The Splendor of Fear

by Ambrose Ibsen

  Maybe it's the candlelight. It looks warmer, more inviting because of it.

  Or maybe the house is showing you a new face—presenting a different version of itself.

  Maybe it's been feeding on your misery, mending itself with your anguish.

  An unsteady laugh escaped my lips as I started for the copse to the right of the house. As I'd done before with Jared, I crept around the driest edge of the standing pool to keep my feet dry, but I'd only gone a few paces when I realized it wasn't necessary. The water level had fallen substantially throughout, so that I could walk straight to the porch without fear of plunging in past my calves. Stepping carefully to keep my laces dry, I made it onto the bottom porch step, and the light splashing I made extinguished a few nearby candles with a hiss.

  Taking up one of the candles on the porch, I stepped over the remainder and towards the front door, where the shadows and the firelight fought for supremacy. Somewhere deep inside, casting that delicious orange glow, was the hearth. If I quieted my breathing while standing at the threshold, I fancied I could make out the popping of firewood.

  It was a delightful noise, utterly reassuring. The sights and sounds of a fire brought to mind quaint images of frontier living, of nights spent lounging under a blanket, and despite the house's previous associations, I began to sense that this was a place I could feel safe in, at least temporarily. To my beleaguered mind, if I was to pass the night anywhere in this forgotten acre, to wait patiently for Jared, then this was the wisest choice, bar none.

  A bead of white wax rolled down the taper in my hand and cooled against my knuckles. I stepped inside, the low salutation of the creaky floors making my shoulders tense as I did so. Borne on a gust of wind, a handful of leaves skittered across the foyer, and they looked to me like scurrying mice in the sparse candlelight. I wavered there for quite some time, looking for my voice. “I-Is anyone there?” I called out. The voice was barely my own; it was raspy, weighed down by fear.

  No response came to my query.

  Starting deeper in, and simply being thankful to have the moldering walls standing between me and the fierce cold of the night, I allowed myself to relax somewhat, and began seeking out the room with the hearth in it. It wasn't hard; all I had to do was follow its voluminous glow across the walls. I did just that, weaving out of the foyer, to the right. This brought me into a shadowy room full of toppled furniture whose only light came from the flickering of some few tapers scattered pell-mell in candlesticks across the floor. I had been in this room once before; it was the room with the rusted stove, the one with the mottled rug and broken chairs.

  The fire was coming from a room adjacent. I glimpsed the light—and with a shudder of delight, felt its warmth—through a narrow doorway planted some ten feet beyond. Careful not to disturb the mess in this dark room, I shuffled through and paused in said doorway, where I discovered a lovely fire bumbling in a stone hearth. And more.

  This room was as cozy and pleasant a thing as a house of this age and disrepair could possibly have managed, and a slow pan across its length told me it was in a relatively good state compared to the rest of the place. Forming something of a dead-end, there were no other doorways in this room leading to other spots in the lower story. It was relatively high-ceilinged; I wagered the ceilings here were in the ballpark of nine or ten feet. I couldn't have touched them even standing on a chair. The plaster on the walls had been chipped and gouged over the years, but overall they held up, and in one spot a piece of art still hung in place—a primitive-looking depiction of the Last Supper, by the looks of it.

  Unlike other rooms, this one appeared free of water damage. A stack of logs sat beside the fireplace in a rusted iron receptacle, and a pair of wooden chairs were positioned on opposite ends of the hearth. The mantle was built of thick, natural wood, but except for an abundance of dust there was nothing on it. Pacing around in this simple room, I soaked in the warmth that rolled out of the hearth and sighed with genuine relief. I felt like I'd run across a water bottle in the desert; I wasn't out of the woods just yet—literally and figuratively—but this was a step in the right direction. Hunger and thirst were not negligible for me at this point, but I was thankful enough for this modicum of comfort not to concern myself with those growing appetites.

  In awe of my luck, I planted the candlestick I'd been carrying upon the stone of the hearth and then eased myself down into one of the chairs, finding it solid. My legs, excruciatingly overtired, spasmed a little as I stretched them out towards the fire. I leaned back, letting my body sink against the frame of the chair, and let the warmth wash over me.

  I wasn't sure who had started this fire or lit the candles, but I was damn thankful for it. Perhaps it really had been Jared; maybe he'd found his way back here and had set about making this place a temporary base camp until he could figure out how to get us home. Where he'd gone since remained to be seen, but as I relaxed in the chair and soaked up the warmth, I hoped he would soon return.

  The house was silent, but thanks to the stirring and popping of the fire the silence was not oppressive. Outside, the wind buffeted the exterior, setting the entire place creaking for several seconds. I cradled myself and prayed that this ordeal would come to an end. Eventually, it would have to, right? The curse that had befallen Newsom's Landing, however supernatural, still operated on a fixed schedule. It was said to last only a single day. I wondered why it was that Ellie Pomeroy's spirit remained here, why she poisoned this place so long after death, and if she could possibly be convinced to stop. What did she want? Justice? Revenge? A friendly ear?

  It occurred to me that she might have been the one that had started this blaze in the hearth. Maybe if I stuck around long enough, she'd find me sitting in her chair and I'd have a chance to ask her personally.

  We had made a mistake by coming here on September 14th—the date upon which the long-dead witch was at the height of her powers—but eventually the date would change. Within minutes or hours, the calendar would inexorably roll over to the 15th, and I had to believe that her sway over these woods would ebb, thus freeing anyone trapped within. All Jared and I had to do was survive until that happened.

  It was easier said than done, maybe, but as I nodded off by the fire, I felt like we had a fighting chance.

  Fifteen

  I dreamt in that house where none had dreamt for over a hundred years.

  Slouching in the chair, head bobbing as I struggled to remain upright, my body took a much needed rest, but my mind remained as active as ever.

  It started with a bit of noise; a rustling, specifically. I found myself sitting up, looking around the room. Its borders were ill-defined now, and the finer details had blurred into a shadowed mess, but the major elements remained, and were, if anything, more vivid in my dream than they had been in waking life.

  My eyes caught the bumbling of the fire. The tongues of flame visible in the hearth were long and thin, and they swayed to a private rhythm. What began as red flame shifted glacially to orange, and then yellow, as was to be expected. But I stared on in wonder as the fire began to explore the other hues on the spectrum; the hearth came to glow with a cold blue, then a verdant green. The room was lit eerily in indigo when I glanced away from the fire and became aware of another presence in the room.

  It was a woman. She strode in very quietly, the floors barely creaking beneath her step. Wearing a long, white dress and a bonnet from whence long tails of carefully-braided hair snuck down her shoulders, she looked almost like a milkmaid. She did not turn to look at me; in fact, as she walked across the room and took a seat in the chair opposite mine, she seemed to be making an effort to mask her face from me.

  Sitting bolt upright in her chair, the woman—face hidden by shadow or else masked by the machinery of the dreamspace—began to tend the fire. She reached out and picked up one of the metal instruments kept by the store of firewood and stoked the flames. She did so with great care and interest, and like me, she seemed transfixed by the shiftin
g colors.

  The fire went from indigo back to red, then orange, then yellow, then blue, green...

  I don't know how many of these cycles the two of us had watched in silence when I heard the woman begin to laugh.

  It was a quiet laugh—the amused laugh of a woman who'd just happened upon a funny memory. What she did next was stranger still; using the iron poker she held in her wan hand, she carefully plied one of the lit logs from the flaming mound and eased it out of the hearth. It rolled down the pile, kicking up sparks, until it came to rest at the very edge of the stone.

  The woman bent down and picked up the flaming log.

  A very strange feeling rose up in my chest as I watched. I couldn't say why I was distressed at the scene, but in my gut I understood something very frightening was occurring. Heedless of the pain it must have caused, the woman scooped up the flaming log and placed it upon her lap, where the flame immediately began consuming her long, white dress. As the fire spread—red, orange, yellow—she rocked gently in her seat and let loose another, throatier, laugh.

  The fire spread. She rocked frontwards and backwards with increasing force, laughed harder. The fire was blue now, green, indigo. The bonnet went up in flames, as did the braids, and even then she didn't look up at me. The fire made light work of her clothing and began feasting on the skin beneath, and rather than shriek or cry, the woman just kept on laughing. Eventually she was still, and the chair itself had caught fire. The room was full of smoke—smoke that smelled like sandalwood and lavender, rather than burning flesh. As the fire ate its way inward and the depths of her torso were bared, the smells intensified in their sweetness.

  Then there was darkness. Every sense was shut down in an instant. I couldn't recall the smells that had filled the air only moments ago; could not so much as conceive of scent itself. I'd traveled deeper into sleep.

  My awakening was gradual. The warm hues of the fire—straight oranges and yellows—pried at my eyes like the morning sun. I'd developed a crick in my neck from slumping in the chair.

  From somewhere in the room, I heard a faint creak. Taking a deep breath, I sat up and opened my eyes, expecting to find someone tending the fire. I didn't recall, just then, precisely where I was or how I'd gotten there, but the recollection only took me a few seconds of confused blinking.

  There was no one at the fire. The logs had burned down substantially and a good deal of white ash had accumulated amongst them. I wasn't sure how much time had passed since I'd dozed off, and as I wiped at my eyes and tried to puzzle that out, everything else came back into focus.

  Jared. The curse. The house. The woods.

  I was still in the house. Jared wasn't there. I had no idea of the date, but there was every possibility the calendar hadn't yet rolled over to the 15th of the month—and that I remained under the witch's sway.

  That strange creak sounded again, pulling me from my thoughts. It was clearer this time, and seemed nearer, too. Looking past the hearth, then past the empty chair, I found nothing, but as I turned towards the doorway I discovered a new shadow hovering nearby.

  I fell out of my chair.

  The creak had not been the settling of the floors or the bracing of the house against the wind, but the sound of rope under tension. While I'd slept, a length of rope had been strung over one of the wooden beams in the ceiling, and at its other terminus, dangling two or three feet from the floor, was a limp body.

  My eyes glazed over with terror, and I scrambled across the floor, into the opposite corner of the room. Pressing my back to the wall, I stared up at the corpse in dumb horror, slack-jawed. I didn't want to look at it, but the odious pull of the thing was so magnetic I couldn't look away.

  It was the body of a woman—or what had once been a woman. Patchy tendrils of oily silver hair obscured parts of the face and neck, but as the body turned on its noose, rolling this way and that in the draft, everything was more or less visible. The eyes, sunken and drooping in life, were thrust wide open now, and the yellowed spheres bulged to such an incredible degree it seemed a miracle that they didn't come tumbling out of their sockets. A malformed nose like a worm writhing out of white soil festooned the face.

  Perhaps most jarring of all was the mouth, though. The lips were parted slightly, and the overall impression was that the blackened teeth behind were locked in an eternal grit. But as the figure rotated, I saw this was not the case. The jaw was marked on each side by two rust-colored studs—the heads of nails—which had been driven through the flesh and into the bone.

  I knew then that I was staring up at the corpse of Ellie Pomeroy, and my stomach seized. The hateful creature behind all of my delusions and sufferings presently dangled before me, completely naked. Her body was white as bone and threaded in knotty blue veins. The body looked fresh, somehow—drained only very recently of its vital energies.

  I had to get out of the room. I would have done just about anything to avoid existing in close proximity to the hanging witch, but my only exit from the room lied past her swaying form. My teeth chattered more intensely than they had when I'd been out in the cold, and all the bones in my body seemed to follow suit as I fought to stand. After no little effort, I succeeded in gaining my feet, but remained a quaking mess. Combing my hair out of my face and holding my breath, I began creeping around the room's perimeter towards the doorway, sticking close to the walls.

  All that while, the creaking of the rope waxed discordantly and the dead woman's eyes traveled in a neat arc along with the sway of her body, her gaze possessing the sharpness of a knife. Every time those jaundiced eyes bore into me, I couldn't help but stop. My retreat only resumed when she shifted with the draft and the spell of her gaze was momentarily broken.

  I was very nearly to the door when it occurred to me that this was merely the latest in a long succession of hallucinations. Quivering against the wall, some ten feet from the doorway, I glared at the corpse and wondered what reason the witch had to show me such a thing. I knew from the history I'd read that Ellie Pomeroy had not been hanged; she'd been murdered by a group of townsfolk and buried face-down in an unmarked grave. The scene I now faced was undoubtedly horrific, but it didn't reflect reality as I knew it, and I began to wonder if it was even real. After all, I had seen and heard many things in these woods that had turned out to be nothing more than illusion.

  Reflecting on all I'd been through, something rose up in me, began to supplant the terror that'd left me mute and paralyzed. I was angry.

  Looking up at the witch with contempt, I spoke. It took me a few moments to clear the tearful edge from my voice. “Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Why are you torturing me, and Jared?”

  The body eased back to the right so that those dead, answerless eyes were fixed on me again.

  I shuddered, but kept on all the same. “Jared and I didn't do anything to you. Understand? We just came here to spend some time on this land—we didn't do anything to deserve this. Why are you still haunting these woods after so long? And why target the two of us?”

  The rope groaned as the corpse reeled slowly to the left.

  I choked down my fear and took another step—then another—towards the door. “You lit all of those candles, didn't you? And you started this fire. You wanted us to be drawn to the house, right?” I glanced around the room. “Well, I've been here awhile, and I'm still wondering what the point is—what you want from us. Do you want to scare us—to get revenge on the living for what you went through? Do you want us to feel bad for you? What the hell is it?”

  My next step coincided with another shift in the rope, and the corpse locked eyes with me.

  “You've put us through a lot of shit,” I seethed. “But you've scared me enough. None of this is real. I know who you are, and I know how long you've been dead. And I'm done being scared.”

  I walked past the corpse, finally arriving at the door. I had been in the process of drawing in a relieved sigh when my shoulder brushed up against the witch's limp foot, and instead a
wicked shiver coursed through me. Even as I pulled away, took a step through the door, I was taken aback by something.

  That foot—that dead flesh I'd bumped up against—had felt real.

  It hadn't felt like an illusion.

  Suddenly, my courage evaporated and the fear came running back to take its place.

  I started through the dark room ahead of me, leaving behind the corpse and the fire, and navigated by the light of the few candles on the floor, which had by then been reduced to stubs. I felt my way to the next room and headed towards the front door. That was when I heard a voice coming from somewhere else in the house.

  “Penny?”

  I froze.

  “Penny? You in here, Penny?”

  It was Jared.

  “J-Jared!” I cried. “Is it really you?”

  I heard him sigh loudly. “I've been looking everywhere for you, babe. Where are you?”

  My legs weakened at the sound of his voice, such was my joy at being reunited. I wanted to run to him, but I wasn't able to pinpoint his location. It sounded like he was deeper in the house, perhaps several rooms away, or even in the upstairs. “I'm in here! I'm in the house, I... I'm near the room with the fireplace.” I turned this way and that, trying to furnish a better description of my current surroundings, but I stopped short.

  I had turned—for only a second—back towards the room I'd just come from. The firelight issued warmly from the doorway, and the noose continued its oscillations.

  But there was no one hanging from it.

  The body—Ellie Pomeroy's body—was nowhere in sight.

  The horrific implications of my discovery were only just beginning to dawn on me when I heard a sudden cacophony of feet smacking against the timeworn floors. Bare, flabby soles were striking the planks from somewhere in the lower story, and were doing it with such rabid force that I could feel it from several rooms away. The walls shook as something struggled after me in the darkness; something that would enter into sight at any moment.