Chapter 8 Dark Domain
DARK DOMAIN
The door opened, and I couldn’t help but yelp in surprise as, well, half of me thought that he might have just disappeared.
However, the second I realized it wasn’t the same man as before, I automatically took a step back.
This was because he was an even stranger character than the one before him.
One that would have given Lurch from the Addams Family a run for his money.
Well, I guessed that just made me Wednesday then, as I straightened my spine, ready to introduce myself.
However, the seven-foot giant, who looked as if he was in desperate need of a couple of cheeseburgers and a shit load of Vitamin D, simply stared down at me as if I were a stray dog begging for food.
He was also wearing a pair of black sunglasses that were small and round, making him look like some crazy scientist, complete with a long white coat.
“Hello, is someone there?” he asked, looking over me, which wasn’t difficult, as he would look over most people.
But that’s when I realized that he was, in fact, blind.
I watched as he reached out with a walking stick, its silver shaft crowned by a coiled cobra, mouth open in a silent hiss, its head positioned exactly where his unnervingly long fingers wrapped around it.
He even took steps out the door as if this would help in discovering whether anyone was here. So instead of waiting for the other guy to come back and potentially deny me access, I quickly ducked around him and grabbed Bo’s collar, dragging him with me.
However, the guy must have heard our footsteps, as he whipped back around to face the door, he foolishly just let us in through.
“Hey! You can’t go in there!” he shouted after us, making me have no choice but to yell back.
“Sorry, gotta go!”
Then I slammed the door shut and pushed the large metal bar down across the door and into the slot that kept it from opening.
“What the hell’s bells, girly!?” Bo complained, making me shrug my shoulders before telling him,
“What? We don’t have all night… now come on, it’s time to… oh my.” My sentence trailed off when I turned to face the opposite way from the entrance.
“Okay… so not what I was expecting,” I admitted as soon as we were faced with the gothic-looking hallway, one that looked as if we had just been transported into a much larger building.
Almost like the building outside had some kind of veil on it, hiding the true, dark nature of the place inside.
But just to be sure, I found myself uttering,
“How is this possible?”
“Oh, girly, you have no idea what you have just walked us into,” he told me, making me frown at our strange surroundings.
The hallway looked more like I had just stepped into some bad guy’s ‘not so fairytale’ castle.
The walls were a series of Gothic stone arches that were heavily decorated.
Each held an elaborate keystone at the highest point, and in the center was a different gold-painted symbol.
As for the pillars, these were carved in such a way that they looked as if they had been taken from a garden after first being frozen in time.
Stone roses and vines entwined around each one, carved with such painstaking detail that I might once have believed they had drawn breath, as if they were now frozen mid-bloom.
As for the ceiling, this looked more like something out of a cathedral, with its ribbed, vaulted construction, named this because it looked like stone ribs of a skeleton that all connected to a spine.
It looked like something straight out of medieval times, and the dark green and light green checkered floor only managed to give it an eerier vibe.
At the far end of the room stood what looked like a stone altar, and suspended above it, was a black wrought-iron candelabra which hung from the high ceiling on a thick chain.
It was positioned so that its flickering candlelight spilled downward, illuminating a stone face on the far wall.
Six thick black rings, each crowded with candles, hovered one beneath the other, growing larger as they descended, until they looked less like fixtures and more like floating rings of fire.
I started to walk closer, unable to stop myself from looking beyond the arches, trying to make out anything with evil intent.
But all there seemed to be were statues on plinths, figures stood motionless in the dark.
They made me shiver, as if any moment I expected one to move.
Like those street performers who painted themselves like living statues down on Hollywood Blvd and only moved into a new position when they received more money.
They freaked me the hell out, but nowhere near as much as these did.
Perhaps it was because I couldn’t make them out and therefore couldn’t tell just how frightening they could be.
Oh, who was I kidding? I hated statues, no matter how dark it was.
It was a phobia of mine and was called Automatonophobia.
The fear of human-like figures, which included anything from mannequins, wax figures, statues, to dummies, animatronics, or even robots.
Now, most of the time, I pushed through it and fought against the reaction to run from them.
I had taught myself to see them as just things that would never hurt me, so it wouldn’t affect my everyday life.
But there was a vast difference between a plastic person standing frozen in a shop window wearing the latest fashion to… well… this.
“Having second thoughts, girly?” Bo asked as I glanced nervously at the dark alcoves beyond the archways we passed.
“If you must know, I don’t like statues.”
At this, he started laughing, making me narrow my eyes at him.
“I’m glad my fear amuses you,” I commented dryly.
“It’s not the fear, it’s the reason for it,” he told me.
After shivering again when we passed the last one, I asked,
“What do you mean by that?”
“Girly, you have no idea what kind of place you are about to walk into, and you’re more worried about the statues when the only thing you should be fearing is anything with a heartbeat behind these walls, not what decorates them.” Well, I guess he had a point there.
“You know my name is Eliza, right? Even my nickname, Lily-pad, I would take over, Girly.”
“Yes, and my name is Boruta, but you are yet to call me it… or get it right,” he mumbled this last part, making me sigh in realization.
“Okay, so, fair point… Whoa! Goddess, that’s not exactly welcoming,” I commented, my apologies quickly cut off when turning around and finding myself suddenly faced with the creature that was at the end of the hallway.
It turned out that it wasn’t an altar at all, but an elaborate stone niche, with a scalloped canopy above and a terrifying stone head of some demonic creature filling the space in between.
“And nor would it be, seeing as it wants your blood,” Bo said, making me snap my head down to his.
“What?!”
“Answer me this, girly, do you see any doors here? Any welcome mats or neon signs telling you where the bar is?”
I frowned after having a quick scan around.
“No,” I said, making him smirk before nodding to the demon’s head.
“That’s because there isn’t one.”
Again, I seemed to be in a perpetual state of frowning, not even producing words to express my confusion.
“Huh?”
“Everything has a price, human, Eliza, and here… well, it’s your blood,” he said, emphasizing the use of my name to make his point.
“My blood!?” I practically screeched.
“In my world, your blood is your vow, and that is precisely what Lord Oblivion wants if you are to pass over into his domain.”
My eyes grew wide at this before frustration kicked in.
“Oh, for Hecate’s sake, I thought this was just a fucking nightclub!” I complained, now knowing what the price of getting inside would be, and yeah, my reluctance was obvious.
Bo grinned at this and gave me a little pat on the arm before turning around, intent on walking back toward the door we had entered through. An action he put words to, now commenting in a smug tone,
“Oh well, we tried, and that’s all that matters… now, let’s go home, get me settled in and order more pizza.”
I looked at his retreating form before glancing back to what seemed more like a demonic lion with its mouth open than the simple unlocked door I had been hoping for. It’s red, glass eyes now staring at me in a lifeless question. As if even this inanimate stone beast was mocking my fear.
So, with that in mind, I straightened my back and, before I could talk myself out of it, I suddenly plunged my hand inside its mouth, knowing this was the only way.
“Ahh!” I shouted as the mouth closed enough that I couldn’t pull my hand back out, as something solid started to lower over it from above.
It was a pressure I could soon feel pressing down on my hand, forcing it to flatten inside the mouth.
I could then feel the grooves beneath my palm, as if many hands had forged this handprint in stone.
“Girly… fuck, what are you doing!” Bo shouted in panic, running back over to me and trying to tug my hand out, as I, too, now wanted to be free.
“FUCK!” I screamed.
Bo was straddling my wrist directly in front of me, with his legs on either side of the beast, trying to gain leverage with his feet. He gripped my wrist and tried to tug at the same time I pulled, but it was no use. What the fuck had I been thinking? This was a mistake. It was…
“OWW!” I screamed as I felt a stabbing pain pierce my palm from underneath.
“Oh, fuck,” Bo said, knowing that it was too late as he let go of my arm, now admitting defeat.