White Manor

9. The Crypt

The tomb was dug deep into the earth, its stone staircases lined with blue burning torches. The tunnels wound seemingly at random in all directions, each leading to its own family tomb under the manor. A great statue loomed in the central chamber, nearly ten feet tall and overgrown with moss. It was the grave of The Stone Lady, and at the statue's feet stirred two shining azure forms.

Constance arose first, her ethereal feet not quite touching the cold stones of the tomb's floor. The zombie known as The White Lady was gone, stripped of all rotted flesh and muscle, leaving a beautiful spirit that was Lady Constance of White Manor. Straight hair, black but for the spectral flames glowing beneath, fell in waves over her pale blue skin.  Her face was featureless, save for dark shadows where the eyes and nose should have been.

Another unearthly glow emitted from the statue that served as The Stone Lady's tomb, filling the crypt with light like the torches never could. The sudden burst of fire awoke Freida from her nightmares of monsters and graveyards, and she floated three feet off the ground in her shock."I'm a ghost!" Freida screamed, her hands at her cheeks like a surprised child.

"And my arm! It's back! Though more blue than I remember..." Freida continued to float around the azure-tinted crypt, examining her new spirit body fervently. Constance paid her no mind, just waited for her old friend Beatrice, The Stone Lady, to materialize from her grave.

Beatrice's appearance was brief and dramatic. Again blue light shot from the statue, this time in great cones like searchlights. Freida stopped her shock-induced self-study to see what the pretty lights were about. As they watched, The Stone Lady herself phased right through the stone statue and levitated down to Constance's level. Freida floated down as well and took note of the two spirits before her. They're like exact opposites, she thought.

  Beatrice's hair was a mess of blue-grey tangles draped around her skeletal and aged face. The shadows of her features were dark and deep like a skull, and the fire that burned within her burned bright and hot in the dank crypt.

"You left our bodies in the boneyard," Constance said, more an accusation than a statement. The static in the specter's voice echoed through the cavernous chamber and all the winding tunnels. Beatrice seemed to smile despite her featureless face.

"The Lumbering Horror would have followed if I had stolen his meal from him. You understand, Constance, I cannot risk the bones of those buried down here. Not even for my caretaker and her touched ward." Freida didn't catch the insult directed at her, she was more concerned with something else The Stone Lady had said.

"Did you say meal?" Freida cried out, the static lining every syllable bringing her hands to her cheeks again.

"He's eating our bodies up there?" Freida would have fainted if she hadn't been a ghost, instead, she lay backward in the air as if floating in a pool. Then she began to silently drift around the room.

The two older spirits ignored her. Constance spoke first.

"We'll find new bodies, that's not a problem. People die every day. First, we need to get back to the manor and find a way to lock The Lumbering Horror back in its lair. Which of these tunnels would lead me home, Lady Beatrice?"

The Stone Lady pointed one astral finger directly ahead, to the tunnel her statue was facing. Constance nodded in a swathe of raven-blue hair and curtly turned to leave. She grabbed the weightless and catatonic Freida before going and pulled her through the air at her heels, leaving Beatrice to return to her grave.

Constance thought of shaking Freida from her daze and letting the girl float along herself but decided against it. There were worse things down here than The Lumbering Horror, and Freida's mind was holding on by a thread at this point. Constance feared seeing another of the more frightening residents of White Manor may push the girl past the point of no return.

As long as we don't run into It, Constance thought. The Thing Beneath the House is somewhere in these tunnels, and we have no physical bodies to leave as bait this time. The spirit doubled her pace through the blue-lit corridors.

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Its brother had failed to bring Freida, and now she was so close, Foul Feast could smell it, feel it in its many sensors. She was in the crypt, with It, and It was going to find her.