The Case of Charlotte Ward Pt. 01

The shattered ruins of Ferenczy Castle sprawled under the night sky, its tumbled stones pale and skeletal in the moonlight. Only a single wall remained standing of the once mighty heap, the other three having fallen out and away, tossed carelessly in the explosion that had destroyed the Castle. The violence of the collapse was evident from the half-acre of scattered stony debris that covered the steeply sloping hillside. A conical segment of roof, its red tiles cracked and splintered, had rolled a few hundred yards farther than the other debris, and it was by this architectural fossil that Charlotte Dextra Ward and her assistant, Lily Carter, paused their hike and rested. They'd left their truck two miles downhill to follow a little goat path that climbed steadily up into the lonely, quiet mountains. The air was thin, and cold, and strangely silent, and they had long since left the last gnarled pine behind them. Charlotte, breathing deeply, set her pack down and examined the ruined fragment.

"So this is it," she said. "The explosion must've been terrible. Look how far the debris was scattered."

"Sure enough," puffed Lily, leaning against the cracked base of the ruined tower. "Ol' Magnus did his work well. 'Course, he had a right head o' steam up, I imagine."

"Hard to believe anything will be left," Charlotte said, looking up the slope to the dark, ruined wall ahead.

"Ah, well now," said Lily, grinning. "The Baron was a clever one, and always thinking ahead." She fished a bottle of water from the pack, offering it to Charlotte and then sipping some herself. "When the Romanians took over in the '20s, he knew he'd have to be a little more careful, have a few hidey holes ready for when he'd need 'em. He delved deep too, put tunnels all through these here hills. The castle might've gone up in smoke, but I'll warrant the fire didn't reach them all. Besides, Magnus was hellbent on killing the Baron, and I doubt he took the time to hunt for his stashes as thoroughly as he might've. Oh no, he was always one for planning, Baron Ferenczy was."

"You talk like you knew him, Lily," said Charlotte.

"Well now Miss Ward," laughed Lily, "that couldn't be, could it? How old would that make me? A hunnert? Hunnert n' fifty?" Her laughter echoed down the slope and in the valley, a deep, booming sound that was quickly lost in the dark.

Charlotte looked over her companion more closely. She was a striking woman, perhaps fifty, although Charlotte had to admit that she had never asked her age, and indeed Lily seemed to have changed little in the ten years since she'd they'd met in Arkham. She had an expressive face, with large dark eyes bordered by deep laugh-lines, and a wide mouth that often quirked itself into a broad, toothy smile. Lily was tall and straight, just over six feet in her socks, with a lean, powerful body. The enormous pack she had carried up the trail from the truck attested to her athleticism, and her slimly muscular legs and broad shoulders were accentuated by her close-fitting hiking clothes. Her iron grey hair was tied back in a tight bun, and her eyes glittered in the moonlight. The contrast between the two of them was stark; Charlotte was barely five feet tall, noticeably more curvy, bespectacled and blonde. Still, she'd held her own on the hike, even if her pack had been the lighter.

"Regardless," Charlotte said, "his plans didn't do him much good in the end, did it?"

"Everyone dies," said Lily, slyly. "Or, at least, that's what they tell me."

"Well," smirked Charlotte, "we'll just see about that, won't we? C'mon!" She struck out up the trail, towards the ruins, and Lily followed.

The night was cold, hinting at the approach of autumn - soon, winter storms would close in on the mountains, filling the passes with snow and making the peaks inaccessible. They had been lucky, thought Charlotte, to have found the location of the Baron's ruins as quickly as they had, thanks to the hand-drawn map they'd discovered amongst Joseph Curwen's letters hidden in the archives of Miskatonic's Pickman Library. A week or two later, and they might have had to have waited until the next summer for their visit. But now...a thrill ran up her spine, and she felt her face flush with excitement. Soon, she'd know if any of Ferenczy's materials had survived his death. If they had...

A wind rose, flowing down from the peak to stir Charlotte's short blonde hair. A sound like furtive tittering, barely on the edge of hearing, floated down from the ruins. Lily looked up sharply, her hand resting on the pistol that hung from her hip.

"Just the wind," said Charlotte, impatiently, adjusting her glasses.

"Maybe," answered Lily. They kept moving.

The path died among the blocks of the castle, and they had to pick their way carefully among the ruins. The stones were scorched and blasted, and some had been shattered completely, raw unworked rock exposed and stark against the pitted fronts of the carved blocks. Charlotte ran her hands over the blackened and split surface of one of them, a block that looked as if it had been struck repeated with great hammering bolts of lightning.

"Powerful forces," muttered Lily, pressing close in behind her.

"And soon," said Charlotte, her voice husky, "they'll be mine to command."

They reached the hilltop and stood under the wan moon-shadow of the ruined wall. The wind moaned through the empty sockets of the windows. If Charlotte closed her eyes and listened, she could almost make out mocking, hateful words, just audible in the wind's gusty breaths. Lily was digging through her pack.

"Here it is, Miss!" she said happily, finally finding the flashlight in her enormous backpack. "Knew I had it!" She flicked it on and a warm, yellow glow, startlingly bright, was cast against the wall.

"Let's find one of these 'hidey holes' soon," said Charlotte. "I don't like this wind. A storm may be coming." Together, they crouched, shifting rubble and sweeping aside dried, brittle lichens that had colonized the stone floor. Occasionally, they would stumble over a slightly taller protuberance of stone or rubble, remnants of interior walls dividing rooms from one another. The floor, where visible, was of the same heavy stone masonry as the wall. In life, thought Charlotte, the old castle must have been a bitterly cold place.

"Ah ha!" said Lily, "lookit 'ere, Miss Ward!" She reached to her hip and withdrew a long knife from its sheath. She worked its edge into a joint between the wall and a floor tile, cleaning debris to expose a long, straight light, slightly wider than the tight jointing exhibited by the other tiles they'd examined. "Let's clear this spot a bit, and see what we can see, eh Miss?" They kicked the loose rocks aside, and Lily crouched down to hammer the cleaned surface with the pommel of the knife. The slab rang hollowly, and Lily grinned. Charlotte's blue eyes shone with excitement.

Lily produced a crowbar from her pack and together, sweating and straining, they slowly worked the massive floor slab aside, inch by inch, until they had exposed a yawning aperture. Roughhewn steps lead downwards into the dark. Charlotte stepped forward eagerly, but Lily put her hand on her shoulder and stopped her.

"Allow me, Miss, if you don't mind." She put the crowbar away, shouldered her pack, and drew the heavy 9 mm Parabellum Mauser from its holster. Gun in her right hand and flashlight in her left, she led the way. Charlotte followed.

Thirty-nine steps brought them to a cement-walled tunnel that wound slowly and slightly downwards. The floor was stone, and their boots clicked loudly against it as they walked down the hall. Charlotte, a full head shorter than Lily, peered around her to try and see down the hallway.

"See anything?" she whispered.

"Just more tunnel. Stay close. Who knows what the Baron left behind down here."

A further ten yards down the tunnel, Lily's light illuminated a series of runes or sigils that had been drawn directly into the wet cement of the wall, running right up and across the ceiling, back down the opposite wall, and even across the floor, where a thin line of cement had been spread over the flagstone of the tunnel floor. Charlotte pushed past Lily to examine them.

"Aklo," she said after a minute. "A protective ward. Just a general one, though. Nothing...specific." Lily pointed the flashlight down the hall, lighting on a heavy wooden door.

"They there to keep us from going in, or to keep something from coming out?" Charlotte could only answer with a shrug.

They approached the door quietly, and Lily pressed her ear against it and listened, her eyes closed tightly, her brow furrowed in concentration. After a minute of listening, she opened her eyes and shook her head. "All's quiet," she said, putting her hand on the wrought iron handle. "And it's unlocked. Shall we, Miss?" She flung the door wide and hopped back, light and gun pointed straight into the open doorway. She swept the room with both.

The door opened onto a wide, spacious laboratory; two heavy oak tables, stained with chemicals and scorch-rings from crucibles, stood nearest the door. Both were piled high with beakers, vials, alembics, and papers. A large, throne-like chair, heavily cushioned, rested before a huge fireplace in one corner, while in the center of the room a rune-lined circle had been chalked out on the floor. But it was the shelves that made Charlotte grab the flashlight, push past Lily, and run into the room. Lily sighed and followed her in, dropped her pack by the door and lit a dripping candle that stood on the table.

Charlotte peered at the shelves. They reached from ceiling to floor and completely filled two walls of the room. The leftmost were labeled "CUSTODES" in carefully printed letters, and were lined with squat stoneware jars. Their lids were sealed with wax, and Vulgate inscriptions had been chalked onto the surface of the jars, different words on each.

"Let's see," she said, reading the phrases, "'Malus Puer.' 'Hoc Est Terribilis.' 'Deformis Pullum.' These are the Baron's guards! Whole shelves of them!"

"And those must be the others," said Lily, holstering her gun and picking up one of the glowing candles. She walked over to the other shelf, stepping carefully around the chalk circle. Charlotte turned and examined the rightmost shelf with her.

"It's Ferenczy's 'Materia' all right," she said. The jars were taller and made of thin, elegant glass, stoppered with lead plugs and labelled with numbers. Inside each jar was a measure of fine, blue-grey powder that shone like talc in the flickering candle light.

"Must be forty or fifty of 'em," said Lily, counting quickly.

"A whole library of essential salts," said Charlotte, awed. "More than even old Curwen had back in Providence." She laughed suddenly, giddily, and danced a mad jig around the shelves. "By Azathoth, Lily! You know what this means!? We've got them - Ferenczy's personal collection of essential salts! The greatest occultists in history!"

"And his, uh...those things," added Lily, gesturing over her shoulder towards the other shelf. Charlotte paused her dance to look at the heavy jars on the opposite shelf. She smoothed her shirt with her hand, coughed, and nodded.

"Yes, well, they might come in handy too," said Charlotte, her voice only slightly unsure. "Now," she clapped her hands together, "let's get some more light."

They lit more candles, and soon the room danced with flickering shadows. Charlotte poured over the stacks of crumbling parchment strewn over the tables. Lily shivered, and examined the fireplace. A pile of ancient, dried firewood had been heaped next to it, and the sparse, dead ashes of a long-ago fire remained in the hearth. Leaning into the fireplace, Lily looked up the flue and whistled.

"Must vent out of some secret, hidden place on the hillside. Clever ol' Baron! How about a fire, Miss Ward? Bit cherrier, doncha think?" Charlotte waved her hand in acknowledgment, and Lily soon had a warm fire crackling in the fireplace. The room was practically entirely lit now, the remaining shadows escaping into the distant corners.

"Look at this nonsense, Lily," said Charlotte with disgust. "Ferenczy's incantations are barely any better than Curwen's! It's a wonder they could put down anything they'd summoned up when they were done with it. Sloppy, just sloppy."

"You think yours'll be better then, Miss?"

"I know they will be, Lily. Between Willet's notes, the third and twelfth incantations we got from the Necronomicon, and your Grandfather's experiments, I think we've refined both the rising and falling nodes down to their purist form." She slammed her fist down against the table. "I'll show them, Lily! Those fusty Old Men, in their sad little rooms! Why, with all the accumulated knowledge in this room, I'll be the greatest Sorcerer that ever lived! Come on, let's get started!"

Using some water from the water bottle and a towel, they mopped up the old chalk circle, and when the cold stone floor was dry Charlotte drew a new, slightly elliptical circle, the long axis carefully aligned with magnetic north. She drew a dizzying array of runes around its outer circumference, and when she was done, her shirt and hands were coated in chalk dust.

"Robes, Miss?" asked Lily. The incantation required special care, and that included very specific proscriptions against mixed fabrics.

"Yes, alright," said Charlotte. Lily immediate pulled her shirt off and dropper her pants. She was soon naked, her tanned skin warmly glowing in the firelight. Charlotte, blushing, turned her back and did the same. She had to suppress a squeak of surprise when Lily, still naked, stepped around in front of her and tapped her arms.

"Up Miss, and I'll drop the robe on you."

"Y-yes, alright," answered Charlotte, raising her arms. The soft silk of the robe slid over them and down around her body, with Lily's hands lightly brushing Charlotte's shoulders and waist and she adjusted it. She stepped back, hands on her slim, muscular hips, and admired the close-fitting, body-hugging robe that ran voluptuously over Charlotte's form.

"Very nice, Miss Ward," she said with a leer. She then whipped her own robe up and over her body, the muscles of her stomach and legs flexing as she wriggled sinuously into it. She ran her hand up her side and over her breast and grinned. "I do love a bit of silk," she said, winking. The robe hugged her rugged body close, tight enough that the etched ridges of her abs were visible through the fabric.

"A-all right, you hedonist," stammered Charlotte. "Let's get to work. Bring that chair over to the circle, and we'll begin." When Lily had dragged the enormous throne across the room, Charlotte sat down and began to read from her notes.

"Okay, put the 'Keeper of The Gates' at...uh...6 o'clock there," Charlotte pointed to the nearest arc of the magic circle. "And then the 'Warder' at 9 o'clock and the 'Goat of Ephesus' at 2 o'clock." Lily set the strange, small bronze statuettes at their appointed places, facing (in as much as they could be said to have a face) inward, towards the center of the circle. "And where are the Amulets of Zoth?"

"Right here, boss," she said, handing one of the strangely carved discs for Charlotte to wear, and put the other around her own neck.

"Light the Black Lotus incense." A match flared, and soon the strange, heady aroma of the forbidden flower wafted through the underground laboratory.

"Have the Waters of Ragalan ready, just in case." Lily sloshed a sealed bottle around, and set it next to the chair.

"Check," she said.

"Well then," said Charlotte, flipping the papers, checking and double-checking the circle and the precautions. "I suppose we're ready."

"Who'll we raise?" Lily looked at Charlotte, who looked at Lily, and then at the Custodes' shelves. She shook her head.

"Maybe we'll wait on the Guards," she said, suppressing her shudder. She had read about the horrible, terrible things that had guarded Ferenczy's secret workings, and she was not eager to see them in the flesh, not yet. "How about one of them?" She pointed at the glass bottles on the Materia shelf. Lily walked carefully around the chalk circle and rubbed her chin as she looked over the jars.

"Who's who?" she asked.

"I didn't find Ferenczy's inventory list among any of the paperwork down here, so we'll just have to go by trial and error. Don't worry," she said, shaking her head at Lily's cocked eyebrow. "I've got the descending node ready. Should anything go wrong, I'll chant it and put it down quickly. Just pick one. I'm ready!" Lily shrugged, and ran her fingers over the bottles, her fingers fluttering.

"Well," she said, "seven's a lucky number, right?" She grabbed the bottle labelled "VII" and carried it carefully over to Charlotte, who took it and stepped gingerly into the circle. Carefully undoing the stopper, she slowly poured the strange dust into a small heap in the middle of the circle. Turning, she saw Lily strapping the gun belt around her waist. "Just in case, okay Miss?"

"Prudent," admitted Charlotte, settling down into the chair. She got the paper with her modified formulae written on it, and nodded at Lily. "Alright, let's begin."

Her voice started small, but rose as the incantation gathered strength. With each word the light from the candles and the fire dimmed, and a strange cold wind seemed to blow from the dark corners of the room, gently stirring the heap of dust in the circle.

"Per adonai eloim! Adonai jehova! Adonai sabaoth! Metraton on agla mathon, verbum serpentes, mysterium salamandrae! Conventus sylvorum! Antra gnomorum! Daemonia coeli gad, almousin, gibor, jerosan! Evam, zariatnatmik, veni! Veni! VENI!"

As the last word echoed strangely in the dark, the fire suddenly flared to life, and the candles seemed to pour light back into the room. A smoke rose from the dust, an obscuring mist that mingled with candle flame and incense to form a miasmal wall that roiled in the strange wind pouring through the room, a breath from some illimitable gulf of darkness beyond the human realm. There was a resounding sound, like the grinding of stone in an earthquake, or the sudden rush of the sea in a tidal wave, and then...silence, and all was still. Charlotte and Lily let out their held breaths, and the smoke parted.

Standing in the center of the circle, looking dazed, blinking his eyes, stood a man, utterly naked, swaying unsteadily as he took in the unfamiliar surroundings.

"Always said seven was a lucky number," growled Lily, running her eyes over the man's naked body. Charlotte shushed her, but she had to admit, he had a very nice body. He was tall and well-formed, a sweeping chest with firm, well-defined muscles that glowed warmly in the firelight. His arms were powerful, and his equally muscular legs flexed and relaxed as he slowly rocked back and forth, sturdy tree trunks that supported him well. His well-defined stomach included twin straps of muscles tapering down his waist to a hard-ridged "v" that made the breath catch in Charlotte's throat and led, inexorably, down to a well-proportioned member hanging between his gorgeous thighs.

His hair was short and darkly red, and a dusting of red hair could be seen on his limbs and chest, with a thicker swatch nestling his cock. Freckles were scattered over the magnificent swell of his chest and shoulders, and were noticeable on the proud ridge of his nose. His bright green eyes were growing rapidly more alert, and he scowled in confusion.

"My name's Lily, gorgeous," she said, leaning in with a leering smile, "what's yours?" He blinked a few times, looked from Lily to Charlotte, and then said something is a rolling, sonorous language that neither spoke.

"What's he saying?" said Charlotte, still eyeing the broad chest of the handsome redhead in front of her.