The Legend of Darklore Manor and Other Tales of Terror (20 page)

     "Years later, when Edmund died, his son Damon inherited the mansion and its macabre secrets. Although it had been strictly forbidden, he reopened the crypt and reinstated the dark Brotherhood of Thule. Damon soon became fixated upon his occult activities and his arcane obsession caused him to ignore his family.
     "Neglected by her father, Damon's young daughter, Belladonna, found solace in an unseen friend who whispered to her each night as she lay in bed, filling her young head with twisted thoughts. She recited a nursery rhyme to summon him and the dark entity visited her in her dreams. In the guise of the consoling Sandman, the beguiling spirit played upon her weaknesses and quickly gained her trust. In time, it turned the young girl against her father and convinced her that the members of the Brotherhood were sinners who must be punished for their heathen practices.
     "Once again, the dark one demanded a blood sacrifice in the ritual chamber. Belladonna stole her father's key and snuck down into the family crypt. Her mother, Elizabeth, followed her and caught her in the act of spilling her own blood. At the Sandman's instruction, Belladonna had sliced open her left palm and was allowing the blood to flow into the ceremonial chalice as it rested on the altar. Her mother screamed and ran to stop her, causing the startled girl to spin toward her with the dagger in her hand. The silver blade punctured Elizabeth's heart, killing her instantly and bathing Belladonna in her mother's blood."
     Sandra took a deep breath, considering the dagger in her hands as the tarnished blade reflected the sheriff's flashlight beam.
     "Alerted by Elizabeth's scream," Sandra continued, "Damon rushed down into the crypt, arriving to find Belladonna holding the bloodstained dagger over his wife's dead body. Confronted by the horrific truth, Damon tried to save his daughter from the vile force that had corrupted her innocent soul. Fearing that the girl was possessed, Damon attempted to exorcise the demon.
     "As he chanted the rite of exorcism, strange shadows began to rise from the spot where Elizabeth's blood had seeped into the earth. Oily black tentacles reached out of the ground, encircling Belladonna as she lay helpless upon the interment altar. The shadows took hold, and as they wrapped themselves around the girl's body, her pale flesh began to blister and shrivel from their poisonous touch. Belladonna screamed as the darkness took hold of her soul. Within seconds the beautiful girl was reduced to a withered heap of smoldering flesh and bone before her father's eyes.
     "The heavy granite door slammed shut, sealing Damon inside the chamber. He whirled around to see a tall shadow in the shape of a man towering over him. The shadow grabbed Damon by the throat and its clawed fingertips began to glow like red-hot irons in a molten fire. The fiendish entity drove the scorching spikes into Damon's eyes, viciously blinding him and cruelly leaving him alive so that his last memory of sight was the grisly vision of his dead wife and daughter. Realizing his horrible fate, Damon vowed that the dark spirit would never escape the tomb. In his last moments his fumbling hands found the sacrificial chalice and he used Belladonna's blood to scrawl a glyph of binding on the inside of the tomb door, sealing the chamber and trapping the beast inside the Darklore crypt.
     "Imprisoned by the spell, the entity remained entombed inside the burial vault until Andrea Mather's incantation unknowingly released it by dispersing the ward. Resurrected and summoned forth from the tomb, the dark one now lurks amidst the unholy shadows of Darklore Manor."
     Sandra finished her macabre tale and looked down at the corpses strewn in tortured poses on the crypt floor. A tarnished chalice rested beside the skeletal remains of Damon Darklore.
     Theo's voice trembled as he assessed our grim situation. "If what you say is true, then we're trapped like rats in a cage. There's no way that thing will ever let us leave this place. We'll die in this crypt and no one will ever know we're down her."
     Sandra cast her gaze upon the mystic sigil on the tomb door, intently studying the bloodstained glyph. "I don't think it will risk entering the crypt and getting trapped in here again."
     "What good does that do us?" Theo asked. "There's only one way out of here. We'll be dead as soon as we step outside that door."
     The sheriff withdrew his revolver. "We can't cower in here forever. If we're going to die, I'm not going down without a fight."
     Sandra shook her head. "I'm afraid bullets won't have any effect on this thing. But you're right, we can't stay here very long."
     "Why not?" Theo asked.
     "You saw how it brought that doll to life." Sandra motioned her head toward the shattered remains of the sinister toy. "If it can possess inanimate objects, then I suspect it has the ability to control the dead and manipulate them like puppets."
     Theo cautiously backed away from the corpses that lay at his feet, joining the sheriff and myself inside the lantern's dim halo.
     "It sounds like we're damned either way," Sheriff Hill said, shifting his gaze between Belladonna's body and the doorway.
     "No," Sandra replied, "I think there's a way we can send this thing back to whatever hell it came from, but you're going to have to trust me."
     "What's your plan?" the sheriff asked.
     Sandra's reply quashed what little shred of hope I had been clinging to. "We have to unleash our worst fears."
     "What?" I gasped. "That's exactly what this thing wants."
     "I know," Sandra said, looking me directly in the eye. "Like I said, you're going to have to trust me."
     The sheriff clenched his jaw as he pondered our seemingly hopeless situation, then growled, "What other choice do we have?"
     Sandra picked up the chalice that lay on the floor, then stepped to the altar and set the tarnished goblet down beside Belladonna's remains. She lifted the ceremonial dagger and grasped the blade tightly in her left hand then closed her eyes and yanked the knife across her palm, slicing it wide open. I shuddered as I watched a stream of crimson run down her frail wrist. Sandra held her palm over the chalice and let her blood drip into it until the goblet was nearly half-full, then she removed a silk scarf and wrapped it around her hand to bandage the gaping wound. She slipped the dagger beneath her jacket and into her belt then carefully lifted the chalice and stepped toward the exit.
     "Let's go," she said. "Stay close behind me. When we get to the ritual chamber, follow my lead, but whatever you do, don't say a word."
     Sandra led us out into the mist-shrouded corridor and as we left the sanctity of the crypt I began to get the sickening feeling that we had made a terrible mistake. Though Sandra's knowledge of the occult was unparalleled, a part of me wondered if her mind hadn't been twisted by her numerous dalliances with the dark side. The eccentric woman who was leading us into a deadly confrontation with the forces of darkness was an unpredictable stranger who bore little resemblance to the stable-minded professional that I had once known. I did not doubt that she would give her own life to save the souls of those who had died here, but I feared she might sacrifice us all, if need be, in order to vanquish the infernal entity that haunted Darklore Manor. Even though I had begun to question her sanity, I realized that our only hope for survival lay in trusting her.
     As we proceeded along the corridor toward the ritual chamber chattering whispers echoed from the darkness ahead. A freezing chill descended upon us as we entered the pitch black room. Grim specters of the restless dead emerged from the shadows and began to close in. The ghostly silhouettes ambled forth in a shuffling gait to surround us on all sides. Their skeletal faces were twisted into inhuman masks that stared at us with soulless eyes. Sandra held the bloody chalice high above her head and the shadows recoiled, allowing us passage between their nightmarish ranks.
     Sandra continued forward until she reached the middle of the room then stopped before the ritual circle that was inscribed on the floor beside the altar. She removed the goat skull from the ancient tabernacle and set it on the ground in the center of the circle. A ghostly moan began to rise, as if her actions had awakened an ancient immortal spirit from its eternal slumber. Sandra quickly lit the three black candles that surrounded the ritual circle, then dipped her fingers into the chalice and used her blood to trace a large triangle between them. Strange voices whispered while other unearthly sounds screeched and chattered from the shadows around us.
     Sandra held forth the chalice and began to recite an unholy incantation to summon the beast of Darklore Manor from the depths of the abyss. "Hail the Lord of Shadows, bringer of death and eternal torment. We have come to serve thee." Sandra's voice bellowed throughout the chamber. "Reveal to us thy true form, so that we may bow before thy dark majesty. Arise, master, arise!"
     We remained petrified as Sandra uttered her blasphemous invocation. An eerie hush fell over the room, plunging the crypt into unnerving silence until the sound of heavy pounding broke the deathly calm. The rhythmic pulse grew louder and louder until the slow drumming of a thunderous heartbeat reverberated throughout the chamber. Then, as if summoned by the ominous sound, a writhing swarm of serpentine shadows rose from the darkness. We watched in horror as the black tentacles crept up the stone walls and slithered across the ceiling to loom menacingly overhead.
     Within the ritual circle, worm-like tendrils of black mist emerged from the ground beneath the horned skull to squirm across its pitted surface and entwine themselves around its twisting horns. The wriggling mass of shadows clung to the decayed bone, forming a hideous face, and the skull began to rise up, held aloft by a billowing column of black smoke that issued forth from the ground beneath it.
     Sandra stepped to the very edge of the circle and continued her sinister invocation. "We beseech thee, O Lord of Shadows, cast thy fiery gaze upon thy mortal servants. Trample thy enemies beneath thy cloven hooves, yet spare those who are thy humble slaves."
     As she spoke, molten red orbs glared from within the skull's empty eye sockets and the billowing cloud began to take on a beastly form. We stood awestruck and horrified as we watched it sprout sinewy arms ending in skeletal hands with razor-sharp claws and long goat-like legs covered in shaggy black fur.
     Sandra raised her arms out to her sides. "Spread thy ebon wings to wrap our immortal souls in thy dark embrace."
     As the monstrous apparition rose higher, black leathery wings sprouted from the beast's back and stretched outward to span the shadows before us. The demon's features shifted to match each new verse Sandra recited, as if she were somehow sculpting its ungodly semblance with her words. It seemed to be latching onto images from the darkest recesses of our minds and transforming our nightmares into reality.
     Sandra's voice reached a crescendo as she made her final decree. "We have shed our life's essence and we offer thee our blood."
     The hellish creature stood glowering over us, its eyes seething with unearthly fire. Sandra bowed before the demon, raising the blood-soaked chalice as an offering to the unholy beast that was now living flesh. I stood trembling as I gazed upward—horrified and repulsed by the loathsome abomination that loomed before me. The black beast issued forth a low rumbling growl then threw its horned head back in diabolic rapture.
     Sandra quickly took hold of the ceremonial knife that she had tucked in her belt. In one swift motion, she thrust the dagger up into the demon's chest, piercing his black flesh just below the sternum, driving the blade upward into its heart. A terrible roar erupted from the wounded fiend as its black blood spilled to the floor and the walls echoed with the cries of a thousand tormented souls.
     
"Run, now!"
Sandra shouted, as she dropped the chalice and bolted for the stairs.
"Go!"
     The monstrous beast flailed and shrieked in agony, but it could not escape the confines of the ritual circle.
     
"Don't look back!"
she screamed.
     Sandra leapt through the encompassing shadows and hit the cellar stairs running, with the rest of us in frenzied pursuit. The narrow staircase passage forced us to ascend in single file. I was immediately behind Sandra, followed by the sheriff and Theo. I could hear the shrieks and wails of the hellish legions that trailed close behind us, but I dared not look back. I frantically leapt up each step, but as I neared the middle of the staircase I lost my footing in the darkness. I stumbled and fell, blocking the passage for the sheriff and Theo. Without a moment's hesitation, the sheriff scooped me up in his arms and slung me over his shoulder then continued to run up the steps completely undeterred by my added weight.
     As I gazed back down the staircase I could see the horrors that had risen from the forsaken crypt. An undulating sea of monstrous forms stretched out of the darkness to thwart our escape. Theo bounded up the stairs only a few steps ahead of the pursuing shadows. Barbed tentacles flailed through the air and loathsome talons clawed the walls behind him.
     When we reached the top of the staircase, Sandra hurried to insert the key in the keyhole. I heard the lock turn and the squeal of hinges, followed by an eerie moment of silence. Time seemed to stand still and each second hung in the air like an eternity. From somewhere in the darkness behind us, a soft voice called Theo's name. He turned to heed the hypnotic call and his gaze was met by a familiar face. The spectral form of Andrea Mather was standing on the staircase behind him.
     "Theo," she whispered.
     "Andrea?"
     "Don't leave us here, Theo," her soft voice pleaded. She stretched her pale arms out toward him and Theo reached back to take her hand.
     
"No, Theo!"
I screamed. But my warning was too late.
     The instant he took hold of her hand, Andrea's form deteriorated into the withered corpse of Belladonna. A legion of hellish shadows swarmed over him and within seconds he was covered in oily black tentacles. A taloned hand reached out from the shadowy blackness. Theo struggled to escape its grasp but its ebon claws stretched over the top of his head, digging its monstrous nails into his flesh. With a violent crack, the shadow snapped Theo's neck, twisting his head around to face the opposite direction. Dark blood spurted from his lips and his eyes stared in horror as his body was dragged back down the staircase and swallowed by the infernal blackness of the crypt below.