The Crypt Keepers
By: Lauren Shain-Raque
SMASHWORDS EDITION
*****
PUBLISHED BY:
Lauren Shain-Raque on Smashwords
The Crypt Keepers
Copyright © 2009 by Lauren Shain-Raque
All rights are reserved and retained by the author and may not be reproduced without the prior written consent of both the above listed publisher and author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
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Prologue:
The walls of this castle have been crumbling around me for the better part of a century. I seldom walk through the corridors of this desolate place without feeling a slight pang of grief on behalf of its sagging foundations. The windows were the first to go; the delicate filigree and stained bits of candy colored glass succumbed to the stones of local children or the branches of ancient trees. Several of the more prominent window panels still hang in my memory, their substantial counterparts strewn around my feet. Shards of color pepper the floors and one must take special care not to lacerate a foot. It is for the most part the windows in the seldom used parts of the castle, the windows of the rooms in use have been protected and replaced as needed. It is almost as if the other parts of the castle do not exist, they serve as nothing more than an eyesore and a deterrent to anyone who might happen to think to themselves that entering the castle might be a good idea.
The rats love it here. Seldom do they cease their chatter, I considered adopting a stray cat once in the hopes that it could rid me of them, needless to say, it failed. For a brief moment in time I had no need to fear for my precious books or the tattered seats of the sofas and chairs, but like all things mortal, the cat died and I hadn’t the heart to find another. So now, all things that matter most to us are kept separate from the lodgings of the rats and are protected by our ever watchful eyes. My volumes are tucked neatly in their shelves and the articles of clothing that we wear are always on our person. Every now and again cloth is salvaged from the town and I try my hand at making suitable things for us to wear. My brothers tend to favor whatever style of clothing is most prevalent on the men of the village while I gravitate to the traditional dresses of our own time. I believe that the quality of clothing and style has gone some what down hill and that I should remain true to the time I was born of.
The marble floors that once filled our grand ballrooms are now dusty and chipped with age, such an abundance of soot and ugliness covers them that one would need special tools to even recognize the grain. I am still young considering the centuries that I’ve seen. My father died not so long ago, or I suppose that he died since I’ve seen nothing of him for some time. I haven’t yet ventured to the upper rooms; though the floors are sturdy, I’m not sure if my mind is strong enough to gaze upon the relics that used to make up a large part of my early life. If only our things could outlast us. The curtains and chairs and every other part of the accoutrements that we take for granted slowly rot beneath us and are gone before we realize or have a chance to halt their deterioration. Many of the things that are still in service now have been salvaged from the village.
Many of the valuables that I could have salvaged have been sold or pilfered. One in particular that I regret not having locked away was a necklace that since the time of my birth had hung around the neck of a stature that looks over one of the ballrooms. The paintings that graced the walls of this castle are gone, all save those that are locked away in the secret halls and cubbies of this great forsaken place. The halls that were once filled with pictures of our youth and the landscape that gave beauty to the castle are bare and all that remain of their grandeur are the tattered remnants of tapestries and the faded outlines of the picture frames. Here and there rests a sculpture or figure that stands out against the vacant walls. The grey of the walls and the grey of the statues tend to blend together making it look as if a portion of the wall is misshapen.
There are an abundance of secret alcoves and burrow that until I’d served my time cooped up here after our purpose became clear, I hadn’t even found. The bulk of these small and nearly all blocked off now, passages were built long before my father took over the estate when my grandfather died. He added chambers and storage compartments with no obvious plan or reason. Indeed, he never set foot in many of these places after they were completed. Suddenly, they were whole as he would never be, and held no sway over his conflicted being. Many of the tubes lay still unfinished. The workers that slaved beneath this sordid place abandoned much of their work when my father left. With him went the pay and the promise of future work and so the continuation of life for their families. They left quickly, having stayed longer than I thought they would , and were gone completely with not so much as a day’s notice.
He flitted, like he always did, in and out of the grounds. Often he would leave for days and until the last time that he left the men were content to wait, this time the workers finally had enough. The ones that didn’t leave succumbed to death when the plague finally worked its way to us in the forgotten country. I’d heard of such sickness in the cities and provinces around us, but never did we think that we were in danger. The sickness looked as though it would pass our small feudal village. However, it shook the very infrastructure of our village. The plague that struck the countries around us was nothing like the monstrosity that finally caught us. The death that came on the backs of rats killed quickly and sparingly, leaving some alive to tell the tale; this sickness took all. On the whole I think that my family and I would have been able to better cope with a sickness that spared some other than ourselves.
It was a measured sickness, killing in stages. Step by step it took the village until it had fully progressed and all were dead. It was more of a plague of the mind that seized the body, leading to the eventual death of the afflicted. The first signs that our haven was no longer safe were subtle. The clouds rolled in and our skies darkened for several days. The chill stated soon after, it was a cold like no other; even the cold of the most brutal winter high in the mountains couldn’t compare to the perpetual chill that filled the bones of the people. The bundles of wool and scarves that scurried about parading as the villagers went about their business as quickly as possible. Their heads hung low and greetings were as cold as the air around them. Hearths were stoked and the fires kept burning well into the night. Even in the middle of the summer, when the sickness came, the fires burned bright despite the intense heat that they added to the already sultry atmosphere.
The children were the first to go. Many of the first affected were street urchins. Somehow they were always able to scurry out of the way before anyone could offer help. Their small diseased bodies started piling up in the second week of the chill. Communal graves were dug after the children were pronounced dead and the people saw they were nothing more than urchins. Though it seems callous to say it, many of these wayward children were not missed, some even felt grateful that their own children could now play without hassle. The children of the village played as if nothing had happened, it was the way of these people to put aside what happened the day before and look forward to tomorrow. The adults, though they knew that the end was surely coming, kept their co
mposure until the last child died. Even as the last child lay dying, the parents kept their composure to ensure that the child went to their eternity peacefully.
I felt sorry for the urchins that didn’t die first. Many of them had to watch the others die, not knowing who may be next. After the last of the urchins died, came the death of the children of the peasants. They went far quicker than their street savvy mates. It was if though the need of the urchin to survive without assistance helped them stave off the illness for a little while longer. The illness swept quickly through the ranks of peasant children and grieving parents were left to wonder why. All of the children were dead not long after the initial outbreak of sickness. The elderly came next. Like flies they died by the dozen. The women and men died last, having suffered the horrors of the loss of their entire families. After the death of the last man in the village, the animals came. By the hundreds they moved to the village to consume the corpses that had not been buried or begun to rot.
Secluded high in the mountains of the surrounding countryside, my family watched. Our food became scarce and our water contaminated. There was little that we could do but pray that we would be pardoned as the village was not. The wolves and bears were the worst. At night we could hear their cries as they feasted on the corpses in the village below. The humans were no longer in charge. As a whole, the rest of the world had no idea of our plight. They turned their eyes away from us. We sent letters and messengers to the outlying cities and neighboring castles, only to find that our messengers died long before they reached their destinations. The solitude that had afforded us such joy was now a cloying force that seemed to condemn us to death. No matter how we wanted to flee, our better judgment kept us anchored to our castle. None of us knew that the sickness held no sway over our lives, so we waited.
We were alone in our suffering, though the years had endeared us to the men and women that worked in the castle, they resented the fact that we showed no signs of the sickness. Their demeanor slowly changed as the days drug on, reflecting the feelings of the people in the village. They came to us seeking a reprieve from death, but there was none. Our money that had long since provided us a cushion on which to rest could do nothing to protect us. It seemed as though the death would consume us as well as the people of the village, leaving no one to pick up the pieces. Had we died in that first wave of illness I think that someone else would have continued the cycle, I am sure now that it functions independently of us now. I thought at one time that if we gave up the cycle it would simply cease, but I know now that it would continue, perhaps more difficultly, but it would continue.
Our castle was safe enough for a time, and then the stock animals became ill. Our supplies of meat vanished before our eyes. The fear of starvation and disease gripped the people of our castle and soon barbarism ran rife. Our servants refused to serve us, arguing that their last days would not be spent under someone’s thumb. As quickly as they defected, my older brothers escorted them off the premises into the wilderness that was bogged down with sickness. Some made it as far as the village below us, collapsing in fear, disease, and disgust at the smell and sight of the many rotting corpses. Others barely made it to the forest, their eyes bulging and bursting in the sockets with the pain of death. Still others died only feet from our gates. Some of the more loyal house workers wanted to move the bodies, none were brave enough. Instead they watched the heavens for signs that the world was ending and tried their best to keep their eyes off the festering corpses.
The dead servants as a result, rotted and festered just beyond our front door. For some reason even the servants that stayed on with us eventually caught the sickness. Some died in their sleep, only to be discovered by their fellows the next morning. Others died while going about their daily chores, and still others lingered for weeks before disappearing all together. What seemed to hit the villagers far harder than the actual sickness was the veil of sadness that hung about their shoulders. Men and women killed themselves and others lamented their loss, too concerned with their grief to care for those left living. I suppose the closeness to the sadness that was afforded to us by way of the servants helped us to realize the gravity of what was happening. It also allowed us a closer look into the sickness that was taking everything from us.
It occurred to our family not long after the death of our last servant that we were to be as the damned, forever reigning over the corpses of the village below. The sadness never came; we simply went on living no matter how closely we came to the dead. My father disappeared completely when he realized that our lives were to be spent remembering the death and sadness. Our blood had somehow melded with the putrid disease that took the lives of the peasants before they even knew they were sick. Years passed and we never aged, never grew ill, our role now was that of crypt keepers, unchanging as the centuries passed, withstanding each civilization that sprouted in our fertile plain and its eventual collapse into sickness and death. So far nothing has kept the village safe, no measure on our or any other part has kept the sickness at bay.
Our story has never been told. With each outbreak any man, woman, or child that may remember our faces dies. The sickness keeps our secret. The years stretch by and we are unchanged, and then, as fast as they appeared, the new settlements are flattened and the dead litter the streets. We wait until the last soul has passed then begin our work. The graveyards became full after the first outbreak making the construction of crypts and catacombs in the caves of the surrounding mountains essential. Those too fill quickly however and as a result, decade upon decade of innocent people are shelved, one on top of the other. Should anyone discover the caves, they could see a clear distinction between the current era and its predecessor. It is far easier for Rhys and Regelus to simply stack the corpses each century rather than shift them about to get rid the distinction.
Of course no one from the village ever seems to live long enough to discover the caves. The years that precede the creation of the village are quiet, and the years after its inception are spent trying to catch up with the rest of the world. As the centuries stretch by us we wait, with each outbreak of sickness comes new symptoms. The first epidemic brought sadness to the people; many gave up before their fight even began. The second wave brought anger; men slaughtered one another and their families before killing themselves. Women drowned their children and poisoned their food. The third wave brought sleep, the fourth hunger. No matter what the sickness brought to begin with, it always ended in death. As the centuries passed and we saw the destruction of numerous hundreds of lives and towns, it became easier for us to bury the dead and ready for the next wave. The faces became less and less individual and eventually it became so that each man and woman looked alike.
We watched and with each new wave of death it became easier to grasp the fact that no one was going to come and stop the sickness, no one cared. The eyes and ears of the world were deaf to our pleas. The bodies pile up and we take them away. My brother Rhys toyed once with the idea of leaving the bodies so the next wave of settlers would not form, Regelus quickly talked him out of it. It is Regelus’ belief that without the sickness and the bodies, we would have no purpose and would perish. He is the only one of us remaining that seems to care about eternal life. The thought that I might someday be released from the bonds of servitude to the dead keeps me sane. He wonders from time to time if indeed the sickness will never end, if we are in fact trapped here with nothing but ourselves and the corpses that litter the streets of the village below us.
Our sister, Daphene, died years ago of her own volition. That seems to be the only way that we can die. Out mother, god rest her soul, died in child birth, the stress of two sets of twins at once being too much for her body to handle. None of us know what happened to our father after he left. He never came back. Rhys thinks that his blood was not immune as ours is. That seems plausible save for the fact that we never found his body among the corpses that we wheeled out of the village or surrounding forests. I’ve seldom ventured to the c
rypts with my brothers; I was content to oversee the removal of the bodies and the preparation of the town for the next attempt of successful inhabitants. We have fulfilled the same purpose for nearly five centuries, and we are content to continue. At one time it would have pulled at our conscience, but now it is simply a way of life. It is amazing how easy it is to forget that what we are doing is not right.
We know not what brought the sickness to us, nor what will make it leave. All we know is that the sickness rules us. Our lives should have ended centuries ago. By my count we are nearing our five hundredth birthday. It shall be punctuated, as always, with the cries of the village below us. Each new sickness brings something that we cannot prepare for; all that we can do is ready ourselves for the clearing of the corpses and cataloguing of the dead. This is our contribution to history, our attempt to make right some small bit of the legacy of the sickness. This marks the fifth wave of death that shall nestle itself in around us. The year of demise for the quiet unassuming town below us is fast approaching, and as the numbered days until its death grow small, we prepare.
1: The Coming
The winds have shifted, as they always do, and the fresh air from the sea beats against the turrets of the castle. I’ve heard stories, stories of an evil that is said to lurk within our walls. The townspeople feel the need to create a story to explain the decrepit east wing, or the lonely singing that escapes occasionally from my lips. Secretly we relish in the fear that protects us, in the knowledge that as long as the people below us fear what we have become, our secret will be safe. Though the stories weave themselves into my subconscious, not once has there been anyone brave enough to investigate the claims in all the years that have passed me by. We’ve been called spirits, vampires, zombies, very likely every name ever assigned to the unknown. The villagers’ fear of us is almost comical, they try their hardest to explain us, but somehow no explanation fits.
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