Beyond the Blue Light

by V. Anh Perigaea

  As she went along, she found several benign titles, ranging from subjects like botany to astrology, but they were interspersed with many other bizarre and arcane subjects that frightened her. Some of the volumes she pulled out looked terribly rare, as if they’d been handwritten centuries ago. She remained in a state of shock as she searched, for she’d never thought him to be interested in such things. But this collection showed him to be more than just a lukewarm enthusiast. From what little she’d seen, this library was a veritable encyclopedia of arcane knowledge. And she’d barely perused the bottom level.

  Shaking her head to banish fright away, she went down on her knees and got to business, deciding to start at the very bottom and work her way up, searching for the book with information on Maryone Gurza. Her fingers brushed leather bindings ranging in condition from ragged to pristine. There were some very old volumes, containing old-fashioned illustrations that’d likely been inked by the shaking hands of monks. She checked over volume after volume, her knees rubbing bare against the ground as she scooted along the floor. By the time the clock struck eleven, she’d only reached the fourth shelf from the floor on the bottom level. She leaned against the books and pressed her brow with her fingers. It was going to be a long night.

  But just then, she heard a scuffle at the door to the study. The door was opening and footsteps were coming in. She froze, panic tightening every limb as she listened with fearful intensity, hoping it was just a maid coming to dust. One set of heavy footsteps entered while another, lighter like a woman’s, followed behind and locked the door. To her dismay, uncle Morton and Mrs. Ackworth’s voices sounded from the study. She inched close to the door and listened. They obliged her by speaking loudly enough that strain wasn’t necessary.

  “She escaped without a whisper,” Ackworth growled. “Think how easily it could happen again.”

  “I am aware of that, Dagrun,” Uncle Morton growled back arrogantly. “You needn’t balk at me like an angry heifer. Be mindful of your place in my presence.”

  “Perhaps, Hel-Blar,” Ackworth hissed. “You should be mindful as well.”

  Silence was maintained for a moment or two.

  “The day before yesterday,” Ackworth continued. “She disappeared.”

  “Well, she’s disappearing all the time according to you!” Uncle Morton accused.

  “Into thin air,” Ackworth said, emphasizing each syllable darkly. “Before my eyes.”

  “Into... What?” Uncle Morton seemed to gasp the words.

  “Yes.”

  A moment of silence availed from the study, Annabelle straining to hear.

  “She shall have to be watched,” Uncle Morton said darkly. “Every moment. Day and night. Very closely. All is happening too fast, much faster than it should be. Assign someone to guard her until we act. And do not allow her to poke around the house.”

  “With pleasure.”

  Annabelle felt dizzy and overwhelmed, and her whole body shivered with fear. She tried to organize her uncle’s words, to align them with reality and form a coherent plan of action. But concepts were a faint buzz beneath the chaos overtaking her senses. She was so overwhelmed and frightened that she felt faint. Did she have any allies left in the world? Any safe place? It appeared not. She’d known that Orenn was no longer a true home to her, but somehow, her heart hadn’t accepted it until this moment, latching on to the only home she’d ever known and the blind safety she felt within it’s walls. Until now, she’d still felt that she could run home if she truly needed to. She was in denial.

  Who were these devils in human skin? What did they want from her? Deep in her heart, she wondered if Tiberius Morton was her uncle at all, or just some demon who’d bewitched and murdered her poor parents.

  She peered around the corner, everything cloaked in blue light, and saw their figures. Her jaw dropped in terror as she saw Ackworth with ghostly-gray skin, white eyes, long teeth, nails and a protruding hump between her shoulders. Her heart froze over and she clenched her jaw to keep from gasping at the horrid sight. But to her even greater dismay, the image of Uncle Morton was no less terrifying. He too had a great hump upon his back, long sharp nails that pointed down to the ground, protruding canine teeth that frothed with a strange pink substance and blank eyes that seemed to stare blindly. He was a great hulking creature, even larger than Ackworth, and rather than white, his eyes shone opaque red. Annabelle was so terrified of the living nightmare before her that she nearly choked and fainted.

  The creatures were repellant and disgusting to her. It wasn’t just their looks but their presence that felt insidious, like a venomous cloud surrounded them. She wished with all her soul to get as far away from them as possible. So she stepped back, too quickly, and tripped over a bookcase’s edge; causing her to stumble and drop the black candle, which fell to the ground with a loud CLANK and extinguished itself, just before rolling away underneath the bookcase on the opposite side of the room. It made one last clunking noise as it hit the wall behind the bookcase.

  All noise from the study halted. She was bathed in a terrifying silence, save for her heart beat, that may have just stopped. The black candle was extinguished, so she was visible. And she had nowhere to escape to, for the library was round, with no large furniture to hide behind. She’d been eavesdropping on a very damning conversation. If Ackworth or Uncle Morton found her here, after hearing what she’d just heard, they’d flay her. She swallowed hard, fighting the urge to scream and fall to pieces. There was nothing to do but be still and listen for the crushing approach of her fate. But silence engulfed the study, for now they were listening to her.

  CHAPTER 25

  Nefaria Draugr Lamia

  There was nowhere to hide. No closets, no furniture to crouch behind and no exits. The silence continued from the study. They were listening, possibly even creeping towards her now. Terror burned through her limbs. She knew she must act, but fear froze her in place.

  Forcing herself from paralysis, she sprinted on tip-toes to the nearest spiral staircase, quickly grabbing a candle from the table and placing it gently on the floor. Then she climbed the stairs as fast and as she could and, stopping on the third tier, threw herself on the floor against the shelves just as Ackworth’s looming form was silhouetted in the doorway. Ackworth carried a lit candle, and her eyes scanned the room hungrily. Annabelle hoped that she couldn’t see the black candle, wherever it lay on the floor. If it’s power was given to Ackworth now, surely all hope would be lost. She listened as the woman’s heavy steps moved about the library, the light of her candle shifting as she searched. The steps stopped in the middle of the floor, presumably where she’d placed the decoy candle. Perhaps Ackworth would take the bait and believe it’d fallen, causing the earlier noise. Ackworth walked about some more, and began to climb the first staircase.

  No! Annabelle panicked. If they found her in here, she was done for. They would lock her in the basement and throw away the key! She would be a prisoner forever, and who knew what else! She tried not to imagine them in their other, darker forms, the ones she’d just seen by the blue light; or what such a creature would wish to do to her. Each step Ackworth took on the iron steps filled her with deeper dread. She shook as she lay there, flattened to the floor, breathing in dust. As Ackworth climbed so did her candle, a light Annabelle feared most gravely. She shrunk back as far as she could against the bookshelf, praying not to be seen.

  Suddenly, Uncle Morton’s voice rang from the other room, calling Ackworth back. The woman’s steps halted for a moment, then continued up the stairs again. Every muscle in Annabelle’s body tensed. But Uncle Morton called out again, this time with more gusto, and soon Ackworth’s footsteps, as well as the light from her candle, descended the steps one by one and eventually exited the library. Annabelle lay flat against the shelves, her heart racing. She tried to think of something to do, but there was nowhere she could go, no exits but the one below her. She would have to wait and hope Ackworth wouldn’t return. The woman was ba
ck in the study now, conspiring with uncle Morton in a hissing voice. Soon, Annabelle was calm enough to register their conversation as it washed faintly in from the study.

  “What was it?” Uncle Morton growled.

  “Nothing,” Ackworth said suspiciously. “Just a fallen candle.”

  Though they sounded mostly satisfied, Annabelle still had the distinct feeling that they were listening in her direction. She knew it would be best to wait until they left to continue her search, or to move at all. This suited her just fine, she wasn’t sure she could find the courage to move anyway.

  The clock had long since struck midnight by the time she heard their footfalls fumble and exit the study. She listened as the door was closed, and their heavy steps faded into the night. She breathed a deep sigh of relief, but was still terribly frightened, for she knew she wouldn’t be truly safe until the black candle was lit. But what if there was no fire left for her to light it?

  She forced herself down the stairs, keeping vigilant watch of the shadows. She had to continue her search, though she felt exhausted from fear and keeping such a late hour. But she daren’t come back here again, now that Ackworth’s suspicions were aroused. She had to do this now. Thankfully, as she descended the spiral steps, she noticed a dim glow coming from the hearth in the study. It lit the ground enough for her to search for the candle, and promised a way to light it’s wick.

  She found the black candle just where she’d expected, against the wall beneath the bookshelf opposite from where she’d been spying earlier. Looking it over by moonlight, she detected no scuffs or dents on its surface. In fact, it appeared to be without blemish at all, as if it had just been drawn from a velvet-lined box and never used.

  Wishing to take no chances, in case someone should return, she rushed into the main study and held the candle’s wick up to the fading embers beneath the hearth. Blue light overtook the room like an old friend, relieving and frightening her at once. She scanned the study, her eyes happening to cross her uncle’s desk. It was there that something caught her eye, a strange object sitting on it’s top. Something about the object set her on edge, peaking her attention like a bad smell. She couldn’t understand why, but she felt utterly repulsed by the thing. It was a strange, jumbled mass of matter, a great lump of dirt and rubbish. As she moved closer, the only item she could identify for certain inside of it was hair. It appeared to be doused with...oil? She didn’t wish to acknowledge what it looked, or smelled, like. But as she choked back a gag she couldn’t deny it - there was blood in it.

  She turned away, not wanting to know more. But, it was clear that something was afoot with her uncle and Ackworth, something strange and terrible. But she hadn’t any time to tarry and think about it. She must act now, and unless she could find a proper hiding place inside Orenn House, it was clear that she must leave immediately. How could she be safe within these walls anymore? Who would protect her from the monsters she now knew her uncle and Mrs. Ackworth to be? Perhaps she could live out her days as a ghost here, forever hidden within the black candle’s glow. It might at least buy her some time. But as she’d learned from tonight’s events, even using the candle posed risks. And the sight of those creatures by the candle’s light was horrific. She couldn’t stand to see them again, and feared what else she might discover in the blue light. The candle’s light made her feel strange, it seemed to be turning her inside out, changing her the more she used it.

  Putting these worries aside for the moment, she went back to the library to search for the book. The search would get her mind off of these hard realities, at least for a time. She knew she had to face her situation, but the prospects filled her with dread so powerful that she couldn’t think straight. Enemies surrounded her within and without, and it was too much for a sheltered orphan like herself to handle all at once. To learn that her uncle was not the man she’d always thought, that she couldn’t trust him, and that her home was not the place she’d always known it to be, was profoundly troubling. It made her feel she had no foundation to stand on, as if she’d fallen off her chair. Her home was now a battlefield, and the only parent she’d ever known was actually her enemy. She wasn’t yet a woman, she didn’t know anything of the world, or how to function in it. Wasn’t it her guardian who was meant to instill such knowledge in her, to show her the way into adulthood? Instead, he’d ignored and dismissed her all her days, leaving her to the mercy of Ackworth’s cruel whims. She’d only gained the power of an education despite his wishes. And now, instead of guiding her into the future, he was cutting her off at the knees, taking away the few promising resources she’d had to her name: a home and a wealthy and prominent protector. What had she now, what promise for a future? In this dark and dangerous world, her only friend was the candle in her her hand; and her only possession the dread in her heart.

  Her thoughts wandered as her fingers brushed bindings, searching for the needed title. She realized suddenly that some of the books’ bindings glowed under the candle’s light, while others did not. She’d thought it merely a trick of the light before, but upon further inspection realized that it wasn’t. There were a few nearby that glowed only a little, and one on the next level up that glowed a great deal. She reached out for one of these nearby titles, finding it contained no writing on either the binding nor the cover, save for a symbol; she recognized it from the strange scrap of paper she’d found in the room with the paintings.

  The volume was strange and troubling, not like a normal published book, but seemed to be handwritten, a collection of acquired knowledge, a journal of sorts. Within it she found various references to those referred to as godly beings who “dwelled beyond time” in a place cut out between the borders of heaven and hell, in a strange eternal realm without name; one so vast that no man in recorded history claimed to have understood even a fraction of it’s mysteries, or to have seen even the smallest fragment of it’s wonders. It was a place, from what she could surmise, that crossed world upon world, with dimensions so numberless that no human man or woman could comprehend their reach, even if gifted with the mind of an immortal. And these ancient, god-like beings were said, in the book, to hold complete sway over the Earth, to it’s undoing.

  And these ancient ones doth dwell upon high peaks

  Casting their eternal shade upon the deeds of mankind

  Tripping man’s steps into eternal paths of sorrow

  Leading them into dark valleys, holding firm sway over hearts

  Bleeding man and woman like cattle of the field

  Their hunger for pain eternal, their dominion unwavering

  Holding the bright ones aloof with the reach of their black wings

  Divorced of life and mind, their eyes scaled

  For the bright ones doth carry the light

  And where two are, there is the power

  To speed into life that which be blind

  To the path that doth lead the soul on eternal passages

  To Light, Life and Power

  For only in the accumulation of sacrifice

  Do the bright ones find the way

  Their twin looking back at them, unscaled

  From it’s pages fell a map, or what appeared to be a map. It’s image and the verse of the book chilled her blood, so she discarded it and ran up to the next level, reaching for the volume whose binding shone brightly. It was difficult to pull from the shelf, for the books were tightly packed, their soft leather stuck together. When she pulled it out, it looked very old indeed, and had strange symbols emblazoned on it’s cover. The title read Nefaria Draugr Lamia. The golden letters reflected the candle light as she stroked the cover with her fingertips.

  She knew some latin from her studies with Mr. Elkstein. But as she held the candle up to the book’s cover, she’d no need to recall her education, for a whole different title appeared. The letters rearranged and reformed themselves, revealing a new title in English. It read: The Unholy Draugr Vampire.

  She dropped the book and backed away, frightened, no
ticing that as she did, the words turned back into Latin. She tried to calm herself, taking deep, steady breaths. What was going on? She’d no idea, and it wasn’t the book she needed, so she left it sitting on the floor and continued her search. She concentrated on the book she was looking for, with the word ‘sorcery’ in the title. Other titles continued to glow, some only a little, but one very brightly. It was on the level above her. It glowed so brightly it might’ve been a candle. Deciding it couldn’t hurt to check, she spiraled up the steps, her feet landing unsteadily on the engraved iron patterns that constructed each one. Reaching the top, she pulled the book from its slot, not sure what she would find. Like the last, it had been a bit difficult to remove, it’s soft cover sticking to it’s neighbors. She brushed her hand over the cover, which had no title, and opened it to the title page. It read: An History of London Boroughs, Tales of Sorcery and Heresy, 1745-1796.

  Below the text was the seal of London, as well as a description of the noble patron of the book. She turned pages until she came to the table of contents. Running her finger down the list, she scanned dates, locations and names until she came to the section for 1785. She then found it, a subheading that read “Fire of Portugal Street, 1785.”

  Yes! She’d found it!

  Promptly turning to the listed page, she found an illustrated portrait of a beautiful, dark-haired woman large enough to fill a whole page. She studied it for a moment, then hungrily read the page’s details on the fire.