Iron and Ink

Dr. Ellis pushed further through the thickening trees before coming to a stop, breathing out a slow breath.

"What is it?" she asked. "Is something wrong...?"

Nothing was wrong. In fact, her father was right. They had reached their destination.

"Oh, my," Lorraine breathed out quietly.

Stretched out before them were the ruins of Seward House, built hundreds of years before but were now only skeletal walls and archways, piles of weathered stone covered in greenery, staircases leading to nowhere. With the sun slowly peeking through the gray clouds above, spilling rays of light down on the ruins, it was impossibly beautiful and haunting.

Slowly, Lorraine walked around, taking in everything around her. She stumbled a few times over the fallen stones, but could not stop herself from moving forward. It was absolutely fascinating to her.

It was not until she reached one lone archway that she stopped, looking up at what was carved into the stone.

Praeteritum. Praesens. Futurum.

From her time spent among Ivy League scholars, she was practically fluent in Latin, which allowed her to know what those three words meant - past, present, and future. But what it was doing there, carved into the weathered stone, she had not an idea.

A twig snapped before a shadow passed in the distance. Lorraine's eyes searched for her father, but his mutterings were behind her.

Slowly, she stepped forward through the archway and her shoes thumped against wood, not the soft ground like before. Looking down, she saw what looked like a door below her feet, but that was not the only thing she saw. A pair of boots stepped within her field of vision and the smell of cigar smoke swirled around her. And looking up, her brown eyes met a pair of narrowed blue ones.

She screamed, stumbling backward, and her heel caught the edge of the wood. The next thing she knew, she was flat on her back as the man rushed forward.

"Are you all right, lady?" he asked her with a thick Southern drawl. "Didn't mean to scare you."

"Did not mean...are you insane?" she gasped, pushing his hands away from her. "You do not just come up on a lady like that. Of course, you would scare me!"

The man chuckled, cigar between his teeth, as he watched her push herself up, brushing her hands over her in attempt to rid of the mud that was now everywhere. "Well, you do know this is private land. You shouldn't be here in the first place, lady."

"That does not constitute your sneaking."

Huffing, she looked up, pushing her hair away from her face to glare at him. But her glare turned to a scrutinizing one as she looked him over. He was tall, that was for certain, and had a broad chest and thick arms that only came from hard labor. He was certainly dressed for it also, in a stained, white button-up, suspenders, brown pants, and, of course, his boots. One thing that made Lorraine take another step away from him was the gun on his side.

"What is going on?" Dr. Ellis said loudly, stepping in front of her in protection. "Who are you and what do you want?"

"I think those are the questions you should be asking yourself," the man said, nodding to them.

"We did not come to do anything illegal, I assure you. I just wanted to see if the rumors were true about the ruins of Seward House."

He raised his arms, gesturing around them. "And as you see, they are. Now, you gotta get off our land..."