The Last Baron

by Saber Vale

  “I’m sorry, is this really upsetting to you?” he asked, leaning back casually, smirking.

  “You’re talking about the fact that my great grandfather killed a young woman, on purpose or not, I don’t know, and you seem to think it’s hilarious!”

  “Sorry,” Cormac said, “most families don’t have such creepy skeletons in their closets, if it were me I’d think it was actually… interesting…”

  “It’s not interesting, it’s horrifying…” I said, taking a huge sip of wine, “that was somebody’s daughter…”

  “How did she die?” Cormac asked.

  “I’m not sure, I think she choked, or hung…” I said, “I really don’t know, it’s not like this was dinner table conversation for my family…”

  “You weren’t curious?”

  “Of course I was, but the most I was ever told was that it was an accident, my great grandfather didn’t mean to strangle her, kill her, whatever…”

  “Are you sure he didn’t?”

  I narrowed my eyes at Cormac.

  “I can’t be certain, no, I wasn’t there,” I said, “but I don’t think that’s what BDSM is about, killing people…”

  “Oh? You know all about BDSM, huh?” Cormac raised an eyebrow.

  He was teasing me. I was starting to think I hated him.

  “No, not very much,” I said, squirming with discomfort.

  I didn’t want to talk about my sexual preferences.

  The truth was, despite the fantasies I’d had from a very young age, my great grandfather’s horrifying story frightened me away from ever trying to play rough. I’d feel an urge, and push it away, out of my mind, but was always… distracted, I guess, by my own desire, even when I was supposed to be fulfilling them.

  “Oh, well, I was thinking of making it a theme for the hotel… like, an adult pleasure palace, complete with a dungeon.”

  I narrowed my eyes.

  “That’s disgusting, Cormac,” I said, “there’s no way it’s ever going to happen.”

  Cormac smiled at my apparent naivety.

  “I hate to tell you this, sweetheart, but I have a lot, and I mean a lot, more money than you to throw at this. Which means that I can wait you out.”

  “You have no idea how much money I have,” I snapped.

  “I know how much money your mom had when she died, which was none, and I know you’re a lifelong academic with a deadbeat father who ran off.”

  I sat with my arms crossed over my chest, shaking with rage. Cormac was exactly the kind of guy I’d pegged him for. A ruthless capitalist, an asshole, a rich jerk who cared about nothing but the almighty dollar.

  “We’ll see what kind of resources I have,” I spat at him.

  He handed me the wine.

  “No hard feelings, babe,” he said, smirking like a frat-boy, “it’s just business.”

  I took a long swig, finishing the bottle.

  “Time to open the port?” Cormac said, his tone friendly and carefree, picking up the squat, amber bottle from the floor beside the couch.

  “Fine,” I grumbled, deeply regretting that I was sharing the castle with this man for the night, however handsome he may be.

  “The port is better than the wine,” Cormac said, taking a long, slow sip.

  “Watch out, it probably has a lot higher alcohol content,” I said, already buzzy from the first bottle.

  Everything Cormac had said, all the dark secrets he’d flippantly brought up, were echoing around in my head. I was broke, my family was disgraced. I was a nobody with no money and no chance against someone like him. All I could do was stall, and I wasn’t sure for how long.

  “I really will preserve the castle really well, Astrid,” Cormac said to me, his voice softened, “and either you can sell your half of the castle to me, or keep your shares and we’ll generate enough income that you could be rich for the rest of your life. You could write, do whatever it is you want to do.”

  “Can we stop talking about this?” I sighed, “it’s not going to happen, I’d rather tear it down.”

  “Ok, we’ll stop,” he said, “tell me more about yourself… what kind of book are you writing?”

  “It’s about…” I sighed heavily, I was so upset thinking about the castle, I didn’t even want to talk to Cormac anymore, “it’s a historical novel set in the middle ages…”

  The truth was I hadn’t even started writing it, and anytime I tried I felt crippling writer’s block.

  “Sounds… interesting…” Cormac said half-heartedly.

  “It is,” I said, “I think it is, at least, I don’t really care if you do.”

  Cormac laughed.

  “You’ve got a lot of fire in you don’t you,?” he said, “you’re kind of an… angry person. I try to stay positive.”

  “I’m not,” I huffed, “I’m not an angry person at all. I just… I haven’t had anything handed to me.”

  “Astrid, you literally just had a castle in Europe handed to you,” he reminded me.

  I chafed.

  “I’m not an angry person,” I said again.

  “Ok, not angry,” he said with a shrug, “guarded? Is that a better word?”

  “My mom dated… dated so many men when I was growing up, we moved around all the time, I could never count on anything staying the same,” I said, “I don’t… I don’t get close to people…”

  I was afraid my words were slurring slightly.

  “I can relate to that,” he said, “I went to different boarding schools in different countries almost every year of my life.”

  “Poor little rich boy,” I sighed.

  “I’ve never said I didn’t have privileges,” he said with a shrug.

  “Whatever,” I said, closing my eyes.

  Cormac handed me the port. I took a big sip in spite of already being nearly drunk. The truth was, I didn’t think there would be any way to sleep in that ancient bed in a windowless room, in a castle with a stranger, if I didn’t.

  The port was much sweeter than the Bordeaux, and went down smooth as warm candy. The room had gotten much warmer because of the fire. The glow from the lantern was mellow and golden.

  “Oh my god, that’s good,” I said, temporarily distracted from my anger.

  “I know,” Cormac said with a laugh, “I could get used to castle living.”

  “Well, don’t,” I nearly slurred, “how long were you planning on staying anyway?”

  “Oh, indefinitely,” he said, and I nearly spit out my port.

  “Seriously?” I whined, “you can’t be serious, I have to work!”

  “Me too, babe!” he said, “this castle is going to be my European headquarters, and the crown jewel of my hotel empire! I’ll be really busy. I think we’ll get along great.”

  “No! No we will not!” I hissed, “and stop fucking calling me babe, I’m not your babe, ok?”

  Cormac laughed.

  “Ok, ok, sorry,” he said, “you’re just easy to mess with, good thing we’re not really brother and sister, I would have made your life miserable.”

  “I have a feeling you’re going to anyway,” I said, as we passed the bottle back and forth.

  Finally, I knew I needed to go to sleep.

  If I didn’t, I’d only make an ass of myself. I was so angry at Cormac for… existing, I guess, that I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with him for another minute without blowing up at him.

  “Good plan, we’ll get a good night’s sleep and in the morning we’ll re-group…” Cormac said.

  “Re-group?” I asked, shaking my head.

  “Yeah, re-group, come up with a plan, I like making plans.”

  “Ok, well, I don’t, as you already know,” I said, “and I don’t really see why we need to plan anything together. You do your thing, I’ll do mine…”

  Cormac chuckled.

  “Ok, we’ll see what happens,” he said, “good night, Astrid, see you in the morning.”

  “Good night, Cormac,” I said, no
dding curtly, picking up my cell phone for the light, and finding my way back into the children’s room while Cormac took the enormous king.

  It had been an exhausting day, and as soon as my head hit the old feather pillow that hadn’t been replaced in twenty years, I seemed to sink into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 3

  I woke to the sound of a blood curdling scream.

  I sat straight up in the bed with a gasp, clutching a handful of the threadbare sheet.

  Was it a dream? I pulled the blankets of the bed up to my chin like a child and groped for my cell phone, desperate for light.

  My phone was dead.

  I was in a pitch black room in a castle in the middle of nowhere with a man I’d just met, a stranger, and I may have just heard someone scream. My heart thumped like a clock ticking at a sped-up pace. The air was cold and still, like the inside of a tomb and I stayed as still as a statue.

  I listened intently in the darkness, and all I could hear was my own heavy, frightened breath, ragged and hollow in the echoing chamber.

  It must have been a dream… or the wind.

  My heart was still thumping, but I was starting to calm down. I tried to lay back, shut my eyes, calm my breathing, but my thoughts raced and my head throbbed slightly from the wine.

  And then I heard it again, a woman’s shriek, far away but as clear as it could possibly be.

  My heart leapt anew and thumped wildly in my chest, and I tore out of the bed, running across the hall to Cormac’s room, swinging open the door, where he was already out of his bed and fumbling with the lamp.

  “Tell me you fucking heard that,” he said, the room suddenly illuminating.

  “What is going on!” I whisper-shouted, only just then realizing I was wearing nothing but a white t-shirt and panties and he was in nothing but a pair of black boxers. His body, glowing golden in the lamp-light, was strong and athletic, shadowed with deeply grooved muscles that rippled as he moved, tense, quick, and graceful.

  “Go put on pants and we’ll go figure this out,” he said, and I stared at him, eyes wide, realizing my feet were ice against the cold floor.

  “No fucking way!” I hissed, “we should stay here!”

  “Someone is in trouble and you don’t want to go help them? I don’t know my way around here, you have to come with me!”

  “Right,” I said, realizing I was being ridiculous. What had I thought the noise was anyway? A ghost?

  I rushed back to my bedroom, slipped into the still-damp jeans I’d thrown over the bedpost, pulled on my hoodie, and practically jumped into my wet keds. When I came out, Cormac was standing outside of my door wearing a pair of shorts, slip on boat-shoes, and a navy sweatshirt, holding the lantern. His golden hair, curly and a little bit long, was messy and tousled.

  “Ok, where do you think that noise came from?” he asked following me as I moved wearily down the hallway.

  “Beneath the castle, there are, like, miles of tunnels.”

  “Miles?” he asked.

  “Well, no, probably not miles, but I never found the end of them,” I said, “and all I’d do some days was I was a kid was explore them. They’re really cool… in the daytime…”

  We went back into the main tower, and then found the stone staircase that lead to the cellar, the dungeon, and ultimately the catacombs.

  Then we heard the scream again.

  It sounded far away, like maybe it wasn’t even coming from beneath the castle after all, but from the keep or the east tower.

  “Maybe it’s just the wind,” I breathed, wishing for a simple explanation.

  “That doesn’t sound like the fucking wind,” he said, “why are you afraid, Astrid? It’s probably just some kids who broke in and are messing around…”

  I nodded, but I was trembling.

  “I’m not afraid,” I whispered, “or at least, I shouldn’t be, I don’t know, I’m not usually so easily…”

  “It’s ok,” he said, putting a heavy, strong hand on my shoulder, “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, ok?”

  I resented that he thought I needed to be protected, but it was a relief that he was there nonetheless.

  We made our way slowly down the stairs, and Cormac reached behind him to take my hand. I was surprised at first, and couldn’t believe his presumptuousness, but ultimately reached out and took it. Letting him lead me was a surprising comfort.

  We made our way through a dark, dank, stone-walled hallway. I could hear water dripping somewhere, and my own breath, heavy and intense, as we crept through the cavernous passageway. Cormac was calm, unflappable, his heavy, decisive footfall on the stone floor the antithesis to my fluttering heart.

  We came to a split, where two new passageways broke off from the first.

  “Left or right?” Cormac asked.

  “How should I know?”

  “What’s left and what’s right?”

  “I haven’t been down here in so long, Cormac,” I whispered, “I think the dry cellar is to the left, the dungeon is to the right, but the dungeon is boarded up, there’s no way anyone is in there.”

  Cormac turned to me.

  “You’ve never been in the dungeon?”

  “No…” I whispered, “they shut it up after…”

  “After…”

  “After the girl…”

  “Oh, ok, well if I was a teenager, that’s the first place I’d go,” he said.

  “There’s no way anyone got in there, the walls are ten inches of solid rock, and the door is fortified with iron sheeting over solid wood. I remember that much.”

  “Let’s go make sure,” he said, and I nodded, shuddering.

  “Ok, fine,” I whispered, even though I was terrified.

  We took a right.

  We crept down the dark tunnel, surrounded on all sides by ancient stone. It seemed to get colder and darker the further we went, and I questioned every decision I’d made that had lead me below ground in a castle in the middle of nowhere with a complete stranger. Maybe it was all some kind of trick to get rid of me. Could Cormac be so devious? Could he want to hurt me? Anything seemed suddenly plausible.

  We crept to the end of the passageway, where a heavy wooden door stood, daring us to enter. The chain that kept it locked was clearly broken. I breathed and closed my eyes, trying to stay calm.

  “I haven’t heard it again, have you?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, “but I still think we should open that door.”

  “Ok,” I said, nodding, closing my eyes and reminding myself that ghosts weren’t real.

  Cormac approached the door slowly, holding the lantern out ahead of him. He walked all the way up to it and, heaving his big, athletic body against it, pushed it open with a sudden slam of the shoulder. I jumped, in spite of myself, and gasped slightly, then watched as Cormac stepped fearlessly into the room.

  For a moment I stood, not breathing, waiting, nearly biting through my own lip.

  “It’s the dry pantry,” he shouted back to me, “theres nothing down here but some old cans with rotten food, more wine…”

  I sighed, my whole body relaxing.

  What was I so afraid of anyway?

  I walked into the pantry with Cormac.

  “I haven’t heard the noise since we came down here,” he said, looking around the pantry, picking up an old can of beets and turning it over in his hand, “maybe it came from the other tower.”

  “Maybe it really is the wind,” I said, though it really, really hadn’t sounded like it.

  “Let’s go back up,” Cormac said, “being down here gives me the willies.”

  The tension was broken, and I felt giddy with relief. We went back up to the west tower, not speaking.

  “I don’t think I’ll sleep,” I said, as we walked into the living room.

  “Me neither,” he said, running his fingers through his hair, “that was sort of wild, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I said, laughing, “welcome to Griffenbe
rg…”

  We made it back to the western tower and Cormac disappeared into his room.

  “It’s five thirty,” he announced, emerging as he strapped his Rolex onto his wrist, “I get up to work out now sometimes anyway, there’s no way I’m going to sleep after that.”

  “Sure,” I said, just then noticing my headache and dry mouth, “I guess we’re up for the day.”

  “I need a shower,” he said, “I don’t imagine the plumbing works…”

  “It’s actually on it’s own system here, I think, drawing and filtering water from a well,” I said, “we may have to turn open the pump, but without electricity it’s going to be frigidly cold.”

  “Cool,” Cormac said, sarcastically “well in a few hours, hopefully, we can get the electric turned on, then we can figure out what works and what doesn’t. Come into town with me?”

  I sighed heavily. My shoes and jeans were still wet. I had nothing to do in the castle by myself, though, especially with none of the lights on.

  Besides, that screaming noise, whatever it was, made me weary of being alone in the castle, though I’d never admit it to Cormac.

  “Ok,” I said, “fine. Let me get some dry clothes on and we can head out.”

  Within twenty minutes, we were in his SUV, Cormac driving of course, as we wound down the side of the bluff as the sun rose behind the castle. I desperately wanted a coffee, a shower, and a dry pair of shoes, and I sat glumly, staring out the car’s window.

  Cormac seemed like he was in great spirits, tapping his fingers like drums on the car’s steering wheel and whistling quietly as he drove. I’m sure he would normally be on a run or lifting weights in a gym somewhere, but instead he was with me at my ancestral castle, complicating my life. He didn’t seem to have a care in the world, or a single concern that he’d come to the castle to destroy it.

  We went straight to the coffee shop where we’d first met. The barista and baker working seemed surprised to see us, like they had no idea what we might be doing there at six in the morning.

  “Uh, you do sell coffee, don’t you?” Cormac asked, smiling in a friendly, affable way at the confused barista.