Dark Duets

by Christopher Golden

  I froze, hating the thought. Not a raven. Not anything so ominous.

  With a shiver I remembered the earlier storm, the monstrous hounds crawling across the fields for us. The woman in red leading them, her mouth a gleaming slash in her face.

  Owen had promised me it was a nightmare. But for a moment I thought I could hear them again in the wind outside. The sound of them howling. Coming for us.

  For me.

  Owen sensed the change in me, lifting his head, worry furrowing his brow. “Emily?”

  I swallowed around a heavy weight in my throat. “How did we get here?”

  He smiled, the expression lopsided, making him look younger. More dear. “Well, first, I removed that robe . . .”

  I laughed, but not for long before the tears came, quick and painful. “Stop. How did this happen?” I paused, one tear welling over, falling back into my hair before he could stop it, and then I whispered, “What did we do to deserve this?”

  He kissed me then, as the answer came. As though he could make the truth disappear along with fear and disappointment and devastation . . . and betrayal.

  I gasped against his lips. Betrayal.

  “You lied to me.”

  He looked away.

  I kept talking. “Every night. We do this.”

  “We love.”

  Love. Love and distance. Love and fear. Love and sadness. Love and betrayal. “And every day, I leave.”

  I could see the pain in his beautiful eyes—those eyes the color of the sea I cross every day. “Every day.”

  “Every day I remember.” And I did remember. I remembered all of it, suddenly, and he knew it. He saw the memories come and he rushed to stop them. To explain them. Like he had a thousand times before.

  “I neglected you.” His voice cracked. “I ignored your pain, your sadness, in part because I did not know how to chase it away and in part because I was terrified of what it would do to me.”

  The words hurt. They hurt as much as the memories that came with him. The nights alone, aching for him. The days of wanting him. The way I had to stand by and watch him become less and less of the man I’d loved . . . more and more of the man I married.

  The way he’d changed.

  The way I had.

  And then, the night I’d left, tired and angry and filled with sorrow and unwilling to go another moment here, in this house with this shadow of a man who resisted love and passion. Unwilling to live without it.

  Unwilling to ask him for it.

  I’d left. And he’d died.

  And I had vowed to forget him.

  Since then . . . years . . . centuries . . . we’ve danced this dance. Given what we thought we wanted. Every night: me, alone in a changing world without memory; him, alone in an unchanging one, remembering everything. Filled with regret.

  How we were both filled with regret.

  And then, after we’ve finally found each other and seen the mistakes we made—

  “I leave. And I forget you. I forget the truth.”

  That I hate him. That I love him.

  “But I never forget you,” he said, and pain seeped through me like dye cast in the ocean, infecting every drop. “I never forget what I’ve done. I never stop regretting that I did not cherish you. I never forget what I feel.”

  “What do you feel?”

  He leaned back against the massive pillows on the bed, the tartan baring him to the waist, revealing a wicked scar crossing his chest from shoulder to hip. The wound that killed him. The wound that took him from me.

  The wound that brought him back.

  I reached out to touch it, and he caught my fingers, bringing them to his lips. Kissing their tips. “I feel the moments we have missed. The eternity we have been apart. I feel the way I long for you when you aren’t here.”

  He punctuated the sentences with soft, lush kisses. And, finally, he said, “I feel the way you ache for me when you leave.”

  The words were the worst possible blow. We had lost everything but the memory of what might have been and lived in a place where everything was gray and we were so alone.

  Each lost in the mist without the other.

  And yet . . . “I would live this night again and again—forever—if it was all I had of you,” I told him.

  “No,” he said. “No more,” he whispered at my temple, holding me in strong, steel arms that seemed able to keep everything at bay. “Not again.”

  “Of course again,” I said, refusing this words. “This is how we have each other.”

  “But, Emily, you can have so much more . . . the other side . . . away from this dark place and its hounds and its wickedness . . . you can have it.”

  He lifted my lips to his, kissing me again, as though the caress could force me to understand. To choose. To leave him.

  As if it didn’t make me want to stay forever.

  I pulled away. “I don’t want it. Whatever it is. I want you.”

  He cursed, soft and sweet in the waning candlelight. “This is my hell, not yours. They were my sins, never yours. You deserve paradise.”

  I shook my head. “You always thought I was the perfect one.”

  He pulled me to him, holding me as tightly as he ever had, strong arms, harsh breath, fierce love. “You are perfect.”

  But I wasn’t. I was as imperfect as he was. Blessedly so.

  And because of that I did not have paradise.

  I had him.

  “I WON’T LEAVE you,” I said, eager to start again. To throw open the sash and toss ourselves through. “Not again.”

  Outside the sky was turning a dishwater gray as the sun struggled to rise. Inside, Owen and I lay tangled in the sheets of his massive bed. He traced a finger down my neck, along my collarbone, over my ribs. His lips followed in the wake of his caress, stilling at the hollow above my hip, his words like a prayer there. “Please, Emily, I beg you. Please leave.”

  The words stung. Lacerated. Demolished. “You want me to leave?”

  “Don’t you understand? This is agony. Every minute with you is unmatched pleasure and unbearable pain because I know that you shall leave, and I shall be alone again, weeping for your loss, aching for you. Desperate for more than a handful of hours. For a lifetime. For an eternity where we don’t have to worry about time or torture or hell.”

  He looked to me, eyes full of anger. “And every day I know it will happen again. You will come and I will love you and I will lose you. And perhaps I could face it, if it weren’t for you. If I did not know that you, too, ache. If every bright memory were not clouded over with the memory of your tears day after day. Tears I have caused.” His voice wavered, more breath than sound. “It’s been this way for centuries, Emily. And I am so tired.”

  A tear trailed down my cheek, and he pressed his lips to it.

  “I don’t want you to suffer.”

  At my words he left the bed, paced across the room before coming to kneel by me, my legs now dangling over the edge. He gripped my knees with his hands, dropping a kiss onto each of my thighs before saying, “That’s the torture of it. Not my own pain—but the pain I cause you. Every morning I break your heart and I can’t . . .”

  His voice cracked and he squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his lips together. His entire body was quivering. When he finally looked up at me, his eyes were bright, anguished. “I can’t keep hurting you like that. Please. Please, you have to end it.”

  I slid from the bed until I, too, was on my knees.

  “Why can’t I just stay here, like this?” I asked him. “Never leave, never go to the dock, never get on the ferry?”

  He shook his head. “We’ve tried that before. Hundreds of times. The woman in red always comes for you with her hounds and drags you away screaming.” His thumb traced circles at the base of my throat. “We’ve tried resisting, we’ve tried tricking and outsmarting. We’ve tried it all so many times that I’ve lost count. And the end is always the same.”

  A sad smile played across hi
s lips. “Every morning I beg you to leave me and never look back, but you always do. But please, Emily, please, this once . . . step onto that boat and stare only into the fog. Don’t look back. This island is a curse—a hell that imprisons both of us. Across the water is paradise—it’s love and light and everything you deserve.”

  “Except for you,” I whispered.

  He dropped his gaze. “I bring you nothing but misery. That’s all I’ve ever brought you.”

  I cupped my hand under his chin and raised his head until he met my eyes. “Not now. Now, you are paradise.”

  His lips found mine, desperate and yearning. He trailed kisses across my jaw, down my neck, across my collarbone. His hands dug into my back, pulling me closer as if he could somehow make us one being.

  Around us, the morning light grew stronger, and I heard the trace of a dog’s howl in the distance. Owen stilled, his muscles going tense. “I love you,” I said, wishing I’d said it in life. When it might have changed this.

  There were tears in his eyes when he pulled away, stood, and helped me to my feet. He thrust my clothes from last night into my hands. “If you truly love me, Emily, please, board the boat and don’t look back; it’s the only way for you to be happy.”

  “And what of your happiness?”

  “My happiness means nothing if it comes at the cost of yours.” He paused, the words catching in his throat. In mine. “I should have seen that in life.”

  Sadness coursed through me. Regret. Anger.

  Fear.

  Outside, the hounds gathered.

  OWEN WAITED FOR me just outside the front door. Fog lay heavy on the ground, but it wasn’t thick enough to block out the glow of the eyes of the hounds standing near the edge of the forest. Their breath turned to cloud in the chill morning air, and I could almost smell their rancid stench from where I stood.

  I latched onto Owen’s arm, and he slipped his fingers through mine. “They won’t bother us. They’re here to make sure we go.”

  True to his word, we followed the path into the tangle of trees without incident. The hounds kept their distance, shadowing us through the damp forest.

  I’d remembered the hike to the castle as being long and arduous, but on our return we found the shore too quickly. Already the boat was there, bobbing at the end of the dock. The man I’d seen before—the one with the three Labs—stood to the side and he tipped his hat when I glanced at him. Next to him stood the woman in red. Hounds paced behind her, anxious and ready.

  I hesitated, and one of the dogs bristled, taking a step toward us. The woman in red stopped him with a hand on his head, a smile in her cold, black gaze. She was enjoying our torture—the prolonged pain of our endless good-bye. I wanted nothing more than to run at her and gouge her eyes out.

  But I knew Owen was right. That would solve nothing. It would merely rob me of these last moments with the man I loved.

  Owen faced me, his hand cupping my cheek. In his eyes I could easily see the question: Would I leave him? Would I stop this agonizing cycle?

  I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know.

  The pain in him was overwhelming, and my heart ached with it. His anguish was more devastating than anything I had ever experienced—this moment worse than I could endure. But when I stepped onto that boat, it would vanish. I’d forget. I’d heal.

  But he wouldn’t.

  And if I looked back, I was dooming him to another morning of torture. A day of agony. So I could see him again. So I could touch and taste him and feel his hands on my body.

  “Leave me.” Owen’s mouth pressed against my own; his tears salted our lips. “Save yourself from this nightmare. Please . . .”

  It was his last request . . . that I leave him here, to this hell. To the fog and the gray and the hounds.

  I stepped back and took my last look at him, my chest tight, tears stinging my eyes and closing my throat. How could I leave this man? Our love? How could I accept an eternity without him?

  What was heaven without him?

  I turned and began the long walk down the dock. Charlie waited for me at the other end, his hand held out to bring me aboard.

  And this pain was nothing compared to what Owen suffered each day, compounded. His hell grew worse every time I arrived.

  I was the instrument of his torture.

  I had to leave him.

  The tears came as I slipped my hand into Charlie’s, feeling his strength in opposition to my weak knees, my trembling body. I lifted a foot and placed it onto the boat and I took a deep breath.

  Behind me I could feel Owen waiting. Wanting.

  He wanted to save me. But he didn’t understand that the only time I was saved was in his arms. That he could never save me by pushing me away.

  My heart screamed against my ribs, wind off the sea stinging my face.

  I knew I was being selfish. I was dooming him again, as I had every day before.

  But I couldn’t let him go.

  When I turned back, Owen was on his knees. Behind him, the man with the dogs stood next to the woman in red: his face streaked with tears, hers awash in triumph.

  But it was Owen I cared about, Owen I needed to see, and in his eyes I saw it all: the agony and the elation. Devastated that I would not leave him, even as he rejoiced that tonight, I would return.

  That he would have another chance to beg me to leave. That I would have another night wrapped in his arms.

  In our twisted paradise.

  Owen’s lips moved and even though I couldn’t hear him, I knew it was the word he said each morning. Every time. “Farewell.”

  And then he was drowned by the fog.

  I stood alone in the gray, surrounded by cloud. My throat burned and eyes watered as the frigid wind snapped at my face. I’d never felt emptier in my life.

  Behind me a voice sounded, all smoke and whiskey. “You’re headed for the castle.”

  I turned, startled. I’d been lost in my thoughts, though what they were I couldn’t remember. I shook my head, trying to clear it.

  “I’m Charlie.” He extended one hand, the size of a tree trunk, and added, “And you’re Emily.”

  Hand Job

  Chelsea Cain and Lidia Yuknavitch

  One day, her hand began to speak.

  It was not the thumb, old opposable standby. One would think perhaps the thumb would have the resolution and guts, being the evolutionary head of things and all, but it was not the thumb. To her astonishment, it was her pinkie finger. That seemingly useless dangler, good for next to nothing but hooking into a grip with the others or carving out an especially stubborn bit of ear wax or applying lip balm.

  “Well, this is it,” her pinkie said, out of the blue.

  She stared at it. Though it made her feel foolish, she spoke, sitting back down on the couch to steady herself. “Excuse me, but this is what?” was all she could think to say.

  She placed her nonspeaking hand over the speaking one gently like a woman crossing her hands in her lap.

  “Do you mind?” her pinkie said. “I’m trying to talk to you.” And so she quickly gave her louder hand air and space. “That’s better,” her pinkie said.

  They sat for a moment in silence. She didn’t want to be rude so she did not stare at her pinkie. Instead, she looked out of her bedroom window at the tall camellia tree with its happy little rosen faces and waxen leaves. She looked at the Restoration bird feeder—so squirrel proof, with its brushed metal and black iron. She looked at the wind chimes—the larger pewter ones with minor-keyed song, and the smaller golden-rodded ones with a major-keyed hymn.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake . . . can you stop daydreaming for a second? You call this a life?” her pinkie said, raising up a little with indignation. “This is a slack-minded grotesque cartoon version of a life. An air-freshened glossy magazine prison. Look at all this domesticity shit. What are you, Martha fucking Stewart? At least Martha had some chutzpah and went to jail. Knitted ponchos with black women. What’ve you done lately
? Run the dishwasher?”

  Taken aback, she looked over toward the kitchen, where the dishwasher hummed dully: it was exceedingly efficient.

  “Yep, best keep those motherfucking dishes clean!” her pinkie continued. “I mean, Jesus, woman, what the hell has happened to you? Did you honestly think we wouldn’t . . . you know, notice?” Silence sat between them the length of her arm.

  She coughed up a response: “When you say ‘we,’ who do you mean, specifically?”

  Her pinkie shot out straight away from the other fingers on her hand. “Oh my God. Have you gone brain dead? Hello?” And now her entire hand was in front of her face, her phalanges all waving vigorously like fat flesh-colored worms. “This we, you stupid meat sack!” her pinkie screamed.

  She glanced a bit too hopefully at her other hand. It just sat there, passive and limp. Typical, she thought. What was all this about? A pinkie rebellion? What did she even use her pinkie for that mattered? Briefly she got an image of herself in her mind’s eye, doing that thing she did every morning on her monotonous commute to work, letting the freeway sort of take control, hooking her pinkies only around the base of the steering wheel. Almost not driving. Just gliding along a path already laid out for her—her whole life . . . Right about the time she gathered the courage to make a fist out of her speaking hand—I mean, really, this was nonsense, she could simply make a fist and curl that little mouthy bitch up and under if she wanted to, or even better, run to the closet where the winter clothes sat neatly in a box and slip on a mitten—her pinkie launched itself at her face. She panicked and slapped at it with her free hand, like she was fending off an attacking bat. Then there was a sound, a blade slicing through ham, the pop of the skin and then the soft give of the meat. Her nose felt like it was full of cold water, and pain seared between her eyes. Then she heard something hit the floor, a little thud, just before she managed to grab her offending hand by the wrist and wrestle it to her thigh.

  She tasted blood, all acrid tin warmth. It filled her mouth and snaked around her lips.