In the springtime they came upon a thread of great promise: a cluster of tiny islands on a lake in a southwest corner of a peninsula. They booked a room at a grimy inn and rented an outboard motorboat, and at daybreak they struck out onto the water. The two of them sat under blankets, shivering against the frigid winds that pressed across the vacant lake. Charles steered the vessel while August did his utmost to activate his Sensing abilities.
At first the presence that August felt moving alongside their boat did not seem to fit their quest. The presence was arresting in its gruesomeness: the sight of a gaunt young woman floating upon a boat made of human remains. But August was well accustomed to the occasionally shocking and repulsive forms the spirits took in order to penetrate the chatter of the human mind, therefore he knew that this appearance likely had some underlying meaning.
That meaning came in the form of navigation. The ghostly woman was conveying to August images of an island, one with a great stone house and a family vault, even a dock for their boat. He urged Charles to follow the spectral guide.
August shouted directions with such urgency that Charles felt himself panicking. He did his best to steer them in the proper direction, but every inch they travelled seemed to bring them only further out. A seemingly endless sprawl of grey water stretched out before them. Charles began to worry about their safety. He eyed the jerry-can at his feet and prayed they’d have enough fuel to get back to the mainland.
“Shut the motor off!” August suddenly cried. He was practically standing.
Charles killed the engine and then sat listening to his heart thumping in his ears. He suddenly felt light-headed and lighthearted. A lump grew in his throat.
The island was there.
It seemed to have arisen from the depths like a lost continent. But it was real, utterly real. Nevertheless, Charles felt as though their vessel had somehow crossed a precious threshold where dreams had heft and matter was weightless. In this giddy, topsy-turvy bliss the pair of them glided toward the island’s shore.
The great house was stunning. It was the stuff of August’s boyhood love of haunted houses; almost archetypal in its perfection: majesty crumbling, sorrowful and beautiful at once; a monument to permanence that was somehow, paradoxically, slipping into oblivion. They had been blessed with a glimpse of the mansion in that rare moment between permanence and nothingness.
The tide pulled the boat to shore. Charles sculled them toward to the wooden dock and then moored them.
“Look at this,” August whispered, indicating the upturned bowl and the dirty, soggy length of white linen upon the dock.
They explored the house; an experience that snatched both men’s breath and voice.
At the end of a stout footpath they found the open stone vault. Intuition ordered Charles to collect the scattered matryoshkas. August secured the spirit bottle in the smallest doll and then the matryoshkas were reassembled and set inside the bowl.
It was while the two men were silently exiting the tomb that they saw her. She was smiling at them, her smoky form stood out in bas relief from the woodlands that surrounded them.
“Hello, dear Celeste,” August said in a tearful voice.
*
All seemed hopeless once Desdemona had lost the tether of Celeste’s voice. Her sister silenced, Desdemona had resigned herself to merely floating upon the boundless water, surrounded by the fogs that masked the world from her. It felt like an eternity and she felt forsaken.
But then she heard the motorboat. Shock made her numb. Had Mother and Father somehow returned? Had the whole ugly ordeal been a nightmare? Desdemona scoured the mists. She heard voices: men’s voices first, but then…
Then…
Celeste. She was no longer crying, she was elated, chatty. She had been restored somehow.
Desdemona took up the swords and rowed until her arms burned. She did her utmost to follow the voices.
Fate, she discovered, had moved her in a full circle. She found herself back at the island. A boat, not unlike Father’s, was tethered to the dock.
It was only when she went to steer her raft toward this dock that Desdemona realised she was walking, or rather gliding. She crossed the lake and the lawn.
She found the family vault restored, down to the great iron door, which had been reattached and re-locked. The great house was a welcome sight, but it nonetheless seemed somehow altered. It was paler, blurred, like a poorly-snapped photograph in an old album.
Desdemona entered the house with an ease that unnerved her. She slid through the scullery and the foyer and up the spiral staircase. The house was tidy and visibly cared for.
There were voices down below.
She moved down to the dining hall. She found them: Celeste and the two men who were laughing with her. The heavy curtains were drawn and the tapers sat burning in the candelabras. Celeste would never tire of playing night-time.
She uttered Celeste’s name but found that her voice was distant and warbled. She moved around the long table, slipping behind the drapes.
Peering out through the opening between the curtains, she was delighted when Celeste turned her head and saw her, or so Desdemona thought, hoped. She hearkened back to the warm summer afternoon when she had seen some apparition, something indistinct, through these very curtains. Had she seen a premonition of herself that day?
She told Celeste to not be sad, that she couldn’t be with her just now, but that she would be with her soon.
Just as soon as the men called her back to the great house.
The two men were staring intently at the tabletop. An adjustment of her perspective allowed Desdemona to see Mother’s Tarot cards laid out in a King’s Cross spread. She knew that the deck was missing Chariot and Ruin, but she watched intently as the men attempted to decipher her future, or perhaps her past.
Desdemona hoped that their reading would somehow spell out a way for her to fully return to the island. She was here but not quite here. Part of her still felt adrift on her chariot, inside that grey void.
Fate, which had so kindly kept her and Celeste together for so very long, had now driven a cold, painful wedge between them. Desdemona imagined herself as a pale queen in a distant grave. She clung to the hope of reunion.
Publication History
“Scold’s Bridle: A Cruelty” is original to this collection.
“Chain of Empathy” is original to this collection.
“Banishments” was first published in Looming Low, edited by Justin Steele and Sam Cowan, Dim Shores, 2017.
“Fragile Masks” was first published in The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories, edited by Stephen Jones, Skyhorse Publishing, 2018.
“Neithernor” was first published in Aickman’s Heirs, edited by Simon Strantzas, Undertow Publications, 2015.
“Deep Eden” was first published in The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu, edited by Paula Guran, Running Press, 2016.
“The Patter of Tiny Feet” was first published in Searchers After Horror, edited by S.T. Joshi, Fedogan & Bremer, 2014.
“The Rasping Absence” first appeared in Black Wings IV, edited by S.T. Joshi, PS Publishing, 2015.
“After the Final” was first published in The Grimscribe’s Puppets, edited by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., Miskatonic River Press, 2013.
“The Sullied Pane” was first published in Crooked Houses, edited by Mark Beech, Egaeus Press, 2020.
“Crawlspace Oracle” was first published in Mannequin: Tales of Wood Made Flesh, edited by Justin Burnett, Silent Motorist Media, 2019.
“Cast Lots” was first published in Nightmare’s Realm, edited by S.T. Joshi, Dark Regions Press, 2015.
“Notes on the Aztec Death Whistle” was first published in Weird Fiction Review #10, edited by John Pelan, Centipede Press, 2020.
“Headsman’s Trust: A Murder Ballad” was first published in Pluto in Furs: Tales of Diseased Desires and Seductive Horrors, edited by Scott Dwyer, Plutonian Press, 2019.
“Three Knocks on a Buried Door” wa
s first published in Apostles of the Weird, edited by S.T. Joshi, PS Publishing, 2020.
“Ten of Swords: Ruin” was first published in Their Dark and Secret Alchemy, edited by Robert Morgan, Sarob Press, 2019.
About the Author
Richard Gavin explores the realm where fear and the numinous converge. His eerie, nightmarish stories have garnered high critical praise, appear in several volumes of Best New Horror and Year’s Best Horror, and have been collected in five previous books, including Sylvan Dread: Tales of Pastoral Darkness and At Fear’s Altar. Along with fiction, Richard produces works of esotericism and meditations on the macabre, such as The Benighted Path: Primeval Gnosis and the Monstrous Soul and The Moribund Portal: Spectral Resonance and the Numen of the Gallows. He dwells in the North. Online presence: www.richardgavin.net
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