Tenebrae Manor

by P. Clinen

  ****

  To feel the solid ground underfoot proved welcome relief to the tiring Bordeaux. Ever onward he trudged, his pace soon becoming a weary drag and he took on the guise of one somnambulating. The sun rose again, however he took little notice of it. Rolling itself to the highest point in the oceanic sky and shining down onto his pale forehead, Bordeaux was able to discern that he must be headed in a southerly direction. He recalled the subtle things he had forgotten; the daylight calls of birds, the verdant reflection of light shimmering off tufts of grass greener than he could remember. But most prominently he recalled how quickly the time flew when he had both night and day dividing it.

  He refused to stop in his wanderings. Though hunger and fatigue gnawed at his body, he persisted until nightfall came around again and with it, another revelation. When the hills had taken on their violet cloak given them by the darkness and the stars had lit their lanterns and hung as silent observers, Bordeaux noticed a light glowing in the distance. A dull glow of orange that, given the vast range of vision around him, must have still been several miles off if it were indeed what he thought it to be - a campfire. He had at first dismissed the light as a trick of his fraying consciousness, though the further he walked, the larger the glowing grew until there was no denying it to be a small fire. A fire which, as he crept closer in the darkness, presented itself as the centerpiece of a camp site of two travelers.

  Around the flames they sat, casting lengthy shadows that exaggerated the minimal bulk of the pair. Bordeaux crouched so that the lengthy grass concealed him, paying no heed to the repugnant smell given off by the proximity of mud.

  Two men, one much older than the other, huddled quietly about their little fire, which gave shape to the cart and horses that stood reined by the roadside. Bordeaux lay still for some time, the men none the wiser to the stranger in their presence. Both were dowdy, forgettable in appearance and no doubt peasants or simple workmen. The older man, with shoulders weighted heavily with age, plucked at the knots in his unkempt beard with a blade; his friend, an equally disheveled youth, stoked the flames with a stick. The scent of soup permeated the air and overran the odours of the marsh, channeling from a kettle that hung over the fire. The smell taunted Bordeaux and he readily mused over a course of action.

  Surely these two strangers would assist a fellow vagabond lost in the marshes. The play unfolded in his mind; he would approach them and pledge peace and they would permit him to travel with them. Perhaps they could then inform him of his whereabouts and with such a basis, Bordeaux might be able to discover the way back to Tenebrae Manor.

  Just as he was about to rise from the reeds and approach, he stole back in a flash on an impulse of realisation. Having heard the sound, the youth turned his head from the fire and scanned the vicinity but the shadows concealed the demon efficiently.

  Bordeaux reached for his temple and probed at the arisen issue - his horns. He was not dissimilar to the men in any other way, however the two curled protuberances, small though they were, would instantly give himself away as a character of suspicion. Bordeaux had dealt with simple-minded villagers in ages past, many times evading the accusations of his demoniac notions through varying measures. He wondered whether times had changed since he had been at Tenebrae. The year was unknown to him, the culture of the outside world completely alien. Perhaps it would not be an issue?

  No, he could not risk it and with no means to cover his small horns, he was at a loss to determine the right action. He would not need to decide, for another problem arose when the old man suddenly opened his mouth and muttered to his companion - they did not speak in a language Bordeaux understood.

  They spoke in short bursts, with Bordeaux unable to denote the pauses between certain words so that their voices slurred into an unintelligible drone. The crimson demon focused intently; it was not in French that they spoke, nor any of the Latin based tongues. No, this was something different.

  Although he could not be sure, Bordeaux assumed the language to be that of a Slavic decent. The assumption proved to be of little help; not only did he remain unaware of his location, he could in no way inquire of the two gentlemen before him. Deadsol had been of Russian decent; Bordeaux had often heard him speak the harsh tongue and pen the Cyrillic letters but even though there were similarities in the strangers' accents, he was not sure.

  Bordeaux realised that his best bet would be to hide himself amongst their cargo and travel in secrecy. He circumnavigated the campsite, keeping at a distance that left him in the darkness. Cursing the sound of his legs swaying through the grass, he scooped up a pile of mud and hurled it away from him, so that the thud caught the attention of the wayfarers. They turned towards the noise and spoke to each other. The horses brayed uncomfortably and in the minor commotion of it all, Bordeaux threw his body onto the cart and hid amongst the load of barrels and sacks that sat there.

  ****

  He had fallen into a fitful slumber. Aptly covered by a tarpaulin, Bordeaux awoke to the rocking of the cart as it rumbled down the road. The sun pierced through the fabric of his covering and stung his lethargy into play yet again. His stomach nagged with hunger and he could see a sack in front of him with a small tear in it, where a handful of grain that Bordeaux assumed to be rice poured through. He lifted his head quietly; the wayfarers had their backs turned to the cargo and were chatting to each other as the horses carried on. The scenery had not changed; the swampy hills carried on for miles around with the wind whistling so loudly that he could scarcely hear anything else.

  But when Bordeaux had eagerly shoved the rice into his mouth, he noticed something peculiar that made him gag. Perhaps it was that he had not eaten in so long, or that the grain he ate was hardly nourishing, or more likely; that the carriage was traveling back the way he had come the day before. He felt at a loss; for how long would he be trapped in these marshes? The miles he had covered on foot yesterday were for naught, now that the cart drove in the opposite direction. Defeated, he let his head fall back down and again fell into a restless sleep.

  The days passed in minutes. The crimson demon had lost count of how many times he had seen the sun and moon. There were times when he would wake and wonder if it was a new daylight he felt on his pale face or merely the same day he had counted before plunging into delirium. His strength was failing him. The rice from the broken sack was revolting and it took every effort not to expel every mouthful.

  "Is this my punishment?" he mused to himself. "Maybe Tenebrae Manor was my purgatory... And this swamp, this endless rotting wasteland must be..."

  Yet just when the crimson demon had consigned himself to the idea of an entire torture in the marshes, the winds ushered in a change so refreshing that his resolve steeled ever slightly. A crisp scent cut his nostrils and invigorated his person; the cart had reached a coast. The travelers seemed revived too; their long journey coming to a close, they spoke gaily amongst themselves, still unaware of the stranger in their cargo.

  Bordeaux watched seagulls float in lazy circles above him and, eventually, he could hear the sounds of the sea as it crashed against a small harbour town that would be their destination. Perhaps salvation had come for Bordeaux or at least a further reprieve.

  The voices of people, despite their foreign tongue, sung like music to his ears. Society, the bustle of a small port. Bordeaux could hardly believe such things still existed for him. Presently the cart came to a halt, the horses brayed and Bordeaux heard the crunch of the two men's footsteps around the cargo. He swiftly clambered into the empty rice sack and lay perfectly still. Bordeaux could hear the men grunting as they lobbed the cargo down onto the docks. Soon it was his own limp body that was thrown and he stifled a cry as he hit the deck with a thump. Bordeaux had arrived.

  27: Freeing Those Imprisoned

  It was true that Tenebrae Manor suffered the strains of considerable tension at this point and that each character had innately scrambled to their own methods of weathering the menace of disturbance. In
many cases, it had been a resorting to unification and standing firm against peril but for the spindly Arpage, it had been his natural affiliation to cowardice that had him scattered of mind and body.

  When the golems had attacked the carriage as it returned from the cemetery, he had cannoned into the house without a thread of care for his friends and had not been seen since. The expanse of the mansion meant that none could track him down, were he indeed still within its walls; although one began to suspect that Arpage was lost in a sense that he could not find his own way about rather than having someone unsuccessfully trace him.

  Notwithstanding his disappearance, he was indeed still inside Tenebrae Manor and yet he could find no other creature or room that he recognised. While he had momentarily wanted to vanish and to be safe from danger, Arpage was now yearning to find someone or something that he knew in this place he thought was home. How it could be that he could be lost in his own abode puzzled him greatly. However, the vacuous silence that met his cries filled him with sickening dread. The musician conceived horrid images of the friends slain at the hands of those monsters. And he, the dribbling coward, had escaped to an empty shell of a house. Perhaps he had been thrown into utter isolation, the only lively being of the manor. Like a hermit crab, he longed for his loft in the auditorium. To stroke the keys of his monstrous piano again, to nap on his dilapidated couch with inked smeared score sheets covering the dusty floorboards around him. Were he to absorb the sombrous acoustics of the auditorium again, he would feel complete. It would not matter what became of his friends. Arpage could hide in his guilt indefinitely. For he knew that if someone were to find him, surely they would reprimand him to such extent that isolation would be his only desire.

  But the indecipherable mansion lay its artery-like corridors all about him and being of a disheveled state of mind, Arpage could not discern the correct path that would take him to his hovel at the higher stretches of Tenebrae. Heightening his frustrations was the omnipresent taunt of the auditorium itself; he could see its carbuncled protuberance from various vantage points around the house. Here, he could see its outer walls from the floor length window of an abandoned sitting room. There, he could see it from the covered walkway bridging two turrets. And as he sidled up a spiral stairwell through the shadows, the auditorium was there again, further away this time, seen through one of multiple arrow slit windows.

  Up and around the stairs he climbed, until he was running frantically down another corridor. To his left, the moon shone down onto the sheer cliff face where the manor was perched, so Arpage was finally able to realise that he had reached its rear side. The pines jutted like spearheads across the valley and immediately below him was nothing but black void. How far he would fall before reaching the knuckled bottom, he did not know, for the moon played tricks with the shadows playing through the valley. So onwards he ran, in his attempt to plunge deeper into the bowels of Tenebrae, where he assumed his safety would be augmented.

  Down more stairs he ran until he burst out into a cloistered courtyard enclosed on all sides by the high rising of architecture. And there was the auditorium again, high above him, camouflaged amongst the cityscape of roofs and windows of the ancient home. The auditorium taunted him - ominous, panoptic. He fell to his knees in despair.

  “Curse the mountebanks who built this place! Damn their tangled artistry! That a man can be lost in his own home, the very idea!”

  Arpage curled forward so that his forehead brushed the cobblestones as convulsing sobs drenched his flaccid hair with tears. So engrossed was he in his bemoaning that he did not notice the dark flash of a velvet ghoul watching him from the wall face high above him. From deathly blue eyes it stared, waiting with a spidery patience from a cobweb of ivy that strangled the castle wall. The apparition scuttled across the bricks and leapt over the quadrangle with chilling speed.

  Arpage, having seen the shadow flash over his head, quivered with wretched timidity. He looked up at the walls above the cloisters and shook uncontrollably upon seeing the ivy rustling in varying places. The spider needed concealment no longer, for the prey was trapped. Its shadow crawled about Arpage in a wide circle, as though spinning a quietus of silk around him.

  Before he could scream, the being advanced to him and when he peered from his fetal huddle to observe his captor, he saw only the arachnid grace of the vampiress Edweena.

  “Lost?” she said, her voice husky as bruised onyx.

  “Madam Edweena, indeed!” he cried and crawled forward so he could wrap his arms around her ankles.

  “Such torment I have not known,” he gasped as he kissed her feet. “It is worse than the desert of writer’s block! Such loneliness! But now! You are here, oh sweet Edweena!”

  Edweena placed her hands on her hips and huffed, “Stupid little man, it has been one week.”

  “A week?” cried Arpage. “And here was I thinking that time was lost at Tenebrae. Certainly given the drawling torture that was this week, it feels a thousand years have passed since I laid eyes on another!”

  “It is a very big house, I suppose. Those forgotten architects certainly had their work cut out for them. But it is in fact good that I have found you,” said Edweena.

  She broke free of Arpage’s clinging hands and glided towards the cloisters. She wrapped herself around a pillar and disappeared into the shadows.

  “Good, yes. Good doesn’t quite cover it, I’m afraid,” said Arpage. “Splendid, wondrous, what have you.”

  “Follow me.”

  Arpage scrambled to his feet and ran after her into the darkness of a long hall, where the red carpet ran bloodstained beneath the cruel portraits of ancient barons. A sort of strange light encompassed Edweena and from the vantage point of the composer, she appeared as a brilliant shadow, shaped from the light of the candle she carried. The shape of her slim shoulders seemed so accentuated in the darkness that one would assume them carved from the sinuous candlelight. Her steps moved in glissando fashion, gliding like a finger across the keys of a great piano, brushed in a swoop of baritone.

  “You will take me to my loft in the auditorium won’t you, my sweet Halloween?” asked Arpage.

  “That dusty old hovel?”

  The composer struggled to keep up with the lithe vampiress and she refused to slow down or acknowledge him with the turn of her head.

  “Yes, my dear,” continued Arpage. “Like the dawn that lost its way to Tenebrae’s trees, I too am lost. And my hovel, as you say, eludes me as this house eludes the earth and sun.”

  They continued their way through tallow soaked corridors and up slick staircases.

  “After your foolishness at the farm, I’d say you do not deserve such a reprieve,” said Edweena.

  “The farm! Madam, I assure you, it was all the work of those other two! That scarecrow, that man!”

  “Perhaps. But now the man, what was his name? He has escaped. What will you say if he finds civilization? What if the world buys his story?”

  “The man Jethro, oh my word! I know the err undertaken, be it my fault or another’s,” Arpage bemoaned.

  “You’d best hope that he is dubbed insane,” said Edweena. “Or better yet, that the fool falls to the dangers of the forest and perishes swiftly.”

  “You would wish such a fate on a man? A painful death?”

  “To run through a deathly fire, knowing that rest awaited on the other side. To die would be a peace…”

  They came to a certain room that Arpage immediately recognised; the room where Crow had brought in the body of Madlyn, after Sinders and Arpage had escaped the fire. The disorderly tea tray remained where it had been left and mice had congregated around the crumbs that remained scattered about tepid teacups.

  And now they were back out in the front hall before the grand staircase. Arpage flew to the foot of the stairs, knowing that the auditorium was at the summit on the right. Usher stood soldier still and watched the pair in silence.

  “Oh you did it!” squealed Arpage. “The path
is revealed, my precious auditorium at the zenith of these very stairs!”

  “Hold it, Arpage,” said Edweena coldly.

  The composer had placed one foot on the first step and convulsed at her demanding tone. He half turned and peered over his shoulder at her.

  “I was not leading you to your loft, mister,” continued Edweena. “Come. You and Sinders are to assist me in patrolling the house.”

  “What? No!” cried the composer and he attempted to dash up the stairs.

  In a flash, Edweena had grabbed him by the ruff around his neck.

  “Yes, I am afraid. No one is exempt. The manor needs every hand to help.”

  Arpage had begun to cry. “But me? Stopping those things? Impossible! And Sinders! It is through false smiles that I treat him civilly. I’ve grown an impatient indifference towards that scarecrow…”

  “Well, if you want a loft to come back to,” said Edweena, “you will come with me now.”

  Off in another direction she dragged the composer and, showing little resistance in defeat, Arpage allowed her to do so.

  ****

  Commotion cluttered the halls of Tenebrae; the house groaned from its state of hibernation and, like ancient machinery, stirred into life. Yet beneath the castle, deep in the dark reaches of forgotten tombs, all was still. Only through the spinning of the spiders or the scurry of rats did life unveil itself. The silence was deafening. So encompassing that it played tricks and feigned noise. Was there a thud heard in a far off room? Could a clinking of chains be heard shivering from the blackness? Were any present to hear it, they would indeed hear a low and tortured wail echoing through the gloom. The cry of one in severe torment, though it seemed so far away that its source could never be located.

  In the dungeons, Deadsol moaned in the pain of isolation. He hung from the wall of the dank cell, an epitome of rust. Like the corroded bars of iron that enclosed him, he too was disintegrating. His own chains would not yield under his strains, for they were new and glistened with the reflections of whatever rare light they could catch.