"Nathan! Nathan! Come back!" The inhuman voice filled the space of the dark
hallway.
“You'll not trick me twice! Never! Never more!” Nathan ran, blinded by sorrow and
absence of light.
He approached the Great Parlor. The reek of charred timber exhaled its sour
breath, lamenting its ruin. The pallid glow of an indifferent moon exposed the
shameful existence of mortals’ greed. Shaking, Nathan stood naked, chilled,
returning on the anniversary of her final scene, foolish to have believed in a
dream.
A raven loomed in the disfigured Cyprus. The once majestic tree shared the
untimely demise with the Mansion of Frances Bordure. The herald of doom glided
from a bone-finger branch, stretched its claws, and grasped the ledge, in front of
Nathan. Its devilish wings stirred the night’s smoky haze.
“What do you want?” Nathan yelled, braced tall, defiant. “I am free of her spell
and wise to your treachery.” He hefted a soot-covered candle stick, flung it at this
nemesis, the trickster of his dreams. The raven hopped free of harm’s way. Glass
shattered in a distant corner.
Nathan rose to the balls of his bare feet, testing each step, leaping over fallen
supports and jagged slate.
The black bastard cawed, injecting its venom into Nathan’s soul, reeling him
forward in a desperate desire to escape. His feet sped with disregard, sharp
pains, in the stead of death. Over the roof of the collapsed portico, down the
lane, and under the foliage, where sentinel elms stood in twin files, limbs
threatening to grab an arm, leg, or Nathan’s bouncing genitals. “Help!” Came his
cry for no mortal could hear.
Looking back, the raven pursued, black on black, gaining on or herding him?
“Ugh!” Nathan collided, solid, falling backwards, landing on sharp edges of
gravel, crawling on his back, avoiding the apparition’s reach.
“Please, please. Oh God, please. Frances, make it stop!” His spine scraped over
a large rock. He rolled, took, and threw it, only to pass through the ghostly form.
“Return to me. Give me life.” A voice rumbled as if coming from the depths of hell.
“Harm you have done. Your essence, you shall pay.”
Nathan squirmed on the ground. “Me? No. Oh, no, was your madness of ruin, not
mine.”
A cold wind lifted him and suspended him flat, hovering, then carried him back
toward the Mansion of Frances Bordure. The canopy of elms blurred, as he
passed under. Nathan cried. “Help me! Somebody!”
“Caw, Caw,” the raven replied, landing heavy on his chest, claws gouging him,
whetted beak stabbing at his ribs, severing flesh, chipping bone, questing for his
heart.
Powerless. Paralyzed, but able to call out, “Frances! I’ll come back now! Wake
me from this nightmare!” Consciousness waned, then returned with pain, only to
delve deeper into the dream where his love awaited, soon to be—alive—in the
Mansion of Frances Bordure. Not as she should be—defiled by the raven.
Nathan stood in the Great Parlor draped in a king’s purple robe as if reining over
many now master over death. The mansion reborn in vibrant colors of red and
green, fabrics of silk and chintz, ornaments of silver and gold, inlaid in pearl.
“Nathan, Nathan, my love.” Frances wore lace, as beautiful as their happiest day.
She curtsied with gathered red hair, then breezed near him. Life’s sweetness
expressed from her pores, remembered and adored. Her flesh pink, like the
living. “Darling, you have come to me.”
He took her hands and examined them, even the fine hairs seemed tainted with
renewed life she had stolen. His lips touched her skin, warmed by a beating
heart, no longer ravaged by the raven.
“Darling,” she grasped his hand as if she would never let go, “come with me to
the veranda and wait, as I did for you.”
Her eyes of love and light brought solace.
“Soon, children will arrive and we must greet them.” She smiled and kissed her
betrayal on his lips.
Down the shaded lane, Maria and Jason approached, holding hands, afraid, as
Nathan had been, to reenter the fire-stormed mansion of their mother, Frances
Bordure.
The End
The Mansion of Frances Bordure
(2007) (Unpublished)
A Short Story by Russell Traughber
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