The Macabre Tales of Young Edgar

Lord Edmund was standing in the midst of a warzone, in the eye of a storm. It wasn't a recent storm. Indeed, the tension in the air had always existed. The lightning had pended throughout his lifetime, so that the very atmosphere he grew up in had been electric.

Whirlpool Manor was a battlefield. It was built not on foundations of rock like normal houses, but on a hollow labyrinth filled with secrets and horrors. Echoes of madness could be heard aboveground, where they seeped in through the grates in the basement, wrapping their tentacled motifs around every lamp post, door handle, knob, knocker and item of cutlery in sight.

Secrets coiled themselves around the carved legs of tables, and around the prongs of forks and other eating implements, like things to be speared and consumed. Secrets wobbled in the dust moats, dissolved and scattered. Secrets peered from the uniform eyes of the portraits, none of whom contained a subject older than twenty-five, and some of whose subjects had fishy appearances, or faint lines like scars or gills around their necks.

The sheer mass of the secrets which accumulated in the Manor had a weird gravity all its own. It warped the house and all the people in it. It cast the Manor's silhouette like a burned and blackened husk against the skyline, so that its spires stabbed the clouds like spears. It forced servants to flee, and made visitors go insane. It afflicted neighbours with ill fortune, extending its wrath to the reef which bore its name, upon which many ships had been splintered.

It had even taken its toll on Edmund himself, bending him to strange habits, so that his personality was mutated like that of a creature given wholly over to darkness; his youthful and normal aspects becoming vestigial, and his will impotent.

Yes, Edmund thought, with such conviction and assertiveness that his admission was no longer true. Yes, I have fallen victim to the crimes of war. This house is a battlefield, but on it today, bloody tides will turn.

A whirlpool it is, indeed! he thought further, fleetingly. It is a storm of a place which draws all evil to itself, and drowns the innocent. It is a churning, turbulent thing. What better place for any tide to reverse itself?

All of these thoughts were compressed, ignited and extinguished in the space of a second, while the doorknob turned. Then, the wooden surface caved in, revealing first a sliver of scaly blue, and then the whole face.

'Edan.' Lord Edmund's voice was stern, and unsurprised.

'Brother.'

The fish lips moved out of time with the syllables, so that the effect was disjointed and dream-like. The eyes, which were half-blind, greyish orbs, stared vacantly ahead. Only a thin crop of silvery blonde hair remained on top of a bizarrely compressed head, which was at once flatter and more conical than any truly human skull.

The most obvious signs of the creature's gradual change, however, were the small, glittering scales around its shrunken ears, where small patches of fingernails appeared to be growing there. The slitted gills beneath the battered collar of its funeral suit were barely concealed.

'You received my note,' said the undead fish-man. It was a statement, not a question. Despite his alien complexion and the slightly distorted shape of his head, he gave an impression of haughtiness. In life, his would have been a profile far better suited to the role of aristocrat than Edmund's ever was.

'I did,' replied Edmund, cautiously.

He was without his cane, and also without a coat or jacket, so that his right hand had nowhere to withdraw to, and nothing with which to fidget. He wrung it with itself, flexing his fingers nervously. As though in sudden inspiration, the hand tightened into a fist. As it slackened, the Lord's left leg slackened with it, and he assumed the posture of one who limps.

'You will come with me, then,' the changed corpse of his brother, Edan, said.

'Yes,' Edmund responded, after a moment's hesitation. 'Yes,' he repeated curtly, with a compulsive nod. 'Yes, I will.'

'Good.' The fat lips momentarily tightened, pulled back in a smile of satisfaction, before they were allowed to hang limp again, like to thick, slimy sea slugs.

'There is, ah, just one thing...' Edmund murmured, averting his eyes.

He allowed himself a small, inward smile of his own. His usual stammering had been resumed with such ease that it wasn't apparently an act. Long years spent in servitude had made him an excellent liar- after all this time living over a veritable vault of terrifying monsters, he barely felt the heat of stress.

'And what is that?'

'Please allow me, er, to fetch my cane,' Edmund muttered, smoothly. He felt the tiniest beads of sweat, tinier than the scales on his brother's face, forming around his hairline. What if Edan wondered why he had been leaving without it in the first place? What if he was caught? He would need to act quickly...

A compliment ought to do the trick, he decided. Edan had always been an egotist; always susceptible to pride, temptation and sin.

'I was never as strong as you, brother,' he continued, rubbing his hands in each other for effect. 'I have come to the right decision in the end, but all of this,' he gestured in small, nervous circles, 'has taken its toll. I am but a cowed old man of weak stature and demeanour. In my haste, I have forgotten my most intimate possession. I fear I shall not be able to walk all the way to the sinkhole without it.'

Edan frowned intolerantly, and for a moment, Edmund thought that his lie had been too obvious. Then, the fish-man shook his head, and made a dismissive noise that was half snort and half gurgle.

'Then fetch it,' he admonished, 'and do not waste my time with your miseries. Old fool, indeed! I am glad I did not live to become you, little chance though that there ever was of that.'

As he turned, Edmund felt a stabbing in his chest. Though their separation was to be a brief one, those parting words rang with the farewells of decades earlier. They stood in stark contrast, for those had been happier goodbyes. Even when Edan had spoken to Edmund on his deathbed, they had been optimistic. They had promised a refusal to bow, and the eventual end of his family's slavery.

Although the face that waited behind him now was different, Edmund knew, his brother's mind and body were the same. This fish creature was not a mere zombie, nor reanimation of his dear older brother and childhood mentor and friend. It was a corruption of him.

Edan's very soul, if he still possessed one, had been shredded by his ghastly servitude. It had been warped to the same extent as his physical container. His eyes, which always stared blankly, reflected the fate of all the hopes that had once hidden behind them.

As the memories of former, courageous goodbyes stung the corners of Edmund's eyes rasped in his throat, he choked back hot tears. Now, he resolved, the baton had passed, and his turn had come.

It was too late for Edan. Now, it was he, Edmund, who had to be courageous.

Crossing the room seemed to take an eternity. Edmund's spilled ink and scattered papers were like casualties lying on a recent battlefield; the site of a skirmish in which he had fought, and to which he now returned in its eery emptiness. Nothing had survived here except him.

As though he were retrieving a souvenir, or the medal of a fallen comrade, he plucked the staff up from where it lay, stiff and lifeless on the floorboards. Fondly, he polished the perfectly round pearl on the top with the corner of his shirt, which had come untucked. Then, he held the staff to his chest, letting its rigidity infuse him.

There, he clutched it like a baton.

This is the baton that has been passed, he thought to himself. Like everything that is inherited in this slaughterhouse, it will soon be bloodied. Yet, it will be the blood of vengeance and honour that my staff tastes. The blood of oppression will be spilled here no longer.

Like a doomed flag bearer marching towards the enemy, he turned and assumed his most convincing limp as he dragged himself from the room.

Edan made a dissatisfied noise when Edmund reappeared through the doorway. 'You are so slow,' he remarked. 'We do not have time to waste. The Angler Fish tells everyone you were left until last because you were most useful, but I know that this is deceit. You were left until last because you are so cumbersome as a human that there was no point in changing you. In death, you will only be a burden.'

Edmund bit his tongue, thinking of how these cruel sayings were the antithesis of his brother's assurances when they had both been younger and warmer. Now, he was hot-blooded, while his Edan was as cold as the grave. Even the air around him seemed to shiver, as if he had an icy corona, like the one that rings the moon on frosty nights.

Nevertheless, Edmund's brother's words did not taunt him. They were barbed, but being a wily fish, he evaded their hooks. He had no ambition to be useful to the Angler Fish, and thus, he had no reason to rise to the bait.

'No matter,' said Edan, callously. 'We will make use of you in the end.'

His cat-like, fattened smile still curling on his lips, the fish-man paused at the end of the corridor. For a moment, Edmund thought he was waiting, so that they could walk side by side. Then, Edan hurried up, quickening his pace so that his footsteps squelched along the carpet.

Edmund took his chance. A soldier unsheathing his sword, he unstopped the pearl from his staff in one fluid, silent motion. When it came out, it revealed the thin, needle-like blade that was attached to its underside, so that the pearl itself was the rounded handle. The long knife glittered faintly in the dim light, just as the bauble on top of it had always winked slyly when its weapon had been concealed.

Edmund gripped his pearl tightly. Casting it up in a wide, powerful arc, he brought it down with all of his might so that its tooth pierced the Edan's back, and the fish-man gave a suffocated cry. It was impossible to tell whether his breathlessness was due to a punctured lung or a general inability to speak loudly out of water.

Ink spurted, gushing jet-black from his wound. Through it, he seemed to deflate, until he finally crumpled in a heap on the floor.

The words he garbled as he fell were unintelligible. They might have belonged to another language, or another way of communicating altogether. Perhaps they were mere side-effects of a psychic message.

Edmund didn't wait around to find out. Sprinting, the shaft of his old walking stick now abandoned, and clutching his retrieved blade, he leaped over the dispatched corpse.

As though he had reclaimed it from his brother's dead body, his youthful strength was fully restored. His steps were confident and heavy- they smacked against the floorboards, so that not even this dusty corridor could muffle them. As he ran, silver lines flew along the sides of his hair like decorations.

'Edgar,' he panted, breathlessly swearing his young charge's name. 'I will not let you die in my war.'