Last Request: A Victorian Gothic

By Jeff Chapman

"For the love of God, cut off my head."

The last request in Uncle Silas's will shocks everyone speechless, everyone except his favorite niece, Anna. More than death itself, the claustrophobic Silas fears a premature burial. Will her elders carry out his request? Anna is certain they will not. It's up to her to do the right thing, even if it is a bit grisly. Armed with butcher knife and candle, Anna heads for the crypt underneath the church in the dead of night. All does not proceed according to Anna's careful planning. Graves have a way of not letting go.

Last Request is a historical novella set in Victorian England with gothic sensibilities. What's more gothic than beheadings, nightmares, and a dusty crypt filled with moldering corpses? Your heroine faces plenty of suspense, terror, and horror in her quest to fulfill her uncle's wish, but there are also moments of comedy along the way. Fans of historical fiction, gothic thrillers, and Edgar Allan Poe will find something to like in Last Request.

So step inside a dark story in the tradition of the penny dreadful, at times humorous and horrifying, but don't close the door behind you. Someone might lock you in.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeff Chapman
• Release date: Mar 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781393171850

Jeff Chapman

Jeff Chapman explores fantasy worlds through fiction and is the author of The Merliss Tales fantasy series, The Huckster Tales weird western series, and The Comic Cat Tales series. Trained in history and computer science, Jeff writes software by day and explores the fantastic when he should be sleeping. His fiction ranges from fairy tales to fantasy to ghost stories. He's not ashamed to say he's addicted to dark hot chocolate and he loves cats. Jeff lives with his wife, children, and cats in a house with more books than bookshelf space.

Book preview

Last Request

Last Request

A Victorian Gothic

Jeff Chapman

Last Request: A Victorian Gothic

Jeff Chapman

Copyright 2014 by Jeff Chapman. All rights reserved.

This eBook or any portion of it may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author—except for brief quotations in reviews.

The story contained within this eBook is a work of fiction. All material is either the product of the author's imagination or is used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead) or to actual events is entirely coincidental.

Edited by Katie L. Carroll.

Cover shows a detail from The Governess (1844) by Richard Redgrave (1804-1888).

Contents

Last Request: A Victorian Gothic

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Last Request

A Victorian Gothic

Anna fidgeted with the black lace binding her wrist. Something extraordinary was in the offing. Her writhing stomach confirmed it.

Ahem, said Aunt Rachael, Anna’s guardian. The font of proper decorum clasped her hands firmly together in her lap and stared straight ahead, intimating the posture her ward should adopt.

Typhoid had taken Anna’s parents when she was three. Her mother’s dying wish had consigned her to the care of the reliable but wholly unimaginative spinster Rachael.

Anna sighed and made an effort to appear respectfully bored while she waited for the rest of her family to settle in the offices of Creighton and Creighton. The reading of Uncle Silas’s will had brought them to the five chairs arranged in a half circle before the desk of Mr. Julius Creighton, Esquire.

Cousin Mildred wedged her prodigious frame into the center chair. Uncle Thaddeus and Cousin Joseph sat to her left. Aunt Rachael and her ramrod back occupied the seat to Cousin Mildred’s right. Anna followed in the last chair.

Mr. Creighton placed his spectacles on his desk, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and commenced the reading. A grandfather clock opposite Anna ticked with each period of its pendulum. Everything about Mr. Creighton—the cut of his hair, his crisp suit, the darkness of his cravat against his snow white shirt—exuded dignified, professional detachment. An observer, Anna thought, watching but not living. With only seventeen years of experience to draw on, she felt sorry for this old man and his stuffy profession.

Up to now, the reading had been all property and assets equitably, if not absolutely equally, distributed. No one had cause for complaint. Anna again fingered the black lace adorning the cuffs of her mourning dress, a nervous and bad habit according to her guardian. A surreptitious glance to her left assured her that Aunt Rachael had not noticed this latest infraction. Anna shifted in the uncomfortable chair, suspicion mounting that something more and unusual remained.

Now we come to the last request in the will and testament of Silas Vandemar. Mr. Creighton glanced away from the documents and cleared his throat, looking over his lenses at each family member in turn. People often make, er, strange requests in wills.

Anna clenched her hands and grimaced. Would he want to be buried outdoors, left to suffer the elements on a scaffold like a savage from the wild west of far America? Or burned on a funeral pyre floating down a river like some Hindu raja from India?

Few of these are legally binding, Mr. Creighton continued, but as the last request of the deceased, we should at least take them seriously. Mr. Vandemar... Well, let me read it before I go further.

Anna glanced sidelong at her relatives. All but Mildred leaned forward in their chairs, all staring intently at the solicitor, who situated his reading spectacles and took up