Prologue

A song as old as time coursed through the cavernous veins of the coal mine: the thunderous rain of hard leather on bare flesh, the choir of piercing wails and despairing cries; two strident melodies intertwined to form a single, inhumane tune.

It was an anthem of progress composed by vicious men brandishing vicious whips. It was a hymn to prosperity wrought from the labor of boys condemned to a tragically brief lifetime of brutal, naked servitude in the bowels of hell. It was an ode to a future built on the lash-stained backs of children whose futures had been sacrificed at the altar of the First Industrial Revolution.

Above all else, it was warning that every wretched young slave learned to heed sooner or later. A warning to keep their heads down and their starved, beaten and weary bodies moving at all costs, lest they draw the ire of the wardens.

Alas, the wardens were never short on reasons to make their unfortunate charges sing their blackened little lungs out. Any boy who gave into his exhaustion, even momentarily, would be whipped for slowing down, only to be whipped once more for invariably messing up in his rush to placate the men. Those who dared to beg for a mouthful of water or collapse midway through their sixteen-hour shift suffered even more for their insolence.

Still, there were those for whom the song was as much a beacon of hope as it was a harbinger of pain. Such was the case for Oscar, one of the mine's several hurriers – boys whose days were devoted to crawling through a series of cramped, constricting tunnels while dragging a cart full of freshly mined coal behind them.

Oscar feared the lash as much as any other slave; the numerous cuts and welts that perpetually adorned his malnourished frame and never truly ceased to ache gave him ample reason to. But the more time he spent in the stygian darkness and maddening silence of these tunnels, with a lonely, claustrophobic death always looming over his head, the more he found himself preferring the lash. Compared to the nerve-racking uncertainty that lurked in the tunnels, the pain of the lash seemed oddly comforting in its inevitability and mundanity.

Thus, after yet another arduous day surrounded by lifeless rock, slithering shadows, and the distant echoes of imagined voices, Oscar's heart leapt with cautious hope when a few, faint notes of the song wormed their way into the tunnels and reached his ears. He stopped for a moment to calm himself and catch his breath, which was no easy task with the thick candle that was strapped tightly into his mouth. And then the moment was over and he had to start moving again, for no one would excuse his tardiness where he was going.

He put his right elbow forth. Feeble candlelight pushed the darkness back. Left elbow. Chains tensed around the boy's chest and waist as they pulled at the cart, digging into flesh and bone. Right knee. The plug shifted uncomfortably inside him. Left knee. Well worn cart wheels came to life with a squeak.

Right elbow. Left elbow. His prepubescent body trembled and strained as it was forced to bear the crushing weight of the collar, chains and cart yet again. Every square inch of his skin was wet with muddy sweat from the infernal heat of the underground, and soaked strands of hair stuck to his forehead.

Right knee. Left knee. His stomach growled, painfully empty but for the hard-earned mouthful of cum it had received for breakfast. His overstretched jaw cried for relief from the waxen intruder, while dehydration tortured his tongue and throat.

Right, left, right, left, right… He thought back to those boys from a couple of hours ago. How they had dropped their pickaxes and rushed to kneel before that man with mouths wide open. How they had pressed against each other, competing for a gulp of warm piss to quench their thirst. And how he had looked on with impotent envy, as the man generously wet their waiting tongues.

Right, left, right, left… A bead of molten wax slipped off the candle and splattered onto the rock below, adding to the white trail that had formed over thousands of trips. Oscar looked at the candle with a fearful reverence. It was almost spent now, which meant the day was coming to a close at long last.

Right, left, right… The song was growing louder, closer. Oscar could make out some tearful pleas among the onslaught of wordless screams, howls, and squeals. The tunnel's exit revealed itself soon after, bathed in the dim glow of lantern light.

Right, left… Oscar's heart was beating like a drum, matching the terrifying tempo of the wardens' whips. The collar seemed to tighten around the boy's neck.

Right… He emerged into a sea of naked, dirty boys laboring – and singing – under the sadistic guidance of men in loincloths. Straight away, his ears rang with the unmistakable sound of a whip slicing through the cave's hot, stale air.

Craaaack!

Oscar's lungs expelled all the air inside them in one violent burst. He turned his head just in time to see another boy – a younger one, who still had a bit of meat on his bones – collapse to the floor, a fresh, fiery red stripe running from his shoulders down to the small of his back.

"Lazy! Fucking! Brat!" a man growled at the sobbing child, and each word was punctuated with another lash, another howl. "No one gives two shits that you're tired. Get back on your goddamn feet or I swear to God I'll flay the fucking skin off your worthless hide."

The inconsolable agony in the little boy's face pierced like a dagger through Oscar's chest, but he knew sympathy would be of no use to either of them. He scrambled to his feet without a second thought, not wanting to suffer the same fate. Wiry muscle tensed and shifted as he rose, skin gleaming with a mixture of sweat, dirt, dust, and coal. His rib cage expanded and contracted with each fatigued breath, throbbing painfully all the while. A prepubescent erection protruded obscenely from his hairless groin, the inevitable result of the ever-present plug inside him, and a little ball sack hung right beneath, pulled taut by the iron ring at its stem.

Having long shed any sense of modesty or dignity, Oscar grabbed the chain tethering him to his cart and began dragging it across the cavern, shamelessly letting his hard cocklet bob up and down along the way. Everywhere around him, the mine was replete with cruelty, but he had become quite adept at tuning out the awful music of his fellow slaves' suffering, and continued on his path. He only stopped once, when a glob of hot wax dripped onto his foot and briefly sent him into an erratic dance until the torturous heat had faded.

He arrived in front of a large, rail-mounted wagon, where the other hurriers were already unloading their cargo, while a bald man used his whip to keep them focused on their task. Oscar dug into his cart and produced a small pile of coal that was almost too big and slippery to hold, which he deposited into the wagon. He did this again and again, whittling down his cart's contents while earning himself more and more black stains on his hands and chest; stains that would likely go unwashed until one of the wardens picked him for a post-work fuck.

"Get the fuck on with it, brats," the bald man bellowed and swung his whip.

A muffled scream came from behind Oscar. Lumps of coal scattered across the ground. Oscar barely managed to avoid tripping over them and earning himself a taste of the lash. He went back to work, careful not to get tangled up with the whipped boy, who was frantically trying to collect the coal he had dropped.

Alas, in his desperation to evade the man's wrath, Oscar failed to notice another bead of freshly molten wax drip off the candle. The next thing he knew, a scorching heat had enveloped the tip of his hard cocklet and nothing else mattered anymore. He clutched his crotch, crumpling like paper, and howled into his gag.

The bald man snorted. "Stupid little whore burned its cock." He stepped towards Oscar at a leisurely pace, making no effort to comfort him. He raised his whip into the air and brought it crashing down on the back of the boy's thighs. Oscar jerked violently and sang at the top of his lungs. "Stand straight and hands behind your back, slut!"

In spite of the pain, or perhaps because of it, Oscar obeyed without a moment's hesitation; it was all he knew how to do anymore. His lean flesh was pulled taut over his rib cage as he assumed the desired position. His cocklet, now covered with hardened white wax and pitch black coal, was quickly deflating.

Eyes filled with tears, Oscar could only watch as the man's blurry figure loomed ominously over him. In one swift motion, the man had his hairless balls trapped in an iron grip, squeezing yet more tears and cries out of him. Oscar's knees trembled, but he kept still like he had been taught to.

"What on earth do you think you're doing, you dumb brute? You're here to work, not play with that little worm of yours," the man snarled, his foul breath seeping into the boy's nostrils, and gave the tight little ball sack a sharp twist.

Every muscle in Oscar's underfed form was visibly straining to abstain from shielding his crotch from the man's hand. He whimpered incoherently into his gag, desperately trying to apologize for his mistake.

"If I catch you touching yourself again, I'll whip that thing until it's fucking black and blue, you hear me?"

Oscar nodded anxiously and the man finally let go. The tension in the boy's overworked physique evaporated with an anguished sigh, only to flood back in all at once when the whip unexpectedly struck him across the chest, biting into his sternum and cutting into his right nipple.

"Get back to work, slut."

The man's voice rang in Oscar's ears while the boy sang a few more tortured notes. There was no respite for the hurting slave. Oscar sobbed softly as he started loading up on coal once more. He winced every single time his thighs brushed against his aching scrotum and every time the coal pressed against the whip mark on his chest, but he bit down on the candle and labored on.

Thanks to the mishap with the candle and the ensuing punishment, Oscar ended up being the last hurrier to finish his shift, leaving him all alone with the bald man. He towed his now empty cart and presented himself to the man, standing at attention with his head respectfully bowed.

The man blew the candle out, then gripped the boy's flaccid cock with a heartless laugh. "Dumb fucking slut," he muttered as he roughly scraped the hardened wax off the tip.

Oscar winced, but clenched his fists and made no move, glad that he wouldn't have to bear the discomfort of the candle's solidified residue any longer.

"That's better, isn't it?" the man asked, though they both knew he had no interest in Oscar's well-being, nor in that of any other slave. He reached behind Oscar's head and unfastened the strap holding the candle in place, then tossed the makeshift gag aside with the rest. "I bet you're thirsty."

"Sir, yes, sir," Oscar croaked, moving his jaw every which way in an effort to alleviate the excruciating stiffness that had set in hours ago.

The man pinched the boy's mouth open and spat into it. "Drink up. I want that cocksucking mouth of yours nice and moist."

Oscar swallowed eagerly, grateful for the opportunity to wet his parched mouth after so long. "Sir, thank you, sir."

"And I bet you're hungry too."

"Sir, yes, sir," Oscar replied without thinking, as a good slave ought to.

A wicked smirk formed on the man's face. His loincloth fell to the ground. "There you go. Best meal a boy whore like you could hope for."

Oscar dropped to his knees and opened his tired jaw wide to accept the thick, odorous cock that was dangling from the man's dense, dark bush. He ran his tongue round and round the mushroom-shaped head, picking up all the salty precum he could find. His stomach rumbled, mistaking the activity in the boy's mouth for a promise of food.

The man rested his hand on the slave's head. His grip was loose, applying no pressure whatsoever, but the gesture alone left the boy no room for error. Oscar pushed forward, swallowing more and more of the cock, until his nose pressed into the man's bush and he pulled back. A few moments later, the boy had settled into a steady rhythm, sliding his lips up and down the shaft and occasionally pausing to tend to the bulbous tip with his tongue.

The man made his satisfaction known with a number of grunts and moans. Soon, his cock began to harden and grow under the young slave's skillful ministrations, and the boy's mouth proved much too small for its full size. "What are you waiting for, slut? Use your damn throat."

Oscar obeyed, inhaling deeply though his nose before slowly impaling himself on the engorged prick. One inch [2.5 cm]. Two inches [5 cm]. Three[7.5 cm]. Four[10 cm]. He relaxed his throat as much as he could, suppressing the urge to gag. Five[12.5 cm]. Six[15 cm]. His nose pressed into the man's sweaty crotch.

"And keep it there."

Oscar was desperate to please the man, well aware of the consequences should he fail to do so, but his throat could only bear the fleshy intrusion for so long. He began gagging, and attempted to pull away. Six inches. Five. Fo- The hand on his head tightened its grip. Five inches. Six. And back into that dark bush.

A horrible, garbled noise emanated from the boy's stuffed mouth. Arms hovered impotently at his side, while terrified, pleading eyes looked up at the man, but failed to garner any sympathy. Before long, the boy was sputtering like a fish on dry land, each convulsion of his throat accompanied by a long, slimy string of spit that spilled out of his mouth and dangled from his chin before hitting the ground.

Only when Oscar's face was starting to turn blue beneath all the filth, tears and snot did the man relent. Six inches. Five. The man's cock glistened with spit as it slid out the boy's mouth. Two. One. The hand on Oscar's head let him go no further. Still on his knees, he coughed and gasped for air around the cock's head, until a firm nudge forced him to start all over again.

One, two, three, four, five, six. Then, six, five, four, three, two, one. And all over again, on and on, until the man finally lodged his pulsating prick into Oscar's throat and rewarded the hungry slave with another loud of salty, slimy semen.

"Don't go forgetting your manners now, slut."

Oscar knew exactly what was being asked of him and he did it without question. He licked the man's cock and balls clean from any leftover cum and spit, then crouched down and began kissing his feet. The man raised his big toe and the boy took it into his mouth, meekly sucking all the dirt and sweat off it.

That little display of gratitude seemed to mollify the man, and Oscar was at last untethered from the cart that had accompanied him all day long; the harness itself, of course, remained in place as had been the case since it had first been fitted onto him. He was then allowed to join the crowd of grimy, sweaty slaves huddled together outside the dining hall, waiting for the only reward they'd get for another day in the soul crushing, body breaking routines that were their lives.

The wait was even more unbearable now that the end was so clearly in sight and Oscar had no more work to keep him occupied. Nonetheless, he had come to enjoy these few minutes he got to spend waiting for his turn to quench his thirst and sate his hunger. He treasured the uncomfortable closeness, the feeling of other boys' muddy skin sticking to his own, the unanimous growling of their empty stomachs, the inevitable whimpers when someone inadvertently touched a fresh whip mark, even the occasional erection pressing into his flesh.

This was the only time of the day when he could just stand there; no orders to follow, no whip to hurt him, no cage to hold him. The only time he could, however briefly, fool himself into thinking he was a fisherman's son again, instead of a slave, and that he was waiting outside the kitchen with his siblings as their mother lovingly set the table and the scent of warm soup pervaded the air.

The starving, thirsting horde inched forward with every passing minute until Oscar got an unobstructed view of the dining hall. Despite its name, the dining hall was not, in fact, a room. It was a pair of wooden troughs, one filled with water, the other with gruel. A dozen or so nude boys were gathered on their hands and knees in front of each trough, with their faces buried in the trough's contents, while their plugged rears were raised in the air and displayed right alongside their dangling cocklets, ringed ball sacks and blackened soles. That was the only way the little slaves were allowed to eat and drink; yet another rule meticulously crafted to remind them of their subhuman status.

When his turn finally came, Oscar assumed the same position, squeezed between several other boys and dunked his head into the water, allowing the lukewarm liquid to relieve the heat of the mines. Then, he opened his mouth and greedily swallowed as much as he could, feeling as though life was flowing back into his drained body with every gulp.

The other boys dove in with just as much fervor, and before long, the water had been tinted with a muddy brown from all the grime washing off their faces. That, however, did little to dissuade them from drinking the trough dry, or from lapping up the moist wood with their tongues afterwards.

Next came feeding time. Twelve nude, ravenous boys crawled frantically to the second trough and watched with wide-eyed anticipation as it was flooded with the viscous, tasteless gruel that comprised their only guaranteed meal. "Eat up, pigs," the man in charge said and the boys immediately buried their faces into the questionable slop, as if they had become possessed by the gnawing voids in their stomachs.

The trough was emptied almost as fast as it had been filled, and the boys were ordered to clean up. Oscar turned to the blonde boy to his right and eagerly ran his tongue along every nook and cranny of the blonde's face, picking up every bit of gruel, dirt and snot he could find; to a perpetually hungry slave, even that revolting mixture was a treat. Once the blonde's face was spotless, Oscar pulled back, closed his eyes and let his fellow slave return the favor, savoring the intimate caress of the other boy's soft, moist tongue.

The whole process lasted only a couple of minutes, after which the boys were unceremoniously marched to the holding pens and carelessly crammed into the first cage that looked like it might fit them. As the door was shut and locked behind them, the boys squirmed and shuffled inside their little prison before collapsing into a shadowy heap of dirty, panting flesh. Oscar ended up resting his head on another boy's tummy and groin, with a little cock inches away from his face, while yet another boy was piled on top of him.

The men walked away, taking the light of their lanterns with them. The pens were plunged in impenetrable darkness and soothing silence. The dreadful song had died down at last, if only for the night. All that remained was the gentle, rhythmic breathing of young boys, interspersed with the occasional cough.

Oscar spent his last waking moments lying motionless and listening to that calming lullaby, while he reminisced about the family that had abandoned him and the home he would never see again. And, as he drifted into the blissful embrace of a dreamless slumber, his tormented soul joined the others in an unspoken prayer for freedom.

God did not hear them. But another did.

ACT 1: THE HEIR

Time was a vicious cycle from which there was no escape. Minutes had turned into hours, yet all Sam could see from his stiff, uncomfortable seat in the back of the car was the same old dreary countryside. Nothing but verdant valleys and hills, basking in the warmth of the early afternoon sun and sprinkled liberally with nigh identical clouds, trees, boulders and bushes. Each time they were arranged a little differently. Each time they looked exactly the same.

More than once, Sam had entertained the notion that they were lost and had indeed been driving in circles. On the one occasion, he had voiced that thought, however, his mother had responded with unconvincing reassurances that this was not the case, promptly followed by a suspicious glance at her smartphone's navigation app.

This summertime purgatory was merely the beginning of what should have been Sam's vacation; a thankless reward for a long, monotonous year in sixth grade. Desperate to escape in the only way he could, he stared vacantly at the window pane and let his unfailingly fertile imagination – fueled by movies and video games alike – paint the glass with the blissful imagery of distant shores, covered in fine sand and wet by crystalline, tropical waters.

A large umbrella erected from the sand, adorned with red and white stripes, and cast its soothing shade underneath. There, shielded from the vicious sunshine, a handful of boys in swimming trunks were talking and laughing among themselves. One of them – skinny little Gus – noticed Sam and beckoned to him with a goofy, endearing grin: "I'll race ya to the water!"

Before Sam could reach out to his friend and inevitably shatter the illusion, another row of dark green trees rocketed past the car. The vision in the window dissipated, like dust that was blown away by the wind. Sam exhaled his disappointment with a heavy, protracted sigh.

His mother looked up from the road and briefly adjusted the mirror to get a better view of her son's face, which was sprinkled with freckles and framed by his messy, strawberry blonde locks. "Everything okay back there?" she said.

"Yeah," Sam replied without an ounce of enthusiasm. The twelve-year-old had made his displeasure at having to undertake this trip abundantly clear over the last few days. Faking a sudden change of heart would have convinced no one, so he found no reason to bother trying.

"That's the spirit," his mother teased. "Need I remind you that you promised to give this trip a chance, mister?"

"No," Sam admitted reluctantly. "I'll try to look on the bright side. It's not every day you get to visit the house of an uncle you had never even heard of until he…" He pressed two fingers against his temple, cocked his thumb and pulled the trigger, only to shrug off the bullet with a wide, cheeky grin that exposed the dimple on his right cheek.

His mother said nothing. Instead, she put on an expression of surely exaggerated shock.

"What? You talk way too loud on the phone," Sam said. "And it's not like we have soundproof walls or something."

His mother rolled her eyes and, reluctantly, smiled. "If you were half as devoted to doing your homework as you are to being a smartass, maybe Mrs. Hudson would not have given you a C-."

Sam gulped loudly at the conversation's sudden swerve into the topic of his grades. It's not my fault that Mrs. Hudson feels the need to suck the fun out of every classroom she steps into, he would have liked to respond. Alas, experience had taught him that the longer he lingered on the topic, the deeper he would dig himself. "Jesus, mom," he said instead, channeling all his youthful theatricality into sounding genuinely offended. "My uncle just died and that's all you can think about? Show some respect!"

His mother stifled a chuckle. Sam knew that reaction all too well. It meant she found her son's comment grossly inappropriate and could hardly contain her pride at having raised the little creature that had uttered it. "I hope you'll be keeping your colorful commentary to yourself where we're going," she said shortly afterwards.

"Duh," Sam replied. "I'm not stupid." No friends and no colorful commentary… His eyes drifted to the cracked screen of his outdated, second hand smartphone. The signal indicator had shrunk down to three bars, out of the original five. And apparently no signal either. He leaned against the window, dejected, and sighed again.

Give this trip a chance, Sam, a mockery of his mother's voice insisted. It could be fun, Sam. Yet as foul as his mood was, Sam kept his bitter thoughts to himself. He understood that this was no more his mother's choice than it was his own. Ever since his father's passing, she had shouldered the burden of raising Sam all on her own. The allegedly vast fortune of this mysterious uncle could be her chance to finally ease that burden, and a few weeks in an isolated house was a small price to pay for that opportunity. Not that the sixth-grader would ever admit it.

"Good, cause we should be there in… about thirty minutes. Forty minutes tops."

"Yay," Sam replied, halfheartedly pumping his fist into the air. He checked his phone again, just in time to witness his signal weaken by yet another bar. Three down, two to go.

***

Lush green pastures faded into drab expanses of dried mud, withered grass and skeletal trees. Smooth asphalt gave way to coarse, uneven dirt. But the car soldiered on, groaning with every sputter of its aging engine and every bump of the untamed road.

Sam had told himself that he would have welcomed any change of scenery, but he had clearly not considered the possibility that his metaphorical purgatory might segue into this rather more literal hell. Thankfully, the vague outline that was slowly emerging from the horizon gave him a semblance of hope that his journey would soon be coming to an end.

He checked his phone again; an almost reflexive habit that, like many of his peers, he could not shake off. The garish, tastelessly intricate clock on the lock screen – which the tween held up as the pinnacle of graphical design – struck twenty three past four behind the cracked glass. His mother's estimate was now off by around two minutes and counting.

The outline, once a mere scribble in the distance, grew in size and clarity with each passing moment. By the time the car rode past what appeared to be a collapsed cave entrance, the scribble had sprouted into a massive manor guarded by imposing walls of cracked, overgrown stone. Having lived most of his life in a cramped city apartment, Sam could not help but stare in wide-eyed wonder.

The car stopped just a few meters away from the entrance. Sam hopped out and started stretching the soreness of the long drive away without missing a beat. The summer was still young and the sun had yet to become unbearably hot, so he was dressed in blue denim shorts and bright yellow, sleeveless hoodie, which made for a pleasantly tight fight on his slim, athletic physique. His outfit was complete by a pair of formerly white sneakers.

"Sam, honey, I don't think the luggage is gonna grow legs and stroll up on the front door on its own," his mother called to him, already unloading the contents of the car's trunk.

Sam, however, was presently occupied with folding his right leg until its heel was pressed against his butt. "Did you try saying 'abra cadabra' in a deep voice?" he replied, then moved onto the other leg. His shot at comedy failed to garner any applause. "Yeeesh, I'm coming, I'm coming." He walked up to the trunk and grabbed his share of the luggage. "Piece of-" He slipped the strap over his shoulders. "-cake," he finished with a strained smile. He followed his mother to the front gate, trying not to huff and puff too much along the way, and dropped his cargo on the ground.

The gate was an ominous, ornate contraption of raven black iron. A crest in the shape of an eight-pointed star sat at its center, split evenly between the gate's two halves. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here, Sam imagined an excessively deep voice declaring; a momentary daydream that nonetheless etched a soft, playful smirk on his face.

His mother, meanwhile, went ahead and pressed the big, round button mounted on the nearest wall. It produced an awful, high-pitched electric buzz to let her know it worked. "Here we are," she said gravely, and it wasn't entirely clear whether she was talking to Sam or to herself. "Remember," she turned to Sam, "no joking around. Your dad's family hates us enough already." Putting on a gentle smile, she reached out to ruffle her son's hair. "Okay?"

"Yeah," Sam replied and swatted his mother's hand away as though it were a particularly pestilent fly. He could look past the somewhat patronizing question, but believed himself too old to leave the assault on his hair unanswered, at least in public.

"Message received," his mother said, looking quite amused by his childish rebuff.

Sam stepped forward and pressed his face between the gate's bars. His eyes followed the wide, cobblestone road on the other side all the way to the steps of the manor, then climbed up the building itself.

"You didn't tell me my uncle's house was this frigging huge," he noted. The manor was, in fact, nothing sort of gargantuan; a word that Sam had never heard, let alone used, before, but the meaning of which he was now beginning to grasp.

"Would you have believed me if I had?" his mother asked back.

"I guess not," Sam admitted after a short bout of stubborn silence. He could hardly believe it now, when he was staring right at the manor. Just as he could hardly believe that the existence of this immeasurably rich relative had been kept from him for so long. Even knowing that there was no love lost between the two sides of his family, he could simply not comprehend how that had not come up even once.

Sensing that his mother would not have the answers he was seeking, Sam changed course and tried to study the manor more closely; as close as the distance would allow, that is. He quickly surmised that that the manor's sheer size was the only thing that was remotely impressive about it. The building itself was old and neglected, with ivy growing unchecked along its walls and more than half of its numerous windows sealed with ugly planks of semi-rotten wood.

The rest of the estate had succumbed to a similar degree of decrepitude. Besides the cobblestone road itself, the land was overrun with weeds. Half the shrubberies had grown into bloated, unkempt chunks of green, while the rest had withered away, and ornate ceramic pots loitered around, holding only barren soil, if even that.

The gate split in two with a deafening screech. At the other end of the cobblestone road, the manor's front door opened as well, and a dark figure emerged from it. Sam retrieved his luggage and joined his mother in marching towards the manor, and whoever awaited them there.

As they drew closer, Sam was able to discern more and more of the figure's features. It was a slim, middle-aged woman in an austere, black dress that looked as though it had been plucked out of another century. The woman herself was stiff as a statue, standing inside the door's frame with her wrists crossed in front of her waist. Her face was sharp and severe, adorned with a pair of small, round glasses that sat uncomfortably close to her eyes. Her hair was kept in a plain, utilitarian bun and made a meager attempt to liven up her looks with a splash of rust red, but even that was marred by a prominent gray stripe on the left side.

"Hello, I'm Olivia Bennett," Sam's mother said, offering her hand to the older woman. "I'm- I was William's-"

The woman in black did not reciprocate the gesture, seeming content to merely scrutinize Olivia from behind her lenses. "Yes," she replied, her voice soft like shattered glass, "I have been expecting you for quite some time now."

Olivia stared at her for a few awkward seconds, before finally retracting her hand. "Right, sorry to keep you waiting," she replied graciously, pulling off a reasonably convincing impression of someone who was not irked by the ice cold welcome. She put her hand on Sam's shoulder and nudged him forward. "This is-"

"Samuel," the woman in black cut her off again. "I am well aware." Her face softened into a restrained smile and her muted green eyes regarded Sam with the sort of fondness typically reserved for personal effects tragically misplaced and triumphantly recovered.

"Um, hello," Sam said meekly. He wanted nothing more than to shrink behind his mother, out of the strange woman's sights, but something compelled him to stay put, transfixed by those muted green eyes. Why the hell is she looking at me like that? He wondered briefly if this was another distant relative he had yet to be informed about, but he was supposed to be his uncle's last of kin, so that possibility was not on the table.

"It is good to have you here at last, Samuel." The woman's voice momentarily wavered with a tinge of warmth that had been sorely lacking up to that point, but was too little and too late to make her seem more welcoming. "Right where you belong," she added pointedly.

Where I belong? Sam had never devoted much, if any, thought to that particular question, but he was quite certain that a decrepit manor in the middle of nowhere was not the right answer. He wasn't too fond of the woman's insistence on calling him 'Samuel' either; it made him feel like he was about to be given detention.

The woman stepped back and freed Sam from her captivating gaze. Her smile vanished without a trace, if it had ever been there to begin with. "Welcome to Greenwood Manor."

Greenwood. That name lay at the root of all of Sam's problems, and all of his questions. It had been the name of his mysterious uncle, but not the name of his father, and it was certainly not his own name either; that would be Thorne. Yet those two men, who had borne different names and – seemingly – lived worlds apart, had been brothers. It was a perplexing paradox that Sam had been pondering on and off for several days now, to no avail, while his mother refused to provide anything more than vague references to his father having a complicated relationship with the rest of his family.

"My name is Eleanor Harker," the woman continued, "and, by the cruel decree of fate, I shall be your host." She beckoned the pair in with a curt gesture and closed the door behind them.

The manor somehow managed to look even bigger on the inside, though perhaps that was merely an impression created by the sheer awe that flooded Sam's mind. The entrance hall was decorated with delicate, gaudy furniture crafted from mahogany and ivory, complete with miniature drawers that were clearly not meant to be opened, and paintings of fantastical landscapes that contrasted starkly with the decadence lurking just outside the door. The floor was composed of checkered, black and white marble, and draped with an embroidered, velvet red carpet, while an ostentatious chandelier hang from the ceiling. And straight ahead, the hallway split into three paths, one headed towards the left, another towards the right, and the last one twisting up the stairs to the second floor.

"You may leave your luggage here," Ms. Harker pointed to a conveniently empty corner. "Ms. Murray will be here to take them to your rooms shortly."

"Ms. Murray?" Sam blurted out, as young boys with a healthy sense of curiosity are known to do at the worst of times. "Who's that?"

"That, Samuel, would be the maid," the woman explained.

"Oh." Eager to be rid of the weight he slammed his luggage on the floor without a second thought, while trying to wrap his head around the novelty of having a maid at his beck and call. I wonder if my uncle had some grizzled, old butler too.

Ms. Harker turned to Olivia, who had just deposited her suitcase and backpack. "It sounds like you had a long and grueling journey. Perhaps you ought to get some rest. The ceremony is not slated to commence for a few more hours." This newfound concern for Olivia's well-being was an undeniable improvement over the dismissive attitude that had been previously displayed, but even Sam could see past the veneer of shallow politeness.

"Uh, yeah," Olivia replied. "That would be great."

"Excellent," Ms. Harker said, though her expression and cadence failed to reflect her stated enthusiasm. "What about you, Samuel?"

His sudden return to the spotlight caught Sam off-guard and he could only stammer a couple of syllables in response. "I'm f-fine," he managed at last. "Not tired, I mean." It was rare for a twelve-year-old boy like Sam to run out of energy, and rarer still for him to admit it. He always despised wasting precious time on something as uneventful as sleep; not when he could be hanging out with his friends or playing video games or, in this case, exploring every nook and cranny of the manor.

He was, however, quite hungry, and his hunger had been growing steadily over the past two hours or so. "But, um…" Finishing the sentence proved easier said than done, on account of Ms. Harker's steely gaze piercing through his flesh like a nail. So, he resorted to gently – but not very discreetly – nudging his mother with his elbow.

"Oh." Olivia exclaimed not too long after. "Right, yeah," she whispered, then looked to Ms. Harker. "Is there any chance Sam could get something to eat? He, uh, skipped lunch today."

Sam would not have put it past his mother to explain – in excruciating, embarrassing detail – how he had violently expelled his lunch in the middle of the trip. Had that come to pass, he would have quickly pointed out that they had been on a mountain road with numerous sharp and nauseating turns. That this ultimately proved unnecessary was a great relief.

Ms. Harker parted her lips ever so slightly, as though she had just uttered the world's quietest gasp. "Surely, I need not remind you that it is well past lunch time," she replied pointedly. "But," her eyes wandered over to Sam again, "I suppose I could ask the chef to prepare a light meal."

And with that, the matter was settled. Ms. Harker would escort Sam to the dining room, before going off to speak to the chef, while Olivia would wait by the luggage for the maid to come and show her to her bedroom.

"Right this way," Ms. Harker said. She led Sam down a long, dusky hallway lined with doors of finely carved wood and portraits of people in fancy, antiquated attire; people who most likely lived, and died, a very long time ago. They walked together in uneasy silence, interrupted only by the sounds of their feet and Sam's grumbling stomach, until they arrived before the large door at the hallway's leftmost end.

Ms. Harker pushed one half of the door open and wordlessly ushered Sam in. The room on the other side was vast, and replete with soothing sunlight from the tall, arched windows that lined its walls. At the center, beneath a trio of identical chandeliers, stood a long, rectangular table that was adorned with a green, velvet cloth and vases of mostly wilted flowers, and framed by an array of matching, cushioned chairs.

Sam took his first few steps into the room. Fuck. This room alone is as big as our apartment. He wandered towards the nearest window and peered into the back garden; it appeared to be in better shape than the front, without weeds and properly trimmed shrubberies.

He would have stood there, taking in the view, had it not been for the creeping realization that Ms. Harker was still there; stiff, unreadable and studying her young guest with that same, chilling stare she had employed at the steps of the manor. Only, this time, Sam did not have his mother around to shield him from the undesired attention.

He attempted to diffuse the tension and unease by putting on his best cocky smirk. "Um, miss?" he said. "Is everything okay?"

The woman snapped out of her self-inflicted trance and hurried to pick up the pieces of her shattered composure. "Forgive me," she said, sounding almost human for a change. "I fear I am growing sentimental in my old age. And seeing that face again, after all this time, it… it is quite overwhelming."

"Uh… I'm pretty sure we haven't met before," Sam pointed out.

"I suppose not. But you do bear an uncanny resemblance to your father. When he was your age, that is. You even have the same dimple on your right cheek."

Sam's hand reflexively reached up and fumbled around the spot in question. "Wait. Hold on a sec. Y-You knew my dad?" he said, no longer minding the woman's continued presence all of a sudden.

"I knew a great many people who are now gone," she replied somberly. Then, she adjusted her glasses and ostensibly reverted to her previous, frigid demeanor. "This is neither the time nor place for such grim conversation. I shall go and speak to the chef. Make yourself at home, Samuel." The woman offered one last, halfhearted smile and disappeared behind the closing door, leaving Sam alone with his many, unanswered questions.

No one fucking tells me anything these days. He looked at the table and pondered his options. Naturally, his eyes were drawn to the solitary chair at the very end of the table. The lord's seat.

But he feared that picking that specific seat after only ten minutes in the manor would not have made for a great first impression. Thus, he settled on the seat right next to it instead; it felt more appropriate for a guest and would still be unobstructed on one side.

He reached into his pocket and fished out his smartphone, hoping to find something to watch on YouTube; something to distract him from his growling stomach. No signal. Great. It was hardly an unexpected development at this point, but that made it no less disappointing. Considerably more surprising – and far more devastating – was the discovery that the manor did not appear to have any sort of Wi-Fi either, at least not in this area.

"Well, that's just fucking great," Sam muttered under his breath, strangely conscious of being heard swearing, even though there was not a single soul within earshot.

But wait, it gets better, a bombastic anchorman who inhabited the twelve-year-old's head announced. Not only had Sam's phone lost any connectivity, it had also somehow lost track of time and was now claiming it was New Year's Day… on the year 1847. Fortunately, Sam was fairly handy with technology and this proved to be little more than an inconvenience that was promptly resolved with a quick dip into the settings menu.

Piece of cake, the anchorman bellowed, before exiting the stage. Mmm, piece of cake… Sam's stomach rumbled, growing more impatient by the moment. I wouldn't say 'no' to a piece of cake right now. Especially if it has, like, molten chocolate poured all over it. He licked his lips at the delicious mental imagery, then groaned and planted his face onto the table.

***

An eternity had come and gone in the sobering solitude of the dining room. An eternity plagued by gnawing questions that buzzed like flies inside Sam's head. Who was this woman, and how did she know his father, as a child no less? If his father came from such wealth, then why had Sam and his mother never seen so much as a penny of it? Why was the food taking so long to arrive? And what kind of food would it be? They weren't making him peas or something, right?

A knock on the door put all those questions to rest, for the time being. Sam raised his head and stared quizzically at the door, while his mind readjusted to reality following its atypically long period of introspection. Another knock. "Um, y-yes?" Sam croaked. He cleared his throat and tried again, louder and clearer. "Come in."

The door swung open. A young woman entered the room, pushing a silver cart with a matching dome at the top. "Sir, I have brought you your meal," she said in a remarkably flat tone, as though she was mentally counting down the seconds until her shift's end.

The woman was dressed in the white apron and conservative, black dress that comic books and films had conditioned Sam to associate with maids. But as she approached, the illusion of a model maid began to crack. Despite her evident youth, the woman's face was deathly pale, save for her pitch black lips and eye shadow. Her hair, which was a similar dark hue, had been cut short, which worked with her slim frame to give her an almost boyish look. Moreover, her ears and nose were adorned with an assortment of subtle, silver piercings that contrasted greatly with her prim and proper attire.

She stopped right next to Sam, placed her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow at him. "I take it you're Samuel," she said.

"Uh, yeah," Sam replied. He was not sure what to make of the woman's aloof demeanor, but he was certainly not becoming any more partial to people calling him 'Samuel'.

"Huh," the woman shrugged. "I figured Mr. Greenwood's nephew would have been older than…" She waved her hand aimlessly in Sam's general direction. "… this." The lack of any manner of inflection made it difficult to tell whether she was genuinely disappointed, or merely abysmal at making small talk.

"Um, sorry?" Sam said, flashing an uneasy smile.

The woman smirked, painting the paper white of her face with a warm, invisible color. It dawned on Sam that she did, in fact, have quite a pleasant face, once one looked past the unnatural pallor. "Don't be," she said, that warm, invisible color now seeping into her voice. "Better a kid than another fat, old fart."

Sam was taken aback by the woman's bold choice of words, which only served to amplify the impression that she did not belong in this dour, old-fashioned place; not any more than he did, really.

"Plus, I guess you look kinda cute, so there's that," she added nonchalantly.

It was now Sam's turn to change color. In his case, though, that color was a terribly visible beet red. A confident and outgoing boy, Sam had always been vaguely aware of his good looks, but in no way was he prepared – at the age of twelve – to be called 'cute' by a young woman who fit that descriptor quite nicely herself. He tried his best to form some kind of response, but in the end settled for sitting there and watching as the women set the table.

"Hope you like mac 'n' cheese," she said, unveiling the dish and placing it down before Sam, who had forgotten all about his hunger.

"Y-Yeah, I do," Sam replied, latching onto the changed subject like his life depended on it. "Thank you."

"Why, you're welcome." The woman's smirk grew into a full, teasing smile. "Anything else I can do for you, sir?"

Being called 'sir' filled Sam with all sorts of feeling that he did not know the words for. "No, th-" he began to say, only to realize that there was, in fact, a matter of the utmost urgency that he needed help with. "Is there, like, any way to connect to the internet here? Like, Wi-Fi or something? I can't get any signal on my phone."

"Yeah, I wish," the woman snorted. "Signal has always been wack around here. Same with internet, really. Your uncle was… let's just say he was not big on tech, so this place is a few decades behind on these matters. Hell, I bet my iPod was the most sophisticated machine he ever saw."

The woman's words fell on Sam like a ton of bricks. No phone calls. No internet. For three. Whole. Fucking. Weeks. He prepared to release a loud groan, only to remember his begrudging promise to give the place a chance. "So, uh, what is there to do around here then?" he asked reluctantly, already convinced that the answer would not be to his liking.

"Hmmm." The woman placed her hand on her chin and fell into a thoughtful silence. "We do have a pretty extensive library," she said eventually, confirming Sam's suspicions. His face must have given his opinion on books away, for the woman appeared to rush to the very next suggestion. "We also have a huge garden. Worst case scenario, you can kick a football against a wall, though I'm not sure we have any footballs either."

Sam let out a sigh.

"Or," the woman perked up, "if you're lucky like me, you have Elle to keep you busy."

"Elle?" Sam asked.

"That's my nickname for Ms. Harker."

"Oh." Elle for Eleanor. "Ms. Harker didn't strike me as the type to like nicknames."

"You're damn right, she's not," she laughed. Her laughter spread to Sam in a matter of moments. Right after, she put on an exaggerated pout. "But you're not gonna tell on me now, are you?"

"N-no," Sam said, all red and flustered. "Promise." Ms. Harker should probably learn not to be so serious all the time, anyway…

"Thanks," she said. "Tell you what. If you're well-behaved, I might let you borrow my iPod. Beats reading those dusty, old books, doesn't it?"

Sam's face lit up. These were probably the first good news he had received all day. "Yeah, it sure does. What music you got?"

"What do you think?"

"Well, you don't look like a Mozart kinda person," Sam replied. "So I'm gonna go with, um… rock, maybe?"

"There's… a bit of that in there too, I guess. Most of it is some kind of metal though. I thought the piercings and whatnot would have given it away."

"Oh." Sam was not especially familiar with the genre, as his few forays into it had given him the impression he was listening to a choir of screeching wildcats. The young maid's charm and attractiveness, however, would never in a million years allow him to voice that opinion. "That sounds cool," he said.

"Finally," the woman groaned, "someone with good taste. I thought the day would never come. But anyway, I gotta go. Got places to be and, unfortunately, work to do."

"Okay," Sam said, trying to conceal his disappointment.

"See you around," the woman said with a playful smirk. She pushed her cart towards the door. "By the way," she stopped right inside the frame, "the name's Charlotte."

"Nice to meet you, Charlotte," Sam beamed. "Mine's Sam."

Charlotte laughed softly, but said nothing else, letting the embarrassing realization sink in unaided. Mercifully, she was already gone by the time that happened, leaving Sam to contend only with his own, mortifying thoughts.

Mine's Sam. Idiot. He wished quietly that the earth would just open up and swallow him right where he sat. When his wish went unheard, he turned his attention to the bowl of fresh, mouthwatering mac 'n' cheese in front of him and dug in, hoping his meal would outlast his shame.

***

Eerie stillness and unnerving quiet permeated the hallway, not a soul in sight. Sam clenched the bowl and crumpled table cloth in his hands, awash with an inexplicable and inescapable sense of vulnerability and dread as he stared down the long corridor.

He had finished his meal in a fraction of the time it had taken to prepare it, but the maid was nowhere to be seen, and his upbringing demanded that he pick up after himself. Thus, he had decided to leave behind the comfort of the dining room and venture out into the dim, lifeless hallway in search of the kitchen.

He started walking at a slow, uncertain pace, not unlike a prisoner marching towards his execution. But though the path ahead was devoid of life, Sam was not truly alone. The men and women trapped inside the portraits hanging from the walls were there as well, observing his every step with sinister intent. Ancestors, most likely, who had long crumbled to dust.

Sam cast his gaze down at the checkered, marble floor and trod on, but even so he could feel their soulless eyes on him. He could sense them judging him: the descendant who had come to their home an outsider, and who would always remain as such. Worst of all, he could hear them whispering behind back. Only it was not a whisper exactly. It was quieter than that, barely more than a thought; one that clung like a disease to the back of his mind.

He stopped and surveyed his surroundings. Though he was too old to actually believe that paintings could talk, nonetheless he couldn't ignore that nearly imperceptible noise that had wormed its way into his ears. And yet, his survey yielded no results. Everything was still, everything was quiet, just as it had always been.

With no other leads to follow up on, Sam took a gamble and approached the nearest door. Whispers, I knew it. Impossible to decipher, but clear as day, emanating from behind that door. Maybe they'll point me to the kitchen. He drew closer and hesitantly raised his fist to knock. The whispers droned on, composed of two starkly different pitches; one low and heavy, the other high and light.

Sam took a deep breath, cleared his throat and knocked. Once. Twice. The lower voice exploded with a fiery intensity, even as it remained too faint to comprehend. Sam flinched away from the door, his heart beating just a little bit faster.

Maybe this is not a good time. He was about to move on, when the higher voice trembled and cried, inadvertently inviting Sam's youthful curiosity. His hand found its way to the cold, rusted iron handle and gripped it tight, but ultimately failed to turn it. Whether that was because his fear of getting entangled in whatever was transpiring behind that door overpowered his curiosity, or simply because the rust had corroded the handle into uselessness, was not possible to tell.

Leaving the whispers to their own devices, Sam resumed his journey among the watchful portraits. Eventually, he made it past the entrance, which marked the corridor's midway point, and arrived before a door labeled 'K TCHEN'.

Well, what do you know. There is no 'I' in 'K TCHEN' after all. Sam giggled softly at his unspoken joke, probably deeming himself a much greater comedian than he truly was. He knocked, but received no answer. His reluctance somewhat alleviated by the absence of any battling voices, he went ahead and opened the door.

In spite of the dim first impression created by the door, the kitchen turned out to be in a rather immaculate state, especially compared to some other parts of the manor. Spotless tiles of stark white and ocean blue were arranged diagonally on the floor, while the walls were lined with counters, cupboards and drawers made out of maple wood. The windows, of which there were three, were much closer in size to the ones found in Sam's home back in the city, yet they proved more than sufficient in inundating the ample room with pleasant, natural light.

"Hello?" No response. For how massive the place was, Sam was beginning to notice that it was rather empty. He made a beeline for the sink and added his bowl and fork to the pile of dirty dishes. "Guess I'll just leave these here then," he mused out loud. Next, he folded the table cloth and left it on the counter; he would have put it in one of the drawers, but he hadn't the faintest clue which one it should go into, and he reckoned it would be awfully indiscreet to rummage through them one by one.

All of a sudden, a sharp, loud noise echoed through the room, like the slam of a falling blade. Startled, Sam snapped around and saw a door made of heavy, reinforced metal in the far corner of the room, which he had somehow missed previously. "H-Hello?"

The blade dropped again, as if it were responding to Sam's call. The heavy door opened slowly with a low, sustained groan, exhaling its frosty white breath into the kitchen along with a muttered litany of exasperated phrases in a language Sam could not comprehend.

A towering silhouette emerged from the arctic mist, wearing a snow white apron stained with blood red splotches. Stepping out into the kitchen, the silhouette revealed itself as a man well into his thirties, with dark olive skin and a closely shaved head. "What now?" The man spoke softly, but made no attempt to conceal his vexation. His voice was deep, yet smooth; a stark contrast to his harsh, scowling face and the gruesome scar that ran along its side, stretching from the tip of his eyebrow all the way down to his square jaw.

"S-Sorry." Sam stumbled backwards, until his butt pressed against the counter, while his eyes kept darting back and forth between the man's scathing glare and his bloodied apron. "I w-was just bringing my dish back."

At first, the man simply stood there, silent and still, not acknowledging Sam's stammered apology. After a few torturous moments, however, his scowl began to relax and his shoulders dropped. "You must be Richard's nephew. Samuel, right?"

"Uh, it's Sam, actually," the sixth-grader blurted out, emboldened by the man's now slightly less menacing demeanor. "But y-yeah." At least that's what everyone keeps telling me.

The man looked Sam in the eye with a sorrowful expression. "I'm sorry for your loss," he said. "Your uncle was a good man. He deserved better than this."

The man's comforting words imbued Sam with a deep sense of discomfort. Though they shared the same blood, Richard Greenwood had never been anything more than a name on a slip of paper to Sam. Subsequently, the man's death was as insignificant to Sam as his life had been. It felt terribly wrong to garner sympathy for a nonexistent loss, but the seconds were slipping by, and Sam did not want to appear impolite. "Th-Thanks."

The moment lingered for a more seconds, then the man turned to leave through the same door he had arrived, while Sam looked on, frozen in place. "Will there be anything else?" the man said.

"H-Huh? What do you mean?"

"I've a kitchen to run, kid," the man explained. "And I could do without some kid getting in my way. So unless you have a good reason to be here, you better move on."

Sam gulped. "Oh, uh, s-sorry," he said. He marched towards the exit with the man's eyes undoubtedly glued on his back, until he was struck by a delayed realization. He must have been close to my uncle, if he's calling him Richard. He stopped and turned around. He was met with a fierce, expectant glare that told him he had better pick his next words carefully.

Fortunately, Sam was not about to let this opportunity to learn more about his mysterious uncle slip by without a fight. He inhaled, mustered all his boyish bravery and stared right back at the man. "What if I help?"

"I beg your pardon?" the man raised his eyebrow.

"If you let me stay, I can help," Sam said resolutely. "I know how to cook pasta and eggs," he declared with undue pride, "and I bet I can do a bunch more stuff if you tell me how. I won't get in your way."

"This ain't no playground, kid," the man said. His hand reached for the bulky handle of the reinforced metal door and clenched it so tightly, it looked as though he was about to rip it clean off at a moment's notice. Instead, he snorted and turned the handle with a sharp, brutish motion, producing a crack that could just as easily have come from an unfortunate person's spine. "You can do the dishes," he said at last and disappeared into what seemed to be a walk-in freezer.

"Sure thing," Sam replied, albeit too late to be heard. His plan to remain in the same room as the man was off to a rocky start, but it was a start nonetheless, so he returned to the sink and got to work. He had washed dishes once or twice before, but the pile of kitchenware that erected from the sink dwarfed the ones he had seen before, even if it was still rather unassuming for a manor this big.

It took him somewhere around fifteen minutes to wash all the dishes, glasses and utensils, and set them aside to dry. By that point, the man had come back out of the freezer and, without uttering a single word, had deposited a plate full of raw meat besides the sink, before commencing work on something that evidently involved a great number of eggs and a lot of flour; Sam couldn't tell what exactly that was, however, for the man's colossal frame was blocking the view.

"I'm done," Sam announced while wiping his hands dry on a nearby towel. "What's next?"

The man froze. His muscular physique tensed briefly beneath his skin-tight black shirt, then loosened again with an annoyed sigh. "Next," he said pointedly, "you can wash the steaks I left there."

Sam took one look at the stack of raw, glistening meats and decided that he was already about as close to it as he ever wanted to be. If he were to quit now, however, he knew that the last fifteen minutes of dish washing would go to waste, and he would get no answers out of the man. Thus, he put on a cocky smile, mostly for his own benefit, and went back to work. "Consider it done."

Fashioning his hand into a claw, he grabbed the topmost steak with his fingertips to minimize the contact between his skin and the raw, revolting flesh. Then, with a grimace permanently etched onto his face, he dangled the steak beneath the faucet and turned the water on.

"Say, uh, you didn't tell me your name," he said, asking as much out of genuine curiosity as he was out of a need to distract himself from his stomach-churning work.

"Chef," the man answered curtly, nipping the nascent conversation in the bud.

The razor sharp reply dissuaded Sam from making another attempt to converse for a short time, but eventually – sometime around the third or fourth steak – the sixth-grader was ready to give it another shot. "So, uh, my uncle… what was he like?"

"Haven't I told you already?" the man said, his voice dripping with annoyance, until suddenly it wasn't. "Richard was a good man. Better than he had any need to be, what with all that money he had coming out his ass."

"Yeah, okay, he was a good man," Sam pressed as he moved onto the next steak, "but that still doesn't tell much anything about him,".

"You're persistent, I'll give you that," the man chuckled with amusement. "Most people," he added after a brief pause, "would call Richard eccentric, maybe even weird."

"But not you?" Sam interjected.

"No, not me," the man replied. "Sure, he was something of a shut-in and he had his demons; that much is clear. But he was also compassionate and generous, and not just with his wallet. Richard believed that everyone deserved a second chance in life. And he gave me a job when no one else would. There, satisfied?"

"I guess," Sam replied, not wanting to press his luck just yet. He finished up his current task and wiped his hands again, while trying to digest the man's words. They were painting an almost saintly picture of his uncle, which was at odds with his alleged hatred for his brother's widow and son, as well as his evident disinterest in offering them any financial aid. And yet, the man spoke of him with such admiration and praise that Sam could not easily dismiss his words.

Sam ran his hand through his strawberry blonde hair and cautiously approached the tall, bald man. "Done. Anything else?"

The man turned his head just enough to reveal a smirk. "What? You want to keep going? I already answered your question, didn't I?"

"I don't really have anything else to do," Sam said, and promptly remembered the library Charlotte had mentioned. "Well, not anything better anyway. Besides," he smiled, "I bet I can think up some more questions."

"Fair enough, kid" the man said. He marched to the kitchen counter, grabbed a slim, curved knife and offered it to Sam with a theatrical twirl. "Start by peeling those potatoes," he motioned to a halfway open sack on the floor.

"Yes, chef," Sam said resolutely and took the knife.

"Hector will do," the man said.

"Hector," Sam repeated. "Got it."

"You do know how to use that, right?" Hector pointed to the knife. "I don't want to get blood all over the counter."

Sam was none too enthused by Hector's worrisome priorities, but chose not to address them, figuring this had to be some off-color joke on the man's part. "I'll be fine," he said, "I think."

Luckily for the both of them, he was proven correct. Though he had never peeled a potato before in his life, Sam had watched his mother do it on occasion and he reckoned it should be fairly simple, all things considered. He took his time with it, to be on the safe side, working the knife slowly and steadily. More often than not, he would slice off some small, perfectly edible potato chunks in his effort to excise the dirty skin, but he nonetheless performed quite well for a first timer.

As he carefully carved through potato after potato, peeling off brown strips of varying length and thickness, he thought back to the whispers he had heard in the hallway and the relative emptiness of the manor. "Hey, uh, Hector?"

"Yes?" the man said with a faint chuckle. "What is it this time?"

"How many people live here?" Sam asked. "It feels kinda… empty, I guess?"

"Hmmm, I'd say five," Hector replied. "Well, four now. Richard was a shut-in, as I said, and he preferred to keep staff to a minimum. That was another reason people called him eccentric. He valued charity more than luxury."

Four? "So, there's you, Char-, err, Ms. Murray and Ms. Harker. Who else is there?"

"That would be ol' Bernard," Hector said.

"Ol' Bernard?"

"The gardener," Hector explained. "He's been around for decades, though technically he lives in a hut out back."

"Why would anyone live in a hut when they could live in here?"

"You'll have to ask him yourself," Hector said. "All I know is that he does not like coming in here."

So, Hector was in the kitchen, and this Bernard apparently doesn't like coming into the manor. Was that Charlotte and Ms. Harker I overheard earlier then? Charlotte had not seemed to like Ms. Harker, so Sam thought it made sense that they would be the ones fighting behind that door. And it would explain Charlotte's conspicuous absence when he had finished his mac 'n' cheese.

Sam set aside another, fully peeled potato. "Say, how many potatoes do we need again?"

"How many have you got?" Hector asked.

"Uh… five."

"Keep peeling."

Sam groaned, but did as he was instructed and the room fell into busy silence once again. Several uneventful minutes later, Hector walked up to Sam and stopped him just short of cutting into yet another potato by placing his hand on the boy's wrist.

"That's enough," he said.

"Oh, okay," Sam said, quite glad to finally get the repetitive task over with. "Enough for what exactly? What are we making?"

"I," Hector replied, "am making mashed potatoes with garlic." He snatched the curved knife out of Sam's hand and set it aside. "Better not try our luck with this. Ms. Harker will kill me if she spots so much as a nick on Richard's only heir."

"Eh, I wouldn't worry about that. You're way out of her weight class," Sam giggled. The mental imagery of the thin, middle-aged woman trying to take on the mountain of a man that was standing before him was deeply amusing to Sam, in part because it provided a welcome distraction from the oddly unsettling notion that a complete stranger like Ms. Harker might harbor some genuine concern for his well-being.

"That is true," Hector chuckled, "but she's my employer now, and I'd rather not get fired."

Sam conceded with a nod. "So, what should I do next?"

"Patience, kid," was all that Hector said, then he produced a chef's knife and began chopping the potatoes into small pieces.

Never one to complain about unsolicited breaks from doing some tedious chore, Sam stood back from the counter and watched Hector work from a marginally safer distance. He quickly discovered that there was no more excitement to be had in observing someone else perform a repetitive task than there was in doing it himself, even if said someone was wielding the knife with a truly impressive degree of dexterity.

Before long, Sam was zoning in and out, sometimes looking at the man and others looking right past him. Eventually, his chaotic glances converged on the man's face and the big, hideous scar that marred its right side, which he could now see in all its horrific glory. The scar was clearly not recent, but its lingering prominence was unquestionably a testament to the severity of the injury that had caused it.

"That must have hurt like hell," he thought out loud.

"Hmmm?" Hector replied absentmindedly, thoroughly absorbed in his work.

"The scar," Sam said. "How'd you get that, anyway?"

Hector shot a quick glance at Sam and resumed his work, only to stop abruptly after a few more seconds. "I tried to kill a man," Hector said, eyes glued to the wall. "It didn't take."

Sam laughed, but his laughter was quickly drowned out by the man's silence and he was overcome with a sense of palpable discomfort. "You're… joking, right?"

Hector appeared to ignore him. His knuckles went white and he exhaled slowly through his nostrils.

"S-Sorry," Sam said, admonishing himself for his thoughtless words, "I didn't mean to-"

Hector let go of the knife and stepped closer to Sam, casting his massive shadow over the twelve-year-old. "Thanks for the help, kid," he said. "I'll take it from here."

Sam did not need to be told twice, and a few seconds later, he was gone.

***

In the aftermath of his exile from the kitchen, Sam found himself stranded in the manor's hallway once more. There, his first course of action was to pull out his phone and check the time, the only function his phone could serve now that the nonexistent reception had rendered it otherwise useless. He was quite surprised to discover that he had spent the better part of an hour in the kitchen, and it was now a few minutes past six in the afternoon.

Approximately two hours remained until that mysterious ceremony that Ms. Harker had spoken of. Sam stared vacuously at the cracked screen, while he tried to ascertain the best way to kill those two hours. The thought of seeking out Charlotte and asking her to lend him her iPod, like she had suggested herself, crossed his mind, but so did the lingering embarrassment from their previous encounter.

His eyes suddenly shot up from the screen and hurried to scan the hallway, searching for that ephemeral shadow that had just skirted at the very edge of their vision. The shadow itself was nowhere to be seen now, if indeed it ever had been, but Sam thought he could vaguely recall it moving through one of the doors down the hall.

In the absence of a more exciting potential pastime, Sam opted to follow the shadow, be it real or imagined. He walked up to the door in question and, upon finding that it was slightly ajar, gave it a gentle push. The door moaned as it opened, revealing a room as vast as the one Sam had eaten his mac 'n' cheese in.

This must be the library Charlotte told me about, he reckoned as he wandered in and let the door close – though not completely – behind him. Nearly every wall was hidden behind rows and rows of bookshelves that rose up to the ceiling, while ladders mounted on wheels leaned against them, offering access to the higher rows. Unfortunately, the layout only left enough space for two windows and those, while tall and wide, were covered by drab, beige curtains that kept most of the sunlight at bay, plunging the library into a dim and moody atmosphere.

Sam delved deeper into the room, but found no trace of the shadow he was seeking. Guess I must have imagined it. He found only a large, round table in the center of the room, which was covered by a thick layer of dust and adorned with a half-melted candle. Unable to resist the temptation, Sam ran his finger tip along the table's surface, scooping up some of the dust and leaving a trail of spotless wood in his wake. Then, he had a quick look at his dusty fingertip and promptly wiped the dust off on his shirt, before resuming his exploration.

No friends. No internet. Just a truckload of dusty, old books. I bet Mrs. Hudson is watching me through her magic mirror and having the time of her life right now.

Sam strolled leisurely along the perimeter, dragging his finger across the spine of every book that crossed his path and making a halfhearted attempt to read the titles, on the off chance that something mildly interesting might catch his eye. More often than not, the verticality of the letters and the thickness of the books proved to be an insurmountable obstacle for the sixth-grader's ever dwindling patience.

He did, however, read the names of each section – which were engraved onto big, bronze labels that were, in turn, bolted onto the shelves – and they offered a fairly grim prognosis for the remainder of his vacation. Politics. History. Economics. Shakespeare. Medicine. Man, if this was all I had for entertainment, I'd probably have shot myself too.

Even the Fiction section was mostly comprised of door-stopping, inane-sounding titles like 'Pride and Prejudice' or 'Wuthering Heights'. Only a few works by Jules Verne managed to pique Sam's interest and only because their titles were faintly familiar from some loosely inspired, action-packed film adaptations he had watched at various points.

He grabbed 'Journey to the Center of the Earth' – a title that evoked memories of a tall, bald man being chased by voracious dinosaurs – and opened it to the first page. He made a genuine effort to read it, but nagging thoughts of his friends – who he had been cruelly parted from at the best time of the year – would not let him concentrate long enough to make it past the opening paragraph.

"Screw it," he muttered and returned the book to the shelf. He continued his stroll, fully intending to leave the library the moment he circled back to the exit, but his plans were derailed when he came across a metal mesh door at the far corner of the room.

The door had a thick ring welded onto it that lined up perfectly with an identical ring on the door's frame; a design clearly meant to accommodate a padlock, which was currently absent. Looking through the mash, Sam saw what appeared to be a much smaller, more private section of the library. There were no labels that might give away the nature of its contents, but there were – curiously enough – several books strewn carelessly across the floor, along with a folded sheet of paper.

Though he was no more interested in literature now that he had been a few minutes earlier, Sam found this private, little corner of the library singularly intriguing. These books, he reasoned, must have been quite extraordinary to merit such special accommodation. Perhaps they were extraordinarily expensive, the sort of book only someone wealthy enough to own this manor could afford. If so, then whoever had last walked through that door must have been unaware of their value. Either that, or they had to leave the room in a hurry, which would explain the conspicuous absence of the padlock and the mess that had been left in that person's wake.

Against his better judgement, Sam decided there was only one way to sate his thirst for knowledge and opened the door. He squatted in front of the dropped books and took a closer look, careful not to disturb the mess he had found them in, lest he implicate himself in whatever had happened here. But, much to his dismay, the books seem to bear no titles – or any other sort of descriptor for that matter – on their thick, wrinkled covers.

Naturally, his eyes next gravitated towards that folded sheet of paper, which seemed to have slipped out from one of the books. Sam picked it up without much deliberation, guessing that, unlike its much bulkier companions, it would not be missed.

The paper was awfully worn and brittle, not to mention discolored by dried coffee stains and missing a chunk on one end. Upon opening it, Sam discovered it was, in fact, a letter and it was addressed to someone by the name of Alistair.

No sooner had Sam finished reading the letter than he commenced reading again. What. Then again. The. And again. Fuck. His disbelief grew exponentially with each repetition – as did the lump in his throat – and the more it grew, the more Sam found himself rereading the letter.

He latched onto the word 'slave', for it was – oddly enough – the most mundane out of all the words that had been etched into that aged paper. He had been taught about slavery at school, and the letter was now bringing all that forgotten knowledge of sixth grade history flooding back in.

To be a slave, Sam had learned, meant to be treated as property and denied human rights. Now, he didn't have much insight into what that truly entailed, but it was his understanding that slaves always had to follow orders and needed permission to do just about anything else. He also recalled that many slaves had been children, with some even being born into slavery, never to know the sweet kiss of freedom; a detail that had, of course, been relegated to a mere footnote, ostensibly for the benefit of the history textbook's young readers.

Unlike the overly sanitized history lessons at his school, however, the document that Sam was now holding in his hands laid the cruelty and callousness of that dark, but fortunately bygone era completely bare. There were no abstract speeches about dignity and freedom, no grim implications being hurriedly glossed over. Only the stark reality of a young slave's utterly appalling abuse – one might even say 'torture' – at the hands of what Sam could only assume was one of his ancestors.

By the time Sam had found it in him to tear his eyes off that scandalous letter and put it back on the floor, it was already far too late. The words had seeped into his mind, painting a vivid picture of that unfortunate boy who had been so nonchalantly condemned to slavery, and who had to spend his days gagged and chained outside, tirelessly and thanklessly operating the gate under threat of a whipping.

Above all else, Sam's mind was haunted by that most unexpected remark about the boy's penis. The crude and candid manner in which his ancestor had spoken of regulating the boy's masturbatory habits was as unsettling as it was morbidly fascinating, and the implication that said habits needed to be regulated in the first place birthed a whole new crop of questions. One thing was for certain. He had to know more about those abhorrent practices that his ancestors had partaken in, and he was in just the right place for that.

He licked his inexplicably parched lips and turned his sights onto the numerous books that were still on the shelves of this private section. Unlike their fallen brethren, these would be much easier to replace without betraying his unauthorized entry through the metal mesh door. All that remained was to decide which one he would start with, a task that was somewhat complicated by the utter lack of titles. After some brief thought, Sam settled on one of the tried and true methods of decision making.

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe…

***

The old, weathered planks that lined the floor of the manor's upstairs bathroom creaked under the weight of Sam's feet, alerting the crouching figure at the room's center to his presence. The figure, in turn, sat up straight and greeted Sam with a friendly smile on a familiar, ghastly face.

"Hi," Sam with poorly disguised unease, the memory of his earlier blunder still burning bright inside his mind. Only that memory was no longer alone. It was accompanied by a deluge of terrifying, intoxicating new concepts gleaned from those forbidden books at the library; concepts that had thrown Sam's thoughts into utter disarray.

"Hey," Charlotte replied. Beside her, a big, oval bathtub – not unlike a miniature indoor pool – was slowly filling with water. "Took you long enough." She placed her hand beneath the running faucet, presumably to ensure the water was at the desired temperature. "Better hurry up if you don't wanna miss the ceremony."

"Yeah, I was, uh," Sam fidgeted awkwardly with his hair, "checking out the manor… and I got carried away."

Indeed, Sam had spent over an hour holed up inside the library, hungrily turning page after page in his quest to squeeze every horrid, salacious detail out of those dense, archaic texts; and occasionally pausing for a split second to absentmindedly adjust the tent in his pants. Eventually, he had become so engrossed in his literary journey through the manor's sordid history, that he had lost track of time until his eyes could no longer bear the strain caused by the ever dimming, late afternoon sun.

Charlotte turned the faucet off, as the bathtub was now close to full. "There's clean towels and a bath robe over there," she said. "Also, leave your clothes in that basket when you're done. I'll drop by later and add them to the laundry."

"Uh, okay, thanks."

Charlotte stood up, walked towards Sam and looked down at him with a devilish smirk. "Unless you wanna save us both some time and give them to me now."

Distracted as he was by the numerous, alien thoughts infesting his mind, Sam needed a few moments to parse Charlotte's words and become hopelessly flustered by the audacious suggestion. "Wh-What?"

"Aww, don't tell me you're getting bashful all of a sudden."

Sam fumbled around for a coherent response, but could only remain frozen in his place, equal parts mortified and aroused in equal parts by the prospect of being nude in front of the attractive – if eerily pale – maid.

"Relax," Charlotte laughed, "I'm just pulling your leg."

"Oh, right," Sam forced himself to laugh along. "Of course."

Charlotte marched past him, heading towards the exit. "Unless you want to, of course," she said on her way out.

Once he was alone, and reasonably certain that no one would come barging in unannounced, Sam stripped down to his boxers and stood in front of the mirror. With Charlotte's purportedly joking proposal still fresh in his mind, he raised his fists into the air and flexed his muscles. His eyes wandered all over the reflection's nearly naked form, none too humbly admiring the slender, athletic physique; particularly the usually faint six pack that was now being pulled taut over his abdomen. Even so, the kind of bravery required to strip naked before a pretty woman was well beyond his reach.

In a slave, modesty is a flaw that ought to be excised as early as possible, a passage from one of the books Sam had read emerged crystal clear from the chaos that raged within his head. Compulsory nudity has been repeatedly shown to have a net positive impact on a slave's physical and mental health. The constant exposure to the elements strengthens the slave's boy so that he may better serve his superiors, while the deprivation of any manner of privacy is crucial to helping him shed any lingering notions of dignity and identity; notions that had no place in a slave's mind. Equally as important, of course, is the economical aspect: it would be a terrible waste to expend one's hard-earned fortune on clothing something as disposable as a slave.

Like most children his age who had grown up in a developed nation, Sam had never really stopped to appreciate how lucky he was for the comfortable, if somewhat unimpressive, life he had. Until now, that is, when Charlotte's teasing combined with the contents of those antiquated tomes to make him ponder the plight of the boys who had been in this manor before him, not as honored guests, but as mere slaves.

Sam needed look no further than his own, still fresh discomfort at Charlotte's suggestion and his subsequent relief at getting to strip and bath in private. A slave in the same predicament would have had no choice but to remove every stitch of clothing they had on the spot and hand it away; no such luxuries as standing around in his underwear until he felt ready to take them off.

At that last observation, Sam felt an inexplicable and overwhelming compulsion to remove his boxers, just like that hypothetical slave boy would have done. He succumbed to that compulsion with a motion so abrupt that it surprised even himself, then stood at attention with his head bowed and his hands clasped at his side; a position that several sources had described as being part and parcel of a slave's life.

He looked down at the twitching, tween cock that dangled from his hairless groin, baffled by the peculiar response these thoughts were eliciting from his body. Sam had all too often faced the dreadful prospect of an ill-timed erection, so the concept of perpetual, public nudity seemed absolutely nightmarish to him. And yet, somehow, standing there – in the proverbial shoes of the naked slave boys who had once inhabited the manor – made him cock grow harder by the moment.

After several seconds of maintaining the same position and unsuccessfully trying to make sense of his cock's puzzling arousal, Sam snapped back to reality. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and cleared his head, redirecting his attention away from his half-hard cock and towards the imminent ceremony, which he was supposed to be preparing for.

He gave his cock a quick squeeze – a brief consolation for his decision to otherwise neglect it for the moment – and approached the bathtub. Dipping his hand into the water, he found it pleasantly hot; perfect for a long, relaxing bath that he unfortunately had no time for right now. Here goes, he thought, and climbed into the tub.

***

Sam sunk into his cushioned chair, his back sliding towards the seat, while slowly deflating his puffed cheeks. At his mother's insistence, he had eschewed his usual wardrobe of tee-shirts and shorts for a pair of long, dark jeans and a plain white, buttoned shirt; a young boy's approximation of a formal attire.

Seated across from him, with only the relatively short width of the long, dining table to separate them, Olivia was checking her watch for the sixth time in the twenty or so minutes since they had entered the dining room. "So much for punctuality," she muttered and rolled her eyes at Ms. Harker's continued absence.

This is almost worse than being at school, Sam decided. At least, if this were school and Ms. Harker was a teacher, her failure to show up twenty minutes into the hour would have constituted implicit permission to evacuate the classroom and pursue a more entertaining pastime. He would have no such luck here, not with his mother watching.

"What even is the big deal with this ceremony thing, anyway?" he said, sitting up straight moments before he would have slid off the chair entirely.

"Something about welcoming you into the family," Olivia shrugged. "Look, it's a pointless tradition invented by rich people with too much time on their hands. Don't think about it too hard."

Sam crossed his arms on the table and rested his chin upon them. "And if we play along, we get a bunch of money? Is that it?"

"It's a bit more complicated than that, but yeah."

"Right, we also gotta stay here for three whole weeks." His eyes lingered on the texture of the table cloth while he became lost in thought. "I don't get it," he said after a few seconds. "You said dad's family hated us."

"It's more that they hated your dad for leaving," Olivia interjected.

"Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. Point is they sure didn't seem to like us. So why did they remember I exist all of a sudden?"

"Well," Olivia replied, checking her watch again, "I'd like to think that your uncle still loved his brother deep down, so he put you in his will."

"Uhuh. Must have loved him waaaay deep down."

"Honey, some families are, well, they're complicated. Wealthy families doubly so, I imagine. But I suppose your uncle didn't have much of a choice," Olivia said. "He couldn't just let the glorious Greenwood name die out," she added in a pompous, faux-aristocratic voice. "And you were his only option, for better or for worse."

"But I'm not a Greenwood," Sam pointed out. "I'm a Thorne."

A warm smile flashed on Olivia's face. "Yeah, you can thank your dad for that."

Wish I could, Sam thought and fell into a sullen silence. What set in was not grief exactly. That would have required him to remember his father, but all Sam could recall of the man was fabricated memories built out of his mother's stories. It was a deeper loss, one that he was much too young to put to words. It was the unspoken burden of keeping alive the memory of a person he had no recollection of, and whom he could never hope to meet.

"He did save me from a whole lotta bullying, didn't he?" he said eventually, putting on a brave face.

"Perhaps," Olivia chuckled. "We missed a great opportunity to dress you up like a forest elf for Halloween though."

Their banter came to a swift end when the door burst open. Sam sat up straight at once, then watched Ms. Harker march into the room without a hint of a smile.

"I apologize for the delay," Ms. Harker said matter-of-factly. She stopped just behind the lone chair at the table's head and looked down at her guests. "There was a matter of some urgency that I had to attend to. Shall we commence?"

Those three words marked the start of a length and clearly rehearsed speech about the illustrious history of Greenwood Manor, as well as the family that built, named and inhabited it throughout the centuries. Sam made an earnest effort to offer Ms. Harker his undivided attention, but he soon began to tune out bits and pieces of the neverending lecture, his mind growing increasingly occupied with more pressing topics, such as "What's the point of all this?" and "When are we gonna eat?"

Olivia appeared to fare much better, keeping her eyes trained Ms. Harker as the older woman slowly circled the table during her speech. Sam, however, had reason to suspect that his mother's attentiveness was purely superficial. Not unlike the numerous times she had been the captive audience to Sam's rambling about the latest video game he was obsessed with, only to evidently forget every word the moment the next one was uttered.

"In the early nineteenth century," Ms. Harker continued with all the passion of someone reading a telephone directory out loud, "Edward Greenwood pulled the family back from the brink of financial collapse and became one of the pioneers of the First Industrial Revolution when he opened the Greenwood Coal Mine. He was the architect of a new era in the history of Greenwood Manor, and perhaps mankind as a whole."

Don't yawn, don't yawn, don't- Sam clasped his hand over his mouth, clenched his jaw and yawned with as much subtlety as he could. Wait a minute. Edward Greenwood… He perked up immediately when he recognized the name of the man who had written that letter – that tantalizing testament to human cruelty – that had been now burned into his mind.

The innumerable children that had suffered at the hands of the man – and likely many more of Sam's ancestors – went conspicuously unmentioned in Ms. Harker's lecture. Perhaps the omission was merely meant to preserve the supposed innocence of her young listener, or perhaps such inconvenient details had fallen victim to a concerted effort to whitewash the family's history. Recalling that those revelatory books had been hidden away behind a supposedly locked door, Sam speculated that the former interpretation was much too charitable.

In his introspection, Sam appeared to have missed another chunk of Ms. Harker's speech and barely caught her uttering his uncle's name. "Richard Greenwood," she said, "the most recent lord of the manor was a solitary man, but a paragon of kindness and generosity." Her voice briefly wavered as she praised the man, but she promptly regained her composure. "He funneled the immense wealth of his forefathers towards a number of charitable causes, making the world a better place in his own way."

The woman circled back to the head of the dining table and cast her cold, green eyes on Sam. "These great men might be with us no more, but their blood lives on, coursing through your veins even as we speak."

Great, can we eat now?

"Rise," Ms. Harker commanded. She walked towards the centermost window at the far end of the room, where a flat, black box sat upon a small, round table. She stood behind the small table, crossed her wrists in front of her waist and turned back towards Sam with a stern, expectant glare.

"Right, yeah, sorry," Sam stammered as the woman's command finally got through to him. He kicked his chair back, got up on his feet and marched up to the small, round table. Looking down at the flat, black box, he noticed it was made from some kind of wood and adorned with the same eight-pointed star that he had previously seen on the manor's gate.

"Tell me, Samuel, do you know what this is?" Ms. Harker said.

"Uh, it's a box… with a star on it?" Sam replied, struggling to figure out what sort of answer the woman could possibly be expecting. "Wait, it's the northern star," he took a hopeless shot in the dark.

"Not quite. This is the sigil of the Greenwood family. The shard of the cosmos. An undying reminder of the duties and privileges that come with belonging to a bloodline as old and noble as yours."

"Oh." Sam briefly considered asking what those duties and privileges might be, but quickly decided against interrupting the woman and instead settled for putting on a quizzical expression.

"As I have just taken the time to explain," Ms. Harker said pointedly, "your predecessors had all achieved greatness, though not always in the same manner. Visionaries, pioneers, even philanthropists. Every one of them was a star, burning brightly throughout their time on this earth." She reached out and gently lifted Sam's chin with her fingertips, forcing him to make eye contact. "So, too, will you be. You might not realize it yet, but your lineage has endowed you with untold promise, and I have no doubt you will one day fulfill that promise."

Sam found no comfort in the woman's overly elaborate compliment, but he was at the very least relieved when she let go off his chin.

"No matter how bright a star may shine," Ms. Harker went on, "it shall always be just one, infinitesimal fragment of an unfathomably greater whole. This sigil is meant to remind you that you, Samuel, are no different. You are a fragment of an ancient bloodline, and you must always remember and honor the legacy of those who came before you. Do you understand?"

"Uh, I… think? Yes."

"Excellent," she said, and opened the box to reveal a golden ring sitting upon a silken red pillow. The ring was slim and plain, save for the little, eight-pointed star that had been welded onto it. "Give me your hand."

Sam gave his mother a quick glance, but she could only offer him a look of guilty sympathy. Desperate to get this farce over with, he took a breath and extended his hand.

Ms. Harker took the ring in one hand and held Sam's hand in the other. "Now, do you vow to honor your blood, to carry on your ancestors' legacy and to undertake no action that might sully their memory?"

"Uh, yeah," Sam said. "I-I do."

"Very well," Ms. Harker said. "I hereby bestow upon you this sacred sigil." She slipped the ring onto Sam's index finger, until it sat snag on him. "May it guide you in the days to come." She pulled back and flashed a lukewarm smile. "You may consider this your belated welcome into the Greenwood family."

"Th-Thanks," Sam replied. He fidgeted around with the ring and realized he quite liked the sensation of the gold coiled around his finger. He only hoped he would not have to actually change his last name to Greenwood, or anything of the short. He liked Thorne well enough. It was his name, and his father's name; one of the few things that still remained from a man Sam had been too young to remember.

"It's good to have you back, Samuel," Ms. Harker said. "Now, then, let us feast."

***

Dark clouds had gathered above the ancestral seat of the Greenwood family, joined in a nebulous conspiracy to rain down their wrath upon the estate with reckless abandon. Try as they might, however, the manor refused to budge, standing proud and defiant in the eye of the storm.

Sam found himself watching the battle from a distance, far outside the estate's walls. His vision was intermittently hampered by the strawberry blonde locks that the howling wind insisted on sweeping right into his face, but, oddly enough, neither cold nor rain dared touch him. His feet took the initiative of carrying him towards the estate, leaving his mind and eyes free to hunt those fleeting peculiarities that made the scenery feel inexplicably alien, even as it remained unerringly familiar.

Initially, that seemed to be a task as gargantuan as the manor itself. It was as though Sam was wading through some otherworldly, phantasmal haze; unseen, but deeply felt. Fortunately, as his destination inch closer and closer, the haze appeared to gradually disperse and he was able to see what had lied underneath all along.

The walls were the first thing to grab his attention. They were uncharacteristically pristine, unblemished by the cracks and ivy they had borne in the light of day. Nor was that big, round button by the gate that might produce that horrid, buzzing noise.

Peering through the bars of the black, iron gate, Sam noticed that the rest of the estate was similarly impeccable, as though the rain had washed away the decay. The garden, whilst painted in the brown and orange shades of autumn, was no longer beset by weeds and its numerous shrubberies had been expertly carved into impressive topiaries. The manor's windows had also been freed from the unsightly planks that used to obstruct them, and they now shone like beacons of life and hospitality amid the raging weather.

But the haze had one more secret left to unveil, and, as Sam turned his head, his gaze came across a young boy that was standing just behind the wall and flickering like a flame in the wind and rain. He could tell the figure was a boy because it was completely naked – save for the iron collar around its neck, the leather bit in its mouth and the manacles that tethered its wrists to the chain hanging overhead – and there was a shriveled cocklet dangling from its hairless groin.

The boy was presently occupied with a series of doomed, darkly comical attempts at shielding his body from the biting cold, and he did not appear to notice his observer. Sam, on the other hand, was thoroughly bewitched by the simultaneously wondrous and horrible sight of the boy's nude, shivering physique.

He could have stayed there for hours, feasting his eyes upon that poor boy's nakedness and misery. The skin that glistened with rain drops and burned with fresh welts and cuts. The scrawny, outstretched torso that trembled with every anguished breath. The smooth, skinny legs that rubbed fervently against each other in search for a sliver of warmth. The occasional peak at a lean, dimpled buttock. And last, but certainly not least, the little cock and balls that were so shamelessly exposed for all to see.

But Sam was not content to stay there. The strain in his loins demanded that he get a closer look at that wretched young slave. Recalling how the letter had spoken of a slave tasked with operating the gate, Sam called out to the shivering boy, but his words fell on deaf ears. The naked boy did not give even the slightest indication that he had heard him, as though Sam was not really there.

Suddenly, the dark clouds were torn asunder by the warm, soothing rays of the rising sun. Ears ringing with the dying echo of a distant scream, Sam slowly opened his eyes and found himself back in his cozy, double-sized bed in the manor's upper floor. He was dressed in his thin, summertime pajamas and his finger still bore that star-adorned ring that had been put on it several hours earlier. His limbs were, as usual, splayed in every which way and the bed sheets were tangled up into a wrinkled mass right beside him.

Addled by sleep and consumed by a lust he had never known before, Sam tried to hold onto the rapidly fading details of the dream in the only way his disoriented mind could conceive: he yanked his pants and boxers down to his ankles, opened his buttoned shirt and grabbed the bed's headrest with both hands. Then, his ever fertile imagination kicked in to complete the reenactment. Fictitious restraints slithered and tightened around his wrists, irrevocably binding them above his head, while a phantom bit lodged itself between his teeth, forcing his jaw open and simultaneously robbing him of his ability to speak.

Sam looked down at his naked body. He watched the rhythmic rise and fall of his toned chest and the incessant throbbing of his unreachable, tween cock; a view the boy he had dreamed of must have been intimately, torturously familiar with. The cool caress of the early morning air on his bare skin provided a welcome deviation from the ferocious winds in his dream, but the privacy of the bedroom filled him with a perplexing sense of envy towards that miserable slave boy.

As if it had read his thoughts, the door knob turned ominously. Sam hurried to curl up into a fetal position, in the hopes that this would conceal his erection and make his mortifying nudity a little more bearable, but it was not to be. The crumpled fabric around his ankles hardened into unyielding steel and pulled his feet down, forcing him to stretch and display every square inch of himself to whoever lurked beyond the door.

The imagined intruder walked into the room and feasted his eyes upon the bound tween's exposed and defenseless form. Sam moaned incomprehensibly and strained in vain against his bonds, but only managed to appear as though he was desperately humping the air. The intruder bellowed with derisive laughter, savoring the tween's helplessness and depravity.

And just like that, the magic was gone and Sam was left alone, unbound and staring at his needy, neglected erection with utter bewilderment. His dream had been something straight out of a horror story, yet somehow he had come out of it aroused. He could not comprehend what his cock was finding so appealing about that chained slave boy's plight. Innumerable explanations swirled around inside his mind. Some were unconvincing. Others were frightening. Most of them were both.

In the end, Sam told himself that he was merely suffering a case of crossed wires from having gone an entire day without a chance to relieve himself. Then, there was only one thing left to do. He wrapped his fist around his cock and pumped his aching shaft with all he had. Not too long after, he curled his toes, arched his back and gasped softly as his whole body shuddered with orgasmic pleasure. Finally, he collapsed onto the bed, breathless, with a pair of glistening, clear drops on his stomach and a look of abject serenity on his face.

To Be Continued