Macabre

Edmund awoke the next morning feeling different than he ever had before.

Leftover rain dripped from the roof outside. The storm had continued all night, letting up only slightly after the mansion struck six in the morning. The sudden silence had jolted Edmund from his shallow sleep.

His sleep had to have been shallow; getting to sleep had been so difficult. He had settled into bed at the stroke of one in the morning. Even so late, no matter how still he lay, his heart beat so fast and thoughts sped through his brain at such a rate that he had lain awake for hours, assaulted by a thousand ideas all demanding his attention.

Trigger Warning: poem referencing self-harm

By the time he reached his room, Edmund wasn’t angry at all. He was an orphan, would always be an orphan, and was going to leave the mansion. Everything made sense again. He grabbed up his poetry notebook from his desk, chose meter and scheme, and began to write.

It was still raining.

Edmund had resolved himself to explore as many rooms in the Mansion as possible, and wasting even an hour for meals in familiar rooms felt inefficient; so when he acquired his lunch from Mrs. Kippling, he asked for a different dining room.

She directed him to a medium sized dining room, designed to seat six diners at most. There, Edmund ate his thick chunky soup that was almost a stew and smelled of oats.

At first, Edmund was delighted to receive his first expectation as a Moulde. As he was still unfamiliar with the Moulde family, he assumed — quite incorrectly — that attending a family meeting would be an easy expectation to meet.

By the time he had made his way up the hill again, he realized it was an opportunity as well: In An Ornithological Watcher’s Primer, Lady Strumbrugge had been very explicit that the only reliable way to learn about birds was to watch them.

Black rain was still falling on Moulde Hall as Edmund walked briskly through the winding halls towards his room.

Once Tricknee had showed up, the evening had fallen remarkably quiet save for the loud slurping of soup. When the mansion finally tolled seven, everyone made weak excuses and left to return to their rooms or walk about the grounds, until it was just Tricknee and Edmund who sat at the table. Edmund didn’t remain long.

As Edmund entered Moulde Hall, Ung stepped forward to address Mrs. Kippling. “Matron’s guests have all decided to have their meals in their rooms.”

Mrs. Kippling’s face turned bright red as her hands began to wring themselves back and forth. “And I suppose they all think I can just fix it all up, no trouble? My gracious, I couldn’t take a tray to each of them — I have to start dinner soon!”

Edmund opened his eyes to the massive form of Ung staring down at him.

After a sleep brought on by trauma, it is traditional for the sleeper to take a moment to remember where they are and what has happened. Dr. Vendebirk II theorizes in his On Morpheus that this is the brain’s attempt to expunge unpleasant memories of the previous day and being entirely too enthusiastic about it.

Edmund did not have this luxury. Every hour the deafening chime of the clock bell had snapped him awake, both reminding him of his present condition and keeping him from such deep respite.

The Moulde estate, Edmund learned later, was everything on top of and inside of Haggard Hill, in the northern part of the Squatling district. Haggard Hill itself was a full twenty acres of hill covered with old trees, tired grass, and a sagging old gazebo with peeling white paint, all surrounded by thorny hedges and a sharp wrought-iron fence. The heavy black gate cautioned MOULDE HALL in a sharp and spidery lettering, and was framed by statues of two large ravens, their eyes sharp and beaks terrible.

Edmund became a Moulde when he was eight years old, after lunch, on a day not otherwise particularly different from any other day.

Spring was coming to a close and the harsh sunlight of summer was struggling to slip through the giant black cloud that filled the sky. Edmund was sitting on his stiff bed, writing a poem about the holes that riddled the warped window shutters.

Edmund had taken to poetry. When he was seven, he read a book titled The Mechanics and Structure of Verse: a Primer to the Aspiring Poetic by Sir Peeres Ekes. Years later, after he had outgrown its novice lessons — even considering the book’s inconsistencies, overly simplistic structure, condescending view of poetry as an art-form, and multiple outright lies — he still held a soft spot in his heart for the book, considering where it led him.

Sir Edmund Moulde, a gentleman for whom no introduction could be either required or sufficient, is a mysterious and complicated figure. For one who so singularly affected the destiny of nations, very little is known for certain.

This is not to say we know nothing. While countless documents, diaries, and letters were lost in the Great Brackenburg Fire of 1954, every recovered document written by his hand has undergone years of study and interpretation by the great scholars of our time.