The Last Baron

by Saber Vale

  Most of them were iron and as heavy as a secret in my hand.

  “Where do those go to?” Darleen asked.

  “Honestly? I have no idea,” I said, “maybe the dungeon, but we already broke in.”

  “There are three keys,” she said.

  “The dungeon, the west tower, and… the keep, maybe? We’ve broken into the west tower too, but there’s no reason someone would have hidden the keys like this…”

  “Have you broken into the keep yet?”

  “No,” I said, “we haven’t gotten there yet. You have to enter through the catacombs.”

  “Spooky,” Darleen said with a shiver.

  “Yeah, my uncle was the last person interred there, and that was only like, fifteen years ago, so I’m not in a rush to get down there…”

  “And before that?”

  “My great grandfather. My grandfather died in the US, and said he wanted to be buried in California, where we lived…”

  “What about the girl? The woman who died?”

  “Oh, she wouldn’t be there, her… her family lives in the town over… some of them are still there, Cormac and I met them.”

  “Wow,” Darleen said, “that must have been strange.”

  “Yeah, it was,” I admitted.

  “It’s only history when it happened to someone else, otherwise it’s… it’s just life, even if was in the past.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “that’s why… that’s why I care so much.”

  “I get it,” Darleen said, “really, I really do.”

  “Hello?”

  Cormac’s voice, outside of the boathouse made both of us jump.

  “Oh my god, it’s just Cormac,” Darleen said.

  “We’re in here!” I shouted to him.

  Cormac was ducking through the screen door a few moments later.

  “I didn’t think I’d find the two of you together,” Cormac said, peering through the faint afternoon light seeping through the skylights.

  “I think you take for granted that everyone’s as difficult as you,” I said cooly, smiling at him as he crossed the room.

  “What are those,” he said, ignoring my little jab and gesturing towards the keys.

  “I don’t know what they go to, I figured the dungeon,” I said, holding the key ring up into the light.

  “No, those are all iron,” he said, taking them out of my hand, “the dungeon had a more… contemporary steel lock, it was only a few decades old.”

  “So these keys go somewhere else?” Darleen asked.

  “They must,” he said, “I wonder how long they’ve been down here.”

  “The boathouse was built in nineteen twenty five, the last time I came here with my family was in two-thousand-and-two,” I said.

  “So that only leaves seventy eight years for them to have been hidden,” Cormac said sarcastically, stroking his chin in faux contemplation.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “I have dinner almost ready, come on back, we’ll figure out the new mystery of the keys later on,” he said, nodding back towards the house.

  The three of us walked through the thickening mist back towards the castle, Cormac holding the heavy set of keys dangling from his hand.

  Chapter 14

  Cormac had set a bubbling pasta sauce going on the stove upstairs, and the whole west wing smelled rich and tomato-sweet.

  “So I guess the two of you are acquainted now,” Cormac said, as he set pasta water to boil.

  “Yeah,” I nodded, “what were you up to all day?”

  “I needed to send some emails,” Cormac said, “and I went ahead and asked some questions in town, if anyone remembered anything they’d ever heard about your great-grandfather.”

  “Did you hear anything interesting?”

  “Lots of rumors, apparently there are multiple torture chambers underneath the castle…”

  “Partially true,” I said with a shrug.

  “And Caroline, the woman he lived here with, was a witch,” he went on.

  “Believable,” I said.

  “And the girl who died begged for her life while your grandfather watched her struggle as he drank champagne and ate oysters…”

  “Hmmm,” I said, “that one seems a little fabulous.”

  “Well, that’s the perception a lot of people hang on to. A sadistic murder by a villainous baron is a lot more interesting than depressing accidental death caused by a bumbling, older BDSM fanatic.”

  I laughed. Darleen looked at us both like we were crazy.

  “What has been going on at this castle?” she asked, shaking her head, “you both sound like you’re a little bit… I don’t know, into something pretty deep or crazy…”

  “Maybe we are,” I said with a coy smile.

  Cormac and I shared a look that I was pretty sure Darleen caught.

  “I wonder where those keys go,” Cormac said, “maybe after dinner we’ll do some exploring.”

  “No, it’ll be too dark to go beneath,” I said, “I don’t like going down there at night.”

  “It’s always dark underneath the castle…” he reminded me.

  Only the night before we’d gone down long after dark.

  “Doesn’t Darleen have to get back to her hotel?” I asked.

  “She can stay here,” Cormac said, and my skin prickled.

  “Where?” I asked, so quickly that Cormac smirked.

  Could he tell that I was ever-so-slightly jealous?

  “She could stay in the servants quarters,” he said, “no offense, Darleen, they’re probably the nicest beds in the castle.”

  I shot Cormac an angry look.

  “Oh, well, I don’t want to displace anyone,” she said, noticing my irritation.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Cormac interrupted me.

  “No, you’ll be happier there, trust me, did Astrid tell you about our ghost?”

  “Ghost?” Darleen said in disbelief.

  “There’s no ghost,” I said, rolling my eyes, “but there are definitely some pretty weird noises at night…”

  “Ok, and the servants quarters…”

  “They’re just more updated, less ghosts..”

  “Less ghosts, got it,” she said, “sounds great…”

  “Is dinner ready yet? I’m starving,” I said, slipping a bottle of wine out of the cupboard.

  “Did Astrid tell you about the wine collection? Thirty year old Bordeaux's…”

  “It’s amazing, there’s not much more to it than that,” I said, popping the cork and slipping some glasses out of the dish rack.

  “So you guys have been all alone up here, drinking expensive wine, solving mysteries, and… fighting about developing the castle?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I admitted.

  “It honestly sounds like a really good time, the beginning to a romance or horror movie, or, like, a play that ends in murder, I can’t decide…”

  “None of the above,” I said, pouring her a glass of wine, “unless I end up murdering Cormac, so I guess we can’t count that out…”

  “Oh, come on, I’ve been having fun,” Cormac said, “haven’t you?”

  I smirked.

  “It’s been fun,” I admitted, “but intense…”

  “How long are you both staying here?”

  We glanced at each other once again.

  “We’re in a kind of a stale-mate situation,” Cormac explained, “so, indefinitely?”

  “Neither of us have anywhere else to be,” I said.

  Darleen cracked up.

  “Ya’ll know this is super weird, right?”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Cormac said, and I shot him another look.

  Darleen shook her head, still laughing at us.

  “To each his own, if living in a haunted castle with a roommate who’s also your step-sibling who is also your nemesis is what you guys need in your life right now, well I’m happy for you.”

  I laughed. It was pretty weird, and it was on
ly getting weirder by the day.

  Cormac’s homemade pasta was excellent, as usual. After we ate it was almost dark, and I hoped Cormac had forgotten about the trip he wanted to take to the dungeon. Whenever I went down there the feeling I’d get was so intense and overwhelming that I was afraid I’d lose control. I wasn’t myself when I was there, and I craved the opportunity to submit to Cormac as much as I feared it would weaken me.

  “I’ve had a really long day,” Darleen said finally, “I’m going to turn in… do you mind showing me to my room?”

  “Who, me?” Cormac asked, “uh, yeah, sure, I’ll be right back Astrid.”

  Another hot surge of jealousy, stronger than the first, rolled through me. I reminded myself, once again, that I didn’t care about Cormac. He wasn’t my boyfriend, we were hardly friends with benefits, more like enemies with benefits, and even if he was sleeping with Darleen it was none of my business and I didn’t care.

  Still, when he walked her out of the east wing towards the servant’s quarters, I was queasy.

  I tried to busy myself with the dishes, but couldn’t help but count the seconds tick by as he probably just showed her the shower and where the extra sheets were. Maybe she leaned in and kissed him right before he walked out, and he had her turned over on the bed that very moment pounding her from behind.

  Why hadn’t I just mentioned or hinted that Cormac and I were sleeping together? Was Cormac even attracted to her? Why was I making myself so crazy?

  “Astrid?” Cormac’s voice in the door made me jump.

  “Oh my god, Cormac, I was zoned out, I didn’t hear you come in,” I gasped.

  He laughed at me, crossed the kitchen and sort of pinned me against the sink, his hands on my hips.

  “Stop,” I said, not at all wanting him to stop, “I told you I need space.”

  “Ok, ok,” he said, backing off, his hands held up in the air.

  I instantly felt the loss of his warmth against my skin.

  “Is Darleen settled in?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” he said, “she seems so confused about what’s going on up here.”

  “Well, that makes two of us,” I said, “what the hell are we doing?”

  “I thought we were having fun,” he said with a shrug.

  “I got…” I felt myself blush, “I got jealous… I thought, when I first saw her, that you had a girlfriend or something…”

  “Oh come on,” he said with a laugh, “did you really think I would…”

  “I don’t know,” I said, blushing “it’s not like we have any kind of… arrangement… and I don’t know you…”

  “I don’t have a girlfriend, I have no attachments,” he said, “I promise.”

  “Just now, even, I was worried you would…”

  Cormac laughed, putting his hand in a reassuring way on my shoulder.

  “Ok, well, I wouldn’t fuck a woman in the same house as a woman I was already sleeping with, not without telling her first…”

  I breathed again and shut my eyes.

  “The baron certainly did,” I said.

  “He did, didn’t he?” Cormac said, tilting his head and smirking at me with those perfect lips, “when you were jealous, were you also a little bit… turned on by it? You seem to like the stories…”

  “In a fantasy, maybe,” I said, “but not… not reality…”

  Cormac laughed quietly, moved close to me, pressing lips against my neck slowly, as though testing me.

  “Please,” I said.

  “Ok, I’ll stop,” he said, “we’re done with… that, but I still think we can be mystery solving adventure buddies. Come on, let’s go down there, I think it’ll be fun…”

  “Why?” I whined.

  “Because I want to know what those keys open,” he said, “I promise you can sleep separately, we don’t have to have sex anymore if you don’t want…”

  I wanted to, of course, but sleeping with him only confused me. The mystery though, what happened to Sophie, and the possibility that the keys could illuminate any part of it, was too tantalizing to ignore.

  “Ok, ok,” I relented, “let’s go.”

  As we had the night before, we lit lanterns and made our way back down into the castle’s underground passageways.

  “What do you think we’ll find?” I asked, as the now-familiar echo of our steps on the stone floor resonated in my ears.

  “I don’t know, but isn’t that the fun of it?” he asked.

  “I don’t think this is as fun for me as it is for you,” I reminded him.

  “What… what were you dreaming last night? When we…”

  “I dreamed Caroline was watching us,” I said, “what about you?”

  “Oh, I dreamed you were you, but you were also… you were Caroline…”

  “In my dream you were you, but you were…”

  “The baron?”

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling a chill up my spine, “was anyone else there?”

  “No, but I was… I don’t know… afraid of you… you as Caroline…”

  “She was frightening in my dream too… sexy, seductive, but frightening…”

  “So weird,” he said, as we passed the door to the dungeon and walked deeper into the passageway than we ever had before. I’d forgotten to bring my mom’s ashes, but I wasn’t sure how to inter them in the catacomb anyway.

  “So we’re going to…”

  “The catacombs,” I said, “where the dead were buried. I have an uncle down there, so that can’t be the only key.”

  “An uncle you actually knew?”

  “Yeah, my mom’s little brother, he died in a sailing accident here in Europe, otherwise he would have been buried in the U.S. He was a college student…”

  “Wow, so his body is just down here…” Cormac said, turning to me, “I’m sorry, but that’s just…”

  “Creepy as fuck?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “It’s really no different than a mausoleum honestly,” I said.

  “Except I don’t normally live on top of mausoleums,” he said.

  “It used to be very normal,” I said, “people didn’t used to be so afraid of death.”

  We came upon a heavy wood and iron door with a huge iron lock.

  “Ok, moment of truth,” he said, slipping one of the keys into the lock.

  It didn’t work. It hardly fit.

  “Maybe we’re wrong,” I suggested.

  “No,” Cormac said softly, slipping the second key, then the third, into the lock.

  Finally, it clicked.

  I breathed deeply, my heart thumping.

  He opened the door slowly, and we both went inside.

  The smell his us first. Not the smell of death, really, but a faint, pungent smell of decay.

  “This is a lot,” I said, as we walked into the dark chamber.

  “Is it too much?” he asked, and I shook my head no.

  “Is the baron down here?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, “he is.”

  We went through the passageway into the actual catacombs, where sarcophagus had been slid into the walls, covered in name plates and inscriptions, some of them hundreds of years old.

  Griffen family members going back hundreds of years made their final resting place, and I ran my fingers over their names carved into the stone, Ingrid, Johan, Frieda, Karl…

  “Here’s the baron,” Cormac said, “wow.”

  I walked over and looked, then let my eyes wander until, seeing another name, I gasped.

  “It’s Sophie,” I said, “why would she be here?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, “would that be normal?”

  “No, not if they weren’t married.”

  “Her name’s still Wagner, on the name plate,” he pointed out.

  “Why would her family let him bury her here?” I asked Cormac, who shrugged.

  “Prestige, maybe? Some people spend their whole lives looking for it.”

  “I guess.”
>
  I thought about my mom and how desperate she’d been to make sure people had known she was a baroness. Maybe having a daughter entombed in the castle gave the Wagners some kind of unfortunately achieved status.

  “I’m getting kind of freaked out,” I said, “maybe we should go back.”

  “No, let’s keep going,” Cormac said, just as a noise from above, in the castle, startled us both.

  “What was that?” Cormac asked, holding his lantern up like he might suddenly have X-ray vision.

  “Probably nothing,” I said, and then heard it again.

  A voice? A howl? A scream?

  “It might be Darleen,” Cormac said, “we should go check.”

  “I’d rather be up there than down here,” I said, following him as he rushed out of the chamber, leaving the door wide open behind us.

  We jogged up the stairs and heard Darleen’s voice, calling out Cormac’s name, then mine. She sounded terrified. We shot each other a look and ran faster.

  We emerged into the main hall of the castle and listened for Darleen. We heard her call again, and her voice had clearly come from the East Wing.

  “Come on,” Cormac said, and I followed as he practically ran up the stairs.

  “Darleen,” he called, his voice echoing up the dark stone staircase.

  “Cormac?” she called back, and we ran past the Baron’s chambers, bursting into Caroline’s room as she called out Cormac’s name once again.

  “Darleen,” Cormac said breathlessly, “what’s going on? Are you ok?”

  “I… I’m fine,” she said, though her face was white. She was wearing jeans and a thin, white-cotton t-shirt without a bra, like she’d dressed in a frenzy.

  “What are you doing up here?” I asked, holding up the lantern.

  “I heard voices, in my room, I thought I heard a scream,” she said, “and… I got sort of freaked out I guess, so I came to find you guys… I thought I heard you up here, I knew I heard you, and then I couldn’t find you, it was so freaky…”

  “But you’re ok?” I asked.

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said, sitting down on the bed and putting her head in her hands, “sorry, my heart’s beating really fast, give me a second, I just got kind of… worked up there for a minute, let me… let me just get my bearings…”