Enjoy,
The Exploration of Chateau Du Dragon!
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“So, what ‘historical treasure’ have you found this time?”
Vanessa followed her boyfriend around the small grove of magnolia trees and
down the barely visible trail.
“Who says I found anything? I was just talking to some
people at the bar, mentioned I was into urban exploration, and a guy popped up,
mentioned he knew a place, and that I should check it out. That’s all.” He
smirked.
“Carl, I know you better than that. You don’t just wander
off to any ol’ place some stranger mentions. You’re not usually that stupid.”
“Usually?”
“There was that one time in New Hampshire…”
“Never going to let me forget that one, are you?”
“You got us arrested.”
“Okay, okay. I did look the place up, did some research, and
I think it’s clear. It should also really grab your interest when I tell you
what it is and what it means.”
Vanessa rolled her eyes, but followed him. The ground was
soggy underfoot, never quite deciding whether it wanted to be mud or underwater.
Dead Spanish moss hung like streamers from Oak and Willow trees as they walked;
typical Louisiana fare.
“So when are you going to tell me about it?”
Carl held up one hand as he pushed a bush out of the way.
Then he motioned for her to move up and join him. “There it is!”
The house was ancient. Kudzu covered half of it, stretching
down from the roof, but the front porch and the main entrance stood out. The
weather-beaten wood contrasted with the green, giving an impression of a
mummy’s skull, partially unwrapped from its lavish bandages. The glass from the
windows was long gone, smashed through vandalism or by nature’s will. The
curves of the architecture and the towering pillars still stood out to Vanessa,
making a smile break out on her slender face.
“An early 1800’s plantation house. Not bad, Mr. I don’t know
what we’ll find.”
“Actually, I read that it’s a late 1700’s, but you would
know, I suppose.”
Vanessa elbowed him playfully in the side as she pushed past
him, out from under the trees. “Anything else you read about this particular ol’ home?”
Carl smiled and took a deep breath. “Well, from what I could
gather, they called it the dragon chateau. This was actually one of the early
starts of the Underground Railroad that ferried escaped slaves to freedom. The
story goes that out the back of the house, about two miles away is the Gulf of
Mexico, with a large private dock, and that the owners of the plantation, who’s
name nobody seems to remember, actually ran a tunnel from the house all the way
down to the dock, where Spaniards would pick up the slaves.”
“Oh, so you’re saying there’s secret passages in here?”
Carl grinned and nodded.
“That’s why you insisted on flashlights, food and water, and
some extra clothes?”
Another grin.
“You take me to the nicest places.”
The front porch became imposing up close. A gaping hole was
all that remained of a large picture window, and the front door clung
stubbornly to a single hinge. Flashlights surged to life, their beams bouncing
off the walls. Anything of value was stripped ages ago. All that remained were
bare walls and the remnants of rusty furniture frames.
“So, Mr. Bookworm, what happened to the slaves that went
with the Spanish?”
“Honestly, if I had to guess, I would say the just ended up
slaves somewhere else, like the Spanish colonies off in the Caribbean. This
place was before the Underground Railroad really took off, though, and from the
stories I found, not many slaves made it through here to be picked up.
“Oh? Was it a fake get-away?”
“Seems that way. Apparently the other local land owners came
together, raided the place. Some claims of voodoo rituals, blood and virgin
sacrifices, sex with demons and devils. You know, just all the usual fare. Some
of them escaped, but the owners, all the slaves, and a group of Spaniards were
all caught and executed, probably hung from one of the trees we walked under on
the way here. ”
Vanessa held the flashlight under her chin, “You and your
spooky stories.”
The tale stuck in her head as they continued through the
house. She kept her eyes open for anything that might look like, or give clues
to any kind of secret passage. Vanessa wracked her brain, trying to decide if
the story sounded familiar. It was certainly true the Underground Railroad had
routes that led south, as well as north. Could it really be possible that this
house was such a stop?
“Hey! Vanessa!”
Carl was standing near the far wall of what might once have
been the den.
“Let me guess, Mr. Scooby-Doo, a fake wall in the back of
the fireplace?”
He smirked. “Nothing so obvious. Check this out, though.”
He ran his finger along the lines between the bricks in the
wall, starting from the floor, up, then over, and back down.
“There’s no mortar between this section and the rest of the
wall. Also, check this out.” Carl ran his finger over the front of the brick
just above the divide. “I don’t know if you can see it, but it says ‘dragon’.”
Vanessa stepped closer and looked. The face of the brick
looked off, but she couldn’t read anything on it. Her fingers slid over the
surface, feeling the bumps that were barely there. “Are you sure? I think it’s
missing the ‘R’”.
“Probably just worn off.”
He grabbed a brick near the top and pulled. It came easily,
a handful of others tumbling to the floor as well. Pulling out more stones
revealed a dark space, and a set of stairs leading down into the earth.
He swept his flashlight back and forth. “There, that wasn’t
so hard to find.”
Vanessa bit her lip. A thick, cloying smell rolled up from
the passage; a scent of mold and moisture, of rotting fish and wet earth. The
passage had been too easy to find. Carl was already crawling inside, exploring
with his flashlight. He was practically shaking with anticipation. He turned
back to her, and saw her lip folded between her teeth.
“Is it okay, you think? We do still have the rest of the
house to check out, see what condition the second floor is in. Maybe see if
there’s anything to raid in the kitchen?”
She forced a smile and shook her head. “It’ll all still be
here when we get back. It’s sat this long, hasn’t it?”
Only the first steps were wood. After that they were cut
into the earth itself, but as they moved deeper, the stairs turned to stone
steps that were slick underfoot. The walls did the same, starting with wooden
supports, giving way first to dirt, and then stone. Water dripped down, only to
vanish between cracks. The stairs went on, further, and deeper.
“Carl, how can we still be going down? Shouldn’t we be under
water by now?”
“Yeah…I’m not sure, maybe there’s some kind of drain system
behind these stones.” He tapped on the wall with his flashlight. The moisture
on the surface was clearly visible, and they watched as a drop beaded up
between two stones, rolled down, and vanished back into the wall.
“I don’t think we should go much further. It’s…strange…down
here.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right, as old as this place is, we
don’t want to wander too far, trigger a cave in, or risk getting caught if the
place floods with the tide or something like that.”
Glurhrrrgle…
The sound started almost as a low rumble, bouncing back and
forth up the stairs and between the stones. Vanessa suddenly felt sick to her
stomach. The sound could almost have been speech, though what word or language,
she had no clue.
“What the hell was that?” Carl was leaning down on the
steps, trying to reach deeper with his flashlight. “Hey, I think I see the
bottom of the stairs! It’s not that much farther.”
Before she could stop him, Carl had started down again.
After just a few steps he was starting to disappear into the darkness, so she
carefully followed after him.
There was another dozen steps, and then it opened into a
massive, round room. The floors and walls were placed stone, the ceiling, a
good ten feet high, was obviously part of a natural cavern; someone had
discovered this cave and built into it.
They stepped into the cavern, their flashlights scanning the
area as they stood in awe. Several hallways and chambers led off from the main
room. Stone tables were the only furnishings in the main chamber itself. The
smell, which had wafted through the opening at the house, was almost
overwhelming. It waxed and waned, as if the source was moving. The strength of
the stench made Vanessa cough, gagging at its worst.
Dragllehhth…R’lyeh…Shalal…Turthogahh…C’turrr…
The strange words rolled out of the side chambers, hallways,
and reverberated through the stones of the floor, as if there were further
chambers deep below. It was obviously a language, but the words were thick,
barely recognizable as any kind of speech. There remained a pattern to them, a
sense of powerful meaning behind each group of sounds. To Vanessa, it sounded
like the last gasps of someone drowning, trying to talk through a throat full
of water, past a tongue and lips numb from hypothermia.
There was a wet slop from
one of the hallways and Carl spun to meet it. All his flashlight could find was
two large, circular reflections from deep in the darkness. Then they were gone.
Vanessa crept over to her boyfriend, grabbing his arm as she
pressed her back to his. Her flashlight ran from one hallway, to a chamber, to
another hallway. More unrecognizable words. More wet slop sounds. More round reflections.
Eyes. They were eyes.
Large, glass-like, bulbous eyes.
Another slop. Then
another, closer. Vanessa turned her flashlight towards it.
A man stood in the entrance of one of the chambers. His skin
was grey and looked waterlogged. He was mostly bald, with small clumps of long,
stringy hair reaching down to his shoulders. The sides of his neck were covered
in folds. The nose was mashed, and almost seemed like it was melting into his
face, and his lips were thin, almost nonexistent. He wore clothes that were
impossibly old, torn, and stained.
Worst of all were his eyes; large and bulbous, like they
didn’t fit in their sockets. They had no color, just huge pupils that made
almost the entire eye look black.
She felt Carl’s gasp through her back, pressed against his. “What the fuck…”
More of them were slowly stepping out of the chambers and
hallways, all of them similarly deformed. Some looked more human, some looked
almost like fish.
Strange words again, the flashlight sought out the source,
finding a more human creature with its half-lips moving.
“Cthorrtaghnn…Dpthue…Fur’thoroee…R’lyeh…”
It lifted an arm and pointed at her, the fingers all had thick
webbing between them and no fingernails. “Breeder…”
Carl started to push Vanessa back the way they had come,
towards the stairs. His bag swung down from his back, hanging from his forearm
as he unzipped it and pulled out his gun.
Whether the creatures recognized the weapon and the threat
it offered, they made no sign. Vanessa turned and shone the light back towards
the stairs, only to find two of the fish-men had slipped in front of it, their
bulbous eyes looking back at her as they whispered in their strange, thick
throated language.
“Carl, we can’t go back…”
The gunshots echoed in the chamber. Then the space was
filled with a cacophony of slops, chittering, Carl yelling, and unrecognizable
words from the creatures. The power of the stench increased almost tenfold
making Vanessa choke. One of the creatures lay on the stone floor, bleeding
out, one large eye deflated from the bullet.
Cold, wet, hands grabbed at her. Carl was pulled away from
her back and there was more yelling, more gunshots.
“Vanessa! Straight ahead! Fresh air! The bay! GO!”
She turned and saw him on the ground, four or five of the
creatures grabbing him, holding him, pummeling him with their deformed hands.
The gun went off again and one of their heads erupted in the thin light.
“Go! GO!”
Another creature reached for her, and she swung her backpack
around, swatting away the hand. The air swirled around her and for a moment,
she got a whiff of fresh air. More of the creatures were coming at her. Carl
was lost under a pile of them. A quick spin caught sight of the stairs, and she
dashed away in the opposite direction.
The stench cleared as she ran down the hallway. Fresh air
whipped around her, although the stench of the man-fish clung to her skin and
in her nose. Behind her, Vanessa could hear the sounds of their feet on the
stone. Slop-slop-slop. Further behind
them came another gunshot, then a sharp snapping sound, borrowing the unnatural
acoustics of the tunnels to reach her. It was all she could do to not imagine
what that sound was.
The tunnel sloped upward, the stone floor becoming slick as
she ran. Her lungs started to burn, but the feet behind her kept her pushing as
fast as she could.
The water was ankle deep and rising, but a light further
ahead gave her hope. The sounds behind her started to fade and then were lost
as she burst out into the setting sun.
She collapsed onto her hands and knees into the salty water
of the bay. Almost unconsciously, she started splashing handfuls of water onto
her arms, trying to scrub away the memory of those cold, slick hands grabbing
at her skin.
Then the sobbing started as the relief of being outside
again reached her. With a deep breath, she lifted her face to the warmth of the
sun. She willed it to wash away the experience, the memories. Then she looked
out across the water, and saw the unmistakable shape of several human-like
figures swimming around, breaching the surface.
Sounds started to come up from the tunnel again; footsteps
in the water. The fish-men were still chasing her.
Vanessa crawled further out and started waving and screaming
to the swimmers, hoping one of them would come to help her, someone that might
even have a car parked nearby.
All the swimmers stopped and turned in the water as one. The
fading sunlight glinted off their large, round eyes as they started to swim
toward her.
