The Cellar Door

The Dark Lord didn't always enjoy doing His bidding, but when he did, he thrived completely. The joy he felt when He gave him a job? Incomparable.

The witches knew whenever the Dark Lord tried to re-open the rift that Eddie had sacrificed herself for, in the hopes of keeping it closed. Her body and death had created a magical connection with the land and the cellar door to which she was permanently linked to. Every single soul that wishes to come or go through the door, good or evil, had to deal with Eddie and her say was the final word.

Or so they thought.

Alucard was visiting his mother, on instruction from his father, when she started feeling dizzy. He passed it off as her being a weak human when she fell to the floor. The thump was felt deep within Alucard's chest. He had never felt this way before: hurt. He knew she had passed, but what he didn't know was why he felt so much pain when he didn't actually like his human family.

He had inherited his worst traits from them, such as his ability to feel and the voice inside his head that had the audacity to argue with him. He longed for the solitude he was promised when he left the human world to live with Him. Oh, how he longed for the solitary confinement he once felt when he first arrived in the Further.

Alucard regularly wished to make sure Father was happy. It didn't grant any special treatment, it was yet another side effect of having a human half. The weak bastards that provided half of his DNA made sure he himself was partially weak, and nothing would let him forget it.

In the days that passed his mothers death, Alucard laid her body to rest in the catacombs beneath the village she had lived her life in. Hers joined the infinite number of restless bones left to rest for eternity. While he held her burial service, his chest started to flutter in agonising pain once again. This time though, it was more powerful. His heartbreak, unknown to himself, would cause a brand new rift into the Further that the Witches couldn't control.

Heck, Alucard himself couldn't even control it. So, who could? Who would?

A brand new crimson key appeared around the neck of the Dark Lord along with a brand new doorway into the Further right alongside the casket of his mother. Except, instead of the usual metaphorical door, a literal wooden door appeared into the brickwork, with a crimson lock. They seem to be forged in blood, but whose?

Alucard decided enough emotion for the day as he returned to his human home. Too many times his pathetic, stupid emotions had bested him. He was determined to not allow this to interfere with his life's mission. But how? How could he stop this pain in his chest from ever occurring again?

Well, there was one way. It was, however, dangerous and extremely ill-advised.

While Alucard was debating whether or not to remove emotion from his being, the witches were still unaware of what had happened with the new rift created and unaware of the new lack of control they would have if malevolent souls decided to come through the new doorway from the Further. It wasn't unusual for those spirits to also be oblivious to this, seeing as the cellar door was so new.

The crimson key for the doorway Eddie was linked to was tied around Nat's neck on a obsidian-black chain while the soul of the previous Mother Superior went about her new daily tasks of passing the souls of the newly departed through the rift she was in control of. It was mostly those of the local villages surrounding the covens' land. There weren't too many, really.

Luckily, the type of soul that passed through didn't depend on whether they were good or bad in life, but it generally depended on how they died. Usually, if the person died naturally and had no unfinished business, they were considered a good soul and had no trouble passing through the rift into the Further, and Eddie usually allowed these to pass back on occasion to visit their loved ones.

One day, a woman appeared in front of Eddie wishing to pass through to visit her son. The woman took Eddie's hand to come through the doorway, but a block was placed on the door which stopped the woman in her tracks.

"I'm sorry. I can't let you through. You're his mother, aren't you?"