Before Ever After (15 page)

“I completely understand why you would want to visit this charming place,” Jonathan said, “but why would you make such a condition about the barn, Max?”

“Because that’s where the basilisk tortured Uri into madness,” Josef said.

“A basilisk?” Dex asked. “That’s one of those mythical snake monsters, right?”

“Not exactly,” Max said. “A basilisk is more like a cross between a dragon and a rooster. It stands three feet high with the beak of an eagle, the head of a rooster, the wings of a dragon, and the tail of a lizard. It’s hatched from the yolkless egg of a seven-year-old rooster brooded by a toad on a warm pile of dung.”

“Sounds charming,” Simon said.

“It might just be me, but somehow a three-foot-tall Franken-chicken doesn’t strike me as that terrifying.” Brad smirked.

“You might live longer if it did.” Shadows from the fire danced over Ingrid’s face. “A basilisk can kill you with a mere glance and is so venomous that everything in its wake withers into a barren desert. You do not want to cross paths with such a creature.”

“Now, well, that ups the fear factor.” Brad hooked his arm around Simon’s.

“People were so afraid of basilisks that a rooster in Basel, Switzerland, was tried and burned alive for supposedly laying a basilisk egg in 1474,” Josef said.

“And thus the rotisserie chicken was born,” Brad said. The group chuckled. A loud pop from a smoldering log in the fire shook them back to quiet attention.

“So is that how you kill a basilisk?” Dex asked. “By fire?”

Max shook his head. “The only thing that can kill a basilisk is its own reflection or the crowing of a rooster. Travelers in the Middle Ages brought caged roosters along with them in case of a basilisk attack.”

“Something Uri might have done well to carry on his way back home from his last campaign,” Josef said. “The story goes that Uri was able to make a good living over the years that he had hired himself out as a mercenary. In between mercenary stints, he was able to build this farm, marry, and have children. By the early sixteenth century, however, the Swiss reign in the battlefield was drawing to a close. For all their bravery and ferocity,
the Swiss and their pikes were no match for the new scourge of the battlefield.”

“Which army was that?” Simon asked.

“Not an army,” Josef said. “Guns. The end of Swiss infantry dominance came at the Battle of Bicocca, where they were fighting for the French against the Spanish and papal forces. The Swiss were slaughtered by artillery fire and those who survived marched home, unwilling to fight any further. Uri was among them. But he did not return alone.”

The rain was pouring in earnest now. “What do you mean?” Shelley raised her voice over the howling wind.

“A basilisk had followed him back,” Josef said grimly.

“A basilisk?” Brad gave a sharp gasp. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m afraid not. But the basilisk did not kill Uri. That is, not immediately,” Ingrid said. “At first, no one knew about the basilisk. His family just noticed that Uri appeared distant and spent a lot of time by himself in the barn. Except for the cows, he allowed no one else inside it. He spent long evenings in the barn, and the more time he spent there, the more worried his family became. Uri started speaking of being visited by a basilisk and how this basilisk would tell him the strangest tales. His wife was sure that he had gone mad but refused to let anyone else know about it for fear of what they might do to her husband. The Middle Ages, as you know, was not exactly known for its enlightened views in the field of psychiatric treatment.

“When his two children fell ill and died, Uri withdrew from the outside world entirely. His wife begged him to come out, but Uri refused to leave the barn. One night she went to the barn to try to find out what was happening to her husband. What she heard made her run away in terror. It was the basilisk,” Ingrid said. “The next day Uri’s wife went back to the barn and found Uri lying dead inside. He was clutching a basilisk’s tail feather in his hands. But that was not the strangest thing his wife would see that morning.”

“Why? What else did she see?” Rose sat on the edge of her seat, her small fingers digging into Jonathan’s arm.

“It’s late, campers, and we have an early day tomorrow,” Max said. “I’m sure Josef and Ingrid are tired.”

Rose nodded. “Oh, yes, of course.”

“You might want to freshen up first before bed,” Ingrid said. “There’s a bathroom you can use just down the hall and another one upstairs.”

Shelley waited with Max in the living room for her turn to use the bathroom. “Basilisks are tragic creatures, don’t you think?”

Max looked surprised. “What makes you say that?”

“Well, they didn’t ask to be born that way. They’re simply an odd result of an even odder chain of events. They’re doomed to be alone. It makes you wonder how much of the villain they really are.”

Max stared into the fire. The flames flickered in the amber of his eyes.

“Well?” she asked.

“Well, what?”

“What do you think? Do you think basilisks are evil?”

“It’s just a myth, luv.”

“I know that,” Shelley said. “I’m just speaking in hypothetical terms.”

Max sighed. “All right, hypothetically then. Is a basilisk evil? Well, according to the stories, it certainly did bad things—inadvertently or not. Does that make it a monster? To those it killed, I’m sure it does.”

She shook her head. “A basilisk didn’t ask to be that way. It didn’t have a choice.”

“Shelley …” Max pressed his lips together. “There’s always a choice.”

“Everyone ready for bed?” Josef carried an armful of blankets into the living room.

“All set for dreamland. Are we sleeping in here?” Brad eyed the spot nearest the fireplace.

Josef looked at Max. “You didn’t tell them?”

“It must have slipped my mind.” Max grinned and picked up a blanket. “Campers, grab one for yourselves. We’re rolling in the hay tonight.”

• • •

The group huddled together under large umbrellas outside the barn. Shelley stared up at the tall barn doors, trying to remember their color. Rain washed over them, blending them into the gray of the evening. A basilisk, she thought, would certainly have felt right at home in the wet darkness.

“Very funny, Max. Ha ha.” Brad hugged his blanket. “Hey, cute kids, you can come out now.”

“Sorry, Brad,” Max said. “We really are sleeping in the barn tonight.”

“We’re sleeping in this barn—this haunted barn—this barn where Uri was killed by a basilisk?” Brad’s eyes widened with disbelief. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m always serious.” Max opened the doors, stepped inside, and disappeared into the barn.

Shelley heard the click of a switch. A faint orange light glowed from inside the building.

“Make yourself at home, campers,” Max said.

“No cows?” Brad’s face lit up when he saw that the barn was empty.

“The cows are brought up to the mountains this time of year to graze,” Max said. “I hope you aren’t too disappointed.”

“I’ll try to get over it,” Brad said.

“Choose a spot in any of the stalls, campers. There won’t be any … er … traces of their former occupants,” Max said. “Or you can stay in the hayloft if you wish.”

The group inspected the stalls. The hay was clean and warm.

Max led Shelley to the wooden ladder to the hayloft. “Watch your step, luv.”

Shelley’s heart pounded harder with every rung she climbed. Her ears buzzed with a mix of anxiety and anticipation at the prospect of spending the night in close quarters to Max. She realized just how close when she reached the top of the hayloft. There was only room enough for three people—if the third person happened to be half her size and was willing to sleep standing up on one leg. She walked to the edge of the loft
and watched the group settle into their respective stalls. “Um, guys, there’s … uh … room for one more up here.”

“Sure, sweetie,” Brad called back. “We’ll be right up.” He pulled his blanket over his head and snuggled next to Simon.

“Would you rather sleep downstairs?” Max asked Shelley.

She peered down. The only empty stall was next to Dex’s. She plopped her blanket next to Max’s before she could change her mind. “No.”

“Pleasant dreams, everyone.” Rose snuggled close to her husband and disappeared in his huge arms.

“Nodding off already?” Max asked. “I thought you’d all perhaps like to hear a bedtime story first.”

Shelley rolled over. “What story did you have in mind?”

“I figured that after the little story that Josef and Ingrid told you, you might want to know what really happened to Uri. But if you’re all too sleepy to hear about it now, we can do it some other time. It is rather late.” Max yawned.

“You love torturing us, don’t you?” Brad said. “If you so much as blink before telling us that story, I will be snoring in between you and Shelley faster than you can say ‘slumber party.’ ”

“Yes, Max.” Jonathan sat up. “We’d love to hear it.”

“You twisted my arm.” Max rummaged through his backpack. He pulled out a flashlight and switched it on. He pointed its beam toward the center of the barn’s ceiling just as thunder clapped close by. “Look up.”

Brad shrieked. A basilisk stared down at him.

Or rather a disturbingly lifelike painting of one.

“Meet Uri’s basilisk,” Max said, “the very sight that greeted Uri’s wife when she found Uri dead in this barn.”

Shelley studied the creature’s painted features. It was just as Max had described. It had the head of a rooster, the outstretched wings of a dragon, and the long scaly tail of a lizard. But there was something else—something familiar about it. She stared into its amber eyes. There was a melancholy there that she could have sworn she had seen before.

“Not exactly the last thing you’d like to see before falling asleep,” Dex said.

Max switched off the flashlight and crawled toward the edge of the hayloft. He looked down at the group. “Uri was a mercenary. That much is true. As a young man, Uri saw the mercenary life as a means to an end. He was driven by the single, simple dream of returning home with enough money in his pockets to build a better life for his family. No one told Uri, however, that dreams and war cannot coexist.

“On his first campaign, Uri had the luck of finding himself under the command of a captain widely known among the ranks as the Basilisk,” Max continued. “No one knew how the captain had earned such a terrifying name and no one, including Uri, had the courage to ask. The captain, you see, was not exactly the most sociable fellow around. He was a tight-lipped, battle-hardened man with the reputation for being equally as merciless to his enemies as to his men. He did not tolerate cowardice and did not hesitate to execute any of his men who showed signs of weakness.”

“How terrible,” said Rose, snuggling closer to her husband.

“I believe that in medieval times that practice was quite common,” Jonathan said. “The Swiss pike formation could only be as strong as their weakest man. I can imagine that if any one of them bolted in battle, the spiked columns would be left with a rather unfortunate gaping hole.”

“Bonus points for Jonathan,” Max said. “The practice of executing cowards and deserters was part of the Swiss mercenary code and thus an unlikely reason for the Basilisk’s name or reputation. In that respect, he was no different from the other mercenary captains. He may have differed, however, in his penchant for staring into the eyes of the unfortunate soul at the end of his pike. You might say this basilisk’s glare could quite literally kill you.”

“Now there’s a guy who wasn’t hugged much as a child,” said Brad. “I had a boss like that once. No wonder Uri went nuts.”

“On the contrary,” Max said, “the captain saved Uri’s life on the battlefield on more than one occasion. In the end, however, there was one thing the captain could not save Uri from—himself.”

Max ushered Shelley down from the hayloft. He asked the group to join them in a circle in the center of the barn. He switched on his flashlight again and swept its bright beam across the ceiling.

Shelley gasped. “What is all this?”

Another world hung over her. Faces. Trees. Life. The mural was painted in the same style as the art that adorned the furniture in the main house.

“This is what really killed Uri,” Max said. The beam of his flashlight settled on a scene in the corner of the ceiling. A blond woman was carrying a small, dimpled child in one arm. She stood in front of a barn that was identical to the one the group was in. The woman was looking directly ahead of her, welcoming a visitor beyond the borders of her painted world. Peeking from behind the woman’s skirt was another smiling yellow-haired child.

Shelley frowned. “I don’t understand …”

“Uri was sick, luv.” Max illuminated the ceiling with a wave of his flashlight. “And this was his disease.”

“Disease?” Dex asked.

“Yes. A terminal case of nostalgia,” Max said.

“Nostalgia hardly qualifies as a killer disease, Max,” Brad said. “Unless, that is, one waxed nostalgic about the eighties and died from the combined weight of big hair and shoulder pads.”

“Nostalgia,” Max said, “from the two Greek words
nostos
, which means to ‘return home,’ and
algia
, which means ‘pain.’ Before the Swiss doctor Johannes Hofer coined the term in 1688, the oftentimes fatal sickness was simply known as the ‘Swiss disease.’ It referred to the extreme homesickness that afflicted Swiss soldiers in the sixteenth century that made them anorexic, depressed, and even suicidal. The condition was thought to be triggered by certain mountain folk songs and traditional Swiss soups.”

“So Uri was killed by soup. That makes perfect sense. Are you sure this is really hay we’re sitting on or should I bring out some rolling paper?” Brad asked.

“Max, please forgive my friend over here for his constant interruptions,” Simon said. “I’m afraid he’s still in shock from all the clean air flooding his system.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve seen this before. RSD—Rapid Smog Detox. I’m sure Josef will let us burn some logs if you really need to take the edge off,”
Max joked. “Unfortunately for Uri, nostalgia wasn’t as easy to cure. The disease was a matter of grave concern for Swiss mercenary employers. What employer in his right mind would want an army of weepy soldiers? The French even forbade the Swiss to sing those notorious folk songs at their garrisons to prevent outbreaks of the disease. Some Swiss doctors, hoping to dispel beliefs that this condition was a cowardly trait exclusive to the Swiss, blamed the disease on the difference in air pressure between the Alps and the lowlands that supposedly compressed the blood and made the Swiss soldiers more susceptible to this desperate yearning. Bloodletting thus became a common practice to cure this affliction.