Sorcerie

by Russell Gilwee

  She’d die with this forsaken child.

  Or so her despondent eyes implored.

  Die with it rather than forsake it.

  Her child. Her only child.

  The tiny thing in her arms.

  Oliver considered it more closely.

  The tiny thing swaddled in her arms.

  Searching now for sunken eyes.

  Sunken eyes too close together.

  A badly sloped little forehead.

  Small crooked little teeth.

  A malformed skull besides.

  With odd calcified appendages.

  Not unlike tiny little horns.

  An afflicted thing in the end.

  A cursed thing, surely.

  Caleb (while continuing to avert his gaze from the cooing child) lifted a small bassinet insert from the homemade crib made of ash and intricately carved with the moon cycles, including the blood moon. Freeing it from the larger crib and betraying its true design.

  To be that of a tiny coffin.

  Abby made a mewling noise.

  Pulled it tighter. The newborn.

  Pulled it tighter against her bosom.

  That tiny swaddled cooing thing.

  Gray-faced and purple-lipped.

  The thing let out a little cry.

  Its small eyes sliding slowly open.

  Sliding slowly open to find Oliver.

  Revealing small little eyes of black slate.

  That gradually turned indigo blue.

  Not unlike Oliver’s own eyes.

  Or so he silently contemplated.

  As it blinked at him blindly.

  Trying to see him, perhaps.

  Trying to see its father.

  As its small gray face flushed.

  Its tiny cheeks turning pink.

  As it softly cooed yet again.

  And not like those many black birds.

  Or so Oliver decided now.

  Not like those many black birds at all.

  How could he have imagined such a thing? Such a most horrible despicable thing? Furthermore, while he was on the subject, how in heaven above could he have ever allowed himself to be convinced this child, this blood of his very own blood, could ever be an afflicted thing? A cursed thing, surely? For this was his child. This child was a part of him. And he a part of it. It had not asked to be here. It had not asked to be born. But born it had very well been.

  A miracle. A dark little miracle.

  But a miracle nonetheless.

  That now had its most awful price.

  Its most hideous and unfair fate.

  Through no fault of its own.

  Through no sin of its own.

  Abby was still mewling. And it slowly turned to her with those small little black slate eyes turned indigo blue. Staring up at her.

  As Abby stared down at it.

  With such pure and pellucid love it quite nearly burst Oliver’s very heart gone leaden in his chest, allowing it to beat again.

  Oliver turned to Caleb.

  The previous months flashing.

  Flashing in his throbbing head.

  Abby’s voice. In the darkness:

  Of a time not long ago past:

  You should remember something, Oliver.

  Back in London I told you I would try.

  Just that. But I never promised to stay.

  And then his own voice:

  Dismissive. Rather angry:

  Is this to be our purgatory, then?

  Is that what you intend?

  And again Abby. Prescient:

  If altogether horribly fatalistic:

  Perhaps it is what we both deserve in the end.

  Yes, Oliver turned to Caleb now:

  And quietly beseeched him:

  “Me. Take me.”

  Caleb, salt embedded in the creased skin folds of his sunburnt cheeks, registered no surprise. His large rheumy baleful eyes simply staring at Oliver. Rather quite hollowly and unblinking.

  Fay made a sound, however. A word of a sound implying disapproval. Bushwah. Or something sterner as she knelt on the hardwood floor over that dark and ugly stain and scrubbed furiously on hands and knees. A large bristle brush and a generous foamy lather of soap. The soap handmade and smelling of lemongrass and anise. Only to stop her work now. To offer him her disapproval.

  “Call not the devil,” Oliver said, voice hoarser than ever. “He will come fast enough unbidden, is that not what you said?”

  Feeling a need to remind her.

  Feeling a need to convince her.

  As if he could do any such thing.

  The old woman rose in a single motion as if defying gravity, gray hair in her face flashing those bits of lavender. Voice adopting its own dark singsong quality: Rising: Falling: Mesmeric:

  Its own bizarre dreamlike timbre:

  Not unlike Caleb: Her husband:

  As if this were all a nightmare after all:

  From which Oliver might still wake:

  Her subsequent words floating like living things in the fulgurating red-orange candlelight and grayish-red smoke turned almost incandescent by the blood moon outside the window:

  “The child is hollow,” those floating words reprimanded in warning. “You are not, young man. You know not what you ask for. Aye.”

  Oliver again looked at mother and child.

  At his Abby staring down at the infant.

  Bloodshot eyes completely lost in it.

  Lost in this dream of a nightmare.

  Those lost eyes seeming to say:

  I am your mother. I will not forsake you.

  I will not, my dearest child. My only child.

  My little dark miracle of miracles.

  As she disappeared beyond them.

  As if slipping off a cliff edge.

  Oliver, the Fairy’s Breath incense silently imploring him once more, came to stand between mother and child and the others.

  Resolute, if terror-stricken.

  Never having felt so parched.

  So desperately in need of drink.

  Quite no longer able to swallow.

  Tongue thick and swollen.

  Charlemagne growling nearby.

  In solidarity. The giant beast.

  As it moved in around him.

  And beside that rocking chair.

  Beside mother and child.

  Caleb nodded while seeming to fade in and out of permanence in the incense smoke. “Know you must go willingly, Oliver,” he said, his, hypnotic voice seeming to fade in and out, too. “Into the cold uninterrupted darkness. And there is no coming back. Not for you. Not once you step into that stygian abyss and embrace her. There can be no salvation.”

  “And the child?” Oliver said.

  Still Caleb refused to look at it.

  As did the others. Eyes cast aside.

  “Unburdened of enchantment, aye,” he said.

  “Unburdened. How?” Oliver said.

  “But never to be baptized,” he cautioned.

  “--god forbid,” Dr. Marwick reviled.

  The revulsion bedeviling his face.

  As Hilde silently crossed herself.

  (The willowy woman. The midwife.)

  Over a long apron covered in blood.

  A dark and viscous-looking blood.

  As she knelt now at that dark ugly stain.

  Resuming where Fay had left off.

  The dark ugly stain on the hardwood.

  A stain unmoved by the lather of soap.

  Or machinations of the bristle brush.

  “Unburdened. How?” Oliver said again.

  His own voice fading in and out.

  Seemingly losing its permanence, too.

  Its permanence in the here and now.

  As Oliver felt himself fading.

  Fading off toward a darkness.

  A darkness awaiting him.

  Awaiting to embrace him.

  And to never let go.

  37.

  AS THAT AWAITING DARKNESS
ever so very patiently stalked Oliver, whispering sweet-nothings into his ear, its most terrible of sweet-nothings on what Oliver imagined as its long and black and forked tongue, Fay coaxed mother and child from the rocking chair made of heavy oak and dragged it, the chair, screeching most awfully, from the double-hung window to the very middle of the nursery, arranging it to face the open bedroom door. The short dark hall beyond it. And the dark narrow staircase.

  Fay then nodded at Oliver.

  And he sat down into that chair.

  All at once feeling quite weightless.

  Rocking. Floating. Back and forth.

  Becoming rather further untethered.

  Further untethered from this world.

  A grim feeling not unfamiliar to him in the end.

  As if this were always meant to be his fate.

  Ever since he’d first set foot in this cottage.

  In this small stone cottage by this cold gray sea.

  The others gathered about him.

  At her silent instruction of them.

  Forming a circle around the chair.

  Fading in and out. In and out.

  In the grayish-red incense.

  A beaded necklace hung heavily around Fay’s neck. Oliver had never seen her wear the beaded necklace before. It featured sweet-sounding ghungroo dancing bells. Small glowing moonstones emulating the four cycles of the moon. All cresting a talisman. A thorn tree filled with black birds. Backlit by a large red crystal.

  The blood moon.

  She placed the swaddled newborn child in Oliver’s arms. Then proceeded to crush into a fine red powder with pestle and mortar fresh crimson-red Fairy’s Breath stamens. She rubbed that powder between her palms, staining her pale skin a dark red, while muttering beneath her breath an exotic bewitchment before sprinkling the powder into the bottle of homemade elderflower keshal.

  The powder swirled in the keshal.

  Producing all manner of unnatural color.

  Purple, marigold, red, and blue.

  The old woman then used a long bony finger to drip the enchanted keshal onto the child’s tiny tongue. One drop.

  The child’s eyes turned again.

  Back from indigo blue to black slate.

  Oliver saw himself in that black slate.

  In that deep and awaiting darkness.

  Before those eyes went slowly gray.

  And swam back to blue again.

  Falling shut as the child sighed.

  Sighed drowsily in his arms.

  Afterward, Oliver’s head was pulled back, not rudely, but firmly, as if he might resist, the old woman’s bony fingers tangled about in his hair, his neck making a small cracking noise as the bottle of enchanted keshal was pushed against his parched lips and, if not violently, then resolutely inverted, causing the harsh liquid, tasting not unlike a thick sweet nectar spiked with the bitter chemical of petrol, to spill aggressively down his parched throat, burning most terribly the mucous membranes of his mouth before then setting to hellfire the soft lining of his esophagus and eventually his belly.

  Causing him to gag. Wretch.

  Searing into his heaving lungs, too.

  Causing him to feel as if he were drowning.

  As if he’d ingested liquid fire and brimstone.

  His insides reducing to a blistering ash.

  Creating of him a hollow husk.

  All the while, the old woman stood above him and the swaddled newborn child, muttering her untranslatable incantations, waving back and forth burning blooms of the mysterious black flowers, the black petals (appearing velvety to the touch, but being anything but) turning to a scattering ash while the crimson-red Fairy’s Breath stamens produced a shimmering meteor shower of fiery red sparks. Glowing brightly in the incense smoke. Sizzling and popping and exploding and making dull that red-orange candlelight.

  Punctuating her black Gaelic magic.

  And causing the incandescent grayish-red incense smoke itself to become overheated, to begin swirling, a maelstrom around him and the swaddled newborn child, becoming more incandescent, and hotter and hotter still, spinning and pulsating, as if they were at the center of an exploding star, the terrible heat and keshal exhausting and utterly disorienting him, before this maelstrom suddenly vaporized in the flash of an instant, leaving in its wake a terrible bone-chilling cold. Not unlike the center of a collapsed star. A dead thing.

  And as the smoky haze cleared--

  Leaving only that dulled candlelight--

  And that watchful giant red moon--

  Hung heavily over those dark woods--

  On this long and unending night--

  Oliver discovered the swaddled newborn child to no longer be in his arms, but tucked safely in the crib and the others standing at the empty wall beside it. Their backs to the open bedroom door. The short dark hall beyond it. And the dark narrow staircase.

  And to him.

  Fay, staring at the empty wall with the others, spoke to Oliver without turning around. “Close your eyes,” she whispered.

  As she closed her own eyes.

  The others doing the same.

  Or so Oliver intuitively grasped.

  Their bodies falling limp.

  Oliver found himself unable. Unable to close his eyes. Instead, he found his wife, his Abby, her cute little nose practically touching that empty wall. Shaking terribly, she seemed to sense his attention. Half-turning, her eyes fluttered half-open and met his own.

  One pale hand on the crib--

  And the other hand reaching back--

  Back through the red moonlight--

  And that dulled candlelight--

  Reaching back for him.

  “No, you mustn’t,” Fay scolded without the need of opening her eyes again, slapping hard at Abby’s wrist. Leaving a welt.

  That welt spread on Abby’s skin.

  Flowering. Blossoming. Crimson-red.

  Abby’s hand retreated. Chastened.

  Oliver and Abby were forced to say goodbye in that most awful silence in the small fraction of a moment between the old woman’s strident admonishment of her -- and the all too very real expectation of something far, far worse still yet to come. In that most awful silence, in that small fraction of a moment before Abby obediently, if reluctantly, and indeed painfully, closed her eyes and turned back to face the empty wall, a lifetime, their lifetime, passed between them. Happier memories. Sad memories Grief. Disbelief. Tears.

  Then her eyes had fallen shut.

  With her back to him once more.

  She looked so very fragile.

  The smallness of her neck.

  The narrowness of her shoulders.

  So much like a frightened child.

  The all of her just shivering.

  Oliver wanted to hug her.

  Whisper to her. Promise her everything would be all right this time as he’d done many times before even when he’d suspected the actual truth might be less comforting, if more honest.

  His mind flashed yet again.

  Back. Short long months ago.

  Himself. Feeding her those bitter little orange pills.

  Bitter little orange pills pulled from a murky brown prescription bottle. In the bedroom they’d shared across the hall. Across that short dark hall.

  It’s going to be okay, he’d said.

  On one of their first nights here.

  After leaving her all alone.

  All alone after the fall of dusk.

  In this place of all places.

  And her timid reply as she’d lay down for another night of troubled sleep. You’d tell me this time if it wasn’t, wouldn’t you?” she’d said to him.

  As if he were capable.

  Capable of telling the truth.

  To her. Let alone himself.

  He sighed deeply with the thought.

  With the very wretchedness of it.

  As he now turned away from her.

  Turned away from his wife. His Abby.

  As he�
�d done far too many times.

  Far too many times in the past.

  When he had quite buried himself.

  Quite buried himself in his own grief.

  In his own despair and treacheries.

  Using them as a crutch to abandon her.

  And wondered if he was doing it again.

  Fate having the last laugh of him.

  In this moment of self-awareness.

  As he turned from her this final time.

  Toward the open bedroom door.

  The short dark hall beyond it.

  And the dark narrow staircase.

  Steeling himself even as he trembled.

  Even as he felt himself fall apart inside.

  Even as he felt himself feel her fear.

  The fear she’d known for so long.

  The fear she’d known for so very long.

  His eyes blinking away warm tears.

  The small stone cottage silent.

  Until-- From far below. In the cellar.

  The sound of footsteps on the old rickety staircase and then the soft creak of that cellar door. A pregnant pause. Before a shadow began to rise on the wall outside the open nursery door. Slowly ascending. Ascending.

  As a cold draft blew into the nursery.

  A rather familiar cold draft in the end.

  Snuffing out that candlelight gone dull.

  And leaving only the red moonlight.

  And that slowly ascending shadow.

  Rising. Rising on the wall in the night.

  On this long and unending night.

  Oliver finally closed his eyes.

  The world faded to pitch black behind his closed eyelids. And sound for the moment to the banging jackhammer of his terrified heartbeat and the irregular gasps of his twittery respiration.

  He kept his eyes closed.

  But for brief ghastly flash pops.

  Involuntary glimpses really.

  Of his impending doom.

  Flash pop.

  The rising shadow falling over him.

  Flash pop.

  A cold black hand reaching for him. A cold black hand turned a cadaverous gray in the red moonlight. Leading Oliver from the nursery. And into the short dark hall beyond it. And down the dark narrow staircase.

  Flash pop.

  The old rusted horseshoes nailed to the double stable doors in their odd concentric circles. Knocking hollowly as they bid to him a farewell.