The Old Mansion
Campbell stood, calmly waiting for them. He checked his rifle, making double sure of the bullet in its chamber. Lowering it, he held a torch ready under the dangling fuse of six dynamite sticks, wedged deeply into the half-rusted, twisted steel structure. A simple raise of the arm is all it would take.
He listened carefully, judging from his long experience in the tunnels, the exact moment to spring his trap. It would be the last time he would have to hear their abominable cries along with their nauseating smell. After the unknown scores the sluag had captured, tortured and killed, they could hardly know one of their most trusted slaves was about to exact his own brutal vengeance.
“Come on. Come on, all of ya’,” he said to himself. “Time to fill the graveyard.”
But the moment came and went. Before Campbell could ignite his fuse, he felt a sharp pain in his side, then another in his back. Turning, Campbell stared into a morbidly pale captor’s face, one of his former cohorts, wielding a lengthy knife that had just stabbed Campbell twice.
He staggered in disbelief, dropping the torch. As the captor came at him again brandishing his weapon, Campbell clearly marked his dead, spellbound eyes. He flung himself aside into the rock wall to evade his attacker.
In the next moment, hundreds upon hundreds of the bat demons, of all sizes and shapes, soared and smashed into and over them. The bombardment assailed Campbell’s senses like a salvo of putrid filth and disease. He was bitten and scourged many times as they passed through the tunnel. Within the pandemonium, his attacker lunged. The blade emerged through the maddened flitting of wings, catching Campbell again, this time in the chest.
Campbell wanted to give up and welcome the miserable end of his life. He glanced at the lashes and bites all over his body, which began bubbling with poison. The severe pain from these and his knife wounds quickly sapped what precious strength he had left. Yet he could not succumb, he thought, not for a few more seconds.
As most of the sluag passed, Campbell buckled to his knees, lunging for his old rifle. He spun on his back and lurched the weapon up. The captor halted as Campbell, with a rush of adrenaline, shakily rose again. When the captor advanced, Campbell pulled the trigger with nothing but a grinding, clicking sound— the old rifle had jammed. Desperately, Campbell reached for the burning torch on the floor while barreling forward, blindly swinging it and catching alight a single sluag speeding by. The captor pivoted, seizing Campbell’s arm, twisting it as he jammed the torch behind into Campbell’s shoulder, where his sleeve and part of his hair caught aflame.
Campbell cried out in agony, stumbling backwards against the tunnel wall where he first stood. He frantically tried to put out the flames scorching him. His relentless enemy came once more to finish him.
Campbell barely lifted his forearm, crying out again in unbearable torment. Just as the captor’s knife reached his throat, Campbell jerked his burning hand above his head, igniting the dynamite fuse. The last thing he saw was the hitherto captor’s dead eyes revealing sudden astonishment ... .
The explosion rocked the passage as the ceiling completely gave way; stone and earth collapsed in a furious heap. The rusted steel and wood supports snapped easily, and like a rippling domino wave, the tunnel walls crumbled from within themselves. Most of the pursuing sluag were caught and buried almost instantly.
Down the passage, the wreckage rapidly surged. Campbell had indeed chosen the optimum juncture of vulnerability to blast apart the tunnel. Like a shattering gargantuan backbone of ceiling and wall, nothing could escape its destructive path. Within minutes, even the sluag who had flown furthest along were entombed within the passageway’s furious demise.
Midway between the tomatoes and potatoes, James found what he was looking for: that elusive, perfect stem of bananas. He placed the selection in his cart as he strolled through the farmer’s market. Once again, he did not notice how several of the early morning shopping patrons eyed him, some in general curiosity, others leering in suspicion— at least not until he bumped into someone, leaning in to inspect a package of strawberries.
“Excuse me— Oh hello, Mrs. Bishop, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you. How are—”
“— No, that’s all right,” she said, quickly moving away. “Have a good morning.”
James studied her. Highland Pointe folks always had time to pleasantly converse or gossip; whichever was more expedient. That it was now six a.m. made no difference.
He surveyed those near him, blatantly staring like they had passed both a verdict and sentence on him.
“What’s the look, Walters?” said James aloud, catching a shopper’s critical gaze. “Why don’t you just say what’s on your mind for everyone to hear?”
“Where’s your daughter, James?” came another voice behind him. He turned. Wayne Schultee, the high school football coach faced him, staring from behind a full cart of groceries, appearing angry and outraged.
“I don’t know, Schultee. But I guess you already made up your mind what’s happened to her, right?”
“First your wife, then your girl,” countered Schultee. “What are you hiding?”
“How many here in this town have lost family and friends?” said James. “I know what happened to your boy five years ago— doesn’t make me suspicious of you. Why do you accuse me of hiding something?”
“They say your daughter ran off into the woods,” said Walters, now speaking up. “They say she went to see ghosts.”
“And you’re always yelling,” added Schultee, “how there’s no truth about the woods, how it’s all a bunch of nonsense. It seems like that’d be a real smart cover-up.”
James stood firm, his eyes angrily darting between his accusers. “What’s wrong with you? You all know me. I run a respectable business in this town. I lost my dear wife. And now my Marie is missing!”
“Did your innocent Marie go off to find the ghost of your wife?” asked Schultee. “What do they got planned next for the rest of us?”
“Listen to yourselves!” said James. “You’ve cracked, you really have! That woods out there has made you lose your minds!”
“We’ll be watching you,” warned Schultee, “Watching you close.” With that, he pushed his cart ahead and walked off. Walters also disappeared around a corner, along with several other patrons who had been curiously listening.
James clenched his jaw in frustration. He looked down to see a half-crushed package of strawberries in his hand.
The explosion echoed all around them. Perion halted Marie and Courinn a moment to listen further. A low rumbling sound emerged, beginning to shake the walls where they stood. But it did not stop. It continued moving, approaching closer down the tunnel.
“Run!” yelled Perion. “Run!”
As fast as they did, it seemed no use. Marie felt she was trying to outpace the wind. The rumbling became almost deafening as rocks and chunks of the walls crumbled all around them, leaving a thick haze, causing Marie to gag. Then, it suddenly ceased: the rumbling, the shaking and the falling pieces of rock.
Perion halted them again as Marie fought to control her wild panting. Her side and shoulder were throbbing after her fall from the dragon bones. She shook her head, seeing that Courinn and Perion were hardly winded at all. “What a drag being mortal,” she thought to herself. Still clutching the flare Campbell gave her, she shoved it into the side of her boot.
Perion listened, then grinned. “I believe we outran it!”
“But did any of the sluag also escape?” asked Courinn.
Perion shook his head. “I don’t hear anything. Still, we can’t be sure. Let’s move. It should not be far to the outside tunnel entrance.”
As they hurried on, Marie noticed a saddened pain lash across Perion’s face.
“Are you all right?” she asked him.
He lowered his head from her, biting his lip and shutting his eyes as he walked. Marie would later learn that Perion saw glimpses of Campbell’s terrible last moments, some sort of lingering result from the mind-lock Perion used to free him.
It took less than a quarter-hour, but before that, they became fearful of more booming sounds, now coming from ahead. The further they went, the sharper the noise was. The walls again began to throb and rattle with some kind of angry, percussive force.
At last, they came to the tunnel end, emerging in the glow of early morning— into the most fierce lighting and thunderstorm Marie had ever experienced. Twenty seconds later they were soaked to the bone with heavy rain.
Within a short distance, they found themselves trudging through the very bog they had left when captured. But it now looked quite different. The swampy pools appeared like powerful electric beacons from the reflected lightning above. The rain pounded into the bog so hard that it sounded as if a tide of rushing water loomed. The thunderclaps forced Marie’s heart into her throat. A streak of lightning, coupled with an enormous blast of thunder suddenly blinded them, crashing into a tree only ten feet away, instantly shattering it to pieces in a tremendous whirl of smoke.
“We must escape this place!” shouted Courinn. Marie turned, just as her comrade transmuted again into unicorn shape. It was a wondrous, yet peculiar spectacle— especially seeing Courinn’s glasses somehow assimilate, then disappear into the unicorn’s thick mane. Perion quickly helped Marie onto Courinn’s broad and sturdy back. Just as he vaulted up behind, Courinn charged off through the bog.
Marie was again in awe at how gently the unicorn held them, especially now through the boggy terrain. She knew enough about riding to know that this swampy, uneven ground would be nearly impossible for a horse to try to navigate through. But Courinn sped on, almost magically, hardly touching the ground. Her golden horn was held up straight and proud, pointing the way ahead to safety.
“Consider yourself honored,” said Perion, closely in Marie’s ear so she could hear him. “A unicorn rarely, if ever, lets anyone upon its back.”
Onward they rode, skirting a mountainous line off to their right. The marshy lichen and wet moss began to disappear. The ground under them became firmer. They were leaving the bog behind.
As the morning progressed, the rain lessened and the storm let up, leaving only heat lightning. Marie was thankful as she now had a nasty headache. A brilliant rainbow appeared above the bog’s scant trees, rising into the sky. Marie had never seen one so saturated with color. Gazing in wonder, Perion voiced aloud her thoughts as if he heard her thinking.
“Yes, soon we’ll have some business at the end of that rainbow. Somewhere ahead beyond the Gwindylo.”
“How far is that?” asked Marie.
Perion shook his head, unsure. Then something caught his eye. “Hold, Courinn!” he shouted. Perion sprang off the halting unicorn and ran back a bit. When he returned, he looked relieved.
“What have you found?” asked Courinn.
“Something I was eagerly looking for— a narrow, nearly hidden ravine that runs through the mountains here, from where the River Kindrane begins. My comrades and I have only used it once or twice, but it does lead in the direction we seek and will save us much time, instead of entering the treacherous Spellhollow Pass.”
“Don’t the shifting tracts also extend to this side of the mountains?” asked Courinn.
Marie blinked in amazement. Courinn now stood once again in mortal form, soaking wet, but her green eyes bright and energetic.
“They do,” said Perion. “We still need to be very careful.”
Brush and thick trees hid the ravine when they came to it. Past this, a rough and rocky track wound its way between the sides of two hilly ascents. Perion led the way.
The air had been warm and humid during the storm, but now, even with the rising sun, the breeze turned cooler and Marie felt her first shiver from being all wet. Her boots gushed and sloshed as they walked and she realized how tired, sore and hungry she was.
“When is dinner and bed?” she asked aloud. How long had it been since she ate something? She couldn’t remember.
“There is a quiet spot at the far end of this ravine, which we’ve used as a camp,” said Perion. “We can rest there.”
“With nothing to eat,” said Marie.
It was an endless hour, thought Marie, before they reached the ravine end. Perion led them into a natural semi-ring of rocks set among several trickling fissures from the stone. It indeed appeared a pleasant, restful area.
“This is the beginning of the Kindrane,” said Perion. A good, wholesome place, considering how close we are to the sluag caverns and the far more terrible evil that lies only half a day’s march northward from there.”
“Please say we can drink the water?” asked Marie.
“Yes, it’s fine,” answered Perion. Marie rose with a groan as her injured side and shoulder had tightened up. She thankfully stuck her face into the dribbling water, drinking deep and long. Courinn joined her. When they finished, Marie thankfully plopped herself down among the rocks, stretching out the pain in her limbs. Without intending to, she almost instantly fell asleep.
When she woke, she saw Perion working a small fire. He turned to her. “Good afternoon. Feeling refreshed?”
Marie rubbed her eyes, then reached to her side where an oversized fern leaf was pressed. She lifted it, seeing a thin layer of ointment over a dark bruise that felt less painful. She looked up, meeting Courinn’s eyes which smiled back. Marie glanced around her. The pale sun appeared to be late in the sky.
“How long did you let me sleep?” she asked.
“Most of the day,” said Courinn, arranging several more fern leaves. Upon them were various nuts and berries. “I’ve gathered something of a small meal for us.”
“Looks—delicious,” said Marie, wishing it was something more like roast beef and mashed potatoes. “But first, I need to ... ” She hesitated, a bit embarrassed. “Well, this place is nice, but I don’t think it has a bathroom.”
Courinn smiled again, amused. Perion motioned outside the stone ring, through the trees. “Stay close, Marie. Don’t wander off.”
Marie went only a very short distance. She could still barely hear Perion and Courinn talking softy. Just as she finished her business, Marie saw a blur move between the trees. She halted, still as stone.
Another shape stirred, darting between a tree and a large rock. Before Marie could scream out, she was cornered by three men in dark blue uniforms. They wore strange looking caps and held long rifles.
They were so close that Marie knew she could not outrun them, but nonetheless her eyes darted about, searching for an escape. One of the soldiers as Marie guessed they were, stepped up with his rifle pointed straight at her.
“Don’t move,” he said in a thin voice, “if you value your life.”
A fourth soldier appeared and spoke to the first. “She’s alone, no others.”
“No others?” thought Marie. Did her friends somehow escape? If so, she wasn’t about to give them away.
“Move now,” commanded the first soldier, motioning in the direction she had come. When she did not budge the soldier snarled, revealing sharp, fang-like teeth. Startled, Marie took a few steps. The soldiers formed a circle, barricading any escape.
Marie walked on. There was no longer any camp ahead, no ring of stones, no trickling water, no sign of her comrades. Perion had said they were still in the shifting tracts region. Where was she now?
“Who are you?” she angrily asked the lead soldier. “Where are you taking me? You have no right to do this.”
The soldiers said nothing, escorting Marie for another half hour. Rain began again. The woods here were indeed different: More trees and rock, unlike the bog with less sun shining through. Late afternoon now quickly welcomed dusk. Marie was soaked all over again as the rain grew heavier and the throbbing in her head returned, courtesy of more lightning and thunder.
Undaunted, the soldiers stayed in formation as they marched. Marie examined the ground, marking that they were traveling along what must have been a road at one time, long ago. She felt light headed and realized how famished she was.
“Excuse me, do you have anything to eat?” she asked with no reservations. “I’m starving.” The soldiers gave no answer.
They came to a wide entrance in the woods. It was a clearer roadway made of small, neatly laid, dark stones. It immediately split off in two opposite directions. The soldiers led Marie to their left, up a gradual ascent curving along to their right. The thunder and lighting became more intense as it did when they first escaped the sluag lair. Rounding a final bend of the road, Marie was greatly relieved.
There was Perion and Courinn, also surrounded by soldiers. Marie broke the ranks, running to her friends through the rain. They were just as thankful to see her.
Courinn took Marie by the hands. “Did they hurt you?”
“No, just scared me,” she answered, wiping the dripping rain from her eyes. “Let me guess … lost in the shifting tracts again?”
“Miles from where we were,” admitted Perion in plain frustration.
“And from the frying pan into the fire,” added Courinn.
Behind them, at the top of the hill they had reached, stood a huge mansion set within a tangle of unkempt evergreen trees. It rose several floors high, with several more sharply angled gables and a long, lower section at the far end. The road stretched around the perimeter of the structure and led back down the hill at its far end, back to the entranceway in a wide circular pattern.
Yet as lovely as it must have once been, it was now only a shell— a burned out shell of a long forgotten dwelling. The estate had suffered a great fire that left it standing by its charred and blackened frame only. The scent of freshly burned wood still hung heavily in the air, hinting the fire had occurred recently. From where they stood, an entire wall was consumed and fell away, revealing what looked like a great hall just inside. Behind the estate, crooked fingers of lightning streaked across the ominous, quickly fading sky.
The soldiers shoved Marie and her friends ahead to enter the old mansion. As they did, they saw at the hall’s far end— its ceiling rose the structure’s full height, having no floors above it— another figure emerge from a half-collapsed balcony. He stepped down the rickety stairs to the main floor, quickly approaching until he stood before them.
He had a cruel face: a long, narrow head with eyes much too small and pasty thin lips. He was in the same old-fashioned blue uniform and from the look of the stripes on his arm, he was in charge. He glared at them in disgust, and his nostrils flared again and again, like he could not control it.
“I am Corporal Dlucket,” he began, “One Hundred Forty-Third Regiment Infantry, under the command of General Tollarthur Caine. You are each under arrest for trespassing, without proper leave granted, within the here said boundaries of the general’s estate. Judgment shall be passed immediately.”
“Trespassing?” exclaimed Courinn. “You are entirely mistaken. We were miles from this so-called estate. It was your lackeys that brought us here.”
“Hold that tongue, little one,” replied Dlucket. “Or I will remove it as you stand.” The lightning clawed through the mansion’s burnt out windows, making one side of Dlucket’s hawkish face glow, while the other was trapped in deep shadow. As the thunder crashed overhead, he reached out to his soldiers, taking a rifle that Marie would soon learn was a musket, and held its bayonet at Courinn’s mouth. “You will address me by my rank only. Come. There is precious little time left.”
The soldiers hurried them through the large room. It looked like it once must have been decorated as a medieval-style hall. The red-orange rays of the setting sun snuck through several fair-sized holes in the high ceiling, exposing the scorched and splintered beams that made up the lining of the roof.
They quickly climbed to the balcony and through a long passage. Charred destruction was everywhere and Marie could not guess why these soldiers held forth in this broken- down place, or even cared who came near this worthless property.
They entered another flame-blackened area with a high ceiling. Marie froze, staring at what stood before them, feeling the alarm that also took hold of Perion and Courinn.
Rows of guillotines were set next to one another. Their tall, upright frames stretched fifteen feet or more. The blades held aloft were rusty, chipped, and horribly jagged.
Dlucket spoke quickly as more soldiers entered, until they stood more than a dozen strong, each holding their musket bayonets at the prisoners.
“For the offense of willfully trespassing General Caine’s grounds, judgment has been passed by myself, Corporal Dlucket, this twenty-eighth day of April, in the year eighteen sixty-eight. Sentence will be carried out immediately.”
“Eighteen sixty-eight?” exclaimed Courinn. “You’re out of your mind, sir! Let us go—”
“— I am Corporal Dlucket, you will address me by such, even as you breathe your last breath! The war may be over, but our enemies, such as you are still among us. Set them in the stocks and proceed with the executions.”
Thunder exploded outside. The soldiers seized all three of them.
“You cannot do this!” shouted Perion, struggling to get free. “We have been sent by Professor Mifflin! You have no right—”
“— Mifflin, ah yes,” interrupted Dlucket. “Another who’s neck I shall soon send to the gibbet. I’ll be sure to inform him of your protest and insubordination. But the general’s decree stands supreme, now and always. And you will address me by my proper rank!”
Just as three soldiers shoved Perion stomach down onto a wooden platform, Marie heard a cry from one of Dlucket’s men.
A unicorn’s deadly horn repelled two armed guards back as her hind legs sent another sprawling across the room.
“Swiftly now!” shouted Dlucket. “Swiftly!”
Marie resisted hard against the soldiers, but was pushed down and held onto another of the guillotine stocks.
Courinn leapt aside from several bayonet lunges.
A sudden high-pitched whine began all around them, mixed with the relentless furor of the storm.
“Courinn, can you get Marie?” cried Perion. “Marie!”
Perion was securely strapped. His head was shoved into the block cutaway for his throat. Ten feet above hung the suspended blade. A soldier slammed down the upper wooden frame, snapping it into place over the back of Perion’s neck. He shook with anger.
“My friends will come, Dlucket! This cruelty will be avenged!”
The whine grew louder and sharper along with the crashing thunder. Drowned within this nearly deafening noise was the voice of Dlucket, shouting back in anger: “Insolent rapscallion, I am Corporal Dlucket! You will absolutely address me as such!”
There were sounds like voices, close by. What had begun in his dreams quickly became clearer and fuller, traveling through the liminality of the mind, between sleep and cognizance. James woke with a start.
He sat up on his couch in the living room, listening. An open bottle and empty glass were left on a table before him. Yes, there were voices and other sounds of commotion. He stood and looked out his front window into the late afternoon light.
Mirroring a scene occurring in numerous places across the country back then— though for different reasons— some twenty to thirty townsfolk had gathered. Many held more handmade signs, some showing photos of lost loved ones, others shouting, angrily and fearfully.
The ever-smoldering tempers and anxieties in town had boiled over. Marie’s disappearance, the daughter of someone who had already inexplicably lost his wife, together with the news that Marie had taken up with the strange Woldred girl, was a surefire catalyst for trouble. As if the congregation needed any more ammunition, Bettyann, Tilda and Trish were also there, notching up their rage just a bit more.
“Marie tricked us into going,” lied Bettyann. “And after that, we heard strange laughing, until I saw her talk to ghosts. With my own eyes, I saw her!”
James furiously stormed into his kitchen and dialed his phone. “I want Sheriff Radich, right now please, this is James Meehanan,” he growled, his voice cracking from the anger bursting inside.
“Sheriff!” he boomed after several moments, “I have an entire protest in my front yard right now, picketing against my family. I’ve had enough! So help me if they don’t leave! Get over here now, before I do something I don’t want to!”
“James, listen!” retorted the sheriff. “Walk out of there, I’ll take care of this. Go somewhere, maybe visit Anna in the cemetery, just don’t—” He never got to finish as James slammed down the phone.
Outside, an old man from the crowd sharply pointed an accusing finger in Tilda’s face. “What about you?” he asked. “If there’s anyone we should be suspicious about, it’s your mother, Tilda Jentiss.”
Tilda quickly bucked up in defiance. “I saw the ghosts too and Marie went off with them. And maybe her dead mother is one of them!”
“You tell the truth,” persisted the old man. “Your mother never had anything to do with anyone gone sick or missing?”
All eyes were on Tilda now. Most there knew of the stories and suspicions that cropped up about Nioma Jentiss. Tilda hesitated and took a deep swallow, the recent confrontation with her mother ringing in her ears. A fleeting thought tugged at her— what if her mother lied and made Jack disappear anyway? Tilda quickly forced the notion aside.
“Never,” answered Tilda.
The protesters began to shout again when James emerged from his house, gripping a baseball bat.
“Get off my property!” he roared, “Get out of here!” He smashed his bat into two large signs, propped against flimsy stands. People backed away, then scattered.
“Where’s Marie?” they shouted.
James held the bat like a weapon. “Leave me alone, leave my family alone!”
“She talks with ghosts!” their shouts went up. “She’s a witch! You get out of here! Get out of Highland Pointe!”
James lost control. He threw the bat down and drew out a .38 pistol tucked in his pants. He pointed it into the air and fired off two shots. The protesters scattered again, shouting back at him. James aggressively stepped forward, firing three more shots, sending everyone running down the street. He then stood alone as the sun dipped from the sky, until he sank to his knees in despair.
The piercing whine ceased. The thunder and lightning ended. The sun was gone and night had come. A clear voice rang out:
“Enough! Assist them immediately!”
Marie stumbled in a mixture of disorientation and stomach-churning fear, now gently held by the very soldiers that moments ago were savagely strapping her down for a horrible death. Perion, lying on the floor and Courinn, backed against a wall and returned to mortal shape, were also kindly and reassuringly helped to their feet.
Marie gulped in amazement, for they were no longer in a charred, flame-scourged shell. It was a perfectly lovely room with exquisite furnishings. There was not a single guillotine to be seen. Each soldier held no musket, nor were there any signs of weapons upon them. In fact, they were no longer soldiers at all, but finely dressed servants.
There stood Dlucket, the same as before— or was he? He now appeared somehow different. Although his face was the same, it was softer perhaps, the angular sharpness gone, the eyes compassionate.
“Begin preparations for our guests at once,” he ordered, while holding a large, ornate pocket watch on a fine chain, which he keenly glanced at. “Arrival seven fifty-three and eight seconds p.m.,” he said. The servants snapped to attention and left the room.
Marie blinked, staring at Courinn, who exchanged a bewildered glance with Perion.
“Are you hurt?” he asked Marie.
The corporal stepped up to them. “Please be comforted. You are safe now.”
“Safe?” exclaimed Marie. “You tried to—”
“—You almost killed us,” cut off Perion, replete with anger.
“No,” the Dlucket look-alike said. “I am Corporal Delk, One Hundred Forty-Third Regiment Infantry, under the command of General Tollarthur Caine. I am charged with the night watch of the general’s estate. You were unjustly captured by that pea-brained Dlucket and the mindless leeches he calls union servicemen. As I said, you are safe now and will be throughout this beautiful spring night as long as you leave here before daybreak tomorrow. Allow me to offer you the comforts of the general’s luxurious home.”
Marie gazed around the room. “Are we really still in the same house?”
“You are indeed,” assured Corporal Delk. “Please forgive my hastiness, yet by the looks of you, I would assume a hot bath and supper would be most welcoming.”
“Yes, please!” said Marie.
“Allow my servants to attend to you,” said Corporal Delk. “Anything you wish, you have just to ask.”
“Thank you!” said Courinn.
“Yes, thank you so much, Corp