A Parish Darker: A Victorian Suspense Novella (12 page)

I quickly brought the sheathe over my chest and wrapped my free hand around the hilt. I could not move from my back or even roll in another direction, but I was able to begin to pull the blade from its holster. As I did, the man regained his bearings and tightened his fist just within eyesight. With the blade only a moment shy of being free, he raised his fist high and came down with all his strength on the juncture between my bicep and forearm.

The sheer force led to the bones in my elbow giving way and the blade, with my hand still wrapped around the hilt, falling just out of the sheathe and onto the ground above my head. I felt I no longer had control over my limbs but was fortunate the weapon would not be easily freed from my grasp.

With the struggle coming to an apparent close, the man disengaged momentarily, reached immediately beside him, and showed in both hands a stone that outsized even his colossal grasp. He regained his breath and perhaps his composure and wasted no time raising upward.

My arm trembled, in pain and fear alike. I could feel nothing other than that raw, primal fear coursing through my body that ached and was in need of any sort of respite. I was not sure what could be done, or should be done, or how it could be accomplished, but I did not wish to die. Even if it meant doing what I had never wished or imagined doing, I did not want to die that day.

The attacker paused with the rock above his head, his wild eyes illuminated in the bright, rain-stained night. His momentum shifted forward, signaling the rock was coming down, inevitably to meet my skull and end me—but it did not.

My assailant was stuck upright, unable to move his large body in any direction lest the damage worsen. My hand shook and quaked as I did all things possible to keep the blade steady. It had gone through his stomach so easily, so much more so than I could have anticipated.

The stone in his hands tumbled backwards as he relinquished his hold on it and I brought my left hand onto the hilt to push the blade further inside. I knew not what organs would be gored as my knowledge of anatomy was limited. I felt squirming and squishing from inside as I twisted the blade, realizing it would be either me or it would be him who would walk away from the encounter.

His large body did not deceive. He was strong and his will was ironclad. The man wrapped his large hands over mine just as the blade had gone through and the hilt pressed against his ragged shirt. To my surprise, he began to pull the blade out, with only his own strength and despite my own resistance to the act.

He had been phased by the strike—I had no doubt of that much—but he was ever slow on showing it. The blade continued to come out as I grunted with every remaining fiber of my being to push and keep it inside of his stomach. When his pulling and pushing of the blade out of himself was nearly complete, I put all of my strength into disabling him the only way I saw how.

The short sword worked quickly and with diligence. The entrance point of the blade from his lower stomach was widened as I angled the blade upward, creating a vast chasm leading all the way to his sternum. The intensity in his eyes began to fade as he watched his innards begin to spill from his body. I knew not how to identify the blood and organs falling onto my chest. All that was apparent to me was that there was no return—not from this.

The man’s hold on the hilt softened slowly until his hands fell by his side and his body toppled to the side of my own, with the blade still affixed somewhere deep in his torso and out the other side.

I rolled onto my back and began crawling in the muddy swamp of a garden toward the castle. I called out to the Baron, in whispers and whimpers, for help. None came.

My right arm felt broken, as did my ribcage. Pushing myself up from the ground was and remains the most vivid instance of pain my body has ever experienced. To this day, I suffer from complications sustained that night, and merely writing this for you now causes me to wince at the sharp memory of that moment in time.

I yelled and groaned and snorted in agony, screaming at agony unfamiliar to me. I fell over and tried again, and failed again. I continued to crawl all the while, with the rain-soaked soil seeping into my mouth, my eyes, my ears, my hair. The rain washed it all away as soon as it stuck only to stick again.

I at last made it to my feet only a few strides from the door. Limping and with my right arm being cradled by my left, I was in no condition to fight even should I have the element of surprise. It appeared I would have little choice in the matter, however, when another figure appeared in the doorway that I hoped would be my shelter from the storm.

The nightmare had become endless. There was no conceivable means of surviving the night. I considered giving up and accepting my fate as I watched the silhouette in the doorway approach my position a few steps down the hill.

“Is this not enough?” I said, exasperated. “What do you want? What more do you want?”

No answer.

The glimmer of light revealed him to be a male. Roughly the size of the others yet more nimble, he moved without issue on the increasingly unreasonable terrain the storm was creating beneath our feet.

My foothold began to slip and I was convinced I would tumble backward, down over the man whose life I had no choice but to take and into some abyss below. I was ready to quit—to give up, to surrender to whatever fate that awaited me.

That was not to be the day I died, however, and my great fortunes continued in the most unexpected manner.

In an immediate reminder of what had happened with the assailant I had myself killed, a pointed end ruptured through the live man now on the approach. He stopped, staggered, and fell forward as a boot was put into his back that sent him plummeting down the hillside and into the expanse of the forests below.

“Baron!” I yelled well beyond my physical means, ever-thankful to have been spared such a gruesome death.

The figure now standing in the doorway, however, was not the Baron. Upon hearing my words, my savior only shook his head and turned to retreat into the castle without acknowledging me further.

I knew not why I was spared other than assuming the man had spared me due to my present pitiful state. His attire and vestige seemed akin to the others in that ever-darkening night, but his demeanor was not all the same.

Despite the inherent danger, I stumbled up the path and made my return trek back into the castle proper. All had fallen quiet in my absence—that is, save for my scrabbling against the walls as I tried with all my might to keep myself upright and moving forward.

In the main hall, I was immediately greeted by three and four more bodies than before. A sinking feeling preceded my concerns for the Baron’s safety. In spite of his retaliations and the brutality of it all, it was still the two of us against whatever we may face going forward. I would not leave without giving him the aid he had given me.

Though I saw no further assailants as I made my way back to the corridor leading to the study, my lack of coordination and control over my step was being masked by the torrential downpour outside.

In that first hall to the corridor, two bodies immediately caught my eye and nearly my stomach. Lamps at the entrance and in the distance had been lit unlike before. I wretched at the sight of the death affront me—one man young, his torso sliced at such an angle as to nearly be divorced from his body; the other nearly split down the middle. Such sights were becoming familiar in ways I hesitate to mention even now, in this writing.

Their blood had been splattered upon the walls, giving each surface ma color most appropriate for what had transpired in the castle that night. I pushed forward, cautious in my steps as I waded through the gore ahead of me. I knew not what awaited me at the end of the hall, but I felt compelled—for reasons still not entirely clear to me—to see it through.

As I turned the corner and squinted, I peered through the remaining darkness toward the open entrance to the study. The doorway offered a narrow view of the expansive interior. When my eyes had adjusted to the distance, I saw yet another victim of the night’s violence slumped against the station that held the cages of rodents. The Baron stepped into view from the right, his axe in hand as he circled the room.

For the briefest moment, his eyes matched mine. I saw relief in the Baron’s face in that moment. Through that look, I knew his faint smile came as a result of seeing I was still alive. He kept his eyes on me and shook his head as he centered himself in the room.

Just as he did, a second inhabitant of the room came into view—this man equally alive. His back was to me at the onset, but he soon turned to face me as had the Baron himself.

The man standing in the doorway allowed his hand to bring the sizable metal door to him. Before the room was sealed, I glimpsed him in better light than before and recognized his attire and his appearance and demeanor—it had been the man who had saved me from certain death just moments earlier.

With the door closed, the seals around the entry made it nigh impossible to infiltrate without a key. The unmistakable sound of the latch on the other side of the door being fixed in place solidified my fears once more: I was alone, again.

The clamoring of the door and the commotion therein left no mystery as to the Baron’s location. The tumult and footsteps that sounded from the entrance hall was the exact result I expected. I was left with no choice but to retread my path back into the corridor.

A torch lit the way and shone the way ahead of the intruders making their way toward my position. Without being permitted into the study, my only other familiar option was to duck into the door nearby and hope I went undetected.

In retrospect, I feel as if one more second in the hall would have been my end. Of the many fortunate turns my path took that night, that seemed the most impeccably timed. Within only two or three quieted breaths and muted whimpers inside the waiting room, three bodies rushed past the door.

Before long, I heard them pounding and striking the steel entrance to the study with both sharp and blunt weapons alike. Their ferocity made me question how long the door would last, but I did not dwell long as I felt it would only be a matter of time before they began to search the rooms of the corridor.

Gripping my ruptured elbow in my free hand to steady it dulled the pain of walking. Otherwise, each swing of the arm gave way to unfathomable pain that no amount of adrenaline could silence. I held firmly onto that pain as I peeked into the hall to discover it empty, for the time being. The attack on the steel bearing of the door had let out incessant rings in the small hall, but they showed no sign of slowing—indeed, if anything, the intensity of their strikes only intensified with each blow.

Even if I wished to help the Baron, I reasoned there was little I could do in my current state. Perhaps it was merely an excuse born of desperation, but it was the one that informed my actions going forward.

The main hall showed no sign of life—a notion roundly reinforced by the dismembered bodies littering the once exquisite entrance to a gorgeous castle. My only means of escape with which I felt any familiarity was the long and winding road leading up the hill to the front gate. The storm seemed likely to wash me into the ravines on either side but my options were so limited that it seemed the soundest plan.

Before I could make my way to the door and attempt to lift the considerable barriers keeping it in place from any outdoor siege, a pair of silhouettes made themselves known in the moonlight by the broken window by the entrance. Without hesitation, I hurried toward the back of the castle once more as I heard them land on the broken glass and hurry forward.

I feared they saw me and would give chase but was thankful when they opted for the study corridor instead. The main entrance, though more familiar and leading more directly to civilization, appeared too dangerous at the time. I do not know if it bode well for my sanity in the years since, but I chose the only other option at my disposal.