Bound & Bound – the Curse and the Captives – - 1. Chapter 1: Falling Through a Tunnel

Bound & Bound

– the Curse and the Captives –

"Freedom is existence."

Jean-Paul Sartre

”When we are dead,

seek not our tomb in the earth,

but find it in the hearts of men.”

Rumi

A Modern Gothic Novel

by AC Benus

for

THE FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD BOY

who conceived of this book.

I hope he can look up to me

with some pride

Contents

Chapter 1: Falling Through a Tunnel

Chapter 2: The Cemetery

Chapter 3: Letter from the Dead

Chapter 4: Arbitrary

Chapter 5: Stay Away from Me

Chapter 6: The First Pick Blow

Chapter 7: The Scrying

Chapter 8: On the Balcony

Chapter 9: Strained Circumstances

Chapter 10: Rumi in the Pit

Chapter 11: Rape of Ambition

Chapter 12: Complex Feelings

Chapter 13: Vamp Club

Chapter 14: Spider's Web

Chapter 15: Train Ride to Sighisoara

Chapter 16: Lady on the Loggia

Chapter 17: With Eyes Raised to God

Chapter 18: "Did you hear me?"

Chapter 19: A Monster's Birthplace

Chapter 20: The Well in the Woods

Chapter 21: Blood Betrothal

Chapter 22: The Guest; Fate's Choice

Chapter 23: A Stroke of his Belly

Chapter 24: Ecstasy

Chapter 25: Climbing the Rook

Chapter 26: In the Bear Pit

Chapter 27: Family Crest

Chapter 28: The Love Word

Chapter 29: Black Heart

Chapter 30: Rapt Disbelief

Chapter 31: Bound & Bound

Chapter 32: Molybdomancy

Chapter 33: Rising Water

Chapter 34: Water Versus Heart

Chapter 35: Respect

Chapter 36: Under the Floor

Chapter 37: Hoia-Baciu

Chapter 38: Executor

Chapter 39: Full Circle

Chapter 40: Denouement

Chapter 1: Falling Through a Tunnel

LIGHTNING MOMENTARILY BLINDS ME. Dream-like, the space within my head bristles with static, and ionized particles leave the taste of blood on the back of my tongue.

In that self-imposed darkness, raindrops pelt my cheeks and forehead like shearing points of ice. From there they pour unchecked straight down into my eyes.

Thunder rumbles over my chest, within which my heart burns like fire: I am powerless, afraid, and very cold.

I draw my eyes open again while licks of lightning reveal my destination through the black night. A road winds along a stream's crooked course ahead of me, and white-hot spectres of fulmination silhouette a mountain as they dance a fury behind it. Atop its craggy peak a castle is outlined and featureless, save for menacing turret teeth and spiked roof pinnacles.

I am sitting in a cart. The motion of the driver in front catches my attention. He raises his whip, and Crack!, he hurries his lank horse along.

Thunder rolls persistently. It joins the vibrations rising from the rough cartwheels to further rattle me.

Trying to move my hands causes instant regret. In agony I realize that they are pinned tightly behind my lower back. Rope that feels like the woven matrix of a thousand needles sears by grinding within the open sores of my lashed wrists.

I shake the icy rain from my face like a dog; it's then that I notice what I am wearing. It is a long shirt the colour of the night around me, and as rough in its woollen texture as sandpaper against my skin. It is plain in the extreme, and seems mostly like a sack with arm slits. My bare legs and feet are folded under me for warmth, but they are still shivering where the rain touches them.

Something makes me turn. The whole time, another man has been in the cart with me. He is tied up too, but overall he appears much different than I do. For one, at about thirty, he's five or six years older than I am, and his attitude is sharp and confrontational. His clothes are vibrant and well made: baggy trousers in a light colour, and a pieced-together shirt of red and yellow bands drawing together in a "V" down the centre of his powerful chest. One would think he'd display signs of being sympathetic to our shared plight, but I have to say, he only seems angry, angry with me perhaps.

His dark features are chiselled; aquiline. A well-shaped beard does not hide but only enhances his determined face – perhaps the face of a warrior – a soldier in the in-between time of fight and rest.

He glances at me like I am worthless to him. Like his misery, which by right of experience is mine too, is a burden to him.

In the distance a crow caws, and I turn to regard the shadowy castle again. I do not know where I am, but I fear the place I am going to with my whole being.

Lightning sears, and I snap my eyes shut to feel and taste my internal static one more time, for when I open them again, everything is different.

Gone is that feeling of surrender, gone too is the cold and night.

I stand in a courtyard.

The late afternoon day is warm, but my stomach is chilled and knotted.

"Is this a dream?" I ask myself.

I glance around the court. The irregular sides are a mixture of bare rock walls, fancy-carved stonework, and galleries that rise several stories. Running columns and arches peer down from the second and third levels.

The sun is setting and casting a vermillion-orange glow over everything, including the two prisoners being held to their knees before me.

Through my moment of disorientation, I glance powerlessly down at my rising hands. My clothes are fancy, silk I guess, and gold lace trims the coat that I am wearing. This dark green outer jacket is cut so that it comes down to my mid-thigh. My waist is secured with a leather belt over the jacket, and it is one that is so long, the end is looped through the cinching to hang loose as a dog's tongue by my right kneecap. A scabbard and sword are attached to this belt, and my hand goes to the hilt as if that is its accustomed resting spot.

The men – the prisoners – are made to bow their heads by the pair of guards behind them. The one to my left is the strong one from the cart, although the fighting spirit I saw then is now turned to something else. To what I do not know, but it is just as fierce as when first seen.

A woman steps up from behind me and touches my right elbow. She wears clothes as elaborate as mine: a flame-red silk gown with gold embroidery encrusting every exposed edge. When I glance at her face, and at her savage beauty, I find that I hate her with my whole being. She is the one making me do this, do this thing that knots my gut into regret even for an act not yet played out.

Her touch at my elbow becomes a searing grip.

Somewhere distant, a crow caws.

"All right," I tell her, and mean 'You win.'

To the guards I command, "Take them, to where they belong."

The watchmen kick the prisoners to their feet, and the lashed men stumble over the cobblestones, as the unnatural shift of balance with hands pinned behind them makes equilibrium a challenge.

The men are further booted and shoved towards a low stone wall. I do not know what it is, but it has a broad curve to it, and a course of capstones brings it to about half a metre high.

My sword rattles slightly. This woman whom I hate has slipped her hand through the crook of my arm with deceptive ease. We walk through the court, trailing the confined men.

When they get there, the prisoners are roughly propelled to their knees right before the wall. Boot heels are placed high on the men's backs, between the shoulder blades, and force the men to bend.

Their upper chests and necks are laid flat on top of the wall. They rotate heads to look at one another.

A shirtless castellan appears from one of the doorways. He is the commanding officers of the guards, and as such, must play another role in the castle as well. Now he wears only black leather trousers and boots. In his hand, and slung backwards over one shoulder, he carries a crescent-honed broad-axe. On his face rides an atramentous mask in the maddening form of a raven – as ink-dark as night itself – and one that obscures his features, all of his features except for his disconcertingly human eyes.

I confront the woman. "No, it's not too late."

She tosses an iniquitous chortle in my face. It is one of false amusement couched in contempt for my 'weakness' of spirit.

I do not have to be psychic to know what she thinks of me. So, why then is it that in this heart I occupy, I know that once I loved this monstrous creature; that once this 'thing' made me both proud for my manhood to possess her, and content to have her love own me to my very fibre – but not now.

By the low stone wall, the two lashed men speak softly. It is a strange language, but by tone alone I know the soldier captive is angry. He seems to be spitting out a vendetta-laden threat, but the other one – who is younger and more soulful – appears to be comforting his companion in warm tones.

The guards back away, and the raven-masked executioner steps up besides the soldier prisoner. The castellan tests the blade angle against the warrior's neck and finds the right position to assume a wide-legged stance.

He raises the axe. It is drawn back in spring-like tension over the executioner's head.

I yell at the woman, "Wait – No!"

The cruel one's derisive laugh rings out and pings shrill echoes against every stony corner of the courtyard.

The axeman's oddly human eyes are locked onto her from behind his raven mask.

She nods.

The iron blade swings though the air with the sound of thunder cracking.

Wreathing my head, and amplified through the amber-hued twilight, echoes boom as if from a cloudless sky.

Then, seemingly in slow motion, the man's neck is severed while his partner watches with unflinching gaze.

The clanging of steel against flinty stone rings like a bell as blood drenches blade, head and copestone.

My hands rise momentarily to stop up my ears, but the reverberations deafen me. The sound recoils through my head like thunder in a bottle, or a bird screeching within a closed off room. My tightly clenched eyes nevertheless see the dead man's head fall.

It rotates slowly as gravity pulls it down to fall as if through a stone tunnel.

The executed man's features turn to me. His eyes are open, but instead of appearing angry, or fearful, they look ecstatic.

˚˚˚˚˚

Thunder rumbles and cracks sharply. I rise bolt upright in bed, bending at my waist, and hands flailing out as if to catch my breath. In another moment, I pause and listen. All that I can tell from my environment is that I am awake, sitting in the dark, and frightened with the fearful images still floating through my head. I grope around my immediate area, confirming I am as I left me: on top of my summertime sheets, wearing only my boxers.

Panting, the built-up layer of sweat on my chest and arms is instantly cooled by the breeze coming through the open window. Slowly, some clarity of thought finds me in my malaise. The clatter of thunder must have only been a 506-line streetcar rolling past on Carlton three stories below.

I inhale deeply, and let my rigid spine slump a bit.

"It was just a dream." My whisper sounds desperate to convince, but I have no hope that I can really believe that murmuring will to deceive. Some dreams are instantaneously recognizable as passing shadows of aimless thoughts in the night; some others are far from that, and can shake a person down to the core as being a forgotten or deeply repressed memory. Such was the one I have just had.

The curtains rustle lightly in the faintly smoggy glow cast from the streetlight.

Out of the corner of my eye, a shadow moves on the other side of the darkened room.

With cautious determination, I gradually rotate my head, and swallow down the hard lump of growing alarm gathering in my throat.

"Hello...?"

Nothing. Then there is an indistinct rustling sound from that corner of the room. It is like muffled rocks being shifted under moving water.

I whisper, "Who's there...?"

Nothing. There are some faint scrapings, and indistinct guttural chatter, like a person trying to clear his throat at a funeral.

Keeping my eyes locked on the unforgiving darkness from which these disturbances are coming, my hand gropes sightlessly. I shift around, rise up on my knees, and try to find my phone on the bedside table.

My fingers brush against the device, and I pick it up carefully, making sure my grasp only makes contact with the gripping surface on the sides.

I raise it up slowly so that the screen faces towards the unknown thing in my room.

I hear more scraping sounds, and a 'voice' trying to vocalize some wordless utterance.

My finger gently slides over the screen's inky surface. It instantly lights up and sends that rectangular projection of LED illumination into the far corner of my bedroom.

The light trembles slightly – that shaking being transferred from my hand – while I begin to pan it to the left. The corner of my dresser casts further murk into the gap behind it.

Something moves just out of the screen's reach of light to the left.

Trying hard to suppress my growing jitters, I slowly pan my phone in that direction.

Just as the glossy, black edge of something comes into view, a blood-curdling screech makes me jump.

My heart leaps into my throat. The phone's box of cast brightness falls off of the barely illuminated edge of it. 'The thing' takes flight, and sends a cacophonous rush of air over my head. I shield my face, and the phone in my hand casts murky white light over the ceiling and walls in the form of ominous shadows in motion. I duck lower, for the columns of downward spinning air is like a hard object to pelt me with a feathery lightness.

I suddenly get angry.

I uncover my head, roll off my bed – getting one foot tangled in the damn sheet – and land hard on my knees. I crawl like a crouching baby on all fours to the foot of the bed.

The screeching continues, and disorientates me in the echo chamber effect of being drunk.

Reaching out low from the floor, I stretch to grab the best weapon I know: my game-used, Wayne-Gretzky-autographed hockey stick!

I peer above me. This thing is all fluttering motion, black eyes, sharp beak and menacing cries.

I rise to my feet, kick out my legs for support, lock sights on it, and take aim with my personal piece of ice hockey history.

My heart races; I have an odd mental flash of an indistinct woman's face. It is 'her,' the woman in the flame-red gown from the end of my vision.

I swing wildly, and the business end of my stick crashes loudly into the wall near where the feathered thing is. This must be enough, for it flaps with controlled purpose and flies towards the window. There it lands and folds its wings as placidly as the devil might himself.

Air escapes my lungs soundlessly, for there being sideswiped by the murky yellow light from the streetlight outside, is a massive raven as dark as the night from which it arose.

It hops once on the windowsill, flipping its body around, but it never takes it eye off of me. In fact, it seems to be scanning me up and down in full and unafraid candour. Oddly, I sense there is some emotion in that cold orb watching me from the bird's profiled head. If I have to put a word to it, it pities me. At least, that's how it seems.

The raven opens its beak and raises an ear-splitting series of screams. It then jostles around a bit, hefting its shoulders, and in another moment, hops twice before leaping out the window with wings spread full like a bat. In an echoing flap or two, I can see in my mind's eye how it flies out into the slumbering city.

Like a ringing in the ear, the returning silence of the night insistently pressed into me again; that and the sound of the heartbeat in my throat.

I set my honoured hockey stick back in its rightful spot, and cautiously walk to where the creature had been when I awoke and first heard it scratching at something.

My dresser is not a special place. I run fingers over the few things there to see if anything is broken or disturbed. Nothing is. I glance at the small selection of family photos I have stuck between the frame and the mirror. One is of Erich and me, but…das Arschloch…I pass that one over. He's not someone I want to think about right now. There is another one that stands out; an old snapshot in faded colour with a crenulated white paper border. It's a picture of my dad by an old car, smiling when he was in his early twenties – as I am now – with an attitude of confidence and winning swagger. I bend in closer and see that it is slightly askew. As I reach out to touch it, I half tell myself it is nothing, but there do seem to be some new scratches on it, for the untouched white of the paper underneath is streaking through in the background sky of the snapshot. The bird scratched this...?

I ignore the idea as preposterous, and set the picture back to be ninety-degrees to the frame, like it always is. As I finish, I swallow down a rueful lump; I can never look at that image dispassionately.

I glance down and the clock on the dresser tells me what time it is.

Shaking myself a bit, I head to the window and feel my knees are a more than somewhat tottering. I guess the sudden shut off of adrenaline leaves the body in only one of two states: jonesing for more excitement, or longing for the retirement home. Right now, as my toes sink into my shag rug, I just wish I had a chair.

At the window, I splay my hands apart and lean out. Down below, all is as it should be for half past two in the morning, and then I have a sobering thought. The funny thing is, I realize, that since I've started university and have been living here, the rumble of the streetcars have never bothered me. It's just more background noise to effortless shut out.

I right myself hurriedly, barely ducking my head so that I do not crack it open on the window sash.

My fingers absently reach out and touch the gently undulating side hem of the curtain. It's weird that I would mistake a tram shuttering by for thunder, and what was that 'dream' about anyway..? It was all so real – real and sad.

"Wait a minute," I mumble. "It couldn't have been a streetcar…they stop running at midnight."

I jump.

Ring, Ring!

That's my phone.

I rush to my bed and fumble with the covers. It must be upside down, for I do not see the light from its screen

Ring, Ring!

I tear off the sheets, and my phone goes crashing to the floor and shag rug. I pause, and thankfully I hear:

Ring, Ring!

I drop to my knees with hands on either side of it.

I flip it over. The screen is lit up and reads: Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.

My heart stops; that's a hospital.

What should I do?

Ring, Ring!

I hit 'Answer.'

"Hello...?"

There is a pause with some crackling static.

A soft and tremulous voice inquires, "Is this Mr. Corvin?"

"Yes," I say, and hear a desire in my own voice for this woman to speak out, and do it quickly.

"Mister, Em-ric Corvin...?"

"Emeric, yes." I hate it when people slur my name down to two syllables – it's a gut reaction, I can't help it.

There is a pause from the other end of the line.

I demand to know, "Who is this?!"

"Mr. Corvin, I am sorry to…well, you need to come down to the hospital."

"Is it, my father?"

There is no answer. To the crackling static, I insist, "Tell me!"

"Mr. Corvin, when you do come, please be sure to bring someone who can drive you home again."