Gloom had over come the Vanderwall Estate when Duchess Elizabeth had come to live there. The house was in a crumbling state, lonely and in despair. Where once lavish decorations were proudly displayed now remained only tattered and ruined. In the most remote mountain region of the kingdom the palace stood proud and tall, now slumped by the erosion of the soil under it. What became of Duke Vanderwall and his servants was a thing of mystery, but his younger niece Elizabeth held possession to his last known letter which said little of anything but, "I have found it". Now in her early thirties she was too old to re-marry, her husband passing suddenly of a strange illness. Rumors spread of her poisoning him, and to prevent scandal the King sent her to live in the Vanderwall Estate in isolation forever. Her only accompaniment would be Leonardo and Marlon, two strong and handsome young men and servants, and Betsy her small and fragile servant girl.
The walls of the house once painted with a striking gold were now dulled, though the paintings hung straight and new. What strange paintings they were, all of nude women in torment with little devils sitting or laying upon their chests. The differences between the paintings were only in the smallest of details, but all held a hypnotic quality that held the attention of the Duchess for hours on end. 'What madness could drive a man to collect so many of these ghastly things?' the Duchess often thought to herself. Indeed they were horrific, but they belonged in this old Gothic house along with the gargoyles outside.
The gargoyles were another oddity of the Vanderwall Estate. Instead of pointing outward along the walls and gates of the outside compound as they would, they were pointing inward. The gargoyle was meant to keep evil spirits outside of a church or house, these seemed to be meant to keep them within. But still, the Duchess believed in nothing of the sort and any tales of ghostly happenings on the estate grounds or in the house itself, she just passed off as local superstition. Things of the supernatural persuasion simply did not exist in her mind. It was clear though that her uncle Duke Vanderwall was indeed a quite eccentric fellow and may have been mad. In fact, the Duchess was quite sure of it.
Leonardo had made a discovery upon the first day there. In the study he found a secret passageway that led down to a dungeon. He immediately reported it to the Duchess who went herself to see it and found it perversely amusing. It was a dark and damp cellar room as one would expect a private dungeon to be with a bizarre wood and iron contraption in the center of it. There were an assortment of chains and shackles all hooked to a wooden chair with it's back leaned backward. There were all sorts of gears and contraptions attached to the device though the four of them could not figure out what they were for. It appeared to be some sort of torture device powered by a water wheel in the corner of the dungeon. There was a hatch above the wheel from where the water flowed and a lever to be pulled when the water was to be released. Neither of them could understand where the source of the water would come from, though it did not matter much since they would never need to use it.
The Duchess thought it would be best to lock the study and forget the room existed. Most of the books in the room were all in some strange foreign language and had perversely sexual illustrations. The most shocking the Duchess had found was that of a half man, half goat creature sodomizing a young woman. She had nearly fainted from the shock. As she commanded, Marlon had locked the study and given her the key for safe keeping. 'No decent person should be allowed in that awful room' she thought to herself hiding the key in the vanity table in her bedroom. It was clear to her that the good Duke Vanderwall was indeed a sick and immoral man. She had wished that she hadn't learned these things about her uncle as she had a fond memory or two of him as a child. Those memories were now crushed and replaced with an imaginative figure of perverse cruelty. It was of no doubt now that the machine in the dungeon was of a sexual nature.
Despite being rattled by all she had discovered, the Duchess bathed and slept easy the first night. Her bed was large and soft with an ornate headboard that stretched across the wall resembling the wingspan of a bat. It was colored a dark red juxtaposing with the soft cream color of the walls. Every room in the house had something strange and dark about it, and needed remodeling for a more uplifting tone. Despite the steadfast skepticism of the Duchess, the house was beginning to unnerve her a bit. Betsy, a weak minded and superstitious woman was all ready greatly unnerved and walked through the halls and rooms of the house with a building tension and paranoia. Leonardo and Marlon both seemed to be unaffected by the unusual house though they took more of an amused take on the entire estate.
While outside winter kept the world still and silent, the Duchess was having a restless night. She tossed and turned in her sleep and awoke with her body hot, enflamed from a passionate dream. Her head was a little dizzy and her vision was blurred. All she could see was her bedroom door open and the dark figure of a man holding a lantern. She sprang up to a seated position and her senses came about her, though the shade with the lantern had vanished, and closed the door behind him. Wrapping herself in a fine robe she hurried from bed listening to the footsteps echo down the hall. She lit a lantern of her own and followed the footsteps outside of her bedroom door and down the hall towards the east wing. The footsteps continued but seemed to be just out of vision of the lantern's light until they ended abruptly when the Duchess found herself at the study door. Not only was it unlocked but it was also slightly ajar. She shut it, and left it like that deciding to lock it in the morning. She didn't want to walk all the way back with the key on this cold night.
In the morning the Duchess locked the study door. To her knowledge there was no other key for that door, and it was still safely hidden in the vanity table when she returned to her room the previous night. How it came to be unlocked was a mystery, though she suspected Leonardo or Marlon might have lockpicks. Or perhaps there was a skeleton key she was unaware of. These old houses usually had one. But Leonardo and Marlon had been her ever faithful servants for years and would not keep that sort of thing from her. But what was even more troubling than that, one of them had crept in while she slept.
The Duchess had confronted both of them, but both denied having been in her room, or to have been in the study. She didn't believe them of course, there no other men in the house besides those two. That is, unless someone had broken into the house. The likeliness of that was speculative at best. The house was isolated and winter made travel nearly impossible. Food was all ready stocked in the cellar as was the common procedure but there wasn't anywhere to go for emergencies, and for that matter anywhere to come from. Despite the overall certainty it was one of them, they both denied it over and over. Fed up with their lies the Duchess decided to let it go and perhaps try and catch them in the act another night. She played as if the whole incident had blown over and was completely forgotten and forgiven. She took her bath as normal and undressed for bed. She had slipped into a elegant white evening gown and crawled under her covers in the blanket of pitch darkness. Comfortable in a seated position with her back leaned against the headboard she waited patiently with a candle beside her and a match to light it when the time came.
It was difficult for her to fight back sleep as she was not known to being awake at such late hours. Her eyes began to grow heavy as the night slowly wore on. The night was quiet, and the cold air seemed oppressive despite her keeping well under the blankets and sheets. The Duchess felt her eyes grow heavier and soon it was a futile battle to keep them open. As her eyes closed a sense of warmth overcame her. She moaned deeply as a warmth slowly crawled its way up her thighs. Realizing it felt like a man's hands she quickly opened her eyes and quickly lit the candle to find herself alone in the bedroom. 'Perhaps I just dozed off and had another passionate dream?' she thought to herself stepping out of bed with the candle. When her feet touched the floor the room sank with a deathly chill, as if Father Winter had gently blown his icy breath on the back of her neck.
She shivered quickly finding a blanket to wrap herself in, and started towards her bedroom door. The blanket did little good. The further she walked away from her bed the colder it felt. By the time she had touched the door handle her breath was visible in the faint candle light. When she tried to turn the door knob, that is when she heard a bizarre scratching noise from the other side. Her ear pressed against the wood, she heard the sound of nails or claws slowly scratching away at the wood of the door. A sensation of falling overcame her stomach and the cold grasped her suddenly by the spine nearly paralyzing her movements. There was a whispering just beyond the scratching, but it couldn't be made out. Her eyes suddenly became wide as she felt a clammy, frozen hand wrap around the back of her neck grabbing at her from behind. She tried to turn her head to see who was behind her in the room but was paralyzed motionless. The blanket that wrapped around her, fell loose and dropped to the floor. Then, a small breeze pushed through the room blowing the candle out. Finding ability to move a bit, but still in the clutches of the cold, the frozen hand guided her back to her bed where they turned warm upon her laying down. The warmth soothed and massaged her body easing her to sleep.
Over the next few weeks the strange nights continued. The Duchess would often awake inflamed with passion and the feeling of being penetrated and ravaged by an unseen nightly visitor. Each time she tried to escape her bed the warm touches would turn frozen and painful. The days did not offer much comfort either. Marlon and Leonardo being two young and virile men cut off from the world were beginning to turn dark minded. They began to torment Betsy who seemed to be on the edge of nervous breakdown herself. They were grabbing, groping and making lustful threats towards her. Each passing day they grew more and more bold until the Duchess had spied on them forcing Betsy to her knees to service them orally. The Duchess knew it wouldn't be long before Marlon and Leonardo grew bold enough to turn to her for such activities.
