Here it is! The amazing cover for The Double Life of Incorporate Things, the 3rd and final Magic Most Foul novel!
Releasing the week of December 2nd in Digital and Trade Paperback! (Dec. 1 update: the novel is currently available to order in print & Kindle. Barnes and Noble outlets available in coming days).
I'm so impressed with what the designer, Stephen H. Segal, did, and I think that it's a perfect image to draw this saga to a close. What do you think, dear readers?
In fitting timing with the December 2nd release of Double Life, Sourcebooks is currently running a limited-time $1.99 sale of Darker Still (Book 1) and The Twisted Tragedy of Miss Natalie Stewart (Book 2)! So if you haven't caught up on the saga, NOW IS THE TIME! Here are the links: Darker Still for Nook Twisted Tragedy for Nook Darker Still for Kindle Twisted Tragedy for Kindle
Stay tuned for the release announcement as soon as it's available for sale! Thanks, dear readers, for coming along for the journey of the serialization for these many months, I will release one more free segment on the blog this week, but the story will not be completed within that segment, there's still more story to tell! Get the full novel to see how everything resolves!
Those who were donors of $20 or more along the Double Life journey, your signed book and/or various donor gifts will be shipped to you and should arrive by mid-December.
(For previous chapters, see right side bar. If viewing by mobile, scroll down from http://leannareneebooks.blogspot.com for all chapters)
Chapter Twenty Six (Part 5)
Mrs. Northe, seeing that we had the family well in hand,
turned her attention to the wavering wall portal, staring at it with concern.
She began murmuring another iteration of numbers, but this time, from what I
could guess, it was a sequence in the proper golden ratio, as high as she could
think of and starting back again at a low number. Reclaiming the divine
patterns, wresting a semblance of peace from the grip of malevolence. The edges
of the carved wall, now cleansed of the blood tokens, flickered back into
becoming a wall once more.
I stayed focused on the shifting paintings and the
struggling possessed bodies, though I wanted to see the look of surprise on the
faces of the two conscious leaders. None of them could have possibly known we
could directly reverse one of their most consistent magics. I deserved a
self-congratulatory moment of pride, but I didn't dare take my eyes off my
targets.
Nathaniel rose to grab the little girl, even as a shot rang
out. There was a scream and a clatter of a gun. One of the Majesties was
clutching a bleeding forearm, blood all over the white tablecloth. It would
seem Vincenzi had tried to fire a weapon, trying to take advantage of the chaos
of wind, still-hovering objects, and the maddening whispers that summoning demons
produced in the air, but Brinkman got to him before he could fire, a wisp of
smoke floating up from Brinkman's own pistol.
Vincenzi was too late. The countercurse worked its magic.
There was a crackle of fire, and a fresh new screaming in
the air added to the ongoing wail of Lady Denbury's ghostly retinue. In a huge,
roaring pop, the paintings all came off their hinges and slid to the floor,
leaving tracks of greasy, bloody paint along the wall as they descended; the
canvasses were wet with indeterminate moisture. Trapped now in the frames
leaning at odd angles against the wall were horrid forms, twisted and nearly
gargoyle-like. Indistinct, demonic heads topped the fine clothes that were
warped and dripping. Only the most ugly ephemera remained; an evil imprint,
oily and greasy, a sheen of bloody perspiration bubbled up on sulfuric
canvases.
So too did the bodies fall, slumping to the floor as if
marionette strings had been cut. We knelt with the families as they began to
rouse, terrified, but as Jonathon did, having some sense.
Brinkman took one look at the horrid exhibition against the
wall and blew his whistle loud and several times, until the room crawled with
officers. He instructed them to get the Winsome family to safety and explained
in no uncertain terms who was friend and who was foe. The family was all too
happy to exit the premises. The little girl threw her arms around me. The
husband scooped up his son in his arms and seemed too ashamed to look at any of
us who had helped him. The mother collected her daughter and murmured to me as
an officer ushered her out: "I don't understand, but thank you…"
Above the din of the police, Reverend Blessing continued the
exorcism rite, and this seemed to give comfort to the pallid officers, coming
into the scene with no idea what to expect, but seemingly glad for some kind of
spiritual offset. If the officers were uncomfortable taking blessings from a
man of color, they didn't show it. I think they knew, seeing this scene, what
was right to fear and who was a mere brother in humankind.
Blessing clutched the Society's insidious '"book of
death,'" and between scriptural declamations he continued to read off
names within, bidding that the souls mauled by the claws of the Society find
their deserved rest.
"Spirits who weep here, heed me," Blessing
bellowed into the foul air, his deep, rich voice captivating and compelling.
"These men seek to gain power through methods of torturous unrest. Be
their downfall by granting your own souls the peace God wants for you."
There was still a wavering line where the portal had gaped
wide. Mrs. Northe was facing it, her arms out, her body fierce and taut,
proclaiming scripture at the portal to try to shut it at last. Wrestling
against the closing of the door, a black form darted out from the portal and
careened into the hall. A demon on the loose.
"No!" Jonathon cried and ran after the wretched
thing in the instant.
"No!" I cried and ran after him. I didn't think
twice any more than he did. I just pursued.
Dimly, I realized the force was headed for the study,
snuffing the lights out down the hall as it passed. Light by light, the vile
force plunged our surroundings into darkness. We pursued it into the study
where one gas-lamp chandelier remained dimly lit, casting the room into an eerie
glow.
But the moment we both crossed the threshold, the door
slammed shut behind us of its own accord and the gas lamp guttered into a pale,
sickly blue pilot. Now it was just us in the dark. And a raw, untethered demon.
Jonathon went to the desk and turned a lamp, which
illuminated for us that the black form stood in front of the window where
beyond, the night was cool and dark, but the demon was blacker than the black
night, its form not richly beautiful in night shadow, but empty and void of all
life.
Jonathon and I stared at one another helplessly, and in the
instant we both started crying scripture at its chasm-like form. Jonathon threw
himself in front of me as the form floated closer. I struggled to put myself in
front of him instead, but he kept me behind him. If such a thing inhabited
Jonathon again, my mind would crack under the strain.
I withdrew the sharp scissor point from my bodice. But what
a blade would do against an incorporeal force was laughable.
A wave of anger and despair washed over me, perhaps the
effect the presence had upon us. Suddenly I wanted to shove Jonathon away from
me. To be anywhere but near him. Ugly sounds gurgled in both of our throats.
Snarling, animalistic noises. It would turn us against each other. In a locked
room. While chaos still reigned in the rest of the house.
Down the hall I could hear that the wailing had resumed.
This time, it had more voices.
The siren that was dead Lady Denbury had all the officers
screaming too. It was, in the end, too much for us.
The spirits animating the corpse, the open portal, the
lingering dark magic, all the amassed horrors the Society had brought upon this
house, down into the floorboards and mortar, it was in the end too much for a
few stalwart souls to close up and shut down. We needed an army of those as
experienced as Blessing and Mrs. Northe. The rest of us were too beaten down,
our reserves tapped by so many facets of this unexpected war. We'd fought a
good fight. But now…
Our shoulders sagged as Jonathon and I both choked and
shook. We were paralyzed by the dread and horror that was the core of the
demonic presence. I felt a hand clamp around my neck. It wasn't Jonathon's. It
was my own, the terrible force eating us inward, turning our own tired selves
against us. We sunk to our knees, both of us gasping and snarling. I tried to
rally, to reject the presence. A choking "I renounce thee..."
afforded me one deep breath before the suffocating darkness threatened to
overwhelm me once more.
I clutched the small scissors in my hand. Whispers careened
around my ears. They urged me to drive the blade into my own flesh. To just
give up. To let them in. To give them room. The point of the very sharp scissor
point pierced my wrist, by my own doing. A drop of blood welled up. I remembered
the runes that the magic had carved into my flesh, and I found myself making a
line up my wrist, searing, burning pain sharpening every sensation.
"Natalie," Jonathon choked. A tendril of black
shadow sweeping out from the demon's wake was wound around his neck, manifest
evil taking shape and wielding violence.
I stared at the line of blood seeping from my wrist, my
heart racing from the burning pain of it. I couldn't give up like this. This
incorporeal beast before me was just that: incorporeal. It needed to be shot
down with a bullet of light, faith, hope, and determination.
I pulled upon everything that had brought me to this point
in one final shrugging off. I thought of all the sacrifices, Maggie's lovely,
bloodstained face flashing before my eyes as if I were praying to a saint. She
was a saint here today, and I was stronger than this. If she could take in five
of the beasts, I could take on one. The worst wretches of the corporeal and
incorporeal world always underestimated determined young women.
I remembered the cross that burned upon her, and with one
even slice of the open scissor blade, I intersected the bleeding line up my
wrist with another one, to make a cross. I lifted up my wrist, blood pooling in
the lace at my cuffs. "I renounce thee!" I cried as the black
silhouette of the demon advanced upon me, hovering.
But like Joan, I needed more armor. I looked around wildly
for something else. I picked up the inkwell on Jonathon's desk, and I plunged
my finger into it, making the sign of the cross upon my forehead as if it were
Ash Wednesday. From dust we were made and unto dust we would return. But not
today.
"I renounce thee!" I shrieked again. Jonathon was
trying to close the distance between us, and I fell to my knees before him,
using the inkwell to paint a messy cross over his brow. "We renounce
thee!" Our rejection caused a tremor in the room. Books rattled on their
shelves. The expensive trinkets from around the world shuddered on the marble
fireplace mantel. The window panes shivered.
Jonathon shook his head, as if tossing off a terrible dream.
He narrowed his eyes at the hesitating, pulsing dark form. "Upon the
graves of our beloved mothers," Jonathon bellowed, "we renounce
thee!"
A sudden burst of light had us blinking and wincing, and
suddenly between us and the horrid, silhouetted form of congealed evil, floated
the bright white forms of two beautiful women. Angels called down to the fight.
I recognized one of the angels as my own. And the second one looked a great
deal more like Jonathon than that thing wailing down the hall did.
"You leave our children alone," the spirit of my
mother said to the vacuous silhouette in a venomous tone. "This is the
end. Your kind has failed. You cannot win against such wondrous love as
this." She turned her beaming, beautiful face upon us, and tears of
amazement rolled down my cheeks.
"Did you hear that?" said the second spirit, a
beautiful woman in a lavish gown, in a vicious hiss In the name of God the
Father, of the Son, of the Holy Ghost. In the name of all the saints, the host
of angels, and everything that is holy, get out of my house!" shrieked the spirit of Lady Denbury.
Lady Denbury was not tied to that body in the dining room at
all but instead tied to her beloved son. Her spirit was resilient and made new
again in the fight. The bright, transparent form of Lady Denbury lifted an
elegant hand into the air and sharply backhanded the inelegant, tar-black form
before her, and it splintered into a spattering mess, wet ashes upon the fine
rug, nothing but ugly residue.
Jonathon seized me and stepped back so that none of the
demonic muck could land upon me, all the while staring up at the ghost of the
mother he'd never had time to grieve. The two ghostly women looked down at
their embracing children.
"Don't go, Mother," Jonathon gasped, his tears
flowing as freely as mine. "I never got to say good-bye, I—"
"I love you too, my darling, perfect boy," Lady
Denbury said with a dazzling smile. "And you needn't say good-bye. I'll
always be with you."
"I am so sorry, Mum," Jonathon said in gasping
breaths. "I should've done more, I should've saved you—" He tried to reach
out and touch her, hold her.
"You've done everything you can," Lady Denbury
replied. "Look at all you've done. You've done more than you even know, my
darling. I am so proud of you."
"Both of you," my mother added. "Don't they
make a perfect couple, Lady Denbury?"
"Indeed. She's Lady
Denbury now." Jonathon's mother smiled at me. "And I couldn't rest
happier."
"Be well, darlings," my mother said as she and her
friend in heaven began to fade. "We're never far, we live within you, and
in any darknesses, we are with you. Never forget. Live in the light."
"I love you," both Jonathon and I blurted to our
mothers simultaneously before they faded entirely. We swayed on our feet,
breathing heavily. The study door swung open again of its own accord. There was
no more screaming anywhere. Just the murmur of activity. Of cleanup. Of a
battlefield victorious.
Somewhere I could hear Moriel raving as he was being led
away, leveling threats and decrying the undeserving underclass. There was
another loud smacking thud, and I suspected Brinkman had knocked him out again.
It was admirable Brinkman hadn't killed Moriel, really. I'm sure the government
would have given him leave to do so; however, whatever secret Moriel held had
something to do with someone Brinkman loved. Human beings could do amazing,
nearly inhuman things for love. This was something the Society seemed keen on
subverting though they seemed unable to understand it. It was not something
they could overpower. That was their ultimate hubris.
I heard Mrs. Northe calling for us.
"In here," I called into the hall with the last of
my energy, allowing Jonathon to gather me up into his arms, sinking with me
again onto the floor, our backs against his beautiful bookcase.
We were bloody and drenched in sweat, ink, and water, our
clothes torn and besmirched. Bruised, battered, alive. Grieving. Joyous.
Relieved. Exhausted. Alive. Jonathon
tore his black silk cravat and made a bandage for my wrist.
Suddenly there were shouts and screams once more. Did I
rejoice too soon? I smelled smoke. And burning flesh.
The dining room was on fire.
Brinkman popped a sweaty, smeared face into the study,
standing wide-eyed at the threshold. "The corpse. The corpse of Lady
Denbury… It..."
"Went up in flames," I finished. "The spirits
will have their revenge. Let them combust the body. It's part of
resolution…"
"My men are instituting a bucket brigade from your rear
well, Lord Denbury," Brinkman said. "We'll do what we can to save the
building. You've a haven at a safe distance, yes? We should evacuate you and
your friends from the estate at last."
Jonathon nodded. "Up the earthen corridor behind the
library. A cottage."
"Go on then, quickly." Brinkman shooed all of us
into the hall and toward the library. I saw my four friends going on ahead, with
Reverend Blessing carrying Maggie's corpse in his strong arms. The sight made
tears spring forth again. Nathaniel and Lavinia directed them toward the
library, and they disappeared into the next rooms.
"Do hurry," Brinkman insisted. "After all
we've been through, I'd hate for a lowly fire to take you down. I'll join you
once I see to it the men are at work with the well."
"Thank you, Mister Brinkman, for everything,"
Jonathon called. Brinkman batted a hand in the air and ran off.
Jonathon Whitby, Lord Denbury, III, paused in the middle of
his corridor, watching flames licking out into the hall from Rosecrest's lovely
dining room. Jonathon stared at the flames of destruction.
"Sometimes," he murmured in a haunted, sad voice that was elder than
his years, "some things are best left to burn."
He grabbed me by the arm, and we darted toward safety.
--
(End of Chapter 26.5 - Copyright 2013 Leanna Renee Hieber, The Magic Most Foul saga - If you like what you see, please share this link with friends! Tweet it, FB, + it! The Magic Most Foul team really hopes the audience will continue to grow and it can only do so with YOUR help! If you haven't already, do pick up a copy of Magic Most Foul books 1 and 2: Darker Still and the sequel: The Twisted Tragedy of Miss Natalie Stewartand/or donate to the cause! Donations directly support the editorial staff.
Cheers! Happy haunting! See you next Tuesday!)
(For previous chapters, see right side bar. If viewing by mobile, scroll down from http://leannareneebooks.blogspot.com for all chapters)
Chapter Twenty Six (Part Four)
There was smoke curling up in wisps from her bodice. Something
had ignited upon her, perhaps within her... I struggled with my bindings,
lifting the chair up behind me, managing a heavy step nearer to Maggie, but she
shoved my shoulder with preternatural strength and I nearly hit my head on one
of the table's sturdy candelabrum, a wisp of my hair catching in a candle flame.
It was a cross that burst into fire right at her sternum. A
large crucifix had been hidden beneath her bodice, and it burned free of the
layers, a solid metal pendant the size of my palm. As the cross ignited and
sizzled her flesh so did it seem the demons burned within her, broiling from
the holy water.
Jonathon jumped to his feet in the
chaos. He hadn't been tied to the chair, only bound with wrists behind his
back. He turned his back to the table and lifted his wrists over the candles on
his side of the table, burning his hands and his cuffs. I could smell these
terrible separate stenches of burning flesh and fabric. But in doing so, he
burned his bindings too. Brave man, he suffered melting flesh on the side of
his palm but snapped his wrists free. He too bounded toward Maggie, but she
tossed him off as if he were a rag doll and his body came perilously close to
the still-open portal where forces hung suspended in this precarious
battleground.
Jonathon reeled to regain his
balance and rushed back over to me. As the side of his palm wept blood and
peeling skin, he undid my bindings.
It was not only Maggie's scream that filled the room but a magnified
and horrible sound, many screams, burning from the inside out as the blessed
liquid doused the demons within. Demons who were surely killing her from inside,
as blood began pouring from her ears, dribbling from her lips, tears of blood
rolling down her cheeks.
Her still-standing body went rigid, shuddering and shaking,
the blood pouring faster. It was the most horrible sight I could have imagined.
This was after having witnessed the sallow flesh of the dead come to life. But
to see the living tortured so...
"Maggie!" I screamed amid the screams. She
staggered to the side, to me, into my arms, and I sunk with her to the floor. I
held her tight. And because I spoke now for someone else's life, somehow my
disability was no match for this fight. My tongue and speech were free.
"Maggie, listen, say with me, say to the devils,"
I cried in a choking, desperate gasp, tears streaming from my eyes as the blood
wept from hers. "I renounce thee...
I renounce thee..." Her body shuddered and shook, her blood seeped all
over my skirts and sleeves.
Margaret Hathorn looked up at me and smiled weakly, causing
another river of blood to pour forth from her lips, and there was an aura of
great white light about her, an angelic halo that took my breath away with
heavenly beauty. She seemed as though she wanted to say something.
But then she died in my arms.
I screamed a wailing sob. I closed her eyelids immediately.
Her dead, open stare would undo my mind. I held her close, her body and blood
still warm.
But there was no time to mourn. For then, another cascade of
events happened all at once. It was everything I could do to keep up.
The other two Majesties started up with the counting and the
chanting again, which made the demonic threshold active, rippling open once
more, but their incantation was stopped by Brinkman cocking the pistols. Nathaniel
had managed somehow to wrestle one of the throwing knifes into his palm and was
cutting loose his bindings and Lavinia's in turn.
Jonathon picked up a pitcher of water and threw them at the
portal, directly toward the lintel and sides, trying to wash away the blood and
ash that had activated it. Nathaniel did the same with a second pitcher.
Lavinia took up a tureen of soup and poured it over the floor, falling to her
knees and scrubbing free all the terrible things that had made this room such a
magnet for the demons. All this action against the portal caused the rectangle
to flicker. The heavy dread of the room lifted slightly. A scale sliding more
toward our victory.
But the corpse of Jonathon's mother started screaming again.
Items lifted off the table again and all of us winced, clapping our hands to
our ears. I lunged for the terrible ledger book of the Master's Society,
searching for clues in its terrible pages. We had to calm the spirits tied to the
effigy of Lady Denbury. The names of the "parts" had to be addressed
and sent to rest.
I dimly heard running footsteps in the hall coming closer. Was
it the police officers at last? But Brinkman hadn't blown the whistle… Who
else…
Yet more familiar faces ran into the room, one dark and one
fair, both looking alarmed. Reverend Blessing and Mrs. Northe! Blessing dressed
in his clerical suit and collar, Evelyn Northe in an elegant but unadorned
riding habit.
Exactly where they'd come from, I couldn't know. They likely
had traveled as soon as they could. Mrs. Northe wielded a pistol, the reverend,
a cross. My heart soared, but as Brinkman trained a gun toward them, Jonathon,
Lavinia, and I all lurched forward and shouted some variant of:
"No, they're on our side!"
Moriel, who had roused again from the punch, was aghast at
the sight of the reverend's dark skin, for he snorted: "Oh, and you dare bring a blackamoor into my sight to soil the very air around us? Your
species really is—"
Another punch from Brinkman sent Moriel back into the
pudding again, causing Blessing almost to smile, but his gaze was soon focused
directly on the more pressing matter of the reanimate corpse, and he moved near
it, knowing exactly what to do as he had done in Doctor Preston's hospital wing.
Mrs. Northe took a moment to consider the wavering, open portal but swept the
room to meet our gazes first.
"My friends," Mrs. Northe cried. "Are you all—"
That's when she saw that Maggie was in my arms. Alongside the siren-like wail
of the reanimate body, she shrieked, falling to her knees at my side. I stared
at her helplessly.
"She took them into
her," I cried. "Demons. From the portal. Five of them. We couldn't
stop her, we didn't know—"
"It should have been me," Mrs. Northe insisted,
tears splashing onto Maggie's scorched bodice. "It should always have been
me, bearing the brunt, my poor girl, no, it should have been me—"
"Right before Maggie acted," I explained, "she
looked at me, with stern resolution, as if this was the only thing she could do."
I spoke as if somehow an explanation could ease the pain. It didn't.
In the background I heard Blessing begin an exorcism rite to
untie and set to rest the collective of unseen spirits that by our experience
we knew were attached to the embodiment of Lady Denbury. The other two Majesties
were laughing and taunting the black man, calling him derogatory names, the
Society clearly based on the falsehood of racial superiority along specific
bloodlines.
But Blessing was unruffled by the racist slurs. He remained focused
on spiritual matters at hand. The Denbury body was one thing, but the retinue
of spirits, they were further unwanted company. We could all feel the chill the
ghosts carried in their wake.
"Reverend Blessing, the names of the dead are writ here,"
I declared, sliding the ledger book across the dining room table toward him,
fighting to be heard against the din of spiritual unrest.
He nodded and began addressing the spirits the Society used
in their methods to power reanimate bodies. He called them by the names listed
in the book. He bid them leave the dead flesh and promised that their remains
would be put in sacred ground. The poltergeist effects the spirits were
wreaking in the room began to settle a bit. Mrs. Northe echoed all of Blessings
words, acting as his assisting minister in the exorcism rite, though she
reiterated and enforced his scripture while still rooted to the ground near
Maggie's cooling body.
The two conscious Majesties started up with insidious
chanting again, in a tongue indiscernible to me, and as they did, the open
portal wavered, dark shadows drew closer to the threshold, as if another wave of
monsters were about to seep over. Brinkman nodded at Nathaniel and spat in one
of the Majesty's faces. Sansalme just sneered up at him. Nathaniel moved to gag
both the men on either side of the still unconscious Moriel.
"This is just the beginning," Sansalme said in a
slight accent I thought might be French. "You've really no idea." He
dabbed Brinkman's spit out of his eye with a silk handkerchief.
"Well, I'm sure you'll be telling us all about it in a
court of law," Brinkman growled.
"No…" Sansalme replied, seemingly unconcerned.
This terrified me as much as the portal. What could threaten these wretches? I
shook myself away from staring at them in disgust.
"We need to get the 'help,' the family, together,"
I cried to Jonathon, to Mrs. Northe, to Nathaniel and Lavinia, who were still
trying to repair and erase the various dark magic effects upon the room. "That's
the cue for the arrests!"
We had to settle the room, lest the police turn against the
unwitting victims, as the officers could hardly be sure who or what was doing
the damage. This was the type of horrific chaos the Society wished to wreak,
where no one could effect change and keep faith, where no one knew who was
friend or foe. Where everyone turned against one another. But the Society
couldn't know what a wonderful team we had among us.
I stared down at Maggie's corpse. My despair would not help
the dead woman in my arms who had been so brave. It was my turn to show that
kind of strength and willingness of sacrifice. I had the knowledge to wield a
countercurse, and I needed to wield it now. I shifted Maggie off my lap, and
Mrs. Northe took her into her arms instead. Her blood had soaked through my
dress, was all over my hands. I couldn't worry about that.
I darted to the elaborate screen that traditionally hid the
staff during the meal and closed off the door that led to the kitchen stairs.
And there the family stood, dazed, just behind the wooden panels. Glassy eyed, they
stood slightly swaying, waiting to be summoned. The sight of all four of them
triggered my immediate shout as I dragged the children forward first. As soon
as I moved, Jonathon was with me in the instant, following with the wife and Nathaniel
with the husband.
"Ego transporto
animus ren per ianua, Beelzebub the Devil!" I cried, and Jonathon
echoed me.
The adults struggled against us, the demons within sensing
that we were at war. Jonathon dodged a punch; I nearly had my hands bitten by
the red-eyed children. Lavinia, Blessing, and Mrs. Northe all rushed to lend
hands while still spouting scripture. The forces which sought to harm us
recoiled. Together we took up the same shout, shoving the disoriented, confused
bodies toward their respective paintings.
We said the countercurse again and again: '"sending the
soul through the door…" This had been Jonathon and my puzzle to sort
through together when we met. The words were roughly translated from Latin, but
with an Egyptian word for "soul-door" put in for an extra
complication, as the portrait frames were literally a door for the soul to be
deposited into. It had been a hard-fought mystery to solve but the countercurse
had worked for restoring Jonathon.
Jonathon, Nathaniel, and Lavinia, all of us took up the
countercurse together, utilizing variants on the Devil, Satan, the damned, any
possible name for what was supposed to be the penultimate of evil, the prince
of darkness itself. We tried to encompass all that these foul energies wished
to be, and in doing so, trap them by the title they aspired to. The power of
the name, we'd learned, was one of the eldest powers of all, and it was one the
Society seemed to take very seriously. We had our faith. They had theirs. And
now we had to play ours against theirs with everything we had.
--
(End of Chapter 26.4 - Copyright 2013 Leanna Renee Hieber, The Magic Most Foul saga - If you like what you see, please share this link with friends! Tweet it, FB, + it! The Magic Most Foul team really hopes the audience will continue to grow and it can only do so with YOUR help! If you haven't already, do pick up a copy of Magic Most Foul books 1 and 2: Darker Still and the sequel: The Twisted Tragedy of Miss Natalie Stewartand/or donate to the cause! Donations directly support the editorial staff.
Cheers! Happy haunting! See you next Tuesday!)
As you've noticed, the blog has been overtaken by the serialization of The Double Life of Incorporate Things, which has been such a wonderful, fascinating
ongoing experiment. But recent experiences ought not go unmentioned.
Fittingly on November 2nd, dia de los muertos, and All
Saints' weekend, I spent the evening in the haunted and incredibly historic
Morris-Jumel Mansion in Manhattan for a ghost investigation, thanks to dear friend Elizabeth Kerri Mahon, author of ScandalousWomen, who found out about it in the first place and invited us along (on her birthday, no less!).
This mansion saw the likes of George Washington, Aaron Burr, Bonapartes, and least of all, the indomitable lady of the house, Eliza Jumel.
Paranormal is my normal. I believe in ghosts because I have seen, heard and felt them, all in various ways and capacities through my life. If you've read my work you know that spirits and spirituality factor in as the major themes.
So I don't NEED proof. I know what I know. I am suspicious of and generally dislike the idea of ghost hunting. I write about ghost-busters, I don't need to patrol them myself, because often if you go looking for things the wrong kinds of things are looking for you.
But in this case, the mansion itself was putting on the
evening, billing it in a relaxed manner in which it would be a historical
sleepover with tour guides availing themselves to our questions and giving us a
whole night in the house to ourselves, what a neat way to live in that house
for a day and get a chance to immerse myself in the history of it. If there was
a haunting along the way, so be it.
What I wasn't prepared for was the amount of spectral
activity that availed itself to us in the house as if it were another tour
guide. The lady of the house was certainly active for her guests. Known to
actively and unabashedly haunt the house, Eliza Jumel was a fascinating woman
who led a fascinating if not oft controversial life. (For more about this amazing lady, please visit Elizabeth's fabulous blog post about her.)
The evening began with the group of about twenty
participants interested in history and the spectral (my kind of folk),
listening in the small ballroom to gentlemen from Acoustic Archives. They spoke
with us about some of the amazing spectral activity captured and recorded in
the house, showcased video and audio, and explained a little about what they'd
be doing with equipment in the house that night. We continued with a tour of
the outside and full inside of the mansion by very talented, knowledgeable guides.
Then we all gathered in the kitchen, the basement of the
house and the official "ghost hunting" began. With this, I was
skeptical. Ghosts don't necessarily like to perform on command. The questions
to "show yourself" and "give a sign" as bidden by the gentlemen
with the equipment weren't really garnering a response. But they were amenable
to all of us asking questions and participating and the group got an
interesting discussion going in the dark, talking about history and positing
things the spirits might be feeling or hanging onto. It was a large sort of
seance, in a way, but there was just too much activity, too large of a group, I
thought, to get a specific response. However there were significant cold spots
near me and my friends, and I saw that someone had taken a photo and there were
a lot of orbs. I sensed we were not alone, but I knew it would take time before
something responded, if anything would. I don't like to test the spirits, and
had this not been a welcoming energy in the building, I would not have stayed
there. I certainly don't tempt malevolence. A fascinating development began
when we decided to split up the group by gender. Men went upstairs with
equipment, we ladies remained downstairs and for the next hour. And we
communed. Without any real need for communication with spirits (I can sense
people's desperation about these things, proof of the paranormal drove a lot of
very intelligent persons from Conan Doyle to Houdini a bit batty, so I try to
steer clear of ever having expectations of the spirit world, for in
expectations therein sets up disappointments), we talked to them anyway.
We
all, taking turns, told them of what all had happened for women in the
intervening time since women had been there in that basement as slaves or
servants, young or old, all of them living a life of great toil and struggle
and limited freedoms. We told them of laws, of suffrage, of rights, of careers
they likely couldn't have imagined in their day. We thanked them. Profusely.
For being our foremothers. For having visions that grew into our modern world.
For having stories no one would ever know. We honored them. We tried to imagine
what their lives would have been like. We all realized how lucky we are now.
How much there is to be thankful for. How much there is still left to be done,
in terms of equality. And then, when we wondered if the lady of the house had
much hand in the kitchen, all the track lighting flickered on in a wave and
then off. (No one was near the switch and it was not on a dimmer so the effect
would have been impossible to create by hand). There were certainly spiritually
charged feelings about house and housework.
When we rejoined others upstairs, they were taking our
questions and comments further, with incredible results. With a small flashlight
with its cap unscrewed so that any connective presence from a ghostly response
would make it flicker on or turn it back off, the lady of the manor was
answering questions.
With a directive to turn the flashlight on to full or off
depending on a yes, no, or 'flicker if maybe' question, the lady told us she
liked our presence there, was fond of men but never really loved one, had
complex feelings about children, was very proud of her home, would like to have
a ball in the ballroom (she was hesitant about this until I clarified for her
if she would like it if it were a ball done in the style and dance of her day,
and this was a resounding flashlight "yes"). And she really liked
being spoken to in French. (Thanks to fellow writer and bookseller Stacey Agdern
for helping provide insights and some French).
Perhaps the most striking answer to a question was the
flashlight blazing in full when asked if she might linger on haunting her own home because of fear. Fear of what was next. Fear of the beyond. Fear of passing onwards...
It's something I muse on in every one of my books. The veil between our world and the spirit world is always very thin in my work. As I feel it is very thin in general if one but focuses upon it. Ghosts play prominent roles; are heroes, antagonists, love interests, plot twists, problems, saviours, complications. What I try never to do is answer those questions beyond what I feel the characters can safely say. What the strictures of my worlds dictate.
I was moved by our night in the mansion, both from a human level of what we accomplished as people, strangers drawn together merely by a very respectful interest in history and what might haunt it. And then from a spirit level as there was no trickery to the flashlight, (I'm enough of a skeptic to have queried the item but there was no incentive for the light to be rigged, no one was filming this, no programs were watching, and no obvious way it could have been rigged, so I simply took the item for what it was) and Lady Jumel's responses matched what we know of history, of her nature, with some surprises and nuance. She deigned to bring herself to life for us and entertain in her home once more. What an honour.
I don't come away from a night like that with any answers, or any different notions about ghosts or about an afterlife. I believe what I believe; that the spirit world is always there for us, but that we shouldn't rush desperately into its arms. As for the Great Beyond, that's the divine mystery. And we'll all find out when we do. I don't go looking for proof of the supernatural, in this case, I went looking to spend time in a historic mansion. I let instances happen to me and then I enjoy and respect them for the isolated incidents they are. Life and the spirit is an unfolding journey. I can be a very impatient person, but when I just trust in process, I'm happier and more likely to be presented with all that I need, moment by moment, experience by experience. For more poetic and lyrical musings of that nature, please read my books.
Soon I'll post another musing of visiting a building that helped define me and my mission in life and art.
The late Lady Denbury was the body. She was the amalgam of
"parts." She was the
reanimate terror. The final, desecrating insult to the Denbury legacy…
A yellowed corpse with matted, dark hair that was tousled in
what had once surely been a very lovely funereal coiffure now stood as the next
parading terror at the dining room door. She was swathed in black robes synched
by a golden belt, the flowing fabric hiding the somewhat disjointed and uneven
height of her, as her body would have been pieced together from myriad bodies. This
was done so that the unnatural creation would tether as many ghosts to the
reanimate body as possible, one ghost per harvested body part, harnessing the
most amount of life force possible to make the corpse active.
And then the corpse opened its mouth. Everything in the air
screamed in response. This was just like it had been for us in Doctor Preston's
hospital before; the unnatural tie of spirits that powered the body, the tenor
of the dark magic carved into dead flesh, made the very fabric of the air
shriek in a pitch specifically designed to undo the sanity of anyone within
earshot. As the unseen ghosts that made the room drastically chill by their
presence were worked up into spiritual frenzy in the hellish siren wail, plates
and silverware lifted off the fine linen upon which they'd been laid. The
poltergeist phenomena of the attendant spirits was now made active. One
reanimate form created myriad paranormal problems in its wake.
Lavinia and I winced, shrinking from the noise; Nathaniel
clapped hands over his ears, unprepared for this turn. Brinkman closed his eyes
and remained calm.
Jonathon stared in horror at the openmouthed creature that
bore some slight resemblance to his face. This time, this was not something
Jonathon could endure without reaction. He stood and pounded his fists upon the
marble-topped table, causing all silverware airborne by spirits' affectation to
clatter back down onto the marble. "Enough!" he shouted.
Moriel rose and went to the standing, swaying corpse, taking
its yellowed hands in his. "That's enough, dear. You heard him." The
corpse shut its mouth and turned to Jonathon expectantly. It just stood there
like a terrible statue as Jonathon's knuckles went white when he clutched the
back of his chair.
"You will not dishonor the late Lady Denbury so,"
Jonathon growled. "It is an insult to this house!"
"Well played, Lord Denbury III," Moriel laughed,
applauding Jonathon. "You did originally have me convinced. You'll have to tell me how you managed to get
yourself out of the painting, I simply must
know!" he said eagerly. "And also,
what you did, then, to one of my demons! If he is not within you, whatever
happened to him? He'd have wanted a new place to stay…"
Maggie piped up with a distant, airy voice. Amid the latest
horror, I'd almost forgotten about her sitting a seat away from me. "The
demon left Lord Denbury because he wanted to be with me. I kept him… I loved him! He became mine!" She swiveled her
head to Moriel, her eyes glassy, her lips dry and cracked. I wondered if they'd
sedated her with something, or if her mind had simply gone, all the work in Chicago for nothing.
"Ah, did he then?" Moriel asked Maggie gamesomely.
"He did!" she insisted.
"Then you do have your uses, little poppet."
Moriel laughed. "Delightful, all of this! What discoveries we make!
Sansalme, make a note of all this in the book!" The second-in-command
pulled out a fountain pen from his pocket and loomed over me, flipping to a
blank ledger page and taking notes in deep, iron-red ink…
Maggie swiveled her head back and looked directly into my
eyes. Something hardened there. She pursed her lips. She knew me. A fire
flickered there. What was she up to...?
Majesty Moriel looked at the dead Lady Denbury and back to
Jonathon with a sick smile. "I knew resurrecting Mumsy would put you to
the true test, son. I assume your friend here and your baits, then, are
plants." Moriel leered at me, then Lavinia. "But good that you
brought them. They're pretty, they'll do." Then he whipped his gaze back
to Maggie with an altogether darker intent. "Don't you think, Miss
Hathorn? You're very pretty, you've done nicely thus far, to trap a demon for
your very own?"
Maggie just nodded primly and regained that airy voice that
did not sound inhabited as her own. "Thank you, Your Majesty. All for the
greater purpose."
"You see," Moriel said to all of us. "You'll
all come around to Miss Hathorn's way of thinking. You'll see it is the only way." He looked over his
shoulder. "Isn't that right, Mister Brinkman?" Brinkman nodded. I
gritted my teeth.
"Do secure Mister Veil there," Moriel instructed
of Brinkman before turning to Jonathon. "It was good you tied up your
girls, Denbury. Less we have to do." Brinkman pulled a leather strap from
his pocket and secured Nathaniel's hands behind his back. Nathaniel started to
struggle, but Moriel whipped out a second knife from another pocket,
cautioning: "Careful, Mister Veil. I spend my spare hours testing throwing
knives on peasant flesh. I doubt your redhead there would look improved with a blade
jutting from her gullet, now would she? Let Mister Brinkman do his work."
As Nathaniel quieted and Brinkman obeyed, I questioned the
operative's loyalty. I felt everything begin to spin out of control. We weren't
going to make it out alive. The fear I'd kept in check threatened to undo me. I
tried to hold back tears, but one escaped.
The Majesty turned to the yellowed corpse hovering beside
him and instructed: "Go and tie up your son, my love. I don't want him
getting rowdy, but I'd like him to see all this. If he's a good boy, I might
even deign to adopt him as my own. He should've been mine all along."
Jonathon spit at the wretched man. If looks could kill,
Jonathon's expression would have ripped the Majesty limb from limb, slowly and
agonizingly.
The hideous form of what was supposed to represent Lady
Denbury lurched over and bound Jonathon's hands behind the back of the
beautifully carved chair. He would not look up at the thing as it tied him. I
did not blame him. I stared at Jonathon, willing him strength and if he could
read minds, telling him how much I loved him. Suddenly, for him, I felt
invincible, despite these harrowing turns. God had to be on our side. Heaven had to be watching and waiting for us to
make our move... For no one should be meant to endure such hell.
Once finished, the effigy of Lady Denbury shuffled back to
stand against the wall, leaning against the marble of the mantel, slightly in
shadow, as if it needed the corner to prop itself up. Its milky, cataract eyes
were unfocused as it stood awaiting its next orders and purpose.
I wanted to look at Brinkman, to demand, with one glance
alone, why he wasn't saying or doing anything. Surely, this was all punishable
to the death. The Majesties had damned themselves enough, hadn't they? But no,
our rule still stood. We hadn't yet done the countercurse and that had to be done to restore the Winsome
souls to their bodies, lest that hapless family be caught up in collateral
damage. We had to limit the circumference of this ever-expanding circle of woe.
"Now, dinner! Sit and watch your betters eat,"
Moriel said to the gathered company gleefully. "That's how it should be.
How it should always have been. Always
should be!"
The family came in to serve the three Majesties dinner, moving in a daze, their possessed bodies less animate
and more unwieldy than when the demon had overtaken Jonathon. Aprons were slung
over their fine clothes that had begun to tear and fray. I found I couldn't
look at the two children. It was too painful. But I couldn't look at the
representation of Lady Denbury, either; she was too horrid. So I stared at my
empty plate and prayed for our lives. I struggled to keep focused and not give
over to panic and futility.
Food was laid before us. Not that
I had any appetite. Not that we were free to eat. The laying out of food seemed
symbolic, a representative trapping. The Majesties didn't eat, either; they
merely drank a dark wine—if even wine at all, something thick and pitch black
like tar—in crystal goblets. I didn't want to know what it was. It seemed too
viscous and dark to be blood. It left a black stain upon their yellowing teeth.
I imagined all this lavish food going uneaten spoke to the Majesty's desire for
wastefulness, greed, for lavish loss at the expense of others. I could see them
just leaving this whole table to rot. But not while I had breath in my lungs
would I be that passive.
I had been given a second chance
at my voice. I was not about to lose that power now.
Bound or no, we all still had our
voices. Leveling the countercurse would set things in motion as planned. We
couldn't have figured the equation changing so horridly with the corpse of Lady
Denbury, but we couldn't let that derail us. It was up to the rest of us to
stay strong when Jonathon was doing everything in his power to maintain his
sanity. He couldn't look at the creature, either. I didn't blame him. He'd
never properly mourned. I longed for the moment he could and put all these
nightmares at last to bed, with my help.
"The lintel, please, Vincenzi,"
Moriel said, some of the dark substance dribbling down the side of his paunchy
face.
Vincenzi leaned over toward Maggie, and I saw the flash of a
silver knife and blood spurted onto the marble table as Maggie shrieked, her
finger dripping scarlet in the instant. He grabbed her hand and squeezed it
into the goblet before him. "You could have warned me," she pouted to
the large man. He sneered at her. She didn't fight him as he clamped her hand
tighter, swirling the blood in the glass. I had to remind myself she had somehow
come here of her own volition.
The third Majesty rose with the last offering. With the
bloody-tipped knife, he carved a horizontal line meeting the two vertical lines
in a tall rectangle. He poured the contents of the glass across the line,
scarlet blood dripping down the fine wallpaper in dark, garish streaks. I felt
the ground tremble a bit. Vincenzi was murmuring to the wall like his
counterpart had done. As I blinked my eyes, it seemed the wall itself rippled.
Moriel and Sansalme took up murmuring too. Numbers, in a sequence. It was what
Crenfall had been murmuring in his madhouse cell. The golden ratio, but the
divine pattern uttered in reverse. It was writ on the floor in tar and blood
and now murmured actively on their lips.
The first course was being cleared
around us. Soon the possessed bodies of the wretched Winsome family would
either be downstairs or hidden again. I tried to catch Jonathon's eye. We
couldn't delay. We needed to level the countercurse now, while all four of them were in the room. Even though Jonathon
hadn't managed to lure out the Society plan for the recorder in the wings as
Brinkman had demanded, if what that carving of the wall meant what I thought it
might, we couldn't afford a portal...
Whatever was being called or loosed in this room... The police couldn't arrest that... A mouth to hell…
But I couldn't do the countercurse
on my own, not with four souls and bodies to reunite. We all needed to do our
part and all in one concerted effort. I kept trying to get Jonathon to look at
me, but he was transfixed at what was becoming manifest behind Moriel.
A dark rectangular shadow opened
up, like a door swinging open. Where there was a wall, there was now a
corridor. Inside, just like the girding behind the walls of a home, was the
framework between life and death. It was an awesome and terrible sight that was
impossible to truly comprehend, even when staring into its abyss.
I recognized this from one of my
dreams, a corridor between life and death, between forces for light and those
for the dark. Wavering threads hovered inside, weaving and moving like a busy New York street.
The fabric of the very universe was laid bare before us, something we shouldn't
be privy to, but as the Society was tampering with the very tapestry of the world
and tearing at its threads, sticking wrenches into gears, the divine skeleton
was visible beneath the flesh.
Five black, vaguely human forms
peeled out from the ether and into our world, crossing the threshold with
horrible murmurs rising in the air like the cresting of a storm. They were like
shadows without bodies, and they whipped about the dining room like careening
ghosts.
They were visible, black holes,
obliterating chandelier light, firelight, and candlelight as they passed by it.
Fomented misery, they made the air not only frigid, but bitter and malevolent.
The taste of unadulterated evil. As Moriel laughed the forms flew faster,
dizzying in their movement. These were what possessed bodies. These were the
host demons. The sweat of panic dripped down my temples.
The corpse of Lady Denbury began
to groan again; at any moment I expected another full-fledged wail. The
silverware rattled and lifted, hovering a few inches above the table once more.
I wished I could, through force of will, like I had seen spirits do once
before, shift all the knives and forks and any pointed object. I wished I could
drive everything straight into Moriel's chest.
"Come, come," Moriel
cried to the shadowy forms. "I am here to give you life. Soon we'll
outnumber our enemies. Life by life, blood by blood. Come! Take..."
"Yes, come!" Maggie cried suddenly, pushing back
her chair, rising to her feet. "Come unto me, demons! Fill me! All of
you!" Maggie cried. "I want you..."
The shadows pacing the room suddenly turned as if dogs catching
a scent.
"No..." I murmured, wresting in my chair. My words
fumbled in my throat, my old disability threatening to halt my words as anxiety
tended to do. "No...don't…do that..."
"I want you," Maggie continued. There was a
horrific and unnatural shudder of her body as the shadows all pounced at once,
disappearing into her. The Majesties gazed on with a sick, eroticized hunger.
"I want you"—a sudden, fierce fire leaped into her
eyes as she retaliated with a scream—"to go to hell!"
From the pocket of the prim pinafore she'd worn, she
withdrew a glass bottle with an ornate cross upon it, clear liquid inside.
I realized dimly she was not cursing us to hell. She meant
the demons. The demons that had overtaken her. Or, maybe…that she had just
entrapped…
Seizing the bottle of what I realized must be holy water—why
else would there be the cross upon it?—she drank it down swiftly, emptying the
whole bottle, choking but drinking still. Her face contorted in agony. She
crumpled forward in a jerking movement. A wretched gurgle sounded in her
throat.
"No!" Majesty Moriel cried, his look of ecstasy
suddenly turning to rage. "Traitorous little bitch, what do you think
you—"
Brinkman suddenly punched Moriel in the face, and he slumped
face first into a bowl of pudding. As the other Majesties on either side rose
to fight, Brinkman whipped two pistols from his pocket, one trained on either
of the Majesties. My heart buoyed. The man was our side after all. Thank God.
He waited long enough to prove it. No. Brinkman was smart, the souls weren't
yet back in the painting, and him playing their side had bought him more
leverage, to be standing so close to the wretches, able to escape being bound
like the rest of us.
Just as I swelled with hope, Maggie started screaming.
--
(End of Chapter 26.3 - Copyright 2013 Leanna Renee Hieber, The Magic Most Foul saga - If you like what you see, please share this link with friends! Tweet it, FB, + it! The Magic Most Foul team really hopes the audience will continue to grow and it can only do so with YOUR help! If you haven't already, do pick up a copy of Magic Most Foul books 1 and 2: Darker Still and the sequel: The Twisted Tragedy of Miss Natalie Stewartand/or donate to the cause! Donations directly support the editorial staff.
Cheers! Happy haunting! See you next Tuesday!)
Instead of drinking the blood, Moriel gestured for Sansalme
to rise.
Brandishing the knife, the associate moved to the wall behind the
Majesty's chair and drove the blade into the fine paper and the plaster behind
it. He serrated the blade down the wall in a line, continuing unto the
wood-paneled lower wall. He shifted a few paces, the length of a door
threshold, and struck another line into the wall from above his head down to
the floor.
He then took one glass and tipped it at the top of one of the lines,
blood pouring downward in a messy rivulet to pool at the baseboard. Next, he
lifted the second glass and poured another bloody line. I heard him murmuring
something unintelligible at the wall. The hairs on my arm nearest to that wall
began to slowly stand on end.
"One should never waste
blood," murmured Moriel in a hungry tone. "It is too precious of a
resource. But that is what your kind
thrives upon, does it not, Whitby?
Forgive me if I do not call you by a more ancient name. You have taken a body
in this time, and that is how I shall refer to you, everything and everyone in
their place."
"Call me what you wish, but I hesitate at your making
assumptions of me. What do you presume I thrive upon?"
"Waste, wantonness, disregard for life." Moriel
gestured to the spilled blood behind him. "See how we honor the desires of
creatures such as you?"
"Ah. Yes. You have honored my kind perfectly,
Majesties."
"And it is how we reach out and call to you,"
Moriel said with a deadly little smile. He rose. With a scuff of his boot, he
kicked back a length of fine Persian carpeting beneath the dinner table,
revealing the wooden floor. "Now you see how we built bridges unto you in
the first place."
I glanced down to see that the floor beneath the long, thick
rug was covered in symbols of varying kinds, runes and numbers, a mess of
different religions and traditions, symbols of faith inverted and perverted,
some of the floor carved, some covered with chalky powder, some drippings of
wax, some patches painted in tar-like substances and burn marks, some washed in
an iron-red stain that was surely blood... A deal of it I recognized as being
similar to what Maggie had hellishly fashioned inside her empty closet when she
was recreating the demon's likeness out of the scraps of Jonathon's damaged
portrait.
It was a mess of ritualistic offerings and evocations to
bring terrible things to life... The pooling blood behind Moriel's throne of a
dining room chair began to dribble toward those grooves and carvings, soaking
deeper into the damaged wood as if it were parched earth.
I shuddered. Why didn't we think to look under the surface
of things?
Jonathon pretended not to notice, as if everything was
perfectly normal, if not boring. Whatever he had done to steel himself to such
revelations was the most impressive thing I could imagine.
Brinkman was a statue at Moriel's side. I wondered what was
going through both of their minds. Whatever was carved, painted, and bled onto
those floorboards was yet another spell to break, and I tried not to panic, as
I only knew one countercurse, and that had to do with the poor prisoners on the
wall who had, thankfully, remained in their painted positions.
"Before we get to our meal, let's talk a little
business, shall we, Majesty Moriel?" Jonathon posited. "Your plans. I
need to know what all is unfolding both here and in New York. You've courted us here, to walk
the earth, summoned by your dark dealings, lured by your promises. My kind
seeks our utopia. I do hope you're getting closer to providing it. I want to
know how you'll be doing so, beyond your various tenuous experiments that have
suffered as many failures as successes."
Moriel and Sansalme looked like beady-eyed vultures, staring
at Jonathon with a strange, collective expression that shifted discomfortingly
between starvation and caution. Moriel smiled again, revealing more of his
jagged, yellowing teeth. Sansalme reached into the briefcase he'd set to the
side of his chair and threw something heavy upon the table with a resounding
thud. It was a ledger.
"Before we do that, Whitby," Moriel replied in a singsong
tone. "I'd like to summon more of your kind to the dinner table." His
eyes swept to Lavinia, then me. "Since you've provided such fare..."
He checked his pocket-watch. "And Vincenzi should be here any moment to
provide the lintel."
I turned away so that he could not see my fear at being
called "fare." The blood offering was not enough, clearly. I did not
wish to appear complicit, as that would be too convenient, but I would not let
him have the pleasure of my discomfort. Lavinia did the same, and I could feel
her eyes boring into me for strength like pulling water from a well.
Lintel, Moriel
said. The top part of a door... That's what the two carved and now bloodied
lines were upon the wall. The sides of a door... No... I could feel my bruised
and punctured hand begin to shake. We had to move forward, quicker, before they
opened something to only God could know what...
Moriel gestured for Sansalme to bring the ledger forward,
toward me.
"If God writes your name in the book of life," Moriel began in a grand
tone, curling his hand in a slow flourish, "so shall your names herein be
written in the book of death. The power of the name is vast, as we know. And
the more names rent asunder in our cause, the more powerful our book of death."
The long, leather rectangular ledger was black, tipped in
red. The lackey flipped it open and shoved it under my nose. The ledger bore
names inked down one column.
Lord and Lady Denbury
There was an underline beneath their name that carried over
to the X like a smear.
Jonathon Whitby, Lord
Denbury III
Another X crossed out Jonathon, as his soul was still
presumed dead...
Mister Crenfall
Doctor Neuman Doctor Preston Doctor Stevens The Winsome Family
The top three names were blotted with an X. Crenfall was
useless. Preston was dead. Was Samuel, Doctor
Neuman, Jonathon's friend in Minnesota,
dead too then? Likely presumed so. The last doctor, the one who had been
working on the chemicals in New York,
did not have his name crossed off. For now. The Winsomes I assumed were in the
portraits, though I couldn't be sure.
There was another host of names listed under "parts."
All the names were smeared. Parts. I
swallowed back bile. Perhaps whatever corpse had been built in the Denbury
cellars, these were the names of the poor souls who could never find rest, not
while a part of their bodies were sewn up into such unnatural horror. Wondering
where that corpse was threatened to undo any false calm I managed. I was frightened
it would turn up at any moment, around any corner…
Each name in the book was written in a dark red substance
that was surely blood. Whose, only the devil could know. But there was an X and
several blank lines...
"Go on, write yourself down, girl," Moriel said to
me with a brilliant, nauseating smile. "Just...sign on the line..."
Moriel looked toward the ornate screen for the servants to stand behind. "Come
here, little Barty Winsome, come when I call you," Moriel cooed.
The little Winsome boy, who looked like such a cherubic
little gentleman in his portrait, such a contrast from the hollowed, sickly
child before me, shuffled out from behind the staff screen and toward me.
Moriel slid his ceremonial knife down the silk runner and with a preternatural
motion, Barty stopped it.
I felt rough hands that were not those of a child fumble and
pull at the bindings of the hand that hadn't been "cut." Fingers chafing
and bruising me with clumsy force, a knife sliced through the fabric around my
wrists. Once my right hand was free the possessed boy seized it, brought it
around over the book, and punctured my index finger with the tip. I cried out.
He forced my finger onto the line of the ledger. "Sign," the boy said
in a gravelly voice that was incongruous with his body. I made a feeble, wavy
line that in my mind was not putting down my name but instead a scream. In my
mind I declared, with that blood: I
renounce thee...
There was a slight breeze in response, ruffling the pages of
the book. Moriel sneered, as if my blood were in his power. I liked to think it
was the direct opposite.
Curiosity seized me, and I rifled through the book before
me. The child made a move to stop me, but the Majesty clucked his tongue.
"No, no, let her look..."
The page numbers were not in order but in that reverse of
the golden ratio, and each page bore names and plans, some sketches, chemistry,
and theory, all madness. The Society's disparate wings of experimentation,
horrible upon horrible. A deal of it matched the wretched sprawling scrawls
upon the estate floor.
"Are our plans not beautiful, little girl?" the
Majesty cooed, drinking in my disgusted expression. "We will rebuild the
natural world with unnatural evolution. In doing so, restore natural order,
with infernal lineage."
I stared at the ugly man in horror. All of their work was in defiance of divine patterns, of the laws of
life. The Society wished to rewrite the very building blocks of all that was
good and beautiful upon this earth, withering the sacred, making heaven's
natural order unnatural chaos. The theorists and doctors of the day may argue
that God could come down to numbers and mathematics. If that were true, then
maybe so too could hell be summed up in equations. It was a mad book of
possibility, but all of it was most certainly quantifiable.
There was a rustle of noise in the hall, and a figure
appeared in the doorway of the dining room. One that caused my heart to tumble
deep into my chest.
Oh, God... Maggie...
Margaret Hathorn stood framed by shadow in a lovely pale
blue dress the color of a bright New
York sky...
A hulking, awkward, bug-eyed man loomed behind her, surely the
third "Majesty." They all looked as though they were the worst of
what blue-blooded inbreeding had done to elder generations. And then there was beautiful
petite Maggie among us, a jewel, a wide-eyed lost lamb offsetting such
ugliness.
Maggie's gaze swept the room blankly. As if she didn't know
any of us. Her gaze lingered on Jonathon. "Hello, Lord Denbury..."
she said slowly, as if she were determining something. I doubted there was
anything left of her mind, by the look of her.
I managed to hold back tears. If she would not acknowledge
us, I could not act like we knew her. For all the Majesties knew, we were all
strangers. That might play to our advantage. A flicker of confusion passed
across Brinkman's eyes, but it was soon lost again inside the walls of his cool
facade.
Jonathon only stared at Maggie and offered one of the
trademark leers the demon had been so good at, and he purred: "Hello, pretty..."
I could not hold back a revolted shudder at that. At those
exact words the demon had once used upon me. Jonathon had heard and seen it all
from his painted prison, and for a moment I feared that whatever magic was in
this house was reverting him back into what his body had become... No... I had
to trust him. Even though everything felt like it was sliding against us...
There were officers in these very walls... We couldn't lose, surely...
"Majesty Vincenzi," Moriel said, gesturing to the
lumbering,black-and-gray-haired man
with sallow olive skin. "How good of you to come." Vincenzi moved
forward to kiss Moriel's hand before pulling out a seat for Maggie, two seats
away from me, each of us spaced out around the table with a chair between us.
"Before you clutter this home with more of my ilk,"
Jonathon demanded with a stern tone, "answer my questions." In the
end, the demons seemed quite sure that the humans who wished to use them, in
fact, answered to them. The Majesties were playing with the most terrible kind
of fire, one they couldn't safely control. "Tell me your plans going
forward, so that I may approve of them or set you on a new course."
Moriel furrowed his thick, graying brows. "Why, we play
for the hearts and minds of the nations that have turned from our power. We
seek to take our magic right to the core. The very crux of the matter."
Moriel smiled eerily, his milky eyes lit. "You know, Whibty, this isn't a
casual association, our being in the Denbury estate today. We're not just here
because it's a lovely property we got hold of. One could call my being here a
vendetta. Though my perspective was one of a slow-burning flame rather than a
constant war. I wanted to be sure that when I went after what I'd always
wanted,it would be unquestionably mine.
When you resurrect the dead, they are unquestionably yours."
Jonathon, in playing his part, bowed his head as if he
understood. But I knew this was a new and unexpected wrinkle. Something flashed
in his eyes. Perhaps his father was right and there had been something to be
paranoid about after all, something in the Whitby past to be concerned about. Moriel gestured
Brinkman over toward Jonathon.
"Mister Bank, do take up my knife there and use it to
keep an eye on Whitby.
I'm interested in putting his body to the test." Moriel's sick little
smile curved his thin lips. He gestured to Sansalme to his right, who withdrew
his dagger again and held it very obviously in front of Nathaniel. Perhaps our
valiant gentlemen were not trusted as Society associates after all.
"Majesty Vincenzi," Moriel said sweetly. "Did
you bring my lady along as I bid you?"
"Of course, Your Highness," Vincenzi replied in a
thickly accented voice I assumed was Italian.
"Very good."
Moriel reached again into his pocket, and this time withdrew
a small silver bell. He rang it long and hard, a sharp, high-pitched ringing
that went reverberate through the house.
"We've still one more guest to seat," Moriel
explained grandly, winking at Jonathon. There was a tense silence. Then a thud
from the foyer. And another thud. And a scrape.
Footsteps.
Inelegant, clumsy footsteps. Outside in the hall, the gas lamps
that lit the corridor were dimming. One by one. Shuffle by shuffle. Lumbering
footstep by lumbering step...
Whatever was coming was taking all the light with it...
"Say hello to Mummy, Johnny..."
Oh, God. Horror of horrors.
Lady Denbury.
Dead Lady Denbury.
Standing at the threshold.
--
(End of Chapter 26.2 - Copyright 2013 Leanna Renee Hieber, The Magic Most Foul saga - If you like what you see, please share this link with friends! Tweet it, FB, + it! The Magic Most Foul team really hopes the audience will continue to grow and it can only do so with YOUR help! If you haven't already, do pick up a copy of Magic Most Foul books 1 and 2: Darker Still and the sequel: The Twisted Tragedy of Miss Natalie Stewartand/or donate to the cause! Donations directly support the editorial staff.
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