The Macabre Tales of Young Edgar

That afternoon, Edgar got his tour of the Manor and its grounds.

He was shown all the various bedrooms and draughty dining halls, and was taken once more through the library, where bookcases and stacks of boxes teetered at equal heights. Here, he had had the views of the foggy moors explained to him in greater detail. These, it turned out, were part of an ancestral estate that stretched for miles into the wilderness, and all the way to the village of Anchorage on the other side. Famous landmarks, and even the infamous reef, were named after the philanthropic Vile family, who had been ocean traders in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The young writer was also introduced to the laboratory in the basement, a recent addition Lord Vile had made on a whim. As his fumbling and mumbling showed, he was none too familiar with it. Indeed, it seemed to represent a hobby which had quickly been abandoned. Some of the glass flasks were lopsided in ways that looked unintentional; blackened around their lips, or with holes melted in their bottoms. Other brass instruments were carelessly bent. Copper containers had started to oxidise, and tablecloths were singed. Various apparatuses had been hastily dismantled- to avoid an explosion, or so Edgar suspected.

After the red-faced Lord pushed him out of that room again, he was given a damp and depressing tour of the basement proper. The lower levels of the Manor were more castle than house, with great stone arches set into the slimy walls. The lowest of these arches were fixed with iron grates, and seemed to ventilate some kind of subterranean canal or open drain. The stale breath from their snarling mouths was like the whiff of an exhumed corpse. In the darkness behind their bars, in which Edgar saw rows of teeth, a foul river could be heard, slapping wetly.

He was simultaneously drawn to, and repulsed by, these gutter passageways. On the one hand, the smell of them was putrid. They reeked of decay. One the other hand, however, they were a mystery. More than that, they were one of the most understated mysteries Edgar had yet encountered, which only made them all the more suspicious.

Who would fix sewer grates near the floor of a basement? Edgar wondered. Who would fix them at intervals all the way along the basement corridors, in decorative arches, as though they were windows?

The grates could not have been there for drainage purposes. Indeed, if the foul tide rose, it would spill over into the lower sections of the Manor. How could that be intentional? Were the grates an architect's mistake, perhaps?

Edgar didn't think so. For one thing, far too much care had been put into the shaping the masonry. Even the wrought iron had been carefully moulded into what a closer inspection revealed were more tentacles. Suckered limbs curled themselves around the main bars, as though gigantic octopi reached out of the darkness, seized hold of bars, and were attempting to haul themselves up.

On several grates, the Vile family crest, complete with kraken, even appeared. To young Edgar, this suggested that the archways had the same status as the Manor's front gates, whose job was to greet carriages with human passengers.

Curious, he leaned closer. He tried to scan the darkness beyond each portal for a flicker of light or shadow that might betray what lay in there, but the stench was overpowering. Clapping a bony hand over his mouth and nose, he recoiled as a matter of instinct.

'Oh, Edgar, you really mustn't!' said his guide, pushing his charge away with his own firm hand in the centre of Edgar's back. 'You'll invite fresh support for the miasma theory of sickness!' he tutted, chortling.

Before Edgar could look around, he found himself being herded into the next part of the Manor. 'This here,' Lord Edmund announced, 'is the staircase to the, ah... aviary!'

With gloved hands on hips, so that his elbows jutted out like teapot handles, his enthusiasm was ill at ease with the precarious spiral staircase he confronted. More like a shaft than a stairway, the escape from the ground floor to what might have been an attic hatchway was very steep and narrow. It wrapped itself like a skeletal anaconda around a slim central pole, while the railing that accompanied it looked more decorative than functional. It was barely more than a wire, such as might be employed in the making of a birdcage, rather than en route to one.

Edgar gulped, doubting very much that it would support even his weight.

'Um, all aboard, then!' said Lord Edmund, with glee.

Following him, Edgar noted the old Lord's confidence in mounting the unsteady contraption. He shook his head, wondering when his host would next complain of his old age or feeble bones. The Lord, however, had looked over his shoulder then, and mistook Edgar's disbelief for objection.

'Are you, er, coming?' he asked. 'No? Why, what's wrong, my dear boy?'

'Well, don't you think this staircase...? I mean, doesn't it look a bit... rickety, my Lord? A bit... unsafe?' Edgar raised one eyebrow, blanching afresh, so that his eyes stared wide with remembered horror. Despite his fixation with it, the staircase didn't remind him of a past incident so much as it was an outlet for the anxiety that had been building up in him ever since the shipwreck- and even before then, if he was to be honest with himself.

'Nonsense!' Lord Edmund declared, throwing up his free hand and waving his glove in the air. His cane landed loudly on the step in front of him, having missed its cue. Nevertheless, he did not fall, or even falter. 'It's perfectly secure,' he said, banging the cane more violently, so that the whole staircase wobbled.

'And I'll have no more of this, 'my Lord' business, either! You may address me as Edmund from now on... or,' he paused, and whet his lips, 'if you, er, like, you could even call me... Ed?' This last was practically a whisper, as though he didn't dare to speak his hope aloud. 'You've been here for almost a week now, after all,' he added, in hurried justification.

'Naturally... Ed,' said Edgar, distractedly. His eyes were still on the stairs. 'It won't happen again.'

'Now,' said Lord Edmund, more boldly and ceremoniously. 'You shall have to come further upstairs, and meet the other Ed!'