The Silk Diamond

I: The Inheritance

The Inheritance

Kirian sat at the table staring blankly at the middle aged man who was telling him something that was obviously impossible. He took a deep breath, felt his fingers dig into the edges of the chair he was sitting in, and repeated himself, not for the first time that day.

"I'm getting a...a house?"

"Yes, Mr. Arthur... For the last time. You've fainted, You've vomited all over my carpet, and your remarks have been relatively incredulous. Yes, for the umpteenth time, your great aunt Grizelda has left you a house!"

"I'm sorry, my who?"

The attorney slumped in his chair and rested his head upon his desk. It met the wood with a soft 'thunk'.

"Mr. Arthur, the house...it's yours. It's in Briesman Forest...In Washington...State, not D.C..."

The man across the desk handed Kirian a manila envelope.

"Everything you need is in that envelope, anything else will be mailed to you. That property is yours effective, now. It's already stamped. It's been notarized."

Kirian looked up at the attorney with a beguiling smile.

"Forealzies?"

The man put his hand to his forehead and rubbed his temples and took off his glasses shakily before glancing up to the young man across the desk from him with a weary kindness, only the mildest irritation visible in the wrinkles upon his forehead.

"Yes, Mr. Arthur...this property belongs to you...Forealzies."

Kirian wandered out of the attorney's office, awestruck. In the same week, his app had gone public, reached IPO and made him an immediate millionaire. And now, Kirian was being given a house, by some aunt that he didn't even know he had. Kirian, after all,  was an orphan. Yeah, of course he had a father somewhere in Montana or something, but he had lived with his brothers in their dingy man cave of an apartment since he was seven years old.

Kirian pulled out his smartphone and dialed the number of the two guys he trusted most, his brothers.

"Hey Sy?"

"Yeah", Sy, the "fun" brother, replied. In the background there were shuffling noises and shouting. It sounded like he was skateboarding or doing something otherwise dangerous.

"Aye, Ibrahim, you there?"

His other brother, the responsible one, Ibrahim, picked up on the first ring.

"Who set something on fire..." 

Kirian laughed. "I've got some good news guys..."

"Better than the fact that you're like a millionaire?," asked Simon. "I've seen the news and I propose we buy a giraffe".

"Better than the fact that you've gone public and your company is on fire?", Ibrahim supplied.

"Much better", Kirian agreed. He looked down at the envelope in his hand.

"It seems, someone left us a house....boy's we're moving."

"What", they said in chorus.

 

"Yeah", Kirian said with finality.

 

While Kirian was on the bus on the way back to the dingy apartment that the brothers shared, Kirian flipped through the folder that the attorney had given him. Among the pages he found the most interesting article about the folklore of the land that the boys would be moving to, a place called the Silk Manor.

Apparently the manor was the subject of all kinds of mystique and had been in a state of disrepair ever since the last owner, one Kallan Silk, mysteriously disappeared. The circumstances, according to the paper had something to do with crimes against the church.

Kirian's head was swimming. He didn't even know there were settlements in the pacific northwest in the 1700s, let alone there being a structured enough government that there was persecution, and of white people to say the least. Nevertheless, he set his reservations aside, digested all the information and zipped home to gather all of his belongings. It seemed to Kirian, deed in hand, when it rains it pours and when the sunshine's, it's golden and unanimous.

After packing all his stuff and booking the car to the house, from a hundred miles away, the black town car—a gift from his company— stopped at the great green drive to the house. Kirian would be the first to admit that he expected the house to be in a state of disrepair. The large stately house was more than a house, it was a mansion, with two wings—east and west—in addition to a cemetery around the back and at least four acres of yard space.