Evermont

It was already past midnight when Interrogator Malik Joon arrived at the House called Evermont. The bright beams of the limousine’s headlights swept across the tall hive mansion.

The Evermont lurked behind leafless trees, implanted long ago to add colour to the oppressive High Gothic architecture of the large, rambling buildings. Joon thought it looked typical of the sort of hab-houses you might find nestled into the mid-hives, full of the character the middle classes exude into their homes. He didn’t need to be a psyker to sense the mix of snobbery imbedded in the very rockcrete, as if the buildings wedged between the upper and the lower hives found themselves disdainful of one class and resentful of the other.

A faint light gleamed from the walk-level lamps as the private car swung into the drive past two deactivated servitor-sentries guarding the Evermont’s approach, their flesh slowly decaying with disuse.

Joon waited for the driver to open his door before stepping into the cold, filter-recycled air of the hive-street and looking with his own eyes upon the face of the mansion.

The driver informed him his equipment had already been delivered, so the Interrogator thanked him and told him to wait. It had been a long drive from the space-port, and he was keen to stretch his legs.

He used his rosette at the House doors to announce his arrival. The door-scanner whined as it read his identity, and the Interrogator wondered whether the machine-spirit was having a hard-time remembering when last someone with so much authority had visited. He fancied decades.

With a groan of unlocking servos the blast-doors opened and Joon stepped inside. He walked upon an endless sea of chessboard tiles, the black and white marble stretching across the grand foyer. A crystal chandelier dangled from the domed ceiling, casting dim candlelight across the hall, like starlight across a void. Joon watched it sparkle with demure delight as he wandering inside, the doors shutting behind him with a hydraulic hiss.

Footsteps echoed from above and he looked up to the see the figure of Madam Swanson, the Evermont’s ancient Chamberlain marching down the stairs towards him. One hand sliding down the banister, the other holding the hem of her black and white uniform dress, with a high-collared blouse and simple pearl earrings. She was an old women, her face wizen and her short hair grey. Even though she smiled slightly as she came before him in greeting he noticed the fear and worry in her aging eyes.

“Madam Swanson, I presume,” the Interrogator bowed warmly. “Interrogator Malik Joon, acting for Inquisitor Morrfax. Sorry I’m so late; the shuttle took longer then was expected.”

“Oh Interrogator, I’m so relieved Lord Morrfax sent you. Though it feels like an age since Morrfax and Lord Evermund parted ways, I was dubious as to whether your master would respond to his last wish.”

“I understand it was in Lord Evermund’s last will and testament that my master should tend to the matters forsaking this fine house, but he felt it was better I attended instead,” Joon commented solemnly as they stood in the foyer, his arms clasped behind his back. “My master was saddened to hear of Lord Evermund’s passing. From what I can gather they did not part on the best of terms, something he deeply regrets. But with such terrible memories under its threshold, Morrfax feels he cannot set foot inside this house. Which is why he chose to send me rather then attend himself.”

“Oh, I’m sure your more then adequate to deal with the… with the issue at hand. And indeed, lord Evermund’s passing was a great shame. I fear it was his own grief that shortened his life in the end,” Madam Swanson sighed, studying the Interrogator. Storm-grey eyes looked with curiosity at the Interrogator’s well-built frame, his aristocratic poise and handsome, bald headed and dark skinned face. In a long black greatcoat and buttoned tunic he looked just like his master, the great and venerable Inquisitor Morrfax, long-standing friend of the Evermund family. “I’m afraid I must leave almost immediately. With the last of the Evermunds dead I must oversee the distribution of their estate. You’ll be alright by yourself?”

Joon chuckled and began to stroll past the chamberlain into the centre of the foyer. “I wouldn’t be a very good Interrogator if I was scared of an old house now, would I? Even a house with such nefarious secrets…”

“No I suppose not… especially being one of the few who know its secrets. I’d thought of exorcism, but you know the Ecclesiarchy, we don’t want that sort of stain on the family history.”

“Of course, my master stressed every respect was to be paid to the House of the Evermund family…” Joon’s voice drifted away with every step deeper into the house. He hadn’t noticed when he’d first arrived but the house almost seemed to hum with emotion.

It was cold in the foyer; the generators had been deactivated months ago. Stacks of furniture and family trinkets stood wrapped, boxed and packaged in the corners, ready to be taken away and split between whatever families still bared some distant relation to the Evermunds.

“This place is a bit of a maze,” Madam Swanson said, stepping past him to lead the way. “I’ve just time to show you around.”

A passage branched off to the right, turned left into a large bare room, stacked with unhung paintings, boxes of old books and continuing again as a corridor. Swanson picked up an old lantern-skull as they went.

“Your equipments all set up. I had the servitors place the candles as per your instructions before they left.”

Swanson retraced her steps to the entrance foyer. “All servants and servitors are gone, all doors and shutters are locked. There’s a vault downstairs, though no ones been in there for decades.”

They went up the wide, sweeping staircase. At the top was an open door leading to other rooms, and a passageway branching off to the right.

“You can walk right round on this floor,” the chamberlain said. “All the rooms are connected.”

Joon mentally memorised the layout of the house, building a map in his head. Even in its dereliction Evermont was a handsome house, oozing personality, but there was also the ever present sense of madness and grief that stained the place, sapping its splendid spirit.

He followed the chamberlain along a passage that went up a short flight of steps and down again, through an L-shaped room that ended in another corridor.

Finally they arrived at the end of a branch passage and the bottom of a steep flight of steps that angled off to the right.

Swanson paused. “I’m not sure what to believe myself, but Lord Evermont spent most his time up here. He used to lock himself inside. Sometimes… sometimes you could hear him screaming. Once the Warden of the Guard had to break down the door to get to him. They say he was a wreck of a man, they saw he saw things.”

Joon peered up the wooden staircase as Swanson brandished her lantern before her. “What’s up there?”

“The observatory. Master Evermund spent months up here by himself. He was quite the recluse by the end. Half mad with grief, the poor man. Much of his most treasured possessions are stored up there. He and his daughter used to watch the stars come out in happier times, before the death of her mother, and her, well her…” Swanson’s tone of voice was grave, and her eyes wet. “That’s the most affected place. Servants said they see things up there. Hear things. It’s where I had your equipment set up.”

“Thank you Madam Swanson, that was most wise of you. My abilities will be more efficient in the most affected locations. I’m sure my mind will get to the bottom of the matter,” the Interrogator said earnestly.

The Chamberlain gasped. “So you yourself are a psyker, interrogator?”

“Indeed, I thought I made that clear in my earlier communiqué,” Joon shrugged. “One of the reasons the Inquisitor sent me was because of my empathetic abilities. Morrfax is not a psyker himself you see.”

His voice dropped to a murmur, as if he were speaking more to himself then to the chamberlain. “I do feel a presence here though, something dark and brooding. Something not alive or truly dead.”

Swanson looked nervous. “I’ve got to run. Do be careful, young Interrogator.”

“I’m curious,” Joon said quickly. “Morrfax never told me. The last time he and Evermund met here, what happened?”

Swanson signed heavily. “That’s where it all happened, master Joon. After the death of her mother, Evermund’s daughter Marietta became a somewhat deranged child. Lord Evermund couldn’t control her; she was cursed with wild mood swings, hallucinations, personality disorders and long death-like trances. She started cavorting with undesirables and associating with less then well-to-do people. When she was sane she cared only for the next thrill and the sating of her latest whim. Evermund thought she was possessed. Possessed, master Joon, possessed by the warp!”

“Go on,” Joon ushered eagerly.

“Well he couldn’t go to the Ecclesiarchy, because you know what they’re like, so he sent for dear Inquisitor Morrfax, his old friend. When Morrfax arrived he told Evermund his daughter was a witch, and that only death would save her soul. Well the thought of losing his daughter after his wife was too much for him to take, so instead he locked Lady Marietta in the observatory. They say while she was locked up she went even more insane, they say she screamed her very soul into the walls, and that something in that room is still haunted by the strength of her own vanity.

“Eventually of course Morrfax realised Evermund could never kill his own child, so the Inquisitor tried to exorcise the girl himself. Ultimately he was forced to banish her very soul from her body, and to all accounts she died. After that Lord Evermund was a shell of a man, and he and Morrfax never spoke again.”

Joon thanked her for the information and she passed him the key to the observatory and went to wait by the limousine. Alone in the house, the Interrogator unlocked the observatory and swept inside, checking the shutters were locked.

The observatory was a dusty old attic half full with boxes of ancient old junk, including a range of old telescopes suspended on tripods, once used to study the stars, an ancient piano and a half-wrapped, man-sized, cracked mirror.

His equipment was already arranged. A line of psychoactive candles bordered the room, which he went around lighting with a golden igniter. A stack of much larger candles were set up as rough points in a hexagon in the middle of the attic, and Joon spent a few minutes sprinkling a tube of holy water and dabbing an aquilia across the floorboards with marrow chalk. He took a bag from his belt and scattered the finger bones of Saint Julius across the hexagon, then positioned careful the skulls of Saint Judeus and Saint Yokenco.

Soon the attic was full of the heady sent of frankincense and rosethorn, and Joon felt his mind open up like the petals of a flower.

He then powered up the vox-recorders and psychic-amplifiers, checking the machine-spirits weren’t idle before opening the most important part of his tools. Unlocking the null-field cylinder, he deactivated the archaic device and took out the spherical, organic object inside.

Alien to most planets, it was an edible fruit called an apple, and was the key ingredient to many a psychic ritual.

Pulling up a dusty old chair Joon took a large bit of the exotic fruit and let his mind soar. Relaxed in his chair he chewed and listened to the sounds of the house; the creaking of the flakboard and the crack of rusted pipes, and the rattle of the shutters.

Suddenly he sat up straight in his chair, sniffing the air. He put down the apple and stepped down the stairs into the passage. No, he hadn’t imagined it; he could smell a woman’s perfume above the aroma of the incense. In the passage it appeared stronger. There was something subtle about the scent, something coy and playful.

Malik Joon moved along the creaking corridor, opening doors to make sure each room was empty. He ended up back in the main hallway. Here the perfume was almost overwhelming, saturating the recycled-air.

He stared down the wide, curving staircase; in the bend he thought he detected something silver, some slight suggestion of a shape. But he couldn’t be sure.

As he placed a foot on the step, the perfume vanished. His ears caught a soft laugh, so soft he couldn’t be certain he hadn’t imagined it.

Then there was nothing; no perfume, no hint of movement or form, nor laughter. He reached out with his mind for a moment, touching the walls with his consciousness, then darted quickly down the stairs and into the foyer. He found no one.

Malik intoned a prayer of thanks to the God-Emperor. He was sure he had a duty to complete now.

He stepped out of the house and into the driveway, where the Chamberlain sat in the limousine.

“Did you sense a presence?” She asked as she unwound the window.

“Oh yes, there’s something there.”

Swanson swallowed. “Then you’ll be able to do something?”

“Perhaps,” Malik commented cautiously. “It all depends whether the spirit wants my help. I’ll be staying overnight at any rate, this is just too intriguing. Anyway, you should go. The driver will take you anywhere you wish.”

“Thank you, Interrogator. I’ll return in the early hours to see how you’ve progressed.”

After the car left, Malik rearranged his vox-recorders at the top and bottom of the main staircase. He picked up his apple and placed his chair in the foyer at the bottom of the stairs.

The hours placed slowly before the laugh was repeated. Malik was alert immediately. He rose from his seat and wandered cautiously to the foot of the stairs. The soft laughter came from again from somewhere above, and he heard the tapping of high-heeled shoes going up.

And still he neither saw nor felt no one. The flesh of his bald scalp tightened as the tapping receded.

Malik found he had to intone another prayer before he had the strength to go up, but finally he forced himself to the top of the stairs.

He looked down the branch passage to his right and, at the far end, glimpsed a wraithlike figure. It was the translucent form of a girl of a about seventeen or eighteen, the wall clearly visible behind her. He hurried forward, and the image vanished as if she had been little more then a swirl of obscura-smoke.

Malik studied the walls carefully. The traces of psychoactive ice coated the flaking wallpaper. He went back to the stairway and re-ran his tapes; the laughter and the sound of high-heels were there, faint but recorded.

The Interrogator patrolled the building in its entirety before taking up his post on the first floor, near the point where the ghost had first vanished. Nothing happened for another few long hours. Evermont groaned and creaked as he slouched in his chair.

He came too, startled, as a feminine voice whispered in his ear. “Soon…soon, now…”

His psychic defences were up in heartbeat and the voice vanished. Joon was completely alert now. The leftover psychic imprint of an emotionally deranged girl was one thing, but a cognitive, self-aware entity was something else entirely. The Interrogator began to entertain the idea he might be dealing with something more dangerous then he had expected.

He felt cold and stiff, but adrenaline seared down his veins. He glimpsed the wraith girl, distant, along the passage to the left. He rose and moved towards her. The image lingered as if waiting for him, then retreated with the familiar tapping behind it, to the foot of the staircase leading to the observatory. She seemed more real then before.

Her lips moved as if she was talking to him, but his mental defences were up now, and he wouldn’t let her in.

She went up the steep narrow stairs, reached the top and paused to look down at him. As Joon stared up at her, she disappeared.

He went up, holding the banister tight as he rose. He re-entered the observatory. He pondered whether the girl had led him back up here, and wondered why. He’d been up here in the first place, why lure him away and then lure him back? Was she playing games? Was she trying to show him something? Something he had missed the first time?

She didn’t reveal herself even when he sent out cautious empathetic messages with his mind, so he began searching the room for anything of value. He found nothing, just old books on astronomy and poetry, old dolls and ordainments and a few musical instruments. The largest things in the room were the cracked mirror, the dusty piano and the telescopes, neither of which were of much interest.

Malik decided to wait for the ghost’s revelation.

In the meantime he wrote a report to his master on a dataslate, detailing all the strange occurrences of the entire night, before having a light meal of Munitorum issue dry-rations.

After he had finished he returned his vox-recorders back to the observatory and sat back in his chair to restart his vigil. This time he didn’t have to wait long, perhaps she too, was eager for the final confrontation.

Her sensual perfume came first, alerting him, and his mental barriers went up, not too much to shut her out completely, but perhaps enough to protect his soul from anything capricious. Then the house grew silent; the quiet having an eerie deadness to it, as if it sucked up all living sound.

As he stared into the faint candlelight she appeared, smiling at him. It was a smile of demure satisfaction, as if she was winning a game. She seemed as real as anyone Malik had ever seen, and his heart beat faster.

As he approached her the Interrogator told himself she wasn’t real. He remembered what his master always said, that an open mind was a fortress, with its gates unbarred and unguarded, and struggled to close his own mind. She waited for him, in the middle of the room, untroubled by the aroma of incense and the meticulously written wards, allowing him to approach.

She was young, and by the throne was she beautiful, thin and slender, but with an air of glamour that acted like a drug.

When he’d almost reached her, she backed away, far across the room. Though the candlelight was heavy she cast no shadow across the floorboards, yet he could see her plainly.

She backed away through the boxes of old junk, past the tripods, telescopes and piano, and Joon followed. He followed until she could back away no further and she disappeared into the cracked, half-wrapped mirror.

In desperation Joon tore off the paper wrappings, staring into the broken glass.

The mirror showed only his reflection. His breath of relief made no sound. In a second he realised he’d lowered his defences.

Her eyes materialize before him, dark glaring pits in the oval of her face, and her gaze was fixed on him, almost hypnotic, compelling and passionate. He felt strangely reluctant to move as she left the mirror and glided towards him.

She came closer, closer, closer till it seemed he sensed freezing breath on his face. She wrapped her arms about him, and he felt the pressure of her embrace. Her hands pressed against his back, and he was engulfed in the scent of rich perfume.

Her mouth fastened eagerly over his. It was cold, white-hot cold. Her kiss turned into a dreadful noiseless sucking and, too late, he realised his mental defences has long since collapsed. The illusion of living flesh ended. Only the mouth was real, frighteningly real, sucking…

Light exploded like a flash-bulb. Sounds rushed in at him, the creak of ancient flakboard, the rattle of the shutters.

Sight returned slowly. By candlelight, the observatory appeared gloomy and insubstantial.

The ghost-girl had gone, and he saw another Joon walk towards the main door. This other Joon paused at the threshold to look back, and its lips curled in a smile of triumph. The laugh which followed was damningly familiar.

Interrogator Malik Joon looked down at himself and discovered he no longer had a body. The spirit of Marietta Evermund had stolen it. He cried out but had no voice. Terror seized him as he heard door-hydraulics whine.

Now he knew what it felt like to be a ghost. He moved and made no footsteps. He drifted through a wall. Nothing was real; he had lost all sense of touch. He sank through the floor.

Tears welled in his eyes that were not there, by they still blinded him. He heard the main doors lock and watched the new Joon wander away down the street. Silence came to Evermont.

***

When the chamberlain visited the house the next morning, there was no sign of Interrogator Joon. His candles had burnt themselves out and the limousine driver informed her he hadn’t called for a ride.

Swanson was somewhat disgruntled; if the Interrogator had found it all to be a waste of time he could have just said.

She stayed long enough to make sure everything was locked up, and for the last time, looked around the old house.

Was the Evermont haunted?

Something in the corner of her eye seemed to follow her, and a noise echoed in her head.

“Help me… help me!”

Swanson left in hurry, darting away from the mansion, suddenly nervous. That voice… why did she imagine the voice inside her head sounded so much like young master Joon?