Ravenword and The House of the Red Death - 5: The Baron

5

The Baron

The hinges of the door across the narrow passage from where Professor Fichtenberg now slumbers as Romero creak in protest as Vin intrudes upon the darkness. The room is a duplicate of the one he had first been introduced to the night before, yet bereft of the warmth and sundries of habitation. A queer sensation marks the bare mattress and candleless chest of drawers, as if he himself were a ghost gazing on the shuttered remains of a former life. Even the air feels void of natural resonance and threatens to syphon the vitality from his chest. The succubus in that uncanny stillness, however, recedes under the mirth of Parson’s call.

“Phoneless.”

“Nothing in the purple room,” Vin calls back as a muted clamor draws his attention to the window. His senses prickle warily with the impulse to trespass. A giggle seeping through the casement dismisses the warning and he crosses in ease to throw wide the panes. Craning his head into the open air, he finds Julia poking her own pigtailed crown out from the neighboring chamber window.

“Sorry,” she giggles with a wave. “I didn’t think they’d open so easily.”

Vin offers her a smile reminiscent of Motisha. “No radio?”

Shrinking back in bashful recognition, Julia offers an apologetic smile and shakes her head. “No. It’s kind of weird being in an orange room, though. I mean, one just like upstairs.”

Vin nods and withdraws, closing the panes and then the door of the somber purple room to continue searching those deeper in the hall. The pedestal-borne candles between stand coldly extinguished in favor of the dreary gray light offered by the windowed sentry as he grasps the knob of the next chamber entry. The prospect from the white chamber exhibits the weed-riddled courtyard and drab face of the encircling wall. “White, no phone.”

Behind him Parson opens a door and scouts the violet room with disgust. “Oh my god. I’m so glad I didn’t get this room. How do you stand it?”

Pulling the door shut, Vin is poised on a glib retort when a fleeting figure beyond the window seizes his momentum. Stock-still and staring, he peers at the vista through the white room.

“Now what?”

Vin spins on his heels with a start.

Parson assesses him wearily as Julia skips past them with the ebullience of a game.

“Nothing,” he insists. “It’s nothing. Just a shadow.”

“Just,” Parson echoes dubiously as Vin shuts the room.

Vin does not respond, and the two turn to find Julia standing between the last set of doors with shoulders shrugged and snickering, her fingers pointing at the thresholds on either side.

Parson’s austere countenance gives way to enthusiasm as he crosses his arms thoughtfully. His eyes narrow as if calculating figures in the recesses of his mind and then he swings at the waist to review the hall behind them. “The door to your left should be the black room.”

“So what’s behind the other door?” Vin continues, following Parson’s logic with a hopeful gleam.

Julia drops her hands and looks to the door with a thrill of anticipation. As Vin and Parson stride to her side, she takes the doorknob in hand.

“It’s locked,” she deflates, staring into the wood grain.

Her face blanches suddenly, and she leaps from the door.

Vin rushes to put his ear against the door, bringing a finger to his lips.

Parson stands beside them, his chest tightening.

Vin relaxes and looks at Julia. “It’s gone.”

“What’s gone?” Parson asks, teetering between dread and annoyance.

“I heard a knocking,” Julia whispers, hugging herself.

Parson deflects with a wave of his hand, “That could have been anything—the wind, the plumbing, Billy getting to know his right hand.”

“It was all echoey and hollow and weird,” she bleats.

“You didn’t hear it?” Vin checks.

“No,” Parson replies, annoyance winning out over dread. “Is that a key in your pocket, or is there something else you’re fishing around for in there?”

Vin and Julia exchange bracing glances as he withdraws the shiny brass key and introduces it to the keyhole.

“It doesn’t fit,” he sighs, looking to Parson, who seems more relieved than surprised.

“Now what?” Julia moans, defeated by the game.

“We check the black room,” Parson retorts, trying to meter his tone. “Then we see if the others had any luck.”

Vin turns, tucking the key back into his pocket, and crosses the hall. “Might as well be sure.” The door opens with a rusty whine, but easily, to reveal what they had expected, a chamber dressed in black. With Parson and Julia peeking in on either side, they share a moment of consternation in the discovery that this room, like the others, is devoid of any communications equipment.

“I guess it could have been the wind,” Julia acquiesces timidly as the three withdraw, leaving the black chamber behind them and assessing the locked door.

“The professor must have the key,” Vin insists pensively as they retreat toward the mouth of the corridor.

The three are quiet until they reach the door to the professor’s chamber, where Parson pauses. “I should check on him. If he’s awake, I’ll ask.”

Vin nods and leads Julia into the kitchen as Agnot, Charlie, and Billy enter with expectant expressions.

“Nothing yet,” Vin says in answer, pulling out two chairs from the butcher-block table. “But the last door on the right is locked.”

“Same thing upstairs,” Agnot replies with a curious tone as she and Charlie join them at the table.

“But we heard this creepy knocking,” Julia interjects, still spooked.

“That was us,” Agnot rebuffs with a sardonic roll of her eyes.

Billy, meanwhile, ambles to the large door at the back of the kitchen.

“We already checked there,” Agnot calls after him, annoyed. “It’s the boiler room,” she explains in answer to Vin and Julia’s expressions.

“Where’s Parson?” Charlie asks.

II

Upon closer inspection, the frailty of the body inhabited by the two men seems too severe to sustain either of them for much longer. Crouching beside the small bed, Parson monitors the anemic pulse palpitating through the tenuous channels in his emaciated wrist. The man’s wan pallor and shallow breath concern the nurse in Parson, who lays his palm over the waif’s forehead before checking his pupils. Lifting the eyelids, the listless irises stare blankly through constricted windows.

Parson sighs heavily, then stands. For a moment he casts a pitiful assessment upon what has become of one of his favorite teachers before the dire implications lead him to the consequences stalking him and his companions. That thought brings to bear the urgency of finding the key to the mysteriously locked chamber, and he turns to the chest of drawers.

With the ginger movements of a considerate burglar, Parson slides open the two smaller drawers of the dresser. With the awkward task of sifting through the professor’s underwear proving fruitless, he moves his search to the three larger lower drawers to find nothing but Fichtenberg’s threadbare clothing.

Throwing a backward glance over the sleeping body, he pans the room. With the exception of a short and narrow bookshelf crammed with collegiate texts, the room is very much the same as the others. As he deliberates searching under the bed, a reclusive angle peeking out from the folds of the navy-blue tapestry at the end of the shelf catches his eye. With a thrill of anticipation, and illicit daring, he quietly draws the ornate box from the shadow’s hollow. Parson takes a deep breath and lifts the lid of the delicately engraved case only to have his hopes for both the key and the professor dashed. In addition to matches, he finds a syringe, a set of fresh needles, and several full glass vials rolling over a photograph carpeting the floor of the box. A set of familiar faces smile up at him in black and white.

On the bed behind him, the professor’s eyes open.

Parson reaches into the box, carefully avoiding the drug paraphernalia.

Behind him, the cadaverous figure rises silently with a venomous scowl.

Captivated by the image of the Ravenword’s younger selves, Parson examines the photo as he returns the box to its place on the shelf.

The addict joins his knobby hands in a conjoined fist and raises them over his head.

The hairs on the back of Parson’s neck prickle as a shadow across the door catches his eye.

He turns.

The strike descends.

The blow strikes the crook of Parson’s neck and shoulder, sending him sprawling to the cold granite.

Panting over him, his chest heaving in an excited agitation and horrible sobbish wheezing, the wretch grabs the box and falls back onto the bed, quivering with rage and rapacity. His taxed body curls around the case like an emaciated dragon, glaring at Parson with a vile and desperate spite.

Unable to determine whether it is Fichtenberg or Romero who cowers greedily in the nest of blankets, Parson backs away toward the door cautiously. Rubbing his bruised muscles, he shakes his head in pitiable homage to the miserable creature. He slips out of the chamber, breaking visual contact with the addict only when the heavy door separates them.

Still rubbing his neck, he steps into the cavernous kitchen, where Billy is gloating over the two keys dangling from a ring hooked by his finger. Upon seeing his friends in this setting, it occurs to Parson that the kitchen and dining hall are much larger than the twelve-room accommodations seem to need, and he wonders if there is another wing to the nineteenth-century addition.

“How is he?” Vin asks as Parson pulls out a chair to join them at the table.

“Stronger than he looks,” Parson replies, wincing as he stretches his neck.

“What happened?” Julia plies, her eyes wide with concern.

Deciding against disheartening his companions further by divulging the professor’s addiction, Parson tosses the black-and-white photo onto the middle of the table.

“Hey!” Julia cries happily. “That’s us!”

Agnot and Charlie huddle over her shoulder, pointing at the photograph.

“Wow,” Agnot exclaims. “Look how good Professor Fichtenberg looks.”

A handsome, albeit gangly, man of fortysomething, wearing a spirited smile and wavy, clean-cut hair, peers out of the monochrome image with eyes bright enough to be striking even without the flourish of color. Around him, the founding members of Ravenword wave and pose with fresh, enthusiastic faces.

As his companions ogle the nostalgia of the image, Parson nods at the keys dangling from Billy’s finger. “Where did you find them? Are they the ones?”

Billy answers with a satisfied smirk. “Don’t know yet. I first noticed them in the boiler room looking for something to eat. I didn’t know it was a boiler room.”

“Where’s Motisha?” Julia chirps, too captivated by the flood of memories to notice Billy’s triumph as she squints at the photograph.

“Taking the picture?” Charlie suggests.

Billy grows sullen as resentment clouds his sense of accomplishment.

“That’d be the day,” Agnot counters.

“Remember, she hadn’t joined yet,” Vin corrects, recalling the formation of Ravenword as a college club.

“Were they even together then?” Charlie asks, digging through her memories of T. J.

“We weren’t,” Agnot interjects, pointing at the picture. “Look how hot you were.”

Circumventing Agnot’s faux pas, Parson chimes in assertively as he stands. “Reminisce later, bitches. I want to make a call.”

His exclamation rallies them to their feet, abandoning the photograph to the tabletop in favor of the key Billy is trying to liberate from the ring.

“What are you doing?” Agnot chides.

“We don’t have to all go together,” he retorts, annoyed with her incessant harping. “We’re not lemmings.”

Freeing the first key, he tosses it to Parson.

“Fine,” Agnot snaps, extending her hand.

The two glare at each other like dogs sparring for dominance. Billy drops his gaze with a smirk, tossing the second key onto the table. Agnot grabs it and, taking Charlie’s arm, heads out of the kitchen. At the threshold of the dining hall, they hesitate, whispering between each other, before turning around.

“You coming or not?” Agnot grumbles.

Billy crosses his arms defiantly but shifts his weight away from the countertop to plod behind them in a sulky gloom. A moment later the three are gone and Vin turns to Parson with a hum of anticipation.

With Julia between them, they return to the long and narrow hallway like intrepid explorers, eager to discover and yet cautious of the menace that haunts their denial. Despite the day reaching full strength, the light filtering into the hallway remains anemic and casts a somber hue on the doors and pedestals. The three continue in a communion with the silence that feels as inherent to the castle as the stones used in its walls. Approaching the locked door, they notice the ruins of the chapel standing beyond the glass panes for the first time. Like sleepwalkers they reach the door.

Vin leans his ear to the door as Julia steps back, her hands clasped at her breast.

Parson watches his face for a reaction.

Their eyes meet, and Vin shakes his head.

He then gives way to Parson, who takes a deep breath and guides the key into the keyhole.

It fits.

Vin creeps closer, his eyes fixed on Parson as he turns the brass head.

The latch clicks and frees the door from the frame.

In spite of herself, Julia rushes to Vin’s side as he and Parson push against door.

The door swings open to reveal the framework of unfinished walls and a small window, familiar to all the rooms, staring back from across the rustic chamber. Yet it is the gaping black pit yawning between the margins of the exposed foundations that commands their attention and sends a dire shiver through each of them.

Absorbed by the impenetrable darkness of the void, Vin, Parson, and Julia stand transfixed by the creeping gulf widening in their minds as if the atramentous chasm were a consuming contagion. A crackling frost expands in their chests as a voiceless, dispirited chill beckons from the imperceptible depths to lure their souls, warm with life, into the grip of its subterranean slumber.

A resonant “Holy shit!” startles them to their senses, pulling each back from the edge. Turning upward, they find Agnot, Charlie, and Billy looking down on the pit from the upstairs doorway. Vin notes the roof high above them. Though lacking a ceiling, it appears sound and provides no clue to the gutting of the chamber or the unnerving hole in the earth.

“Can you see anything?” Vin calls up to the three above, holding tightly to the frame.

“Yeah,” Agnot says, her retort resounding with a hollow reverberation, “a big fuckin’ waste of time.”

Parson and Julia recede back into the hallway as Vin strains and grapples for the doorknob, his heart pounding like an adamant alarm against the snare of the pit. Catching the brass orb, he pulls the door shut and twists the key to secure the lock, leaving the gulf of their disappointment to the chasm.

“We’re going to go unpack,” Parson relents, taking Julia by the hand with a dismal sigh before sauntering down the drab hallway.

III

T. J. and Motisha evade the bustling shoppers while enjoying espressos under the reaching awnings of the Gucci salon. Behind them green hedges line the plate windows of the tawny arched facades while tourists and natives navigate the pavilion en masse underneath the sheltering paned vaults encasing the famous Milano fashion district. Retail bags embellished with Dior, Armani, and Prada huddle at Motisha’s feet as she watches T. J.’s gaze drift absently.

“Perhaps this wasn’t a good idea,” Motisha says, searching T. J.’s pensive expression.

“No, it’s okay,” he replies, offering her a reassuring smile. “Besides, it’s a little late to change our minds, don’t you think?”

A coy grin curves her lovely features, and she takes a sip from her cup with a flutter of lashes. “I wouldn’t mind Monaco.”

T. J. returns her smile and shrugs.

“That isn’t fair of me, I know, but I can’t abide going back without you. And if you get to have your holiday, then I deserve mine.”

T. J. nods, and as his eyes fall on the teardrop ruby pendant adorning her breast, a shadow taints his countenance.

“It’s a keepsake, and I will always wear it in Milan,” Motisha insists, checking him with raised brows. “I am more sentimental than people give me credit for.”

“I thought we weren’t going to dwell?”

T. J. lifts the little espresso cup to his smile and glances into the crowd and his expression suddenly falters. His eyes grow sharp as his brain races to confirm the recognition.

The mysterious agent, whose dogging of Ravenword compelled him to abandon his friends, strides through the crowds.

T. J. tracks him, hoping to glimpse or to project the agent’s course.

Perturbed by his distraction, Motisha shifts to turn around only to be stayed by T. J.’s swift hand reaching across the table. “It’s nothing.”

“Who did you see?” Motisha insists, her expression an amalgam of annoyance and dread.

“I’ll be right back,” he says as he rises. With a hurried kiss on her forehead, T. J. rushes into the throngs in pursuit of the agent, leaving Motisha to gaze after him contending with a will of her own.

IV

The long corridor hosting the various color-themed rooms is alive with the voices of Ravenword as Billy shuffles through with a cup of tea and a plate piled with cookies. Agnot and Charlie’s muffled banter seeps from their door as he passes, as does the rush of shower spray from Vin’s lavatory. The animated voices of Parson and Julia spill into the corridor with abandon, as they have propped open their doors in order to prattle like schoolgirls from their respective chambers as they unpack.

Having left his own door ajar in hopes of returning with hands occupied with morsels, Billy kicks it gently and it creaks open to reveal the black chamber. The room is already a disheveled collage of clothing and luggage with the wrinkled sheets and blankets of the bed churned in a haphazard bundle. Likewise kicking the door shut behind him, Billy sets the cup and plate next to the candle lamp on the chest of drawers and straightens.

His gaze falls onto the choppy sod cloister beyond the black-framed window. The imposing square tower that rises out of that weed-riddled lawn stares back at him under the oppression of stewing clouds as if angry with his intrusive gaze. Billy’s eyes follow the weather-beaten masonry to the inky window that interrupts the tower’s weathered face. Stillness falls over him as he peers into that distant portal. Where such grounding would be a precursor to fear in others, in Billy it is akin to the posture of a pointer scenting prey.

Locked in place, he waits.

The presence in the black window of the tower stares back unseen.

Stolid and focused, Billy tries to will the watcher forth.

Nothing.

Billy turns his back on the window abruptly, having no patience for reticent ploys.

A raven caws brashly in the distance somewhere over the chapel wall, but Billy chooses to ignore the lure and moves to disembowel his duffel bag. Grabbing a fistful of underwear, he transfers them brutishly to one of the top drawers in the dresser absently. He continues until the contents of the duffel have been stowed before dragging his backpack across the floor and onto the rumpled bed with a lazy heave.

Pulling the zipper along the body of the pack, the main compartment gapes to reveal toiletries and more clothes. Billy digs into it absently like a badger in the dirt until his fingers strike an object both hard and unfamiliar. Rifling quickly, he pulls a satellite phone from the shabby backpack. Astonished, he stares at the brick-size device, contemplating its usefulness and the intentions of the agent who had excised his key in Viareggio.

V

“I don’t get it,” Julia laments, standing before the tall windows in the dining hall and staring up at the overcast sky, the dull light of the somber day washing her skin in a pasty hue. “I thought Italy is supposed to be warm and sunny?”

“Eat your soup, Julia,” Agnot deflects in a tone that sounds very much like an order.

“I’m waiting for it to cool down,” she replies with a glance at her friends sitting around the end of the table.

Having unpacked and showered, Agnot and Charlie had returned to the kitchen to explore the pantry where they found several industrial size cans of various stews. Considering the odd weather, they busied themselves preparing a main course from the selection while adding heartier fare from the stores of breads and cheeses to surprise Ravenword with a nicely laid-out warm meal.

At the head of the table, Vin resists playing the part of mediator in favor of a torn chunk of rye bread soaked in rabbit stew. On his left Parson turns to Julia, patting the seat of the empty chair beside him. “Ignore the old woman,” he teases. “Come sit next to young and pretty.”

Julia giggles and takes the seat, offering a conciliatory smile to Agnot, who sits beside Charlie on the other side of the table.

“Sorry,” Agnot replies, “I didn’t mean to snap.”

Julia’s smile brightens, and she waves back to her. “Eff’n eff,” she sings.

Agnot answers the inane reply with a dry expression, “Sorry, I graduated from high school.”

“Agnot,” Julia giggles.

“Julia.”

A couple of empty chairs away, Billy pauses in his shoveling of soup and bread into his mouth to assess his companions. “Why do you think they brought us here?” he punts, after a thick gulp, shrewdly watching their reactions.

The lesbians exchange cryptic glances as Julia looks from Billy to Vin with a suddenly sullen wane. Parson, however, continues to sip from his spoon, unaffected, as Vin wipes his mouth with the cloth napkin supplied with the table dressings.

“That’s a funny way of referring to the professor,” Vin muses, “but I guess it’s appropriate.”

Billy pulls off a piece of bread and caps it with a square of cheese before stuffing it into his mouth with a sardonic smirk. “Um, okay.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Agnot snarls, leaning past Charlie to glare at Billy.

Charlie exhales wearily, dropping her spoon and looking furiously at Billy.

“What?” he exclaims. “Can’t I ask a simple question?”

“You know why we’re here,” Vin interjects irritably.

“Um, okay,” Agnot mocks with an overly exaggerated shrug. “You always gotta stir the goddamned shit!”

Parson’s eyes dart from Billy to Agnot and then to Vin as he holds a slice of bread and cheese to his mouth feigning a disinterest worthy of Motisha. Beside him, Julia sinks in her chair.

“So you’re just going to live in denial?” Billy retorts.

“Denial?” Agnot echoes indignantly.

“Have you been fucking unconscious the past three days?” Billy sneers.

“Fuck you,” Agnot roars, “and your fucked-up life!”

“Stop it!” Charlie shouts, bolting to her feet. “Both of you!”

Burnished by the rebuke, Agnot and Billy retreat to glaring at each other with contempt.

“I’m not going to listen to you two argue for two weeks!”

A derisive chuckle trickles from Billy, who stares at his hands and shakes his head slowly. “I can guarantee you won’t have to if you don’t pull your heads out of your asses.”

“Billy,” Vin chides, checking him with authority.

Billy meets Vin’s domination with an austere defiance as he rises. “When you guys are ready to talk about this fucked-up shit, come get me.” Grabbing his bowl and plate, he kicks the chair back and marches out of the dining hall.

“I think,” Parson says delicately, “it’s time we find that phone.”

VI

Vin and Agnot push the heavy nineteenth-century doors open against the blustery gloom of the dismal afternoon. Tufts of overgrown grass and weeds in the courtyard, stretching out to either side of them, bow angrily to the abrupt harassment of the sharp, charging wind. Vin, Julia, and the lesbians step into the harried day and are quickly absorbed in the unseasonable morose. The incessant clanging of the huge iron wrought gate riddles the air angrily as if unseen hands were wracking them in a desperate bid to escape.

Turning, Vin shuts the door behind them with the aid of a sweeping gust. The door snaps tight with a thick and disconcerting thud, relegating them to vulnerability.

“At least it’s warm,” Julia offers weakly, hoping to stoke a gleam of optimism.

Overhead, mountains of murky billows tumble and churn as they scroll across the agitated sky. In the distance, Jupiter gives voice to the tumultuous dome with a deep and booming rumble that resonates from peak to peak.

“We’ll meet back here if it starts raining before we meet up behind the castle,” Vin says, taking the lead and stepping off the granite landing. “Right or left?”

Agnot marks him with an expression devoid of enthusiasm as she passes, leading Charlie onto the bullied grounds to the right. “See you on the other side,” she calls without turning around.

Charlie takes her arm and the two commence their search in an affectionate huddle.

Vin offers a bolstering smile to Julia, whose stout pigtails are no match for the will of the wind, and she skips down the worn and chipped steps to join him.

The facade that hosts the great Gothic entryway extends the entire length of the building to encase the formal dining hall and the themed guest rooms. Ahead, the desolation stretches far beyond the abbey until it is finally broken by the sagging western wall. The monotony of the vista is interrupted only by a tree, bent with age, struggling in the northwest crook.

As Vin and Julia meander under the reaching windows of the dining hall, a desultory rapping reaches their ears, piquing their reluctant curiosity and playing on their sense of exposure.

***

Agnot and Charlie, meanwhile, have turned the northeasterly corner of the building, where a cluster of ruined houses greets them. Under rows of watching windows high on the castle’s eastern face, the shanties tell the story of their grim histories with dilapidation and ruin. The crumbling stone walls of many have pulled in the decayed remnants of their roofs. Even from a distance it is obvious that the emaciated doors, those that remain, have long since lost their purpose and leave no need for a key delivered on the talons of a raven. A drab greenbelt of reeds and mosquitoes winds from the far corner of the castle to an arched outlet in the east wall where the corresponding mire still drains into the alpine wilderness. Rusty fangs grin at them menacingly from the lip of the archway, the remains of the bars that had once fortified the compromise in the ancient bulwark. In the heart of the bleak setting, a small bridge of stone extends a faded pathway over the ribbon of muck to fallow fields and untamed orchards. Without speaking they proceed into the time-ravaged expanse of the service bailey like sleepwalkers stepping into an eerie canvas washed in sepia and monochrome.

***

With Julia pressed against the cold wall of the weather-beaten face of the dining hall behind him, Vin peeks around the corner as the unnerving tapping continues unimpeded. Images of guillotines and ax murders are subdued by the reality of a loose set of windowpanes beating against the apartment by the will of the wind. He relaxes and looks back at Julia with mild reproach.

“You didn’t close the windows, did you?”

Julia’s nose crinkles with her knitting brows, unsure what he is referring to.

“When we were checking the rooms this morning,” he expounds, stepping away from the building. “The orange room?”

“Oh yeah,” she shrinks into shrugging shoulders. “It’s not that big a deal, is it?”

Vin considers the supposition. “I guess not. But the last thing we need right now is something stupid to freak us out in the middle of the night.”

Julia’s eyes widen as they walk over to the open window. “Oh my god, I didn’t think of that. And it’s right under my room!”

“I don’t know if I can reach it,” Vin says, stretching his arms and body to grasp at the bottom edges of the window frames. “Nope, see if you can find a big rock or old stump.”

Vin starts rummaging through the tall weeds and grass, brushing his hands through them. Julia, however, afraid of an unpleasant discovery, simply strolls to and fro hugging herself as she inspects the wild lawn.

“I don’t see anything,” she sings against the gale that has risen suddenly to buffet her. Not getting a response from Vin, she turns and finds him examining a thicket of weeds.

***

In the service ward, Agnot and Charlie have been drawn to a tiny building by its relatively well-preserved condition. Rounding the low stonemasonry wall, they find that, like the other buildings, it is lacking a door. As Charlie examines the entryway, she doubts there ever was a door.

“It’s a well house,” Agnot declares, stepping cautiously into its dark hollow.

Chills rise on Charlie’s shoulders as she loses sight of Agnot in the darkness lording over the interior. “Let’s keep looking, babe.”

“You should see this,” Agnot exclaims, her voice resounding in unearthly reverberations. “It’s a lot bigger than it looks from out there.”

“That’s okay,” Charlie deflects anxiously, pacing at the entryway. “Let’s keep looking.”

“It’s so dark.”

A rock clacks across Charlie’s nerves as it prattles down the walls of the well. A dispirited plunk from the black depths follows, constricting Charlie’s reason in the grip of an ambiguous fear.

“Get the hell out of there!” she spurns, stomping away from the well house.

Agnot hurries from the darkness and quickly wraps her in her arms. Charlie buries her face in Agnot’s shoulder, trying to tame her trembling.

“Sorry, babe,” Agnot whispers, “I just thought it was kind of cool.”

“I know, but not being able to see you ten feet in front of me is not.”

“I get it,” Agnot consoles. “Let’s keep looking.”

***

“It sure looks like a tombstone,” Julia demurs as Vin rests the hewn stone against the foundation of the nineteenth-century addition.

Panting, Vin looks up at her from his stoop as he tries to catch his breath. “Does it matter?”

“Why don’t we just call to Parson?” she suggests. “He can shut it from the inside.”

An image of Parson sitting in the kitchen as disembodied voices sail through the hall flashes through Vin’s mind and he laughs despite himself.

“What?” Julia asks with an uncertain grin.

“What would you do if you were in there hearing someone calling your name when you knew everyone else was outside?”

Julia indulges in a mischievous chuckle. “Yeah, that would freak me out.”

Vin nods with a grin before straightening and stepping up onto the stone. Leaning his body against the wall, he reaches up and brings the two panes together to a close. “We’ll lock it once we’re inside.”

The momentary levity sets them more at ease. Vin springs off the block, and they continue along the face of the apartments. At the last window, the corner of the building recedes and that levity is grounded by a sight that catches their breaths.

The imposing chapel cathedral rises out of the despoiled earth as if having rooted and grown from the bile of that desolation. Its yawning medieval archway and flanking towers are mottled with the stain of rain and lichen, sun and grime. Swaths of missing roof reveal decayed beams like the exposed ribs of a rotting corpse. Murders of black corvids swoop and soar in and out of the desecration on the invisible byways of the mad wind. Tumbled pavers plot a course through the weeds to the fractured steps of the entrance landing, where enormous doors, coated in the same spackled grime as the surrounding masonry, stand sealed by time and the elements.

Slowed by creeping apprehension, Vin and Julia trespass the sod breast of the once sacred bailey under the ancient scowl of the defiled church. A battalion of gales bully them like phantoms of angry parishioners as they approach the bare granite plateau of the landing. A menacing rumble thunders in the deep mountains to the north.

Reaching the corner of the steps with Julia on his heels, Vin ascends to the dust-swept platform. Behind him, Julia stares up at the decrepit cathedral with a cringe.

“Come on,” Vin coaxes, having turned to find her transfixed.

Reluctantly, she takes his hand and climbs the steps.

Facing the ornate ironwork, weeping rust and scum, that frames the doors, Vin withdraws the raven’s key.

***

“There’s nothing here,” Agnot huffs as she and Charlie plod over the soft dirt past the small bridge bowing over the murky channel.

The great hulk of the castle looms spitefully, and Charlie can’t shake the spectral watching of the hollow, black windows lining the high walls of that oppressive wing. In spite of her willful intent, she pauses as if captivated and lifts her face and then her eyes to the series of stygian cavities. Relief seeps into her veins upon finding only emptiness in those repetitive frames.

Her solace, however, is short-lived. An ambient shift sets the atmosphere ajar, as if the moment has been immersed in an affectation of despair. Charlie turns, hoping to draw reassurance from her lover’s brooding countenance, to find Agnot ahead by the stream. Her back is to her. The distance between them is a sudden gulf of grief. As if blunted and soulless, Agnot stands queerly slack against the bleak backdrop of tuft and bramble and the tangle of forsaken fruit trees devouring the eastern wall in obscurity. The blotted strokes of storm clouds upon that dreary canvas deepen to malevolent gunmetal and descend like preternatural mountains of doom over the dispirited figure bewitched in a milieu of in-anima.

Once again the rapier of fear plunges into Charlie’s chest. Nothing within her can feel Agnot’s presence. Desperately open, her senses expand to reap only the oppression of the castle and its bereft bailey. Even the smatter of ruined outbuildings retain the impressionist echoes of the last days of life. Yet the shadowy landscape and dispirited cast of her lover defy vital resonance.

Charlie’s pulse sinks with her heart as she struggles to face what horrors calling out may bring. She fills her lungs, her hands sweeping behind her for an anchor. Her will and her voice falter. She falls against the bone-like frame of a dilapidated bake house, silently pleading for a sense of life in her lover’s form. Any hope lingering in the wider world bleeds away as if all of reality were suddenly blanched with desolation.

Unable to endure the ghastly ambiguity, Charlie regains her footing and steps forward with stifled whimpers. As she traverses the gulf between her and the changeling, she quivers under the sapping of her strength and weakening of uncertain knees.

The figure’s demeanor is unchanged.

As she struggles toward the golem, memories of laughter and lovemaking mock Charlie’s imagination, as if predicating an endless divide. She reaches for the shoulder of the dispirited doppelganger, but a thick dread smears the atmosphere with a foreboding that stays her hand. Pursing her lips against crying out, Charlie steps abeam of the figure, resigned to the harrowing reveal. The hairs on the back of her neck rise.

A blast of white light suddenly blinds her upon a stunning thunder strike.

Crumbling to the ground, her scream is a thin tenor within the mighty crash.

“Holy shit!”

Charlie gapes, stunned and dazed, but buoyed by her paramour’s exclamation. Agnot is in the dirt beside her. As her senses clear, Agnot is grabbing her and pointing into the field. “Look! Look!”

Charlie pulls her bewildered eyes away from her resurrected lover to peer across the boggy stream. Fleeting shadows disappear through the drainage arch in the protective wall. Her blood curdles when one turns and stares back at them with brazen and ferocious eyes.

“Wolves!” Agnot exclaims. “They were in the orchard. I could feel them watching me,” she finishes with a disconcerting drone, as if suddenly possessed once again by the golem.

Charlie scrambles to her feet, pulling Agnot up with a force beyond her gentle nature. “We gotta go!”

Agnot complies, throwing her arm over Charlie’s shoulder. “You’re shaking like a leaf,” she exclaims, pulling her in to kiss her head as they quickly stride toward the south ward.

Charlie looks back over Agnot’s arm, which provides her no comfort.

“Don’t worry, babe,” Agnot reassures, “I don’t think they’ll bother us, at least not during the day.”

***

Julia clutches the bars of the iron fence caging an ancient cemetery flanking the western length of the cathedral, pressing her trembling form against its unyielding anchor. “Can we go now?”

Vin, his face blanched by the crowning blast of lightning and thunder, answers with shaken reassurance before his eyes goggle. In a frantic charge, he grabs Julia and pulls her from the conductive black stripes.

Overcome by his steel, she surrenders with a flutter of affinity and uncertainty as he sweeps her into the open bailey.

Alighting at the edge of the overgrown cobblestone road, his grasp eases, and he returns her gaze with soft and apologetic eyes. “Lightning and metal fences aren’t a good combination.”

“Oh,” she sighs, before casting an absent glance on the iron palings. “Oh!”

Vin’s releases her with a flushed recognition that warms his cheeks as he withdraws to the relief of the open air.

Julia, begrudging the emancipation, turns to thank him only to have icy fingers rake the back of her neck. Vin is retreating slowly with a scowl fixed on the cemetery. Behind him the gnarled trees bracing the sagging wall howl and wave in the gales as if pleading with them to desist. She jogs to his side with a shudder, hugging his arm and searching the stark visage of the cathedral for the dreadful mark that has captivated him.

Granite headstones, from the tall and exquisite to the low and simple, populate the necropolis under the arches of the nave so layered in grime that the stained glass is nearly indistinguishable from the masonry. The imposing wing of the weather-bleached transept divides the ranks of those long departed, sequestering the humbler remains to a stretch of cankered sod tumbling back to the margin of the Lady Chapel. There, a stone wall juts from the cathedral to anchor the black spears of the iron fence.

Vin takes Julia gently by the shoulders of her fuzzy purple coat and leads her along his crab-angle course. From their shared vantage, the wall turns like a page to reveal a crude garden of lowly crosses, rust eaten or rot-wooded, hidden from the grace of the noble yard. Interrupting this lowly bid for absolution, a mausoleum crafted from marble finer than any found on the sacred ground rises conspicuously amid the modest ornaments. Like the formal cemetery, this small necromantic ward is barred by the continuing strength of the ironwork fence and an inconsistency in the pattern of these black bars denotes the presence of a hidden gate.

Vin returns to the perimeter of the black grille with Julia glued to his side. She lifts a fretful gaze against the wind to monitor the menacing sky as Vin surveys the mausoleum, captivated by the cryptic inconsistency.

“Why is it back here?” Julia wonders aloud, looking from the marble house to Vin. “Do you think they ran out of room in the main cemetery?”

Vin shakes his head, the thrill of discovery coursing through his veins. “No,” he explains eagerly, pointing out the various yards. “This isn’t holy ground. See, look, the part of the cemetery at the front of the chapel was reserved for people of rank. The part behind the transept, that square part coming out from the church, was for common people—probably people who were important or prosperous but not part of the aristocracy.”

Julia follows his hand as he pans over the small site before them.

“This little graveyard…shouldn’t even be here.”

She looks back at the churchyard cemetery and then at the mausoleum, cocking her head. “Um…okay. So why is it here?”

Like weaving an eager tapestry in his mind, Vin pulls the clues together as he drifts along the fence to meet the gate. His face reflects the brooding, yet energetic, mood of the turbulent atmosphere as his inquisitive fingers caress the frame of the secret entry.

“It was probably put here after the castle fell into ruin,” he surmises, gesturing to the markers. “These graves surrounding it are set with crude markers, but they’re not primitive, so maybe people from a nearby village buried their dead here, mistaking the placement of the mausoleum as holy ground.”

“Okay,” Julia exclaims with a tentative sigh. “So why is the mausoleum here?”

Vin reaches through the bars, his hand searching for and finding the latch on the other side. “Obviously someone significant came to the castle…”

The latch does not give way as he tries to pull it out of its cradle.

“Poe!” Julia proposes excitedly. “Aldo said Poe was here!”

“But he’s not buried here,” Vin counters, entranced and confounded by the unwilling gate. “And he certainly didn’t die here.”

Julia’s fervor evaporates.

Vin pauses, turning to her with sudden fervor. “Don’t you see? Aldo said that Poe came here and found out that the story of the red death was true. So someone had to have told him the story.” The ghastly implications suddenly dawn on him, repelling him from the gate.

“What?” Julia asks reluctantly. “You think it’s true?”

“What, Poe’s story? That’s ridiculous. But it might be based on a historical event known to the locals. Someone who knew the legend would have to’ve brought him here.”

“And died?” Julia surmises dreadfully.

Vin steps back and surveys the uncooperative ironwork. “We’ve got to get in there.”

Julia recoils at the thought of worming their way into a tomb.

“Let’s just go,” she pleads fretfully, hoping to avoid antagonizing whatever forces have been dogging them on their journey. “I think it’s going to rain.”

“We’ve been looking for the home of this key,” Vin insists, presenting the brass key, “and mausoleums are usually locked.”

“Aren’t we supposed to be looking for a phone or radio or something?”

“Yes, but if this goes to the mausoleum, we need to know it.”

Julia shifts her weight to question the significance of the tomb when black-feathered wings descend from the cheerless canopy and into the unhallowed yard. With a rustle and caw, the raven alights on the gable of the marble house, cocking its head to cast a beady eye on the two. Before either can comment, thin and ethereal rays of silvery beams reach through a crevice in the murky thunderheads to polish the ebony corvid and gray stone with an unearthly grace.

Faces wide with astonishment, Julia and Vin acquiesce to fate to join forces at the gate.

“It’s rusted solid.” The words press from Vin’s lungs as he strains to force the arm of the latch out of its cradle.

“Oh my god!” Julia exclaims.

Vin’s head swivels to find Agnot and Charlie rounding the far end of the corner of the castle at a full run. Their white and terror-stricken faces register on his brain even before he can process the scene.

“Run!” Agnot booms, her command penetrating the dreary air like a cannon through the mist.

A harrowing thrill rushes through both Vin and Julia as a pack of wolves rounds the corner behind them. Giving no heed to Julia’s scream, Vin heaves her up onto the iron spindles, unceremoniously shoving her petite posterior over his head.

Grasping the daggered peaks of the black bars, she pedals desperately to pull herself up to the crossbar.

Vin clamors frantically behind her, using the atrophied hinges of the gate as footholds.

As Julia spiders down the inside of the iron, Charlie and Agnot burst onto the grille, throwing her to the ground.

With wolves at their back, the two grapple with the sinewy bars.

From an uncertain perch on the dragon spines, Vin grabs Charlie’s coat at the back of the neck and, with all of his strength, hoists her to the crossbar and then grabs Agnot. As he heaves her from the sod, the wolves rush upon her, leaping with the wild ferocity of deprived fangs.

Agnot bellows as jagged teeth sink into her calf and tug loose her grasp.

Julia screams, palms at bloodless cheeks.

Vin and Charlie shout a communal rebuke at fate, grasping Agnot by the shoulders, lifting both she and a viciously tenacious wolf.

Agnot’s instinctive kicking and pawing for a foothold beats the beast loose, and she explodes onto the iron spine, pushing Charlie and Vin to the unhallowed ground.

Both scurry away from the cage on hand and heel as Agnot teeters at the top of the fence with the wild dogs leaping and gnashing murderously after her.

Rocked by the onslaught, she leaps from the height and hits the ground with a cry of pain.

Vin and Charlie sweep her into their hands and out of the reach of the snapping jaws that lunge furiously between the bars for another taste of her flesh. Not waiting for her to find her footing, they drag her quickly along Julia’s panicked path to the mausoleum. Behind them the wolves begin to throw themselves savagely against the bars.

Streams of rust fall from the corroded latch with every brutish impact. Soon it is loosed from the encasing grime and bouncing in its cradle.

With limbs racked by terror-charged nerves, Vin thrusts his hand into his pocket at the face of the mausoleum.

Julia is already wiping away a century of gunk with fingers frantically searching for a keyhole.

The latch of the gate bounces ever more freely under the collective barrage of beasts.

Sensing the giving of gate, the pack summon all the barbarity of their lineage to attack the iron barricade.

The moment lingers.

Agnot is reassuring Charlie.

Julia’s eyes are burrowing into the keyhole.

Vin is inserting the key.

His hand turns.

The latch of the gate jumps.

The door of the mausoleum gives way.

The gate is thrown open.

Agnot shoves her friends into the darkness.

The wolves are upon them.

Agnot screams, tearing her leg out of a saw-toothed mouth and shoving the door behind her.

The yelp of a crushed muzzle pierces the fray as the four wrestle the iron door of the marble house against the offending jaws and, finally, into its frame.

Vin wedges his foot firmly against the bottom seal of the door with a stomp and sets his weight upon it. Regardless of how heavy the barrage of lunging wolves, the door does not move.

“Agnot?” he checks through the pitch as his fingers find the keyhole and he locks them in the shelter of the tomb.

She hisses from the stinging gash before answering, “Okay. I’m okay.”

The tumbled pounding of wolves throwing their bodies against the thick iron door is replaced by unnerving scratching and snorting and sniffing along the seams.

A light is struck, and Julia’s breath is caught by the desiccated corpse lying between her and the lesbians. The flashlight tumbles from her quaking grasp. As it hits the cold marble floor, they are again engulfed by the blackness of the mausoleum and the onslaught of the wild wolves.

“Goddamnit!” Agnot hisses.

“It’s not her fault!” Vin snaps before catching himself. “Sorry, sorry.”

“No, you’re right,” Agnot follows quickly. “Sorry, Jules.”

Light again emerges in the darkness at the hand of Charlie, who holds a small flashlight of her own. The closed space allows the light from its diminutive lens to adequately illuminate the tomb.

“That’s my girl,” Agnot chimes.

It is only with the steady light that the condition of each is apparent. Still rooted against the door, Vin is scuffed and scraped with a tear in his sleeve and an underlying gash in his forearm where an iron bar caught him in his fall. Julia is equally plied with dirt with a purpling bruise swelling on her cheek. Charlie’s hands, now bracing Agnot’s stance, are sprinkled with stripes of blood. Agnot is worse by far. Both of her legs and feet are gnawed and bloody, torn deeply with the gashes inflicted by the primal tools of the carnivores.

Beside them all the grizzled remains of the enigma rest upon the stone bier covered in dust and decay as if hewn from the marble itself. The cast of the odd, angled light from Charlie’s lamp stretches and exaggerates the features and cavities of the dusty remains into strange, shadowed fancies consistent with every macabre imagination.

As their collective survey settles, Vin nods toward the wall opposite himself and the door.

The three women turn to find an inscription carved into the marble above the head of the eternal recline of the tomb’s inhabitant.

Enrico Salvador Eliano Romero † Nobile dei Barone di Maledetto di

Anno Domini 1779–1819

***

Parson sets what medical and first-aid supplies he could find on top of the chest of drawers in the blue chamber, looking out the window into the dismal day with somber resignation. In the bed beside him, the professor sits curled in his tangled nest of blankets and languishing in the semiconscious nodding of his narcotic euphoria. The rattling in his lungs began soon after Parson entered to check on him, culminating in bouts of choking hacks that leave Parson wondering if his declining health in this isolation was the real reason behind the invitations.

***

“I don’t think the professor has split personalities,” Charlie says slowly, contemplating the implications of Romero’s name in the wall.

Julia recedes from the engraving with tears welling in her eyes.

“That’s impossible!” Agnot retorts, the pain coursing through her making her impatient with even her lover.

With the wolves huffing and clawing in his ear, Vin stares at the inscription, trying to determine a reasonable explanation for the coincidence. “I wonder if Fichtenberg adopted the identity, or at least the name, for his other personality.”

“Parson would know,” Julia trumpets desperately. “Let’s go ask him.”

***

The tiny hairs on the back of Parson’s neck prickle. Wary of another attack by the addict, his eyes dart quickly to the incapacitated wretch.

The professor has not moved, but his stillness does nothing to dissipate Parson’s unease. Attributing the queer atmosphere to being alone in the apartment annex with the professor, he sits on the edge of the bed and takes Fichtenberg’s hand.

The professor’s heavy-lidded eyes roll to the heart of the room, where a gossamer wisp is developing like a ribbon of smoke.

***

“How long do we have to stay here?” Julia moans, tears tracing lines down her creamy complexion.

Vin follows the scratching and seething along the perimeter of the iron door.

“A long time,” Agnot replies bleakly.

Vin’s expression changes to curiosity as his eyes fall absently on the skeletal remains. “Agnot, you’re Catholic, right?”

***

Parson pulls Fichtenberg’s hand gently in order to extend his arm.

Gazing through the euphoric haze, the professor’s brain fixates on the form developing over the shoulder of his former student.

Clasping his hand around Fichtenberg’s frail wrist, Parson carefully slides back his sleeve.

***

“Not since my mom caught me with Kat Thrace,” she quips, wincing under the triage of Charlie, who has ripped out the lining of her coat to bind Agnot’s wounds. “Why?”

Vin nods toward the body. “Look at his hands.”

Clutched in the withered bones of the folded hands, several cords lay under a layer of dust against the bare sternum, the ends of most having fallen between the hollowed ribcage.

***

Parson sighs heavily, disheartened by the pattern of blotchy lesions that dot the professor’s sallow skin. Behind him, the phantasm takes the form of a terrifyingly unearthly Romero.

Fichtenberg lurches out of Parson’s grasp with eyes wide in mad recognition.

***

“Scapulars?” Agnot frowns. “I’ve never heard of someone being buried with more than one.”

“What are scapulars?” Julia asks, trying to avoid the corpse.

***

Startled and confused, Parson leaps to his feet as a feeble scream croaks from Fichtenberg.

Lifting his talon-like hand, he points chillingly past Parson.

Parson spins on his heel only to throw himself against the dresser, horror-stricken by the phantasmal presence of Romero’s horrible ghost. Before he can react, the phantom is upon him.

***

Shovels slice into the damp earth.

A black void beneath encasing walls.

Romero is leading a man down a ladder into the pit.

The swinging lantern casts an orange hue on the worn features of the author Poe.

The two men are walking through a hall of grotesque monuments.

Desperate footfalls in a stretch of blackness are consumed by a snarl.

One man is scrambling out of a pit.

A roar and a scream and Romero is snatched.

A sick white mask stained with droplets of blood.

Huge arched and ill-grained doors slam shut.

Fourteen squares are coupled with golden cords and placed in cold and folded hands.

A marble mausoleum rises.