The Macabre Tales of Young Edgar

Edgar was silently furious.

Like a tempest, he tore through the still air in the third floor corridor, disturbing cyclones of dust that wobbled in the few, lancing beams of dim light, scattering like asteroid belts. His stride lengthened, matching the reach of his legs, so that he was faster and more powerful than his usual, hunched posture allowed. Drawn up to his full height, and with fierceness in his eyes, he thought himself possessed of an intimidating demeanour that his thinness only enhanced. It was as though he were a ravenous wolf that had been long starved, but still knew that it had teeth and claws.

A rock spider, he withdrew into his tunnel, slamming the door behind him. Rather than being drowned, its extreme noise echoed in the cavernous silence. Through such acts, Edgar swore, he would teach the Manor who was dictator here, and who was servant.

Rage boiled inside him, bubbling up like poison in a cauldron, or a withering draught brewed in an alchemist's vial and flask-filled laboratory. Like the latter, it had been forced through so many twisting tubes and convoluted, copper pipes, tormented by so many fires, and subjected to so much pressure, as Edgar had attempted to play along with Lord Edmund's games, and laughed off the hideous and unlivable parts of the Manor, that it was fit to burst.

How dare he! Edgar fumed, snorting so that his steam had an outlet. How dare that bumbling old fool condescend me, again and again! He knows something he isn't sharing. He thinks me a half-wit, and easily duped. Perhaps he thinks my brain works only when I'm writing, or perhaps he merely pretends to think that, too?

'Ha!' he barked loudly, to nobody in particular, exclaiming only because he was unable to contain his wrath. One of the marionette eel skeletons that had been hanging over his head jumped with surprise when he bumped into it. Another, which was a plesiosaur-made-puppet, was sent spinning by his breath.

Who does he believe he has hoodwinked? Edgar thought. Does he think himself sly? Why, he knows nothing of slyness! And the way he pretends at being elderly, so that I should fawn over him, I expect... 'Oh, my old bones!' this, and 'I am a poor old man,' that! I have never seen anybody less frail in my life. Why, for all his robustness and the way he never ceases talking, he might be forty-five!

Edgar paced back and forth, letting his pulse quicken further. His thoughts ran rampant.

The stamina of his fumbling lips is in particular a sight to behold -or not to behold, as I would have it! He talks and talks, even when he runs out of things to say, so that he mumbles and spits and stammers helplessly, like an infant. The sound of it is like water hammer in a pipe that ceases to produce substance, and so stutters with air. For such an old man, he cannot be very wise. Nobody has even taught him the courtesy of being quiet!

'Hmph!' He tossed his fringe out of his face, and reached for a comb to tame it.

Zealously, he styled his hair, channeling his anger into his work, until his carefully smoothed locks resembled an oil spill. Then, he clothed himself in blackest wrath, donning all the finery of an assassin. First, he stripped off the sleeves of his jacket, and, after assessing it as unsatisfactory, he tossed aside the remaining vest. His shirt was damp with sweat and scents. That wouldn't do, either.

No, it certainly will not do, he thought. It will not do at all to have a scent! Scents are things for prey, not for predators.

In the end, he stripped off all of his clothing, and built himself up again from scratch. A finely pressed suit of smoothest ebony went on, so that once he was as pristine as if he had been embalmed. The shirt that accompanied it was red this time, instead of white, and starched until the collar jutted out like a blade. It folded in on itself, forming a throne for his ivory neck. Beside its crimson, his skin was quite bloodless. It even had a ghostly glow, and shone softly in the darkness. Finally, he threw a midnight cape about his shoulders, the better to vanish into the haunted night.

In every aspect of his life, Edgar worked in visions. Now, he was pleased to observe, this vision was complete.

He fancied himself a phantom, robed in terror and mystery. He had moulded himself into the shape of a spectre, but if he had known of their existence in later narratives, he might rather have thought himself a vampire.

He was deathly pale, so that his face became a grim mask in the feeble light of the shivering lamps and candles. His wide, sunken eyes were remorseless pits. His high cheekbones were the cliffs that soared above the rabid, restless ocean, turning sheer, merciless faces upon drowning men and ships splintered on the rocks below. His sweeping cape whispered along the carpet as the young man continued to pace. Its rustling silk spoke in wordless syllables, like the tongues of the possessed, the senseless fear that crawls through dark corridors, or the unseen, imagined things that lurk in graveyards, abandoned castles, and other places with which Death is suitably impressed to call a part of his domain.

I am the Phantom of this Manor, Edgar thought, smiling smugly. I am master here, but I work behind the scenes. I will not be observed. I will stalk, and I will prey, like nightmare upon dream. My power is a latent one, but it is all the more terrifying for it. I will have what I desire, and none shall stand in my way!

Only the faintest hint of red kissed his lips, like a droplet of blood fallen onto a lily. Like such a potent substance, however, the sorcerer-phantom who was Edgar intended to use it well. Blood was seduction, he knew, and even a drop of it beneath his milky skin was more valuable than a vat could be to a conventional occultist.

'I do not deal with the Devil,' said Edgar, to his reflection in the mirror. 'If he exists, which I am certain that he does in some sense, then I have no need for him. Seduction is my aim henceforth, and in it, I answer to no higher devil than myself!'

'I have handsomeness at my dispense,' he told the empty room, directing his cold regard to the peeling wallpaper. 'Thus, I may be a phantom of dreams as well as nightmares, hunting where I will!'

Crossing to the window, which had never previously been opened, he tugged at the knotted cords and threw the curtains wide. Sunset greeted him, violent and fiery. It was like the rancour of a thousand trumpets announcing a mounted charge, or the bloody tattoo of war drums. A dark knight, a phantom and a wizard now, Edgar was dressed for battle.

He stood, arms folded and rigid, in the streaming light, like the risen dead awaiting Hell on Earth. In that pose, he braced himself against possibility. He thought the final strokes of his master plan in silence, lest the eavesdropping skeletons and taxidermy creatures prove spies loyal to the house of Vile.

If he does not trust me with the information he hides, he thought, then I will have it by other means. I will be wilier than he can predict, striking at his heart where fear cannot wound it. I will make him love me more than I know he does already. This will be easy, for he underestimates me so. He does not realise how transparent he is- as if I cannot see the way he looks at me, or hear his sighs behind my back! As if I am beguiled by his shallow motivations, like the insect in the plant's trap!

He let his pose fall, and leaned against his writing desk. There, he plucked a quill at random from the jar and placed it between his teeth like a Spanish rose. His forefinger stroked its feathered tip with relish. Edgar was adopting his writing stance again. He hovered over the blank parchment, carefully selecting the words that would follow the end of his monologue.

I shall come to embody his secrets, he thought. I shall embody them until he has no other affections, only those he keeps for me. I shall be his greatest secret of all, so that he no longer has reason to keep any secrets from me!

Then, like a puppet on cut strings, he fell into his chair. As ferociously as a hungry wolf whose hunt is for meaning rather than flesh -or rather, for meaning and then flesh- he pounced upon the paper. His freshly inked quill tore it to shreds, and Edgar wrote an effigy of love and lust.

That night, he wrote the first of many traps.