A Fine Cast of Characters - J. Dane Tyler [40]
“When will I meet this benefactor?” I managed to speak at length, and his eyes darted to me for an instant. He perked an elegant brow at me, and winked. I smiled, a euphoric sensation of floating, levitating above the floor, filling me.
“At dinner, my friend. Of course I meant to introduce you then. Had you opted for sleep instead, it would have been at breakfast, or dinner tomorrow.”
“I didn’t realize we would have someone joining us,” I said, “I’ve not dressed for dinner.”
“Nonsense! Your attire is not important, and I am seldom formal.”
I nodded. “You’re certain? I won’t offend your friend?”
His rich and bubbling laughter lifted the corners of my mouth with it. “Of course not! He is even less formal than I!”
He turned the handles of a double door at the end of the hall, in a dim corner of the corridor. They swung wide and a slipstream of musty, dank air rushed by and rustled my garb, sending gooseflesh racing over my exposed skin.
The lightless interior of the room, a black vacant maw, stared at me across the threshold. I hesitated, and my friend noted my falter. He came beside and stared over my shoulder into the inky depth of the room.
“Hm. A draft must have blown out the candles. I’ll light them again at once. Please, go in. I’ll be a moment.”
He padded brisk and sure down the hall, leaving me at the doorway of a room whose depths my eyes could not penetrate. I took one halting step, then another. I saw a slit of light, bluish white, pale, spectral, ease up the wall like the pupil of a feline, broadening and thinning as it ran. I stared, incapacitated in fear, watching the ethereal illumination, frozen in my tracks. My mind found foothold in my childish terror, my banal fear of the darkness around me, and deciphered I beheld the part between curtains; a window caught a ray of moonlight from beyond and let it spill in through the odd shape of the fissure.
I exhaled, and took another wavering breath before I realized I held it all the while. I took care to keep one eye on the door to ensure my friend’s stealthy return did not cause the jolt I experienced on his last entry. I extended a hand before me, and waded as if in a black swamp, a moonless lagoon at night, groping for the dining table or a chair or some sort of obstruction. Shadows shifted, crept, crawled along the high walls, reaching for me, encircling me, surrounding me and pressing on me. I felt the icy grip of panic reach for my throat, tighten my chest, drawing my breath close and fluttery to my—
My friend poured into the room like a rushing wave from the sea, and he shot a winning and disarming smile to me, his face lit by the candle lighter behind his cupped hand. He steadied the flickering flame for a moment, then stretched it away from him into the dark and an instant after, a lamp began to glow, pushing the rim of gloom back. I saw the outlines, faint and indistinct, of the massive wooden table that rolled away into murky shadows. A second extension of his hand and the wall sconce behind me, beside the door, sprang to life, and this corner of the room warmed and livened with quickening light.
“Ah,” he said at last, and snuffed the candle lighter with a puff of breath through pink and cheery lips, “that is much better, is it not?” Again his smiled warmed, comforted and calmed my jangled nerves.
“Yes,” I said, and noted the light didn’t penetrate the abysmal shadows at the far end of the room. The light cascading from the part of curtains over the window died somewhere among those shifting shades, and did not alight upon table, floor or chair. It simply vanished into the room with nary a trace, and I marveled an instant at it before my friend spoke again.
“Our dinner will be here shortly. May I refresh your sherry, dear friend?”
He scooped the ringing crystal from my hand before I could protest. From the ebon shadows he whisked another shining decanter and with the faintest clink I heard the warm pour of fluid swirling in the bowl