The first chapter of my extremely long long looooooong overdue story Castitius Lilium.
Enjoy!

Plain Text Version Here

Chapter One:
"Sleepless Dreams (DOWn the RAbbiT hOLe)"

Alice Hillstone was afraid. For her, fear fit like a second skin. She hated it, but she often found herself staring out of the corner of her eye at people who weren’t behind her rather than dead-on at the person in front of her. At 21, she could not place when the anxiety first manifested itself. When she was still small, her parents died, but she seemed to remember feeling the fear, less potent, even before. She stood in her low-rent apartment, gazing into the full length hall mirror. It was a practice in trying to strengthen her bravery. Alice was not afraid of mirrors, but had heard an old wives tale about Death appearing in your mirror at a certain time of night. There was more ritual to it than that, but the idea had stuck in her head. She would run past the glass if she had to pass it late at night, but now she was attempting courage. She made a face at herself.
“Idiot,” she mumbled.
She shrugged at herself and, careful to shut out the light after turning her back on the mirror, wandered into her bedroom. There were not any of the clever knick-knacks or framed prints most young single women’s rooms would have, not because she disliked decor, but because she had never gotten around to it. In fact, aside from her bed, a bedside table with a lamp on it, and a bookshelf, the room was empty. Her bookshelf was full of collections rather than popular paperbacks. Fairy tales, mostly. A thick leather-bound collection of Grimm’s fairy stories, a thin Blue Fairy Book she had snatched from a used bookstore. Arabian Nights had nearly a shelf to itself. Despite her fears, the dark simplicity of these folk-stories were a comfort,so absurd they couldn’t be feared, but so magical and weird they sent shivers down her spine.
She had always felt drawn to these stories, and her first drawings had been copies of illustrations. On her bedside table was a sketchbook filled with as much the same. She slid into the blankets and picked up the sketchbook. The last few were vague wispy sketches of a man.
She kept attempting him over and over again, but she could not get his eyes right. She saw him in her mind, perfectly and constantly, but he never turned out. He was not a fairy tale figure, though in some way he was larger than life, and Alice could not see through the trace lines whether he meant harm of good.
She snapped the sketchbook shut and set it on the bedside table again, and clicked off the lamp. Night crept into her mind, and with it, dreams.

“Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”
He was there every week, rapping on the window. When it started, Alice hid under her patched blanket, praying he was a dream until she knew it to be true. He had to be a dream. It was not so much that there was anything particularly frightening about him as a figure, at least, there should not have been. He was average enough in appearance, overly tall, with dark hair and pale skin. His face was far too lined for a man who could not have been a day over thirty, but he was not particularly scary to look at, unless you noticed his eyes. They were dark, endless, animal. They were too dark to show where the iris began and pupil ended, but it seemed like they would be slitted.
More frightening was the fact that he arrived at her window, every Monday at three AM without fail, tapping ever so lightly on it. On the window that was three stories up. It had been three months. He would tap on her window, and wait for ten, fifteen minutes, then leave. This night he had only been waiting for five. Alice pulled the blanket well over her head and shivered.
“Are you afraid of the big, bad wolf?”
His voice sent an icy thrill across her skin. It was smooth as oil, calm, but only calm in the way the eye of the storm is calm. There was a sort of hiss, or perhaps a growl beneath it. Alice tried to pull herself into a ball.
“Why are you haunting me?” Her voice squeaked to the phantom.
There was a chuckle, like an animal screech. “To be let in.”
“I don’t want you in.” Alice moaned into her pillow.
“Are you afraid, little pig?”
“Yes.” She tried to make herself invisible beneath the blanket.
He laughed, a hideous, ringing laughter. Then he was gone.


Alice woke with a start. The classroom was empty. The lights were flicked off. Her professor and the rest of the students had disappeared. She moved her still unfocused gaze to the clock. Eight PM. They had left her, all alone and sleeping for three hours. It had been another near sleepless night, haunted by dark dreams, and the art history class had been so long, it had been so easy to slip. Now it was dark outside, dark and deep and unknown, full of things that created sleepless dreams. She tried not to panic. She gathered her bag and stood. She hurried out of the classroom, out of the art building.
Fear picked its way along her spine. She felt her breath escaping her lungs ragged. When she reached the parking lot, the eerie orange glow of the streetlights cast the world in more shadow than they removed. She hurried along, avoiding the temptation to look over her shoulder, until she reached her little white Chevy. She hurtled herself towards it, fumbled briefly with her keys, and slammed the door after her. She quickly inspected the back-seat, and finding it empty save a Coka-Cola bottle and some books, flicked the locks and allowed herself to relax.
She leaned her head against the steering wheel and sighed.
“So stupid,” she mumbled.
The fear was always there, watching her from just beyond her vision, lurking in dark corners and empty rooms, waiting at the end of hallways. Only now she could see the figure from the night-terrors. The man with his dark, animal eyes she could never capture. When she was in daylight, surrounded by people, she knew he was a figment of her imagination, and nothing more, yet when she was alone she could hear him in her head, begging to be let in.
She shook herself and started the car, and sped away into the night, watched by a large black cat, crouching in the bushes.

Alice did not live too far from the university. She arrived at her apartment complex within fifteen minutes. She grabbed her bag, unlocked the car, locked it again, and hurried up the stairs. The lights were flickering in the passage outside her door. She looked to either side, and saw nothing. But.. Out of the corner of her eye?
No. There was nothing. Those animal eyes were not real. She had certainly not seem them gleam at her from the shadows. She shook herself and pushed the key into the lock. As she swung the door open, she realized something was wrong. Terribly wrong. She smelled the smoke before she felt the burst of heat. She felt something pull her backwards as flames exploded out of her door. As they leapt towards her, grasping for her sweater and jeans, singeing the tips of her hair, panic seized her completely. She could not move or scream, and yet the other force was dragging her backwards and down the hall, and away, into the night air. She clutched the figure holding her, and squeezed her eyes shut. Everything was fear and heat and the singing twang of nerves.

When Alice could register something beyond the pounding of her heart, and the roar of blood through her being, she felt cold. Freezing. It was as if she were embracing icicles. It was too cold even to shiver. Her body would not respond to the aching chill. When she felt in control enough, she looked around. She was at a park or maybe a playground, seated on the slide, one of those slick metal ones that stick. There was a jungle gym nearby, with beads of dew glittering on it, and large swing set, the swings swaying gently in the breeze. Alice closed her eyes and tried to focus.
What on earth was she doing here?
She could not even remember the last time she had been in a playground. Large groups of kids made her worried when she was little, she had preferred to play one-on-one in a well-lit toy room.
She looked up. The hair on the back of her neck had prickled. No one was there. She jumped up from the slide and looked around. She did not want to be here. She did not know how she had gotten here. She forced her feet into action, and stepped quickly, trying not to break into a run or draw attention to herself. Soon she was bathed in the glow of streetlights. She blinked as she got her bearings. Her apartment complex was several blocks away.
Her apartment? What had happened to it? She tried to prod her brain. Nothing was making any sense. She had opened the door, but there had been.. Fire? But why? How?
She continued moving.

She smelled the smoke before she turned onto her street. A cloud of it filled the air. A fire-truck rushed past her. She sped up slightly. Arriving at the brownstone building, she saw that the blaze was mostly taken care of. Fellow tenants stood around blearily in pajamas, while firemen in yellow rushed around, packing things up. One noticed her and came forward. He looked at her.
“You wouldn’t be... Alice Hillstone?”
“Yes,” she tried to say evenly.
“Oh man, I hate to say this, ma’am. It was your apartment. Everything was completely destroyed.”
Alice closed her eyes and let this information wash over her.
“Did anything make it?” she gulped.
“It’s not very likely. I’m so sorry,” he said, shuffling his feet. Big strong men aren’t really cut out for sensitive news. He placed a hand awkwardly on her shoulder.
“It appears to have started from the inside. Do you think you maybe left an oven on or a tossed a stray cigarette?”
She shook her head slowly, her eyes unfocused.
“I don’t smoke. I never use the oven.”
“Well, sometimes these things just... They just happen. I’m sorry ma’am. My recommendation to you is to find a friend to stay with for the time being... Ma’am?”
She shook herself. There were no dark eyes glittering at her from across the street; it was stress and imagination. She looked up at the apartment complex.
“Why me?” She asked the world at large.
“These things happen,” the fireman said helplessly.

Alice prided herself on, while often a wreck, never being hysterical. In the lobby of Motel 6, she felt she could be failing even at that, as she gathered her key card from a sympathetic desk clerk. She wandered down the hall to room 106, and slid the key card into the lock. The green light blinked on and she entered. She did not bother with the light-switch, or adjusting the temperature. She literally leapt onto the bed and gathered herself under the blankets. She felt numb, and sleep came quickly. She dozed, but fitfully, seeing only fire, and such strange, dark, animal eyes.
Outside a cat was wailing.
It was three in the morning when her eyes, red, tired, aching from exhaustion, snapped open. The wailing of a cat outside had become unbearable, even in her weariness, to ignore or sleep through. It sounded just like an infant, abandoned to the coldness of the world, screaming for attention. Alice opened the window, and found there was no stopper to keep it shut, no screen to keep her from falling out. She stared into the night. In the bushes beneath her window, yellow-green lamps glowed at her. A cat, so dark it seemed less black than void in cat-form, was hidden behind those eyes. It mewed pitifully at her.
“There, don’t do that.”
She reached a hand down and stroked the fur, it was smooth, shining, soft.
Its eyes gazed into her own pleadingly. As if to say, let me in.
“Alright.” she said softly, picking up the animal. She brought it into the room, and closed the window.
“Just for tonight, though.”
The cat clawed and wriggled in her arms. She dropped it and gasped.
“Hey!”
The animal dropped, but it never hit the floor. Before her stood a man with dark, inhaling eyes.
She stared up at him in abject fear. Her legs wobbled, her lip shook. She was frozen to the spot. But inside she was crumbling.
Her mouth squeaked out the words, “No. No not you.”
“Oh yes, me. You let me in.” He grinned. “You finally let me inside.”
Alice squeezed her eyes shut and clinched her fists. “I know you aren’t real. You can’t possibly be real.”
He slid around her, his voice shivering her spine.
“I’m more real than you could possibly imagine. More real than you will ever be.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” Her words were laced with the agony of fear.
“I’m doing nothing to you.”
“You are tormenting me. Leave me alone. Haven’t you done enough?”
“All I’ve ever done, is ask to be let in, little girl.”
He seemed to float around her, moving suddenly, but seeming to flow from place to place.
“Now, you need to sleep, girl. Sleep deep.”
The words poured into her mind, soporific. Her eyes grew heavy. Her thoughts swam. Fear was replaced by a hazy exhaustion. Then there was nothing.

Alice’s eyes flickered, then opened. She realized she was laying down on some sort of soft bed. There was no light, only an emptiness that seemed to carry on forever. The air felt old, spent. The fear came back, in full force. Her body began to quiver.
“Scared?”
Her eyes adjusted enough to see the man, with his dark glittering eyes, standing over her. He was grinning with satisfaction.
Alice put her hands over her face. “This is just a dream.”
“I don’t think you’re waking up.”
She opened her eyes and stared up at him. “Where am I?”
“My house.”
“Who are you? Why have you-”
“One question at a time.” He grinned. “I won’t tell you my name.”
“Why me? What did I do?”
“You exist. It’s a good enough reason,” He lowered himself to eye level with her. “Master.”
She shivered. “Wh-what?”
“Alice of the Hillstone family, I am in your service.” His eyes sparkled sickeningly.
Fear was arching in her back, like a tiny cat with a thousand feet. “I don’t understand.”
He rose to his feet. “Up,” he commanded.
Weakly, she followed.
“Through the tragedy of your birth into the Hillstone family, you have been marked as prey,” he said, as she followed him out of the room and down a dark hallway.
She absorbed this. She was destined to be eaten by a man with the ability to turn into a cat, to torment her mind. She did not reply. She had nothing to say. There was nothing to do.
“The Hillstone family has became a target for many... Unique persons.”
A human sacrifice, to a bizarre and powerful cult, what a death.
“I wasn’t even raised as a Hillstone, I was raised by-”
“Your godmother, Anne-Marie Lyle, until you were emancipated from her care upon your eighteenth birthday and moved to this town in order to further your studies.” He nodded. “Please, don’t bore me with trivialities. It was unfortunate your mother and father were so... Tragically killed.”
A lump formed in her throat. She had only vague memories of them. She had been taken into her godmother’s care when she was six, if you could call it care. Anne-Marie was not an evil woman, but too young and unready for children. She had left Alice to her own devices, by and large, and now... A figment had appeared knowing all about her, her history, her life.
“Did you kill them?” she pondered.
Surprise briefly burst across the man’s face, and was quickly replaced by a gloom. “Never.”
The dark intensity he said this with surprised Alice, as if the suggestion had been the deepest offense to him.
“Did you know them?”
“In a way.”
He stopped, they were in a large, circular room. There were no furnishings, but the walls had a mural on them, a strange scene depicting a story perhaps, of violence and ancient times.
“With regards to your lowness, I’ll try to keep it simple. In the time this tapestry was created, a pact was made between...” He paused, then said enigmatically, “My kind... And your family.”
She did not ask for clarification. Something about him, his dark animal eyes, his pure hugeness, so big he could only be fiction, held her silent and captive.
“The jist of this is, you are in my care.”
She widened her eyes, the spell broken by shock.
“What?”
“Through your lineage, you have found yourself my service.”
“So you’re my...”
“Servant, bodyguard, accomplice. Whatever you need me for, I will be that.”
“But you, you’ve done me nothing but harm.”
“Harm has come to you because of who you are. If you had allowed me to, I could have prevented your trials. Such as the burning of your apartment.”
She felt her knees weakening. “That really happened?”
“You would have been burnt to a crisp had you crossed the thresh-hold. To your luck, I was able to pull you from danger.”
“Th-thank you.” Her eyes were distant. Her head felt light. She shook it, as if to clear the confusion. “This is too much. Please just... Just..” The lightness traveled down her spine and darkness opened up at the back of her skull.
She fell forward, and with amazing speed, the man caught her before she hit the floor. He watched her solemnly, as her consciousness swam against the current of darkness back to him. She blinked up at him after several minutes. Everything rushed back to her.
She pushed against him, but he did not let her go. “According to my kind, I cannot tell you my name. Names hold the key to the power of every living thing. Names are a sort of control that no one must have.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“You may call me November, for lack of a better name.”
“Please,” she whispered. “Take me home.”
The man called November raised an eyebrow. “I already have.”