by Eve Hathaway
Chapter Eight
STRANGE FACES WITH red eyes and large, unnatural smiles blinked and chattered at me from the darkness. High-pitched and exceptionally low voices bickered at impossible speeds in singsong voices ranging from nearly inaudible whispers to deafening roars.
"Judas!" The distant voice was not threatening this time, but faint and gentle. It drew me steadily from my feverish delirium and guided me to the window where a glimmering light bobbed up and down in the courtyard.
I squinted at the dancing light and realized that it wasn't a light at all, but a brilliantly white gown worn by a girl.
No, not a girl, it was Bast. She seemed to float along the grounds like a ghost. Her face lifted to the window and she stretched out her pale hands towards me, beckoning.
Without thinking, I tore myself away from the window and stumbled down the hall. To this day, I have no idea how I found my way to the correct door. Instinct, I suppose. The night air caressed my skin but I had no time to enjoy it, so entranced was I by my desire to find the maid.
"Judas!" Her voice sounded like tiny tinkling bells, beautiful and serene to my ears. As I pushed open the gates to the courtyard, I found myself face to face with her and she took my hand in hers.
She looked radiant in the moonlight with her nut brown hair flowing freely around her shoulders and her bejeweled gown billowing around her slim form. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.
"What are you doing out here?" I asked her.
She smiled and squeezed my wrists, pulling me across the courtyard to a small, bolted door. "Come!" she whispered encouragingly, drawing me through the door and into a magnificent hidden garden.
The moon was huge and hung in the sky like a swollen balloon, shedding a silver light over everything. The garden was flooded with shimmering crystal water bedazzled with blooming lunar flowers and lily-pads that clung to our legs as we waded through to a tree of golden apples.
I had never seen anything so tranquil before and as I gazed up at that magnificent tree, I was almost ashamed to be such an ungainly creature as a human. I reached out to touch one of the shining fruits but Bast laid out a hand to stop me.
She pointed up into the branches and I saw an enormous black serpent coiled around the trunk, glaring at me with wicked ruby eyes. I pulled back with a cry and felt Bast's hands slipping over my eyes, blinding me.
"Have no fear, Little Master. He won't harm you." Her lyrical voice was instantly soothing to me, but I could not shake away the fear of that serpent. I felt her lips against the shell of my ear, leaving burning marks in their wake. When her hands came down, she was standing before me, a visionary angel in white.
"No fears," she repeated, smiling up at me. Slowly, nervously, I reached out to brush back some of the silky hairs that clung to her cheek, but a rustling from the darkness distracted me. From within the black shadows of the tree, a tall figure unfolded itself from the ground and the towering frame of the butler loomed over us both.
A warning scream trembled and died in my throat as I saw him lurch forward jerkily like some gangling puppet. His face was deathly white and his eyes were bloodshot.
Blue veins crisscrossed over his face and he seemed to swallow Bast's white form into his own, spreading his arms wider and wider until they folded her up.
"Bast!" I made a grab for her but my fingers clutched only air. The white dress vanished into the folds of black, and the butler, or demon, or whatever he was thrust his distorted face into mine, paralyzing me with terror.
His breath coiled with mine, and I breathed in the rank scent of death and decay. His white skin bubbled and burst with maggots and flies as they chewed their way through his rotting flesh.
I stared into the inhuman eyes of the devil and he cackled at me, a shrieking, howling laugh that turned my blood to ice. My breath froze in my lungs, and I felt the ground giving way beneath my feet. The garden melted around me, sending my body plunging into the freezing water. Instinctively, I kicked out my legs but the vines of the lily-pads ensnared them.
Panic filled my brain. I thrashed desperately trying to free myself, yet the harder I struggled, the more tightly the vines held. My eyesight grew dimmer and dimmer as the water filled up my nose, mouth, and lungs...suffocating me, ushering me into cold, jellied oblivion.
The last thing I saw before the jellied blackness took me was the horrific grin of the demonic butler.
