The house on the hill sits brooding, pulling its shadows close like a heavy cloak. On moonless nights the pale green glow of foxfire lends an eerie light, but this Hallow’s Eve the moon is full, bathing the mansion in silver. Square pockets of midnight litter the façade like hollow eye sockets where the windows once were; they now gaze sightlessly over the greensward grown rampant.
The weary travelers pause to rest below a lightning-stricken willow, the air thick with the damp reek of charcoal. Wordlessly they nod in agreement toward the mansion; the long-predicted storm looms violently on the horizon and the promise of a dry floor is too much to resist. Freeing themselves from the clutching vines underfoot, they make their way toward the manse.
The legend of the house is known for seven counties in every direction: beautiful Morgana, she of the nine lovely sister witches, and her Torment. Tales whisper of madness, misery and bloodshed. This was the lair to which she lured men with promises of lust and abandon; this is where men came to die. But when a dusty soul travels many miles by foot and wishes only for haven from the fury of a hundred-year storm, those whispers are easily ignored.
Weather-beaten planks shriek in protest as the travelers mount the front stair, but the clamor is carried away by the sudden wind as the moon disappears behind angry clouds. Suddenly all is dark. As dead leaves scurry around their feet the travelers scramble for the door; a quick flash of lightning reveals the strangely gleaming doorknob. The first fat drops of icy rain hurry the men inside.
The parlor is awash in a faint glow, and heavily shrouded shapes crowd the middle of the floor. A quick flash of lightning reveals what appears to be furniture draped with canvas. As the first traveler reaches forward to pull back the cloth, his hand disappears through a tightly woven web of incredible thickness. He jerks back in surprise, but his arm remains fast. The other man leaps forward and gives a great pull, and they tumble backward upon the floor. The lightning is almost constant now, and it reveals the traveler’s arm encased in a fist of bone, white knuckles glittering in the storm’s assault. The grip is of iron and will not relent; the traveler has been freed only because the arm has separated at the elbow. As he works to free himself, I look more closely at my surroundings.
Here I’m afraid I must apologize. It was my intent to relay this tale dispassionately, as if from a distance; I find that I cannot. The events which follow have left an indelible impression that no separation of years can allay, and I will carry this night with me to the end of my days. I pray every evening for release from this prison of my memories, and sleep comes only in snatches, when I am too exhausted to scream any more. Had I but known my fate, I would have rotted in my dank prison cell and been glad of it rather than hatch the plan that ended with Tiny Tim and myself running ahead of the storm and headlong to our dooms.
I look more closely at my surroundings. In the near-constant violet-white light, I count nine gilded floor-standing mirrors of exceptional workmanship spaced evenly around the perimeter. Helpless to resist, I drift toward the closest. The gold frame is inlaid with onyx black dahlias and wicked fanged serpents with ruby eyes. Through some trick of the flickering lightning the serpents seem to seethe and coil. Mesmerized, I peer closer until my breath fogs the glass, but when I move to wipe the steam my hand passes through the mirror. I lurch backward, expecting the apparition to clear, but the fog swirls and begins to take shape.
A face materializes in the mist, out of the mist, and solidifies into an achingly beautiful woman with tumbling raven hair and skin so soft I want to weep. She reaches toward the glass, through the glass, Dear God she’s stepping through the glass howcanthisbehappeningitcan’tberealmygodshesbeautifulhelpme.
Tiny Tim has been screaming since the hand clapped onto his wrist but my ears are now deaf. As the woman floats closer, it’s as if the room has gone black and she is the light, the altar to which I will kneel from this day forward. Her outstretched fingers caress my cheek and I feel a freezing, burning sensation so detached it seems like a childhood memory. I close my eyes and lean in for the kiss when the sound and light come rushing back in. Timmy has stopped screaming long enough to see what has been happening and smashes the clutching hand across the back of my neck, shaking me to my senses.
The woman howls. Robbed of her prey, the huntress bares her teeth and advances. Her perfect lips shrivel, peeling back impossibly until her gaping maw reveals four-inch fangs dripping with smoking venom. Her hands suddenly split and crack, the nails becoming talons ready to rend and tear. I backpedal into Tiny Tim and we spill to the floor in a tangled knot of horror, scrabbling at the dusty floor in an effort to escape.
Only as my head fills with light and pain do I realize we’ve reached the back wall of the parlor. I turn to Tiny Tim and open my mouth; at the time I thought only to scream, “Get out!” and head back into the gale. My words die in my throat. Tiny Tim kneels transfixed before another mirror, its smoky opalescence slowly collecting itself. I spy another siren, tousled red hair billowing weightlessly around perfect shoulders as she emerges from the glass. But even as her incarnadine lips crease into a seductive smile her emerald eyes flash with rage and purpose. Her arms reach, reach; her steel-tipped nails sink into Tiny Tim’s temples and pull. The skin on his face and neck stretches and tears and not once did the dreamy, stupid grin leave his ruined countenance. She pulled his face and scalp off like a wet sock unrolled from a wrinkled foot, with a muffled, wet snap serving as a low counterpoint to her rising, gurgling glee. His red, gleaming skull hit the floor and bounced once. The smell of blood and death and bowels rose as his death rattle expired.
To this day I don’t remember rising; suddenly I was crashing off the walls pursued by two, three, four and more of the sister witches as they materialized from their quicksilver coffins. I do remember splintering through a door and careening through a maze, and the tableax I encountered are not fit for retelling in this world or the next. It shall suffice to inform you that I was not the first man to enter these wretched corridors. Dessicated, abused corpses lurked in every closet and dead end, and every shadow thrown by my passing threatened to rise up and swallow me whole me. The heart-piercing shrieks and gruesome sounds of feeding as the witches consumed Tiny Tim lent an inhuman strength to my flight; were it not for their sinister motivation I would not have possessed the wherewithal to shatter one wall and tumble back out into the rising storm.
I felt the rain and hail not at all. I half-scrambled, half-ran back to the nearest road where I was struck a glancing blow by a passing motorist. I may have stumbled in front of the car on purpose, such was my state of mind. When I awoke screaming from my concussion my arms and legs were bound in irons and I was sitting in the back of a wagon headed back to prison, surrounded by heavily armed stone-faced wardens. I almost cried in relief.
It is said Morgana’s Torment shifts. At times it perches jauntily atop the craggy hill, light and airy with birdsong and breezes. At other times it squats heavily, seething silently with ill-concealed malice. I believe it has to do with hunger. The last time I laid eyes on the Torment it seemed to reach for me as the prison bus carried the chain gang back to jail after a day on the road; I put my eyes out with my pick and nearly succeeded in killing myself such was my panic and grief.
The reason I share this with you is because word has reached me that the house is opening soon for public display. Some fool with money paid the back taxes and decided it should be registered as an historical artifact. My scribe’s pen cannot convey the urgency with which I urge you not to patronize the mansion. It will be the death of someone, maybe even you. There is no need to be brave, no need to show your fancy that fear has no hold on you. Because if you enter those doors, you won’t have time to be afraid…
