The Legend of Darklore Manor and Other Tales of Terror (21 page)

     
"NO!"
I cried out. But I had no time to grieve.
     Belladonna's ghastly corpse continued to ascend the staircase, closing the short distance between us. Behind her, coiled tentacles slithered forth, stretching upward along the mossy stone walls. The sheriff lunged forward up the last few steps and through the library door. As soon as my head cleared the exit, Sandra slammed the door closed and twisted the key in the lock. Inhuman shrieks wailed from beyond the sealed barrier, followed by a violent barrage of thunderous pounding that threatened to tear the door from its hinges.
     As the infernal shadows continued their furious assault against the locked door Sandra barked, "Stand back!" She tore the wrapping from her wounded hand and smeared her palm across the door, painting the glyph of binding in her own blood.
     "Get out of here, now!" the sheriff shouted. "Run!"
     We bolted out of the library and down the corridor leading to the entrance hall. The shadows seemed to close in from all sides, constricting our path as we fled for our lives. With bounding leaps we sprinted beneath the towering sentinel knights and out the open door, making our escape from the accursed house that had claimed the lives of so many others.
     My heart pounded violently as I reached the lawn and fell to my knees, shuddering and gasping for breath. I broke down in tears as I thought of the horrible fate we had nearly suffered.
     Sheriff Hill reached down and gently helped me to my feet. As I stared up at the mansion that loomed in the ghostly mist I felt a strange sense of calm and I realized that I was no longer burdened by the oppressive fear that had plagued my life for the past four years.
     Sandra whispered, "We're safe now."
     I wiped the tears from my eyes. "You had me scared for a while."
     "I'm sorry," she said. "I couldn't explain things down there. I could sense that it was probing our minds and I couldn't risk letting it discover my plan."
     The sheriff looked at Sandra curiously, as if he were scrutinizing the validity of her story. "You had me convinced that you were conjuring the Devil himself up from the fiery depths of the abyss."
     "I needed to create a mental image that we all could focus on so that the entity would latch onto our thoughts and manifest our fears."
     "Why?" Sheriff Hill asked.
     "I needed to trick it into assuming a physical form so that I could spill its blood. It was the only component that was powerful enough to contain it and trap it inside the ritual circle."
     The sheriff stared at her in disbelief. "You used its own blood against it?"
     "Yes," she said. "I remembered what the spirit of Damon Darklore whispered to me when we encountered his ghost during our first investigation. He said that more blood had to be spilled. I originally interpreted it as an ominous threat from beyond the grave, but after I discovered that he was trapped inside the mansion, along with the others that died here, I reasoned that his spirit was trying to tell us how to break the curse and set them free."
     "Do you think it's finally over?" I asked.
     "I don't know." Sandra shook her head. "Only time will tell."
     The sheriff cast a hard look toward the mansion as if he were staring down a mortal enemy.
     "What about Theo?" I asked.
     The sheriff hung his head. "He's been in and out of foster homes since he was six. He's run away from every one of them. Someone's bound to file a missing person's report, but I doubt anyone will think that his disappearance is unusual. His life ended ten years ago when that thing stole his parents. The memories tormented him and filled his heart with hatred. Vengeance was the only thing that kept him going after his friends died, but it clouded his vision. In the end it consumed him."
     "He was the last in the bloodline of the Knights of Thule," Sandra said. "It wanted him most of all."
     "So what do we do now?" I asked.
     The sheriff sighed. "Nothing we say could ever convince people to stay clear of this place. Who would believe us?" He walked to his patrol car, opened the trunk and pulled out a can of gasoline.
     I stared in disbelief as he carried the can back to the mansion's porch. "What are you doing?"
     "Something I should have done a long time ago. If I had, that kid would still be alive. By my count, seventeen people have died here. That thing inside killed them. I'm not going to have any more deaths on my conscience. I'm making sure it doesn't happen again—not on my watch."
     He splashed the gas over the entrance door, emptying the contents of the can onto the front of the house, then lit a match and tossed it onto the porch. Within minutes, the old house had erupted into flames. Writhing tendrils of fire snaked outward and upward, reminding all of us of the tentacled demon entombed in the Darklore crypt. The three of us stood transfixed by the inferno before us as if we were gazing into the fires of Hell itself.
     After a long moment of silence I asked, "What about their bodies? They deserve a proper burial."
     "We can't afford to excavate this ground," Sandra said coldly. "If we didn't kill that thing, at least it's trapped down there."
     "It's better we leave our secrets buried," the sheriff said solemnly. "Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust."
     "Dust... and shadows," Sandra whispered.
On Halloween night in 1971, Darklore Manor was the scene of a mysterious fire, and the mansion burned to the ground. The official police report lists the cause of the fire as arson. However, there are rumors of a cover-up concerning certain facts of the investigation, including the discovery of skeletal remains of several bodies found deep in the foundation of the charred ruins.
     Six months after the mansion was razed, Sheriff George Hill suffered a fatal heart attack and died in his sleep. Four years later, Sandra Faraday went missing under mysterious circumstances. Her whereabouts remain unknown to this day, but rumors claim that she was driven mad by what she saw inside Darklore Manor and was committed to an asylum. Others say that she took her own life. Whatever the case, I alone am the last to know of the horrors that dwelled within that accursed place, and I feel a deep obligation to share the truth with those who might gain from it.
     I have often thought of what I encountered inside Darklore Manor. Occasionally the nightmares return and the visions of Belladonna, the shadow man and the diabolical doll still haunt me. But I find solace in the fact that my dreams are merely the remnants of distant memories from a time long past when I was enslaved by my fears.
     There are many people who have explored the fringes of the shadow domain and glimpsed vestiges of the unseen world that surrounds us. Many of us know that there are portals to the spiritual plane that can be breached, allowing the dead to trespass upon the realm of the living. And though this ultimate knowledge offers proof of life beyond death, it paints a grim portrait of the horrors that await some in the afterlife.
     As for Darklore Manor, few traces of the mansion remain, yet reports of the Lady in Black continue to this day near the site of the old manor house. There are those who say that her wandering spirit is cursed to roam the grounds for eternity as punishment for her mortal sins, and local tales say that her mournful wail can be heard on moonless nights during the midnight hour. Other ghosts are said to haunt the site as well, and although the mansion has been gone for nearly forty years, people continue to avoid the area. For, as I well know, it is a place where spirits of the dead do not rest easy, nor do they find release from their eternal sorrow.

— The End —