Cauldron House (S)he
Pt. 3
There lived an old
creek far to the north of nowhere just east of faded dreams, on out past the
want nots and never-minds of common folk. It whimpered and carried on, half
choked on muddy gray banks, its fuller days behind it. Crotchety old toads sat
on fat haunches, grimacing and snapping out their tongues at buzzy things
milling about in the still air. Breezes seemed unwelcome here or perhaps just
unwilling this far deep into the wood. The air was sticky without feeling wet
and the thickness of the canopy halfheartedly shunned the warmth of the afternoon
sun. Speckled beams of light punctured the screen overhead in clusters, casting
striped shadow and split highlights on gray-blue bark.
Headed south,
traveling as the creek goes, there was all but lost among the Cat Blossom
patches, a sunken cavern. A clumsy trail of a stairs had been gnawed into the
descending slope of the rock-face eons ago by craftsmen of little pride. The
stone path was coated in slick moss and slime, oozing in desperate hope of an
unsure foot.
Just a stone’s
throw into the mouth of the cave, the first hanging torch splashed erratic light
on the rusty colored, mica sprinkled walls. Strange script adorned the entrance
walls, chiseled in detail with meticulous care. From there the stairs sharpened
and spiraled downward into an incense drenched abyss and layers of thick smoke
clung to the air as the stairs stabbed deeper into the darkness. Bending left,
the tunnel floor was dusted with a fine, red soil. Rats scampered soundlessly,
barring an occasional squeal, dotting the silt with their paw print trails in
and out of the scattered remnants of unfortunate traveler’s bones. Violence
lived here. This place, sadness’s cozy abode. If a dream ever found its way to
this dismal trapping, it was surely survived only by the cackling of madness
and cruelty.
The ceiling,
growing taller now, rounded out into what might be the center of this place and
begrudgingly revealed several passages in the distance. This lobby though, if
it was to be so called, saw more care than the places before it. Golden
candelabras, all aflame and etched with the same strange writings as the cavern
walls, bestowed a grace and eerie majesty to what had before been merely dimly lit
tunnels. Elaborate red and gold velvet tapestries that clung to shiny rods,
draped down towards smallish alters, the source of the sweet incense thickening
the air. Massive, painted portraits of both men and women with hardened, nameless
faces held court here, bearing grim witness to whatever manner of behavior that
called this place a home. Beyond the light crackling of dancing torchlight,
this place stood still with the patient anticipation of a famished spider. The
only things ever to be here were the dead and the soon to be.
At the far end of
this hall stood two carved, cherry-red stained, wooden doors of staggering enormity,
where preternaturally gifted fingers had given life and tale to its décor. The
entrance towered at height of three men and what was once only tree flesh and
bark were now hideous gargoyles, serpents, griffins and demonic visages, all painstakingly
etched. Naked, human figures of agony, fear and denied repentance sought escape
from the hoard of beasts and as the story of these chamber doors would tell it,
there would be no happy ending. Atop it all was a four-armed, female figure,
her head that of a ram. In one hand she held a human heart, another the head of
a lion, the third a scale and in the last, two crying babies dangling by their ankles.
A sudden shuddering quivered the earth kicking up small, red clouds of dust. Slowly
the shaking gave way to the deep moaning and creaking of the old wood and the massive
doors began opening inward.
