“If there is one,” Theopolis has added which has sent Jessica into a near panic which has increased the volume and anger tone in her voice; and now Theopolis is saying something about gargoyles, because he is sitting near an enormous cement one, sort of listening to Jessica and sort of wondering what it might be like to sit up on it as if he were riding it; and, now Jessica - in full fury - is lunging at him in disgust of his ‘attitude’ at this most awful and desperate moment. Theopolis part-way covers his eyes, expecting to see Jessica bounce off it and onto the floor, but instead, a wondrous thing happens. The immense, stone statue very delicately - almost politely, almost as if it had lifted up just slightly and tip-toed with its long, clawed, toe-nailed feet - moves, several ‘steps’ to the right across the shined and polished floor. Jessica is speechless. Awestruck. She stands there a moment wondering if she actually heard the clicking of toenails against the floor - or was that some sort of strange piano music - anyway, she does not linger long, for what was once behind the mountainous gargoyles, being silently, ominously guarded, is now wide open, stark straight in front of Jessica - a door!
“C’mon,” Jessica yells, and runs for it, hoping Theopolis will not stop to talk about things he’d just seen, or worse yet, poke at them doing something to make that wide open door close. I wish it were true, dear readers, as I like Theopolis very much, that his plan was not to stop for a moment and ponder this beast - his size and the likelihood that shrimpfish, little Jessica could cause it to ‘move’ - and probably ‘poke’ something at it, wondering ‘just how did it move?’, but it was not something like this . Rather this was his plan exactly; but, at the urging of his friend (and her mood just before this) he dares not stop - he, too, runs straight through the wide open door, previously blocked by the gargoyle. In they go! To what appears to be an underworld altar room. Red painted walls, black and white tiled flooring, black candelabras and things that make most vampires cringe at the thought - relics of wooden crosses, leather furniture with metal rivets, and old, eerie painting of ancients with eyeballs so realistically painted that they practically watch!
“O powers of cruel intentions! I thought this door led to the way out!” Jessica wails in disappointment.
“This is just another room. Another cre-epy room, that is,” Theopolis complains. He turns to look back toward the moment he gave up, but the door is closed and there is no sight of the beast out front.
“Did you shut that?” Theopolis asks Jessica.
“What?” she turns to look in the direction he is looking.
“The door? No.”
“I… I, didn’t either,” Theopolis stammers and looks, wide-eyed about the candle-lit room. His look is met with other wide-eyed looks from ancient paintings as he moves his eyes around the room and back to Jessica.
“Uh-uh-uh,” he says with a pretend quiver of fright, “now what?”
“Well - Don’t sit there!” Jessica points to a red, leather chair with a head-rest and foot-rest. A wooden tray stands next to it, draped with a red, velvet cloth and upon the red velvet, carefully set out, are long, silver instruments, most pointy and sharp.
“Ah!” Theopolis gasps, and for the first time in Theo polis’ ‘proud’ (to be a vampire) life, he covers his neck with his hands.
“A blood-letting,” Jessica says.
“A what?!” Theopolis nearly cries.
“This old relic, is where some doctor - or someone - performed what was called a blood-letting. Medieval times, the Dark Ages,” Jessica calmly and resolutely explains, “that’s how they thought diseases were cured. If the diseased or ‘tainted’ blood was ‘drained’ out, the thought was, that the disease was gone. Sometimes leeches were used, but sometimes…” she points to the chair.
“Aahhh!” is all Theopolis says; and pulls his collar up over his chin.
“Maybe this is just an old, relic room. A vampire with a sick sense of collecting.”
“Maybe its an altar room! Whatever it is, can we go now? How do we get out of here?”
“The door, of course; I want to look around. You go ahead, but wait for me outside. Don’t leave me,” Jessica insists.
“I won’t,” he says and walks to the door, watching the eyes that watch him as he goes, transfixed upon him, they seem to be. He pulls the door handle. It won’t budge. He pulls again as hard as he can.
“It won’t open,” he nearly shrieks.
“What? Pull harder,” she says, turning a long, antique, silver scalpel carefully in her hands.
“I’m pulling with all of my might!” He pounds his fist against the door, “hey, you out there! Let us out of here!!” he yells. Jessica lays down the instrument.
“Not so loud,” she tells him.
“Why not?!” he asks panicky.
“It just feels like we shouldn’t be loud in here,” she says and continues to quietly peruse the room.
“You are freakin’ me out, right now. Why aren’t you scared? Angry? Panicking? A two-ton thingamabob has just locked us in a room with a - a - you know-” he points toward the blood-letting chair with out say the word, “that!”
“Look!” she says, “over here! A dumbwaiter!”
“Ahhh! A what? Who?”
“An old elevator - a dumbwaiter! Come here, inside, with me. We have to pull it up ourselves. That’s what they are called. Dumbwaiters. Before elevators.” Theopolis nearly runs toward her, part out of joy that there might be an escape and part out of fear going anywhere near that chair. Until now, Theopolis had never imagined that there had ever been anything, historically or otherwise, that could drain the a vampire! So, he runs into the dumbwaiter and pulls, as fast as he can, upon the pulley-rope that Jessica tells him to pull. She pulls too, and they lift off from the ‘blood-letting room’ as Theopolis later calls it, knowing now, how a mortal must feel about the vampire; and soon, they arrive up on to the floor above. The dumbwaiter opens out to a splendid, green-cast light, open air, and the glass ceiling of a conservatoire - a belvedere. Still confused? A frost-free, summer house. What?! Doesn’t matter for across the airy, sun-lit room full of potted plants and ferns, a door stands ajar, not wide-open but open enough for Jessica and Theopolis to run to it - run through it - out of the underworld castle and out into the dry, dusty gulch of the In Between.
Three seconds into their happy-go-lucky run to freedom, Theopolis yells to warn Jessica, “Trolls!” Sticks come hurtling. Stones are being tossed.
“Quick! Behind that boulder!” Theopolis tells her. He picks up a large stone and throws it in the direction from which the ammo is arriving. It pings the troll who’d nearly hit him.
“Yes! Smashed a cooch!” Theopolis grins. The entire group of trolls groan and yowl, a most displaceable sound of carrying on rises up from their rabble. He laughs and ducks their thrown stones. He grabs another. He throws again.
“Kibosh!” A solid thud is heard as he hits his target. He turns to Jessica. Jessica ducks behind him looking frantically for a way out of this new quagmire.
“Over here!” she yells tugging on him to join her and they both run, as fast as possible, lunging and darting toward the Witch’s Tree. The whole time, sticks and stones hurtle back and forth until a final stone, thrown by Theopolis, lands with a thud so loud it induces a chorus of yowls so thunderous that a quiet moment follows as if they all were hovering under the sky of a violent storm, during which time Theopolis and Jessica hide behind a robust boulder to catch their breath. Theopolis, then, scrambles for a reserve pile of stones, when suddenly Jessica hears the tree whisper - to her - the way to the bridge.
No time to lose amid the mayhem, the uneasy feeling grows that the unruly group is only quiet because they are doing the same thing - gathering more ammo - but in a larger and most uncivilized group. And so, Jessica does not wait to determine the logic, nor the likeliness that a tree would whisper directions - and good directions, too.
Instead, she yells, “C’mon!” to Theopolis and runs. Theopolis runs, but he is hit.
>
“Ow!” The trolls laughter rolls across the dry and dusty In Between like a wave rising and then crashing down against the sand. Theopolis follows Jessica, running to catch up when he turns and points to a certain bald old bugger among the group of hooligan, roughed-up trolls.
“I’ll get you back!” he yells. The trolls snarl. Old Tyrannomous glares and clacks his teeth, lifting his chin toward the sky, making a strange and eery sound. Theopolis nearly bumps into Jessica who has stopped in the middle of the gulch. She is reciting a strange poem. A poem which seems to be whispered to her, still from the tree - now a bit too far off to be heard from, yet stuck in the In Between as she is, Jessica does not pause to wonder; instead, quick-as-she-can, she utters the words of the poem.
“Up the bridge is where you’ll climb,
To get ye to the other side…”
She holds up her arms against rocks flung at her, covering her head just as one hits her arm, “Ow!”
Theopolis insists, “Jess! We’re not covered here!” He looks around - for cover - but sees the shadow of the Stygian Downs Bridge. “O…” he stops fussing, realizing she may have found the way out. He turns and furiously begins hurling as many stones as he can, defending Jessica.
“How do we get up there?” he yells while throwing. Jessica keeps her mind on her duty and continues with the recitation:
“…but when it looks like up is in
Then down is out and spin again -
once East, once West, between is three
And down you’ll go through portal B.” She turns and interrupts Theopolis’ ‘cooch smashing’ by pulling on his sleeve, tugging him to a spot at the East. She spins him (and her) around quickly.
“Once East,” she says and then ducks and runs, pulling Theopolis with her to the West. The trolls groan, slower and move slower. The pair spin again.
“Once West.” The trolls begin moving backward and fade out as if seen only through a dark and misty haze. Jessica pulls Theopolis toward the middle point between the prior two and spins, even faster.
“One, two, three!” At the yell of three the two instantaneously appear up on the ledge of the old cantilever bridge looking down into the mist of the underworld at the once again imaginary dusty gulch of the In Between.
Covered in dust but relieved and happy as can be about being ‘above ground’ Jessica exhales and lets her shoulders droop, releasing the tension from the worry of possibly never finding the way back to Thaddeus - from the underworld - again. Both Theopolis and Jessica laugh out loud with joy; and without thinking, Theopolis grabs onto Jessica and hugs her with all his might. She’d saved their lives, for one reason. While being squeezed, Jessica looks off toward the stretch of land where the bridge begins, and thinks about books, her room, and her ‘home’ (away from Home). His eyes tightly closed, Theopolis thinks about victory, the defeated trolls, and Jessica. Suddenly realizing he is squeezing her as tightly as one might squeeze a teddy bear, his eyes pop open - awkward! He pulls away; and, they both ignore the uncomfortable moment when he glances at her neck.
“I couldn’t have done it without you!” he tells her before losing the happy moment to the awkward feeling, “I feel great!”
“Me too!” she exclaims.
“Let’s go!” Theopolis says and puts his arm around her as they walk down the bridge’s spidery, iron structure - which is even darker than the darkness - through the mist to the solid ground of home. His next words echo through the canyon.
“I absolutely insist that we do that again!” Jessica laughs, tossing her head back, accidentally showing her fangs.
“Tell me how you did it!” he ins?ists, “How’d you get us out of there?!” he asks.
“The tree. While you were, you know, kyboshing or quashing, or whatever to those trolls, the tree whispered to me.” He laughs.
“No, really. It told me the words to say, and somehow, I just remembered them, like a the poem - it rhymed. Fiends help you if you’ve got to get out of there quickly! The thing is rather long for a get away plan,” Jessica tells him.
“Probably at least a few who didn’t get away, otherwise I doubt the trolls would loiter there in such numbers.”
“Like they’re waiting for a meal, right?” Jessica shivers, “Could’ve been us, I guess?”
“Glad I wasn’t - and you weren’t - one of them,” he says with his arm around her they walk.
“You know,” Jessica mentions after a brief silence, “I think I’ve had a dream with that same voice - the tree’s - in it; or at least, it sounded rather familiar. Ever do that? Dream something and then it comes true later?”
“Deja-vu,” Theopolis says, “That’s what the undead call it.”
“What do vampires call it?” Jessica asks.
“Relatives,” Theopolis says. “Like refrigerator sticky notes.” They both laugh.
“Before refrigerators,” Jessica adds.
“Exactly.”
That night, Jessica - happy to be back safely in her room, safely at Thaddeus Preference’s, sits at her desk with her night lamp on, writing a letter home to her Father. Her curtains are open to the pitch dark night out in front of her. She signs her name to the letter and draws heart shapes in the corner of the envelope.
We did jump, Father. We did! In my last letter, I told you we were talking about the Legend and the Underworld Castle. We went there, we jumped! Can you believe it? It was terrific, I suppose, but somehow not what I expected. For one thing, Theopolis and I - when we arrived at the table - were dining together! This confused me and Theopolis for he can not feast upon another vampire, even if I am only a half. I mean, that is true, isn’t it? Because, well, I noticed him, occasionally staring at my neck. Not that I was uncomfortable, but, I Don’t Want to End Up Drained!! Ha ha. Just teasing you, Father. He’s a very nice person. Truthllfully. I’’ll write to you later and tell you more about it all. I’m going to bed, now. Feels like I’ve been up for days! Don’t know why I’m telling you that. You probably have been. Take care of yourself!
Besotted,
Jessica
She lays down her quill pen, caps the ink, switches off her lamp, and climbs into her crisp sheets looking out the window at the moon.
“Good night, old man,” she tells the moon and winks. She pulls shut her curtains, then snuggles down into the covers and falls fast asleep.
In Jessica’s dream this night, a chilling occurrence, a ghostly figure of Domina enters Jessica’s bedroom and speaks to her of the night she once had to endure - captured at the Witch’s house. Domina’s screams and shrieks of terror haunt dear Jessica while in her dream she and Theopolis travel the underworld looking for a way out. My it is a nightmare! during which Jessica tosses and turns with a fever of 105 degrees! Neither Jessica nor Theopolis go to their school classes the next day - as it arrives - for he is sick in bed, too, with a fever as high as he has ever had after suffering the haunting nightmare. Again, at night, both have another visit - in dreams - from Domina in shadowy figure who leaves them both, through separate hallways, taking with her their fevers when she melts out of sight - as apparitions do just melt away.
Just what makes her haunt vampires? A dislike for their creed? Perhaps it is jealousy as poor Domina never got to return to her life, happy as usual as the vampires who enter the underworld for the memorable night at its ancient castle. Her soul, right now, infact, is stuck - as a tree - in the In Between due to that horrible, incorrigible, despicable, down-right distasteful Witch!
Jessica sits straight up in her bed, her head and hair sweaty from the night and day’s fever before.
“Evil dungeons! Was that a dream?! That poor woman! O!” and Jessica wails a mournful sigh. She covers her eyes and cries.
The next day, Theopolis sees Jessica at school. He doesn’t smile when he sees her, and she does not smile at him, neither. They solemnly walk toward each other, and Theopolis holds out his hand for Jessica to hold. He puts his other arm around her and she lays her head ag
ainst his shoulder, both quiet for quite a long time.
“You okay?” Theopolis finally asks.
“Not really. You?” she says.
“I don’t think so. Not as bad as yesterday, though,” he admits.
“Yeah, me neither. Do you want to go study somewhere?”
“No,” he says, “I’d rather get something to eat. Want to come along with me?”
“No,” Jessica tells him, “I’ve gotta study.” Theopolis rests his chin on Jessica’s head.
“Did we really cause that? To her? I mean, did she suffer because we went into the underworld; or, is it something else - something she’s trying to warn us about?” Jessica answers, unsure of what she has seen in her dreams.
“That’s what it looked like, didn’t it? Like we shouldn’t have gone or thought we were welcome.”
“I feel awful, and sorry,” he admits, “both unnatural for me, that I wanted to go again, now.”
“Me too,” Jessica says, “but I don’t even know why. It wasn’t that fun, but it… just felt right, I guess, like it’s who we are, somehow. Now what do we do?”
“I don’t know,” Theopolis tells her, “I can’t - not if someone will suffer while I go.”
“I cried so hard,” Jessica admits. Theopolis presses his lips lightly against the top of her head.
“I don’t want to tell you what I did,” he says.
“What? Tell.”
“I painted you something,” Theopolis owns up.
“Why wouldn’t you want to tell me that?” she asks him, smiling at the thought of having such a lovely surprise awaiting her.
“It’s not the way you’d want to see yourself. It’s the evil… that I saw, in you, after that night… I saw you so differently. Myself too,” he says.
“O!” Jessica says, not sure how to respond to his honesty. Then she thinks back and remembers feeling a bit like that herself, about him. She tells him, “That’s how I felt about you, also.”
Legend of Stygian Downs (Vampire DeAngeliuson Book 2) Page 8
