A Winter Tale, Part II

*Continued from A Winter Tale, Part I

"The twilight thickens, and the fleeting scene
   Leaves but a hallow’d memory of love!" - H.P Lovecraft, "Sunset"

"What happened here?" They were the first words spoken by either my partner or myself since we first set our footprints on this property this night. The horrible conclusion which had been gradually obtruding itself upon our confused and reluctant minds was now an awful certainty. This manor was no house, but a lair. And somewhere inside - with us - there lurked a beast.

***

My partner shot me a questioning glance, his left hand on the edge of the door. I could only reply with a nod and watched in subdued terror as he shut the double-doors behind us. The encroaching fear each of us had experienced was now fully present and it was likely only our overzealous pride that forced us to remain enclosed in the manor. There was no doubt that my partner briefly considered a rapid absconding, as I had. The consideration likely occurred a subsequent instance, as the flickering light from my hasty torch revealed blood-stained keys on the grand piano. The stains were black under the orange light, but the dried texture was unmistakable. Beyond the occasional crackle from the flame and the conventional creaks and groans of such a large structure, we could hear nothing save our own respiration.

Moving into an adjacent gallery, shadows thrown onto portraits of the manor's residents and their ancestors heightened our anxieties and almost caused me to allow the torch to extinguish itself. Painted eyes stared at us as we walked toward the hallway leading to the grand salon and the staircase to the upper levels. Though a childish notion, the eyes seemed foreboding, as if they could see the outcome of this night. Equally childish, the thought that those same eyes bore cognizant witness to earlier events bore its way into my imagination and I mentally interrogated the portraits within my own mind. That the image of a previous matriarch answered my query with mortal warning served only to reinforce my own intuition or my own insanity.

Fortuitously, most of the manor's walkways were at least partially carpeted and afforded us the ability to maneuver through the home in relative silence. Communication between my partner and myself was a necessity, but the strengthening of the odor as we ascended the staircase only motivated our taciturn mood, and we withheld our desire for vocal reassurance, preferring instead to utilize visual expressions and an expeditiously concocted language of hand signals.

It was in the second floor dining room that we found the deputy. Rather, a portion of him, identified only by the worn leather holster below what was left of a hip, for his upper torso was nowhere to be found. Neither my partner nor I were very much interested in following the trail of smeared blood that led into the next room, a room designed to fully appropriate a morning's sunlight for the enjoyment of any occupant. This disinterest was perpetuated by the fact that the deputy's firearm - a trusty Colt revolver - was incontrovertibly missing.

Our attempt at avoiding encounter with the remainder of the deputy's body, however, proved fruitless as we again encountered the trail of blood upon the staircase to the third floor. Thankfully, the revolver was located at the bottom of the staircase, likely having dislodged itself from the upper torso that was ostensibly dragged up the steps. I handed the torch - whose flames were by now threatening to expire - to my partner and collected the firearm, verifying that it contained its lethal payload. We were disheartened to learn that two bullets had been fired. Given the deputy's reputation as an expert shot, we could only assume that his aim was certain and that whatever it was that he hit simply did not die before halving the man's figure.

Not lacking want of departure, my partner and I silently agreed to hasten our search of the manor, our original intent long abandoned in lieu of solving this mystery we had unwisely decided to decipher. The horrifying discovery made upon entering the master bedroom is what caused my partner to break our self-imposed silence.

***

I had no response. Piled and protected under rudimentary camouflage were several bodies, all unrecognizable in their state of massacre. That three were women was no question - the mother, the daughter, and a servant - but the rest were indistinguishable from one another. Just before the flame from the torch died a fitful death, my partner attempted to point to the floor. I could briefly see a pattern painted in blood before we were engulfed by darkness.

Despite being able to literally see nothing, I leveled the pistol in the darkness, listening to the sounds of my partner feeling along the walls for another mounted lamp.

"Oh, Christ."

My partner inadvertently placed his hand in dried sinew that once belonged to the body of the son. That a seven-year-old boy's flesh had solidified itself to a wall six-feet from the floor was enough to finally convince us to partake in an exit. The match-strike was deafeningly loud and both of us quickly examined the symbol outlined in blood. Resembling a demon with a tentacled mouth, it bewildered our sensibilities. Sections of the image were smeared by footprints. Some human and others... something else entirely. My eyes made contact with my partner's and a cooperative decision was come to - we were to immediately leave.

Upon turning to the doorway, I became educated in what the image portrayed. My partner was never granted the same opportunity. His soul-curdling scream pierced its way into my very bones and I was once again engulfed by darkness.

Lighting my way to the corridor with the flash of gunpowder, the sound of penetrated tissue momentarily encouraged me until I accepted the possibility that I had instead shot my partner. Selfishly - and embarrassingly -  I prayed that the beast would stop long enough to enjoy its feast or to preserve my partner's body with the bodies of the others. Amid the chaos of thoughts of death and the reality of blindness-induced vertigo I ran, unsure of whether or not I was even on the ground floor. Even after the fall through broken glass I could not determine how far I descended. Fainting from the impact on iced-over snow was not, I bemoaned, what I wanted my final impression of life to be.

***

In the morning, I awoke to the scrutinizing hands of a doctor and the sounds of a fire brigade quenching thirsting flames. The manor was saved and the bodies of the inhabitants were found, along with the body of my partner and, strangely, the intact - and completely nude - body of the patriarch. He had been shot three times with the gun the local police found in my possession.

It is for that reason that I have been divorced and am currently awaiting the hangman's noose. Only in facing death do I realize the truth. My partner and I invaded the home of a demon surreptitiously living among us in a man's form. A demon, perhaps in an effort to return home, that devoured its own friend and family. I attempt to take solace in the fact that the killing of such a monster might earn my passage into Heaven.

But I fear that even God will not believe my tale.

A Winter Tale, Part I

"Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;
    Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win." - Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher

It is not without depravity that my partner and I live our lives. During the whole of a dark, moonless night in the winter of the year, with reluctant rainclouds scarring the field of stars above, we had been engaging in one of our depraved and insufferable acts. That we are experts in our chosen occupation provides us with misplaced and obsequious senses of superiority. We are better than our fellow man - the fairer gender included - and if we cannot have we feel we deserve, then we shall simply obtain it by any feasible means.

The large house - one easily described as a manor or a mansion - stands as the lone structure on nearly 50 acres of property in southwestern New York. The plot of land appears inviting, serene - and it is most certainly peaceful out here - while the house itself exudes a melancholy aura, as if the very wood and metals it is comprised are embarrassed at their intrusion on an area so pristinely natural, save, of course, for the existence of its foundation, its walls, and its many heavily draped windows. There has been talk of the proprietors erecting other structures - a barn, a guesthouse, a separate quarters for the few employed servants - but the lady of the house, a self-professed follower of Transcendentalism, has so far won out the arguments she often partakes in with her far-too enamored spouse.

My partner and I had been observing the tenants of the home for almost four years. There is a popular utterance among the more professional of our peers that one should never, and I quote, work in one's backyard. And, in light of our own professionalism and the fortuitousness of having both married into wealthy families, my partner and I adhered to this philosophy as if we were the star disciples of Aristotle and Socrates. We had bantered about plying our trade the first winter when each of us noticed - at varying times - that the inhabitants of the manor were absent for nearly a fortnight, leaving only one retired deputy to protect the manor and the grounds, though the grounds themselves needed no protection. The second winter we had even surveilled the property, noting that the deputy, despite his aptitude with the firearm, failed to notice even our footprints slowly filling in with snow just a few feet from the kitchen door on the reverse side of the structure. By the third winter we had managed to draw plans of the house by peering in each window and, on more than one humorous occasion, even sketched the sleeping deputy while standing arrogantly in full view, had he but awoken from his slumber.

And, so, my partner and I decided that should the residents of the house take an extended leave from their abode a fourth straight winter season, then my partner and I shall break our long-held belief and alleviate the residence of its possessions of value.

Though we had both remained calm experiencing an instinctual inclination that something was amiss - there were no signs or hints that the deputy was present, and all the drapes to all of the windows, including those of the higher floors, were drawn shut - we proceeded as we had so carefully devised over the course of the past year. The bolt on the solid oak double doors of the music room turned simply enough, my partner extraordinarily adept at aligning the tumblers of a lock without the use of its appropriate key.

Neither of us were prepared for the fetid and putrid odor that each of our acute senses of smell were assaulted with. My partner immediately turned, covering his mouth, in a futile attempt at preventing his evening meal from committing rebellious upheaval. We were not murderers, though we must both reluctantly admit that we were guilty of having killed, and the familiar stench of death both alerted us to the predicament at hand and invigorated senescent memories of our most vile of acts.

Our intent upon entering the abode was to seal the doors behind us and allow our eyes to adjust to the relative darkness before we began our task. The unpleasant fragrance emanating from the room - my partner theorized the entire house - prevented us from a quick entry and instilled in us an irresistible desire to see. Hastily I created an improvised torch using oil from a mounted lamp and a discarded stick from a pile of stacked firewood nearby. My partner, in the process of gathering his fortitude, queried my decision to not simply remove the lamp from the wall, but resolved himself that the handle might provide whatever creature - imagined or substantial - responsible for the odor additional opportunity to audibly track us through our exploration of the manor.

It is not without hesitation that my partner and I live our lives. During the whole of a dark, moonless night in the winter of the year, with reluctant rainclouds scarring the field of stars above, we hesitated for an eternity before proceeding further and farther into the darkness. That we are the only known souls within miles provides us with a misplaced and fallacious sense of responsibility. There are dead here -  perhaps something else - and, like the black cat, curiosities to be sated.

*Continued in A Winter Tale, Part II