The Underland

Until this very moment, Martin Bentbrook had been enjoying his vacation. Fifty weeks out of every year, Martin spent his days sitting in a cubicle working through a seemingly ever-growing pile of documents in need of processing; he spent his evenings alone, sitting in front of his television, a barely thrown-together meal of mostly unhealthy food laying half-eaten and growing cold on the sofa beside him. On weekends Martin would sometimes go out to the park and fly a kite. He used to like to build kites, and he had plenty of them just lying dormant in a closet. He rarely flew his kites anymore, and he hadn’t built a new one in over three years. Martin was basically lonely and unmotivated for those fifty weeks. But for two weeks, two gloriously liberating weeks, Martin went somewhere on vacation.

Martin was an unremarkable man, neither tall nor short, with dull brown hair and grey eyes. He wasn’t particularly handsome (although if he wore his hair differently, he might be considered passably good-looking), and his personality didn’t really make up for it. He knew a lot about a lot of things, most of them things that very few people cared about very much, so Martin didn’t have any really good friends. In fact, Martin didn’t much care for his regular life. That is why every year he saved up his money so he could go somewhere wonderful and do all the interesting things to do there. He’d been to Greece and climbed Mt. Olympus, just to see for himself that there really was no pantheon at home. He’d been to Africa, to Congo, and been guided on a safari through the jungle to see a temple that was older than human civilization, the proportions had seemed wrong, he’d noted. He’d been to Japan, and was taught to wield a katana by a real samurai, a wizened old man with chestnut skin and a wispy beard down past his waist. He’d been to Egypt, and climbed the Great Pyramid of Giza (you weren’t technically allowed to go near the pyramids anymore, but enough cash in the right hands could buy a spot on an archaeological team for a day). This year he was in the United Kingdom of Great Britain, taking a tour of all the oldest castles. It had been his goal for this trip to spend the night in a castle, and not one that had been fitted as a hotel, but a real stone castle, without a wait staff or television set, on a straw pallet with a broadsword laying beside him. Surprisingly, it had taken quite a lot of work to accomplish this. But after many a trans-Atlantic phone call, he was finally able to find a castle, located just north of the Scotland/England border, about halfway between Edinburgh and Glasgow, that was privately owned, and whose owner was friendly enough, or bankrupt enough to let him spend the night on his own, with a weapon, for the meager fee of one thousand pounds. Martin would, of course have to supply his own food, water, bedding and broadsword. The sword had not been a problem, as Martin possessed one of his own (the customs fees for traveling with it were a bit steep, but cheaper than buying a genuine one in the UK). The bedding, oddly enough, proved the most difficult challenge of all. In addition to the three hundred pounds the seamstress had charged him for the pallet, he’d also had to bring an entire suitcase full of American beauty products with him (which, of course, meant more costs at customs). Once he arrived at Heathrow, everything had gone perfectly. Another vacation expertly planned and executed.

It was Martin’s final night in the UK, the night he was spending in the castle. He had picked up his pallet, bought some provisions, driven to the castle in a rented car, met the owner at the gate to be given the key and be shown where to leave it in the morning (the thousand pounds had been pre-paid, of course), set up his bedding, shadow-fenced with his broadsword a bit, and finally laid down to sleep on the straw pallet. That brings us up to the moment in question, the very moment when Martin Bentbrook stopped enjoying his vacation. Martin heard a scream. Not just any scream either. Not the scream of a raucous teenage girl, not even the scream of a woman in distress. Not the scream of a person suffering violence either. It was a scream that did not seem to come from a human throat at all, and it frightened Martin quite thoroughly. For five minutes the scream carried on, fading slightly, then coming closer. Five minutes without pausing for a breath. Martin lay quivering on his pallet, clutching his broadsword to his chest.

At last, Martin could bear it no longer, he steeled himself by remembering stories where a sleeping person is frightened by an unnatural sound, and upon investigation, discovers it is nothing more than a creaking gate, or a tortured engine trying to turn over, or a lost animal, or some other such mundane and non-threatening thing. He picked himself up, held his sword in both hands, and moved toward the window of the room in which he’d chosen to sleep. Nothing Martin had ever seen, heard or done in his life could have prepared him for what he saw in the castle’s courtyard.

Next Chapter >>