Interlude

My apologies for the interruption in this history. I've some ... interesting ... events occur that require my utmost attention at this time.

Thank you for your patience.

- Edward

Wax and Wane

I was away from Tumbledown managing my own affairs for the next few days. Life does go on and you can only miss so many days away from the office before your customers begin to worry. The longer I stayed away from Tumbledown, the more surreal the events seemed and eventually they took on a dream-like quality. I had managed to convince myself that it was all a hallucination and made up my mind to auction off the entire estate without ever visiting it again. Even the link with Lurk had faded away into a barely noticeable thread. In fact, the memory of Lurk was something that my mind skirted around completely.

I was fortunate enough to run my own business, small as it was. My partner Paul had managed nicely enough while I was away, but I could see his relief when I returned. Paul was not a people person, he worked much better with computers. I wasn't much of a people person either, but compared to me, Paul was severely handicapped by his shyness.

The weeks passed in a blur; there were computers to fix, networks to manage, and of course, clients to talk with. I never spoke of what happened at Tumbledown, in fact, when Paul asked I evaded his questions. He must have taken my reticence as a sign that I was still upset over Edgar's passing, because he didn't press for many details and seemed happy to swing back into routine.

As the month of July progressed, I couldn't shake the image of the full moon out of my head. No matter where I looked, I saw the blasted thing, hanging over the horizon like some double exposure in my brain. A sense of urgency was building and I felt a compelling desire to leave my offices and return to Tumbledown. I paced restlessly, until the eve of the 17th when the presence of lurk exploded in my mind, frantic with urgency.

I had to return to tumbledown and carry out Edgar's wishes.

The Journal

The leather bound journal with attached key was Edgar's personal journal. One of several that he kept and later transferred to his monograph.

This one however, seemed to be written especially for me. The tiny, crabbed handwriting spoke of enormous effort on his part, as his hands tended to shake in his later years.

"Now that Lurk has provided proof of my sanity, and provided you haven't run screaming from the house like a goosed prom date, there are things you must do to secure Tumbledown against the Darkness.

Firstly, you have befriended Lurk but you are not his master. You must repeat the feeding with milk and honey, but this time you must add three drops of your blood to the mixture. Place the saucer in the center of the living room throw rug. When the greedy beast finishes, you must call his true name, Elezmandar, thrice. When he makes eye contact, repeat the following incantation ... This will bind the imp to you and impart some measure of his powers. Do this at once, because without his aid, you and Tumbledown are lost. Under no circumstances break eye contact with the beast until you have spoken the binding, if you do so, he will attack you and cause you no end of mischief."

Madness.

If it were not for the fat bellied imp curled in front of the fire like some black hairless cat, I would have doubted Edgar's sanity. As it was, I was beginning to fear for my own. With a heavy sigh, I rose from the comfortable chair and made towards the kitchen.

Some hours later, as I drove across the city and back to my own apartments, I could feel the mental bond stretching between myself and my new familiar. It is as close to a schizophrenic experience as I ever want to experience. Although there is no sharing of actual thoughts, there is a sense of ...understanding... empathy, if you will. If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can feel his quick thoughts and the rough wood under his scrabbling claws. I can see through those black eyes of his as he scurries about the eves of Tumbledown. When we are close, in contact, it is unlike anything imaginable. His senses overlay mine, giving me preternatural abilities beyond that of mortal man.

When I finally drifted off to sleep that night, my dreams were strange and disjointed. One moment they were comfortable and familiar, and the next, I was skulking about Tumbledown hunting mice.

Utter Madness.

Lurk

Elemanzar, or Lurk as he is called, is an imp. He is a familiar; a minor being tasked with the guardianship of Tumbledown. Lurk is not photogenic, and to my knowledge this is the first time he has ever been photographed. He hates the camera now and if I pull it out of my pocket he will vanish into those dark crevices that he calls home.
I think it was the flash that startled him, possibly pained him, with those huge eyes of his.

Imps, I later discovered, are related to Fairies. Yes, Fairies. Not the tall, human-like, Tolkienesque fairies that you have seen in films. But the small, ephemeral creatures possessed of a child-like beauty. Imps and the other entities I later learned about are not evil, per se. They can learn to be evil, true enough, or even driven to evil. But for the most part they can be best described as selfish. Most of the Eld (those creatures of myth) are different from man in that they are selfish. The concept of helping another being is alien to them, much like the concept of true evil is foreign to most men.

What is evil? True evil?

A person, an entity, that derives pleasure from the deliberate inflection of pain upon another can be said to be truely evil. There are variations, shades of evil, that fall short of the actual participation required of the Soulless Ones. The Eld are just selfish to the point of cruelty, but not truely evil.

When Lurk had finished his milk and honey, he licked his lips with a horrible smacking sound and with a quiet whisper spoke. "The master commanded me to give this to you."

and with that, Lurk reached through the fieldstone and pulled out a book and key. I did not recognize either, but I would later come to hold both very precious. It was the monograph of my Great Uncle Edgar.

Clutching it in both of his twisted, clawed hands, Lurk leapt from the fireplace to my lap in a great bound and slapped the monograph against my chest. I could feel the dull claws of Lurks toes digging into my legs and smell the honeyed milk on his breath. My heart beat like a sparrow trapped in a cage at his closeness.

"Take it take it take it" Lurk hissed, thrusting the leatherbound journal against my chest. With trembling fingers, I grasped the rough leather.
Lurk turned and leapt back to the fireplace.

"You should make a fire," Lurk spoke, his black eyes glinting in the grey light "I would like that."

Hours later, Lurk was curled in front of a warm fire while I sat in Edgar's favorite high backed chair and read his monograph.

The Letter

Honoring Edgar's wishes, I opened the letter when I arrived at Tumbledown. The paper was yellowed with age, as if he had written it many years ago before sealing it and remanding it to the executor. I could smell the stale, lingering odor of his apple Cavendish pipe tobacco on the papers as I read the contents.

I suppose I could bore you with all the minutiae of the letter, or retype the contents, but the truth is that many of the things it contained are personal and some few could be dangerous.

However, the gist of the letter was clear. Make friends with Lurk, the house familiar by leaving a bowl of milk and honey by the fireplace. Wait for the full moon and renew the wards that protect the house. Visit his grave on the new moon and place a ward around it with salt.

My opinion of Edgar was always high, but my head shook with disbelief as I read the letter over and over. His... eccentricity... was often remarked upon, but I had no idea as to the depths that it went. The only thing that kept me from burning the letter and shutting the place up until I could sell it was his post script "Nephew, I know you will find the contents of this letter hard to believe, so I must offer you proof of my sanity. Feed Lurk and call his true name, Elemanzer. Oh, he will answer to Lurk readily enough, but only once you befriend him with the ritual offering and make him yours. You will have no doubts when you have befriended Lurk."

With a self conscious grin I found the milk and a jar of local honey. The milk was a few days past expiration, but smelled good to my nose. I envisioned Lurk as a cat of some sort, so in a shallow dish I mixed the milk and honey and set it upon the hearth.

"Lurk!" I called. "Here Lurk! Kitty, kitty, kitty!"

When no cat immediately appeared, I settled in the large rocking chair across from the fireplace and reread the letter.

Feed Lurk and call his true name, Elemanzer.

What the hell.

"Elemanzar!" I called. "Here Kitty..." and my words died in my throat. Elemanzar was not a cat. Elemanzar was the least cat-like thing I had ever laid my eyes upon. I watched in frozen terror as the small, black creature slunk around the firewood, leapt upon the hearth and with a wary eye upon me, lapped at the milk and honey with a bright red tongue.

Pausing in its lapping for a moment, a sibilant whisper came to my ear "I am not a cat."

Great Aunt Hattie

The house was named Tumbledown, after the way that it appears to tumble down the side of the gorge and it was built sometime in the 1930's as a love nest for my great uncles only wife, Hattie.

She was long dead before I was born. She died in childbirth, which was much more deadly than it is today. Now we treat childbirth as a supermarket trip. But back then, well, if you survived the trauma of the actual birthing, your child might actually live four or five years before dying of some nasty disease.

Edgar and Hattie only had a few years together before she died. Long enough for him to build Tumbledown and get used to the idea of being with her forever. He never got over her death nor the death of his infant daughter some few days later.

It was then that Edgar packed up Tumbledown and departed for destinations unknown. Family rumor had it that he vanished for five years before he came back home. He never stayed home long when he did come back. I guess it was too painful for him to stay in the house where his beloved died, yet he was unable to sell it because she had loved it so much.

I know that Edgar traveled extensively, his house is full of souvenirs from his adventures. Not just tourist knock-offs, but real, genuine articles that would have historians and antiquarians panting to put them in a museum.

The House

This photo shows the house as I inherited it, mice and all. I haven't changed a thing, except to recharge the spells that Edgar had around the place and become friends with the familiar that keeps watch over it.

Yes, I'm familiar with the occult arts.

I had to learn rather quickly, what with everything that occurred after Edgar's death. But I'll get to that later - I'm not much of a paranormal expert nor a writer it seems, with all the rambling I tend to do.

So there's the house. Not terribly big on the outside, but it's even smaller on the inside. There's junk from the 1800's stacked in the cellar, junk from the 1900's piled in the attic, and a few modern conveniences on the main floor. You can't tell from this photo, but there's a steep gorge behind the house that drops about 50' or so to a swift, stony stream and the house kinda steps down the gorge in 4 labyrinthine levels.

I have memories of that house from my youth; summer visits as a young lad when Uncle Edgar was home, and when I was older and in college I would visit whenever I could. It was always musty, dusty and in a state of perpetual disarray. Edgar had built it himself one summer when he was a young man in his twenties. I know he had help building it, but it's still quite a thing to envision, building a house with your own two hands and no electric contraptions involved.

There's only a few acres left around the house now. It was once much larger, but was sold off to the local mill. Well, it was actually leased out for 99 years, but I'm not going to be around in 2086 so it might as well have been sold.

A bit of History

A bit of history.

I'm new to the whole paranormal business and still quite skeptical about many things. Until very recently I lived my life without a care for the shadows or odd events. I was firmly rooted in the present, looking forward to my normal everyday activities with no more ambition than to plod along at my employment, retire and eventually, die.

All that changed when my uncle Edgar finally passed away at the unheard-of age of 111 years. I say unheard of because most of the men in my family tend to either die early from adventuresome accidents or sometime shortly after they pass their 80th birthday. It's possible that he might even be alive today if he hadn't wandered away from his house while the nurse was napping. Well, maybe not, as he'd be well over 121 years old and even though he was (mostly) sound of mind and body when he wandered off, he was showing signs of dementia and slipped into those old memories of his more and more often. I was there the day they discovered his remains, not more than a mile from the house. I'm surprised we didn't find him sooner, because we searched the entire area for three days with dogs and dozens of volunteers. The woods were not that dense... But I digress.

Uncle Edgar was different than most of my other relatives. He was an adventurer, an explorer, an active man with a taste for the exotic. See the young lad sitting on the bottom left of the photo? The one with the strange eyes? That's Great Uncle Edgar circa 1900.
Edgar's house was filled with the unusual - a ratty lion's head trophy that he shot on safari in Africa in 1912. Huge wooden masks and spears from tribes lost to civilization. Books and flowers and smells that would tickle your nose and make you sneeze violently. And dust. Gods, I don't believe the man ever dusted.

So when everything was said and done, the funeral was over and the will read, I was given the house and contents because "Edward is the the only one of you damn fools that would ever visit when he didn't need money."
So I inherited the house and all of it's contents and a small sum of money in a savings account. Mr. Farmer, the executor of the estate, also gave me a sealed envelope which bore instructions to open and read when I was alone.

Edgar was a strange old man.