Free Tenebrae Manor by P. Clinen Page A

to those who seek it, Deadsol. But such endeavors are wasted on the ignorant. The cunning always emerge victorious."
    "Oh folly! Woe to me, woe to my mind of severed tendrils!"
    ****
    Madlyn stood at the head of the great stairwell and drifted off into a vacuous reverie. From the outside of a window came a tapping and a muffled hoot, the ghastly shape of a great owl fluttering ominously behind the pane. Madlyn’s own owl-like eyes started at a door slam from where she’d just made egress. Out of the shadows there hopped Comets, having himself been abdicated access to Libra’s bedroom.
    In the blue light of the moon, which cast its shadows in the shapes of grotesque puppets across the bleak stairwell, there stood girl and boy. The servant girl. The harlequin. An alien tension held the pair in a state of caution, for neither of these two had ever laid eyes on the other hitherto. Madlyn relived memories of a younger day when she, a little girl, traversed a tent of funhouse mirrors. Such was the distorted shape of the little man before her, that these memories were relived. Madlyn raised a finger as if to prod Comets’ face. In return he did the same. She tilted her head in inquisitive inclination. He did also.
    ****
    "It was last year when I had decided I would not attend the next celebration," said Edweena. "The very atmosphere of the auditorium made me cringe. And so minimum was the entertainment."
    "Perhaps that is why she seems much more demanding this year. I agree it was not Arpage's magnum opus. You will not attend this time around?"
    Edweena sighed. "I suppose I must. If anyone inquires, I am there to assist you. Let it be known I still hold my grudges..."
    ‘It is appreciated, to be sure.”
    Bordeaux and Edweena slowly made the return journey to the light of the kitchen corridors, dim as it may be, yet a revered salvation from the pitch-blackness of the haunting cellar. A voice seemed to drift from the dark, a whisper that crawled across the necks of the two beings. Forget the light, it said. Stay here in blinding doom; give yourselves up to the enveloping morbid sleep. Down here there is no light, not in this far corner, these most deep confines, this very perimeter of space and time. Not even the dim moonlight of the Tenebrae night can penetrate this lull.
    The bloodcurdling murmur was unanswered by both Bordeaux and Edweena, immune as they were to all horrors after centuries spent in darkness. Any other weak mortal would swiftly perish here, this place where sanity was so easily surrendered. Where one finds themselves dashing wildly into unseen surroundings in panicked attempt to find an escape, to expel all terror from the hot blood of their warm bodies, for they are so foreign in this cellar devoid of heat and pulse.
    No, Bordeaux and Edweena did not turn towards the voice. Their backs remained facing the darkness, morphed into hulking shadows against the backdrop of the torchlight.
    ****
    Deadsol clasped his scalp in anguish; his erratic composure had flown from bold intrusion to pitiful depression.
    Libra watched this charade with indifference; Deadsol's exaggeration of all emotive faculties was well documented amongst the residents of Tenebrae Manor. Her patience was dwindling, the urge to be rid of the man stirring the cauldron of her bubbling anger.
    "Deadsol, cease this blubbering! Cease!"
    "Blubbering, she says! Blubber, the very word carries hypocrisy. Oh ho lo! Pot calls the kettle black! A pot indeed! Oh woe!"
    At last, Libra's temper reached boiling point. She stood from her recline and raised her hands skyward.
    Deadsol gasped as he felt his feet leave the ground, as though some unseen force had plucked him up by the scruff of the neck. He thrashed and wept like an infant, his leather shoes clacking together as he kicked.
    "You forget yourself, Deadsol. I should give you such a thrashing." Libra's voice was one of unwavering control. "Your priorities should direct themselves towards that of my