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Authors: Erik Tavares
Tags: #werewolf, #Horror, #gothic horror, #vampire, #Gothic, #Genre Fiction, #Literature & Fiction
House of Corruption
HOUSE of CORRUPTION
by
Erik Tavares
Copyright © 2012 by Erik Tavares
Kindle Edition
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Cover Art by Aaron Sims
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Cover and Interior Design
by Erik Tavares
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously; any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
To Christopher and Peter.
Thanks.
PROLOGUE
The Monastery of Jerónimos
Lisbon, Portugal
October 1886
A house holds only what you bring inside
, Artémius Savoy thought, remembering his father’s voice.
So why would this house of God feel so...
He considered the right word and, strangely enough, could only think in Portuguese.
Unhallowed?
Midnight bells tolled outside the transept chapel as he shuffled up the aisle, feeling cold, wishing he could find satisfaction at the end of another busy Sabbath. His spirit ached for the comfort of prayer and the silent pondering of God’s graces. A wraith of an idea lingered just beyond perception, a subtle intuition or whispering of the Spirit that something—
Something is coming
.
The rough fabric of his woolen robe itched as he slumped into a pew near the chapel’s head. He scratched at his collar, smoothing a callused hand over the cloth at his knees. By all accounts he looked the part of a monk; he could be easily mistaken for a member of the order. Yet his robe and sandals and sash felt more like a costume, as if he only pretended to serve God.
I serve Him, do I not?
It had been a productive four months among the Hieronymite friars, adapting their skills in herbs and potions and alchemistic folklore. The fact he was a foreign academic, a Jew by birth, and a secular priest of the Catholic Church did not diminish their hospitality. They patiently bore his verbal clumsiness until his Portuguese improved. It was a rare opportunity to commune with one of the last surviving religious communities within the Church even if, on paper, the order had long been dissolved. The adepts of St. Jerome enjoyed a keen interest in gaining knowledge, and the practical application had been, as an extracurricular activity, a welcome break from his frustrations at Cambridge.
A soft clinking caught his attention. A white-robed initiate snuffed those candles farthest from the altar, his motions practiced and quick from many such nights. He was no older than sixteen. He smiled a tired greeting at Savoy’s glance. Twelve hours of masses and confessions took their toll.
“
Noite boa, abade
,” he said.
“Thank you, Jorge,” Savoy replied in Portuguese.
“Will you be here long?”
“Go and get your rest. I can finish in here.”
Jorge nodded in gratitude and disappeared down the aisle into the vastness of the darkened church. Savoy felt a fatherly sort of attachment. Though he did not regret his service in the Church, his place in academia, there was a part that wondered—
what might have been?
Was it worth spending his days seeking the unknowable, perusing old books, gaining knowledge in strange places…when he might be happier with a wife, children, a son like Jorge to call his own?
Then he considered his own father, and dismissed it.
With Jorge’s leaving the chapel felt immense and vacuous. Those candles left burning cast distorted light over the paintings depicting the Passion, glinted off the altar’s silver trappings, bled up into the high arches, and danced along the stones to Savoy’s sandaled feet. Many shadows, ensconced in deeper corners, refused the light.
He glanced at the vaults along the wall, considering the innocuous tomb of Juan de Aleres of 1537, the lid bearing two different dates of death. Four days after Juan had been entombed, the monks heard his muffled, frantic screaming from inside his stone coffin. When they opened it, they found the poor wretch shivering and babbling, his fingertips rubbed to bony stumps. Ragged gouges marked the inside of the stone lid.
The second date marked his true death, nine days later.
To endure such darkness...
A chill seized Savoy’s neck; tiny hairs stiffened.
Need some air.
Three candles upon the altar flickered and died.
—
and a swig of brandy.
He left, leaving those few remaining candles to burn out. He had no interest in walking with no light behind him—with its vaulted ceilings and octagonal pillars, the Church of Santa Maria de Belém stretched like a vast cavern. The further he walked, the more he focused on the
clack-clack
of his sandals, drawing solace from the repetition of sound.
Earlier that day the Church teemed with the faithful and those seeking alms, but as he passed the abandoned confessionals and exited outside into the central courtyard, the silence was almost deafening. There the two-storied cloister, with its many arches and windows, coiled around the yard like a snake with candlelit scales. The night was cool, clear and inviting. Under different circumstances he would have snatched his spyglass and followed the movement of the planets.
Yet with each step his discomfort deepened. He mentally examined the day, those things to accomplish the upcoming week. He respected the voiceless whispering of Spirit, but he wished it a language he better understood.
Then it happened.
He knew it, felt it, a half-second before. The air cracked with the tolling of Santo Hélena, the monastery’s largest bell. It rang six times. As its sonorous cry echoed, doors of the cloisters opened—
boom, boom, boom, boom
—and monks fled into the night. He expected the bobbing lantern before he saw it, gleaming ever closer from the far side of the courtyard.
“
Abade!
” Jorge ran toward him, breathless.
“What is it, boy?”
“The devil...it is here!”
“The dog?”
“It is no dog,
abade
. Three goats are torn apart. A horse is gone missing. The snares are sprung, empty, and the other animals are in a panic. The brothers have gathered what they could, and the House Guard have their rifles—”
“That will not help.” Savoy placed a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Collect yourself, Jorge, and be brave. Tell Irmão Guadal I will attend to it. We have discussed this.”
“Yes.”
“Throw the bridge into the trench before you ignite the oil. Prevent the beast from crossing over. Remind the Guard! It is imperative they do not let it escape, not until I can deal with it directly.”
“You will face it alone?”
“I am prepared. Can I trust you?”
“But—!”
“Can I trust you?”
Jorge frowned. “I will tell them,” he said.
He left, running back the way he came. Savoy ran in the opposite direction toward the cloister. Those meeting him for the first time—well-aged, ample frame, iron-flecked beard—often suspected him better suited for antique books and a pipe in a comfortable chair, his passions confined to dead languages and politics. They would never have imagined him racing in robe and sandals, his elusive dread replaced with the knowing—
I was right!