Flash pop.
All the black birds alighting from the small stone cottage.
Lifting into the night sky against that giant crimson moon.
Flash pop.
The thin narrow path leading into the dark woods. A dark woods full of frightful-looking trees. Badly stunted. Knurled trunks. Crooked deformed limbs. Clad with spiny leaves. Grayish-skinned. The color of bone long after the meat had rotted away. Offering fractured winks of a dark marrow.
Flash pop.
Creepy-crawly and slithery things.
Skittering and rustling about in the dark.
Flash pop.
Shadowy fairy-like things flitting about, too.
Large and small. Hissing. Laughing.
Flash pop.
That grayish hand pulling him along.
Deeper down the wooded path.
Flash pop.
The dark woods abruptly opening to a clearing. Small, if well-tended bonfires bordering the path, welcoming flames jumping, crackling, spitting in the red moonlight as the ground beneath his feet turned soft and marshy.
Flash pop.
Lanterns fashioned from turnips and beets. Dreadful visages of ghoulish suffering carved into them. Winking and blinking hazy candlelight.
Candlelight of most unnatural color.
Blinding him with their fuzzy halos.
Purple. Marigold. Red. Blue.
Flash pop.
The fairy-things now whirling about him.
The women in flowing dresses. Cone-shaped hats. And the men in medieval vests and woolen knickers. Curved Manx sheep horns on their heads.
Their whirling faces hidden behind terrible masks. Terrible masks offering darkly fantastical and grossly exaggerated features. Elongated noses. Bulging eyes. Fiendish grins. And mouths curdled in horrid screams.
Capering about to wild isometric Gaelic music.
A simple harmony without regular meter.
Hornpipes. Fiddle. Accordion. Six-hole tin whistle.
A festival of the macabre. The dead.
Flash pop.
Familiar faces peeking out here and there.
At Oliver from behind these terrible masks.
Charlotte. The eerie strawberry twins.
Holding hands. Dancing about in a circle.
The Shoprite girl. The pharmacy clerk.
Oliver’s creepy little pupils. Fellow faculty.
Including the mole-like school headmaster. Simon Tibbets. Affectionately known as Tibbs. Gyrating most frenetically in a slant of red moonlight. Short arms flinging giddily. Thick stocky legs kicking-out spastically.
It would seem the entire town present.
The entire town in obscene costume.
And nearby. Dr. Marwick and Hilde.
The birthing blood still fresh on their clothing.
The pair hidden behind their own avatars.
Mocking eyes. Sneering toothy grins.
Colorful and horribly mordant.
Flash pop.
A druid priest. A druid priestess. Elders.
Black robes with black hoods over silver masks.
Silver masks that betrayed no expression.
Somehow most frightening of all because of it.
Yet their identities also quite familiar.
Quite familiar enough in the end.
Evidenced by a beaded necklace. Ghungroo dancing bells and 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.
Fay. The priestess.
Evidenced by a deep and hypnotic voice.
Possessing a melodic singsong tone.
The rasp reduced to a scratch.
Caleb. The priest.
Offering from behind his hideously expressionless silver mask beneath that draping black hood: “Where there is no fear… There is no grace…”
Flash pop.
The music rising. A frenzied crescendo.
Flash pop.
The cold black hand turned a cadaverous gray in the red light of the blood moon hung heavily over the wooded clearing leading him from the ceremony and down a narrower-still corridor through the shimmering heart of a much larger, impressively taller fulgurating bonfire to the black watered shore of--
A deep swampy bog.
A dark brackish water choked with peat and moss and snake-like vines. And populated besides with fearsome-looking carnivorous plants.
Sundews with their pin-shaped sticky red tentacles and free-floating, rootless bladderworts possessing large bright yellow poisonous flowers.
Oliver forced his eyes closed yet again.
Forcing himself to no longer peek.
Hiding in the darkness inside himself.
As if he could somehow hide there forever.
As if he could somehow escape his fate.
The ceremony continuing behind him.
But falling rather mute in his ears.
As the world fell silent about him once more.
But for his rapid shallow gasping breaths. That jackhammer of his heart. And the seductive lap of the cold, black, brackish water at his feet.
Then all too soon at his knocking knees.
Flash pop.
His eyes glimpsing once again.
Just simply unable to help themselves.
A grayish figure very slowly coming into focus. Standing before him in the murky black water in the glowing red moonlight. A woman. Flowing red hair. A hooded red cloak over a striped petticoat and black leather shoes with shiny buckles. Sharp cheekbones. Her lips a deep rosy-red in the moonlight.
Greeting him with large indigo blue eyes.
A vision of quite haunting beauty.
Young. Sad. Wise. Lonely.
“Sarah Blackwell,” he said.
“With lips of rosy hue…” Caleb hushed.
Hushed softly from somewhere behind Oliver.
His voice traveling over the black water.
“Dipp’d five times over in ambrosial dew…”
The black water now rising to Oliver’s waist.
At which point he found himself hesitating.
Unable to move his legs gone to stone.
His feet sinking down into the soft mud.
Too overcome and afraid for all that.
The haunting beauty before him smiled at him, sensing his fear, invigorated by it. Her grayish hand clutching harder still. Suddenly allowing him to find himself staring, instead, into the countenance of his wife, his Abby.
He sighed. A quietistic noise.
His body falling limp beneath him.
Allowing, as if he’d ever a choice, the haunting apparition to slowly drag him down into the black water turned the color of blood by the moon.
It was only in this heavy darkness far below the brackish surface the true nature of this pulchritudinous specter was finally revealed to him.
Much like the accumulation of drowning plants and the indistinguishable tiny little drowning creatures decaying in the acidic bog around him--
She turned before him monstrous.
And Oliver again heard Caleb’s voice:
Heard it one last and final time:
Echoing down into that cold darkness:
A final and closing stanza:
“…she leads them to destruction.”
Oliver’s mouth curdled into a scream that would never end as he suddenly found himself face-to-face with an elongated nose and bulging eyes turning from indigo blue to an obsidian black over a fiendish grin full of terrible teeth.
Hissing: “Stay…”
Before consuming him.
In an everlasting darkness.
38.
AT JUST THE VERY MOMENT her husband was slowly sinking down into that everlasting darkness, a most terrible shudder shook Abby from head-to-toe. A dismaying, if, in the end, an undeniable clairvoyant awareness that her Oliver, her husband, was now gone from her at just tha
t very moment.
She was sitting in the rocking chair.
The chair now facing the double-hung window.
The blood moon. Those dark woods.
She rose violently with the shudder. Crying out.
As if being rudely shaken from a deep trance.
Blinking heavily. Exhaling forcefully.
And suddenly no longer moving slowly as if at the malevolent whim of such a deep trance, but with resolve, as if time were of the essence. Snatching the swaddled newborn child from the crib, then scurrying fretfully to the nursery door only to find it closed.
Only to find it locked.
Fresh terror gripped her.
And a sense of horrible déjà vu.
Accompanied by the familiar, if harrowing sound of tiny wet and squelchy footsteps coming up from behind her in the light of that giant red moon.
She held the child even tighter.
Moaning with despair. Eyes closing again.
Anticipating sharp terrible claws.
A mouthful of black teeth.
Only to hear the door lock turn.
And the door swing ajar.
Eyes popping back open--
She found standing in the hall--
Mr. Ethan Hanover.
The real estate agent hurriedly entered the nursery. His muddy brown eyes overwrought beneath that nest of black hair, his gigantic Adam’s apple bobbing up and down even before he spoke as he went to the double-hung window and rather anxiously surveyed the dark intervening open ground between the small stone cottage and those dark woods, insuring they were actually truly alone.
“Please, love,” he whispered franticly.
Ushering her now toward the open door.
“There is not a moment to lose. Midsummer’s eve. The shortest night of the year and the nights will only grow longer and longer still with the next blood moon on the winter’s solstice.”
He shook his head with the thought.
“A most terrible year, aye,” he said.
Choking out the grievous words.
Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.
“A most terrible unnatural year.”
He grinned here. A tortured grin.
If seemingly unaware he was doing so.
“Then not another for three years more.”
A harried glance at his wristwatch.
“The first ferry leaves in an hour,” he said.
Still pushing her toward the open door.
Her and her tightly-held swaddled child.
“You must hurry, love,” he insisted.
The short dark hall beyond it.
The dark narrow staircase.
But as he did so, quite unbeknownst to Abby, Mr. Ethan Hanover, real estate agent, did happen to glance at the swaddled newborn child’s reflection in the large antique mirror with the ornate silver frame featuring those angelic-looking chubby-cheeked, dewy-eyed little cherubs with playful little smiles on fluffy white clouds. It was only the most absent and merest of glimpses, but it seemed to last a small eternity to the tall and thin man as the child in her arms was revealed to him to be anything but a small and fragile and innocent creature.
Rather, in a nightmarish flash--
That child was revealed to be--
In that dark cold flat mirror glass--
Swaddled despite it was: A demon.
A most ancient and dreadful evil.
Chilling quite instantly his very blood.
“My merciful god,” he gasped breathlessly.
Abby stepped back from the man.
Hugging the child even tighter still.
Unnerved by his sudden abhorrence.
As he now came to stand between them.
Between them and the open bedroom door.
“Abomination,” he then bewailed.
Quivering all over as he was.
Abby glared at him coldly.
“Move, Ethan,” she demanded sternly. Demanded of him between clenched teeth. “I beg of you, move,” she said.
Instead, he fumbled with the brass key--
Preparing in all his quivering haste to lock her and the swaddled newborn child in her arms inside this prison cell of a dark nursery once more.
And never quite noticing--
The boy crouching in the corner.
In the darkest of the corner shadows.
Thin knees pushed to his chin.
A long muddy shirt and trousers.
Mud-caked hair hanging in his face.
Over large sunken black eyes.
The boy rose in a most odd, uneven, hitching, and rather dreamlike manner. His bones soft and malleable, shifting about most unnaturally.
Creaking damply. Resettling.
Black eyes blinking slowly. Languidly.
As the boy shuffled silently forward.
From that darkest of corner shadows.
Into the crimson red moonlight.
Revealing a black leathery skin.
A black leathery mummified skin.
A severely sloped forehead.
A grimace of small crooked teeth.
As Ethan fumbled with that brass key.
The real estate agent never noticing the mummified boy until the last moment when it came for him in a sudden nightmarish flash of the eye.
Mr. Ethan Hanover then screamed.
A horrible strangling surprised noise.
That only all too soon faded.
Faded off into the stone walls of the small stone cottage as he was dragged from the crimson red moonlight into that darkest of corner shadows.
Abby, clutching the swaddled newborn child, pushed out into the short dark hall and down the dark narrow staircase and out of the small stone cottage itself once and for all -- only to be paused by a large dark creature prowling the muddy driveway in the red moonlight.
The giant beast. Charlemagne.
Capable of dispatching a wolf in one bite.
Running it down and severing its spine.
Much less a small mother and child.
It came between her and the half-buried Q5.
Useless the Q5, Abby immediately registered.
Immediately registered in an absent kind of way.
In an absent, exhausted, demoralized kind of way.
Before noticing in the dark a black sedan.
Still idling. That empty black sedan.
Wrapped with its silly local advertising.
Knocksharry Real Estate, it proudly said.
Replete with a black and white photo.
Of a smiling Mr. Ethan Hanover.
That smile flashing a silly grin of teeth.
A little twittery at the edges, perhaps.
The beast came between her and it.
Between her and that still-idling black sedan.
The giant wolfhound then did slowly approach mother and child, treading rather far too easily through the deep sloppy muddy soup without any sound, its massive head and neck held high. Its tail lifted in an upward sweep.
Muddy brown eyes red-tinged in the moonlight.
Those red-tinged eyes appraising the child.
The softly cooing newborn cradled in her arms.
And then subsequently, Abby herself.
Before its dark bristled snout lifted.
Lifted toward that giant round red moon.
A deep howl rising from its dark throat.
Echoing to the cliff-edge. Out to sea.
39.
ABBY STOOD ON THE back deck as the dark faint outline of the Isle of Man slipped into the cold sea like a dead body sinking down into a watery grave along with the shadowy castellated spire of the Tower of Refuge holding its long silent vigil in the heart of Douglas Bay. It was only then a cold and heavy fog gathered, attempting to erase any last memory of all of it.
The gathering fog also muffled sound.
The ferry boat’s powerful diesel engines.
The giant propeller churning the water below.
Slicing a
nd tumbling a dark foamy sea.
Abby felt herself shiver. Hug the child.
The newborn swaddled against her chest.
As the blood moon sank from the night sky.
Sank behind that gauzy curtain of fog.
A diminishing reddish-pale orb fading away.
As the rising sun hinted at the ship’s bow.
Imbuing the foggy darkness with light
With the first pale bands of light.
Charlemagne stood beside mother and child on the back deck. Ears pricked. Dark brown eyes alert, twinkling in the predawn. The giant beast stiffened and offered a low growl when a man appeared on the back deck for a morning smoke. The poor gentleman quickly thought better of such a thing and returned back inside.
Abby stared down at the child.
At the newborn swaddled in her arms.
A feathery fluff of coral red hair.
Mimicking soft flames on its head.
In this gathering of the predawn.
She whispered while staring down at it:
As if whispering to the fog itself:
Her voice a gentle singsong:
“Isn’t she beautiful?” she said.
Meanwhile, to the east, in this gathering of predawn, the cold and heavy fog slowly began to separate, stretching and pulling apart like cotton candy and eventually offering peeks and glimpses of the British mainland gradually appearing in the foreground.
Rising from the dark and choppy sea.
Rising not unlike an undead thing.
Not unlike a clever magic trick.
A rather clever bit of sorcerie.
As the child cooed softly.
40.
IN THE BEGINNING. Last autumn. Beyond a mist-cloaked copse of trees and a thick colorful hedgerow in red and orange bloom, just behind a crumbling stone wall blanketed in a fuzzy layer of dark moss, Oliver walked with his real estate agent, Ethan Hanover, out from the small stone cottage, a thin curl of dark gray smoke rising from the cottage’s old white chimney stack.
Ethan had just completed the tour.
A short tour of the small stone cottage.
A property he’d sold over the phone.
His first ever such sale in his line of work.
He was now politely making his leave.
A twittery smile. Quite eager to be off.
Despite it being hours still before dusk.
Only to feel a hand push at his backside.
Sorcerie Page 24