I’ve heard it said that celebrity deaths, eerily, occur in threes. For instance, Ed McMahon (June 23, 2009), Farrah Fawcett (June 25, 2009), and Michael Jackson (June 25, 2009). Or David Bowie (January 10, 2016), Alan Rickman (January 14, 2016), and Glenn Frey (January 18, 2016).
My family members aren’t celebrities, but it’s bizarre how their deaths also occurred back-to-back-to-back like they did. On a Thursday evening, my parents were driving home from a restaurant on the outskirts of Austin, Texas when my Dad swerved to avoid hitting a deer, went off the road, and plowed into a massive oak tree, killing them both. The following Tuesday, just after we’d returned from their funerals to our house in Houston, my fitness-obsessed husband Mark out of nowhere suffered a major heart attack and died within minutes, widowing me and leaving our 17-year-old without a father. And then a week after that, right after burying my husband, I got a call that my brother Johnny, my only sibling, was killed in what the police described as “an animal attack” at his home in rural Colorado; they weren’t sure if it was a bear or a mountain lion that mauled him.
It’s this final tragedy that several days later brings me and my only remaining family member, my son Dane, to the office of my late brother’s lawyer near Denver. Neither of us wants to be here, still too consumed by grief. But we were already in town to arrange and attend Johnny’s funeral and, at this lawyer’s request, agreed to stop by this late afternoon.
After handing us cold bottled waters and offering his condolences once more, the lawyer, a heavily-wrinkled, older gentleman named Warren, gets to the matter at hand.
“Now Mrs. Larkin,” he begins, consulting some paperwork on his desk in front of him, “as I’m sure you’re aware, your brother was quite wealthy.”
I am aware.
As far back as I can remember, my brother Johnny really only cared about two things: science fiction and fantasy. He was the prototypical smart, nerdy kid growing up in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s who played Dungeons & Dragons with his friends, quoted Star Wars constantly, and treated The Lord of the Rings like it was Holy Scripture.
In college he was inspired by the futuristic technology used by Tom Cruise’s Pre-Crime division in Minority Report and created some kind of virtual reality software program that several Silicon Valley tech companies got into a heated bidding war for; the winner paid “an undisclosed amount” for it, which I heard was north of $50 million.
After the check cleared, Johnny dropped out of college and then essentially dropped out of our family. He moved to Colorado, bought some isolated mansion surrounded by land, and lived there pretty much like a hermit from what I was told. His visits during the holidays became less and less frequent, and he never invited me or my parents his way. Honestly, over the past 25 years, I’ve only seen him a handful of times, which seemed to be just how he wanted it.
“Mrs. Larkin?” Warren says.
“Sorry,” I say, embarrassed that I let my mind wander down Memory Lane. I glance at Dane in the chair next to mine, and he gives me a sympathetic smile.
“Here,” Warren says, holding out a thick stack of papers held together by a black binder clip. “This is a list of Johnny’s assets – soon to be your assets.”
“Thanks,” I say, taking the papers. I flip through them, stopping on a page that itemizes my brother’s “Real Estate Holdings.” There’s his residence near Denver, of course – a second home in Bangor, Maine that I’ve never heard of – what appears to a beach house in Malibu that I also know nothing about – and a fourth entry with no address that sounds odd.
“What’s Mythical Manor?” I ask.
Warren eyes the page. “That was my question too,” he says, “when I asked your brother for an updated asset schedule, and he included that.”
“What did he say it is?”
“He’d never give me an answer. He’d just reply with a wink emoji. But you know Johnny – he could be like that sometimes. Or a lot of the time.”
“Honestly,” I say, “I don’t know Johnny. I guess I never did – at least not since we were kids.”
“That’s too bad,” the lawyer says, reaching into his desk drawer and pulling out a set of keys. “But maybe you can get to know him by what he left behind.”
“What do you think it is?” Dane asks me when we’re back in our airport rental car, traveling away from Warren’s office and toward Johnny’s house – well, his primary house.
“What?” I ask, changing lanes.
“Mythical Manor,” he says. “Do you think it’s mythical? Like it doesn’t exist?”
“Who knows? Your uncle Johnny was an odd duck.”
“I barely remember him. I remember he had glasses and like a really thick beard, like a homeless guy.”
“Or Santa Claus.”
“Speaking of mythical…” my son says, and we share a quick smile.
Johnny’s mansion is about what I expected – rustic and underfurnished, with some rooms sitting practically empty. It’s like the teenage boy I remember got older but never grew up.
Dane and I head out to the unfenced backyard to get a closer look at the Olympic-sized pool, which, despite it being July and prime swim season, is covered in at least several months’ worth of leaves.
“Not a shopper or a swimmer,” I say, more to myself than to my son. “Wonder how he spent his time.”
“There’s the guest house,” Dane says, gazing into the distance at a small bungalow that stands alone.
He moves toward it, but I tense up. You see, I told him that his uncle died from a wild animal attack on the property, but I didn’t get into specifics. The reality is Johnny’s body was found inside the guest house (by his cleaning service), lying on the tile floor. The police said he must’ve been mauled outside, then managed to escape into the guest house and shut the door behind him. Unfortunately, at that point the damage had already been done, and he soon after succumbed to his injuries.
When the police told me their theory, a thought crossed my mind that I never vocalized: why would a guy with no guests be hanging out over by his guest house?
Warren assured me that the death scene has been cleaned up, but in case it hasn’t, I don’t want my son traumatized by what he might see. So I catch up to him and say, “Let me go in first.”
“Okay,” Dane says, never one to be overly inquisitive – which sometimes drives me crazy but is a blessing at the moment.
We reach the guest house, having verified that no wild animals are in the area. I grip the door knob, expecting it to be locked and to need to pull out Johnny’s key ring from my pants pocket. But to my surprise, the door is unlocked, and I’m glad now that I ran and caught up to Dane.
I push the door open, fearing the worse. But the tile floor is spotless, and everything looks to be in order.
Dane and I step inside, and he closes the door behind us. The place actually looks a lot more homey and lived-in than the main house. Books line the built-in bookshelves that cover the entire right wall, and the bed in the bedroom to the left looks slept in.
“I’m thirsty,” my son says, heading toward the refrigerator in the compact kitchen in front of us.
I watch him go, my strapping six-foot-five offspring that somehow came from my five-foot-two body. My husband was tall – but not that tall. I tell Dane he’s so big because I breastfed him for two full years, which grosses him out but honestly might’ve contributed to his size.
While he rummages through the fridge, I can’t help but give the tile floor at my feet another look. It’s hard to believe that this is where my brother, my own flesh and flood, breathed his last just a few days ago.
My eyes move up from the floor to the sprawling bookcase. The expected sci-fi and fantasy titles fill the shelves, but what looks like our childhood collection of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries are also here, situated about halfway up. I feel a sudden rush of affection for Johnny that I haven’t felt in a long while; I guess nostalgia can be a powerful force.
I pull out The Hidden Staircase, which, if I recall correctly, is one of the very first Nancy Drew entries and also one of my favorites. As I study its exterior, I notice that a tiny speck of something red is dried on its old spine. Could it be blood?
I replace the book on the shelf and take a step back, examining the titles around it. My eyes widen as I notice more red specks on other books. They’re miniscule but definitely there.
The police made it sound like this mountain lion or whatever it was clawed and bit my brother several times, then he ducked inside, collapsed on the floor, and died. But if that’s what happened, why is there what appears to be blood on the bookcase? And why is it over waist-high?
Did Johnny lean against the bookshelf before he fell to the floor? It’s possible. It’s also possible that he didn’t die the way the police think he did.
I take another look at The Hidden Staircase, the gears in my mind turning.
Dane rejoins me, swigging a 20-ounce bottle of Dr. Pepper and noticing my quizzical expression. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe nothing. Help me take these books down.”
“All of ‘em? That’s a lot of books.”
“Humor me.”
My son sighs, sets his soda on the floor, and starts pulling down the books. He starts on the top shelf, which, given my short stature, I appreciate. I tackle the bottom rows, piling the books on the floor as orderly as I can.
“That’s weird,” Dane says.
“What?”
“This one won’t come down. It’s, like, stuck.”
I stand back and see what he’s talking about: there’s a red book on a row near the top that he’s trying to yank down, but it won’t budge.
“Try pushing up,” I say.
“Okay.”
He does, and my suspicions are confirmed when a latch is released, and a door embedded in the bookshelf cracks open.
“Whoa, secret passage,” Dane says, pushing the door open wide.
Beyond the doorway is a small, non-descript room that is empty except for a circular stone staircase that descends underground.
“Probably leads to the main house,” he says, “in a closet or something. Let’s check it out.”
“Hold on,” I say, sighing. “Look, your uncle’s body was found here, in the guest house. It’s possible the animal that attacked him is down there.”
Dane ponders this. “Was the door to the guest house found open or closed?”
“Closed.”
“Then the animal couldn’t have gotten inside.”
I consider this, unsure what to think.
“Besides,” my son says, “even if it is down there – which it isn’t – it’ll have gone days now without food or water. It’ll be too weak to mess with us.”
“I don’t know…”
“Plus, I always keep a pocket knife on my keychain.”
“You got it?”
“Right here,” he says, patting a bulge in his jeans pocket.
“Well—”
“It’s fine,” my 17-year-old says in his patented sing-song, dismissive tone that he uses whenever he thinks I’m worrying too much about something. Then he starts down the staircase.
I take a deep breath and follow, a little anxious.
What we find at the bottom of the stairs is much more than a tunnel connecting to the main house – it’s a grand hallway adjoining a series of rooms that seems to go on and on. And all of it looks medieval by design: stone walls and stone floors, old-fashioned sconces with flickering flames, elaborate tapestries hung all around – even several suits of armor standing sentinel.
“What is this?” I ask, awestruck.
“It’s like the cellar of a castle,” Dane says – and he’s right.
I peer into a nearby room that seems to break with the Middle Ages-inspired décor; inside are several computers on desks, lots of computer equipment on shelves, and a rat’s nest of computer cords.
I notice in a corner a giant, high-tech-looking metal cylinder mounted on a swivel that’s pointed toward a double-door closet. “What in the world?” I say.
“Is that some kind of cannon?” my son asks.
“Looks like something from NASA.”
“Why’s it aimed at the closet?” Dane asks, walking toward it. He yanks open the double doors to find it vacant, with just a blank stone wall facing us. However, the stone appears darker here than in other places underground, like maybe it was burned. Can you even burn stone?
I was about to ask Dane his thoughts on the matter, but my A.D.D. teenager is already moving on to the next room. I catch up to him, finding ourselves in an enormous walk-in pantry, with rows and rows of canned food stacked on shelves and giant sacks of grain piled on the floor next to countless gallon-sized water jugs.
“What on Earth,” I say. “How does one guy need all of this?”
“I don’t know,” Dane says. “What do you think happened here?” He points with his foot to a sack in a corner labeled “Barley” that’s been torn open, its contents partially spilled out.
“Looks like it was clawed—” I stop short as I hear something a ways off.
It sounds like a grunt.
Dane and I trade looks. “Is that a dog?” he asks.
“Shhh – maybe it’s the wild animal,” I whisper, fearful.
The grunt comes again, louder. Closer.
“Get your pocket knife out.”
Dane reaches into his pocket and pulls out his key ring.
“Oh crap,” he whispers. “I forgot.”
“What?”
“Airport security made me leave the knife there.”
Suddenly I remember too, wincing.
“Sorry,” Dane adds.
I glance around the room for a possible weapon, spotting the canned food next to us. I pick up two cans of beans and hand one of them to my son.
“Better than nothing,” I whisper. “Let’s get out of here.”
We tiptoe back into the hallway, peering in both directions. But there’s no sign of any animal.
Then what emerges from a room in the distance is a creature that my terrified mind can barely process. It spots us, stopping in its tracks.
“Mom,” Dane mutters, sounding as petrified as I feel.
The beast resembles a lion, but it also has a second head – that of a long-horned goat – and a tail that ends in a third head, that of a venomous snake.
“That can’t be real,” I gasp.
The monster seems to challenge my statement, letting out a guttural roar from the mouth of its lion head.
As it does, I notice the dried blood around its mouth and the mouth of the goat head – and I know what really happened to my brother.
The creature then lowers itself onto its haunches, growling at us, looking ready to strike at any second.
Dane hurls his can of beans down the hallway at it and misses high. “Come on,” he says, taking my can from me. He tries again and pegs this abomination squarely in the chest, causing it to yelp in pain. “Bullseye!” he says, smiling.
Then all hell breaks loose as the furious beast charges toward us.
“Run!” Dane yells.
He retreats, sprinting back toward the circular stone staircase, with me on his heels. Neither of us dares to glance back at the stuff of nightmares that’s barreling after us.
Dane reaches the staircase, spins, and ushers me past him. “Go!” he hollers, gallantly pushing me up the first few steps. I obey, too frazzled to argue.
I hear my son rushing up the winding stairs behind me, then another roar from the creature, which sounds very close by.
“We’re not gonna make it,” he says, breathless.
I peer back and witness a horrifying sight: this three-headed monstrosity lunging up the stairs after us. Then Dane falls onto his back and puts his legs up in the air, looking like he’s about to do leg presses – which he does when he’s working out for football.
“What are you—” I begin to scream, frantic, just as the beast pounces onto my son’s prone body, the jaws of the lion head open wide, its sharp, blood-stained teeth showing.
With a loud grunt, Dane kicks with all of his might, and the beast goes flying backward, falling topsy-turvy down the staircase with an anguished cry. Then there’s a loud cracking noise like snapping vertebrae, and the only sound that can be heard is the labored panting from my son and me.
“It’s dead,” he says.
You don’t know that,” I say.
“It broke its neck.”
“Which one?” Not a question I ever thought I’d ask.
Mounted on the wall next to the stairs ahead of us are crisscrossing old swords, more medieval decorations. Without a word Dane dashes up the stairs, leans over, snatches a sword off the wall, and starts hurrying back down with it.
“I’ll check,” he says, moving past me.
“Dane William Larkin!” I yell after him, alarmed and angry.
“Erica Bryn Larkin,” he says, mocking me playfully, not stopping.
“Get back up here!”
“One sec!”
I sigh heavily and move to fetch the other sword, just in case. As I reach for its handle, I notice dried blood on it. Did Johnny also reach for it after he’d been attacked by that horror show? Was he too weak to wield it? For whatever reason, he decided not to fight and instead to retreat to safety in the guest house.
Clutching my sword, I find Dane at the bottom of the stairs, ramming the tip of his sword repeatedly into the belly of the prone beast. If it wasn’t dead before, it should be now. All three of its heads are motionless, and its six eyes are closed.
“Got ‘em,” I say.
“Got it,” he says, propping his blood-stained sword against the stone wall. “It’s one creature.”
“There are three heads, Dane. I think that qualifies as them.”
“It’s got one bod—”
Dane breaks off, gasping, as the presumably dead monster’s snake head lashes out toward his leg, fangs bared. Without hesitation I swing my sword down hard and decapitate it.
“Oh my gosh,” he says. “Thanks.”
“I thought it was dead,” I say in a sing-song tone, giving him a hard time.
“It should’ve been.”
My son frowns, humbled, giving the severed snake head a swift kick down the hallway.
“What do you suppose it is?” I ask, studying the corpse.
“Could it be some kind of science experiment?” Dane asks. “Like, merging lion DNA with goat and snake DNA?”
“I don’t think that works,” I say.
He notices a recessed area off the hallway and walks toward it, partially disappearing inside. “Whoa, check it out.”
“Better not be another creature,” I say.
“It’s not,” my son says, reaching in and taking hold of something. When he turns back to me, he’s gripping two black guns with long, narrow barrels. “Tranquilizer guns.”
“How do you know that?” I ask.
“Because I know guns.”
“How?”
“YouTube.” Dane steps into the recessed area again. “Here are the tranq darts.”
“Do you know how to load ‘em?” I ask.
“Duh.”
I sigh. The lesson in humility was a brief one, it seems.
Minutes later, each of us is brandishing a loaded tranq gun as we further explore this Middle Ages basement.
We come to a drawn black curtain that covers an entire doorway. As Dane goes to pull the curtain aside, I grab his shoulder. “Be ready,” I say.
He nods, yanking the curtain aside, and what we see inside this new room makes me gasp. Against the right wall is a large, thick Plexiglass enclosure, like something you’d find at a zoo. And locked inside the enclosure is a white horse with wings.
“Oh my gosh,” Dane says.
My eyes drift up to the top of the enclosure where I see an engraved metal sign attached that reads: PEGASUS.
“What is this?” I mutter, dumbfounded.
“This,” my son says, “is Mythical Manor.”
The Pegasus sees us and moves to its empty food dish, whinnying.
Dane eyes another drawn curtain on the opposite wall. He moves toward it, carrying his tranq gun, with me right behind him, carrying mine.
He pulls the curtain aside, revealing another room with another Plexiglass enclosure that contains a large, bearded being with one eye in the center of his forehead. The engraved sign reads: CYCLOPS.
“Hi,” Dane says to him.
The Cyclops rushes up to the laminated glass and slams a fist into it, which makes me jump. Then he grunts loudly and turns his back to us.
I spy another drawn curtain on the far wall and walk to it, with Dane following me. I pull it aside, bracing for whatever weirdness awaits us.
Inside this room’s enclosure is a creature with the lower body of a horse but the upper body and head of an old woman, her bare chest covered by her long, grey hair. As you might suspect, the sign reads: CENTAUR.
“Hi,” I say to this more normal-looking being – normal by mythical standards anyway.
“Hi,” she says back.
“I can’t believe you’re real,” Dane says.
The elderly Centaur smiles weakly at him. “As real as you are.”
“Sorry – it’s just I was always told centaurs are make-believe.”
“Where I’m from, humans are make-believe,” she says. “At least they were until the dark day he showed up.”
“Who?” I ask.
The Centaur turns to me. “The man who hunts us and keeps us captive here, for his own amusement.”
“Johnny?”
“That’s him.”
“But how?”
“Through a gateway he found between this world and ours, using some magic he calls a laser.”
So that’s what that high-tech cylinder thing is.
“Look, we’re sorry,” I say. “We don’t want to keep you captive.”
“What about him?” she asks. “He left days ago and hasn’t been back.”
“He’s dead. The lion-goat-snake creature killed him.”
“Oh, a chimera. It must’ve gotten out of its cage.”
“How?” Dane asks.
“Well, he did feed us – maybe he wasn’t careful enough.” She gestures to her empty food and water bowls. “It’s been a while.”
“There’s food and water in the pantry,” I say.
“Will you please let me out?” she asks.
“How?” my son asks.
“There’s a button on the wall behind you. It opens a door on the cage.”
Dane goes to locate the wall button while I grip my tranq gun a little tighter. She seems friendly enough, but my encounter with the Chimera has me wary of all mythical creatures.
My son presses the button, and a door in the Plexiglass enclosure springs open.
The Centaur gallops out of the enclosure and then around the room.
Dane and I share a look that says, “Can you believe this is actually happening?”
She finally stops next to us. “Sorry, just needed to stretch my legs.”
“It’s fine,” I say. “So how many, uh, beings from your world are here?”
“How many cages are there?”
“I don’t know.”
“When I was captured, there was an ogre, an imp, a banshee, a goblin, and a gnome – but it’s been a while. No telling how many are here now.”
“Well,” Dane says, “we’re gonna help you all get home.”
I glare at my son for making such a stupid promise. “Dane, how? They’ll kill us.”
“Not with these,” he says, gesturing to our tranquilizer guns. “Besides,” he says, turning to the Centaur, “you’re gonna help us, right?”
“Of course.”
I turn to her. “Can you convince them not to hurt us?”
The Centaur shakes her head. “Some of them would attack me, and I didn’t cage them.”
“Neither did we.”
“Listen, we’ll figure out a way. Why don’t I go eat while you two take inventory? Then we’ll meet back here and formulate a plan.”
“Okay,” my son says.
“I’m Honotia, by the way.”
“I’m Dane, and this is my Mom, Erica.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” she says. “Thanks for freeing me.”
Honotia smiles and gallops away. We watch her go, still stunned by everything we’ve witnessed this evening – which has probably turned to night by now.
We take our tranq guns and continue our sweep of the premises. I use the camera on my phone to start cataloguing every creature that my insane brother somehow invented a way to access and capture. I see things that I know will give me bad dreams for years, but I power through. Others, like a beautiful mermaid in a water tank, are pleasant sights to behold.
Dane and I finally reach what looks to be the final room and the final enclosure. Inside it lies a thin middle-aged man in tattered clothes, who appears to be sleeping.
My son and I exchange looks of surprise.
“Hello?” I call.
The man peers up at us, then slowly gets to his feet. “Hello,” he says. “Who are you?”
“We’re, uh, heirs to this place.”
“Heirs? Is Johnny dead?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” the man says. “I worked for him here.”
“You did?” Dane asks.
“Yeah – until he started mistreating the creatures. I told him it wasn’t right. He got mad and shot me with one of those,” he says, pointing to Dane’s tranquilizer gun. “When I woke up, I found myself locked in here, the cage for his next conquest.”
My son turns to me. “Mom, I’m sorry – but your brother was a monster,” he says. “We gotta let him out.”
Dane moves toward the opposing wall. I eye the man, who’s watching my son intently. My gaze moves up to the top of the enclosure, where the engraved sign reads: LYCANTHROPE. What the heck is that?
I’m about to ask the man when I hear my son hit the wall button, and the door in the enclosure opens.
The man steps out. “Thanks,” he says.
“No problem,” Dane says.
The man offers a hand to him. “Boris.”
My son shakes it. “Dane, and that’s my Mom, Erica.”
“Pleasure,” Boris says, outstretching a hand to me and smiling.
I shake it, but something in his smile causes a feeling of uneasiness to come over me.
Boris points to the tranq gun in my hand. “Mind if I take a look?”
I hesitate, not wanting to hand my only weapon over to this stranger.
He seems to sense my reluctance and spins toward my son. “Can I take a quick look at yours?”
“Sure,” Dane says, handing the tranq gun over.
I tense as Boris examines the gun.
“Sorry about my brother,” I say.
Boris nods, then turns his back to us.
Dane and I trade looks of concern.
I clear my throat. “Clearly he had a side to him I didn’t know about.”
“So do I,” says Boris. Somehow, his back appears to morph, seeming to expand. Then there’s the sound of snapping metal, and he drops the tranq gun to the stone floor.
I glance down and see that the gun has been broken into two pieces.
My son and I lock eyes, terrified.
Then we watch as Boris turns to us, his face now monstrous.
“Ah, a full moon,” he growls.