“Ok I’m basically back physically but not mentally”
Hey! This is the last post before I start posting actually stuff again! Maybe! I don’t know yet, I’m still writing this a month in advance, and Cheyenne is telling me to hurry up and be done with it already, so this isn’t going to have much of an intro. But I’m in Illinois now! Hurray! And then I’ll be gone again in like a week! Oh! So we’ll see how much I can get done in the meantime.
Here’s the previous chapter!
Spectral Crown, by Andy Sima: Chapter Twenty-Four
The rest of that day was spent in near total silence, as we had very little to do or say. Iacob’s servants did not come for us, nor did we receive anything for lunch or dinner, neither food nor screaming heads. That night, too, nothing happened. No one came through the locked door, and upon waking the next morning, there was no one missing. We counted ourselves lucky for that. Perhaps the Blestemats felt we had learned our lesson, but whatever the reason, we were not about to hold out hope.
“What if they do not come and get us?” Simon asked. “What if we simply sit in here and rot for the rest of our days?”
“They will come for us,” I said. “They need the Uradels to believe everything is normal until the wedding.” Like many other things about this castle, I knew it to be true. No one questioned me, but my mother gave me a look that seemed to say she was unconvinced.
On our second day after our failed trap, there was a knock at the iron door. The knock did not wait for a response; the door simply opened a moment later to reveal Iacob’s servants framed by the archway of the door. The group of them strode in and the tallest one directed Simon to gather the servants and maids who had retired to their quarters.
Once we were all assembled, Iacob’s group of servants spoke to us. The tallest one said, “The Uradels have once again requested they be waited upon by their own. We have no choice but to oblige. You shall follow us forthwith and shall proceed in your duties as you have this past week. Anything that I deem as unsatisfactory will result in severe sanctions against the transgressor. Is this understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Simon said, humbly bowing before the tall man. “But, if I may be so forward…”
Whatever Simon was going to say was cut off sharply by the tallest servant. “The Blestemats wish you to know that they are disappointed in how you have reacted to their hospitality. But they hope we can all move past this. Now follow me.”
There was no room for any other speech, and the group of servants turned as one unit and walked back out the door. We trailed them and the iron door shut behind us on its own. Only once we were all in the halls of Castle Blestem, with the servants leading us onward, did anyone dare speak to each other. We all knew the score now, even Reinhard. Further acts of the nature that we had committed would not be tolerated. Which meant we only had one shot at this.
I adjusted my boots as we walked. An electric sort of tension filled the air around us as we followed Iacob’s servants down the spiral staircase and through the marble halls of the castle. Everyone knew what the plan was, and when it was to be carried out, but no one knew who was to initiate it. And no one knew if it would work.
We finally came to the grand foyer, entering it from the east side. To the north was the throne room, across the hall from us were the passages that led to the Uradel’s quarters, and to the south was the enormous iron entrance to the castle. It was through that door which we would escape.
The plan was set into motion at the center of the room. Overhead, the giant chandelier sparkled and reflected its light. Iacob’s men showed no sign of knowing that anything was happening, even as Franz began hurtling towards them. Of course it was Franz.
Knocking them aside like a falling tree, Franz grabbed one of the shorter servants and pulled him away from the group. Or, rather, he tried to. As Franz yanked the shorter servant away, the pale man gave a cry of terrible pain, stiffened up, and fell to the floor, crashing out of Franz’s grasp. The huge man hurtled on, having lost his load, and skidded around to face the group of Blestemat servants.
“Tsk, tsk,” the tallest servant said. He reached into his jacket for something, but Freda charged forward in that moment, too, followed by myself, my mother, Simon, Greta, Reinhard, and the others, and grappled at the servants that were still standing. I pulled my father’s knife from my boot and grabbed the tallest servant, thrusting the knife against his pale throat.
With shouts of shock and fear, I noted that every other Uradel servant who had attacked one of Iacob’s men had lost their target. All of the Blestemat servants had uniformly fallen to the floor in a kind of rigor mortis. And all of them on the floor no longer had legs, but rather white tendrils of flesh that connected them to the thing that now slithered and squirmed against the knife I held to its throat.
“So,” Iacob’s servant said. “You finally are awake, aren’t you? Or is it just you, Saelac?”
“No, we all see,” Simon said, staring in horror at the fallen things on the floor, more like tentacles now than human figures. Their clothes were disintegrating into their bodies, and all recognizable features were being absorbed in a clay-like way. Soon, all that remained of the other servants were three pale lumps the size of a man on the floor, spread out from the base of the servant I now held prisoner. He, if I could even call it that, remained mostly unchanged, and still resembled a Blestemat man but with fleshy appendages instead of legs.
“Do you see, now?” it said, voice straining. I watched as the flesh tentacles at my feet wriggled and moved like enormous serpents, faces and forms shifting across them like something inside were trying to break free. “So, what do you hope to accomplish?”
“We wish to leave,” I said. “Immediately.”
“The door is locked, you know,” he answered. The other folks from Uradel surrounded us, keeping their distance from the lumps on the ground, and from me.
“Then open it,” I said, pressing the knife harder against his white skin, trying to make the point clear. But I began to wonder how effective a knife would be.
“I don’t think you want me to,” he said. “You can’t get out that way.”
“Do it. Please. We just wish to be free,” Simon said.
“Alright, Simon Taylor,” the thing I constrained said. “I will do it. If Mr. Bergmann here releases me.”
“Don’t do it, Saelac,” my mother said. “Bring him to the door.”
“I will,” I said, and began dragging the thing backwards, across the foyer and towards the huge iron door that blocked us from our exit. Iacob’s servant was immensely heavy, and the things that had once been other servants dragged behind with the sound of raw dough. No, there never had been other servants. There had only ever been one.
Finally, with the occasional assistance of Franz and Freda, we made it to the front door. I turned to face the keyhole, with the head of Iacob’s servant still against my own. I never loosened my grip on the knife. I hissed in the thing’s ear, “Open the door.”
“As you wish,” it said, and with languid movements of its arms, produced a key from its jacket. The key was made of crystal, the same green crystal that the thrones had been made. As the thing in my arms slipped the key into the door’s keyhole, I realized that it no longer even resembled a man. It had been melting the entire time, and now was more like a malformed sculpture than anything else.
Two white appendages turned the key, and the entire item slid into the door. The door suddenly glowed at its edges, a scintillating green that seemed to come from the other side, and then it faded. Without a sound, the door swung outward. And, to our horror, revealed nothing but shadows.
“What have you done?” I shouted at the thing I tried to hold, and suddenly my knife was ripped from my grasp, absorbed into the thing by some otherworldly force. The white blob congealed in my arms, and then with a breath of air, lost all its viscosity and fell to the floor as does a drop of water. The other three lumps, too, became runny, and the whole mass slithered away on its own accord. But still the voice emanated from it.
“I told you, you didn’t want me to open the door for you,” it said.
The retreating goop seemed to laugh as we stood in front of that shadowy space and stared into an abyss. It was a physical wall of shadows, just like the ones Iacob and Sorina had opened to transport their captives. Eldritch figures writhed inside of the doorway, seeming to dance about in ecstasy and torture.
“What do we do now?” Freda asked, backing away from the door. “We can’t go through there.”
“I don’t think we have much of a choice,” my mother confided, turning around to face the center of the foyer. We all turned to follow her gaze.
The liquid that had been the servant was now reforming into a human shape, which spasmed and twitched horrifically, controlled by a deranged puppet master. It contorted itself into impossible shapes and incongruous angles, until it just as suddenly stopped and settled on one shape. It was, by all appearances, still the servant, but with joints that bent in the wrong directions. It lifted itself up, pulled skyward by its head, and stood staring, with black eye sockets and a gaping mouth.
It began to scream and rushed forward, all broken angles and disjointed bones, eyeless face still seeing perfectly well. It was the height of four men and its hands were big enough to grip a horse. Howling, the thing twisted towards us and reached out, snatching one of our number up in its enormous fist.
The rest of us stumbled backwards in terror. From down the western hall, I thought I could hear running, as if someone might be answering to all the commotion. Which meant we could not stay any longer.
The man in the thing’s grasp, screaming just as loudly as the shapeshifting thing that held him, began to be cocooned by the white skin of Iacob’s servant. The hand spread outward, like melting ice, feeling its way around the man’s body, until he was entirely covered. Now there was a squirming, pushing lump where a man had once been. The eyeless thing smiled and swung its other hand at me.
I jumped backwards, falling to the floor and crawling backwards. My ears were filled with the sound of everyone screaming and yelling. All I could think of was getting away from here.
“Through the door! Everyone!” I shouted, and jumping up as quickly as I could, I ran through the shadow wall that was the doorway.
I could not see much on the other side, for it was nearly pitch black, but there was enough light from some source that the bodies of my comrades were illuminated as they fell in after me. First Simon, then my mother, and others, too, followed me through the portal. I could still hear screaming on the other side.
“The door!” Simon shouted. “We must close the door!”
“Once everyone is through!” my mother said.
“We do not have time!” Simon exclaimed. “Quickly, Saelac, help me!”
For once, I agreed with Simon. “We must close it, before that thing follows us through,” I said.
Most of our surviving members had already fallen through the door as Simon and I began to shove the iron portal closed. Reinhard, it turned out, was last.
“Shut it! Shut the door!” He cried, and immediately began pushing on the door opposite Simon and me.
Just before the two doors met, a huge white hand thrust through the portal, finger wiggling and twisting. “Shut the door!” Simon yelled. I pressed with all my might against the carved iron but the huge fingers in the space there jammed it, keeping the door ajar.
“We can’t do it!” someone shouted, straining against the immovable door.
“We must!” I said. And then Franz and Freda joined in, too, one to each door, and shoved. Their combined force was enough, it seemed, to finally block off that passage. And separate the wriggling fingers from their hand.
The giant white sausages fell to the floor with a crash, still thrashing on their own. But in just a few moments, as I watched them, they melted away to a liquid, which slid back under the door we had just shut.
For a few harrowing moments, there was a heavy pounding against the iron, but then it fell silent. It seemed, for the time being, that we were safe.
I fell to the floor, exhausted, and got a good look at my surroundings. Turning around, there was no door anymore. Just stone. I was not surprised.
The place we were in, I noted, was similar to the rooms near the bridge over the sewer pit I had traversed with Kolte, Greta, and Ema. Except this room was much darker, with very little light to go by but a sort of inherent illumination that allowed me to see shapes of everything. A shadowed passageway stretched ahead.
“Where are we?” someone asked, breaking the monotony of strained breathing and faint sobs.
“Somewhere else inside the castle,” I said. “We haven’t left yet.”
“Damn it all,” Simon said. “We’re just as doomed as we were before. Perhaps more so now. The royals will not give us another chance.” I suspected that my fate would be different.
“Well,” my mother said, standing up. “In that case, we should get moving.”
“Moving where?” Franz asked.
“Somewhere that isn’t here. The royals will be back, don’t you think?” my mother answered. “Once we’ve all had a chance to catch our breath, we must press on forward.”
“If you insist,” Simon said. He stood up, too. As did I and many others. Reinhard was the last to stand up. He was silent, eyes darting from face to face. He seemed to convey blame upon the rest of us.
“Let’s get on with it, then,” Franz said, and started to lead the way down the tunnel ahead of us. It was the only choice we had, as we were blocked in by walls on three other sides.
As we walked down the tunnel, we came upon a bridge, wide enough for three or four men to walk side-by-side, and it spanned a huge gap. The contents of the space below this bridge, however, were far different to the sewers I had seen before. Beneath this bridge were enormous vats, open cauldrons and tanks of a red liquid that bubbled occasionally, like so much sluggish mud. The vats gave off no scent, light, or any indication of their existence at all besides the occasional pop that the bubbles on them would make.
The room we crossed over was full of these tubs, a row on each side of the bridge for an interminable distance ahead. It was like a vast cellar, a vile distillery. I tried not to think about it too much, for asking too many questions might have led to uncomfortable conclusions.
“What is this place?” Simon asked no one in particular.
“You know as much as the rest of us, Simon,” Greta said. “No point in asking.” This elicited a small chuckle from my mother, despite the circumstances. Simon went quiet.
We walked for a while, on a path that seemed to have no end, until eventually I saw a huge door at the far end of the bridge. Something in my chest jerked at the sight of the door, and my heart beat faster. We were meant to go to that door.
We continued to walk, stopping briefly to investigate a colorless stain on the bridge in front of us. It seemed to originate from a drip in the ceiling, splashing downward with a regular rhythm. Reinhard experimentally put his finger in it and sniffed.
“Scentless,” he said. And without any prodding from anyone else, he tasted it. “Tasteless.”
“You’re going to get yourself sick that way, Reinhard,” Simon said. Reinhard snickered.
“Sicker than eating rotten meat will get me?” he asked. “If I die, it’s on your head, Franz.”
“My head?” Franz said. “I didn’t make you do nothing!”
“A double negative. You did make me do something, you illiterate idiot,” Reinhard said.
Franz stiffened up. “What did you say?”
“Illiterate idiot,” Reinhard said, smashing some of the goop between his fingers. “And a crippling coward, too.”
“You dare call me a coward?” Franz said. He took a step closer to the little man.
“Please, brother, we’ve come so far. Don’t let him get to you now,” Freda pleaded. “He isn’t worth it.”
“I have been tormented by this man long enough,” Franz said, staying frightfully calm. “It’s his fault we’re here in the first place. We would have been better off just waiting in the quarters. But no, we had to go and attack our very hosts!”
“Might I add, in my own defense,” Reinhard said, still staring at his fingers, “that you were the one he came to take?”
“Reinhard, silence yourself,” Simon said. He had seen the sparkle in Franz’s eyes.
“I had no say in that!” Franz roared. “Do you think I liked being bait?”
“I would think you much preferred it to being a watcher. Bait does not need courage. Bait can be insane, and it won’t make a difference to the hunter.”
“I am not insane! And I am no coward!” Franz said, striding up until he was right next to the little man. “Your insults against my honor will not stand.”
“Funny, talking of honor,” Reinhard said. “You didn’t even have the honor to die a dignified death. Kolte did. George did. And you ran, instead.”
“I was not in control of my actions!” Franz said.
“Franz, please, he wants to get a rise out of you,” Freda said.
“You’re right, woman,” Reinhard said. “And it’s the most fun I’ve had in ages.” Reinhard flicked the pale liquid he had stuck to his fingers in Franz’s direction. It hit him square in the eye, and for a moment, I thought Franz was going to laugh.
Then he exploded into rage. And, with Kolte being dead, there was no one to stop him. Franz swung out his arms and picked up the little man around the neck and shook him like a chicken. “I’LL KILL YOU!” he screamed.
Reinhard gasped for breath, but still managed a smile. “Do it,” he gasped. “If ye got the stones for it.” Franz’s face turned beet red and he hurtled to the edge of the bridge.
“Franz, no!” Freda said, yanking at his arms. My mother and I had jumped into action, too, and were trying to hold the hulking man back. But it was no use. He was too intent on proving himself now. And in spite of our best efforts, with one swift motion, Franz tossed Richter Reinhard off the bridge.
The little man spiraled through the air, laughter and screams mixing together until he hit the liquid in the vat below with a sickening thud and began to sink into it.
“I’ll have your head, you hear me!” Reinhard said. “I’ll have you executed!” He struggled against the red liquid, but whatever was in the vats seemed to have a mind of its own. Like a fly sinking into molasses, Reinhard was sucked downward with a pop and a slurp.
We stood in terror at the edge of the bridge, looking down at the mess Franz had made. His face was one of contentment.
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Greta said. “It was about time someone put him in his place.”
“Franz killed him! He can’t do that!” Simon said.
“But I can. And I did. I am a man of my word,” Franz said. And he stepped back from the edge of the bridge and turned away. “Come on. Let’s go.” Franz started to walk towards the door at the far end without waiting for us.
“I expected nothing less, really,” my mother ruminated. “It was bound to happen. And what does it matter, I suppose? We’re all dead anyway.”
“This is true,” I conceded. But Simon would not give up.
“That’s a sin! It is a sin to kill,” he said.
“Reinhard was a vile bastard,” I said. “Morality is relative, don’t you think?”
“No! Morality is certainly not relative!” Simon said. “We have a very definite base on where to stand. You can’t make up your own rules because you feel like it.”
“And who’s going to stop Franz, or me, if we do?” I said. “You can’t, and God can judge me when I die.”
Simon looked like he was about to say something more, but just said, “A prince’s attendant, of all people. Really, Saelac, you should know better.” But that was all, and we made our way across the bridge.
“This is it,” I said.
“What is it?” someone asked.
“Our way out,” I said.
“How can you know?” my mother asked me, giving me a sideways look.
“I don’t know,” I said. And I had no reason to believe it was our way out. But I stood at the front of our group before the iron door and gave it a tug with all my might. With a terrible scraping sound, the sound of disuse, the carved door gave way and opened to reveal a set of dusty spiral stairs ascending upward into darkness.
“Onward and upward,” someone said, and we began to walk the steps out of that subterranean place.
Wow! I’m going to start running out of book to post soon. What will I do then when I don’t have time to write? Who fucking knows. But I’ll figure it out!
1 thought on “Spectral Crown: Chapter Twenty-Four”
Comments are closed.