Esau

The salty Chesapeake breeze runs cold over the barren farmland atop Mason Hill. Past the scorched timbers of Jeremiah's mansion lay a grove of twisted trees, shrouding the sight of a mausaleum from the outside. The sky darkens, painting blood red across the canvas of clouds as the stars awaken to behold the pulsating green light growing deep within the grove.

Hidden behind the marble and cast iron, life pours into dessicated flesh. Dark blue eyes open in confinement and see images of betrayal in his mind projected onto the inside of the casket lid. Forgotten pneumatics squeal and scrape as a panel lifts up. Gears crank as the boy is drawn out on a platfrom into the chapel area within. Like the machinery, he groans as well from being awakened. He opens his aching eyes as the glowing green muck sliding off of his pale body, his only illumination. He convulses as his lungs expel more liquid light then seize their first breath of stale sepulchral air tainted by acrid chemicals. Without warning the platform hinges downward, dropping him onto the cold floor with a wet splatter from the spilled chemicals coating the mosaic tiles. The sharp pain against the back of his skull shakes him into angry wakefulness. He gazes up at the image embedded in mausaleum roof.

At one time it had been painstakingly removed tile by tile from another chamber of death uneathered in the remains of Pompeii and carried across the sea. It was reassembled and restored to dark magnificence. An albaster face marked with black and red features shrouded by flowing red locks and burning eyes stared down at the boy in silence. Wings of blood unfurled behind marble-white shoulders, revealing inhuman details of demonic anatomy that an artist must have directly beheld.

Ancient fresco crumbles as the boy shrieks. Pigmented stones and plaster fall on his soaked and unkempt hair as he depserately searches his confined space. The glint of brass a foot from his face catches his eye. The letters trigger a new level of terror.

RACHEL FELICIA MASON

He hears the hinged lid above him begin to rotate upright. He wraps his fingers around the metal edge, and lets the iron pull his untested legs up to a stand. His legs quiver as they struggle to remember their purpose. The blood rushing through them stings like liquid fire. As the illumination from the reanimation serum begins to dim, and he chokes down the last gulp of breathable air in the crypt, he makes out his own name on the lid as in slams back into place.


MARCUS GABRIEL MASON

On the other side of the river, two men sit on a bench on the pier. The older man, his grimy face tanned and wrinkled from a life on the river, cracks open a bottle cap and passes a beer to his son, who just became of age. They both turn their heads as they see the ball of flame rise in the thickening darkness. A split second later they hear the echo of the explosion at the top of the hill.

"That was the Mason house, Son! There's more monsters diggin' out from the ground tonight!"

"Quit yer tales, Pa! Ain't nobody livin' there no more, Hell ain't nobody been up there since them wierd Caledonians came a'huntin..."

"Caledonia? I heard it was one o'them cat-people lookin fer 'is kin!"

"They was in the inn, Pa! I saws 'em! They was this black cat-boy and a lady with a metal wig and a machine runnin' on her..."

The psychic wave radiated from the Mason estate, racing at the speed of though across the water to bowl the two spectators end over end. The foam of the bottle spilled onto the grey weathered wood of the pier and fell between the planks onto the gently lapping water.

A young man levitated above the burning trees, surveying the destruction by the light of the inferno. The smoke lingered in his nostrils as he folded space around him like a cloak, vanishing from the carnage.