The Keep

[SerendipitousMelody]

.:.Welcome, my friends...to hell.:.

 

[SerendipitousMelody]

At first glance, you see the Keep as you walk down the small path that some call a road, but the tough grasses growing through it made it not like any ever seen. Careful hands once pruned the area, but now, left it as it was.

Immediately, you sense something strange about the tower, but it was a benign strangeness. Castle-like in design, it was not classified a castle because of it's small size. So it was called a 'keep.' It had no name, and that was peculiar. It was supposedly centuries old, yet it looked as if the last stone had been slipped into place only yesterday. In fact, your first reaction was that you had made a wrong turn, and perhaps this was not the deserted 500-year old fortification you had heard about, that had just appeared one strange day.

Ages ago, a huge flat slab of rock had thrust itself out from the western wall of the pass. Around it ran a deep gorge through which flowed an icy stream that appeared to spring from within the mountain. The Keep sat on that slab where the small cabin used to be, but it seemed as if the Keep belonged there.

It's walls were sleek, perhaps forty feet high, made of granite block, melting seamlessly into the granite of the mountainside at it's rear. But the most striking feature of the small fortress was the solitary tower that formed it's leading edge: flat topped, jutting out toward the center of the pass, at least 150 feet from it's notched parapet to the rocky gorge below. That was the Keep. A holdover from a different age appeared. A welcome sight in that it assured dry living quarters during a watch over the pass.

But strange the way it looked so new, yet so old.

The heavy wooden gates in the Keep's entrance arch were wide open, as were the shutters on most of the windows in the walls and in the tower. The Keep seemed to be airing out. Strolling through the gates and into the cobblestone courtyard, you notice the cool and quiet. Turning slowly, you see that the tower looms over you; gray walls surrounding you on every side. Feeling as if one was standing in the arms of a huge slumbering beast, a shudder rolls through the hearts of many.

Then you see the crosses.

The inner walls of the courtyard were studded with hundreds of them...thousands of them. All the same size and shape, all the same unusual design: the upright was a good ten inches high, squared at the top and lipped at the base; the crosspiece measured about eight inches and has a slight upward angle at each end. But the odd part was the height on the uprights at which the crosspiece was set--any higher and the cross would have become an upper-case "T."

They were vaguely disturbing: something was wrong with them. The upright was brass and the crosspiece nickel, all skillfully inlaid into the surface of the stone block.

Then, it strikes you. Something else was missing. Birds. There were no birds in this area, where they were loud in the woods you had exited. No. The Keep was silent, no wildlife anywhere to be seen.

Then, another thing comes to mind. Who had built the Keep? And who was paying to have it so perfectly maintained in such perfect condition? It didn't make any sense. Staring at the shadows, you realize that because of where it was built, light came very difficultly to it.

...Night would come early.

 

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