“Question: What do time and gender have in common?”
Answer: They’re both fluid, both social constructs, and I’m sick and tired of trying to figure out where they both fit in my life. Yes, that’s the punchline, no, I’m not unpacking all of that. Because I don’t have time. See?
I feel like I’m stuck in this weird Groundhog Day-esque repeating loop when it comes to this damn blog. Every week it’s “oh, what can I write about this week?” and then it’s “Oops, I have a massive amount of homework that I have to do,” and then it’s “haha just kidding, I can’t do either my homework or my blog because I have a million other things that are supposed to be fun and enjoyable that I now resent because I don’t have the mentally capacity or time to fit them all into my schedule in a healthy way, but I should still prioritize seeing friends and family because one day I’ll be dead.” So I leap from loop to self-defeating-loop and every time I come back and hate myself a little bit more because I either procrastinated or went and spent time with friends when I should be working, and then I hate myself more for feeling guilty for enjoying my own life. When does it end? Hopefully when finals let up, but who knows when that’s going to be, because I thought I’d write all my essays this weekend but, surprise, I was too depressed on Friday to do anything, spent time with people I love and care about on Saturday, and then did both those things on Sunday. So rolls around another week, and another chapter of gay vampire castle simulator.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a privilege for me to be able to see my friends and family and enjoy my time with them, especially now that most of us are vaccinated (brief reminder that if you aren’t vaccinated yet and you can physically receive one and can schedule an appointment, please please please do). And it’s a privilege for me to somehow still find the time to do any of this because I don’t have an actual job. Fun fact, I was sort of laid off of my previous position because the funding ran out on my research program, but that’s a whole other story. My life is loaded with systemic privilege that comes to me largely from generational wealth and genetic chance, so take every complaint I make with a grain of salt. It feels bad to me, but it isn’t actually that bad. Nothing’s actually at stake here; I just kind of feel like I’m about to explode at any given moment but somehow I can still go to a track meet for children, because I can unscrew myself enough to try and put people over work (but also because I have the privilege of being able to do so). So, yeah. I’ll survive. I, uh, probably should be a little easier on myself, though, because, at the end of the day, spending time with loved ones is what matters the most, and why do I care if I didn’t get a chance to work this weekend? I did more valuable things with my time. And yet, I feel guilty. Such is the pressure.
Are my feelings still valid? Eh, probably. Are they accurate, though? Eh, probably less so. But it’s so very hard to decrypt half the time because I’m still in that constant loop of self-hate that I already mentioned. Do I have the right to feel so stressed if I’m generating my own anxiety by purposely pushing off work by spending time with people instead? Why do I feel stressed at all, when I have time to work later and spending time with friends is objectively better anyway? Or is spending time with people an excuse I give myself to not work? Or, perhaps, is working an excuse I use to avoid spending time with people? Classic chicken-or-egg situation, except instead of birds and breakfasts, it’s impending doom and impostor syndrome.
Either way, I should stop working myself into a steaming, frothing mess and just post the damn chapter. Here’s the previous one.
Spectral Crown, by Andy Sima: Chapter Eighteen
I slowly grew accustomed to the shifting of shadows and altering of shapes that were cast on the wall by our torches, along with the unnerving fact that none of our group had a clear idea of how long we had been in the caves, how far we had gone, or what direction we were traveling in. This lack of understanding seemed to be induced by the castle itself. The fact that I was getting used to it frightened me
The torches we carried above our heads did not seem to wear down at all, which was fortunate, because if they had, we may have been without light on our return trip. That would have been far worse than any visions the cavorting flames could conjure out of the darkness. Though every so often I would see something from the edge of my vision that I could not necessarily attribute to simple tricks of the light.
After an indiscernible amount of time traveling down that path, a time that may have been five minutes or five hours, we began to reach a series of diverges in our road that became more frequent. It was here that our markings of the walls became quite useful. Especially as all the walls looked the same.
“I have been thinking,” Kolte said.
“Don’t strain yourself,” Greta muttered.
“I have been thinking,” Kolte repeated, “what is the purpose of these passages?”
“For transportation. What else?” Ema said.
“Right,” Kolte said. “But think about this. We have not seen a proper door. We entered into this space through a loose set of bricks. The only other room we have come across should have been abandoned long ago in favor of somewhere cleaner. How is anyone supposed to use these spaces?”
“Don’t forget the room the George was killed in,” I said. “Another loose brick.”
“Right,” Kolte said. “So what, then, is their purpose?”
“Maybe they are structural support,” Ema said. “They must serve some function.”
“Or what if…” I started, and then stopped. Kolte walked into me, and Ema into him. Greta had pulled off to the side as the rest of us stumbled forward. What I was seeing was too convenient to be true.
“What are you doing, Saelac?” Kolte said.
“Are you alright?” Ema asked me.
“What if…” I started again. We stood at another T divergence, and instead of looking down either path, I stared at the middle of the wall in front of me.
“What if what?” Kolte said, staring at me. I merely waved my torch at the wall in front of us, trying to direct Kolte’s gaze. I was too stunned to complete my thoughts. It was too coincidental, to appear here. Right now, as we had this conversation. The castle was listening. “What if what, Saelac?”
“Kolte, look at the wall,” Ema said, tugging his arm. She had seen it too, and was shaking her head. Greta scratched at her chin.
“What is- oh,” Kolte said. And he, too, noticed what the rest of us had seen.
The wall before us was arched and pointed at the top, and some bricks were set farther into it than others. It was almost as if it was a marker for some sort of crossing, almost as if it were a door, bricked up and blocked out.
“What if this part of the castle has been purposely abandoned and covered up?” I said, finally finishing my thought.
“They could block problematic doors with some bricks,” Ema added.
“Or hide it with a fireplace,” Greta concluded.
“You think that these tunnels have been purposely hidden?” Kolte said. He was now feeling the edges of the bricks, the ones that were inset. He appeared to be looking for weaknesses.
“ “I think it makes sense,” I said. “Why have an arch like this, clearly made for a door, and fill it with bricks? Why empty and abandon a dining room that was in perfectly good condition?”
“Maybe they just forgot,” Kolte said.
“Or maybe they do not like what’s back here,” Greta said.
“What if they don’t know what’s back here?” Ema said. Now I, too, was feeling at the wall.
“Trust me,” I said, speaking with my gut. “They know exactly what is back here.”
I pressed at the bricks in the wall, hoping to maybe find one that was loose enough to move. Was the throne room just behind this wall? Did the Blestemats previously have a door behind their crystal chairs? Or maybe the dining hall sported a blank wall where a door once was, but now was only bricks and unanswered questions. I would have no way of knowing if I could not get through the wall.
It was Kolte who found a weak brick first. “Saelac, come see this,” he said, and was attempting to pry out a loose stone with his thick fingers. I crowded around him, with Ema and Greta close behind us. The stone Kolte was working at stuck out just enough that the man could wedge his fingernails in, but not far enough to move it.
“Let me try,” Ema said, and moved Kolte out of the way. She took up his place before the wall, and carefully pulled at the brick until I could feel a cool breeze passing through the gap that had formed. It was a pleasant contrast to the mustiness of those catacombs.
“I can’t move it any further,” Ema said, peering through the hole in the wall. “But I can see a room on the other side.”
“What does it look like?” I asked.
“Green,” she said.
“Green?” Kolte said.
“Green,” Ema assured. She moved to the side, and I took up my post at the wall. I looked through, and sure enough, what I saw was indeed green. It was the same shade of frosty emerald that made up the thrones of the highest Blestemat royalty, but here it was less crystalline and more liquid. The light I saw, for that was all I could see, flowed and seemed to spiral on the other side of the wall, beckoning me forward with an outstretched finger.
I shifted over so that Greta and Kolte could view the phenomenon. “What room do you think it is?” Kolte asked.
“I believe it’s one we haven’t been to yet,” I said. “Unless, perhaps, it is the throne room.”
“I doubt it,” Ema said. “None of the thrones were directly against the wall. We would at least have some vantage point to see the rest of the room.”
“This is true,” Greta nodded.
“So what do we do now?” Kolte said.
“We aren’t going to get into that room, whatever it is,” Ema said. “The brick is there fast.”
“Then we must keep moving,” I said. “We must not lose track of our goal.”
“I thought this was our goal,” Kolte said. “To find something abnormal.”
“Our goal is to find our missing friends,” Ema said. Kolte’s face told me he did not need reminding.
And so, we kept moving. Picking one of the paths at random, we moved away from the arch in the wall and the mint space on the other side. I could have sworn that I heard something behind us, coming from whatever was behind the wall. I could not shake the feeling that this was no fluke, that we had been meant to find the wall. That I had been meant to find the wall.
That paths we walked now would occasionally, to my surprise, widen out so that all four of us could walk side-by-side with ease or narrow down so that we had to travel single-file. Now that I was looking for it, I saw more and more examples of places where a door or passageway might have been at one tine. Sometimes, in rare moments, I would even see gaps in the wall that we might have peered through. But no one else noticed, and my experience with George told me to live and let live. Or perhaps live and let die.
Despite how much we walked, we never reached a dead end or any real change in composition of the tunnels, besides more or less turns and the tunnels being wider or narrower. It became unsettling in how uniform everything was, like we were walking in circles. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if we had been.
“Does anyone have any idea where we are or what time it is?” Kolte said after a while.
“No,” I said.
“Not a clue,” Ema said.
“I’m not hungry,” Greta said.
We had to stop and turn, the three of us, and look at Greta, confused until we, too, realized we weren’t hungry.
“How long do we think we’ve been back here?” I said, slowly.
“Two or three hours, at least,” Kolte said.
“I was thinking less than forty-five minutes,” Ema said. Kolte stared at her, face lost.
“I can’t honestly tell,” I said. I looked around at the walls uneasily, and then turned to Greta.
“It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been back here,” she said. “We aren’t hungry. We aren’t thirsty. Are your legs even tired?”
I noticed that, in total discord with the distance we had travelled, I felt no fatigue. “No,” I admitted as much.
“What are you saying?” Kolte said, looking at the little woman.
“I’m saying,” she said, “that I don’t think we’re meant to be back here.”
“Well, that was a given,” Kolte said. “This castle doesn’t like us. What else is new?”
“Or perhaps,” I muttered to myself, “The castle wants us here.”
“It doesn’t really matter,” Ema said. “We don’t understand this place. It is clear that odd forces are at work.”
“What are we to do about it?” I said.
“Nothing!” Kolte said. “There is nothing we can do about it. We should keep walking and try to find our lost friends, or give up and go back.” There was a brief silence before Greta spoke.
“You were the one who brought it up,” she said, a smile tugging at her lips. I thought Kolte was going to explode.
“Listen here, woman,” he started, stalking towards Greta, but stopped, turned around, and peered down the hall past us., in the direction we were to move forward. “What is that?”
I turned to follow Kolte’s eyes. There was a faint, sophisticated chuckle, one that I might have expected to come from one of the royals, and a pale, white figure, hidden by darkness off ahead of us. It shambled away.
“The castle is toying with us,” I said, watching the misshapen figure retreat. “It likes that we are confused.”
“How can you tell?” Ema asked.
“I can feel it,” I said. There was a feeling in my gut, pulling me further down the hall. The castle had more to show us. I came to realization that once it had shown us what it wanted to show us, it would dispose of us as it saw fit.
“Then we should continue on,” Greta said, and swished off down the corridor, torch held high, following the specter that had created the eerie, bourgeoise laugh. There was no argument from the rest of us, besides a huffing from Kolte. I feared that Greta’s headlong sense of direction would cause her demise. But we walked down the hall, the pale figure in front of us ever just out of our reach, ever just far enough away that we could not quite see it, could not quite gauge its appearance.
After following the apparition for a while, it turned a corner, and we reached a room that was roughly a square in shape. There was nothing to mark it as a room of any purpose. It was the same bare stone as all the other tunnels, coated in shadows and spiderwebs. Directly across from us was another tunnel. The strange thing we followed here was nowhere to be found.
“What the devil is this, then? An empty room?” Kolte said, spreading his arms out and turning around to survey the entire setup. “Another meaningless space?”
Greta said, “It looks no different than anywhere else we have passed through.”
“That thing lead us here,” Kolte said. “And now it is gone. There must be something here.”
Ema and I had spread out to the walls of the room, trying to see if there were any loose bricks that might give us an opportunity to enter back into the castle proper, or give us a view of our general location.
I did locate something of interest while Kolte and Greta bickered uselessly in the center of the room. There was, like so many times before, a loose brick. With aid from my knife I was able to pry at until it shifted over. It afforded me a chance to look beyond the wall once again.
“I’ve found something,” I said, glancing back over my shoulder. Ema crowded around me, and Kolte and Greta, gathering their senses, joined us. I peered through the hole in the wall to the other side.
The room was dark but lived in, unlike the previous dining hall I had seen. Candles still smoldered, recently put out, and the bed was unmade. It was silent, though I heard mutterings and laughs from the door across the room.
The room suddenly flickered to life. Without any warning whatsoever, the torches on the wall and the candles in their sconces burst into flames silently, as if they had been burning the whole time. There was no one in the room to light them, yet they lit anyway. I could see now that the space beyond the wall was lavishly furnished, with rick silk sheets and high wood frames supporting the bed that had previously been unmade, but now was suddenly clean. A dark dresser and a vanity stood across from the bed, the mirror shimmering resplendently and shining light on the carpets that covered the floor. Flowers sat in pots that lined the edge of the wall. Tapestries depicting scenes of castle life adorned the walls, and a fur carpet covered the floor. There were, however, no windows.
This was a room for royalty, and the door opened and Prince Maynard of the Uradels walked through, accompanied by two Blestemat men I had not seen before.
No, I realized, I was wrong; I had seen one of them before. One of them was the old stablemaster, except now he was much younger. The wrinkles had gone from his face, and his pale skin shone with a refreshed light. The other Blestemat man, also beautiful, was unknown to me. He had not been at the dinner the past night, but he was not a servant, either, for his elaborate dress rivaled that of Iacob himself.
“I must say, you cleaned this perfectly, sir Blestemat,” Maynard said surprised by his room arrangements. Maybe it was the flowers that surprised him.
“We must keep our most esteemed guest happy, Prince Uradel,” the stablemaster said, thin hand resting on the boy’s pale-blue shoulder. “It was no trouble at all.”
“Indeed,” said the other pale royal. “it would be absurd to have any guest treated so poorly.”
“Thank you, Laurentiu,” Maynard said, smiling widely. He made his way into the room, closer to my position. “Although, I was wondering, why weren’t you at our meal last night? It was most wonderful.”
“What do you mean?” said the man who was apparently named Laurentiu. “Of course I was at the meal. Everyone was.” And he placed his hand on Maynard’s other shoulder, so both of the young man’s sides were covered by a Blestemat royal.
An expression of unease crossed Maynard’s face, but only momentarily, as it was replaced by assurance just as quickly. Maynard turned and stared into the mirror at the edge of the room. From behind him, the stablemaster and Laurentiu smiled.
“Of course,” Maynard said. “Of course you were present. Everyone was.” His eyes took on a torpid look, as if he had been drugged. But this soon passed, as well.
“This has been a good discussion,” said Laurentiu, the man who had most definitely not been at dinner. “But now it is time to rest.”
“To rest?” Maynard said. “Why, we just had dinner.” Just had dinner? Had the entire day really passed in the time we had been in the walls? No, that was impossible. But then…?
“Yes, but it is late. You must be rested, for tomorrow we begin preparing the ceremonies,” Laurentiu said, and smiled. He never removed his hand from Maynard’s shoulder.
“This is true,” Maynard said. And he broke his gaze from the mirror. The hands drifted from Maynard’s shoulders and the thin boy made his way to the bed. The stablemaster retrieved some night garments from an unseen closet. “I should rest. I would not want to disappoint my bride-to-be.”
“No, you would not,” Laurentiu smiled, and pulled back the covers from the bed.
“Say,” Maynard said, watching Laurentiu as he made up the prince’s bed. “Shouldn’t the servants be doing this sort of work?”
A look seemed to pass from Laurentiu to the stablemaster, who was standing silently by, waiting for Maynard to take his garments. “Usually, yes,” Laurentiu said. “But we are… short-staffed. I have been sick for a number of days myself.”
“As have I,” the stablemaster said. “But it was Iacob who suggested we escort you, so we could not refuse.”
“Of course,” Maynard said. “It is only natural.”
“Indeed,” Laurentiu said. “It is only natural.”
There was a moment of awkward silence, and Laurentiu stared at Maynard, and Maynard stared back, until the prince looked away sheepishly. Laurentiu smiled. From his corner of the room, the stablemaster sniffed the air.
“Do you smell that?” the stablemaster said, quietly. From my vantage point in the walls, I could just barely see the outline of his face. His nostrils flared and sucked in air hungrily. And he looked in our direction.
“Smell what?” Laurentiu said. “I don’t smell- oh. Yes, I do smell something, now that you mention it.”
“Smells like,” the stablemaster said, and began to walk over to where I was peering through the wall. “Smells like vermin.”
I suddenly realized the peril I was in, and shoved the brick back into place as carefully and soundlessly as I could. I pulled myself away from the wall, stumbling backwards into Kolte as I did so. He was about to cry out, but I silenced him as best I could.
There was a moment’s silence, and then the sound of the stablemaster’s nose, very close to the wall. The very stones themselves seemed to hold its breath as the stablemaster sniffed once, twice, and then stopped. The sound of his breathing was deep and animal, a beast hunting in the dark.
But then from the other side of the wall, I heard the muffled voice of the stablemaster. “No, I suppose it’s nothing. Just rats in the walls.”
“Yes,” said Laurentiu. “Just rats in the walls.” And then the sound of the voices faded. I pulled our group as far against the other wall as I could before I explained anything.
“What did you see?” Ema asked.
“And why did you run into me?” Kolte said.
“You heard them, didn’t you?” Greta said to Kolte. “Royals. Uradels and Blestemat. Maynard, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “Prince Maynard. His room is on the other side of the wall. He was being escorted by the stablemaster and a new Blestemat royal. I didn’t recognize him.”
“Anything interesting?” Kolte said, impatiently.
“Besides the fantastic decoration of royal quarters and an entirely new Blestemat royal who wasn’t at last night’s dinner? No, not really,” I said. I wasn’t entirely sure if I was being facetious.
“Hmph,” was all Kolte said, and he broke off from our group and walked back to the center of the room, looking down either hall.
“Actually, there was,” I started, more to myself, “something else. The stablemaster looked much younger. And both the Blestemats said they had been sick recently.”
“What do you think it means?” Ema asked. Something in my stomach twitched. And in my head, an idea kicked, something I had been considering for a while.
“I think it means that we won’t be finding our lost friends,” I said. Ema and Greta looked at me in confusion, but soon understood.
“You think that the Blestemats… consumed our friends?” Ema said. I nodded.
“I don’t know in what way. But I suspect it to be true,” I said.
“They are ghouls, then,” Greta said. “In the most literal sense.”
“Hey, look at this,” I heard Kolte say from the middle of the room. He was staring down the passage we had yet to explore.
“What is it, Kolte?” I said, and moved over to him to also peer into the unknown. And in the unknown, I saw the figure that had lead us here.
“That creature is back,” he said. “It may be here to lead us further.”
I knew that the creature before us was most certainly not here to lead us further, just as I knew that we had to leave that room. Immediately.
“Kolte,” I said, quietly. “Do not approach that thing.”
“Why not?” he said, moving slowly towards the thing in the hall. “It simply moved away from us last time. Maybe now we can get a good look at it.”
“I don’t think we should get a good look at it,” Ema said. “Kolte, please, let’s just go back to our quarters.”
“No,” Kolte said. “What will it do? Tickle me?” he said. “I have fought men bigger than this before.”
“That is no man,” Greta said. We were now at the center of the room, watching Kolte move closer to that thing.
“Sure it is,” Kolte said. “It looks like a man. It laughs like a man. It must be a man.” There was, again, that sophisticated chuckle coming from the thing in the hall.
I was not sure what Kolte was seeing, but I was not seeing a man before us. It was roughly the size and shape of a human figure, and its skin was the same white color as the Blestemats, but it seemed to have the consistency of raw dough. It looked as if it were made of clay. It seemed to have no hands, as its arms ended in a lumpy mass. In places it was splashed with splotches of browns and reds, especially near its head.
The thing seemed to have no eyes, though as I looked closer I saw that there were black slits far up the sides of its head, almost like someone had taken normal human eyes and pushed them out at an angle. The eyes squinted like they were smiling, but the mouth was far from a smile. It was far from anything, really. It was more of a gaping void, with two teeth, one on the top and one of the bottom, that met at the middle, bridging the gaps of the upper and lower lips like some sort of bony column. Like someone had reached into the creature’s mouth, stretched it out, and then stapled it together at the center.
“Kolte,” I said. The thing was not moving from the edge of the room but rather just staring at Kolte as he approached. “Please, let’s go back.”
“No,” he said again. “I can make my own decisions. I am a man. And you, Saelac, are a boy.”
“Kolte,” Ema pleaded. “Listen to me. Come back here.”
“Ema,” Kolte said. “I’m sorry, but I won’t listen to you, either.” And he stepped closer to the pale thing. Its stillness reminded me of a statue, but with a fleshy quality.
“Here we go,” Greta said.
“Hello, my brother,” Kolte said, now directly before the thing that I realized was even taller than Kolte was. “Maybe you can show us another secret?”
A low, erudite laughing emanated from the thing, though it did not move. And then, in a flash and a crack that I did not even comprehend, it bit Kolte’s head off.
It removed a large portion of Kolte’s skull with one fluid motion. It seemed to have stretched itself directly above Kolte and, using its two teeth, bit down at the base of his skull and tore it away. What remained of Kolte’s head was the sides of the skull that held his two ears, and nothing else. Where Kolte’s brain had been was now a visceral valley, which perfectly framed the content face of the two-toothed thing. And it laughed.
Kolte’s body slumped forward and hit the ground with a bloody thud, and then began to bleed out on the ground. The thing that had so suddenly eviscerated Kolte knelt down carefully, almost tastefully, and began to nibble at what was left of the sailor’s head. Every so often it would look up at us and chuckle, eyes almost nonexistent and mouth gaping.
“Kolte!” Ema screamed, and was about to run at the thing, arms flailing and eyes pouring like faucets, but Greta grabbed her around the waist and held her back.
“Child,” Greta said. “Kolte is gone. You are still alive. We must move, quickly. More time we spend here is more time we could die.”
“No! No!” Ema yelled. “Kolte can’t be dead! He can’t be!”
“Ema, please!” Greta yelled, and began pulling her backwards. She looked at me for some sort of help. I was still stunned and speechless.
“Let me go, you hag!” Ema screamed, clawing at Greta’s bony arms.
“We need to move. Now,” she said. And she kicked me. “Let’s get going, you stupid boy!”
“Yes, yes, we need to go,” I said, jolted into action. I jumped in front of Ema and gave her a good heave backwards. She toppled over as Greta jumped out of the way. “Come on,” I said, and grabbed at her arms and hauled her up, not giving her an opportunity to fight back.
The three of us ran back down the hall, the sound of light laughter and a delicate chewing coming from behind us.
Damn, that was a long-ass chapter. I don’t know if next week will be more Spectral Crown or not. It probably will be, depending on how I spent my weekend, but that’s ok, because even though I feel like I’ve fucked over my work-life balance, at least the life part gets precedence. And, in all honesty, I’m lucky to have that.
1 thought on “Spectral Crown: Chapter Eighteen”
Comments are closed.