Sorcerie

by Russell Gilwee

  And he was not alone.

  A willowy woman appeared under the black umbrella behind him. Large and fretful eyes. And quiet as the grave. Wearing a long black dress that dragged in the mud below her soiled boots.

  Oliver’s mind flashed back madly.

  For he had seen this woman before.

  This strange willowy woman.

  Peeking out past thin curtains.

  Of a farmhouse down a dirt road.

  Down a winding well-used dirt road.

  Down from a small real estate office.

  Ethan Hanover’s real estate office.

  Over there in nearby Knocksharry.

  Observing him with large and fretful eyes.

  From behind those thin curtains.

  Of that lone farmhouse.

  Out there in the middle of nowhere.

  As if Oliver meant Ethan harm.

  The woman being his wife.

  This strange willowy woman.

  Now on Oliver’s own doorstep.

  The willowy woman took Abby firmly by the hand and led her inside the small stone cottage without offering Oliver so much as a glance on this occasion, her large and fretful eyes focused forward. Abby went with the willowy woman as if she had not a choice, though for a moment looked back at Oliver as if begging him to intervene. To protect her. To make this dark nightmare somehow end.

  “Hilde,” Dr. Marwick said.

  As the women vanished inside.

  His manner brusque and cold.

  Colorless like the weather.

  No longer pretending politeness.

  “The midwife,” he then added.

  Oliver shook his head. Dismayed.

  “Abby should be in hospital,” he argued, having to shout over the wind and rain. “In Douglas. Per our arrangements.”

  “God forbid,” Dr. Marwick said.

  Or Oliver thought he might have said.

  It being muttered under his breath in the wind and rain.

  And he found himself wondering how the good doctor had come to be here so quickly in the storm. It was almost as if he’d already been on the road when Oliver had made the hysterical phone call. Furthermore, suddenly somehow quite certain he’d gotten the answering machine at the medical centre in town after all and not an actual person.

  But how could that possibly be true?

  How could the good doctor have known?

  Known to come on this most terrible night?

  Known to venture out into this storm?

  Unless, it was the storm itself telling him.

  Telling him on this Midsummer’s eve.

  Telling him the time was nigh.

  Dr. Marwick entered the cottage.

  The small stone cottage was now pitch dark, but for the glowing woodstove in the corner. The electrical power having gone out apparently. Having apparently failed in this awful storm.

  Perhaps it had even been out earlier.

  When Oliver had come for Abby.

  When he’d been so malignly bitten.

  He could not seem to recall.

  His mind full of cobwebs.

  He remained on the stoop a minute. Full of misgivings. When he finally tried to follow his wife and eccentric guests inside, he was intruded upon by a low growl. From below. Charlemagne.

  Thick black lips receded. Canines.

  When Oliver made the silly attempt to circumvent the animal, that low growl swiftly manifested into a horrible snarl.

  Inviting a stalemate of sorts.

  Stay outside and don’t get bitten again.

  These seemed to be the rules.

  Stymied, Oliver haplessly considered a small dull hatchet leaning against the wall beside a pile of fresh kindling before noticing in the distance beyond the ramshackle barn and paddock fence--

  Caleb. At the wooded edge.

  Standing on the thin narrow path.

  Framed neatly by an eddy of black fog.

  As the storm lashed about him.

  But seeming not to touch him somehow.

  As if the storm could not touch him.

  As if he simply did not acknowledge it.

  As if it somehow could be unacknowledged.

  As if that made all the difference.

  Meanwhile, the cold rain had turned the mortar dust and filthy mud on Oliver’s own clothing into virtual concrete and Oliver felt its weight as he moved forward and met Caleb in the weather. The old man offering him a solemn nod as if seeming to already know what was transpiring without the need for any explanation.

  It was only then Oliver discerned--

  Fay in the overgrown garden.

  In her rugged gray rain coat.

  And comfy two-tone brown country walking shoes.

  Her hair in that gray scarf.

  Moving with determination in the black fog, slipping through all the wind and rain as if she could somehow avoid it, too, gray scarf appearing and disappearing amongst the blooms before pausing at the blossom of black flowers with the deep crimson stamens. Sniffing. Her nose a delicate instrument.

  Picking a black flower here. There.

  Caleb leaned closer to Oliver, his raspy voice becoming reverential: “Fairy’s Breath. Also known as Enchanter’s plant.”

  “I don’t understand,” Oliver said.

  “To open the gate,” Caleb hushed.

  A terrible wail was then heard.

  From inside the small stone cottage.

  Where it had been conceived.

  Abby. In labor. Tiny claws.

  Fay placed the black flowers with the deep crimson stamens in a basket next to a bottle of homemade elderflower keshal.

  The bottle label hand-painted.

  Displaying white elderflowers.

  And other things in a dark forest.

  Gyrating and dancing things.

  Blurry and exotic things.

  Fay then left the overgrown garden without a word, or even a peek in Oliver’s direction, her long wool skirt and comfy two-tone brown country walking shoes seeming to float right over the muddy muck before she vanished inside the small stone cottage without any grief from Charlemagne keeping sentry at the double stable doors below those rusted horseshoes in their odd concentric circles.

  It was at that moment--

  --the forgathered migration of black birds abruptly flocked from the ramshackle barn and dark woods to the small stone cottage in a black wave, black against the black sky as the last of the stormy gray twilight faded away as this day truly turned into night and not just a foreboding mimicry of it.

  The black birds then settled there on the small stone cottage not unlike so many black leaves -- their dark shadowy outline casting in a rather nightmarish black relief the large thorn tree hidden inside its thick stone walls.

  Oliver felt his knees give.

  The sucking mud grab at him.

  As if trying to swallow him whole.

  Not unlike a stone.

  35.

  OLIVER CAME TO to find himself in one of those Adirondack chairs on the stoop below the eaves, his concrete clothing slopped in a fresh slime of the cold, foul-stinking mud, the same cold, foul-stinking mud now glued to one side of his face where he’d fallen, caking an eye, the world a dark blur. For just a moment, he almost wished he had face-planted in the stuff, leaving both eyes useless. Blinding him from this dark world.

  From what might still be to come.

  Caleb sat in the chair beside him.

  The old man had now almost certainly seen the buried state of the Q5 and where Oliver had been digging earlier in the day. Oliver would have thought the old man might have questions.

  About Oliver’s state of mind.

  He’d dug up the foundation, too, after all.

  The mud not fully cratering in there.

  Not up against the cottage itself.

  Not there beneath the eaves.

  From whence that evil thing grew.

  In the shadows and the muck.

  The old stone blocks
disturbed.

  Chipped. Gouged. Shards broken.

  From shovel blade and hoe.

  The tools abandoned nearby.

  Instead, Caleb said:

  Rather quite solemnly:

  As if in mid-homily:

  “Accused of sorcerie. Sentenced to burn at the stake that very sundown. The townsfolk, they did watch her burn. The unborn child still in her womb. A damnation. That unborn child. A most cursed thing, surely.”

  The beast snoozed with one eye open before the double stable doors and their odd concentric circles of rusted horseshoes.

  Abby could be heard upstairs moaning terribly and occasionally crying out as her labor suffered churlish ebbs and flows.

  Meanwhile, the wind and rain suddenly ended like an overture. And the black fog lifted like a black curtain at a playhouse.

  Revealing a heavy black sky.

  No stars. Only a large red moon.

  Hung heavily over the dark woods.

  Not unlike a giant bloody eye.

  Staring down inscrutably.

  Everything else still and quiet at the moment. But for the great many black birds jostling about as one on the small stone cottage’s marram-thatched roof above them in the dark crimson glow of that red moon. Dark feathery wings. Sharp clicking talons.

  But then from the night came music:

  A distant music as if only imagined.

  Coming from beneath that moon.

  From somewhere in those dark woods.

  Or so Oliver perceived as he thought he maybe saw just inside the woodline those fairy-things again, dancing and cavorting.

  Dancing and cavorting to that music.

  That music from those dark woods.

  Beneath that giant red moon.

  The old man heard it, too.

  A mud-caked boot tapping.

  Tapping softly on the stoop floor.

  The old buckled planks creaking.

  To that strange and distant beat.

  His voice adopting that singsong quality:

  Deep and hypnotic once again:

  As it had done back in that farmhouse:

  Keeping time with his tapping boot:

  The rasp reduced to a scratch:

  “Buried in the manner of a witch where nothing would ever grow again save that of a thorn tree,” he hushed, the red moonlight teasing out the red in that grizzled beard and twinkling in his large rheumy baleful eyes as that boot tapped softly. “Thou shall not suffer a witch to live, they said over her. Thou shall not suffer a witch to live, the townsfolks said.”

  Before offering a quiet refrain:

  An almost prayer-like amen:

  “Tehi. Tegi. Tehi. Tegi,” he said.

  The music then seemed to swell.

  To swell most terribly in Oliver’s ears.

  Before suddenly being drowned out by--

  A most horrible cry of agony.

  From the small stone cottage itself.

  Oliver shot to a standing position.

  Gasping. As if he’d been electrocuted.

  By a dark current of cold electricity.

  Spine gone rigid. Knees locking.

  Skin bristling. Head spinning wildly.

  Meaning to go to his wife. His Abby.

  If he could just unlock his flinty joints.

  Toward that most horrible of cries.

  Sounding as if of death itself.

  A calloused hand returned him to the chair. Forcing him back down. Forcing him to listen. Forcing him to understand.

  Forcing him to hear a part of the story he’d not yet heard before this night. As those black birds jostled about above.

  Becoming ever more restless.

  Realizing the final hour was truly nigh.

  As the old man disclosed to Oliver:

  Explaining most reverentially:

  As if quoting a sacred bible psalm:

  “Her unborn child burned to ash in her womb.”

  “Birthing a curse for a small town beside a cold sea.”

  “Birthing a grim and most unwelcome curse. Aye.”

  “Their ashen bones buried twelve feet down.”

  “An old stone cottage, the mouse trap.”

  “A young barren couple, the bait.”

  Oliver again felt that cold electricity.

  Causing his heart to quiver. Spasm.

  As the old man darkly said:

  Rheumy baleful eyes unblinking:

  “On the blood moon of Midsummer’s eve.”

  “A child. To be sacrificed to her unsettled spirit.”

  “An offering to save the town’s own children.”

  “To save them from her wicked despair.”

  “From her most awful damnation.”

  And with that, another scream.

  Another horrible cry of agony.

  As if Abby were being torn in two.

  Torn in two from the inside out.

  As if by claws. Tiny claws.

  “A child born of sorcerie.”

  “Soulless. An abomination.”

  “To be offered. Sacrificed.”

  “Tonight, Oliver.”

  Oliver could feel the tight muscles of his face stretch and then freeze again in an expression of abject, horrified revelation.

  As the old man betrayed:

  “It was never to be your child. Aye.”

  Red-tinted tears filled Oliver’s eyes.

  Washing out the cold, foul-stinking mud.

  Yet blinding him completely this time.

  If not, perhaps, allowing him to finally see.

  A dark world turned to blood.

  “It was never to be anything but an offering to her. To it. For you cannot pluck the fruit of happiness from the tree of unrighteousness.”

  There rose a lone cold wind gust.

  Rising as if from those dark woods.

  Where those fairy-things played.

  It pushed past the ramshackle barn.

  That lone cold gust of wind.

  Across the cold muddy ground.

  And beneath the eaves. Moaning softly.

  Buffeting the double stable doors.

  Rattling the old rusted horseshoes.

  In their odd concentric circles.

  Turning them into windchimes.

  A rather hollow knocking noise.

  Bleak and haunting and tuneless.

  A grim prophetic sound.

  “The horseshoes…” Oliver said.

  His fucking sanity teetering.

  As if he were standing at the cliff edge.

  The jagged black rocks waiting below.

  Inviting him to simply step off.

  An old stone cottage, the mouse trap.

  A young barren couple, the bait.

  “The horseshoes…” he said again.

  As if he’d become only an echo.

  An echo of who he’d once been.

  Or might have been in this life.

  A life turned to nightmare.

  “I thought such silly totems…” he said, his voice most terribly hoarse. “I thought such totems were meant to repel witches.”

  Once only a silly bit of quaint folklore.

  But only much too real in the end.

  “Rather--” the old man began.

  Those horseshoes knocking.

  Knocking hollowly on the doors.

  “--to contain one,” he confessed.

  The fairy-things, dancing and cavorting in the shadowy trees below the giant red moon, suddenly became even more animated.

  As the music seemed to swell again.

  That strange and distant beat.

  From somewhere in those dark woods.

  As the black birds jostled about.

  Jostled about on the thatched roof.

  Making soft cawing noises now.

  As there rose from the cottage--

  A final and horrible wail.

  Soon followed by--

  A baby’s cry. A birth.

  36.

>   OLIVER SUBSEQUENTLY HAD a fleeting glimpse of a memory of Charlemagne rising before the double stable doors, then stepping aside as if in invitation. Dark brown eyes glistening, pupils filling with that giant red moon in the starless black sky. And of the old man leading him and the giant beast into the dark small stone cottage and through the flickering red glow of the woodstove and, finally, up the dark narrow staircase.

  Oliver might have anticipated the final act in this small stone cottage would play out inside the master bedroom to the right. The bedroom he had shared with his wife. His Abby. But, in retrospect, in the end, it did seem only rather fitting to find it dark and vacant tonight and the nursery across the hall the hallowed place.

  Oliver entered the nursery (that had been the spare bedroom). Entered into the red-orange glow of candles. The candles fulgurating in the dark cold flat glass of the large antique mirror.

  Abby was seated in a rocking chair by the window. An antique rocking chair they’d also purchased in town to complete the nursery. Made of heavy oak with a linked-style slat wooden seat.

  She looked completely drained.

  Her face the color of gray chalk.

  And in her arms: A swaddled child.

  Also gray-faced. Eyes closed.

  Mouth a small purple slit.

  Incense burned on the window ledge.

  The sticks glowing a queer dark red.

  Infused, apparently, with Fairy’s Breath.

  A stone pestle and mortar nearby.

  With remnants of a fine red powder.

  The crushed crimson stamens.

  Of those ugly black flowers.

  The resulting grayish-red smoke floated lazily about the nursery, its long tendrils encouraging Oliver inside, silently coaxing him forward, its fume somehow both acrid and cloyingly sweet, yet also imbued with the odor of decay. The smoke turned almost incandescent by the gleaming red-orange candlelight and the giant red moon hung heavily over those dark woods outside the window.

  Dr. Marwick, Fay, and Hilde (the willowy woman, the midwife) were busy removing evidence of the birth, including a blood-soaked quilt from the center of the floor, revealing a dark ugly stain already settling into the hardwood, seeping into the grain.

  Oliver became aware the congregation avoided staring directly at the child -- especially as it began to make cooing noises. Cooing noises that reminded him of those many black birds perched on the rooftop just above them. With their soft cawing sounds.

  Their black feathery wings.

  Sharp clicking talons.

  Abby, draped loosely in a handmade cotton nightgown Oliver had never seen before, her eyes large and exhausted and bloodshot, lifted her gaze from the thing swaddled in her thin arms and mutely implored him -- mutely implored her Oliver, her husband -- with a terrible desperation bordering on the insane, intuitively aware, perhaps, of what was to come and unable to accept this fate.