Shadows of Bastione: DREAMS collection

By Catharina Kruger

Undesired dreams. A chequered past. Trapped.

 

Shortly after arriving from New York for a three week visit with her fiance's family in the UK, she started to experience disturbing occurrences. The family estate, cast in a vast country landscape, although very imposing and magnificent in appearance, stirred unwelcome feelings and what she interpreted to be nightmarish dreams. The tone of these dreams escalated after the vivacious woman of the house opened a battered wood and steel trunk with old papers, presumably belonging to long gone owners.

 

What story did the house with the stately windows have to tell and where did the woman named Mary fit into the ensuing events? And the diary of Rosalynn, what secrets lay hidden inside it?

 

Soon the life that the young business woman so carefully carved at home for her and her young charge, was submerged in turmoil. Her mindless sleep-wanderings did nothing to improve matters; rather aided the forces that maliciously drove her to the brink of mental collapse. Starting to question her own sanity, fear for the safety of her loved ones settled, and with that came distrust of those she was desperate to rely on.

 

Powerless to prevent the turn her life took, when faced with no other choice, she put herself in harm's way to save those dearest to her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kruger-Zeelie Trust
• Release date: Jan 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224520046

Book preview

Prologue – The Beginning

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She woke abruptly and stayed motionless for a long while, still drowsy and confused by the deep sleep just woken from. The house was quiet, with just the squeaking of wood audible now and then. Outside, through the leaves and branches of the ancient chestnut trees, the faint moonlight projected shadows on the powder blue bedroom curtains. 

A soft breeze stirred in the warm autumn night, moving the curtains playfully through the open window. Slowly, she started to doze off again, back into the blissful oblivion of country-sleep, her nine-year-old mind fixed on only one thing: The Derby. The morning brings Saturday, at last! How excited she had been since she came home from boarding school and learnt about the planned event!

From an early age, Lyoma Browne had been a keen horse rider. Before school, she participated in every local event possible and later, once she became a member of the posh Litch Ditrich Boarding School some hundred and twenty kilometres away, continued to feed this passion at every opportunity that presented itself. Her young stallion - hair almost the same auburn tones as her own - is healthy, trained and ready.

A sudden noise downstairs shook her back into consciousness, but before she could attribute a cause to it, one terrifying scream after the other echoed through the night air. She sat upright, pulling the bed linen up over her chin. With just her nose and upper head showing, she remained on the bed, staring at the bedroom door.

Thudding sounds followed; the screams first became muffled then died away altogether. Almost as fast as it got disturbed, the night went back into silence, safe for the soft sound of the wooden floorboards.

She couldn’t tell how long she sat like that, waiting for her mother or father to open the door, speaking to her in their well-known, comforting voices. They did not come and after a while she started to wonder whether she really heard what she thought she heard; whether maybe it was all part of a nightmare, stripped from reality. She remembered dozing off again after waking the first time. Maybe instead of drifting into dreamland, she landed in nightmare alley and the noise, the screams, all came from her encounters there.

She got up from the bed, slightly shivering even though it was not at all cold. The scrap of moon provided adequate light for her to find her way to the door without turning on a light. The door opened smoothly, without the familiar squeal; the lubrication was working well.

There, her Dad said the night before while Mum was tugging her in. He closed the lubrication container and winked, "all hinges done. Now you can sneak out anytime you wish, without The Dragon Lady ruining your fun." They all laughed, remembering how she, Lyoma, barely seven then, once shouted those same words at her mother when she refused a sleep-over at a neighbour’s house, because she felt her daughter was just too young for such an adventure. The incident soon turned into a family joke.

Stepping out on the landing, she could hear muffled sounds, but could not figure out what it was. She went to her parents’ room, but their bed was empty. When leaving, still obedient to the family rule: sleep-silence at night between ten and six, she noticed the time on the clock by her parents’ bed; it was after midnight, almost ten minutes to one. The rule of sleep-silence was a standard rule and one her parents enforced vigorously. Only on rare occasions, was her older sister allowed to have friends over; they could still only stay up until midnight. After Mary-Lynne married and the East wing of the house was turned into a self-contained living unit, she and her husband automatically fell in with this rule.

Instead of going down the stairs, Lyoma moved to the far end of the landing, the area from where the South passage, dining room and big entrance hall were partially visible. She was still a bit scared, but had more courage hearing other living sounds in the house, and now strongly believing the screams she thought she heard were just part of a bad dream.

She considered kneeling down; but, remembering how her head got stuck between the balustrades of the stairs not more than a year ago, decided to remain upright. Her father had to break out part of the railing to free her, and afterwards gave her a first lesson in carpentry when she had to help fix it. He had warned her so many times before not to lean through the rails.

She pressed hard against the wall, straining to see the part of the dining room where the soft sounds came from. The grotesque shadow against the far wall started to shrink and slowly took on the recognisable form of a person. Moving into the faint moonlit passage, she recognised the tall figure of Garrett, her brother-in-law, but she couldn’t make out what he was dragging. Immediately following, the slender shape of a woman, who could only be her sister; the bundle in her care was smaller, but again Lyoma could not place the shape.

When the passage door closed behind them, she ran down the stairs, her fear now completely vanished. With her sister and the latter’s husband up and about, no screaming demon will be able to touch her! They were both very fond of her and made no secret about it.

She followed them outside, expecting half to see them going to the barn, but instead they turned to the carport south-east of the house. Covered with wooden walls and a tiled roof, and surrounded by big trees, it was much darker there and since nobody turned on a light, she could not follow what they were doing. Squatting behind the water-well in the middle of the garden, she heard a closing car door. Then both reappeared and started to follow the winding garden path back to the house.

Her curiosity stretched to its limits, Lyoma ran to where the other two kept busy a few minutes ago. Entering the parking area, she recognised the shape of her father’s Bentley. He was very fond of fine cars, especially vintage, which clearly showed through his collection. By far his favourite, the [1]S3 Continental, coach-built by H J Mulliner & Co in the early sixties, was one of several vintage models he proudly owned; most of them kept in the barn nearest to the main dwelling.

Standing dead-still beside the vehicle and peering into it, Lyoma gradually became aware of two figures in the front. Wondering what her parents and sister were up to, she tested the door handle and when it slid open, flung the door wider with force in the hope to give whoever was sitting inside a big fright for crawling about at night, expecting her to remain asleep.

With the vehicle door open, the interior light lit up. Lyoma expected to hear a gasp; instead she heard a very weak moan. But that was not what fixed her attention. It took a while for the scene before her to sink in, but when the horror of it finally reached her senses, all she could do was stare in utter shock.

Her father’s head bent oddly backwards, one part of his face almost gone; a bloody mess. Her mother’s face was still intact, however also bloody. The moaning sound came from her mother’s bruised lips.

Unable to properly process the scene before her, she took a step backwards ... and into a pair of strong hands. She heard her name, recognised the familiarity of the masculine grasp on her shoulders. At that point she started screaming, wild, and uncontrollable. She was still screaming when carried into the house, with a big hand muffling the sound; still screaming moments later when a needle pricked her arm; and only stopped when the strong drug started to carry her off into oblivion.

PART I  Chapter 1

The Visit

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Going around the last bend in the road, Donovan reduced speed and brought the small rental car to a smooth standstill, the engine still running. The windscreen a perfect parallel with the building, they had an unhindered view of the imposing structure where it towered over the landscape against the backdrop of a rocky outcrop.

Dioma looked at the stately home while the automated gate slowly opened. Although impressive, she was not sure she liked the place, for no specific reason. It was big, three storeys: an elevated ground level, and two more, with large wooden-framed windows. A flight of wooden stairs led up to the front door, finished with carved wooden balustrades on the sides.

Do you like it?

Yes ... Yes, I do. Dioma did not want to hurt his feelings and hoped she sounded convincing. Since she agreed to finally meet his family, he had been going on about the place and although she must admit that it is very imposing, there was that faint feeling about it she could not explain. Maybe it was just too big and overpowering for her liking, with far too much history.

Up to the late eighteen hundreds, Bastion Estate was part of a large farming area known as Patriote Pasture. This land was bequeathed by King George III during his reign in the seventeen hundreds, to the late Sir Brian Bradley Patriote, allegedly after the latter saved two of the King’s daughters from harm by a vagabond (i). The event was tersely recorded in the Patriote Register, but strangely the account was never acknowledged in Royal History.

[2]King George III (George William Frederick) was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland until the union of these two countries in 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, until his death. He was deeply devout and spent hours in prayer. In 1761 he married Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, whom he met on their wedding day. He never took a mistress (in contrast with his grandfather and sons) and the couple enjoyed a genuinely happy marriage. They had 15 children: nine sons and six daughters. He is most remembered as The Mad King and The King Who Lost America. In the later part of his life, George III suffered from recurrent, eventually permanent, mental illness. Medical practitioners were baffled by this at the time, although it has since been suggested that he suffered from the blood disease porphyria. He did not travel extensively and spent his entire life in southern England. In the 1790s, annual holidays were taken at Weymouth, Dorset, which he popularised as one of the first seaside resorts in England.

They started to move again and soon Donovan parked the car in a guest parking lot close to the stairs. Here she comes! His words led Dioma’s focus back from the rocky outcrops further back, to the house entrance.

A blonde woman came gliding down the stairs, no doubt Donovan’s young step-mother. His father remarried a year after his mother died of cancer. Some suspected their relationship to have started long before the funeral, but, judging by the welcome the new wife received into the family, nobody seemed to mind.

Hello, hello! And welcome! You must be exhausted. Do come in!

Dioma quickly understood how a man well over fifty, in fact any man, could fall for the woman who first embraced Donovan, then drifted over to where she, Dioma, was standing. Goddess is the only word she could find to describe the vision. Draped in faded pink and cream, her blonde hair moving freely with every long-legged stroke she took, Welma Drosdt could have stepped from the pages of any top European fashion magazine.

And you must be Dioma, she said, momentarily folding her arms around the younger woman in a warm hug. Not just men, Dioma thought wryly; the defeating charm of the slightly older woman surrounded her like an encompassing cloud, sweeping along every human element within that cloud.

I wondered what the racket was about. Should have known! A tall man descended two steps at a time. He looked a bit young to be Donovan’s father and Dioma wondered whether this might be the older brother he often mentioned.

It was indeed. Donovan introduced him as Preston, his big brother. Donovan was born years after his older sibling - eight, nine years. Dioma herself came from a similar family structure; just in her case she is the eldest, with a sister born some sixteen years after her. Lu-Anne is now ten and in Dioma’s care since their parents’ death eight months ago.

Dioma could not help but feel that the assessment done on her in the thirty seconds the tall man took to study her before taking her hand in a firm grip, was deep and thorough. Worse: that she was weighed and found wanting. Preston said nothing, just turned back to his brother and gave him a second hug. He is visibly fond of his younger sibling.

Drosdt senior had also joined them now. He greeted Donovan with the same passion as the other two, which made Dioma realise that this friend of hers is part of a very close, affectionate family. Which is rather unexpected considering she never even spoke to any one of them since meeting Donovan.

Not getting the same unpleasant feeling from the father that she has already been found inadequate, Dioma blessed the latter with a brought smile that lit up her face.

Where is the young one? Welma asked. Didn’t you say you are bringing her along?

Donovan gave a quick glance at Dioma, who decided not to be intimidated by the situation, or the older brother with his disapproving attitude. She kept her voice even: Oh, she will still join us. Her trip back from camp got delayed. I’ll pick her up at Heathrow tomorrow afternoon.

Is she travelling alone? From Welma.

Only the last stretch, but the air hostesses take good care of young children. Fortunately, she is very independent and adventurous!

Her casual take on the matter did not seem to improve the eldest Drosdt son’s view of her and she shrugged her shoulders to that. The other two seemed less bothered.

Oh well, then at least we have some time to get to know each other before terror strikes! responded Welma laughingly. Donna and Colin will take your luggage to your rooms. You are still staying apart?

Dioma was slightly taken aback by the straightforwardness, but not Donovan. Regrettably, yes!  He looked teasingly at Dioma, who quickly glanced elsewhere. He had been trying for a long time to convince her to move in with him, but so far she managed to resist. She could never pinpoint why it remained so important to her to retain her independence and not rush into marriage or any other binding relationship. They are not dating other people any more, but have not talked about engagement or marriage yet. She suspected that Donovan was also not ready for such a final step, even though he seemed in favour of a semi-marriage, probably more for the comforts it would hold than any other reason!

Good! Then your rooms are ready.

Their arrival was around morning tea time. After enjoying refreshments with the rest of the family, Dioma excused herself to her room. She figured they might need a few hours alone with Donovan to catch up on news and other matters. Besides, her body was desperate for a shower after the long trip; first the flight, then the road trip by rental car. The air conditioning of the vehicle stopped working half way; for the last approximately hundred kilometres, only the wind through the open windows could bring relief.

Her room is on the top floor. While ascending the wooden stairs, she appreciated the sturdiness and craftsmanship. The flight up to the top floor, although done in the same pattern and type of wood, looked like it could have been installed more recently than the other flights. She learnt the reason for that later: When Cage Drosdt decided to move his business to his home, he turned the larger part of the semi-elevated ground level into office space; it is on ground level at the back with an elevated front. This required the family areas to move one flight up and led to the addition of another floor at the top to accommodate guests.

Below the ground level is a massive basement, partially under- and partially above-ground. She later learnt that this serves as a laboratory for their fruit wine (commonly referred to as country wine, and in legislation as made-wine) business.

Dinner that evening was pleasant, although Dioma did not eat much, as was normal for her after a long trip. Welma has the ability to pull people together; she was an excellent hostess. As conversation progressed, Dioma learnt a little more about the household in general – roles and responsibilities; do’s and don'ts. Preston has taken over a large portion of the lucrative family business, now run from the stately manor. He also occupied the east wing living unit, which in itself was the size of a larger than standard house. Welma and Cage shared the 1st level with the entertainment areas, with the 2nd level reserved for guests. Donovan has a permanent apartment on the same level as his parents, but he was also put on the top level for the duration of Dioma’s stay, so she and the younger girl would not feel deserted.

Drosdt senior still had significant say in the business, but Dioma did not try to analyse his role further, not for the moment anyway. Donovan had the opportunity to join the business on equal ground, but he opted to follow a different direction: that of estate lawyer. He completed his basic study locally with excellent scores and was approached by a firm in New York[3] City to continue his studies with them, aiming to later join in full partnership. He accepted and never looked back.

Welma had a variety of interests and Dioma soon lost track of all the bodies she was a member of, the projects she was champion of and the welfare ventures she played a role in. She was also a keen artist and part of her and Cage’s private living area, was turned into a spacious studio after she moved in.

Dioma felt worn-out when later retiring to her bedroom, a pleasant kind of exhaustion. Donovan did not insist on spending private time together, for which she was thankful. It was past ten and she did not want his closeness that night, for no obvious reason. She just felt like being alone and was almost thoughtless while completing her pre-sleep ritual of face -cleaning, hair-brushing and such.

Feeling restful and drowsy, she dozed off soon after lying down.

*****

She woke abruptly to a quiet house, with just the creak of wood audible now and then. Through the leaves and branches of the ancient chestnut trees, faint moonlight projected shadows on the lime bedroom curtains. A soft breeze stirred up, moved the curtains playfully through the open window.

She glanced at the digital clock by her bedside and wondered what woke her at this time of night; the clock showed thirty-seven minutes past midnight.

She was starting to doze off again when suddenly her door clicked open. Now she was wide awake, raised her upper body and leaned on her elbow.

Donovan?

No answer and no movement.

Dioma turned on the night-light, got up and walked to the door, frowning. She first inspected the antique-like knob, then opened the door wider and looked down the faintly lit passage. The house was quiet, and all other bedroom doors seemed closed.

With a shrug, she closed the door again, tested it, returned to her bed and turned the light off.

When the door opened a second time just when she started to doze off again, she became annoyed. Was somebody playing a trick on her? If so, who is it and what was the purpose thereof this first night in a strange house?

This time she got up without turning any light on. She opened the door, stared out then shouted softly down the empty passage: Hello ... and when receiving no response: This is not funny, okay?

The next moment the door slammed shut in her face; she barely managed to pull her hand out of the way in time to prevent a nasty bruise. Now very upset, she decided to wake Donovan; left her room and tiptoed to his door. It was only a few steps away from hers, but all the time she felt chills running down her spine. She knocked once, turned the knob and entered - just to find his bed empty.

Dioma moved silently back into the passage, decided to check the windows on the far side. Maybe one of them was open and causing a draught.

She found more windows in the row not properly closed, and after closing them, returned to her room. This time she switched the bed-light on again, turned its glow down further and crawled back underneath the bedding. It was past seven when she woke up in the morning, quite late for her who believes in an early start.

Having rushed through a quick shower and dressed casually, Dioma descended the stairs in search of the dining room, hopeful for a solid breakfast. She retired the night before without obtaining breakfast details. Normally not consuming much while on the road and soon after a trip, she felt starved this morning.

Pursuing the sound of porcelain and cutlery, she found the small breakfast room on the ground floor. The only occupants were Cage and Welma, and an elderly man whom she suspected to be the butler, Colin. Although not served from hand to toe, Donovan did mention that they do allow certain luxuries, such as a couple serving as full time butler and housekeeper.

Cage and Welma greeted her heartily, while the elderly man quickly approached the wooden server against the wall. He opened the lids of the stainless-steel bowls and moved to a stack of plates, seemingly awaiting her instruction. She held out her hand to receive a plate, then smiled friendly up in his freckled, somewhat wrinkled face: Is it okay if I help myself?

He nodded and moved back to where he stood earlier when she entered.

Dioma was not one of the lucky women who could eat what she wanted without impacting her body. She had to keep herself in check constantly, but did allow deviation at certain occasions, of which breakfast this morning was one.

Slept well? Welma appeared really interested in her answer, a quality Dioma can appreciate.

Like a log!

Of course, it was a lie, but here in the small breakfast room, with the sun shining softly through the net behind the pulled-away drapes, it seemed silly to even mention her encounter the night before. Besides, she was fairly sure the door-slamming happened as a result of the open windows, and where Donovan was at that time of night ... Well, it is his business and if she really wanted to find out, she had to ask him.

That is good. At what time do you have to pick up your sister? It was Cage asking.

The plane arrives half past three. It’s an almost two-hour drive; I would like us to leave around one, then we should be well on time. I mean Donovan and me.

She did notice the quick glance between the older couple, but decided not to remark on that when they did not say anything further.

Dioma learnt later in the morning what it was about. While strolling outside, appreciating the well-kept garden, she saw Preston approaching. Not sure whether he was looking for her or just accidentally using the same path, she continued her slow stroll. He soon caught up with her.

Morning. His greeting was neutral.

Morning. She did not know him and had no intention to engage in early morning chit-chat.

Neither did he, it seemed, as he immediately came to the point in a business-like manner: Do you have a valid driver’s licence? UK endorsed, that is.

Yes. Why?

Donovan had to make a day-trip: business, something to do with the estate of one of our late employees. Did you get his note?

Note? No, where?

He said he left it on the stand by your bed.

She shook her head and kept her appearance steady, not in the least bit willing to admit to this almost stranger her concern about his brother’s unannounced absence. It wasn’t there when I got up. Maybe it fell to the floor. I’ll check.

"All right then. Donovan asked me to take you to the airport if he couldn’t return in time, but I also have to leave