A Parish Darker: A Victorian Suspense Novella

by Rhys Ermire

  I turned as much as I could from my lax position on the sofa. There stood Baron Lechner von Savanberg, his demeanor as calm and collected as it had been for much of my stay. To the outside observer, he would have appeared little worse for wear than when the night began. His dining jacket had been neatly pressed and left atop one of the spare chairs nearby. His buttoned vest, dark in color, and outer sleeves of his white dress shirt showed few signs of what had transpired. Apart from some splatters of blood and bodily fluids on his pant leg, it was as if the night had, in reality, been uneventful.

  After removing his antique pocket watch and taking note of the time of just past one o’clock in the morning, he returned it and began to sort through the keys in his pocket. The ring was sizable, enough to house more than a dozen keys, and it was not long before I realized nearly all of them were used for only one purpose.

  “The night is indeed still young yet,” mused my host. “We have just over one hour to relax. Time is ours now—moments to ensure that we know where we stand, and where we will when this is all over.”

  It was then that he seated himself across from me, crossed his legs, and placed his interlaced fingers upon his knee. Our eyes would be focused on one another for the breadth of the lengthy and all-too-revealing conversation that ensued.

  “Baron, what is it that’s happened?” My hand rested on my forehead as I asked many questions of the “what”, “who”, and “why” variety. I asked all that had been troubling me to that point, sometimes in incoherent form. This rambling came to an end when the Baron laughed and kicked his foot outward in a display of gleeful emotion.

  “What is it you think of me?” asked my host whose royal candor was on exhibition even then. “Do you see me as good? Evil? Please speak freely. We have time on our side, for now.”

  I straightened my posture, sitting up onto the couch with a bend in my back, saying wearily, “What should I think?”

  “Well, dear boy, that depends on what you think of my impetuses. Do you feel you are being kept here against your will?”

  “Kept here, by either circumstance or your will,” I replied. “I don’t know which is true.”

  “The weather is not under my control, as convenient an idea as that is,” said the Baron, smiling as he uttered the last of those words. “Control can be both good and it can be bad, no? If I were controlling your actions with your safety in mind, and your very survival at that, would it be bad? Whereas if I were doing so purely for my own benefit, you would say it was bad, would you not?”

  “Which is it?” I asked, sensing his words to be a confession of sorts.

  “It is perhaps both, or neither. Maybe it is one or maybe it is the other. That is regretfully not for me to say. Tonight, in these moments that remain between us, I wish to hear more from you than myself. There are sanctions and confirmations we must address, you see.”

  The Baron, in all his elegance, showed no concern for my dirtied clothing soiling the upholstery of his no doubt expensive chair there in the library. I leaned forward, unable to free myself from his gaze that held me captive. Just as I did so, so, too, did my host.

  “You spoke earlier of your future with Miss Robertson, did you not?” he asked, smiling. “For someone who has captivated you so, I am sure you do not leave home without a picture by your side.”

  Though he spoke in a casual and considerate fashion, it was then that I confirmed the Baron was not as upfront with me as I had been him. I could not bring myself to reply, not with any immediacy.

  “Perhaps there, in your pocket watch? There, the one with gold trimming and the embossed face.” As he spoke, he motioned toward my pocket where the watch was being kept. To my recollection, I had not removed the watch in his presence to that point. His only opportunity to have seen it would have been in my room at some point in my stay. When, I was not sure, but it soon was evident it mattered little.

  With reluctance, I removed the watch but kept firm hold of it, extending my arm and it toward the Baron. “I will share the watch with you, but only on one condition that you must meet, to my satisfaction.”

  He held out his own hand over the table between us. “Oh! Anything! What is it you need of me?”

  “I need to know one thing,” I said, opening the watch and placing it facing him on the tabletop. “Not about the watch, and not about its make or color or its character.”

  “Then?” the Baron asked. “What is it, my friend?”

  I scanned my recollections to be certain and proceeded with confidence. “How did you know her name?”

  He smiled and soon laughed while clapping his hands. “Oh, your dear Emilia? You mentioned her at dinner. Your fainting spell must have done more to your memory than you know.”

  “I did,” I confirmed, my hands covering my lower face as my incisors pressed against the tip of my thumb, “but I also didn’t.” Even if he had somehow seen the letter in my room that had been safely stored away, there was still one detail he had availed himself that he should not have otherwise been privy. “Baron, you must tell me how you knew her family’s name. I am certain I never mentioned it in your presence and it is on no document or piece of paper I would have brought with me. There is no reason you should know it.”

  My host took to tapping together the top and bottom canines of his well-kept teeth, soon adding his forefinger onto the arm of the chair to the mix, its nail producing a unifying sound amongst them. His teeth meeting in such a way showed a thoughtful look, one that I had not yet seen.

  “You are perceptive, Edwin,” said he, rolling his sleeves to his forearms and straightening his pant leg. “You are thoughtful all your own. Never let anyone insinuate otherwise. I did not expect all to be so easy, but such is how it should be. Life will always be surprising and, in these few choice matters, a little challenging. Before we embark for that avenue of conversation, there is another that I feel will enflame your knowledge a little more—something substantial, for the two of us, to share that we may both remember even as age catches up to us. Will you come on this journey with me, just for a moment?”

  I nodded, observing the Baron’s static eyes over the bridge of my interlaced fingers.

  “There are those out there, thinkers and some in the sciences, who believe that we are not responsible for deciding what becomes of us. They say it is not of our accord. Some believe these lives of ours to be the machinations of overly-concerned deities, but I have always roundly dismissed such a notion,” said the Baron, waving his hand in demonstration. “There are only two things, two moments, in one’s life that are actually of any great consequence or meaning. Do you follow?”

  “Surely it is birth and death,” I replied, “but beyond that, you have me at a loss.”

  “All that falls between these two moments is of no meaning. Some outcomes you view as preferable to others, but ultimately, they are all equal in the eyes of time and space. She is cruel, this overseer of ours. Do not take this to mean she is a benevolent goddess—no, certainly not. She is something that we have neither invented nor discovered. This dear lady—let us refer to her as ‘Order’ for the sake of this discussion—is both real and imaginary in equal portions.

  “For too long, men have viewed themselves as bound to her, to Order. We have confined ourselves to her, this start and this end, and have rarely waged any contest to the contrary.” The Baron paused, staring his pointed eyes in my direction and not relinquishing his gaze even as I broke our line of sight. “What is more,” said he, “is that you, too, have been bound by Order. This is no fault of your own, not explicitly. Most have been.”

  “And you?”

  He smiled, running his prominent teeth over his bottom lip as if in contemplation. “No, no, I respect no such boundaries. You should not either, so long as you remain capable.”

  I shook my head, wiping the sweat from my brow and flustered cheeks. “None of this changes what you have done, Baron. What you’ve done, legal or not, will not be excused by anything short of aler
ting the proper authorities.”

  “I had hoped, Edwin, you would understand without being forced to bear further witness,” said my host, rising from his chair and moving across the room to the gala window overlooking the garden below. “I see now that this is not what was intended. For the sake of both of us, we must align ourselves further.”

  The concern in my face must have been apparent as I watched his posture and manner of speaking transform into what I can only refer to as disengaging. As he continued, he bridged the tips of his fingers in an apex in front of his lips.

  “This Order is a fickle monster. We see it as cruel and we see it as unjust, but in reality, it is nothing more than what we do not yet know. It unfolds as it does, and a record is kept that may be read,” said the Baron, his eyes dim, focused, and narrow. “What we see as Order unwinds with the same determinant structure it always has and always will. What we may do to control it, though, is better understand this record that it keeps. Do you follow?”

  I shook my head. “Not with any real understanding.”

  “What you may find most compelling, when this matter is settled in its entirety, is that we are bound to only one perspective, you and I. We know not what another man sees at a given point in his life, in any given moment or instance.”

  To this end, he was right. “That is true, Baron. After what I have seen, I don’t know how I can trust in you or your judgment. I concede that it was self-defense, yet I can only—”

  “Edwin!” he said with some exasperation. “You mustn’t make this about just me or just you. That man was a victim of his own frailty, nothing more or less.”

  “It is the brutality that unsettles me most,” I confided, unable to abstain from seeking some greater admission of him. “Even with regard to animals or fish at sea, I have not seen a creature disposed with such calculation before tonight.”

  “If you wait for someone to do you harm without making clear your intention to defend, they will strike with a similar lack of regard for your well-being. Take what you may, lose what you may not.”

  I cupped my hands and lowered my head into them. “I am grateful, Baron, for you having saved my life. I just do not know if seeing a man killed, outright, is something I can bear for the rest of my years—especially without due process to accompany such a disposal.”

  “The law is a construct of man’s need to control his fellow man. Some men need order to know the limits of morality. Others have no such need. What you will know is that we do not need laws or a legislating governance to determine whether due process has been carried out.”

  My host had continued to make clear in unrelenting abundance that his actions came with no remorse. He was justified in his actions, and I confess I began to agree to some end.

  Our eyes remained fixated on one another as the chimes of the clocks in the library began to make their presence known.

  “The time is good,” said he, looking into my pocket watch with a smile. “I will soon show you more. I will only do so with the assertion that you will do as I say and without any contest from this point forward. I have fielded your concerns as best I can, but from here, your answers and your questions will be exclusively your own.”

  A moment of silence passed between us. “If you do not agree, you are free to leave now, on your own volition and at your discretion. If this is not what you want,” said the Baron, “you should go now, before the storm.”

  CHAPTER X

  Baron Lechner von Savanberg and I exited the library together, but not before he extinguished the series of lamps behind us. The light fixtures illuminating other areas of the castle were to be next. This was a directive made clear to me by my host systematically traversing the hall seeking out any such light sources.

  As we reached the window gallery behind the stairwell, the Baron cautioned for me to watch my step. “Careful here,” said he, nodding toward the ground with a lit candlestick in hand. “This is still a mess, and a dangerous one at that.”

  Shards of colored glass littered the stone floor and ornamental rug beneath our feet. The glass was patterned in chaos. This was undoubtedly the result of an assault from outside, with the bulk of glass indoors but some remnants on the sill nearby.

  “This must be—” I said in plain affirmation and with no hint of finishing the sentence. The Baron bowed his head in confirmation, leaving no question this had been the entry point for the night’s earlier intruder.

  The Baron hoisted the candlestick in his hand onto the hook nearest the heavyset door I had noticed in my earlier survey of the premises. “Edwin, beneath us, through this door, is a shelter,” said he. “This is where one could weather out a storm if they were keen on such accommodations. I will unfasten these bolts and leave the final key with you,” the Baron then paused, undoing two of the three locks and leaving the third and simplest in my care with a golden key, “as a show of kindness.”

  I wrapped my fingers around the considerable key and sized it against the remaining lock. They appeared to be a match, though I did not know why the Baron would leave it in my possession instead of his own. There remained no time for questions, however, as he led me through the house, room to room, vanquishing the lamps in each and locking others. No moments of contemplation or hesitation passed as he made each move with utter confidence.

  Before long, we were in the darkened entry way to the main hall. It was only the two of us—save for the budding thunder and rain quaking the house at its most vulnerable points. The storm outside indeed suggested a certain savagery. It felt animalistic in a sense, showing no regard for the nerves of man.

  An indeterminate amount of time had passed since that incident in the study earlier in the night. I was not sure of the time, nor did I want to be. In one vain moment, I wished to distance my mind and sanity from that sight, that incident, that place. The further from it, I thought, the more easily with which I could breathe without the thought of a bloodied man invading my consciousness. To this day, even some twenty years later, nothing has proven effective in erasing that moment.

  As we began down the darkened hall to the study, the only point of illumination was the pale candle in the Baron’s hand. The lamp at the end of the hall had been extinguished, for one reason or another. I could only envision the once lumbering man that had towered over me before waiting there for me—a second chance, my life in his hand, before being cut down so effortlessly yet again. His skull had spilled onto the ground beneath our feet. Blood had encompassed much of the space normally reserved for standing. The image replayed in my mind as we moved forward.

  I began to feel a shortness of breath, a skip of beats in the chest. I braced myself against the wall with my fists clenched in accordance. The Baron turned to face me, resting his hand upon my shoulder and giving me the slightest smile of reassurance.

  “Surely you are not still concerned with earlier,” said he. “There is much more to fear in this world than dead men. The living are a far greater threat. Come, let us not waste a second more. There is much for us to do and a finite amount of time with which to do it.”

  I still cannot express with assurance what it was that came over me in those next few moments. The Baron led the way, deeper into that fissure of unknown man-made darkness. The candle flickers swung to and fro, sending the faintest beams outward with no regard for pattern or rhythm. As we rounded the corner, we came upon the final trek to the study.

  Cast only in shadow, the room resonated with the same mystery it had earlier that very night. In darkness, though, it was chilling in ways fear only knew. The Baron kept the candle nearest to him, giving it little chance to illuminate the path ahead. I knew not what to expect—would the dead man be staring me in the eyes? Would his once dead hand reach out for my leg upon stepping foot inside?

  My vision blurred as we passed through the doorway into the ever-darkened room. I could see nothing ahead, following only the Baron’s silhouette highlighted by the glow from affront him. When the candle was placed upon
his work station and he was reaching to turn on the light, I knew not where I stood relative to the earlier terror but expected the remnants of the intruder to be sticking to the soles of my shoes.

  In one great flash, Baron von Savanberg lit the lamps throughout the study. My eyes adjusted and compensated for the darkness, and after the initial sting subsided, I looked with reluctance to the ground beneath my feet.

  It had been where the man from before had died—where the attacker had been stopped by the Baron with an axe. Blood had spilled onto the floor along with a mesh of brain and flesh. The sight had been a ghastly one, one that I recall with such vivid detail even now.

  Now, some hours later, I stood in a study free of any evidence of the earlier event. The dead man was nowhere to be found. No blood or other indications were present on the stone slab or rugs beneath my feet. I examined as intently as my mind would allow. To both my relief and horror, I found nothing.