"Victorian Upir" Chapter 1: The Return

by: Jeel Christine de Egurrola 

Jewish Cemetery 1657 by Jacob van Ruisdael 

Chapter 1: The Return

The night is foggy and damp. The cemetery, where hundreds and thousands of corpses lie six feet under the ground, is quiet and vacated. Some monuments of angels are crying in agony, some are in still and rigged position. Some are holding swords, some are flying. While some monuments are angels, some are crosses of different designs. More and more varied designs are etched on each monuments, sarcophagi and tombstones. Some are simpler than the others. Some are big, some small, some tall, some short. Different epitaphs inscribed in memory of people’s dead loved ones. Some with flowers and candles on it revealing that someone has just visited their dead...

A sudden burst echoes through the night—ending the paralyzing silence. A raven shrieks. The sound comes from the part of the cemetery where the monarchs and the elites are buried—particularly from one of them where seven ugly and gruesome black cats circle the ground. As if chanting a spell, they meow in unison. Unearthly utters that send shivers to anyone’s spine.

The ground burst again. Old haglike hands from six feet under creep the surface. Then the corpse grovels up to a stand. A body of a dead woman now in motion alive from the dead!

The Lady Meresse returns from the stench of the dark abyss. The wrinkles on her skin like crumpled paper, covered in soot. Her body drape with dirty red velvet plume with cloak as dark as where she was hailed. Gloved pale hands, dirty, gored and swollen. Flesh, unmoldered but almost rotten and it smells. White pus from what looks like open wounds oozes. A wail of ail bursts as her blue lips part. The sound otherwordly, unearthly, eerie like a hiss of a Hydra, like a howl of a savage wildcat... Her eyes are as white as snow, unpupiled and hellish. Ashen face no longer the beauty of night. Nothing but a horrible countenance!

The Lady Meresse is darkness personified. Like automaton she paces, she staggers, she stumbles. No more is the swagger of the princess that she once was. Lady of night, once beautiful now ugly and zombielike

She continues to flounder, hoping to reach the Castle Black before sunrise.

Cats—vile black cats follow her trail. Familiars wretch beyond wretched like her face---piteous, ugly and unworthy. Oh poor, oh poor princess! Oh poor beasts!

Seconds became minutes, minutes became hours, at last! Lady Meresse returns! Now she enters the bridge where her knights used to cross. It is the same bridge where her golden carriage jaunts. Since the lady's demise, all around Castle rock was enveloped with unearthly filth, smoke dark, eye-soring and sickening buboes caused by bacteria. Death in the royal family, including their scribes, knights and court subjects... Like virus, darkness hits her realm. Her subjects died in vain but lady of night has returned. Alas!

She paces to the paseo once more, and another more until the gate of the Roanne Horse she enters. The Gate of Alkaid, Greek of "the leader,” one of the seven gates of Silent Hill where a feral black Roanne Horse was carved in stone... A kelpie it was believed to be, the horse the water sprite who drowns its prey and devours its prey's flesh and insides. Upon midnight it transforms to the Roanne Horse, based on their folklores. Maine and skin as black as night, as evil as the devil himself. The Roanne kills through its menacing eyes. It hunts by nightime. During the Samhain it lives again. Bloodlust and deceit that drive it; also live in its core...

Together with her seven pets, the lady passes. The seven blacks---the seven favoured; Azazel, the Darkling; Azrael, the Angel of Death; Samael, Destruction and Discord; Beelzebub, the Chief Spirit of Evil; Midnight, the Essence of Night; Malefic, the Evil and Vicious; Morningstar, the Prince of Darkness

The seven that is the seven stewards of Aides. Felines to honor the God Aidoneus, of the underworld..

Toward the threshold of the Castle Black she gaits with hankering for the manor house's quilt to comfort and console the feeble and the frail. A longing for the warmth from the hearth against the smothering and frostbitting cold...

Funny how she misses the heat, the sun, no longer hers to wish... She hungers for the meat in the butcher's slaughter house. She thirsts for crimson red blood smeared on its tables. Oh! She could smell it. She could taste it. She's starving! Her appetite with great desire!

The Castle Black is situated atop the Silent Hill. A Victorian facade delights the senses. A 17th century frontage excites perceptual admiration, and of intellectual, and emotional wonderment. Above the palace is the moonshine, Nyx herself the goddess light that illuminates the night. The panorama is so pleasing, delicious and itself entertaining—perfect catch for an artist's eyes. It is a moment captured, a scene frozen in time.

The lady looks at her former home with love, and longing. Memories come crashing like waters from a mount descents to a river. Her Queen mother's touch, hand brushes her auburn hair. Her King father's might, the battles he fought and won. She remembers the prince's hypnotic blue eyes, pouty lips that touched hers. The dance in her masquerade ball, her sixteenth day... He, enthralling her with his gentle and ethereal motility... No one moves with an eldritch skill as her prince. The Duke of Buckinghamshire, of the Cliveden manor, third in line as heir to the Centauri court.

How could someone without a heart remembers! Some poor cadaver without a pulse and a soul become cognizant! Someone buried for centuries, hibernated for Aeons long. But she does remember! She does! For the first time since decades ago, she feels alive. Alive! Is she alive? She wonders? Or is this a dream in a dream in a dream?

"I am the Lady Meresse Tatiana Vasilli de Saptarshi, princess of Castle Black manor, the heir to the Saptarshi throne" she hisses. Saptarshi, the seven bright stars of Ursae Majoris...

The doorhandle she twists, and surprisingly it opens. The once locked door no longer barred. The woods and stones of the manor answers through the coal-black blood that runs through her veins... Her new blood, gift from Aides, the brother of the God Zeus. Aidoneus, the God of the Underworld..

Through the snow-white eyes, the gift of Sight to the otherworldy and through her piercing sharp fangs to relish blush delight gifts from the Goddess of the Darklight, Nyx, the Luna, the mother of the children of the Night.

The manor house, once filled with music and once happy with dances and laughter like the Faerie Summer Court, Seelie and the UnSeelie now forsaken, abandoned, and empty of mortals and animals alike. Reek air vents through the hollow of the Castle Black's interior. Cobwebs like gossamer sparks light the parlor. Dusts blanket the white fabrics covering the woodworks.

She looks at the familiar vastness of the room. On the grand staircase cowers long-tailed black rodents fleeing upon the mistress of the manor's return. She parts her mouth in a horrid grin. Teeth yellow from the grim of demise and decay. Satisfaction from the hours walk, is all. Now hunger and thirst she must gratify. She calls on her seven favoured.

"Catch the rats, catch them, now my lovelies!"

Thrall to bondage to their mistress, the black felines run. They all stretch out over a distance. Extends Azazel from one spot to another in great space... Gallops Malefic, the handsomest and fiercest of them all... Morningtar, the royal of the seven catches the first rodent. Sharp cat fangs pierce through the poor creature's body. Samael turns the Castle Black's first floor in chaos. Discordance, a skill for a perfect catch none others possess. Becharming, a quality of the loveliest beast of the night, Midnight enamors its prey with its spellbinding wolflike yellow eyes. Beelzebub hauls the quarry with silence like a tiger and patience like that of a lion. Azrael, with perfect angel onyx wings, she catches from air.

The Lady drops on her knees, no longer can she wait. Blood she lusts, thirsty of its scarlet sunshine sweetness the human blood can only suffice. For now, the rodents will do her enough to fill her mouth, not decent but fair nutrients for her body. The small hairy black beasts---offering for blood consumption

All seven drop their quarry to their mistress. They return to the hunt and back again, and again, and again... She devours all little hairy, nasty, and wet beasts with the urgency of her own monstrosity!