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The Curse of the Black Castle	By : SheliakBob Category: S through Z > Universal Horror Movies Views: 873 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own "The Black Castle", nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-The Curse of the Black Castle
- 1
THE CURSE OF THE BLACK CASTLE
The riders crashed through dense thickets, pushing their horses hard.
“Are you sure this is the right way?” Demanded one of the huntsmen, wiping sweat from his brow and pushing another prickly branch out of his face.
“Positive!” Shouted the woman in the lead. She guided her mount through the brush with her knees, threading a path while her male companions boorishly crashed and blundered behind her.
“If we don’t get there soon, I say we turn back.” Whined a pale aristocrat. “If we hurry, we can still make that lodge by the lake before dark.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” teased the woman. “Don’t you want to see the dreaded Black Castle with your own eyes?”
“Are you sure it’s haunted?” asked the first rider.
“Positive!” She shouted with a laugh.
With a single last push the riders broke through the thicket they’d been struggling with and burst out into a wild, overgrown meadow.
“There it is!” Shouted the woman.
Ahead of them the meadow rippled upwards until it reached a deeply rutted and half-overgrown dirt road. The road wound up a hill thick with gnarled trees and outcrops of boulders, upon which squatted the notorious Black Castle of the Count von Bruno. Built from blocks of black granite quarried locally, the castle rose like a black fist above the forest. Two fat towers flanked iron gates, beyond which lie a massive keep surrounded by curtain wall, all crowned with crenellations like blunt teeth.
“Well,” said the first rider as he trotted his horse out of the thicket, pulling brambles from his jacket. “It is certainly…black.”
Surrounded by the riotous green of the forest and shimmering waves of tall grass, there was something almost otherworldly about the black stone edifice. The towers cast long, broad shadows down the hillside. A cold breeze blew down the slope, as if the castle’s icy breath sighed among the branches. The castle seemed to radiate a palpable chill, a darkness that could be felt even at this distance, in the bright sunlight.
“Ugly pile of rocks, isn’t it?” sniffed the pale aristocrat, mopping at his brow with a perfumed handkerchief.
“I like it!” shouted the next rider out. Tall and thick with coarse features and hair so blonde it looked white in the sunshine, Ludwig delighted in all things grim and brutal. “Magnificent!” he shouted at the castle itself, as if trying to flatter the stones.
“Come on! Let’s get a closer look.” Therese van Wilk kicked her horse to a gallop and rode straight for the iron gates, which were open and swinging in the breeze. She shouted a challenge back at the screechy protest of the rusted gate. The others looked after her for a long moment, then, seemingly reluctantly, nudged their horses to follow.
The gates, thick with rust like clotted blood and tangled with weeds, creaked ominously as the riders rode past, but did not repeat the metal shriek that had welcomed Therese. Up close, the stark black stones of the castle could be seen to be streaked green with moss and stained gray with lichen and years of crusted dust. Weeds grew right up to the walls of the keep, completely choking the once bare mustering yard inside the walls. The riders glided through chest high waves of grass, as if fording a green river until they clattered up the stone stairs toward the castle’s great hall.
“The gates are open, but the doors to the keep are closed.” Therese remarked with a frown.
“Does My Lady desire entrance to yon Castle?” asked Ludwig with a wild grin. “Then fear not! This brave knight shall sally forth and gain admittance for thee, Fair One!”
So saying, Ludwig pulled a thick-hafted boar spear from his hunting kit, crouched it like a knight’s lance, and suddenly charged straight at the stout oaken doors, screaming a war cry.
There was a terrible crash, the crack of splintering wood, and the shriek of torn metal as the double doors burst open, one hanging by a single bent hinge. Ludwig and his horse barreled through the broken doors and continued to charge into the great hall beyond, swallowed by the gloom inside the castle.
“He’s mad.” Observed Theobald von Seiken, the pale one.
“He’s a brute and a boor.” Agreed his friend Heinrich.
Therese laughed with delight.
“Come on!” She cried, cantering through the broken doors. “Into the Haunted Castle, my brave knights!”
Herman von Melcher, who was older than the others and had the graying hair to prove it, frowned, but said nothing as he rode in behind his younger companions. Some sense of foreboding caused him to look up and scrutinize the glassless windows of the ruined keep. For a moment he thought he saw a shadow move past a window, but it was gone before he could be sure it had ever been there.

A dead gray eye watched the hunters approach through the woods, their ride to the gates of the castle, peering past the torn remnant of a velvet curtain. Bloodless lips pursed in thought, twisted with a momentary flush of anger, then relaxed into a wide, sinister smile. A deep voice, as dark and velvet as the curtain, murmured, somewhere between a purr and a whisper, “It appears that we will be having guests for dinner.”
An unseen Something in the darkness growled hoarsely in answer.

The hunters rode their horses into the great hall of the castle, horses’ hooves clattering on the rich inlaid tiles of the floor. Most of the furniture and furnishings had been carried off by looters soon after the Count von Bruno’s death. All that was left were scraps of cloth, shards of once fine porcelain, and splintered wood fit only for kindling. Dead leaves rattled around the corners, stirred up by the prancing horses.
After a quick circuit to survey the hall, Therese dismounted by the huge open hearth of the hall’s fireplace. She pulled some supplies from her saddlebags and lifted a brace of rabbits from the horn of her saddle.
“Let’s have some lunch!” she called to the men.
There were various grunts of approval and a hearty shout, but none of them left off clattering around the hall, jostling each other in mock-joust, to assist her.
Therese frowned, but with a resigned shrug set about kindling a fire out of broken chairs and piles of dead leaves, and applied herself to the bloody task of skinning the rabbits. Once cleaned, she skewered the hairless carcasses and set them to roast over the fire.
The smell of cooking meat soon attracted the men, who one by one dismounted and wandered over to the fire. They let the horses wander freely in the hall, which was larger than most barns.
While the others cut slices from the roasted coneys with hunting knives, or nibbled daintily at the proffered skewers, Ludwig tore a greasy haunch off with his bare fingers and sprawled against the wall.
“So, they tell me you’ve been here before.” He said to Therese, muttering around a mouthful of meat that he chewed with open lips. “Is that true?”
Therese nodded, a little wistfully. “Yes, but that was years ago. There was a time when it seemed that I might become the mistress of this very castle, by marrying the Count von Bruno.”
Herman von Melcher grunted.
“Except for the inconvenient fact that the Count was already married.” He observed.
She laughed and smiled a very unlovely smile.
“Yes, but the Countess was a frail, soft fool who didn’t deserve the kind of man her husband was, and Karl had already thought of a few ways around that pretty little problem.”
“I’ve been here before too.” Put in Theobald, the young Count von Steiken, who had only inherited his title a few short years before. “With my Father. But I was very young and I barely remember what the place was like. All I really remember was that the Count had a dead, gray eye that terrified me, and he knew it. It made both him and my Father laugh every time I saw it and screamed. They both enjoyed that very much. Von Bruno would play a sick game of peekaboo with me, sliding his eyepatch off just to get me to scream at awkward times.”
There was a brief silence with only the crackling of the fire.
Herman von Melcher, well aware of Therese’s plans for the boy, gave her a “Do you really want to spend your life with that?” look and raised an eyebrow.
She smiled sweetly, eyes glittering at von Melcher, and patted the young man’s hand.
“He had a cruel sense of humor. Everyone said that about him.” She said soothingly.
“Wish we had better wine to drink than this Riesling.” Ludwig blurted, tossing aside an almost empty wine skin. “It’s too damn dry to wash down rabbit.”
Therese smiled.
“I think I might be able to help with that.” She said lightly. She slipped off to an antechamber just next the the musicians’ alcove and soon returned with a couple of bottles of uncommon vintage.
“Karl always kept a few bottles of his favorite wines hidden from the stewards, so he would always have some handy if affairs grew tedious. He once showed me where he hid them.”
The men greeted her with shouts of “Huzzah” and soon set about hunting up some proper cups to drink out of. That proved more diverting than they anticipated and after a sort of scavenger hunt through the empty halls of the castle, they were eventually settle back down before the fire, quaffing the finest of Count von Bruno’s secret wine stash.
They were not very deep into their cups when Heinrich brought up the topic that he had been brooding about since their arrival at the abandoned castle.
“You say that this castle is haunted?”
Therese took a long, slow drink from her cup. Her eyes grew misty, looking far away, far beyond the darkening hall and the fire lit faces of her huntsmen companions.
“Oh, there are many ghosts in this castle.” She whispered. “These walls have seen countless acts of cruelty and despair. Many a wretch gasped out his last breath in the dungeons beneath our feet. The weak and powerful alike have met knives in the dark, or woken with vengeful hands wrapped round their throats. All great houses have history, and what is history but the ghosts of days long past?”
“No! No musty shrouds and rattling bones for us, girl!” shouted Ludwig. “Tell us about the Monsters those fools at the Green Man were shivering about. The blood-thirsty man-beast and the walking dead, and the things that eat trespassers in the dark. I don’t want whistley moaning wisps of ghosts, I want something meaty and nasty and dangerous!”
“Oh.” Said Therese, opening her eyes wide. “Those ghosts. Those ghosts I knew. I met every one of them, personally. I can tell you many things about them, if you really want to hear their stories.”
“Now, we have something!” Ludwig murmured as he settled in to enjoy his wine and a good ghost story.

She started slow, her voice pitched softly so that it barely competed with the crackle of the fire. She told them about Count von Bruno’s unfortunate African enterprise, how Sir Ronald Burton and his two English friends betrayed him to the natives, who tortured von Bruno and his faithful manservant Gargon. They burned out the Count’s eye and tore Gargon’s tongue out by the roots. All the while, their heathen witch-doctors chanted dire curses and the mob shouted for their blood. The Count and Gargon escaped their captivity with the natives and made their way back to Austria, where Karl had to endure the indignities of courtly mocking until he retired to his ancestral castle.
Two of the Englishmen who engineered his African downfall made the mistake of wandering into Von Bruno’s trap and suffered horrible, grisly deaths at the Count’s hands. Their ghosts are said to still wander the halls, drifting like tattered white sheets, moaning in the moonlight…
“No moldy shrouds or rattling bones!” shouted Ludwig, interrupting the story and throwing a gnawed upon rabbit bone for emphasis.
Therese nodded, pouting prettily before continuing.
She told them about Gargon, the brutish manservant who fell into a pit full of crocodiles. The peasants claimed that he did not die in the pit, but survived somehow, becoming a horrible beast, half-man, half-crocodile that still lurks in the bowels of the Black Castle, feeding on would-be robbers or unfortunate travelers who wind up trapped in the castle dungeons. Some villagers swear that the ghost of old Doctor Meissen, stabbed by the Count for his treachery, lingers still in his laboratory in the north tower, brewing and bubbling new poisons to test on the unwary. There are stories that the Dead Doctor creeps about at night and pumps sickly sweet smelling gasses under the doors of village houses, just to see what effect the strange gases might have. More than one guest at the Green Man has run screaming from his paid-for sleeping room because he heard an unknown footstep by his door and smelled something strange wafting in by the windows. Even the Count himself, murdered by the English rogue Burton, shot while running off with the Count’s wife, still haunts his castle, some say. His ghost walks in the form of a man, most nights, but by the dark of the moon, he takes on the shape of a fierce black panther, the very kind that he once hunted and killed in these very woods, and stalks human prey!

“Stop it! Stop it! No more!” cried Theobald. His friend Heinrich, who had been grinning and nodding throughout the grim tales frowned at his outburst, but said nothing to the young Count.
“Haven’t we heard horrors enough? “He gasped. “Fun is fun, but isn’t it time to ride out? I would hate to be forced to spend the night in such dire surroundings, after listening to such horrible tales!”
“Oh, it’s too late for that, darling.” Therese said. She pointed to the high windows of the great hall. The sky outside had turned a deep burgundy. “It’s almost nightfall already.” She said, with barely concealed merriment.
While Theobald was digesting the notion that he was trapped in a very haunted castle for the evening, his eyes growing ever wider and his already pale skin growing ever whiter, Ludwig laughed uproariously.
“This is too fine!” He shouted, voice ringing through the empty hall, raising murmurs of echoes from every corner. “This is too magnificent!”
He whooped like a wild man and threw a wine bottle far into the darkness beyond the firelight, where it shattered unseen.
“I came on this hunt with the hopes of bagging a stag, or a boar, or maybe even a bear, but this… a Ghost! Now that would be trophy worth having!” he whooped again, tottering drunkenly to his feet and brandishing a hunting knife practically the size of a cavalryman’s saber. “By God, sirs…and lady,” he bowed unsteadily toward Therese, “I shall hunt a Ghost in the halls of the Black Castle itself! And I’ll not come back empty handed!”
So saying, he loped off into the darkness, laughing.
“He’s completely mad.” Gasped Theobald.
“Completely drunk, is more likely.” Grumbled Heinrich.
“He’s a fool, nothing more.” Snapped Herman. “Enough of this talk of ghosts and ghouls. My brother was murdered in this castle, not by a ghost but by an Englishman. Sir Ronald Burton. And you,” he said, pointing to Theobald. “Your father died here too, of illness or poison, we shall never know. This accursed castle is haunted enough for all of us without talk of superstitions or foolish folk legends. I’m sure we all have our own reasons for coming to this God-forsaken ruin. I suggest that we get some rest so we will be fresh to start our real hunt, tomorrow.”
Theobald and Heinrich stared at him with blank amazement, clearly not understanding a word of his intent.
Therese studied him for a moment with speculative eyes, new calculations racing behind her smile.
“Why Herman, whatever could you be talking about? We were out for a bracing ride and a bit of sport. What possible reason could you have for wanting to roam about dear, dead Karl’s castle?”
“Don’t give me that, witch! I’m sure von Bruno shared more than enough of his secrets with you to give you cause to search this castle. Don’t tell me a few bottles of wine are the only treasures he told you were hidden within these walls. And I am Count Herman von Melcher. You would do well not to forget that!”
“Treasure?” Therese half sang, with a bright smile. “Now that is an interesting topic! Your Excellency.”

“Do you hear that, my friend?” whispered the velvety voice. “We are legends now. Nothing but foolish superstitions!” Chuckles echoed down the black hallway, bobbing in the darkness like icy bubbles. “Perhaps it is time to greet our young friends.”
Something in the darkness slavered and rasped incoherently. Ponderous footsteps began to thud down the hallway, toward the flickering light in the great hall.

A horrible, terrified shriek erupted from somewhere in the corridors beyond the castle’s great hall. The hunters snapped out of half-dozes, lulled by the fire’s warmth, to look around frightenedly. There was a long moment of silence. Then a deep bellow, a gurgling, raspy bestial sound that could not be human sounded in an upper room. Crashes and shouting followed, muffled by the distance. The sound of footsteps pounded across a floor overhead. The huntsmen leaped to their feet and followed the sounds, looking upward as puffs of dust fell from the ceiling. There was another bellow, this time more of a growl, with a hint of a predator’s glee to it. Something had cornered its prey. Mad laughter, peals so intense and raw that Therese covered her ears to shut them out. Then there was a crash overhead, broken wood and the shattering of glass. A scream of triumph.
Something fell past the hall’s grand window to crash heavily on the ground outside. Broken glass tinkled down all around it, like blood-streaked snowflakes. Amazingly, a shape, human but bent unnaturally, broken in terrible ways, staggered to its feet and raced for the forest beyond the gates. Cackling and gibbering, it ran into the night.
“It’s Ludwig.” Heinrich said, after a moment. “All his hair’s gone dead white, from some terrible shock.”
“How could you tell?” Theobald muttered. “His hair barely had any color in it to begin with.” He tried to laugh, but what came out was a nervous titter that he soon smothered with his hand.
Another ferocious, gurgling howl echoed from the gallery above them. There was an ominous creaking sound, then the great hall’s chandelier, now just an empty wheel of wood and iron, plummeted out of the darkness and crashed on the floor. The huntsmen’s horses, which had already been spooked by the previous disturbances, now reared and shrieked and galloped for the front doors. The animals nearly trampled each other in their haste to squeeze out though the doorway. The door hanging by a hinge was pulled completely loose and banged on the ground, splintered seconds later by pounding horse hooves.
“The horses!”
“Damn it! I knew we should have tied them off instead of letting them roam loose.”
“You didn’t say anything about it.”
“Yes, but…I knew it anyway.”
Therese rolled her eyes in exasperation.
A few moments later, there was a growl from the darkness. A huge, hulking shape lumbered out of the gloom, pausing at the edge of the fire’s light to cover its eyes with a thick arm. The form was gargantuan, almost seven feet tall, easily four feet across its broad, heaving shoulders. Its hair was long, shaggy, cut in rough bangs over a snarling face. The clothes it wore had once been rough peasant’s garb, but now were filthy rags, stained with the crusted brown of dried blood and streaked with green muck. The brute’s barrel chest heaved, his breath huffing in and out, loud as a horse’s snorts.
“Gargon.” Whispered Therese. She recognized the figure as the brutish manservant who had been ever at Karl von Bruno’s side. “But, he’s dead. He fell into a pit full of crocodiles. They ate him. Karl saw it with his own eyes and told me. That can’t be Gargon. Gargon’s dead!”
The brute lumbered forward and the fire lit his face.
Gargon’s face, never very lovely, was a horror now. Thick brow and broad cheekbones covered with horrible rows of scars. Lips pulled back over teeth that had been filed sharp, like a crocodile’s. One cheek had been torn open and teeth showed through the gap in the flesh. He opened his mouth, jaw dropping lower than should be possible, due to some ripping of the face muscles, the scarred gray lump that was all that was left of his tongue writhed obscenely. He hissed at them. Hissed like some huge reptilian beast.
“The guns!” shouted Herman.
“Tied to the horses’ backs.” Spat Therese.
“Not all of them.” Said a strangely calm Theobald.
The foppish young man reached into his overly embroidered hunting jacket and pulled out a dueling pistol, small and dainty-looking, but still deadly enough in the right hands.
With a remarkably steady hand he aimed the pistol square at Gargon’s ruined face, and pulled the trigger.
There was a crack and a gout of flame, a cloud of black powder billowed away from the barrel.
Somewhere, far to the left of Gargon’s face, the lead bullet spacked off a wall and fell clattering on the floor, halfway across the room.
The others stared at the young man, incredulous, disgusted, unable to give voice to their annoyance.
Therese actually let out a sharp little bark of a laugh.
Theobald continued to stand there, arm outstretched, smoking gun in hand, a vacuous look on his face with no idea what to do next.
Heinrich pulled his sword and charged Gargon. The young man’s weapon was a light dueling sword. Gargon the brute swatted aside the thin rapier blade, oblivious to the deep red slash it made across his palm. Then he lunged forward, grabbed the hunter’s neck with both hands and began to crush his throat. The crunch of bones breaking was clearly audible.
Herman, the Count von Melcher, pulled a long thick-bladed hunting knife from his belt. In a grim monotone, without looking at her, he told Therese, “Run.”
Which she did, immediately.
As Gargon and Count von Melcher locked in a deadly grapple, Theobald started to scream, high and shrill, like a girl. Therese shrank back against the wall, then using one hand to trace her way in the dark, she ran.
Before she had run very far, a sudden draft gusted against her cheek and a cold, strong hand grabbed her by the arm.
“This way, Girl!” a voice hissed in her ear.
She was pulled into a cramped passage hidden within the wall and a swiveling panel swung shut behind her. There was a crack and a hiss, then a match flared to life. She found herself looking into the kindly face of Doctor Meissen, who once served the Count as the Black Castle’s resident physician. He lit a thick candle and pulled her along the passageway.
“We mustn’t stay in one place too long. Gargon will sniff us out if we do, and quite likely tear through the wall to get at us.”
The Doctor led the way, waddling with an awkward and painful looking limp. The white curls of his hair bounced beside his ears. The black pillbox-shaped cap he wore kept threatening to slip down over his bushy white eyebrows.
“Doctor.” Observed Therese, “You do not appear to be a ghost.”
“That’s because I’m not, my dear.” He said, pausing to pinch her quite hard on the cheek to prove his non-vaporous solidity.
The two of them squeezed uncomfortably closely through the narrow passage. Behind them, there were some distant screams and very ugly crunching sounds.
Almost immediately, something thumped against the wall. Blunt fingers scrabbled across the stone. There was a terrible snuffling sound, like some great beast trying to sniff out its prey. Doctor Meissen moaned softly and pulled Therese along more frantically. Heavy footsteps paced their progress, fading away only as they started to ascend a narrow stair that wound its way up inside the tower wall, away from parallel corridors.
“Gargon. I thought he was dead.” Therese ventured, after long, breath-sapping surges up the steps.
“Gargon? Dead?” Meissen shook his head. His curls bounced in the candlelight. “No. Gargon is very difficult to kill. The Englishman Burton’s African friends found that out the hard way, and they tried very hard.”
“But, the pit. Hundreds of crocodiles. Karl…told me…about the pit.”
How, Therese wondered, could an old man like Meissen be scurrying up these stairs while a fit and vigorous sportswoman like herself could barely manage to keep putting one foot in front of the other?
“Hundreds?” Oh no, my dear. The Count was given to exaggeration when boasting about his trophies. There were only dozens of reptiles in the pit.”
Therese sighed.
“How did Gargon survive against dozens of ferocious crocodiles, then?”
“He didn’t need to. You see, starving crocodiles will gladly eat their own kind, given the opportunity. They are very practical creatures like that. No useless sentimentality. Gargon only had to kill the first two or three that latched on to him. Then he fed their carcasses to the others, who were all too happy to gorge themselves on their comrades while he climbed to safety. But those first few beasts, they did terrible things to poor Gargon. It took me months to patch him back up. I nearly gave up hope that he would recover at all.”
The Doctor paused, taking a deep sigh.
“He has never quite been the same, though. He has become…wilder. Meaner. Did you notice that he has filed his teeth? He eats them, you know. The remaining crocodiles. He rarely eats anything else.”
Therese looked up at the Doctor, standing there in his black tunic, his eyes glittering in the candlelight.
“I thought you were dead, yourself, Doctor Meissen. Didn’t Karl stab you? He told me that he stabbed you.”
“In the back, my dear. In the back.” Answered Meissen with a disturbingly sinister smile. “But he was so obsessed with his revenge on Burton and Elga that he didn’t stay to check his handiwork. I am a Doctor, after all. I was able to treat my own wounds and survive. After a fashion.”
Therese took a long, careful breath.
“After a fashion?”
“Yes. You see, I drank the remainder of the same elixir that I gave Burton and the Countess.”
“Poison? The poison that simulates death? How did that help cure a stab wound?”
‘Ah. Yes. The Poison. You see, my dear, there really is such a poison. And I do have a sample in my laboratory. But it is hardly the kind of thing one carries about, is it? No. The serum I had with me, that I always kept close at hand, close to my heart, was something very different.”
“Von Bruno hired me not just to be his private physician, but to find ways to extend his life. He hired me to provide him with the key to immortality. He was a very ambitious man and did not believe that one lifetime would be sufficient to carry out all the plans he made. In my youth, while researching the darkest of alchemies, I spent many years wandering through the Carpathian Mountains, where rumors had it that secrets could be found, in the darkest caverns, the vilest crypts, secrets that could show one how to cheat Death itself. I found…such things.”
Therese’s eyes grew wide.
“Wurdulak.”
Meissen’s face lit up, a great fatherly smile rose to his lips.
“I see you’ve heard of such things! You are a very learned young woman, Lady van Wilk. I commend you on that.”
“Yes. Wurdulaks. And even worse things—and there are even worse things to be found, I assure you. You see, Sir Ronald and Elga quite completely died, when they took my serum. They awoke, hours later, thinking that they had been only unconscious, because that was what I told them would happen. That was what they expected. So they did not check their heartbeats. They did not question how cold they felt. They were only relieved to be ‘alive’ and cared about little beyond their own embraces. Ah. Young love.”
“I would have liked to see their faces. To see their faces the first time they became…hungry.”
Meissen’s chuckle was evil and rippled like black silk. Looking past the weak little flame of the candle, Therese could see a lambent gleam rise in his eyes, as if some inner fire were flickering to life.
“Here we are, my dear.” He said, pushing open another secret panel.
Therese recognized the room immediately. She had been there before, after all. It was the Count’s private bedchamber, the one he never shared with Elga, his Countess. She staggered into the room when the Doctor pushed her, stumbled over silk sheets on the stone floor and sprawled across the Count’s wide bed.
At that moment, the outer door to the room burst open, banging against the wall hard enough to rattle the glass still lingering in the windows. Gargon stood hulking in the doorway, huffing and grunting. Blood dripped from his fingers. He was chewing something.
Therese cringed on the bed, pulling flimsy silk sheets across her for protection, knuckles to her mouth to suppress a scream.
“Yes. Gargon still lives! He has great appetites, that one. But he prefers his meat warm. Hot with the taste of life still in it.”
“Gargon panted and gave a terrible leer.
“I, on the other hand, prefer flesh after it has grown cold. It troubles my stomach less that way. First Gargon will slake his thirsts. Then I will return later, to see that the bones are properly cleaned. I assure you, we will take the utmost care with your remains. I am sure you have such lovely bones, my dear. I cannot wait to see them!”
Then, with a mad laugh, Meissen stepped back through the secret door and slammed it shut.

Hours later, Doctor Meissen returned to the dead Count’s bedchambers. His insides were wiggling with anticipation, like iced gelatin stirred up with something almost like hunger. Drool oozed across his lips.
When he swung the door open, an inexplicable sight greeted him.
Gargon was sprawled across the bed, his clothes rumpled and very much in disarray. A wide, contented smile sat on his idiot lips.
Therese van Wilk, very much alive, was pulling a fur cloak from the Count’s armoire around her bare shoulders.
“What?” Meissen stammered. His lower lip dropped open, trembled slightly. “Still alive?”
A sweet, smug smile blossomed on Therese’s lips.
“You were correct, Doctor. Gargon does indeed have…great appetites! He is nearly insatiable, that one.”
“But…You couldn’t have...but…he’s a beast! He’s…”
“Brutal? Savage? An uncouth monster? Well, yes. He was not entirely…unsatisfactory.”
She pulled the cloak over a bare leg, covering a livid bite mark on her thigh that the Doctor was staring at rather obsessively. She blushed slightly and gave him a coquettish wink.
“Certainly more of a challenge than any of those children I rode in with would have been.”
Meissen was shocked beyond words.
Therese yawned.
“I rather like this castle. I would probably have become mistress here, if that frivolous little Elga had not betrayed dear Karl the way she did. I think…I may stay here. The property does so need a woman’s touch. Don’t you think so, Doctor?”
Gargon grunted contentedly.
“You…You’re the Devil!” Meissen chocked out eventually.
The smile on Therese’s lips turned hard and cold.
“Welcome to Hell, Doctor Meissen.”
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The Curse of the Black Castle