A frisson of mordant anticipation and philosophical skepticism mingled within Genesis as he ate his breakfast.
After fulfilling his physical famish he went into the mansion's designated auditoria.
The appointed arch-charlatan's historical clarification was nigh, primed to unravel the lurid fabric of dark history shrouding this accursed edifice through centuries uncounted.
As the assembled crowd of thrill-seekers rustled into their tattered seats, a spectral quiet descended like a curtain.
Then the mansion's housekeeper, a member of that bloodline charged as sentinels of this unholy ground - ascended the stage.
With hollow eyes sunken in funereal cloaks, the specter began weaving threads from the tattered loomwork of ages immemorial.
"For generations beyond this world's scant memory," his voice hummed like the input of an oracle, "my lineage has stood sworn guardian to these precincts. A legacy of four hundred soul-blighted years."
The sinister raconteur gestured to the fresco-adorned walls whose sickly tints and patterns seemed to slither with profound wickedness. "These very stones enshrine a shame that has calcified into our island's indelible, and to some, sacred consciousness. Though to most, this place remains an unhallowed anathema to be shunned..."
Genesis leaned forward, rapt despite his feigned apathy, as the housekeeper carried them deeper into the charnelhouse of unearthed histories.
"Here, with cackling gullet and thirsting maw, does the sacred bones of the entity once christened 'The Lady Of Sorrows' find eternal repose.
A nickname synonymous with tyranny most exquisite and brutal rapacity beyond human morals.
But to some, a maiden of dark beauty."
Though his next utterance fell like the infinite weighted silence attending a execution's scythe-stroke. "For it was by the tortured, abused hands of her own subjugated thralls that this queen of beautiful savagery found her dominion's bitter end.
Devoured alive, flesh and muscle, by the very slaves she had so cared about, in her own rough way."
After several seconds, he cleared his rusty throat and continued,
"Those dissenting souls who dared raise cries against her godly sovereignty met fates more cruel than the crypt-borns' darkest reveries.
Public penance, fires stoked from humanity's seared remainders, eager to receive fresh tinder...
Yes, they were BURNED ALIVE for their betrayal."
Genesis clearly noticed that this housekeeper and his lineage sympathized with their master, but did not really care.
For his utmost goal was to know the whole story, and deduce if there is any truth to it.
"Aye...and those who tried to steal or claim this mansion for themselves after The Lady's death, deluded by notions of reclamation or hubris, were met by...mysterious calamity at every turn. Sank like rot-riddled husks into the mire of tragedy..."
The mansion keeper's watery gaze roamed across each thrill seeker's eye in turn as though peering straight into their very souls. "Mayhaps there are forces beyond logical reason's ken that yet prowl these vaulted halls. Ancient maledictions begotten in fury's primal screams lingering to shepherd new lambs towards the slaughter's maw..."
"I avow with soul-lead certainty that even in death, The Lady of Sorrows persists still in this mansion." The keeper's tone took on a ghostly resonance, as if voicing some dark taleteller.
"She who was victim to so unholy a fate remains now the daemon-queen, an eviscerating sentinel ever-vigilant against any unworthy entrance."
A lipless, mordant chuckle rattled from the withered pelvis frame as the pale specter's hollow sockets drank in each thrill seeker's attention.
"Only those loyal subordinates whom she deems worthy vessels for her malefic affections are permitted gateway to these accursed precincts. For the rest?"
That cursed smile of his widened to bestial dimensions. "Mayhaps their screams shall join the unending chorus echoing down hushed, haunted corridors towards realms of madness..."
As the droning history neared its terminus, the tone abruptly pivoted to one of stern reproach.
"When the night descends upon us, I counsel all to seek refuge inside your chambers. For the shroud of night births perverse shades of delirium and seeks to punish intruders!"
"Aye, the spirits haunting these stones are known well for their malignant...impieties.
No soul yet has wandered their mists without courting some lurking, irresistible doom to bare their razors in naked madness's light!"
As the assembled masses erupted in hushed murmurings, debating whether to relegate these proclamations to mere metaphor, Genesis found himself wavering between skeptical apathy and transfixion.
Surely such lurid superstitions were but the tools of a bygone age thought long discarded?
A means to intimidate the ignorant into line whilst shielding some forgotten, immemorial truth or treasure?
Yet for each flicker of dismissal within the professor's soul, he felt an inexplicable fatalistic certainty take root.
Had he not witnessed earlier that fleeting presence, that wholly entity sentience watching him during night's quietest moments?
Yes, Genesis had seen that which should never be given occulted purchase over the waking world. And now, facing an intimation of the horror's very source, he felt shuddering dread's dark seeds sprouting within.
His contemplation was broken by the keeper's crypt-whisper announcing a festive repast - a masquerade ball in the "tradition" of The Lady's own renowned gourmet tastes.
A chance to see first-hand the epicurean delights of the sadistic scion's profaned palate.
Genesis then swept from the hall back towards his sanctum, his chambers.
The mansion's crepuscular penumbra had swallowed the sun's last gasping rays as Genesis ascended towards the changing room where his masquerade vestments awaited.
Upon the threshold, a mordant smile played across his lips at the exquisite, baroque finery draped with all the perverse splendor of a torment-chambered nightmare.
Clothes the shade of arterial blood begged to sheathe his pallid form in deviant, gothic allure.
Each embroidery seemed woven from the fabrics of Hell's own dimensional antechamber. As Genesis' hands caressed the fabrics, a frisson of unholy feelings shivered down his spine like the caress of fingerbones.
"To behold the formless unknown in all its dark majesty..." he purred, locking eyes with his reflection's feverishly luminous stare.
The gilt-edged mirror appeared to swallow all radiance, reflecting back only but the professor's pale, defined visage - an obscene memento mori leering amidst the macabre fittings.
With relish he began wearing his form, reveling as the blood-hued drapery slithered across untanned flesh like a succubus's depraved caress.
As the ensemble's eldritch, baroque elegance fully worn, the overall effect was one of devilish handsomeness that meets fallen angelic temptation.
"Yes..." Genesis's whisper took on a bestial rasp as eyes narrowed in satisfaction. "Let us for once drop this veil of dusty, scholarly affectation. Should the occult ever prove real..."
His fingers trailed across his tailbone-length ginger hair, smooth strokes as if divining blasphemous runes inked across their weave.
"Then no refuge shall be spared my ultimate dominion," he growled with escalating fervor. "Simple human governance and sovereignty amounts to nothing in the presence of unearthly powers. Should these demons and angels ring true, all semblances of mortal control shall crumble beneath my slightest, Luciferian intonation!"
Those sharklike, pale blue eyes rolled back in the thrall of sacrilegious ecstasy as Genesis' malefic murmurs quickened to fevered, frenzied pitches.
"The grand design...a cosmos realigned to coruscate eternally within the Outer Dark's cyclopean geometry.
Witchcrafts, demonology's clarioned dominions, the machinations of extradimensional Hells at my unbridled beck - all shall swell in delirious fealty beneath my shadow's ever-lengthening rule!"
Only the ominous gong of the eve's seventh bell managed to pierce the professor's dream. As those haunting peals faded to silence, Genesis' gaze refocused - the wild, occult mania dimming back to a low, simmering ember.
With deliberation, he straightened his hellbent grimace before sweeping from the chamber and descending into the hall of festivities, dancing bowels.