The Last Will and Testament of Stefan Blackhawke was cut and dry and there was no contesting against it. The old wizard had built an estate, a many-storied tower as wizened as he was at the end of his life. Not to be confused with Negro Grand Dames of the south, Stefan was an old country wizard, a bloodline from Europe, Romania as I recall. If during my investigation I find out he had even the slightest ties to the royalty thereof I was dropping this job faster than the train that brought me.
Why was I here? When wizards die, they call in experts to come in and render the premises inert since wizards tend to leave the mortal coil with all manner of dangers still armed and poised for mayhem. Failing to get an expert they call for someone like me, a jack-of-all trades. The job I was hired for was different though. It wasn’t for me, but my old master. This told me two things, one; this place had ties to her and maybe a clue as to what happened to her, and second, the possibility she might still be alive. Like our expert counterparts, our deaths are swift and usually messy, disappearing without a trace was extremely rare.
The job for my master came from an unholy alliance of lawyers for the estate and Stefan’s offspring, chief among them for his firstborn, his only son. Oddly enough not the prime benefactor of the will, that honor was left to eldest daughter. Even his wife was set to inherit very little, but from what I came to understand she was cozily nestled back in Europe and was content with whatever money she received.
Along with disarming the old wizard’s madhouse, I was commissioned to retrieve several items, tokens of inheritance for the other children. The son had even offered me an exorbitant amount if anything meant for his siblings went ‘missing’ or for any untoward damage inflicted upon his father’s estate during my investigation. Children tend to be a distorted reflection of their parents and I had the distinct impression that for all his faults that Stefan’s son was twisted back in a manner towards being human.
Stefan Blackhawke built his tower in the Southern traditional style of the South in northern Louisiana on a rocky outcrop on the Black River. Trees and bushes had overgrown the area, but they seemed especially attached to the old tower. The wisteria crawled up the pillars and stone brick walls threatening to devour the monstrosity. The wooden overhangs, if you could still call it wood, had been stripped of paint by the sun and weather and now matched the stone in gray and world weariness.
After fighting my way through the dense brush to the foot of the tower with the stink of the woods and the river in my nostrils I half expected the wooden steps to crumble beneath the weight of my boots but apparently, they were of the age too stubborn to bother breaking. They still creaked and groaned something awful as old people tend to do. The tower must have been something when it was first built as it still bore the styling and prominence of southern plantation homes.
I pulled on the old gray doors half expecting the knob to pull free at my touch, but it held firm and with a click the doors swung open silently. The dissonance between inside and outside was night and day. The interior was highly furnished in a manner of opulence rarely appreciated in the new world, at least not in the abodes I was used to. There was a heavy European influence from the chase couch to the chandelier and every bit of furniture in between.
But the piece de resistance was the white marble statue settled between twin crescent staircases in the foyer. A somber angel with wings pressed back in a manner most humbling. It looked to the sky for salvation holding aloft a sphere engraved to look like an eye.
I have traveled the world my friends sampling every manner of oddity and delight the cultures of the world have to offer and for all I have seen both perverse and wondrous nothing sparks my ire quite like Luciferians. I assure you; these aren’t the devil worshipping cult members you read about in dime novels and newspapers. They’re a distinct offshoot of Christianity that avail themselves to the angel Lucifer in hopes he will seek redemption from God. How a Luciferian managed to not get lynched or tossed into the river tied to stones in the South is beyond me, let alone build his estate.
The oddity that occurred to me wasn’t how richly furnished the place was but that it was immaculately clean. I remembered at that moment that the servants were still present. On paper, they were slaves before the war, but as I was told, Stefan had been paying and treating them fairly, so after the war nothing changed. The fact that they remained loyal to him before, during, and after the War of Northern Aggression led me to believe they were probably a part of his flock. They were also decidedly absent at the time. It also occurred to me that there were probably one or two heirs unaccounted for among the children of the servants. It was none of my concern, it is something for the demons wearing the vestments of clerks to deal with.
People are under the misconception that wizards are atheists or anti-religion at best, at their worst they worship pagan gods or the devil. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is as I’ve learned over the years a mix of respect and jealousy for the magnitude of power, the ratio of the mix depends on each individual wizard. But it seems as if I have wandered into the domicile of a very rare breed.
I decided to check the library first. It makes sense that a wizard’s most precious keepsakes were tomes, so most of the items I was tasked with procuring were in fact those. For anyone of my vocation the use of amulets to detect the presence of arcane arts was essential and though my heritage granted me some natural proficiency in this regard, precision was the difference between collecting a paycheck and attending my last funeral.
With a twisted strip of silver on a string of rawhide in one hand and the old sheriff’s silver pistol secured at my hip I wandered up the stairs to the third floor where I was told the library lay. The architecture through optical illusion twisted my perception of the interior making it seem grander than it truly was and upon reaching the third floor I began opening the highly decorated cherrywood doors. I poked my head in drawing, bed, and music rooms all equally opulent in their furnishing. Opposite the stairs was a pair of double doors and sighing at the obvious nature of things I pushed against them.
The doors swung open silently revealing a grand room with an intricately designed rug and accentuated by a two-story grand window on the other side letting the light of midday inside. The walls were replaced with bookshelves that reached to the ceiling and were tightly packed with books. Stacks of books haphazardly gathered at the foot of these shelves, not for being too lazy but rather there was no space for them amongst the others and so the have-not books were made to wander the floor like vagabonds.
The two red leather armchairs on either side of the room did not distract me from my mission though I realized within the clutter it might take me awhile. What did in fact distract me was a tall lectern standing before the great window, upon which lay a book open for the world to gaze upon and seemingly untouched by the sun who had been reading for some time. Curiosity soundly defeated better judgement and I trotted across the rug with small thuds booming against the silent room.
I reached the lectern and gazed down upon the book. The cover and flyleaf were turned revealing the first page. It looked like a diary, or a journal. Basic arcane drawing beautifully drawn followed by detailed notes. A project journal then. Written by... I turned the cover with my fingers in marking my place. Stefan himself was the author. A personal journal entitled, “Catch the Devil’s Eye”. Interesting title for a project journal. Seemed more appropriate for those dime novel horror stories that have become popular up in New York and Boston.
I flipped the page, then another. The notes were concise in neat handwriting as the drawings become ever more intricate ranging from arcane circles to artifacts and even machinery. I flip another page, still more drawings becoming ever more detailed and elaborate as the notes become longer and more detailed. There was a manic mind behind these drawings and notes, hidden in the shadows of the lines. It is almost imperceptible as the writing maintains a steady flow. No scribbling or crossed out words nor unintelligible ramblings and smeared ink. But the drawings become larger, filling up half a page as the pages turn and the notes follow this trend until each is filling up an entire page.
Then nothing. Blank pages fill the book. I turn the pages as manically as the author must have been to pour that much focus and detail into this work with such consistency, but the edges flow from one side to the other until the very end. The last two pages layed out before me consisted of two solid walls of text written very small as if by tiny hands and dominating the center of the text as if looming out from it is a bold sketch of the angel in the foyer.
It was written in Latin, and I strained my mental acuity to remember my lessons as I read. What I could make out, what I could translate. It told the history of the land. It told of the native people, of settlers, of homesteaders, all who tried to settle the land but because of famine, disease, or the animals disappearing, none managed to claim it. The land rejected them. The land sought a master and eventually found it in the Blackhawke family. Those who knew the truth of the power reaching out from the maelstrom. Those who knew about the Devil’s Peephole. Those who were damned to live within the sight of a never sleeping eye. The last line read: The Tower must not fall.
A chill ran up my spine and beads of sweat dripped down my neck and to fully commit my heart to the act of stopping, the silver charm clutched firmly in my hand unfurled with a loud ‘ping’. I shook, startled by the sound. I looked down at the charm in my hand. Something changed within the tower. The charm was designed to unfurl slowly as one approached an enchanted source. But to happen without moving and all at once brought a sense of dread upon me I hadn’t felt since the assassin wraith several months prior up north.
Instinctively I looked up and nearly yelped at the sight of the face against the glass window, dark and hollow. Realizing it was a reflection I turned quickly to see the dark-skinned man in well-tailored clothes holding a Winchester. Over a score of feet separated us, there was no way to reach him before he turned the rifle on me and ended my journey on the mortal coil. The room provided no cover and even the armchairs offered little against a Winchester save to dampen the impact of the bullet enough to prolong my suffering before an inglorious end.
“You is the collector?” The man’s voice deeply resonated in the room. The southern accent deeply rooted in his mannerisms but with a touch of refinement that would be charming under circumstances that didn’t involve a loaded rifle, as it stood, it intimidated me to my core.
“I is the collector,” I said with no intention of mocking him but too scared to answer in any other fashion. The man let the rifle fall to his side. Gray patches in his hair and well-trimmed beard marked his age.
“Name’s Ellias, t’was butler to his lordship. The books you’s looking for be set aside over there,” he waved a hand towards a stack of tomes isolated from the others. The hand that had held the barrel of the rifle was worn and weathered like the wood outside and something told me that it too would creak and groan but never yield.
“The same for everything else,” he continued, “Been set aside anticipating your arrival. Best take them and leave. This’s no place for your kind.”
“My kind?” I asked suddenly feeling an affront.
“The kind that be snooping,” he grinned.
I shrank under his piercing stare, feeling embarrassed, I turned my head. In my peripheral I watched him turn on a heel with precision and grace and elegantly stepped away, almost militaristic. I stowed my mortification next to my pride in the recesses of my mind and perused the stack of books he had indicated. Everything was there as he had said. It would be best to gather everything and go.
But I wasn’t satisfied. If anyone knew about the link between Stefan and my master, it would be the old butler or there would be some other clue in this tower. It looked like I had no choice, and I would be staying in this madhouse longer than anyone, especially myself, wished. I looked down at the charm in my hand that felt warm against my palm. The silver band had refused to retwist itself and dread creeped slowly across my skin.