Chapter Twenty-One

"Thought you'd all like to have what they used to call a sneaky preview of the latest epic movie." Johannes Forde grinned at the group of friends standing around his wag. "Before we go and take up the Family's offer of supper and accommodation for the night. What do you say?"
Ryan nodded. Once Krysty had revived that frail glimmer of life, he had recovered amazingly fast, his strong constitution helping to pull him through. It had taken another hour, into full dark, before he'd come around enough to pick a cautious path back to Bramton, where the others had been waiting anxiously. J.B. had already organized the search party, enlisting John Winthrop and some of the men of the ville.
They'd disbanded with undisguised relief once they saw Ryan and Krysty stumbling out of the darkness of the surrounding bayou.
Now, after a bowl of rich vegetable soup, so thick it was more of a stew, Ryan was almost completely recovered from the near-drowning, though he was still totally blind.
"I've got it all processed and we can take a look. Not what you'd call a finished cut, as there's a few bits and bobs that need trimming." Forde's neat white beard and mustache seemed to float in the gloom, with a life of their own. He was still wearing his fringed buckskins, and his pony tail was now tied back with a ribbon of brightest gold.
"When will you show it to the people?" Mildred asked. "That's when they settle up with some jack."
"Indeed, yes. Straight and true as an ebony rule, that is. But, friends first."
"Someone coming," Jak said, turning to peer into the darkness beyond the Clanton Corral and the livery stable. His nocturnal vision was the best in the group.
"Cornelius?" J.B. asked.
"Come to see why we're late for the meal?"
"No. The Mayor."
It was John Winthrop, scurrying along, keeping close to the shadows of the buildings that lined the main street. He wore a long duster coat, dark brown, with its collar turned up high. When he arrived he sounded out of breath and was visibly nervous in case anyone saw him there.
"I have a little time, outlanders," he panted.
"What is it?" Ryan asked.
"You seem decent, honest folk."
"Get on with it."
"Right, Mr. Cawdor. Indeed. Straightest point between two places is the shortest line." He scratched his head. "I don't think I have that quite right."
"We get the picture," Krysty said.
"Yeah," Mildred agreed. "We see."
"You go as guests with the Family."
Ryan nodded. "No secret, Mr. Winthrop. What of it? That what you came for?"
His head bobbed quickly, like a drinking bird. "That's the reason."
Everyone waited, but Winthrop seemed as though he didn't want to elaborate.
"Danger?" Jak said finally.
"Deep and dark," replied the mayor of Bramton. "The Family has reigned here for longer than anyone can remember. Word is that they never change. No, that's wrong. Because they change. Yes, they surely do that."
"You aren't making any sense," Forde said. "They never change, but they always change."
The clouds had drifted away and a bright moon hung over the bluffs to the east, toward the cliff-top house of the Family.
"Old people here, like Zenobia Simpkins, swear that Elric and the others have hardly aged a day in the last twenty years or more."
Doc snorted. "Old wives' nonsense! Stuff and damned taradiddle!"
"You may think so, Doctor, and you can surely not look to me for comment on that." Winthrop, despite his quaking fear, was a strangely dignified figure.
"Get on with it, man," Ryan growled, aware of time sliding by them.
"Just a word to the wise, outlanders. Bramton has been owned by the Family since just after skydark. Some say for centuries before that."
"You continue to spout the most arrant rubbish, Winthrop." Doc rapped sharply on the highway with the ferrule of his swordstick. "Before skydark there was no question of barons and the owning of land and of people. It was not the American way. Do you have any cogent proof for us of your preposterous conceits? No, of course you do not."
Winthrop turned to face the old man. "There have been young men and young women missing. Only one body, torn and raggled by the millstream. The others" He snapped his fingers. "Never seen again."
Ryan shook his head. "Every frontier pesthole has the same story, Winthrop. Young folks get tired and up their roots and move away."
"There is the sickness and the way" He stopped and looked up.
From far above them they all heard a strange, chilling cry, an unearthly shriek as something passed its shadow between the moon and the watchers, a creature that seemed to have a huge wingspan, oddly shaped. It swooped once more, turning at speed so that none of them could see it properly.
Then it vanished.
"What fuck was that?" Jak said.
"If you couldn't make it out, then none of us could." Ryan stamped his feet. "Sounded like a kind of mix between a gator and an eagle."
J.B. turned to the mayor. "Anyway, you were telling us about the Family, Winthrop. Go on."
The man was quivering like an aspen in a hurricane. "No. No more. They can see and hear everything. Why not just leave Bramton now? Leave this whole blighted area. Don't go to the dark house on the cliff."
He turned and started to walk quickly away, neck hunched, head buried in the folds of his coat, stopping a few yards away. "I never spoke to you. Understand? Never! If you must go to the house, then guard yourselves. I can say no more, outlanders. Just guard yourselves!"
He bustled off, swallowed up by the night.
Krysty sighed. "Think we should take his advice and leave the place?"
Forde responded instantly. "Nay, nay. There can be rich pickings for us all around Bramton. I've sold one film and there seems a likely chance of another to this freakish Family. Move on because of some nervous old dotard? I should say not. If you outlanders want to run whimpering and shitting yourselves into the bushes, then I won't stop you."
"We go to the house," Ryan said firmly.
"He was terrified, lover. You couldn't see how frightened Winthrop was."
"Don't need to see fear. Smell it a country mile off. I say we go."


BUT FIRST FORDE INSISTED on showing them what he called a rough cut of the 16 mm movie he'd made of the good folk of Bramton.
Krysty stood close to Ryan, her hand resting gently on his right arm, giving him a whispered commentary of the short film.
"Hey, it's brilliant! Sort of general view of the ville, from near to that weird store. Moving in closer. How do you do that, Johannes?"
"What?"
"Well, I can see you weren't moving, but your camera is. Kind of remote control."
"Called a zoom lens."
"How's it work?" Dean asked.
"Bit too complicated for you, son," Forde replied. "Watch now and you might see someone you recognize in"
"It's me!" the boy whooped. "Hey, that's me. I never saw myself 'cept in a mirror or a glass door or a pool of still water. That's me, Dad."
"Believe you, son."
"Hey, don't I look like myself? There's Doc!"
"Calm down, Dean," Ryan said, barely managing to control his own bitter frustration at not being able to see this miraculous movie.
Doc was smirking. Ryan could hear it in his voice. "Didn't realize what a handsome fellow I was, what a dashing and roving blade!"
"There's Mildred standing close to J.B., talking. Now she's just looked over her shoulder and seen she's being filmed. Now she looks all shy and nervous."
"Didn't know I was on 'Candid Camera,' " the woman said to Krysty.
"Is it color or black-and-white?" Ryan asked. "I've seen old predark vids that were black-and-white."
"This is in rich true-to-life color," Forde replied. "Nothing but the best."
"Hair's whiter than thought," Jak said quietly. "Snowier than snow."
"Camera doesn't lie." Forde adjusted something on the projector that made it run a little more slowly. Ryan caught the change of pitch.
"Now it's me," Krysty whispered. "The things moving sideways to give a wide view."
"Called panning," Forde said, unable to keep the pride out of his voice at their admiration and delight.
"It's me again, lover. Walking with you, Ryan. Can't tell from the film that"
"That I'm blind?"
She wasn't thrown by his spurt of anger. "Yeah, just that, lover. If I didn't know, I'd swear there was nothing at all wrong with you."
"Reminds me," Mildred said over the clicking whir of the projector.
"What?" Ryan snapped.
"Haven't checked your eye today."
"Nothing to check."
"Still best let me have a look. Maybe first thing in the morning."
"Waste of time, Mildred."
"Might be. Might not be. I'm the doctor, Ryan, not you. Let me decide."
"I'm looking at the projector. I can feel the heat of the light on my face. Must be a real powerful light to do that. It is, isn't it, Krysty?"
"Yes, it's very bright," she admitted reluctantly, knowing what he was about to say.
"Well, as far as I'm concerned it could be a hundred miles underground."
"Here's the townfolk," Krysty said, changing the prickly subject.
"There's Winthrop and the old woman." Dean was still bubbling with excitement at seeing something he'd only heard rumors about. "They look just like they do. I'd recognize them anyplace from this film. How much more is there, Johannes?"
"Not much. Just a little bit I took of the main street and a couple of shots of that Cornelius guy."
"There's the Banbury Hotel." Doc laughed. "I must confess, it looks a little more prepossessing on the film than in real life. You can't smell the damp or taste the persistent odor of burning onions."
"This is where Elric first appears," Krysty said quietly. "I can remember the moment he came. Just here Oh."
"What?" Ryan said.
There was a general chattering from everyone that made it difficult for him to pick out any details of what had happened, what was happening.
"Fireblast!" he roared at the top of his voice. "Will one of you squawking jays tell me what's going on? Krysty! What's gone wrong with the film?"
"Nothing, really," she replied, though failing to hide the puzzlement in her voice. "Just that Elric Cornelius doesn't seem to show up on the film."
"How can that be?"
Forde had stopped the projector, speeding the film back, sending it rattling on fast rewind through the gate. "I never seen anything like it before," he said, running it forward again.
"What the? Will someone please just tell me what the film shows if it doesn't show Cornelius? Is the film faulty or damaged, or what?"
"Sort of smudgy light," J.B. replied. "But everything around where he stands is sharp as a crystal. Everyone else is there. We're all there. Just Elric Cornelius."
"Damnedest thing I ever saw." Doc laughed. "If I wasn't a man of science who resolutely places arcane ephemera and inexplicable happenings into the 'X-Files,' then I'd say that Master Cornelius might be... "

"Be what?" Ryan pressed.
Mildred spoke. "I know what Doc is getting at. We're closer to sharing experiences than any of you." Her voice faded a little and Ryan figured she had to have turned away to address the old man directly. "No such things, Doc. You got a lot of faults, but superstitious gullibility isn't among them." She paused for a beat. "Or is it?"
"I share the beliefs of the master of mystery, Sherlock Holmes, my dear Dr. Wyeth. If you have carefully checked off all the possibilities, then what remains, however unlikely, must of necessity be the truth."
Nobody else in the group had the least idea what Doc and Mildred were arguing about.
Ryan tried for an explanation. "Just what the dark night are you two saying is the reason for this Family member not appearing in the film?"
"Something he was wearing," Forde said abruptly. "The totally dark black clothes in sunshine. Some trick of the light, I guess. Just didn't register on the stock. After all, it's way past its expiry date. Like a hundred years past it. Got to be that. Or something like that."
Ryan felt the unease, and he raged inwardly at his own helplessness, unable to see what they had all seen and judge for himself.
"Well," he said finally, "if we're all content with that explanation for this oddhappening, I guess we can all get going for supper at this big house on the bluff. We must be way late already."
"Better to be a few minutes late in this world than fifty years too soon in the next," Doc said.
Nobody could think of anything to top that, so they all set off for the Cornelius mansion.