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Risen for a Tower
Brian S. Wheeler
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2014 by Brian S. Wheeler
Risen for a Tower
Contents
Chapter 1 – Ever Onwards, Ever Upwards
Chapter 2 – Tilted
Chapter 3 – No Quarter
Chapter 4 – Signs of Trespass
Chapter 5 – Propositions
Chapter 6 – Bells and Bones
Chapter 7 – Causes the Dead Cannot Understand
Additional Tales Featuring the Turner Boneshakers
Help Spread the Story Across the Flatland
About the Writer
Other Stories at Flatland Fiction
Chapter 1 - Ever Onwards. Ever Upwards.
“I know you’re still not ready to believe me, Ethan, but monsters are gnawing at this tower’s foundations.” Cedrick Pyle’s eyes burned and a knuckle popped as the old man straightened a finger at the grandson seated at the other side of the desk. “I dare you to try counting all the vagrants you’ll see by just peeking out of that window, hiding in my shipping yard’s warehouses. I’ve tried counting them all morning, and there’s just too many of them peering at me from the warehouse buildings’ windows. I know they’re out there, and I know monsters of the most terrible kind always follow those rootless dregs.”
Ethan Pyle sighed before forcing a soft smile. He reminded himself that his grandfather was a remarkable man who had pioneered an industry of shipping schedules, of train routes and sea lanes, of highways and postal services. Ethan reminded himself that his grandfather’s attention to detail conquered all the logistics that might challenge the delivery of good, part or service according to the stringiest of deadlines. Grandfather Cedrick grew wealthy from wrestling the world until the world bowed to his whim. That struggle would have killed a lesser man decades before Cedrick’s ninety-three years. The least Ethan could do was to forgive his grandfather for a little prejudices, for maybe a little hate, for maybe more than an ounce of paranoia.
Ethan leaned forward and offered his grandfather a light while the old man bit upon one of his cherished cigars.
“You should ignore them if you can’t forgive them,” Ethan winced as the tobacco smoke itched his eyes. “Forecasters are calling for the coldest winds in over twenty-five years to roll in our little corner of this globe. Those people outside are only desperate for shelter.”
Cedrick growled while his lungs, bellows still stoking appetite and ambition, savored the cigar.
“Takes a special kind of fool to trust a forecaster, boy. Do you think I would ever have raised this tower sheltering the two of us in such comfort if I kept my ships in dock every time some forecaster warned there was going to be cold wind out at sea? There are always cold winds out at sea. The strong sometimes survive where others dare not go, and sometimes the strong become very wealthy for it. Nope. My trucks rolled when my competition stayed in the garage because they were too scared of the ice.”
Ethan knew his grandfather took no pleasure in debate. Cedrick had never prospered by straining to see the world through another man’s eyes. So Ethan stood from the comfortable leather chair and stepped to the window behind his grandfather.
The view remained inspiring.
Cedrick’s tower, his mansion, his castle, his emblem of his wealth and his pride, stretched into the sky. Cedrick believed the acreage of his estate was best suited for warehouse space, for the buildings in which gathered so many valuables the world outside his shipyard walls forgot or abandoned. The old magnate had employed one architect after another through the years in the purpose of raising his tower higher and higher in the center of his shipping yard. He never hesitated to replace one builder with another should a contractor ever hesitate to add one more level to Cedrick’s tower. Many considered the resulting structure a hodgepodge of styles, and it was rumored that Cedrick’s rivals had maintained bets concerning when that tower would eventually crumble. The tower had outlived all of those rivals who had sacrificed their dollars to enter such odds.
“Take your time, boy.” Cedrick grunted as he squinted at a sheet of paper that attracted his attention among the multitude piling upon his desk. “You’ll see them all soon enough, slinking from one building to the next.”
Ethan did not stare from the highest point upon his grandfather’s tower. Though the tower by then swayed in robust winds, Cedrick continued to demand one layer after another be added to its peak. Cedrick always placed his desk one level below the story currently being built by whatever crew was foolish or brave enough to attempt its construction.
“It gets harder and harder to see anything on the ground.”
Cedrick smiled. “Ah, and that motivates me to keep burning more than all the wealth. To rise above all the muck and guile. As long as I live, Ethan, I’ll keep stacking onto this tower. Just as long as the monsters gnawing at my foundations don’t first send this spire falling all around my shoulders.”
Nothing for as far as Ethan’s eye could see challenged the tower’s height. Cedrick had cut down the woods decades ago to make room for the first of his squat warehouses. The old man had wasted no time replacing green with asphalt.
“Use my binoculars if you need them,” Cedrick chuckled. “They may still burn bright, boy, but my eyes just don’t focus like they once did. I just sense where the trespassers are hiding these days.”
Ethan accepted the binoculars to humor the man. Ethan pressed the binoculars to his face and slowly scanned along the buildings. A white, fleeting blur caught his attention, and Ethan focussed his view just in time to look upon a pale, ugly face leer back at him from a dark warehouse window before in a blink vanishing into the building’s dark.
Ethan gasped at the face. He had looked upon it for hardly a second, and still, he
felt the hairs on his forearms stand and chill.
“You see him too then,” Cedrick whispered as smoke from his cigar drifted to that high chamber’s ceiling.
Ethan pulled his eyes out of the binoculars’ lenses. “Saw who?”
“Clavius Turner,” Cedrick’s eyes blazed. “Don’t try to deny it. Your face tells me all I need to know.”
Ethan sighed. He had heard that name many times - Clavius Turner, his grandfather’s obsession, his boogieman, his arch-nemesis.
“I know what you think.” Cedrick’s words scraped out from between his teeth. “You think Clavius Turner is a figment of my imagination, a phantom of senility. You’re far from the first to think I’ve made up that name. Lots of people think I’m haunted by a fictional villain, now that I’ve outlived all my real rivals. But he’s real, Ethan, and he’s ugly enough and powerful enough to fill your sleep with nightmares. All the cold and miserable beggars squatting in my warehouses to escape the cold will all fall to Clavius Turner’s terrible charm. None will be able to deny him. They will give him everything. Your life is never going to be the same now that you’ve seen him, and you’ll learn that Clavius Turner may as well be called the devil himself.”
“What does he want?” It was the first time Ethan had ever asked. His grandfather’s warning felt heavy as Ethan’s mind struggled to erase the memory of what his eyes had seen.
Cedrick shrugged. “Who’s to say other than Clavius Turner? Some of the rabble who have been escorted off our grounds claim Mr. Turner’s arrived to fight on their behalf, to help the dockhands earn a living wage, whatever that means. Some say he’s here to look out for the undocumented workers who have slipped through to feed at my trough. I suppose all kinds of people see Clavius Turner as a guardian angel. I’m sure Mr. Turner knows every cross every person on this yard has to bear. But I don’t believe for one second that Clavius Turner is here for any other reason but the expansion of his terrible power.
I’m no pup, Ethan. I might sleep so high above the ground now, but don’t forget that I’m a self-made man. I haven’t forgotten what it takes to survive in the muck, and all my old guts tell me Clavius Turner is out for either conquest or destruction. I’m sure this tower must look like one hell of a target to him.”
Ethan shuddered as the tower swayed as a gust of wind whistled through the window. Ethan peeked again upon the stumps of warehouses that stretched outward from his grandfather’s tower, counting the empty windows. He did not hope to find any phantom staring back at him. He searched for evidence that such phantoms could not be, and so he did not allow his gaze to linger too long upon any single, dark window.
“Don’t feel sorry for them,” Cedrick spoke as his grandson lingered at the window. “Those dregs will survive the cold. Somehow, they most always survive. They are the scrupulous and shifty, and they are all crooked enough to do whatever it takes to shiver through one more cold morning. You’re still young, Ethan, but you’ll learn when you sit behind this desk my death will give you. Those who trespass in our warehouses present the greatest obstacle to our progress. They bring vice, and disease, and worse of all, Ethan, they attract monsters of the most terrible kind.”
Cedrick’s eyes gave Ethan no comfort as the younger man turned away from the window. The old man’s eyes burned so brightly though the surrounding flesh looked so ancient.
The winds again whistled through the window’s sill. Ethan’s hands clenched as he felt the tower shift. Cedrick appeared to take little, if any, notice of the sensation as his attention locked upon another sliver of paper on his desk.
“That must be the Arctic bubble moving through this far south.” Ethan helped himself to a brandy from the decanter his grandfather kept in the chamber’s corner. The drink refused to settle in Ethan’s stomach as the winds pushed upon the tower. “Have you spoken to the architect lately?”
Cedrick looked up from his desk and grinned. “You’re more of a help than you know. My meeting with Mr. Hampton almost slipped my mind. Too many schedules and deadlines over the years finally suffocating my old memory. I’m set to meet with him first thing in the morning. I think he should be close to finishing a new level for this tower. A little ceremony might be called for before Mr. Hampton starts working on the next story. Consider yourself invited, Ethan.”
Ethan swallowed and felt the brandy still burning at the back of his throat.
Cedrick stared at his grandson. “I have no intentions to ever stop building upon this tower, boy. Ever onwards. Ever upwards. No matter who’s hiding in my warehouses, I refuse to take a single step backwards. I’m too old to retreat.”
* * * * *
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