"Nameless" (A Short Story)

by: Jeel Christine de Egurrola

I plan on writing a prequel for this particular short story for the readers to be able to understand the personalities of the two main characters, and to know how their lives became entangled in a crisis.

Anyway, thanks to sir Jayson for an opportunity of a lifetime. :)

******

"They say that nameless things change constantly--that names fix them in place like pins. But without a name, a thing isn't quite real either. Maybe you're not a real thing."- Holly Black, Ironside

a shadow in a shadow

She could see that the boy is trying to cut the binds on his hands through his pocket knife. His isn’t as tight as hers, she notices. As soon as his binds loosen from where he squats, she shouts at the big muscular goon with the goatee that intertwines in locks, his bayonet on his scabbard on the right, and a bow and a quiver with arrows attached to his belt on his left. “Alright, fuck me!”

The goon spreads his lips in a mocking grin and moves to grasp her. The other two hoodlums—one bald, and the other blond—cheer in glee. He unties the knot on her bonds that deprive her from any form of movements and struggles.

Before he could ravish her, she smacks a punch to the big guy’s face and kicks his crotch. The guy screams in pain. She takes the bayonet from his scabbard and presses it down to his back and he stumbles unconscious. The other two riders advance her with their knives. The long-haired blond guy was able to cut her shoulders, opening up a leak where thick blood oozes. It stings her enough to loosen her grip on the bayonet. “Shit!” she screams and she ducks toward empty boxes on her right. The man catches her. He punches her back and forth until bruises appear on her freckled face. She could feel the pain in her cheeks. And before he could swing at her again, the boy whose binds were cut reaches down to the big man’s shoulders. He makes an attack that leaves the boy stumbling down on his back.

She reaches for the bayonet on the floor and presses it with force down to and fro the goon’s back. The boy gets the other knife, which stretches on the floor near the bald goon’s dead body—the one he hit unconscious with a steel rod. He stabs the blond hoodlum’s heart and he dies.

“That was fun.” He sighs in relief.

She reaches and takes the bow and the quiver where the arrows are stored out from the blond’s buckle, while he takes the rest of the bayonets with him.

They hurry to untie the binds of other prisoners and run for their escape before the other punks come back from their short trip elsewhere. The three men weren’t their only jailer, seven more are out there somewhere.

They both know that it isn’t safe to be out of the building in this time of the night. It is possible that more hoodlums are out for a lookout scattered in the building. What they need for now is a hideout where they can plan for their escape. They hide themselves in another room—a stock room of sorts—near the media center. It is the safest room they find in the midst of the darkness.

The room is dark. The only light that comes in is from the holes possibly created by bullets that passed the doors and the walls of the room. The inside is as dusty as the abandoned building itself. Various footbags of different colors are gathered in a pile on a shopping cart on one of the edge of the darkened room. Mops, vacuum cleaners are placed on the other edge, while bottles of detergents, sprays, and other liquids in bottles that must have been expired are arranged on a steel shelves attached to one side, and placed on the left side side are steel tables and cabinets that looks almost old as the building itself.

“For a moment there I though you want to fuck those goons.” He starts looking back and forth at her and the other prisoners who squeezed together in compact in the right side.

“Who in their right mind would ever want to be screwed by those homicidal punks who smell like shit? And what, fuck in front of everybody in an orgy? That’s so nasty!” She scowls.

“Uhm, exhibitionists, paraphilias, caudulists and the likes of them...” He replies.

“Right! Like they are in their right minds...”

“Yeah.” “You know what, I like you.” He smiles at her. His hair black as coal, eyes silvery gray, lips red not from lipstick—but natural red, a dimple appears on his right cheek making him younger than the first time she looked at him. He is probably eighteen or nineteen. She guesses.

“How come?”

“You’re cool, dangerous and you have wits none of them possess.” He points at the rest of the group. One girl sits with her knees that touch her breasts, hugs herself in what seems like fear in her eyes. A six year old kid snuggles under his granny’s protection. A woman in a green buttoned close cardigan and black jeans cautiously peeks at the outside through a little hole on the door. An old man whose hands don’t stop trembling sits beside a slender bloke in his early twenties who wobbles his lips in a silent prayer.

“You’d be surprise to know that that praying guy has a sense of humour.” He looks at him, and shakes his head.

“I don’t like guys. I’m not gay. My brother is.... I like women. That means you...”

“Oh! You’ll pretty much dislike me sooner or later. I’m not who you think I am. I am a serious lady and I have no time for games. And I love my solitude. So, please leave me.” She explains, trying to discourage the silvery gray eyed.

“Too bad I’m liking you even more.” He grins.

“Wait! Are you hitting on me?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you are.”

“Maybe I am. “ He teases her. Her wavy blond hair fits perfectly with her soporific blue eyes with curvy eyelashes that flutter like wings when she blinks. She wears a blue thin camisole, a designer’s jeans, and a black Chuck Taylor boots.

“I don’t like flirty guys and girls much. I might punch you now.” Her face now angry and annoyed...

“Then why don’t you?” He encourages.

“You know what? Fuck out!” She swings her fist toward his face, but before she could hit him, he dodges down and catches her by the waist. She jerks backward in an attempt to make a second hit, but he steps back in a defense position.

“Hey, easy there girl... I mean you no harm. I just wanna talk, you know. No one here talks with sense like you do. They’re all boring... all trapped in their fears.” He explains. His face no longer frivolous but serious and earnest...

“I’m a bore. So you better find another person to bug.”

“You don’t bore me.”

“Okay! So here’s the deal. I don’t want anything to do with you. Not now. Not ever. As soon as we get out of this hellhole, we will all be moving our own separate ways. We will not see each other again. We will forget that this shit ever happened. If destiny is so cruel that it’ll allow us to stumble with each other again, let’s pretend we don’t know each other. Alight!”

“I’m fine with that.”

“That’s a wise decision.”

“So, are we cool now?”

“Yeah, for now if you don’t do anything stupid.”

“I...” He hesitates. “...will try not to...” and smiles his cocky smile. “So, you’re a killer?” He asks.

“What?” She is confused.

“Well, you’re so good with the knives. Where did you train?”

“First, even if I use my knives well, it doesn’t mean I am killer. Second, I haven’t trained ever. Third, this is the first time I held a knife in offense of another. Lastly, I didn’t kill anyone. I stabbed the guy unconscious, not killed. You killed the blond.” She points her finger at him.

“...to save your ass!”

“I didn’t need saving. I can take care of myself. I could have taken him down on my own.”

“Okay, I believe that. But you are really good with the bayonet.”

“Fluke, possibly...“ For a moment there she only stares at him and hesitates but she continues. “It’s called adrenaline rush. See, our sympathetic nervous system mobilizes our body’s resources when we are under stress. Clearly because of the adrenaline, it must have induced a type of fight-flight response in my body. That explains why I was good with the knives. In fact I felt good then.”

“Oh, not only dangerous but also a nerd...”

“I am not a nerd. I am jut well-informed!” She exclaims.

“Huh!” with sarcasm in his tone of voice...

For that she moves away from him toward the woman who stands demobilize near the door. The woman looks at her and asks. “So what’s the plan?”

“So far, they haven’t moved yet, which means not of the men we took down have awakened yet. I am not sure how many goons are out there. They haven’t started looking for us, which means they haven’t known of our inexistence yet. I am gonna scout out till I decide how we will get off this hellhole.”

“Is that safe?” She asks.

“Yeah. I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll go with you.” The silvery gray eyed boy offers his help. She would have said no, but she nods instead.

She with a knife on her side, and the bow and quiver tucked on her shoulders; and he with knives of his scabbard; together they exit the storage room through the corner of the fourth floor to the stairs. They stealthily peek through and see two men talking silently below. One guy has a patch at his right eye. He wears blue chequered collared long sleeves. His jeans are tattered on the both knees. His oxford footwear looks old and worn. The other guy has a smaller build than the former. His cotton sleeveless has brown smears that look like dried blood. He wore a knee length men shorts, and a pair of combat boots. Both of them have holsters with guns on them. Gosh! Two total fashion misfits... she thinks.

They move to the other side of the building where another staircase is located. It would have been convenient if they use the elevator, but that would only attract the hoodlums, and the elevators in this old building don’t even work. She knows it because she heard two of the men talking about the malfunctioned elevator.

The stairs down is surprisingly empty of people, so as the upper stairs. She asks the boy if he thinks it is safer for them to climb down the stairs. The boy agrees to do as she thinks. So, they both steps down. When they reach the second floor, they see one sleeping lookout with a 20-inch barrelled, non-chrome lined stainless steel M16 riffle. So far in their peripheral view, they see no one else down, but they cannot be so sure. Who knows how many hoodlums are in the building. They enter the halfway and found no one.

“We have to go back.” says the boy “We have to get the others fast.”

“You crazy?”

“No. If we are gonna get out from here, we have to get out fast. This area seems safe. We have to get them all down here.” Then, she agrees.

They hasten back to the top until they reached the storeroom where the rest awaits them, and all of them hurry back to the second floor in an empty room where a mantel is found. Its firebox is empty of firewood. Its pilasters and plinths are cracked open, and the smells of termite-eaten-woods fill the space of the room. They stay there for half an hour after the two left.

Near the stairs, she could see that the sleeping lookout is still dreaming of who-knows-where-Faerieland. Without hesitation, she prepares her bow and arrow for four perfect bullseyes. She knows she wouldn’t miss. Archery is her skill. She intends to hit him on all limbs to deprive him from walking or moving his arms and hands. The boy is almost halfway the stairs to strangle the dreaming goon when another goon with dreadlocked hair unbeknownst them both shows up behind her. He reaches her arms heavily, and she stumbles on her back. The goon starts shouting.

The sleeping goon awakens but is unable to resist the boy’s steel rod that hits the side of his head. Groggily, the goon hits the ground. The silvery-eyed boy gives him another heavy blow and he falls back to dreamland unbeknownst the fact that he would no longer be waking ever from the deepest of the deepest slumber.

Another man with built like that of a body builder shows up and shots a gun toward the boy. It hit past him. He ducked crawled back up the stairs where the dreadlocked hoodlum is still fighting the girl. But the girl, who is now yards away from the running goon, shots her arrow through his heart. And he falls the ground.

The boy continues running toward the girl. “Move! They’re behind me.”

The blond girl shots his next arrow straight to the left eye of the punk with the gun who is chasing the boy. Though he yells in agony, he is still able to shoot the boy. Bullet hits a portion of his right shoulder. It isn’t a deadly wound, but an injury all the same. Two more hoodlums are now shooting. “Shit!” He cusses. They hurry up the stairs where they meet the raged-driven bald—the one the boy hit earlier.

But the boy’s knife fly through the bald’s heart killing him dead on the floor.

“And now look who’s so good with knives!” She utters. He smiles in his victory.

They continue running through the other staircase where they wait for the two goons. She let fly two arrows simultaneously toward one of them, who wobbles down to his knees. Blood leaks from his wounds and sobbed like a baby. The other one—the one with eye patch—keeps shooting with his revolver. They climb down the stairs to the first floor then to the dirty kitchen where they hide at the back of the scullery.

The goon enters. “Come out, come out wherever you are!” Angry, he jams through the tables, making utensils and pots tumbling down the tiled floor. He couldn’t shoot anymore. His is the last of his bullets, and he has to only shoot it bullseye on either one of them, and possibly strangle the other one or kill it with a knife. He smiles at his perfect plan.

But the two have their own perfect plan as well, which overcome the punk’s. The boy comes flying toward the back of the hoodlum. A bait that he is now, while the girl with the sniper eye aims at the big guy’s heart.

The room suddenly become silent. She hears no more the shouts of the two champions, nor does she hear her own heart beating. The perfect catch—she says at the back of her mind. She pulls the string and the arrow goes flying to the goon’s heart. Hurriedly, she pulls the next arrow through the goon’s left knee. The boy stumbled away from the dying goon. The last arrow in her quiver she shoots toward his skull.

Pools of blood flow from where her arrows hit.

I am a murderer. She shuts her eyes and forces her tears away. The sting in her throat she fights.

The boy shakes her shoulders and she finds herself mystify for a while before regaining her awareness. “You okay?” He asks, but before she could reply, he kisses her on the lips. She kisses him back. Their tongues now in perfect harmony... She has never felt anything like it. It was euphoria and peace at the same time. After what seems like an eternity, her head falls on the crook of his neck.

They hurry back to the room in the second floor where the other prisoners are hidden.

Silently they all pace to their exit...

“It’s Kato. My name’s Kato Green.” He smiles, but she didn’t smile back—her face in forlorn.

“I...” She hesitates. “I don’t have a name. If I tell you any name, it’ll be a lie.”

“What do you mean? You can’t not have a name...” He is perplexed.

“What I’m telling you now is truth. I don’t have a name. No one calls me any name. I am only known as a girl, nothing more.” I am nothing more but a shadow in a shadow.

But he believes her. How can he not? He trusts her with his life. She trusts him as well. He wishes that they could be together longer even just for one night, but the deal they had he has to respect. Pretend like they don’t know each other...

“So, it’s goodbye then” She nods, and they both part just like that. Just like that.

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"Victorian Upir" Chapter 5: The Secrets of Castle Black

by: Jeel Christine de Egurrola

gothic house matte painting 

Chapter 5: The Secrets of Castle Black

Young lad Jack now with the young princess, his eyes no longer white but beautiful sapphire-blue looks at her green eyes, filled with desire and longing—to kiss her red lips.

She, stares and sees for the first time not an errand boy but a boyish face—a young handsome face with a cocky grin.

He moves to her, closing the distance. Her lips touch his. A jolt of electricity flows through her and she jerks back. Without hesitation, she flees like a confused innocent teen and not the hag that she once was few days ago.

She finds herself outside the manor house, confused about the new feeling she has for the slave boy. In a few days, she will be reunited with her Xander, and she couldn’t afford any distraction. Not now, not ever. There is work to be done and be done with it fast!

She follows the path toward one of the seven gates of Silent Hill, The Gate of Phad. For a moment, one might think that the Gate of Phad is a replica of the Gate of Merak that leads to the Chapel or Peter the Rock. In an illusion, they are twins, but in truth one slight difference is at all obvious. Why didn’t she notice it before? She asks herself.

A dweller she is of the manor for seventeen years. It is a shame for a princess to miss such vague detail of her own home—the very land where she played hide and seek alongside her cousins. The very land where she scoots around as a child...

Perhaps, because she wasn’t allowed near this particular gate...

The Gate of Phad, like Merak, is made from wrought iron, horizontal posts attached to piers are painted white. Same sized imposts sit below both voussoir, which are connected to a keystone on the center of the slightly pointed arch. While Merak’s arch is Roman, Phad’s is of Gothic architectural pattern.

A huge lock seems to shimmer even under the dark and in the dimness of the night. Even so, with her advanced senses, she doesn’t need any lighting device for her to be able to see in the darkest of the darkness.

As if in servitude to her, the blockage seems to unbolt on its self.

She opens the gate not so wide, but enough for her body to slip through. She slides inside to a white painted, ten yard long Gothic vaulted walkway intersecting two separate open hallway on each side, opposite each other where a rib connects on the vault. A stink fills up the abandoned path.

After about what seems like five feet walk from the initial rib on the vault, another set of rib extends another two hallways opposite each other, same goes about the next five feet walk and so goes for the next six more ribbed vaults.

She admits that she hadn’t been in this part of the manor because the area had been restricted then on. None even the royalties and commoners enter this gate. Once it had been locked, but her blood—Aides very own—has magical properties that unlocks what is locked.

Where all twelve walkways lead, she has no knowledge of. Perhaps in her new life, she may explore each one of them, and be known of what lies there, and what dangers were her family is keeping her and the manor house from.

She continues to where the hallway leads her and she skids to a halt.

A movement... There is as swift movement of an orb of sort crosses from her vision just few inches from the hallway where she stands. Whatever that is, it is freakish, but she isn’t afraid. She has crossed the underworld for like centuries—had met hideous creatures in the dark realm. She isn’t afraid. She gives her cold damp hands reassuring squeezes. She moves from the stink of abandonment to a vast abandoned courtyard, with few gazebos on the sides lining near the plant bosomed walls.

In the night she could see Grape Ivy on the walls, Honeysuckle vines and Butterfly Bushes surrounding each gazebo, some oversized flowering plants she isn’t familiar of fill almost half of the courtyard. In the centre of the courtyard poses a large irregularly textured circular pillar stone monument with carvings of what look like pagans symbols surrounded by several shrubs and bushes. Large trunks of climbing plants coil around it. Butterflies of various colors and other insects are busy flying around and extracting the sweet juices from the flowers that extend throughout the area.

It is amazing. What danger could this place bring? She wonders.

The place is beautiful. More beautiful than the Silent Hill forest...

But what of the orb she saw about earlier she has no explanation.

She hurries back to the manor house to the library in the hopes of finding history books of the manor. Perhaps some of literature may answer the many questions she has in mind—questions no person can possibly answer her as of the moment. Maybe she could ask Thomas or the errand boy or those she is yet to summon from the dead.

The library in the second floor is two doors away to the right from where the staircase is located. Its French doors of fine grained, reddish brown colored Mahogany is patterned with similar Gargoyle-like designs embossed on almost all of the doors in the house.

Inside the library is a Walnut wall panelling instead of wallpapers. Attached to them are bookshelves that extend from the platforms up and to the ceiling with huge Lacquered wood mouldings touch the top of the uppermost compartments of the wooden shelves. A collection of almost of the same size hardbounds are placed on one side of the wall. On the other side are several volumes and collections of encyclopaedias and other reference books. On some shelves are paperbacks. To where the history section is located, she doesn’t know.

She reaches a cabinet of catalogued cards and starts looking for ‘Castle Black Manor’ in the titles section. Dust motes make her sneeze spasmodically the irritants in her nostrils.
She finds two cards with the titles “Castle Black Manor House: History and Construction” and “Castle Black Edifice.” She copies the each Dewey decimal classification numbers on an old paper parchment she finds on piles in one of the drawers of the library’s counter table.

She arrives at a collection of hardbounds, and finds the two books on the same shelf. She sits on one of the wooden bar chairs. She scans the first book—a not so thick book. Read through some parts. She does the same with the next book. For a while she learns some information about her family, their properties, the construction of the manor house, the woodworks and features of the house and so on... for what seems like two hours, she tires herself from the reading, half-satisfied for the knowledge she just received, half disappointed for not having find any information on that courtyard where the Gate of Phad and its hallways lead to. None of the two books take mention of what’s behind all the seven gates of the Silent Hill.

She takes off from the library to hunt. It is almost midnight and she is hungry. In the next day, she decides to rummage through the library ones again. She is not about to give up on finding what secrets lie behind the manor where she is born. She is positive that somewhere in the vast collection of books she will find her answers.


--to be continued---http://twitter.com/jeelchristine

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"Victorian Upir" Chapter 4: The Summoning

by: Jeel Christine de Egurrola

Lilith by John Maler Collier 

Chapter 4: The Summoning

Lamia in myths is a goddess who devours children for their pureness and the youth of their skin so she wouldn’t get old. The Lamian ritual is what will give the lady back her youth.

She was only sixteen when she died from the deadly airborne bacteria that spread Europe during her time. The Great Plague of 1738—similar to that of the Black Death in the 12th century—it was called, a bubonic plague that killed thousands of people in Europe during the 17th century.

Word has it that the Egyptian goddess Bast plunged the plague as a consequence for the Inquisition. According to history, cats and other witch familiars were burned alive, some beheaded. The goddess fury hit the people regardless of their race, age, sex, religion, like fiery arrows sending their souls afloat from their flesh.

The lady remembers the very night when enormous number of wild and house rodents distributed in her area, and in Europe. Lumps in her skin and bubo discharges she remembers in displeasure and disgust. Sickness was their only food.

Her queen died, followed shortly by the king, then her prince and herself and everyone in Castle Black.

Meresse, together with the two servants and the seven black cats hurry toward the Gate of Alioth, a wide white painted gate made of wrought iron, horizontal tendrils attached to opposite piers. The voussoir, which is strengthening by the rounded arch’s keystone, sits on two imposts opposite each other. The gate further leads them to Castle Black’s very own Catholic Chapel, the Chapel of Peter the Rock, built right after the Medieval Inquisition in the 16th century.

During the 11th century, the area surrounding the chapel was considered a sacrosanct ground by the pagans who worship many gods and goddesses. There in the same area animal sacrifices took place.

Beside the small chapel is a wide barren lot where no weeds, grasses and other plants grow. This was believed to be an area of great power, where the pagans do their rites.

While the lady kneels on the ground in a silent prayer to the goddess Lamia, Thomas and Brown gathers small round rocks in piles to be used in the ritual.

The small stones where spread in a circle, whose diameter reaches about five feet, enough to lay their human sacrifice.

Inside the circle, the lady sprinkles rock salts on the center where a single pile of rocks is placed similar to the ones piled by the witches in the woods of Blair.

She continues to disperse the salt in an outline of a large inverted star. The inverted pentagram... The pentacle—a very powerful circle symbolizing great power. She places each point of the stars candles lade bare on the dry ground.

Inside the same circle lays all seven silently sleeping new born babies in an inner circle a feet away from the candles.

All the felines position themselves inches away from the original circle, while the lady sits inches away from the south point, Thomas stands inches away beside her. Brown, on the other hand, with a match on hand waits nearest the circle for the rite to commence.

So it begins.

An athame on hand, the lady creates a small cut on her wrist—enough to let black blood flow from the leak to a monarch’s chalice, and she utters a chant in a language none of them understands.

The goddess Nyx gifted the lady with the tongue of gods and goddesses so she must speak their language, but lacks the gift of comprehension to the sacred tongue only the deities understand.

Utters from the lady’s part lips a familiar word, “Aero,” the errand boy lights the first candle on the west point of the inverted star. A gust of strong wind envelopes the sky, leaving withered flowers flying on air in flux with the wind current. As the air loosens, several vortexes arise from the ground, and the rest of the dirt and leaves follow in radial motion with it. The sounds of the wind like jazz in her ears. For a moment, it stops and every sound turns low, very low.

The chanting continues. At the mention of the word “Flamma,” Brown lights the second candle situated northwest upper point of the pentacle. The fires on both candle flames turn heavier and bluish in color as if it intends to burn with maximum strength. The smell of burnt coal occupies the air.  In less than five minutes, the bluish heat color turns back to the yellow-orange-red flame.

At the mention of the word “Terra,” Brown fires up the third candle northeast upper point of the inverted pentagram. The fragrance of mosses and tree barks and leaves fills the atmosphere. Sounds of wild animals fill the air—reptiles hiss, apes grunt, bats screech, bears growl, eagles scream, ravens croak, wolves howl, cicadae sing, raccoons chitter, rats squeak, cats meow, and others cry.  It takes almost ten minutes till the sounds deteriorate.

The errand boy lights up the fourth candle on the east—the fourth point, “Aqua” it is... the eye of the storm appears above the circle. A blanket of light illuminates the earth, follows shortly by the roar of Zeus’ thunder. A heavy amount of precipitates from the atmosphere drops to the ground but not wetting the circle or anyone around the circle. The storm continues for about ten minutes and ended immediately. The cyclone disappears in a tear of time. Then the smell of the iodine and sodium chloride from the ocean fill their nostrils. It used to be a nasty smell when she was alive, but now, the smell is like daisies in her nose.

She summons the last element, “Spiritus.” Brown lights the last candle in the pentagram. In no time, all candle fires up in heavy flames. A tingling sensation evaporates from her insides. A feel of spirit coming out from her body... She rise up from the ground, a translucent white chord connects from her belly to someone else’s belly. An astral projection that she is now, floating above ground—in the astral plains—looking down at body lying dead in the ground... The woman’s auburn hair scatters around, limbs on her sides. Her emotionless and wrinkled face like that of a hag’s with cracked lips.  

Two men reach out to her. One of them shakes the woman’s shoulder, calling a name the astral couldn’t hear.

The astral projection would have floated away. The feeling of freedom like a bird she now relishes in Utopia.

Someone is calling.

“M’lady!”

“M’lady Maressee!!”

In a sudden shudder, the lady wakes up. In shock of the latest event. For a moment she forgets herself. She looks up and sees two sapphire blue eyes looking down at her... A pretty boyish face. She closes her and flutters in open. Disappointed to see only two emotionless white eyes…

And she regains her awareness. She feels good inside. She kneels back on her earlier spot. She continues the incantation. This time like a true necromancer, she summons Lamia.

In otherworldly language, she speaks “Hear these words, hear my cry. Spirit of Goddess Lamia from the other side. Come to me, I summon thee. Cross now the great divide. Beloved spirit, Goddess Lamia, We seek your aid, Commune with us and move amongst us.”

She repeats the words until the ground shakes and the salt from the pile of rocks in the center of the pentagram begins moving up in unearthly motion along a vortex of dust from the ground, and appears an unrecognizable shape. An opaque silhouette of a figure appears.

“Speak” it squeaks in the otherworldly language.

“Seven first born for thee, for a beauty incessantly evermore for me and my court!” She speaks.

“Very well, daughter of Nyx! Thine is the beauty evermore.” And the figure disappears.

The ground shakes as it’s mouth guttles each sleeping infant one by one. And nothing is left but blood on the ground where the babies use to lay, unlit candles on the same pointed angles, cats posed on the same spot, both servants stands in stupor from what they saw.

The lady stands, she swaggers like a princess that she is. Her unfreckled face now smooth and soft... Her lips pouty and red... Eyes no longer ashen white but a perfect hazelnut... Her auburn hair now shines like silk. She dances. She twirls her swirly red dress. She laughs—not a hag’s laugh but a teen’s silly gag. A young lady in her sixteen. Beautiful.

Jack Brown is spellbound. 

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"Victorian Upir" Chapter 3: The Subjects

by: Jeel Christine de Egurrola

The Vampire, Philip Burne-Jones, 1897

Chapter 3: The Subjects

On the third day of Lady Meresse’s resurrection from the dead, the house became less ghoulish than it was when she entered it for the first time. The furnitures in the hall are no longer bound with shrouds. Castle Black looks more inhabited now.  Atop the tables with flower carvings and swirly leg bases are lit candles with varied colors and designs on wide-ranging handle socket shapes. More candlesticks can be seen on tables, consoles, and cabinets.

Three antique couches with Gargoyle designs projects from each edges and extremities, and carved on its legs and arms. The larger couch that can accommodate four people poses on the center adjacent like designed sofas that can accommodate two people each faces each other. A center table etched with the same design half closes the space between them. On the east side of the parlor stands another sofa that can accommodate one person set in an L direction from a narrow and short shelf with a few collection and volumes of books any member of the household or guest can sit for a good read. More books and tomes can be found in the Saptarshi library in a separate room on the second floor of the house.

Like the parlor, the Lady’s room is free from shrouds, now available for her own comfort anytime after sunset and before sunrise, that is. Where she sleeps is the cellar, a mattress from one of the house’s guest rooms is positioned. The cellar, indeed, is the safest place for the likes of her to slumber, where no sunlight enters. The cellar is now her lair for the time being until she finds a better and a more comfortable den for herself and for her kind as soon she wakes them all together from the realm of the dead, which she is reminded to do about now.

To bring at least one or two people from her court back to living she must do today. Aides gifted her and her felids with the tongue of summoning and incantations for the awakening.

In the cemetery, she identifies two dead from her court, a house butler and an errand boy. The seven favoured now in their rightly locations, with the lady who sits at the center of the circle utter the incantation. A dead black raven lies on the ground where it will be devoured by the ground—a sacrifice for the Aides. A life for a dead—a payment of a debt...

The raven no more in sight... Aides answers. Nyx blesses.

The ground shakes like earthquake, then it bursts just shortly. Crawls out from the grave is old man with Ashen emotionless face, and pale crumpled skin. Like the Lady in her awakening, the old man’s wounds are with bloodthick saps like that of plants dripping down. His eyes are white and empty of pupils and irises. He wears a collared loose fitting brown garment which extends to his hips, and a black Victorian undergarment. His feet are bare like the lady’s during her return.

“Merry meet, Thomas!” The lady exclaimed.

“Meeerrrr-yyymeeettt m’laddieee...” Thomas uttered in an awful inhuman sound.

The lady gives the butler her hideous yellow-teeth-smirk. “Come along now. There’s one more we have to wake.”

She and the feral cats move to the next tombstone where lay under the ground is the errand boy—her personal errand boy, who was barely seventeen when the bacterium hit him dead. The same errand boy whose sapphire blue eyes and heart belong only to the lady Meresse...

The same incantation is uttered, the same ritual commences. Cowering on the ground is the boy she calls Brown. Jack Brown. Half American and half English... With white eyes, the boy’s passionless face projects a devilish grin.

Thomas and Brown devoured the dead rabbits and squirrels the lady prepared for them both. They weren’t at all satisfying but enough to give them human voices and human gaits and better awareness to harness their new gifts from the goddess herself. Till then they can begin their own hunt.

Meanwhile, the lady, who sits in the dirty kitchen plays Mad Scientist. With her ingredients all scattered on the kitchen table, and a grimoire—unfolds to a page on making sleep potions. She found the tome a day ago after her hunt on the restricted area of the library—more like a museum of sorts, where démodé and antique goodies are sheltered on glass consoles.

Her cauldron now fully heated, she slides the soupspoon and pours on each two small glass bottle. After each is filled, she closes them with lids that have droppers attached on them. “Perfect!” she smiles.

The next day is hunt day for the three Upir, and the seven favoured who haunt mostly of small creatures like rodents, chicks, roaches, spiders and lizards.

Later that night, the Lady Meresse commands her two servants for a great hunt—with a far greater cause than their personal blood hunts. The Lamian hunt, whereby they would hunt seven new born babies for the lady. She gives both servants each a glass bottle, where filled inside is the sleeping potion.

And so the hunt begins.

Thomas and Brown step through the Gate of Merak, located northwest of Castle black. The wrought iron gate, like all other gates are connected on stone piers that are taller than that of the Gate of Mezar, as tall but not as wide as the Gate of Alkaid. The same Grave Ivys loop in swirls like snakes on the gate posts and spread on pier walls. Yards far from the gate is long winding road that heads to a small village, which used to be subjected under the Saptarshi court, and now is a subject of no one, but is still part of the Castle Black manor. On the other opposite direction is the road that leads away from Silent Hill to Buckinghamshire.

To the village, both servants move in a flash. Swift like the wind... Like spirits they are unseen in the human eye.

Repose from any form of noise other than that of breathes of sleeping villagers and animals, the village’s calm and hush atmosphere give the hunters a great advantage to claim their quarry easily. Small one to two storey houses align along the village narrow rocky dirt path. Some of the houses are brick made while few of them are of terra cotta, and terra cotta roofs.

Brown finds an empty horse wagon unhooked from its horse. It is a perfect storage to transport their quarry. His face turns to a grin. Brown loves to smile even when he was still alive. Everybody in the Castle Black, may it be royalties, elites or lowlies have a fondness to this young man for his light-hearted nature—a perfect subject to offer ‘de-stressing.’

With the use of their advanced senses, both can smell through the walls to know which house lodges toddlers, and infants. They begin moving. Thomas to the second house from the entrance of the village... Brown, on the other hand motions toward a two storey house where a new born rests on the second level. On what means to enter the houses is no one’s concern. Small square windows are usually covered only either by wood, or wool. Wool covered windows are easiest to get into.

Thomas stealthily enters the window with wool shrouding it. Inside are three two heads in deep slumber, between them is a little pale creature with tiny fingers and tiny toes—the victim. He drops the sleeping potion on the baby’s small mouth until the liquid sips inside the mouth. Now the little one is in deep spell so it won’t cry. And out the house he goes toward the no longer empty horse wagon—another little creature sleeps inside. It is Brown’s. Then he moves on to the next victim.

Brown is now inside a one storey house where his second victim slumbers in a wooden cradle. He drops the liquid inside the baby’s mouth and in black magick, the baby’s dead to the world. And he takes off.

It takes them about an hour to recover all their victims—all sleeping, possibly dreaming—their souls now wondering in another realm—dark and void.

Horseless, they move the wagon with their Upir strength by their hands and speed. They run in a wrinkle of time.

As they reach the Gate of Merak, stand on four gloves on its center is Azazel, the Darkling, as if expecting their arrival. The black feline hisses, and moves toward the house in a swift.

The Darkling enters the parlor first, and the lady smiled at the sight of her pet. She knows that her subjects have arrived.

She sits comfortably in the largest couch. On her right sits Morningstar and Malefic, Samael on her left. On the other couch on her right is the sleeping Beelzebub. On her left lie Azrael, while Midnight rests atop the center table. And Azazel reaches the couch where the Chief Spirit of Evil lays.

As the door opens, all felines turn to its direction.

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"Victorian Upir" Chapter 2: The Hunt

by: Jeel Christine de Egurrola

Deer Running through a Forest by Friedrich Gauermann

Chapter 2: The Hunt


As the sun falls far below the horizon the lady awakens in the moist of the cellar floor. The seven favoured with her, small ugly creatures. Her long curvy eyelashes flutter like butterfly wings. She breathes the stench like aroma of that fancy English perfume. From the lack of adequate red fluid, her body aches. Today she must hunt, she thinks. She imagines scarlet red fluid in flux in a narrow body-laden stream. The smell like flowers in her nostrils... The taste like sweet wine in her lips...

She rises from her wet floor bed gently as not to awaken her sleeping black darlings. Her gait less the zombie she was the other day but her face, still displeasing to the senses like her cats, ugly to the bones.

As soon as the Lamian sacrifice is over, her true beauty will be ones as it was again, the felines' as well.

To the upper level of the house she enters, to the portion where her room is located, via the grand stairs sloping around both opposite direction like snakes moving in projectile motion. She ascents. She tiptoes as silently and as elegantly as would any royalty. Her scarred and bruised bare feet from her previous walk pain she feels, but relishes it like orgasm on its wake.

The second storey of the house is as it used to be; hazel brown draperies hang along colossal windowpanes, pieces of Victorian furnitures with Gargoylelike projections pose on several spots. Tables sit from the ground adjacent to one another, tablewares of silver lie atop them. Grave Ivy trunks coil from pots beside the tables. They wound like snakes with leaf skins alongside each table leg posts. Dirty white cloths shroud couches and woodworks alike. Long dark hallways on both sides...

She moves.

Forward she walks on the left relative the center staircase where her grand room is located. Walking on the dark hallway unsurprisingly comforts her. As a kid, she likes to hang out on dark corners inside the house with her dolls. Sometimes she sojourns the dark wolf-dwelled forest within the enormousness of the Silent Hill alone. Her solitude means a lot to her.

The darkness soothes her better than candy or lollipops unlike her little sister Mayrn.

The tick-tock sounds of the pendulum swings she hears like euphony in her ears. The grandfather clock on the uttermost end of the hallway where the sound springs from, a memory takes her away for a while, making her stop walking, and standing for minutes in the same spot.

She and Mayrn used to play near the clockwork. Mayrn, like her, basks the sounds of the teetering pendulum. A tear flows through her face. She misses the live little doppelganger of hers. They both share the same straight auburn hair color, pale skin complexion, freckles spreading on their faces. And while her eyes are green, Mayrn’s are blue like their father’s.

She paces again, looks at the paintings spread along the black wooden walls. Pictures pasted on the manor house walls belonging to the manor founders, political leaders, and monarchs who are her forefathers and mothers. There they are—Alexander Vasilli de Saptarshi, Duke; Queen Marrionette Vasilli de Saptarshi, Ser Lorenz Anton Tatiana Argos, her father Carlos Munichin Vasilli de Saptarshi, her uncle Duke Carlos Edvard Vasilli and others.

She stops on a third to the last doors before the dead end of the dark hallway. Her room—the doorknob now she twists with yearning. Her bed she hankers to curl in. Pink duvet she longs to snuggle with like man arms of her Prince Marcus Xander Blake, her only bloke, the only man she loved and loves .The Duke she waits to awaken from the deepest slumber. “Soon, my love, soon!” in spite of herself, she whispers.

She sits atop her princess bed still covered with white cloth. She teeters like a little babe for a while and uncloths her enormous pink princess bed—like that of Disney’s princess bed. She slips in and dazes to a nap—short sleep but enough to bring her to REM where she dreams.

In her dream she moves up on the steepness of the house's roof—a usual activity that would make her lost track of the time she enjoys when she was ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen then on. She used to exit from the attic window and climb the manor house walls to the roof. She likes to sit there for hours to watch stars sparkle like gold coins and gems glittering when exposed to the sun, and find her favorite constellation, the Ursa Majoris, or the Big Dipper where the North Star is found.

In the dream, instead of sitting down and enjoying the panorama, she stands there unnerve of what might happen next, whether she would jump steeply down that might or might not end her life or fly high like a bird enjoying its freedom.

A sudden jolt from her insides awakens her from her day dreaming. Defeated from the chills, she feels more jolts from varied parts of her body. Pain all around is all she feels. She shrieked in fear. A cry of agony, as if her heart is about to bursts to teensy-weensy pieces. Her peripheral view begins to mist as tears fill her lenses. Her arms twist in distortion, then her legs. All her limbs bend in an ugly and horrific outcome. Her body wriggles and again and again until pain she can no longer bear and everything turns black and nothing.

Then she wakes up in terror but is unable to remember what it was that provoked her feelings of fear and anxiety. Her pillows and the other side of the bed where she slept now damp from sweat. Her whole body shudders.

A consequence from insufficient blood in her system must have been the cause of this anxiety, she justifies. A hunt she must seek out as soon as possible. A further physical deterioration she must avoid. She hurries through the hallway, down the grand stairs, to the parlor.

She calls the seven, which responded in less time.

Outside they go, walk the paseo toward the Gate of Mizar, located east of Castle Black, one among the seven gates of Silent Hill. Like the Gate of Alkaid, the Gate of Mizar is wrought iron structured, whose horizontal posts are attached to a stone pier on both sides, and intersects with vertical pointed posts emphasizing its gothic architectural design. Twinning plants that must have been Grave Ivys, which Silent Hill is famous of, coil through its tendrils, spread through the pier’s four surfaces and reach both imposts and its tops.

Mizar or Zeta UMa, like the rest of the gates of Silent Hill, is one of the seven stars in the well known constellation Ursa Majoris. And unlike the Gate of Alkaid, it doesn’t have any carved stone structure like the Rhoanne Horse of Alkaid. It is in fact the simplest of the seven gates.

The path out of the gate leads them to the dark forest.

The forest is one of Meresse’s favorite places in Silent Hill. The needles of the pines complement perfectly with the manor house’s Victorian style as if the gods themselves knew how the Castle Black would be structured—as if they favoured the mortal makers of the manor enough to comply with them. However, according to old stories, Castle Black is created by Erebus himself as a gift to his daughter Nyx who expresses a distinct fondness to mortal men and women. For whatever reason Erebus awards a loft for mortal utility is quite not known.

The haze of the night fills Meresse’s vision of fuzzy forest outlines. For a moment there she thinks she sees woods motioning along with roots propelling up and down and sides as if they are walking and moving from one place to another. She could not tell exactly if what she sees is possible. Her mind must be playing tricks on her or it could be the dimness and the fog inducing movements that aren’t there—illusions the human brain cannot comprehend. But her resurrection from the death in itself sounds more out of the question, but here she is now walking not quite alive but not dead either. Who knows what mysteries there are in the world where we are living.

She continues to walk, following a trail she used to pursue with her father and his hound consorts when they go hunting on the woods. Hunting was a common sport for the monarchs and elite men and some women in England.

As they walk, time seems to stop as she and her felids get absorb in the forest cold ambiance. And even in the darkness Meresse sees another movement somewhere one o’clock her current spot. The felids start hissing as if they smell danger. She begins pacing to that area where the movement fixes. It must have been an antler, which is a common prey in the forest, she guesses, but the little felids think otherwise. While she steps further, there the movements start again that looks as if an animal is fleeing away from her direction. The felids start running forward, and she follows but in a slow course.

There in that same spot where the movement begins she sees an injured brown antler lying in the damp forest floor, as if some animal belonging to the upper level of the food chain got to it first. The antler is still alive but is grasping air for survival, but the looks of it shows an animal in its deathbed. Most of its belly is consumed by whatever predator that caught it. It must have been a wolf. Wolfs are common in the forest.

Blood fills the forest floor and the plants near it, where the blood must have splattered. What Meresse wanted is a quarry untouched but what she has now is a body of a dying one. But her instincts cannot be stopped. At the sight of blood she darts down to the animal and starts consuming its blood.

It wasn’t enough. She needs more and she wants human blood.

The hunt isn’t over yet.

After her first feed, she moves again. Her advanced senses lead the way. They move farther and farther away until she sees another movement of an animal that she now sees. It flees with an unnatural locomotion, like her Xander, she remembers. She follows its trail. She moves as silently as would a hunter—a lioness. Her swift, flashing and yet soundless movement—an ability that hers and her kind possesses—makes her hunt an easier one. She jumps up one of the pines, and from there she spots her prey inches down below it. She readies herself for a silent dive like diving on water to a fall on the anterior of the animal that will leave its body lying still on the ground below it.

And she drops.

The animal tries to struggle but her inhuman strength overcomes it. She punches the animal down and again and again until its body surrenders from consciousness.

She catches her first real quarry, now in the middle of the forest—lost in the wilderness and away from the world. It is another antler, a much bigger one. She presses her fangs on the animal’s neck where the jugular is located. She feeds. The lush of it she revels.

The seven favoured watches as their mistress perform her rite, in awe of the bloodsucker.

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"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!

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