The Curse of Sangrook Manor (2 page)

“Among other reasons,” said Erenkirk.  He pulled a flask from his coat pocket, then raised it to the portrait in a toast.  “Habrien Sangrook, the family artificer.  We owe a great debt to him and his research.”

Darvik turned away.  “You have a copy of his book.  He invented the extractor.”

“And he never calibrated one to work with pigs, I can assure you,” said Erenkirk with a wry chuckle.  “Looks a bit like you.  You haven’t been hiding Sangrook blood somewhere in that forgotten ancestry of yours, have you?”

Darvik retched again.  He despised how close his own work was to that of an Sangrook monster, how much of his livelihood was rooted in that family’s fell experiments.  How much of his future would be dominated by them?  He needed an escape.  “I want you to test me.  I need to be named master so I can walk away from Windmire and the duke while I still have some humanity left.”

Erenkirk, to Darvik’s surprise, considered the demand.  “Convince me you have the knowledge.  Why do we need the human extractor?”

That was barely a question.  “Essence holds every aspect of the creature.  If we extract a man’s essence before he dies, we have his memories.  That makes it possible to build an artifact to read them.”

“Good, and if the subject is already dead?”

Darvik had tested dead pigs as part of his calibration process.  He had hoped that he could extract the essence without suffering the screams.  “Essence escapes quickly after death, but you can still collect some.  You only get a fraction, but it could be enough.”

Erenkirk tilted his head and nodded.  “That didn’t take long at all.  Maybe you really are ready.”

“Even if the human extractor is here and we can find it, we still need a way to access the memories.”

“Oh, do we?” asked Erenkirk.  He adjusted his dark vision lenses for effect, then opened the nearest door.  This one led into a dining room.  By the looks of it, the servants had never cleaned up after the Sangrook’s last meal.  Plates were covered in bones, cups lay on their sides on the stained tablecloth, the chairs were pushed back, and a mound of wax lay beneath every candle-stick.

“You’re hoping Habrien already solved that problem, too,” said Darvik. 

Another door.  Another ruin of a room.  This time it was the kitchen, where the fireplace reeked of bat guano and insects buzzed over a water-barrel.  The previous rooms had reeked of mold and death already, but the added stench of bat shit and a rotten pantry was too much.  Both artificers held their breath and pushed through the next door.

They stood in hallway lined with doors, thankfully bereft of anything but cobwebs.  “We have two objectives,” said Erenkirk.  “We need to find Habrien’s laboratory and his journals.  His tools, such as the extractor, will be in the lab.  The journals will either be in the family library or his bedroom.  The Sangrooks weren’t known for their hospitality, and they didn’t breed quickly, so there’s hope that neither room was ever cleared out and re-purposed.”

Darvik pointed toward the end of the hall. “There are a lot of doors in this mansion.  Twenty in this hallway alone.  It will take more than all night to find what we’re after.”

Erenkirk kicked open the nearest door, revealing a small chamber with a bed.  “Servants’ quarters.  We’ll spend the night here, then split up in the morning.  You’ll check every floor below this one, and I’ll check the ones above.  Then we’ll talk more about whether you deserve your independence.”

The old man slipped into the bedroom and slammed the door behind him, leaving Darvik alone in the dusty hallway, where floorboards rattled and rafters groaned.  He opened another bedroom door and examined the dilapidated chamber.  A mound of dead flies lay below the dust-dark windowsill.  The bed was tightly made, and upon pulling back the blanket, Darvik found a clean set of sheets, more comfort than he had expected.  A plain armoire stood in the corner.  Darvik cracked it open to find a set of hose, a wool jacket, a few coins, and various brushes.  The young artificer helped himself to a brush and set to work dusting off the bed and clearing cobwebs, wishing he had found a broom as well.

He sat down on the bed and set his goggles on the nightstand.  How could Erenkirk expect him to sleep here?  His answer came in the form of a muffled clatter through the wall.  His master was rummaging through his pack for a bottle.  Erenkirk never fell asleep sober, so the surroundings hardly mattered to him.

Darvik had no such luxury.  He bundled himself in the blanket, hoping it would filter out the malodor seeping from every inch of the mansion.  He tried to sleep, but unease enveloped him.  He heard the rats squeaking and scratching.  He imagined spiders vaulting from surface to surface, trailing their webs over his head.  He felt the chill wind drifting through loose window-panes.  Even the sounds from the outdoors disturbed him.  The crickets chirped a little too low, sounding like saws cutting through bone.  Vermin shrieked from within the clutches of owls, and the wolves had found no more sleep than Darvik.

Sleep was impossible.  There was no choice but to leave the room, and there was no point in waiting for Erenkirk to wake up before he started the search.  Darvik gathered up his belongings and wandered the halls amid the eldritch chorus of mansion discord.  He opened each door he passed and followed every downward flight of stairs.  Down he climbed, down and down and deeper than the mansion was tall.  The deeper he descended, the quieter and better preserved the mansion became.

In the dungeons, he came across the corpse of some mangled and tortured prisoner, or perhaps a mangled and tortured victim of dark experiments.  Not even the Sangrooks were bold enough to practice their evil magic on the upper floors, where a stray servant might see something not meant for mortal eyes.  Darvik knew he was getting closer to where the extractor might have been hidden away, and where it would have been used.

He peered inside each cell as his walked past.  Most were empty.  Some held corpses sprawled on the stone floor.  At the end of the hall was a cell with an open door.  A dead woman leaned against the wall, and Darvik recoiled at the sight of her.  She wore no clothing, and her skin was still soft and white, with no signs that the rats had fed upon her.  From her appearance, she could have died that morning.  Deep gashes bit her sides and breasts, as if she had been savaged by some gargantuan cat.  As he stared, Darvik’s weary mind saw blood still dripping.  She had but one finger still attached to her hand, and a manacle held it in the air, pointing at a discolored brick.  Was she pointing to some hidden door?  Was this a not-so-subtle clue meant to entrap interlopers?  Or was Darvik asleep in the dusty, musty bed seven floors above and suffering this mansion’s nightmares?

If this were a dream, he would follow where it led.  If it were not, well, he was here to explore this mansion’s secrets.  There was no choice.  He stepped into the cell, half expecting the iron door to swing shut and the corpse to spring to life and lunge at him.  Neither came to pass.  He was alone in the silence with nothing but a mutilated dead woman for company.  He wasn’t sure if that was any relief.

He spared no time in examining the brick.  He brushed his finger against the mortar, only to find that it was not mortar at all.  When he tapped at it, a chunk broke away to reveal wood beneath.  This was just a frame, which meant this brick was loose.

He could still find his way upstairs, reunite with his master, and tell him about these lower chambers.  They could return in the morning, rested and prepared to excavate the dungeon and what lay beyond.  Surely Habrien Sangrook’s secret laboratory was in the vicinity.  They could find it together.  But he knew all too well how that would play out.  Erenkirk would unbuckle his belt and use it to mark his apprentice as lazy, disobedient, cowardly, and foolish.  Then Darvik would spend the night tending to his scabs and return here in the morning.  He’d still be alone, but also sore and bloody.  No, he had disobeyed his master by leaving his bedroom.  His only hope was to find the artifacts before morning.

He pushed at the loose brick and was rewarded by a click as some underlying mechanism unlatched.  The wall slid away to reveal narrow tunnel and let free the surging rush of an underground river.  He braced his arms against the outer rim of the tunnel and leaned for a better look. 

A chain rattled.

Darvik spun just in time to see the prisoner, the pitiful denizen of this cell, lurch forward at him.  Her every joint was floppy, her jaw hung open, and her dead eyes were locked upon his face.  The fingerless hand swiped at him as she tumbled to the ground.

Darvik startled and stumbled back.  His footing failed him and he tumbled into the secret passage.  For a brief moment, he slid down a smooth cement chute.  He stretched out his arms, hoping to find some purchase and stop his descent, but his fingers slipped along the slick walls.  His head slammed against the floor and his goggles cracked and fell away.

Now surrounded by darkness, he tumbled out the end of the chute and fell through the air.  In a moment, he landed with a splash.  A current grabbed him, forcing him along a narrow riverbed.  The water was shallow, but the current was strong.  His pant-legs snagged and tore on something, and his pack ripped free of his shoulders.  He cascaded downward, blind and helpless, struggling to breathe, bouncing between the rocks as the river pushed him in all directions.

Another drop.  The riverbed fell away and Darvik spilled down a waterfall.  He sucked in a deep breath, catching almost as much salty spray as air, then plunged into a lake.  For a moment he was submerged, floundering in icy black water, salt stinging his eyes.  A current pulled him away from the waterfall, but it was weaker now.  He was too sore and bruised from his fall to swim, and yet swim he did.  There was no choice.  With every stroke of his arm, he knocked against some floating object churning in the lake.  Something grabbed at his leg, but he kicked it off with little effort.  He forced himself upward and forward until he found purchase, then hauled himself onto a rocky shore.

Darvik vomited water and heard his dinner trickle back into the lake along with it.  His lungs filled with air again, and he rolled to his back.

How would he find his way back to the mansion?  It was a sick irony that Sangrook Manor, of all places, was where he most wished he could go.  But there was no returning to its cursed halls.  He had no light, no tools, no stairs or rope.  He was a creature of the caverns now, for however long he would survive.

No.  Not yet.  He pushed himself up, coughed out another mouthful of water.  Shuffling his feet and arms outstretched, he slowly sought out a wall.  Perhaps there was another way up.  Perhaps the tunnel was meant as a chute to dispose of spent bodies, but perhaps there was a gentler route as well.  Perhaps it wasn’t just the dead who were sent down that waterfall.  Darvik did not savor the thought that there could be a whole society down here, a fierce tribe of the mutated spawn of Sangrook experiments.

His hand brushed against stone, and he put his fears aside.  Carefully, he crept away from the lake, brushing the tips of his fingers against the cavern wall to keep himself from straying.  The rush of the waterfall filled his ears, leaving no space for any other sound, nearly drowning out even his own thoughts.  Down here, he was deaf as well as blind.  He walked slowly, occasionally kicking something on the ground.  After the third time, he bent down to examine what it was that covered the floor.  His fingers wrapped around a stick, but the realization of the truth dawned on him slowly as he felt along its length.  Each end was a knob, and the object was the length of his thigh.

He tossed it aside and fumbled for another.  This was curved and pointed.  Another was a half-sphere full of holes.  The next… Darvik could no longer protect himself by thinking of these objects in the abstract.  Darvik was stumbling in the dark tripping over human bones.  This was no mere cavern, but rather a mass grave.  With no light to go by, he circled the cavern, feeling for any doors or tunnels that would lead him out.  He tried to use the waterfall as a reference, but the sound was just as trapped as he, and it never seemed to grow louder or softer as he moved around the room.  Further on, his fingers found a mound of corpses.  He steeled his nerves and ran his hand along the nameless dead, using them as a guide just as he had used the stone wall.  Later still, when he dipped his toe in the lake, he crawled along its bank until he struck a wall again, then continued the circuit.

He circled the cavern three times before he admitted that there was no exit.  He could barely guess how long he had explored.  An hour, maybe two.  It was not all wasted time, however.  He determined that the cavern was roughly circular.  The ground was steep in places, with the waterfall at the lowest point.  At its highest, the room was perhaps level with the dungeon.

Having exhausted the perimeter, he sat down, leaning against the stone wall.  His left leg rested on some human remains, but he didn’t shift around it.  This was a crypt, no doubt where the Sangrooks dumped the bodies of their victims.  His path had taken him through a river and down a waterfall.  Any bodies from the dungeons, then, would have been washed away by the river.  So how was this cavern so full of the dead?  He idly picked up a skull and turned it in his hand as he pondered.

There must be other ways in, of course, and not along the walls.  Perhaps there were other chutes.  Perhaps one had a rope or a ladder he could exploit to return to the manor.  He stared up, hoping that he might see some spec of light that could lead him to safety.  But this cavern was a starless night.  He reached up with an arm to test the height of the ceiling and felt nothing.  He hopped, lightly at first, then with the full force of his legs.  He found nothing but air above him, and winced when his foot hit the ground and pain shot up his leg.