by Phil Maxey
“Work with you? I’m not stealing anything…”
Alyssa rolled her eyes, while the old man smiled. “No need for that. In fact it’s what we already have that we need help with. The… ‘other things’ I just mentioned want to get their hands on your grandfather’s book. All we ask is you help us stop that from happening.”
I paused for a moment, but I had already made up my mind to hang around anyway. Didn’t want to seem too eager. “Maybe… I can do that.”
He smiled. “Good. Then there is also another way I may be able to help you…”
“What’s that?”
“Help you get your company back.”
*****
I sat outside an office door with glass paneling which proudly announced the business inside belonged to Fletcher B. Hayward. Alongside me was the professor. Alyssa was evidently sleeping but I’m sure I heard her playing computer games before I left. When he mentioned getting my company back I scoffed. I told them there’s no way. I can’t even get past the security at the headquarters.
I virtually camped outside the Hell-Lock corporation building when I got back, until the police evicted me. Problem was I hardly knew who to harass, having had a ‘hands off’ approach since the whole shindig was left to me. All I knew is once a month I got a deposit in my bank account for fifty million dollars, and I never asked or cared how it got there. The only face I did know was my father’s attorney and right-hand man, Maxwell Wilkins who I hadn’t seen for over a decade, or knew where he lived.
Fortacan told me that he knew someone who might be able to help, but I knew it was pointless. I had no way of proving who I was. Still, I needed a place to hold up from these paranormal things chasing me and he told me the bunker was ‘warded’ whatever that meant and they couldn’t get me there. Either way it was a roof, warm room and food that tasted right.
Noises and dark forms came from beyond stenciled glass and the door opened. Out came a guy roughly half my height, wearing a smart but cheap suit. I went to say my introduction, but he looked at me frowning, then turned back to the office and waved.
At the door stood a tall woman with tied back hair the color of a smog filled sunset.
“Professor,” she said with a smile. Fortacan awkwardly got up and walked forward with his hand out, which she shook endearingly. They both turned to me.
“This is the man I told you about,” he said.
I nodded.
She looked back at Fortacan. “Yes, please step inside.”
Her office was sparse but well decorated, containing only what it needed too. The few things that looked out of place were a shield and just above it a sword, both mounted on the wall. The shield had a crown and dagger motif on the front.
“Cool movie props,” I said.
She gave a false smile in reply. “Please take a seat.”
“So you’re a demon then?” she said, as if she was asking me my date of birth.
I looked at the professor then back to her. “That’s what I’m told…”
“And you used to be Sebastian Hell-Lock?”
“I am Sebastian Hell-Lock.”
She gave me another smile which hinted at irritation. “That is to be established.”
I looked at the professor. “How is this helping?”
She typed a few words on a keyboard in front of her. “Mr. Groves told me that you used to live in an apartment on fifth, overlooking the park? But when you returned, someone else was living in that residence?”
“I managed to sneak into the building, knocked on the door, no one was home but the cleaner said a woman was now living there.”
“And what about your family’s home upstate?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Haven’t been back there for twelve years. I lived only in the apartment since I was eighteen.”
She typed more information about me into the computer, then opened a drawer and pulled out a wad of paper doorstop thick, pushing it across the desk. She then held up a pen. “Take this and write down your entire life. From the moment you were born to the moment you were changed. Dates, places, people. If you can remember them, any numbers associated with your former life. Bank details, phone—”
I was looking at the shield. Maybe she was a knight in her time off? I was just about ready to believe anything at this point.
“Mr. Hell-Lock?”
I looked with a smile and picked up the paper.
They exchanged a not so secret glance and the professor and the lawyer got up and walked through another doorway, closing the door behind them. They thought I couldn’t hear them but I could… mostly. She didn’t want to take the case and that Fortacan shouldn’t trust one of my ‘kind.’ Can’t say I blamed her. I looked down at the blank piece of paper. It accurately reflected who I had become. I started writing. Almost everything the red head wanted, my previous life spilling out onto the page. But as memories became words I couldn’t help feel I was writing about a stranger.
I finished up after five pages, including a signed doodle and dropped the chunk of paper down on her side of the desk. The door opened and they both reappeared.
“Good, you have—”
“I don’t blame you for not wanting to trust me,” I said to the lawyer.
She stopped halfway to her desk and rocked back on one of her five-inch heels. “My family have been fighting your kind—”
“Demons?”
“Evil creatures for centuries Mr. Hell-Lock, so no I do not trust you. But I do trust Mr. Groves, so here we are.” She sat back down. “Can you gain access to your family’s ancestral home?”
I looked at the professor, then back to her. “I don’t have a key if that’s what you are asking. I don’t even know if… I still own it.” That wasn’t a lie. I always presumed Wilkins had sold the thirty-three room mansion. I was the only heir and I never went back. What was the point of keeping it?
She spun her laptop around. The screen showed paint chipped iron gates, surrounded by stone pillars with the statues atop that I always hated as a kid. Several chains were wrapped around the iron bars, and when she zoomed in a faded wooden sign mentioned private property. Through the gates a road could be seen, bordered by a thick blanket of gnarly trees. A shudder went through me which I did my best to suppress.
“If you were to have some family items that would help your case. A creature of your ability I’m sure could make that happen?”
“Sure. I’ll break into my old family’s home and steal stuff.” I quickly realized she wasn’t joking.
“It’s not stealing. They already belong to you. It has to be items nobody will know are missing. Otherwise it will defeat the purpose of you having them.” She looked at my wrist.
Shit.
“What about your watch? Was it from a family member? Is it inscribed?”
“I got it some years back in Europe, so no.” I needed to change the subject. “What exactly is my case? How are you going to prove who I am?”
She smiled. “Get me the items Mr. Hell-Lock and let me be the attorney.”
CHAPTER NINE
I looked at the interior of the 1970s Stingray sports car, while a constant drum of heavy rain played out above me. The sun had just set and the creatures of the night were waking, or so I presumed.
Alyssa had finished putting the gas in, and had just walked back from the store. She quickly climbed in the driver’s seat and dropped a bottle of soda and a bunch of candy on my lap.
“Take what you want,” she said.
“Don’t these rot your… fangs or something.”
“They haven’t done over the previous two decades.” She checked the road north was clear and pulled out onto it. The wheels spun in the mud until they gripped and we surged forward.
I looked at her trying to get a better gauge of her true age. “So it’s true about vampires living forever then? How old are you?”
“I was thirty-two when I changed in the late nighties.”
“Oh… ”
&nb
sp; She smiled. “Threatened by older women eh?”
I looked out as we passed a colonial style house nestled amongst tall trees. “Not anymore…”
Silence returned between us, as it had been for most of the trip from the city. We were returning to a part of me that felt as old as the twisted trunks we were driving past. When Wilkins called me into my father’s study and told me about the accident that made me an orphan I barely flinched, or at least that’s how I remembered it. I hardly saw them anyway, spending most of my time at boarding school, and only returning to ‘Doom Castle’ as I used to call it, on holidays, and even then the hired help were my true guardians, as mother and father were busy hosting parties.
“Have you seen Hell-Lock manor before?” I asked her.
“It’s a big rich person’s house. I get it.”
“So that’s a no then…” She briefly looked at me as the wipers struggled to clear the rain. I looked back at the increasingly dense forests around us. “I once got lost for hours—”
“In the grounds?”
“No, in the house. I was around six or seven, took a wrong turn on the second floor and couldn’t find my way back. I don’t remember much, just flashes of things which I must have imagined… Or that’s what I thought until… Anyway they eventually found me in the basement, in an old dumbwaiter, hiding. That little incident cost me a year in therapy.”
“What were the things you imagined?”
“I stumbled upon underground caves, with scary looking statues and weird paintings. And there were tombs, and…” The old memories returned, but now they had added weight. Was it all real? I glanced at Alyssa. “And other things. The therapist put it down to bad influences at school, you know comics, films, the usual suspects.”
“Did you try looking for that part of the house again, when you were older?”
“Why would I look for what doesn’t exist?” I looked back out to the heavy sheets of rain, but even in the gloom I started to recognize some of the features of the landscape. “I didn’t know about any of this… spooky stuff.”
She glanced at the map on her phone. “I think we’re close.”
I sighed. “We are.”
A high wall with black iron spikes appeared close to the left side of the road, and we slowed, then stopped when an entrance appeared.
I dragged my eyes to look upon the gates of my family home.
“Cool statues,” said Alyssa. “What are they? Knights or something?”
“Something.”
Two stone figures sat on both sides of the towering iron gates, one had a shield and sword in a dynamic pose, the other was an unknown due to the top half missing, but I remembered it contained another knight in a more thoughtful stance.
She looked over to me. “You think you can scale those gates? I don’t know if you can use your abilities properly yet, but we should probably not break the chains.”
I nodded, not wanting to leave the car. “Maybe we should wait for the rain—”
A rush of damp cold air heralded the driver’s door being open and she was out amongst the downpour in an instant. I shook my head and did the same.
I pulled my jacket up around my neck and tried to see where she had gotten to.
“Over here!” she shouted from beyond the gate. “Quickly before a car passes and sees us.”
I knew the chances of any vehicles being in this forgotten part of the state was unlikely. Hell-Lock Manor was about as remote as you could get in NY, surrounded by over a hundred acres of woodland that was ancient by time the Mayflower landed.
I walked forward to one of the stone pillars and scrubbed away some of the grime that hid the proudly stated name of who once lived there.
‘Hell-Lock Manor - Built 1814. Residence of the Hell-Lock family.’
“Come on!” came Alyssa’s voice echoing off the wall of trees which contained the narrow road which led deeper in.
I took a step back, then leaped forward and upwards, clearing the top of the gate and landing in a large puddle which covered half of my face in brown sludge.
I spat out a twig swearing to myself and jogged after the vamp who was now just a murky moving shadow ahead of me.
As I ran, I looked left and right at the old trunks and branches and the darkness beyond. I wanted to leave, but instead I moved deeper in to the waves of depression that always hung in the air whenever I visited my ancestors’ property. The road veered left and right until eventually gothic towers and dark gray stonework came into view. I stopped alongside the vamp. I was home, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that it had been waiting for me.
“You must have had a big family…” said Alyssa looking up at six floors of a house that looked as if it had been thrown together by passion and rage. Arched windows sat up against slated roofs and chimneys.
I walked forward across the gravel path which circumnavigated a stone fountain. “Nope, just the three of us and a handful of staff.” I ignored even a glance at the slits of windows that hardly allowed any daylight into the basement, and walked up the wide steps to the arched entrance. Even with the extra inch in height I gained three months ago the top of the door was still a few feet above my head.
“This place is wild,” said Alyssa. She looked up at the words engraved into stone above the door. “What’s that mean? Stamu…”
I glanced at the fading indentations that I always puzzled about myself. “‘Stamus contra malum.’ No idea.”
I tried the black iron handle expecting it to be locked, when a creak bellowed out from the hinges and the solid wooden door swung inwards. We looked at each other and she pulled a pocket flashlight from her coat and walked inside.
*****
I wavered on the threshold wondering if I was eighteen again. Everything was the same. The chandelier that I was always convinced would fall on me as a kid, the black and white silver gilt framed photos with a few layers of cobwebs, and even the rugs with the fairytale scenes which covered the hardwood floor. As I stood there not particularly wanting to enter, the immense scale of the main hall came back to me. I had always presumed that my memories of feeling insignificant when inside was because… I was a kid. But standing in the doorway looking at the grand staircase that could fit a small crowd of people on a single step, confirmed that was an incorrect assumption. I took a step forward as if I was sneaking into a giant’s castle.
“Close the door!”
“Right.” I stepped onto the dusty slabs of stone and did as asked. The door closed with an echo that reverberated through the halls. I arched my neck back as far as I could to see a glass domed roof lost in the gloom high above, which a constant drone of rain beat against.
“Hey?”
I looked at Alyssa. “What?”
“I get you’re having a moment, but we got work to do. Where should we go?”
I looked at the options, trying to pull my unwanted memories into the light. The hallway continued to the left of the main stairs disappearing into darkness, and double doors sat to the left and right. “Umm… up I guess.”
She threw out her hand. “You first. It’s your joint.”
“Haven’t been here in over a decade,” I mumbled as I walked forward looking up at the crystals and lights of the chandelier and took a few steps to the side, then walked onto the dusty carpeted steps.
“The professor said we should take small things. Anything engraved or signed would be perfect.”
“Sure.” We arrived at the first landing then climbed again. A curved antique couch sat to one side on the first floor, with a corridor spanning left and right behind it. Doors were dotted ten feet apart, moving off to a junction to our right.
“I can see how you got lost. You know what’s in any of these rooms?”
Glimpses of a distant life came and went. I walked forward slowly, when a noise rang out. We both froze and looked at each other.
“I’m not detecting anyone in here, you?” said Alyssa.
We both had our abilities, and
mine could pick up even the slightest sound of a heartbeat. I shook my head. “It’s an old house.” I went to walk forward again when the sound repeated itself. A faint scratching noise was coming from below us. “Rats.” I said with a frown.
Alyssa turned back to the lower floor. “We need to check it out.”
“What do we care about—”
The same noise was now accompanied with a clinking. I sighed. “Fine. Let’s go see the rats.” I swung around, when the metallic scraping sound happened again but much louder. There were either a lot of rats or one the size of a horse just twenty feet below us. I wasn’t happy with either option, and there was still no sign of a heartbeat. We crept down the stairs as the sound continued. Something was being dragged across the floor of the main hall, but the whole place was draped in shadows even I was having trouble making sense of. “There’s something down—” I saw a dark shape in the form of a man. His head was slouched to one side and he was shuffling as if his feet were chained together.
“Here, take this,” said Alyssa handing me the flashlight.
“I don’t need—”
The clanking chain noise stopped. She pulled a dagger from a sheath on her hip.
I noticed a whisper of smoke rising from it. “I think your daggers on fire.”
A loud groan boomed out. I flicked the flashlight towards the source and grimaced at what the light revealed, but before I could shout ‘There’s a zombie covered in chains at the bottom of the stairs’ a multitude of creaks emanated from the floor just above us. The doors were opening. It was then I noticed a glow coming from my watch beneath my sleeve. I quickly pulled my hand to my side, hoping the vamp next to me didn’t notice.
The thing below groaned again, the sound becoming more distorted and high pitched as its limbs stretched until it was double its original height. “I’ve seen this movie. Don’t kiss the husky.”
We both looked at her dagger which was now almost as bright as the flashlight. “We need to leave,” she said.
I frowned then looked into the gloom on the floor above. Things were moving amongst the darkness.
