The Crypt Keepers

by Lauren Shain-Raque

  I ran down the path to the hall while Rhys and Regelus worked at their moving in the dungeon. The branches and brambles struck me in the face and caught in my hair as I moved through the forest down the path. I thought for sure that when I reached the hall he would be there waiting, gloating, ready to rub in the fact that he had something to do with the paintings. I hadn’t thought yet how I assumed he would be involved, but my mind was so clouded that by the time I reached the bottom of the servant stairs, I had convinced myself that he had somehow made his way into the castle and found the paintings. I moved quickly and flung the door open to the hall to find it vacant. The fire looked as if it hadn’t been stoked in days and the desk was neatly laid out as it had been in the months that preceded this. The journal that he left there on the desk had been freshly inked and I knew that he had been here not so long ago.

  I turned through the pages quickly, noticing references to our meetings here and there. I thought for sure that there would be some entry that would betray his location, would betray the intentions that he had. I moved to sit in the chair behind the desk as I read the journal and just before I nestled myself in I glanced down at the seat. I don’t know what made me look, but as I did I noticed a small bundle tied with a blood red ribbon like the one that fastened the rock to the first note that Dmitry gave me. I grabbed it up quickly and pulled loose the ribbon. The small winding script that was so familiar to me now greeted me. ‘Angel, I know that you will come looking for an explanation for the goings on of the past few weeks. You can find me where the bodies lay, where you keep them or not. I am in the caves above the clearing trying to find an answer for the sickness that took the village.’

  Angrily I crushed the note in my hands and rubbed my palms together fitfully. He knew that I would come looking for him, he knew that not long after the pictures started showing up that I would realize that he was the reason that the pictures kept reappearing in the halls of the castle. I decided then that I wouldn’t go to the catacombs, that I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. So rather than go running to the catacombs I built a small fire and burned the note along with the journal from the desk. I walked slowly back to the castle, glancing occasionally back at the caverns, hoping secretly to see some sign of Dmitry. The castle was cold when I returned, the fire in the grate of the study having burned out while I was away. Though the cold does nothing to me physically, it wreaks havoc on my spirit.

  As I ventured out into the hall to gather a stick or two of wood to stoke a new fire, the painting caught my eye. I put the wood back on the pile and removed the painting from the wall, intent on building a fire with its soon to be splintered pieces. The sadness in Daphene’s eyes in the portrait mocked the memory of her spirit. I tore it in twain and smashed the bits of frame against the cold stone of the study floor. I then rolled the canvas into sticks to start the fire with. Soon after my outburst, the fire crackled merrily and I sat in my chair watching the tattered remnants of that sad memory smolder before me. I hadn’t realized that tears flowed freely from my eyes until one solitary drop splashed against the papers on my desk. The water smudged the ink unattractively nearly as much as my fingers did when I frantically began to wipe it away.

  I hesitantly raised my hand to my eyes and wiped away the fat tears that held tightly to my dark lashes. It’s been centuries since I cried, until that moment I knew not if I could cry. My heart broke again and again as the sobs that reminded me so much of Daphene’s the night she came seeking my forgiveness shook me. I saw myself in her. I knew then the sorrow that lived so deep within Daphene, and I understood what she had done. I knew then what I did not understand that night that she came to me, that there is some sorrow that is simply too deep to escape. I watched as the fire burned and cried silently to myself, the tears rolling off my cheeks and staining the front of my silk blouse. It was Regelus that found me then, found me gazing into the fire with tears making their way down my face.

  ‘Dear sister,’ he whispered into the soft hair at my temple as he scooped me into his arms, ‘what has happened to you?’ His eyes searched mine and he moved with me in tow to the sofa on which Daphene and I had parted ways. ‘What troubles you?’ His hands traced the line of my jaw and he raised my face to his. Kissing my forehead gently he leaned my head against his chest and let me cry. I cried for what seemed like a lifetime before finally wiping my eyes to steel myself for a revelation. I looked up into his face and rather than tell him my worries, I asked for Rhys. I regretted having asked Regelus for comfort other than him, but I knew that with both Rhys and Regelus there, the things I wanted to say would be of greater worth. He came to the study not long after I asked for him and sandwiched between the two I began to tell them of the night that Daphene came to me.

  8: The Dawning

  I know that not so many pages past I swore that unless they asked me about that night I would never tell them, but as the days drug by and since the reappearance of the portraits, my feelings changed. Seeing Daphene there in the portrait and knowing that the sadness was there long before the sickness came opened a new chapter in my life. Looking at the portrait the sadness in her eyes made clear the knowledge that even if the sickness hadn’t come to us, her fate would have likely ended the same way as it had with the coming of immortality. Rhys and Regelus sat quietly as they listened to the words tumbled out in harried sentences. Their surprise was minimal considering what I was telling them. I had expected outraged cries or exclamations, but instead silent reverie greeted me.

  They listened intently and nodded with each phrase as if we had all been present that night. Their reactions affirmed what I had suspected, she had come to them. I mulled the thought around in my mind for some time before I finished my recounting. I peered at them from time to time out of the coroner of my eyes as they listened to me there. For the better part of the evening that we spent there together they were my silent pillars. They sat on either side of me, comforting me and letting me tell them exactly what was on my mind. Their eyes watched me intently and they both raised their hands to comfort me when bouts of sadness shook me so that I was unable to continue. It seemed as though they might rise up at any moment and hug me tightly against them. Both Rhys and Regelus waited patiently before telling me what I suspected long ago; I was not the only sibling that Daphene came to that night.

  She moved among us that night, saying her goodbyes in this way or that. Though I was indeed the first that she visited, she came to all of us in turn. In those times we each went about our lives as if Daphene would come out of her sadness as quickly as she had dropped into it. With the evening closing in each of us went about our tasks leaving Daphene to roam the halls as she pleased. She came to Rhys in the observatory not long after she left the study. He told me that her eyes were rimmed with the red of recent crying and that though she seemed to be burdened with some heavy sadness, she seemed a bit freer when she left him. After she made her way down the stairs of the observatory she went to Regelus in the dungeons. His eyes grew stormy as he told us that she shed not a tear while she talked to him.

  He seemed as if he might cry then, and his eyes moved about the room nervously. We sat silently then, listening to the crackling of the fire and watched as the sun rose slowly on the horizon. We bonded then more than we ever have and though our hearts were heavy with the loss of her, we understood why Daphene did what she did. The day broke angrily and a storm raged outside the castle the likes of which none of us had ever seen. Rain pelted the walls and windows and the clouds darkened. It seemed at first as if the sickness would come early to claim us and the people that were not yet present in the village. The rain quickly turned to sleet which lightened to snow by the middle of the afternoon and I spent the remainder of the day worrying that Dmitry might still be in the catacombs. A faint light flickers in the catacombs now and I wonder what Dmitry may be hoping to accomplish by camping there.

  The hall is deserted and stands like an igloo coated with the snow and ice of the wintry storm. I gathe
red together provisions that might make Dmitry’s stay in the catacombs more pleasant then as the snow slowly came to a stop. The bag that I held, bound tightly now with twine, hung heavily against my spine and the prospect of trekking to the catacombs seemed gruesome. I told Rhys and Regelus that I wanted to spend the day in the hall of the village below and that I wouldn’t need any assistance. Reluctantly, they let me go on my way while they worked in the dungeons below the castle. I knew that they intended to watch the hall from time to time and I also knew that they were both familiar with my aversion to chill so I built a fire high in the fireplace of the hall. I walked quickly from room to room in the hopes that Dmitry had come back, in the hopes that I might still escape having to go up to the catacombs that I so wholly loathed.

  As the smoke bellowed happily from the chimney of the hall that had for many weeks been barren I slipped out one of the back doors and thanked whatever God was listening for the light dusting of snow that began to fall. My tracks were covered not long after I made them and the shifting of the snowflakes made me nearly invisible in my white gown. The only thing that might have given away my movement was the black of my hair and the dark color of the bag on my back, but I think that had they seen me one of them would have followed. As I made my way to the catacombs the snow fell in clumps from the tree canopies above me, every now and again an animal flitted across the path in front of me and I had to swerve to avoid them.

  The catacombs seemed to be further away than I had anticipated and as I moved toward it I saw the orange of the fire burning. My eyesight seems to be getting keener with the passing of the years and I am inclined to believe that some day I may very well be able to see through things. I walked steadfastly for an hour and eventually came to the cut stone stairs that wind up to the catacombs. The ice coated them thickly and the snow on top of that. I moved slowly toward the opening of the catacombs, afraid of what I might find. Though I knew the layout of the catacombs and though I knew some day that I may need to come to terms with the fact that I feared the catacombs, the prospect of it now scared me more than anything. The fear that I’d felt for centuries now stared me in the face and showed no signs of dissipating.

  My fears slammed into one another in my head as I crested the top of the staircase. Icicles hung like teeth at the entrance of the catacombs and as I peered around the edge of the door I saw Dmitry there with his arms wrapped tightly around himself. The fire raged in the center of the fire pit and the bodies stacked around the perimeter of the cave were coated with a thick layer of ice. My stomach lurched as I moved into the glow of the fire and Dmitry’s eyes followed me. His face would have lit up with a smile if the muscles hadn’t been so newly changed and susceptible to cold. His new found immortality had yet to take full effect over him as only six months prior to this moment he had been human. His bones still ached with the cold, his skin still burned with intense heat, and his heart still ached with loneliness.

  ‘It took you long enough.’ He laughed as the snow and icicles shook themselves free of his hair. ‘I am here of my own free will, not because of some silly note I happened upon.’ My voice wavered with frustration and also an eagerness that I hadn’t expected. His brow furrowed then and he opened his mouth to speak, ‘Why then if it is of your own free will did you build a fire in the hall?’ He pretended stupidity then, rubbing away the cold from his fingers, ‘I find it funny that someone who is so in control of herself would need to sneak out to meet me.’ He stood then, taking the heavy bag from my shoulders and sitting it gingerly down near the fire. He led me to the seat that until only moments ago he had been occupying and sat down heavily beside me. The seat beneath me was still warm as his body still held on to the characteristics that made him distinctly human.

  I thought for a moment how nice it would be to feel his arm about my shoulder and for a second I though that I might find it there, but his hands stayed firmly in his lap, laced about one another. ‘I snuck out to protect you, my brothers don’t even know that you exist. And I find it humorous that someone so cocksure was mysteriously out of the forest when my brothers came searching.’ The bag rested against his leg and he jiggled it lightly. ‘You’ll never know what’s in it that way.’ I said as a smile crept across my mouth. ‘I wasn’t trying to find out what was in it Miss, I was trying to regain feeling in my leg, why does the cold not affect you?’ He kept at the jiggling and his other leg joined in. The cold was not the only thing that kept his limbs moving; his eyes flitted about impatiently and I knew that not only was he cold, he was also nervous.

  ‘Sabine. The cold does affect me, just not in the same way as you.’ I pulled the bag from in front of his leg and began to untie it nervously, wondering if he heard my name. ‘What?’ He asked, an uncertain smile playing at his lips. ‘The cold does affect me just…’ ‘No, what was the first thing that you said?’ He had heard my name, and now wished to confirm that it was indeed the thing that he heard. ‘Sabine?’ I asked. ‘Is that your name by any chance?’ His hands unlaced then and moved to take the neck of the back from me. ‘I suppose you could call it that.’ I tugged the bag away from him and began unpacking it quickly, I think that if it was at all possible my face was flushed hotly at our exchange. ‘It is a beautiful name, and I am honored that you’ve shared it with me. Here let me.’ He asserted as he took the bag once more from my hands and pulled the blankets and parchment packets from it. ‘Why do I need more parchment, you’ll just get upset with what I’ve written and burn it, or take it, or simply crumple it all so that the ink smears.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought that the proper response to a gift is one of thanks not ridicule, but if you don’t want the things I’ve brought you I’ll take them back and forget that you exist all together.’ The flush came back to my cheeks and smacked his hand in an attempt to make him release the bundle of things that I’d given him. His hands held tight to the bundle and his eyes met mine, they are blue by the way, an icy blue that mimics the color of the sky on a snowy day, ‘I like the gifts, I was making a joke.’ He laughed then, as if it would make me forget that what he had just said to me and against my own volition I laughed with him. ‘I’m not used to joking, I apologize, my brothers are quite somber.’ My face felt hot as it hadn’t it years and I busied my hands with the kerchief I carried with me. It was Daphene’s and though I’ve had it with me all these years, it still retains its beauty.

  ‘Don’t worry, this isn’t that lively a bunch anyhow.’ He mused as his hand swept out about him to draw my attention from scaffold to scaffold. I wasn’t aware of it but apparently a look of disgust and confusion crossed my face for he was immediately sorry for the joke that he made. ‘Too harsh, I apologize. So…’ He then moved to finish unpacking the bag and made a mental note of each. ‘Thank you for the gifts, they are sure to make my stay in the hall much more pleasant, I tried to discover what I could from the bodies but as far as I can tell, there is nothing to glean from these bodies.’ ‘Really,’ I said, careful not to disguise the twinge of sarcasm that filled them, ‘what had you expected to learn, did you think that maybe we had written down an explanation of the sickness, that we some how knew why the people die as they do?’

  He fidgeted for a moment and continued to expound on his thoughts, ‘I came to this cave because I saw your brothers moving corpses here, I thought that perhaps they did something other than bury them here.’ He focused his eyes on the bag and its contents. ‘You think we are monsters don’t you.’ He did all that he could to keep his eyes on the bag until finally I placed my hand firmly on his chin and trained his eyes on my face. ‘What do you think I am Dmitry? What have you become?’ His eyes filled with tears and I let him move my hand as he took it from his chin and pressed it to his chapped lips, ‘I had hoped that you were an angel.’ His eyes filled with tears that spilled over the damn of his eye lids and he moved to wrap me in a hug. His arms nearly encircled me before I could escape them.

  ‘What do you think I am Dmitry?’ He pulled back from me and
gazed at me intently, ‘I haven’t the slightest clue what you might be.’ He turned from me and packed his gifts back into the bag. ‘Why are you avoiding my question Dmitry? Does it scare you so wholly to think that I might be something other than what you can explain away with your reason?’ He fell silent and as he did I stood and walked to the mouth of the cavern, ‘I will be in the castle should you need me, if you aren’t scared to ask for my help. My brothers are likely to dislike you from the moment they hear you exist, but I must tell them about you.’ He kept quiet still and had I stayed a moment longer I would have seen that he was crying. The bodies of his family no doubt rested somewhere in the catacombs and though he feared what he had become, he refused to acknowledge that he was no longer at least partly human. He wanted desperately to be something that he would never be again and still believed that if he held on tight enough he might not change.

  I walked at a determined pace back to the castle, avoiding the hall in its entirety, unafraid of what my brothers might think if they happened to see me emerging angrily from the forest. They were in the dungeons again, though today they had arranged their many projects in such a way that I was made to climb across the furniture that they had piled at the foot of the stairs. They fussed at first when they heard the noise. Once I made it past the mess they froze, worried that I might wonder what they were doing. At that point in time I was so frustrated with Dmitry that I didn’t really care what they were doing. I fear that what I let slip next will ruin any chance at a peaceful existence that we may have had. ‘I will be welcoming someone into our home soon brothers, you should do well to brush up on your manners and be polite.’