Grey October (East Hollow Chronicles)

by Charlotte Munro

  ‘Show me what will happen if I don’t take her.’

  ‘The girl with the face of the other?’ she asks, picking out a fluffy white and crimson stained part of the bread and flicking it into her non-existent mouth – I have no clue where it goes, but it fuels her, it is her sustenance. Her want. And if I give her what she wants, I can get what I want in return. That is after all, how Hell works.

  ‘Yes, her. Show me what will happen if I just leave things how they are.’ My voice does not shadow my urgency, my grip upon the table just accents that, and the witch looks up, her slithery eyes darting from me to the globe on the table. She drops the bread into her lap, brushes the crumbs from the darkness of her face and extends those bony fingers, all white and gnarled, all knotted and cracked, towards the orb; once her fingertips touch the clear glass it shrouds with colours, merging together to form colourful swirls, then patterns and finally clear images.

  ‘A King you shall be, but one most unwanted,

  Look to your friends, those that flaunt it.

  The girl left untouched will be an issue,

  All she asks, is for her to kiss you.’ She pauses, and I go to speak, raising a hand to say something, but she shoots a dagger cutting glare and wraps her gnarled hands around the orb once more.

  ‘Her heart is the key, the key to your suffering,

  Without her, Prince Boy, you will be nothing.’

  ‘You are a terrible old hag – nothing you say ever makes sense!’ my fingernails claw into the table, so much so, the wood grain splinters into my fingertips. I pull away, raking a hand through my hair, moving from side to side. Attempting on making sense of her riddles, trying to make these puzzle pieces fit.

  ‘Neither sense nor sensibility is inside of you, Evander. You know what you want, even if it is wrong.’ She sinks back into her chair, reaching her crooked fingers into her lap and pulling a few chunks of the bread apart, staring mindlessly at them as though they are about to catch alight.

  I turn away, pushing back the errant hairs from my face, trying to compose myself before leaving this forsaken room, but as I reach the door, hands resting on the doorframe, her words draw me back, turning my head over my shoulder my eyes meet hers.

  ‘You give her what she wants, she will be yours for the taking.’

  ‘For what I want?’ I ask, lifting an eyebrow.

  ‘To complete your mission or to start your own, give her what she wants and the seeds will be sown.’ She tents her fingers together just in front of her shrouded face, her dark robes rustle as she lowers her hand once more to pluck and dissect parts of the bread, peeling away the crust as though is it nothing but a shell, protecting the innards.

  I open the door wordlessly; the witch needs not my thanks, she needs a new job. I click shut the door and stand motionless for a few minutes, my mind digesting the information – what little help she was.

  She wants to kiss me? I can think of a thousand girls who want that, who would sell their soul a thousand times for a chance – but not one I want to kiss in return. What else… what else could she want?

  Surely someone like Elli wants more, needs more?

  I push myself away from the foretelling room; the sweet smoke of candles slips underneath the door and fills me with an unsteadiness. I tread over the red ground, staring down at the tracks on the clay earth before lifting my gaze to watch as the Demons soar back down from Earth, their black wings furling and then disappearing beneath a veil of invisibility, beneath their skin until they need them.

  Money. She needs money. Not for herself – no, she is too nice, too sweet to use it on herself – but for the shop, Beaumont’s Antiques. Human money, how meaningless it is here, but on Earth wars break out, humans kill each other for a few coin, a few crisp notes. Here, we have mounds and mountains of coins and notes, all the world’s currency, from the people we bring down here. Taken from their belongings, from everything on their person, we throw it all aside. We have no use for pitiful change, for currency as such. For in Hell we barter in souls and in promises, in contracts and bargains.

  Which I think is far more expensive than a pocketful of change.

  If I line my pockets, gather as many notes as I can. Tens, twenties, fifties. If I can give her what she wants, then she is mine for the taking… a contract bound and sealed. All I then need do is take her back down here with me and she’ll be reunited with her sister; mission complete.

  Yet…

  Why don’t I feel so accomplished? Why do I not feel relieved that it will all be over soon and I will ascend to my father’s throne, so easily, so simply?

  It has been seen in the glass orb; the colours of the future, it has been seen. It is my future.

  Easy for the taking.

  But I’ve grown a strong dislike for simplicity recently…

  Ellison –

  The wind howls in the trees, their naked branches waving and dancing upon the current, plucking the last few dying leaves from them and pulling them to the floor; the branches look more like gnarled fingers enticing you in, readying for the cold to bite into your bones and freeze your heart.

  Twilight has made the transition from dying light to dark navy skies; swirls of ominous clouds marble the black night above, fading from the grey October light to the dull, miserable charcoal skies. A promise of coming storms is made within the heavens, the dark clouds rolling in, darkening the blackened sky to a menacing purple and navy with flashes of lightning piercing through them. The deep rumble of thunder confirming that promise.

  The grass is wet beneath my knees, fresh rain has brought out the dampness of mud in the cemetery, brought rich green to the grass where otherwise it just looks a dying yellow. Dying, everything about this place is so full of The End. Underneath my fingertips, the callous stone of Madi’s monolith feels just as cold and dead as I feel on the inside.

  ‘Madi.’ I whisper, feeling the wind cut through to my already numbed bones. I’ve been sitting her since leaving work early, just when the navy was seeping into the rumbling clouds. Now the skies are pitch dark with only the distant amber glow of streetlights lighting up the dark and eerie graveyard.

  My phone vibrates again, inside my coat pocket, another text from Jade or Liv. I ignore it, knowing that it’s one of them wondering where I’ve gotten to. Last I checked the screen, Liv was leaving me to it, in her words, guessing I was with Prince Boy and that she would leave me alone. I couldn’t help but chuckle, how far from the truth that was.

  Sitting alone in the cold, dark cemetery in front of my sister, is far from sitting in a bar or a restaurant, anywhere with him.

  ‘Am I good enough, Madi?’ I murmur, catching my reflection in the rain soaked stone, ‘Am I good enough for him?’ I lose my voice in the harsh winds, losing it with the whoosh of dead leaves and stray flower petals. I lower my eyes from the stone to the marbled shingle above her grave, to the rustling petals of the pink roses I have just placed there.

  ‘I’m not you.’ I breathe, feeling a choke forcing my throat shut, ‘I’m not perfect, not good enough.’ I grip my fingers into my damp jeans, feeling the cold gnaw through the material and numb my skin, freezing me to my bones.

  ‘It should have been me. Not you. It should have been me.’ I bite my lip, trying to fight back the choking sob, but in doing that I have failed to stop my eyes from running with warm tears. The rain starts just then and my face is wet from icy rain and the salty warmth of tears. The rain batters into me, slamming into my side intertwined with an onslaught of wind. I shield myself slightly, raising a hand to stop the leaves from tussling around me, blurring my vision as well as the tears as I lift myself up.

  ‘Madi.’ I swallow the lump that sits still so prominent in my throat. The rain continues soaking through my thin coat, matting my hair in sodden knots. As I stand right before my sister’s tombstone, the flashes of lightning light it up; the crackles illuminate the sky for me as I turn away and crunch over the gravel of the path, feeling the wind push me along
, feeling the harsh rain drive into me. The rumble of thunder urges me on, but as I walk, so slowly, past the other gravesites, along the gravel, nothing can rush my sorrow; the stones that crunch beneath my shoes, wet and loud, are the only sound, bar the wind that whistles past me in this dead silent cemetery.

  I look up towards the iron gates, they rattle and bend against the harsh winds, another flash lights the sky and I see them glint, like teeth, shining in the dark. I stop for a moment, eyes adjusting to the darkness of the night, squinting from the rain that torrents into my face, matting my hair, slick and sodden against my skin. I wait for another flash to get my bearings on the path, before I walk down, closer and closer to the exit, when another flash crackles in the sky and a brief rumble of thunder follows. I see just outside the gates a shadow standing there. Stretched and looming, I immediately halt, staring through the menacing gates that slam against the locks, they whinge and whine against the wind.

  Another flash and I see that the shadow is not just the caretaker waiting for me to leave.

  Two more flashes above me and I see exactly who it is; the bright sapphire that cuts through even the darkest of nights is my clue. My hand draws up to my neck, feeling the warmth of the jewel touching my skin, warming my frozen bones, my numbed core. I crunch through the gravel, closer to the exit, my shadow dancing with the wavering trees, only catching glimpses of it from the flashes above.

  ‘Evan?’ I call out, slowing my pace just before reaching the gateway, through the blur of rain and tears, I cannot be sure; it might just be my imagination conjuring him up, my innermost desires. But when another lightning flash lights up the sky, I am pleased to see him still there, pleased to see he is as sodden as I, and as real as me.

  ‘Elli.’ His voice cuts through the whistling wind, the howl of the trees as they bend and bow and the clatter of the iron gates knocking into one another.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I shudder in the wind, the cold is biting into me even more. A few more steps and I am out of the cold and haunting place.

  ‘Can’t enter hallowed grounds. It’s bad for my health.’ I shake my head at his answer, a slight curve meeting my lips as I take the last step out of the gates and into his shadow.

  ‘I was looking for you.’ He speaks with an urgency that I have never heard before in his voice, and as I look up and catch his eyes, I see them burn brighter than normal, even in the cold, even in the rain. It seems nothing can dull those eyes.

  ‘And you came to a graveyard. How morbid.’

  ‘I wasn’t the one sitting in there for hours.’ He adds.

  ‘You’ve been standing here all this time?’ by the looks of his soaked hoodie, his drenched hair, I would guess so.

  ‘Hallowed ground is bad for my health.’ He says again, this time stepping forward and unzipping his soaked hoodie.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You’re soaked through.’ He says, sliding out of his jumper and stepping closer, so close that I can feel his warmth cut through the icy winds. He drapes his wet hoodie over me, and I pull it closer. The warmth that remains even inside of the sodden material, warms me up immediately. I breathe in, catching the faint scent of wood and smoke, of sweet candles and burnt earth. The hoodie may warm my body but it’s his gaze, his unrelenting stare and the slight smile on his lips that flushes my face with warm crimson.

  ‘Why do you torture yourself?’ he asks, no brow furrowing, no eyebrow lifting, just a steady voice and his hauntingly beautiful eyes.

  ‘With what, coming here or you?’ I step over that invisible line, before I am too far I retract, ‘I come to see her when I need some questions answered.’

  ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

  ‘Who I was looking for.’ I murmur, losing my voice into the crisp wind that whips through us, picking up my wet hair and whipping it across my face. He breaks the small gap between us, his warm fingers cupping my chin and lifting my face to look up at him. I don’t feel the icy rain any more. I don’t feel the cold knit icicles around my joints, freezing my muscles. All I hear is my heart thudding in my chest and all I feel is his hot breath upon my face.

  I can see myself in his eyes, a reflection in the deep blue. They manage to catch every bit of anguish in my face, the tear stained and rain soaked cheeks that blush a light red and the lips so chapped from me biting them and the harsh weather. I see his fingers running along the side of my face, each ring glinting underneath a flash of lightning, the gemstones glowing eerily against the pale of his hand. I feel his finger, so warm, so comforting, trace the curve of my face, his eyes consuming me, swallowing me.

  ‘Evan.’ His name touches my lips, but his ringed forefinger finds them and hushes me. Beneath another torrent of lightning, I see his face, his dark eyebrows knitting low against his eyelids getting lost within the shadows of his face. His lips twisting into some strange line, no smile, no smirk, just parting ever so slightly. His eyes are alight with a raging urgency, one that troubles as well as invigorates me. I am unsure how long I can stand in his gaze, with his hands upon my face, his face inches from mine.

  It is as though he has heard me, the inches close in and his hands drop from my face and knit behind the back of my head, entangling with my knots of hair, pulling me closer to him until his lips crash into mine, so close that I feel his teeth graze my top lip, tugging at my mouth with his. My hands move, dropping the bag I had started to cling onto, to the floor. Hooking my arms around his neck and drawing him even closer, I am lost in the movement, all I hear is the rain falling upon the gravel, his footsteps as he pushes me into the metal bars of the gate, one hand moving from the back of my neck to run along my arm, down my side and staying against my waist. He tears a little at my lower lip, pulling away and opening his eyes, the flicker of sapphire brings me back from a moment of ecstasy, so much so that I fall slightly into the gates, feeling a little light-headed and spent. He keeps one hand upon my waist, his fingers drawing small circles against the sodden material, but even under his hoodie and my jacket and own jumper, I can feel the warmth coming from him.

  ‘Elli.’ He starts, pulling away a few steps, with it he brings the hand by my waist to his side, diving into the inside of his shirt that he’s tucked into his jeans. He pulls out a white envelope; or what was left of a white envelope, water has messed it up, worn holes into the side, started to turn it into mush, but I can see it is full with something. I raise an eyebrow, feeling the cold return to me. In the mid October chill, I have felt the warmth of summer touch me, wrap his arms around me and pull me close, now away from his embrace, I feel the numbing ice return to me. The harsh winter pulling me back to reality.

  ‘What’s that?’ I ask, watching him pull apart the wet paper and then hand it to me, I glance down, icy fingers grasping the damaged envelope, seeing the flush of red notes and the queen’s head, I stare back up to him.

  ‘Why are you giving me this?’ I ask, feeling the warmth return to my cheeks, feeling a strange flutter in my chest that had felt so heavenly, fall into the depths of my stomach.

  ‘I thought it was what you wanted—‘ he starts but I cut him off, shaking my head, closing my eyes and fighting back the urge to hit him with his damned envelope, instead I walk forward, sidling past him.

  ‘You thought I needed charity?’ my voice trembles with anger, cracks into the wind, but he hears, and Evan whips around and grabs at my wrist, his touch blistering.

  ‘I never thought you needed charity.’ His eyes glower and I see behind the flash of lightning that streaks across his face, that he is as turbulent as the skies.

  I lift my hand, the one with the envelope and I shove it into his chest, the rain soaks the paper even more, this time mushing the notes in with it. I shake my head, blinded by falling rain and my own anger, I cannot see exactly what is on his face, but I know he is not expecting what I do next.

  My other hand strikes him, hitting him square on the cheek, causing his head to roll upon impact. He automatically raises h
is hand and I back away, feeling the burn of his eyes, as well as his grasp abruptly around both of my wrists.

  ‘What is it you want, Elli? What is it you want?’ he demands, his voice a flurry of anger, of concern and of such brash urgency. I cannot truly hear each word as the wind cuts through us and forces me back, but I get the gist of them, through the mosaic of tears I make out his lip movements. I shake my head, lunging forward and grabbing my bag in one swoop, I turn and drop the envelope of money to the gravel below. My feet pounding and crunching against the path drowns out his shouts, drowns out my own sobs that wrack my frame, completely obscures the pitiful voice fading in the cold, October night,

  ‘I want you.’

  Evander –

  ‘Are you sure this girl’s not the right one?’ Kaiser drawls, picking at a bone and looking intricately at the buttery marrow inside; he lounges so casually upon the chaise lounge, goblet of scarlet half empty on the tray upon the table, complete with a plate of discarded bones and meaty samples. I ignore his chiding, I just stare over the plate of marrow and bone, to Alpheus, watching him, still with his nose in the velvet tome, still unaware of our presence.

  ‘She is not her sister. Her sister is in the torture pits, exactly where she belongs.’ I bite, tasting copper in my mouth from gnawing at the inside of my bottom lip. If I could bargain my own soul (if I had one) I would. If it would get me out of these four walls, right now, I’d do anything.

  ‘Well, she seems to have her spirit.’ He laughs, sucking at the end of a joint, before becoming just as bored as before and flicking it back onto the tray with the half eaten others. ‘Smacking you twice now, that has got to be a record, dude.’ He laughs again but this time I deliver a cold, hard stare as my response. My eyes can mimic ice as well as their gemstone clarity. I knot my hands together, running fingertips over each ring, massaging the ruby pentagram on my thumb.

  ‘No one normally can fight off your charm, Evan.’ Alphie raises his eyes from the typewritten pages, casually flicking over one whilst staring at me, dark eyes narrowing and his lips tweaking into some sort of a smile. ‘Is this the girl that is to be your defeat?’