Tenebrae Manor (31 page)

He fell asleep instantly, while crotchets and quavers danced inside of his head.

**** 

What of the Lady Libra, the once untouchable apex of Tenebrae’s hierarchy? Having relinquished her position to what she reluctantly decided were ‘more capable hands’, she too decided to diminish the lavish excess of her life - in some aspects.

Choosing to ignore the valuable treasures she had collected, she kept a small livelihood with only her most favourite things. Yet she was unshakeably hedonistic, so that while she was able to give up the grand bedroom for the sake of a smaller quarters; the position of her new room just so happened to be directly above the kitchen halls. Thus meaning that she had direct access to a shaft where a winch and pulley delivered food directly to her room with minimal effort.

As such, her gluttony only escalated, her plumpness proliferated, until she grew so fat that she rarely left her room at all.

****

There came a time not long after when Edweena again began to feel the yearning for a new challenge, the stillness of the manor frustrated her greatly and she fought against the quicksands of stagnation with increased vigour. She moved irritably about the house, seeing little but abandoned rooms and silent corridors. It was not that she despised the place but merely felt that her time at Tenebrae Manor must end and perhaps end sooner than anticipated.

The fact that she had obtained closure from her old friend Libra and that the manor was now entirely free of immediate danger prompted her decision to venture into the world beyond the darkness of the trees. She wished she could steal away quietly, leaving little commotion in her absence, however she knew there would be one person who would truly lament an unexplained disappearance.

She leapt stealthily across the rooftops of Tenebrae Manor like a panther in a mountain range, landing on the window ledge of a certain turret, from where the flames of a candle flickered weakly.

The silence of her arrival did not startle Bordeaux, who turned from his reading desk as though he had expected her all along. He gazed knowingly at her, Edweena stepping down into the room and pacing about as if it was her own. She stopped before Bordeaux’s favourite painting, the painting of the sunrise and observed the masterwork of the brushstrokes.

“I’m leaving.”

Bordeaux sipped at his long ignored coffee cup and grimaced; its contents cold.

“I know.”

Edweena looked at him expectantly. “So?”

Bordeaux heaved a heavy sigh. “I cannot stop you, Edweena.”

“Come with me.” She leant over the writing desk and stared earnestly at him.

“I… I cannot,” he replied.

Rolling her eyes, Edweena stepped away. “I understand your station. But why stay? Did your exile not fill you with the expectation of a more exciting life?”

The crimson demon stood and led Edweena back to the painting, where neither of them spoke for some time.

Bordeaux finally broke the silence. “In times past, I was servant on a vineyard in Southern France. Our country lay in fields of verdant green, lined with miles upon miles of grape plantations. The leaves were like stars; I still remember how beautiful the land looked in the afternoon sun. I remember the breeze of the Mediterranean coast on my skin. Life was fleeting but life was wonderful. At five and twenty, I had an accident on the vineyard. The pain was so incredible; I knew myself to be dying. I know not how long it remained dark, only that I awoke again and my family was gone. My home had seemingly been abandoned long ago. I was still of this world. I could breathe. I could walk, talk. Yet something had changed. The earth seemed clearer, I could see and feel things I had never known and I thought that I must be alive. But I wasn’t. I had died, I know I had died. And there was no God, no deity to meet me after death. Perhaps more frightening still, no Beelzebub or devil appeared to banish me into eternal hellfire either. There was nothing but I still
was
. Surely you have an idea what that feels like? To die and realise that there is nothing. No eternal afterlife of paradise, no confining to swelter in an underworld. Nothing. Why am I still here? Is this my curse? Is this hell? I have seen it all, Edweena. I have travelled through the Orient, the steppe of Asia Minor. I have stowed away on ships, an imposter sailing for the edges of the world, only to discover that there is just more land. I have seen the swamp eaten jungles of the new world, the polar extremes of the furthest Thule. My recent exile was nothing new. I have settled at Tenebrae Manor purposefully. Like many others under this roof, I cannot die with time, lest I am killed. At times I have thought of ending it but… I must stay here. I have duties here, at least for now. You must understand, Edweena.”

Edweena could not respond for several moments, tears forming in her eyes. Bordeaux looked down at the ground and felt his chest swell with despondence.

“I had no idea of your mortal life,” she said. “Nor your previous travels.”

“It is fine. Not all of us can so easily cast aside the memories held dear to them. Deadsol was a miserable Russian baron before death, before his sanity dwindled over the ages. Now look at him, he has never been so jovial. Arpage, he cannot even remember his life before Tenebrae. If only I was so fortunate.”

“I too, curse my immortality, Bordeaux. I had no choice either. At times, I wish I could be like Madlyn. She, like all humans, has no idea what a privilege it is to die eventually. I feel such anger that my mortal death was taken from me. To sleep in blissful darkness forever… I would give all else to get that.”

“Which is why you would leave now?”

“Yes,” said Edweena. “I know that the night ends at a certain point. From then on, I am in great risk of perishing. It is the thrill of mortality, the idea of a life of arbitrary length. It compels me, Bordeaux.”

“You would treat your life so recklessly?” asked Bordeaux.

“I have had my share of years, Bordeaux. Lord knows how many years excess. This life I have now may as well be death of sorts. Should I die, you will know that I died having truly
lived
.”

Bordeaux sighed. “I understand.” 

Tenderly, with the fondness of a true friend, Edweena kissed Bordeaux upon his gaunt cheek, heartache consuming her. Without the need for further words, she stepped away from him, pausing briefly at the window ledge before vanishing into the trees outside.

Bordeaux was seized by a paralysis of mind; his knees shook and only once he had fought for any sort of composure did he move to the window to see if he could still see Edweena somewhere in the distant trees.

But she was gone and the night carried on as it always had.

END OF PART THREE.

36: Epilogue

The winter had arrived late that year but when its winds arrived, they bit hard with punishing indifference. Their polar currents cut through the still forest like wights exhuming a ghastly wail, perhaps lamenting their lack of orientation betwixt the trees, for the gales blew this way and that at their own will. The trees, silenced by a blanket of crystalline white, slouched in pneumonic sleep, immersed so deeply into the night around that they recalled nothing but darkness. It was as if colour had never existed; grey dominated the stony sky and evanescent wisps of cloud flitted high in the domed atmosphere.

             
Nestled in its small clearing, a wooden hut stood strong against the wintry blasts, yet it was slowly losing its stance to the piling of snows about its walls and the smoke that drifted from the chimney was instantly snuffed by the winds. For this hut, its feeling of isolation was exaggerated in the gloom, it cowered to the gusts and allowed it to dominate the forest.

             
The moon was a waning gibbous and it could be said that its waning was a result of the cold currents extinguishing its lunar flames, for it shone dimly through the windows of the shack and across the wooden floors draped with a fur rug.

The old man sat in his chair, nestled feebly from the elements by a thick layer of woolen blankets. And certainly his snowy beard aided his warmth despite its resemblance to the powder outside. The fire crackled in the hearth, providing more than adequate heat to the room. Yet even with the main log burning nicely, the old man could not help but notice his diminishing pile of kindling to the side of the fireplace and he sighed begrudgingly. His bones ached, though whether this was due to his age, the cold or even both, he could not tell.

Supposing that it did not really matter, he shivered in his blankets and stretched in his chair. He would have to gather firewood eventually; nobody else would in this hermit’s abode.

“Mayhaps it will be good to go outside,” he said to himself. “If only to feel the elements in these old bones again.” He would only be a moment; the larder of firewood was only a few metres from his hut.

With a struggle, he rose and donned his green cloak. His slouched profile looked not unlike the snow-capped conifers outside the door, weighted down with the season’s drifts.

The difference in temperature between the inside of the hut and out was tremendous, as the old man felt instantly the blows of gale lashing at his weathered face. Still, he shuffled out into the dusk and when he had reached his woodpile, he stopped and admired the majestic silence of the pines that encompassed his home. Certainly it was cold but would that really matter, say, if he were to venture but a little further to admire the forest?

“A little further. What harm, other than freezing to death?” he chuckled, before breaking into a series of autumnal coughs.

He waded through the drifts, passed his old forge, passed the stables where his last horse had died decades earlier. The trees towered around him, as though they were parental figures watching over his comparably tiny frame. To feel the cold and such cold it was, invigorated the old man. Memories of his youth flew on the gusts, times when he could ride just as fast through the tree trunks, when he knew the ins and outs of this nighttime forest like the back of his hand.

There presently came a moment when he decided that he would turn back but upon commencing his return journey, he realised his trail had been covered with new snow. A younger man may have panicked in such a situation but not this nonagenarian. He had lived out his years; the idea of death no longer frightened him. No, he rather cursed his own dull wit. What a fool he had been, venturing out into this weather at his age.

“I will deservedly perish. Stupid old fool,” he muttered.

The trees gave no assistance in gauging his whereabouts; they all looked the same to him.

Onwards he wandered until he came upon a place where the trees stopped all of a sudden and a sharp cliff face echoed in the void beyond. He clambered up a great boulder until he was able to sit on the ledge of the precipice, where the trees below carried on uninhibited until they met mountains on the far horizon.

He sat in silence, shivering in his cloak with wisps of his white hair blowing across his wrinkled face.

“Surely you should be some place warm.”

The old man flinched at the voice and when he turned his ancient head, he saw the demon standing beside him.

“Bordeaux,” said the old man.

“Crow.”

The old man stared at the crimson demon, who appeared more than content to admire the view of the forest below. It was the very same Bordeaux he known from years earlier, his immaculate dark red suit, his charcoal scarf blowing in the frigid breeze; how long had it been since he had last seen him?

“I suppose I just wanted to feel… alive again,” said Crow.

Bordeaux chuckled. “Don’t we all.”

“You look the same,” was all Crow could muster to say.

“And why would I have changed, sir?”

“I had thought you might not be around anymore,” replied Crow. “The manor still stands?”

“A foolish idea to think otherwise.”

Crow chuckled in response. He and Bordeaux remained quiet for some time, listening to the sounds of the whistling wind in the pine branches.

“You are indeed fortunate, Crow,” said Bordeaux. “You will receive rest shortly and what wouldn’t I give to take it from you.”

Crow felt a slight fear in his chest but Bordeaux continued to gaze out over the abyss with no sign of movement.

“I stood on the threshold of Tenebrae Manor some time ago,” continued Bordeaux, “And, for a fleeting second, I nearly ran, wishing nothing more than to see a new place. To perhaps, find Edweena. To see whether the world has changed further from the last time I saw it.”

“And you didn’t?”

Bordeaux laughed menacingly. “Ha, no sir. I did not. Again, the question begged, why? I have nowhere to be. Any home elsewhere would merely become stagnant again, in time.”

“I suppose I cannot relate,” said Crow. “I have no grasp of such a lengthy life and never will.”

“Ah Crow, old friend. I could throw myself from this very cliff but then what? I had thought myself dead when my mortal existence was taken from me and now I cannot tell how many centuries I have passed in this purgatory.”

No more words were uttered for some time, until Crow began to shiver more so. Bordeaux stirred from his perch like an eagle rustling from hours of watching in patience.

“Follow the flames home,” said Bordeaux.

Crow stirred. “What? Bordeaux?”

He turned to where the demon had stood seconds earlier but Bordeaux was gone.

When Crow looked back into the trees, a trail of ghostly orange flames seemed to hover in a line until they disappeared from view further ahead.

Thankful for the kindliness of his strange friend, Crow gathered himself up and wandered back into the forest, following the flames that would, no doubt, bring him back to his hut. The winds and the snows continued with no difference to their nonchalance, the trees remained covered in their blanket of eternal night.

And it is there that those pines would continue to stand, in a forest that some may call the darkest corner of earth. But no – that is the wrong choice of words, for a corner is a place where two ends meet. This is rather a nothingness, born of mystery and existing in a greater emptiness. A place on the planet that may never be discovered and, to any who would listen, may never need to be discovered.

Somewhere in that forest stands Tenebrae Manor, immortal as an artwork. And, like the arts, where anything can come from nothing, the mansion is still there, quintessential of the gloom that protects it and paramount to the ongoing reprieve of sufferance it represents.

END