There was a time and place that was fixed in the ether of a location forever. The atmosphere, the moment of shock and elations of surprise that overtook everyone that had been there that night. It had been a grand feast - one of the grandest that Levinson Manor had ever had. There were people from all over New York Society that had angled and maneuvered to get an invite to such an occasion. Young, beautiful, and accomplished feminine idol, Ms. Cora Levinson had an announcement that evening. No one was sure what it was that she had news about. For a few months she had gone to New Orleans, accompanied by the dashing young Captain Robert Crawley, 37th Lord of Downton. Most were shocked that an Englishman of such standing - with a strong love of the British Imperium - would tolerate the heat and anachronisms of the Reconstructed American South. Yet, as one would never have to reiterate who knew of such things, when Cora Levinson - so fine and fair - asked a man or boy to come with her anywhere, there was hardly a debate.
Neither of her parents knew what exactly their daughter's news was either. When Cora returned from New Orleans, Martha Levinson had been eager to hear how "Captain Britain" faired in their native city. Truth be told, if a foreigner found the American South tedious, at the best of times, then they would be completely overwhelmed and knocked about by the strange and eccentric "City of the Dead" that was so wholly different than any other place in the world. Yet, brushing her long luxurious tresses of raven curls, the teenage girl only shrugged a bare pale shoulder and smirked. Martha didn't like that. The red-haired Southern Belle most certainly was disturbed whenever her youngest child got that little smirk of mischief on her beautiful face. The girl's mother, with annoyance, had burst into her and Mr. Levinson's room and announced that they should batten down the hatches. 'The "Genius" thinks she's got us this time.' Martha had exclaimed - forever convinced that her beautiful and lovely young daughter was somehow mentally retarded and or slow witted. Her husband didn't feel that his wife's thinking was helpful, to which Martha would relent, but maintain that their girl was 'dumb as a brick' none-the-less.
One might have thought that Mrs. Levinson throwing a large ball and dinner party to celebrate whatever the announcement might have been was a challenge to her teenage daughter's rather smug convictions. If 'The Professor' was going to be so dramatic, why not announcer her 'news' in front of all of New York High Society while she's at it? She was sure that whatever else could be said for her 'lovable dummy' the girl knew how to play to an audience. But Cora, in response to her mother's provocation, went so far as to send more invitations in spite. Martha, being incensed by her prize beauty's cheek, sent even more invites. Soon enough, there seemed to be a thousand people coming to this grand party dedicated too … well, no one was quite sure. But as Mr. Levinson lamented to his son, it didn't really matter at this point, even the lamp lighters in Harlem would come just to see what the fuss was about. To this, Harold Levinson - watching armies of footmen with high stacked plates of china to be placed at long tables - pondered aloud 'what in the hell' was going on?
To this, his father only patted Harold's shoulder and told him not to ask.
When Robert and his sister Lady Rosamund returned back to Rhode Island from England they were shocked. It had not been the easiest month of young Captain Crawley's life. He had gone home to tell his own parents of the news that Cora was currently being coy about in her own family home. But the last thing he expected when he returned was to find a train of carriages, a mile long, winding up the narrow cliff path to Levinson Manor. It seemed that everyone - and he meant 'everyone' in New York City, Newport, and as far away as Boston - had come to this 'intimate' family dinner that he and his older sister were supposed to be attending. Looking at the crowds of people in ballgowns and tails, Rosamund, genuinely, asked her brother if Cora had become President while they were gone. To that, Robert, in shock, said that not even presidents get this kind of reception. He was almost positive that Ms. Cora Levinson had seemingly conquered the entire known world in their absence, and this was her Triumph through her new Imperial capital's streets.
When they found Cora, she was in a silken Worth evening gown that made her cerulean eyes and the sapphire placed upon her brow glow. The durability of the regal headpiece was impressive to Lady Rosamund - a true credit to its craftsmen - for it was surely being tested by the way the teenage girl banged it and her forehead against the wall in self-flagellation. Immediately, Robert asked what was going on. He wanted to know what happened to the 'small family dinner', and he demanded to know who all these people were. To this, Cora admitted that she was absolutely tired of her mother thinking that she was retarded, so, to prove her wrong, Cora thought of the absolute stupidest thing she could think of … and did it. Robert hushed Lady Rosamund when she complimented her new friend on the execution and the sticking of the landing.
Cora had no choice but to admit that everything had gotten completely out of hand and asked for Robert's forgiveness. But the Royal Officer only chuckled mirthfully under his breath. He claimed to the girl that he saw as both business partner and valued friend - in the least - that he did a rather stupid thing himself back at home. If anything, their combined disasters only proved that they made the right decision in the end. The girl only smiled tiredly, looping herself around his arm. She would take being a close friend when all she did was love him more and more.
The question on everyone's mind was a simple one: exactly what were they all doing at Levinson Manor? There was small talk, mingling, compliments and disdain for the food served. But at all times each eye turned up toward the table on the dais. There, the beautiful and young Cora Levinson poked her food nervously, exchanging dependent looks with Robert and Lady Rosamund. She dared not look to her left where her mother would bore deeply into her, seemingly knowing when to catch her daughter's glance. The girl would quickly look away awkwardly, as Mrs. Levinson would chew obnoxiously, staring a hole of expectancy in her once cocky little girl. Finally, as the second dessert was being served, Martha, domineeringly, turned Cora's chair suddenly to face her. 'Baby girl, are you gonna dance all night with your hand on my ass, or are you gonna make your move?' She had asked bluntly.
It was the moment of truth. She took Robert's hand and squeezed it as she stood and cleared her throat. Suddenly the room quieted as a roar of scraping chair legs on marble tile screeched up in the tall ceilings of the opulent dining room. For a long moment Cora looked up at all the masterwork paintings and portraits bought from Austrian and Italian auction houses. She licked her lips nervously, turning back to Robert who gave her a nod of encouragement, while Rosamund tepidly threw her support behind the girl with a very unsure thumb up. Then, with a sigh, she began to tell the room about a story of a little girl with a dream.
"What?!"
"Speak Louder!"
Sighing, Ms. Cora Levinson raised her voice an octave louder. From that point she began anew with a tale of her Aunts and Grandmother that endured the "Siege of Vicksburg", meanwhile her father and Grandfather fought at Gettysburg with General Lee. And it was there, in those horrible battlefields that her family had a dream.
"My dear, perhaps you could speak up?!"
"Yes, I also know Mrs. Lee, wonderful launderer. But then, the Chinese had been doing that sort of thing for thousands of years, haven't they?"
"I feel that we shouldn't talk about Politics at the table, don't you agree, Cora, my sweet?"
The lovely fairy princess rolled her eyes as the crowd began to chatter to themselves over everything under the sun … except her story. Flustered, the girl turned toward Mrs. Levison. Martha had her elbows on the table, her chin resting on her upturned fists. There was a look of pure mocking on her mother's expectant face as she fluttered her eyebrows at her daughter's 'superiority'. The girl was starting to replace her social anxiety in front of the large crowd with a fuming anger.
Suddenly, the crowd went quiet when the frustrated and tilted beauty slammed an uncharacteristic fist on the table. In a sudden rage, the girl mounted her chair. Then, lifting her skirts up - unintentionally slapping Robert across the face with them - she stepped upon the dining table. The entire crowd watched the girl surrounded by her parents, her aunts and uncles, her cousins, her school friends, her many, many, suitors, and even the Mayor of the City and two State Governors. There, she climbed atop the table ripping her silk skirts free, knocking forks and glasses to clatter on the floor. With a look of determination, the girl pulled off a long opera glove to show a simple steel ring of medieval design. It was adorned with a Druid dragon with amber eyes. The ancient heirloom of the House of Grantham was on the girl's finger, her engagement finger.
'WE'RE GETTING MARRIED, DAMNIT!'
It seemed almost planned that at that very moment Robert finally pushed his head out from underneath the girl's skirts. He looked upon a silent and shocked crowd. Mr. Levinson was massaging the bridge of his nose with two fingers, steeling himself for a migraine. Meanwhile, Martha looked completely made of stone. A look of surprise and shock only found on the victims of the Gorgon was etched on her face. For just a brief moment - trying to turn the momentum - Harold attempted to clap for his sister. But he was met with only a distant fork clatter that came in stereo within the silent room. His mother - without looking - grabbed him by his collar and pulled him hard in a death grip as a warning that she would murder him if he didn't shut up. Cora cleared her throat, still standing atop the table.
'So … keep an eye out for the, uh …umm … well, keep your schedules clear.'
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The main dining room of Levinson Manor- large- opulent- had been a thing of wonder in the days that Cora Levinson had proclaimed her happiest moment in anger. The crimson painted room was adorned with marble columns that bore gilded holly grafted on. It twisted and wrapped about the columns and walls in echoes of the artistic French Romantic Expressionism - taking inspiration from Versailles. All about the crimson hall hung painting and portraits of people and places of the many Romantic and Classical periods of the European Renaissance. While the long table of cherry wood was polished to a glistening glaze in the glow from the stained-glass windows that streamed reflected light from the sun or moon. The place of honor at the table had a certain ethereal spotlight by strategic sunroof which added a certain mystic of lighting. It was a bit of showmanship that was all Martha Levinson. It had been added to the floor plans in order to create and sell an image that no English Lord could deny when her beautiful daughter glistered in light as she sat at her mother's table.
Yet, half a century later, the room was now but a hollowing echo of the grandeur of its glory days in a gilded age. Decades of dust coated the once shining finish of the cherry wood long table. The gilded holly upon the columns were greened and corroded by exposure to salty ocean air that drafted from the many broken stained-glass windows. The sea breeze wheezing and wailing through cracks and crevices of the fractured and ruined room with tall ceiling draped with networks and layers of thick cobwebs. The once painted visage of a clouded twilight sky of violet and orange was lost in dark shadows of neglect upon that once breathtaking ceiling. The paintings, bought at cost from impoverished abbeys and fallen estates at the height of the Imperial European Continent, remained. But now dust and webs obscured artistic faces and moldering painted ruins of antiquity. The once irreplaceable and priceless works of art now hung off rusted and buckling nails at odd angles, wilting and drooping, their heavy frames falling apart in exposure to uncontrolled weather and salty air.
What once was a place which seemed magical, that most of New York Society would kill to come to in the summer months, now looked haunted and deformed. But still, there remained times, in the quiet of the witching hours, when the sound of plates still tinkled, the muffled psycho-babble of dinner chatter reverberated, and the faint echo of a string orchestra could still be heard from the dark narrow halls of the abandoned manor house. They were the ghosts and imprints of a time and place that had not yet been forgotten in the bricks and stones of this gilded palace by the sea. And perhaps the ghosts stirred once more within the dining hall of Levinson Manor for one reason above all else.
("Laputa The Castle in The Sky" - Joe Hiaishi & The Japan Philharmonic World Dream Orchestra)
There, in the exact same spot were Cora Levinson had once stood defiantly upon the long table … another figure remained stalwart half a century later. The sunlight was dimmed and shadowy in the obscurity of hanging sea moss and ivy that spilled through the broken sunroof above the place of honor. The very appearance of this figure in the ruined temple to a lost world of tomorrow stirred the ghosts and memories. Fore, side by side, and step for step, with the lovely heiress Cora Levinson, this young man would seem her masculine twin. They both shared the very same black curls and cerulean eyes - he was darker and taller than her, but they shared a similar face. In his fingerless gauntleted hand, the straightened officer's saber of Lord Robert Crawley, worn at his side that very night his engagement to the love of his life went public, flashed and gleamed in the haunted beams of sunlight with its naked blade drawn. The young man who held his ground toe to toe with Ms. Cora's resonance - though dressed in a peacoat of beaten mahogany leather and denim trousers tucked into tall Mexican federal police boots - stood a perfect amalgamation.
In George Crawley, his looks, his appearance, and all that made his soul, was blood that flowed from that fated great love's very future of who Cora and Robert cemented for themselves half a century ago in this very dining room.
RINCKLINK!
SHRRICK!
TRINK! SHRRICK! SHHHHRINCK!
Two large men in three-piece padded suits, coal black beards, and trailing black turbans pressed the assault as pounding feet echoed down the long marble corridors. Each man carried a long and curving Saracen Scimitar. Their steel was black as night with Arabian runes upon their blades. They each swung with large arcing and sweeping slashes - their swords designed, exclusively, for decapitating the filthy 'Dhimmi' that polluted their Prophet's lands. But today, in the costal Rhode Island countryside, their black blades could not find their mark.
Low guard, high guard, parry, thrust, each of the religious zealot's blows were met with a ringing of steel against steel. George fought both men two at a time, his grandfather's old royal saber clashing and clattering with horizontal and diagonal parries. Decades of dust clouded about their footwear, as their feet shuffled and hammered on the rickety old crafted table that creaked under the strain. More turbaned Shiite fanatics dripped into the room in single numbers. Blades drawn, each man looked up to watch the dueling figures fighting on the dais, dancing over and around the places of honor. There were a few that watched to look for an opening to join the fight. Yet, most - having already passed through the carnage of the drawing room - hesitated.
Like their butchered brothers, the Islamic fundamentalists found that it was easy carrying their black swords about the open Iranian street. At home they were a part of a sacred order that was answerable to only the Grande Imam. But the world seemed an entirely different and exceedingly more dangerous place when they ran into someone that studied swordplay for many long years, since childhood. At ritualistic ceremony and in accordance to the law they brandished their ancestral heirlooms, but their knowledge of the actual use of the weapons in a fight was extremely limited. They expected to be chasing a child, a teenager that was legendary only in tall tales told by ignorant strangers and perpetrated by Lady Hexham's magazine. Instead, they found themselves engaged in combat with a master swordsman who was fighting off religious zealots who swung their sacred blades like primitive clubs. In the end they seemed exotic and fierce, but in truth, they were yet another group of noblemen's' sons who rushed into ceremony for power and prestige, without contemplating what it truly meant to make a vow to kill Allah's enemies.
Still, there was courage in their holy war cry as they rushed forward to the fight. George turned and leapt over a sweeping curved blade. Spinning, he put the toe of a fascistic Mexican boot into the groomed neck beard and chin of a third combatant that tried to mount the table. The Saracen let out a high-pitched gag when the edge of the table caught the small of his back, making a cracking noise as he hit it on his way down to the filth and leaf strewn marble floor. The youth advanced, trying to fight his way out of the enveloping ring that the Shiites were trying to enclose him in. Both his adversaries atop his great-grandmother's table met him again with swinging blades. He had parried away the left blade with a sharp ring, before meeting the second sword with a low guard with a flick of the wrist. The blades caught at their shins.
With a quick duck, the curved black blade of the recovering first swordsman passed above his head. Being caught out of position, the bearded man's blood flew out of his mouth along with two of his teeth when the boy used the hand guard of his grandfather's saber as a brass knuckle for the haymaker he threw. The Shiite made no noise as he stumbled heavily off the table, landing in a dust cloud and clatter of aged and overturned dining room chairs at the foot of the dais. Once more he ducked under the second man's high swing for his head. Turning into it, the youth used the fundamentalists own momentum to his deadly advantage. He slid the straightened blade across the Islamic swordsman's torso as he passed, cutting deep into the abdomen. The boy did not turn, but he smelt the blood on his blade and in the air as the man and his entrails spilt onto the table.
However, when George tried to continue, he found that another zealot was blocking his way. Behind him he heard men barking orders in Farsi. The table was about to give way as more and more enemies were climbing on and running after him down it's long face. They were trying to hit him with the old "Hammer and Anvil" - rushing him from both sides. But he had already seen this act of the play already once today. Except, instead of hitting the deck, the teenager turned and charged right at the figure trying to cut him off from the main corridor. At the last moment, the youth vaulted over the man's large horizontal swing when he halted to cut George in twine. Twisting mid-air in a corkscrew, the boy flipped onto the large burly man.
He found himself standing atop the Shiite zealot, each foot planted on one of the well-dressed fanatic's shoulders. Then, with a spring at the new elevated height, he reached out and caught the bottom rungs of the main crystal and silver chandelier. It had been hung low by the former servant's at times of disuse making it accessible to clean via ladder. Below, the force of his momentum sent the Islamic fundamentalist stumbling right into the jaws of the chasing stampede. The collision - akin to a bowling ball knocking down pins - sent several men into a pile. The force of the collision collapsed the once priceless Levinson dinner table, causing many zealots to go down with it. But there was still a handful which recovered and gathered about the base of the low hanging ornament.
The turbaned men leapt to grasp at their enemy. They cursed and swung their blades at the youth's dangling feet as he swung back and forth. Lifting his legs just above the swish of a black scimitar blade. Filth and neglect dusted the bearded men as the chandelier swung like a pendulum back and forth, tinkling sharply as the teenager climbed the layered rungs of desiccated silver and through the forest of dangling crystals to the top of the gigantic ornament. He waited till the force began to drift back to the shouting and slashing mob of fanatics. Then, grasping the rusted chain the opulent centerpiece was vaulted from, George cut the rusted chain below his hand.
CRIIIISH!
With reckless momentum, the priceless decoration that had once been essential to the whole décor of the modern palace's dining room went careening at the grouped together fundamentalists. Some dove out of the way, but most couldn't get away fast enough as they were smashed to pieces by this flying death wheel of crystal and silver finery. For those who couldn't escape, there was nothing left but a skid marking of blood and discarded sacred black scimitars.
As for the swordsman, he used the momentum of the rusted chain to swing back. With saber brandished in hand, George Crawley swung dashingly across the dining room, his shadow casting itself over a fixed point of time which would spark a true love that would set in motion his own genesis. He let go of the chain, giving a tight rolling summersault midair, landing with a crouched clap of boot soles on marble.
Sheathing Robert's saber - taking it in hand - he adjusted his granny's Worth wedding dress rolled tightly against the small of his back. But just as he was making for the servant's exit, one last Persian swordsman tried to block him. Timing it for his enemy's reach back when he would give an all-out swing, the adventurer slid feet first between the tall man's open leg stance. Lifting a gauntleted fist, the boy pounded the man's testicles as he slid past. With a gasped cough, the fundamentalist had tears in his eyes as he cradled much more cherished family heirlooms than the black blade the clattered at his feet. He stumbled with high pitched wheezes out into the hallway, hearing - without care - the teenager's footsteps as he escaped down the dark corridor. Feeling sick to his stomach, the bearded Persian bent over in the middle of the servant's hallway making sobbing anxious noises at the throbbing in his groin.
"THERE'S THAT LIMEY BASTARD!"
"GET'EM!"
"Nope, no, no, nope, no, oh no!"
He only, vaguely, registered the return of sprinting feet that had once alluded him. George Crawley came flying back out of the shadows of the dark corridor going the opposite way. The youth was muttering under his breath in panicked anxiety making a B-line right for the Persian roadblock who thought his troubles couldn't get any worse at the moment. The man made a guttural noise when he felt the youth, in one smooth motion, roll back to back over his keeled over figure. He turned to watch the youth hit his feet in stride at an impressive lit. He only had a moment of catching his breath from the pain in his groin before he felt like he had been swept away in a human tidal wave of angry, mostly Italian and Sicilian, men in dust covered suits. Some were covered in blood, others had ugly black eyes and broken noses … and all of them were beyond pissed off. The Shiite zealot was trampled, taking some of them with him as a mass of charging figures in pursuit of George Crawley sprinted past and over the heap of bodies.
For a moment they were lost in the narrow and foul darkness of the forgotten and unseen parts of the Levinson household. Like the shrunken and closed arteries of a mummified corpse - where the once lifeblood of the elegance and palatial reverence of the house upon the cliffs of the sea ran - there was only dark and dusty corridors that led to nowhere. Lost, forgotten, there was no knowing what one would find down in the depths of this idealistic monument to a fleeting future of many small moments of a glimmering utopia of promise. But there was a rhythm, an instinct, that carried the gangsters onward, like a herd of near-sighted buffalo galloping through a narrow ravine. Their feet thundered as they charged through the shadowy and cobwebbed halls. There, they found a thrown open door that led to the servant's main staircase.
During the years of the house's activity, at almost every hour of the day, there was traffic down this open main stairway. Whether it was maids carrying bed linins or mops, footmen with trays, and valet with clothing, it was a never-ending bustle of shift work to maintain the large house at all times. Dim light gleamed in ghostly gloom from tall sloping barred windows at each landing that never faced the sun and could never be peered through. At their feet were oaken staircases that traveled as high as Ms. Cora's tower bedroom, all the way down to the ominous storerooms carved out of the seaside caverns at the foundations of the manor house. A tattered and age eaten white carpet traveled up the center of wide stairs that could fit four large men abreast. The railing was oak covered in a film of filth with chipped and whitewashed banisters wrapped in cobwebs. Dust particles danced heavily in the soft haunted glow of the abandoned servant's staircase.
Before then no one went up this way on the hunt for George Crawley. There were many reasons that they gave, from ignorance of the floor plans, to the dodgy knowledge of the structural integrity of the staircases. But the real reason was that there was something not right about the place. There was an eerie quiet that settled - not just in the surroundings, but inside you. There was a rattle two flights above, the titter of a female voice whispering under breath with a heavy burden. The faint echo of gossiping figures that seemed too far away to see and yet close enough to hear. And at all times the phantom sounds of feet rushing to and from, up and down. Of all the places, there was something unnerving about the servant's stairs above all the rooms. Perhaps it was simply that after all those years of non-stop activity from shifting armies of maids, hall boys, and footmen, the house still hadn't forgotten the bustle.
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But that didn't seem to matter when the first groups of angry mobsters and mercenaries charged down the steps, halting a moment to steady themselves as the manor shook more violently than before at the latest tremor and roar. Dust rained down atop of them from the railing and banisters from the upper floors as the violence shook the neglect and filthy debris free. The roar chilled them to the core, coming in stereo in the echoing and hollow gloom of the darkened servant's quarters. For a long beat the lead figures held at the head of the column, shushing and smacking one another to shut up as if some mythical beast could hear them. As the moments passed, they began to create a bottle neck at the main entrance of the staircase. Soon, the entire mob of bloody and dusty street thugs were stranded on the stairs, sore both physically and emotionally at everyone around them. Yet, like the buffalo of old, they never realized that they all had been herded - tricked by sleight of hand.
Suddenly, coming from the darkness, the lone mobster dusting off his feathered wide brim fedora at the tail end of the column never noticed a figure uncover his face from inside his leather coat. Peeling away from a blind spot corner in the shadows, George Crawley took three large strides - in complete soundless stealth - before springing up to catch the top of the doorway to the servant's main staircase. Swinging his feet for momentum, he put both Mexican soles of his boots into the back of the last man at the end of the group. Being propelled forward in shocked agony by the small of his back, the gangster fell forward hitting the three bruised and dusty men in front of him. Those three fell into four, then, within moments, an avalanche of humanity rolled with curses, pained cries, and surprise down the stairs. They piled at the main landing, yelling and wrestling in confusion. But those who survived the ugly mishap watched the shadowy figure of their prey mount and slide down the railing, crouched on his feet, avoiding the human wreckage. Giving a smooth and sleek flip off the banister, George hit the landing flawlessly and immediately began to flee up the stairs back to his granny's old teenage girlhood room.
"Come on! There he goes, there he goes, there he goes!"
Now, simply and totally enraged beyond sense, the gangsters and street mercenaries rallied to their feet. In mass, the thugs quickly charged up the stairs in a stampede of vengeance after their wolf's head in a blind head of steam. The thunder of their feet and the outrage in their voices could be heard through the entire secret path. Forever did their noise break the eerie silence that gripped the abandoned servant's staircase for many a forgotten decade. Yet, as the echoes came in the distance, a new sound came closer. It was the sound of fleet-feet hopping down the banisters of the double staircase. Driven by rage and humiliation, no one noticed that George had doubled back via slipping down the railing behind them as they charged upward. Falling with a silent crouch back at the main landing, the youth sidled against a wall, looking up silently to see if they caught onto his trick. But when the noise continued to travel up, the youth took the saber in hand and quickly began to descend.
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The further down he went, the quieter the roar got, but the violence of the shaking became more intense. Between the lulls, the world grew silent as the darkness deepened. Soon, wood paneled walls of whitewash turned to rust colored brick, the oaken stairs turned to smooth stone. Also, the pleasant weather of the closing days of summer that whispered the coming colds of autumn were lost in the deep shadows of the lightless passages of the basement levels of Levinson Manor. There, wrapped in impassable pitch-black corridors, was a deep humidity emanating from a growing source of heat. With the passing of every level it grew steadily, building in intensity. One could only imagine, surrounded by darkness and growing heat, with echoed roars of something large and fierce in the cavernous surroundings, that this was what the descent into Hell might be like.
Yet, George continued on, passing slick and coal black rock of a sea cliff cave. Above his head were brick structures, the roots of the house's foundations. Meanwhile, nets and mazes of piping jutted above the humid labyrinth. Slowly, the darkness was cut by sections of the piping which began to glow a soft crimson. The haze of intense heat was visible as it drenched the corridor. The many dark paths were heavily misted with steam that had been conceived in the constant fizzle of condensation dribbled from the ocean cavern ceilings onto the superheated piping.
However - path lit by scolding red light - the youth was not prepared to see that it had gotten so out of hand. He had been so sure of his own timetable when he set the trap, but it seemed he had underestimated how emaciated the manor's central atmosphere had become in so many decades of neglect. Quickly, he picked up the pace, traveling deeper into the increasingly unbearable humidity. The smell of superheated salt in the damp cave passages made his mouth go dry and wetted his grown-out mane of raven curls till they were soaked. The environmental condensation collected on the shoulders of his peacoat of beaten leather. But still he continued down. It wasn't till he reached the final level of stairs - carved from sea rock - that he returned to his goal.
It had seemed like a long way down, but he figured that he was nowhere near the bottom of the cliff. Yet, the journey seemed long and taxing due to the environmental hazards. But all of that seemed a walk in the park compared to the atmosphere that greeted him when he threw the door open at the very bottom basement level. The humidity had been dissolved away. Down the long hallway there was nothing but the intensity of a pure dry heat - like standing in front of an open oven on full tilt of blue flames.
Shielding his face with the palm of an outstretched hand, George jogged down the stone corridor carved out of sheer rock. The glimmer of sediment and rare gems on the walls and ceiling of the cavern was shown in the red light that tunneled at the end of the corridor. Mini fires blazed forth from mushroom and fungus that grew out of the rocks of the cave, raining sparks and embers down all around from the exposure to the immense heat setting them aflame. Half-way to the end of the hall, the youth stopped at what was the beginning of a brick wall of the very bottom of the manor's foundations. With a familiar hand, the youth gripped a loose brick and pulled it out. It made a loud clacking noise against the rocky floor as George repeated the action of removing bricks and tossing them away at a frantic pace. Behind the collection of loose bricks was a secret compartment filled with insulation. It had been a hiding place carved out for someone within the Levinson Family. But on this day, George Crawley retrieved, instead, the only items he had to his name.
Wrapped around an old and worn holster and an ornate dagger in a sheath of shabby brown leather was a Mexican weapon's belt. It had once belonged to a Lieutenant of Pancho Via. He had been a killer of many "Federales" and five citizens of Columbus, New Mexico in 1916. The old villain had survived a failed civil war, only to foolishly challenge a young racer to a gunfighting duel in a crowded seaside Cantina during fiesta in the palmed paradise of Tijuana. The adventurer had taken it off the old revolutionary he had left dead under the moonlight on the seashores of Mexico.
Inside the holster was a sleek and streamlined revolver that was futuristic. It was the kind of weapon that - like much of George's gear and weapons - was unique and distinguishing. The Webley was different when it had been given to Matthew Crawley just before "The Battle of Mons" in 1914. Nor was it the same weapon he gave to Lady Sybil Branson - who used it on an Orangeman with a grudge before she fled her and her husband's flat in Dublin. After years in a locker downstairs - taken from Lady Sybil's nightstand drawer after her death - it had been given to a young child by his family's butler in case he ever needed use of it to escape royal agents who would put him in Carfax Asylum. Eight years later it gained much fame for its design and its owner's constant need of it through many adventures in a world of Depression. But mostly it was famed for its unique and one of a kind refitting.
In debt to a young swashbuckling rebel that had saved him from cultists, Jiro Sato - the genius Japanese gunsmith of New Orleans - offered to retrofit and streamline his hero's revolver. Laboring in passion for the artistry of weapon's crafting as the grandson of the Emperor's personal Metallurgist, and a fan of the American Western Cinema and pulp magazines …
Sato made a masterpiece.
The weapon was taken apart, reassembled, then broken, and rebuilt by a mad genius's interpretation of weapon design. It's sleek and streamlined redesign - plus its powerful retrofitting to fire rifle caliber bullets - had many comparing the futuristic looking weapon as 'Something out of Buck Rogers' by those who glanced it in wonder and amazement. Thus, the finished product was what the boy's band of rebels revered and Professor James Moriarty – "The Necromancer" - would curse as "The Ray Gun". While many unfortunate Mexican Pistoleros and old socialist revolutionaries simply called it "El Cañón de Mano" with just a lilt of fear in their voices for the revolver and the one who wielded it.
Slipping his weapons undercoat and around his waist, George fastened them with a clip of the large silver buckle. Next, with shuffling, he pulled out a pack of fine brown leather that had gone supple in long years of exposure to harsh weather and constant use since he was a small boy. Like most of his equipment and gear, George Crawley was known to be quite sentimental about clothing and items – known for not letting go of something just because it had some age to it. Thus, he never questioned why the pack - given to him by his mentor long ago - had somehow never been outgrown by him. It seemed to fit him no matter how he grew over the years - matching his size and need. Under the flap was a rolled blueish grey blanket which had shown wear but not as much tear as it should have. It had been used for many years, given to an adventurer long ago on his first voyage as a child on the vessel of a Science Pirate who took him as an apprentice. The woven material was of unknown origin, its pattern beyond the craft of modern machinery, and its uses more than what could be perceived for both warmth and camouflage.
But he nearly forgotten about the item that was hanging off the back - attached to the tarnished and chipped four-pointed star of silver that usually clasped the pack's flap.
("Terrible Fate" – Theophany)
It was like a punch to the face. He reeled a moment, though his feet were planted firmly. He was suddenly overwhelmed, his senses flinching, his muscles tightening as if some terrifying figure of nightmares had leapt out in ambush and onto him. He made no sound, but inside he felt as if some foreign entity - giving shrill cries of terrifying noises - was clawing and attacking. The darkness surrounded him, the heat intensified, and he felt as if his entire body was set on fire like the mushrooms and cave fungous around him. He could feel every ember, every lick of flame that blackened his skin and scorch his nerves till they popped off like the cooking of meat over a cookfire. He felt the pain, the panic, and the confusion of being lit on fire in the endless void that lies beyond the circles of the world.
In his moment of agony, his mind was suddenly filled with dark images. Thomas in the West Wing of Downton Abbey, an unmoving baby girl swaddled in his arms by her favorite blanket as he wordlessly carried her away. The venomous look of Lady Mary Crawley as she sat, languishingly, upon the red carpeted floor by the Nursery Door. How she hated him, her own son who had lost her everything in that moment. He stood in a doorway of a Knickerbocker bedroom in Manhattan with his father's smoking revolver in hand, five dead old women lay naked and half-dressed around a nude young mother they had forced onto their king-sized bed. The look in the blood covered beauty's frightened dark eyes haunted his very soul - thinking that the last round in the chamber was for her.
Then, finally, there was a firelit room in the bayou country house of an African Priestess. A young girl with fine chestnut hair in ringlets and bow, dark almond eyes, black ribbon choker, and white dress of lace lay in the middle of the floor. She had three gunshot wounds - rifle caliber slugs - all in her pale chest. The girl, the finest of Southern Belle's, the Lily of New Orleans, looked at him with such sorrow and remorse for what she did. Fore, in her mind, this had happened to her for something that she had done, some wickedness. It never entered her mind that it had ever been his mistake, not the boy that she loved with all her heart … that she would love even onto death.
It was physical, mental, and spiritual agony that overcame him all of the sudden. The perpetual torment of being engulfed in flames, the empty darkness all around him, and his mind overcome with the endless screams and begging of two little girls. It came in stereo, Marigold sobbing in fear, begging her grandmother figure to see that she was a good girl. Meanwhile Sybbie pleaded with Mirada Pelham that she could do whatever she liked to her as long as she didn't hurt Marigold. It came so loudly, so clearly, that it was as if he was there again - eight years ago. Then, surrounded by physical and mental anguish, the cries of the girls he loved awoke a sudden fierceness.
It was an anger that straddled madness as he took the pain in masochistic drumming. The exertions of the darkness upon him back building a torque of iron will and rage that drove him when all hope was left faded in many terrible places of this world that he had seen and been trapped by. Then, when all his flesh burned off - turned to ash that blew away - it revealed a suit of armor that was impenetrable. With gritted teeth, the images and voices of a tragic past fueling an anger that was past rage and hatred. The boy pushed back against everything that had been piled atop of him. Again, and again, he pounded and hammered at the visions that were meant to cripple him, each wound and cut driving him to hit harder. The darkness began to fade, the voices dimmed, the awful memories conquered. Then, he opened his eyes to find his flesh untouched, the room brightened by the glow of red at the end of the corridor, and his sight filled with his opponent.
Two slit eyes wreathed in flame burned fiercely from the ceremonial tribal mask of "The Necromancer" that was attached to the four-pointed star clasp upon his old pack. Runes of an ancient and evil language of pre-history - in an age of man undreamed - scrolled across in a glowing crimson upon the wooden bark of a mask carved from the Nubian Tree of the Serengeti. The power and potency of the extreme and purity of heat had not risked the incredibly ancient wood, but instead reinvigorated its powers. Even now, George could feel the wicked hand of a defeated foe reach out and strike at the defenses of his mind. The savage and brutality of their physical duel in the catacombs of the St. Louis Graveyard of New Orleans months ago was now matched by the sheer will power of their mental battle in the fuming darkness of the sea caverns under Levinson Manor. Black sludge like ectoplasm seeped from the brutal twin facial scars across George's eye that the ancient evil had given him physically in their last fight as they set their powers against one another on the mental plains.
The Mask knew better than to try and tempt its captor. From their first duel in the Temple of the Dark Lord upon sunken Westernesse when George was but a child, an apprentice of a science pirate. To their battles when he was a young captain of a rebel band in New Orleans. And finally, their last duel months ago. The ancient evil within the mask knew there was nothing it could give nor offer to the stalwart and valiant young hero. So, it swung and clawed like a feral animal, the shadow consciousness of an evil sorcerer of long ago trying to escape, to destroy its enemy by its dark powers inherent within the mask. But it was unavailed against the might of one whose suffering and tragedies fueled an exhaustible store of inner strength unrivaled. Ectoplasm sizzled with a foul scent while it dripped from the youth's wounds onto the heated mask while the boy hammered the maleficent poltergeist of the Necromancer back into dormancy. The crimson glow of evil runes faded back into the wood of the wicked tree like a ghost through a wall. The flaming eyes of the dark Sorcerer Supremes' black spirt trapped inside disappeared, leaving only blank eye slits that were windows into the endless void.
Fore, it yet perceived in secret, kindling its malice, that time was the one thing that the foul spirit trapped within the mask had in great abundance.
When the battle was over, the youth slumped hard against the brick wall, his pack jangling. Though he had not been set on fire nor tossed into the void, George's mind reeled as if he had borne such injuries. He would recover, but not simply, and certainly not quickly. It was with a deathly burden that he carried such an item of exceeding evil on him. Many times, in his dreams and wandering mind on leagues of traveling miles, it had been overtaken by horrible things of his past. The voice of the self-righteous wrath of the Great Accuser commentating and tormenting his conscience and mind, attempting to corrupt him, to drive him mad. And there were many of nights that the youth wished to toss aside the vile tribal mask, the greatest of evil artifacts still in the world. But he would not risk blunder nor naysay practical wisdom for a moment's reprieve from the torments of a vile wickedness's malice.
George Crawley would not leave such an evil on the side of the road to be found by an unsuspecting and innocent stranger only for they to become a victim and thrall as the demon's new host. Neither did he wish to face the same enemy again which would now have a greater knowledge of George and his loved ones through its many weeks of fierce sorties to overthrow his mind. The only safe thing to do was to carry it with him. He would find a guarded place to lock it away so that the Necromancer, the shadow of a greater evil of the ancient world, might never conceive more evil designs in this modern age of man who had lost all knowledge of such things of pure wickedness and power.
And, yet, the doom of the exiled heirs of the fallen House of Grantham had long been spoken.
Sliding the sheathed saber alongside his pack by harness, the youth slung the fine leather behind him with jangle and rattle of sword. He gritted his teeth at the sudden immensity of the weight upon his back - like he was carrying nothing but lead inside. He took a moment to steady his mind, hardening his heart. The pack in question carried no such heavy load, resting evenly atop Cora Levinson's tightly rolled Worth Wedding Gown upon the small of George's back. Instead, it was all within his mind and in his soul, for the mask of the sorcerer - bearing tens of thousands of years of distilled evil - manifested itself as a greater burden. Neither could it be said now, that of all the greater deeds and hardest tasks, carrying the Vodun mask upon his back and resisting its many temptation and torments was, perhaps, one of the single most dangerous and valiant feats ever accomplished in this age of man.
The saber rattled in its metallic sheath as the figure of the young hero stumbled a few steps, knees buckling and shaking. But eventually, reaching into his coat the youth withdrew the silver fob watch he had used in his granny's bedroom. He grasped it tightly, holding it to his breast, gasping for air in the heat and burdened weight upon him. He didn't flinch when he closed his eyes and felt a hand reach out to touch him.
Slender, graceful, and fair beyond words, he felt the sudden maternal embrace of a young woman hold to him gently, helping him back to full height. When he opened his eyes, he didn't see the raven-haired daughter of an Earl and a talented nurse who had been by his side his entire life. But the concentric circles on the cover of the silver watch glowed a soft azure that showed that something had responded to his plight.
His breath was that of one who came up for air after too long under deep waters. He was freed from the deathly weight within the touch of the ethereal angel that was drawn to him by a simple and primal love for a young man who never knew she was ever there. Unraveling the fine silver chain about the fob watch, the youth once more placed about his neck. He had hidden it in his inner coat pocket, knowing that it would be the first thing that a studious and experienced bounty hunter would look for while on the hunt for George "The Comet" Crawley. But now he saw no reason to conceal the artifact. It's very touch - like the spirit of the magical princess who gave it to him - lightened his load greatly and cancelled out the evil torments of the mask upon his back. The circles from the crest of "The Master's Wheel" continued to glow softly within his shirt as the youth now rushed toward the red light at the end of the corridor.
He covered his head with his forearm to protect himself from the floating embers of burning cave fungus floating from the ceiling. When he reached the door at the end of the hallway, he found a warped and bulbous dent at the very center of the aluminum bolted door. All about the frame was a deep crimson light that wreathed it. The doorknob was glowing red, sauntering steam flowing off it as the first dribbles of heated brass liquid melted in thin river down to the keyhole. George knew what that meant. Lowering his goggles over his eyes from his forehead, George reached behind him and extracted the greyish blue blanket rolled under his pack's flap. He cloaked and cowled himself in the luxuriously soft and masterfully woven material. Then, holding his breath, the youth threw a boot into the heated door.
"Ahh!"
Even wrapped in protective material made from the strongest hemp from the dark ocean floor, the intensity of the heat that rushed over the figure that kicked open the door came on him in a strong gale of pent up energy. Embers and ashy mushrooms were swept down the corridor. George felt as if he had kicked open the door that housed the 'fucking' sun. His face stung as the heat became so intense that he couldn't even sweat. Shutting his eyes, the boy forced himself to struggle forward, when every instinct inside him screamed to run the opposite way. After all, this wasn't exactly what he had in mind when he set the whole thing in motion. Now, as it was, this might be much closer than he thought, or wanted it to be. He sprang into the raging inferno that was lit inside the room.
It was here that the great and mighty mythical beast whose roar shuddered and quaked the opulent palace resided. Yet, there was no sleeping fire drake guarding a horde of the choicest treasures of the Levinson family. Instead, there was a rocking and moaning Iron hided beast which was rattling and clanking. Tentacles and appendages of searing hot pipes of glowing crimson were attached to the metallic monster whose shimmying was loosening iron bolts as steam erupted from a bulging and warping pot belly. Here, at the very bottom levels of Levinson Manor, there could be found one of the largest and most powerful heating furnaces in all of the world.
At its peak, it could easily centrally heat not just every room and level of the manor, but all of the servant's areas. In the string of some of the most devastating winters of the late 1880's, Levinson Manor was a beacon and outpost against the deathly cold for many of those years. However, having been in disuse for many long decades since those days, not to mention George Crawley clogging the pipes when hearing of the coming of an army of foes. Now, three hours of being turned to the highest setting with the heat having nowhere to go, each clogged pipe was ready to burst like a pin to a large explosive that sat on the very roots of the manor itself. And when the ripening Industrial furnace finally hit critical …
No one wanted to be even half a mile from the manor which was set to go off like a ton of dynamite.
George peaked behind goggles that protected his eyes from flying embers and sparks shooting from the rumbling machine. The glass had already burst from the meter read outs that maintained the heat levels of the furnace. Inside each instrument monitor, every arrow was ticked far to the right, most wobbling deeper into the critical red areas. More and more steam from building pressure in the clogged mechanism was spilling out, fogging the room in blistering obscurity up to George's knees. The iron furnace was starting to glow a deep crimson. The bolts from buckling compartments and pressurized pipes shot off like 'Tommy Gun' bullets into the rocky walls and ceiling of the sea cave. The youth ducked several ricochets as he backed away from the expanding machine that was in a critical countdown to oblivion.
"Shit, shit, shit!" The youth muttered to himself. "Yeah, you're really going to show up the guineas by blowing yourself up before they can!" He scoffed in self-admonishment at his own stupidity.
At the end of the room was a large and expansive tube of thick black iron that lifted up into the cavern ceiling. In front of the man-sized expansive pipe was a long rectangular door that cut across sideways. When George tossed it open quickly, to not scold himself, he jumped back as a deluge of decades old coal nuggets slushed out, skittering and clattering onto the floor. With a curse, the youth dug out two sets of thick insulated leather workman's gloves used by former boiler maintenance men that had once shoveled said coal into the furnace. The youth put both sets of gloves over his hands. He could barely move his fingers. But it was just enough to do what had to be done. Reaching into the dark tube, the youth tossed out two shovels, before slipping inside the pipe. Kicking more fossilized coal onto the floor, George shut the door behind him.
It was pitch black inside the confined space. Lifting his hand in front of his face, he would've never known it was there. But the one thing he did notice was that the feeling that he was standing in the inner sanctum of an erupting volcano had gone away. He had taken refuge in the coal storage compartment. It had been a large piped tube that stretched from the surface of the manor all the way down to the boiler room. Thus, rather than carry tons of coal down to the basement, workers need only to shovel it down the shoot. Out of sheer necessity to protect the coal from enfilade heat from the furnace, the iron tube was double insulated against the environment of the room outside. However - as a testament to the coming Armageddon - George could feel the heat seeping through the iron. In the bald spots on the floor, uncovered by coal, he could already see the soft glow of crimson and smoke starting to saunter off the coal. Removing his trusted heatshield and camouflage blanket, he rolled it up tightly and shoved it back under flap of his pack. Then, feeling around, he grasped hard iron rungs of a wide built in maintenance ladder that went up.
George mounted the long iron bars and began to climb them quickly with squealing cries of new weight on rusted metal. The sizzle that met his climbing alerted him to the luck of wearing insulated gloves before gripping the rungs. The measurement of progress was taken on faith for the young man as he climbed in the exclusivity of impenetrable darkness. The sound of his feet and hands echoed hollowly up and down the pipe. He panted in anxiety, not knowing how much time he had before the furnace blew. It also didn't help that he now had to climb the literal length of the basement levels. It was as if one had to scale the sheer seaside cliff face to race a coming explosion.
But if George Crawley was exhausted, he didn't feel it, fore, his adrenaline shot through the roof when he looked down. The sound of fizzling was a harbinger to a sudden red light that glowed from below. Creeping slowly up, like a rising tide, was the heat from the furnace which had finally melted through the insulation and was working its way up toward him. Soon, he was coughing as smoke from the cooking coal began to drift up toward him. Before long, oxygen was becoming scarce. Anxiety began to set in as he bumbled into another situation of his own making. He had gone from being nearly incinerated from a bomb he armed himself, to being suffocated to death while climbing a blazing chimney. It took all his training and forceable will not to panic or give into fear. If he overexerted himself, then he might use up all the oxygen and pass out, leading to being burned alive. The adventurer maintained an ascent that was steady and quick paced as the smoke grew thicker about him, testing his very nerve.
Finally, with no time for relief, George had tied his race with the red glow and billowing smoke to the top. Yet, surrounded by black obscurity and sizzling iron walls, the youth found that the hatch was closed. Steam and smoke were starting to rise from under his hands as the heat began to eat away at the first layer of his workman's gloves. Now, shortening his breath in a miasmic fog of black toxicity, while the intensity of oven like heat surrounded him, George made his first sputter of fear. Again and again, the youth threw a leather clad shoulder against the clamped hatch with force. Steam fizzled off the leather … and had it been any other coat the heat would've eaten it away assuredly. However, the tanned leather of the coat to which George Crawley - and his unbroken line of descendants - would later become synonymous with was much more than met the eye.
Yet, for once, the age of the manor worked in the adventurer's favor. In the glory days of the Levinson's reign in High Society, nothing could move the locked hatch. But decades of rust and disuse gave way its strength. And when George precariously grasped each side of the lips of the hatch, hanging over the open chasm of fiery death in order to propel both his feet up to kick it, the iron circle showed gleams of sunlight upon overgrowth on the estate grounds. The force of George's kicks over the open chasm grew more and more desperate as he felt the heat of the sweltering and scorching metal burn away the material of his gloves. But still no oxygen flowed down, as each sliver of open air was pushed out by escaping coal smoke that flooded through each crack of daylight. As George began to lose consciousness muddled words began to play in his head as despair began to take hold of his struggle to open the hatch.
'You are an ill-bred, vengeful, violent, plague upon this family and its noble legacy!'
BANG!
'I have spent many nights convinced that Isobel - in some madness of self-righteous charity - switched my boy at birth with some farmer's daughter's mistake left at the village church doors. And it warms me, truly, at times, to think that our real heir is safely tucked away on some kindhearted tenant's farm. Yet, I couldn't find him nor bring him home till now, because, no matter how hard I've tried, I could not convince Mamma and Papa that you are not mine!'
CLANKGCK!
'So, go on, nameless bastard, go fight your 'honorable' last stand! You have taken my husband and my baby from me, but I won't let you take my daughter, my only child left! I wish you, with speed, to whatever end you choose as long as it's far from me!'
BANG!
' GO!'
CLANKGCK!
'Matthew and Caroline were irreplaceable. They were so very unlike you, with your provincial courage and grifter's swagger who any beggar can find in a dozen more orphanages all around the Empire. There was only one Matthew Crawley and Caroline Talbot. You? Dogs have the same courage and integrity, but with double loyalty and thrice the breeding in their tails.'
BANG!
'GO!'
SHRROTTHUMPH!
Suddenly, with one last kick of despairing and helpless rage, the hatch was knocked completely off its corroded hinges with a sobering and uncomfortable squeal of metal. As it popped into the air, the heavy iron cover nearly hit George. Evasively, he released his right hand and swung back. The pain of the third iron rung from the top smashing into his ribs nearly weakened his grip. With clenched teeth he dangled one handed over the fiery chasm in the blinding river of smoke escaping through the opening to the surface. Laboring, with the last of his strength, George climbed out of the billowing furnace manhole and out into the cool and sunny air of the final summer days of the Rhode Island countryside. With elation at such a small and hard-won victory, George threw himself into the ivy and vines of the overgrown servant's area behind the manor.
For a long moment he lay on the ground. All about him was a wide and expansive stone patio that was covered in vines, Ivy, and weeds that cropped up and pushed through the spaces between the tiles. There were a complex of other buildings and smaller houses. A domed glass paneled greenhouse completely grown over by the vegetation inside. Branches from trees and hedge limbs burst through brittle weather and sea stained glass. Thick Ivy draped over the whitewashed smoke house whose eaten and weathered wooden door hung off its hinges on a termite devastated wooden porch. The servant's quarters were located in a dilapidated and large rust colored brick building which was wrapped in vines that snaked through broken windows and stained white wooden panes.
Behind the lavished manor house - built in dedication to a Tomorrowland that never was - there seemed to be an entire community of servants and ground keepers who lived their lives around it. There were food stands, catering tables, and even a weed eaten and rusted baseball diamond in the far distance. There was a time, in places now forgotten, that this grand house seemed to generate its very own universe, an existence, all on its own.
But George Crawley didn't look out to this almost cult like commune in ruins, but instead lifted his soot stained goggles up to the top of his forehead and lay back. In the distance there was bird chatter. He squinted his eyes against the gleam of the late-morning sun. And he was stilled by the sound of the cool breeze that rustled the weeds and ivy leaves about him. After days locked up in the quiet and abandoned manor, George had almost forgotten the feeling of the wind on his cheeks and to hear the noise of living things once more.
He was, momentarily, besotted by the sunlight and fresh air of the closing summer days of rural New England. His eyes transfixed by the swaying motion of a distant tree near the greenhouse that was caught in the sea breeze which rustled its green leaves as it quivered. He seemed to be as one who had escaped a tomb that he had been shut in living, lost in darkness which made him forget the simple pleasures of a summer day.
With a shake of his head, the figure, stained by carbon scoring on his coat and cheeks, lifted his hands.
"I'll be damned …" He muttered in disbelief as he glanced his bare palms stained black.
It was only then that he realized how close he had just scraped by. The heat of the iron surface he just climbed had not just burned through both double layers of the insulated workmen gloves he wore but had also burned through his own padded fingerless gauntlets. His escape had just been in the nick of time, or else in any moment afterward the heated iron would've burned right through the flesh of his hands.
FFFFFFFRRRRRRRRRRRRHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOMMMMM!
His mind was shaken back to the situation when he felt the ground underneath him rumble harshly. His hand shot like lightning to the Ray Gun when he heard loud smashing of glass. In the distance he saw that the violence of the latest tremor had loosened the panes of several windows in the abandoned servant's quarters and the overgrown greenhouse. Removing his hand, the leather pack jangled, the saber rattled, and the ancient wood of the evil mask clunked when George rolled onto his front and got back to his feet. With anxiety, the youth removed and tossed the double pair of gloves and pocketed his fingerless gauntlets he would have to mend and patch once more. He was behind the lazy perimeter that the mercenaries and gangsters had thrown up. Now, possessing all the items he came to this godforsaken place for, his new and only goal was to get out before the furnace went critical …
Putting two fingers in his mouth, the youth gave an alerting whistle toward the tree by the overgrown greenhouse.
The novelty excitement of the action in the large whitewashed palatial Gilded Age ruin was lost on the company of reserves that were sent to keep a watch on the main gates. Most were gangsters, new to the organization. They were sons, nephews, and cousins that were given the shit work, trusted enough to watch the cars … and that was about it. They had gotten insulted, smacked on the back of the head, and told to shut up by the older guys when they complained. There was no way of knowing when they'd be able to prove themselves to the bosses and lieutenants. Instead, they picked guys up, drove them to places, and served dinner at the safe houses to a table of wise guys that had never ending jokes in which the new recruits were always the butt. Some of the boys were disheartened, gathering around in groups, shooting dice in front of the line of top end bumpers. They were all told by the upper management- the real paisanos - that if they were going to go on a long trip to Rhode Island, of all places, they were gonna do it in style.
Yet, in the end, this was the sort of thinking which led to blunders. Fore it was the column of flashy cars manned by men in even flashier suits that got them noticed on their way to Newport. Thus, in their unhurried show boating through New England, the rumors of their coming long proceeded them. It was why by the time they arrived and looked to storm Levinson Manor, they found nothing, but traps set by an enemy who was waiting for them.
And yet, with the noise of young men shooting dice, and the general dying down of the sound of gunfire in the manor, there was a single undisturbed figure who sat alone in a plain motorcar that had diplomatic markings. It was of modest make compared to the gangster's vehicles, and the color was rather lived in, unremarkable. Yet, what the car had been was reliable and non-conspicuous. That was what the older woman wanted, what she told her men to choose. For a long time, the handsome figure, in silk dress and matching turquoise hat with pinned feather, had studied her enemy. She was by no means an expert, fore, in truth, no one could be. But she had sent out modest eyes and ears, and the handsome older woman had a brain on her.
These transplanted Italian rustics still lived and died ten miles from where they were born, like in the old country. They were racist, prejudice, and xenophobic. Thus, they were useless on the hunt - not good for anything other than grunt and muscle work. These prejudice apes came to this place in force, somehow expecting to find an English Gentleman, the 38th Lord of Downton - some figure approximating Crawley's hero Sherlock Holmes and the boy's old teacher and mentor Allan Quartermain. When in reality he would be nothing of the sort. The older woman knew that George "The Comet" Crawley's greatest strength - the reason he had alluded her all these long years - was due to his uncanny anonymity and his unmatched skills as a ranger. His years being taught the ways of surviving in the wild by the likes of Quartermain and the greatest of African tribesmen often thwarted her.
From the time he was just a boy to now as a teenager, the heir to the House of Grantham knew how to blend in with his surroundings and disappear into the wild. Never had the youth used his real name in the open nor in writing. It took her years to find him, after chasing ghosts and tall tales from New York City to New Orleans. Ever after her agents followed up on numerous stories of some rather good-looking kid with a Webley Revolver who helped some Mississippi farmer. Some nameless kid who rescued some young woman from desperate ruffians in West Virginia using Hong Kong street fighting martial arts. And a youth who had handedly alluded the Ku Klux Klan in some mountain path at the Cumberland Gap between Virginia and Tennessee.
If you asked the people which he had saved years ago where he went, they'd send you in the wrong direction or flat out lie. If you asked American Democrat Senators and Representatives, they'd deny knowing anything about their dealings with the Ku Klux Klan, but then, assure the older foreign woman that the 'Dirty little Limey Papist' she was looking for had been dead for years. Of course, it wasn't true, yet the paramilitary arm of the Democratic Party would never reveal that they had been outwitted by a tweeny, least the Negros, Jews, and Catholics catch wind of their weakness and turn up at the ballot box.
In New Orleans she and her men were turned away from nightclubs, restaurants, and other businesses. It was a city built on tolerance and acceptance, but there was no place for bounty hunters nor anyone else that was after "The Comet". One negro grandmother on stage even stopped her jazz set just to throw the older woman out of her club for speaking ill of the once Outlaw Captain that was known in those parts. It was apparent that wherever George Crawley had been seen, he left devoted friends and admirers for valiant deeds done for their benefit and salvation. It wasn't till he reappeared in South Texas and Mexico that her influence could finally be woven.
The Southwest of North America was a dangerous place, especially in Mexico. There, George Crawley's good deeds meant nothing to roving bands of Mexican bandits and mercenaries - former revolutionaries from a lost Civil War. Nor did his legend frighten desperate and angry Native Indian gangs fleeing to the lawless Rio Grande from the dust storms that swallowed their reservations in Oklahoma. And there was always a man with no name, ready and willing, to hunt a rogue figure down for a price in the places that Crawley ranged. The civility found on the American and Mexican border during the end of the Gilded Age had once more been lost in the worst years of the Depression. Thus, it was, that in a place where violence and lawlessness ran rampant, there were plenty of assassins, bounty hunters, and desperate fighters who would gladly collect the price the older woman was willing to pay.
Yet, it had been two years, and all she had to show for it was a false hope in locking George Crawley away in "The Mission" at Saltillo. There, she thought he'd rot away, lose his mind to the endless darkness of that evil place. But he escaped within a year. Since then, her bounty hunters, assassins and even some of the most trusted and beloved members of her own household, have only ended up on the wrong end of the fabled Ray Gun or went missing beyond accounting somewhere out there in the hills of Mexico.
It was an endless madness, a tangled web of torments that strangled the life out of the dark colored woman with fair skin that sat frozen in the backseat of her car. Her dark eyes watched the rolling dice of the young Italian American men in the distance. It shouldn't be this hard, it was never supposed to be this hard. What she wanted was justice, and what she got was suffering. Why was it that her son's death seemed so simple? And yet, allowing her to find peace in it was so hard? All it took was a night, a simple stroking of a beautiful British Lady's pale and nervous hand around her son's manhood - around any manhood - for the first time. No investigation, no convictions, he was simply dead. It was condescending, it was outrageous, to think that her pride, her joy, the only thing she ever loved in this world could be taken, and that was it. His lifeless body carried across the manor like so much garbage, by infidels, by women, by filthy cows! It was murder, it had to be! The Countess of Grantham, her whore, and the unwashed maid acting as if they were disposing of a body. Someone had to pay! Someone would pay!
But for eighteen years no one had.
There were times that the wilting foreign rose thought of outright killing her, this Lady Mary Crawley. It would be so simple, to take the life of the blushing pale virgin that murdered her son. In fact, it might have been the easiest kill of them all. She toyed with the idea of having her raped in her bed, humiliated and defiled, to be found by her family in gruesome and terrifying remains. No one in Grantham County would ever forget the gory and horrible murder of Lady Mary. But then, her suffering, her pain, would only be temporary. Sodomized, tortured, and gutted like a filthy swine, it all ended in death eventually. It was too easy; it was too quick. She wanted the elegant and beautiful fashion queen to suffer as she suffered. She wanted her to be sitting in a car, in a foreign country, living only by the blackest of hate within.
It had been fifteen years, fifteen long years since she had her opportunity to visit her revenge upon the silken whore of the House of Grantham. It was a religious imperative, 'an eye for an eye'. She would kill Lady Mary's son, take his life, and then they would be even. Yet, that kind of poetic absolution had long evaded her. Fore George Crawley turned out to be so wholly different than his parents, so unique in temperament to a normal English Gentleman - and how infuriating and tragically ironic it was. Through the long years her nephew, her grandson, and the most trusted members of her household told her that there was no point in chasing George "The Comet" Crawley. They say that he hates Lady Mary, that given the chance he would stake the demonic beauty himself. They say that Lady Mary disavowed him, said he was illegitimate - a foundling imposter. Why continue to throw fortunes and valued lives away when there was no love between mother and son? But the older woman never bought such stories. She had been a mother herself once, a mother to a terrible and frightening monster. And she knew the truth of the matter.
The first time her son had raped a woman it had been her own Persian Lady's Maid when he was fourteen. The regal woman had attacked her son, chased him around their estate outside Istanbul, smacked his beautiful face with her shoe. She had cursed him, told him he was nothing but a dog, that he brought shame upon them all. Yet, in the end, she didn't stop loving him, nor did she blink in having the woman he violated stoned as an adulteress. Kamal would always be her son, he would always be the love of her life, even when the stories of his 'forceful vulgarities' abroad reached so low as shepherds' wives and so high as the youngest Princess of Monaco.
But still the foreign princess did not believe that British Vampire hated her own son. Fore, if Princess Pamuk could still love a son who had even forced his own mother into bed at his will and want, then Lady Mary would love a son for the minor sin of being so very different than what she wanted out of a child. In the end, the Iranian princess knew that the death of George Crawley would destroy Lady Mary Josephine Crawley irreparably, no matter what she said in public or even unto herself.
Yet, today … today might be the final day, when all scores were settled, and she might rest forever afterward.
But there was a familiar noise that stirred her from her ice-cold concentration off the clicking and rolling dice in her purview. At first, she couldn't place her finger on what it was. It wasn't that she didn't know what the sound was. It was the sudden misplacement of it, the shocked oddity of it being in this place of all places. Indeed, it simply slipped her mental grasp, the sound not forming a picture in her mind. She stirred in her seat, looking all around with a puzzled countenance upon her aged handsome face. It grew louder as it came closer to them at a rapid pace. The woman sat up, noticing that now even the younger men had taken notice of the obvious noise that still remained vaguely unreachable in her mind. The gangsters didn't arm themselves, but simply gathered close, looking all around.
The front of the Levinson Estate was a vast wilderness of overgrown shrubs, tall weeds, and twisted trees. The once white stone walkways of the grand house were overgrown, swallowed by a hedge maze grown wild, and upturned by snaking tree roots that worked their way slowly to the sea moss clogged fountain. It seemed impossible to maneuver in any large group and taking the cars any closer to the Manor was simply out of the question. Having burst through the decrepit and warped front gates, the lead car of the column had instantly paid for it by its undercarriage being caught under twisted roots upon the grounds. Most of this expedition would have to be done by foot, something no one - not even the Princess's men - relished.
But the word she was looking for was … hoofs.
Yes, it was all too late that the Princess realized that what she was hearing was the sound of racing, fleet footed, horse hoofs on stained cobble stone. By the time that she realized that was what it was, there was a rustle coming from the new wild overgrowth from the ever-expanding hedge maze. Breaking through the foliage in a leap was a black stallion with white feet and a matching star upon its brow. Mounted on a fine leather saddle made especially for Lady Mary Crawley on her eighteenth birthday, was a figure that the older woman did not recognize. Giving the magnificent beast urging kicks, he galloped through the tangled web of vines and roots, thundering from the maze onto the main thorough fair toward the gates. No one stopped him, most looked puzzled. The only people who did anything was the Princess's personal guard who drew their swords and circled about her closed door.
There, for the briefest moments, the older woman's dark glistering eyes met the cerulean of the stranger that rode by. He was taller and darker than the rest of his family, covered in carbon scoring. A pair of racing goggles, soot stained, were pushed up onto his forehead. The peacoat he wore was made of beaten mahogany leather with the collar done up in the back. He had a leather pack of dark brown, with a tightly rolled silk Worth wedding gown underneath. The familiar saber of a Victorian British Officer was strapped to the packs side while an utterly soul stealing and terrifying mask of ancient wood was slapping against its back. The figure did not look his age, his face was handsome to a fault, but hardened - bearing the deep marring of an inescapable sorrow that would be worn forever. His hair was a perfectly quaffed mane of waving raven curls that were grown out, covering the back of his neck.
It seemed that for just a pause of time and space the universe slowed and the two met one another's eyes. Then, the youth, with a wry trickster's smirk gave the old Princess a two-finger salute. It was then, after months of chasing him from Fort Worth, to New Orleans, then across the United States to Rhode Island, that the vengeful princess - for the first time ever - finally laid eyes upon George "The Comet" Crawley …
Sailing by, eight feet high, on a horse as quick as dreams.
Entr'acte Music
"Whiskey in the Jar" - Santano