Morning. My name is Rebecca Engels and I think I should start by apologising, I'm sure our question is not usual,” she said smiling. “We are trying to find a way to contact Mr. Daniel McGregor and we thought, probably wrongly, that given the links of this hotel with the current McGregor family maybe you could guide us.”
“Well, of course it's not the kind of question we receive every day,” the woman answered smiling “but I'm afraid there has been a misunderstanding. The McGregor family, the original owners of this house, have long since disappeared. The last descendants sold the house to the Campbell family in the eighteenth century and these to an English potentate, Henry Mitford, in the nineteenth century. They are the current owners of the building although the exploitation as a hotel is contracted to a multinational hospitality company based in London.”
Becca felt as if a bucket of freezing water had been thrown over her. For a second, she had believed that this visit would give her a way to contact her supposed father and clarify many things, but it was another dead end.
“Anyway, it's curious that you ask specifically for that name.”
“Oh, really? Why?” Charice asked immediately.
“Let me show you,” the woman said, coming out from behind the counter and guiding them through double glass doors that led directly into the dining room and up the wooden stairs to the second landing. “You see, as a hotel manager we have to study the history of the house so that we can explain it to our clients and, curiously, Daniel McGregor is possibly its most famous tenant and perhaps the most infamous one as well.”
“What do you mean?” Becca asked almost afraid of the answer.
“Well, in his time he was a very controversial character. He was the lover of Maríe de Guise, the wife of James IV of Scotland and mother of Mary of Scotland, whom you will surely know because she spent twenty years locked up in the Tower of London as a result of her bad relations with her cousin, Elizabeth I. Maríe de Guise was known as a libertine and it seems that he used to spend a considerable amount of time with her. It is said that he had absolute control over her, not only because of his sexual abilities,” she said, winking at Becca and Charice, “but because, according to his contemporaries, he had contacts with the world of the occult, witchcraft and those things, you know. At that time those things were very badly seen, witchcraft I mean, not sex, and that brought many misfortunes to the McGregor clan, some of those they finally could not recover from. Curiously, he disappeared after Marie's death and nobody heard about him again. Some say that one of his other lovers, Lady Camille Dubois, could have hidden him for a while in Duncan Hall, a few miles from here, but it was never confirmed.”
Becca had to grab the ladder to keep from falling on her back.
“You said Duncan Hall?”
“Yes, why? Lady Camille Dubois was one of the owners of Duncan Hall, it's a huge mansion on the shores of the lake, but I do not think you can visit it, it's still a private residence.”
“Yes, we know,” Charice said thankfully without adding anything else.
Becca did not know how to react. She had not found any clues about her father, but the McGregor family's relationships with her own family seemed to come from much longer away than she expec
ted.
“And this is the gentleman in question,” the woman said, standing on the landing and pointing to a huge portrait on the wall.
Becca and Charice looked up to see the picture the woman was pointing at.
“Holy Armani,” Charice said as soon as she saw the man's face.
“Well, I had not noticed the resemblance when I met you!” replied the woman.
Becca could not retire her gaze from the face of the man who was looking at her intensely from the painting. Beyond the ornate dress, the wig and the dark colours of the painting, that man was a dead ringer for her. The colour of the eyes was different, his features were slightly sharper as expected in a man, but there was no doubt that the resemblance was much more than reasonable. His features coupled with the elegance he showed in the painting and that challenging look made him a very attractive man, but in a way that somehow went far beyond the physical.
“Yes, I know what you are thinking,” continued the woman, laughing openly. “Marie de Guise was a lucky lady! It cannot be denied that the gentleman was tremendously handsome. Anyway, be that as it may, he disappeared around 1575, some years after Marie's death. Local history says that an angry mob attacked the house with intent to execute him for crimes of witchcraft and treason, but that he was alerted by his mistress, Camille, who took him to Duncan Hall as I explained before, and he was never seen again.”
Becca could not say a word. The sound of the woman's voice came to her and her brain registered the information, but somehow her soul was lost in that painting, in that look. Once again life had taken her down an unexpected path and in the hope of finding a Daniel McGregor she had run into another. Another that was somehow also linked to Duncan Hall and her family and, although she did not know how to explain it, also to herself. It was Charice who took her out of her reverie with her usual dose of pragmatism.