Keeper: Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Del seemed to take the potential onslaught of visitors in stride. Jamie had the hunch that his ease was due to the fact that helping Jamie entertain visitors was more in keeping with what he had been hired for in the first place.



“Somehow I don’t think he signed on for single handedly helping to defend the new Keeper against assassins.” Jamie muttered as he returned to the library. He had a mug of hot chocolate in one hand and set it on the desk’s coaster with a smile. He had tried to hide how shaken the mirror with its disappearing act had made him but had apparently not done too good a job. The hot chocolate was Del’s idea of comfort.



“Not bad as such things go.” Jamie pulled the inventory towards him as he settled into the worn chair. It creaked comfortably beneath his weight. He flipped the pages to Storage room three.



“I really should have checked this before opening crates,” Jamie said to himself as he read the entry on the mirror. Apparently the mirror reflected the destruction of the former house of the keeper. Jamie thought of the images he had seen. “More like the aftermath of destruction.” The images he had seen just reflected the blasted stone and earth. “Unless I just came in at the end of the movie clip.” He continued down the list. Some of the items made no sense to him. He wasn’t sure if it was because the notes were in shorthand or because the objects were simply that foreign to him.



“After all what would mirror, rlc dest orig hse have meant if I hadn’t seen the mirror first?” He let his finger slide down the narrow, handwritten lines of the inventory. “Odd that all of the rest of the house inventory is typed up. Maybe it is just the keeper’s floor.” He flipped a couple of pages. He found the clothing storage and the hat box that had cause so much dust fairly easily. Its page was typed. Jamie flipped back to the storage room three pages. “Handwritten. Maybe no one wanted to go through these to update them.” The thought gave him pause. Why had no one ever opened the crates? The handwriting on the inventory page was old. It had that peculiar sepia tone that blank ink seemed to get after a lot of time had passed. He continued reading the old and faded lettering but came up with nothing that looked like it would have been a box of journals dated 1809.



“That would have been almost too easy,” Jamie said, stifling a yawn. “I could actually do with a little bit of easy at the moment.” The old handwriting and hot chocolate had done its work and Jamie was finding it hard to keep his eyes open.



“With the early rising and exciting day I’m not really surprised.” He stood and stretched. Not sure where else to begin, he decided sleep was a good option. He walked back to his room, eyeing the closed door to Albe’s room with suspicion even though Del had assured him that the room had been cleansed. He entered his room and closed the door. For extra measure he locked the door, something he had never done at Albe’s before. He felt a little silly but not silly enough to unlock it. He undressed and slipped into bed. He was pleased to see that Del had laid the fire against the chilly night and he watched the shadows dancing on the ceiling as he drifted to sleep.



In his dreams the firelight took on a different tone. Gone was the warmth and comfort of the hearth. These flames were bent on destruction.



“Form a bucket line,” A voice harsh with smoke called. Jamie watched as men lined up passing buckets between them to empty on the blaze. Jamie tried to join them but in this world he had no substance. He was only a dream. He stepped away. As he watched, he realized that while all of the men in line were male, very few of them were human. He saw those who reminded him of Del and those who were shorter. These men were barely three feet tall and extremely hairy. Only the intelligence in their eyes kept him from suspecting they were animals of some kind. He wondered if those were the same type of people who had formed the mini hazmat team earlier. There were those whose build and form reminded him of the High Talbot and those whose visage shot fairy tale words into his brain. Words like giant, goblin, sprite and elf. Jamie shook his head trying to take it all in. The air was filled with bits of shimmering and with a start he realized that the shimmering, flying things were fairies.



The bucket line was losing the war against the flames. The commander of the bucket line seemed to realize this at the same time Jamie did and spilt his line in two, sending half to soak the area around the blaze so that it would not fan out and consume the forest. Jamie looked around. The cleared space for the house was roughly the same size as it was now. He couldn’t imagine the trees burning.



“But if this is the destruction of the first house then 200 years would have grown them back.” Jamie caught movement in the trees.



“The blaze is not natural, where are the dampeners?” The hoarse voice again called. The outlines in the woods shifted but they did not come forward. Help came from another direction. They were a mixed bag of people as well but each of them held out their hands much the way the High Talbot had done when fighting the thing in Albe’s room.



“Magic,” Jamie thought. Part of him wanted to stay and watch but he was curious about the watchers in the woods. Careful to keep his footsteps light in case any here could detect him, Jamie made his way around the fire brigade and towards the forest. He edged into the tree line and towards the shadowy figures. He had thought they wore capes of black but instead the nearer he drew he noticed they were dark green, dappled with darker browns.



“Like camouflage,” he thought. The old fashioned camouflage seemed to be working as no one in the clearing seemed to notice those who watched from the woods. The hooded figures stood watching the activity. They were silent and for the most part motionless. Every so often the capes would shift in the breeze, mimicking the rustling of the leaves. Jamie tried to look beneath the hoods but could not penetrate the darkness. He counted five of the hooded figures. An explosion in the clearing caused him to turn and stare at the action. The scene more closely resembled the image from the mirror now, with a hole blasted into the earth where a small stone house had stood. Around the hole the bucket line was decimated. The debris had caught them like shrapnel and Jamie saw many broken limbs and bleeding wounds. Jamie’s first instinct was to rush to help but he remembers his attempts to aid the bucket line and restrained himself from running forward. The hooded figures showed no surprise at the explosion. For a few heartbeats they stared at the destruction, then as one the five cloaked figures turned and began walking away from the clearing. Jamie followed.



His presence went unnoticed as the group moved through the woods. They moved as silently as the shadows they mimicked. No twigs snapped between their feet, no branches sighed with their passing. Jamie realized he was silent as well since his presence seemed to affect nothing. It was eerie. The only sounds came from behind and faded the further they got from the clearing. Jamie shivered at the unnaturalness of their passing and fought the impulse to shout something into the night, just to hear a sound. The group approached a small patch of open ground in the woods. In this space stood a sixth cloaked figure. Moonlight seemed to light the scene like a streetlight and Jamie ached for his sketch pad. The five figures he followed stepped into the moonlight and bowed slightly to the one who waited. Jamie found that with the direction of the moonlight he could actually make out some of the features of the one waiting. He had a large hooked nose and eyes that were pale yellow. They seemed to almost glow in the dark recesses of his hood. On his left cheek there was a semi-circular scar. It looked as though something sharp had been pressed against the skin as the scar looked uniform in depth. Jamie shivered.



“It is done,” one of the hooded figures said, causing Jamie to jump. “The keeper could not have survived. Lune Merdos will go as planned.” The scarred man nodded. He turned away and began to walk. The other five followed. Jamie started to follow, a light tapping sound stopped him. He frowned looking around for the source. The sound continued and Jamie realized the tapping was coming from outside of the dream. Blinking, he awoke in his bed. The tapping continued. Jamie turned towards the sound. Someone was knocking on his window.