Das Licht--The Light: Finish The Story Contest Week #46

Prepare to enter the realm of #finishthestory contest, sponsored by that font of creativity, @bananafish. The first part of this week's story was written by @dirge. This is a writer of the first rank. What a rich beginning!

Check out #finishthestory if you would like to embark on this, or a future adventure. I recommend it!

Leitner

by @dirge

Benjamin Leitner, son of General Reinold Leitner, grandson of Count Dietrich Leitner, stepped from the stagecoach and lit his pipe. The night was cold, the sky a vast black emptiness. The moon, if it had shown itself at all that night, was gone, and nothing but the light cast by Benjamin’s lantern offered solace from the creeping dark.

He’d reached the graveyard, home of his family tomb and its historic dynasty. It was a forbidden place, the site of his late mother’s suicide, where Leitners were entombed stretching back centuries. He hated this place, more than anywhere else on earth. But he’d come, alone as ordered to. He’d come, as he had no other option but to do so. And he’d brought the gold.

The letter was written in her typical style. Loquacious, expounding on the nature of their relationship, apologizing for her affairs, thanking him for standing by her throughout it, remaining at her side despite all the controversy of the town. Despite even her own parents telling him to abandon her as a lost cause.

She’d not only dragged herself down into the mud. But him as well. Benjamin the financier, of Wolfstone and Kauffman, now the cuckold of all of Austria. But worst of all, she’d tarnished the name of Leitner.

And when the accusation came, of witchcraft and devilry, of black magic and the most bestial of sacrilege, of whoring in the night endowed with opiates unto madness. Well, it was no wonder when Kauffman wanted out.
And still he stood by her.

Should he have been surprised when the letter came, demanding the last of his finances or else she’d accuse him in the papers of having masterminded it all? Of being an original scholar of the black arts?

That would render the Leitner name into devilry.

No. He couldn’t allow that.

Benjamin finished his pipe, the tobacco charred and ashen. He cast the ash into the wind then slipped the cherry wood pipe into his coat pocket, beside the letter crested with her seal.

Melinda. Oh, you wench.

I’ll be in the crypts, waiting.

He suspected she wasn’t alone. Benjamin suspected the whole carnal tribe to be down there, waiting for her.

Well, so much the better. Let them all wait for his arrival. Let them all see the truth, the forbidden history denied to the world. Stretching back into the foundation of the soil. Let them know who it was that the Leitner’s may be.

He stepped across the grass, peering at the graves of his forbears till he reached the central crypt. The iron gate was ajar and the darkness seemingly impenetrable. They were down there, waiting for him.

“Melinda,” Benjamin said to himself. “It could have been different. So different. But you threatened my name. For that, I cannot forgive you.”

He entered the crypts.

“Time to meet the family,” he thought to himself, almost with a laugh.

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What will happen next? My idea:

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Das Licht -- The Light

By @agmoore

He chanted as he entered the chamber.

Ich leite das Licht
Ich leite das Licht
Mit diesem Licht
Gebe ich dir Sicht

Before him light streamed, a brilliant glow that widened as Benjamin progressed deeper into the gloomy space.

Melinda was alone. Her arrogance had grown so in recent months that she faced him confidently, without her cohorts. But this bravado softened, when she observed the ethereal light flowing from him.

He stopped chanting and addressed his wife gently.

"And so we come to a resolution, at last, Melinda."

She retreated into the shadows, instinctively understanding the light was to be feared.

"I don't know what trick you're playing, Benjamin, but nothing you do will improve your circumstances. Pay me, or my friends and I will ruin you. We have stories, planted strategically, that implicate you in vile deeds. Your family's name, the Leitner name, will forever be tarnished."

He began again to chant rhythmically.

Ich leite das Licht
Ich leite das Licht

His steady voice filled the silence. Each time a chant issued from his lips, the radiance intensified, until the darkest corners of the crypt were illuminated.

She pressed her hands to her ears.

"What is that you keep repeating? Stop it, I tell you, or I'll ruin you no matter what."

She was hysterical now. Light enveloped her.

Benjamin's words echoed. Light and sound united into an energy that drew a circle around husband and wife. Never, even in their most intimate physical moments, had the two been closer.

"Melinda, you are here because you chose to be. Everything happening now was revealed to me when first I laid eyes on you. But nothing was preordained. Each step, each turn in the path, you decided."

Melinda crumbled into a heap on the stone floor. Her eyes fixed on him in panic.

He chanted.

Ich leite das Licht...

"Stop it. Stop it," she screamed. "What are you doing to me?"

"Leitner, Melinda. Benjamin Leitner. More than a name. A destiny. It is through me, through my father, grandfather and my ancestral line that redemptive light is conducted. In each of our lives we come across one person who seems doomed. That person becomes our charge. We bring light into that life so the dark ways are abandoned."

She was breathless now, and whispered.

"All this time, you planned..."

"No Melinda. I waited. I tried to conduct the light into your life. But you turned away. And so here we are. One last chance for you. There's still time. Leave your dark ways. Come. Be redeemed. "

He raised his arms, his cape forming a welcoming embrace.

"I need an answer, Melinda. Your time is up."

She stared at him, her eyes coal black, her lips slightly parted. The voice was weak. The words were not. She stood shakily, her hips supported by the sweating stone walls.

"I...I...

"Damn you, Benjamin."