He would not have thought a human being capable of making such a horrendous noise and abandoned the dark narrow chamber in the stone wall, scrambling up the rickety cellar staircase, tripping, skinning his knee through his mud-soaked pants covered in mortar dust (bringing to mind that peculiar fat boy who’d tumbled off his bicycle on the final day of term), scrambling into the small stone cottage and up the interior staircase, and into the short dark hall.
The screams louder than ever.
Punctuated by high-pitched shrieks.
To find Abby thrashing about.
In the bed. In their bedroom.
Twisted horribly in the bedsheets.
Her small head thrown back.
Her eyes scrunched tightly shut.
As she screamed and shrieked.
Her face a purplish-blue.
“Abby!” he shouted.
But she could not hear him. Could not hear him as her terrible cries turned into terrible moans as she writhed about in the twisting bedsheets, becoming more entangled. More deeply mired.
More deeply mired in nightmare.
For Oliver’s wife was still asleep.
In this most horrible place.
Beside this cold gray sea.
A cold gray sea turned to black.
Black in the gathering storm.
“Abby, wake up!” he cried out.
Grasping for her now. Frantic.
Believing she might suffocate herself.
In the ferally-twisting bedsheets.
Coiling tightly around her neck.
She spasmed away from him.
And his hand fell to her belly.
To her pregnant abdomen.
To the unborn child.
Protruding from the sheets.
It was at that moment Charlemagne pushed forward from the shadows. Ears pinned back against its massive head. A low growl emanating from deep within its muscular rough-coated chest. A low growl drowned out by another tortured bellow from Abby.
Oliver ignored the stupid dog.
Practically falling onto his wife.
In his desperate attempt to rouse her.
To rouse her from her nightmare.
That hand still on her belly.
Still on her pregnant abdomen.
Still on the unborn child.
Her skin feverish to the touch.
Unaware of the sudden flash in the giant beast’s dark eyes. A sudden flattening of its thick black lips, revealing its canines.
It all happened in a terrible instant.
A snarl. Abby’s eyes popping open.
A lunge. Oliver being snatched.
Snatched from the unborn child.
Snatched from his wife. His Abby.
Snatched by those powerful jaws.
That could severe the spine of a wolf.
His right arm suddenly in a thrashing vice.
Whipping the all of him back and forth.
Sharp razors sinking into his flesh.
Sinking down to the very bone.
Dragging him to the floor.
Abby shrieking again. But awake now.
Oliver screaming, too. Howling.
Like it was all just a terrible dream.
A most terrible horrible dream.
From which he might still wake.
In this most horrible place.
Beside this cold gray sea.
A cold gray sea turned to black.
Black in the gathering storm.
33.
OLIVER WASHED THE bite wound in the kitchen sink, his stomach doing queasy flip-flops when he dared to peer too closely past the stinging foamy dish soap and a flap of torn flesh at dark puncture marks from which blood oozed.
A dark blood in the storm light.
Soaking up a scrum of paper towels.
He thought of rabies. Worse.
As if there were something worse.
Something worse he might fear.
Fortunately, the arm wasn’t broken.
At least not from what he could tell.
He could still move his fingers, anyway.
The dog watched from the staircase.
Neither sheepish nor vainglorious.
Just watching Oliver. Silently.
Dark brown eyes inquisitive again.
Abby appeared behind it in the shadows.
The shadows of the narrow staircase.
“Pack a bag!” Oliver demanded of her.
His voice quite dismayingly shrill.
Shrill in this dark gathering storm.
The wind howling in the eaves.
The rain beginning to pound.
Abby blinked. In a daze.
“Have you been drinking?” she said.
“Now, Abby!” he shouted at her.
He meant to get the fuck out of here. Right now.
To get as far the fuck out of here as he possibly could.
Knowing what he now knew about what was down there in that fucking creepy-ass cellar behind that fucking stone wall.
Knowing what he’d found out there this morning in those fucking creepy-ass woods, too. That doll bursting into flame.
Out there in that swirling black fog.
Knowing about the black fog, too.
Undaunted by the wind and rain.
Quite able to turn day into night.
As it had rather done once before.
When the child had been conceived.
As this day also turned to night.
On this Midsummer’s eve.
Knowing about the Ludlows as well.
The previous occupants of the cottage.
The child a cursed thing.
Drowned. A bog in the woods.
Polly undone. A cleaver.
Knowing of other vile tales of a distant past.
A distant past that was not so distant here.
In this awful place removed from time.
Wooden barrels and iron spikes.
A barren woman burned at the stake.
A barren woman who’d not been so barren.
Not so very barren, in the end, after all.
Burned at the stake at sundown.
With her unborn child inside her.
A damnation. A most cursed thing, surely.
Buried in the manner of a witch.
Where nothing would ever grow again.
Save that of a thorn tree.
And so much more besides.
Horseshoes and Rowan crosses.
Cryptic carvings and blood moons.
And spooky little fucking children.
With spooky little fucking necklaces.
Knowing he just had to go.
Knowing they just had to go.
Before it was too fucking late.
Assuming it wasn’t already too late.
Wasn’t already too late for them.
As that thick black fog swirled.
And that salty rain pounded down.
And that cold wind howled.
Shaking these very stone walls.
Of this small stone cottage.
Beside this cold gray sea.
A cold gray sea turned to black.
On this day turned to night.
On this Midsummer’s eve.
He wrapped his bleeding arm tightly in a dish towel while that dog silently watched him, and when he was done found Abby to be beside him. A pair of bags hurriedly packed. Odds. Ends.
That was fine. Just fine.
They’d leave the rest of it.
All the fucking rest of it.
Fuck all the rest of it.
Oliver grabbed the bags (his lame arm smarting, already bleeding through the thin dish towel) and rushed out into the storm that was no longer just gathering, but had now, quite ominously, settled right down upon them. A tempest of lashing wind and rain.
Making havoc in the black fog.
The foul mud sucking and deep.
He threw the bags into the Q5.
Threw t
hem into the empty back seat.
Before thinking to assist his wife.
His very pregnant wife. His Abby.
Into the front passenger seat.
Then leaping behind the wheel himself.
Meanwhile, the thunder made loud terrible sharp cracks in the black sky above them -- as if the entire world were a giant black egg about to be smashed into pieces and its black rotting innards to be unceremoniously spilled out in a gooey slime of cold entrails.
A world turned inside out.
Whatever the hell that might mean.
Oliver wasn’t waiting to find out.
He punched the Q5 ignition button.
The engine roared to life. His mud-caked foot punching down on the gas even before he threw the vehicle into Drive.
The Q5 hiccupped.
Then lurched forward.
And for just a moment--
He thought he’d make the paved road.
Winking in that swirling black fog.
But then the all-weather tires dug down into that terrible deep sucking quagmire of mud (perhaps, he pondered drearily, that gooey slime of cold entrails had already been rather quite unceremoniously spilled out long ago) and began to spin uselessly, the Q5 turning around and around in slow circles. Spinning them, too.
Charlemagne was on the stoop.
Dark brown eyes twinkling.
Watching them curiously.
Amused. Black tongue lolling.
Oliver, his head also spinning deliriously, eventually found the presence of mind to at least punch the vehicle’s computerized display board, shifting the Q5 into Quattro all-wheel drive.
The transmission made a crunching noise.
A rather reluctant, if painful sound.
But the all-weather tires managed to grab.
Attempting to work in concert now.
Finding traction in the slough again.
Lurching them teasingly forward.
Toward that dark winding ribbon.
That dark winding ribbon of paved road.
Oliver cheered with relief.
Only to feel them suddenly lose momentum. The fucking tires spinning again. Making a high-pitched screeching rubber noise. The Q5 sliding sideways now. The thunder clapping even louder. A giant flashbang grenade accompanied by a portentous explosion of searing white light. Perhaps lightening, perhaps just his own weary head left blinded and disoriented by the concussion itself, with the return of the darkness after the explosion of that searing white light all the darker because of it as the Q5 slid helplessly toward the small stone cottage where that giant beast watched them so curiously.
Oliver cursed the storm.
Cursed this morass of foul mud.
Cursed the stupid fucking Audi Q5.
Stamping the gas again with fury.
The Q5 engine revving. Screaming.
The exhausted tires spinning.
Splattering the mud everywhere.
Sliming the vehicle windows.
Trying to bury them alive seemingly.
Abby grimacing beside him.
Hugging her pregnant belly.
Hunching over now. Muttering.
Praying, maybe, he thought.
Perhaps it worked, her prayers.
For at just that terrible moment--
The tires again seemed to find purchase.
Pushing the vehicle forward once more.
The pale headlights hitting that sign.
That silly wooden handmade sign.
At the edge of the paved road.
Reading: SIORGHA COTTAGE.
The Q5 bouncing heavily toward it.
The pale headlights bouncing, too.
Making the sign jump up and down.
“We can just make the last ferry,” he said.
And almost believed it. Truly, he did.
Only to feel the vehicle abruptly shudder.
Abruptly shudder about them.
And then slide horribly backward.
As if this nightmarish world were somehow being dumped on its fucking head and the vehicle losing its battle with gravity.
Oliver even felt it in his stomach.
That terrible sinking falling feeling.
As they inexplicably slid backward.
Back toward the small stone cottage.
Waiting for them ever so very patiently.
As if knowing they could not leave.
As if knowing they could never leave.
Abby moaning, and then screaming.
Hunched over, but not in prayer.
Rather, doubled over in pain.
Or so Oliver suddenly realized.
Small pale hands on her belly.
On her pregnant abdomen.
On the unborn child in there.
“Hurts,” she whimpered.
“Abby?!?” he yelled.
Tears stood out in her eyes. Veins on her forehead. Staggered by the sudden overwhelming agony manifesting inside of her.
“Like claws,” she gasped.
It was then her water broke.
Sloshing down at her pink boots.
As the Q5 slid backward.
Its tires spinning. Spinning.
Backward into a soupy pit.
A soft and mushy depression.
Sinking. Sinking very deeply, indeed.
Sinking right down to its axles.
The engine sputtering. Stalling out.
Doing so with a final sad low whine.
Dying right there. Falling silent.
The wind roaring ferociously.
The rain pounding. Tiny fists.
The black fog folding over them.
As the thunder bellowed uproariously.
As if in a terrible dark laughter.
In a world turned inside out.
And quite upside down.
On this day turned to night.
On this Midsummer’s eve.
34.
DESPITE THE MISERABLE weather, Oliver and Abby remained on the front stoop after abandoning the vehicle, shivering in the terrible gusts of wind and rain as the black fog slipped in and around them, offering its own chilly embrace. In retrospect, it would seem a rather funny thing to do, remaining out there on the stoop, shivering below the eaves, rather than returning back inside the small stone cottage and peeling off their wet clothes and warming their cold bones in front of the woodstove, but it was something they did without even the need to speak of it.
The weather the better alternative.
To whatever it was inside those stone walls.
Abby eventually collapsed into one of two Adirondack chairs they’d bought in the village weeks ago on a whim. Her bony knees tucking into her belly. Huddling, and anticipating further anguish, if no longer feeling, at the moment, like claws were tearing her open from the inside out. The first round of contractions over.
Or so Oliver desperately told himself.
Even as he damn well knew better.
Even as he damn well knew it had been something more than just simple contractions. That it had been this place. This place meaning to tear his wife to ribbons from the inside out if she dared attempt to leave it.
Dared attempt to leave it and whatever it inhabited.
A crazy notion he tried to dismiss.
Even as he found he could not.
Given what lay in that cellar wall.
Given the sordid history of this place.
And what might be inside of her now.
Inside his wife. Most desperate to get out.
And therein laid a troubling proposition.
For the Q5, as it turned out, had drifted back into where he’d been digging earlier that day between the cottage and the overgrown garden. The mud having since caved back in there, hiding a minor sinkhole. The Audi had managed to slide right into it, sinking right down to those axles. There would be no retrieving it without a tow. Pacing beneath the eaves, the blowing rain stinging his cheeks, Oliver pressed his mobile to his ear
, first trying to reach a tow service, but failing to make the call connect -- then thinking better of it and trying the good doctor, instead. For a brief tantalizingly moment, he thought just maybe he heard a distant ringing over the storm and a scratchy voice that may or may not have been a recording.
He left an hysterical message.
Only to have the phone die on him.
With a burst of horrible static.
That seemed to take on a voice.
A familiar ghostly voice in the end.
A voice he’d first heard deep in the cellar.
In the red light of those boiler flames.
Sibilating impishly in the darkness.
Finding those odd invisible little cracks.
In the stone cottage’s aged foundation.
Hissing with the whispering wind.
And now in this burst of static.
A haunted disembodied voice.
A woman’s voice, surely.
“Oliver…” it seemed to say.
As it had greeted before.
“Stay…” it seemed to implore.
As it had urged back then.
He fought an urge to just throw the phone out into the black fog. The wind and rain. To be quite rid of it. To silence the hideous thing. Instead, he lifted it above his head into the miserable weather beyond those eaves and fought desperately to find an elusive signal. Thinking that perhaps he might’ve called Caleb instead of the good doctor. Thinking if he could not locate a damn signal he might very well have to brave that path through those dark shadowy woods. It might be either that or very well deliver the child himself.
Right here on the front stoop.
With that beast staring at him.
Staring at him with dark amusement.
His arm still smarting from its bite.
And who was to say it wouldn’t bite again?
If he tried to touch her? To help her?
To deliver that unborn thing inside of her?
Or do much worse to him, perhaps.
The mobile confounded him, however.
Refusing to provide him a signal.
The wind trying to rip it from his hand.
The rain threatening to short it out.
Oliver wasn’t certain how long he might have stood out there struggling for that signal, but it was long enough for a black station wagon to quite suddenly appear in the muddy driveway from that thick black fog, skirting the edge of the quagmire, thereby cleverly avoiding the nastiest bits. A familiar black station wagon, in the end, that appeared like it might have been a hearse in a former life.
Dr. Marwick exited the wagon.
Beneath a giant black umbrella.
Grave in a black overcoat.
Sorcerie Page 21