He muttered something. This stranger.
Something Oliver didn’t quite hear.
His voice deep, but raspy like sandpaper.
“Pardon?” Oliver heard himself apologize.
The stranger bent down. Smelling of the salt air.
Salt embedded in the creased folds of his skin.
“I inquired if you’d yet eaten, lad,” he said.
Oliver still wasn’t sure he’d heard him clearly.
Perhaps the fog making a mockery of his words.
Confounding that Manx accent. Ye’d yet aye-ten lud.
Until he said: “Have ye had yer supper?”
An hour later, after a quick shower and change of clothes, Oliver and Abby ventured back out into the soupy night, Abby with a bin of cookies on her lap decorated with a big red bow.
Oliver pushed back onto the A4. The stone cottage slipped into the murk behind them, disappearing as if being vanished. Erased from existence. Along with the entirety of the known world.
Leaving only this dark ribbon of road.
And the thick dark woods bordering it.
“How far is it?” Abby said tentatively.
As if she’d not been in the vehicle earlier.
As if she’d not heard the same directions.
“Hm. He indicated it just on the other side of these woods,” Oliver reminded her. As if it were a riddle to be solved.
Abby stared out at those woods.
It was the same woods where she’d momentarily lost her way on that thin narrow path now hidden somewhere in the fog.
Twisting and turning in those eerie trees.
Badly stunted. With knurled trunks.
And crooked deformed limbs.
Armored with spiny leaves.
Grayish-skinned. The color of bone.
Long after the meat had rotted away.
She shivered, recalling how those trees had stolen the path out from under her feet, hiding it, before whispering into her ear.
Their voices soft and mesmeric.
As if quietly summoning her deeper.
Deeper into their bony embrace.
Their gnarled limbs slowly opening.
Inviting her into a deeper darkness.
A darkness devoid of that path.
She shivered again. Sunk in her seat.
Tried not to stare out at those trees.
Like tortured souls rising from the earth.
An army of the dead in the heavy mist.
Still whispering. Gently calling to her.
Knowing she would eventually heed them.
Even as she was most desperate not to.
Soon be unable to resist their allurement.
Their ever-patient dark thaumaturgy.
Oliver glanced over at his wife, but she turned away from him, leaving him to assume her growing apprehensiveness was only for the evening chore ahead of them. In the meantime, just as they had been told, a narrow dirt road abruptly appeared in the dark woods, disappearing into the forest of trees and the dense fog.
Oliver took the narrow dirt road, bouncing along on its uneven surface, but grateful to find it dry. It had been graded for adequate drainage. A crown in the middle of the road feeding moisture to gutters running along the shoulders before the dark trees. Gravel had also been added to the problematic areas and every fifty feet, or so, there were metal grates over drains feeding culverts.
Oliver sighed. Made a mental note.
As he followed the narrow little road.
Winding deeper and deeper into the trees.
Deeper and deeper into the thick fog.
Eventually, the forest of trees opened, revealing a farmhouse. A large wooden structure with a tiled roof and stone base. A small wooden boat sat rotting in the yard beside a rusted truck and a corrugated-paneled barn with metal roofing and siding, providing protection against rain, snow, sun, wind, and the damp air.
Oliver made another mental note.
There were answers to be found here.
There were ways to yet survive.
Oliver made the mistake of peeking inside the barn, however, after parking and exiting the Q5. The barn housed a butchery with large meat trolleys and spiky metal hooks along with bone saws and an array of knives stored on a magnetic rack above a corroded pair of bloodstained stainless steel gloves. Fresh and old blood.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
A male Manx Loaghtan sheep with its distinctive set of curved horns hung upside down from a spiky hook, bleeding-out into a tin basin, body cavity sliced open and hollowed, dark eyes dull.
Drip, drip. Drip, drip.
Drip, drip, drip. Drip, drip.
The tin basin nearly full.
Like a bathtub of dark blood.
Thick, viscous, and sticky.
It was the smell that initially stopped Abby short right there in the middle of the yard with the bin of cookies clutched before her. A tin bin as fate would have it. Wrapped with its silly red bow.
“Hope that’s not dinner,” Oliver said.
Almost certain he could hear those drips.
And maybe the faint buzz of horseflies.
They proceeded warily to the farmhouse.
A wreath made of Rosemary hung on the front door, greeting them. It was tied with green thread and handsomely adorned with snapdragons, marigolds, and garlic flowers in intervals of three.
At least it smelled nice.
Cleansing his olfactory palate.
Abby frowned at the wreath.
Especially at those intervals of three.
Too much like the Rowan cross.
Too much local folklore in the end.
Especially with that beast back there.
Bleeding-out into that tin basin.
The door swung open before they could knock, quite startling them, but spilling a warm light out onto the porch. The large fellow with the gray beard tinged with red filled the doorway.
His much smaller wife followed.
An uncontainable whirlwind of merrily-smiling hospitality. A simple, if pretty dress. Homemade. And lavender in her hair.
She practically hugged herself.
Beaming with anticipation.
“Come, come,” she invited, moving like a tiny beam of light in front of gray-beard, seeming to twinkle with her every movement. “You must be Oliver. And, of course, that would make you Abby. I’m Fay and you’ve met my dear Caleb, the salty old fool.”
She seemed to twinkle even brighter.
Swaying blithely back and forth as she was.
Perhaps backlit by the house lights.
Perhaps just emitting her own light after all.
There in the dark of the front porch.
“You two have been the talk of the town, you have,” she said, musing. “Our mysterious attractive couple from London.”
She looked them over now.
Her large eyes a flat pale gray.
“Well, then, Oliver and Abby, you don’t look so mysterious to me,” she eventually judged. “Just a bit unsettled, perhaps.”
Caleb grunted behind her.
Abby only sighed gratefully.
“I do feel a bit the fish out of water,” she said.
As if she might tell this woman anything. Everything.
As if she might be helpless to stop herself.
“Of course, you do, love.”
Fay put an arm around Abby’s waist. A motherly gesture. And led her into the warm farmhouse. Oliver and Caleb remained a beat on the front porch. Just staring at each other awkwardly.
“We don’t have to hug,” Oliver said.
His deadpan humor was met with a frown.
The farmhouse was a maze of small rooms.
A foyer with a steep staircase rising to bedrooms.
A round threadbare hand-knotted rug on the floor.
A sitting room. A dining room. The kitchen.
Faded wallpaper with faded photographs.
Grave faces lost to the mi
sts of time.
There was comfortable and well-used antique-looking furnishings, long-settled into the sunken hardwood floorboards, adding to the pervading sense that everything in the old farmhouse had been here in such a state for as long as anyone could remember and that it would be here in such a state long after anyone could remember was long gone from this world and that this was just how it should be for this was a place seemingly removed from time, a feeling further enhanced by the absence of any obvious modern conveniences. Not that any such absences were obvious. In fact, such conveniences might not have been missed at all if not for the tiny transistor radio drawing attention to itself from a shelf just inside the cozy little kitchen. A battery-operated device playing a scratchy old Irish lullaby of a song with harps, fiddles, flutes, and mandolins.
They settled around a dining table.
A long and thick oak dining table.
It resided in the narrow dining room.
A dining room offset from the kitchen.
A small hearth situated at the far end.
Offering a soft flickering firelight.
As if it were a hundred years ago.
Fay, meanwhile, had prepared a hearty meal. Lamb stew. Herring pie. Queenie scallops with butter. Autumn vegetables.
Oliver and Abby shared an uneasy glance over the lamb stew steaming in a cast iron pot in the middle of the table, silently ruminating on what they’d just seen hanging from that hook in the barn, but any hesitation was soon forgotten after the first bite.
It was simply delicious. Everything.
And Oliver sighed with delight.
His every muscle relaxing contently.
“Cider?” Fay politely asked them.
“Please. Thank you,” they said in unison.
Still, for some reason, Oliver found himself thinking of Hansel and Gretel. The trail of bread crumbs. The mettlesome forest birds. And the wooded house made of cake, candy, and confectionary. As if this tantalizing meal had anything to do with any of that.
Yet, there it was all the same.
There in the cobwebs of his mind.
He shook it away even as he glanced at Abby and observed on her face both a similar contentment and incongruous disquiet.
Fay poured the cider from a jug.
The cider a golden hue. Obviously homemade.
She then reached for a bottle of apple brandy.
“A warmer?” she said, beaming again.
Abby demurred, covering her cup with a hand.
“You’re certain?” Fay chided playfully, winking, her long gray hair catching snatches of the cider thrown by the dancing firelight. “Nothing quite like a mite of spirits to warm cold bones.”
“Actually, we don’t drink,” Abby said.
Oliver reluctantly passed on the apple brandy, too.
Caleb grimaced at the head of the table.
“Quite right, in the end,” Fay acknowledged, determined that Abby should not be made to feel awkward, winking yet again. “Call not the devil for he will come fast enough unbidden, aye.”
The woman cackled with the thought, then proceeded to pour Caleb and herself a shot of the apple brandy, anyway. Flat pale gray eyes glazing softly with the first sip and somehow reminding Oliver once again of that poor beast bleeding-out in the barn.
As if he could not rid his mind of it.
And felt his appetite begin to wane.
Insatiable only moments before.
Suddenly feeling a bit lightheaded, too.
Maybe it was just the warm fire.
Crackling nearby in the small hearth.
Or the long cold walk on the beach.
After a long week of moving.
“Now, then, Abby, love,” Fay said. “What did you busy yourself with in London, dear? Were you, likewise, a teacher?”
“Human resources for a banking outfit, actually,” Abby said, shrugging like she always did when discussing it as if it were a thing to be apologized for, or at the very least forgiven. “Managing payroll and benefits and the like. Sorting starters and leavers.”
“Did you enjoy the work?”
“Not especially. No.”
“And why would that be?”
“I felt too much like a hamster in a cage.”
Fay was amused by her honesty.
“And what will you do with yourself now?”
More shrugging. More apologizing.
“Still sorting that out, I suppose.”
Fay patted her hand tenderly.
“Fear not, child,” she said with such quick conviction and sincerity that Abby could not help but smile and believe her when she added: “It will come to you, love. I’m most certain of it.”
Oliver turned to Caleb.
Silently working over his meal.
“I saw the butchery in the barn,” he said.
Caleb offered a grunt between bites.
“Is that your line of work?”
“The butchery is just a bit of business for idle hands,” Fay answered for her husband at the head of the table, suggesting she did a lot of the talking for the large gray-bearded taciturn man.
She then leaned quickly forward.
Her tongue suddenly sharp.
“Prior, this salty old fool spent years with his mistress while I toiled here raising his children. A most selfish shrew she was.”
Caleb grunted again. Continued to eat.
“The sea,” Fay said as explanation.
Those flat pale gray eyes turning silvery.
“Ah, you were a fisherman, then,” Oliver said.
It explained the rotting boat in the yard.
“It’s my understanding men who work on boats to be a superstitious lot, indeed,” Oliver went on. “Although, admittedly, I suppose if my fate were in the fickle hands of mother nature, then I’d seek out solace in any manner of unconventional comforts.”
Abby kicked Oliver under the table.
In the shin. A bit harder than necessary.
And rather indiscreetly. Begging his discretion.
For his own part, Caleb had stopped eating.
His head slowly lifting from his plate.
His deep and raspy voice grave.
“--Ye should not be here,” he said, the firelight dancing on his sunburnt cheeks, salt embedded in the creased skin folds. “I’d very well thought I would’ve made that clear to the both of ye.”
Oliver felt his heart stop in his chest.
Like a car engine sputtering. Stalling out.
He shared another glance with his wife.
Sitting on the other side of the table.
Her fork frozen in mid-air. Face ashen.
“Ye were to stay in bed,” the old man said.
Fay was winking again. It was only then Oliver and Abby realized Caleb wasn’t speaking to them. Two young girls had materialized from the heavy shadows of an adjacent corridor and were now standing silently at the foot of the long oak dining table.
Strawberry blonde twins.
No more than eight years old.
The young girls spookily identical in every last detail, including long-sleeved cotton nightgowns falling to their bare feet.
Caleb motioned them over.
The girls came to stand on either side of his chair, their heads tilting toward him. Faces expressionless as porcelain dolls.
“Our granddaughters,” Fay said.
The old woman beaming again.
“Aideen and Kaitlyn,” she disclosed.
The girls just stared blankly.
“A story, is that what yer after,” Caleb surmised, his inherent gruffness all of a sudden a fuzzier and less prickly thing. “Ye’ll have to ask the permission of our guests, then, ye must, lassies.”
More staring. Silent. Unblinking.
“We’d love a story,” Abby encouraged.
The young girls seemed to smile.
Seemed to smile in perfect unison.
As if reflections of each other.
Oliver was
still considering that (and juxtaposing it against the peculiarity of his odd students) as the dinner party moved from the narrow dining room into the main sitting room featuring more antique furniture and a larger hearth with elaborate stonework.
Caleb limped into the room.
The hitch the culprit of a lame leg.
He stoked the fire. The flames jumping.
Fay presented a tray of warmed milk in identical mugs for the strawberry twins, steaming coffee for the adults, and neat rows of sugar cookies from Abby’s gift tin with the big red bow. She added apple brandy to the coffee, only realizing her mistake after the fact, but Caleb had already settled comfortably into a magnificent leather wingback chair beside the fireplace and was rather ready to begin his tale and Oliver and Abby too polite to offer complaint.
The dancing firelight played on his grizzled face. The shifting of light and shadow like characters in his narrative. He began quietly with what was apparently a traditional local refrain:
“If it is a lie I tell, then it is a lie I heard,” he said forebodingly in a natural storyteller voice. Deep and hypnotic with a gentle singsong quality, the rasp reduced to a distant scratch like that of the kitchen transistor radio as if his voice were being broadcast from a far distance. A far distance from the annals of time almost lost.
“Once upon a time, quite long ago, a young woman by the name of Sarah Blackwell lived by the edge of this very gray sea with her husband.
It was an unhappy marriage.
For she was barren.”
Oliver peeked at Abby.
She had imperceptibly flinched.
Flinched at that insidious little word barren.
The flinch unnoticed by the others.
Only Oliver. And perhaps Fay.
Fay, the strawberry twins curled at her feet, silently motioned Abby over to an empty chair next to her and demonstrated how to braid strawberry hair with wild flowers. Demonstrating on Kaitlyn. Or maybe it was Aideen. The second child took her grandmother’s cue, silently scooting over and re-settling at Abby’s feet.
“One day Sarah was seen gathering strange herbs from Cregean Glass. The green bog. And on the very next full moon, that same soul, upon passing by her cottage and seeing what he took to be a most unnatural light, did on that occasion warily peek through a window into her home and witness her muttering a cabalistic rhyme over a fire pit into which she tossed the strange herbs.
Sorcerie Page 9