Shadow Over Sea And Sky

by K H Middlemass

  “I love my family,” she said hesitantly. “And my friend Simone, I love her too.”

  “Is that all?”

  Emily raised her eyebrows. “Yes, that’s all.”

  She could have asked him about whom he loved or if he had ever loved at all, but she didn’t. Volkov’s eyes were level with hers, the flames of the fire perfectly reflected in their glassy surfaces. His face was perfectly composed, that brief sign of depth no longer visible to her.

  “I meant no offense, Miss Emily,” he said. “It is mere curiosity.”

  “For a short while, maybe,” she began, “When I was younger, about twelve or so.”

  She turned her eyes to the fire, where she could see the flames perform their dance for real. She felt warm and content, forgetting for a moment where she was and what she was doing. She just kept talking, speaking softly to the fire and sinking down further into her chair.

  “During the summer I used to spend a lot of time at the school field. There was a tree there, this big old oak, and I liked to sit in its shade so I could read or draw until the sun went down. It was so peaceful, a place that was just for me.

  “But there was this boy that I went to school with. His name was Adam, and a lot of the time he and his friends would come to the field to play. We were just kids and we didn’t really have many other options, so a lot of us ended up spending more time at school than home. We entertained ourselves.”

  “You did not play with your fellow children?” Volkov asked. Emily shook her head.

  “No. Most of them thought I was strange because I was quiet and preferred my own company. For the most part it didn’t bother me, but I used to watch them sometimes. I was far away enough that I could look at them and not have them notice me. I’d see Adam running around, kicking a ball, tackling his friends and laughing, and I’d get this warm feeling in my chest and realise my heart was beating faster.”

  Volkov leaned forward slightly, hunching his shoulders and clasping his hands together. He was listening to her, and though his face was as grave as ever he was clearly focused on her words.

  “There wasn’t even anything remarkable about him,” Emily went on, emboldened. “He was just like any other boy his age. Messy hair, torn clothes and scabs on his knees, a face scuffed with dirt. His eyes were a pretty blue, though. I liked those.”

  Looking at Volkov now, seeing the colour of his own eyes, that unearthly shade of burnt gold, Emily longed to see those pretty blue eyes again. She continued to talk:

  “So I kept going to the tree and they kept coming to the field. Sometimes I’d watch them and sometimes I wouldn’t. Their games weren’t quite enough to drag me away from my stories and my pencils, though I did draw them sometimes. I drew Adam, too, spending hours trying to capture the exact shade of blue for his eyes, and that’s just how things were for a while. Then one day they brought some of the girls from my year along for a game of kiss tag. Have you ever heard of kiss tag, Mr Volkov?”

  It was a stupid question of course, but there was something about Volkov that told her that he might sincerely be ignorant to such a childish game. To her surprise, he smiled at her.

  “I was raised with other boys, Miss Emily, none of which I could have called a friend,” he said, still smiling. “But I can guess.”

  “I was trying to draw something, I don’t remember what, but I do remember that I was really focused on it. I get that way sometimes. I could hear everyone shouting and laughing but I wasn’t paying attention to what they were doing, all I knew is that the girls were shrieking and the boys kept losing their nerve and goading each other on. After a while I looked up and realised that Adam was running towards me. He was fast, and before I even knew it he’d dropped down and planted a kiss on my lips before turning on his heel and running back to the group without a word.

  “I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, so I just sat there and watched him go. I didn’t know if it was an invitation to join the game or his weird way of telling me that he liked me, but that warm feeling had come back and spread further through my body and I felt happier than I ever had. It was just a little kiss, a dry peck on unsuspecting lips, but it stayed with me for a long time anyway. It seemed important back then.”

  She thought about it for a moment, wondering why she had told him all of this. It was chaste and uneventful, but it was one of her most private memories.

  “We grew up, but we were too young to begin with,” she continued. “I suppose I was just happy that he noticed me. He kissed me that one time and then we never spoke to each other again. By the time I was really old enough to understand what it was I felt, he was someone else. Someone I didn’t like anymore. And he didn’t like me either. We were too different, our paths in different directions. It happens.”

  “A chaste tale, Miss Emily,” Volkov said, but he was not being condescending or cruel. His voice was laced with sincerity. “For such a beautiful young woman.”

  Emily felt her cheeks growing hot and turned her face away. “I… preferred to draw.”

  “I see. And do you still feel this way?”

  “Yes,” she replied emphatically and without hesitation. “I mean I don’t… I’ve never had time for any of that.”

  “And time is precious,” Volkov agreed.

  Emily nodded. “I’m only twenty-five years old, Mr Volkov. I don’t need to rush into anything. I’m not quite ready for forever yet.”

  “Only twenty-five,” Volkov repeated softly, a hint of wistfulness in his voice. Emily looked back at him as he sank back in his chair and covered his eyes with his hand, his long fingers pressing against the expanse of his forehead and the bridge of his nose. He was still smiling.

  “Now you are only twenty-five,” he said. “But one day you will look over your shoulder and see that your whole life lies in your wake.”

  Emily couldn’t help but laugh. “You can’t be that much older than me.”

  Volkov lowered his hand, eyes on the fire before him. “Looks can be deceiving.”

  Silence filled the room again, as oppressive as it always seemed to be in this house. For the first time that night, it occurred to Emily to check her watch.

  “Oh shit!” she blurted out, staring incredulously at the position of the hands. “It’s after midnight, I didn’t realise it was so late.”

  And she didn’t. This was something that frightened her, to have lost time in this way. She was accustomed to some hours slipping away from her when she took the pencil to the paper or the brush to the canvas, but nothing like this. She picked up her bag and threw it hastily over her shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Mister Volkov.”

  He seemed amused by her apology, judging by the half-smile that played on his lips. He began to walk about the room, extinguishing some of the candles by licking his finger and thumb and pinching the wick.

  “You apologise too much for things beyond your control,” Volkov said as he snuffed out another flame.

  Emily took his words to mean that he wasn’t angry or bothered by what had happened, but her cheeks burned with embarrassment nonetheless. She had never considered what a vulnerable thing it was to draw in front of someone else. She had completely lost herself and let him watch.

  Volkov came back to her, their eyes meeting. “You must be tired.”

  Emily nodded. Every minute that she remained standing stole a bit more of her energy. Her limbs were beginning to feel a little heavier, a little less pliable. Her exhaustion was sudden and immediate, now coursing through her body without any chance of reprieve. She felt her body sagging a little and struggled to stay up straight.

  “I should get home.”

  “Miss Emily,” Volkov said. “You will stay here tonight.”

  Emily waited for her rational self to refuse and was alarmed when she did not emerge. Her instincts were telling her one thing, but her body barely felt like her own anymore. She wanted to say yes.

  “My mother isn’t well,” she said weakly.

  “I am re
sponsible for you, Miss Emily,” Volkov said, voice softening. “And your mother would surely not wish for you to share the same fate as poor Sarah Wilson.”

  There were a thousand things inside that she wanted to say to this. She wanted to tell him that she barely knew him, that she didn’t trust him, that in many ways she was deeply afraid of him, but none of these things would come to her mouth when she tried.

  “How did you know about Sarah Wilson?”

  “Her husband came to my house this afternoon.”

  Emily tried to assemble her thoughts back together, desperate for some internal coherence. It made sense that Howard would have come here, either alone or with his search party, to ask after Sarah. Sarah had worked at Fairbanks Manor for most of her life, so why wouldn’t she try to get her old job back? She wasn’t to know of Volkov’s peculiar living habits or the eccentric nature that drove him into elective isolation. He hadn’t introduced himself to Caldmar, hadn’t made any real attempt to become a part of the community; Emily suspected that she was the only regular contact he had in this place.

  So maybe that’s what had happened; perhaps Sarah had come up here and she was still lost somewhere along the cliffs. Or on the beach.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him the truth. I told him that if she had come to my house then I would not have been there to receive her. I am rarely here during daylight hours, and when I am I sequester myself away so the door does not disturb me. If she came here, I did not see her.”

  He spoke with such confidence and yet with such softness that Emily felt compelled at first to believe him. But there was something that made her play his words over again in her head, until she landed upon something that disturbed her.

  “What do you mean by ‘share the same fate’?”

  Volkov laughed then, a quiet sound that rang through her like a bell.

  “The poor woman is missing, is she not? I would be loath for such a thing to befall you, Miss Emily.”

  She could sense the feeling of artifice that was wrapped up in all of this, but at the same time she could not resist the aching tiredness that spread through the entirety of her body. She wanted to sleep so badly, and his gaze was beginning to feel like something more, something all-encompassing that scared her.

  “I insist,” Volkov whispered. He was close to her now and she was caught in his gaze, unable to look away. That old, dead smell rose up again, encasing her within it, but she barely noticed. Under the thick band of his eyebrows, his eyes were so clear and so beautiful and she could have sworn that they were glowing in the dim light around them. But it wasn’t a good kind of beauty, it was something else. They were beautiful in a dangerous way, like the eyes of a beast. Tiger’s eyes.

  “All right,” she whispered in return. “I’ll stay.”

  She felt her body teeter, unsteady on her feet. Volkov took her by the arm as if to steady her. He was smiling in a way that she could only describe as triumphant, with a hint of satisfaction.

  “To your room, then.”

  He led her out of the library into the darkness of the hallway. Emily was so tired that it was like walking through treacle. With each step, a little piece of her consciousness fell away and everything around her took on a strange, unreal quality. Most of the candles that framed the painting on the stairs had gone out, but a few still burned bright despite the lateness of the hour.

  The stairs were a chore to her exhausted body and Emily leaned heavily against Volkov for support as they ascended. They turned left when the stairs diverged in both directions and walked along a corridor that seemed to stretch and expand in front of her, growing longer all the time. She wondered if they would ever reach its end. But then Volkov halted and they were standing before the door to the room that would be hers.

  They stood there for a moment, side by side, before Emily stepped over the threshold and into her room. It was peculiar to see a bedroom, only one of several throughout the upper levels of the house, simply because in all that time she’d spent in this place when Hugo was alive she had only seen the rooms built for company and official business.

  “Thank you,” she said, turning back.

  “Should you need them, you will find some spare candles in the drawer,” Volkov told her. “And you have the light of the moon, of course.”

  He handed the candle to her, and she took it without question. “My eyes are accustomed to the darkness. My affliction has had some benefits, at least.”

  She nodded, thankful to know she would not have to spend the night in complete darkness if that was what she wanted. The candle’s flame warmed her skin and the light was comforting.

  “Good night, Miss Emily,”

  Volkov offered her a brief smile made by a closed mouth. It was a smile that did not reach his eyes. Still smiling, he bowed his head to her in a quick motion, then turned on his heel and walked away, leaving Emily standing at the door alone. She closed the door quickly and took a deep breath, thankful that he was gone. The air around him always felt so oppressive, so heavy, especially when he was so still and so close to her. It made her think of the few times in her life when she had been so drunk that she had become the opposite of herself, making decisions that she would never make under normal standards and getting ideas in her head that seemed great at the time but later proved themselves to be anything but.

  She set her bag and coat on an armchair near the window before placing her candle on the bedside table. There wasn’t much left of it now, but it would last her long enough to get into bed. Emily immediately became conscious of just how dark the room was and, now that Volkov was gone, just how quiet. It was a heavy sort of silence that she found unnerving, and quickly she found herself humming the first tune that came to her mind, just to make some kind of noise. She removed most of her clothes until she was down to her underwear and a t-shirt, then went to the window and opened the curtains, accidentally disturbing the long-settled dust of a room that most likely hadn’t been used in decades. Moonlight spilled into the room, and everything became a little clearer.

  The bed was weighed down with seemingly endless sheets and blankets. She was tempted to pull some of them off entirely and leave them on the floor, but the formality of the room around her stayed her hand and she decided that she’d just have to put up with it. This was not a comfortable place to be, not the sort of place where she could really be herself. As she slipped between the sheets, the cold sent shocks of pain up her bare legs and her feet felt like two blocks of ice, but she quickly curled herself up into a ball and tried to warm up.

  The languor that wracked her body before was gone and Emily was awake again, the oppressive silence of the house distracting her. As she lay there with her eyes closed, she tried her best to ignore the lack of sound around her, to listen to the sounds in her head and watch the pictures that flickered across her eyes. At home she could always count on hearing the call of the gulls or the familiar crashing of the waves of the sea, and even though she was closer to the sea than at home she couldn’t hear a thing. She wondered if the walls were so impenetrable that even sound could not enter. She willed herself to settle, but it was hard.

  As time went on though, she finally began to feel herself slipping and happily let go of her fears for oblivion.

  ***

  The room was red. As red as red could be. Thick, scarlet curtains swept along the swirl of the burgundy carpet; the walls were papered in a bold crimson. Memories of Jane Eyre and the Masque of the Red Death flitted through Emily’s mind, but only for a moment, Here, in this room, her thoughts were dominated by blood.

  A sound behind her made her turn, and the room stretched out before her like time’s corridor. She was standing before an altar carved from a dark, rich oak erected atop a set of marble steps, and when she looked up, the ceiling pushed out and became higher and higher. Everything was fluid, shifting and forming through the dream time. In one second she had moved from before the altar to behind it, looking out onto a c
hapel with pews of rotting wood, and in her head it was as if it always had been. Something indefinable compelled her to look down. Hugo was kneeling at the altar, his old, liver-spotted hands clumsily clasped in prayer. A rosary hung from his wrist, the thick black crucifix swinging gently back and forth in a breeze that Emily could not feel. But then this was a dream; she couldn’t feel anything at all.

  Hugo was muttering under his breath, fervently praying in a language she did not recognise. His eyes were squeezed shut. Emily reached out to him only to have her hand halted by some invisible force, like glass. Hugo’s own hands were shaking, his mutterings becoming louder and louder with each wheezing breath.

  “Hugo,” Emily said. Her voice was distorted, echoing around her.

  His eyes opened, their piercing blue stare rising up like the moon rising in the sky to meet her gaze. The prayers fell from his lips and into silence. Their eyes were locked, and the deep redness of the room cast shadows across his face, settling in the lines of his skin.

  “The virgin,” Hugo said. “The desire for the untouched.”

  Emily blinked, confused. “Hugo, it’s me,” she implored. “It’s Emily.”

  Her words were like water. Hugo cast his eyes down back down to his hands, where he watched as thin trickles of blood began to creep down the tendons of his wrists. It beaded slowly along the tip of the wooden cross before dripping to the floor, where it began to soak into the carpet, spreading through it like a disease.