by J. R. Rain
It’s about at that moment the very same sword that Clifton had plunged into the wizard’s back appears suddenly, slashing through the air, like a silver, one-winged hawk. The sword is being controlled by none other than the ungrateful wizard.
Unfortunately, the sword is also hurling straight at Clifton, who dives just in time to avoid being impaled by it. Instead, the sword point buries itself deeply into the stone floor next to him, its handle wobbling like an arrow in a bull’s-eye. As the boy scrambles to his feet, the sword slides free on its own volition.
“Not good,” Clifton says.
The sword slashes again—and Clifton dives again, rolling across the dusty floor. He scrambles to his feet and sprints to the far wall, where he grabs another, similar sword.
Just in time, too. The magically compelled sword is hurling straight for him, point first. A blow meant for Clifton’s heart. Except Clifton had spent a lifetime playing swords with his older brothers and friends. Hell, Clifton had always always wanted to be a pirate or a knight.
Using both hands, Clifton times his swing just as the flying sword appeares before him. He heaves as hard as he can...and sparks fly. And so does Clifton. The force of the flying sword is enough to knock him off his feet. But at least he’s alive. For now.
He barely has time to find his feet before the sword is back, flashing and striking and cutting. It is all Clifton can do to defend himself. But the magic behind the sword is too strong. The blows are too powerful. Each one sends him reeling and stumbling...
* * *
The dark-haired boy takes a deep breath...and pulls hard.
Once again the circular room rotates, revealing the secret chamber beyond. The dark-haired boy watches, stunned. Then he sees the chaos in the room beyond. There, lying on the floor, is the same girl he had seen earlier. There, beyond is the boy—who’s fighting a sword with no body.
“Bloody hell?”
And there, perhaps most disturbing of all, is something old and ancient and clearly from a world of nightmares.
He stares for only a moment before springing into action. He dashes through the doorway and finds another sword on a nearby wall. He grasps it, pulls it down. So far, the ancient wizard hasn’t noticed the newcomer, so intent is he on compelling the magical sword to fight the boy.
Now the dark-haired boy creeps up behind Merlin. Monique awakens now, turns her head, watches the scene unfold. She stifles a gasp.
The dark-haired boy is suddenly not sure about this plan. He pauses, swallowing hard. The sword falters, shakes. But still he raises it over head—
And just as he does so, the wizard turns to face him.
Too late, the boy is already swinging the sword as hard as he can—
The wizard raises his hands—
The sword flashes as bright light erupts from Merlin’s fingertips.
Wizard and boy stare at each other.
In the back of the tomb, the disembodied sword that Clifton had been battling, promptly clatters to the ground.
Back to the dark-haired boy as he stares down the great wizard. And we see that a red slash has appeared across the magician’s throat. A throat that had been looking younger and younger.
Now the red slash turns into a stream of blood.
And the wizard’s head promptly falls off to the side, and the body collapses.
* * *
Clifton, out of breath and sweating, dashes over to his cousin who’s still lying on the floor. He lifts her head, cradling it. Her skin is rapidly reverting back to normal, and young Clifton watches in fascination and relief as her aged face grows young again.
“Clifton?” she mumbles.
“You’re going to be okay.”
He helps Monique sit up against the arched opening. Once done, the young adventurer heads over to the dark-haired boy who’s still holding the sword and staring down at the wizard’s headless body.
“Thank you! But there’s no time to waste. We need to light the candles again. And get him back in the sarcophagus.”
“The what?”
“The big casket.”
“Oh, right.” But the dark-haired boy still sounds dazed. “Why?”
“Just trust me.”
Using the torches the two boys light the candles again. Next, they drag the headless body back to the sarcophagus. A grim business. Both boys frown and look away. Finally, a brave Clifton picks up the head by its long hair, holds it out before him, and looks away as he carries it back to the ancient casket. Once there, he tosses it inside, and both boys close the lid.
“Let’s get out of here!” says Clifton.
No one disagrees. The three of them exit the hidden chamber, with Clifton supporting his cousin. Once in the circular outer room, the dark-haired boy promptly pulls the lever/torch in the wall. Almost immediately, the room rotates again, sealing Merlin’s chamber closed—and opening the far tunnel. Their exit.
Before leaving the circular chamber, the dark-haired boy breaks off the tip of the wooden torch within the opening, jamming the lever. He looks at his handiwork, grins. “That should do it.”
Torch in hand, they head back through the long tunnel. Once at the winding stairs, Monique has regained her strength enough to climb on their own. Long minutes later, each is out of breath when they reach the altar again. The dark-haired boy kicks open the secret entrance and, as they scramble through, another priest spots them.
“Come on!” the dark haired boy says. “I know another way out of here!”
As the trio dash through the sanctuary, the boy snatches up his sketching pad. He leads them through a side door, down a side hallway, and soon the three of them emerge into an alley—and into the afternoon sunshine. They keep running and soon turn down a busy street, where they disappear among the throngs of people.
A short while later, the three of them step down another alley, each hunched over, winded, and laughing.
“Thanks for helping us,” Clifton finally says when he catches his breath. “That was really brave.”
“And you were really stupid,” says Monique, elbowing her cousin.
The dark-haired boy grins. “No problem.”
“I’m Clifton. This is my cousin, Monique.”
The dark-haired boy grins and shakes their hands. “Pleased to meet you,” he says in a thick, German accent. “My name’s Adolf. Adolf Hitler.”
The young Hitler holds up his drawings of the church’s interior. The drawings are surprisingly wonderful. He smiles, but there is a distant, haunted look in his eye.
“I’m an artist.”
The End
Return to the Table of Contents
Samantha Moon
Guest Blog
Some call me a vampire.
I say, why use labels? I’m uncomfortable calling myself anything other than a mother. That’s the one label I am comfortable with. I’m a mom first and foremost. A private investigator next, even though that is fairly recent. Seven years ago, I wasn’t a private eye, but a federal agent.
So, even that was subject to change. Perhaps someday I might find myself better suited for a different job, although I will always help those who need help. Although I’d always admired Judge Judy, I would never want to be in her position: to judge the actions of others. That took wisdom...a lifetime of wisdom. Technically, I’m only in my mid-thirties, although I look much younger. Still, far too young to judge others.
Truth was, my current lifestyle was perfectly suited to private investigation. Other than meeting new clients, who tended to want to meet during the day, I got along just fine working the night shift.
So, yes, one of the constants in my life was that I was a mother. Of course, even that was threatened just a year or so ago, when a rare sickness almost took my son from me. A son who was growing so fast.
Supernaturally fast.
Don’t ask.
I have a daughter, too. A daughter who offered many challenges, the least of which was that she could read minds as easily as s
he read her Facebook newsfeed.
Yes, I was a mother...and a sister. My sister has had a rough time of it, of late. She’s recently been introduced to some of the darker elements of my world, and might be holding a grudge against me. But she would get over it. She’s better. I need her in my life.
Of course, there was another constant in my life...a constant that I ignored. A constant that I denied. And, as they say, denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.
Denial is my sanity.
You see, I have to deny what I am. Who I am. Or I would go crazy. I know I would. In fact, a part of me is certain that I just might be crazy. But let’s not go there.
Yes, call me anything. But please, just please, don’t call me a vampire.
At least, not to my face.
Return to the Table of Contents
The Masque of the Red Death
by Edgar Allan Poe
The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.
But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince’s own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet dancers, there were musicians, there was beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the “Red Death”.
It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.
It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. These were seven—an imperial suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here the case was very different, as might have been expected from the duke’s love of the bizarre. The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. To the right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the windings of the suite. These windows were of stained glass whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung, for example in blue—and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange—the fifth with white—the sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet—a deep blood color. Now in not one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all.
It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to harken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused revery or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before.
But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel. The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colors and effects. He disregarded the decora of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric luster. There are some who would have thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be sure that he was not.
He had directed, in great part, the movable embellishments of the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fête; and it was his own guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm—much of what has been since seen in “Hernani”. There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these—the dreams—writhed in and about taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away—they have endured but an instant—and a light, half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many tinted windows through which stream the rays from the tripods. But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the blac
kness of the sable drapery appalls; and to him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulged in the more remote gaieties of the other apartments.
But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept, with more of time, into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who reveled. And thus too, it happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before. And the rumor of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise—then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of disgust.
In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the prince’s indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revelers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood—and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.