The Middle Place

This is yet another story that's a "work in progress". I had every little time again this week to write...

The parlor walls strobed with a dazzling, white light. Then the deafening crack of thunder, as if the stormy skies above Portis House had split in two. Alice, my daughter, stepped closer and took my arm.

As if, as her father, I could fend off such power.

Rain hammered the windows, and a howl of wind wound its way down the chimney. The fire I’d just kindled – it blossomed in a sudden woosh of air, and we welcomed the increased light it provided.

What a storm-tossed house I had inherited, deep in the Caledonian Forest. This was my ancestral home, a place I’d never laid eyes on until last week. When Mister Grafton, the executor of my uncle’s estate, had brought us here.

I recalled, for the hundredth time, passing through the outer gate, and beneath those enormous wrought iron letters arranged above the threshold.

MORTUI VIVOS DESIDERANT

----

“Are you quite sure you want to sell your ancestral home and land? An estate that has been in your family for centuries?” Grafton said.

We stood just inside the dimly lit foyer, while a swirl of dried autumn leaves skittered just outside the still-open door behind us.

“It’s so remote here,” I said. “Besides, haven’t you already dismissed the staff?”

“They’re on notice, the three of them, but I was waiting for you to finally see the place, to perhaps spend a few nights here before finalizing your decision. In all candor, I feel you owe your uncle that much.”

I was a city man – an academic professor of chemistry at university. Living here would mean giving up my career, my research. And what of Alice? I could never sentence her to a life here. Her mother deceased, she would have to live with her grandparents. On the other hand, what harm would it do, spending a few days here?

“Very well, Mister Grafton. I’m not heartless, you know. I have fond memories of my uncle. He visited us many times over the years, and I am curious about this place.”

“Glad to hear it,” he said. “Then it’s settled.”

Before Grafton departed, he invited me on a walk in the forest just north of the house. There, among great oaks now devoid of leaves, he handed me a large, black skeleton key.

“This is the final piece of your uncle’s estate – and my most important duty as executor of his will,” he said. His manner was severe, and, given his no-nonsense demeanor, I knew this was of utmost importance.

“This is the key to your uncle’s research, conducted over many years at Portis House.”

“Research?” I said. “He was a scientist?”

“I don’t know the nature of his research,” Grafton said. “But it consumed the latter half of his life, before he passed away in the parlor at ninety years of age. This key, he stated in his will, fits a lock somewhere in the library. Keep this key and its purpose a secret. From anyone and everyone.”

Two hours later, Miss Henge prepared our dinner and readied both our rooms. After eating, we skulked about the cavernous house, marveling at the size of the rooms, the elaborateness of their furnishings. For now, I hid the huge metal key from Alice, and I stashed it atop the highest shelf in my bed chamber’s armoire.

Throughout the rest of that day and evening, a sense of gloom settled in my heart. The sensation suffused every room, every hallway. Alice seemed ambivalent – alternating between apprehension and a consuming curiosity. She never tired of opening wardrobes, searching for hidden doorways, or browsing the shelves in the home’s library, given her nature as an avid reader. In addition, she pointed out something on the family coat of arms displayed in the parlor – symbology I hadn’t seen before. At its center, rays of light beamed from an open door.

Perhaps it was the dimness, the emptiness of the great house that unsettled me. Heavy, dark furniture in most rooms sat shrouded in dust. We found several chambers strung heavily with cobwebs, a diminutive bat skeleton dangling from one by a thread. Thank goodness we saw no large, furry spiders, but only their long-forgotten handiwork.

----

On our third day at Portis House, I was just finishing breakfast when Alice came running in, carrying a dusty old tome in her hands. She’d been spending nearly every waking hour in there reading and researching our family’s history.

“Father,” she said, her eyes wide with excitement, “you must hear what I’ve learned. About the founding of this house!”

“I can’t wait to hear it,” I said, smiling.

I loved seeing her mother’s tenacity and curiosity still alive in her. She plopped down on a chair and immediately began to explain.

“First, portis is Latin for doorway, or gateway,” she said. “That explains the coat of arms we saw on the wall. I was curious why our ancestors chose that name over Grimshaw, the family surname. Well – the Grimshaws viewed Portis as a power word. I wondered why that was until I read through other texts on the history of this entire region. There, I learned how an ancient people called the Caledonii inhabited these forests and hills. They used guerilla tactics to fend off the Romans. Interestingly, a cult of mystics among the Caledonii, called the Bealach, played a special role in keeping the Romans at bay.”

“The Bealach,” I said, then repeated the word several times, relishing the sound of the guttural Gaelic on my tongue. “Oh, sorry – please go on.”

Alice explained that the Bealach gained magical power by creating a doorway between the world of the living and the middle place, the realm of ghosts. Through that gateway, spirits of the dead could reach through and pull a living person into their spirit world. As Alice went on, I began to feel a disconcerting chill.

“This killed the victim, of course, “ Alice said. “However, the gateway, and the Bealach themselves, gained power from the spirits. Harvesting, they termed it. And, during the Roman invasion, they used this method to slay Roman soldiers and other officials. Imagine finding the body of an uninjured soldier, lying dead in the middle of a Roman camp or fort. It struck terror into them, and it was a factor in their eventual retreat from the region.”

“So how is the name Portis House connected with the Bealach?” I said.

“Remember those words over the entrance gate? They’re in Latin. They translate to the dead hunger for the living.”

My unsettledness became fear..

“What are you saying, Alice? That our ancestors were members of this cult – this Bealach?”

“Doesn’t it all fit together?” she said. “A powerful family, hundreds of years ago, named their newly founded home after the Latin word for doorway? And then the phrase over the gate – that the dead hunger for the living? When you consider that in light of the Bealach mystics and the power they wielded, it’s quite compelling.”

The thought that my ancestors dragged the souls of the living into the world of ghosts, to increase their power through magical means, unnerved me. But then, considering the remoteness of the estate, I had always wondered what gave the Grimshaw family their power. From what my uncle had told me, the family didn’t mine metals or minerals, nor produce and sell anything. Yet somehow they accumulated wealth and stability across the centuries.

Yes, their tenant farmers and woodsmen paid rents, but I wondered now if some kind of sorcery could explain the Grimshaw power. If so, I felt tainted. To think that all the wealth I and my own family had enjoyed was the result of murderous sorcery was too much to stomach. I had to calm myself, pray on it, and consider all of this more carefully.

The inkling, no, the longing, to flee Portis House suddenly flooded me. The quickest way of forever distancing myself from my family’s dark history. But if the untimely passing of my wife five years ago, and the past few days, had taught me anything, it was that confronting disturbances was the only way to resolve them and find peace. 

At this point, Alice and I would be here for least another week. I had to know if what my daughter had uncovered was true.

----

Alice stood holding my arm as the storm continued its assault. She jumped with each resonant clap of thunder, while a cold sweat had broken out on my own skin. Just then, Mr. Finch, the groundskeeper, rushed in.

He’d served Portis House for over forty years, and, as the family trickled from Portis House, one after another, until only my uncle remained, Finch had remained steadfast in his devotion to the place. Yes, the gardens were now overgrown with weeds and thistles, the lawns untended for over twenty years, but he had served as the home’s repair man, and the house was in remarkable condition. 

Now, as the candelabrum encountered drafts from the storm, his face took on a ghoulish, wrinkled aura – his dark eyes glistening in the shifting, shivering light.

“Mister Grimshaw,” he said, his breathing labored, “I just secured the loose shutters on the second floor. They did a fair amount of damage, but we’ll get no water leakin in during the storm at least.”

“Thanks, Mister Finch,” I said. “Are storms like this common here?”

“Not at this time o’ year,” he said. “It bein’ late fall – we should be watchin’ snowflakes fall, not lightning tearin’ up the sky! Well, I’m off to more work.”

He hurried off, while Alice had released my arm and was now inching her way across the parlor floor. Her gaze appeared riveted to an enormous, medieval tapestry that covered most of the wall. Its colors were so faded that I could discern no pattern or theme.

“Alice?” I said. “You alright?”

Lightning flashed again. Then she pointed to the upper right corner of the tapestry. I’d seen it, too – a white-hot glint of light. Something peeking from behind the tapestry.

“Up there, in that corner,” she said.

Over beside the enormous wall hanging, I reached up and pulled one edge away from the wall – amazed by its thickness and weight.

Then it happened.

The tapestry, in a matter of seconds, tore completely free of its hanging rod and came crashing down upon us. It knocked us to the floor. I felt the shock of pain through my knees as they slammed into the hardwood planking, and Alice cried out.

“Alice!” I shouted.

I quickly struggled free of the immense pile of fabric, as we both coughed and choked in the thick cloud of dust stirred into the air.  Seconds later, I freed Alice, too, and, despite the pain in our knees, we seemed to be uninjured.

The next flash of lightning nearly blinded us, given the darkness of the room. As the bright spots faded from our vision, we saw it.

Anchored to the wall, concealed beneath the tapestry, was an immense mirror, framed in an ornately carved wood frame. I’d never seen one so massive. 

“We’re lucky that didn’t fall on us!” I said. “It would have crushed us to death beneath its weight!”

“And imagine the shattering glass surface!” Alice said.

When the lightning flashed again, my heart seized as I started into the mirror.

“No!” I cried, as I stumbled backward. Alice rushed to my side, terrified.

What I’d seen wasn’t possible. In that brief, blinding flicker, the parlor was filled with people – a hundred of them – standing all about the room, their monochromatic complexions blurred and shimmering. Men, women, children – in all manner of dress, from all periods of time. Was I losing my mind?

“Did you see that?” I shouted. “Alice, did you see it?”

“What? I saw only the room, and us, reflected in the mirror.”

I described the terrifying apparitions I’d glimpsed. How they’d stood collectively at attention, all their gazes focused on us. There was only one explanation. These were ghosts imprisoned in the middle place. By my ancestors, using dark magic. And now we had to free them…