A Mischief in the Woodwork

CHAPTER 36

The Baltane Mansion

It was in the paper again, next time – the same manor that had swallowed its masters a week ago. The Capers of South Hempton had commissioned their newsboy to follow the last article up with another – one that pleaded with anyone who might be able to shed insight on what had happened to their neighbors the Baltanes, before such mischief demanded further price in the neighborhood.

Please, it read. Anyone who can shed

even a morsel of light on this tragedy;

anyone who can so much as presume to

tell us what It wants.

We fear for our lives. For our children's

lives. It is in our neighborhood, with a

keen appetite, and there is nowhere else

to go – save the open city, which was

always so much worse than the haven

of home. Until now. Gods, please tell us

that is not the hope that we are reduced to.

Please come.

Anyone.

Before our luck that feels increasingly

like cheating fate runs out.

I had managed to ignore the pull of the place the first time, but now it was more than intrigue aspiring to stake a summons. The notion of going to this place still felt like a distraction from the priority that was Tanen, but I wanted to touch the place with the same desire that had compelled me to touch him, and as recent happenings had proved, it was an end game that I was hard-pressed to deny.

It would likely be in my best interests – and Tanen's as well – for me to get the deed over with so the itch would rest, so I could concentrate on saving Tanen's soul without further distraction.

So I responded to the call. I simply marched back inside following my retrieval of the paper and announced:

“I'm going on a trip. I'll be gone for a time. Ombri can continue to tend the weedflowers in the case that it's more than a day. She's been doing it anyway.”

And I went to fill my pack.

None of us had ever 'gone on a trip' before. I was the only one that strayed from Manor Dorn at all, and even my lengthy absence out chasing Bailin hadn't been a conventional 'trip'. It had been an estranged errand that kept me out there, improvising until I could work my way out of it. I had certainly never packed to go on a trip. Planned it and executed it like a simple operation. One could not typically presume to pack a bag that would account for what they might encounter while hankering to go from one point to another.

But, well – given the opportunity to pack first, I wasn't going to not. Extra food and clothing (and a weapon thrown in here and there) were always prudent supplies to have on hand.

“Where is it you're going, minda?” Letta inquired a little wryly, following me into the next room. She saw the paper on my pallet, however, and moved to read for herself whatever had prompted this impromptu little excursion.

“The Baltane manor?” she asked. “Truly, minda, what has you so invested in things beyond your own lot, these days?”

“I can't explain it, Letta. Maybe, gods willing, in due time I will be able to.”

“Manor Dorn misses your faithful presence,” she noted. “Evidence of your absence creeps through the place. That corner of yours where the floor rots away is not as well tended, these days.”

I hadn't had the presence of mind to keep up with that, lately, had I? I needed more tiles.

But I would see about that when I got back. Right now, I had to go see the Baltane Manor. It was calling my name like a breathy demon in a nightmare, a nagging echo on the breeze. I had to make it stop.

“Take someone with you,” Letta urged, not one to sit by and watch me slip like I seemed to be doing.

“Who would I take, Letta? Everyone is needed here.”

“Take Tanen. We survived just fine without him before he came to us, and he's a good one to have as an escort across the rubble. He came all the way from Cathwade.”

“You don't have to remind me. And we survived just fine without him because I was here to do many of the tasks he has taken up in my absences. We need him.”

“Words I never thought I'd hear glide from your mouth.”

Well, things had changed, hadn't they?

“We have Victoria and Ombri, now,” Letta reminded me. “We can manage. Take him with you, Vant.”

I caved. “As you wish. We shouldn't be gone too long.” I didn't mind Tanen's presence as much, anymore, it would just be harder to concentrate on the Baltane issue with a greater issue tagging along after all. But I had no desire to stand around arguing. Time was rather of the essence in my life, nowadays, and I was on a schedule with this.

“Godspeed, minda. I hope you have some misplaced sense of what you're doing.”

*

Manor Baltane was a mansion. Manor Dorn was well enough, but it did not compare to the bulk and grandeur of the place that I stood before later that day, my sullied skirt hem billowing over the rubble-gravel street. Valchester Lane was the name of the street, respectively, but it was hardly respectable anymore. It was not nearly as bad as some, but it had certainly crumbled from its glory days as the smooth, sweeping avenue it had surely been.

I clutched the strap of my pack at my shoulder, gazing up at the great diseased entity that had been calling me to its side. Tanen stood at my flank, gazing up likewise. It had taken us a good number of hours to reach the place, trudging over the rubble, and we were both sweaty and powder-streaked and ready to be at journey's end. We had rested once, to eat and drink, and then we'd been on our way again. My feet were sore. I was sure his were too.

“Shall we knock?” Tanen proposed.

I surveyed the top balcony of the place, then decided we might as well. I moved forward, hearing Tanen scuff to life behind me, and we went to the door and knocked on its vast, bold, ornate black pane. I had not knocked on a door for almost as long as I could remember. Only once or twice had I had the chance, running some errand or other as a young child for the circle I was born into. Before the mischief had completely stopped people from being neighborly. Before I had been sold to the Dorns, and thrust out into the isolated, rural countryside.

We waited a good few moments before someone came to the door, but then the great latch was thrown back, and the slab creaked inward. The dark face of a lovely young slave woman peered out, taking in the two unfamiliar whiteskins come calling.

“May I help you?” she asked. She had a more sober face than Letta.

“I come on behalf of the Capers,” I said. “In the paper, they asked...” I didn't rightly know how to put it, but it seemed she had read the paper.

“You've come to investigate. You?”

Perhaps I did not fit the bill of an investigator. “Yes.”

She glanced at Tanen, then back at me. “Be warned, whiteskins do not fare well within these walls.”

I couldn't very well explain to her that I was a slave and why I therefore did not fear the same fate as Master whiteskins, or that Tanen was a ward of mine who had nothing to fear in all the world until the protection I had secured wore off, so I simply gave a curt not, acknowledging the warning. “We bear right of passage,” I assured her.

And so she stood back, and let the door fall farther inward. The cool darkness of the interior washed over us, breathing us in, and I let it draw me in like a subtle vortex, stepping over that threshold followed closely by Tanen.

They kept the drapes drawn, much as we did in Manor Dorn, but the drapes here were heavier, smothering the light almost as well as the walls themselves. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim pall, but then I was looking around at the vast, ornately done front room, with all of its beautiful, decaying décor, done in sullied burgundy and rotting mahogany. A spiraling staircase swept up to the second floor, its ebony balustrade looking rickety, the carpet of the stairs mangy and tattered. The landing fanned out, creating a railed balcony that encircled all four walls. Above that – far above it, it seemed, nearly in the rafters of the place, I could see a third floor, cloaked in high shadow.

“Don't linger near the drapes,” the slave woman advised as she closed the front door and drifted dismissively back through our midst. Was she to leave us by ourselves, then, to do as we pleased? Her gray attire sifted over the dislodging pulp of the rug underfoot as she retreated into the interior of the place.

“What happens near the drapes?” Tanen asked, and she stopped at the end of the rug to spare him an answer.

“They swallow people like you,” she said to him, and further questions refrained from pressing elaboration. Then the slave woman retreated into another room, leaving us to the business we had come for. Tanen stood by my side looking about, not knowing precisely what it was we were to do. I looked around a bit more deliberately, taking in the essence of the place, deciding on my first area of interest.

A grandfather clock ticked in the corner, but the hands both pointed directly down, hanging loosely from their mooring. With every tick, one of them took the first step to making its erstwhile rounds, but fell back with the other one after only that first margin. A great crystal chandelier was suspended in the vast emptiness overhead, covered in cobweb and...moss. Fancy furniture and decorations stood about, everything sullied or cracked. One lovely little statuette of a lady had lost its face; only a chipped void remained, the face itself lying intact on the table at the statue's feet.

She gazed up at the world from her feet... I thought poetically, then shook the disturbing image from my head and moved on, stepping away from the center of the room to wander toward the edges. Those heavy, dark velvet curtains looked like a lush cache of mischief, ripe for disturbing where they hung in leaden dormancy over the windows. How long had they shut out the light? Smothering it, banishing it, repressing it like the plague itself? Half of me wanted to rebelliously throw those drapes open. The other half, of course, while not afraid, was wary still of what touching them might stir up.

On closer inspection, I saw that the rich velvet of the curtains was pock-marked with holes, as if eaten by moths. Some of these holes were singed around the edges. But they were more like sores, weren't they, I thought – because they had indeed not been eaten by moths, or singed by flame. They were symptoms of the disease.

I ran my eyes up and down the great lengths of the drapes before aspiring to touch them, raising my fingers tentatively to the soft texture of one shadowed fold. It was not soft as velvet ought to be, though, I discovered. Rather it chaffed against my fingertips, as if dunked in saltwater and dried with a crust, or left out in the sun for the fibers to fry.

But I only had the vaguest moment to absorb the texture of it before the visions rushed me, clamoring into my mind's eye. I saw a fair young woman standing by the concealed window, swathed in a stunning, sullied pale green and ivory gown. She was glancing over her shoulder into the center of the room, and a ripple ran through the curtains right before the vision grew jerky, and the woman shrieked and disappeared into some hard-to-track black velvet maw.

I recoiled, startled by the vision even though I had expected no less. It was still hard to watch, hard to invite in without being properly affected by it. But I recovered, letting my breath center me, and slowly reached to touch those treacherous curtains again. The velvet feel gave way to a taste – what humans tasted like. I swallowed that sickening impression to delve deeper, letting the visions smooth themselves out into a stream in my mind, rather than the bursts that liked to erupt out of the shadows and bombard me, as if trying to ward me back.

The resulting input told rather the same story as the first vision, but this time I let it play out, absorbing the nature of the incidents.

“What are you looking for?” Tanen's voice filtered into the visions, and I withdrew and turned away from the window.

“Just looking,” I replied vaguely, surveying the rest of the room.

I wandered about the edges, visiting the other windows. Each set of curtains warned of similar temperaments. When victims got too close to the windows, they got swallowed. No one ever saw anything but a ripple, either before or after a strangled yelp or scream, and then someone would be missing from their company.

I drifted into another room from there, quietly exploring the ground level of the mansion. Tanen wandered after me, resigning himself to silent exploration in my wake, not interrupting my obvious muse.

There was a fireplace in the next room, and while my interest was piqued by the strange symbols drawn in the ashes that lay there, what really caught my eye was the hollow that yawned where the back of the fireplace should have been. In all respects, it looked like a hallway.

The young slave woman appeared in the doorway behind us, seeing the direction of my interest.

“Is that–” I began.

“A hallway,” she confirmed.

“Where does it lead...?”

“No one knows. No one goes down that corridor, Monvay. It developed over a period of time; each time a fire was lit, it burned away a little more of the stone in the back, there, leaving more and more of an alcove.”

Intrigued, I stepped forward and crossed the hearth in a semi-crouch, where I could get a better look down the corridor and reach the first of its scorched stones. My fingers brushed through the soot, and I saw what the slave woman said to be true. As the alcove was burned into existence, the smoke of the fires began to get whisked backwards instead of upwards, where the tendrils painstakingly carved the rest of this new brick hallway. It had even designed the charred portraits that hung on the walls of the passage. Wondering what was framed in these portraits, I ducked further into the fireplace, careful not to disrupt the symbols in the ashes, and into the maw of the hallway.

“Vant...” Tanen piped up a little guardedly, but I was already in the passage.

It was carved at an odd angle, slanting off from the fireplace, and I treaded down the first bit of its length wondering where it led. But I had come for the portraits, and I stopped at the first to gaze at the figure hosted there. Some regal whiteskin, clothed in luxury. I moved on to the next, and found myself staring at the face of the young woman I'd seen in my first curtain-vision.

All it took was a touch to tell me: these were portraits of the masters of the house. The Baltanes.

Tanen ducked into the shaft after me, not wanting to see me disappear down some dark, mysterious passage by myself, as it was becoming increasingly clear I was prone to wandering.

“Who are these people?” he asked.

“The Masters,” I replied without looking at him, pattering a little deeper into the passage. He did not ask me how I knew, and I did not think to hide the fact that I did.

"Where are you going, Vant?"

I gave him a look laced with ridicule over my shoulder: Where does it look like?

"This would be why, I'm surmising, you get into frequent trouble," he observed.

"You have no idea what I get into." As I pressed deeper I trailed my fingers against the bricks of the passage. My awareness injected itself into the mortar, running along the cemented lines ahead of my physical progress. Into the shadows ahead my mind's eye raced, breathed in by the cool, lung-like depths of the deviant passage. I gasped slightly in conjunction with the hallway's inhalation, stopping in my tracks as I became blind and my vision-self took over completely. And perhaps I myself was not welcome in those deepest shadows, and it was wise to let my gifted awareness continue on alone.

"Vant?" came Tanen's distant voice. "What is it?" But I was not with him anymore. My eyes shifted back and forth beneath my lids, following the vision current. Only my palm pressing against the wall of the passage kept my body anchored upright, kept me standing without swaying, even as it was what anchored me to the vision as well.

Down the corridor my awareness raced, breezing through the shadows, twisting and turning through the maze-like dimension that the passage was tied to. The breathy shadows propelled it along, until all at once a great obstruction rose up and hit me in the face. I was almost knocked out of the vision, but after a dizzy tremor it steadied, and then my mind's eye was gazing up at the rising facade of a hulking door. I felt as small as a mouse.

But where a mouse might have contrived to slip under the crack of this door, there was no such opportunity here. The door was sealed tight, on all four sides. But there was a keyhole, and it was through this that my awareness aspired to gain entrance. The vision rose from the ground shadows, spilled upward over the slab of the door and crested the bottom contour of that keyhole.

Dim lantern light dawned against my eyes from within, and I peered in on a single, barren room, all done in musty stone. And in the corner – a girl. Huddled in a filthy, tattered little dress, matted hair stuck to her tear- and dirt-streaked face.

Dismay filled me at the sight of her, and then, as she lifted her face and peered through her locks of fair brown hair almost as if she could sense me, I recognized her. She had been pictured in one of the portraits in the hall, along with her mother, Mrs. Baltane. The Mrs. had been one of the ones taken by the mansion curtains, but it seemed little Mia Dane, here, had escaped the same fate as the others. Granted, she was certainly half swallowed, here at the end of this alternate-dimension offshoot of the mansion, but I could feel it in the bones of the place, could sense it in the hope on her raised face: she was waiting to be saved. She was reachable.

I opened my eyes, and my awareness was sucked back from the ledge of the keyhole, back down the twists and turns of the hall to my body. It snapped back in place inside me, and I turned in slight disorientation to Tanen.

"What?" I asked, a little delayed.

A frown creased his face, gauging the nature of my absent behavior. "Are you alright, Vant?"

I swallowed, collecting myself, and went to exit the shaft, where I found the slave woman waiting. Once again Tanen was caught up in the breeze of my impulses, following after me with no better grasp on the situation.

"There's a girl," I said to the slave woman. "At the end of the passage. Mia Dane."

The slave frowned – half suspicious, half intrigued. "You demonstrate an uncanny insight, Rubble Gypsy. No one has told you her name."

"I would hazard that isn't the greater issue, here."

Brooding over my 'uncanny insight' a moment longer, the slave ultimately dismissed it in agreement, and her frown turned to a nod of confirmation. "Mia Dane. The Blatanes' youngest daughter. She wandered into the shaft a number of weeks ago. Never came back out, and no one would go in after her. She was always playing in the ashes, even though Mrs. Baltane told her repeatedly only the slaves were to dirty themselves in the stuff. But she liked playing in it so much; sometimes, we would leave it longer than we should, just so she could play, before cleaning it up."

I considered the fireplace again. "Did she draw these symbols?"

The slave nodded. "Yes. Do they mean something to you?"

I hadn't tested them yet, but now I couldn't resist. Crouching in the ashes, I carefully traced one of the signs drawn there. Then, glimpsing its essence, I turned back to the slave. "Do they not mean anything to you?"

Touched by a frown again, the woman stepped forward to give them a look. A look of surprise dawned on her face. "I had not looked at them since before they were...completed with this intricacy. Once or twice I glanced at her dabbling, but...they were just basic shapes. The first stages... I had no idea she added these lines." Her eyes moved back and forth over the symbols, recognition and intrigue lighting the lines of her face.

"What are they?" Tanen asked.

"They're symbols from the language of the ancient Serbaens," the slave replied, dumbfounded. "Their like is found on the walls of the caves that our ancestors inhabited. What does this mean?" Her eyes turned to me.

"You ought to be able to read them the best of anyone present, my lady," I reminded her.

"But...how did she know them?"

"Perhaps she didn't. But pray tell us what they mean."

"Don't you know?"

"I would like to hear it from you, as one who the language belongs to, if it's all the same to you," I said. "And perhaps my companion would be interested in the translation." In truth, I could only guess what Tanen was making of all this. But it seemed cruel to leave him in the dark completely.

The slave woman straightened from her crouch, and glanced between the symbols from a vaster vantage point. "They say peace, and harmony. This one is the symbol for a messenger." She gestured to one of the signs, and then let her eyes land on the last. "And this one is the sign of the gods."

I stood as well, satisfied. "Sometimes," I said, "our aimlessness is in fact not aimlessness at all. Sometimes it is merely a subtle part of the greater scheme. What may be aimless to us can just as soon be harnessed and channeled by the greater forces of this world."

She accepted this readily enough – and, truly, I was counting on the expectation that she would. It was the kind of language the Serbaens spoke. The kind of thing Letta might say to me.

"Now," I said. "She's waiting at the end of the passage. Go and retrieve her. Once one of you has saved her, she will be indebted and mortally grateful, and redeemed in every respect. Keep her away from the curtains in the beginning, but she will not have to fear them in the future."

I could see it on her face; she wanted to ask me, "how do you know this?", but she refrained. And I was relieved, for what could I say? "I have seen it" did not seem a satisfactory answer.

"Perhaps you will want to tell your fellow housemates that you will be gone," I suggested. "Or if one of them would rather go, of course – one is as good as another. But whoever it is may be gone for a time. In the meantime, if it is permitted, Tanen and I will inspect the upstairs."

"No one goes to the third floor," the slave warned me.

"What's on the third floor?"

"That's where it... That's where it all began. A slave died there. And now a dark presence haunts it."

I took that in, considering the implications, and when I didn't shirk away from the idea, she elaborated;

"You can see it, even from down here. The pall of shadow that gathers in the rafters, and clusters on the top floor, and peers over the balustrade. It has long been the true master of this house, minda. Be warned."

I considered her words fairly and gave a single nod, grateful that she thought to warn me. What she described was well enough as far as interpretations went, but I did not bother to tell her it was not precisely what I expected to find. I lingered in waiting only to see that the extent of the prior issue was heeded, and she inclined her head in assurance.

"I will get Mia Dane," she said, and only then did I beckon Tanen to follow and start out of the room.

As we started toward the stairs, Tanen finally let his better judgment intrude on the unorthodox mission, and he seized my arm, stopping me. Drawing me to a conspiratorial proximity, he murmured his misgivings at last; "You heard what she said, Vant. What are we doing here? What is this?"

"I'm doing exactly what I said I was doing. Investigating. And it's alright, Tanen – trust me. It's not some dark spirit hiding up there."

"How do you know?"

"Look, I only said you could come because Letta insisted I have an escort. You're not here to ask questions."

"An escort to help protect you, if need be," he differentiated. "I would hazard that that role entails I don't just let you go traipsing into the midst of every 'dark presence' that comes our way, spirit or otherwise."

“You're welcome to wait outside, if it bothers you,” I told him.

“And what am I supposed to tell Letta, when you disappear again?”

It seemed being unconscious during the last trip had done nothing to keep him in the dark about it. The others must whisper about me, behind my back. “That there was little point sending an escort to prevent such a thing, should it happen again.”

He stopped me once more, gently, as I made as if to continue, and I spared him one last glance. “What is it you know about everything that the rest of us don't? Because you do, don't you? That's what this is... And if there's something that you know, Avante, I think I speak on most everyone's behalf when I say there are a lot of us who would like to have it out of you.”

I should not have expected any less from him (or anyone), really. He was not stupid. I had shown undeniable signs of an uncanny involvement, lately. For that, I allowed him his moment of demand, my eyes searching his face in a thoughtful manner. But it was neither the place nor the time, so in the end I extracted my arm from his hold.

“You speak fairly,” I acknowledged. “But we're here for a reason, right now. Just let me see to it, so we can be done with it and on our way home.”

He held onto the righteousness of his demand, for a moment, but then I saw it grudgingly dissipate, and he left me to do what I saw needed doing in my strange element. I picked up where I had left off, pushing my skirt aside as I twisted back toward my bearing and moved toward those stairs once again. As I began to climb I tilted my head, eyeing the upper reaches of the place, the nearing darkness. It was the second floor I came to first, of course, which was in all respects reminiscent of the first, but I left it behind without much inquisitive ado and climbed higher toward the more significant darkness that loomed past the top balustrade.

It was a silent, heavy, and brooding presence, hanging like a stagnant cloud of bad weather in the rafters. As I rose to its height, it sank in around me, sealing me into the sinew of its domain. I looked down, and Tanen seemed far, far away looking up. The panes of his eyes were plummeting, distant windows. Sparks of soul that seemed to be falling away even as they were frozen in motion. I swallowed, and looked forward again where I stood on the rotting landing.

It was inevitable that I felt as though I were disturbing some brooding sentience, up there, stirring through its eddying dark thoughts as I moved forward. But it was only the clusters of dust-bunnies that stirred in the shadows, wafting against the edges of their keep.

Cobwebs drifted between the posts of the railing – a railing that I did not touch. It was not what interested me. What did interest me was the stain I could now make out on the ornate carpet before me, a ways down the balcony-landing. I treaded toward it, pausing at its faintly maroon edge. It was mostly dust-saturated and dark from age and shadow, now, but there was a tinge I thought I recognized.

A touch would do the trick, where any question remained.

I crouched at its edge, not voraciously keen on sullying my hands with it, but it was so old, by now, and getting hands dirty was just a way of life, anyway. So I reached out and touched it, sifting my fingertips over the starched fibers.

The vision I saw then was a familiar one. Fever dreams like ones I had experienced. Other symptoms that came with that sickness many of us had suffered.

But this soul had not been as lucky as me. This had been one of the first cases, brought fresh from Serbae. Suffered before things – all things – had begun to change in our nation.

A slave had indeed died up here, but it was not a ghost that haunted this level. I lifted my fingers from their contact with the bloodied carpet and looked around, taking in the rest of elements that disgraced this floor. A large painting on the wall next to me was plagued by great downward streaks, much the way a painting might look if left out in the rain before it was allowed to dry, as if the picture was melting right off the canvas. Little more than faded, splotchy greens and blues remained, except for some faint, watermark-like architectural etchings in the background. The golden frame was tarnished and dusty, and all the wallpaper that fanned out from behind it was peeling and sapped of its vibrancy.

My eyes traveled across the floral wasteland to the next painting – this one of a more recognizable ocean scene; a ship rocking on stormy waves. But, as I rose for a closer inspection, I found that the canvas was rotting, and was plagued around the hull of the ship by barnacle-like warts. As for the rest of it, a couple patches near the edges had receded to bare the mottled matte beneath, and spots of mold were creeping in from the frame-shadowed corners.

Next I came to the largest one of all, this one showcasing the elegant likeness of a tree, somewhat close to life-size, as far as paintings went. But all of its leaves were absent from its branches, and they lay in a true life-like heap at my feet, very much outside of the painting. Dead leaves. Shriveled and brown and decaying into dust. Some were strewn across the landing, nearly all the way to the rail.

My hem rustled through them as I moved on.

A part of me wanted to wander into the rooms that lay in dormant seclusion behind closed doors, up here, but I had gleaned what I'd come for. After extending my investigation of the encircling landing, I turned to return downstairs.

Tanen was waiting a little anxiously for me, but, seeing me in one piece, visibly relaxed.

“Fear not, Tanen, I told you it was no dark spirit,” I said, plunking back down on ground-level turf.

Then what the hell is it, I could see his eyes asking, but he refrained from pushing the matter, at least then and there, and simply turned to bring up the rear in the act of departure with less humor than what he had showed coming in.

And of course – dark spirit or not, it was still no laughing matter for those of us who could attest to the true nature that it did bear.