The Fiend of White Buck Hall (edit title/settings)

The story is set in 1897 in late March in the pine barrens of southern New Jersey. Rated spicy, it is a historical/fantasy/paranormal. The hero, Thomas Hillyer, is a wizard. His familiar is a white buck. The heroine has no extraordinary powers until she stares into the white buck’s eyes. Afterwards, she has prophetic visions.

The heroine, Molly Coan, was a secretary in New York City and worked for Mr. Filmont, a railroad magnate. Molly’s friend and former coworker became pregnant by Mr. Filmont and expected support from him but met an untimely end when she fell in front of a train. Molly believes her friend was murdered—shoved in front of the train. She has letters from her friend detailing her dealings with Mr. Filmont.

When Mr. Filmont asks Molly to come to his home and work on his personal correspondence, she is afraid, but she does not want to lose her job. When he sexually assaults her, she hits him with a statuette, knocking him unconscious. She fears she has killed him. A Graphophone was running during the conflict, leaving a recording of it. Molly takes the wax cylinder from the Graphophone with her.

Days later, she reads in a newspaper that Mr. Filmont is not dead, he claims she robbed him. He has offered a large reward for her capture.

She hopes to prove she was wronged using the wax cylinder as evidence, but she is down to the last of her meager supply of money. Seeing an advertisement in a newspaper for a secretarial job, she travels to the sleepy little town of Stony Mill, New Jersey, deep in the Pine Barrens. The innkeeper in the town claims that Thomas Hillyer is an albino in league with the devil as a sorcerer and wizard. The innkeeper tells her about the white buck who roams on Hillyer’s land. He claims the white buck can stare into a man’s eyes and steal his soul.

Molly—desperate for money and food—refuses to believe the innkeeper’s tales and takes the shortcut to White Buck Hall through the woods. It grows dark and the white buck comes upon her, but he seems a kind creature until a hunter shoots at him. Then the white buck kills the hunter, but when he comes up to Molly afterwards he does not seem the same gentle animal. He stares into her eyes and she feels as if he is stealing her soul. She passes out.

Thomas Hillyer is furious with his assistant, Rafe for putting the advertisement in the newspaper. Thomas does not want a secretary and certainly not one who is a woman. Still, he cannot help but be drawn to the lovely Molly—until she talks in her sleep and mentions Mr. Filmont—the man who ruined his father.

The death of the hunter has riled up the townsfolk of Stony Mill. They want to see the wicked animal killed and hold Thomas responsible because they believe he controls the white buck allowing it free rein.

Thomas manages to turn them away with a banishing spell, but not before one of them shoots out a window.

Molly discovers Thomas’s household to be very unusual. The housekeeper is a bearded lady, Rafe is a dwarf, and the cook is unusually tall but mute. Thomas had been with the circus for many years and offered his home as a place for his friends to retire.

Thomas learned metaphysics from a sorcerer, Averill, in the circus and became the circus magician when the old sorcerer died. Though now is possession of his mentor’s grimoire, he has not achieved the level of expertise of the great Averill. However, since the white buck became his familiar he has made progress and acquired far more power.

Still, he is disturbed that he cannot actually predict future events. Using botanicals in his lab, he hopes to concoct a potion able to improve his aptitude for prescience. He believes he is getting close to a solution and has been testing his mixture on mice.

Molly awakes seeing the image of the white buck change slowly into the face of Thomas Hillyer. She finds herself caught in what she believes must be a spell as strong gusts of passion envelop her in Thomas’s arms.

When she finds the letters in her trunk are missing, she insists upon their return. Thomas suspects the town doctor took the letters, but when he goes to the doctor’s house, he’s finds the man with a knife in his back. That same night, Thomas’s barn is burned and his horse dies in the fire.

Thomas tracks the perpetrator and finds a bounty hunter. Thomas goes to his special circle in the woods to set up a banishing spell—meanwhile he commands the white buck to set the bounty hunter’s boat adrift.

Molly finds a crystal ball in Thomas’s trunk and sees the image of the white buck setting the boat adrift. When she goes outside, the bounty hunter grabs her from behind after he has killed Thomas’s stable hand.

Meanwhile, Thomas returns to the cabin where he saw the bounty hunter. Exhausted, Thomas falls asleep until he hears the bounty hunter returning. Thomas hides in the cellar.

The bounty hunter intends to take his pleasure with Molly. Thomas bursts out the cellar and shoots the man.

Molly is grateful but traumatized. When they return to White Buck Hall, Thomas discovers that Molly is wanted for robbery and has a $1000 reward on her head.

Thomas tells Molly he will marry her. That way she will have the safety of a different name. Molly is distressed that he has not professed his love.

She types his research paper and wonders if he gave her some of the drug. Her visions are becoming more frequent, more debilitating, and consistently point to the death of the white buck. She fears he is the white buck.

Married in a brief ceremony, they travel to Philadelphia. Thomas’s city house has servants and a more rigid lifestyle. Though Thomas incites a wondrous passion in Molly. she thinks it must be his magic. Still, her love for him grows as does his for her. But the crystal he wears is exactly like the one the white buck has around his neck and her visions of the white buck’s death grow more detailed. She sees herself running frantically with brambles tearing at her skirts.

Due to her experience with the bounty hunter and her visions, she decides she must learn to fight. It turns out to be a good decision, for as they are riding in the Phaeton around the streets, another carriage hits theirs. Molly is knocked unconscious, but wakes to find Thomas fighting with another man. When a bystander grabs Molly, she kicks him in a sensitive spot and gains her freedom.

The next day, Thomas is taken away by the police for assault. He fought with the son of Mr. Filmont.

Molly is distressed and thinks of turning herself in so gain Thomas’s freedom. Then she decides a better idea might be to leak the story about her friend to the press—to undermine Mr. Filmont’s character.

The newspaper refuses. But meanwhile, Thomas has his household frantically search for Molly. Thomas—exhausted and distraught—drinks down his potion and has a vision of his own. He sees his assistant, Rafe, bound in a cave.

Molly returns to find Thomas incapacitated and fears what his manner of illness might be.

Rafe is missing. Thomas and Molly check the railroad station. Returning to the house, Thomas alights from the carriage and Molly screams when she sees his eyes have turned red. She believes he is going to transform into the white buck, but he passes out.

While waiting for a doctor, she deliberately initiates a vision but she sees only the remains of the cabin where the bounty hunter had taken her. When she comes too, she learns that Thomas has returned to White Buck Hall without her. Furthermore, he has put a spell on the doors so that she cannot leave the house. She climbs out a window.

She knows she loves Thomas, even if he is the white buck. She wants to tell him that and travels to Stony Mill.

Meanwhile, Thomas is followed on the train. Presuming the stalker to be one of Filmont’s thugs, Thomas jumps from the train before it reaches Stony Mill. The man who tailed him, shoots at him and grazes Thomas’s arm. But Thomas hurries to his magic circle in the woods to see if he can find Rafe.

Molly arrives in Stony Mill accompanied by Thomas’s butler. They see three suspicious men with guns. Molly and the butler rent a carriage and head toward White Buck Hall, but on the way, the butler is shot. The white buck comes to Molly’s rescue and takes her to the secret evergreen grove. There she finds Thomas, cold and nearly lifeless. When he rouses from his stupor, they make love.

She falls asleep afterwards, but when she awakes Thomas is not there. She fears for his life. When she leaves the grove, she is accosted by one of the men she had seen in town. She shoots him as he shoots the white buck.

The buck tells her to pull him into the grove. She does, but then realizes she might need the gun, which had fallen from her hand. When she steps out of the grove, she meets with Mr. Filmont who shoots her.

Thomas hears the shots and comes running. He commands the evergreens to kill Filmont.

Thomas knows only one way to save Molly. He can take her wound for his own, though he is not sure the spell will work. However, as I is the only hope he has, he does it. Molly awakes to see him dying. She throws his wand at the body of the white buck and instantly Averill, the great wizard appears. Molly faints at the sight.

Averill explains that after his death, he could not leave Thomas for he knew he had much to learn. So he took on the form of the white buck and became the source of Thomas’s greater powers. He tells Thomas that he needs only Molly’s love for his power now.

The grove spins as a great cataclysm ensues and Thomas passes out. When he wakes, he finds the grove has disappeared. Molly wakes beside him and they travel to the location of the old cabin where they find Thomas’s assistant bound, but alive, in the cellar.

The three make their way back to White Buck Hall where a happy future awaits.