Chandelier Macabre

By Gary W. Shockley

For Horatio Oberon Twitchgrove, the war had never ended. He fought as a child, as a teenager, as an adult. He fought into his twilight years. War was all he had ever known. Peacetime? Hah, like he could change now. It just meant trading his general's uniform for a crimelord's mantle. He proceeded with the same ruthless abandon as ever. Oh, he might be old now, battle-worn and broken—even wheelchair-bound. But he had his children. His grown children. What need had he of capable limbs when he had children to do his dirty-work? Through them he maintained his strangle-hold on the vices throughout the land.

 

Still, there was Ronaldo, his youngest, born to too tame a wife. A bit problematic, that one. He'd never quite gotten it. Now he's gone off and found himself a young woman. Hah, of refined tastes! Naye, he's married her! She, without an ounce of bloodlust in her veins! Su, she calls herself. Without an E. As if that matters. As if anyone cares. Well, she'll have to prove her mettle to the whole family. One year. He's given her one year to demonstrate her worthiness to bear the Twitchgrove name. Who says he's not compassionate? That's plenty of time to commit an atrocity most foul.

Approx. 250 pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cranefly Press
• Release date: Dec 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223906360

Gary W. Shockley

Gary W. Shockley grew up in the Indiana countryside before moving to California by means of Pennsylvania and Oregon (it’s a long story). Along the way he learned a thing or two. He has made a living as software QA tester, software engineer, copy editor, and technical writer. But ever since he was a child, he has written stories. He is now an award-winning writer whose stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies. Most of what he writes defies genre boundaries and could be called slipstream. He currently lives in Mountain View, California, with his wife, Lori Ann White, herself an award-winning writer. They have a cat named Manti. Lori and Manti are currently working on their second novels. Email: [e-mail] Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gary.w.shockley

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Also by Gary W. Shockley

Titanium White

Pungent Women

Quicksand Village

Chandelier Macabre

Watch for more at:

https://www.facebook.com/gary.w.shockley

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

CHANDELIER MACABRE

First edition. December 2023.

Copyright © 2023 Gary W. Shockley.

Written by Gary W. Shockley.

Dedication

To Lucius Shepard, who more than anyone shaped my early writing career, who taught me the importance and structure of the paragraph and introduced me to many unfamiliar words (such as empurple, cicatrix, filigree, jounce, tussocky, and ensorcel), and who threatened to overshadow my every appearance in print with his own, which he largely did—until the ravages of time took their toll.

Table of Contents

Birthday Dinner

An Obscure Volition

Honeymoon

Emergency Meeting

Home, Sweet Wackerly

War Memento

The Stables

Lamentation

Visitation

Professor Loof

Horsemanship

Coma

Bedside Gathering

On the Hunt

Recovery

Another Visit

Melodia

Horse of Another Color

The Other Stable

Penetrating the Labyrinth

Investigation of Wackerly

A Growing Reserve

A Tense Brunch

Balcony Altercation

Flashback

A Disappointing Peace

An Irrational Confrontation

A Meeting with Horatio

Professor Loof Receives a Warning

An Early Birthday Celebration

Dress Rehearsel

The Brood

Calamity

Dinner Is Served

A Matter of Fear

Ronaldo’s Important Lesson

Chandelier Time

Birthday Dinner

Horatio Oberon Twitchgrove rode the motorized chair down the grand spiral staircase. It was an erratic spiral, at times choosing to unwind, or flatten out, or even sweep upward, all in genuflection to the organic nature of the edifice called Wackerly. During his glacial descent, he thought of war. He saw it in the scabrous walls all about. A gnarly twist became the deceptive thrust he’d used to find Pythnen’s elusive heart. A knotty mass became Balraith’s bulbous nose, snorting great gouts of blood as he collapsed on the Heirodyte Steppes. A fibrous patch became the tangly wilds of Gastar, where he’d lost half his men just short of Lymphet’s amassed armies. And there, an organic shaft, so like the Great Krushik’s long lance, whose mighty thrust had dealt him a near-fatal blow.

As these memories coursed through his mind, his mouth shaped war cries left unvoiced, and his body trembled and convulsed feebly.

The staircase reminded Horatio of war because all things reminded him of war. It was all he had ever known. He saw in the meandering descent the leaps of illogic, the reversals of fortune, the deceptions and betrayals that had defined those conflicts. Those wars had taken a terrible toll on his body, leaving it broken and decrepit. Known collectively as The Grand Abomination, they had begun when he was five and ended when he turned sixty.

Now eighty, and despite twenty intervening years of peace, he remained a formidable warrior, if not in body then in mind. He had made the transition to peacetime in the only way he knew how, trading in his decorated general’s uniform for the fine-tailored business suit of a crime lord. The Twitchgrove family lurked like some black octopus in the shadows of the law, its long and powerful tentacles controlling every vice in the land.

During his descent, he heard an occasional knock at the front door followed by the footsteps of his steward Seville on his way to answer. One by one his grown children were arriving. Though he had sired half a hundred, only six survived, such was the cost of those wars and the turf battles that followed. The fact that the family empire could flourish upon the shoulders of these six attested to their ruthless natures.

Horatio strained to hear as voices drifted upward. Did he detect an undercurrent of hostility? It wasn’t like his children to fight amongst themselves. Yet the very air seemed charged with some indefinable menace. As the grand foyer at last unfurled before him, Horatio peered about. His vision, tunneled by glaucoma, framed his brood in the distant vestibule. They stood in a most unnatural way, resembling not so much a leisurely reunion as a military deployment. His body reacted instinctively, tensing with battle readiness, hands thirsting for weapons, though his mind knew better. His children couldn’t possibly be plotting a coup on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. They were Twitchgroves. Though treacherous in every regard—masters of thievery, sabotage, extortion, kidnapping, murder and every other form of mayhem—they put family loyalty above all else.

The tiniest jolt announced the bottom of the stairs. Stunned by the sudden stillness, he steeled himself as his brood rushed forward to greet him and lend assistance as he slid from chairlift into wheelchair. With a curt acknowledgment, he pressed his tremulous palms hard on the wheels to propel himself past them and away from that moment of doubt.

Come, come, I’m hungry, he cast back to cover the awkward moment. We’ll talk once there’s food in our stomachs.

As he passed through the arch into the voluminous space of the dining hall, he avoided lifting his gaze to the monstrous chandelier above, so tempting with its war relics, as this was a day to be spent in the present, with his children.

Crouched on eight ornate talons in the center of the dining hall was an oaken table. Its elliptical surface was inlaid with a fantastical black octopus with purple splotches and too many arms and eyes. In the past a much larger table had served the family, seating up to fifty, for such had been his prolific paternal outpouring—both through wife and sport. At that time a rich maze of octopuses had intertwined upon the tabletop, the assembled heraldic symbols of all his children. Each child had used the Twitchgrove black octopus as root, adapting it to suit their own personal traits and martial exploits.

But the years had not been kind to the Twitchgrove family, and the ravages of war had made so many chairs superfluous, so that it became too grim a reminder of loss; and he had replaced it with this one, which—though small for the room and overwhelmed by what hung above—allowed for a more intimate gathering and less shouting.

Somewhere there was a room where he stored all the heraldic symbols of his children—a grand display covering two whole walls. But he no longer frequented that room, or even remembered where it was, being too painful a reminder of his losses.

As he wheeled himself to the head of the table, Horatio felt the palpable, malignant mass above. He settled into the cushioned high-backed chair with its skeletal design and only then became aware that the dark intrigue still lingered. Why this persistent and pervasive sense of bloodlust?

He peered about the table, taking inventory of his brood, all seed of his loins, with their thick black hair streaked with crimson, deep-set eyes, thick brooding brows, and that wide gnarly mouth. They were agitated, he could tell. Though they hid it well, it showed in their somber regard of minutia (a wine glass here, a spoon there, a fly on the tabletop), as well as that telltale twitch of their neck cords. It was the calm before the tempest.

Whatever the problem, dinner was hardly the place for it. It could wait until the business meeting to follow. Not that he was expecting any big surprises. His spies were reporting good things. Quentin had the mines in fine shape, though there were rumors of trouble in the Nadir Mountains. Gregor had rigged ever bigger gains at the gambling casinos and was building new ones in lucrative places. Of Horatio’s three daughters, Melodia had tripled the slave trade and now had brothels in almost every major city. Desdemona for her part had been skillfully nudging third-world factions into balanced conflicts, the better to sell weapons to all sides for the long-term. As for Gwendoline, she had cornered the market on two new designer drugs, and was getting excellent results in her trials of a new psychedelic—this despite new and dangerous competition, according to his spies, who spoke of two close calls, and Horatio was relieved to see her well. As for Ronaldo, he was outdoing himself as always with new marketing and investment ploys, proving his worth—

Horatio froze, eyes fixed on Ronaldo, his youngest son, sole offspring of his ninth and final wife Torpola, bless her confounding soul. Revealed within his tunnel vision was something more, someone sitting beside him—the agent provocateur!—for Ronaldo had seen fit to bring a date.

A date! It was unprecedented, unimaginable, ill-advised and inexcusable. True, Rolando was but nineteen, but still, had he so little sense? She clung to Ronaldo’s sleeve so lovingly as to have almost escaped Horatio’s notice. Now there was no ignoring this thorn lodged in the very heart of the family. A pretty little thing, she was so doe-eyed and meek that Horatio had to wonder if Ronaldo had brought her as a sacrificial lamb. But no, that simply wasn’t in his nature.

Ronaldo, Ronaldo, what have you done now? he thought. It had been apparent from an early age that the boy was cut from a different cloth—far too cerebral and in all the wrong ways. He had dimples. Dimples in a Twitchgrove? Yet there they were, bejeweling that sensuous mouth. At least his brows had substance, but to what purpose, for they left his face unguarded! Too expressive, too buoyant of mood. No, not a typical Twitchgrove, and Horatio had the mother to blame for that—Torpola, with her ounce of compassion and genes too dominant in far too many regards. The most cerebral among his wives, she alone had not ridden into battle at his side, as he had met her after the wars.

After Torpola’s death, Horatio had been hard-pressed breaking Ronaldo of bad habits. Gone were the paint brushes and canvases, the advanced calculus books, the bug collections, the musical instruments. He needed to be practical and productive!

The tabletop with its fabulous octopus inlay vanished beneath a banquet’s worth of dishes as servants carted in all manner of delicacy. But Horatio had lost his appetite. There was grave risk of an uncivil act here. He glanced aside at Quentin, oldest at fifty-three, holding his fork in dark deliberation, awaiting the moment of mayhem. Next to him sat Gregor, forty-one, his ghoulish face made longer by his gaping mouth hungering for this morsel. Horatio could well imagine the pair at work. But then he caught sight of his three daughters. The seemingly masculine Twitchgrove traits had found curious expression in them, giving a robust beauty, a commanding presence. The evil that men do, Horatio thought. Whoever had come up with that phrase had never met his daughters.

Melodia, Desdemona, Gwendoline. Men didn’t know quite what to make of them; even women were intrigued. The three could simultaneously attract and repel. More than once they had surprised him with their voracious appetites for inventive tortures, and even now he saw them salivating over this sweet thing.

Hear, hear, Horatio said, tapping the tabletop, hoping to avert a row. The occasion calls for celebration, does it not? He waved at the opulent spread and inhaled the savory aromas. You’ve all come from so far away, and no doubt you’re stir-crazy from your travels. He surveyed them all. Still, certainly for the next few hours we can conduct ourselves in a civil manner to honor the family name.

We always defer to your wishes, said Quentin, deftly twirling a steak knife.

Perhaps Ronaldo would care to introduce someone, said Melodia with a too-wide grin.

At mention of his name, Ronaldo looked about and realized his oversight. Oh, but of course! Horatio, Gregor, Quentin, Melodia, Desdemona, Gwendoline. This is Su, a good friend of mine. She spells it without the E, by the way. Just S U, Su.

It’s a pleasure to meet you, Su, said Gregor.

All welcomed her, and to excess. Only Su and Ronaldo seemed to miss the insincerity.

It’s wonderful to be here, Su enjoined, and to be making your acquaintance.

Elegant, cultured, immaculately dressed and groomed, she radiated an astonishing naiveté.

If you don’t mind telling us, said Gwendoline, what do you do for a living?

Su straightened in her chair, looking prim and proper. I’m a professor of mathematics at the University of Hargreaves in Xanluthu.

The family digested this in silence.

Was Ronaldo by any chance a student of yours? asked Desdemona.

One of my best, she said, beaming. Though that was before we started going out.

Ahhh, the proper ethical protocol, murmured Desdemona. By the way, just how old are you?

Twenty-four, which makes me almost five years older than Ronaldo. She said it with the slightest smile, as if charmed by the idea.

You don’t have to answer these ridiculous questions, said Ronaldo, glaring about.

I have nothing to hide, Su said. Is there a problem with me being older?

They all looked at one another.

We’ve all robbed the cradle often enough, said Quentin. I suppose someone else ought to have a turn.

Let’s be fair, said Melodia. She doesn’t look any older than Ronaldo.

That perception earned a grudging acknowledgement.

Just out of curiosity, said Gregor, do you do anything useful?

Ronaldo half rose. That’s uncalled for! Realizing he was being baited, he settled back. Teaching has tremendous value, especially at her level. She’s considered a math genius, if you must know.

Su smiled quietly, choosing not to enter the fray.

We’re all just a bit curious, said Gwendoline, as to whether you’re aware of the nature of our family business.

Su glanced aside at Ronaldo. Well, I’ve been told you’re all into wealth-building.

The remark elicited chuckles all about.

Ronaldo took Su’s tiny hand in his and looked defensively about. He cleared his throat. I suppose I should mention that Su is my fiancé. We’ll be getting married soon.

Everyone froze, staring in disbelief. Then they began to object.

Horatio slapped the tabletop, a thunderclap that silenced all. He glared at Ronaldo, appalled by this revelation. He had thought her a mere dalliance in his cap of youthful exuberance. This was too much! Too much entirely! With an effort of