Indescribable: Book Two of the Primordial Read online

  “I need to be heading back.” Carolina was pulling on her boots. Her back was turned to James. She knew that he must suspect something. She had never left his campsite that early in the night. “Somebody beat up my brother today,” she said. “I need to check on him.” She could hear the shuffling of James behind her as he crawled out from under the blanket and emerged from the tent. A moment later she felt his hand on her shoulder.

  “Who would do that?” he asked.

  Even though she wasn’t looking at James, she could hear the fakeness in his voice. “I don’t know who would be capable of doing something so hateful,” she answered and began walking away, letting his hand fall away from her. She didn’t even look back as she made her way into the woods.

  The next day, Jonathan was finally able to speak for the first time since the attack. “It was that man. The one with the gone hand,” he said through his still swollen lips. “The one with the lion, he’s the one that did it to me.”

  Carolina had been standing in the hallway when Jonathan stated the attacker’s identity to his father. She nearly fell to her knees with disappointment. Everything that she had assumed, but had hoped was nothing more than a creeping paranoia, was revealed to be a sure thing.

  Later that day, as the news of Jonathan’s attacker spread throughout the countryside, Carolina heard from other people besides Blanche that her initial intuition of the man’s stature and morals way back on the night of the masquerade ball had been accurate. He was no good. Blanche told her that now she was hearing that he had already seduced several women in the area. More people were saying that they had heard that he had committed a murder. Soon, all of the young women of the area were becoming increasingly cautious and watching out for him. And Carolina began to grow afraid. Hearing the gossip from Blanche and others was one thing, but hearing it from Jonathan, her very own brother, was a completely different ball of wax. It had to have been true. James was crazy, she presumed. Who else would do what he had done to Jonathan? And the only motive that she could come up with was one of jealousy. She was disgusted by what she had been doing and intended to never see James again. The stature of the man that she and others were creating caused her to wonder what would happen if she came across him when she was alone. Would he grab her and drag her away with him?

  She didn’t go to the campsite that night, but as she lay in bed, unable to sleep, her mind pondered what James must’ve been thinking upon her not showing up. She imagined him growing angrier about his abandonment with every moment that passed. In the scenario that she created in her mind, he was bare-chested and ripping apart his campsite with growls of anger under the silver light of the nearly full moon. Every sound that she heard within the structure of the house caused a sense of alarm to course through her and made her think that he was coming to see her instead.

  It was the next day, a stormy afternoon, when Carolina was busy cleaning one of the back rooms of the house that she heard a knock on the front door. Both of her parents had gone out and Jonathan was upstairs in bed, asleep. The pain had finally eased enough to where he could rest instead of enduring the fitful sleep that he had been experiencing before. She flung the dirty rag to the side and walked through the house. She swung the door open, expecting to see that the local doctor was early for Jonathan’s checkup, but no one stood on the porch. There was the steady ding of raindrops on tin. That day, there was no sign of bright sunlight breaking through the gray cloud cover. Carolina’s eyes searched the outside but saw nothing. She was just turning around and beginning to close the door when something on the porch caught her eye. It was a beautifully wrapped box that was leaning back against the porch railing.

  Carolina’s face contorted into a mask of confusion. Her initial reaction was that someone had delivered a gift for the family, offering condolences for the attack on Jonathan, or that it was a get well wish for him, but the single yellow zinnia that was tied to the ribbon told her differently. She approached the package, leaving the door open behind her. The box was oblong. It was wrapped in white paper and was tied with a blue ribbon. Her name was attached to the front with a small square of thin paper. She lifted the box and shook it. It was light and barely made any sound. She propped it on the porch railing, slid the ribbon off the end, and ripped the paper across the front. The paper was hanging down each side in tatters when she finally lifted the lid off the box. Rust colored fur was what she saw. It took her a moment to register exactly what it was that she was seeing, but when she did, she dropped both the box and its lid to the floor. The contents spilled out onto the hardwood slats of the porch. Carolina gasped with horror and covered her mouth with her hand as she began backing up from the ungodly discovery. She felt her eyes fill with tears.

  It was a fur shawl that had been crudely and amateurishly crafted from the hide of a red fox. The craftsmanship was so poorly done that the edges were ragged where they had been cut and not overlaid with stitching. Spatters of dried blood were across the skin and the inside of the white box. The head was still attached and it didn’t take but a moment for Carolina long to notice the nip on the ear. Violet. Carolina choked back a low, guttural scream. Her chest heaved with anger and disgust. Fear wracked her body and mind. She noticed a slip of paper that had fallen out of the box and had drifted closer to the wall of the house. She picked up the paper. It was a handwritten note.

  My Dearest Caroline,

  Only the finest luxury for a beautiful lady as yourself. Let’s please put aside whatever it is that has driven us apart. I miss you deeply. You are mine till the end of time.

  Yours Forever,

  Mr. James Percy

  With shaking hands, Carolina crumbled the paper in the palm of her hand. Her eyes darted around the plantation’s surrounding landscape. She could sense him in the shadows of the camellias. She thought that the dry rustle of the indigo plants was surely his footsteps. It hadn’t been long at all since there had been the knock on the door and she knew that James couldn’t be far. She glanced one more time at Violet’s fur and burst into sobs. This time the tears were uncontrollable and she was not able to hold them back. She went into the house and closed the door behind her, flipping the lock. What made the matter worse was the knowledge that she had to go back out there, gather up the remains of the fox, and hide them somewhere that they wouldn’t be discovered by her parents. She could only imagine the downward spiral that the scenario would take if they found out that she had been fooling around with the man that had nearly killed their son.

  After burying Violet’s remains in the spot where the garden disappeared into the woods, Carolina retired to the inside of the house where she hastily bathed in a washtub of lukewarm water before her parents eventually returned to discover that she was covered in mud and dirt. That evening Carolina was so distraught over that day’s events that she was deeply afraid that the worry that she felt was visible to her family.

  Later that night, as Carolina was trying to sleep, there were unusual sounds that jostled her out of her light slumber. She knew that the things that she was hearing were not only her imagination running wild with paranoia. There was the sound of a carriage’s wobbly wheels and a horse below, outside her window. There were voices. Carolina sat up in bed, perking her ears to the distant mutterings. Her parents, she realized. It was her mother and father that she was hearing discussing something outside. Why were they up so late? She flung the blanket aside and stepped out of bed. Her initial thought upon being woken at such a late hour by hearing their voices was that something was wrong with Jonathan. She stepped down the hallway, peeked into his room, and was relieved to see that he was sleeping soundly in his own bed. From there, she made her way downstairs. The front parlor door was standing open. Outside it was pitch dark. She could hear her mother and father, and a third man? Their shadows danced across the ground under the light of the moon.

  When Carolina stepped onto the porch, she saw that there was a stranger’s dark, unkempt carriage that was parked in front of
the house. A horse that was as black as the night sky was attached to the front. Her parents were standing at the side of the car, occasionally looking over into the carriage itself, and didn’t even hear Carolina as she made her way to their side. When Carolina peeked over the carriage’s side, she was shocked at what she saw there.

  James was lying on the carriage floor. He had been bound and gagged. His eyes met hers and Carolina gasped at the horror of what was going on. She was already backing away from the morbid discovery when her father spun toward her. “Carolina! To your room!” he ordered. Carolina obliged his request, but knew even as she was crawling back underneath the covers of her bed that she wouldn’t be able to sleep for the rest of the night. Outside her window, she continued to hear the voices. It sounded like the conversation had moved to the garden. Carolina got up and peeked through her window, but couldn’t see past the largest of the camellia trees that were on that side of the house. After going back to bed, to her surprise, she finally did dose off into a fitful sleep.

  The next day, the mood of the Rimbault plantation had changed for the worse. It had gone from one of happiness just a few short days earlier to a somber, subdued mess of worry. The feeling was so thick that it seemed to be a tangible thing. Carolina didn’t mention what she had seen the night before. She hoped that her parents were not able to decipher the look that had passed between her and James, that they knew each other. What if they were able to detect the romance that the she shared with him?

  Over the following days, things sunk even lower. Her father began spending more and more time locked in the cellar, all alone. It wasn’t unusual for him to spend time down there. It was where he read and studied, but he had never stayed down there for such long periods of time, barely seeing the light of day. What was even more troubling was the fact that he had carved a strange, heart shaped symbol into the wood on the outside of the door. Her mother had become a shell of her former self, not even changing out of her nightclothes for the remainder of the day. The only member of the family that showed any sign of improvement was Jonathan and that was because he had been near death before. As the days passed, Carolina wandered ghost-like through the hallway to often find her mother sitting at the Regency style desk in the upstairs study where she had begun spending a lot of time writing in her diary. The room’s single window was open and a cool, autumn breeze blew in. The thin, white curtains swayed. On the day that Carolina approached, Ella looked up from her writings and placed the feather pen into the crystal inkwell that sat on the desktop next to an unlit wax candle. Her eyes were bloodshot, red with tears. Her complexion was waxy.

  “Come sit down, Carolina,” Ella motioned to the chair on the other side of the room, next to the window.

  Carolina walked further into the room and sat in the chair. She looked out the window onto a clear and impossibly blue sky. In the distance, the trees of the woods had already become an array of orange and yellow. The air was pleasantly cool on the back of her neck.

  “What your father and I did the other night was something horrible,” Ella said. “But whatever happens because of it, I want you to know that we did it trying to help you and your brother, your children. It just spun out of control is all. We never meant to kill him,” Ella wiped tears from her face and was not able to get her words out. “Here, I knew I wouldn’t be able to tell you everything that I needed to so I wrote it down.” She reached across the desk to pick up a piece of paper that had been folded over and sealed with blue wax. Her arm bumped into the inkwell. The glass jar tipped over and blue ink spread across the desktop, seeping onto the edges of the papers. Ella let out a small laugh. “Now look at what I’ve done,” she said and reached her hand to the jar, sitting it back upright. With the sleeve of her nightgown, she began to wipe the ink from the wood of the desk.

  “Momma, don’t. You’ll ruin your clothes,” Carolina said and stood up, searching the room for a rag.

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” Ella said. “It’s just a thing anyway.” She looked at Carolina and shook her head. “Material things don’t really matter in the end, Carolina. Love does.” At this, she began sobbing uncontrollably and reached the back of her hand to her face to wipe the tears away. Forgetting that her hand was covered in ink, she unwittingly smeared the indigo across her face. She laughed through the tears at her silly mistake.

  Downstairs, they heard the door to the cellar open. It had been closed so long that it was an exaltation of dank air. The door creaked on its hinges.

  “Finally,” Ella said, looking over her shoulder. “He emerges.”

  A moment later there were footsteps coming up the steps. A long shadow was looming past the study’s door.

  “Anyway,” Ella’s voice had dropped to a near whisper. “I don’t want Stanwood to hear us discussing this, but I do want you to understand.” She picked up the paper and handed it to Carolina. Her face was smeared with blue. “Carolina, what I feel, the pain that all of this has caused me is horrid. It is the most unimaginable feeling of torture that is running through me. I know that the punishment for my actions will be the worst.” She looked toward the door again and dropped her voice even lower. “The knowledge of all of this is indescribable.”

  Carolina looked up from her mother’s heartfelt confession and saw that a figure had appeared in the open doorway. At first, she was sure that it was her father that was standing there, but as the vision registered in her mind, she was horrified at what she saw.

  The imposing figure that was standing across the threshold looking in on them was wearing a mask. It wasn’t an elegant and beautifully constructed mask like those that Carolina had seen at the masquerade ball a month earlier. This one had been haphazardly stitched together with thick twine. It was two animals. A wolf and leopard, Carolina recognized. A thick, brown cloak was draped over the man’s lean frame. Carolina could smell the hay-like smell of the rough burlap. She stood from the chair and screamed. Ella spun around in her seat. When she saw the monstrosity that stood across from her, she jumped to her feet, causing the wooden chair to fall and clatter to the floor.

  The figure stepped forward, into the room. By then, Carolina and Ella were huddled together on the floor up against the wall, clutching each other tight. Carolina’s eyes searched the nightmare that was approaching the two of them. The afternoon sunlight lit him from the front, and Carolina could see every disturbing detail of his figure. His heavy boots were clomping across the wood floor. As her eyes darted over him, she realized that he only had one hand. No, Carolina thought, it can’t be, but when the eyes behind the mask locked with hers, she knew that it was true. James Percy stood in front of her and was full of murderous intentions.

  Before Carolina knew it, James had his hand entangled in her mother’s hair and was dragging her away. Ella’s hands were reaching out in front of her and trying to grasp onto Carolina’s, but because of James’s determination, they were not able to grip each other fast enough. Carolina screamed as her mother’s hands slipped out of her own. In front of her, Ella was screaming with terror as she was sliding across the hard floor on her bottom. Her hands were reaching above her, fighting at the hand that was wrapped around her hair, dragging her. Carolina crawled to her knees, still reaching out toward her mother. “Momma!” she shouted through tears, “Momma!” James was backing up toward the door, and Carolina had a sinking knowledge that if he made it to the other side then it would be too late.

  It seemed like just after she thought it, James was across the threshold of the door, and Ella’s hands were grasping at the doorframe in a frantic determination. Her hands slipped from the wood, and the two of them were in the hallway when he finally let the grip on her hair go. From inside the room, Carolina saw James disappear around the wall. Ella was scrambling to her feet, but a second later James was there, at her side again. He had a thick rope that he threw over Ella’s head where it landed on her shoulders. He pulled the slipknot tight and in an alarming speed, whipped the rope around the railing. Knowin
g what was about to happen, Carolina jumped to her feet and charged through the room and out into the hallway, but it was too late. Right in front of her, James forced Ella over the side of the railing. There was a series of sounds that were in such close proximity to one another that at the time they seemed to overlap, but later, if Carolina could remember any of it, she would recall three distinct sounds. There was the one of the rope as it unspooled until it was taught. After the sound of the rope, there was another. It sounded like a heavy bag of feed had been dropped onto the ground. And then there was a snap.

  Carolina screamed. Her face was wet with tears. She looked over the banister at her mother’s limp body as it swayed through the air on the end of the rope. Carolina turned back to James. “How could you?” She screamed. “I hate you!” She went to him and was punching and slapping at his torso with her bare hands. James grasped her shoulder in his hand, holding her back. Carolina felt a rush of air from behind her and there was a new sound that she hadn’t heard before. It was something that she had never heard before. It sounded similar to a cat purring, but it was much louder. Carolina turned and was both confused and terrified at what she saw.

  A creature that she had never seen the likes of before that day was hovering in the air in front of her. It was the size of a housecat. Its smooth, bare skin was the color of ash from the fireplace. The small wings on its back were moving at an unbelievable speed. It had a head that was way too big for the size of its body. A set of large, pointed ears stood upright on the top of its skull, and a wide grimace of sharp, yellow teeth was spread across its face from ear to ear. It was smiling at what it was doing. One of its front arms was raised and a long, pointed arrow was held within the tiny hand. The jagged, stone arrowhead was pointed at her.

  Carolina broke away from James’s grip and bolted down the hallway. She was screaming in terror as her bare feet slapped against the hardwood floor. She knew that the creature was flying close behind her. She could hear and feel the air from its wings. She reached the door at the end of the hallway and swung it open. She slipped into the room and slammed the door behind her. The room was small and bare. It was a linen closet. There was nowhere to hide. There was a pounding on the solid wood door. Before Carolina knew it, the door was ripped open, and it banged against the opposite wall. James was standing on the other side of the threshold. The small creature was hovering over his left shoulder. James reached his hand out and grabbed onto Carolina again. This time, he spun her around and pulled her close to him so that her back was pressed against his body. His arm was held tight around her.