Freaks & Facades: Interlude - The Last Moments of Marie Thibeaux
Welcome friends, to a very special interlude of Freaks & Facades!
Tonight, instead of our usual bullet journaling recaps, we give you prose! The Last Moments of Marie Thibeaux!
This is a special story that accompanied our roleplaying for Session Ten: Get Out of Town. It's a little exercise in gothic fantasy that host/Dungeon Master Aboleth Eye was inspired to write. And tonight, we merrily and malevolently share it with our beloved readers.
This story does contain spoilers for Freaks & Facades' first arc, specifically the Session Ten recap. If you have not caught up with the story and do not want to be spoiled, please feel free to read on up.
If instead you were brought here from the Session Ten recap, by all means read on! And, if you are compelled by your own curiosity to experiences this horror interlude, don't say we didn't warn you... Hehehe...
Love, Aboleth Eye
Premise:
On a terrible, dark night at Houndswood Hall, the last lady of House Thibeaux wakes up to screaming and wild hounds attacking the last servants of her dying household. Is it the Black Dog of her nightmares finally come to claim her life? Just like it claimed the rest of her family?
Or is Marie, wracked by paranoia and grief, half-dreaming of this lurking predator as she runs to procure some protection?
Warning: this is a horror story, so please bear that in mind before reading on. Possible triggers include: mentions of violence, bloodshed, murder and death; animal harm mentions, mental anguish.
A vision of being startled awake by the sounds of screaming and barking! You claw away the curtains, moonlight spills in through the windows of your mother’s old bedroom. Your room as the grand lady. Torches are waving and there’s lots of movement below on the lawn. People in their nightclothes being surrounded by dark shapes.
Is it the Black Dog coming to take you at last?
The lawn of Houndswood Hall is being littered with the bodies of your servants and guards. Their blood sprays black on the moonlit grass and stone. How did they get over the wall? Through the gates?
But you must run! All at once the wild hounds bay towards the night sky, drowning out the sounds of panicking servants and dying moans! It has come! The Black Dog must be coming for the last heir of House Thibeaux!
You burst out of the room, running to the armory. Your father kept many of his best rifles for hunting there. His portrait passes you by in the hall, austere and rigid as he always was. You remember the gunpowder and tobacco smell that clung to him after a hunting trip. A great deer for stew being dragged on a one-wheeled cart by the boy.
Or the times in the spring when he had the boy carrying his guns and the bag of new puppies for the kennels. New hunting dogs for Houndswood Hall, torn from the nests of wild canines in the deeper woods–those that feared your father as king of the forest. The boy would only seem to light up attending to the puppies, taken from their wild home to live under Father’s thumb. Like he had been…
You turn the corner, recalling Father’s tobacco mixing with the coppery smell of blood that fateful day. He claimed his favorite rifle had finally burst on him as he was taking a shot. You think it must have been a shot at the Black Dog… That damned him…
He smelled of blood all the way through his infection. You had to hold a cloth soaked in mint oil to keep from heaving at his funeral. The second funeral you had ever been to.
The lounge before the armory smells of Father as you enter. And Mother as well. He used to entertain his fellow lords here. Mother used it to weep and take her powders after he died. She practically abandoned her apartments, which you now occupy. She abandoned life as well altogether.
Somehow the Black Dog had slipped beyond the gate and made its way to her on the sofa. The boy had mixed her powders that morning, they should have been as safe as her usual narcotics. But the beast slunk its way in, claiming her mother while defenseless in the lounge. Muffling her screams of fear as she doused the cushions in buckets of hemorrhaging blood, tears and what was left of her sanity…
You knew you could smell the Black Dog in the house that day! That dreadful fall when you were left all alone as the last Thibeaux!
She had never liked the dogs of her lord and husband. The Black Dog must have known…
The boy believed you, he always did! Not like the others.
The others, servants and so-called friends, who called you “inflamed” or “delirious” for admitting the Black Dog exists! They are all too scared to admit he exists!
You take out the first rifle you can find that isn’t caked in dust. The boy maintains them as you demand as Lady Thibeaux. He is always so good to you!
The image of the boy when he arrived oh so long ago. Sullen face, dark eyes, dreadfully filthy. And to be your playmate, your father said! A distant relation one should be kind to.
Markian was never one to obey such an order. You and he were the scions of House Thibeaux! And the boy–nothing of consequence. One of your excommunicated aunt’s many progeny with her squalid military husband, whose lap she did not leave except to birth more mouths they could not feed. Barely even a Thibeaux with how murky and improper of blood he’d been born. But he had promise in Father’s eyes, apparently.
He had survived the whoreson’s plague that stole away his profane parents and pitiful siblings… That must mean something. And let it not be said that House Thibeaux did not show their distant relations mercy.
Your brother made the boy’s place known from the start. In those days you worshiped Markian, and you followed his example, of course. Jests and teasing, pinching and poking. It was all a game until it wasn’t… But the boy was not some whimpering pup that cringed at every raised hand. He barely spoke, except when Father demanded with a mark across the face.
That made Markian more daring, and you more feeling towards the whelp.
When the boy hid away in the kennels at night to avoid Markian’s ingenious nocturnal schemes, you were kind and did not tell your beloved brother where he was. When Markian learned greater schemes at school, you graciously let the boy do your duties keeping Mother breathing and Father attended to.
When Markian took the boy into the woods and was devoured by the Black Dog, you were so kind. You did not blame the boy for what befell him–the first of the Black Dog’s many deaths. You were so young. Father was beside himself. Mother was a watering pot. The boy was traumatized obviously, having been coerced to hunt with Markian and then fleeing when the frothing mad Black Dog revealed itself.
The boy did not give the Black Dog an interesting chase. Your brother did. That is what damned him. And what gave the Black Dog the first taste of Thibeaux blood…
You cock the rifle. You hear many paws bounding up the staircase. Bursting into every room. Teeth first!
You aim the gun at the armory door, let them take you as a huntress of House Thibeaux! The Black Dog and its creatures will face their greatest challenge yet! You are not a cruel but stupid child, a slave to addiction or a failed huntsman! You are Marie, last of the Thibeauxes! This is your land and your forest! Not the Black Dog’s so long as you live!
The Black Dog is there. You smell the foulness of his stench roiling from under the door. Your finger is on the trigger!
And…
Nothing happens. Clouds cover the moon, stealing what little light you have. You are very, very still in the dark of your father’s armory… There are no more screams or snarls you can hear.
Are you truly the last one alive at Houndswood Hall? Can the dogs even get into the armory?
But then you see it. The door handle.
It’s turning…
The door opens.
A fractal beam of moonlight shines on a face. Not a furry, slobbering maw…
A face young and withered, marks of the whoreson’s plague slowly healing upon the cheek.
A face older and red, marks of denigration by his master’s hand. And that of his son and wife.
A face downcast in prayer before grave after grave, beside you.
A face older now, as a box with a pitiful gesture is held before you.
A face, holding terrible black eyes, as your hand–it was your hand, wasn’t it?–swats away foolish promises.
The boy’s face. When did he get so old? And so serious? And so handsome? And so angry?
And the smell of the Black Dog… How long had he smelled like it?
Bang! The cabinet windows ring out as the sound breaks the night in twain! Gunfire!
You look down. In your shock, you stupid girl, you had lowered the rifle to the floor. And now you see the hole the boy has made. In your stomach.
Memory devolves into feelings of anguish and blistering, draining pain! The body collapses, clutching the fountainhead as it spills upon the floor!
The Black Dog watches, uncaring of his shoes being touched by the wellspring of red.
The body is making terrible noises.
You cannot hear it, too busy screaming.
The petals of clouds unfurl about the moon. The pack is seated behind their leader. Silent. Obedient in a way unnatural. Licking their jowls…
With barely a sigh, the Black Dog lets his pack rush upon the body. It comes apart easily… And, probably for the first time, he smiles.
Showing his teeth in the moonlight.
For no one alive to see.
We thank you for reading this prose Interlude from the realm of Ravenloft and the misadventures of Freaks & Facades!
After reading, you may be drawn back to the Session Ten recap here!
If you are now lost and wish to learn more about our first arc of adventures, check out our Campaign Index here for all the Freaks & Facades fun!