Fear of the Dark

It was autumn in Corpus. The harvest term was largely done up, and Count Carrion was sitting in Carrion Hall. Shadows lengthening by twilight in the October chill. The whistle of wind could be heard throughout the streets of Corpus. So much so that the baker, the barber, the busser, even the butcher could be heard shivering their teeth as it swung through the small bucolic village. Foot travelers were unrecognizable as they trundled and scrunched their coats up to their ears to escape the whips of wind. The locomotive drivers scarcely differed, as the normal traffic slowed to a halt. A small layer of dust collected on them, covering the paint in unfair portions.

Darkness in every nook and cranny. Darkness from the lowering sun. If there had been candlelight or fires, even a handful, the darkness would have abated for a few hours till night. Darkness in the Sallow Inn, at the heart of Corpus. Even the lodgers at the inn could feel the darkness creep down the halls, under their doors, to sit beside them as they shut their eyes. And darkness in Count Carrion of Carrion Hall. This darkness sat atop the others as the sun died. It was strong and lifeless as it loomed over Corpus at Carrion Hall.

On any given night, but especially this night, Count Carrion sat on a glacial throne with a dreary look about his face, as he was surrounded by butlers. Some heap of scattered peoples in red and black vestments. Constantly running round each other, slipping to fill the demands and whims and ideas and precautions of Count Carrion of Carrion Hall.

In this deadhouse, with all happiness of character lost in the annals of time, the hall fell to madness. Madness in the darkest hours of night. For Count Carrion, who had sat in Carrion Hall for the better part of a century, was beginning to unravel. Unravel to such a prevailing degree that even the slack jawed and bumbling butlers began to talk. Considerably so, that there were beginning to be comments. Small, harmless phrases in the kitchen of Carrion Hall. Things like, “He wasn’t talking to me, and he wasn’t talking to you, and he wasn’t talking to them, so he must have been talking to himself.”

This sort of thing unraveled into frenzy. Soon the butlers became frightened of Count Carrion, which only increased the measure of frenzy and flippancy amongst the butlers, who were already exhausted at endless tasks, which had no real end or purpose. Carrion, of course, was a money lender, because no darkness could ever be so deep and dreary if the reins did not belong to the hands of bankers and buyers. Dark dealings were upon Carrion Hall, and the Count could feel a lifetime of his activities manifest into dread.

For the Count could see things. Things moving in the darkness. Things that stayed perfectly still, but would whisper to him and creep closer as he looked away. In his darkness, he began to have the desire to follow it, to be sick. He wanted to prove his sickness to the butlers, to the village of Corpus, to God. Insofar as we can tell, the darkness had made Count Carrion, a perfectly normal person several years, maybe decades, ago, desire sickness. He had to prove it so thoroughly that the butlers began to fear existing in Carrion Hall. They felt that every time they made a mistake, they deserved to be punished, that they deserved to be taken out back and shot like a sick dog. In fact, everyone in Corpus, from Carrion Hall to the butcher’s shop to Sallow Inn, felt like they were being whittled away by the wind, like they were becoming husks of themselves. And so the darkness persisted.

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My Lady Lola returns to her grandfather’s house for a few nights previous to her first semester away at college, where her ladyship intended to stay during the colder months. However, due to her roommate’s sudden illness, which caused such upheaval in her ladyship, she promptly packed up her suitcase and fled for the darkest parts of the state, Carrion Hall, to Count Carrion, her grandfather.

My Lady Lola had been extremely dreary on the road to Corpus, with the wind wiping her smile away, the darkness hiding the very whispers of sunshine in her auburn hair. So you can imagine my lady’s great surprise when she arrived on this night to see the butlers in upheaval because of her own grandfather’s sickness. How Achilles died when he was shot in the foot, my Lady Lola fell into a reverie at another disaster befell her. Such composure of worn out dread became Lady Lola that she instantly fell to her knees. If only she could die at this moment, if not to prove to the world how dilapidated she was with the circumstance that had befallen her, but to wipe this great heavy crown away from her.

How horrible and misshapen had Carrion Hall become. Shaped by the architect of darkness and bathed in discontent.

Yet, in her reverie, a kindness was given to my dear lady. The same wind that blew away the conscience of Count Carrion fanned the bonfire within Lady Lola. She felt this empty hall, in such a horrid state, in such a horrible country, and decided, with clenched teeth and furrowed brow, to fear not. Rather, she became more brave. Fear not the darkness, my Lady Lola. There is either something there, or there is nothing. All fear resides in between those two states. It is only those who would stand within the middle, those like Count Carrion who can’t decide which it is, that have such rapturous fear. My Lady. O, my Lady, you would recognize a friend in total darkness. And you would love even the emptiness in the room. For it was you that the fire first started to burn in Carrion Hall.

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Count Carrion’s cacophonous form rose from his station at the arrival of his dear granddaughter. Trouncing through the gallery, booming up the stairs, and making a sufficient amount of noise to wake up the entirety of Corpus came Lady Lola. Lady Lola, with a candelabra in hand, skipping past dusty pictures of miserly old men and women who never even knew their picture was being taken, alighted all the candles she could see. Yet night was almost here, and the darkness started to hug the flame, which produced little light.

Count Carrion pushed past his mass of butlers with a swatting motion of his walking stick. He opened the doors to his throne chambers and threw off such government to provide for his doting granddaughter as she leapt into his arms, careful not to light his hair on fire with the candelabra she held.

“Poppy!” exclaimed Lola.

“Lady Carrion, it is good to have your brightness here,” replied the Count.

“You look gleeless, Poppy. Why are all the candles at rest? Why has the whole of Corpus gone dark?”

“Never mind the dark. Besides, I feel more comfortable in it,” said the Count, who made a small wave of his hand, and several butlers rushed into the corridors and opened the smallest of windows, at which a gust of wind made its way into the corridor and blew out all the candles my Lady had just set alight.

“Come here. You have arrived too late for dinner, yet just in time to see an old friend of mine,” continued the Count, at which he led Lady Lola back to his glacial throne. The butlers took their leave as the last light left Carrion Hall. If it was not for Lola’s candelabra, there would not have been any light at all.

It was firmly night. Lady Lola stood by the throne in patient contemplation for what felt like hours. She knew better than to speak at length to her grandfather, for at any moment he could cause turmoil. Lola, in fact, had grown up frightened of her parents and grandparents. For they seemed austere people. Set in their ways. If all of Corpus came crumbling down upon them, they would not budge. And never budge they did, till their death. Now only Grandpa remained, in this cold fortress of solitude.

Yet, she remembered a time when Count Carrion had treated her tenderly and even sweetly. So long ago, before her parents died. When the Carrions gathered round to celebrate the day of the dead. Her grandfather would lift her high up on his shoulders so she could light the candles on the lanterns that adorned Carrion Hall. Stretching out her candelabra to reach them. Her mother would scold Poppy when a stray piece of wax would slither down to her hands, and Lola would hiss in pain. How strange that she had all these memories within her, but to her grandfather it was all history. Standing there beside him, her thoughts resembled those now barren lanterns. Now her thoughts only lit some small part of her, as if her ancestors were putting it out one by one, like putting a house to bed before the night.

“Do you remember, Poppy?” she asked. But the Count was not looking; his gaze was far into the distance.

“There,” whispered the Count suddenly. He pointed at a corner in the room, yet all Lola could see was darkness.

“Blow out the candelabra at once,” he screamed in a whisper.

Against her better judgment, she appeased, and with one fell blow, blew out the remaining light in Corpus.

At first, the darkness was like a smudge. A formless blob of black, moving and squirming. Her pupils began to dilate. Lola peered in the direction her grandfather had been pointing in. Just there, she squinted and searched. In the corner was a silhouette of a man. A tall man, looking at them, standing perfectly still in Carrion Hall. The phantom overwhelmed her; she gripped her sanity with teeth clenched. She wished she could not see, but rather that the world could not see her.

“You see now, I’m not crazy, as much as your letters suggest,” said the Count.

Lola so much wanted to agree with her grandfather, so that there would be nothing discordant between them. Yet, in doing so, she would forsake him. She would surrender him to this cruel phantom that had taken everything from her. Looking again, she saw clearly that the fear of the unknown that stood before her was wearing a cheap mask of grief. Grief that could never be fixed.

“There’s no one there,” said Lola in a whisper.

“No… you’re wrong. Can’t you hear him?” replied the Count fervently.

“What is he saying, Poppy?” Lola sighed.

“He’s saying…”

“Saying, Count Carrion, I’m in the corner of the room.”

“Count Carrion, I’m taking a step towards you.”

“I’m taking another step.”

“Yet another.”

“Still another.”

“I’m taking a step up the stairs toward your throne.”

“I’m taking another step.”

“I’m standing over you.”

“And now I’m going to…”

“Stop that, Poppy!” exclaimed Lady Lola, as she relit her candelabra.

The illumination showed a gleam of sweat on the Count’s forehead. He had wide eyes that held anguish and terror.

It was just then that the Count realized how much Lola reminded him of his daughter, Lola’s mother.

“Poppy, I know you want someone to be there, but there just isn’t anyone. Look,” Lola said, pointing out to the same corner in Carrion Hall.

Count Carrion puffed up a bit, looking to his granddaughter and back to the empty room. His cheeks began to redden as he felt a hot flash of embarrassment.

“You should listen to your elders, Lady,” said the Count.

Count Carrion put his head in his hands and shook himself in a frenzy. He clutched at his heart with erratic fingers.

“What have you done? I told you to keep that light OUT!” proclaimed Carrion as he reached forward to steal the candelabra from Lady Lola. Yet at the very same moment, Lola gripped it and tried to dodge her grandfather’s advance. This led to a quick yet terrible struggle between grandfather and granddaughter, fighting over the light. One looking to snuff it out at his old age, the other trying to light it anew in her youth. In this struggle, the candelabra, which had been the only source of light in Corpus, was knocked loose and flew across the room, sliding across the floor for what felt like ages, and set aflame the long, dusty drapes that hung over the windows in Carrion Hall. The dust, acting like tinder, created a blaze of flame to crawl up the long surface. Quickly, Count Carrion ran to release the drapes so that the fire did not reach the ceiling. However, in doing so, the rapid shaking of the drapes knocked the dust in a plume into the room and spread fire across the room. A small upheaval erupted that singed the Count’s mustache clean off, as his eyes widened, and he patted out the small singes of flame on him. My Lady Lola, having seen this scene unravel, began to spring into action, grabbing her grandfather to leave.

“No, Lola, grab that blanket. We need to extinguish the fire to get rid of the light!” the Count roared out.

Lady Lola looked hopelessly at her grandfather. She remembered her dear mother, who died of the same stubbornness, just as all adults. Lola could see the change occur in the eyes of adults, a soft, dull glaze in the eyes. When life takes so many things from you that you hold tightly to darkness. As the flames continued to spread all around her, she stood motionless, staring at her grandfather. The great Count of Carrion Hall, on his knees, wrestling with the flame, gripping it to squeeze his friend back into existence. A loud bang on the floorboards. The Count breathlessly turned to see the commotion, expecting his butlers to come to his aid. But it wasn’t the butlers. My Lady Lola had collapsed onto the ground.

For a moment, the Count stood motionless; he knew he did not belong here, wrestling with the flame, yet even still, he paused. He looked for his friend again, yet the friend was slinking away.

“I can do this,” he thought.

“Even if I can’t, I must.”

At once, the Count ran to her in a panic and cradled her head, tears already leaking in the smoky room. He could not hear her breathing. The Count began to cough and hack as he inhaled the smoke. He yelled out in great anguish, looking around at his chambers, at the expensive accouterments of his century of living, the salaries of all the peoples of Corpus up in flames in an instant.

The Count, in his great age, summoned the strength only available in such calamity and lifted his dear granddaughter off the floor. He ran down the corridors, past the many generations of dreary Carrions, faces that looked exactly like his.

The Count could feel the blood pumping through his veins for the first time in ages. Luckily, he was able to reach the front door. But the door was barricaded in. With as much strength as he could muster, the Count banged and rocked, but the door wouldn’t budge. He collapsed to a knee with Lola over his shoulder. Sweat beading on his brow, and hot tears streaming down his face.

“Oh, Lola, how blind I was to fight with you. If only I would have let you have your candles, this would not have happened. I have traded my friend for the life of my only granddaughter, as I have for my only daughter. How many Carrions have died from the darkness? Now there is only one left. How horrible a fate for me, to die last. To face my guilt against the scourge of flame,” wept the last Count Carrion of Carrion Hall.

Count Carrion slowly closed his eyes, thinking only of Lady Lola, her sweet smile, which looked so much like his daughter’s.

Suddenly, there was a loud crack, and an axe came through the front door. The butlers, who had been fighting over the only axe within ten miles, knocked down the door. They burst forth from the door in a heap, falling over each other and over the Count and Lola.

“We have come to your aid,” the butlers said in unison.

And they lifted the Carrions out of Carrion Hall as it burned brightly. So brightly, in fact, that all of Corpus, from the baker, the barber, the busser, even the butcher, came to see the great fire. The wind wrapped around the burning house and fanned the flames so that they grew further still. A great bonfire that warmed the villagers from the wind chill and lighted the entire village of Corpus. Expelling the darkness in the Sallow Inn, running off the shadows that persisted. The shadows died as the sun began to rise.

The Count, through squinted and singed eyes, saw the villagers come out to Carrion Hall. He saw them smile as they looked at the light. If only Lady Lola could see them. How horrible was the Count’s legacy, he thought, that they would smile at the fire of burning money. He laid his chest on top of Lola Carrion. Carrion wept.

“Why did you leave me?” said the friend.

Carrion listened to the hissing of the timber. He felt the warmth of it, as it blazed further in the weeping wind, and he was consoled. No longer did Carrion Hall loom; no longer did his friend occupy it. He gripped Lola tighter.

“You left ME,” said Count Carrion.

“I never left,” said my Lady Lola.