The cold monotone speech pattern of the lawyer William Davies continued through the cordless line.
“Don’t quit now Mr. Sweeler. Think of what you stand to lose, the money, the estate, the entirety of the inheritance.”
Jordy was now fully awake, sober, and in need of escape.
“I can’t do this. I need to leave. Something is hunting me in this place. It’s going to kill me! I’m sorry, but I quit. I can’t spend money if I’m dead, and who’s going to buy some messed up house that spawns demons or shadow beasts or whatever? I was meant to be poor. Just let me be a poor bastard, but a living bastard, that’s all I ask.”
Jordy paced within the eye, still clutching the cradle to his chest like a safety blanket, like a talisman that warded all evil, at least for the duration of this call. He wanted more than anything for William to offer an out, a means of getting away from the estate and back to slumming it like what he was used to, like what he was beginning to believe was “the life for him”. He wanted to chew away a hole in the wall like a rat and be free, but he didn’t believe he had the strength or ability. Deep down he knew it wasn’t a possibility and such desires for freedom were in vain.
“Calm yourself Mr. Sweeler. You’ve done well so far. Just two more nights. Two more nights and your life is set forever.”
“You don’t get it! My life is in danger, there’s some dark shit happening here….Please can you just get someone to come and open the front doors?”
“I do get it, Mr. Sweeler…”
William’s voice went down a fraction of an octave, the harsh coldness of his voice rattling Jordy’s bones with a chill.
“-and about the door, I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“Why not!? Why isn’t it possible!? I’ll just break them down myself if I have to.” He said, unconvinced of himself.
“I would advise against trying it, Mr. Sweeler. Conserve your strength. I expect to hear your voice again next time I call.”
“William, wait!”
“Like I said, only two more nights to go. You can do it Mr. Sweeler. You have no other choice.”
The call ends.
Jordy tentatively puts the phone back down where he found it in the iris of the eye, afraid of some unknown consequence that could result from misplacing the mysterious phone (his only connection to the outside world).
“Oh, right, my phone.”
Jordy was reminded of his own flip phone, the one that failed to turn on when he thought that he was dying back in the cupboard. His phone didn’t work, but perhaps the battery needed charging. This felt unlikely as Jordy was sure it had full bars going into last evening, but it was worth a shot.
“Figures….”
After some time plugged into a wall outlet in the foyer, his phone remained powerless.
He shoved his useless phone and charger back into his backpack then went to relieve himself of yesterday’s liquor in the nearest latrine.
**************
The door was something he was definitely going to try his darndest to open, despite William’s advice, despite his own disbelief in its success, maybe even in spite of it. He hated that he instinctively agreed on the futility of escaping and wanted more than ever to be so very very wrong. He remembered the barred windows, the thickness and heaviness of the doors, the occult-like happenings within the mansion during the previous night. There were opposing forces at play, the likes of which a bit of elbow grease mixed with piss and vinegar were not impressive enough to repel. No matter, he scarfed down his second plain turkey sandwich and expeditiously rushed at the doors of the entryway.
Wham!
His shoulder impacted between the doors. It was ineffective. He crumbled to the floor weakly, wincing. And when his closed eyelids did open once again with the abating of his pain, he was not met with the morning light against the doors of the entryway. It remained absent, causing him to poke his eye when checking to see if they were indeed still closed. He was now sitting in the dark in what he felt to be a more enclosed space. Somehow he knew he was in a guest room on the second floor when a light turned on. And in this space he found that he was taken in by what appeared to be a distant sordid memory.
**************
In the illuminated guest room stood a tall broad shouldered figure cloaked in a hooded sanguine. They wrested the wrist of the smaller feminine other also cloaked and obscure even in the prominent lighting. It was like vaseline had been rubbed on the outer part of jordy’s vision with these physical phantoms in the lessened blurry center. The weaker’s back read submission as the salamander wrinkled between their shoulder blades. They stopped just short of kneeling on the floor as a knife flashed across the scene, causing blood to weep from the wrist-wrested.
“Ah..” they gasped meekly.
“Oh please.” The dominant one uttered with the most exasperated and arrogant of tones.
“You should be used to this by now Caroline. For what purpose were you brought here? It has already been a month come the morrow. Learn your place and revel as the others do. You were brought to bring sustenance.”
“I am not here of my own will and while I do what is made of me, I need not enjoy it.”
“Right you are Caroline. You need not enjoy it, but consider the alternative….” He squeezed her wrist, eliciting a faint cry.
“Love the pain as I do and it will get better.”
He whispered disturbingly sweet into her ear.
“I promise.”
The scene blew away as if from his voice and it did clear like a fog dissipating from a mighty brooding northern wind.
**************
A foul air gust blew through the room, opening the door gently and sending Jordy tumbling like a weed in the desert through the threshold. He did this of his own will, through the will of his body unbeknownst to his mind while it continued to reel. What was the source of this awkward one act play and what was its reason? Was it shown to him out of someone’s volition, or was it more akin to a sneeze, to tourettes of recollection, some ghostly freudian slip? That desire to know and understand was a sinister provocation which could prove deadly in the present tense.
He was forgetting himself when that familiar air had breached his mental sabbatical, bringing back the burning in his nostrils, and the crawling of rats in his skin and in his ears. The unpleasant memories of his own making were upon him, taking a physical and all too real shape, flooding like a resentful tide out of the many guest rooms and into the hallway. He was to be swept unto death deepening the red of that carpet floor, if he didn’t keep moving.
Breathing heavy, his muscles felt eternally sluggish, rapidly lugging himself toward the stairwell. The rapids of the revolving furry flesh accelerated furiously behind. The acoustics of it were appalling. It sounded like the churning of nightmares in the eye of a storm. The storm was born from his lowest depths. It was a place he did not dare to sink to again, even for a man of as little means and aspirations as he.
Everything he ever earned came off the back of opportunities given to him by others. He was never the seeker like he was now, desperately seeking the sanctuary of another “safer” layer in this mansion estate.
Falling forward he begrudgingly hit the stairwell and gazed downward to the mansion’s base. The first floor was a darkening gray with lightning dancing in the creases. Upward was the only way, he thought, as the rats washed over him with the sound of scurrying burrowing flesh.
TO BE CONTINUED