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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781491744949 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | iUniverse, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 09/12/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 210 |
| File size: | 668 KB |
About the Author
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A NOCTURNE OF ECHOES
By CAYDEN CARRICO
iUniverse LLC
Copyright © 2014 Cayden CarricoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4917-4493-2
CHAPTER 1
A Place for Ghosts
Jordan remembered seeing the house as she came over the pass, a lumbering palace crouching just below the tallest trees. Finally Within sight of her destination, she forgot about the aches and pains from the past ten-hour hike and picked up her pace. Everything she needed for a two-day expedition was packed on her back.
She had discovered the abandoned palace a few years back on a hunting trip with her father. Back then, she had asked her father if they could go check it out and explore this hidden wonder of the world; naturally his response had been a swift no. Every year after that, they would run into the mysterious palace, and every year, Jordan would become more and more intrigued. Staying away from the mysterious castle probably was for the best, but potential danger couldn't hold back her curiosity, and by the time she'd moved out of her dad's home to start her own life, she had made it her mission to see what was really going on in the old place.
Now the house loomed in the near distance, just a silhouette of gray bricks filling in the space between the trees. She got to the clearing in the woods where the home's stone walls held back the encroaching forest from the rest of the estate. It was from there that she could fully see the scope of the estate. Distance had hidden its flaws, as the promising palace had actually been rubble all along. Time, with its erosive force, had taken the place from grace, twisting and warping it into something less remarkable than.
High above the ground, a red tile roof stretched across the upper facing of the home sloping to divert rainwater away from the home. Quarried, mortared limestone bricks formed the walls, each intermittently spaced apart from each other by ornate ones chiseled with wreaths, and ferns made their way across the walls' sides, gray- toned ivy reaching up like hands assailing the cracks. Two arched windows bordered a single door that marked the end of the trail. Jordan walked through the clearing and toward the door along a dirt trail that seamlessly became a paved path. She stepped up to the door, which was flanked on both sides by two lanterns.
Jordan stood in front of the door, her hand uneasily grasping the door's handle. She almost preferred to knock before she entered. It was now that she had begun to doubt her decision to come, but with a little reassurance and a reminder of the arduous hike up here, she convinced herself to open the door. It creaked open slowly in a dramatic fashion to a gaping foyer that receded back into two unlit corridors. Before her, a grand hall sprawled out indefinitely, paved by marble tiles paled by years of gathered dust. A crafted, wooden framework lined the lower halves of the walls, while the upper half was covered by a beige wallpaper, now curled and tattered. Above her, she could see a balcony encircling the top half of the foyer, its railing the same intricate design of the woodwork. She took two aimless steps as her head pivoted wildly unable to take in the full glory of the ruin.
She looked to the two staircases at both sides of her and then toward the two halls that diverged off in the back. She smiled to herself, feeling some sense of fulfillment for her trespassing. Without any sense of purpose, Jordan strayed off into the far right hallway, staying on the first floor. It seemed to her that the hall must run the length of the entire home. As Jordan continued down the hall, the visible light behind her faded, darkening what was in front of her.
Taking one random turn after the next, led her to a long corridor that ran across the back of the home. Windows as tall as her were intermittently spaced out on the left side of the hall, presenting a panoramic view of the back lawn, while a few doors were spaced along the right side. The noiseless environment amplified each step, reminding her of her detachment from the rest of the world. Despite the unsettling atmosphere, she pressed onward into the home, bold enough to wander the uncharacteristic halls but not yet quite ready to commit herself to walk into any rooms.
What really stopped her was what she might find in a room. The idea of seeing where someone else once lived was unsettling, and the notion that she might find a body somewhere in the home kept her wary. After all, it would make sense for someone to have unexpectedly died for this place to have been abandoned.
Her wandering ended when the hall she had followed came to an end at a single door. There was no point in backtracking, so naturally, she opened the door to whatever lay on the other side.
Jordan looked passed the open door toward a boundless cavity and walked into the swallowing depth of what seemed like limitless darkness. Jordan waved her flashlight around in the expanse of the dark void. The light from her flashlight diminished as it traveled the distance of the room, fading into a dull glow that barely touched the far walls. She shined it at a lower angle, revealing seats aligned in a descending fashion and walkways between large columns of aisles, all set facing a stage, a massive room forming a relatively small auditorium.
The outside was deceiving. It wasn't that the auditorium was large; even her high school had had a larger auditorium. But rather that the home even had one. She stepped in and waved her flashlight around the preserved auditorium, its beam darting to each corner of the room. The auditorium held at least two hundred seats, all covered with red velvet fabric held by a cast-iron framework. Rust and dust consumed the theatre; the once beautiful red curtains had now been superimposed with a layer of satin brown. The cast-iron seats were covered with a golden patina that interlaced the darkened iron. The auditorium had corroded away into this blighted brown, this color of decay, neglect, and death.
She smiled to herself, feeling both astonished and incredulous at the idea that someone would want to leave this all behind. And if there was an auditorium, what else might have been abandoned in this big, empty house?
* * *
The tide of dusk began to veil the sunlit sky, whose bright cobalt diminished into a deep, ultramarine blue. The forest beyond the home's walls became motionless and still, with only lifeless silhouettes of branches and foliage rising above the exterior walls, like hands reaching over, grasping the walls. The home's empty halls echoed an unsettling silence, complimented by the empty rooms that added to its lifeless void. Outside of the sparse light that Jordan's lamp offered, the inside had fallen to an augmented darkness. Exterior light was blocked out by the home's concealing walls, and all that kept the home from reaching pitch-black was the extrinsic light that poured in from the colonnade of windows that lined almost every hall.
Jordan had taken a moment to stare out the window as she unpacked her thing. She'd chosen the room she planned to stay in during her two-day stay at the home for no particular reason. It looked like it had once been someone's office. Right beside her next to the window was an old, shabby, little desk with a single drawer. She had already checked inside. It was empty. The room was small; obviously, it hadn't belonged to anyone important. But that didn't take away from its significance. She walked beside the desk, dragging her hands across its old, dusty surface taking along with her a fine layer of dust on her fingertips and out to the door for another quick look around the house.
Less than an hour of wandering through random rooms and random halls had landed her in the library. She'd figured there would be one in such a big house. Why not? Whether or not the owners actually read didn't really change the fact that a library and dozens of other needless rooms would be required to fill such a place. She had been sitting at one of the desks flipping through an old encyclopedia indexed for the letter E. The discoloration on each page seemed to discredit whatever relevant knowledge might still be left in the book. It was becoming too late to read, and her efforts to read went in vain, as she was attempting to manage the book in one hand and her flashlight in the other. And after such a long day it was easy to call it a night. She opened the library door to a long, unwelcoming dark corridor that seemed to swallow the light of her flashlight as she shined it down the protracted hall.
Each step she took felt like a risk as she walked through the darkness. Nothing felt certain except for the dangers that seemed to hide in every dark corner. She walked by one of the many intermittently placed doors that lined this hall before stopping suddenly when she heard the sound of something besides her own footsteps. A slow, methodical tick cut through the silence and echoed from a room to her left. She stood still and listened for a moment; each tick felt like a small taunt. In disbelief, she tried to ignore her imagination and continue down the hall, but the unnatural tick was just too much to ignore.
She pointed her flashlight toward the door and faced the room, being careful not to step inside. The ticking was gone. She surveyed the room with her flashlight, trying to find the source. Two small desks faced the front of the room towards a wheeled chalkboard, a few cupboards to the side. And then she saw it. On the floor lay a motionless clock. Feeling reassured, she picked up the clock, its hands frozen at just before eleven fifteen. Its white marble face was laminated in dust. Its glass was cracked down the front. The nail that it once hung from was still attached to its back. She now looked toward the wall beside it and saw a small hole. Then she looked back at the clock.
The walls seethed with shadows that festered behind her in the growing darkness, careful to not stray into the light—shadows that had festered longer than the clock's existence. They watched as the girl hung the clock up.
Jordan looked at the clock, now hanging from the wall. It was still dead and broken but not completely worthless. And she felt a sense of fulfillment; she forced a smile at the minute restoration.
Her return to her room was all but pleasant. She knew no one else was here with her and wasn't one to believe in the supernatural, but she couldn't help but feel as if she were trespassing on someone else's property and that she wasn't welcome. It seemed that whoever had lived here had spent far too much money on the place for her to be able to so easily break in and trespass.
CHAPTER 2Escape to Paradise
On the murky day of November 12, 1930, light gleamed through the thick, overcast sky covering Manhattan into Eugene Motter's office window, which overlooked the city from its twelve-story perch. Eugene Motter sat facing the window, feeling snug and secure as he stared out at the downpour, his bloated body sitting snuggly in the chair that was barely able to contain him. He was wearing the finest blue suit that the world could tailor, and he took great pride and pleasure in being the best dressed around the office. After all he was the boss. When an expected knock at the door caught his attention, Eugene turned around to face the door, posturing himself in a professional manner.
"Come in," Eugene replied.
"You wanted to see me, Mr. Motter?" The young businessman said timidly, his body quivering behind the cover offered by the door with only his head halfway in the room. He knew what was coming.
"Yes, I wanted to discuss your recent performance and how we might deal with it," said Eugene, and he flipped through some paperwork on his desk.
"And ... what of it?" the young man stuttered.
"You're wasting my money. That's 'what of it,'" Eugene snarled, a malicious look consuming his once almost professional-looking face. "You're investing in frivolous bonds that were declining when you bought them. Do you know how asinine that is? You're disgracing me and my firm!"
"I can explain!" said the man.
"You don't need to explain why you're fired. I already know," Eugene said unsympathetically.
"But what about my family?" the man wailed. "I'll never find another jobnow."
"What about your family? I have a family too that I need to take care of. You don't see me wasting money. Maybe you should have been more cautious and avoided investing in such hazards."
"But ... my family, we'll end up on the streets if I don't keep my job," the man pleaded, attempting to reason. But in truth, he had already conceded to his own error and, thus, was unable to make any sort of stand.
"Much better you than I," Eugene said as he dismissed the broken businessman out the door.
Discarded and defeated, the man shamefully slid out the door as quickly as he had come through them. Eugene spun around in his chair to face the window and let out a huge sigh as if he had just been fired, a sigh for his lost assets. He couldn't imagine why incompetence ravaged the company so much lately.
At the end of another long day, Eugene stood outside his office holding an umbrella as he waited for his chauffer. He looked around to see that beggars choked the street with their pestilence. He gave each one a look of disgust and shook his head. How dare they loiter in front of his firm? When his ride had finally arrived to take him home, he looked one last time at the destitute masses that overran the city. It had been a couple of years since the stock market crash, complicating everything he ever knew. Running his firm seemed harder than ever. His employees had never failed him before—until now. They were constantly investing in the worst possible situations. He had been the only one holding it together. Breaking even was a rare victory in today's market and trying just wasn't worth it anymore. He gazed out the window to the city. Maybe he ought to quit and get away from all this; it was obviously too much stress for him. He could just escape from it all and start over.
That night, Eugene made a phone call to one of the best architects New York He decided he was going to build a new house, secluded far up in the mountains, where he could escape the poverty that polluted this city. And he would sell his firm, escaping from the dreadful responsibility of managing such a train wreck.
At first, Eugene was planning something small, just a small estate, perhaps only five thousand square feet or so. But when the architect quoted a price of only $25,000, Eugene laughed heartily. That wasn't even a fraction of his wealth, excluding what his firm was worth. Eugene told the architect to make the house as big and grand as he could in the same remote area a place that would provide solitude away from the pestilence of humanity that scourged the outside world but still had all the luxuries of it.
Only a week later, Eugene met the architect in his office. During the car ride over, he'd hardly been able to contain himself, his imagination let loose with wild ideas of what his new home might be—massive corridors to start with, with junctions to others within just a few steps from each other; a ballroom with a vaulted ceiling so high it got lost out of sight into the heavens; towering spires above deep catacombs that were forever forgotten. His mind had circulated through these ambitious ideas until he'd arrived at the architect's office. And as the architect unrolled a huge piece of parchment paper, Eugene watched as his dreams died in an instant, his limitless imagination stamped out by the limits of reality. He unraveled a large set of blueprints; on the square pages, he saw two congruent, rounded shapes side by side, representing the two floors. The estate's magnitude was limited by the outlines of the blueprints. The architect unraveled it with gleaming eyes, proud of another success—before he looked up at Eugene, who looked appalled by the results.
"It's too small!" Eugene responded despondently. "Where are my guests supposed to stay?"
"Don't worry, Mr. Motter. There are plenty of rooms," the architect assured him.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A NOCTURNE OF ECHOES by CAYDEN CARRICO. Copyright © 2014 Cayden Carrico. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse LLC.
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