by Nathan Roden
“Bite your tongue, you insolent fool!” Maggie screamed into her only child’s face. “The Wellmore family name does not exist to cater to your every spoiled desire! If your Father could hear—”
“Well, he can’t hear anything, Mother,” Sebastian screamed back at her. “What good does it do to speak of him? Father’s last needs have been attended to—with another portion of our meager substance.”
Maggie slapped Sebastian before she even realized it. She began to quake and to cry.
“Sebastian,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, darling. You are all that I have left.”
“You are almost correct, Mother,” Sebastian said. He wiped his mouth. His nostrils flared at the sight of his blood on the back of his hand. “You have me, and you have our hemorrhaging family bank account along with an eight-hundred-year-old crumbling bit of stone that no one gives a bloody damn about.”
“We’ll just have to look for someone like Miss McFadden—”
“Have you listened to a word I’ve said?” Sebastian growled. “There are not enough local people to support a tour based on the history of this place, real or made-up. The only thing that can save this castle is to clothe it with the reputation that it is hopelessly haunted—the more horrifying and bloodier, the better.”
“I cannot do anything to help with that, Sebastian,” Maggie said. “I would not be able to show my face in town if it was known that I perpetrated such a hoax.”
“Then just what would you have us do?” Sebastian said. “When the money is gone, I will have to get a job—perhaps become a gentleman’s valet—while you will be taking in washing. Is this what you wish us to settle for?”
“What if we did have to take on jobs?” Maggie said. “That is not the end of the world, son. Your father and I were once—”
“Do you hear what you’re saying?” Sebastian said. “The living descendants of the Baron Wellmore; forced into servitude—”
“No one said anything about becoming a servant, Sebastian—”
“What would Father say if he could see us now?” Sebastian said.
Maggie collapsed into a chair.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“I’m not asking you to do anything,” Sebastian said, “But stay out of my way.”
“You don’t have to live in this dreary place, Darling,” Maggie said. “Andrea and Benjamin have plenty of room.”
“If you choose to stay with your sister, with her sad eyes and her pity—that’s your business,” Sebastian said, “But my place is here.”
”This place has not been fit for living in for years; the drafty old doors and windows—you’ll catch your death,” Maggie said. “It wouldn’t hurt you to spend some time with your aunt and uncle—”
“I don’t need room, and I don’t need charity,” Sebastian said. “My place is right here, as long as this cow is our sole source of independence.”
“I don’t think that this old place is good for you,” Maggie said.
“You’re partially correct,” Sebastian said. “You don’t think.”
“Well, I’ll put this lamp away, and I’ll be going,” Maggie said.
“Leave it. I’ll see to it,” Sebastian said quickly, blocking the entrance to the basement.
“I’m not completely useless, Son,” Maggie said. “I’ll see to it.”
“Suit yourself,” Sebastian said.
Sebastian followed his mother down the basement stairs. He held a flashlight, even though there was a light fixture hanging from the ceiling. When Maggie passed the passageway that broke off to the left, Sebastian spoke.
“There is plenty of room in the little storage room, there,” he said. “You certainly do not want to go anywhere near the dungeon level. There are rats down there the size of housecats.”
“Your father took care of the rats long ago,” Maggie said.
“Apparently they have learned that Father is gone because the rats are back with a vengeance,” Sebastian said.
Maggie eyed Sebastian warily.
Sebastian smirked as he offered his mother the flashlight.
“If you insist on visiting them, tell them I said ‘hello’.”
“What might you have down there?” Maggie asked suspiciously, “That the rats stand guard over?”
“Have a look for yourself,” Sebastian yawned. “But be quick about it. I haven’t all night.”
Maggie turned toward the first level storage room.
“Andrea is preparing her beef stew,” Maggie said. “She and Benjamin would be so happy if you would join us.”
”Thank them for me,” Sebastian said. “I have more props to prepare and I’m not hungry.”
“Suit yourself,” Maggie said. “I love you, Son.”
“Good night,” Sebastian said, closing the door behind his mother.
Maggie Wellmore wiped the dust from her hands onto her blouse. She walked to her car and moved it but a few hundred feet. She stopped and waited for ten minutes. She stepped from the car and circled around to the rear of the castle. She paused behind a large tree and eyed the two shallow window wells that had been boarded over for decades. There were now small gaps in the boards for the first time in years—gaps that she recently created.
Maggie held her breath when she saw a beam of light pass in front of the window. At first, she thought it was her imagination running wild, but then the beam passed the other window. She sneaked back to her car and moved it far enough away that she could just see Sebastian’s car.
That night was the third night that she had watched for her son to leave the castle after she had gone. The first two times had been for naught. Maggie did not wish to arouse her sister’s suspicion by returning to Andrea’s house too late. Andrea Murdoch was already concerned with her older sister’s behavior. Andrea could think of no reason for her sister to be keeping such late hours. For the past several nights, Andrea stayed awake until she heard Maggie come in. Andrea did not like the Castle Wellmore at all, and she did not trust Sebastian.
Maggie was about to give up on that night’s mission when she saw the lights come on inside of Sebastian’s car. A few seconds later the headlights came on and the car pulled away. Maggie waited three minutes and left her car. She carried a small flashlight and her keyring. She opened the boot and picked up the heavy lug wrench. She didn’t know whether to believe her son about the rats, but she was taking no chances.
Maggie opened the basement door and stepped back to wait for the skeleton to drop down. She pushed her way around it, turned on the flashlight, and crept down the stairs. She paused when a stench hit her nose—the smell of a defective sewer. Eight steps below her, the stairs ended. The hallway turned to the right. Maggie held her breath and stepped down. She took a few kibbles of cat food from her pocket and threw them against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. She waited. Three small mice scampered to the feast. Maggie let out a breath.
She had only been to the ancient dungeon level one time—at her husband’s insistence. The couple had just become engaged to be married. Alistair Wellmore insisted that she would always have an irrational fear of the dungeon unless she saw it herself. He was right. But that visit was years ago, and she still had the occasional nightmare. This subterranean level had remained practically unchanged for the last eight hundred years. The signs of unspoken horrors remained.
As Maggie watched the mice eating, her thoughts went back to her first trip into the dungeon.
Alistair Wellmore did his best to prepare his young fiancé for the descent into his family’s dark past. He installed electric lighting where there had been nothing but torches for centuries. He hid away some of the more brutal and offensive structures. Alistair held both of Maggie’s hands at the top of the stairs while he told her what to expect. Maggie had been frightened, but she was also excited.
There were shackles everywhere—most were attached to sections of the wall. In one place, four shackles hung from both sides of a wooden structure. Thes
e were positioned so that two people suspended across from each other would be almost touching.
Almost close enough—for biting. There was a tapered trough underneath with a drain in the middle. Maggie could not make herself look away from this scene. She shuddered and trembled until Alistair moved her away.
Ancient wooden tables and crude stone constructions stood around the perimeter of the room. Maggie asked Alistair about these but he shook his head. He explained that many secrets were best left in the ancient past.
Maggie shook her head to clear away these memories and bring her senses back to the present. She reached back into her pocket and threw a handful of cat food against the far wall to occupy the mice.
The entrance to the old dungeon stood at the end of the hall, flanked by two unlit torches. Maggie crept up to the door and reached out to touch it. She noticed another smell beneath the aroma of an open sewer. An industrial aroma. An…oil.
She ran a finger along the top door hinge. She rubbed her finger together with her thumb.
Would Alistair have gone to the trouble to oil these hinges? Why would he?
She remembered the door from her previous visit to the dungeon. Alistair made Maggie open the door herself, all those years ago. Alistair wanted her to know of the door’s weight, its strength, and its power. It was heavy enough that it took every bit of Maggie’s strength to move it—a few centimeters at a time. The door was made of heavy timber and iron. Alistair refused to help her, saying that he would not always be around to help her. How prophetic that had been.
Maggie did not remember there being a “peephole” cut into the door. The small door, which was well above her eye-level, had the same type of iron bar latch as the main door. Maggie ran up the stairs to the storage room, picked up a wooden chair, and returned to the dungeon door. She climbed onto the rickety chair. She lifted the small iron latch. She opened the little door and clicked on the flashlight with her trembling hand.
The light reached only a short distance into the room. Maggie moved it to the right, and to the left. She moved it right again—and thought she saw something move. When she moved the light in the opposite direction, she stared into the face of a bearded and spectacled man.
Maggie screamed and dropped the flashlight—inside of the door.
A moment later that flashlight shined through the door at her.
“Who are you?” a man’s voice asked.
“I’m M-Maggie,” she said.
“I’m going to give you back your light, Maggie,” the man said. “We’ve little use for it in here.”
Maggie took the light through the peephole with quivering hands. She almost dropped it twice before turning it around to shine into the dungeon. When she did, she saw the man now had a woman standing at his side.
“Who…who are you?” Maggie whispered.
“We are Oliver and Gwendoline McFadden, Miss…”
“Oh, my God!” Maggie exclaimed, nearly falling from her perch on the worn-out chair.
“You’re Holly’s parents! But you were…everyone thought that you were lost at s—”
“I see that you’ve found my rats, Mother,” the voice behind Maggie Wellmore said.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Contributors
Freebies
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
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