Tenebrae Manor (16 page)

"I don't quite understand, Bordeaux. So give her the brooch back, what has it to do with anything?" asked Edweena.

"She can't have been in the room, I surely would have seen her..."

Edweena sighed. "You're talking to yourself, B."

"What's that?" said Bordeaux. "Oh. Excuse me, Edweena. Just thinking out loud."

The rain ran ceaseless in its lashings; the fervent fire the only offering of comfort to them.

Rising from his chair, Bordeaux stripped away a few stray branches from the ivy-clad wall and tossed them to the flames. The wallpaper peeled away with his pulling, as the vines clung desperately to their host. The intricate patterns left behind ran like a network of veins between the scraps of burgundy wallpaper still pasted to the wall. Bordeaux stoked the fire.

"My apologies, Edweena. I suppose it's just fruitless suspicion. The trees latching themselves to our home, these monsters outside and increasing in number and violence."

"You really thought Libra would offer any help?"

"No. I thought Libra might have something to do with it. That brooch, I believe, may be related to the golems."

17: The Rascalities Of Deadsol & Comets

At the end of the sandy pathway that winds along the gentle downhill slope from the manor's threshold, there stands a most curious vigil. Rusted to the colour of dried blood, a postbox perched on a bent pole reaches out as though waiting on a handshake. Out of place as it were, one could assume it to be Tenebrae Manor's last remaining outreach to the world beyond. Disused for so long that none quite knew how it got there, the effect of its salutation was diminishing by the year as thorny bracken reached their sinuous claws out of the dried ground and smothered it. Tenacious it stood, though fighting a losing battle; it would not be long before it buckled and was lost to the overgrowth.

             
And yet for all its neglectfulness, for all its years in isolated abandonment, the hinges of its lid still spoke like clockwork, groaning loudly as it was flung open. Flung open at the hour before moonrise by the dutiful Usher. The postbox had stood so long and seen so little, that when Usher opened it, there was nothing further to say; empty it remained, frustratingly choked for words.

             
As for Usher, never had he been rewarded with the sight of mail; his stony face stayed the same, his hand reaching into the rusty void was always met with nothingness. This was how it always was at the hour before the rising of the moon and Usher, having completed the task trudged slowly up towards the castle. There was no softness to the scene, only rotted remnants of flaky grass. Corroded fence and disintegrated tree branch cluttered the landscape with dry angularity. The dirty snow laid clumped in patches, its bitter cold sharpness enough to slice skin and give dull ache to weary bones.

             
The return journey was always taxing for the ambling Usher, due to the inexorable rigidity of his unfortunate knees. Had his neck allowed further skyward inclination, he would have noticed the branches that clung to his home so; but oblivious he remained, continuing the only pathway he knew to take. Past the last gnarled tree root, twenty-three more steps until he was back at his post in the foyer.

             
All was as it should be, that is until a slight moderation to the scene caught his eye. Ahead of him, the mighty oak doors of Tenebrae Manor stood ever so slightly ajar. Had he erred? He always closed the door behind him when he went to check the mailbox. His simple mind faltered at the discrepancy and for a moment, he was unable to move. But readily he shook away the clotted shackles of his paralysis and proceeded through the archway, paying close attention to his closing of the doors.

             
Usher would have simply returned to his post, had the upright funeral pall not been occupied by the shadow of another statue. What was this madness? Had he been exorcised from his physical being and left to observe it from third person? He scratched at his flaking scalp with a meaty hand and leaned further forward to where the shadowy intruder stood still and silent. Usher recognised the face in the gloom, the eyes of it flickering on a sudden and a wretched grin peeling across it.

From the mouth of the shadow face came a voice. "Boo!"

Usher gaped and stumbled backwards, almost losing his balance before a strong hand caught him from falling. Speechlessly he composed himself, as though his words had been stolen by the cackling laughter that now filled the hall.

"Capital, Usher good sir! Just capital!" Deadsol guffawed. "What a simply splendid reaction!"

The demon clapped his hands in glee, as the Usher appeared desperately perplexed. The words were caught in his throat, so that he could only utter, "Have I been replaced?"

"Replaced? Why no, my good Usher! Not by the hairs of my moustache! It was simply a jest, a joke in good faith to be sure. Really my friend, you must learn to condone such conviviality! Well now, is that the door I hear?"

Usher had heard it too and reached awkwardly for the doorknob. Beyond the open door, the threshold was empty; some phantom had played knock and run. He shivered as something brushed past him; turning at once to where Deadsol was, Usher found the demon replaced with the squatted posture of Comets the jester.

"Half a man could still do this job proper," grunted Comets.

"Mind your words, Comets you simpleton. Our Usher is a fine servant!"

Usher turned his head again and found Deadsol somehow standing just outside the front door. The bewildered doorman shivered. He could not even begin to understand the magic of these two charlatans.

"Knock knock," said Comets.

"Who's there?" replied Deadsol.

"Usher."

"Usher who?"

"Usher-da learnt to dress proper."

Through this volley, the Usher had turned his head back and forth but when the punch line had been delivered, he looked down to discover his suit was on backwards. He gasped.

"Ha-ha! Delightful!" Deadsol was laughing so hard he begun to wheeze.

Comets too, cackled like a hyena. "How ever did you do up those buttons, Usher?"

Before Usher could reply, Comets had dashed his way down the hallway past the great staircase.

Deadsol called after him. "Comets, we surely can't leave our dear friend in such disarray!" before turning to Usher. "There's a good chap, got to run!"

The doorman cried out to the fleeing Deadsol to no avail but as soon as he looked down, his clothes had returned to normal.

Hallways in Tenebrae ran like rivers weaving through cragged valleys and Comets had plunged headlong into the torrent, his little feet flying over the floors that changed from carpet to stone to tile. And just as a scrap of driftwood strikes heedlessly at boulder and river bend, so too did the jester bump himself against wall and ornament. Around the corner there, where he failed to correct his direction in time and knocked a forgotten clay pot from its podium. Tripping over a square of carpet here, he clutched at curtain as he fell and pulled the entire rod down with him. His tiny lungs wheezed with exertion as he tested the extreme limits of his body with this renegade sprint.

Then, as though all energy had been truly sapped from him, he stopped at the top of a great staircase and stared through bulging eyes at the black chasm beneath him.

As for Deadsol, he had only to follow the trail of destruction that his impetuous lackey had left in his wake. Bereft of any haste or concern in his catching up with the speedy harlequin, Deadsol removed his pipe from his vest pocket and lit it leisurely. The clay pot that Comets had sent plummeting to the floor lay in the demon’s path, miraculously intact and he took a moment to bend at knee and restore its arrangement in the cobwebbed corner.

“Ah, these aching joints,” he mumbled to himself.

He did not show the same care towards the fallen curtains, a brush of his foot kicking them to the side as he continued on.

Upon reaching the stairs, he found Comets jumping down them one at a time at a sluggish pace, taut as a spring as he threw all of his small weight into each step as he jumped. The jester turned and squawked when saw that Deadsol had caught up with him. Shaking away his moribund daze, Comets leapt onto the rickety banister and slid down into the blackness with his echoing voice diminishing in volume as he went. The foot of the stairs with which the two rebels were currently descending marked the entrance to the great kitchens where the mute chef was no doubt busy dealing with both Madlyn and his own vocational demands.

The mute chef, being quite the forgettable and enigmatic tenant of Tenebrae Manor, had not received company in some time. He possessed the loyalty of a bulldog and, pertaining to such steadfast ardor, had tirelessly busied himself with the food preparations required of his post. On recent occasions it had appeared to him that his work had somehow become more difficult, more intense. The monotonous nature of his vocation, the unchanging surroundings of sweltering kitchen meant that he could not be certain. Yet his fatigue increased and it was this fatigue that had led him to retire early for once, to cast aside responsibility if only for a short while and sleep in his room.

He was wrapped in an over-tight set of pajamas that were not unlike his cooking attire; the addition of stripes and lack of grease stains being the major distinction. The candle in his hand quivered in his weak grasp as he breathed a silent sigh and shuffled purposefully to his room - a shallow hollow just off to the side of the kitchen.

From his disused throat there bubbled a sort of low gurgle, a groan of relief to his aching joints as he took the weight of his fat body off his feet and sat down on his bed. His was a drooping obesity, his elder years sagging far beyond the ripened swell of Libra's fatness; and the chef seemed to recede inwardly as hermit crab withdraws into its shell, weighed down by slouched shoulder and sluggish stomach. The senses of appetite were all he had - taste and smell. All the while the pleasures of speech and sound had long abandoned him and, now too, his sight was having its own doubts. He could not read anymore - at least not comfortably and the absence of music and conversation in his life left him joyless. It was always upon retiring to his bed that he felt so melancholic; the chef took solace in the fact that his work kept his mind occupied.

There he lay on his bed, a great dome in the dimmed candlelight, his absent gaze absorbing the outline of the doorway where his kitchen lay beyond. Although he was unable to conjure any irritation from the repetitive faucet that dripped out in the kitchen or of the mice that scampered noisily about the floor, he began to develop an acute awareness that had been unnoticed hitherto. It was an awareness of a presence stalking the shadows with ham-fisted stealth. Yes - there was someone nearby, an intruder.

He sat up slowly and pursed his flabby lips; it could not be Madlyn. At this hour, the girl was usually upstairs attending to Libra's grooming. It was obvious that whoever it was that lurked in the darkness cared little about his or her exposure, for so recklessly did their shadows fling themselves about the kitchen beyond the chef's doorway that even he was able to see them.

With the precision of an assassin, the mute chef placed in his hand a sickly impressive cleaver that he kept glisteningly sharp on the floor next to his bed. He rose to his feet and began to creep slowly into the kitchen, his own stealth benefited by the padded sponginess of his foot soles absorbing any sound he could have made. He delved deep into the kitchen without being noticed, moving softly towards what he presumed to be the intruder.

Raising the knife above his head with astute concentration, he prayed that his eyesight was not playing tricks on him and that the object of his strike was indeed the enemy he had heard. The knife dropped like a guillotine, before the lights came on suddenly and the blade fell from his grasp.

The mute chef rubbed his eyes to adjust to the light, before fumbling about the floor for his knife.

“Woah!” came a voice.

The chef grabbed his knife and leapt to his feet in a fighter’s stance.

“Easy, chef!” cried Deadsol, who had reeled backwards with his hands aloft in defence.

The mute chef, quivering in his rage, only just managed to recognise Deadsol and hesitated before lowering his weapon.

“Easy now, Mr. Chef!” said Deadsol. “Now then, I hardly see that thing doing any real damage.”

The chef, bemused, lifted a fleshy brow towards his extended knife arm and saw his cleaver had been replaced with a leek. The vegetable went limp in his grasp and he dropped it to the floor with a gasp.

Turning in his confusion, he saw Comets the jester stamping about the long wooden table that dominated the kitchen floor. The harlequin found no issue in pressing his feet down onto whatever he found, squashing several plates of food and kicking away various utensils to the floor. Comets then espied a large cream cake at the end of the table. He and the mute chef both dashed directly for it, the jester’s eyes hell-bent on its destruction. The chef cursed his slow reflexes as Comets got to the cake first and did not hesitated not in his jumping into it and causing its tiers to collapse within themselves. He grabbed handfuls of the cake and threw them at his own face.

“Look at me, I’m Libra! Gobble-gobble-nom!”

The mute chef slouched in defeat and let out a heaving sigh. Deadsol found himself shuddering with hysterical laughter, clutching at his stomach as tears streamed down his face and into his moustache. He moved to clap the crestfallen chef on the back.

“Never mind, chef! Had you objected, you should have said as such!”

The chef’s lips quivered with a curious mixture of sadness and rage. His depression had pushed him to the very brink, whereby the simple nudge of Comets’ destructive antics had sent him tumbling over.

Covered with cake innards, Comets spoke. “All those in favour of trashing the joint, say I. I!”

Deadsol shrugged his shoulders at the chef, who strained to understand what was happening to his kitchen and why such anarchy had befallen him.

“Sorry, chef. I must say I. And with two being clearly the majority amongst this lovely little treble of men, it must be said that you are tragically outnumbered! Aye! Aye!”

“Aye!” cried Comets, “Aye! Yah! Hurrah!”

“Avast there, Comets. We must distance ourselves from this swampy lagoon where we layeth marooned! Thou art gentle and understanding oh chef! You’ll clean this up will you not?”