Austin flees his cursed realm, Ejemond, only to find his mother hired assassins—Slick and Moses—to kill him. Trapped in Hamarta’s enchanted mansion—a labyrinthine nightmare where a dragon devours diners at dusk—he realizes the house is Curtin’s psychological prison, its portraits depicting victims doomed to relive their deaths. Escaping through a hidden trapdoor into his childhood backyard, he barely outruns the assassins, but Curtin’s shadow lingers in the real world, blurring the line between curse and reality. The episode forces Austin to confront whether his mind is the true battleground. [Automatically generated summary]
You're about to hear the second season of my fantasy suspense story, Another Kingdom, performed by Michael Knowles.
I think you're going to love it.
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In our last episode, Austin met a cursed magician named Natani and learned how he transformed his lover, Maud, into a mutant rodent woman so that she could escape the clutches of Curtin after the evil wizard took over Ejemond.
But with the wizard hunting him through a lightning storm, Austin was forced to escape to a mysterious house in the woods run by a beautiful woman named Hamarta.
As he stepped through the door, he was sent back to California, where he went to his parents' house in Berkeley.
There, he found that Riley had left him a clue to her whereabouts, an old horror DVD called Horror Mansion, with a phone number written on it.
While he was searching for it, though, his own mother called two of Orozgo's assassins to come and get him.
We left Austin trying to choose between returning to the mansion in Egemond or facing the killer he calls Slick and his muscle man, Sidekick.
And now, Episode 5 of Another Kingdom, performed by Michael Knowles.
Well, you made very good time, I heard my mother say.
She sounded as if she were greeting a dinner guest instead of the assassin sent to slaughter her son.
And it wrung my heart to hear her.
It did.
I felt as if I were swirling into the center of a vortex, a tumult of memories and associations spinning around me.
I searched the mind chaos for some moment to hold on to, some instance in my past of maternal warmth or comfort, something that would make me disbelieve what I was hearing with my own ears.
But I couldn't find one.
Not one.
How had I hidden this from myself so long?
How had I never known what my mother was, what my youth was, my life was?
How could I be so surprised at what was happening now?
I heard Slick answer her.
Where is the lad?
A smooth, confident voice.
A voice like the look of the man.
Upstairs, I think, my mother said.
I know he hasn't gone out.
His car is still in the drive.
Anyway, I would have heard him.
I stood where I was, still frozen, Amarta still waiting for me through the veil of transition, waiting and smiling that possibly malevolent smile, while the killer stood at the kitchen door and my mother, my mother, betrayed me to him.
Okay, Mrs. Lively, said Slick.
Doctor, she corrected him.
Dr. Fleischer Lively, actually.
Doctor, right.
Maybe you ought to go someplace quiet until this is over, ma'am.
Yes, said my mother thoughtfully.
But you won't do anything that will disturb my husband, will you?
He's very distraught.
Austin is our son, remember.
Oh, sure, I understand, said Slick.
I could almost hear him grinning an I understand grin.
Nothing bad's going to happen here.
Of course.
Well, if you'll excuse me, I'll just, yeah, you go back to what you were doing.
My colleague and I will be gone before you know it.
Glimpses of Warmth00:12:13
I heard the kitchen door close.
Slick was inside the house.
And still I stood there between the two worlds.
Ejemond and its dangers were crowding in on my reeling consciousness now.
The storm in the forest, the heavy atmosphere of evil, my sense that the wizard curtain was rushing to the scene to destroy me, my growing suspicion that Hamarta was luring me into Curtin's trap.
It all came back to me.
And at the same time, footsteps.
Slick.
His colleague.
If they found me, I would vanish without a trace, without even a mother's tears to mark my passing.
I stepped through the mudroom door.
My life had become so full of bizarre moments, I don't know where to place this one in the bizarre scheme of things, but it was bizarre all right.
For a second, I was halfway through the door of the forest mansion.
The savage and somehow malicious wind was making the whole tree line sway violently back and forth, like weeds in a rising sea.
Forked lightning snapped across the sky like a dragon's tongue.
Then, the next second, I was in the foyer of the house and the door shut heavily behind me.
With that, the raging storm outside was silent, completely silent.
The tumult in the air was utterly gone.
It seemed this house was so thoroughly sealed that no sound from the outside world could get into it, not even a whisper.
I could see the rain streaking the windows, and I could see the wind lashing the rain, but the noise of it did not reach me.
Instead, I found myself in a warm and lavish entranceway leading out past a grand staircase into a majestic front hall.
I gaped, bewildered and disoriented.
Not only had I just transitioned from one world into another, I had simultaneously transitioned from being a man with a relatively normal, screwed-up childhood to a man who had grown up in the pulsing belly of homicidal darkness.
Horror mansion indeed.
Blinking through my shock, I turned to face Hamarta.
There was, I saw now, nothing sinister in her smile.
Nothing at all.
I must have imagined it.
It was the same warm, wifely, almost maternal smile that had drawn me to her in the first place.
I'll take care of you.
I'll feed you, sweetheart.
I was getting paranoid, that's all.
She beckoned me.
Well, come on, darling, she said.
Aren't you hungry?
I was.
I hadn't eaten anything since the cheese sandwich in Berkeley the night before.
Hard to keep track of these things with the times and places always shifting back and forth.
But yes, as sorrowful as I was, as shattered as I was by my mother's murderous betrayal, I was hungry too.
So I walked with Hamarta down the long hall, and it was a wondrous hall now that I saw it up close.
The gold and purple runner on the floor was lit by lofty candelabras standing on finely crafted brass stands.
The ceiling was high, high above me, vaulted and hung with magnificent chandeliers.
The walls were decorated with painted portraits, a smooth-faced knight resting his hand on his sword hilt, an impish woman in an elfin jerkin, standing legs akimbo beneath some trees, a great black-bearded brute with a bar of iron in his hand.
They watched me pass with baleful glazes, as if they were sorry to see me go.
Then Hamarta said to me, this way, sweetheart, and I faced her and followed her around a corner.
There was another long hall with two huge carved wooden doors standing at the end of it.
Hamarta looked up at me as we walked toward them.
Are you all right? She said with sweet concern.
You seem upset.
Well, my mother just sent a killer after me, and there's a wizard riding on the wind to destroy me, and I don't know what this place is or what I'm doing here, or even who I am, really, who I ever was.
So yeah, I guess I'm a little upset, was what I didn't say.
What I did say was, upset?
No, no, I'm fine.
She narrowed her eyes and her lips quirked and she said, hmm, as if she didn't believe me.
She took my arm and pressed against me so I could feel the soft side of her breast and smell the clean incense of her hair.
Well, whatever's bothering you, it's going to be all right now.
I promise.
This is a place for you to rest and forget your troubles and grow strong again.
You need someone to take care of you, Austin, that's all.
I did.
It was true.
I did need someone to take care of me, and a place to rest and sort out my thoughts and throw off this sorrow and grow steady and strong again.
I needed all that, and I needed the feel of her softness against me and the smell of her hair.
But how did she know my name?
Had I told her?
I couldn't remember.
But she really did feel soft.
We continued along the hall together.
Isn't it nicer in here than it was outside?
She asked me in a gently teasing tone.
Warm, not cold?
Dry, not wet?
Safe, not dangerous?
Aren't things a little better already?
Just a little?
No?
She sounded like a mother trying to coax a smile from a sulky child.
We went on walking, which was strange.
I would have thought we would have reached those big double doors by now, but they were still a long way off.
I wish you would confide in me, she said, still teasing, coaxing.
Tell me your troubles.
Let me make them better.
I know I should have seen the danger.
I think I did see it in one part of my brain.
But I was so sad about what had happened at home.
And I had been so alone these last days, without even an email or a media post or a voice on the phone.
And the smell of her hair and the softness of her breast and the kindness of her voice, they lulled me.
It's hard to explain, I told her.
I'm trying to find my way across the eleven lands, I know.
Everyone who comes to this house is on some silly quest or other, fretting about it, worried, troubled, their foreheads all like this, she said, and she looked up at me and wrinkled her forehead and made a funny expression.
Then she laughed.
What do you mean, everyone? I asked her.
I was glancing down at her as I asked, down at her face, and I thought I saw something, a movement, as if her skin had rippled unnaturally.
But it was over in a second, less than a second.
I studied her closely, but I didn't see the movement again.
People will literally kill themselves with these quests, they really will, she went on.
They'll fret and worry themselves right into the grave, which makes absolutely no sense when you think about it.
What do you have if you don't have your life?
Nothing, nothing at all.
So what on earth could be worth dying for?
It makes no sense.
In the depths of my dejection, I barely understood what she was saying.
I just liked the sound of her voice and the touch of her, and I was glad to be inside out of the storm.
She looked up at me again, up from under her lashes.
How beautiful she was.
Even in my sadness, I found her incredibly alluring.
Now I'm sure your quest is very, very important, she said in that teasing tone.
But I think it can wait at least until the storm is over, don't you?
I opened my mouth to answer, but I didn't answer because my thoughts were all jumbled.
I didn't want to go out in that storm again, that was for sure.
But then, wasn't the storm bringing the wizard?
Shouldn't I be out there running away from him as fast as I could?
I lifted my gaze from her and looked down the hall at the doors, still so far away.
Why were they still so far?
It was confusing.
I glanced back down at Hamarta to ask her about it, and I caught that movement again, a ripple on one part of her face.
Again, it was gone in a moment and her skin was normal.
At the same time, for a second, I thought I caught a smell coming off her, or the faint suggestion of a smell.
Unpleasant, like food gone bad.
Had I done the right thing following her in here?
Well, what choice did you have? She asked me.
What? I said, startled.
Was she reading my thoughts now?
Or had I spoken the thought aloud?
I wasn't sure.
You have to rest at some point, sweetheart.
You can't just keep questing forever.
You have to rest.
You have to.
This place, this house.
Think of it like an N.
A warm, welcoming N along the road.
A home away from home.
The words stirred up my anguish, and I blurted out to her, I have no home, Hamarta.
Then, suddenly, we were at the end of the hall.
The huge double doors were towering over us.
Gargoyles, carved into the medallions on their panels, peered down at us.
They looked like they were going to drool on our heads from their wide-open, fangy mouths.
I stopped, and Hamarta stopped with me.
I glanced from the gargoyles to her.
And this time I was certain of it.
The skin of her face rippled as if something was crawling underneath it.
The sight made me grimace with disgust.
Hamarta only smiled, that sweet, sweet smile.
She opened her mouth to speak, and a beetle crawled out over her lips, scrambled down her chin, dropped to the runner, and skittered away.
As I stared, my gorge rising, another bug tumbled out from beneath her hairline.
It likewise fell to the floor.
What the hell?
I whispered.
But at that, there was a resounding rush of air, and the double doors swung in and opened with a crash.
Reflexively, I started and turned to look.
We were standing on the brink of a gigantic dining hall, a place alive with voices and aromas and activity.
And when I say gigantic, I mean vast, so vast.
I couldn't help but stand and stare at it, amazed.
There was a great wooden dining table in the center of the room.
It seemed to go on forever until it faded into a shadowy distance.
The fireplaces on either side of it seemed as tall as airplane hangers, and the flames in them were crackling, dancing, sparking as they devoured logs the size of trees.
Enormous chandeliers hung over the table at intervals, and the flames from their candles and the flames from the hearths lit a scene of fabulous celebration.
Men and women in fanciful medieval clothing sat in heavy oaken chairs.
The bright blues and reds and greens of their outfits and gowns seemed to light the room as brightly as the flames did.
They were eating with gusto, dishing food from the bowls and carving boards laid out before them.
Fowl and beef and pork and large cooked vegetables and mashed potatoes.
They were downing mugs of ale and laughing and talking.
The women touching the men's arms and batting their lashes at them.
The men showing off their fine white teeth in appreciative smiles.
And the smells.
The smells were warm and rich and wonderful.
They made my stomach growl and my mouth water.
And the noise that rushed out at me like traffic was so full of jolliness that, for a second, my own dejection lifted, and I felt a powerful desire to forget my troubles and join the party.
The storm-swept scene through the gigantic windows to my left and right, the trees swaying, the lightning flashing, the rain slanting in a steady downpour out of the boiling black clouds above, only made the indoor fires seem warmer, the smells more delicious, the fellowship all the more fine.
Confused, I looked back at Hamarta.
But Hamarta was gone.
Totally gone.
Looking down at the place where she had stood beside me, I saw nothing but a large cluster of beetles and roaches and worms scrambling and squiggling off the runner to disappear under the baseboards of the wall.
I felt that rise of disgust in my throat again.
But the next second, the bugs too were gone, as if they had never been there.
I hesitated.
I didn't know what to do.
A Knightly Bet00:15:10
That is, I did know.
It seemed obvious I ought to get out of there, get out now, right away.
This had to be some mental trick of curtains, didn't it?
Yes, it had to be.
But somehow, I don't know.
I just couldn't think about leaving anymore.
The storm was so strong, and my life was so miserable, and the smells and the sounds of gaiety coming out of the dining room were so appealing.
And when I looked at the hallway behind me, it seemed like such a long way back to the front door.
I felt reckless, indifferent to consequences.
I thought, what the hell?
and took one step across the threshold.
I thought, I can always go back.
A man's got to eat, hasn't he?
And then the great double doors slammed shut, and somehow I understood the thing had been decided.
I drifted deeper into the room in a gormless haze.
A serving girl took hold of my arm.
She was wearing a simple brown dress that showed off her wonderful cleavage.
With a bright smile and flashing eyes, she tossed her lavish raven hair and led me to the table.
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She sat me down beside a handsome, elegant, noble-looking fellow.
He looked familiar, but I couldn't imagine why.
Maybe it was just that he looked like a knight from one of the stories I liked to read when I was a kid.
He slapped my back as I lowered myself into the chair.
Dig in, lad, he said in a bold, friendly voice.
He gestured toward a huge roasted bird on a platter right in front of me.
The delectable smell of the fowl filled my nose, and suddenly I felt like I was starving.
I grabbed a leg and wrestled it off the creature and started eating ravenously.
What brings you here?
The knightly man shouted to me over the noise of laughter and conversation.
What's your quest?
I had to swallow a great gob of dark meat before I could answer.
I have to cross the Eleven Lands, find the Emperor, restore the Queen to the throne in Galeana.
He nodded, impressed.
Sounds like a good one.
Let wisdom reign and all that.
I spoke around a fresh mouthful.
Exactly.
If you can figure out what wisdom is.
He laughed, but I frowned.
That was pretty much exactly what my mother had said.
What is wisdom?
I had no answer, so I just kept eating.
Myself, I set out to slay the rapist troll of the Westlands, said the knightly man.
Barely a virgin left unviolated by the time I got there.
The bastard needs beheading, that's for sure.
As he lifted a forkful of potatoes to his mouth, he patted the hilt of his sword with his other hand to punctuate his point.
And with that, I recognized him.
He was the knight from the portrait in the hall outside, which struck me as immensely odd.
I mean, if he was here now, tonight, when had the portrait been painted?
How long have you been here? I asked him.
But before he could answer, a sudden deafening boom shook the entire hall.
The conversation and laughter tailed off.
The diners glanced nervously toward the far end of the table where it trailed out of sight in misty obscurity.
The place was almost silent, except for the snapping hearth flames.
I followed the gazes of the others, looked off into the murky distance.
There was nothing to see there.
Nothing except shadows.
Shadows and, right at the edge of the visible, a boy, a little boy about, I don't know, eight or nine years old or so.
He was dressed in a simple servant's uniform, an off-white shirt and a brown leather vest.
He was standing with a napkin draped across his arm, staring at me, very serious, very still.
He reminded me of the ghosts of the unborn children in the forest.
As with the night, I had the feeling that I knew him, but I couldn't place him.
What?
What was that? I said to the knightly man beside me.
He was busy eating again.
Everyone at the table had started eating and chatting again.
The nervous moment had passed.
That noise, that bang.
What was that?
Hmm.
Oh, that, he said.
You know.
The time.
The time?
It's almost up.
Passing anyway.
Night falling.
He gestured to one of the large windows that flanked the flaming hearth across from us.
I looked and saw that he was right.
The darkness of the storm had taken on a deeper darkness.
The day was ending.
What happens when night falls? I asked him.
But the nightly man had turned away from me.
He was chatting to the woman next to him, a smiling young brunette with glittering eyes.
I looked to my other side and was amazed to see another figure from the portraits in the hall, the elfish woman who had been depicted beneath the trees.
She had short, pixie-cut hair and small, pointy features.
She was gnawing on a large bird's wing.
Excuse me, I said to her.
She was less friendly than the knightly man.
She barely spared me a glance.
Hmm, she said, and went on eating.
What was that bang we just and as if to finish my sentence, another boom rocked the dining hall.
This one was louder than the first.
It made the cups and dinnerware rattle on the scarlet and gold tablecloth.
Again, the conversation dimmed.
Faces turned, glances went into the shadows, as if everyone expected something to emerge from them at any moment.
I peered into the obscurity.
I was beginning to grow anxious.
The table talk was already starting to resume, but I could have sworn I heard a strange growl rumble underneath it.
Strange, and yet familiar.
A sound that made my balls turn to ice.
If you don't get out by dawn, you'll be stuck in this house forever.
The words were spoken softly right into my ear, and surprised, I realized I recognized the voice.
It was the voice of the boy in the cave, the invisible ghost boy who had guided me out to the woods and then vanished.
What the hell was going on here?
I swung around to speak to him.
It was the same boy I'd seen a moment ago, the boy in the servant's outfit with the napkin over his arm, the one I felt I recognized from somewhere.
I couldn't imagine how he had crossed the distance between us so swiftly, but he was already moving away, back around the end of the long table, back to his position near the border of the far shadows.
As he crossed in front of me, he made a subtle gesture with his head.
This way.
Come with me, quickly.
I didn't move, not right away.
I wasn't sure what I should do.
True, he had led me out of the eunuch zombie's cave of female sacrifice, but was he really on my side?
On the other hand, that booming noise, that weird but familiar growl, that sense that something was coming, and it wasn't something good.
Well, I was worried, frightened even.
I decided the boy was right.
I should go.
I had just started to push out of my chair when the elfin woman next to me said, You're not going to go with him, are you?
She continued, gnawing on her birdwing as she spoke, as if she hardly cared what my answer was.
He said I'd get stuck here if I didn't leave before dawn, I told her.
She snorted, glanced at me with her tongue exploring her cheek, that sort of disdainful glance you get from girls who think they're more of a man than you are.
I'd seen that glance a lot in my life.
What was your quest? She said, lifting her chin in challenge.
Cross the eleven lands.
Find the emperor.
Free Galeana.
Mmm, she wagged her head, reluctantly impressed.
Not bad.
I was searching for my father, me.
He'd made a bargain with some demons when I was sick with fever.
They cured me, but then came for payment and carried him off to become one of them.
Still worried, I glanced at the darkening windows, then into the shadows at the far end of the room.
I was growing more antsy by the minute.
I felt I ought to get up, get out, follow the boy.
But somehow I felt compelled to ask her, Did you find him?
Your father?
She shrugged and went on eating.
I got pretty far for a girl alone.
When you're a girl, you have to be clever because you're not very strong.
I tricked an ogre into a crevice, then got him to give up his gold in return for his freedom.
Then I used the gold to buy a magic carriage that made me invisible as I traveled through the children's forest.
That's the sort of thing I mean.
Clever.
A girl has to be.
I guess she does, I said.
But but what?
She turned to stick her chin out at me aggressively, a bit of meat visible at the corner of her mouth.
You think you could have done better because you're a man?
No, but but, but, but, she echoed me, mocking.
I'll bet, bet, bet, that ogre would have beat, beat, beat your but, but, but until you went running home.
How long have you been here? I asked her.
Oh, hell, who knows?
Who counts the days anymore?
But what about your father?
My father's a big, strong man.
He can take care of himself.
Or if he can't, it's not on me, is it?
He's the one who made the deal with the demons.
Am I supposed to spend years out in the wind and rain on his account?
I have my own life to live.
So you came here to get out of the rain?
It's more than just rain, she said.
Yes, I know, but I mean, you came here for the warmth, for the food, the shelter.
What if I did?
And then, I said as the whole story revealed itself to me, then you didn't get out by dawn, and so now you can't leave.
She shrugged again, eating again.
Quests, she said dismissively.
I studied her profile.
You look familiar to me, I said.
It's not just because of the portraits out in the hall.
You, the knight, this whole place, the boy, everyone.
It all looks familiar.
Hmm, she murmured, tearing off a fresh piece of gristle with her pearly teeth.
It's like that for everyone, different for everyone.
The house gets into your head.
It is your head.
That's what makes it so endlessly fascinating.
The hallways alone go on and on.
You can explore them forever.
I was about to answer, about to ask her what she meant, when a third boom sounded, much louder, much closer than the others.
The entire table seemed to hop up off the floor and drop back down again.
Conversation stopped cold.
Everyone was silent.
Everyone was glancing fretfully down the long table into the shadows.
I saw the boy down there, and he was beckoning to me urgently.
Come, come quickly.
This is the bad part, I admit, the elf girl grumbled.
But it's only once a day at sunset.
She was looking out the window across from us, a haunted look.
I looked too and saw the night had almost fallen.
I have to go, I said, as much to myself as to anyone.
You're really going to follow him?
The girl repeated with a laugh.
She gestured with her chin at the boy.
You can't trust him.
He's the last person you should trust.
He's the one who brought you here in the first place.
That made me hesitate again, but a second later, another crashing boom, really terrible this time, so loud it hurt my ears.
The table rocked back and forth.
The room shook.
The windows rattled.
I looked through the panes and saw the last light fading from the tumultuous sky.
I didn't know what to do.
I only knew time was running out.
So I got up.
I started moving to the head of the table, reached it, strode around it, started heading down the length of it, past the fireplace, toward the far shadows, toward the edge of obscurity where the boy was standing.
The boy continued to gesture at me urgently.
Come, come.
I moved faster, and I heard a roar from the shadows beyond.
Oh God, there was no mistaking that sound.
The sound of countless women screaming in agony, all their voices blended into a single voice.
Fear shot through my blood like acid.
I started running.
Too late.
The hideous dragon from the cave came charging out of the distant darkness, roaring for blood.
The room erupted into panic.
It was as if the appearance of the beast had taken everyone by complete surprise.
The screams of pure terror from men and women both were heart-wrenching in their wild intensity.
All the diners leapt from their seats.
Everyone started fighting to get to the double doors behind me.
A frightened mob of them rushed my way, clawing and climbing over one another, trampling the small and slow beneath their feet.
Me?
I hurled myself against the wall, pressed close to it, trying to get out of the way of the fearful tide.
I looked past the contorted, screaming faces of the people, people who had been dining with such pleasure and friendliness just seconds before.
Beyond them, I saw the creature coming out of the nebulous distance, and I realized I had suppressed the true memory of the thing, the true image of how dreadful it was, with its body made of dead bodies, a stitched-together atrocity.
I had made myself forget its bloodlust, its rage, how it had looked at me as it retreated from our last clash in the cave, that look that said we would meet again when the terms of battle were more to its liking.
I knew that this, this bizarre house, must be the battlefield it had been waiting for.
I'd walked right into it.
I glanced toward the double doors.
The panicked diners had piled up against them.
They were pounding on the wood, pulling at the handles, but the doors wouldn't budge.
The screaming was growing louder, wilder, more pitiful.
I saw the elfin girl, all her self-assurance dissolved, nothing on her face but the purest despair and dread.
She reached out of the tumbling mob, fighting for breath and freedom.
But the next second she was clubbed back into the pile by the heavy fist of the knightly man.
Then he in turn was trampled under the foot of a great black-bearded brute.
Throughout the riot, it was all like that.
The women were being crushed beneath the men, the smaller men beneath the larger men, and even the largest men were weeping like babies as they scratched uselessly at the doors or stood paralyzed with their fingers to their lips and blubbered in fear of the onrushing monster.
Well, I could see there was no point in joining the mob.
There was nowhere to run, no way out of here.
The panicked crowd had rushed past me, but I was still pressed where I had been against the wall.
From there, I turned to face the creature.
It came toward me at a gallop.
The thunder of its footsteps made the great dining hall shake as if an earthquake had hit it.
Its furious, ravening roar, the roar composed somehow of the cries of its victims, seemed to make the very air vibrate.
I thought I could smell its breath stinking of death.
It was barreling toward the edge of the shadows with such ferocity, I doubted anything could stand in its way.
But I had to try.
I reached for my sword.
My hand closed.
On nothing.
Tumbling Out00:15:57
A fresh gout of liquid fear shot through my veins.
I looked down.
No sword.
No armor coating my body.
Somehow, the magic of shadow wood, the magic of Queen Elinda's gifts, was not working here.
The house gets into your head.
It is your head.
Yes, that was it.
I couldn't mentally connect with the magic.
I couldn't complete the circuit that made the sword appear.
I looked at the onrushing monster, helpless and unarmed.
I felt my bowels turn to water.
The thing was going to tear me to pieces.
The dragon burst from the shadows into the fiery light of the hall.
It would have been on me in the next second, but there were still a few bodies between us, blocking its way.
It stopped to devour them.
It seized a woman who had been struck to the ground, lifted her in its forepaws, and ripped her in half with its teeth like she was a sheet of paper.
I won't try to describe the scream the upper half of her gave as the beast consumed it, or the scream of the small man on his knees nearby, gibbering insanely as he begged for life until the beast took him too and swallowed him in three great bites.
Most awful of all was the way their wild-eyed, shrieking faces reappeared moments after their deaths became part of the creature's body after it had eaten them.
One face on a thigh, one face and torso on a shoulder.
Horrible.
It was horrible.
Only a few more diners, crippled by the riot, remained between the creature and me.
They howled in helpless terror as the thing steadily thumped toward them.
And as it did, a familiar hand slipped into mine.
I looked down.
The boy.
This way, he said.
He drew me along the wall, closer to where the ravenous creature was dismembering another of the hobbled diners.
I could barely move my legs to follow him.
I could barely turn my eyes away from the blood-soaked spectacle.
The whole room was a cacophony of screaming, a jumble of bodies cowering, waiting helplessly for their turn to die in slow, violent agony.
Holding my hand in one of his, the little boy pressed a panel in the wall and a narrow passage opened.
He pulled me into it and shut the panel behind him.
Suddenly, it was quiet.
The screaming continued, but it was dim, as if far away.
The boy began to sidle down the narrow corridor, clutching my hand.
For a moment, I held him back.
What about the others? I asked him breathlessly.
We might save a few.
We can't, the boy said.
They can't come with us.
This is what happens to them.
Every night at sunset.
He kept tugging my hand, so I followed after, down the corridor to another swinging panel, where we pushed out through another secret doorway into a grander hall.
As I tumbled out, my legs gave way.
I fell to my knees and reached painfully, vomiting onto the scarlet runner.
I was all nausea, no thought.
It was long moments before I recovered my senses.
Then, trembling on my hands and knees, I looked up from my own mess to where the boy stood over me, gazing down at me with his round, serious face.
Will it come after us? I asked him in a small voice.
He nodded solemnly.
He looked as frightened as I felt.
First it will kill them all.
Then it will come for you.
I stared at him, remembering the chaos and the screaming and the fear on the diners' faces.
It'll kill all of them, I said.
He nodded again.
Every night.
That's what it's here for.
Every.
I gagged again and choked back vomit.
I rose onto my knees and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
Then I stood up slowly, unsteadily.
I remembered what the elfin girl had said.
This is the bad part.
They must know, I murmured, amazed.
They must know it's coming.
They sit there eating like that, but they know.
Once again, the boy nodded.
I don't think they let themselves remember how bad it is, but yes, they know.
How bad it is, I whispered, my voice breaking.
It's hell.
We're in hell.
This house, it's hell.
Can't they ever get out of here?
Ever?
Not once they've stayed here through the night.
If you can't escape before morning comes, you can never leave.
That's Curtin's curse.
I was beginning to recover a little.
A little.
My mind was beginning to work again.
A little.
Whatever happened, I mustn't get stuck in here past dawn.
Even if I went through a door that only took me back to California, I would have to find some way to stay there forever.
My eyes must have been the size of saucers when I faced the boy again.
Which way is the exit? I asked him.
He shook his head.
I don't know.
You'll have to find it.
It's a house.
How big can it be?
Where's the nearest door?
I don't know.
Damn it, boy.
Only you can find it.
That's the magic.
Curtain's magic, he said.
I thought his magic only worked in a person's mind, I snarled at him.
This is your mind, said the boy quietly, and he faded away into nothingness.
Open-mouthed, I watched him vanish.
I saw him grow transparent, then grow dim.
No, wait!
Wait, I cried out.
You can't just leave me here.
But he was gone.
I was alone, lost.
With the time till morning ticking away, I wanted to weep.
I wanted to fall to my knees, clutching my hair in panic.
But I couldn't.
Not now, not here, not in this house.
I had to get out before dawn.
I looked around me.
Like I said, how big could the place be?
Big.
It was big.
It was big and crazy.
The layout made no sense.
The first thing I did was move down the large hall to the nearest window.
I passed by candelabras and more portraits.
I saw the sad painted faces looking down at me and realized I recognized many of them.
They had been around the table in the great dining hall.
But even before that, I had known them.
From stories I had read, from stories I had written, from memories and daydreams.
It made my stomach churn to think what was happening to them now.
What would happen to them every nightfall, the fate that would hang over them through every day they were stuck inside this house, every day forever.
And me too, if I didn't get out.
I reached the window and looked through.
It was full dark now.
I couldn't see a thing but my reflection on the glass.
I pressed my nose against the image of my own face on the chill pane, trying to see.
Then, a long flickering streak of lightning shot east to west across the sky.
I saw a courtyard, walled all the way around.
Grass and walkways and a stone statue of the wizard on a pedestal at the center, but no way out.
I backed away, licking my lips, breathing hard, thinking.
I didn't want to just run around the square of the closed courtyard forever.
But if I went to the end of the hall and turned left, maybe I could find another way.
I ran, down to the end of the hall, around the corner.
I came into another hall, exactly like the last.
Candelabras, portraits, windows on the night.
I stepped to one of the windows, pressed my nose against it.
Lightning flashed.
Shit, I whispered.
Another closed courtyard out there.
Another statue of Curtin at the center.
No exit.
The hallways alone go on and on, the elephant girl had said.
You can explore them forever.
I started running, down the hall, around the corner, stopped at the window, looked out, cursed, ran.
It didn't matter which way I turned, how far I went.
Every corner I came around, it was the same.
Another hall, another window, another flash of lightning, showing another courtyard with another statue of Curtain and no way out.
I don't know how long I ran like that in a growing panic of desperation.
Ten minutes?
Twenty?
An hour?
Two?
My already queasy stomach was cramping painfully.
I was gasping for breath.
Finally, exhausted, I came to a stop, bent over, panting, my hands on my knees.
Somewhere I heard a clock chime the hour.
Eight chimes.
The sickening realization rose inside me like a green cloud.
This, this running, this searching, this maze of sameness.
This could go on until morning.
After that, I would be stuck here forever, cursed forever like the other diners to be devoured by that creature, night after night after night.
And just then, the floor trembled underneath me.
I let out a little cry of fear and stood up straight, trembling.
I listened.
I heard a distant reverberation.
Boom.
It was the beast.
Its heavy footsteps, distant now, but getting louder, getting closer.
It was coming for me.
Despair washed over me.
I stood there helpless and pressed my head between the heels of my hands.
What was I going to do?
I could hear the monstrous booming footsteps growing slowly, steadily, louder, closer, every second.
Every instinct of my body told me to run, but where?
If I just continued to go down corridor after corridor, around corner after corner, lost in this impossible labyrinth, eventually either the beast would run me down or dawn, and Curtin's curse would catch up with me.
I needed to try something different, but what?
With the booming footsteps filling my brain, I could hardly think.
But really, there wasn't that much to think about.
There was only one option.
I went to the window, unlatched it, opened it, climbed out.
I fell onto wet grass and scrambled to my feet again.
The rain lashed me, icy cold, stinging my face.
The storm had not subsided, not even a little.
It was still at its raging, furious height.
Without the weird muffling effect of the house, the thunder was deafening, and within the thunder, I thought I could hear laughter now, the wizard's rasping laughter as he came after me, as he closed in.
When a broad bolt of lightning split the sky in two, I half expected to see him bearing down on me on a winged black horse, his starry robe flung out behind him.
Then darkness closed over the scene again, and I was lost in the storm, alone.
I scanned the courtyard, holding up my hand to shield my eyes from the whipping wind and rain.
At first, all I saw were the corridors, one after another, each the same.
But then I stopped.
I noticed something.
At one corner of one wall, one room seemed slightly different.
There were French doors, a higher roof, a subtle change in the quality of the light within.
I started across the court, slipping and skidding, falling to one knee on the wet grass, the rain driving down on me, the wind blowing, the thunder crashing.
The statue of Curtin watched me from its pedestal, its red eyes blank and staring.
I gave the creepy thing a wide berth as I went around it.
But when I looked back over my shoulder, it was, impossibly, still facing me, still watching me go.
I made it to the French doors, pulled them open, stepped through.
There was a great gust of wind, and the doors slammed shut behind me.
I had come into a ballroom.
It made no sense that it was here, but here it was.
It was big and hollow, quiet, lit by an uncanny, multicolored light that streamed in through an enormous stained-glass Rosetta window on one wall.
Dripping rainwater, I moved across the checkered marble floor to its center.
I turned this way and that, looking for an exit.
I didn't see one.
Then I seemed to sense someone looking at me from above.
I lifted my eyes.
There was an enormous mural painted on the vast ceiling.
I clutched my throat.
I heard myself make an awful gurgling noise.
My God, I thought.
My God.
I will never, ever tell what I saw up there.
Not to anyone.
The painting, quavering and alive in the colored light, was obscene and disgusting beyond the power of language to describe.
Even the lowest filmmakers of Hollywood had never debased the human imagination with images like these.
The worst, most violent, most sick and perverted film would have been only a suggestion, a polite symbol of what was painted up there.
As I stared up in horror, the elfin girl's words returned to me again.
The house gets into your head.
It is your head.
No, I thought, frozen where I stood.
Not my head.
Not my mind.
Not mine.
And then the dragon's footstep.
Boom.
Not far away.
Close.
He was suddenly right outside the ballroom.
The colored light from the Rosetta window dimmed.
The beast's shadow rose up behind the stained glass.
The creature had found me.
This way.
The boy, the boy's voice.
I spun toward the sound, trying to find him.
All I saw was an empty corner of the room.
The boy himself was nowhere to be seen.
There was another booming footstep.
The ballroom quaked.
Then, one terrifying roar that contained a thousand dying screams, and the Rosetta window shattered, and the beast came plunging through.
Which way to run?
The French doors just led out into the courtyard, back into the labyrinth.
But in the corner from which the boy had spoken, I could see no exit at all.
There was no time to think it through.
The boy had saved me twice.
I ran toward the empty corner.
The dragon thundered after me with unimaginable speed.
The vast room shook with its footsteps, filled with the shrieking chorus of its roar.
I looked over my shoulder and saw its huge body bearing down on me, its patchwork body made of all the bodies of the diners it had devoured, their shredded flesh still dripping gore.
I looked ahead and saw.
nothing.
An empty corner.
No way out.
I reached the wall.
Only then did I see the iron handle anchored in the floor.
A trap door.
I had about three seconds before the beast was on top of me.
I grabbed the handle, hauled up on it.
The heavy trap lifted, revealing a stairway underneath.
The dragon loomed above me, immense and terrible.
Its shadow covered me, its screaming voices and its hot and rotten breath washed over me.
I hurled myself into the open trap.
The door of my parents' house clicked quietly shut behind me, and I was in the backyard, my childhood yard.
I experienced one split second of unutterable relief.
To be in the light of day, to be out of that mansion, away from that monster, to be in the real world of grass and trees and blue California sky.
It felt for that single instant like pure salvation.
Then I remembered.
Slick, the assassin.
He was right behind me.
My mother had betrayed me to him.
My whole life was a miserable, twisted lie.
Even worse, it was a miserable, twisted lie that would be cut short if I didn't manage to escape.
The relief drained out of me and the fear came rushing back.
What the hell had I been planning to do here?
Oh yes, I remembered.
I ducked my head so that Slick wouldn't see me pass by the windows.
Keeping low like that, I ran around the side of my parents' strange, storybook house, hoping to make my way back to my car.
I reached the house's corner, knelt in the grass to keep below the window, out of Slick's line of sight.
I peeked around to the front yard.
There was Slick's car, the dark blue escalade, parked at the curb.
And there, beyond it, in the driveway, was my car, Riley's Volks.
Man Standing, Shape Appears00:02:49
And there, crap, there was Slick's partner, too, the big football player type, the muscle man.
He was standing at the kitchen door, slowly scanning the front yard, looking for me in case I slipped out of Slick's grasp.
My mind was still reeling, still filled with the images of the dragon about to lunge down at me in the ballroom.
Somehow that made Slick and the muscle man seem less terrible than they were.
They would kill me just as dead if they caught me, but they were only men, not monsters.
I could fight men.
At least I felt like I could.
I took courage.
I got ready to make my move.
It was like one of those prison escape scenes in a video game.
You know, where the searchlights are passing over the yard and you have to time your run so you don't get caught in the beam.
Except in this case, the searchlight was the muscle man's gaze passing back and forth over the front lawn, and I only had one turn to get it right with no extra lives.
I waited.
I drew back as the muscle man's eyes went over the place where I was crouched behind the corner of the house.
When I peeked out again, he was turning away to look up the street.
I took off, crouched low, running.
The muscle man was just turning back my way when I reached the escalate and hid behind him.
Now I could creep the length of the car unseen.
When I peeked out from behind the front fender, I saw the passat in the driveway, close now, only about five steps away.
Yes, but how could I open the door and get in and start the engine without the muscle man hearing me?
I thought maybe I would have to escape on foot.
But then I got a break, a lucky break.
Look, it had to happen sometime.
Slick called from inside the house.
Hey, Moses.
The muscle man answered him in a deep, booming voice.
Yo!
He turned his back on me, opened the kitchen door, and stepped inside my parents' house.
I heard him shout again.
Yo!
I didn't hesitate.
I ran to the passat, pressing the button on the key to unlock it as I went.
I yanked the car door open and dropped behind the wheel and started the engine.
The Volks was already out of the driveway, already swinging around, tires screeching, when Moses the muscle man heard it and came running back outside, shouting, Hey!
Hey!
I hit the gas and shot off down the road.
Next time on Another Kingdom.
I looked at the computer screen.
I saw the figure at the upstairs window.
A man standing there, just standing, just looking out.
The shape of him was so dim behind the glass that I had to enlarge the picture on the monitor, then lean in close, squinting in order to see it clearly.
But then I did see it.
I saw him, his outline, his shape.
It was Curtin.
He was here, in the real world.
Audio Recorded by Mike Cormina00:00:52
This has been Another Kingdom by Andrew Clavin, performed by Michael Knowles.
This episode, directed and produced by Jonathan Hay.
Produced by Mathis Glover.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Associate Producer, Austin Stevens.
Edited by Jim Nicol.
Sound design and mix by Dylan Case.
Audio recorded by Mike Cormina.
Music composed by Adrian Seely.
Hair, makeup, and wardrobe by Jessua Alvera.
DIT by Scott Key.
And our production assistant is Colton Haas.
Visual Supervisor, Jake Jackson.
Lead Illustrator, Rebecca Shapiro.
Illustrations by Anthony Clark.
Animations by Alvin Tyner, Cole Holloway, and Yi-Han Su.
Another Kingdom is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing Production.