The Creggan White Hare Chapter 9: Red Barchetta, a downton abbey fanfic

In the second month of the year 1912 there was a thin sheen of ice that frosted the hardened and browned manicured lawns of the Levison Estate. The sun was obscured by dark and heavy clouds that oppressed much of the light of the world. It was a dull and dead grey that washed out the color of nature about the once picturesque scenery long maintained at the base of a plateau's seaside cliff. Here, in the dreary gloom of mid-winter, a deep and unending melancholy starched the atmosphere with a graveyard like silence that could not be broken by any one voice nor whirl of machine. Life and happiness - even the simplest of joy - seemed to stand oddly still, and in its place the grandeur of the tall and mighty silhouette on the bleak horizon seemed almost haunted. Fore, now, in the absence of all that made Levinson Manor what it was, the palace to a lost world of tomorrow was now open and empty to whatever might find it hospitable to its need.

The motorcar stood idle for a long time as the white figure stood upon the dirt road. Her cerulean eyes following such a familiar pathway that wound all the way up to the plateau. She had remembered seeing it for the first time when she was very young - stepping out of the carriage to where her father and brother stood with a team of land surveyors. She remembered his smile, the way he lifted her up so that she could look through the telescope on the tripod. He gave a deep kiss into her curly ringlets as she looked. That was where it was going to be, her fairy palace, the future. Right there on top of the plateau. He put an arm around Harold's shoulder and held her closer as the two children looked out and shared their father's vision of what could be on the horizon.

Many years later, Lady Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham, stood right in that same spot staring out at the majestic palatial manor born from her vision, Harold's determination, and their father's faith in his children. Tears welled on her pale and lovely face. Her supple throat tightened in the bitterly frigid gust of air, like the sleeping breath of death itself that shuttered and disturbed the landscape with a quiet despair. Her soundless sob frothed as she sputtered a sigh, her burgundy leather gloves squeaking as she gripped the pelts of her pure white coat and matching fur hat. She mourned for those days, those little moments that she knew that she could never get back. He was gone now, taken in the night, never to awaken again.

It was peaceful, they say. Mr. Levinson had kissed his wife as he slipped in bed, proposed that the house was too empty, and that they should probably have few more kids to liven it up. Martha - mid-sentence in a book - didn't flinch at the clap and squeeze of her rump. She agreed … but only if he'll give her a foot massage to set the mood. It was then that Mr. Levinson turned out his light and wished goodnight to an incredulous wife who smirked as she read on.

It would the last words that the man ever shared.

It had been several years now, but Cora still thought of it, of him. This man who never said no, who was utterly fascinated with a young girl as if he had never seen one before. In her mind, Cora could still recall looking up from the piano that was playing and catching the eye of Daddy - elbow propped on the doorframe, his thumb placed over his lips as he studied his prize beauty in wonder. Mr. Levinson was always a self-aware man. Whether he had always been that way, or the war had made him so, Cora could never tell. But the idea of his children – the very concept of creating something that walked and talked, something that you loved and loved you back - never stopped fascinating him. She remembered the hours he spent in her bedroom, holding Edith, staring at her, pontificating to his wife how there was a quarter of them in this baby girl. Martha - two and a half decades into a marriage - only half-listened after so many years hearing a similar speech about their own children and then Mary. But it was always something that Cora would remember and cherish about her father.

The manor was built upon this fascination with these lives born from some magic inside him. It was a monument to this immaculate capture of his imagination by the hopes and dreams of something new and unique to the world born from his love for a woman he married two days after meeting her in New Orleans. After so much death seen in the worst places of fighting in Northern Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, Mr. Levinson became a humanist, an enthusiast for life. When his cynical wife said that something shouldn't be done - he asked why. When his wife sighed - he laughed. And when that impossible thing was accomplished - she punched him in the ribs, he smacked her on the ass, and they both grinned. So, when they took that family trip to the World's Fair in Chicago in 1883, and young Cora had a moment of provenance in an obscure blueprint for a mansion of the future, her father was enchanted by her enchantment. He would provide her with this dream, because, he had to know where it would go and what it would do once it happened. His little girl had a dream and, by God, little girls with dreams were what heaven was made of.

Now, that one dream of a beautiful young girl had come, been fought for, and was accomplished. The destiny seen that one perfect day in Chicago during the World's Fair now stood by her side. A man, kind, good, and fair stood behind her, his face pressed to the back of her head. A daughter, two years a woman grown, clutching one of her arms. Her middle daughter, a year younger, but wiser - her genius - holding her other. And her baby, her beauty, her and her husband's prize gem, hugging her from behind and crying because her mama was crying. Her destiny, her fate, born from the construction of this manor, it clutched to her in the private of this cold and still late-afternoon. Here was where the journey that began when her daddy hoisted her up to look through a surveyor's scope now ended with a family gathered around her in that same spot.

It was too much money, it was too much of a hassle, and nobody even lived here anymore. Harold had wanted to shutter the manor for years, but never dreamed of asking Cora - knowing what she would say. But now the orders had come from on high, the highest power there was. No, not God - despite how she fancied herself - but from their mother. Even in the summers, since Mr. Levinson's death, she did not go to that place. Winter's in New York at San Sochi, Summers in New Orleans at Amantha Pointe, with trips to England three times a year to make sure Violet, or "That Woman" as she called her, hadn't fully corrupted 'the babies'. It had always amused Cora - as it embarrassed the girls - that they were forever referred to as 'the babies' no matter how old they were.

Levinson Manor, this place, was too near to him, her beloved. His love, his fascinations, his soul seemed to be in every room, every painting, and every sunrise that rose from the endless ocean on the horizon. Just being near this place reminded her of everything that was missing in her life, every fight, every disagreement, every admonishment for the Southern Belle being a Grade-A, double-wide, asshole. The longing for every kiss, the petting of her ass, and the smirks. The love notes he wrote her from across the room, to which she would send back with grammar corrections and a note for him to do better. 'You can make multi-million-dollar deals, but you can't use the right spelling of 'There' and 'Their' … don't make no damn sense, boy!'. It was in every brick and empty minute of sacrilege that came with the silence in the deserted halls of this palace by the sea. There was no moving on, no surviving even another heartbeat as long as Levinson Manor remained on the forefront of her mind, eating her money and her heart little by little.

So, it had to go.

Being blunt, she cut off her baby girl's protests by informing the Countess of Grantham that she can reopen Levinson Manor when she starts a multi-million-dollar canned goods conglomerate of her own. Till then, Lady Cora can get her 'pretty little ass' down there to retrieve her prized possessions out of the place, because Martha was shutting it down for good. It was particularly cold, but then, without Daddy, Cora found that Martha was completely unchecked in her temperament and attitudes. Her mother's love had always been a thorny rose, and yet the woman seemed more thorn now with the rose being colored by the blood of her loved ones.

The girls had all thought their mama insane that she would not take her wedding dress, the prized pictures of her girls they gifted to her that past Christmas, nor the great sapphire that she wore upon her brow like an elven queen of old. But the woman only turned from her childhood bedroom window and told Mary - holding the Worth gown to herself in the mirror - that it would not be the last they would see of these things. Her daughter frowned as something prophetic moved soft and quick as a shadow across her mother's face. The woman took her daughter's hand and led her to the painting of Sir Lancelot hunching over the funeral barge of the Lady of Shallot. Then, with a shake of her head, Cora didn't seem to know what she had just said, or why she led Mary to the painting, as if some greater benevolent power of the universe spoke through her in that moment. Then, taking her silken wedding gown, she placed it back on the mannequin by her bedside, straightened the triple pictured frame, and led Mary out with an arm around her eldest daughter's waist.

Now, they had finally reached the end. They were the last ones out, her, Robert, and the girls. In the month of February in 1912 the locks and chains had wrapped the gilded gates. But there was nothing that the woman took with her. All the things most precious to her, birthed from the construction of the grand manor house, was leaving with her. Her husband and her girls. Fore, the wealth of this temple of time was in its very prophecy. To many this place was a failed experiment, a moldering ruin to a utopia that never was, to a lost Tomorrowland. But it was only the few, or perhaps only the one, who knew that it was neither of these things. It was a palace to the very future, but not of the world, or society, but to a family, to a little girl with a dream. Here, outside these silent halls, in the arms of her girls and her soul mate, a father's true vision caught in the provenance of little Cora Crawley's eye had finally come to full fruition.

1935

The town's people of Newport Rhode Island felt it coming before they heard it.

It was like the entire world was caught in a giant vacuum. All the air, the power, and energy, on a perfect day in the closing summer was sucked right out of the ether. It felt like a giant buildup of something massive - a balloon in the split-second before popping from too much mass. They all stopped what they were doing in the silence that fell like the moments after a drawn breath. People halted in the middle of the street, they walked out of shops, and looked to one another in query. But no one said a word … no one. Later, they would ponder if they could have even talked in that frozen moment between strange universes. "The New York Times" would later write that what came next was so massive that it sucked the very oxygen.

Then, it happened.

It rolled like thunderclouds in a hurricane racing an oncoming runaway train. The trees creaked and cracked as a blistering wind of heat chased the massive wave of chaos made of pure cacophony. As it passed, windows shattered, the ground shook, fair concession stands were overturned, and the rumble was felt in the very base of every chest there that day. The sonic boom was an incredible phantasmal wave of terror and fear that washed over everyone and everything. Then, when the blast of heat passed, there was only silence. The cool breeze caressing their cheeks and sweated brows as the world and festivities stilled.

In the distance, away from any knowledge or memory, sheets of ancient rock exploded into the sky. For miles, large chunks of sediment crashed into the green shimmering ocean like a handful of pebbles being flung in frustration across a vast lake. Meanwhile, whitewashed stone and sheered pieces of romantic statues mounted upon manor walls rained down with destruction upon an overgrown forest below a tall cliff face. Trees toppled under the smashing thunder of falling meteorite like foundation stone, while heads of marble angelic creatures lay cratered in undergrowth. In the distance, there was a toe curling, spine tightening, sound of sliding destruction as an entire cliff face plateau fell into the waves below.

There, tipping over like the missing center of a tall wedding cake, the remains of Levinson Manor - which had a large gapping section missing - crumbled upon itself. It seemed to last an eternity, minutes taking hours, but eventually the white and gold manor tumbled with the rest of its rocky foundations into the thundering and sloshing ocean. Gone then was the beauty, the majesty, and the elegance of a place like no other in the world. It's giant domed ballroom of glimmering glass, it's collection of ancient master works of art, and the accumulated memories of an age of fantasy and wonder undreamed, were lost forever into the dark fathoms below. Then, gone at last, were the combined memories and history of the last vestiges of the dreams and heartaches of rich American debutantes who crossed the ocean to marry English Lords.

And yet, somewhere, Mr. and Mrs. Levinson gave a rather charmed smirk, waiting on bated breath for what the headlines will say tomorrow.

The sky was crowded with debris aflame. With the entire middle section of the sprawling manor house blown out from a large warping bubble in the palatial residence. The massive explosion catapulted white chalky stone, gilded rafters, as well as priceless art pieces in every direction across the expansive estate. Everywhere one stood for a mile in every direction flaming debris smashed and crater, the shaking ground caught in great aftershocks of the subterranean explosion that was felt in some compacity throughout the entire State of Rhode Island. Falling pieces of ancient art and flaming white stone whistled like incoming shells of artillery overhead, exploding with massive clouds of dirt that rained like filthy precipitation. Their bombardment snapped tree trunks and eviscerated anything that lay under its destructive shadow.

And it was here - in this milewide kill box - there stood an ivy wrapped rotted five bar fence guarding a field of weeds that flanked a dirt road that led to Levenson Manor. All around it, limbs of mythological marble statues, red hot pieces of piping, and greened brass ceiling ornaments rented and pitted the New England Countryside in explosions of dirt and rock. Flaming stone crushed places on the once charming rustic colonial fencing.

("The Lone Ranger Finale" (The William Tell Overture) – Hans Zimmer)

It was in this crossfire of death and dirt that upon it came suddenly a striding shadow that thunder across the shaking earth. A black horse with white feet and star upon its brow galloped through the fiery falling of the sky and, crouched by its rider, the horse bounded gracefully and proudly over the five-bar rotted fence through the hail of dirt and debris. As the falling shower of destruction lessoned, the fence stood remarkably untouched. However, moments later - in pursuit of the mounted figure - a swanky and expensive car smashed right through the colonial era barrier. The gun metal colored vehicle was quickly followed by a convoy of black and red Ford and Chevy cars that kicked up dirt, with men in fedoras cursing and shouting as they hung out the windows.

However, the convoy was soon bottle necked when the entire rectangular door of iron of whom once belonged to the coal storage area of a boiler room, knifed through the hood of a car causing it to explode.

"Jesus Mary fuckin Christ, Shit!"

The air was alive with screaming objects that fell like meteorites to the ground, causing it to quake and shake. But still, darting evasively from explosions of dirt and weeds, the black horse galloped with a terrific pace across an open flat plain of tall weeds. George Crawley, giving a kick, urged the horse faster into the kill zone as the sound of honking horns bleated shrilly on the steed's heels. Rotted and weathered spectator stands, and long forgotten leisure chairs wrapped in vines and overgrowth was all that was left of a Polo Pitch.

Here, for many months, young men of class and breeding from an Empire across the sea, and fine young collegian men who bussed from Princeton and Harvard had come. Some titled with lordly names, others patron saints of nepotism, yet they all fought on the field of sportsmanship to catch the eye of Ms. Cora Levinson, and later for the affections of her young teenage daughter Lady Mary Crawley. It was also the place where, - bored of a summer of bravado - Lady Mary - at the tender age of sixteen - took to horse and scored an unprecedented five goals upon her own grandpapa's pitch. They all thought that Mr. Levinson would have a heart attack from how hard he was laughing at the way 'baby girl' showed them.

Though Lady Mary had never felt fully comfortable in the presence of her American grandparents, at least not in the way that Edith and Sybil would forever seem to be, the girl cherished the look of pride that her Grandpapa gave her whenever he saw his granddaughter upon horse. Being a dashing cavalier that had rode with JEB Stuart during the War of Session, the man cherished the idea that the essential equestrian mastership had not been lost and lived on in his eldest grandchild. Therefore, it was on the Polo Pitch that the audacious and beautiful Lady Mary Crawley shamed, awed, and dazzled her American cousins and suitors.

Now, many long years later, her only son, her last child, would've captured the heart of his mother had she been his peer. Fore, hitting the straight away, he and his faithful steed raced across the overgrown pitch. The automatic fire of Tommy Guns ripped through the thunder of a falling manor into the ocean. Behind and around them, fish-tailing domed cars wheeled and turned trying to cut off teenager and steed. Yet – using the falling debris and that inherited talent of equestrian arts - the skilled rider darted and sprang away from charging cars that circled and turned like metal sharks on a feeding frenzy.

It is here so noted - though he would never admit to it - but there was more than a passing resemblance to Lady Mary as he twisted and darted, with the same spirt that his own mamma once had riding this very field. Fore, it was that there were very few things that Lady Mary Josephine Crawley had ever taught her son. But the one thing that she made sure he knew how to do was ride a horse. And it was then, and ever afterward, that beyond his jawline, eyebrows, and temperament of personality that it was astride a steed that he had the likeness and baring of his mother. Indeed, there was, in fact, no visible difference between Mary and George when mounted. They rode the same, they sat the same, they had the exact reflexes and instincts, and were identical even to the looks upon their faces as they rode with abandon. Thus, despite their deep resentment toward one another, and very much Like their very entrails and internal organs, this was just one more thing in which estranged mother and son were a perfect, indistinguishable, match.

There was no universe in which the black horse, bred in the wild, sired by prize horses left to roam by their rich owner who put his head in the oven after the "Crash of '29", could outrun automobiles. But the skill of George Crawley inherent in Levinson blood, and forged in races across South and West Texas, as well as throughout Mexico, had him weaving and turning to avoid the circling foes. His greatest advantage - beyond the Polo Pitch being designed excessively for equestrian feats - was that his foes were greener than the overgrowth around him. Most of the gangsters, all of the street mercenaries, and much of the Shiite Zealots, had been incinerated by the explosion, the rest trapped in piles of rubble that fell into the sea. And for a time, in the aftermath of the carnage of this day …

The crime rate in New York City would fall dramatically.

Now all that was left of the hunters that wheeled and slung dirt around were the younger members of the crime syndicate - novices trying to get into the criminal organization. Most had only just learned to drive, while others who knew, only had experience in the city. Their tires and the makes of their boss's high-end vehicles were not meant for off-road expeditions. And though they could outmatch the young adventurer in speed, they lacked the mobility and nimble turning of a well-bred mustang lassoed in the wild, and 'green broke' by its new master. The black and white stallion was at its peak vitality, seemingly tireless, and unhesitating to the pull of the reigns. The young horse was the perfect melding of obedience and wild independence in the hand of a vastly superior horseman.

Thus, the jack-knifing and fish tailing vehicles, driven by teenagers, that pursued George found themselves throwing axels and crashing into flaming debris. In their zeal and inexperience, they even crashed into one another trying to corner the racer who darted around and between oncoming cars. It was a deadly game of dodge, requiring extreme concentration and no small amount of luck. Shrill beeping of horns and wild sprays of machine gun bullets filled the air with chaos. While, still, all around them, more debris fell with explosions of dirt that obscured vision of both rider and driver. However, in a flash of intuition and possession of instinct, George charged across the now mostly destroyed Polo Pitch in which Lady Mary had once made a name for herself in New York Society.

He pulled the reign hard - hearing the roar of an engine nipping at his horse's hoofs. With a spring, the stallion vaulted over a piece of an overlook balcony that had been in one of the art galleries. Behind him there was a cringing noise of screeching steel as the rebar of the concrete base caught the pursuing car's bumper, tearing it off while its iron impaled and ensnared the front of the expensive Ford. Seeing an opening, George gave another kick to his horse, sending it into a hard and frenzied speed. Ahead of him two cars - one black and the other red - crashed head to head. Their chrome bumpers locked, and their hoods smoking and crushed together. Yet, in the wreckage, between the two, was a 'V' shape where the two cars met. It was small but just wide enough for the black and white horse to vault through daylight and out of the madness of the motor-derby that had encircled him. It was just in time, fore, as he sprang free, a Packard smashed into the two disabled cars in vein pursuit.

Free from the chaos, the rider streaked off the Polo Pitch and vaulted over a colonial fence that outlined the road. However, he was far from being out of danger when he noticed that a new convoy was rushing after him. These cars were not flashy, but plain, dependable for the terrain, and bore diplomatic markings. Amateur hour was over - now had come the real enemies. Each door bore the crest of the King of Iran, and every driver and man inside wore a Turk's fez. Some bore burn scars on the faces, other wore eyepatches, and a few had old lacerations. These were former Imperial Soldiers of the Old Ottoman Empire, descendants of the feared Janissaries of the old Sultans - the personal bodyguards of the Pamuk household. They weren't the rabble of uneducated gangsters, greedy mercenaries, nor mindless Islamic Zealots. These were true killers, born and bred, and they would stop at nothing to avenge their old master and restore honor to the most prestigious household of their desiccated Caliphate Empire.

The road became a sloping trench with grassy elevation on each side that was hemmed in by forest to the right and fencing to the left. One tore over the open dirt road while the other two remained on the flanks, climbing onto the sloping ground. The car to the left skimmed the old colonial era fence, while the other lay parallel to the tree line of the old forest upon the Levinson Estate. Their formation left the young adventurer nowhere to run or maneuver. They came on him quickly, men wearing fezzes hung out the windows firing Walther pistols. Hearing the bullets screaming past his ears, George crouched his horse and began to veer to the right. From his side he dashingly slipped free the "Ray Gun" from its Mexican holster and pivoted back.

THUEM!

The noises of the futuristic revolver rented the cool air with a powerful thunder that was intimidating. His first shot ripped away the left side mirror of the right car, knocking the Janissary hanging out the window from the vehicle, dooming him to gruesomely to be dragged under the tires of the motor. His final shot burst through the window of the center car, hitting the driver right where fez met brow. The back of the man's scull exploded over the occupied backseat. The center car swerved, catching the side of the left car, before colliding with the right, driving it into tall unkempt trees of ancient origin to the New England countryside.

Seeing that George was now mounting the sloping ground - angling to slip into the wood - the last of the convoy's lead cars made a push to desperately cut the young rider off before he made it to cover. The blood pounding driver hammered on the horn in adrenaline, while his passengers screamed for him to watch out. But it was too late to turn back. They descended the sloping ground, drifted across the road, and climbed the other side of the small green gully.

SHHRRRUMMPHHH!

They had just about caught George Crawley when the youth vaulted his mustang over a suspicious overgrowth of ivy and moss. When he landed the saber rattled upon his back and the mask of the Necromancer plunked hollowly on his leather pack. But as he charged into the dark and dense woods there was a scream of metal tearing. Fore, unbeknown to the Turks, there was a large log that had been lying in that same spot for fifty long years - a log that Robert Crawley had once sat Ms. Cora Levinson upon to tell her all about Downton Abbey for the first time. Now, all these years later, it's mossy - near fossilized - nubs caught the undercarriage of a Chrysler and yanked it out, sending a part of the car rolling in the woods while the axel and the bottom frame remained caught on the log.

Somewhere in the spirit of the forest, caught in the lay lines of time and space, there was a tweeny girl who sat on a bicycle on the country path through the forest. The group of other guests had long since passed her by. She was terribly embarrassed. They had waited for quite a while for her to catch the hang of the thing, but somehow, she was getting worse. So, the party said that they would continue on and wait for her to get there. It had been an hour since, and still Lady Sybil Crawley at the tender age of thirteen still hadn't gotten any better at riding a bicycle. She sat on the side of the path with her older sister Edith - who was ordered by their mama to stay behind with her. But they weren't in any hurry. Sybil had grown frustrated, cried, screamed into the forest, and sat morosely down. Watching Edith riding languid circle around her baby sister pensively, Sybil claimed that they shouldn't go to their grandmamma's picnic anyway. Edith told her that it would be rude. To which her baby sister replied that Grandmamma was rude.

'Look at this place! Think … we're in a whole different country, Edith! Who knows what we'll find?! Let's go exploring, forget Grandmamma, Mama, and Mary's, High Society lunch!'

The idea of avoiding the mocking and snickered judgement from the New York Society guests as the two girls, shamefully, trudged to the picnic hours later appealed to Edith. The two sisters were contemplating where they should go first when a hotly offended Mary came peddling down the path. She had just sat down with a future Harvard honors graduate with interest in English investment - particularly English wives - when she had been sent by Mr. Levinson to check on her two younger sisters. And when she heard of their plans to ditch, Mary wouldn't have it. Such a snub would certainly reflect poorly on mama - and more importantly on Mary. Thus, at his admission, Edith was now more determined than ever to skip the picnic.

An argument started, then raged, before Mary physically grabbed Edith to drag her back to the picnic. To this, Sybil jumped on Mary's back - the thirteen-year-old girl trying to break up the altercation. Soon, by Sybil's weight or Mary's surprise, all three girls tumbled down the forest path. Landing on the other side of a small hill, the girls found themselves, suddenly, surrounded. From out of every burrow and hollow of tree came the shuffling and skittering feet of an entire colony of fluffy and wild bunnies. The tiny, floppy eared mammals slowly closed in curiously on the violent arrival of these new strange creatures in bonnets and sundresses.

Each side of 'first contact' was nervous than the other, fore it was the first time that any of the Crawley girls had come into contact with any sort of wildlife. Mary loved to hunt, but she had never seen anything up close that was alive. She tried to stop Sybil, who immediately walked up to meet the brown fuzzy ball that hopped up to investigate these intruders. They could've had diseases, they could've been violent, after all, this was America … they all carried guns for a reason. But when Sybil picked up the bunny and held it to her chest, the beast of Mary's nightmares vibrated warmly in her arms.

Two hours later, Mr. Levinson and Lady Grantham found the girls sitting on the forest floor, giggling, talking, and petting bunnies. Father and daughter exchanged knowing looks and slipped away unnoticed. The next day, the girls came back with Mr. Levinson. Their grandfather put up a sign to inform everyone that "Floppyburg" was located down this sloping incline and that it was private property overseen by the Crawley sisters. Taking Sybil in one arm and Edith in the other, he swore to the girls that he would make sure that no one hunted or killed any of their bunnies. Then, providing them his pocketknife, each of his grandchildren carved their initials onto the sign as signature of ownership.

There, for near thirty years, the sign had stood as monument to a cherished childhood adventure one perfect summer long ago.

RATATATATATATATATAT!

The booming sound of repeater fire from Tommy Guns strafed through the dense tree line of the old forest. Leaves and twigs from tree limbs rained down, shuffling and rattling as bullets tore through wild canopies and twisted trunks. Through the foliage screens random sprays of nine-millimeter automatic gunfire riddled a long forgotten and overgrown forest path. The random and uneven traveling line of machine gun fire sent noises of warped ricochets through the hollow ancient woods. Its concentration exploding the rotted and weathered sign covered in ivy that marked where "Floppyburg" once stood. As it disintegrated, a galloping horse thundered just behind the rail fire of a convoy of former Imperial bodyguards in Chryslers.

They shot indiscriminately into the forest at an unseen enemy they were trying to keep pace with blindly. The snorting of the energetic horse echoed hollowly through the dense forest as its hoofs trampled the Crawley girl's initials for good. George raced along the bicycle path that was now barely visible. All around him bullets ricocheted and cut through the close and sullen air inches from his face that was revealed through thin beams of day light that peaked through the tree canopies. From the outside, upon the road, the roaring engines of the convoy came in stereo through dense woods.

They hadn't had him cornered yet, but his spot was a precarious one. If he pulled ahead - even the slightest - he would be in their kill zone. But if he hung back, they'd be waiting for him at the clearing when he got out of the woods. In days past there might have been walking groups of guests taking in the natural splendor of the summertime country or bicycling on a planned excursion to some wonderful views of nature. But now a mustang raced a firing squad. Its rider aimed his revolver at the lead car as he galloped full charge down the overgrown path.

The motors were lined up single file, passenger side adjacent to the tree line. Two ex-soldiers hung out windows with Tommy Guns, giving fire discipline to cover maximum effectiveness. If they weren't trying to kill him, George would've been impressed with their competence as a fighting team. But the young heir to the House of Grantham had more than enough experience in combat himself after nine years. And if there was one thing he knew as a Science Pirate's apprentice and a ranger … it was how to break up marshal effectiveness.

THUEM!

It was a one in twenty-five shot that was fired at passing dark silhouettes through a thick tree screen. But the young marksman had been instructed in sharpshooting by Allan Quartermain - the greatest of Huntsmen in the world. And such an education was in tandem with the teaching of the secret and fierce warriors of the Imakandi of Darkest Africa, of whom had trained a young boy's senses to adapt his aim while in constant motion. Thus, the rifle caliber bullet pierced leaf, avoided branches, and broke the back window of the lead car. It struck the back quarter of the driver's head. His dead weight on the break caused the second car to collide into the back bumper of the first at full speed. The trailing third car just barely threaded the accident, nearly spinning out, giving up ground as the driver wrestled for control. As a result - and with great anger - they lost George to the shadows of the old forest.

At the edge of the tangled woods was a large clearing that shouldered a wheat field and a stone wall. These markers separated the Levinson Estate from the intermediate small farms that surrounded the larger properties of the exuberantly rich that had turned Newport Rhode Island from an obscure rural New England town into a once iconic and mythical utopia of extravagant wealth and finery. In the clearing, among the waving tall yellow grass, there stood a singularly tall tree that stood alone at the end of the path. Its trunk was broad, its branches large, and its leaves countless. It was as ancient as trees came, knowing hundreds upon hundreds of years - when this clearing had once been a part of the forest, before Colonial settlers had cleared the land for farming and ship building in the seventeenth century. Yet, somehow, by mercies now forgotten to the knowledge of man, this tree at the heart of the old forest had been left untouched. And many centuries later, it had become the favored spot of the Levinson Family.

It was during a lunch break while surveying the land that Mr. Levinson and Harold had found it. A perfect sight of the rolling green hills near town and the open ocean upon the horizon. When Cora came to visit the construction site, it had immediately become her favorite spot in the entire world. After the building of Levinson Manor, many of Ms. Cora's advanced lessons on art, history, and literature by the best tutors that money could buy were taken at this spot - under the comforting shade of the ancient tree. On many countryside outings with guests this was the final destination where many picnics and teas were had. And it was this very place, on so many sunny afternoons, had many great memories been accumulated.

Here had been where Lady Mary Crawley had taken her first steps as a baby. It was where Lady Sybil had said "mummy" for the very first time while cradled in Lady Grantham's arms as she rocked her under the shade. And it was on the lower branch, where a then Ms. Cora Levinson sat in the mornings to watch the sunrise from out of the ocean horizon. And it was on one such of these mornings that the lovely teenage beauty realized that she was wholly and unequivocally in love with Captain Robert Crawley, 37th Lord of Downton.

On a frigid evening in February of 1912 that this special place seeming dream-like, crusted with shimmering ice that looked like crystal upon the gleaming glade. Lady Grantham asked that the chauffeur stop the motor. There, she asked her husband and daughters to get out of the car. Wrapped in fur coats and blankets, Lady Cora led her family to the tree where it all started and ended. There, from inside her coat, she produced her father's old bowie knife from his days as a Rebel Cavalier. She handed it to Mary of whom was shocked, but Cora told her to make her mark upon the trunk as big as she liked. In succession, each of her daughters did the same, carving upon the ancient trunk. Then, at last, taking Robert's hand upon hers which gripped the knife, the soulmates carved their own symbol above their daughters'. A single tear fell down her lovely face as she pulled all of them around her and looked at that one special place. Mary had teased that their mama felt these things so strongly, yet she only smirked when her mother wiped a tear from Mary's own eye. Now, no matter what this land would become, it would always be theirs …

The Crawley family's special place.

Nearly thirty years later, the carvings remained and endured. Yet, their only son, their boy, passed that place without a glance. But still – and just for only a split second - the tree itself seemed to groan and creak in some phantom familiarity as George Crawley's shadow crossed the affectionate symbols that would remain till the breaking of the world. There was something of a blessing in the old noises it gave as the valiant youth galloped past the sacred marker, his horse giving a gallant spring over the mossy and ivy-covered stone wall beside it and into the overgrown wheat field.

The Depression didn't come immediately for the farmers as it had for the many Millionaires that staked their claim in their rows of mansions and manors by the seaside. But eventually, the squeeze, the prices, forced many of the New England farmers to sell up and find work in town. The banks- or what was left of them- bought up all the land they could. Without pity or remorse, they locked the old deeds in dusty vaults and forgot they owned the very soil turned and cared for by generations of men and women, passed down from the very first settlers upon this golden land. The field that George charged across with a trail of dust behind his steed's fleet hooves was golden and green, stalks of wild wheat mixed with weeds.

What had been thought of as a sacred birth right, land that was in the blood of generations of a mixture of Dutch and Welsh ancestry, was long forgotten. The golden swaying stalks of stray seedlings of wheat were but malnourished phantoms of better days - losing ground daily to weeds. Some said that there was something supernatural, other-worldly, about the Depression that blighted humanity. Like some foul spirit made of noxious poisons that fumigated the spirit of the world, it seeped into everything, leaving nothing untouched or spoiled. But harder still was to look upon an empty wheat field, lost, unused, when so many died of starvation daily as the slow plague of despairing anguish cast its shadow over the West like a phantasmal plutonian hand.

Beyond the rolling hills of abandoned farm fields lay the town of Newport, Rhode Island. Despite the entire community on the brink of desperation, having lost both employment from rich estates by the sea - which had gone under in a matter of hours in 1929 - and now the old farms falling one by one, there was still a jolly fair that was planned. Whether it was a last gasp effort to invite investors to see that Newport was still a viable place to do business, or just to buck up the citizenry's hope for new beginnings - they had spent the last of the city coffers to make this day special. Reporters from New York and Boston had come - gotten there by hook or crook by big promises.

And there was no bigger selling point than the kicking off the Senatorial bid of local politician James M. Pendergrass. There were games, concessions, and a directive for the local police to keep the 'less than clean' members of the town away. Pendergrass had been working for weeks with the mayor to give a showman's flare to the entire production. Having been the son of one of the many extravagantly rich families who vacationed in the resort town during the summer in their beach mansion, he had a certain fondness for Newport … or at least that was how the speech was supposed to go. But at the end of it, just in time, a locomotive would pull into the old station right behind him, bearing his campaign slogan "A Vote for Pendergrass is One for The Mass" upon the side of it.

It was a plan that a wayfaring stranger had overheard at the combined cafe and general store counter one morning as the mayor and Pendergrass discussed plans. Only once did the older politician notice the teenage adventurer. Considering himself at the head of a charging youth movement, the Senatorial Candidate asked the handsome wanderer what he thought of his campaign slogan. The youth - unsympathetic and antagonistic to the man's democratic politics as well as put off by the fake image of a fellow descendent of an American Heiress - asked with flippant poignancy what the slogan even meant? Insulted and infuriated by the chuckles of counter jockeys and checker playing old men, the politician asked in a tone of dismissive condescension if the kid shouldn't be getting off to school?

'Why …?' The kid asked as he paid for his coffee and pastry. 'Sure, didn't do you any good.' The handsome figure gave a hauntingly familiar smirk that cut deeply as he left with a jingle of the business's door chime and more mocking laughter at the seething politician's expense. The man was suddenly attacked by the image of a Polo Pitch on the Levinson Estate where he played goalkeeper on one of the most humiliating days of his life.

BBBBBRRRROOOOOPPPHHH!

Now, several days later, the youth galloped across the field at a terrific lick to intercept a two-car train that was steaming steadily across tracks that ran adjacent next to the wheat field. At least one thing went right that day, and it came in the form of a train running on time. Thick black smoke plumed out of the black engine as the engineer sounded the whistle of its coming to inform Pendergrass to begin his speech. The train was of an older design, picked special by the politician - hoping to sell his message through nostalgia of a simpler New England. It was hoped that spotting the old familiarity of the certain model of train pulling into the station would endear him to the press, if not so much the masses whose name he used but did not allow to attend his fair.

George sped to the end of the field, moving swiftly through taller stalks by the edge of the train tracks which were elevated by a long dirt and gravel path. Turning the reins on the horse, the adventurer pulled the stallion alongside the moving train. Putting forth all the speed and vitality that was left in the young mustang, they passed the aged baggage car painted with chipped and weathered red. As they came upon the passenger car with new body of blue paint with a white horizontal stripe, the youth began to unhook bridle and saddle. The snorting beast, who had not faltered once in their deadly race against an army of cold-blooded killers, seemed to quicken its pace at the feeling of the riding gear being removed, tasting a freedom being returned gratefully. With a new burst of acceleration, they caught the black iron engine at the head of the locomotive.

Checking his watch, the old black man with thick white sideburns pondered if he should pour more coal into the fire. It seemed like a lot to ask for - especially for no pay. Not only was he called short notice with Sammy out sick with a blonde-haired flu named Minnie who was gonna eat that ole'boy alive, now he was required to 'hit the post' at such a specific time. It wasn't that he couldn't do that. After forty years as a conductor there wasn't anything that he couldn't do with a train. But he wasn't particularly in the mood for that 'cute shit'. Once he got in sight of the station he would have to duck. It seemed that Pendergrass's nostalgic narrative didn't include no negro conductor, and – kind of think of it - neither did any of his policies. It only proved that a man can outrun Ole Jim Crow, but the world was still filled with assholes. It was days like this that the old man seriously thought today would be the day he took his chances with this here Depression …

Especially when he looked to his right.

Thundering in pace with the engine was a black horse with white feet and star upon his brow. It was unsaddled and unbridled as it galloped stride for stride with the train. There, standing upon the bareback of the horse was a teenager. The handsome youth had grown out black curls that covered his ears and neck. He wore a peacoat of beaten mahogany leather. The denim pants he wore were tucked into tall and supple black leather boots. Twin laceration wounds marred the right eye of a collection of hardened and haunted cerulean coloring. Upon his back was a fine pack of supple leather, with a sheathed saber harnessed to its side and some sort of mask hollowly slapping against the back where it was attached to the clasp.

The old man watched in muted shock as the youth in question balanced precariously on the back of a racing horse, as if he was some damn Indian in a "Buffalo Bill's: Wild Western Show". In his hand was a saddle and bridle that once belonged to Lady Mary Crawley. He watched as the youth leapt off the back of the horse and caught the engineer's handrail. In the distance he saw the mustang break away, running freely into the overgrown field where it slowed to an exhausted canter. Suddenly with a loud clank of boot soles on metal grating, the youth pulled himself into the train engine.

With a smooth draw, the teenager slipped a futuristic and sleek revolver from its Mexican holster.

"Something I can help you with, son?"

It might have been the muddy coffee he had to suck down to clear his head of the cheap ass Corn Liquor he drank last night. It might have been waking up in the one room hovel that he rented outside of town since Sheenah finally heeded her dead momma's words and found herself a man who made something of himself before she got "old". Not that she was dragging her tits alongside that suitcase he bought for her in Tupelo when they got married all them years ago. For whatever reason it was, when that handsome young man pulled his 'magic gun' on the old engineer … he didn't feel anything at all.

George was momentarily shocked - even sparing a beat to look down to make sure that he was indeed holding his intended weapon at the man.

"Listen, kid …" The old man reassured him. "I see what you got- fancy as hell. But I ain't supposed to be here today, and I ain't getting paid sure shit enough for this. So, if you gonna do me, done go a'head do me, alright … or get the hell outta here with all that Flash Gordon nonsense." The man sighed checking his watch again out of habit.

There was a sudden look of amusement on the adventurer's face as he observed the detached old black man who scratched his whiskers with a soot stained work glove in disinterest.

With a gunfighter's twirl he holstered his weapon back. "If I shoot you, whose gonna drive this piece of shit?" George asked reaching into his coat.

"Them's the breaks, Desperado." The old man grunted in acknowledgement at the kid's predicament.

"Indeed …"

Suddenly the sound of flicked metal and the gleam of something metallic spun at him. The old man turned and caught what the kid smoothly flipped at him against his chest. When he looked into his stained kaki glove the train engineer saw something that he thought he might never see again. It was a genuine, preserved, Silver Eagle coin. He didn't even know they were in circulation anymore. But somehow, holding it, he had never felt so lucky before. Fore, though they carried no intrinsic value anymore, their rarity made them priceless to coin collectors and shops all around New England. There was no way any such establishment - rabid for such exclusivity of an item - would refuse to do business with a black man.

It was things such as this that could turn the engineer's luck around since his wife left him. The man turned, dumb founded, to find an unreadable look on George's face. Clearly the kid didn't know what he had, or perhaps - having been in the area for near a month - he knew exactly what it was and worth. Suddenly, with silver coin in hand, the idea of ducking to avoid a crowd of ignorant assholes from New York and Boston in their fancy duds was a thing of the past. The old man put his conductor's hat on straight.

"What's on your mind, boss?"

"Right through town, three miles outside, past North Beach, to the cliffs." George answered.

"On the way …"

RATATATATATATATATA

The engineer's compartment was awash with showers of sparks and warped ricocheting of bullets that bounced off the black iron locomotive. Quickly, the youth grabbed the old man and ducked behind the thick iron side of the compartment. All around them machine gun rounds played a round of tennis from floor to bolted ceiling - ripping a hanging map of the railroad junctions from the wall and eviscerating the timetable ledger into a snowy wonderland of shredded paper. George quickly drew the Ray Gun again and peaked out from cover. He saw that the last car in the Pamuk convoy - which had barely escaped the pile up his shot from the woods provided - had come back to finish the job. He saw a mustached man with an eyepatch, fez, and bleeding mouth hanging out the window with a Tommy Gun in hand. When he returned to cover, George snapped open the cylinder of his revolver. Immediately all six cartridges sprang out of the cylinder. He caught them all mid-air with one all-encompassing snatch of his hand. Quickly he picked out the used shells, placing an unused one between his teeth as he reached into his coat pocket.

"Here, here, take it! Take it back!" The old man quickly tried to press the Silver Eagle back into the teenager's chest. "I don't sign up for this shit!" he snapped, ducking as another spray of nine millimeters pinballed around his cabin and tattering the banner on the side of the train. George gave the man a Lady Mary like side-eye while reloading.

"Come on, Pops, where's your sense of adventure?" He asked facetiously with a rifle shell still between his teeth.

"Runnin with the piss down m'damn leg, boy!" He shouted over the gunfire.

The youth removed the previously unused cartridge between his teeth and placed it back in the last slot in the cylinder. "I'll take it back if you want … but it's not gonna get you out of this, old man." George snapped the revolver back closed with a flick of his wrist.

"And you are?!" The engineer shouted at the youth. To this, the adventurer only gave a grimly arrogant smirk of youth as he twirled his gun with a tight expert spin.

"Keep her steady and watch my things …" The kid crouched to his feet.

Slowly, he turned his head to the fine pack of leather that the youth shrugged off and placed on the ruined mess of a desk. There he saw what the youth was talking about. In that moment, in the heat of the burning furnace, and the terror of gunfire … there were no words. He could not describe it if it was asked of him, not a feature, not a color. All he remembered, felt, was a terror unlike anything he had ever felt before.

The engineer was overwhelmed with these terrible visons from the single glance into the blank eye slits of a tribal mask that gazed sightlessly at him from across the cabin.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah … no, no, no if, how, or buts from me, Desperado."

When George broke cover he looked out to the Chrysler trailing after the train. His gut jerked when he saw that they had pulled alongside the baggage car. An old Janissary was trying to climb out of the back seat from the driver's side window and into a door that someone had already forced open in the old train car. But before the youth could react, he was driven back by machine gun bullets from the old imperial providing covering fire from the passenger's seat. When his spray ended, George peeled off and fired a single round at the fezzed Turk. The rifle bullet landed dead center in the man's chest, blowing a hole through dress tie, vest, and shirt of his suit.

A spray of sinew watered the back nine of the empty field as he fell backward over the door window, half dragging awkwardly through the weeded farm field. As result of the intimidating sound of the Ray Gun, the Chrysler driver tugged on the wheel evasively in memory of the last two drivers. The flinch caused the car to overturn on the bumpy and uneven ground. As a result, one of the final remaining Turks was caught mid-climb out of the window and onto the train. For a long moment the old imperial dangled from the banner on the baggage car, his feet dragging next to the tracks. But eventually he fell, ripping down part of the banner …

His blood mired upon the red, white, and blue paper as both were sucked under the train's tracks.

Suddenly, something moved sinisterly inside his mind. The world fell into a deep shadowy veil and time stood frozen. In that interminable stillness he heard a velvet voice of finely crafted words being spoken with foul foundations in the structure of the language. He did not understand what it meant - there was few who could or would dare. But it was communicated through images that flashed through memory in a bass whispering of one's cynical desires and expedient fantasies shown in vindication of passionate moments of hatred and anger. His mind rushed with residual phantoms of small satisfactions, scratched itches, or the fleeting understandings of what it might feel like for that kind of absolution. The spectral images of Lady Mary Crawley in a jail cell, An Iranian Princess impaled on his grandfather's saber … temptations of wish fulfillment at his fingertips. But for a price - always a price - less than shown but more than revealed.

Suddenly, in these foul whisperings of an ancient evil language, he realized what it was he was hearing. He whirled around quickly to find the engineer. The old man was soaked with sweat, in his hands was George's pack. The man's eyes were stricken like dented metal, his body shaking in terror, and yet he reached out for the tribal mask who called to him in a deep whispered voice.

It knew his name, it knew where he lived, it knew his momma's name, where his daddy had worked. It was a voice as smooth as Alabama Lightning, talking like Shakespeare wished he could write, and all of it in his head. It reminisced with him about that time he hit that Jackson boy in anger with a piece of an old fence … and how he died two weeks later from some brain aneurysm. It recalled the time his cousin Alice was staying over from Starkville, looking so damn fine … he couldn't stop himself from following her to the outhouse. Or that time he got drunk while Sheenah started going off about how her sister's man was some bellhop down in New York and he was out here shoveling coal in trains … next thing he knew she was on the floor with a yellowing shiner.

In the voice, in the visions, it painted a picture of a life, of a soul, that the man did not recognize. His heart grew heavy with sadness, his mind weakened with a tremendous guilt. He could not escape the spotted transgressions of fifty-seven years of a life - the sins blaring and blinding till they were all he could see, till they were all that made up a man. Then, he was filled with torment, with anger, and hatred. The figure mastered and warped by the foulness of the accusations, of the persecutions, of his prosecutor. The intensity of the Necromancer's dread ancient dark powers bleeding the light of divinity, stripping the soul, and leaving nothing but an empty and mindless slave filled with scorn by the dark and terror of the holy light.

Then, in this torment and suffering, he was enthralled to evil's will, ever baring a bitter hatred for it as he bore a deep hatred for himself. For the voice called him to the void, to let go, for he surely did not deserve to live. Relief could only be found in the nothingness, to serve that which he was already apart of and yet did not know. The lightening of his pain, of his suffering, in these foul sins could only be given by the shadow of the dreaded figure that welled deeply in his mind, taking over its faculties.

"Pops, put that down …"

George's alert but calm warning with a hand outstretched, was like a man reasoning with a person holding an entire case of Nitro above his head.

Tears were flowing from the man's eyes. "I … I can't … it hurts, don't it? It … hurts." He sputtered a sob. "She kept saying that, but I kept on going … I kept on going!" He shook his head. "She was like a big … big sister … but we ain't no know better." He shook his head reaching under the mask for the clasp.

George immediately lifted his weapon and pointed it at the old engineer. "This is your final warning … step back from it!" He gritted his teeth.

The voice was getting louder, the shadows danced in the gloom of a world veiled from light. It was chanting, manic, like the rattling of a pulley as a rope runs through it to hoist a topsail to catch the wind. It was a waterfall of sweet words with rotted taste bending and hammering at the depressed old man's enraptured mind.

"I got to make it stop, kid!" He sobbed; his eyes squeezed shut. "She's hurt, she'd done hurtin, and she needs it to stop, for me to stop …" The engineer cried. "Ain't I a man?!" He sobbed. "Ain't I a man?!" He roared. "I ain't no animal …" In his mind his cousin Alice was crying into the wood, slamming it hard with a fist, she didn't want to do it anymore. But he kept going. In desperation, the old man grabbed the mask to yank it free in order to save the girl from himself.

"I GOT TO STOP, I GOT TO STOP!"

BLAM

Bloody sinew exploded as the locomotive was washed from the exit wound of the two bullets that pierced the back of the engineer's head. With a final gasping death cry, the old man fell limply to the floor. George's pack and the mask of the Necromancer clattered upon the iron floor with a rattle of Lord Grantham's saber. For a long beat George stood there with his father and aunt's revolver in hand. He looked down at it, thinking - for just a split second - that the mask had won. That he would find smoke sauntering from the barrel and know that he had finally lived up to his greatest fear … that he had killed an innocent over the evil artifact. His mind flashed to that Halloween Night in New York; a room filled with bloody dead old knickerbockers around a terrified naked young mother. He was in the priestess's drawing room in her bayou house, the 'Lily of New Orleans' gasping as he stood with a the same smoking weapon in the doorway.

But the Ray Gun still had five shots in the cylinder.

BLAM

Dangling from atop the adjacent opening of the old engine was a black gloved hand in the sleeve of a matching overcoat. George barely had time to make out a face, before he saw the glint of the figure's Luger pistol. He gave a defensively evasive somersault, rolling out of the way of the stray shot. In a smooth motion, he grabbed up Lady Mary's old saddle and lifted it like a shield on one arm as three more rounds were fired from the Austrian made weapon. With gritted teeth, and a prayer of luck, the fine saddle of boiled and reinforced leather took the blows. The pummel and cantle were ripped off in impact, while the thick seat stopped the last nine-millimeter slug dead. Rolling with the blows, George countered, lifting his weapon and firing. Out of instinct - in what he could only imagine was some subconscious fear of what happened to the engineer - his shot struck his enemy's Lugar instead of his enemy. The sound of ringing metal and a pained curse echoed from the ceiling of the engine. Quickly the shadowy figure with leather gloves pulled himself back to the roof.

George's aim followed him, but he stopped just short of pulling the trigger. In any other circumstance his cartridges could pierce any surface, but he wasn't willing to test the theory on boilermaker iron. Throwing his teenage mamma's destroyed saddle away, he chased the thumping running footsteps of boots upon the roof of the old engine. Quickly he sprang for the back entrance, throwing open the old brass door. There he planted a foot on the rail car latch that connected the box cars to the engine. He quickly fired when he saw a figure in a long black overcoat leap across to the roof of the passenger car.

He almost had him - his bullet audibly ripping the trailing tails of the fancy coat.

"Damn …"

Going back inside the engine, he cursed in frustration. He had noticed that the luggage cart door had already been opened by the time he engaged with the final car of Turks. With self-admonishment, George growled at his stupidity for not realizing that there must have been at least one assassin left. With the situation unfolding rapidly in his head, the youth stepped forward, pulling levers, and shoveling two quick loads of coal into the furnace. The train began to speed up as directed. Once he had the right pace on the dials, the boy went to grab his pack. But he halted when he saw that what was left of the old engineer was atop of it.

He turned the old man over, pushing him off his things. The gruesome sight did not take him by surprise or disturb him - instead, it only embittered his heart with a hurtful kind of sadness. It was a sorrow tinged with a frustrated anger at the sight of such waste of something precious, like the accidental dribble of water into the sand of a long desert odyssey. The youth picked up the Silver Eagle that lay at the man's side and clutched it in his hand, putting his closed fist under nose with an angry sigh. The truth of the matter was that the old man's final moments were agonizing, tormented, and filled with terror. And even when George placed his fist over the engineer's heart and lightly pounded it in affinity it did not make it any better.

Looking down, he saw that the old man's blood stained the mask as it lay sightlessly gazing up at the ceiling. It seemed sated, elated, wearing the blood upon it as a lion does the gore of its prey after a successful hunt. The truth of what happened in the poor old man's life was lost in the grey of the human experience. He did not force his cousin, but she cried, and he didn't stop … but only at first. But an older man's memory of the trauma of a crying older girl during two youths' very first-time having sex, scared him, left himself vulnerable. He had punched his wife … but only after she had struck him three times with a pot. But his drunkenness made him unsure of one solitary incident that happened so early in a thirty-five-year marriage. And that Jackson boy was nearly knocked out by the piece of fencing … but a brain aneurysm was an excuse given by the doctor after the boy was killed while being hit in the head by a group of teenagers throwing beer bottles - one of which was the doctor's own son.

The evil of the mask, of the Necromancer trapped within, was not in the power of the supernatural, but in his understanding of the power of words to the human spirit. Fore, this demon of the ancient world derived power from compliance to his will through shame and the vanity of virtue. Indeed, with the magnification of a single moment, and the twisting of words, it might manipulate honey to venom, finding in any man or woman a single moment of darkness, of regret, and burn them with the sun's own rays through its magnifying glass. For all man sins and all man regrets, and here was where he was vulnerable to evil's call. There was no repentance, no forgiveness, only the void, where the Necromancer ruled all with evil eyes piercing shadow, flesh, and spirit.

With hatred, George watched as the old engineer's blood slowly absorbed into the mask till it was if it had never been there at all.

The boy's pack jangled as he slipped it over his shoulder. He pocketed the silver coin, looking out to see the green hills approaching. He pulled another leaver to set the train course before moving on. When he opened the brass door again, he looked up, checking both sides of the engine roof. Seeing it clear, he leapt down onto the latch, balancing across to the railing of the front of the passenger's car. Sidling against the door frame, he peaked inside the window to find motionless and empty aisles of seats. In that moment he knew what was waiting above. He steeled himself with a sigh, clenching his teeth. Then, he turned to the service ladder and began to ascend.

The cool air of pre-autumn was much colder and biting atop a train that was going a faster speed than what it was meant to while approaching a town. From the elevated height one could see a good deal more of the charming countryside once so cherished by those of New York Society. In the distance, large boulders were still cascading down in rockslides from the demolished plateau where Levinson Manor once stood - the marvel of a now lost age. The mid-day sun glimmered off open ocean that covered the approaching horizon, making it seem a field of sapphires. While just beyond the approaching hills of empty farmland the white steeple of The Trinity Church could be seen towering over the coastal New England town. And taking it all in was a lone figure that stood with his coat tails fluttering in the wind like a cape. His back was to the warry glance of the younger man that aimed the barrel of his revolver at the figure. Slowly, cautiously, George mounted the top of the passenger car and walked forward toward his distracted enemy.

"Such a strange place …"

His voice was accented, musical, soothing in an oddly sophisticated way that made one believe that he wrote music or novels of some great importance to philosophy.

"Acres of land of every sort, all beautiful in its own way …" There was something wistful in his voice. "And yet …" He turned in distressed puzzlement.

"They consider Clam Chowder a signature food."

The man that faced the adventurer was tall, slender as a bow, with a sleek dancer's frame. His movements were elegant, cat-like in their effortless plotting. The way that his long black overcoat with red satin lining moved about his frame was loose and theatrical in its rippling in the rushing cold air. In his leather clad hand, he held an aqua colored scimitar scabbard that had golden Islamic embroidery designs. The flutter of very fine and glistening blonde curls sauntered in the rushing air of a speeding train. The young man in question was fairer faced than his forbearers, with a peachy tan that was delicate. But his looks were strikingly beautiful, with a clean-shaven effeminate face.

There were many of his likenesses found throughout the masterworks of paintings depicting the divinity of angels upon interpretations of holy events captured in art. Yet, there was something feral, savage, hidden in the depths of his hazel eyes. In his fair face was the echoes of the first sparks of Lucifer's jealousy of man - the sinister impulses shadowing an ethereal beauty. Darkness mingling with light, love tinted with malice. The greater ambitions halted, stymied, by the roadblocks of a lesser being than how he accounted himself and his linage at the chosen and favored son of God himself.

He was a ghost, a phantom, that George Crawley had never met or seen. And yet, of all the people in this world, this poltergeist in the beautiful man's face haunted the very destiny of both young men, forever pitting them against one another. Both of the combatants that day had no frame of reference, only stories, only fallout from what happened. When they looked to one another they didn't see it, didn't know what it was they were apart. That twenty-two years of fermented hatred, distilled in the darkened cellars of misunderstandings, sisterly rivalry taken too far, and the lust for one aristocratic beauty of Downton Abbey had led to this moment.

Fore, the man that George Crawley faced was, indeed, a ghost. In his face was a phantom that haunts the dreams of those who ever live in guilt for the consequences of their actions that fell on George's shoulders before he was ever born. The man he faced atop a high-flying train would shock Lady Mary Crawley catatonic, cause Anna Bates to faint, and kill Lady Grantham stone dead.

The likeness between Alemdar Albert Pamuk and his father Kamal was unmatched.

George had never seen Alemdar before, but he had heard of him throughout the years. He was the illegitimate son of Kamal Pamuk and Princess Amélie of Monaco. It was the same story as most when it came to the devilish Mr. Pamuk - charming, suave, and in the middle of the night sneaking into a venerable young woman's bedroom … and never taking her 'no' as an answer. Yet, unlike Lady Mary, the princess did not acquiesce to his advances when he pushed into her room while on holiday in Tuscany. And as a result of the painful night - her screams echoing down stone streets of a sleeping village - she was pregnant. Nine months later, a beautiful boy with his mother's half-American fair coloring and her rapists face came into this world squealing as the horrified nurses watched the traumatized princess leap from the tall palace balcony to dash against the rocks and be carried away by the Mediterranean surf below.

The King wanted to toss the babe in with his whore mamma – of whom had shamed the royal family with her' loose behavior'. But instead, the queen ransomed the boy to his grandmother, a Princess of Iran. For two million dollars of petroleum profits, one for the baby, and one as wear-guild for their daughter's virginity, Alemdar came into the care of the House of Pamuk which mourned the death of a father that had no interest in a child that he knew very well had existed. Yet, this surprise existence of an heir, of a link to her only child, did not comfort the soon widowed Princess Pamuk. The madness found in the horrifying and devoted 'intimate' relationship with her son was reflected in her raising of his only child.

Vengeance - and its allusion from her need for absolution - tainted the beautiful boy's childhood. His worth, his legitimacy in the eyes of his grandmother, was withheld till the day came in which he might deliver a mighty gift to her feet. The vengeful Persian rose reared not a man that would be better than his father, but an instrument, a weapon, for her revenge. Always and forever did she remind Alemdar that he was illegitimate, that his father had raped his mother as he had raped his own, that his grandfather and Grandmother - the King and Queen of Monaco - ransomed him. He was the leavings of an animal, a ruined and horrible blight upon the earth. There was no one who loved him, no one who cared … but her, his granny. She was all he had, the only one who cared for him, and she alone could change his very fortunes … if only he could show that he loved her back.

And there was only one way, one deed, that would prove Alemdar's love and faithfulness to the woman.

"You murdered an innocent man, just to get at me?" George asked. His famed revolver still trained on the older young man in front of him.

"I'd sacrifice the lives of hundreds of men if meant killing you!" There was a spark of enduring madness, set aflame by the very presence of the teenage adventurer before him after all these years.

To this proclamation, a grim smirk played across George's face.

"And when do you plan on doing this, Pamuk?" He asked darkly. "Is now convenient …?" He raised the Ray Gun's aim to the man's head. "Cause it sure is for me." Slowly he drew back the hammer of the revolver.

There was a sudden tense silence as George and Alemdar stared down one another as the train sped fiercely up the side of a hill. But slowly, the fair faced man then opened his arms wide, scabbard in hand, leaving himself completely unguarded.

"If you wish so, then do so." He offered, tilting his head up to the heavens. "But this ends today - either you or me. But it will end, Grantham." The man nodded.

"You got it …"

For a split second the finger of the adventurer touched the trigger of his weapon. He thought of the old engineer, he thought of the waste of some many lives here this day, and all to settle one feud born of an accident or fate that could not be controlled. He would gladly put an end to the river of blood born from the stupidity of an enraptured young Lady of noble birth with a charming foreign guest.

But after a long moment nothing happened.

George pushed the hammer forward on his famed weapon. It just wasn't in him. No matter what a man had done, or who he was, it was not in George Crawley to shoot him unsporting. He was a man of honor, and circumstance be damned. He would not commit murder without combat. He made a snarl as he lowered his revolver. The beautiful man seemed intrigued, watching a lifelong adversary he just met drop the Ray Gun to his side. After another showy gunfighter's twirl, George slipped the gun back into its holster.

("Overture (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) – Michael Kamen)

The flash of flickered steel in the mid-day sun glinted brightly atop the runaway train as both Alemdar and George drew their swords. There were still viscous droplets of Shiite fanatic's blood on Lord Grantham's saber when his grandson and heir drew it forth - letting the pack drop onto his other weapons. Several long paces away the elegant figure of Mr. Pamuk slipped his family's ancestral sword from its ornate saber.

The long blade was smoky and curved, scrolls of ancient Islamic runes were written on the Damascus Steel. The handle was inlaid with gold and brass, with a ruby pummel that had a golden engraving of a family crest. This sword, along with the matching dagger girded to his side, were nothing like the other zealots inherited blades. These weapons were not just deadly, but works of art, valuable - heirlooms of an ancient and prominent noble blooded family. They would not be brought nor used for no purpose. In glancing them, George knew that in Alemdar's mind, this was the end …

A fight to the death.

Yet, as both young men faced one another, the adventurer saw something strange about his foe. With sword in hand, the final duel breaths away, there was peace on the man's immaculate face. All the weight and consequence of his life seemed drained away when finally facing his inherited blood enemy. Fore it was in this hour that it would finally end, this torment, this unattainable ghost that seemed completely out of his reach. Today, with the death of George Crawley, 38th Lord of Downton, Heir to the Earl of Grantham and the Royal House of York, he would gain everything he had ever wanted.

He would have legitimacy to his family name, the approval of his grandmother, and the accomplishment of a lifetime's worth of purpose put into everything he ever did. And if he were to fail, to fall at the end of his enemy's saber, then the madness would finally end. No more would he be the last Jesuit in this temple of hate, built around the memory of a monster. His death at the hands of his blood enemy would release him from the sworn vows of devotion to a handsome older woman's crusade of obligation. To flee her senseless war to honor the memory of a dead son who used her in every nightmarish way possible to a mother, and yet loved him with a passion as strong as her hate.

This was the first time that the two swordsmen had met … And yet in the very moment that Lady Mary Crawley, mounted for a hunt, turned and saw an angelic monster, two young men were doomed to appease the black hatred of twenty-two years of vendetta born from a girlish lust.

"Take your shot."