Velvet Manor

VELVET MANOR

  By

  J. Niessen

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  Published By:

  Velvet Manor

  Copyright 2010, 2013 by J. Niessen

  Cover Page by J’s Art Emporium, Copyright 2013

  Thank you for downloading this free eBook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the material remains in its complete original form.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously.

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  Velvet Manor

  Still dressed in her nurse’s gown when the white shipping box arrives at her apartment, Sheryl confirms that her name and address are printed on the parcel. The feel of the package is offsetting in its weight, as she expects to receive a coffee mug she’d recently ordered.

  Sheryl seeks to keep her spirits lively. Her coworkers, who also reside in the medical complex, serve out of obligation for a loved one with a terminal illness. As a live-in volunteer, Sheryl’s passion is to help the physically disadvantaged, for life at Velvet Manor can be very trying.

  The deadbolt latches by design with the front door closed. There in her quaint kitchen apartment Sheryl retrieves the scissors, slices the packaging tape, and lifts the flaps. A folded invoice rests atop loose styrofoam filler. The opened letter reads: Your shipment could not be delivered. It must be signed for at the (apartment) building’s main office.

  Uneasiness sets in, when she notices that the return address portion is blank. The mail attendant repeats, “Ma’am, there’s nothing on hold for a Ms. Sheryl Mocner.” The exit appears to be twice the distance away. There’s no strength left in her, and the way out seems impossible to reach. Drifting from the postal counter in a daze, serenity engages her discontinued breathing. With lips tingling and feet that feel ice cold, her hands grow numb and the world becomes hazy.

  Darkness voids her memory in the passing moment. With a hard blink and a revitalizing inhale, her consciousness returns. In pain, Sheryl’s fingernails are filthy and worn to the nubs. Her person is covered in grease and soot. The parcel is heavy as she stands in the apartment doorway. Lethargically she enters. The residence has a dismal presence. The door closes and its deadbolt latches. Her senses sharpen to this drastically altered yet familiar environment.

  The room is thick with a suffocating heat. The paint on the walls is peeling. Blood stained bricks show beneath. Beyond barred windows a void-like darkness awaits. The oven, agape, emits a sweltering heat. A dryness in her throat prevents Sheryl from swallowing, knowing she’ll gag if she attempts it.

  Stainless steel countertops run the length of the kitchen wall. The sink and faucets are both absent. In place of the refrigerator is a tall, rusted cage. The living room area is unfurnished. Cracks run along the cement flooring. Large portions of concrete are absent where bent rebar shows. The massive gaps expose abandoned living areas beneath.

  Weathered surgical instruments fill the open kitchen drawer. Gripping the scalpel’s corroded handle sends shivers through Sheryl’s bones. Crimson granules release from the punctured slit she drives into the box. The grains cascade to the lower floors. Surrounded by sand at the bottom of the box is a key. Gripping the front door’s handle Sheryl finds it locked. Teetering on the brink of claustrophobia, she deems the key must be of use for those on the opposite side.

  Startled, she nearly lets out a cry. Someone pounds on the door with no peephole. Managing a reluctant swallow, a thought occurs to slip the key beneath the door to find out who it is. “This is your chance. It’s your only way out,” a voice inside Sheryl’s head exclaims. More incessant poundings cause her to take several steps back. “Have you come to fix the problem?” Sheryl forces herself to say. Her heart pounds in the dead silence. A latch clicks loose. The creak of a rusty doorknob as it turns. Then a door from down the outside hallway slams shut.

  Sheryl places the key on the inside-rack of the scorching oven, understanding items may get misplaced in such times. Closing the appliance door the room’s temperature drops.

  From a few doors down there’s more knocking. “Go away!” exclaims an excited man. The heavy poundings persist. There’s the sound of wood splitting, then quiet.

  Sheryl finds the back bedroom locked. With chattering teeth her body shakes uncontrollably from the frigid climate. Returning to retrieve the key, mortar and brick have replaced the oven.

  Printed on the inside of the shipping box is a familiar outline. After punching holes into the cardboard with a rusted poker, a tarnished scalpel helps to cut the design out. At the bedroom door, holding her breath, Sheryl inserts the cutout into the grooved slot of the knob. The lock clicks and the handle turns as she twists the resilient cutout. Letting go of the key the entranceway slowly opens. A brilliant light radiates from the aperture and blinds her vision…

  Once a buoyant and outgoing young woman, full of joy and excited about life, Emily is now confined to a treatment center which uses her for rehabilitative purposes. Confined to a below-ground dungeon, Emily is restrained by sophisticated machinery that amplifies her innate capabilities. Offered a variety of fixed past times, her greatest focus is composing music. This keeps at bay a lonely darkness inside her. It’s a powerful sadness which may at anytime overcome her surroundings. The music is recorded and rebroadcasts throughout the building. These overtures keep the grounds serine, and reverse the terminal condition of the residing patients in Velvet Manor.

  Emily strives with each moment to stay awake. Her nightmares pose a vivid trial for all of the community, forcing the residents to solve a challenging scenario before they too can escape.

  Believing Emily is somewhere near, within the apartment complex, a team of investigators scour the building where a powerful darkness is believed to regularly take control. Their challenge is to seek a doorway that, when opened, exudes a brilliant light. If one of these self-centered men enters the passageway, they can replace Emily. This threatens the lives of those who rely on the therapy Emily provides. Going from one apartment to the next, the men persistently pound on the door of each home. All the dwellings are inspected on the 14th floor, but one.

  …Sheryl steps into the light. Beyond the doorway her body is weightless. There’s a scenario involving a group of over a dozen men, which she spies on as though looking through the lens of a camera. The twelve disciples are oblivious to her presence. Though they are strangers she identifies each of the thirteen men by name. Grave doubt and fear is on each man’s mind. The moment is fitting, as Sheryl finds peace and comfort in the nervousness of others.

  Able to link with each Apostle’s thoughts, they expose the events of this early time period, and paint a vivid depiction of past personal experiences for Sheryl to learn from.

  There is one man she has no interest to know more about. He has the mind of a monster. And if she were to enter those thoughts any further, she fears her sanity would be consumed. He sneaks away using a secret tunnel below the basement of the meeting house. The group relocates to a dark and fogy garden. Arriving with them Sheryl struggles to stay awake, as all but one man fall asleep. Seeing into His thoughts a crushing weight comes over her. The burden is
so intense that she blacks out. Later Sheryl recalls the events which take place after her mental collapse.

  Once awake her eyes sting. By rubbing her face worry develops. There is blood coming from her tear ducts, and stained on her hands! Relocated to a dank catacomb, which the betrayer used as an escape route, Sheryl hurries to the pantry stairway, but the way out is sealed off. Studying the underground prison carefully, nervous reevaluation affirms there is no exit.

  Crumbled dirt falls in a connecting chamber. Echoing through the catacomb is the brittle snap and grinding of bones. She takes a reluctant peek around the bend to find decayed corpses in tattered robes sitting up from their burial shelves, and then shuffle toward her.

  Bile churns in her stomach, nearly erupting through her throat and into her mouth, as her nerves go weak. Not even a squeak emits when she attempts to scream in fear.

  “This must be a dream,” she inaudibly whispers. “As they are about to capture me I’ll wake up.” But the atmosphere is all too real, as is the self inflicted pinch to her skin. Her heart sinks by accepting the circumstantial reality…that this is a test. And if she can’t decipher the goal of this challenge, then she will be forever buried with these dead, moving creatures.

  What could the lesson be from the scene of the Passover, and the physical confrontation during Christ’s arrest? Counting the bodies, Sheryl realizes that there are eleven corpses drawing closer toward her. It’s the same count of Apostles at the time of their last supper. Could these be?

  Her steady patience rewards. At the circular center of the dark domain the hands of the cadavers join and the members form a circle. In unison they solemnly lower to their knees and bow their heads to the ground, creating the image of a bizarre centerpiece. Breaking up through the ground a sword rises into the air with a miraculous glow. It’s one of twelve weapons, urged by the Apostles’ master--that they acquire--which Peter used to slice a menacing soldier’s ear off.

  Sheryl leans past the still skeletons and retrieves the weapon by its handle. Increased radiance beams from the artifact and envelopes her with its brilliance.

  The light dims and panic flares as Sheryl finds she’s strapped to a gurney, and connected to a life-support machine, in the dark depths of the dungeon beneath her apartment complex.

  The silence that envelopes her fades, allowing noises around to be heard. The panicked sound of four men hollering at the woman standing beside Sheryl makes this place appear all the more frightening. The unwelcomed agents franticly rattle the steel bars of their cage.

  Sheryl recalls the events during her initial blackout, solving how she got so filthy. A preceding investigator located this domain, and set a fire to destroy the apparatus Emily uses to stay well. The blaze injures Emily. Sheryl is directed by the darkness, released from Emily, and arrives to the charred scene. She is called on, not only for physical assistance, but so that Emily may assess her character, in preparation as the next harmonizer. With supply equipment, and instructions on how to use the repair solvent, the device is fixed. The box is a parting gift.

  Sheryl stares in disbelief at a faceless nurse by her bedside, and tries to cry out the name on the woman’s hospital gown, but again nothing sounds.

  Emily is relieved from her shift and ascends the long flight of stairs to her new apartment. Learning the mechanics of the machine, Sheryl is challenged with giving in to the possible mindset of resentment, capable of manifesting into anger, and rage. For now she must learn to deal with her physical issues, appointed to a body stricken with excruciating burns.

  As for the earlier investigator, he has been trapped by the darkness, imprisoned in the alternate realm, and transmogrified into a servant named Pyromancer. A calming factor for Sheryl comes by way of the trepidation the four remaining men exude, in their sustained nightmare.