The Perdition Tales

The rain came down incessantly, pounding against the windshield of Steve’s sedan. Mud pooled in the road, causing him to cry out in surprise on more than one occasion when he lost control and wished sedans were built with four-wheel-drive. A thin layer of mist seemed to fog the inside of his windshield, condensed air reacting to the cold rain that fell from the trees overhead. His headlights lit the road only partially, and he was forced to drive with his high beams in order to see at all. But with the great light piercing the darkness, all he could see were trees, more and more that seemed to choke out the road and tear it from view. But he was always able to find that small, dirt trail, the muddy path that led to the mansion. Thunder boomed as lightning lit the treetops, filtering down to the road as sinister shadows of twisted forms, darkness made deeper by the lightning and shaken into movement by the thunder. Steve wiped his hand against the inside of the windshield, trying to fight off the fog that encroached upon his vision. He scarcely noticed his three remaining fingers anymore; he had grown so accustomed to a missing ring finger that on that hand, it almost seemed natural to him now, as if his other hand, with its mutated fourth finger, was the oddity of the world. But this time, he noticed something in the gap between his pinky and middle fingers, something that showed up in that so narrow space. It almost seemed like a person, a woman ducking into the brush, her dark hair tangled and wild, her clothes black in what may have been some frail attempt to stay hidden. Steve swerved his car and smashed over a pothole, then stopped and looked around, his window down half-an-inch to let him hear outside, to let him hear for cries of help. None came. But on the wind and hid amongst the rain between the cracks of thunder, strange creatures moaned in the distance, howling like animalistic ghosts of millennia past. But no cries for help. Rain pattered into his seat and Steve rolled the window up, started his car and continued to drive on. A gateway loomed ahead, a great, iron portal into the world of the mansion. Against the purple-black sky, the structure loomed like a square monster, the lightning forcing a silhouette to block the road if not for the headlights of Steve’s car. Steve slowed along the road and the lightning lit up tombstones to his right, rows and rows of deathly stone cut into forgotten epitaphs long corroded into the rock. A shape darted behind one of the tombstones, ducking down before vanishing into the earth. Steve kept his eyes trained on the road, and suddenly it ended. He had turned half a circle before the road ended, as if he had reached the other side of a half-constructed roundabout. There were already three cars there. The others were already here. Steve parked his car and reached into the backseat, grabbing his suitcase and bag. He’d packed a bit on the heavy side, unsure of what to expect from this strange meeting in an even stranger town. The people had been cold with him when he asked for directions, saying very little of Mane Manor other than suggesting alternative places to stay. Some had even rebuffed his questions, rudely telling him to get out of town. But someone had finally given him a map, torn and soaked with what he prayed was only water. The map had led him here, into the woods, beyond the harshness of the townspeople. This was a dark, secluded town, cold and alone. As his car had entered the forest and the trees obscured the town from view, he had the vaguest sense that the road was similar to the town’s journey, as if it was headed down a dark path with every sign telling the inhabitants to flee or… Steve leapt out of his car and hiked as quickly as he could through the rain. It came down like hail, pelting him on his back and neck, forcing him to hold his bag over his head for protection. Of all the days to investigate a new property, Steve thought to himself. Dave had to choose tonight. I’m checking the weather before our next meeting! He rapped lightly on the heavy, metallic doors. When no reply came, he rapped a little harder, almost hurting his knuckles on the thick door. Finally, there was a creak - as Steve had expected from a house as eerie as this - and it swung open slowly, the person opening it putting all of his weight into moving the metallic monstrosities. “You finally made it!” Lew said, grunting as he tried to close the door after Steve walked inside. “I got lost,” Steve responded. “Those people in town are some real jerks.” “Wouldn’t give you directions either?” Lew asked. “I had to go to the sheriff to get directions, and even he told me not to come up here. He was nice about it, though. Friendly guy…I can’t remember his name, though I remember he made some kind of joke abut lymphoma.” Lew began walking down a hallway and Steve trailed behind. Lew was older than Steve, but thin like him. He sometimes wore some thick glasses, but often he didn’t bother. The hallway was dark, with some of the paint missing in places, torn in gashes as if someone had dragged a rake along the walls. Steve followed Lew down the hallway, then followed him as he veered right, into a semi-lit room filled with chairs and a large couch that seemed to have leapt straight from the 1920s. There was a crystalline chandelier in the center of the room, inlaid with what Steve assumed to be merely colored glass, not real gems and precious stones. No one’s rich enough for that many jewels, Steve thought to himself. “Well look what the cat dragged in,” a familiar voice said from the couch. A shorter man stood up, heavier than Steve and with curled, white hair. He walked over to Lew and said, “and look how old the cat’s getting.” “At least I’m still young in spirit, you geezer!” Lew responded, laughing as he spoke. “Can you believe this storm, Keith?” Steve asked the white-haired man. “I had to cross a river to get into this town. I am really hoping this mansion’s high enough to avoid a flood.” “I honestly have no idea,” Keith responded. “But I wouldn’t worry. I checked the weather before coming here and they said it shouldn’t last too long.” “Is Dave here yet?” Steve asked. “Right here,” Dave said as he walked in from an adjacent room. “Just checking to make sure the other doors are locked.” Dave was slightly taller than Keith, but with dark hair and a slightly hunched back, the result of years of terrible posture. In fact, Keith had once joked that Dave would be six inches taller if his back was straight. “Are you afraid of someone breaking into your multi-million dollar mansion?” Steve asked. “Nope, just habit,” Dave answered. “That’s the third time he’s checked,” Keith answered. “I think our ol’ Dave is getting a little senile.” The others laughed for a bit before getting settled in. The room was old and dilapidated, with wallpaper peeling from the paint-chipped walls like leftover meat clinging to the last bit of bone. The men described their journeys and their various interactions with the people of King’s End, eventually coming to the general consensus that the people were not too keen on visitors. Then, finally, the conversation arrived at its destination: their reason for being there. “So Dave,” Keith began. “Would you mind telling us how you of all people managed to jump from middle class to rich bastard with his own mansion? And by mansion, I mean castle, because this place…it’s huge.” “Well, I actually inherited it from my grandfather,” Dave began. “I’ve been going through the records and I haven’t found much. I’ve actually found so little that it’s almost like someone went in and scratched him from the records.” “What records?” Steve asked. “The house records,” Dave said. “The family records. Most of what I’ve found was in the library, but there’s a safe upstairs in one of the bedrooms, and it had some documents in there, too. Birth certificates, mostly, but also some leftover copies of the deed and old maps of the town. All over the papers and documents, there are these enormous scratch marks, and sometimes even burns. But some of them weren’t done as well as others, which led me to think that all of the scratches are over one name: Richard Mane.” “Who’s that?” Lew asked. “An old owner?” “He was my grandfather,” Dave continued. “Richard Mane, the younger of two sons set to inherit this mansion decades ago.” “Then why are you just getting it now?” Keith asked. “I’ll get there,” Dave responded. He reached into his haversack and pulled out an old book, bound in leather and tied at the spine with cords. The book seemed fairly archaic. “This is his journal, the journal my dad gave me about two or three years ago. The journal of Richard Mane.” “Richard Morrin…” Keith mumbled aloud as he read from the inside cover, being very careful not to harm the pages. “He must be from your dad’s side. But you said his name was Mane.” “According to his journal, he changed it,” Dave said. “Even this journal doesn’t go into detail, but he mentions enough for me to know something happened here, something big and dramatic. After that, Richard Mane left the mansion, left the town and changed his last name to Morrin. The mansion and all of its possessions went to his brother.” “So how’d you end up with it?” Keith asked. “According to the lawyer that first told me about this place,” Dave began. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone on that side left. So the mansion went back to Richard and then down the line to me.” “Well clearly its last owner didn’t really take much care of it,” Keith said, easing back into a chair which then created a cloud of dust, causing him to have a coughing fit. “How long’s it been since someone even owned this place, let alone took care of it?” “About six years, according to the attorney,” Dave answered him. “The last owner died on a trip to Africa, and his body disappeared during shipping. Not sure what to think there.” “Is there like a mafia in this town or something?” Steve asked, half-laughing, half-serious. “Could be,” Lew said. “The sheriff seemed to be a little too unhelpful to have been voted into that job.” “Well in any case,” Dave continued. “After that, they didn’t really put much effort into finding the next owner. I almost get the feeling that this place kind of acts like a scapegoat for this town, though I have no idea why. The records that led them to me only surfaced after the investigation.” “What investigation?” Lew asked. Dave froze for a moment and ignored the question. He sighed for a minute and closed his eyes, focusing on keeping his thoughts to himself. He stood up and began walking out of the room. “There are rooms upstairs,” he told the others. “You can take whatever one you want. But be careful; I haven’t brought out a contractor yet to see what’s safe and what’s not. I’ll see you all tomorrow.” With that, Dave ascended the stairs and vanished into the darkness at the top. “What’d I say?” Lew asked. “It was the investigation with his daughter,” Keith explained. “Oh,” Lew said, covering his mouth. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know. Did…” his voice dropped lower as he moved closer to Keith. “Did anything ever turn up there?” “Not really,” Keith answered. “According to the sheriff, some neighborhood kids - high schoolers, mostly - said they’d dared Courtney to stay the night in a house that used to belong to a local pastor and his family. The sheriff checked out the house, but all he found was a few drops of what may have been blood by the front door and a couple of blonde hairs by the banister on the stairs.” “What was she even here for?” Steve asked. “Don’t you remember?” Lew asked. “She told us all about it during quartet practice a few months ago. She was coming here to research some family history. Hey…” he adjusted his glasses as he spoke. “I wonder if the records that wound up with the attorney were found by her!” “Could be,” Keith said. He stood up and walked over to the edge of the room, peering up the stairs after Dave. All he saw was that petulant darkness that permeated the mansion. Thunder boomed outside, lighting up the shadows for half-a-second. “I feel sorry for him. I can’t imagine what he must be going through.” “I talked to Susie a few days ago,” Steve said. “She said this was going to be the first time he’s left the house in weeks. Of course, she couldn’t talk very long either.” He trailed off, not wanting to describe the details of a family in mourning. The three of them talked a bit longer and then went their separate ways, following the stairs to the second level where they each sought out rooms to spend the night. Steve shut the light off in the bathroom and walked out into the dark hallway toward the room he’d claimed. It wasn’t an enormous room, but it had functioning lights, so it would do. Steve had thought about asking how the house still had power if it hadn’t had an owner for six years, but everyone else was asleep, so he decided to put that question on the back burner until the next day. There was an odd sound from up ahead, a sound which seemed to move around from the floor to the walls and on to the other walls. It was loudest in patches where the wallpaper was falling away and the plaster was crumbling, but it could still be heard elsewhere as well. It was a quick shuffling sound accompanied by a series of clicks and clacks, as if something was moving tiny claws across the wood floor. Light shone in from the window down the hall, lighting the dim area by rays from the moon. There was a place where a floorboard was broken and shattered, leaving a small hole in the floor about the size of Steve’s fist. Dropping to his knees, Steve held his ear near the hole, listening. The scuttling sound rushed by again, indicating that something alive was moving beneath his feet. Something dark moved past, the light reflecting off of something shiny and black, but long and sleek like some kind of reptile. In only half-a-second, the thing vanished, taking the scurrying sounds with it. It clattered beneath the boards like a chorus, as if an army of the mysterious thing was moving around. There was a broken piece of wood lying in a pile of plaster and wooded shards lying nearby. Steve grabbed the board and placed it over the hole, then moved the entire pile of dilapidation on top of it like a weight. Looks like Dave needs to call pest control, Steve thought to himself. This is nothing short of an infestation. Content that the plaster could keep the things beneath the floorboards down, Steve stood up and went to his room. But even in his room, he couldn’t find the peace he sought. A drink was waiting for him on the nightstand, a glass of water he’d left for himself. He sat down on his bed and took a sip but immediately spit it out: it was alcoholic. To Steve, it tasted like an old egg mixed with a fermented loaf of bread. He could even have sworn that there were random items floating in the cup. Steve groaned and carried the cup over to the window, assuming that plaster had fallen from the ceiling into his cup. The wet puddle on the nightstand only encouraged the notion. As Steve opened the window and dumped what could barely even pass as moonshine out into the windy cold, he caught sight of something below. No, not something, someone. At first appearing as only a silhouette, the man stepped out into the moonlight with a shovel in his hand. He had an old jacket from what seemed to be the early 1800s on and a bowler hat, with what looked like a small metal pipe clasped in the corner of his mouth. The shovel clanked and thudded again and again as it lifted dirt into a mound, leaving a large hole where it had been. After a few moments, the man slid off a metallic sash and left it in a coil beside the pile. The hole he was digging was growing constantly deeper and deeper, and as Steve looked closer, he saw something wrapped in burlap laying beside the pile, tied up at one end with only a pair of thin gray socks extending outward. Steve backed behind the curtain in his room, watching the strange man attentively. After awhile, the man grabbed the socks and dropped the burlap sack into the hole, after which he began replacing the dirt again. Steve dropped down low to ensure the man in the bowler hat didn’t see him. Unfortunately, the man in the bowler did appear to see him. With a single, wild look, the man stared at Steve, his grin increasing very slightly. He pointed his right hand at Steve, showing that it, too, was missing one of his fingers. With that same, dark grin, he drew the stunted hand across his own neck in the sign of a threat. Steve backed away into the shadows of his room, checked that the door was locked and then laid down in bed, trying to drown out the thudding of a shovel with the silence of a dark mystery inside his own dreams. This mansion was not the home for anything but nightmares that night. It was a cold morning the next day. Any heat seemed to vanish before it reached them, despite the bright sun amidst the clouds. A drafty wind blew in seemingly from nowhere, chilling them as they followed Steve out into the yard. Only it wasn’t a yard; it was a cemetery. Steve had been very confused when he looked out his window after the sun had risen. The graves seemed to have appeared from nowhere, and dotted every now and then with small crypts and a grand mausoleum over near the trees. Steve kept his mysterious vision to himself, hiding his memory of an empty field with one, lone grave dug by a nine-fingered man in a bowler hat. But Steve wanted to look around nonetheless, so after a cold breakfast - nothing in the kitchen was working - he convinced the others to explore the grounds, beginning with the private graveyard. They walked amongst the graves, finding some with faded tombstones and others with half-dug graves that seem to have been clawed open by wild animals. Steve kept a wary eye on the tree line. “Hey, come here!” Keith’s voice called out, floating toward them amid the epitaphs of ancient lives. “Look at this!” The others slowly made their way to him, walking through the graves toward the crypt before which Keith stood, staring. “What do you think that means?” he asked, pointing to a message etched into the metal: solvo non verum “Not sure,” Dave said. “I never learned Latin. I think Susie learned some in high school, but mine didn’t offer it.” The words were carved into a metal band bolted into the black stone of the crypt. It was about the size of a large hut, with what looked like some sort of three-piece gateway carved into the door. Two of the pieces came down vertically on either side of the door and the third formed a flat piece going along the top. There was no crack in it, as if it was added to the door as some sort of permanent lock. But even stranger, there was a tiny table elevated about a foot off the ground in front of the door, and sitting on the table were two bowls: one filled with rocks and another with something black and rotting. “Is that meat?” Dave asked, trying not to gag at the smell. “I think so,” Lew said before stumbling away to leave his breakfast by a nearby grave. “I think I’ll be getting rid of this,” Keith said as he held his breath and picked up the table. He dropped it a few dozen feet away, near what he assumed was a shallow, unused grave. The dishes clattered and broke and juice from the black meat oozed down into the dirt. “Let’s take a quick look inside,” Dave said as he grasped the handle of the crypt. The door stuck at first, but he jerked it hard and the flat part of the gateway carving cracked and broke, allowing the door to swing open with a rusted squeak. There was the odor of old, musty air that greeted them, but they pressed through it and stepped into the small crypt. It was mostly empty inside, except for a handle in the wall. “I think they kept the body behind this,” Lew said, pointing at the panel to which the handle was attached. “They packed the bodies in the walls themselves.” But there was no writing to indicate who had been buried in this crypt, no dates or names of any sort. There was, however, a single phrase scratched haphazardly into the stone. The granite dust still lay on the ground before it, as if no wind had ever entered this place to carry it away. The phrase was trapped in shadows, so they were unable to be read until Keith pulled a tiny light off of his keychain and pointed it at it: three will die “That’s certainly very odd,” Keith said as he examined the words carefully. There was suddenly a Lewd cry, a powerful bark that echoed through the crypt. All four of them jumped backward as they saw a medium-sized dog staring at them from the entrance. Its fur was matted and scruffy, with the look of a white beard and mustache around the forefront of its muzzle. Everyone backed away, unsure of what to expect. The dog looked at them with brown eyes, sniffed the dank air and warily stepped toward the four men. Dave quickly analyzed its mouth for the tell-tale signs of rabies, but there appeared to be none. With a small whine, the dog sat down before Dave and seemed to smile. “Hey, boy,” Dave said as he slowly reached out his hand to pet it. Its fur was dirty and curled, and it licked Dave’s palm as if tasting for food. “It must be a stray,” Keith said, looking for a collar and finding none. “Looks like it’s yours now, Dave!” “Hey, Kami,” Dave said. “Kami?” Steve asked. “After Kamehameha, the most famous king of Hawaii,” Dave answered. “My wife and I had a dog that looked just like this one, and that was his name.” The dog followed them around the rest of the day as they explored the mansion. They seemed to go endlessly, to room after room after room, more rooms than even ten families would ever have need for. Lew particularly liked the library, with its large, crystal globe and piles and piles of books and papers. Keith was partial to what could almost pass for a bar, low on supplies it was. But Steve was always nervously peering out of every window they passed, wondering if he would eventually see the man with the bowler hat and pipe in his mouth dragging a body through the dirt. Still, all into the evening and twilight hours of vanished sunlight, he kept the vision to himself. Steve watched from his window as his throat began to burn. It wasn’t so much hot, but dry, as if he desperately needed something to sate his thirst. He grabbed the cup that sat beside his bed and downed it all, almost gagging as he did. It wasn’t water, at least not the water he’d originally poured into that cup. It was something much stronger, almost noxious, as if he had drunk pure rubbing alcohol. But he didn’t care, it was a liquid, a cold wet something to stop the sudden, relentless dehydration that seemed to have overwhelmed his entire being. He drank and drank, the cup never seeming to run empty, as if someone had been pouring it even as he drank, the endless cup with no bottom, the horrible drink burning its way down and numbing his fingers and warming his chest. At last, his legs wobbling, he set the cup down and fell backward in bed, the room spinning madly, the light from the moon dancing along the ceiling as his eyelids drooped and his mind drifted off… Steve awoke when he heard the voices. He couldn’t identify them, or even make out what they were saying. But he definitely heard them from out in the hallway. Standing on shaky legs, his balance nearly destroyed, he leaned against the wall as he stumbled over to his door and out into the hallway. He heard the voices coming his way, moving without footsteps from out of the shadows. He held the railing and looked over it at the ten-foot drop to the first floor below. He could make it if he was attacked. A woman stepped out of the shadows, her dress puffed out to a great diameter and a shawl drawn around her shoulders. A man stepped out behind her, dressed in an old-fashioned suit with a silver chain going from one of the buttons into a pocket. He had a dark blue top hat and light blue gloves on his hands. More people followed, all dressed in similar fashion, as if they had all walked out of a time dead for a hundred years. But even worse, they all seemed to stare at Steve with angry looks, bizarre expressions of disgust and revulsion and revilement. They hated him, despised him, and he didn’t have the foggiest idea why. “It’s him!” one of the women suddenly exclaimed. “I’d know ’im anywhere!” “Are you sure?” the old man in the top hat asked, but some of the younger men didn’t hesitate to run over and grab Steve, holding him roughly by the shoulders. He didn’t have the strength to fight back, so he waited anxiously for them to explain what was circumstances. “Oh, blossoming bluebirds! You smell that moonshine on ’is breath? It en’t even light out yet!” “Time holds no meaning to those who woo such nectar with their seductions,” the old man said, moving close. He crinkled his nose and backed away as if disgusted with the smell around Steve. “You really like your moonshine, don’t you, boy?” Steve had to be dreaming. No one drank moonshine anymore, and Steve had a habit of almost never drinking at all, as Keith often liked to joke about. Of course, Dave was pretty much the same way. “What’s going on?” Steve asked, realizing that such answers were rarely answered in dreams. “It’s him alright,” the first woman said again, moving closer. “Look at his hand. He’s only got nine fingas!” “It’s true,” another old man said, seemingly appearing from nowhere and rashly grabbing Steve by his four-fingered hand. “Edward Mane accidentally cut off one of his son’s fingers when he was killing his seventh victim, Nancy Hodricks. As a result, Mortimer Mane grew up with only nine digits. It’s him.” “What?” Steve asked. “Who’s Mortimer Mane? What are you talking about?” Steve stopped when he suddenly felt a rope touch the back of his neck, and then drop down before his eyes. He looked around, bewildered, as a noose was lowered around his neck and tightened. With a sudden burst of terror, Steve fought back, shoving the men holding him away. He swung his fists, but they met nothing but empty air. After a minute of wild punches that all whooshed through empty air, Steve stopped and looked around. He was alone. The hallway was empty. All of the people were gone, vanished like specters into the shadows. Steve breathed relief for a moment, realizing that he must have been sleepwalking. “It’s the water,” he told himself, rubbing his temples, his eyes pressed closed. As he opened them, a smoky, deformed face came rushing at him. Its eyes were open but indiscernible, its forehead huge and massive, its nose crooked and broken. It screamed at him with a terrifying shriek and cry, startling Steve back into the railing. The old, rotten wood snapped and fell away, and the face kept coming as Steve lost his footing and tumbled off the edge. Too late he realized the noose still tied around his neck, which pulled taut as a four-fingered hand clutched at the knot, trying desperately to pull him up but already weakened from the mysterious drink that had sated his thirst earlier. Steve’s feet never touched the ground. Moments later, a silent, motionless corpse dangled in the entrance hall of Mane Manor. * * * Lew was glancing through an old copy of Macbeth he’d found in the mansion’s library the next morning, a cold cup of bad coffee sitting on the table beside him, when Keith came in to ask about Steve. “What’s the problem?” Lew asked. “Is he still asleep?” “If he is, it’s not in his room,” Keith answered. “I haven’t seen him since last night, and neither has Dave.” “He could just be off exploring, boys being boys, you know,” Lew said, laughing slightly. Steve had been the youngest of their quartet. “Just give him some time. I’m sure he’ll be back.” But as the day moved into the late afternoon, Steve was still nowhere to be found. Dave had checked his room, finding only a broken cup in a small puddle of water beside his bed. His door had been wide open, and he leaned against the banister as he called down to Keith that Steve wasn’t in his room. Lew, who had glanced through more than a dozen books by that time, had finally grown worried enough to join in the search. They moved from room to room, in some rooms finding nothing but a cold emptiness, as if the rooms had been perpetually trapped in an unheated winter. In other rooms, they were billowed with heat, as if the rooms had been specifically designed to serve as secondary ovens. But it was the numerous times in which Lew could feel something behind doors, waiting for the rooms to be explored, which made him worry the most. In these rare instances, Lew would hold a doorknob and stop, feeling rather than seeing something in the next room. He would get the sensation of someone waiting for him, and he would time and again become convinced that Steve was waiting there, only a few feet away, hidden behind a thin pane of wood, waiting for his friends to find him. And in each of these rooms, his friends would be met by the disappointment of an empty room, or a room so cluttered with antique furniture and odd junk that no one could possibly be inside. Their search eventually brought them out to the same cemetery again, with Keith hoping that maybe Steve had been exploring his mysterious vision from their first night. But all they found were the same broken tombstones, the same disturbed graves broken up by the mysterious crypt with its unknown Latin and odd offering table. Keith fumbled for the light on his keychain, shining it on the walls as they looked around. Keith stopped when he saw something that struck him, something which made him take a step back toward the light streaming from the entrance. Dave and Lew noticed it as well. “Now correct me if I’m wrong,” Keith said, his brow furrowed and his tone much more serious than usual. “But I could have sworn that yesterday that message said that three will die.” Dave and Lew remained silent, focused purely on the etching which appeared as naturally as if it had been the original. Silently, the trio backed out of the crypt and headed back into the mansion. The carving now read “two will die.”