Bridgeport

Nothing happened to me, not physically. I escaped the castle unharmed... unbitten. Which is more than can be said for the other poor damned souls that fed that awful place. It feels wrong then to complain, to admit that it affected me so deeply, to admit that I still see the stone face of that haunted edifice in my nightmares. It could have been worse. For many it was.

But I feel I must recount the story on paper, as best I can, both as a confession of my guilt in having helped construct the castle and to ensure the memory of those fallen in its name will not be erased and will long endure, despite the lack of bodies recovered for proper Christian burials.

It was in the spring of 1858 that the thing that called itself Andrei Varga approached me with his plans to build a castle. He very pointedly declined to tell me much of anything about himself or what business he ran that gave him his apparent great wealth. He was very old, and very small, a shriveled elderly man with a slight hunch to his back. Despite his obvious great age he seemed well possessed of strength and faculties, and had married a much, much younger woman than himself, with which he planned to build what he called 'their legacy.'

The castle was the cornerstone of that legacy. Castles are not common in America, even out east where the idle wealthy can build whatever ugly manors suit their passing fancy. Out here, in the western territories, it would be the first of its kind. A harkening back to the crumbling ruins of the Varga's old home country, but with the comforts and amenities of current American sensibilities.

It was to have a large, strange kitchen secreted in its basement, beneath the proper kitchen and larder, as well as many bedrooms the female (I cannot bring myself to call it a woman) of the pair insisted would be for their many children. The apparent age of "Mr. Varga" seemed to leave that notion a waste of time and money. I had my doubts he would survive to the end of construction, as such a large building would no doubt take several seasons to complete.

But they had money. More money, in fact, than I would have normally charged for such a venture. That could have been my first clue, since I failed to notice how wrong those inhuman things were during our meetings, even when I looked them in their hideous red eyes.

The evening of the formal ground breaking finally came, and my team and I went to the site ready to settle in to a long labor. Whatever business venture the Vargas were in, it was a night business, and they expected us to keep their hours, and I was paid handsomly enough to agree. I was surprised to be greeted by the thing that called itself Andrei Varga, waiting alone at the top of the sylvan trail that led to the site of his home- Quite out of the ordinary for the idle rich. He insisted on leading us in, "letting us in through the gate," he called it, despite there being no gate and no fence of any kind.

Castle Varga, as he called it, was to be built on a hillside up into the trees, which were to provide the safety and seclusion the couple sought to raise their young in. He insisted the group stay together closely, as "the gate was narrow," and my team, usually quite surly, for reasons unclear to me still, didn't seem to question his instructions. There was all at once a blinding flash that made me blink and stagger- but the light settled in my eyes. I felt no pain, and indeed nobody in our group seemed to be harmed, but the air felt different suddenly. It was colder. The mountain seemed taller, the trees closer. We hadn't walked far enough up the trail for this to be a trick of altitude, but the difference was obvious. The crewmen seemed bewildered. Varga, whatever he was, did not seem bothered by the cold.

The mistress of the soon to be castle, "Ana" was how it referred to itself- greeted us there. The couple immediately gathered every workman round and laid out their ground rules for the property. Two stand out in my mind: Mr. or Mrs. Varga were to accompany anyone up or down the trail into Bridgeport with no exceptions; and nobody who was not on the contracter crew was to be told of the castle's existence. When I turned to look down the trail we had come up from, it occurred to me then that despite our great vantage point on the hill, I could not see Bridgeport beneath us. The landscape was lost in a swath of dark pines.

By this point, it was far too late for second thoughts. The couple were bizarre, and I am now sure- unholy in some way. But they did have money, and since I had to decline other projects in favor of the building of Castle Varga, it was all the work we had for the forseeable future. We would abide by their terms, be paid handsomely for the trouble, and wash our hands of it. So I hoped.

The building of the home itself was unremarkable. A castle more in name than in function- it did not have turrets or any means of true defenses where armed guards would stand. It was more of a great stone manor, built with lofty ceilings and high arches. If it were not so unholy a building, I might say it resembled a cathedral. But it had all of the amenities of a true manor- bedrooms, bathrooms, a great dining hall, though it did have its idiosynchrasies.

The first being the hidden chambers. There were two, one beneath the great staircase that led to the upper bedrooms, and one down a steep and twisting spiral stair to what I can only refer to as a crypt beneath the library. These hidden rooms were a special point of care for the Vargas, and they often made it a point to rotate who was allowed to work on them, seemingly to prevent any one man from knowing everything about their mechanism. By the time the rooms were completed, I could scarcely find where they were meant to be myself, and I had laid masonry in them.

The second strangeness being the second kitchen. It was larger than the formal, 'normal' kitchen near the dining hall. It was also located in the basement of the place. It had a great wide open firepit large enough for three men to stand in comfortably, an immense washbasin and easy access to the yard near the south side of the manor, as if Mr. Varga expected his servants to butcher and prepare livestock then and there right on the property. I got the impression this was not an odd foible carried over from whatever old country these two monsters hailed from.

To my team's eternal praise, we did what was asked of us. We worked quietly and efficiently for over a year on that God forsaken mountain. Even in the cold of winter that always raged so much harder on the mountain than it did in the city below... whever 'below' was. Not once did any of us break their rules, either. I do not think this point was because of any good will on mine or my team's part, as I know for a fact that by the end, everyone hated their overseers. But we found it very difficult to disobey them while being watched.

At last the day came when the heavy doors were being set into place, and furniture began to fill the stone rooms. The house, castle, whatever you can call such a place, was complete. The tiny, deceptively frail inhabitants were dwarfed by the enormity of the place, but all at once they seemed to fill it and master it. The sun set on our final evening at Castle Varga, and we had been invited up the mountain once again, not for labor- but this time, for a 'celebratory banquet.'

Mr. Varga had requested our presence at a great feast, in honor of the castle's founding, and if the promise of this thanksgiving banquet was not enough- it was at this event that he promised the final installment of his payments, with bonuses. The money had been good so far. As much as I did not ever wish to set eyes on that awful building again, I had no real reason to believe that I could not simply enjoy my dinner, collect my fee and be done with it.

If I had trusted my gut, perhaps I could have been spared the carnage. The rules were ever the same the night of the banquet. Mrs. Varga met us at the trailhead, all smiles and politeness, to escort us through the gate as if we needed help. As if we hadn't walked up and down this same trail every day for the past year and a quarter.

The castle all at once conquered and completed the lifeless, hard landscape it sat perched on. Its windows glowed from within with the warmth of candle light and stared down at us like eyes in the dark. Mr. Varga stood at the door.
"Thank you all for coming" I remember he said, with that false warmness all over his half toothless grin.
"Follow me to the dining hall, if you please." And so they did. I say 'they' instead of 'I' here, because I did the one thing I believe saved my life. I hesitated. I finally, for the first time in more than a year listened to my gut and I held back, trailing behind the group that was led like lambs to the slaughter.

The halls were very full with every workman in them. There were more than forty of us all together, and even such a large house had trouble comfortably accommodating such a crowd. I am still not entirely sure what happened. Just that there was a sudden bright light, a metallic sort of shrieking sound and the smell of a thunderstorm- and the first ten men at the head of the group fell down to the floor stone dead.

The rest is chaos. I heard that sound over and over. I saw the Varga woman fling herself bodily onto Jonathan Crary, the carpenter, and maul him like a wild dog. I couldn't stop the carnage and I am ashamed to say, I did not try. I ran out that door, and down the trail as quickly as I could. It was winter then, and snow had wreathed the top of the mountains in heavy wet clumps. I knew there would be no hiding my footprints in the snow, so I endeavored to escape down the trail and into the city as fast as I could.

I ran down that trail for hours. The trail was not a long one, I had walked it every day. I had walked it hundreds of times. Whatever devil magic occurred at the gate- the path down the mountain no longer led me back to Bridgeport.

I do not remember much of what happened in the following days. I know I had the blessed fortune of being found by a mining company, of them taking pity on me, and of being sent back to the mainland by ship- though I had little idea of what anything meant when they told me where I'd ended up.
Suffice it to say, it was many thousands of miles from Bridgeport, and not a brisk walk up a wooded trail.
I never saw any of my team again. I do not believe any but me survived. As far as why the demons did to those good men what they did, I have come to the conclusion that our vow of secrecy was perhaps not enough. That we knew too much for the monsters to be satisfied with their total seclusion. I watched a woman tear into a man bodily with her teeth. I think I agree with their assessment that they must be kept far, far away from civilization.

The other part of me believes it may well have been a feast to celebrate the building of their home, just not a feast that any mortal man in Christendom would care to be a part of.

I have since found the trailhead leading up into the mountain from Bridgeport. In my braver moments I have taken to carrying a gun and a knife up that hill in daylight, anxious to have my vengeance on Castle Varga. The gate however never once opened, and there is nothing on that hill but silent trees.

-from the journal of Raymond Waterhouse, the Local History and Journals research section of Bridgeport University Library