Title: THE SECRETS OF MULDER MANSION, Chapter 1
NOTES: I posted this last year on my birthday, and after a full year of
telling people that I was working on a second chapter, I'm finally posting
it, and reposting the first chapter for the sake of continuity. This has
been slightly revised since the first time it was posted. It was a reponse
to a challenge someone had posted about writing a classic genre romance as
slash. It's nothing as clever as a spoof or a parody, just a slightly
mocking but genuinely affectionate tribute to the genre.
Rating: M/K, 1/1, PG13
Disclaimer: Mulder and Krycek are not mine.
Feedback: Please! lumpj@hotmail.com
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The Secrets of Mulder Mansion
Chapter One
12/29/99
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The car emerged suddenly from the last of the trees, their bare winter
branches casting complex shadows in the light of the setting sun, and Fox
Mulder's pulse quickened nervously. The view that opened up before them
showed a steep and rocky hill, and the massive house that squatted
forbiddingly at its crest cast a long shadow down over the drive. Mulder
opened the window a little, shivering at the cold damp air that entered, and
peered out towards the house where his father had grown up. A strange
rhythmic noise filled the air.
"What's that sound?" he asked the surly chauffeur who had met him at the
train.
"The sea," replied the man shortly.
"The sea?" said Mulder. "But I thought we were a good half-mile from - "
"Lost half the hill-side in storms over the last few years," said the
chauffeur brusquely. "House is right at the edge now. And there's caves,
down by the shore - you're hearing the echoes of the waves."
Mulder shivered again, and closed the window. He wondered if he'd been
foolish to come.
The call had come a week ago. His great uncle had died, the lawyer had said,
and left a rather unusual will, stipulating that all surviving Mulders come
to the old house to hear it read. Should any one of them fail to appear, the
entire estate would be left to charity. Curious about the family he had
never met, Mulder had decided to ignore his late father's dark warnings
about his great-uncle, and had booked a ticket to the small New England town
where the old house lay.
None of the photos in the family album had done it justice. Oh, they had
shown the gray stone and shingle, the long winding drive, the narrow
windows. They had detailed the sprawl of mis-matched architecture that had
been added over the years, the motley conglomeration of wings and towers and
porches that swelled the house to its current ungainly size. But the
photographs hadn't captured its oppressive weight, the arrogant way it
dominated the landscape.
He'd had his doubts about coming here, but better this than his echoingly
empty apartment, the week of holiday that seemed to stretch endlessly before
him without the comfort of that warm body he'd grown so used to waking
beside.
The car pulled up the drive with a crunch of gravel and oyster-shell, and
Mulder saw that the hill behind the house dropped away in a steep cliff, a
sharp sudden drop to the ocean below. When the car stopped he climbed out
quickly, turning his collar up and squaring his shoulders as he stared up at
the mostly-darkened windows. The ground beneath his feet seemed to shake
with the booming of the waves.
"Your luggage," said the chauffeur behind him, and when he turned the man
was holding out his single suitcase disdainfully. "I have to put the car
away. Ring the bell, and my wife will show you to your room."
Steeling himself, Mulder moved to the great front doors and pulled the
old-fashioned bell.
The housekeeper that answered was thin and wrinkled and horse-faced, wearing
a severe gray dress that looked as if it were holding her mercilessly
upright. "Fox Mulder," he introduced himself.
"I know," she said disapprovingly, and after a hard stare moved grudgingly
aside to let him enter. "You're in the blue room at the head of the stairs"
she snapped at him. " It's not quite ready. I'll take your luggage up.
Living room's through to your left." And with that she turned and stalked
away.
Mulder looked curiously around the hall. It held a strange mixture of luxury
and decay; expensive carpets worn threadbare, a chandelier that was lovingly
polished but with crystals cracked or missing, and various items of
furniture draped with white sheets standing randomly on the elaborate
parquet floor. The staircase had an elegantly carved banister and swept
grandly upwards into the yellowish light of low-wattage bulbs. He shivered
again, and followed the flickering light of a fire through the door to his
left.
Lounging indolently in one of the great chairs before the fireplace was a
young woman so starved, plucked, permed and powdered to mannequin-like
perfection that Mulder wanted to pinch her to see if she were real. She
looked him slowly up and down and pouted her full lower lip at him. "You
must be Fox" she said. "Everyone else is here already. I'm your cousin
Lucinda. I do hope you're entertaining. I'm dreadfully bored, and could
absolutely kill for a drink." She sighed, and then, apparently addressing an
empty corner of the room, said "Where has Alex gone? I shudder to think
what the week will be like if it takes this long to find a bottle of gin
around here!"
"Shut up, Lucinda," came a voice from what Mulder had thought was another
sheet-draped chair. "He's uncle's secretary, remember, not a butler. And you
could have easily asked Mrs. Mellors for a drink yourself." A large form in
a voluminous white dress glided towards him, extending a hand whose pudgy
fingers were weighted down with chunky silver rings. "I'm your cousin
Gertrude, Fox," she said. She had bushy graying brown hair and intelligent
hazel eyes that blinked at him from behind glasses that magnified them to
the size of chestnuts.
Lucinda pouted again, less prettily this time. "Mrs. Mellors is mean. And
I want Alex to bring me a drink."
"Here's Alex. And here's your drink," said a husky voice from behind Fox. He
turned quickly, caught by surprise.
The man in the doorway was tall and muscular, with fair skin made even paler
by the black suit he wore. He had a boyish face dominated by a pair of green
eyes whose expression was incongruously world-weary, and his thick dark hair
shone mahogany in the glow of the fire.
He turned to Mulder and unsmilingly said, "You must be Fox. Dinner's in half
an hour, if you want to change. Nothing formal, but the dining room is
rather drafty."
The words were innocuous enough, but the green eyes caught his with
something that looked like challenge, and Mulder felt himself squaring his
jaw to meet it. Then the man moved on, handed the drink to Lucy, and
disappeared out the other door, leaving Mulder with his heart beating
strangely fast.
"Wh- who was that?" he asked Gertrude.
She looked uncomfortable for a moment, then said, "Alex Krycek. Uncle's
secretary. The will requires that he stay for the reading as well."
"Well, I wish he'd stay in one place long enough to talk to," complained
Lucy, sipping her drink petulantly. "I don't understand why we all had to
come back here, and I'm so bored!"
"Enjoy it while you can," said Gertrude grimly, and Mulder looked at her in
surprise. "I have a bad feeling about this week," she went on. "I fear this
will be a time of great darkness for us all. This family has a lot to answer
for. I suspect that boredom will prove to be the least of your worries,
Lucy."
"You and your damn feelings," said Lucy, rolling her eyes.
But Gertrude was looking soberly out of the darkened window, toward the sea
that beat invisibly at the foot of the rock below, and Mulder, watching her,
felt his own unease deepen.
* * *
When the dinner gong rang Mulder surveyed himself one last time in the
mirror. He had lost weight over the past month, and his dark-green sweater
hung loosely on him. He looked tired, he thought, tired and worn. He sighed.
He didn't even know why he was worrying about it. His appearance was of no
importance here. In fact, it had been weeks since he had looked in a mirror
and seen anything but a man who had failed to hang on to the dearest thing
in his life. Who was he trying to impress tonight?
Then the gong rang again, and he turned his back on his reflection and
walked briskly down the stairs.
* * *
The dining room was huge, dim, and even draftier than he had imagined, the
candle flames flickering in the cool streams of air that wound through the
room. Getrude and Lucy were installed at one end of the table, continuing
their quiet bickering across the slightly yellowed linen table-cloth. A
woman in a high-necked dark blouse and a large crucifix, who brusquely
introduced herself as Alice, sat at the other end, pointedly ignoring the
other women. Mulder sat down next to Gertrude, across from one of the other
empty chairs. He wondered if his uncle's secretary would be joining them, or
if he ate with the staff.
When heavy masculine foot-steps sounded behind him he looked up quickly,
feeling inexplicably disappointed at the sight of a handsome taffy-haired
man who looked vaguely familiar.
"Jonathan!" snapped Lucy. "Where have you been? I've been looking for you
all day! Come sit next to me."
"Sorry, Cousin Luce," said the man, and sat, as directed, in the chair
across from Mulder. "I've been exploring. The old place has really gone
downhill since we were all here last. I can't imagine what uncle was
thinking." He looked over at Mulder, and smiled a remarkably charming smile.
"Fox! Haven't seen you since we were both seven. I think I tied you to a
tree, playing cops and robbers. How have you been?"
"Well, better since I managed to escape the tree," said Mulder, and extended
his hand towards the man. He remembered the day only vaguely, playing in the
woods around his parent's cottage. He had often wondered why his memories of
childhood were so few and fragmented. His father had blamed it on the long
illness he had suffered just before adolescence.
Jonathan shook his hand firmly, fingers stroking lightly across Mulder's
palm as he let go, and Mulder jumped a little at the sensation.
At that moment there was a giggle from the doorway, and Mulder looked over
to see a slight blond man smirk at him. Then he blinked, for a second blond
head, wearing an identical smirk, appeared over the first one's shoulder.
"Hello," said two reedy voices in unison, and the two of them moved together
into the dining room and sat beside each other, next to Jonathan. "Hello,
twins," said Lucinda, still sounding bored.
The twins ignored her. This close Mulder could see that they were not as
young as their size made them appear - there were lines in the skin around
the slightly protuberant brown eyes, and peevish grooves bracketed their
thin-lipped mouths. "So you showed up after all," said the first one to
Mulder, the second chiming in "not as stubborn as your father was, are you?"
"Shut up, twins," said Gertrude oppressively, and they subsided, muttering
nearly inaudibly to each other in a particularly nasty way.
Out of the corner of his eye Mulder spotted a blur of dark movement, and
turned his head to watch Alex Krycek move noiselessly to the last remaining
spot, the empty chair beside him. He was followed by the house-keeper with a
tureen of soup. Krycek looked over at Mulder, and once again Mulder thought
he saw in those deep green eyes a flash of hostility, challenge. What, he
wondered, was going on? What had he done to this quiet striking man to
deserve that look?
* * *
Mulder woke swiftly and suddenly in the middle of the night, with the
conviction that someone was in the room with him. He lunged for the bed-side
lamp and switched it on to discover himself alone, nothing disturbing the
stillness of the room but the deep hollow boom of the sea below. He rubbed
his eyes. He must have been dreaming.
Sleep would be beyond his reach now, though. He was far too wide awake. He
shrugged into his heavy white wool dressing-gown, glad now that he had
brought it with him, and decided to descend the great stairs in search of a
drink.
He wasn't the only one who couldn't sleep. Firelight shone from the
living-room, and as he peered through the door-way a low, laughing voice
called out "Cousin Fox! Come join me - I hate to drink alone."
Jonathan sat on the red velvet sofa beside the fire-place, resplendent in a
deep red satin dressing gown. Solitude didn't seem to have kept him from the
brandy. His colour was high and his eyes glassy, and Mulder was certain that
the cut-glass tumbler in his hand didn't hold his first drink, or even his
second.
Mulder poured himself a small measure of the smooth old spirit and settled
himself next to his cousin, who made room for him, a warm knee jostling his
own. Jonathan smiled his charming smile and said "This place gives me the
creeps. Always has, all the years we've been coming here. All those empty
rooms, and the wind, and that cliff falling away a little bit more every
year. I keep thinking I'll wake up to find the house sliding into the ocean.
Never can sleep properly here."
"Empty rooms?" asked Fox, sipping his drink. "How much of the house in use?"
Jonathan studied him for a moment. "No, you wouldn't know, would you? You
never did get stranded here for Christmas and holidays like the rest of us.
Well, basically only the central wing is in use now. Uncle , that whey-faced
toady of his, and the two old trolls who keep the house and grounds live
here year-round, and there are about ten rooms altogether on the second and
third floors, where we get bunked. The rest of the house is rarely used, and
some parts are closed right up. This part was the original house, you know -
but there was a fire about 120 years ago and when they rebuilt they expanded
around the original frame. Did you ever meet uncle at all?"
Mulder shook his head. "No, never. Never been to the house, never met Uncle,
in fact I hardly remember meeting any of you. I'm not even sure why - my
father simply stopped talking about the rest of the family." Except when he
was drunk, he added silently to himself. When he warned me away from all of
you.
But now Jonathan drained his glass in a single long swallow that made Mulder
wince, and rose to his feet, a mischievous grin on his face. "Come on then!
I'll give you the grand tour!" and he seized Fox's hands to pull him up from
the couch.
What followed was a strange wild exploration, less tour than magic carpet
ride on the tails of Jonathan's red dressing-gown. His cousin seemed to be
seized by a near-manic burst of exhilaration at this adventure, and Fox,
warmed by the brandy and drawn in by the other man's handsome high spirits,
felt powerless to resist. Jonathan's flashlight danced dizzyingly through
the rooms they explored, never staying long enough in one spot for Mulder to
get a real sense of what he was looking at.
And what rooms they were. The house was a maze, and he never knew what the
next dancing circle of light would illuminate. They passed through the rooms
he might have expected - a cozy library with wing-chairs and the rich smell
of old leather and pipe-smoke, a delicate peach-coloured parlour where a
lady-like escritoire sat under a think layer of dust, the kitchen whose
cavernous reaches were meant to accommodate three times the guests and staff
they had now. As they left the central wing, though, the rooms got stranger
and more unsettling.
They passed through a bare chamber, walls rough plaster as though
construction had never been finished, a massive crucifix and a prie-dieu of
heavy dark wood in one corner. A low-ceilinged, flag-stoned corridor spilled
them out into a huge and echoing ball-room, the light picking out
damp-stained curtains and crumbling plaster rosettes, a noise from above
that sounded suspiciously like the squeaking of bats. They paused for a
moment in a small solarium, panes of glass cracked, covered by wood, or
simply gone, where a single chair sat by a rusted bird-cage and a cold wind
whistled through the broken glass, shaking the skeletons of dead plants and
sending leaves skittering with a dry whisper around their ankles. A bed-room
with dark painted walls held a canopied bed onto which Jonathan threw
himself, tugging Mulder down next to him. "Look up!" he said in Mulder's
ear, swallowing what sounded like a giggle, and he shone his light up at the
underside of the canopy to reveal a painting of such rampant carnality that
Mulder had to look away, shocked.
Then he started to giggle too, and Jonathan dragged him off the bed and up a
wooden staircase so narrow that their shoulders brushed the walls on either
side. There were small rooms at the top of the stair-case, with narrow iron
bed-steads in them. 'Servants rooms," said Jonathan 'I lost my virginity up
here, in the days when there were more staff." He grinned, and shone his
light out the window, where it lit a blurred circle on gray stone. "Uncle's
old study was up there in the tower. I always thought it was more than
coincidence that it looked into the maid's bedrooms."
Then up and down more stairs, the rooms growing barer and more dilapidated
as they reached the west wing of the house, closest too the sea. "I don't
understand," Mulder said "I thought uncle had money."
"Pots of it," said Jonathan "But recently it seemed he stopped spending it.
Uncle was - complicated about that."
Then he pulled Mulder into a small round room with nothing but a window and
another door in one wall. "The staircase to the tower," he said. "Krycek
still keeps it locked."
Mulder stared out the widow into the darkness, and Jonathan moved to stand
behind him.
"See how close we are to the cliff edge?"
He was close enough that Mulder could feel his words as warm breath against
his cheek, close enough that he could smell the not-unpleasant scent of
brandy and fading cologne coming from him.
"This part of the house could go any day now if the cliff gave way."
The wind rattled the window in its casement, and Mulder involuntarily backed
away, closer to Jonathan's warm and solid form. Jonathan didn't move away,
stayed with his chest pressed against Mulder's back, and Mulder felt a
sudden wash of heat through his body. Jonathan laid a warm hand on his
shoulder, said
"Well, Cousin Fox?" His voice seemed to be inviting more than an opinion of
the house.
The pressure on Fox's shoulder was slowly turning him to face his cousin,
and he could feel his limbs weakening, his lips beginning to part as his
body stirred for the first time since... his mind spun away from the thought
and he was about to fall into the oblivion of Jonathan's embrace when
suddenly a voice from the doorway demanded "What the hell are you doing in
this part of the house? You know it's not safe!
Krycek stood in the doorway, wrapped in a deep blue robe, holding a large
flashlight.
"I might ask you the same thing, Krycek!" snarled Jonathan. "Sneaking around
after me as usual?"
"Jonathan!" said Mulder in protest, amazed at the venom in his affable
cousin's voice.
Krycek shot him a small puzzled glance, then looked coldly at Jonathan. "I
heard someone moving around, and came down to check it out. I heard your
voice and saw the brandy was out, so I followed you - we don't want a repeat
of that Christmas, do we, when you fell down the stairs and broke your ankle
and lay there grizzling all night?"
Jonathan glared at him then turned and stomped away on a flash of red
dressing-gown, leaving Mulder still standing by the window, suddenly cold
and tired and inexplicably sick at heart. Krycek watched Jonathan go, lips
tight and eyes hard, then looked at Fox. "Are you all right?" he asked
brusquely, as he saw him sway slightly "It's quite true, this part of the
house can be dangerous."
Mulder nodded. "I'm fine, thanks. Something woke me up, so I came
downstairs, and then Jonathan..." his voice died away. Krycek was frowning,
but it was a puzzled frown, not a hostile one, and he found that fact
strangely comforting.
"You're in the Blue Room, right?" asked Krycek. "I wonder..." His frown
deepened, then he seemed to catch himself and his face smoothed once more to
inscrutability. "I'll take you back to the main wing. You'll never find it
after one of Jonathan's wild rides."
Mulder flushed at the words, and they walked in silence back through winding
corridors. When they reached the main stairs Krycek abruptly said "Good
night," and headed for the hallway beyond the living room.
"Wait!" said Mulder, and awkwardly held his hand out. "I wanted to say -
thank you." He wasn't sure exactly what he was thanking him for, but it felt
important to do so. A brief hesitation, and Krycek took his hand awkwardly
and shook it. Then he frowned again, without releasing Fox's hand, and said
"Are you sure you're all right? You're bleeding!"
"No I'm not," said Mulder, then looked in surprise at the back of his hand
as Krycek shone his light at it. The edge of his cuff and the back of his
knuckles were smeared with the unmistakable red of fresh blood.