Northeastern Europe

1999

Often forgotten, but never far from the darker places of this world's history is this secret place that lies unknown and unaccounted for in time and space. There in the deep dark of an ancient forestland, it is guarded by stalwart soldier pines and thick trunked trees with tall, bristly, and creaking canopies that point to the sky, like arrows bent to the heavens. Streams of trickling water bubble over a quiet forest as the animals lie low. The sweeping majesty of the romantic country side dies away in the journey to the undergrowth. Through the twisting snags and clawed talons of outreaching tree branches that litter the nearly forgotten path you'll find tall iron gates. Rusted and ancient, there was only the crest of a crowned double headed eagle made out in the forks of electricity that danced across the heavy, brooding clouds. The peaks of the structure could almost touch. A flight of fancy that makes one think that sorcery was being brewed in the highest towers as the clouds crackled and sparked as they consume it. Suddenly, a crack of thunder startles you, and in the lighting the faces of the trees come alive in their many old and twisted shapes that age makes of all of us. Then, in the flash, you see it for the first time in its full grandeur, the one place that no one wants to be … and never knows it by the wonder of it all.

It's a castle, a fortress, a stronghold covered in Romance, masochism, and contradiction. Not built to ward off assault, or to show the powerful brilliance of divine authority and absolutism of royalty, the castle's purpose was shown only in the moods of what remained. It was a condensed stack upon stack of ivory towers, covered in flowery trellises, ivy, and French idealism of an age of chivalry. And yet like a marvelous beauty pocked and riddled by disease, the white towers and romantic halls were darkened by depressed and twisted gothic nightmares of a brutal and relentless German Expressionism. Chipped and eroded statues of hell-hounds and snarling demons guard stain-glass depictions of Arthurian legend. The graying stone and chipped marble giving way to the airs of beauty wrapped in the madness of disillusionment of a world that once was. Of romance guarded by nightmares and chivalristic heroism only found when purity is tainted by a twisted sickness.

The moonless night glimmered and sparkled in the cascade of slanted frozen flakes that fell on these crafted beasts of Hell. There was something serene in the sway of the solid precipitation that drifted ever so gently. A quiet stillness crept from the shadows and settled in the forest as the storm pulled back. In the reprieve it was as if time itself had stopped in the ancient woods. The hum of wildlife halted, while the creaking tree branches casting their tall shadows in the distance had stilled. From high, high in the tallest tower of the ancient stronghold you could see the entire forest through the bare canopies, the glow of the freshly fallen snow leaving nothing to hide for those who often shrank away from the terrible creatures that imagination conjured on many a dark and stormy night. There should be comfort in that, and it would've been for most other children …

Except for one particular boy.

To him the world was a dull place. It was filled with the same comings and goings of the same dozen people over and over in his short life. He hadn't been around many children his age, they weren't interested in the same things he was, and his mother was protective of him. This boy was a genius, the kind you read about, the kind that makes you pause and fathom how you get a child quite like him. Never had he not known a time when he could not read and as of lately had been spending his time redesigning certain structures for his mother's vacation home in Paris. He didn't really want to, but after seeing such an appalling job in the foundations of the home, what choice did the eight year old have?

So young did this boy understand the intricacies and mathematics of this world. Yet, so seldom did he spend his day without others who were more fascinated in how these things he understood could increase their holdings. So it was that this boy thought rather fondly of the many ghoulish and terrible things of story and legend. To him it was rather exciting business to know that there was something out there that he could not understand … or if there was a way to understand it, why not create the terror and myth himself? Just when everyone thinks they know the universe and all of the secrets, how delightful would it be to give them something they did not intend?

A world of chaos is what he dreamt of.

Of course he didn't share any of this with anyone but his mother. She had been everything to him since he could remember. He was her "beautiful boy" and she always listened when no one else would. He'd tell her of all of his grand ideas and dreams of all the things that no one wanted to believe. He'd stand on his bed and give her and the stuffed animals a speech as if he was at a podium at Oxford. And when he was done she would smile and clap, giggling with a mouth full of cake they were finishing together. He knew she'd listen to him because she also knew what it was like to be in a room and not be heard.

She was a Duchess, a lady of noble standing in an old world that crumbled daily to near extinction. But she was only a title and had no respect from anyone else despite being invited to many a tea. He knew that she was not noble of birth. She was by all accounts common in every way, born and raised in San Francisco. The boy's father met her on a college campus, drunk and stumbling. A life of privilege and academics had frustrated the professor for most of his life. But seeing this beautiful girl, wasting her life in cut off shorts and a straw cowgirl hat, a wonderfully devilish ideal crossed this older man's mind. What if he could turn her into a lady? How scandalous an affair if he could prove that this world that had been so important to his family was truly as superficial as he claimed it to be. Using all his skill and knowledge he romanced and dined, hooked and crooked this girl with all of his charm and her pension for accents. It was many a girls' dream to be romanced by a man, only to find him to have title and a castle to his name. And as she fell more and more into the web it never occurred to her that this fairy tale was all an experiment by a man of science, bored and spiteful of his upbringing. When the experiment was concluded, like all good scientists, the professor cataloged it, wrote a paper, published his finding, and went on a lecture tour. His mother called it a "Honeymoon." He got his terrific scandal when he revealed her origins after a fairy tale night at a charity ball, and when it was over she was placed away with his other experiments and theories to be congratulated and admired by college students for his rebellion against the patriarchal society of aristocracy.

What the boy owed to his father was a mind and outlook on the world. But what he remembered was a Calvinistic man who was endlessly fascinated by his child. A father who made his mother cry and scream of how their child needed love, not books, not another video tape of him writing on a chalkboard. She'd tell him that their son wasn't one of his father's lab rats, like she was. He had endured it for years and years of his life, watching her scream and scream into the vacuum of his own father's genius that only sucked one way, his. He grew to see the hurt in the young woman's eyes, the loneliness, and the withering away in neglect. He felt that they were kindred souls in that regard.

Some would say that all it took was the borrowing of a book from his father's library on automobiles, a pocket knife, and a brake line. But what it really was is the simple innocence of a child that was taught everything but right and wrong. He did not cry at his father's funeral, because he had never seen his mother happier.

Since then they had gone on a world tour doing and buying whatever they wanted. All of it ending here, at the most prized possession that everything they owned and that his father had come from. There were stories of this place, of grandfathers and great-grandfathers who hid here, while their colleagues and comrades ran to South and Central America after the war. Ordering all paths to the castle covered and destroyed, forever forgotten, so that they could continue their work they started in the camps. But whatever that work was, he couldn't say for sure. No one talked about what they started in all the horrible places with the names of evil that the world had never forgotten.

It was said that whatever the generations of mad men had discovered in this bastion of gothic romance had tainted it with a sleepless malice. The castle was cursed to its very foundations, infected with the sickness of an amoral science of evil that took no heed of humanity in the very experiments that tainted the wonder of such ageless craftsmanship. There were rumors that something old, tormented, and awful lurked in the subterranean levels and old dungeons of the palace. It was the very reason that his father's grandfather went mad and his father's father disappeared within the very halls, never to be seen again. The prospect terrified and drove away most that had lived here before that, calling for the castle to be condemned. Even now he heard his father's voice in his head when he asked to come here.

"We are men of science, of nobility, and must strive to understand what has created us … but there are some things that men are not meant to understand, for if we learn of it, we would cease to be men anymore."

But this was why the boy was here in the first place. He had to know what all men should not.

The low rumble of thunder rippled in the distance as shadowed spots of snow flurries ran in slanted patterns across the wall in the reflection of the bedroom window. An unbreakable silence filled the dark stately bedroom filled with odd shapes as flashes of violent light from monstrous clouds clashed in the air above the secluded country side. Small calculating eyes made of a blackest grey looked out the master's bedroom and out to the balcony. There the violence of nature looming on the horizon was the backdrop to the sentry guard of grotesque gargoyles that lined the railing. Their twisted and frightening faces turned to the building, as if to keep the evil things from escaping the walls, not to keep them out. It was more proof that led to proof beyond a shadow of a doubt to the boy that there was something here, something he had been looking for, for a long time. And yet he did not know what. Even in the night the answer called to him, daring him to find the right question somewhere in this forgotten place.

A frustration and anger plagued him since he got here, looking through libraries, digging through desks, searching every inch of this castle. He found nothing. He knew there was something here, something precious, something he needed. Even at such a young age, this boy needed a direction, a focus. Decades of entire family legacies meandering their genius on trivial pursuits, afraid of embracing the deeds and studies of their forbears. For whatever evils they might have done in the name of science, they had meaning in their life, a legacy of discovery that defined them. What was lost was meant to be found and expounded upon. But as to what that was, he did not know. So as the storm approached anew a little boy lay in a bed of silk and pondered the restlessness of his mind and the castle filled with ghosts that did not speak to him.

The quiet of the motionless solitude of his thoughts was broken by a figure outside his door. Quietly he turned his head to the door and saw under the crack a shadow standing there. The light blocked by a figure that said not a word. Rolling his eyes he sighed and waited. He knew that it must be his mother. While his pursuit of his family legacy was fearless and passionate work for him, his mother did not share his enthusiasm for the castle. Hearing the stories did not excite her as it did him, nor did she share his love for the terror of the unknown and myth. She would say when she entered that she was just checking on him, to make sure he wasn't scared. But in reality he knew better. She was afraid and needed him. To be reassured that they were doing the right thing by being here. That she wasn't a bad mother, not an immature mother for being a friend and playmate, rather than an authority in such a young boy's life. And he'd give her that every night if it meant that she would stay out of the way of his purpose … whatever that might be. So he waited for the nightly knock, so that she could crawl into bed with him.

But it never came.

He sat in bed, continuing to look to the shadow under his doorway. It flickered with movement, pacing back and forth, but no noise escaped from the door. It stood still again as if waiting, or distracted. He watched carefully and waited a moment longer.

"Mother, you can come in!" He called.

There was no reply as all movement halted outside his door.

"I know you're there … you can come in." He continued.

Suddenly the obscurity moved away at the sound of his voice. He frowned as the hallway light returned to full brightness from under the crack. He should've laid back, should have thought that it was nothing but maybe one of the servants. But something ate away at his mind, an anxiety that did not sleep. It was an oddity in the bleak snowy night that childhood curiosity and sleeplessness made him pursue the root cause. He tossed aside his silken covers and padded on the red and gold rug over the stone floor till he reached the large double doors.

With a creak of a hinge he opened one of the heavy doors and stuck his head out. Among the two dark doors were golden handles and guarded by the mounted head of a beastly demon above. His dark eyes glanced across the dark corridor that led down away from the Master's grand bedroom. It was a stone path that was lined with embedded statues of dark things that haunted nightmares, and most importantly, kept something out. Down the dimly lit corridor a figure slowly glided across the plush red carpets. Slender, graceful, and without wasted movement, the lean figure with long rivers of glossy locks of straight dark hair walked away in a trailing strapless nightgown of silk. He knew his mother's nightgown, but not the wearer.

"Hello?" He called.

When the voice echoed down the dark corridor it caught the phantom. The train of white silk floating over the supple velvet carpet halted its retreat. For a long time the slender figure stood motionless in sight of stain glass window and demon's snarl. Quietly it turned back to look to the boy as a powerful clap of thunder ripped through the cavernous castle like the roar of a canon. The face obscured by shadow, he saw a young woman, a teenage girl. She had a sleek dancer's body, perfectly proportioned and shaped in every way, like a marble statue of some regal Grecian goddess of antiquity.

Then in a violent explosion of dueling lighting the corridor was rushed by a swirl of the colors of stain glass. Twinkling, sparkling, shimmering, the faces of demon and beast came alive in the colors of flame and sulfur that danced in the violent storm. But as it was built, a great contradiction became of the scenery. For surrounded in the playground of Bald Mountain, stood the harps pluck of Ava Maria from the angel amongst them.

Golden eyes met with dark grey across the lit corridor. It was a moment the boy would never forget. Not the shimmering splendid of her supple perfect skin, or the ethereal beauty that had not a hint of emotion. She was like an artist's masterpiece, a blank slate left to interpretation. Every tick, psychology, personal history, and belief transfixed onto her. She was whoever he wanted her to be, lover, slave, master, and or inspiration. In her way she was absolute perfection of the likes never to be matched in this boys mind. In that moment this girl, this vision, this angel who had stolen his mother's nightgown had enraptured a young mind for all time.

And he'd never be the same again.

As if flipping a switch suddenly the flash of brilliant light died and the world was cast into darkness. Blinded in a moment of a rapid change of environment, the boy rubbed his eyes furiously. But when he opened them again, the corridor was darkened. The vivid faces of the dancing demons of Bald Mountain returned placid, shadows of heavy snowflakes and sleet crossed their frozen stone faces in the muted stain glass of fair maidens and regal lovers of chivalristic legend and romanticism.

The girl was gone as if she was never there.

In the morning they'd find his mother naked and murdered in the study. They'd find all her clothing and her car missing. In the very center of a castle they'd spend years investigating the scorched indention and lightning burns along the columns around it. But the boy would not cry for his murdered mother. He had his genius, he had his title, he had his money, and he had his focus.

On that dark, snowy, and stormy winter's night a little boy had found his purpose and he'd spend the rest of his life and all of his genius to find her again. And no False Messiah and his Great Mouse Detective would stand in the way from making this perfect angel his forever.

The Poet had found his Muse.