Prompt 202 - Now hatred... - The Code

[guardian-erin.livejournal.com]

Title: The Code
Author: Guardian Erin
Fandom: Original
Rating: G
Summary: A young man finds the ruins of his ancestry.



In the ruins of an ancient ancestral mansion, James Winthrop found his inheritance. The foundation was made of stone blocks, which appeared to be the oldest part of the house. The rest of the structure had been rebuilt over time, with additions of rooms and mass remodeling apparent. The last update had been in the early sixties, he knew. The original owner, his great uncle had an enormous sum of money and no heirs. After his death, James' great aunt lived alone in financial crisis. Nothing was seen of the inheritance that would have let his relative spend the last years of her life in comfort.

Her death was something of a mystery as well. There was a quiet funeral with the church, supposedly. He could find no one who had attended or any real evidence that it had happened. In fact, none of the extended family had been contacted of her death until many months later.

James himself barely knew his great aunt and uncle. It was only in the last year that he even knew who they were. Allen and Edith Winthrop. Allen had been a surgeon in the war and brought Edith home as his wife. That was all of their life story that survived. James could only hope for their sake that the story was true, but he had no way of knowing and truthfully it didn't matter to him at all until recently.

The old house was bleak when James entered it, layered in dust and reeking of mold. The dark, heavy curtains that were present in every window made the inside of the house even more frightful. Electricity was out, unfortunately, after years of the old place being abandoned. He doubted that even a rat would want to live in a place like this. In an effort to lighten the heavy gloom in the house, James suddenly shoved apart the old curtains, tying each back to the window frame. More light came in to the living room, but unfortunately the sky was overcast and it did little to relieve the tense atmosphere.

The house must have been very beautiful in its time. Rich reds and royal blues made up the color scheme of the furniture and floors. The walls arched up into tall ceilings, where light sometimes filtered through dirty skylight windows. The floor had the appearance of marble, but it was a deep bloody red with beautiful black flakes that glistened like obsidian, and blue etches made elaborate designs across the entire floor. Unfortunately the beauty did not exist as strongly in the present, and James suspected it would be a nightmare to sell the house, not necessarily for lack of buyers but because of the difficulty of getting around Edith's will.

If it wasn't for the lack of any alternatives, James might have left. As it was, he was in need of a place to stay. A home, a job – an entire life, actually. His aunt's last will and testament was merciful to him, even if it wasn't the most optimum outcome of her death. There was no fortune to pass on. Nothing at all to speak of, except for the old mansion that would cost more in debt and repairs than it was worth. He could already guess that he wasn't in luck when he discovered that the house had been left to anyone in his family who would live in it, and no one else had even considered doing so. Just looking at the place, he knew he didn't have the money to rebuild it. He would never have the money to rebuild it. The only benefit was that the house had been left as it was when his aunt Edith passed away, with furniture still in place, books still on the shelves, and various collected items that might be worth his trouble if he sold them.

It was while he was looking over the contents of a reading room that James found it. A map, drawn in elaborate detail on quality parchment. The red, blue, and black inks were bold and crisp in many places, as if recently drawn, and faded in other areas, like a layered labyrinth sinking into the page. Impossible geometric figures crossed the page. It appeared to be a map, but to what James wasn't sure. There certainly wasn't any 'X' to mark the spot or anything rudimentary like that. His brief experience at the university told James that the symbols going across the page in lines and curves were not Latin or Greek, nor were they the intricate letters of Chinese. It was something else altogether that he couldn't name. He briefly wondered if it might not be a language at all, but a sort of code. But what was language if not a code that was either well known or a complete mystery?

James laid the paper flat against the table, running his fingers over the familiar geometric shapes. The colors were the same as the scheme used for the rest of the house, and the designs on the floor suddenly caught his eye and made his heart constrict in excitement.

They were similar! Yes, similar, but... as he paced over the floors yearning for a flashlight to better examine his surroundings, he realized that there were only a few details in common between the map and the floor itself. James paused, crouching down with his map and pondering. Perhaps it was just a concept drawing that Allen had sketched at one point when he was designing the house. But the details seemed so precise, and the layout was peculiar. He realized that it resembled the structure of the house itself, but there were some extra wings drawn on that weren't part of the actual structure.

The map was a blueprint of the house, then, James decided, going back to the table where he had made his discovery. It was strange. Every building seemed so deliberately drawn, and every design of the marble seemed to have purpose. It was more than just to appeal to the eye. The building, were it completed according to the design, would have a very regular shape, resembling a diamond. Everything about the design seemed to focus towards the center, and upon examining the room further, James realized that a staircase would lead him towards the center of the main building.

The young man's hands trembled as he lifted the map to check again. Was that where old Allen might have hidden his fortune? Next to him on the table, James noticed an old leather book with gold foil letters that had faded with time. Pressed into the cover was the design of a diamond with many facets. The title read, THE KEY TO ETERNAL LIFE.

Something about the book made James shudder, and he couldn't bring himself to touch it. Was that why the fortune was hidden instead of passed on to his uncle's relatives? Had the old bat actually intended on finding a way to live forever? Clearly that hadn't worked out. It was a madman's quest, and if anyone found something even relatively promising in the dark arts, the end result was guaranteed to be insanity and death.

James glanced again at the map, but left it lying on the table next to that cursed book, and did not approach it again. He walked away instead, approaching the stairs and judging the size of the mansion to see if his guess had been correct. This would lead him toward the center of the house, toward his uncle's ruin, and toward the hoarded wealth that should have been passed on long ago.

The stairs were sturdy and only creaked a few times while he climbed them. The entire house, despite its trivial decay, was built to survive a small eternity. A series of skylights brought a natural light to the room that James finally reached. The entire second floor was nothing more than a large, circular chamber, at the center of which laid an enormous bed. This was the master bedroom of his great aunt and uncle. His great aunt, skeletal and with sagging, blackened skin rested in her bed. He felt his heart clamp tightly in fright when intelligent, glistening eyes looked at him, like dark slivers of obsidian in Edith's sunken eye sockets. There was nothing left for that blackened soul but time, and hatred is by far the longest pleasure.

A bony hand lifted up towards him, and as a light peach color blossomed on his great aunt's skin and began to spread, James felt his chest collapse and his world go black.