Status: Re-uploaded 29/09/2012. Paperback $15- http://www.lulu.com/shop/tristrum-rees/the-macabre-tales-of-young-edgar-paperback/paperback/product-20248115.html
The Macabre Tales of Young Edgar
Uncanny Dusk
There was something odd about the dusk, as though he were there in one sense, but in another sense, he wasn't. He chalked it up to the unexpected turn of events, and the sleepless nightmares that had plagued him for going on two weeks now, swelling in intensity as though they fed upon his madness. The cool, night air should have been a cleansing stream compared to the Manor's musty halls, but somehow, it only made him shiver.
His head was light like a dandelion, full of thoughts the slightest wind might scatter. His limbs were heavy with missed dreams.
A Halloween breeze full of dead, rustling leaves drove dust devils across the cobblestones. The same breeze tousled the long grass beyond the driveway gates, infusing it with the breath of ghosts, while the orange sunset was like a flickering jack-o-lantern.
It was a rare, calm night at Anchor on the Hill. The air had that uncanny, bottled warmth that is compressed in the eye of a storm, but there was no storm brewing- not anymore. There were only grey skies that stretched like an endless canvas on which the moors, the cliffs, the rocky beach and the silhouette of Whirlpool Manor were painted.
The only disquiet of any kind, save the mischief of the devils, was in the boy who stood, bedraggled and half-dressed, in the empty drive. Every other strange element of the scene gravitated towards, or else radiated from, him. He couldn't tell anymore. He didn't know where his influence on the world stopped, and its influence on him began. He didn't know reality from illusion, and in his desperation, he was willing to believe anything.
A suitcase dangled from one of his scrawny arms, threatening to pull it from its socket. His shock of mousy hair stuck up as though he had just clambered out of bed, which wasn't exactly incorrect.
Edgar was feeling bitter about leaving. He concentrated on that bitterness, because it was the only thing he had that didn't seem to evaporate as soon as he was outside the Manor's doors.
Lord Edmund would have made him his heir, he thought. That idea stung worst of all, because it was another loss, and thus, another blow. He could have stood to inherit everything. His plotting and scheming, and everything he had endured that night, as well as on the nights leading up to it, might have paid off. Yet, still...
I have inherited enough from that house, he thought, to negate his regret.
As quickly as it was cut down, another notion sprang up to replace it. He had come so close to unraveling a real mystery. As much as young Edgar despised the weird happenings that had plagued his personal history, murdered his loved ones and all but erased his family from the face of the earth, there was no denying his connection to them. Weird things- macabre things, were the only things that had consistently found him growing up. In a twisted, morbid sense, they were all he had left.
If there was one thing Edgar understood, it was the strange. Now, he was leaving the strangest place he had ever set foot in.
Or was he?
As if in reply, a road built from the same cobbles as the driveway curled out of the bracken up ahead; unrolling like a question mark. It peered out of rakish branches, half-hidden in the dim light, like a trail for cats. It looked overgrown, as though nobody had followed it in years. It was easy to see, now that he had studied it for a moment, why this uncommonly spiral-like path had never attracted his attention before.
It was lonely, just like he was.
Hefting his suitcase onto his hip, and easing the pressure on his sore, left shoulder with his right one, he staggered, long-limbed and lanky, into the night.
His head was light like a dandelion, full of thoughts the slightest wind might scatter. His limbs were heavy with missed dreams.
A Halloween breeze full of dead, rustling leaves drove dust devils across the cobblestones. The same breeze tousled the long grass beyond the driveway gates, infusing it with the breath of ghosts, while the orange sunset was like a flickering jack-o-lantern.
It was a rare, calm night at Anchor on the Hill. The air had that uncanny, bottled warmth that is compressed in the eye of a storm, but there was no storm brewing- not anymore. There were only grey skies that stretched like an endless canvas on which the moors, the cliffs, the rocky beach and the silhouette of Whirlpool Manor were painted.
The only disquiet of any kind, save the mischief of the devils, was in the boy who stood, bedraggled and half-dressed, in the empty drive. Every other strange element of the scene gravitated towards, or else radiated from, him. He couldn't tell anymore. He didn't know where his influence on the world stopped, and its influence on him began. He didn't know reality from illusion, and in his desperation, he was willing to believe anything.
A suitcase dangled from one of his scrawny arms, threatening to pull it from its socket. His shock of mousy hair stuck up as though he had just clambered out of bed, which wasn't exactly incorrect.
Edgar was feeling bitter about leaving. He concentrated on that bitterness, because it was the only thing he had that didn't seem to evaporate as soon as he was outside the Manor's doors.
Lord Edmund would have made him his heir, he thought. That idea stung worst of all, because it was another loss, and thus, another blow. He could have stood to inherit everything. His plotting and scheming, and everything he had endured that night, as well as on the nights leading up to it, might have paid off. Yet, still...
I have inherited enough from that house, he thought, to negate his regret.
As quickly as it was cut down, another notion sprang up to replace it. He had come so close to unraveling a real mystery. As much as young Edgar despised the weird happenings that had plagued his personal history, murdered his loved ones and all but erased his family from the face of the earth, there was no denying his connection to them. Weird things- macabre things, were the only things that had consistently found him growing up. In a twisted, morbid sense, they were all he had left.
If there was one thing Edgar understood, it was the strange. Now, he was leaving the strangest place he had ever set foot in.
Or was he?
As if in reply, a road built from the same cobbles as the driveway curled out of the bracken up ahead; unrolling like a question mark. It peered out of rakish branches, half-hidden in the dim light, like a trail for cats. It looked overgrown, as though nobody had followed it in years. It was easy to see, now that he had studied it for a moment, why this uncommonly spiral-like path had never attracted his attention before.
It was lonely, just like he was.
Hefting his suitcase onto his hip, and easing the pressure on his sore, left shoulder with his right one, he staggered, long-limbed and lanky, into the night.
