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mtxref_ficAuthor's Note: Written for < lj user="tamingthemuse">'s "prompt 394-apotropaic". Featuring "Kensington Mudgett", the Team Albany AU version of Kazutaka Muraki, and a young Hyacinth at Halloween. Title nicked from Loreena McKennnitt's "All Soul's Night".
Two nights before Halloween, and Mudgett had cleared his calender for that day and the day before it, during which time, he had the servants help him to put the last touches on decking out the house for the Halloween party to come: orange faery lights brought up from New York now draped across the windows, tasteful cobwebs of spun glass festooning the dining room, the drawing room, the library and the parlor, paper-mache masks of devils and ghosts hanging on the walls. Mudgett had added some of his medical specimen skulls, arranged in Gothic displays of dried roses, old books with cracked leather covers, and glass jars with suspicious labels. One corner of the library he had turned into a fortune teller's corner with a table covered in a purple cloth embroidered with cabalistic sigils under a tent of purple and black chiffon, his spirit board and a tarot deck at the ready on the table.
"It's all simply window dressing, to give the place atmosphere," Mudgett said, leading Hyacinthe outside to the porch that encircled the house. The faery lights and carved pumpkin jack o'lanterns that decked the front gave way to a row of carved turnips with candles inside and spectral faces along the porch railing. Plain glass balls and glass bottles filled with pins and nails and what looked like fingernail parings hung from the ceiling of the porch. Mirrors hung on the outside walls, reflecting the starlight and the light of the rising moon. A pair of stone gargoyles, possibly shipped in from Europe, flanked the steps leading to the rear garden. More turnip lanterns sat on the risers of the stairs, unlit; a trail of more lead down the garden path, with torches along the yew alley belong that.
"What is all this?" Hyacinthe asked, looking up to his keeper.
Mudgett reached out, putting a hand on the youth's shoulder. "This is the true Halloween, the tools needed as the time when the veil grows thin draws near, the time when things may slip across the line between the mortal realm and the spirit realm."
"What sort of things?"
Mudgett kneaded the spot between Hyacinthe's shoulders gently. "Things may come from their world to this that might harm the mundanes, the duffers," he said. "And on the other hand, things of this world may slip across into a realm where they do not belong, where they will find their worst nightmares.
"You," he added, looking down into his charge's eyes. "Are more susceptible of crossing that line or being drawn across it."
"Because you brought me back from the dead," Hyacinthe said, looking down the yew alley, toward where the hidden inner garden lay and the wall beyond it, with its gate that opened onto the woods and the clearing within, where the stone altar awaited his master.
"Yes, unfortunately," Mudgett said. "And so I put up all these charms to deflect whatever creatures might try to slip across."
"Protecting me or your guests?" Hyacinthe asked.
"Protecting both, though you, my green-eyed child of the shadows, have the more powerful charms to protect you."
"Always the best for me," Hyacinthe noted, with a small smile. With the things that his master asked of him, he deserved it, and he earned it.
Two nights before Halloween, and Mudgett had cleared his calender for that day and the day before it, during which time, he had the servants help him to put the last touches on decking out the house for the Halloween party to come: orange faery lights brought up from New York now draped across the windows, tasteful cobwebs of spun glass festooning the dining room, the drawing room, the library and the parlor, paper-mache masks of devils and ghosts hanging on the walls. Mudgett had added some of his medical specimen skulls, arranged in Gothic displays of dried roses, old books with cracked leather covers, and glass jars with suspicious labels. One corner of the library he had turned into a fortune teller's corner with a table covered in a purple cloth embroidered with cabalistic sigils under a tent of purple and black chiffon, his spirit board and a tarot deck at the ready on the table.
"It's all simply window dressing, to give the place atmosphere," Mudgett said, leading Hyacinthe outside to the porch that encircled the house. The faery lights and carved pumpkin jack o'lanterns that decked the front gave way to a row of carved turnips with candles inside and spectral faces along the porch railing. Plain glass balls and glass bottles filled with pins and nails and what looked like fingernail parings hung from the ceiling of the porch. Mirrors hung on the outside walls, reflecting the starlight and the light of the rising moon. A pair of stone gargoyles, possibly shipped in from Europe, flanked the steps leading to the rear garden. More turnip lanterns sat on the risers of the stairs, unlit; a trail of more lead down the garden path, with torches along the yew alley belong that.
"What is all this?" Hyacinthe asked, looking up to his keeper.
Mudgett reached out, putting a hand on the youth's shoulder. "This is the true Halloween, the tools needed as the time when the veil grows thin draws near, the time when things may slip across the line between the mortal realm and the spirit realm."
"What sort of things?"
Mudgett kneaded the spot between Hyacinthe's shoulders gently. "Things may come from their world to this that might harm the mundanes, the duffers," he said. "And on the other hand, things of this world may slip across into a realm where they do not belong, where they will find their worst nightmares.
"You," he added, looking down into his charge's eyes. "Are more susceptible of crossing that line or being drawn across it."
"Because you brought me back from the dead," Hyacinthe said, looking down the yew alley, toward where the hidden inner garden lay and the wall beyond it, with its gate that opened onto the woods and the clearing within, where the stone altar awaited his master.
"Yes, unfortunately," Mudgett said. "And so I put up all these charms to deflect whatever creatures might try to slip across."
"Protecting me or your guests?" Hyacinthe asked.
"Protecting both, though you, my green-eyed child of the shadows, have the more powerful charms to protect you."
"Always the best for me," Hyacinthe noted, with a small smile. With the things that his master asked of him, he deserved it, and he earned it.
