Youthful Indiscretion Read online

something to keep you entertained until then."

  "As a matter of fact, there's a series on PBS about a tour of European cities. They'll have three episodes before two. I thought I'd watch that in my bedroom."

  She smiled and nodded. "Sounds like an excellent idea. You're getting old enough, let me know if there's any place you'd like to visit, and I'll arrange a trip during summer break."

  He grinned as much from surprise as pleasure. "Thank you!"

  He raced through lunch, mostly because Mother dominated the conversation with Eile and Sunny, but certainly because he wanted to get the puzzle disassembled. Once he had finished, he hurried back to his room. He turned on his telly and switched to PBS America, so if anyone checked up on him they would find him doing what he said he would. He then retrieved the puzzle and its pieces. If he separated the last two he planned to reassemble it so he could sneak it back into the vault sometime that weekend. Hopping into his bed, he settled against the pillows and started to work.

  He spent an hour just turning it around in his hands, studying it and occasionally tugging at the pieces or twisting them in a halfhearted fashion. He wasn't in any hurry. If the third piece was any indication, he expected the last two to take hours to come apart, maybe even days. Still, there was no reason to put it off. Maybe he'd get lucky--

  He heard an audible click, and the pieces slid apart. Without even fully realizing it, he pulled and separated them. For a shocked moment he just stared at them, one in each hand. When the surprise wore off, however, he felt apprehensive rather than happy. He suddenly realized something was off; as his mother liked to say, the shilling had finally dropped.

  He tried to reconnect the pieces, as if doing so would somehow reverse something he had started that he knew nothing about. Yet like with the first piece they wouldn't snap back together, they kept pushing apart like two magnets with their north poles facing each other. Frustrated, he threw the pieces onto the bed with the others. Something felt very wrong, but he had no idea what to do.

  Then he remembered: wasn't there supposed to be music? He did hear something, but it wasn't the tune he was familiar with. It sounded like a...a bell! A huge, ponderous church bell tolling in a solemn, almost mournful manner. That didn't sound good.

  Movement caught his eye. Looking down in front of him, he saw the pieces reassembling themselves! Scared out of his wits, he threw himself out of bed, but then stood and stared at them as his heart pounded in his chest, his gut turned to ice, and his hair stood on end.

  It was only then that he realized he was in major trouble.

  After lunch, Differel took the Girls to the gymnasium to give them a rapier dueling lesson. As usual, they acted like their typical carefree selves, giggling and playing even as she tried to drum the basics into their air-heads.

  "Eile, move your feet! Sunny, keep your blade up!"

  "Ha! En garde, ya bimbo!" Eile said as she lunged at her partner.

  "Touche away, you blackguard!" Sunny replied as she parried and lunged back.

  "All right, enough! Stand down." She waited until she had their attention. "Look, I understand you two think this is grand fun, but if you're going to learn how to do it right you have to master the basics."

  "I thought we had those down cold!" Sunny said.

  "Yes and no. You run the drills well enough, but when you spar it all seems to go right out of your heads. So we're going to run some sparring drills. Now, watch what I do." She took a fighting stance and made ready to go through a series of moves, when she heard a bell tolling. Puzzled, she relaxed and looked around, trying to focus on its source. From the way they cocked their heads, she knew the Girls heard it as well.

  "I didn't know you had a bell!" Sunny squeaked. Her penchant for stating the blindingly obvious could be pretty annoying, but in that case she was way off the mark.

  "I don't."

  They glanced at each with expressions that mixed surprise and puzzlement. "Then where's it comin' from," Eile asked, "Denver?"

  "Maybe Downham Market," Sunny said.

  She shook her head. "Both are much too far away for even the loudest bells to be heard here on the estate."

  "So what's going on?" Eile pressed.

  "I really don't know, but I doubt it's anything important." Having said that, she nonetheless assumed it was significant; anything so inexplicable had to be.

  Vlad practically burst through of the floor, and stepped out of the cloud of shadow with a thunderclap, startling all of them.

  "Bloody hell, Thrall, what's gotten into you?!"

  "Master!" The sight of him agitated, even anxious, caused her heart to stutter. "I recognize the sound. It is the bell that announces the impending arrival of the Cenobites!"

  Her mind skipped a track. "Merciful God! That means--"

  "Someone inside the manor has opened a Lemarchand box, most likely the dreaded Lament Configuration."

  For a moment she went numb. If true, the implications were nothing short of apocalyptic. Then her training took over. She pulled out her cell phone and activated the walkie-talkie feature.

  "Mr. Holt, come in."

  After a few moments: "Holt here; go ahead, Mum."

  "Place the house on alert for an imminent Cenobite incursion."

  There was a shocked pause, then: "Yes, Director, immediately!"

  "What's goin' on--" Eile said as Differel put the phone away, but she was interrupted by a house-wide address.

  "Attention! This is Master Sergeant Holt. All guard units on full alert. Prepare for an imminent incursion. All staff evacuate immediately. Assemble in the parking lot for transport to the troop compound. Senior staff coordinate with me. Holt out."

  She stared at Vlad, dreading her next order, but it had to be done. "Stand ready. When the Cenobites come through, you will be the first to confront them."

  He returned a grim visage, but he bowed. "Yes, My Master." He then dissolved into shadow and faded away. As if that was itself a signal, the bell ceased tolling.

  She glanced at the Girls, torn between ordering them back to the States and asking for their help, but as she debated with herself she realized she would rather have them at her back than an entire SAS troop in full battle gear.

  "You two come with me." And she headed for the locker room.

  They sprinted to keep pace. "Just what the freakin' hell's going on anyways?!" Eile asked.

  "Yeah, what's this 'lament configuration'?"

  Once inside she began to change out of her dueling outfit as the Girls emulated her. There wouldn't be time for a shower, but they hadn't had time to work up a sweat. "The Lament Configuration is a type of Lemarchand box. They were a series of puzzle boxes created by Philip Lemarchand, a maker of mechanical toys and singing birds back in 18th century France. Solving them opens temporary portals to other planes of existence and creates bridges across the Schism, linking these realms with Earth. The most infamous and dreadful is known as the Lament Configuration, because it opens onto a plane of endless pain and suffering some call Hell. This realm is ruled by the Cenobites, former victims of the box who have such dark souls that they become part of the plane itself. Fortunately, they can only cross over just long enough to claim the person who solved the puzzle, and they must return before the portal closes."

  "Well, forgive our ignorance," Eile said, "but it sounds like no one's in any real danger, as long as they've got nothin' ta do with that box."

  She finished tying her cravat and slipped on her jacket. "Unfortunately, I swore to protect my people, even from their own folly. I have to do whatever I can to save whoever solved that puzzle."

  She paused and looked at them, feeling trepidatious but hopeful. "I probably shouldn't ask this, but I could really use your help. I would appreciate it if you stayed until this situation has been resolved."

  They glanced at each other with big grins on their faces. "Are you kiddin'?" Eile said. "We wouldn't miss this for the world. Yeah, sure, we'll do whatever we can."

  "Onward t
o adventure!" Sunny shouted with the full force of her prodigious lung power. Differel winced, but grinned. She alone might just be enough to frighten the Cenobites back to Hell.

  As soon as the block fully reassembled itself, the tolling stopped. Apprehension crept over him; he knew something would happen, he just didn't know what. Then the room began to grow dark. He looked around at the lights. They didn't appear to grow dim; in fact, they seemed as bright as ever. Rather, the areas over which they cast their luminance shrank as the borders became more distinct and sharp. Beyond them, the room fell into shadow like it would at twilight when the sun had set but the sky was still bright.

  In that moment They appeared in his room. It wasn't like how Vlad emerged from shadow, or the affect of Dr. Mabuse's transporter machine. Quite literally one moment the room was empty, and next five beings stood in its center. The thing he noted first was the stench. Though not overpowering, it was enough to turn his stomach, and yet overlaid was the scent of vanilla, which partially mitigated but could not completely cover their foul, rotten odor. At almost the same time he spotted a blue phosphorescent glow that surrounded them like a mist.

  Their most horrific feature, however, was that each was deformed or mutilated in some hideous fashion. One was morbidly obese, with its face so swollen with fat that the wrinkles distorted and obscured its features. Another had a flap of skin covering its eyes while its disfigured mouth had the lips pulled back well away from the jaws and the