Behind A Veil of Sleep

[gothicwords]

“Behind a Veil of Sleep”


To the east end of the town of Mrken, butted up against the mountain’s range stood the Rose Estate. In days past it’s presence had been a grand one. Welcomed by the town for decades. The smell of roses drifted through the town summer after summer. A thicket of thorns and red petals guarded the front entrance to the Manor. It was gothic style in artucture that was typical of the times and hinted at the darker dealings of the man who had built the home for his girls. Four towering wings went out and up to the heavens from each corner of the Manor. It had extended wings for each of his daughters to claim and explore as their own. Polished lime stone, marble, garnet had all been brought up the river on barges the year it was built. Grandiosity was the theme of Christopher’s life and he had flourished in his trade. A seaman, whose nature was kind and giving? Yet it was rumored that his wealth was not come upon honestly. He spent his life searching for the treasures of the sea. The mystery of far off lands, and nothing not even the love of Sarah his wife could keep him from his adventures.

Christopher was an excellent man of the Sea. He stood heads and shoulders above the other men. Built muscles that should not have been on a man of such wealth, He was broad across the chest and even broader across the shoulders. His crew had called him God’s Pirate. He was ruthless when it came to business and known for all sorts of manipulations of his prisoners. The man was relentless and he kept it all hidden behind a diplomatic smile. He was a charmer of wits who was bold and influential. Deep hollow eyes of a dark brown convinced men to follow him into stormy winds, promising them the riches of the next land they would throng upon.
Gold of the west, marble of the east and woman in abundance with lands to be reaped and secret treasures sunken beneath black waters to be claimed.

Yet his girls knew only the love of their father. He was gentle and kind, smelling always of sweet coconut and eastern tobacco. And they loved him more than they loved life. And when he died the girls vowed to stay a family and love each other until the end of time.

Sarah Rose had been the most beautiful thing Christopher had ever seen and regardless of the warning of marring such a pagan, he followed his heart and made her his wife. Life had been good and passionate when the girls were young. Day after day he would take his family to the cliffs to tell them of his adventures. Only Alexi would come to know the truth of those adventures, she was the oldest and she was most like her father. Her mother called her a Rapid Wind. And she resented the children, for the love and attention Christopher gave them as they grew and neglected her while gone for months, on his affair with his other love. Rose Justice.

“My little rapid wind, you will be just like him. Making others love you and leaving them to hug at the air, while promising them the world. ” Her mother had often said these things to her before tucking her into bed.

The dedication of Christopher’s faith contradicted that of the girl’s mother who was pagan. Sarah Rose had thrown herself over a rocky ledge, killing herself while the girls were yet just young teenagers. The news of it sank his will to live and broke his heart. Sarah was the one thing he could not live without. Within three months the daughters of Christopher Rose would send the ashes of their father over the very same cliffs. Joining their mother in the rising of the tide.

The Manor had been completed for nearly ten years before the death of Sarah and Christopher Rose. It still sits on the Eastern edge of town; empty of the family that once brought it alive with Love and Hope. It was left to rot with spirits of the portraits inside. Alexi had painted them all so many times, on large velveteen canvases. Now framed to hang from fabric-covered walls. Old music echoed from within and breathed out through the polished stone. The four girls had left it behind. Messina the last of the four to leave it empty had been so reluctant. They had promised their father, to keep the Rose name alive, yet how could they do that with no husbands, and no children? Her departure for Amasynia to marry the Lord Edric was a way to carry on the name, and to continue to love. Rotting away in an old house would be a waste of her life, and one she knew her father would not want.

Alexi as the oldest of the girls and a twin to Gabbi had also been the first to leave. Promising the girls she would come back and with the wealth of a thousand men. She had taken claim to Rose Justice as her father had made her vow. And set sail after several years of establishing herself among the crew and merchants of the land. Replacing her father as Captain had been nearly impossible. At first the other merchant’s had laughed and scoffed. It was the invasion of the enemies of her Father that had caused her to take up a sword, and fight as a man. And she had for several years, guised herself as a man. It was the element of surprised that she slit throats and made a name for herself and her crew. To this day she may shake your hand a little to firm, and have you call her Justice.

The girl’s father had always meant for them to be safe within the walls of that Manor. It would be a place for them to love each other, unconditional. Special care had been taken in crafting out the towers, secret passages and doors, which only opened under the placement of the right key. The girls would forever be safe within the walls of the home he had spent a lifetime building for them.

Strange things happen to a home that sits empty full of secrets.

<tbc>

[gothicwords]

(Several weeks-months ago)

“Take a hold of my hand and do not let go.” Alexi had said to the noble gentleman she had invited to her home. They stood outside the looming entrance of the manor. Oak doors fashioned with a lion’s head knocker. She lifted the heavy metal bar and slammed it against the lower lip of the beast. Over looking a lace covered shoulder she regarded the handsome man with a reassuring smile. Flipping a key into the lock she turned it and the door eased open into a dark entrance.

“No servants?” The eager man asked curiously. For such a wealthy woman at least in appearance and manners it didn’t seem right that she lived alone. Nor did it seem right that such a large estate would be completely dark. However she was beautiful and may provide him some pleasurable experience, so with that thought in mind he entered the Manor.

A dark circle of inner shadows filled their eyes once they stepped through into the circular entry. Two sets of stairs whirled up either side of the looming high cathedral walls. Paintings hung of what appeared the linage of a noble family. Art in it’s own right, picturing ships on stormy black seas, beautiful young woman and little girls lined the stair wall casing. Every door was closed and there must have been ten in that circle entry alone. The feeling that a light may interrupt some sort of quietness inside the manor seemed to surround the gentleman. Alexi knew the feeling all to well. She hated this part of the house and did everything quickly. Lighting a lantern from an invisible desk and moving towards the eastern door.

It was then that she knew they were awake. The first sound of life came with a slamming of a door above. The man startled by it let go of her hand and went towards the first set of stairs. “I thought you said you lived alone.” He questioned, turning to look back at the peacock feathered merchant. She hurried over with the lantern, voice quiet. Hushing him. God, what was she thinking inviting someone else into this house?

“Yes, the cats, they like to play.’ She waved a hand about through the air to dismiss it. Even offered a convincing smile. Although her eyes dragging up the entire length of the dark wood staircase.

**A memory flashed through her mind**

- Years before Messina had come flying down those stairs as a teenager with a young man-giving chase to the flapping of her skirts. The two had fallen into a kissing mess of fabric and flesh at the base of the stair where she and this stranger now stood. The giggles of her sister’s young passion seemed to still be echoed down the stairwell, except now a hollow sound filled that laughter. A deep hollow swell that took over the remembered giggles and mocked Alexi. She grabbed the stranger’s hand and pulled him away, back towards the locked doors.

“Come on lets see about that something better I spoke of earlier?” That should get his attention and it did. She unlocked the door bringing it to fling open as it felt like a window had been left open inside the new room they were to enter. Cold, and disturbing the sensation. She grasped his hand and refused to let go, turning to relock the door they had just entered and then motioned in which direction she was going. She did this because she was about to ran through the darkened room while her hand held like a vice to the mans. – The lantern in her other hand creaked, casting a small amount of light to the checkered, black and white marbled floor. There were instruments throughout the room, such as a grand piano covered in white linen. A wall full of books that was full of rows and rows of shelves mingled in with all of Alexi's paintings. Lovely paintings that watched them as the two adults literally ran across the room as if some monster was going to grab them from behind. Another key, another door and Alexi pushed the man into the next room and looked behind her long enough to see the others shadows that lived in her house, creeping up the walls. Then just as she herself went through the door to join the gentleman she heard the familiar sound of a whooping pulse fill the music room. The door was pushed shut with a remarkable about of effort on her part and then securely locked. This door now that she locked was the door of her chambers.

Inside it was nothing like the rest of the manor. A fire burned low and warm in the large carved mantle. Swords lined the walls along with pictures of her sisters and the ships she named after them. Gabbi, Leitha, and Messina. Then Sarah and Rose Justice. Flowers scattered the room in vases and books outnumbered the shelves and piled up in stacks at one end of the room. The chamber itself was octagon in shape, and divided into two areas by the hanging of a gloriously rich velvet curtain. Apparently a poster bed lay behind the drawn sheers of a canopy while the rest of the room was scattered with furnishing from every end of the land. A table of food with things such as sugared fruits, cheeses and hardened French breads. A hearth and an arrangement of seating, all made the woman’s chambers quite cozy, and comfortable, but not nearly as opulent as one might have imagined her to live. This was all she really needed. Yet one was to wonder if that is because this space was all she was allowed to have since she returned home to find Messina had left the house empty of a Roses presence. Leaving it a perfect habitation for what was Hidden up stairs and slowly growing in number as they took over every room in the Manor. Every room but her own.

She ignored the strange looks the gentleman was giving her. He had questions she didn’t want to answer right this moment. To her dresser she went, disappearing behind the velvet curtian. She started a music box that she always played throughout the night. A small mirrored box of music to ward of evil. Once it began she was able to relax and focuse on something other than her fear of the darkness of her own home.

“Madam. Your home, it’s…” The man began coming towards her in a careful way, unsure of how she would react to any advancement or comment on the obvious haunting of the manor. “Lovely.”

He changed his tone as he saw and felt the tugging of his collar. Alexi’s fingers had begun to pluck away at the buttons of his shirt. Looking up to him she carelessly rolled a shrug off her shoulders.

“Don’t worry, we are safe in here.” She assured him with hot kisses to his thick scented neck. Her words were all that needed to be said before she and the handsome younger man took the rest of the evening to become acquainted.

[gothicwords]

It is not the will of your father...that one of these little ones should perish.
- Matthew 18:14

“James what are you doing? Get back to work, I did not hire you to stand around daydreaming.” Shouted Paul over the heads of the other men who were all gathered around the construction site. Each man had a shovel all his own. James had paused his digging and was staring off towards the Manor. He leaned on the handle of the shovel, the wedged metal stuck firmly in the thawing spring soil.

“James?” Paul huffed tossing another load of soil over his shoulder. The rest of the men knew to keep working, but each of them in turn looked to James who just stood there staring across the grounds towards the Manor.

“Get back to work James. Nothing to see, Ms Rose isn’t even home and no one else lives here. Come on we’ve got a few more hours before we can call it a day. “ Paul was trying to be persuasive before he had to take action. Yet James slowly opened his mouth, pointing towards the Tavern his light red brow had knitted together in a distraught nature. Some of the others turned to look across towards the Manor.

“Me wife says it’s haunted. Spooks filling up the rooms, spirits of children. “ James was not an educated man and the only reason he had gotten the job was because he’s managed to convince Paul he was an able worker. And when he actually did work James could do twice as much as the others. Paul grunted climbing up the incliment of the foundation they were digging. He too turned looking to one of the many windows of Rose Manor.

James. “Me wife says that’s why Miss Rose wants to build the Orphanage for the spooks n spirits.” He explained spitting the juice that had collected from the pinch in his mouth.

“Jimmy, that has to be dumbest thing I’ve heard all day. “ Paul shook his head flicking drops of sweat from the line of his brow went sailing through the air.

“You’ve not been sleepin out here at night Paul. There is noise's, strange noise's Paul. Like the trees be groaning. And I’ve been having bad dreams too. It’s the devil. That house has the devil in it.” James went on giving another spit of saliva and tobacco mixed from his mouth.

“That’s enough!” Paul growled taking James by the ear and pulling him off to the side away from the others. “You listen here ya dumb arse, I don’t need any of that kinda talk around me men. Rumors like that could ruin us from keeping this job, if I hear you talking about that Manor and the Devil I’ll see to it you aren’t able to find work in these parts again. Are we Clear Jimmy?” Paul shoved the man’s head away by the fold of his ear lobe. The simpleton that James was did not realize he could have broken Paul in half just by the sheer difference in height and weight. Jimmy stood about six five and was three hundred and twelve pounds of solid muscle. Holding his ear he whimpered, and nodded once.

“Yeah boss, now me ear hurts.” James pulled the end of the steal shovel out of the dirt and hopped back down into the foundations pit. Looking up at Paul with green eyes, one of which always crossed to the center bridge of his nose.

“You’ll see, soon enough.” James warned in his odd way before he bent over and went back to leveling a good foundation for Miss Rose’s orphange.

[Kobra]

The halls were cast in blue by a moonlight that crawled timidly through the windows of the Rose manor as though it were afraid of being swallowed by the darkness therein.

haunted, they had said

A motheaten curtain undulated in the lunar stare, dancing in a trail of dust-motes; painted with a glow akin to fireflies. Planes of hard and angled shadows clung to the intersection of walls; oozed into the faces of portraits; seeped into the cracks in armor-suits and glowering ancestral busts.

cold.

Here, there was true Darkness. The lights of men, of candle-flame and lantern-glow, held no sway within this hollow bastion. Heat and light were distant and rumored things; here dark things multiplied, feeding off the memories this place held.

they're all here.

The laughter of children fluttered in the chambers of a tortured mind. She had tried so hard to protect them; to gather the little ones to her, the ones that needed help, needed love, needed discipline. Why had they ridiculed her? Left her concerns to play second fiddle to the machismo of these men and their warfare? Why were foreign monsters to be dealt with while starving children were allowed to huddle in the streets?

play with us

[gothicwords]

Not again.

On the floor she found herself in a cold sleep. In that same oval room that multiplied with shadows. Moonlight filled the oval room with butter crème hues. The room splintered with shadows and distorted the merchant’s features. Yellow hues of dark light could not clear the cloud of confusion she felt.

Just last night she had fallen asleep in her Chambers, it had been last night hadn't it? She had locked herself and Rico in her chambers where it was safe from the others. Separated from the rest of the house or more importantly away from the others that where in the house. The veil of protection was wearing thin. Some how they were creeping in through the chambers, through her dreams. More times than not she found herself waking like this. As if she'd been sleeping for weeks. It felt sinfully good. And every time it happened she wanted nothing more than to just return to it. The Sleeping. The dreams. They felt so good.

It was a fog of confusion. But how had she gotten here, again without memory of climbing the stairs?. Yet here she was, and not for the first time either.

Cold. It was so cold where she was. She knew this room. It was perhaps central, smack dab in the middle of the house on the third floor of the Manor. Yet, she had closed all upper levels off for some time. She had to keep the rest of them out. She wanted it for herself. The Sleep. What if they found out about it? Her obsession to Sleep. She had to. She’d do anything to Sleep with them. More loved ones where filling the Manor. Rico, Lee, And Messina. How was she going to keep them from knowing about this? She was waking most mornings; sometimes she wouldn’t wake until the middle of the day when the sun would bring light between the drawn curtains. No one could know about this.

Feet squabbled upward to gain a footing. The smell of smoke, lingered in through a partly open window awaked her senses. She gave the cool air a sniff followed by another. Something was burning. Outside.

A shadow moved to whisper it’s cold and needful caressed into her eardrum. "Ssssleeep..."

Just then a large crash came from outside, as if lumber was being knocked down.

The first glimpse of the destruction through the pain of double glass gave a distorted view of a nightmare. Alexi screamed. Shattering that veil of Sleep.

The Orphanage. It was on Fire. The nearly complete outer structure was collapsing to the earth. "No!"

She flung herself through the cold room and down the many levels of stairwells yelling for Rico.

"The Orphanage, it's on FIRE. It's on Fire. Rico. Hurry. Get the men, Hurry! "

Lee. Lee, the name resounded in her head. His threatening words remembered. "Everyone you care about suffers." How could he? She shot through the Manor in her nightgown flinging a purple robe over her figure and ran bare foot through the spring grass.

Yet one yearning desire pulsed through her. Chestnut curls bouncing across a shoulder as she obeyed the desire to look up to the window of the secret room she had awoken up in. The desire to get back to the Others was silenced only by the sound of water and flames. Soon they promised, she’d be able to Sleep, with the Hidden Ones.

[gothicwords]

Barges of timber went up stream, pulled by workhorses and manpower. More than half a dozen of them were laden down with enough material to build the orphanage. Cypress wood and cut maple, iron works and heavy rock, crystal and brass fixtures along with gopher wood and pitch. Men, horses, rigs of steal all laboring to reach Rose Manor. Ever material that would be needed was being brought up the Sagpa River and through the town of Mryken.

Alexi Rose stood beneath the canvas tent on her estate. It kept the rain off the materials and the men who rested dry. Barrels of water, food and other assorted goods loitered the surroundings. Dust rose up around the Estate created one large continual ball of dirt for the first two days. Until the foundation had been re-established.


"Paul, I want to see this orphanage ready in one months time."

The order was not a simple one but it was exactly what she expected.

"I've given you enough men, enough materials now make it happen. I'll see to it that your men are provided for and guarded while they remain on the estate. I want the men on shifts. I want the work to continue, day and night until the orphanage is finished. "

"Rose?" Paul inquired with a tip of his hat to her drawing an elbow across his sweaty forehead. He had a stalk build and dirty features, but kind eyes.

"I'm just wondering Rose, how you are paying for all of this. I mean. Well." He waited watching to see her reaction but it was simply a small laugh that he got in return. He never knew what to expect from the woman. She was sweet and kind one moment and the next she might be cutting out your tongue with a dull knife. She dusted navy blue leather hands together and waved him forward.

"Don't you worry about that Paul? You've gotten your share already haven't you? You worry about getting that orpahange bult on time."
She gave his shoulder a jerking squeeze. A sharp glare into his face was washed with a cynical smile.

"Now if you will excuse me, I need to .." She yawns "take a nap."

[Kobra]

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She lay, a sleeping princess amid a garden of the macabre.

The dark in atramentous tendrils slithered over her motionless body; the rose from her cheeks stolen by their chill fingers; their icy breath tickled lips of sweet warmth and lungless chasms drank in her precious air.

Their bodies were all about her; not merely in the shadows but in squalid flesh slithering against her own; skin to skin they writhed above her and around her and inside her, slick black horrors as cold as the lifeless ocean; their clammy, inhuman limbs tightening about her beauteous form in embraces foul and unnatural.

And with their gibbering cries they whispered of nocturnal obscenities too terrible to name; and with the corpse-glow that lurked behind their bulbous eyes they opened the way; they continued the journey. She would see its end.

Each time, a little different. Each time, the same...

She stood on a hilltop; bare legs rustled by the breeze. Around her the land stretched oddly, as though it were a sheet pulled too tightly from a central point; the hills wered drawn taut into narrow lines of perspective thrust outward to the horizon; it seemed as though she was the heart of it, and all were zooming harshly toward her.

Cold. She looked down to see her feet encased in writhing maggots; the hill was breaking apart, their rancid squirming forms pushing up from the dark, pulling her down; great fat things of bloated off-white wiggling with gluttonous futility, slithering between her toes, gnawing small shards of flesh away with their tiny jaws; their heads not the expressionless bulbs of larval insects but instead - gods - human faces, some of them familiar, with pale empty eyes and hateful, gnashing teeth.

Though she screamed they kept coming, pulling her down into their mass; filling her eyes and mouth, while above she screamed for Kanashia; his white-clothed body hung above her, head down, spine distended; a rope about his neck, leaving ugly bruises on his flesh. But this time, in this dream, it was not Lucian that held the rope.

It was Altias Bromn.

Then the maggots shrieking obscenities dragged her down into their midst -

"Whore! Filth! Perverter of children! Witch! Witch! Blasphemous harlot! What have you done? You've ruined them! You've broken them all!" They spat and hissed with their miniscule belligerence, ropes of festering drool hanging from their jaws; vomiting forth tinier maggots still with every toxic breath.

Movement; pulled down an endless tube, an obscene twisting tunnel of flesh and writhing tendrils - of clawed hands striking her, leaving scars and scratches, ripping off her flimsy gown to leave her vulnerable and cold in this place of visceral nightmare. A final ejection; a perverse rebirth, squeezing her out of the monstrous womb and into a cold and infinite ocean.

Drifting; floating and sinking, her hair unbound and cast about her to drift upon ethereal winds; she descended over a nightmare world where the air seemed made of black water; yet it left no wetness on the skin, only a chill that seeped beyond to gnaw at mind and soul when body's barriers were broken.

Here, like an angel she was cast out over a landscape beneath the onyx waters that seemed horribly familiar. For there west she could see Devil Ridge; and there, many fires, lighting up the rumpled stone as though it bore the eyes of a thousand demons; but it was east her form was torn t'ward the Sikasoon range, toward the great lake that lay in her foothills; and there, drawn closer, closer...

To a single, twisted tree on an overhang near the lake, roots bloated and lumpy like diseased entrails pushed up from the soil; limbs knotted and cancerous, splayed in agony to the lifeless skies; and the construction of bumps and knotholes upon the trunk giving the terrifying impression of a female form, frozen in perpetual screams no-one would ever hear; crusted crimson sap pouring in twin lines from the holes that were her eyes.

And below her view soared to a rotted shack held in the shadow of that portentous marker; a tiny thing overgrown with river-reeds and tangled vines, the lone window a cyclopean eye-socket in a decay-darkened skull.

With merciless insistence, the nightmare forced her vision to zoom through the half-slung door...

[gothicwords]

Waking up”

Rose bolted up off the floorboards naked and cold. Eyelets lengthened wide with apprehension. Inside one of the many rooms of Rose Manor she kneeled with a rigid back facing the tiled wall. Significantly stiff she sought to scream and to move, but nothing would function. Her muscles all just a frozen existence of flesh. Palms pressed down into the wooden planks until they tingled from the lack of blood reaching her filed nail beds. Needing with a coxing desire she leaned forward to see just beyond the tree and inside to the vision of the half-slung door.

Shallow breaths urged out between trembling jaws of her aristocratic features. Vunerable with need for warmth, the small white hairs of her arms raised, flesh tingling with ache. The cold air in the room made it harder and harder to breathe. Slowing her breathes to faint palpations. Confusion riddled her conscience. Fingers pedaled across her abdomen, soft flesh and a tiny inward naval, marked by the skull-ish tattoo entwined with a thorny rose. Those hands sheltered and protected the life inside. This had to stop. She had to stop doing this. Yet the erge to lie back on the floor and close her eyes was overwhelming. She wanted to know what was under that tree, and what was in the small little shack beneath. It called for her to come and see. It had for so long. She had been sleeping with them for months now. Long enough to know she was always among the Hidden Ones and they with her. She couldn’t leave them. They needed her. Just like Phlynn needed her. Just like the children of Mryken needed her and the town of Mryken. All of them a collective necessitate, gradually coming together.

Behind the comfort of closed eyes filled with blackness where she could see it all again. There was that wide-open space and the beautiful lush green of the hilltop. Vegetation caressing the bare flesh of her leg. The world was hers for those first few moments, free and possible. Just like the ocean when she had sailed it all those years. The landscape seemed to go on forever. It all would mock her eventually, coming forth out of the hilltop was the nightmare, right inside of her. It was longer than she could reach, farther than she could see, the hill shrunk and she became so small, crumbling. “No, no.” her mouth mimicked the words. She didn’t want to remember now. Why had she ever wanted to go back to this? Kanashia hung up by a rope held by Altias. A pit filled with maggots eating at her flesh, the abyss of filth and sin.

“No no.” I am not a whore or a witch. I love the children. The children. No. No you lie. You tell lies. You can’t make me hurt them. They are ours to love!”

She peeled open her eyes to see that she wasn’t there; she was in one of the rooms up stairs. How long had she been asleep? A few hours? A night, a day? Two days? Maybe more. Every time she slept it was deeper and longer. Now when she emerged from her private slumber, others had started to ask, where she had taken off too. Paranoia was setting in.

Her belly was hardly showing but she stared down at it, knowing that a child was coming in the coming months. What she didn’t yet know was there was more than one. The need to protect and nurture it filled her with a longing to go back to sleep. The baby needed her to rest and save her energy to be healthy and strong.

Her eyelids felt so very heavy. Maybe the nightmare would go away this time and it would just be like the beginning, before the Hidden Ones. When dreams were filled with warmth and freedom.

Sleep, Sleep Alexi.

They beckoned. Maybe just a little longer.

Sleep Mommy