by A. L. Mengel
“Do you think he would mind if I had a glass of it?”
They both looked up as there was a knock on the front door. Delia got up slowly, found her cane, and walked over to the foyer. She peered through the peephole, and saw Antoine smooth his hair back. He leaned forward as Delia reached down and opened the door. “Antoine! Why didn’t you just…”
Antoine stepped inside. “I can’t find my key.”
She ushered Antoine towards the sitting room and he paused when he saw Tramos standing next to the sofa in the front room. The power had returned, and Antoine reached over and snapped the chandelier on, bathing the room in light.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you here,” Antoine said. “Talking more about Darius?”
Tramos took a few steps forward. “No, actually. Delia and I were discussing some questions she had about her past. Now I understand you are heading to your estate?”
Delia looked up at Antoine expectantly.
Antoine meandered into the parlor and headed towards the wet bar. He shook his head and let out an exasperated sigh. “I drove past,” he said. “That’s all for now.”
“Are you returning?” Tramos asked.
Antoine looked at Tramos and nodded. “Yes, later tonight.” He looked over at Delia and raised his eyebrows.
“I’ll be coming along.”
Tramos joined Antoine at the wet bar. “You mind if I come along as well?”
Antoine shook his head. “We’re leaving soon.”
*****
Hector and Geraldine left the library and a staff member locked the doors behind them. Geraldine hoisted her bag over her shoulder as Hector pulled his phone from his pocket. The small screen shined against his face in the darkness, as he typed with his index finger. He adjusted his glasses as they proceeded to the parking lot.
“Do you have the address?” Geraldine asked as they unlocked the car and slid inside.
“I’m looking it up now,” he said, turning around to look at the back seat. There was a large box. He turned forward and searched through computer desktop file folders.
She nodded and turned the car engine over.
“Here’s the address,” Hector said. “One Andelusia Avenue. The high price district.”
“That’s Coral Gables,” she said.
“His house.”
She nodded. “Well, rumor is he is going to be there tonight. That’s the perfect time. So let’s go.”
*****
Antoine unlocked his small, silver Mercedes as Delia and Tramos followed out the front door. Delia reached around to lock her cottage, as Antoine waited in the driver’s seat. “Let’s go!” he said.
Tramos held the passenger seat forward so Delia could slide in the back seat, and Tramos squeezed in the front. He looked around for a minute as Antoine threw the car in gear and backed down the driveway. “Nice car,” Tramos said. “Very nice. But small.”
Antoine shrugged his shoulders but kept watching the road. “My sedan was destroyed in the fire. That had much more room.”
Antoine pressed a few buttons and a chorus of strings filled the car.
He looked over at Tramos. “I love Vivaldi. Such a great use of strings. This is Winter.”
Tramos nodded and closed his eyes and leaned back in the seat. Delia watched both immortals, in the front seat listening to the classical music, to the violins; the strings chorused in the passenger cabin as she leaned back in the seat herself, closing her eyes, and wondering what the night had in store.
Before the concerto had ended, the small silver car pulled up in front of Antoine’s estate. Delia opened her eyes and looked out the window. Yellow crime scene tape still surrounded the property, reaching from one end of the property at the edge of the sidewalk towards the other. Large green hedges masked the interior of the front gardens, but they were in blood. Delia admired the purple azaleas that carpeted the crest of the hedges.
Towards the center of the property was a large, iron gate, framed by soaring lamp posts nestled in cement columns.
“I can’t use the drive,” Antoine said. “It’s still taped off.” He pulled to the side of the street and cut the engine. “Shall we?” He looked back at Delia and raised his eyebrows and smiled, as Tramos opened his door and stood on the street.
Antoine fidgeted with the gate key as the door swung open. The gardens were still well tended; the gardeners still visited weekly. But the house was in a different state. Delia still remembered the soaring, grand mason columns that reached from the front, wraparound porch up towards the roof. The front windows, which once were expansive, floor to ceiling glass, were now broken, and the fingerlings of dark soot reached around on the stucco.
And then there was a growl.
And a rustling in the bushes.
Delia gasped as Tramos stood in front of her and Antoine. Antoine looked up and over at the rustling bushes. “What is going on…”
Tramos stood in front of Antoine. “They are protecting it, Antoine. Just like Darius said. It’s the hounds. The Hounds of Hell…”
“The hounds?” Delia’s eyes widened as she craned towards the bushes. Desperate phone calls from Darius permeated her mind. And stories of those supernatural beasts; she could smell their rancid breath; their acidic saliva dripping from decomposed snouts.
And their stench.
Excrement.
And the days when Darius would pound on her cottage door, in the middle of the night. “The estate is guarded!” Darius had said. “Those supernatural dogs are there!”
And then Delia remembered the hounds.
She explained what they were to Antoine. “They are called Hell Hounds. They guard the Gates of Hell.”
Was Antoine’s estate a supernatural gateway? She stood in front of Antoine and leaned close to his ear. “Listen, Antoine. Do you hear?”
Antoine and Tramos stood silently. Antoine looked back at Delia. “I don’t…”
“It’s the Hell Hounds,” she said, as the rustling continued in the bushes. “We cannot defeat them. They will tear us apart!” She placed her arms around Antoine’s back and felt his body tense up.
Tramos crouched down and examined the bushes. “We cannot see them…”
“…unless they reveal themselves to us,” Delia added.
“Let’s just get inside,” she said. She held Antoine, her arms around him, close together, as they took several steps back towards the porch.
The bushes thrashed.
Tramos fell backwards as the hounds charged out of the bushes.
“Get them!” he cried. Antoine lunged forward as Delia bowed her head down. She stamped her foot on the ground. “I command you! Be gone!”
The dogs stopped and focused on her.
Their stance was wide, they were muscular and emitted a rotten stench. Their eyes were fiery and red. Drops of acid fell to the ground from their matted, bloodied fur as tiny puffs of smoke rose to the air. “I command you!”
She opened her arms as the dogs froze.
Her breathing was heavy, her chest rising and falling with every breath.
Antoine watched, his mouth open, as her white wings tore through her shirt, stretched across the gardens, crashing against the trees, and soaring outwards from the small of her back. The woman, Delia, the one whom Antoine had known only as a feeble, white-haired senior, bent down, placed her arms around his torso, and picked him up off the ground effortlessly, as Tramos extended his wings and they all soared into the sky.
Antoine looked down as the hounds jumped and howled, their chorus of barking permeating the otherwise silent night. Delia and Tramos reached their wings across the sky, carrying Antoine up towards the roof of his estate. They settled at the peak, gently landing on the Spanish tiles, as the dogs quieted below.
The night became still and silent again as the breeze flew through their wings. Antoine turned around and saw Delia’s wings retract into the small of her back. His eyes were wide, his mouth hung open.
“You are!”
he said. “You…” And then he looked over at Tramos. “And you!”
“We are here to protect you,” Tramos said. “Our assignment is you. And only you.”
Delia watched Antoine, who hung his head down, and closed his eyes. “For me…” he said. And then she saw. She saw the inner recesses of his mind; of his time in the cemetery when he was chased by demons. She saw him standing in an open grave.
Wake up, sleepyhead.
Delia reached out and touched Antoine’s shoulder. He looked up and looked at her. A solitary tear streamed down his cheek. “What are you thinking, Antoine?”
He shook his head, and looked out at the twinkling lights of the city. Trees surrounded large estate homes on Andelusia, and beyond, towards downtown, a warm glow tinted the night sky.
“I can’t even fathom having protection. Divine protection, isn’t it?” He looked over at Delia. “I can’t even understand how I would warrant such an order. My coffin sentence came but I don’t feel any less evil…”
Antoine focused on Delia. She had grown young. Her hair was long, brown and flowing; her lips were fiery red. She was the Delia that Darius had known so many years ago in Paris, returned to the prime of her youth. Antoine’s face shifted as he cocked his head to the side. “And you…look at you. You’re young again! How can that even be possible? Didn’t The Hooded Man seduce you too?”
She nodded as Tramos stood, looked outwards, and scanned the horizon. She turned back to face him. “The body is just a shell, Antoine. When you see what is really inside, that is eternal beauty.”
“But what about Darius?” he asked. “He grew old and was mortal again. What kind of death is that?”
Delia placed her arms around Antoine’s shoulders and leaned her head against his. “It’s never too late for any of us, Antoine. You’ve spent your life searching for answers. I’ve seen into your mind, Antoine. I know what you think. What you believe. And I want to tell you, I will walk with you. And it’s never too late.”
He looked up at Delia. “Do you think the answers will be in his manuscript?”
“You mean The Quest for Immortality?”
Antoine nodded.
“It depends on what answers you are looking for. Darius wrote that book when he was mortal and dying. His gift of immortality had been stripped from him. When fighting for you. For you, Antoine. But the answers…Darius was very bitter during those days. He was distressed. Running from these things he called ‘the dark ones’. I don’t know what type of answers will be in that manuscript. But you need to consider his state of mind when he wrote it.”
Antoine placed his hand over his eyes. “I just…don’t understand. Maybe reading his words will give some insight?” He let out a sigh. “Then what am I looking for? Does it even matter?”
“Of course it matters,” Delia said, rubbing his back. “You have to go back in there – back down to the basement – and face your past. You need to redeem yourself. Free yourself of the chains you have been wrapped in for as long as I have known you. And if it means finding that book and getting some answers about what happened when you were gone, then that is what needs to be done.”
Tramos turned around. “And the time to do it is now,” he said. “I haven’t heard the hounds. This may be as good a time as any to go inside. I can carry you both. We can fly down and head right into the front door.”
Antoine craned his neck and looked down into the yard, and Delia joined him.
The bushes rustled again.
Antoine looked up and shook his head. “There’s an attic. We can go in that way.”
Delia placed her arm around him, and looked directly at him. “Are you ready?”
Antoine nodded. “Yes…”
“Then it’s time to face your past, Antoine. When we go inside, I will be with you.”
DELIA TURNED TO FACE TRAMOS, who looked up at the sky, in an apparent study of the moon, as Antoine sat on the edge of the roof, leaned back, and closed his eyes. “Let’s go inside,” he said. A group of blue-tinted clouds floated by, as Tramos sighed. Delia placed her hand on Antoine’s shoulder. “Just a few moments,” she said. “I need to take care of this. Before we go to where we are going.” She turned away from Antoine to face Tramos.
“You are so passionate about finding justice,” Delia said.
Tramos broke his trance and looked down at her. “Justice?”
“For the assault on our kind by The Hooded Man.”
He returned his gaze towards the moon and nodded.
“But you seem so distant,” she said. “And even though I have not spent a great deal of time with you, I can tell that you have something on your mind.”
He looked back at Delia. She smiled.
“Are you looking to enter my mind?” he asked. He turned and sat on the edge of the roof, never breaking eye contact. “How can you help me by exploring my past? And why are you doing this now?”
“Because I am being willed to do so.”
Tramos sat down next to her. “What do you know, Delia? What is about to happen?”
She shook her head. “Everything isn’t always revealed to me,” she said. “But there are certain times where I am willed to do something. That I feel a sense of urgency to fulfill. And for you, I must learn more about you. Right now. Before we enter the house.”
Tramos looked out at the city and nodded.
“And it gives me a better idea of who you are,” she said. “And by facing your past, you can receive redemption too.” She looked down at his hands. They were muscular, rugged, a workman’s hands. “In life,” she said, “I can tell that you were a hard worker. Tell me about your life, Tramos. We have all been placed in one another’s lives for a reason. And I believe the reason why we have been placed with one another is about to be revealed to me.”
Tramos grasped Delia’s hands, as they sat across from one another, on the edge of the roof, under the moonlight and floating clouds, above the rustling bushes and the Hell Hounds, and Tramos started speaking to her. As he spoke, he started to tell her, for the first time ever, about his past. And when she listened, she looked deep into his eyes, past the retinas, deeper into his mind…
*****
…Tramos had always thought himself to be one of the eldest immortals. There were times that he had seen Claret – who was believed, at least by most, to be the absolute eldest, and when he saw her, their interactions were, for the most part, amiable in nature.
But the nature of Tramos and his story stretched back further than ancient Jerusalem and the days of Christ.
There was an approaching thunderstorm on the night that Tramos entered the world. It was long ago, in ancient times, before the days of Claret, before the days of Christ, and when the world was governed by the ancient Egyptians and rulers of the land. It was those rulers who commanded the pyramids be built, on the backs of muscular men, in the searing sunlight; as giant, squares of concrete were hauled in the powerful, desert sun, on rickety wooden wagons, Tramos discovered himself, along with the men of Egypt, hauling concrete.
Tramos doesn’t remember how he found Cairo.
Or how he wound up building pyramids with an ancient Egyptian army. But the early years of his life, before he became a young man, had been a blur. He knew, at some point, he was transported from his life in Europe, to the hot desert and the sweaty, brown culture and the pyramid building, but, no matter how hard he tried, he could not remember who, or what, brought him there.
Later in the evening, when he had been laying in his bunk, he pulled the tattered sheet up towards his neck, as a cool, night wind blew in his hut from the darkness outside. The winds tore across the desert, blowing sand and hot air against the flaps.
He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but sleep did not come well for him that night.
Tramos, I am speaking to you. Do you listen?
He opened his eyes and threw the tattered cloth off his body. Sweat dripped down from his neck and his chest, as the winds and heat roared outside
. He looked over and saw his tent mate was sleeping soundly.
Tramos…do you hear me?
He sat up as the wind blew the tent flaps open. He rushed out of bed and tore the flaps closed, as he felt the sting of sand against his bare chest. His tent mate turned and faced the other side of the tent, but did not rouse.
Do you remember me, Tramos?
He looked towards the corner, shrouded in darkness.
Was someone there?
Lie down.
Lie back in your bed, Tramos. Pull up the covers. And remember me…
He climbed back into his small cot, the sweat now dried on his strapping chest, his small, white flax linen which wrapped around his middle. He lie, flat on his back, watching the wind whip across the tent ceiling, as he felt a pair of hands wrap around his ankles.
He raised his head and saw the outline under the sheet; it was, perhaps, a woman, from the light feel of the hands along his calves and thighs.
But the mysterious woman moved further up his body, her hands exploring his developed thighs, his abdomen, and massive chest. He was pinned to the bed and threw his head back, his eyes closed tight.
She lay on top of him, her weight pressed on his; he could feel the heat of her breath against his face, but when he opened his eyes, the appeared to be no one there.
As he felt the searing heat around his cheek, breath after breath came closer to his ear: “You are right where I left you!” her voice was deep. Raspy.
And then his eyes widened.
He shot up to a sitting position, looked down at his lap. Only the linen on which he slept; and he was pulsating and massive. His chest heaved with each breath.
But no mysterious woman.
The wind still tore against the tent flaps.
His tent mate slept soundly next to him.
And he lay back down, pulled the small piece of linen back over him, and closed his eyes once again.
*****
