“How many seconds was that?”
It’s just three weeks in a row of Spectral Crown content, apparently, what with me ranting last week about how Capcom is stealing my thoughts with their zombie brain waves. But this week is going to standard fare again, with another chapter from this ongoing saga. Is the intent to capitalize on the vampire mommy trend floating around? No, because this is a vampire daddy book (well, for a chapter or two, anyway). It’s actually because my partner just had her tonsils out (a few days before this will be published) and I’m going to be trying to help her feel better. So the blog can wait a week, I suspect.
But I’ll be back to regularly scheduled programming soon, fingers crossed, as I get back into the school year. That’s right; my last semester of undergraduate school is finally starting up, and I’m a little nervous, if I’m being honest. My classes seem to be pretty test-heavy this time around, and the grades are just tests and exams. So… Not very excited. I have this growing suspicion that most of higher education, and maybe education in general, isn’t actually always designed in a way that’s beneficial to learning or the wellbeing of students, but instead mired in outdated means of reinforcing the status quo and placing emphasis on facts and tests instead of application and critical thinking. So I’m going to be pretty happy when I can finally just graduate and go to grad school to take more tests and exams. Ah, well. At least essays are a little better, but so goes the cycle of higher education. At least I know I won’t be going for a PhD or anything, as I very much do not want to be an academic. I can only focus on one publishing track at a time, if you ask me. So fiction it is.
Anywho, here’s the previous chapter.
Spectral Crown, by Andy Sima: Chapter Twelve
After a meal such as that, it was only natural that we all returned to our rooms, satisfied and groggy. The food had been delicious, some of the best I had ever eaten, and no one had any complaints following the meal. Even Reinhard seemed placated. It must have only been one or two in the afternoon, maybe later, and there was no way of knowing, but as soon as we made it to our quarters, most of us fell asleep.
Franz was the first to drift off, though his snoring was so noisy that it hindered the rest of us. That couldn’t entirely stop the rest of us male servants from sleeping, however. Kolte and Reinhard soon followed the sandman’s touch, and it wasn’t long before Simon and I were the only ones awake in our room. Simon, being Simon, was too nervous to sleep, and I had a hard time drifting off, partially because I wasn’t tired and partially because the raven in the rafters kept watching me.
Lying there for a while, with nothing else to do, it wasn’t long before the food we had eaten pushed its way through my digestive tract, and pushed this morning’s meal towards my body’s exits. I had to leave the relative comfort of my straw bed and move out of the quarters. Simon glanced at me as I left, but said nothing, and returned to his attempt at decoding a mildewed book from the shelf.
I opened the door to our servant’s quarters and peeked out into the common room. No one was around, as the female servants, too, had returned to their rooms to sleep. The huge fireplace at the back was cold and silent, and Iacob’s servants had not returned. I passed through the doorway and walked through the common room, making my way to the only part of our limited space that I had not yet seen; the relief facilities.
The hallway beyond the common room was not long, and soon split off into two separate passages; one lead to female facilities, the other to male facilities. Chateau Uradel lacked dedicated indoor restrooms of any kind, but here they were wealthy enough to not only have space for the servants to have their own set, but to have two, one for butlers and one for maids. I wondered where the waste was disposed of.
I soon answered my own question, however, as I opened a door with a crude carving of a man on it and stepped inside one of the most foul-smelling rooms I had ever experienced. It was small, dark, and square, lit by the first window I had seen in some time, and contained one stone seat against the far wall. Other than that, and some sort of corn-cob based contraption I assumed was for posterior self-cleansing, it was empty. Kolte had described something like that, once, on the ships he used to travel with.
The stone seat was unremarkable, save that the hole within it was full of nothing but darkness. I stood before the chamber, staring down into the abyss, wondering just how far down it went and if it would ever be far down enough. The stench that wafted out of that chasm was ghastly, reminding me simultaneously of both human waste and something decaying. But I had little choice in my accommodations, and nature was calling. So I undid my clothing and took a seat above the yawning gap.
My business went smoothly at first, though the odor was pervasive. It seemed to cling in my nose, someone filling in a hole with dirt or things yet more disgusting. But I could deal with that. I had helped to skin creatures before, and to clean the meat, so I was not necessarily new to smells like this. But it was not the smell that caught me the most off-guard.
I was nearing the end of my movements when I felt the thing for the first time. It was just a brush against my lower end, a light tickling, almost feeling like a breeze. Back home in Uradel, when one had to relieve oneself outside, breezes were common. But I reminded myself that I was inside, and there could be no breezes here. The next thought that came to mind was spiders, and my body involuntarily tightened.
The tickling sensation got worse so I finished what I had come here to do and cleaned myself with the odd device as well as I could. Once I had finished, and had replaced my pants, I braced myself and looked down into the seat to try and spy what it is that had been touching me.
Momentarily, I was relieved to find that it was not a nest of spiders, or even a few larger spiders, but as the image I was viewing processed in my dumbfounded brain, I caught a scream in my throat. Clinging to the inside of the toilet seat, waving itself in the air, was a human hand.
No, it couldn’t be human, for there was nothing attached to it. It was just a hand, without a body beyond the wrist. It crawled along on the inside of the seat and wiggled its fingers, in the same way spiders raise their front legs when tasting the air. When it moved, it skittered on five makeshift legs, and clung to the stone without falling. I didn’t understand it, and I didn’t want to. That thing had been on me, somehow. I resisted the urge to vomit.
I gave a swift kick to the toilet seat. It was stone, so my foot hurt afterwards, but the kick was hard enough that the spider-hand stumbled. It tried to regain its footing, and began reaching up over the side of the hole, like it was going to climb over, and I gave it another forceful booting. This time it lost its grip entirely, and fell back into the hole with a high-pitched squealing.
The squealing continued as the thing fell into blackness, and after a few moments, I heard a resounding splash. I felt a little bad for it, thinking about where it had ended up, but these feelings soon fled as I heard something from the bottom of the well roar with a force like a hundred horses. It was distant, and the sound drifted up from the depths on the evil-smelling air, but nevertheless I could hear the huge creature below. Something lived down there. And I, by dropping the offending hand in, had bothered it.
I did not remain in that room for much longer.
Nowhere in the small space we were allowed to move about in was far enough away from the bathroom for me. I had tangled with wild animals and some of the meanest folks in Stalpert valley, but this was something that defied explanation, perhaps even more so than Iacob’s talking to birds and the crossing of the border. I tried to find somewhere quiet to think and calm my racing heart.
I considered simply going back to my bed, but with all the snoring, I decided against it. The woman’s quarters were a no, if only for the same reason that they snored like dragons, so that left me with the common room. I took a seat at one of the tables and put my head down. The uneaten food and dirty plates had been removed.
As I sat at the oak tables, eyes closed and face on the old wood, my heart slowly stilled. I came to think rationally about the whole affair, and although I couldn’t quite convince myself that what I had seen was just a particularly pale, malformed spider, it helped a little to imagine it as such. Perhaps the spider had gotten into a duel with other spiders, I thought to myself, and had lost some of its legs. I chuckled at the thought and felt a little better.
After I was calm again and had nearly forgotten the sound that had emanated from the hole after I dropped the hand-thing in, I stood up and thought about returning to the servant’s quarters. But I wasn’t quite ready to be watched by the raven again. Perhaps it would see what I knew on my face. Perhaps it would hear the echo of the beast’s cry in my ears. Perhaps, even, it could smell my own memories of the place. I did not want the raven to know.
I glanced up to the rafters of the common room, and I did not see any birds there. That didn’t mean they weren’t there, and the thought of them watching without my realizing it disturbed me. So, looking around, I tried to find somewhere in the room where the ravens, real or imagined, couldn’t spy on me. I considered under the table, but that was too obvious. And something about it seemed childish. This whole charade seemed childish, I supposed, but at the same time it had an eerie logic too it. I looked for somewhere else to hide.
Glancing surreptitiously around, I was disappointed by the lack of ornamentation in the room, until I chanced upon the fireplace. Yes, I thought to myself, it was perfect. I would hide inside the fireplace, down in the back corner so the birds couldn’t see me, and crouched on the ground so anything that was crawling in the chimney couldn’t reach me without my noticing of it.
I casually made my way over to the stone hole in the wall, the floor covered in soot and ash that must have been decades old, and wormed my way back towards the far wall. The fireplace was surprisingly spacious for servants’ quarters, being a good six feet wide and eight feet deep. The size of it seemed unnecessary, and perhaps even bordering on dangerous, but in this moment, it was just right. I crawled as far back as I could, and crouched down on my haunches, feet in the dust and ash of many fires from many years ago.
From my vantage point, it was just as I suspected. I could see no rafters or buttresses of the common room, meaning that no birds could see me. And I looked up, through the chimney, into the shadows above. There was nothing above me that I could see, but it entered into darkness too quickly to tell for sure. There was no light at the top, either. Perhaps it was blocked, or it was night already, but either way, I didn’t think there would ever be light coming through it.
I leaned back against the grey brick wall of the fireplace. With the white marble floors and black pillars of the main castle, the fireplace seemed unusual, being made of a grey stone. And as I leaned back against the fireplace, I shifted around, trying to find some comfortable way of reclining so that I could organize my thoughts further. Every time I shifted, the wall seemed to shift, too, so there was a brick perpetually sticking into my back. After I struggled for too long, I turned around to see the brick that kept poking me. It was a simple brick, protruding from the wall. Experimentally, I pushed at it. The brick fell through.
I had to stop for a moment and realize what this meant. There was now a brick-shaped hole in the wall, and I peered through. I could see nothing on the other side, but here, finding nothing was good. It meant there was space. And maybe a passage.
I pushed and pulled at the other bricks at the back of the fireplace, and most of them gave way, too. Pulling my father’s old knife from my boot to remove the more stubborn stones, I worked, moving the bricks to the middle of the fireplace in a neat stack, and after a great deal of heaving, there was a small hole in the back wall, big enough for me to easily crouch through. I poked my head into it. It was too dark to see anything, but from the scurrying of rats and the sound of wind, it went on for quite a while in either direction. I could see a wall on the other side a few feet away.
Ignoring, just for a moment, my fear of the ravens, I pulled my head back into the common room and crawled out of the fireplace, where I made my way towards the woman’s side of the quarters. I slipped inside, where most of them were fast asleep. However, my mother was up, weaving a small scarf together. She spied me as I sneaked in.
“Hello, Saelac,” she said to me. “What do you need?”
“Hi, mother,” I said in return, sitting at the foot of her bed.
“You look like you’ve been working, Saelac,” she said, and put down her knitting. “Is everything alright?”
“Everything is better than alright,” I said. “I found something important in the fireplace.”
“What sort of something?” she said.
“A secret passage,” I responded. At this, she sat up more stiffly.
“That is important,” she said. “We must tell the others.”
“I agree,” I said. “I’ll wake up the menfolk. Except for Reinhard. You can get your roommates. I’ll meet you in the common room.
My mother nodded, a rare smile playing at the edge of her lips, and stood up from her bed. I crept towards the back of the room, where the door connecting the maids’ quarters to the butlers’ quarters squatted. Quietly passing through the door, I began to wake up the other servants, one by one. I talked to Simon first, as he was still awake.
“Simon,” I said. “Help me wake up everyone else. Quietly. We don’t want to get Reinhard’s attention.” I glanced at the tiny man, who was sleeping soundly on his bed.
“What for?” Simon asked, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose.
“I’ve found something wonderful. There’s a passage behind the fireplace,” I said.
“Really?” he said. “Why, that is quite exciting.” But he paused and looked worried. “What if Iacob’s servants discover it, too? They would not like that.”
“They don’t need to know,” I said. “The bricks are easily replaced. We just have to be careful, and make sure Reinhard doesn’t find out, either. He won’t be able to contain himself.”
“Agreed,” Simon said. And he got up from his bed. “Let me wake the others.”
So the two of us made our way around the room, gathering our comrades as quietly and as quickly as we could. My conversation with each of them went smoothly, and before long all of us servants, both male and female, were assembled in the common room outside of our dorms. Reinhard was still fast asleep.
With a gesture for silence, I pointed us over to the fireplace, and as one, we crouched down and looked in. We could see the hole in the wall, lit poorly by the torches in the common room, but it was enough. A wave of quiet excitement washed over us.
“We may not be stuck in this space after all,” Kolte said.
“We may even be able to see the sun,” Ema added.
“Or find our royalty,” Simon said.
“And when we do find them,” someone added, “we can ask them to leave.” There was a murmur of agreement.
“Saelac,” my mother asked, “have you seen what’s in there yet?”
“No, not really,” I answered honestly. But I know that it’s a few feet wide, and goes on for a pretty long way. It’s very dark.”
“Let’s get some light for it, then,” Franz said, and he moved out of the fireplace to reach the nearest torch sconce. He handed me the flaming object.
“You first,” he grinned, showing off his pipe-stained teeth.
“Here we go,” I said, and stuck the torch into the passage on the other side of the fireplace, and followed through on my own.
On the other side, I stood up and got my bearings. I looked down each side of the hall and saw nothing for quite a way. The floor and walls were the same grey stone as the fireplace, as opposed to the usual white marble. The wall opposite the fireplace entrance had four sets of chains and shackles pegged into it, set deep into the stone. These bindings did not hold anything up, but each shackle held a long, thin bone, bones that were too thick at the end to slide through. They were yellowed with age and picked clean of all meat; tiny tooth marks covered them.
Extrapolating out from the four chains and four bones on the wall, I painfully looked down and saw at my feet the rest of the skeleton. A heap of gnawed broken fragments and a caved-in skull smiled up at me. I picked up the skull and stared at it in the torch light. For a moment, I thought it was going to start laughing.
Taking the skull away from the rest of the disintegrated corpse, I poked my head through the hole in the fireplace wall and was met by the expectant faces of my fellow servants. Their smiles were tempered when they saw my grim expression, though.
And as I pulled the skull through the hole the desiccated head gave them all the explanation they needed.
The break between chapters was much shorter this time around. But hopefully it’ll be longer between chapters for the weeks ahead! But probably not if classes are as bad as I think they might be. Thanks for reading.
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