“Do you think he ever came in here?” Elliot asked as he climbed down the steps. “I imagine his housekeeper would fetch him a snack whenever he felt like it, so that he never had to step a foot in here.”
Knight shrugged. “Maybe as a kid. But I don’t think it was something rich people did back then. He could hire enough servants to keep one just for wiping his ass.”
Elliot laughed out loud, more joyful by the minute. “I bet he had a whole army of them. Apparently he was also a keen rider and had ten horses to choose from.”
“Yes. And he fell off a horse when he was a kid. Remained unconscious for two days. Maybe that was what fucked him up,” Knight said, somewhat sour that he could provide any excuse for Fane’s actions. Regardless of the source of William Fane’s madness, he had still been perfectly able to hide his deeds long enough that he must had known how horrific they were.
The tour took them to the original entrance hall next, and even with the period decorations and statues gone from the niches in the walls, the space still had a distinctly historical feel to it. It was no different in the corridor that ushered them down the longer side of the original building, all the way to the spiral staircase, which led to Knight’s apartment one story above. The ever-problematic wiring was throwing yet another tantrum, so Knight ended up illuminating the interior with a large-beam flashlight. Its white glow licked the little hollow spaces aligned symmetrically in the walls—as was the style in Fane’s time—and each time somewhere on the edge between light and shadow, Knight noticed indistinct shapes. It was his imagination materializing things that used to decorate the glorified shelves. Figures of mythological characters made of pristinely white marble loomed somewhere at the back of Knight’s mind. The same ones that watched Laurent Mercier follow Fane to meet his fate.
He went quiet when he thought of the sweet Laurent being targeted by that monster. It made watching Elliot’s smile and his excited narration for the camera a bitter pill to swallow.
“It’s a shame they blocked off the windows,” Elliot said, running his fingers over the concrete filling the frames of where windows once were. “I bet there was lots of light flooding in here back in the day.
“I agree, but we don’t use these hallways much. It’s kinda spooky here,” Knight said, leading the way to the staircase which spiraled above the dust-covered statue like the horns of the creature that owned this house. Knight was well acquainted with the grotesque form of the gargoyle sculpture, but he kept Elliot in the dark and very slowly raised the flashlight for the ghastly form to appear, like an intruder from hell about to take out an unsuspecting visitor.
At first glance its form was reminiscent of a large, muscular ape with wide bat-like wings, but light did not lie and sank deep into the crevices of the monstrous head. Wide and yet sunken like a skeleton’s, the inhuman face had thick brows and a narrow muzzle filled with so much teeth they couldn’t comfortably fit into its jaw. The figure was topped by a set of menacing horns that were the doom of the club’s former prez as he fell down the stairs three months prior. In daylight, the dark stains that couldn’t be completely cleaned off the stone were still visible.
Elliot gasped and took a step back at first, but then rushed up to the statue. “I’ve heard of this sculpture. There’s only one shitty photo of it out there. It’s so much more impressive in real life. My followers will piss their pants when they see it. And Fane’s secret room is behind it, right?” He stroked the gargoyle’s muzzle, and Knight could swear the creature leaned closer.
A shudder went down his spine, and he cleared his throat. “Yeah. It should be right under our feet now.”
Elliot grasped Knight’s hand, excited like a teenager before a One Direction concert. “May we see it now?”
Knight glanced beyond the gargoyle, to the wooden panels that were over two hundred years old, and while they got somewhat moldy over time they still guarded the secret entrance to the cellar.
“Yeah. If you can open it,” he teased, approaching the wall.
Elliot let go of Knight’s hand, as rapidly as he had grabbed it, and ran up to the door, touching the wood as if he were caressing a lover. It was a freaky thing to witness, and when Elliot pressed his body tightly against the panels he looked as if he was about to make love to them. Knight wasn’t sure if he wanted to know what was going through Elliot’s head.
“That’s fucked up,” Knight said as he joined Elliot and pressed on a tulip-shaped carving. It dipped under his touch, releasing the mechanism of the secret door.