Serafina and the Seven Stars

by Robert Beatty

  It felt as if all the planets were finally coming into alignment. The two lion statues that normally sat on either side of Biltmore’s front doors were no longer there.

  Braeden looked back toward the fields where the battle had just taken place. “But they’re not just gone…” he said in amazement. “They’re dead.”

  Serafina felt a wave of recognition crashing through her as the connections came together in her mind. Finally, things were beginning to make sense.

  “Come on,” she said, and they headed farther along the front terrace.

  She gazed up toward the external wall of the Grand Staircase, where the spiral of slanted windows and intricate carvings rose up with each floor of the house.

  Biltmore’s front facade was so vast, and so ornate with statues, gargoyles, and châteauesque decoration, that few people even noticed the details of it, but what she saw now astounded her.

  “That’s it!” she said triumphantly, pointing up toward the corner of the tower.

  Braeden gazed up in the direction she was pointing.

  High above, between the second and third floor of the Grand Staircase’s external wall, the carved limestone statue of Joan of Arc was gone.

  The statue had been a grand and romantic representation of the French heroine, dressed in full battle armor.

  “I just killed Joan of Arc,” Serafina said in disbelief.

  “Saint Louis is gone as well!” Braeden said, pointing to the adjacent alcove where the statue of the ancient French king was supposed to be standing.

  She remembered that Saint Louis had been depicted with a helmet, full chain mail armor, and his famous longsword.

  “A longsword,” she said, remembering the battle on the North Ridge and the sight of Mr. Turner lying dead on the ground in the forest, a long, straight slash across his chest. And she remembered the clanking metal sounds that she had heard in the fog that night.

  “It’s the house,” she said in astonishment. “It’s coming alive….”

  Braeden’s eyes widened as he gazed up at the two empty alcoves where the statues had been, and his mouth opened as he tried to gather words. “How can…” he stammered, and then he paused and looked at her. “Is it just the lions and these two statues, or are there more?”

  She stepped back and looked up toward the front walls of Biltmore looming above them. Her lips went dry with nervousness as she slowly scanned the details of the facade. There were many graven ogres, griffons, harpies, minotaurs, satyrs, and other mythical creatures covering the wall.

  And then she saw it.

  High above.

  An empty spot where there had once been a stone gargoyle. It had been a nasty-looking, grotesque creature, with a hunched back, four reptilian legs, large bat-like wings, bulging eyes, and snarling teeth.

  And then she turned and looked out across the Esplanade, up toward the top of Diana Hill, which rose directly in front of the house.

  “Come on,” she said.

  “What’s up there?” Braeden asked as he followed.

  “If I’m right,” she said, “it’s more a question of what’s not up there.”

  As they reached the top of the hill, she and Braeden gazed at the white statue of Diana, goddess of the hunt.

  “She’s still here,” Braeden said, confused. “I thought she was going to be gone.”

  “Look more closely,” Serafina said, “at the base of the statue.”

  “There’s a part missing,” Braeden said as he examined it.

  “Diana was standing next to a deer,” Serafina said.

  “The white deer,” Braeden said in amazement.

  “Exactly,” Serafina said.

  “But what does this mean?” Braeden asked.

  “Everything,” Serafina said, a tremendous wave of relief surging through her body. It felt as if she was waking up from a dark and awful nightmare and realizing that it wasn’t true. “Let’s go,” she said excitedly. “There’s one more place to check. The most important of all.”

  The two of them ran back down the hill and down the length of the Esplanade. By the time they reached the front door, they were gasping for breath.

  “Miss Serafina,” Mr. Pratt said as he came out to meet them. “Mr. Vanderbilt is demanding your presence immediately.”

  “Thank you, I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she told him.

  She went in through the Vestibule, entered the Main Hall, and turned to the right. Following the corridor that ran along the Winter Garden, she passed the door to the Billiard Room, and walked toward the Banquet Hall.

  And there, in the corner, she saw the spot where it had always been.

  The bronze statue of Mr. George Washington Vanderbilt, the grandson of the famous Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, and the master of Biltmore Estate.

  Mr. V.

  And just as she had hoped, it was gone.

  Serafina couldn’t help but smile. Now she knew for sure that Mr. Vanderbilt hadn’t killed anyone. She wanted to cheer. She wanted to hug him. She wanted to shout to the heavens that something finally made sense in the world.

  Have faith in what you know, her pa had told her, and she should have, but her faith had been mightily shaken. She kept thinking about poor, wounded Kinsley and all the people who had died. But despite how strange and almost inconceivable it was that the statues were doing all this, she felt a swell of excitement that she was finally starting to put some of the pieces of the puzzle together.

  “I don’t get it,” Braeden said bluntly. “Why are the statues coming to life now after all this time? What’s the cause of it all?”

  “It might be a sorcerer or a spell,” Serafina said, “some sort of evil intruder.”

  “But why? Why would a sorcerer want to kill all these random innocent people?”

  “There must be some connection between them, some kind of pattern,” Serafina said.

  “It all started on the night Colonel Braddick died, didn’t it?” Braeden asked. “He was the first one attacked.”

  “Along with Mr. Turner, Mr. Suttleston, Isariah Mayfield, and Jess,” she said.

  “Who was next?” Braeden asked.

  “Mr. Kettering at the bottom of the stairs,” she said. “And then Mr. Cobere in the kitchen.”

  She thought about the people on their list. What was the pattern, the motivation?

  And then she asked the same question she had asked herself before and not been able to answer. “What do all these victims have in common?”

  “Maybe the key is that they don’t have anything in common,” Braeden said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe there’s an important difference between them, and we’re not seeing it.”

  “Colonel Braddick, Mr. Turner, Mr. Suttleston, Isariah Mayfield, Jess Braddick, Mr. Kettering, Mr. Cobere…” Serafina listed off.

  “Rich and poor…”

  “Male and female…”

  “Northerner and Southerner…”

  “Biltmore resident and Biltmore guest…”

  “How they died…”

  And then she paused.

  “Dead,” Serafina said.

  “They aren’t all dead!” Braeden said.

  “That’s right,” Serafina said. “Jess wasn’t killed that first night.”

  “Was she just lucky?” Braeden asked.

  “There’s a pattern,” Serafina said, feeling the surge of realization in her chest. “At least at the beginning of it all, there was definitely a pattern….”

  Keen on the trail, she and Braeden hurried down the corridor.

  “In those first few nights, what did all the dead victims have in common with each other, and how were they different from the one victim who wasn’t killed?”

  As they crossed through the Banquet Hall and into the back corridor known as the Bachelors’ Wing, she went through the list of questions in her mind. Rich or poor. Male or female. Northerner or Southerner. Resident or guest…

  “The victims w
ere all so different from one another,” Braeden said.

  “But something connected them,” Serafina said.

  Pausing in the corridor, she thought about Colonel Braddick at dinner bragging about his gun. And she heard the baying of the hounds as they chased down the mountain lions. And she remembered looking out the window of her new bedroom and seeing Mr. Kettering returning from a hunt.

  A shiver ran down her spine. She remembered searching through the fog and darkness for Jess after the battle on the North Ridge, the feeling of being hunted. And she remembered how Kinsley had been in such a panic right before the battle with the lions in the field. He, too, had said it felt as if something were hunting him.

  When she looked up, she realized that they were standing in front of the Gun Room.

  As she and Braeden stepped into the room, she gazed at the glass-fronted cabinets that encased the long rows of rifles and shotguns. And then she looked up at the hunting trophies lining the walls—the heads and antlers of many deer.

  She knew that Mr. Vanderbilt was not a hunter. When he built the house he purchased these mounted animal heads as decor to create what was supposed to look like the gun room of a proper country gentleman.

  She thought again about the people who had died. “The pattern is right here….”

  “But what about Mr. Cobere?” Braeden said, clearly following her train of thought. “Mr. Cobere wasn’t a hunter. He had no connection to the hunters at all.”

  “He was the butcher and meat cook…” she said, remembering the sight of him lying on the tiled floor of the Rotisserie Kitchen. “He was in charge of preparing and cooking the fish and game brought in by the hunters and fishermen. The trout, the wild turkey, the rabbit—”

  “And the deer,” Braeden finished.

  “Exactly,” Serafina said. “In those first few nights, the difference between the ones who were killed, and the one who wasn’t, was simple.”

  “Hunting,” Braeden said.

  “That’s right,” Serafina said, feeling the excitement of the discovery scintillating in her mind. “Jess had tried to work against the hunters. It wasn’t a coincidence that she was the only one who survived that night. The connection to hunting was right in front of my eyes all along, but I didn’t see it.”

  “But if someone is murdering people connected with hunting, then that’s all of us,” Braeden said. “We all live here!”

  Serafina’s brow furrowed as she wiped her mouth. Did the acceptance of an act mean you were guilty of the act? She wasn’t sure. But it was clear that they were still missing pieces of the puzzle. The pattern seemed to be breaking down, the violence getting worse and worse, more random, like it was spiraling out of control now. Baby Nell’s nursery had been attacked. And the bear cub and the coachman had been killed….

  “When did all the trouble begin?” she asked.

  “The night Colonel Braddick and the other mountain lion hunters were attacked.”

  Serafina paused, wondering. “Or did the violence truly begin the night before that, the night the white deer was shot?”

  “Are you saying…” he began uncertainly, “the white deer is the cause of all this, or she’s trying to help us?”

  And then a thought that she’d had earlier came back into her mind. “It’s the house,” she said. “The house itself is bringing its statues to life. The white deer was just the first one.”

  “But why now?” he asked. “My uncle has been hosting the hunting season here for years.”

  “Did it begin the day the thirteen carriages arrived?” Serafina asked. “Could one of those guests be the cause of all this?”

  As they were talking, a series of images began to flow through her mind. She remembered standing on the terrace the night Braeden came to her like a ghost. And she remembered them lying on the shore of the lake with all the stars above them. That was the first time they saw the white deer. It had seemed as if it was a beautiful young fawn, running through the forest, glowing in the light of the stars, almost magical in its appearance. It had brought her such a sense of peace and joy to see it.

  But Colonel Braddick and his hunting companions saw this same magnificent, rare, magical creature and they shot it. They tried to kill it so that they could add the unusual specimen to their collection of trophies. Or maybe it was just boredom, or a bit of sport to see who could hit such a small, moving target. But in the end, whatever the reason, they shot it.

  As she thought again about lying beside the lake with Braeden, she began to feel something tingling in her mind. That’s it, she thought. That was the moment it all began.

  She sensed she was getting closer and closer to the answer.

  But then she heard the rushing sound of many footsteps coming down the corridor. Mr. Doddman and six other armed men stormed into the Gun Room and surrounded her and Braeden.

  Mr. Vanderbilt walked into the Gun Room immediately behind Mr. Doddman and the other men.

  When Serafina saw him, she felt a rush of glorious emotion. It was startling how dramatically one’s opinion of someone improved when you realized they weren’t actually the heinous murderer you thought they were.

  She walked straight up to the master of Biltmore and embraced him.

  Mr. Vanderbilt was clearly taken aback, but he did not reject her embrace.

  “I’m very sorry about taking Cornelia. I was so confused about what we were fighting,” she explained as they separated and faced each other. “But not anymore.”

  “What are you talking about?” Mr. Vanderbilt asked.

  “If there is anyone still out hunting for the beast or searching for Jess, we need to bring them back immediately,” Serafina said. “And if anyone sees a white deer, they should run.”

  She knew what she was telling Mr. Vanderbilt and his men sounded ridiculous, but she said it firmly and with confidence.

  “A white deer…” Mr. Doddman repeated suspiciously.

  Serafina looked at the security manager and the other men. “If anyone sees an animal or someone they don’t know, they should immediately get away from it.”

  The master of Biltmore studied her for a moment, and then looked at Mr. Doddman. “Send out word that no more search parties should go out, and all hunting must stop immediately. And everyone should stay clear of this white deer creature. Get everyone safely into the house.”

  “Sir, if I may,” Serafina interrupted. “Please don’t bring everyone into the house. Get everyone out. Load the carriages and send them away, the guests, the servants, your family. A great danger is upon us and only those who have skills to fight should remain.”

  All the men stared at her in utter shock.

  “There is absolutely no cause for such drastic action,” Mr. Doddman said forcefully.

  But Mr. Vanderbilt said, “You want to actually abandon Biltmore?”

  “Yes, sir. We must.”

  “She’s right, Uncle,” Braeden said. “Everyone is in danger here.”

  “If this so-called white deer is so dangerous,” Mr. Doddman said, “then we should hunt it down and kill it.”

  “No,” Serafina said, shaking her head. “That’s going to make it worse. This whole thing started small, but now it’s getting much, much larger. Do you see? The violence is bringing violence. Bullets aren’t going to hurt the white deer anymore. Its magic has grown too strong. Your guns will be effective against the newer creatures at first, but not the white deer. That’s how Kinsley was hurt. In his attempts to protect Jess, he tried to fight it.”

  The men listened to her with blanched faces, as if they weren’t quite able to believe or comprehend what she was saying.

  She had gone many days and nights without knowing what was going on, without knowing what to do, but now she did know, at least some of it, and she had to tell them as plainly and bluntly as she could.

  Mr. Vanderbilt had listened intently to everything she said, but she could still see the hesitation in his eyes.

  “It’s the statues, sir
,” she said finally.

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” he said. “What’s the statues?”

  “They’re coming to life and they’re killing us,” she said, her voice as steady and serious as she could hold it, her eyes locked on his.

  His expression tightened and his brow furrowed. She knew that what she had just told him was so foolishly impossible that it barely warranted serious thought. And yet…And yet there was something she was telling him that caught him. She could see him thinking it through.

  “It was a gargoyle…” he said in amazement.

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “And there’s a statue of me in the house…” he said, his voice so low and uncertain that it was barely audible. “That’s what scared you so badly…why you didn’t come to me…why you took Cornelia….”

  Serafina let out a long breath, relieved that Mr. Vanderbilt was beginning to realize why she acted the way she did. “I saw a person who looked like you kill Mr. Cobere,” she told him. “I couldn’t understand it. It seemed impossible! But there have been many others, and there’s going to be more.”

  At that moment, the pressure in the room seemed to immediately change. Mr. Vanderbilt turned to his dumbfounded men, who had been listening to all of this, and gave them new orders.

  “Now listen carefully,” he told them in a strong, firm voice. “We’re going to do exactly what Serafina says. Get everyone into the carriages, women and children first, including my wife and daughter, and send two armed men with each and every carriage to make sure everyone gets out safely.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mr. Doddman and the other men said together, and immediately moved into action.

  “We’re doing what needs to be done, sir,” Serafina said. “I’m sure of it.”

  “I’ve been so frustrated that there was nothing I could do about all these terrible things that were happening,” he said. “I’m no marksman or soldier, but this is one way I can lend a hand.”

  Lend a hand, she thought, the same expression that her pa had used. And it surprised her to hear the same dismay in Mr. Vanderbilt’s voice that she had felt in herself just days before. This man of power and experience had been caught in the same roiling sense of worthlessness that she had suffered.