SORCERIE
RUSSELL GILWEE
ALSO BY
RUSSELL GILWEE:
Shady Creek
Tess’ Revenge
Author Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 Russell Gilwee
All rights reserved.
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my wife, Lauraleen, and our goldendoodle, Sophie; family and friends; and to you, Dear Reader. My deepest gratitude.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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2.
3.
4.
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15.
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26.
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29.
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31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
FROM THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
1.
THE MAINLAND ONLY too quickly faded to a dark faint outline on the horizon before slipping into the cold sea like a dead body sinking down into a watery grave. It was then a cold and heavy fog gathered, erasing any last memory of it.
The gathering fog also muffled sound.
The ferry boat’s powerful diesel engines.
The giant propeller churning the water below.
Slicing and tumbling a dark foamy sea.
It was almost as if she’d been rendered deaf.
Lost inside this cocoon of cold and heavy fog.
A bleak and wet and bitterly salty blanket.
Abby felt herself shiver. Hug herself.
Hug herself in a too-thin coat gone damp.
For a moment she just stood there. Alone.
Exhaling gray smoke into the gloom.
A cigarette held loosely between her fingers.
Alone on the otherwise empty back deck.
The other passengers huddled inside.
Alone amid the swirling gray murk.
Above the suddenly muted propeller.
Slicing and tumbling that dark foamy sea.
She sighed. Flicked the cigarette away.
It pitched in the fog. Then fell.
Spitting out a trail of fiery sparks.
Fading in the brume. A dying ember.
She watched it turn invisible. Vanish.
Before reaching out for the thin railing.
The thin railing guarding the back deck.
Her small hands pale and trembling.
The metal railing cold and slick.
She pushed against that railing, leaning over it, staring down at that dark foamy sea churned by that propeller blade -- the propeller blade appearing and disappearing in the shifting mist. Mesmerized by how very easy it would be to simply slide over the inconsequential barrier and allow gravity to take her. She imagined the terrible shock of that dark water the millisecond before that sharp and rotating propeller blade turned her into bloody ground beef.
Her heart began to pound.
Not with fear or with despair.
With quite the opposite actually.
The dank air lumping in her throat.
Lumping there in a tight wet knot.
As if she might never breathe again.
Or muster even a farewell scream.
Assuming she was interested in either.
But then the moment was gone.
And she was left with only a biting wind.
Rising as if from the soupy fog itself.
Penetrating her too-thin coat gone damp.
The cold wet sinking even deeper into her.
As that dark water might’ve done.
Before the flash of that propeller blade.
And she found herself slowly turning away from that cold and slick metal railing and venturing through the shifting mist to a small door and back into the bowels of the ship. A rising staircase. White concrete walls with dull colorless placards providing quite unnecessary directions to the main passenger lounge, bar, toilets.
She climbed the staircase.
Its narrow hall warm and muggy.
Disorienting her after being out there.
Her too-thin coat shedding moisture.
Invisible little wafts of steam.
Her cheeks turning rosy.
The staircase eventually provided entry to the main passenger lounge. An expansive and wide-open area with large dirty windows gazing out listlessly at that gray fog and that dark sea turned white-capped and rough by the biting wind. She pushed forward, moving past rows upon rows of tall lounge chairs with faded, dull-colored fabric. Tight formations of shabby army platoons standing at weary attention with nowhere to go. Timeworn and stained. The vast majority of the seats empty, this being a mid-week crossing in late September. There was a Disney film playing in a small cinema lounge offset from the main lounge. Playing to more forlorn empty lounge chairs. Loud cartoonish voices. Obstreperous and echoing.
Mimicking sounds from the bar.
The café bar at the stern of the ship.
A small stag party getting a jump on the weekend was crowded around it, drinking and making obnoxiously merry and shouting inappropriate things to each other and occasionally in the direction of a teenage girl picking drearily at a stale muffin and traveling with her mum who was apparently dozing, her head having lopped over and come to a rest on her daughter’s slight bird-like shoulder. The boat staff had given up on intervening, congregating in the adjacent NO SMOKING section to play cards and light-up ciggies.
There was the smell of food gone bad.
A fried food redolence. Something fishy.
And the bouquet of spoiling garbage.
All of it competing with a mildew fetor.
Rising from the threadbare carpet.
Abby, to her displeasure, felt her tummy begin to perform tiny summersaults as the boat slowly negotiated the choppy sea and was rather glad she had the presence of mind not to order any breakfast earlier. The Irish Sea crossing from Liverpool to Douglas had been scheduled for an estimated two hours and forty five minutes. Unfortunately, only about a half hour into the voyage, the captain had come over the loud speaker, his low desultory voice crackling with bursts of static, to announce there were engine problems and that they’d be running at reduced speeds. Even more unfortunately, the reduced speeds were now making the unsettling movement of the ship even more apparent. Especially back here in the stern.
Rocking the boat left and right.
Up and back down again.
Not unlike a bobbing cork.
Rudderless and imperiled.
Abby felt her tummy roll once more.
A reverse somersault this time.
Her head swimming dizzily.
And again she thought of that water.
That dark foamy churning sea.
She blinked heavily. Exhaled.
Trying to settle her nerves.
And her struggling equilibrium.
Before offering a stag a withering look.
One of the wankers at the café bar.
A short and pudgy little twit.
<
br /> Making googly eyes at her.
As if she were a fucking teenager.
He grinned greedily at her scorn and she felt his eyes on her as she subsequently moved about the main passenger lounge, looking for her absentee husband. Thinking perhaps Oliver might be hiding somewhere amongst the lounge chairs. Buried in a book.
She discovered an elderly couple.
Fine clothes and cheerless.
The old bitty was clutching a vomit bag and complaining dismally about the cost of the car service and two adult tickets exceeding the expense of garaging their automobile back in Liverpool and flying EastJet to the isle and renting a loaner for the week.
Her husband stared up at Abby.
Relieved for the intrusion.
He attempted a welcoming smile.
Thankfully without the hint of googly eyes.
Maybe even patting a nearby seat.
Begging her to stay, perhaps.
Only to slump when she did not.
Abby paused next at the toilets.
After hearing a loud flushing roar.
The Men’s door then opened.
But it was not her Oliver.
Only another stag-knobhead fighting the zipper on his gabardine slacks and smelling of gin with the cloying reek of urinal deodorizers perfuming the stale air behind him. The ignoramus nearly bumped into her. Mumbled a drunken apology. Abby didn’t bother asking after her husband, the flapping bathroom door offering her an unobstructed peek into the small lavatory. Quite empty now but for an overturned metal waste-can puking its contents.
In need of its own vomit bag.
She moved on to the bow section of the boat, passing the narrow descending staircase to the back deck, then a small restaurant. The Coast to Coast Eatery. It featured a darkened glass door with a CLOSED sign, the only available cuisine back at the stern café bar for this mid-week crossing in late September. She was subsequently greeted in the bow section by the seemingly imminent demise of a large and gruesome mechanical thing. An upright commercial vacuum cleaner (that more resembled a white lawnmower) stood idling painfully in the middle of the room. Unattended. Its electric motor puttering unevenly, as if panting for breath, then abruptly revving to a dreadful squealing scream before collapsing into a fit of grinding noises. The contraption shaking and spasming violently as if suffering a seizure before deeming to repeat the horrendous cycle. Eventually, an attendant arrived on-scene, appearing half-conscious and either completely unaware of the machine’s torment or, more likely, quite grimly unsympathetic to it. With a heavy stamp of his boot heel, this ogre-fellow released the machine’s brake and the afflicted thing jolted heavily forward, motor screaming even louder to a sustained ear-piercing whine as it moved toward the far wall, seemingly spitting out as much dust as it took in. Its tortured sounds finally sending a small cluster of passengers scurrying back sternward after having huddled together against the near wall, not out of any familiarity, but in an attempt to garner an elusive phone signal.
The bow section left desolate.
Just more of those tired lounge chairs.
Shivering in the death throes of that vacuum.
The chairs now less resembling soldiers and more a collection of condemned souls. Assuming there was a difference.
Staring out as the ship pushed through the fog.
The fog welcoming them into its embrace.
Certain to eventually reveal their fate.
Abby felt a slight sting of panic.
As if they knew something she did not.
And for a brief moment she found herself entertaining a terrible and exhilarating thought: What if her husband simply and mysteriously never reappeared? What if she somehow lost him forever on this wretched and godforsaken boat somewhere in the fog between Liverpool and the isle?
She stood there a moment longer.
Contemplating this morbid possibility.
As the vacuum turned back toward her.
Its dull headlamps glowing like eyes.
Amid its terrible harrowing screams.
And in this moment became somehow certain she would not find him. That this game of hide-and-seek would never conclude.
That he would be lost to her.
Somehow lost to her forever.
She felt that knot of a lump again.
Lodging heavily in her throat.
But warm and sticky this time.
More like hot burning caramel.
She gagged and made herself turn away from those dull glowing eyes and those loathsome wails and the spectral embrace of that fog only to find another narrow staircase. This one rising steeply to a reserved seating area in the SkyLounge. This narrow staircase was fronted by yet another boring CLOSED sign hanging from a heavy purple velvet rope like one might see in a movie theater or outside an exclusive nightclub. The heavy purple velvet rope was unlatched from a gold stanchion post on one side, causing that boring sign to hang badly askew, diagonally like a cryptic Guardian crossword clue, the unlatched side of the velvet rope dragging on the carpet.
As if begging her to step over it.
Abby stepped over the velvet rope and pushed past that badly askew sign and climbed the steep carpeted risers. The carpeted risers were exceedingly worn in the middle, the red in the carpet a dull rusty brown from a ghostly parade of countless trampling feet. She arrived at the top of the stairs to a second heavy purple velvet rope. Also unlatched on one side. Also dragging on the carpet.
Not unlike a thick dead purple snake.
She eventually stepped over it, too.
Albeit somewhat more cautiously.
As if it might suddenly lash out.
And attempt to bite her ankle.
She entered the SkyLounge.
The long bar was dark and empty.
Its worn leather chairs vacant.
The large room cast in dimness.
Her eyes slow to adjust.
A charcoal figure caught her eye.
The only person in the room.
Standing at the front wall of wind-resistant windows. Its owner revealed even in this absence of real light (a dimness interrupted only by the faint halos of wall sconces). Revealed in the exaggerated cant of his thin shoulders. The manner in which he held his small chin in his hand. And in the bend of his right knee at rest.
Abby came to stand beside this figure.
Beside her husband. Her Oliver.
Together they contemplated the fog.
A thing seemingly without beginning or end.
As if they were staring off into deep space.
But a murky universe devoid of stars.
Featureless and coldly infinite.
But then, quite unexpectedly, the fog began to slowly separate, stretching and pulling apart like gray cotton candy. Offering peeks and glimpses of a large land mass appearing in the foreground. Appearing from the separating fog like a clever magic trick.
Abby blinked with surprise
As if being woken from a dream.
Or perhaps she was dreaming now, she thought.
Having fallen under its spell.
The fog, having performed this legerdemain, having made something appear as if out of nowhere, now dissolved, like gray cotton candy sugar crystals on the tongue, completing its reveal.
The capital town of Douglas.
On the Isle of Man.
The town’s two-mile Victorian-era promenade with its historic hotels and restaurants and apartments and whimsical horse-drawn trams stretched north and south behind the main harbor and along a sandy waterfront with amiable round green hills rising rather gently in the background. To the ferry’s immediate starboard, however, drawing the eye like a clever magician’s distraction -- as if the dissipating fog might just mischievously decide to change its mind and disappear the town and the isle once more as abruptly as it had caused them to at first appear -- materializing from those smoky wisps of evaporating fog, standing alone in the choppy waters of Douglas Bay, was a large sandcas
tle-like structure perched on a black rocky reef.
Stone-built. Granite. Castellated.
Hanging parapets and corbels.
And a most prominent bell tower.
The belfry dark and hollow.
“The Tower of Refuge,” Oliver said.
Nodding toward the lonely structure.
Sitting on that black rock. As if it were a play-thing built by a giant child only to be abandoned to the indifferent sea.
His voice a reverent whisper.
Almost like he’d not spoken at all.
But rather, only the dim shadows.
“Sir William Hillary’s idea,” Oliver continued after a beat. “He conceived of it during the early nineteenth century after he suffered the treacherous waters of Douglas Bay firsthand after being washed overboard during the daring rescue of a steam packet vessel in the midst of a frightful easterly storm and realizing the shore too far a swim. He commissioned a sanctuary be built out there on Conister Rock with provisions and a bell to summon for help. But it was the poet Wadsworth who finally offered it its enduring moniker,” he said, then quoted: “A Tower of Refuge built for the else forlorn. Spare it, ye waves, and lift the mariner, struggling for life, into its saving arms.’”
Abby stared at that tower.
There in the melting gray mist.
With its dark and hollow belfry.
Staring out silently like a black eye.
From thick weatherworn granite walls.
Cracked and splintered. Crumbling.
An ancient if not immortal thing.
This lonely tower of refuge.
Looming over that black rock.
Above these dark treacherous waters.
That would one day surely take it.
Lapping at its base even now.
Relentlessly. Dark and deep.
A mouth full of sharp teeth.
A belly like a black abyss.
2.
THE MELTING FOG, at least the morning of their arrival, didn’t seem to so much melt away, in the end, as simply lift heavenward and conceive a low overcast sky like a gray umbrella over the world from which fell a gray drizzly rain.
It matched his wife’s mood.
Sullen there in the passenger seat.
Staring out with her blank eyes.
Her small mouth pinched.
“OK?” Oliver finally said to her.
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