Chapter 1

please read the summary in "random story ideas"

Uncle Pasillus could hardly sit still at his small desk in the corner of the study. Pasillus (of course he was only eight years old at the time) had been tinkering with a rather elaborate pocket watch. Five hands spun around the center as Pasillus turned their respective gears so that they faced not only numbers, but colors " different shades of red on one side, and different shades of blue on the other. The hand that pointed to the colors told what the sky was like outside, morning or dusk, while the other four hands told what time of day it was not only there, in the rural country of Ireland (though not the Ireland you may know), but also on the far side of the world (those two hands usually turned opposite each other, but on the occasional moment they moved out of balance, Pasillus was aware that it was the result of some cosmic event that had disrupted the natural flow, for the watch was never wrong). Anyways, Pasillus was so engrossed in his little project that he hardly noticed his father standing over him. After his father grunted to get the young Pasillus’ attention, he looked up to the loving twinkle in his father’s eye.

“What is it you’re working on there, son?” his father asked.

“It’s a watch that tells time, father, but it does so much more!” Pasillus explained to is father all about the watch, what it did, how it worked. His father was at first, only humoring Pasillus, but then his expression changed to seriousness and he began to listen intently to everything his son said.

When Pasillus was finished speaking, a look of joy blazed across his face as his father said, “Bravo, Pasillus. Indeed a fantastic creation. However, I believe your friend, er, Mortimer, is at the front gate. You should take a break and go play with him outside.”

Pasillus frowned, but knew his father was right. Sliding off the cushioned chair, Pasillus walked past the hundreds of gadgets and inventions that littered the floors, the walls, the shelves, and some even hung from a ceiling. They were metal, wood, and twisted glass, all of them served hardly any purpose at all and were covered in a thick layer of dust that gave everything in the room a very rustic feel. You see, Pasillus’ father was called Lord Gregorio, and as his title suggests, he was the lord of a particularly rich plot of land in Northern Ireland. Since he had so much time on his hands, he spent almost all of it coming up with useless inventions and puzzles. But that doesn’t matter much right now.

Pasillus marched out the door to the hallway outside, which slowly twisted until Pasillus was walking upside down on the blood red carpet. Then he came to the spiral staircase and his footsteps echoed off the marble floor and off into the empty space. The light in the stone cylinder came from torchlight as there were no windows.

At the bottom of a staircase, there was a wooden door with a round handle. Pasillus turned the knob the way you would usually turn a doorknob, however, when he opened it, the room beyond was upside down, and the ceiling was far below him while the floor was an inch from his head. Pasillus sighed, closed the door, and turned the knob the opposite way. This time when the door opened, the room was right side up.

He entered the new room, which was large with a vaulted ceiling (that had looked rather odd when the room had been upside down), and had an enormous pair of doors with crisscrossing bars of dark steel bracing them. Pasillus pushed the doors and entered into the sunlight (by now, it’s safe to assume the sort of lifestyle young Pasillus grew up with, and this will help explain things later).

As Pasillus ventured outside, he found himself shielding his eyes. A figure presented itself in the form of a shadowy mirage, and until his eyes adjusted, the figure could have been anybody. However, Mortimer Kult became clear, standing in front of him.

“Oy, what took you so long?” Mortimer asked. There was a slight lisp in his speech, as if one of his teeth kept snagging on his cheek whenever he tried to talk.

“Sorry, I had been busy, but I am here now so what shall we do?” asked Pasillus.

Mortimer frowned, deep in thought. Mortimer was thick as thick could get for a boy his age. His neck was even wider than his face, and his stomach was pushed out far, like a balloon inflated far past its limit, and covered with in a rich purple-silk tunic.

It is not important to know what Pasillus looked like, suffice to say he looked like an average young boy with a strange mop of brown hair that stuck out oddly from the top of his head. However, it is of grand importance to know what Mortimer looked like, though next time we meet him, his hair will be grey and he will have thinned out significantly.

“We could go by the stream and play water hopper,” suggested Mortimer.

Pasillus quite liked this idea, so the two of them headed past the green fields that seemed to glow in the evening sunlight, and the sky which was so blue it could’ve been the ocean if Pasillus didn’t know better. But then again, it could’ve been like a room in his castle which turned upside down with the wrong push of the door.

At the stream (which was only a few yards across), the two boys began gathering rocks for their game of water hopper, which involved skipping rocks across the glassy surface (and whoever got the farthest after ten throws won), then they stood part way into the water with the bottoms of their pants rolled to their knees and began throwing.

“My father is being greeted at his conference in Britain by the Queen. He’s being given a high honor,” bragged Mortimer, who was raised by rich men to be a rich man.

“My father’s invented a machine that automatically peels potatoes,” said Pasillus, who had been raised by an inventor to be an inventor.

“And what good would that do?” scoffed Mortimer. “It seems a bit useless, don’ it?”

“That’s not true,” said Pasillus, feeling his face grow hot. Pasillus didn’t like to talk about his castle and the incredible devices that brought it to life, for fear of being called a freak and his father, a crackpot.

“Well, my parents don’t need a machine to peel potatoes; the servants do it for them. In the kitchens and the library, I’ve got a servant that keeps me bed warm at night when I go to sleep.”

At this, Pasillus couldn’t help but clench his fists tightly around the smooth, wet stone in his hand until his knuckles turned white. Mortimer, as well as the other children of Ireland had never been inside the castle, and had no idea that the castle had no servants (except for Corty, the butler, who’s family had served Pasillus’ family for several generations), because Lord Gregorio refused to keep them. His father didn’t believe that “money should be wasted on services one could do themselves, or else invent something to do it for them.”

Pasillus tossed his last stone, which managed to go just an inch further than Mortimer’s last throw. Mortimer’s smile fell from his face.

“Maybe your father should invent something useful,” said Mortimer, eager to get back on the topic of his family being richer than Pasillus’.

Pasillus saw the verbal attack coming, but still couldn’t stop himself from throwing his last ace onto the table, so to speak.

“For your information, my father is inventing a cure for death.”

 Whatever smile Mortimer had recovered blew away with the sudden gust of flowery-scented wind.

“Y-you can’t invent a cure for death,” said Mortimer, though he seemed very unsure of himself. “It’s not possible.”

“Well,” said Pasillus, feeling rather proud that Mortimer was the one gaping at awe of something he had. “He told me himself. He said one day ‘Pasillus, I’m inventing a cure for death'"nd indeed, those were his fathers words on a random summer morning.Of course, Pasillus figured it couldn’t really the cure for death, but Mortimer didn’t know that.

“You lie!” Mortimer suddenly shouted.

“No, I don’t!” Pasillus shouted back.

The two carried on like that for a while before it started to get violent. Mortimer shoved Pasillus then Pasillus shoved Mortimer. Both boys were on the verge of curling their fists and launching blows at each other when a sweet voice came over the hill that led down to the stream and up to the castle.

“Knock it off, you two,” called Montserrat, Pasillus’ sister, who was standing just above them,near one of the random patches of rhododendrons that littered the countryside with their lavender and crimson beauty.

Of course, she was beautiful, as any daughter of a lord should be, with auburn hair that Gregorio told her looked like her mother’s who was deceased. However, there had always been a knowing look in her eyes that separated her from the vacant gazes of the rest of the beautiful women in the country. Mortimer was momentarily enchanted by Montserrat and lowered his fist at once.

“I-I have to go now,” Mortimer stammered. He turned and ran off toward a black carriage that sat in the middle of the country lane. The dark horses that pulled it were beautiful, but tame, and Pasillus had always found tame things to be rather boring, as did Montserrat.

“Pasillus, dear,” (for Montserrat always referred to her brother as ‘dear’) “Father says there is something he wants to show the two of us.” With that, Montserrat left the hill and returned through the fields to the castle, which now that they were outside and could get a good look, it rather looked like a puzzle itself, swelled to an unimaginably large size. Many of the towers and turrets that rose from it were sideways or upside down. Windows were all shapes and sizes, stairs wound their ways up random walls but began and ended nowhere. Pipes and chimneys stuck out at odd angles, but most served uses long forgotten. Once, Pasillus had gotten lost on the roof, and then in one of the rooms that had no door, but he’d gotten into it somehow, and some say that was the start of his madness that slowly grew and grew over the years. Montserrat had grown up as well, but she moved away to London and married a man whom, in Pasillus’ opinion, she had no reason to be marrying.

Lord Gregorio died conducting an experiment with volatile chemicals at a very old age, and soon, Pasillus became Lord Pasillus, and finally Uncle Pasillus, when Montserrat bore a child. Pasillus still didn’t approve of Montserrat and her husband: a man who had once been rich, but had fallen into the poor house once his great cousin (or something, as Pasillus often forgot) had run off with his entire inheritance. However, the onetime Pasillus met his nephew (named Venulus, after his and Montserrat’s grandfather) he found himself enchanted, for Venulus had Gregorio’s kind eyes, the eyes that Uncle Pasillus missed dearly.

Eventually, Pasillus became mad. Not the mad that occurs when one falls into horrible circumstances (for Pasillus had more money than he needed and more inventions than he cared to test, though some say that was what led to his madness) but the kind of madness that develops from being alone for a half of century.

One day though, Pasillus, like many others, passed away. His madness had finally gotten the best of him. Montserrat passed soon after him. On the day she died, Grekes Kraft (Montserrat’s husband and Venulus’ father) and Venulus went to her funeral, though Venulus was still just a boy.

Meanwhile, Pasillus’ castle, his inventions, his money, and all the rest of his secret items sat alone, gathering dust, until it was their time to be collected and put to good use.

You may be wondering why I am telling you all this, as Pasillus ended up dead and his castle, vacant. However, if you were to stop reading now, you would never get to find out how very important Pasillus and his inventions were about to become.

Author's Note

please read, review, enjoy.

Reviews

[HorrorMaster]

very well written, nice story

[James Watts]

Well written and intriguing. You have an old fashioned style of writing that not many today embrace. It is refreshing to read but I have only written this way a few times before deciding I was lazy lol. Nice start.

[Star Wolf]

Seriously interesting and full of promise. I'd go with this!

[Dutch Jr.]

This is a nice start. Makes me curious about your characters, and the conflicts you plan to introduce with this. Interesting. Keep writing.