Mathieu

by Irene Ferris

  Mathieu looked up at him and it struck Marcus at that moment that there was no sweat on Mathieu’s brow and no sign of the physical effort that was expended to dig the hole. “I’ll show you in a moment. Let me get to it.”

  Mathieu dug again, this time simply moving earth away from the foundation of the house. A pattern emerged, painted on the stones that made up the foundation of the house. Reds and greens and yellows competed with each other to be the brightest and most visible color in a pattern of swirls and glyphs that radiated power even to Marcus’ eyes.

  And in the middle of the pattern was a name that he’d seen before. “Gaap.”

  Mathieu nodded as he uncovered the entire work and then bent down to brush the last remaining granules of dirt that clung to the pattern. “And look here, underneath it all.”

  Marcus dropped into the hole behind Mathieu and leaned over. “William Ludlow. 1795.” Sitting on the edge of the hole, he looked over at Dwayne. “I know I know that name. It’s killing me.”

  “I know.” Dwayne nodded and then looked back at the house. “I’ll get us some water. It’s hot.”

  “Yes, please. I could use a drink.” Marcus looked back at the wall and then over to Mathieu. “So what is this? What does it mean?”

  “It’s a binding. A very powerful binding.”

  Marcus couldn’t tell if Mathieu was disturbed or distressed or anything from the angle he was sitting. And that disturbed Marcus. “Are you all right?”

  Mathieu started at the question. “I’m fine.” He turned to Marcus and gave a grim smile, almost as if reassuring the circle leader of a tenuous grip on sanity. “I’m fine.” He repeated.

  “Then talk to me.” Marcus gestured at the wall and asked again, “What is this?”

  “It’s a binding.” Mathieu repeated. His eyes followed the pattern and then he looked over to Marcus. “If you were to dig on each side of this house to this elevation you would find the same symbols and pattern. And more than likely somewhere below the dirt on the floor in the basement and above the ceiling as well. It’s ingenious, really.”

  Dwayne returned with three bottles of cold water. Marcus opened his and drank deeply. Mathieu accepted a bottle and held it to his face as he continued. “Do you recognize this symbol?” He indicated a glyph near the middle of the pattern with his spade.

  Marcus squinted at it while Dwayne shook his head in the negative. “Wait. That’s the symbol for There, isn’t it?”

  “Very good.” Mathieu’s voice took on a teaching tone. “This symbol combined with a binding and with this spell…” The spade tip pointed out several characters that on their own would be gibberish but together seemed to gel in some strange kind of design. “With this spell it makes a very powerful binding. The creature named here,” again the spade pointed out the name in the center, “was bound to this house with no access to There and ripped away from its Familiar. Trapped and crippled, basically.”

  Dwayne drank deeply from his water bottle and then spoke. “So what you’re saying is this William Ludlow guy in 1795 bound a Demon to this house?”

  “Yes.” Mathieu nodded. “To the confines of the basement to be exact.”

  “And you’re saying this Ludlow guy was from the Foundation.” Dwayne continued.

  Mathieu shrugged. “It feels like it. Your people have a certain flavor or feel to their workings. They have certain methods that they follow that lend themselves to this feeling.”

  Marcus leaned forward and touched the red painted part of the pattern. A large flake fell off and landed in the bottom of the hole. “Did I just….”

  “No. The spell was broken when your friend allowed herself to be bound.” Mathieu leaned back against the side of the hole and used the condensation from the water bottle to scrub his hands. He scrubbed long after the dirt was gone, frowning absently as he did so. “I would almost expect that the paint is deteriorating from that action, not the age of the working or our uncovering it.”

  “Then what was that set-up in the woods?” Marcus asked as he gestured that direction with his chin.

  “If I had to guess, I’d say that was a failsafe.” Mathieu opened the bottle and sniffed the water gingerly before taking a small sip. “The way I read it your Mr. Ludlow set it up that if the binding on the house failed the other spell could destroy not only the house but everything that had been bound to it. Including the creature even if it wasn’t in this plane of existence.”

  “So you’re saying that the Foundation trapped that thing here over two hundred years ago and then let it take Amanda? Why?”

  Mathieu looked at Marcus and then back to the markings on the side of the house. “I don’t know.”

  “Bullshit.” Dwayne intoned again. “That’s total bullshit, Little Bro. You’re making this shit up to freak us out. You like playing games?”

  “If it were up to me I wouldn’t even be here to play them, Dwayne.” Mathieu brushed another clod of dirt from the side of the house. “I don’t have any reason to lie to you. I’m a horrible liar anyway. Always have been.”

  Marcus snorted.

  Mathieu looked at him. “I think you underestimate the spell that was put around this property. It has the ability to not only wipe this house off the map but also to reach across to There and destroy that creature, its Familiar and quite likely the very ground they’re standing on. Your William Ludlow not only trapped that thing, he made it so that even if it escaped they would be able to destroy it no matter where it was.”

  “A laboratory specimen, maybe” Marcus wondered. “They could keep it here and study it and learn from it and then destroy it at their leisure or if it got out of hand.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to know. The truth would probably be entirely too close to what they want to do to me.” Mathieu gestured towards the pattern on the side of the foundation. “I do know this is broken. The spell out there wasn’t, but this one was because the girl willingly allowed herself to be bound. It increased its power to the point it was able to escape.”

  “So now what?” Dwayne kicked the pile of dirt next to him. “What do we do now?”

  Marcus straightened. “We fill this in and then go clean up. Then we hear what the others found out and try to make sense of this entire clusterfuck. And maybe, just maybe, we go get Manders back.”

  “I don’t know about that last one.” Mathieu said quietly.

  Marcus ignored him and started shoveling dirt back into the hole.

  Chapter Thirty

  Okay, so this is really freaky-deaky.” Susan rifled through a stack of papers and pulled out a photocopy. A woodcut of the house that they were currently sitting in the kitchen of was depicted.

  “There were two sources for the history of this house. One was your typical historical document about who built what and what they did and yadda yadda. The other was a book about the supernatural history of this area—you know, the Headless Horseman and Rip Van Winkle and all that stuff.”

  Eddie nodded and took a bite of his taco. “You need to hear this first before I even go into title and deed history of this place. It gets even stranger.”

  “Okay.” The rest of the group, Mathieu excluded, were eating Chinese food from white paper take-out boxes. Jenn used chopsticks to maneuver a piece of broccoli into her mouth and then continued. “So what did the historical viewpoint say?”

  “That’s pretty cut and dry.” Susan pulled out another paper. “This whole area used belong to the Dutch. The Van Rensselaer family. They founded Albany and pretty much had complete control this entire area in the 1600s. Most of their settlement and development was up north, though. They didn’t get down this way much.”

  “When they finally got down here in the mid-1700s they found a whole nest of squatters—towns and villages of New Englanders that had been here for two or three generations.”

  “Naturally, this didn’t go over well. Johannes Van Rensselaer led seven units of militia down here to clean out the squatters in the 1
760s and there was some trouble. Bloodshed, bad feelings, dogs and cats living together.” Susan smiled at Mathieu when he quirked an eyebrow at her at the last sentence. “That means things just went to Hell.”

  “Literally?” Marcus asked around a mouthful of egg roll.

  “Not yet.” Eddie shuffled his papers. “Patience, grasshopper. She’ll get there. Even if I can’t figure out how you can eat that shit and still think you deserve the pearls of knowledge and wisdom that I’m so willingly going to give you.”

  “It’s GOOD.” Dwayne mumbled around whatever he was eating. Mathieu would have been hard pressed to identify its component parts if he’d been eating it himself. Watching it disappear into another person’s mouth made doing so an impossibility.

  “You only think that because you haven’t had GOOD Chinese food yet. When we get to Chicago…” Eddie gestured with a burrito, sauce leaking onto the table.

  “Back on track, people. Back on track.” Marcus interrupted.

  “Yeah. Back on track, Eddie.” Susan smirked at him and took a large bite of something that Mathieu suspected once swam. Or crawled. Or possibly both. He was unsure of which from this angle.

  “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted.” Susan shuffled her papers again. “Squatters, bloodshed, bad feelings all around. Johannes died 1783, bitter and broken because of the issues down here.

  “Enter grandson John Bradstreet Schuyler. He was named for his grandfather and was the son of an important Revolutionary War general. He also married Elisabeth Van Rensselaer, so he was tight into the family and the business.”

  “Right. So where does this start connecting into this house?” Marcus gestured with his chopsticks.

  “Well, that’s where we go from the history book to the book about local hauntings and supernatural occurrences. It looks like this house was built by one of the squatters but it’s also the place where John Schuyler and his twelve year old daughter died. He was thirty, by the way.”

  “Young. Both so very young.” Carol sighed and looked around the kitchen as if expecting to see the shades of either historical figure appear.

  “Yep. And here’s where it gets strange. According to this” she pulled out another photocopy, this time of something from a very old book, “Johnny-boy was close with his grandfather and was heartbroken when he died. He held a grudge against the squatters and wanted to not only drive them away from the family lands for once and for all, but get his revenge too.”

  “But…” Marcus urged her on.

  “But something went wrong. Horribly wrong. Local legend holds that he came down here with his young daughter to ‘bring forthe the wrathe of God ypon’ those who had caused his grandfather so much pain and ruin. The legend says that he moved into this house and started trafficking in the dark arts and was dead within a month—that whatever he’d been in congress with had turned on him and killed him. Contemporary reports of the time say that while his body was horribly mutilated, his daughter’s was never found—just the bloody shreds of her dress.”

  “Ouch.” Dwayne cracked open a fortune cookie and read the slip inside. “Liar,” he muttered to himself as he balled up the paper slip and flicked it in Mathieu’s general direction.

  “This was followed by a few months of ghastly murders, beastly rapes by what the victims swore was the devil himself, lights in the woods, screams in the night and general terror. The populace was frightened and people flocked to the churches to pray for deliverance. Some wrote back to England for help from the king.”

  “No doubt.” Jenn shifted her chair to sit closer to Marcus and laid her head on his shoulder. “So what then?”

  “Well, then everything goes quiet. And Eddie found out why.” Susan nodded over to him.

  Eddie straightened his papers and looked down the table, making eye contact with each and every one of them. “I know you’re wondering why I called you all here today.”

  “Eddie. You say that every time. It’s OLD. Get to it.” Jenn half-sighed and half-laughed as she spoke.

  “Fair enough. The house was built by a merchant up from New England. Who he was isn’t important. Ownership transferred in 1794 by sale to John Bradstreet Schuyler. After Schuyler died, ownership transferred again to…”

  “William Ludlow.” Mathieu said quietly but clearly. “And who was he?”

  Eddie pouted for a moment and then continued. “William Ludlow. Son of Bartholomew Ludlow. Who was the son of Henry Ludlow of the London branch of the Ludlow family. Anyone remember who they were? Anyone? Bueller?”

  “One of the founding families of the Foundation.” Carol said. “The British branch, to be exact.” She paused and then continued. “So what you’re saying is the Foundation took ownership of this house by proxy over two hundred years ago.”

  “Yep.” Eddie popped the ‘p’ in the word. “The title transferred sixty years later to a company that we all know and love.”

  “United Consolidated International Holdings?” Marcus asked with a sigh.

  “Yep.” Eddie popped again.

  “And that is?” Mathieu asked, thinking he knew at least part of the answer.

  “One of the Foundation’s oldest front companies.” Carol answered. “On the surface they’re importers but they also hold the oldest as well as the more dangerous and controversial assets. I don’t think anyone even knows exactly what they own or why they own it anymore.”

  “Who owns the house now?” Dwayne asked with a sidelong glance to Mathieu.

  “I already told you. The Foundation through one of their front companies.” Eddie pushed forward a copy of the deed to the middle of the table. “They’ve done the usual shifting of ownership from one front to another every fifty years or so to cover their tracks, but they still own it.”

  “So Amanda’s father didn’t buy this house for her?” Jenn sounded bewildered as she leaned forward to peer at the document.

  “Nope.” Eddie pointed at the paper again. “No.” He repeated as he tapped a name and date on the form that far predated Amanda’s birth, much less her period of residence.

  “But he told me. He told me they searched together and found this place for her.” She sounded lost. “He lied to my face, didn’t he?”

  Marcus put an arm around her shoulders. “I don’t think you’re the only one, if that makes it any better.”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t. Not in the least.” She wrapped her arms around herself and looked miserable. “He lied to me.”

  “And that leads us into asking what you three found today.” Susan tapped a fingernail on the table sharply.

  Marcus shrugged clumsily, trying not to dislodge his wife. “A scary powerful spell on the property line with another scary powerful spell on the house to keep something trapped here. That one was broken when Manders did her little thing down in the basement. All of the above spells were cast by one William Ludlow.”

  “Define ‘scary powerful’.” Eddie sat back and crossed his arms.

  “The one that’s left is capable of erasing the Demon and this house from existence along with part of another dimension. Hence the technical term ‘scary powerful’.”

  “Okay. I’d say that’s a valid use of the term.” Eddie shook his head.

  “Mathieu,” Marcus said. “Any theories about what happened?”

  Mathieu spoke quietly. “I would draw the same conclusions you would. Schuyler came here to summon something to cause harm to his enemies. He brought his daughter as payment. He lost control and the creature took out its anger at being summoned on him, took the daughter anyway and then rampaged the countryside. Your predecessors sent Mr. Ludlow in to control what was happening and he captured the creature, bound it to this house and then built a second line of defense around it in case it ever escaped.”

  “And then what?”

  “I don’t know. You’ll have to check your own records for that. I wasn’t here at the time.”

  Carol leaned forward and placed her hands on the
table. Mathieu could see she was trying to keep them from trembling. “Why would Amanda’s father put her in this house, knowing full well what was here? And why would he send us here to get her back but lie to us about how this happened and what we’re dealing with?”

  “I don’t know.” Mathieu shook his head. “I really don’t know the answer to that question.”

  “And,” Marcus spoke quietly, “Why does he want you here, Mathieu? What do you add to the mix?”

  “If I knew that, I would never have agreed to come with you.” Mathieu had a grim expression. “I suspect that whatever his reason, it doesn’t involve anything pleasant for me.”

  “So…” Jenn looked over to her husband. “What does this mean?”

  “It means that we need to ask Hugh Devalle a whole lot of extremely pointed questions when he gets here.” Marcus’ scowl made Mathieu shiver in fear.

  Chapter Thirty - One

  It rained that afternoon, the clouds coming across the mountains and down over the hills, blocking the sun and making the meadow a dark, gloomy place.

  Mathieu stood on the screened porch and listened as the rain hissed against the roof. He watched as the water flooded the yard, his eyes never straying from a single white stone near the woods.

  “My mother used to say that rain was caused by the angels crying over the evil that men do to each other.” Jenn stepped onto the porch and stood next to Mathieu.

  “By that logic if they stopped crying, then everything would die for lack of rain.” Mathieu said quietly, his eyes never leaving the white stone. “The same if man stopped doing evil”

  “I didn’t say it made sense. It’s just what my mother told me.” Jenn answered. “A lot of things mothers say don’t mean anything.”

  Mathieu turned to look at her. “My mother used to tell me if I didn’t say my prayers, the Devil would come and spirit me away to Hell.” He smiled sheepishly and shrugged. “I have no problem admitting I was not as devout as I should have been and look what happened to me.”

  “I think that’s an extreme example. You’re hardly playing fair with that one.” Jenn smiled back.