Shadows Out of Time

He handed me a folded sheaf of papers Redcap had given him and swore me to keep it, the only known description of the Inheritor and the Private Estate. From the personal effects of a New England poet bought by Redcap at auction in Arkham, Massachusetts. The poet, who came to New York in the 1920s, found the city nightmarish and oppressive, its antiquarian remnants its only saving grace.

I read the brittle pages again tonight, recalling how I first skimmed them by moonlight, an account of a night walk like our own, ending in my brother’s destination. The poet rendered what he saw from the Estate’s library windows a “pandaemoniac sight…the heavens verminous with strange flying things, and beneath them a hellish black city of giant stone terraces with impious pyramids flung savagely to the moon, and devil-lights burning from unnumbered windows.” He called it “the shrieking fulfilment of all the horror which that corpse-city had ever stirred in my soul, and forgetting every injunction to silence I screamed and screamed and screamed…”

Were the screams that haunted us that night echoes of the poet’s screams? The screams of others who’d walked those same alleys? The screams of children murdered and discarded behind old walls? Of those who’d looked out the Estate’s windows at a world of madness and despair?

When I looked up from the pages, the last door hung open, and Dennis, already through it, climbed a gravel path toward a terrifying house of shadows, whose cupola crested trees that didn’t belong in the city I knew, a bright needle aimed at the mysterious stars and illuminated by moonlight.

Maggie: Dennis, no! Come back.

Me: Let him do what he needs to do. Then we all get out of here.

Maggie: No way! He’s coming back with us now.

Me: Maggie, wait!

Maggie chased Dennis. I dashed after her as fresh screams resonated within the walls of the courtyard and footsteps clattered from the surrounding alleys. The meager flames of oil and candle that lit our way back snuffed out one by one behind us. The full moon persisted — then faded as a tangible darkness surrounded us and cut me off from my brother and friend. Cold seeped into my bones as I ascended the trail. Only the crunch of gravel underfoot let me know I remained on the path. I hurried along until I stumbled against a hard object. When I righted myself, a tepid yellow brightness glimmered ahead. I had caught my foot on the first of several steps approaching a doorway. The light came from within it. My eyes adjusted to the gloom. I entered the house in search of Dennis and Maggie.

Dying candle stubs lit the foyer and the bottom of a curving staircase. Seeing no other rooms or doors I climbed the stairs and called out Maggie’s name, then Dennis’s. My voice echoed flatly, but no other answer came. At the top of the stairs I faced three doors along a hallway filled with the odor of age and mustiness. The first two doors proved locked, but the third swung open onto a room where I found my brother and my friend with the strange man in the Georgian clothing. He studied his pocket watch, its chain dangling from his grip. The room — a paneled library stocked with books so ancient they looked ready to crumble to dust — sloped oddly to my right, creating an odd discordance with the sagging shelves. Dennis and Maggie stood side by side at three modest windows of rippled glass and lead muntins. Timid light from a sliver of moon glittered through. Before I saw any more, the Georgian man noticed me. Stuffing his watch into his pocket, he rushed me, and then pushed me back into the hallway. Without a word, he slammed the door in my face and locked it.

I pounded on the wood, called for Maggie and Dennis, but the door held firm, and no one answered my pleas. How long I stayed there, fighting a losing battle with the door, I don’t know. The harder I banged, the louder I cried out, the more the screams that filled that horrible night pierced me. They came from everywhere outside the strange house as if all the screams I’d ever heard reverberated together in that place.

I gave up on the door only when a hand dropped onto my shoulder from behind.

Jolting around, I confronted an arm reaching for me out of the empty shadows.

Another arm joined it. Both seized me by the shoulders then yanked me off-balance. As I toppled forward, darkness cupped me like an angry hand — and shoved.

A sensation of falling came. The world blanked out.