Sorcerie

by Russell Gilwee

  A chill passed through Oliver.

  And he almost spun about in his chair.

  Almost inspected that cellar door.

  To make certain it was still shut.

  To make certain he’d not felt a draft.

  Not felt that cold black hand on his neck.

  Almost turned. But did not.

  Not wanting the good doctor to observe him do such a thing. Somehow believing the good doctor might diagnosis him. And that any such diagnosis would not be favorable in the end. Then again, perhaps the good doctor was simply a quack in spite of his priggish formality, dark tweed suit, and well-worn black medical bag.

  With child? Did he just say with child?

  “But that is not possible,” Oliver told him.

  “I’ve drawn blood,” the good doctor said.

  This good doctor who’d arrived in the grayness.

  As if manifesting from the grayness itself.

  Arriving so quite unexpectedly in the end.

  This good doctor who made house-calls.

  House-calls on such gray Sunday afternoons.

  “We’ll have our answer within the hour,” he said.

  “For heaven sakes, doctor,” Oliver beseeched. “Please tell me you’ve said nothing to her. In the likelihood you’re wrong.”

  The good doctor’s dark gray eyebrows arched as before, lifting like those seagulls in flight over those dark penetrating eyes.

  “I didn’t have to,” he said solemnly.

  And again Oliver felt that chill.

  Slithering like a snake along his spine.

  Or maybe a wriggly twitchy spider.

  Come back to life from the dead.

  A cold terrible vile thing.

  It remained with him, wriggling and twitching along his spine, as he politely showed Dr. Marwick from the cottage to his car. Apparently the good doctor had not simply manifested from the grayness itself, but had arrived in the black station wagon parked in the muddy driveway behind the Q5. It appeared to be decades old, the station wagon. Dull black paint and a dark glass hatchback. Quietly suggesting it might have been a hearse in a former life.

  A thing to ferry the dead.

  Souls lost to this gray world.

  A pair of black birds with glassy black eyes like faded marbles observed from the low crumbling garden wall the men shake hands before the departing black station wagon shooed them off.

  Oliver returned inside the cottage.

  He returned inside the thick stone walls to find Abby flushing the entire prescription bottle of orange pills down the toilet. Those orange pills vanished in a tight whirlpool of roaring water.

  “Pregnant, you know,” she said.

  Tears stood out in her exhausted eyes.

  Bewildered, terrified, excited tears.

  He supposed a similar expression was painted on his own face for his wife rose from her chore and embraced him. As she did so, he couldn’t help but notice, in his own conflicted state of joy and dread, the dark shadows rising on the stone walls around them and then falling over them. Offering to them their own embrace.

  He felt Abby tremble in his arms.

  Her skin turned cold and clammy.

  As those shadows fell over them.

  Then again, perhaps it was just himself.

  Overcome by that cold terrible vile feeling.

  Trembling for what might be to come.

  For what seemed inevitable somehow.

  Inevitable in this cottage by this gray sea.

  In this dark and lonely little cottage.

  That was not so lonely after all.

  Whatever that might mean.

  18.

  A FEW DAYS LATER, or perhaps it was a week, or maybe even longer, it was only too easy to lose track of time now, as if time had no real meaning here, assuming it ever really had, Oliver found himself standing in the gathering twilight outside Ethan Hanover’s small Knocksharry real estate office. It was a one-man show located inconspicuously along the dark ribbon of the A4 well outside of Peel and surrounded by a dark grove of trees beside a well-used dirt road winding down to a nearby farmhouse.

  Ethan was just exiting the real estate office for the night, locking the door, when he was startled by Oliver in the dusk.

  He stumbled from the fright.

  The tall and thin real estate agent.

  Hand slapping at his sternum.

  “Be still my heart,” he gasped.

  Before thinking wiser of it.

  “Wait,” he said, fighting for breath, still teetering, gigantic Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Rather, I should think, instead, be quite unstill my heart. That sounds the better alternative.”

  His muddy brown eyes blinked.

  Beneath those long black lashes.

  Beneath that bird’s nest of black hair.

  Blinked heavily with the sentiment.

  Hand still on his sternum.

  “I should have telephoned,” Oliver said.

  Though there was a part of him who believed if he had bothered to telephone ahead that this man with his greeting smile falling twittery at the edges in the falling darkness might have brushed him off with a polite excuse and never answered his phone again.

  A silly thing to consider, perhaps.

  Especially on such a small isle as this.

  Then again, Ethan wasn’t offering any invitation into his dark little office. In fact, he was stepping away from the office door and shoving his keys into his coat pocket and might have found a polite excuse right there on his office doorstep if not for a willowy woman peeking past thin curtains in the kitchen window of that nearby farmhouse just down that winding well-used dirt road. A farmhouse Oliver now accepted belonged to the skittish real estate agent given the black sedan featuring his black and white advert photo likeness was parked facing downhill toward that very farmhouse.

  Perhaps that was the reason.

  The reason Ethan changed his mind.

  That willowy woman. Peeking. Watching.

  A woman most assuredly his wife.

  Peeking past those thin curtains.

  Observing Oliver with fretful eyes.

  The reason Ethan pulled out the keys from his pocket and unlocked that office door and ushered Oliver inside, his twittery smile even more twittery at the edges than before. Less a smile all at once than a grimace as he flipped back on the lights, revealing an interior best described as organized chaos. Contracts and listings and metal signs with his likeness with thin wooden posts. Piled here and there. Randomness posing as order. Disheveled like Ethan himself.

  “Coffee?” Ethan offered.

  “No, thank you,” Oliver said. And before the man might have insisted it was no bother, added: “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

  “Haven’t you?” Ethan said.

  Starting the coffee pot, anyway.

  Water. Filter. Grounds. Flicking a grubby plastic switch. Performing the task on autopilot. Something done ad infinitum.

  Before he thought to say:

  “Of course, it should be expected, shouldn’t it? All that quiet to get used to after the big city. Must be all very disorienting.”

  “It isn’t so quiet,” Oliver said.

  That twittery smile twitched harder.

  The coffee pot burped. Bubbled.

  Ethan opened the blinds, but the gathering darkness added little to disrupt the sense the walls were closing in. Did little to alleviate that jumpy rise and fall of his gigantic Adam’s apple.

  Almost as if Ethan had been expecting this.

  Expecting this visit sooner or later.

  Oliver. In such a gathering twilight.

  Standing outside his office door.

  Rather pale and robbed of sleep.

  From a house that was not so quiet.

  Even when it pretended to be silent.

  And Oliver thought of Ethan himself.

  Standing outside the cottage that day.

  That day he and Abby had first arriv
ed.

  Standing out there waiting. Waiting.

  Waiting despite their tardiness.

  Waiting out there in the cold and wet.

  Rather than inside in all that un-quiet.

  Ethan moved a jumble of paperwork off a chair, allowing Oliver to sit. Oliver sat. It felt good to sit. He felt so very tired.

  Ethan sat on the corner of his desk.

  Ignoring the ding of the coffee pot.

  Muddy brown eyes twitching, too.

  “How can I help?” he said.

  Oliver produced a legal document from his coat pocket where it had been rudely folded and stuffed like something to be hidden. He carefully unfolded it. Smoothed out the deep creases.

  Then handed it to Ethan.

  Ethan accepted it reluctantly.

  As if instinctively knowing better.

  Or maybe he did know better.

  And instincts be damned.

  He reached for reading spectacles and Oliver had the sense he might have done so even if the spectacles were unnecessary.

  Anything to buy a moment longer.

  As if a moment could be stretched.

  Stretched into a small eternity.

  He slid on the spectacles, but studied Oliver over them another beat before finally giving the document a cursory look.

  “This is your property deed,” he said.

  He almost sounded relieved.

  As if expecting something far worse.

  He tried to hand it back. Confused.

  “Is there a problem?” he questioned.

  Intimating a rather dismissive tone.

  Or at least trying to sound just so.

  Oliver settled back in his chair.

  Not yet accepting it back.

  “The seller is listed simply as The Ludlow Family Trust,” Oliver said. “No other information about the seller is provided. Only a vague reference to a solicitor acting in conservatorship.”

  “Quite right,” Ethan conceded.

  Still holding out the legal document.

  Still thinking Oliver might take it.

  Only to gradually realize otherwise.

  And grudgingly taking it back.

  Still, he pulled off the spectacles.

  As if in an act of defiance.

  “The solicitor is listed as a William H. Barnaby,” Oliver eventually continued without expression. “But I’ve been quite unable to locate a William H. Barnaby, esquire, in Leeds or elsewhere.”

  Ethan frowned. Suggesting further confusion.

  “I’d like very much, indeed, to speak with the previous owners of the house,” Oliver explained as night descended, the shadows in the office growing longer, moving out from the corners and crevices, dark inquisitive fingers reaching, stretching, for them. “You mentioned the couple was from Leeds. That they bought the place as a summer home but that he fell ill and she never returned.”

  Ethan cleared his throat.

  Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

  “A trust can be established for a multitude of reasons,” he finally said, setting the deed aside on the desk. “For legal and financial purposes, Oliver. And for the purposes of privacy.”

  Oliver waited. Determined.

  Allowing his silence to further unnerve Ethan.

  His silence and expressionless face.

  His blank and taciturn and unblinking eyes.

  How do you know when the moon has had enough to eat?

  Ethan made a groaning noise.

  Glanced at that farmhouse.

  The farmhouse outside the window.

  Beyond the dark grove of trees.

  Down that winding well-used dirt road.

  His dinner was probably waiting.

  A warm fire. A brandy, maybe.

  And that suspicious willowy woman.

  “You make it all sound so very ominous,” he cajoled, attempting levity. “What is to be gained by such a conversation?”

  Oliver just stared at him.

  More expressionless silence.

  Blank and taciturn and unblinking silence.

  Obliging that levity to dissipate.

  Behind that twittery smile.

  Before asking the tall and thin real estate agent: “Why is it you were standing outside in the rain when we first arrived?”

  Ethan seemed to visibly react.

  A spasmed flinching of his thin shoulders.

  Even as his muddy brown eyes blinked hard.

  As if not understanding the question.

  He returned the spectacles to his face.

  As if needing to see Oliver more clearly.

  Of course, they had the opposite effect.

  Given the fact they were reading glasses.

  Given the distance between the men.

  Perhaps his true intention all along.

  To have Oliver just fade away.

  “Was I?” he only said.

  Oliver settled deeper in his chair.

  More expressionless silence. Blank. Taciturn. Unblinking.

  Groaning again, realizing Oliver had no intention of going anywhere tonight until he had his answers, Ethan rose and paced and peered again out the window facing that farmhouse and all the intervening gathering darkness before pulling shut the blinds.

  As if suddenly afraid of being overheard.

  “John and Polly Ludlow,” he then said.

  Shaking his head with the disclosure.

  “It was meant to be their summer home, but when Polly discovered she was with child after many years of trying, they decided to stay,” he told Oliver unwillingly, his voice a dry, hoarse whisper. “They were strange birds who kept mostly to themselves. Especially after the child was born. For it was afflicted, you see. With sunken eyes too close together. A badly sloped forehead. And small crooked little teeth. Always muttering gibberish as it grew older.”

  Another shake of the head.

  With that bird’s nest of black hair.

  “John, its father, was a devout man,” Ethan hushed, a shadow falling over him now, turning him into a silhouette by the window with the shut blinds. “And came to believe the child a cursed thing. He drowned it in the bog in the woods,” he said in that dry, hoarse whisper of a voice. “In the woods behind the house.”

  Oliver once again felt that spider.

  Wriggling and twitching along his spine.

  That cold terrible vile thing.

  “Polly was undone when she learned of her husband’s actions. And settled upon him with a cleaver in the child’s bedroom. Seems likely he never defended himself, aye, and therefore had no chance. As for Polly. A bit of horrible business there, too. She was found at the bottom of the cliff. She must have thrown herself.”

  Ethan fell silent here. Finished.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Oliver said.

  Ethan appeared to lift his head.

  With that bird’s nest of black hair.

  But his own expression unreadable now.

  Unreadable in the deepening shadows.

  Those muddy eyes turned to black.

  “You had a legal obligation to do so.”

  Ethan’s silhouette shrugged. Fatalistic.

  “A lot of history ‘round here,” he said.

  Before his hushed voice trailed off.

  As if that were somehow the end of it.

  As if that somehow could be the end of it.

  Before he grievously added:

  “And quite a bit of it unpleasant.”

  19.

  THAT NIGHT OLIVER returned home to the small stone cottage to find himself walking past the cottage and the still overgrown garden, its tangled vines and stalks and drunkenly-swaying flowers welcoming him back as he plodded through the foul-stinking mud that had turned gummy on the surface if crunchy underneath after weeks of unrelenting damp fog and wind but little more rain. He plodded over to the ramshackle barn standing wearily before the dark woodline before entering through its giant buckled doors left half-open long ago, now glu
ed deeply in the muck, its rusted hinges moaning conversationally in the dark night as he dug in the pitch black of that barn on hands and knees past Abby’s new gardening supplies stained with that foul-stinking mud, the old rusted wheelbarrow she’d found, meanwhile, rolled into a dark nearby corner, watching sightlessly as he searched, digging and clawing and scratching around the abandoned assemblage of queer farming artifacts listlessly decaying into rusted dust and half-buried in the barn floor’s rusty earth before eventually locating what he sought.

  He then filled the wheelbarrow.

  And carted his haul to the cottage.

  And employed hammer and nail to return the congregation of old rusted horseshoes to the double stable doors, carefully placing each horseshoe over its corresponding ghostly outline.

  Recreating the rough concentric circles.

  Afterward, he stepped back.

  And surveyed his efforts.

  It was like they’d never left.

  Those old rusted horseshoes.

  And in a rise of wind heard a voice.

  Whispering dismally in his ear. Ethan.

  Been ‘round here forever like most things.

  For a long as anyone ‘round here can remember.

  This was meant to be their summer home.

  John, its father, was a devout man.

  Came to believe the child a cursed thing.

  Drowned it in the bog in the woods.

  In the woods behind the house.

  Polly was undone. Settled upon him with a cleaver.

  Seems likely he never defended himself, aye.

  She was found at the bottom of the cliff.

  She must have thrown herself.

  Been empty for years now.

  The estate is selling.

  For it was afflicted, you see.

  The horseshoes seemed to grin.

  Seemed to grin mockingly at him.

  In their rough concentric circles.

  A rusted mouth opening in laughter.

  A quaint bit of local folklore, perhaps.

  Such silly superstitious things as horseshoes.

  Then again, perhaps not so silly at all.

  He simply wasn’t certain anymore.

  A lot of history ‘round here.

  And quite a bit of it unpleasant.

  He was just so damn tired.

  And not in the mood to tempt fate.