Dearest Clementine: Dark and Romantic Monstrous Tales (Letters Book 1)

by Candace Robinson

  Dearest Clementine: Dark and Romantic Monstrous Tales

  Candace Robinson

  Copyright ©2020 by Candace Robinson

  Edited by Luna Imprints

  Cover Design by Cover A Day

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. This book may not be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author.

  Table of Contents

  Dearest Clementine,

  Sail into the Unknown

  Dearest Clementine,

  A Piece for Him

  Dearest Clementine,

  Lured in for Death

  Dearest Clementine,

  Darkness Can Be Good

  Dearest Clementine,

  Laughter is Always Better

  Dearest Clementine,

  Our Hearts Wither Too

  Dearest Clementine,

  Sometimes We’re Not Hungry

  Dearest Clementine,

  Wrong is Possibly Right

  Dearest Clementine,

  For those who believe that monsters can love too

  Dearest Clementine,

  Remember when we first met? You told me you wished I were dead. You thought I had done something I shouldn’t have. It was Bogdi, that demon, who harmed your family, not me. I promised myself that he would never bring harm to you again, but somehow it has happened, and he’s stolen you away. I want you to know more than anything that you had my heart from the start. Did you see that? I made that rhyme, just for you. If you were here now, you would tell me what a fool I am. I miss that smile, one I haven’t seen in weeks. But I’ll find you. With everything in me, I’ll put an end to Bogdi and help bring you home. Do you want to know a secret? I was going to ask you to marry me, and I’d already written you a collection of stories. You said you did always like my stories, as unconventional as they may be. While we wait, here is the first one, my dearest.

  Always Yours,

  Dorin

  Sail into the Unknown

  1872

  Keo hadn’t known if he was really a boy or a girl when he’d awoken in a small cottage along the side of a dirt road. A woman named Gwendolyn, his mother, had asked him which he preferred to be. When he thought about her question, Keo felt that he was a boy, but he wasn’t alive like one. Actually, he was very much alive, only not a human like Gwendolyn.

  That day he remembered oh so clearly. The fat moon hung high in the sky, centered between clusters of shining stars. Even a meteor shower flickered in the distance. It was the day Gwendolyn brought him to life. The day she became his mother. Kind and smiling, no sign of her vengeful temper. Before the control she had on him. Before the ax.

  Gwendolyn had made Keo from an old wooden supper table nineteen years ago, but he never once had come to life. Not until that night. A dark fairy covered in flecks of sparkles that seemed to dance across her skin had entered Gwendolyn’s home. Gwendolyn had yearned for a child of her own so badly, and for someone who would help her in her dark tasks. The fairy chose to awaken him.

  Now, Keo sat propped against the wall, his long gangly arms resting lopsided. Peony, his mother’s helper, tapped her foot repeatedly against the spinning wheel as she worked.

  His head stayed cocked to the side as he observed her intricate hand movements, his lips aching to move and speak to her. Peony had been working for his mother for the past three months. She was a year younger than him with short, bright-red hair that curled in too many directions, skin dusted with freckles, overly large green eyes, a pointy nose, and plump lips. She was ugly, she was beautiful—Keo couldn’t decide—but whatever she was, he felt drawn to her. The wooden heart that beat softly in his chest wanted to call it love, but how could it be so if he’d never truly spoken to her? Yet, he knew that’s what it was.

  Every other day before she came, he perched himself against the wall to watch her work. Keo could have gone anywhere else—as long as he remained immobile and silent—but he chose to linger in the front room, despite his mother’s protests.

  The tsking sound continued to echo throughout the cottage as Peony fed the natural fibers into the spinning wheel. Keo’s left leg began to cramp until it hurt so much, he shifted to the side to adjust himself. His boot squeaked softly as it rubbed against the wooden floor, but Keo kept his face expressionless.

  Peony glanced up from the spinning wheel, her green eyes connecting with his. She gave him a side smile and then continued with her task. Keo didn’t know what to think about that strange smile, but he stayed quiet. He could’ve sworn he heard the ticking of his hard heart clicking against the wood of his chest, but he was only imagining that.

  Without peering up again, Peony spoke, “You know, you can just say something if you want to.”

  Keo’s insides startled, but he remained perfectly still. Was she talking to him? He wanted to look around the room to verify that he was the one she’d spoken to, but he already knew they were the only two inside the cottage. Gwendolyn had gone out to gather fruits and vegetables.

  After Peony finished creating the yarn, she stood and brushed the dust from her dark slacks and the edge of her tan tunic. She shuffled toward Keo and knelt directly in front of him, her face only a few inches away. He could hardly breathe.

  “I know more than you think I do,” she started with that strange smile again, “so you might as well let me see if your tongue is as wooden as your skin.”

  Keo couldn’t contain himself any longer. “You—”

  “I knew that would do the trick!” Peony laughed and scooted back.

  “How did you—”

  “How did I know?” she interrupted again. “A possible secret that I’ll save to reveal for another day. All the months I’ve been here, I’ve been waiting for you to say something.”

  “You have? But—”

  The front door swung open and Peony didn’t even flinch. However, Keo did and his mother caught the movement.

  Peony gently stood after Gwendolyn walked in. “You’re back.”

  “What are you doing, Peony?” Gwendolyn clenched her jaw, but the words came out sweet. So sweet that Keo could almost taste the sugar cubes soaking in sour milk.

  “Oh”—Peony moved toward the spinning wheel, pointing at the fibers—“I just finished up the spool of yarn and was about to head home after I do the last one.”

  “Haven’t I told you not to go near my things?” Gwendolyn’s gaze focused on Keo’s, as if he was the root cause of all this. Which, he had been.

  “He fell and all I did was tilt him back up,” Peony explained, crossing her arms. The lie had Keo impressed with the ease of it, the way the words fell from her tongue. He even believed it.

  Gwendolyn narrowed her dark eyes, moving a strand of gray hair away from her face, and biting her tongue. “I’ll see you Friday, Peony.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Peony didn’t even look back once at Keo before she left. He tried not to look at her either, but he failed.

  Gwendolyn tap, tap, tapped her heeled boot against the hard floor for several quick beats before speaking. “Well?”

  “Nothing happened,” Keo whispered, trying to make himself believe the words. “I had a cramp and fell to the side, then Peony rushed over and put me back in place. She was probably frightened that if she left me there, you would think she touched your things.” Because of the lie, a small fissure cracked on his arm. He wanted t
o cry, but he held it back.

  “She did touch my things!” Gwendolyn barked, fists clenched at her sides.

  “I suppose you could consider it that way, but nothing happened. She still thinks I’m only a marionette.”

  Another crack echoed through the house, only this time it was loud enough for Gwendolyn to hear it. Keo wanted to wrap his hand around his thigh, where the wound beat in pain.

  “You”—she clicked her tongue and inched toward him—“are a big liar.”

  Keo kept his mouth shut because if he lied anymore, more cracks would come. It would only make matters worse.

  “She dies tonight,” Gwendolyn said, her voice tinged with finality.

  “But—”

  “I was going to have you get rid of Mrs. Krause this evening, but instead, this has to be done. All because you couldn’t keep yourself hidden.”

  Keo gathered all the strength he could to fight back. He stood from the floor, pressing a hand to his leg where the crack lay buried beneath his shorts. “You always say you created me because you loved me,” he bit back, “but you created me to be your executioner. Nothing more.”

  A loud smack radiated throughout the room, and it took Keo a moment to realize it had been his head being pushed to the side by his mother’s hand.

  Gwendolyn’s palm turned beet red, but she didn’t seem to notice or care as he pressed his wooden fingertips to his cheek. It wasn’t the first time she had hit him, and it wouldn’t be the last.

  “Tonight will be Peony, and then next week, Mrs. Krause,” Gwendolyn said. “After that, it will be whomever I say, for as long as I see fit. Do you understand me?”

  Keo blinked his wooden lids. “Yes, Mother.” He found it better to agree with her because she would only make him do her tasks anyway, with or without his choosing to. But if he agreed, maybe she wouldn’t control him this one time, so he could find a way to escape it.

  “You’re such a good boy.” Gwendolyn pressed the palm of her hand to the cheek she had slapped, before turning to walk into the other room to prepare supper.

  “Not always,” Keo mumbled to himself, and the crack in his arm closed at the truth of it. “I don’t want to live in this house anymore.” The wound in his leg returned to perfect condition, the painful throb no longer there.

  Somehow Gwendolyn could command him to do anything she wanted. Freewill was something he wished he had, more than being human. He wondered what the taste of that would be. Most likely chocolate and licorice dipped in frosting.

  “Oh, and Keo?” His mother came out of the room, wearing her ruffled apron. “Finish making the last spool of yarn that Peony didn’t.”

  His body moved of its own accord. It was a command from his mother and he hated it. Grabbing the fibers from the desk, he sat on the round stool and fed them into the spinning wheel as his booted foot tapped the pedal. Keo worked and worked but grew tired, so he went to the desk where he placed his head against a stack of papers.

  “Keo!” Gwendolyn shouted from the other room where she was preparing supper.

  With a yawn, he finally lifted his head from the desk, finding his mother already hovering over him. “Yes?”

  “You didn’t finish.” Her tone was condescending and laced with rage.

  He looked over at the unfinished spool of yarn. “I’m sorry.” A crack tore at his shoulder, creating a sound akin to miniature thunder. He cringed at the bite of pain.

  His mother’s eyes narrowed, knowing his lie. The one thing he wished he could do, but he couldn’t.

  “I mean, I was just so tired that I needed to rest my head.”

  “Grab the ax and go.” She smiled with deviousness. “It’s time.”

  Keo’s heart and chest tensed up. He wanted so badly to deny what she was forcing him to do. As much as his insides screamed, his eyes glazed over anyway. She was supposed to trust him this time, trust that he would do as she told him to. Even if he wouldn’t have. Now there was no choice.

  “Yes, Mother.” Keo’s lips moved, even though it was not him truly speaking. His feet shuffled forward of their own accord and he screamed inside his head, shouting to stop, but he couldn’t. His torturous body wouldn’t obey his thoughts.

  Gwendolyn handed him the ax and he gripped it firmly between his wooden hands. In that moment, he wanted more than anything to take the ax to his mother’s arms and legs. She’d made him do things, unspeakable things to the villagers with this ax. It was always removing the head, then the arms, followed by the legs. The images stayed with him, no matter how hard he attempted to block them away. Yet no one in town would ever suspect poor widowed Gwendolyn, or her wooden marionette, would have done something so heinous.

  Keo’s mother draped his body in a long cloak and placed the fur-lined hood over his head.

  “Do me proud, my boy.” She patted his back and pushed him through the door. “You will find Peony’s house up the dirt road where Mr. Schultz once lived.”

  Keo knew that house because his mother had made him eliminate the man who refused to purchase yarn from her. But Keo had already known where Peony was staying. He cursed internally over and over as his legs strolled across the field. Nothing he would do could make his body stop. He couldn’t feel the grass touching his legs, the wind rumpling his hair, the smell of the outdoors. As his arms moved to prop the ax over his shoulder, all he could do was sit back and watch how everything would unfold.

  Everyone in town knew there was a murderer about, but they couldn’t figure out who it was. Gwendolyn had told him there were talks of a large burly man with a taste for blood. None of that was true, not even close.

  The past year since he’d awoken, he’d been treated this way. Murder after murder, and his control didn’t exist in those moments. Even if he’d tried to escape, Gwendolyn could always call him back with the enchantment she had over him.

  Up ahead, a small rectangular lantern hung beside a door, where the candle inside burned like a beacon. The cottage was small and old, but had a coat of fresh paint that he’d seen in daylight. He’d passed by it several times but never ventured close, especially not this close. But oh, how he wished he had, yet not like this. Not with an ax gripped in his wooden-knuckled hands.

  He shouted again, trying his hardest to turn himself around. His body didn’t listen. It was possible Peony wouldn’t be home. It was possible she was with someone having a tumble somewhere else. Anything was possible. If he’d been able to speak the lie aloud, he expected that a crack might have formed right across his chest, exposing his wooden heart.

  The sound of his boots hitting the cottage steps boomed in his ears. His torturous hand reached for the door—it must have been locked because he lifted the ax and swung it down to the wood with perfect precision. Keo wondered how he hadn’t been caught yet, because sometimes his body did things that weren’t the least bit quiet. His commanded self wouldn’t have cared, though. It would have swung at anyone who chose to interrupt.

  He chopped and chopped—he hoped the sounds would wake Peony if she were home, and give her enough time to escape.

  Behind him, feet swished, passing through the grass. His body must have heard it too because it spun around, holding the ax high.

  If Keo could truly feel his body, it would have stopped moving. It wasn’t a new intruder—Peony stood before him wearing dark trousers and a white tunic, with her short curls messy and sticking up in odd places.

  She must have gone out the back and come around to the front, he thought.

  The ax went back a few inches more, and he wanted to command his eyes to shut, to not see Peony’s beautiful body parts wind up in pieces. Yet, his eyes remained open. He’d have to remember this forever—like the others.

  “Keo, stop!” she shouted, holding up a hand, not the least bit afraid.

  He waited and waited and waited for the ax to swing down and remove her head, or maybe her arms first this time, or maybe Gwendolyn would choose for him to do the legs instead. But nothing happened.
His body stayed frozen like he had wished.

  Maybe he could command himself? He tried to wiggle his fingers and not a single one of them even twitched.

  With a calm expression, Peony stepped forward and placed her two hands onto his cheeks. He still couldn’t move, but he could feel the warmth of her hands.

  “Keo, come back,” she whispered, her green-eyed gaze catching his.

  The ax fell from his hands and he took in a deep inhale, and then another, and another. “How … how do you know my name?” Gwendolyn had never once mentioned the name of her marionette to Peony, and he hadn’t stated it earlier when they had spoken for those brief moments.

  “You told me earlier, remember?” She smiled and looked away. A lie.

  “That isn’t the truth,” he said, but not moving away from her. “How were you able to command me to stop?”

  Peony held up her hand and showed him a bundle of strands of dark hair resting in her palm. His hair. “I’ve been gathering them, but Gwendolyn’s enchantment on her bundle of your hair is incredibly strong.”

  “Are you trying to command me to do something, too?” he asked in a wary tone.

  Shaking her head, Peony leaned forward. “You were able to finally show yourself to me this afternoon—I’ve had to wait for that. Now I have a proposition for you. How would you like to go to a place where everything from your imagination has a chance of becoming a reality?”

  Keo didn’t understand why this girl, Peony, wasn’t running for the hills or asking him more questions about how a wooden boy was alive. Then thoughts passed through his head, ones of having his own choices to do and be who he wanted to be. A place away from his mother. His mother… He remembered something.

  “I can’t. I’m enchanted here.” His voice came out gentle and tinged with sadness.

  “Not anymore,” Peony started. “With the enchantment I have on this one, as long as we keep our distance, you have nothing to worry about. What do you say?” Her expression looked almost wishful, but how could that be?