Fresh Paint

Here's another short horror story, sort of a sequel to the Tablet of Teh Ri'Teth, or at least part of that Mythos. Not sure what to call my Lovecraft-esque pantheon... Teh Ri'Teth Mythos isn't quite right. Suggestions?
And here's the story. As per usual, it got a bit long on me.

Fresh Paint
By McCallum J. Morgan

“Odd,” said Perkins.
“Not so very odd,” I said. “I’ve seen paint used to cover blood stains before.”
“In an abandoned house?” Perkins asked, kicking a pile of rotten newspapers. “We haven’t found a body, we don’t even know if this is a murder.”
“We have the missing persons report,” I said. “This was the last place they were seen. I’m just saying, the case where blood was covered by paint was that insane woman who slaughtered her husband. Why else would a wall be covered with fresh paint in a derelict house? No one buys paint to slather on crumbling wallpaper—unless they’re crazy. I’m just saying it’s a possibility.”
“Well, you can’t prove there’s blood behind that grey paint. The crazy lady confessed. That’s the only way we knew.”
“Do you have an explanation for this paint?”
“Perhaps someone wanted to test the color out,” Perkins said, shuffling through the old newspapers with a toe. Crumbled plaster littered the floor amidst other bits of garbage. A dead rat. No sign that anyone had been recently squatting in the place. Perkins turned his bowler between his fingers nervously.
“He WAS here,” I said, holding up the monogrammed scarf we’d found in the entry hall.
“You’ll have to have his wife confirm that piece before we know that with any certainty,” Perkins said. “I’m going to search the yard and the trees behind the house. Unless I find disturbed earth or a discarded weapons—or something—I’m not jumping on your hysterical bandwagon. Murder right away!”
“There’s no painting garbage! No brushes or cans, why would they clean up like that in this heap? Unless they hoped the paint would dry and get dirty and no one would ever know any different.”
“And blood dries, too,” retorted Perkins. “Into unidentifiable brown splotches. Could be coffee. Could be spaghetti!”
“Then let’s search the grounds,” I replied coolly. Perkins was right, of course, but something about that still sticky paint was too…too perfect. Whoever had done it had been careful to cover the wall thoroughly. The whole wall…cutting in the edges with precise care and a heavy recoat. Still damp. They’d put it on too thick and the house was humid inside in this weather with all the broken windows.
A thorough perusal of the shrubberies outside produced nothing. We searched through the woods behind the house, but still found nothing but an ancient deer skeleton. We found no body, no freshly turned earth, no discarded weapon or garment. It grew dark and Perkins glowered at me.
“What? Am I keeping you from your occult thriller?” I teased. “I’m surprised you haven’t suggested he was spirited away.” Perkins rolled his eyes.
“Illiterate swine,” he growled. I grinned.
“Pulp fiction is great literature.”
“We still haven’t found our man,” Perkins grumbled.
“No, but we’d better get back to the station,” I sighed. “Getting dark and we won’t find much in the dark.”
We headed back to the car and I kicked a pile of yellow aspen leaves. “Just odd,” I muttered as we climbed in and Perkins started the engine. I shivered and pulled my scarf closer around my neck. Wood smoke followed us into the car, along with the peculiar cold mustiness of fall.
Back at the station, Curew was waiting.
“We’ve got another missing person report,” he grumbled. “A neighbor says they haven’t been home in days and they NEVER leave their cat.” Curew’s eyes bounced off the ceiling. “She’s afriad they’re lying in the house, dead. Better go and talk to the poor thing in morning.”
“To the cat?” Perkins joked.
“The neighbor, Mrs. Blanchard,” Curew corrected humorlessly.
“Who’s the purported missing person?” I asked.
“A Mr. R. Gutring, she wasn’t sure what the R stood for as she didn’t know him ‘all that well, really.’”
“Well, we’ll have our work cut out,” I said, “patching up from your lack of sympathy.”
Curew snorted. “There’s a lot more to worry about in this town than the odd bachelor who doesn’t feed his cat for three days. Virtuous neighbors seem to take care of them just fine.”
“Perhaps she’s actually concerned about the missing human?” I suggested, but Curew just shook his head.
“Humans don’t care about each other!” he scoffed. “For instance, I don’t give a damn about you two. Now go and get home before it gets any later.”
“Says the uncaring one,” Perkins chimed in.
“I’m just concerned about the shoddy work you’ll do tomorrow if you don’t get enough sleep.”
“We’ll need all the sleep we can get to empathize with this virtuous neighbor,” Perkins agreed. “Goodnight, Curew, Mathis.”
“Goodnight,” I said. Curew just grunted.
The next morning found Perkins and I on the stoop of a ramshackle house, shivering in the bitter morning mist.
“Here you go,” Mrs. Blanchard sang, bursting out with a tray of hot chocolate.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Perkins said, scooping up a mug.
“Can you describe Mr. Gutring?” I asked, accepting a mug with a cold, eager fingers.
“Gaunt fellow,” Mrs. Blanchard said. “Dark-haired, and rather yellow-eyed, if you ask me, though I suppose they were brown or something. Always struck me as yellow. Like his teeth. Didn’t keep himself quite clean enough, nor his house, as you can see.” She nodded across the street to the dilapidated house with a broken front window. “But he had a warm voice, and always spoke kindly to Mr. Tinkletoes.”
Mr. Tinkletoes?” Perkins blinked.
“The cat.”
“Ohhh.”
“You can tell a lot about a man by the way he treats his animals,” Mrs. Blanchard went on while I sipped my chocolate and shivered. “So, I believe Mr. Gutring was alright. Despite his friends.”
“Why, what were they like?” Perkins asked.
“Shady,” Mrs. Blanchard replied without hesitation. “They came to visit at odd hours, usually late. Three of them, in coveralls. More shifty-eyed blokes, but they avoided Mr. Tinkletoes. They were over the last time I saw Mr. Gutring. Late at night, and I woke up to a strange sound—not a scream—but, I don’t know how to describe it…almost a musical note, but it chilled my bones. I got up and saw his friends leaving. In the morning, Mr. Tinkletoes was on my doorstep and I never saw Mr. Gutring leave.”
“Are you intimating that Mr. Gutring’s friends killed him?” Perkins asked. I jolted. Hot chocolate dripped over my cold fingers.
“Perkins,” I chided. “Did Curew steal your empathy?”
“That’s exactly what I’m intimating,” Mrs. Blanchard nodded solemnly. “Mr. Tinkletoes was frightened. He hasn’t gone anywhere near his master’s house. It’s not normal behavior. Animals always know when something’s not right.”
“Well,” I said. “We can ring his doorbell, but not much more than that…”
“Just look inside,” Mrs. Blanchard insisted. “I’ve already asked at his work. They haven’t seen him, either.”
“Where did he work?”
“Bookshop, just down the road, Palisades Books and Novelties.”
“We’ll take a look,” Perkins assured her. “Thanks for the hot chocolate.”
“Oh, no, thank you,” Mrs. Blanchard said. “It’s my pleasure.”
After finishing our chocolates, we headed across the frosty street. Mr. Gutring’s bicycle leaned against the faded shingle siding, coated in a sheen of rust and ice.
There were no lights on inside and no one answered my knock. I thought the curtain by the broken window stirred, as if in a breeze…but there was no breeze. The frigid morning air was still, the mist clinging steadfastly to the grass.
I knocked again.
“Hello?” Perkins called. “Is anyone home?”
Nothing. The house sat quiet and grey. Mrs. Blanchard watched from across the street, a huge grey tabby in her arms. Mr. Tinkletoes, presumably.
I smiled weakly at her and knocked again, louder. The thump-thump echoed inside, lonely and hollow. Perkins called again and we listened intently. Tick. Tick. A clock. Nothing more.
“Let’s check around back,” Perkins suggested and I followed him around the house, peering in at the tattered curtains. Through a gap I spotted an empty room, strangely devoid of furniture, but otherwise clean, save for a few clumps of something on the floor. We came to the back door and when Perkins knocked, it creaked inward.
“Anybody home?” Perkins called. We looked at each other and shrugged. Perkins pushed the door open and stepped inside. “Hello?”
“Do you smell something odd?” Perkins asked, sniffing.
“No,” I said. The cold morning air was crisp. “Leaves.”
“Come here,” Perkins said, stepping further inside. I sighed and followed him in.
“We can’t investigate every missing person so thoroughly,” I said. “We’d be doing nothing else.”
“You were the one who wanted to search the forest for a body last night,” Perkins pointed out.
“There was more concerning info about our last vanisher,” I said. “That cult business and the debts…” I trailed off. “That smells like paint.” Perkins was already down the hall, opening another door. I followed quickly after him and found it to be the room I’d glimpsed through the curtains—empty save for blobs of what looked like candle wax, dotted around in a circle. And the wall to the left of the door had been recently painted over with grey paint. The other walls were faded green floral wallpaper.
“Did you say cult?” Perkins asked.
“What, the candles?” I said, scanning the room for anything else. “Circle of candles…same paint…ritual murder, maybe? Blood hexes on the wall….covered by paint. You think this disappearance is connected to the other one?”
“I don’t know,” said Perkins.
“You’re the one pointing things out,” I said. “We didn’t notice any candle spots at the abandoned house, but could have been easy to miss in the detritus and dust.”
“Might not be ritual murder,” Perkins said. “They might just want to cover up their witch scribbles.”
“Then why the disappearances?” I asked.
“We don’t know if Henry Apindon’s disappearance really coincides with the abandoned house. He was last seen in the area, that’s all. And note: Our Mr. Gutring vanished three days ago. This paint still smells and—” Perkins marched over to the wall and touched it gingerly, “—still not totally cured. Painted last night or yesterday…paint can’t have dried properly last night. Too cold in here.”
“The paint in the abandoned house was fresh, too,” I added. “Perhaps they knew we would be coming?”
Perkins shivered. “I don’t like that.”
“I guess we should search the house,” I said.
“What, hope to find the bodies this time? They wouldn’t still be here. Not after they came back to cover the wall.”
“Other evidence,” I insisted.
“Or maybe Mrs. Blanchard is right and he’s dead upstairs,” Perkins said. “Although…then he couldn’t have painted the wall.”
I was staring at the corner. There was…something there.
“P-Perkins,” I said, taking a step deeper into the room. My legs wobbled, rubbery and strange. I blinked. “What is that?”
Perkins stared at it with me in silence.
It was not what I had expected to see and I was confused as to why it should be so disturbing. Why were my legs funny? The sight was strangely dizzying. But why? What was wrong? Something about it was indescribably off…
“If I had to say,” Perkins coughed out at length. “I would say it is yellow?”
I looked again. Yes…if I had give it one word…yellow would be the closest. Though the word did not hold any of the disquiet and unease that I felt looking upon it. It was too fearful to be yellow—too malignant. Too slimy.
What was it?
Perkins stepped closer. I held out a hand as if to stop him.
“They were in a hurry,” Perkins said. “They were trying to cover this…this…yellow.”
“Can’t say I blame them,” I muttered, following Perkins reluctantly into the corner.
We stared at it in silence until we could no longer bear it— It was like something you would see in a dream. A color that didn’t really exist. A shade beyond the natural spectrum. A thing of unsettling nightmare. The yellow seemed to bubble and writhe as we watched.
“We should go back to the abandoned house and check it over again,” I said.
“After we look upstairs,” Perkins said.
We found nothing in the rest of the house, as we had both expected.
We drove quietly back to the old derelict and poked through the rubbish. There was a circle of wax drips in front of the painted wall.
“Apindon was last seen about a month ago,” I mused. “Gutring three days ago. Perhaps there’s a clue in their cult markings?” I took out my pocket knife.
“Then they would have covered them right away,” Perkins said. “But you saw that color?”
“Too unique…maybe they were afraid someone would match it with them somewhere else.”
“What if there are no cult markings?” Perkins suggested quietly. I breathed out a cloud of fog into the cold air and applied my blade carefully to the wall.
I peeled off a chunk of the thick paint layer. Two layers stuck together. The grey paint took off the yellow with it. I peeled off another. The whole wall had been yellow.
“You mean the…color…is the cult marking?” I asked.
“We’re clearly not meant to see it, whatever the case,” Perkins said.
“This doesn’t make sense,” I muttered.
“Not ritual murder, but we’re still missing two men,” Perkins mused.
“And this—this color is connected somehow. But how?”
Curew was not amused with our findings.
“The disappearances are connected?” he asked. “By paint?”
Perkins rolled his eyes and I scowled. “If you will, yes,” I said. “No it doesn’t make sense, but there’s definitely a connection. I don’t know what. I don’t think we can really say murder, but their disappearances are not normal. I’m going to go and ask Apindon’s relations if he knew anyone by the name of Gutring.”
“That wasn’t a normal color,” Perkins said.
“You’re not a normal color,” Curew said, squinting at him. “Mathis, get him a coffee on your way to interrrogate these poor relations.”
“See, you do care,” I said.
“No, once again it’s the quality of your work,” Curew said. “Or Perkins’ to be exact. You two will get nothing done if he’s incapacitated.”
I rolled my eyes and we set off. But it was a dry run. Apindon's wife knew nothing of any Mr. Gutring, but she was able to confirm that the scarf we’d found at the derelict had belonged to her husband.
The next day proved to be too busy with overdue paperwork to go back and search either house again and I was rather put out with the thought that there was no more evidence to be gathered from either location…though I still felt we were missing something important.
A month went by before we had any further hint. And when it came it arrived like a slap of icy seawater in the face. My telephone jangled obnoxiously one evening while I was enjoying the last of the sunshine through my sitting room window.
“Mathis!” it was Perkins. “I've seen it!”
“Seen what? Where?”
“The color! That abnatural yellow hue!” Perkins exclaimed breathlessly. “I’m visiting my girl over here in Grunwich. We went for a walk and—" Perkins paused for a breath. “We were passing a house. A new one that was being painted—the inside—there were painters going in and out. And the door was open—and I saw—it was on their paintbrushes, too—the COLOR!”
I was silent for a few moments, listening to Perkins panting. “Did you ask them where they got it?” I asked.
“No,” Perkins said, falling back into a rushed stream of words, “they were already packing up for the day—they seemed to be careful not to let the yellow paint show on their tools, washing it all behind the house—I was so unsettled that I went back to my girl’s house and took a shot—just a small one, mind—and when I went back, they were all gone and the house locked up.”
“Did you get their company?” I interrupted.
“No! I’m afraid I was too excited to pay attention. I want to say their logo had a bird of some kind but I’m not sure—I asked the neighbors, but they weren’t sure, either. Really, odd, none of them seemed to know anything about the painters. They didn’t know who owned the house, either. But I peered through the windows and the walls—the walls—”
“Were yellow,” I finished, forcing myself to loosen my grip on the telephone receiver. My hand was beginning to cramp.
“They oozed with it,” Perkins shuddered.
“Are you sure it was the same…hue?” I asked.
“Sure?!” Perkins exclaimed. “There was no mistaking it.”
“All right,” I said. “Did the painters seem suspicious to you, other than washing everything in the back? That’s not that odd.”
“Now you’re trying to be the skeptic?” Perkins huffed. “Not really. But they did seem to take extra care not to show off their paint unnecessarily and they eyed us as we walked past. I think they noticed my reaction to the paint and they seemed even more guarded after that.”
“Hmm,” I mused.
“Well?” Perkins asked. “Are you going to come over here?”
“I thought you were sure it was the same paint?”
“Bring a flashlight,” Perkins grumbled. “I'm at my girl's place. 14 Gryphon Road, Grunwich.” And he hung up. I sighed and replaced the receiver.
This was our only lead on this so far. And it had also been too long…Curew would not approve of our wasting time on this vague mystery. But something was undeniably going on.
I found my flashlight and my pistol, just in case, and drove over to Grunwich as fast as I could. It was a twenty minute drive to Grunwich, and then I got lost looking for Gryphon Road. It was well after dark by the time I finally found Perkin’s girlfriend’s house.
“Timmy already went back to look at the house,” his girlfriend told me. “He sure was pale. Is everything alright? He kept going on about a color.” My heart ticked faster and I felt for my hidden gun.
“Where is the house?”
“I’ll show you,” she said.
“No, you’d better stay here,” I said, glancing around at the darkness. “Did he have a light?”
“I gave him Dad’s light. Is everything ok?”
“Yeah, yes. How do I find the house?”
“Just go down two blocks and take a right onto Hayward, then one block and a left onto Aspen. It’s the third house on the left.”
“Thanks,” I said and hurried off into the night. The air had that strange heavy emptiness that comes with extreme cold and I shivered in my greatcoat. The cold seemed to assault my skin with an almost tangible presence. It had snowed three days before and the dusty film was slippery on the pavement. My nose and the tips of my ears stung with the chill.
I found Hayward and hurried down in, my light bouncing off snow-dusted mailboxes and dead hedges. And there was Aspen. I stumbled to a halt, petrified, thinking the ground had turned…yellow…in front of me, but it was only a layer of fallen aspen leaves peering through a snowless patch. My heart didn’t resume a normal pace, though. I couldn’t see Perkins’ flashlight.
Maybe he didn’t feel the need to be seen standing there outside the house…damn, it was cold, why would he have come down here ahead of me? Why was he still here? Or was he?
I approached the third house on the left. This had to be it…but…there was a light on inside! In fact—it was the only house on the entire street that had any light on. And then I saw the old truck in the drive, hidden partially by a large bush. There was a logo on the side. And it looked like some kind of bird. My breath chuffed huge clouds out in front of my flashlight beam and I switched it off. Where was Perkins?
The golden light danced inside the quiet house…like candlelight. Ducking, I tiptoed up the icy steps to the door. The handle turned and I slipped into the dark warmth of the entry hall. I closed the door quietly behind me and squinted into the gloom. Stairs led up into blackness. The light was coming from down the hall, and by it, I could see that the entry was not yellow. Not that yellow. I thought the walls must be white, but the candlelight made them buttery. The warmth was a relief but the sounds I heard quietly drifting down the hall chilled me worse than the air outside.
Whispers rose and fell in an unworldly cadence, shuffling up and down through almost inhuman registers, but so, so quiet. I trembled and nearly dropped my flashlight.
A horrifynig shadow fell across the light coming from the open door down the hall. I stepped back, pressing up against the frigid front door.
“In ancient days,” intoned a crisp, dry voice, “he knew the earth, and the earth bled, for it could not bear the presence. And men offered of their blood, that the earth might not be consumed, and they worshipped the Lord of all, the King of Hell.”
I trembled anew as more rasping voices joined in a chorus: “And his house shall be painted in the hue of his glory and all who enter in shall know his madness.”
“We have touched the sacred pigment,” said the first voice, “and we have let loose the blood and tasted the glory of pure insanity—hell’s own love. Tonight, our king requires another sacrifice! Behold!”
“Teh Ri’Teth!” chanted the chorus. I gripped the doorknob, as if to flee. But then Perkins’ voice cut through the fiendish whispering.
“Don’t do this!”
Sacrifice!
I pulled out my pistol and advanced on the candlelit shadow.
“Erah!” chanted the worshippers. “Teh Ri’Teth semmi rarat.”
An insane laugh rattled the chandelier above my head. I was almost to the door but I stopped, unable to advance against that horrible sound. It trailed into a sinister giggle and I swallowed shakily.
But Perkins was in there. And I had a gun. I took the last few steps to the door and thrust my pistol into the room to a chorus of “Teh Ri’Teth!”
“Nobody move!” I ordered, stepping through into the—the—the color.
The entire room swelled and glowed with that sickening hideous shade. The walls seemed to breathe it out, as if they were not merely painted with it, but were it. The paint looked still wet, sweating, dank and alive. I staggered, the pistol shaking in my hand. The candlelight danced like whirling figures on the shimmering walls of the color.
Four painters sat on the floor around the circle of candles and their shadows twisted agonizingly on the yellow walls. Their coveralls were splattered with various colors and their faces bore a ludicrous glee as they all turned to look at me. Perkins was sitting with them—and he was the one giggling.
I advanced on the circle with clumsy, numb steps. Only Perkins made any sound. The giggle whispered in the back of his throat and his eyes gleamed with…with that color!
“P-Perkins?” I stuttered. His giggle trailed off into a quiet, high-pitched squeal. “Stop that!” I shrieked, much louder than I meant to. “What’s happening?” I knew I couldn’t hit anything. The pistol’s sights danced before my eyes on the rubbery ends of my arms.
The door slammed behind me and I whirled, heart blocking my trachea, to see a fifth painter locking the door.
“Open it!” I hissed, my pistol tracking a delirious arc after the man as he grinned insanely at me and stepped away from the door.
“Ha!” Perkins guffawed.
“Shh!” the painters hissed, and then they all began murmuring under their breath in that bizarre cadence. Perkins joined them.
“Perkins, damn it! What are you doing?” I gasped and turned back to the fifth painter. “Give me that key!” I demanded. He just stepped back and began humming. I advanced on him. He wasn’t armed. He kept backing away, humming madly.
“Give it here!” I hissed, charging at him. He stumbled against the wall and cried out. I skidded to a stop and dropped my pistol. The painter screamed as—the wall—he writhed—the wall—he was stuck to it—and the color seeped into his clothes, his skin, like a dye spreading into fabric…his scream rose to a terrible pitch and his eyes dilated—as yellow as the wall.
And the color absorbed him. The other painters held their breath and all was silent. I stared at the blank yellow wall where the painter had disappeared, my chest heaving and my fingers twitching. I stooped and picked up my pistol, turning back to the door. I fired madly at the lock, but as I did so, I saw that the door, too, was yellow…
My bullet missed the handle and vanished into the paint, leaving a ripple that passed out from the door and across the wall, as if it were all liquid.
Liquid paint. Liquid yellow. Liquid madness.
And then I heard a voice.
“In my house, all must be the color of glory.”
The painters screamed and scrambled across the floor to grasp each other in terror, knocking over candles as they did so. Perkins among them.
The walls were dripping onto the floor. The color was seeping across the old wood toward the center of the room. I backed away from it, firing madly at the advancing wave, but my bullets just splashed into the floor as if it were nothing more than a veneer of reality.
I found myself huddling with the painters and Perkins as the color surrounded us, oozing ever closer.
“You were supposed to be the sacrifice,” Perkins whispered in my ear. “We shouldn’t have painted a whole room.” He began to sob.
“He told us to,” rasped one of the painters. “Teh Ri’Teth. A whole room, he said. For his glory.”
“And so it is,” hissed that unfathomable monster-voice I had heard earlier. I clutched Perkins.
A few of the candles still stood or guttered on the floor around us. The yellow tide eased closer, snuffing them out, one by one, until we were in darkness.
But there was no darkness in his house.
The color was the light and it began to absorb us, one by one, as we screamed in the agony of knowledge.

October Frights! The Phantom of the Opera, Part Three

Welcome back!

Are you ready to delve back into Godfrey and Serafina's nightmare? If you've just joined us, you may want to read the previous posts, which have parts one and two of my Phantom of the Opera retelling.

Part Three: Into Gehenna

I did not run this time.

"Wh-who..." I began. But my voice was reedy and cracked. I swallowed.

"Who are you?" I demanded more firmly.

"Not who, Godfrey," said the sound. "What." I located the source: it seemed to come from the wall behind the dressing screen.

"What are you, then?" I asked, forcing myself to take a step towards the wall.

"I am in a transitional state," said the sound as it impossibly moved along the wall toward the corner. "I am not man, I am not quite deamon, I am the opera ghost!" The sound seemed to recede deeper into the wall, becoming fainter. "Soon, I will be fully manifested!"

Dropping the book, I raced out of Serafina's dressing room and followed the sound as it hummed through the wall, down the hall, deeper into the opera house.

"What do you want with Serafina?" I demanded.

The sound just strummed humorously. I was running now, down stairs, along dark passages, following a phantom noise.

The sound led me into a dusty storage room filled with old set-pieces. An Egyptian god loomed over the shadowy space, his bird-face faded. I dove between papier maché rocks and cardboard walls of varying colors and themes. As I passed between two Greek pillars a trip wire shot up and I staggered, collapsing beside a bust of some philosopher. The bust tipped, and I rolled out of the way—just as a trapdoor opened in the floor. The bust fell into a black hole and splashed into unseen water. The trapdoor creaked shut again, its seals so perfect that it was invisible.

I hunkered in the shadows, trembling. I dared not cough, though the dust tickled at my throat. I waited, but the sound did not return.

I made it out of the opera house without further incident and paced my flat all night, unable to sleep or cease imagining that the sound was back...

In the morning, I called on Serafina. Her maid said she was not to be disturbed, but I refused to leave and at last, Serafina agreed to see me in her parlor. She was wan, her eyes sunken and her lower lip under constant attack from restless teeth.

"There's no use pretending," I said, seizing her hand. "I heard that—that sound last night. It tried to kill me!"

She snatched her hand back. "You SAW HIM?"

"No, he led me to a trapdoor, I almost fell in...you can't do whatever it is he wants. You can't sing for—for whatever it is!"

Serafina hid behind her hands. They were skeletal and white. Her abjectness struck me with horrible pity.

"I don't care if you've dabbled in the occult," I said softly. "I love you. Please stay away from that THING."

She lowered her hands but would still not look at me.

"I didn't realize what it truly was I was getting into," she said, her voice trembling. "Not until I heard that voice..."

"It doesn't matter," I insisted. "You don't have to go through with it!"

"He's always watching, always listening," Serafina said, tears in her eyes. "He'll kill you."

"He almost did, but listen! We can leave Bamberg, go far away. To England, maybe."

"I can't leave before tonight's performance," Serafina said. "I have an obligation to the production."

"Right afterwards, then," I said. "I'll have a cab waiting outside, in case he knows my car. Slip out after the show and we'll escape. I'll just lay low until then. I think he thinks he succeeded in killing me."

Serafina contemplated this, her brow furrowed.

"Yes," she said. "I think that would work." She beamed at me through tears. "I'll come to you directly after the show. Take me away. I love you, Godfrey. Thank you."

I kissed her hand and smiled.

"Thank you, Serafina."

"One never realizes the horror until the reality strikes," she said softly.

"Say no more about those things," I begged. "They need never trouble us again."

I left her house, but not my worries behind. Did the owner of that sound really think me dead? What if it discovered our plot? She said it was always watching.

I returned to the opera house and snuck in through the stable to explore it in the daylight. I searched Serafina's dressing room more thoroughly, but could find nothing. The deamonology book was gone, too. The room where I had nearly fallen to my death was just as unyielding. I could not find the trap door and the trip wire had vanished.

Defeat hung heavy on my shoulders as I returned to my car, parked several streets away. The evening was fast approaching. I drove home and called for a cab.

I had him park by the side entrance of the opera, where many performers came and went. And I settled in to wait, restlessly tapping my watch. I could see the operagoers arriving out on the main Street.

I watched late performers hurry past into the side-door.

A tall, hatted gentlemen I had never seen passed by, pausing at the door. He wore a wool cape with a high collar drawn around his lower face. He turned toward the cab and I caught the gleam of his black eyes, glittering in his white brow—staring straight at me. He lowered the collar and grinned at me with gold teeth.

I gripped my watch so hard the glass cracked.

The man's neck!

His throat was missing, replaced by some obscene metal gadgetry. Gears and rods protruded around the edges. Long copper strips and wires tangled like tendons in place of his larynx. Rivets lined his jaw.

In a moment, the neck was covered again and the man as gone.

Not a man. But not a deamon, either. The opera ghost!

I leapt out of my cab and raced to the door.

The door slammed in my face and when I tried to open it, I found it locked. I beat on it frantically and yelled for someone to open it, but no one came. I raced around to the main entrance and dashed up the steps, shoving aside several fur-garbed dames.

They squawked in protest but I didn't slow down, hurling an elderly gentleman to the side as I charged up the last steps to the door.

"Sir, where is your ticket?" demanded the concierge.

"I'm a friend of Serafina Szeman," I growled, trying to skim past him.

"I'm afraid you must have a ticket or pay now," the concierge insisted, blocking me with a firm hand. I dug furiously for my wallet and handed him the whole thing.

"Sir!" Protested the concierge, but I was already gone, racing along to the backstage entrance.

I burst into her dressing room and found it empty. Except for the deamonology book, lying on the vanity, open to the hieroglyphics page.

I nearly lost it and went racing off to search the entire opera house, then I saw a note beside the book.

It had been hastily written in pencil.

I'm sorry, Godfrey. You don't understand. I need to sing this concert. I need to see the wonders of Gehenna and the Convocation. This is an honor beyond anything you would ever understand. When I come back, I will be all yours.

Love,

Serafina

I stared.

She must be mad. Or this was fake. It was her handwriting...but the man had a machine that spoke for him and a typewriter that worked on its own. He could surely replicate handwriting.

But where had she gone? Gehenna? What was that? Where was that?

My eye fell upon the symbol that was circled in the book. Opening rune.

Opening...I looked again at the walls. The man had been inside the walls. He'd spoken to me from within. There had to be secret passageways. I began probing the walls' unyielding surfaces.

I frantically went over every inch of the bored green wallpaper. And then again. And again.

A knock sounded and a stagehand called, "five minutes, Miss Szeman." I sank to the floor in despair. So much time had already passed. I would be too late!

The carpet stared back at me, intricately patterned, unlike the wallpaper. And there!

In the corner, nearly hidden by the wardrobe, the Opening Rune peered up from between the twining curlicues.

Breathlessly, I crawled over to it and placed my hand on it. It felt no different from any other part of the floor. I pressed on it and felt something click beneath the carpet. Before my very eyes, the wall beside the wardrobe slid away, revealing a sliver of ultimate darkness.

I stood and took a candle from the vanity.

There was no time to be frightened of the foul wind that blew from that chasm. I stepped into darkness and the secret opening slid shut behind me. I was horrified to find various miniscule peep-holes into Serafina's dressing room. He HAD seen me, and presumably saw Serafina whenever she changed behind her screen!

A passage led off, narrow and low. I had to duck and go sideways to proceed. I came to a fork and was unsure which way to go...until I saw Serafina's gold key lying several feet down the left hand branch. The tunnel suddenly stopped and I found a hole in the floor, with a ladder leading down. This must be the direction that the man-deamon-ghost had led me before.

The passage went on and I found the lever that must control the trap door. Down another ladder, and I found myself on a stone embankment high above the water into which I was meant to have plunged. It appeared to be an underground river...or a sewer, though it was only mildly rank...and rank with a strange sour-metal smell. Chemicals, maybe.

The embankment ended and I found a tiny arch. My candle was guttering and I was forced to stop to trim the wick clumsily with my knife against the stone wall.

On I went, breath shallow and limbs quivering. The new tunnel dripped with slime and sloped steeply downward. The anise wrapped in mustiness stole into my nostrils and my lungs pumped faster.

That smell. And I thought I smelled old copper, too. And decay. The tunnel leveled off and I faced three entrances, all trimmed with archways built from human skulls.

Which way?

In the trembling light of my candle, I saw words written above the arches, carved into the stone.

Tartarus, Abaddon, and ...Gehenna.

I took a nervous breath and plunged into the arch named Gehenna—too fast.

I sprawled down a flight of slippery steps. My candle bounced into the darkness and went out.

Return tomorrow for the horrifying conclusion of the Phantom of the Opera!

And explore the blog hop below:

October Frights! The Phantom of the Opera, Part Two

Welcome back!

Are you ready to delve back into Godfrey and Serafina's nightmare? If you've just joined us, you may want to read the previous post, which has part one of my Phantom of the Opera retelling.

The Phantom of the Opera

Part Two: The Blasphemous Sound

I fled that hellish chamber, madly racing through the dark and somehow emerged into the street—after breaking through the rotten door that Serafina had locked behind her.

I emerged into the night, tattered, scuffed, wet, and bleeding.

I got lost in the winding streets and fog and didn't make it back to my car until nearly dawn.

I called on Serafina later that afternoon. She was still distracted and the circles under her eyes were deeper. Yet she seemed to almost glow with a weird excitement. I did not ask her about the mysterious cellar or the ghoulish typewriter.

The impression that she was not of this world anymore haunted me.

Serafina did not protest when I suggested dinner that night and I watched in sickly fascination as her excitement grew with the night.

After I took her home, I waited again and sure enough, Serafina emerged from the side door, cloaked and candle-bearing.

I was not fortified by champagne. My legs were shaky as I stepped out of my car and made to follow her. The vague horrors of that nightmare flickered through my mind, like Serafina's candle in the mist.

It slowed me just enough and I lost Serafina in the fog. I had to return to that place. I had to know the truth. How much had the alcohol colored my first visit? I almost ran down the alley, my footsteps slapping on the wet cobbles. She was nowhere to be seen. Twice, the muted glow of a lamppost fooled me.

"Serafina!" I called, but the fog robbed my cry of volume.

I kept going, trying to follow my hazy memory, but it was useless. I got lost again and finally returned to my car, wet and dejected. I sat and waited for Serafina's return. I wondered if I should confront her.

Her reappearance from the mist, almost an hour later, robbed me of breath and I sat limply in my fog shrouded automobile as she drifted ghost-like from the night and vanished again into her house.

When I called on her in the morning, her maid told me she was feeling ill and was still in bed. She had another performance that night. I told the maid to tell her I would see her at the show.

The evening came, deliberately, and I knocked on her dressing room door before the show began.

"I'm fine!" She called. "Really. Tell Peroll he did an amazing job adjusting the bodice. I can breathe without being stabbed by the seam."

"Serafina," I said. "It's me. May I come in?"

"Godfrey?" Her voice took on an edge of anxiety. "Yes. Yes, come in."

I caught her in the act of recomposing her features. Fear and guilt vanished under a veneer of tired happiness.

The room was full of her perfume, sweet and Rosy. But again that weird spice odor whispered underneath...anise, metal, and mold.

"Are you all right?" I asked raggedly.

"Yes, I think I just needed more rest," she said. I can't go out tonight; I have a meeting with the director, discussing future projects, then I must get to bed."

"Yes," I said. "Yes." I was nearly taken in by the reality she offered me with word and tone. The nightmare of the night before last seemed distant: unreal and champagne-inspired. But...

I had seen her vanish into the fog.

I had seen the guilt on her face. Or had I?

"You look tired, too," she said, concern in her tone but something else in her eyes...almost accusation.

"Yes," I said. "I should get to bed early tonight, too."

"Perhaps I'll see you in the morning?" She suggested.

"Absolutely," I said. "I look forward to tonight's show." She smiled and I turned to leave.

I glanced back before I closed the door and saw that her face had returned to conflicted anxiety.

Whatever was bothering her, she used it to great effect that night, pouring her emotions into her role. Her voice sparked with angst and her high notes were more chill-inducing than ever before.

After the show, I returned to her dressing room to congratulate her for another stunning performance. As I approached, however, I heard her talking to someone. I stopped with my hand on the knob.

"He acts like he didn't see anything," Serafina said. "Are you sure he was the one who broke the door?"

Words answered her. My stomach leapt up against the back of my rib cage and I leaned against the he door to keep from falling. To call it a voice would be borderline blasphemy. God did not create such a mode of expression. It twanged and hummed, metallically—jarring—buzzing—non-musical, but with infernally musical tones sparkling amidst the grinding chaos.

Somehow...words tumbled out of that—that sound.

"I saw him, Serafina. I saw him. He must have followed you. You must get rid of him."

"He'd had quite a bit of champagne that night," Serafina said hopefully. "Maybe he doesn't remember. Besides, I took your transcript. He can't really know anything."

"We can't risk him finding out," insisted the horrible sound. "He'll interfere. Do you not want to sing for the Convocation?"

"Of course I do!" Serafina protested. "I told you I want nothing more. I don't know how to get rid of Godfrey. He already suspects I'm not well. If he heard or saw anything, he might worry about me. If I try to push him away, he'll likely pry into things more."

"You must want to sing more than you want any human affection. If the deamons hear any love in your voice, they will not be pleased. Do you wish to displease the Convocation?"

"No! I'll...I'll get him to leave me alone...I'll tell him I'm too busy to see him until after the last performance of the show."

"See that he believes you," warned the sound. "He must stay out of the way. Music is all."

"Asmodeii?"

"Yes?"

"It is you, isn't it? Why can't I see you?"

"You don't even know what I look like. Is it my voice? Did you not expect it to sound like this? It is horrible, isn't it? Now you see why the convocation wants you to sing for them. We cannot make the sounds you can. That's why I prefer to communicate via machine. But your GODFREY HAS RUINED THAT. I will speak to you again. In this voice, my Serafina. I hope it does not frighten you too much."

I gripped the door handle. My Serafina...spoken by such a hellish sound! No, no, it was wrong. My hand trembled and the doorknob rattled.

I looked down at my white knuckles in horror.

"What was that?" demanded the sound.

"The door!" gasped Serafina. I let go of that handle as if it were molten and leapt back.

"Who's there?" twanged the sound. I looked about, but there was nowhere to hide. Footsteps.

A gaggle of ballet girls rounded the corner and I dashed into their midst. They giggled and hooted in protest. Serafina's door flew open. I ducked around the corner, hoping the ballet girls would shield me from sight.

"Prima Donna!" The girls trilled.

"What are you doing here?" Serafina demanded.

"The night is young!" replied one and several other answers joined: "Why are you still in costume?" "What are you doing?" "Leading lady has nerves, eh?"

It seemed the girls were all a bit drunk.

"Oh never mind," Serafina said. "But you should all get some sleep. We have another show tomorrow night."

The girls moved off with a chorus of "Humbug!" and Serafina closed her door. I waited at the corner, shaking like a struck cymbal. I was too afraid to approach the room again.

That sound...and what? The source of that sound was invisible? Serafina could not see it. Had it mentioned deamons? I clutched my head. I was dead sober. But this...

I shook in silent agony for what seemed hours, but must have been only twenty minutes.

The door creaked open and I went rigid.

I listened to Serafina's footsteps fade off down the hall and slowly relaxed. Strange calm stole over me and I squared my shoulders. I marched around the corner and threw open the dressing room door. If the source of that sound were still here, I would kill it.

The room was empty. It was not lavishly furnished. After checking the wardrobe and behind it, as well as the vanity and dressing screen, I had to give up. The thing was not here. Its smell was, though...that clean spice, immured in decay.

The room felt empty, tomb-like in its vacancy. I did not believe in invisible things. But then I remembered the entrance to that crypt near the typewriter. I had been drunk then.

But I hadn't been drunk earlier, when that sound had called Serafina 'my Serafina.'

My eye fell upon the floor beside the chair.

A book lay on the carpet, partially open.

A surge of white hot horror passed through me and I seized the book off the floor. It was very old and musty, leather bound and cracked. The title was The Ways of the Fallen Angels: Secrets, Summonings, and Symbols.

Two ribbons protruded from the damp pages, marking separate places. I flipped it open to the first.

A sort of alphabet was depicted. Unnatural shapes, mostly intricate geometrical diagrams, triangles, stars, and interlacing circles. One was circled in red pencil: an upside down triangle with a cross hanging from the tip and a curved line intersecting the top side. It had a caption: Opening Rune.

I frowned. With a careful flick of the mildewed pages, I turned to the second ribbon and was faced with an illustration of creatures—horned and hooved—gathering about a huge pentagram of fire.

The chapter title was printed in gothic letters: The Great Convocation of Devills.

Absurd! But...why was I trembling? I was no longer alone!

The sound filled the room, soft and mechanical.

"I SEE YOU, GODFREY!"

Stay tuned for the installment tomorrow!
and check out the rest of the hop below:

October Frights! The Phantom of the Opera, Part One

WELCOME TO THE OCTOBER FRIGHTS BLOG HOP!

This is a super fun annual event where horror authors gang up to terrify and amuse you. You can 'hop' from blog to blog via the link we all share at the end of our posts. October 10-15 we will be serving up mayhem and madness, so stay tuned.

I have written a retelling of the Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. One of my favorite classic books. I also love all of the movie versions I've seen as well as the musical. I'll be posting this story in installments, somewhat fitting for a classic retelling as many classic novels were published as serial in the newspapers.

The Phantom of the Opera

Part One: The Typewriter

It began, and ended, with a key. Firstly a key of gold. Lastly a key of C.

Serafina Szeman made her debut at the Bamburg Opera on the 13th of November. She was leading lady in a production of Freerenmeck’s Angelicus.

I had been seeing her for several months before the opening, but she had been strangely distant during the weeks of rehearsal. She was something of a last minute casting choice, chosen at a hasty audition to replace the famous soprano Edithe Ridaphelm, who had bowed out for unknown reasons.

So I had rarely been able to call on Serafina since she'd started rehearsing and when I had, she was always in a hurry—late to rehearsal, to voice lessons, to the costumier—or else she was very tired and understandably quiet, even cool towards me, but I put it down to exhaustion.

I hoped she'd be better after the opening. Happier at least. And it was a triumphant opening. She has the voice of an angel. Lucid and soft and when she hits the high notes, my spine tingles.

I took a massive bouquet of roses to her dressing room after the show. When I knocked, however, there was no reply. I waited a moment, then slipped inside, hoping to surprise her when she arrived.

I found she was already in the room, her face rapt as she poured over a letter on aged paper.

"Serafina," I said, "you were marvelous! I don't think anyone has sung Lilliana so well! You had me in tears, congratulations!"

She did not look up from her letter. Her eyes were wide...almost adoring.

"Serafina?"

She tore her eyes away from the letter and jumped a bit, quickly sweeping the letter behind her back.

"Darling," she said, extending her other hand as I crossed the room. I took it to kiss, and noticed she clutched a small gold key.

"What's this?" I asked.

"Nothing," she said, snatching back her hand. Turning away, she stuffed both the letter and the key into an envelope.

"You were wonderful," I repeated.

She smiled vaguely and tucked the envelope under her comb.

"Thank you, Godfrey," she said. Her gaze was still distant, looking past me, as if I were invisible.

She must still be on the stage...her marble cheeks glowing with the applause like noble edifices caught in a sunset. Her perfectly curved lips smiled meekly despite their obvious glory. But...her normally sharp green eyes were misty—like stained glass that was curtained, blocking the internal candlelight.

I was close enough to smell her perfume—thick with rose and honeysuckle. And another odor.

A mustiness. But spiced...like anise wrapped in ancient molding papyrus.

"Will you let me take you out, now?" I asked. "Now the opening is over?"

"I can't," she said, then she seemed to shake herself and looked guiltily into my eyes. I was about to protest. "Of course," she said, and then I noticed the circles under her eyes.

"I think you need rest," I said. "I'll just drive you home."

"No," Serafina said, smiling. "We should celebrate. I promised we could go out when I had time. I won't be able to sleep, anyway."

I went to get my car while she got changed and then drove her to Les Cloches. We had a delicious supper, but she was still vague and distracted, even after champagne.

After I dropped her off at her house, I sat in my car and smoked a cigar. What letter had she been reading? An admirer’s? She couldn't have any yet...unless they had written the note during the performance. Or perhaps a cast member? But surely not? She loved me, didn't she? We hadn't had much time together since the audition.

And the key?

My mind conjured symbolic heart-keys and secret rendezvous...

A flickering light caught my attention and I peered into the dark. The side-door of Serafina's house had opened and emitted Serafina herself, in a thick wrap, bearing a candle of all things. She did not glance around—and thus did not spot me—but headed directly down the alley with purpose.

I stabbed my cigar butt into my gloved palm and leapt out of my car to follow her. I'd perhaps had a bit too much champagne and had half a mind to seize her arm and demand to know where she was going—who she was seeing.

But as I caught up, I slowed, almost in awe. She moved like a shadow. Her hair shone in the candle-light like burnished copper threads. The gathering fog curled its fingers around her, beckoning her into the night, and I got the irrational impression that she did not belong to me, nor to this world. She was already lost.

I kept to the shadows and corners as I trailed her through unfamiliar alleys that sloped ominously downward. Dread crept upon me even as the fog rose, thicker and thicker. A chill settled on me. I stumbled, looking around at leering facades, decrepit and strange. I realized we must be heading towards the river, hence the fog and cold. Guilt slipped through me for following her like this—then anger—then she vanished.

I froze.

Gaping windows smirked at me, black holes in the soft whiteness of mist. I heard a clink, and took a few rapid steps forward.

Serafina had slipped into a deeply recessed doorway and her candle had been lost in the cloaking fog. I tiptoed along the wet cobbles—ancient but perfectly fit—we were in the old quarter of the city, very near the river.

I stopped behind a cracked and mossy lion statue by a nearby gate and watched as Serafina unlocked a heavy door and was swallowed by a rotting, crumbling house.

Her candle did not appear in any of the windows. I realized I was hunkered by the house's main gate. She had gone into the cellar.

The house, with its deformed lion, damp moss crevices, and stench of decay, repulsed me violently. But with a wracking shudder, I charged down the slippery steps to the cellar door and seized the icy handles.

Serafina had not locked it behind her.

The humid doors creaked open and heaved me into moist darkness, where I fell to my knees on slimy stones.

Dark emptiness bulged around me, menacingly soft with a hard metallic odor. I got to my feet, unsure why I was trembling. Trembling not with any understandable adrenaline from secretly following someone, but with an irrational premonition. Something terrible was happening to Serafina and there was a sick, coppery flavor in my mouth. A chilling draft wafted that anise and parchment smell to me and I set off impulsively into the stone hallway.

The passage hooked right and plunged down, into the bowels of the earth, it seemed. I went slowly, afraid of slipping on the slime-coated flagstones.

The incline leveled out and I ran into a cobweb-covered wall.

I felt along it until I found the passage made a sharp turn to the left. I followed it around yet another corner and saw a flicker of light at last.

Two doorways yawned before me.

One the entrance to hell. One heaven. The right door gaped, black and sucking, cold and promising of terrors unimagined. And I fancied the smell issued from that featureless hole; the air was heavy laden with putrid rot, mixed with molding paper...ancient parchment...and a hint of anise.

Through the left door, a candle glowed, illuming the silhouette of my sweet Serafina.

Her back was to me; she was seated, gazing with her candle deeper into the room. I crept closer, careful to avoid the right hand opening. Serafina was speaking to someone I couldn't see.

"When will I get to sing for them?" She asked. "Surely I proved tonight I was good enough?"

I pressed myself to the door frame and peered around into the room, hoping to get a glimpse of whoever she was speaking to.

But no voice answered her. A clacking sound filled the malodorous air, cacophonous and malignant. As I peered into the secret rendezvous, I was sure the champagne must be making its full force know, for there was no earthly reason for the sudden dizziness that seized me. My head swam and the strange but not unholy sight rippled before my eyes. I nearly doubled over with nausea.

The room where Serafina sat on a stool was small. She was not more than ten feet away from me, sitting at an antique desk pushed against the far wall. On the desk sat her candle, and a typewriter. The typewriter was the source of the horrid clacking.

Serafina was at a slight angle to me and I could see her hands were in her lap.

The typewriter was operating itself!

I clutched the doorframe to keep from falling.

"I will do my best, Asmodeii," Serafina said. As if replying to the typewriter. I could not read the candle-lit page from the door.

The typewriter clacked away, like bones rattling in a cemetery. Then silence.

"You flatter me," Serafina said, her voice eerily girlish...a giggle hiding on the edge. "I cannot wait, either."

The typewriter replied and Serafina said, "Thank you, I will. Good night."

She took the page from the typewriter and folded it carefully, tucking it into her bosom. She turned and I retreated into the shadows. There was nowhere to go but back, or into the other horrible doorway.

Inexplicably, I found myself slipping into that foul abyss. The cold sucked at me, metallic and hungry.

Serafina passed from the small room and vanished back up the passage without glancing into my hiding place, taking her candle with her.

I was frozen in place, alone in the dark but with the distinct impression I was not alone...a legion lurked in the chasm behind me.

Suddenly, I remembered my matches. Pulling the book from my pocket, I clumsily fumbled out a match with my gloved fingers and struck it.

I turned around and nearly screamed. A row of skulls leered at me.

My heart hammered, each stroke threatening to be the last. The skulls were mortared into the wall. It must be an ancient crypt, perhaps part of the legendary catacombs that spread labyrinth-like beneath the city.

I shuddered and took my guttering match timidly into the room where Serafina had held her strange communion.

The typewriter gleamed sinisterly in the rank shadows. I dragged my feet reluctantly through the room. The typewriter seemed to wink in the flicker of my dying match. It loomed larger and larger and my feet grew heavier and heavier, but I was determined to seize the hateful thing and throw it upon the flagstones.

I was hardly thinking rationally, but part of me was aware that the thing must be operated by some hidden mechanical means, and if I tore it from the table, the secret would be revealed.

I was so close.

Just a few mores steps.

My match went out.

Darkness swept over me and the typewriter burst into hideous clacking laughter.

RETURN tomorrow for the next installment!

And check out more October Frights on my fellow blogs:

A New Mythology--Oramon--Nomra and the Living Dark

   In the internal depths of Oramon, Nomra’s kingdom grew. Among her crystal forests and sculptured blocks of stone she grew new, strange plants for the dark spaces. Some of her new flowers gave light and some were made of living gemstones. She created also, great underground seas of water, molten gold, and milk.

   Before Denu and the wolves, and before she created her Night Light, she used Phiron’s fire to animate her first stone companion, Syn, who was cold and dead in aspect, but able to carve exquisite murals, statues, and hallways for Nomra’s expanding world. Phiron also helped her to make birds of sapphire and ruby that filled the halls with eerie music. She made, too, a steed of steel to carry her about her domain. It was named Sylo, and was like Phiron in form.

   Once, as Nomra rode Sylo to the edge of her demesne, she sought to form a new aviary for her birds. Phiron accompanied her, giving his light to reveal the dark that Nomra might form it as she pleased. But there was already someone there, asleep, as Neron and Nomra had slept in the shadow before light awoke them.

   Nomra drew back, startled and the dark swallowed the being up again before it could wake.

“What untold ancient one is this?” she wondered. “I have never seen the like.” Cautiously, she stepped forward again to reveal the being entirely.

   In her fear of new things, she subconsciously formed the dark as she revealed the new one, and in so doing, unintentionally disfigured the being.

   He opened his eyes and beheld Nomra.

   She was frightened by the terrifying aspect of the monster and turned her steed to flee.

   “Seem I strange unto thee?” he asked. “All is strange unto me. If I frighten you, let me veil myself.” And he took the darkness behind him and without Light, formed a covering for his many eyes and fluid limbs.

   “You create without Light,” Nomra marveled.

   “I have dreamed long and dreams are dark, their substance is real to me,” said the being. “The Dark is an insubstantial world, one of unending, unformed possibilities. The chaos of Night is not solid and can form and reform as it pleases.”

   “There is no need for such uncertainty,” Nomra said. “Let me show you the world of reality, of light and form and concrete beauty.”

   “I find true beauty in the abstract, yet you arouse my curiosity: show me these strange things you speak of,” the being said hungrily. 

   “What shall I call you, Strange One?" Nomra asked.

   "What wilt thou call me?”

   “Onys,” she said. “Of the Dark.”

    Onys nodded and approached Nomra. She led him into her kingdom and showed him the marvels thereof. Behind his veil of night, Onys’s eyes sparkled in delight.

   “These are indeed marvels,” said Onys. “I wonder what more marvelous things we could create in this half-light world of yours.”

   “Will you teach me how to create without Light?” Nomra asked.

   “It is not so much creation as suggestion,” Onys said. “To make things with Light is to bind the Dark. To weave Darkness is to teach it movement.”

   So together, Nomra and Onys made Urr, a great eye of living stone that could see far forward and far backward in time. They made also the Je, four winged maidens with long tongues like snakes.

Onys built a breathing throne of chaos in Nomra’s favorite crystal garden and from this blasphemous throne he perverted her creations.

   Onys unformed her jewel birds halfway, so that they were eternally changing shape, from one kind of bird to another and bats and other winged things that had no names. The breathing throne of chaos expanded to fill the crystal chamber and Onys let loose tendrils into other chambers. Eyes budded on the tendrils and soon he watched all that transpired in Nomra’s domain.

   At first Nomra did not mind the aberrant intrusion and expansion that filled her chambers with dreaded Darkness and seething malice. She was thrilled by the ever-changing, though horrifying madness of these new things. She did not mind that the unblinking tendril eyes of Onys watched her wherever she went and wept tears of blood when she bathed in the sea of milk.

   She did not even care that great hideous membranes grew between her stalactites and rained creeping things upon the stones.

   Phiron whispered to her, warning that Onys was a vile creature, that she should not let him conquer her domain. She did not listen. At first.

   She sought to form Darkness on her own, and shaped for herself the first true bats, but she could not bring them to life without the help of Onys. Frustrated, she sat beside the sea of molten gold, poisoned with the shifting chaos and sparkling eyes of Onys.

   “Nomra…” whispered Onys’s voice from a thousand hidden mouths. “Nomra…”

   Nomra stood and followed the hissing voices to where Onys waited on his throne of chaos.

   “Come to me, Nomra,” he said. “I desire you. Step into my throne and let me embrace you and enfold you in my murk.”

   Nomra held back as the Darkness seemed to tug at her. “I do not wish to,” Nomra said.

   “Do I not excite you?” enquired Onys. “Have you not thrilled at my intangible and ever inescapable pandemonium? Give yourself over to me, Nomra, let us be one in anarchy. Let the Dark change you as I have been changed, as you changed me, dear Nomra. Let me kiss you!”

   His tendrils of slime and membranes sought to pull her into his throne.

   Nomra screamed and pulled away as the churning mucus lapped at her feet and the sticky webs entangled her arms.

   “Phiron!” she cried. “Save me!”

   Phiron tried to reach her, but the Je intercepted him and herded him towards the edges of Light, where Darkness was supreme.

   “Do not touch me,” Nomra warned Onys, but he only laughed.

   “You cannot escape me,” said Onys.

   Nomra seized his webs of Dark that he sought to enwrap her in and used her new skill to reform them. They broke away from her and she fled from the throne into her chamber of sparkling flames. Onys sought to extinguish them with his eye-covered tentacles, but Nomra reformed the tendrils into solid things and with the faint flame-light, managed to freeze them into stone.

   Phiron had singed the Je and escaped from them. He rushed to aid Nomra and they solidified all of the Dark tendrils, tentacles, and creeping feelers and roots that extended from the throne. Then Nomra sealed up the throne in a cocoon of diamond. She left Phiron to blaze bight and keep the Darkness from emerging while she went to the surface to collect sunlight and fallen stars.

   When she returned to the sealed throne of chaos, she formed a cage of silver to contain her new Light. The first lamp, a dazzling Light, which she called Mihr, she hung outside the cocoon to ensure it remained sealed and kept Onys from emerging and bringing pandemonium to her demesne.

Then she and Phiron went through all the chambers and all the caverns and halls and froze the tendrils and closed the eyes and scrubbed the place clean of unformed Darkness. Syn chiseled away the solidified remains of Onys’s expansions and carted them off to a new pit, called Obis, that Nomra made for the purpose. She left Urr alone in its chamber, but sent Sylo to hunt down the Je, which she trapped in silver cages and hung above the gloom of Obis.

   With her new Underworld Light, Mihr, Nomra was at last able to give life to her shadow creatures. She brought her bats to life and sent them to slay all of her old birds that had been commandeered by Onys and then she formed new birds of diamonds and opals.

   She also made the wolves out of shadow and gave them life with the Light of Mihr.

   So Nomra won dominion over Shadow.

The Olwick Slasher

   Inspector Daveign was renowned for his skills in solving crimes and ferreting out murderers and thieves. He was also known for his curious knowledge of things beyond the normal scope of science. He had studied the histories and cases of the arcane with Dr. Ivenburge at Grunwich Bridge College and had purportedly resolved several mysterious cases throughout the countryside; cases involving things which no one in the city dared speak about.
   So it only made sense that he was called upon by officials of Olwick village. There had been grisly murders in the town, and no trace of killer or possible motive. Without delay, Inspector Daveign packed his important articles and boarded the train to Olwick.
   The village was far out in the countryside, beyond Typpenham, nestled among the Orring hills along the Olrin River. These hills were extremely lush and green, abundant in oak and elm and covered in vibrant, but overgrown patchwork fields. Run-down stone walls bordered the little patches of wild grass and brambles and there next to no sheep in those pastures.
   Grey gloom covered the sky and wandering wisps of mist wended their way through the dark tree trunks or clung to the occasional dilapidated remains of a house. At last, the villages’ gambrel roofs came into view, rising over the misty river and steeply arched bridge.
   The train station was barely standing, riddled by worm and dark rot. Inspector Daveign hefted his worn suitcase and stepped out into the cavernous street, the roofs were close overhead and the rough cobbles were choked with mud. He had a map, scrawled on the back of an old notice, directing him to the old gaol, where the village’s lone constable kept office.
   It soon seemed apparent that the map had been drawn wrong. Daveign was hopelessly lost in the eerie, quiet streets. How, he could not imagine. Yet here he was on an abandoned street with dark, shuttered windows all around. No gaol to be seen.
   At last he spotted a window that was aglow with flickering red light. Adjusting his tie, Daveign approached the rickety house and tapped on the pitted door. He waited in the shadowy silence and knocked again. At last he heard shuffling sounds from inside. The door creaked open and blazing eyes greeted him through a black veil.
   Daveign drew back at the ferocity of those icy irises.
   “Pardon,” said the Inspector. “I’m looking for the gaol.”
   “What do you want with the gaol?” asked the veiled woman. “Or with this town altogether?”
   “I’m Inspector Daveign,” he said, switching his suitcase, so he could extend his hand. The veiled woman looked at his hand.
   “You’re here because of the deaths,” she said quietly. “Please come in, I’ll make you some tea and then walk you to the gaol. These labyrinthine streets are hard to get used to and it’s cold and damp out.”
   “I suppose I’m in no hurry,” the Inspector said, slowly, unsure if the woman with blazing eyes made him more nervous or curious.
   “Do come in,” the veiled woman entreated, opening the door wider. “The train ride must have been long. A little refreshment will prepare you better to meet with the constable and the monstrous details of our village’s plague.”
   “Thank you, very much,” Inspector Daveign said, stepping onto the threshold. The woman stepped aside and closed the door.
   “This way,” she said, leading him down the hall into a little parlor. It gave the overall impression of perfection, but threadbare, dark, and a little dusty. Old furniture was arranged aesthetically around an ornate plaster fireplace. Embers glowed lazily in the hearth and not a glass knickknack or lamp was out of place. There was a door leading off the parlor, open a crack and spilling a flickering red light onto the carpet.

   “Please sit down,” said the veiled woman. “I’ll start the tea. Make yourself at home.” She turned and vanished into the dark house. Daveign set his suitcase down on the couch and stretched. It had indeed been a long train ride. He sighed.
   The air was dusty and tinged with an odd smell…scented wax, perhaps. He glanced at the little side door, with the flickering red glow. Curiosity flared inside him and he slipped cautiously to the door. Now he detected a distinct odor of spices. He peered through the crack.
   “That’s my husband’s study,” the woman’s voice announced from behind him. He jumped and whirled around.
   “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—” he sputtered.
   “No, it’s all right,” she said. Her veil was thrown back and he could see she was a woman of perhaps forty, with crow’s feet and beautiful lips. Her eyes were startlingly bright and alive. She held a tray in one hand and a kettle in the other. “My husband has been dead for three years.” She carried the tray to a small table and set the kettle over the coals.
   “I’m very sorry,” Inspector Daveign said.
   “Don’t be,” said the woman. “He was a good man. I remember him always, by his study. You may look, if you like.” She swept to the door before Daveign could defer. She flung it open and motioned for him to step in.
   “Captain Eric Ryver, of Her Majesty’s Cavalry,” she said. “Village benefactor and watchman after he returned from the War of ‘77. Died of a vicious fever.”
   Curiosity overcame Daveign and he stepped slowly into the room.
The widow had made a sort of shrine out of a side table, an assortment of picture frames depicted the Captain on horseback, receiving the Medal of Monezuela, and holding hands with a beaming Mrs. Ryver. The more recent pictures were daguerreotypes, but a painting depicted the young Mr. Ryver. His eyes were pale contemplative spheres of a sorrowful aspect, his brow wide and intelligent, his nose majestic, and his fine cheekbones were framed by dark wavy hair.
   Clustered around the picture frames were an assortment of scented candles, burning with oddly red flames. The desk had apparently been left untouched, covered in dust and a half written letter.
   “I am glad he did not live to see the horrors of today,” Mrs. Ryver said.
   “I’m sure he was a great man,” Daveign said. “I see he was awarded the Medal.”
   “Yes, it hangs there,” she replied, pointing to where the Medal hung in the shadows over the little shrine.
   “He looks very kind,” the Inspector added.
   “He was,” the widow sighed.
   “I’m sorry to remind you of more sadness in this dark time,” Daveign said, moving back towards the door. He hoped to remove his awkward presence from the old room, but the widow did not move.
   “It is not sadness to remember such a wonderful soul,” she said. “It is a comfort. And I never forget anyway. I remember always.” She looked at Daveign, her eyes brimming with life. She smiled and stepped out of the way. The Inspector exited the room and she shut the door behind him.
   “Would you tell me about the happenings in this village?” the Inspector asked. “It might help the case to hear it from another local besides the constable.”
   “Certainly,” Mrs. Ryver said. “I hope you can solve it with utmost haste. Please, sit.”
Daveign sat beside his suitcase and waited expectantly. The widow, sat opposite him in a great wingback chair and smoothed out the wrinkles in her black skirts.
   “The first incident occurred just across the street,” she said, looking the Inspector directly in the eye. “I heard a hideous shriek in the night, shrill enough to wake me in my upstairs room, though the window was closed. There was great commotion, and I met Mr. Murgusson outside his door. He was going to the constable. I went in to try and calm the hysterical Mrs. Murgusson. She implored me not to go upstairs, but I couldn’t calm her, so I went to look. Would to God I hadn’t. The eldest Murgusson daughter lay sprawled out on the tangled bedsheets, white as death.” Mrs. Ryver stopped, shuddering, and then continued. “It looked like an animal attack. Her throat…there was blood everywhere. The window was closed, locked, undisturbed. As were all the windows, Mrs. Murgusson assured me. And the doors had all been locked. How could an animal get in? And what animal would attempt an entry? Only madness or viciousness could have perpetrated the attack. There were no strangers in town. How could they have got in anyway? The Murgusson’s are neither mad nor vicious, I can vouch for that. Or were. They are mad with grief now, I fear.”
   She paused as the kettle began to whistle. She continued her tale as she poured the tea and passed a cup to the Inspector.
   “The second incident happened across town. Mrs. Colchester, in like manner was ravaged and left on her bedroom floor. Her husband remembered nothing. The constable put him in the gaol anyway, thinking he’d caught the perpetrator. But a few weeks later, while he was still securely locked away, another victim was found in the river.
   “Young Mary Ludwig, she’d been out with a youth that night. Henry swore he’d parted with her at the fence on the edge of town, as they live on opposite ends of town. Again, only madness or viciousness could have committed such an act; Henry is neither of those.”
   “There was a fourth?” enquired Daveign.
   “Yes,” said Mrs. Ryver. “Just last week. The cobbler’s apprentice from out of town. The only male victim.”
   “You think that’s significant?” Daveign asked.
   “I don’t know,” Mrs. Ryver replied. “Perhaps.”
   The Inspector finished his tea as he waited for Mrs. Ryver to put on her boots and re-drape her veil. She led him out into the darkening street.
   “Have you arranged lodgings?” Mrs. Ryver asked.
   “I was told Constable Murray would have something available,” Daveign said.
   “I hope the bumbling fellow has not neglected that detail,” she said. “I will put you up in my spare room if he has.”
   “Thank you, Mrs. Ryver,” Daveign said gratefully.
   They curled through the winding streets, passing a few people, none of whom hailed Mrs. Ryver. The villagers eyed Daveign with mild curiosity and even fear, but none attempted to greet him, either. They darted furtively past, glancing down the narrow alleys and fingering their rosaries and charms. Several pointed their index and little finger at him, to ward off the evil eye.
   “This is the Inspector from Bamberg,” the widow called after one of the gesturers. “He’s come to help us.”
   “No earthly power can help us,” replied the villager without looking back.
   Mrs. Ryver sighed. “They cling to their superstitions so tightly.” She laughed humorlessly.
   “Superstitions are not always something to laugh at,” Daveign said softly. Mrs. Ryver looked at him sharply through her veil. Then she nodded.
   “Perhaps so,” she said. “There it is.” She pointed down the street to a crumbling stone block of a building with dilapidated shutters and a flaking black door.
   “Thank you, Mrs. Ryver,” Inspector Daveign said. “You have been most hospitable.”
   “Civic duty, Inspector,” she replied, smiling and inclining her veiled head.
   The Inspector watched her turn and head back into the deepening shadows. He thought it a bit odd that she still wore her mourning garb three years after her husband’s death, especially the veil. He shrugged and turned towards the worn gaol.
   Inspector Daveign found the interior no more promising, and the Constable even less so. Constable Murray was a very slow individual. It would have been no surprise to Daveign had the murderer been completely natural and still uncaptured by this lumpy intellect.
   The Constable had fewer details to offer than the widow, but they all corroborated her tale. Daveign resolved to interview more of the village’s inhabitants, as well as the suspects.
   “Suspects?” enquired the Constable.
   “Yes, the husband of the second victim and the lover of the third,” Daveign said patiently.
   “Ah…yes,” said the Constable. “They’re not guilty.”
   Daveign was taken aback by the answer, because it implied more wits behind the Constable’s tiny forehead than had previously seemed apparent. It wasn’t blind faith in his fellow villagers that prompted the reply, but a fear of something else.
   “Where are they now?” Daveign asked.
   “Here,” replied the Constable. “I knew you’d want them brought in. So I kept ‘em here. There weren’t no other possible suspects. Tangible ones. But they’re as innocent as you or me.”
   “None of us is innocent,” Daveign replied. “May I speak to them now? Then you can release them.”
   “Release them?”
   “Yes, don’t you want to?”
   “Well, yes, but I thought…”
   “You thought I’d barge in here with my city license and condemn an innocent man for lack of a palpable murderer.” Daveign said. “Bring them in one at a time: I’ll speak to Mr. Colchester first.”
The Constable was flabbergasted. He stuttered for a bit, then marched out to the cells, leading back a tall man with translucent orange hair and haunted eyes.
   “Hello,” said Daveign. “I’m Inspector Daveign. I know this is going to be difficult, but I want you to tell me about the night your wife died. I want you to leave nothing out.”
   “I didn’t kill her,” Mr. Colchester said. “I loved her more than my own life.”
   “Just tell me what happened. I want every detail, no matter how painful it is to relive.”
Mr. Colchester sighed and closed his eyes. “Must I?”
   “If your story satisfies me, I’ll let you go,” Daveign said. Mr. Colchester opened his eyes.
   “What’s the use in that? There’s nothing out there for me, now that she’s…she’s…” Mr. Colchester trailed off and tears bloomed along his colorless lashes.
   “What of vengeance?” asked Daveign. “You could help me catch the killer.”
   “The killer cannot be killed,” snarled Mr. Colchester. “You city people with all your learning and science will never understand: some things are not of this world.”
   “And some of us have come to understand that, through our learning,” said Daveign. “Even things not of this world must have connections to this world. Now tell me, what happened that night?”
   “I was asleep,” said Mr. Colchester. “I started to dream. Horrifying, nameless things. There was something sitting on me, crushing me. Something dark and wicked and laughing. I tried to struggle, but I just sank deeper into horror, pushed down by the laughing thing. Hideous it was. And there was a smell: the smell of death, of open graves and rotting corpses. I tried to scream and at last the sound forced its way out and I jolted awake.
   “But it was too late. Gertrude wasn’t beside me. I scrambled to light the lamp and then I saw her on the floor. Twisted into a funny shape, a look of horror mixed with bliss scrawled across her white cheeks. Her throat…it was all mangled, the skin all ripped apart…and peeling…there was blood all over the floor. I tend sheep. Sometimes a wolf will come around these parts, and it’ll get a few sheep. My wife looked like one of those sheep. No human could have done that, and I least of all.”
   “And the date?” the Inspector asked.
   “It were the third. Of September.”
   “Thank you,” the Inspector said. “You may go home.”
   “Did you hear me?” Mr. Colchester asked. “I said it wasn’t a human that did it! I’m crazy, you’ve got to hang me for…for killing my own wife.”
   “I agree,” said Daveign. “It was certainly no longer human. Constable, please take Mr. Colchester home. I’ll talk to Henry while you’re gone.”
   Inspector Daveign found the three cells, all now empty, save one. A tow-headed youth sat hunched in the far corner, hugging his knees.

   “Henry?” asked the Inspector.
   “Where’s Mr. Colchester?” Henry asked, still without looking up. “He didn’t do it!”
   “He’s going home.”
   “So you’re going to hang me then?” Henry asked, almost hopefully. “I’m to take the fall for the monster?” The Inspector said nothing. Suddenly Henry jerked his head up. His eyes were swimming with tears. “I want to die,” he said, blinking furiously. “But it won’t do any good. And you can’t kill it.”
   “Why not?”
   “It’s already dead.”
   “I know.”
   “You do?”
   “Yes, unless you and Mr. Colchester and the Constable and Mrs. Ryver are in collusion to perpetrate some scheme with unimaginable purpose.”
   “Mrs. Ryver?” asked the youth. “Who would scheme with her? No one talks to her if they can help it.”
   “Really?”
   “Yes, she’s peculiar. Always wears that veil.”
   “So her grief turns people away?” asked the Inspector. “She seemed cheery enough to me.”
   “I guess,” Henry said. “I dunno. She’s got some weird air about her. People say she’s got the evil eye; that she’s bound to the devil. Stuff like that. But you wouldn’t believe that any more than the truth about the killer. The killer that butchered Mary…” Henry swallowed a few times, choking back sudden sobs that sent a tear tracking through the grime on his face.
   “Tell me about her death,” the Inspector said gently. “Then you can go home. Leave nothing out. Start with the date.”
   Henry sniffled than began slowly. “It was the thirteenth of September, I think. We met out by the old hay barn, like we did almost every night since I told her I loved her. We had to sneak out, see, her parents didn’t like it. I don’t think mine would’ve either, but I never let ‘em catch on. Anyway, we met like usual and when we went home, I kissed her by the fence on the edge of town and told her…I said…I told her we’d never be parted, not by our folks, not fortune, fate or God. I never shoulda said that! It’s my fault she died. I tempted fate, tempted God! You may as well hang me. I just as good as killed her with those words as if I’d a used my own hands!”
   “What happened then?” the Inspector interrupted.
   “I went home, and I dreamed…terrible dreams. I dreamed at first I was with Mary in the field behind the barn. Then…she turned into a…a…a thing. A dark thing…I don’t know, a demon? Smelled like rotting things and death and it was crushing me, squeezing the air out of my lungs. My eyeballs felt like they’d pop out. And the…thing, it laughed. It laughed and called my name mockingly. I tried to scream. But I couldn’t, I kept sinking into…something. A wriggling, squirming, laughing darkness. And the thing kept laughing too.
   “At last I managed to scream and I woke up. I didn’t sleep any more that night. Later that morning I heard them yelling that another victim had been found. I didn’t know who it was. I just followed the crowd. Then I saw who they’d dragged out of the water, all pale and purple lipped. God, those lips used to be so soft! And her throat…it was all ripped up, splayed open and pale, bloodless, waterlogged. I see her every night now. Every night, and I know it’s my fault!”
   “It’s not your fault,” the Inspector said. “You said yourself, the thing that killed her is already dead.”
   Henry sprang at the bars and yelled in Daveign’s face, “And that means I’m crazy. Just kill me, I deserve it!”
   Daveign reached through the bars and grabbed the boy’s wrist. “Calm down,” he commanded. “It’s not your fault. The demon that did this is responsible. Your youthful promises were naïve, but they did not kill Mary. Something else did that. And I’m going to find it and destroy it.”
   At last the boy sank to the straw covered floor.
   When the Constable returned, Daveign asked the Constable to take Henry home in the morning and tell his mother to keep an eye on him, as he might try to do himself harm. Before the Constable led Daveign out, the Inspector elicited reluctant promises from Henry not to hurt himself.
   The Constable lit an old lamp and led the Inspector out into the murky black streets. Daveign glanced about at the gloomy gables and decaying walls, dripping with moisture from the mist. They came to a worn and yellowed inn and the Inspector was shown to a tiny, but comfortable room. There was one other guest, he was told, across the hall: a collector who had come out to examine some rare stone brooches that the insolvent Winston family was trying to sell.
   In spite of his fatigue, Inspector Daveign interviewed the innkeeper before he went to bed. The innkeeper’s version of events did not dispute with any of the details the others had told him. He too, had dreamed strangely, though much less vividly on the night of the apprentice’s death.
   “Their shop’s just across the road,” he said. “Good shoes, too; it’s a shame.”
   Daveign thanked him and retired. It was past midnight and so after going over his notes, the Inspector placed his necklace on the bedpost by the pillow and blew out his candle. His sleep was disturbed by vague and horrifying dreams.
   The darkness heaved and convalesced, then dissolved. It was breathing and alive, churning around him like a viscous glob of terror. A heavy, vile breath of rot assailed him and caressed him in shivers. Something pressed on his chest, a weight of darkness, exhaling vapors from the tomb. And a hideous, vibrating chuckle emanated from the thing on his chest as it pressed him down…ever down into the living night.
   An inhuman scream jolted him from sleep. He blinked and clutched his blankets in white hands as the shrill sounds scraped his tingling ears. The screams came from the room across the hall. The collector. Inspector Daveign staggered from his bed, scrambled into his dressing gown, grabbed his necklace from the bedpost and snatched a few of his special implements from his suitcase.
   By the time he’d fumbled his door open, the shrieks had stopped. Steps rang on the stairway: the innkeeper had been aroused by the sounds. Daveign tried the door across from his, but it was locked. He slammed his shoulder against it, but it held. It would be too late! He slammed it again. He hammered on the door and yelled for the collector to answer. Nothing.
   The innkeeper lumbered up. “Do you have the key?” demanded Daveign.
   “No,” panted the innkeeper.
   “Go get it!”
   The innkeeper turned around and clumped back to the stairs. Daveign pounded helplessly on the door and then listened at the crack. All was silent. At last the innkeeper returned with the keys and they opened the room. They were much too late. All was as the widow had described. Untouched window, mangled corpse, bloodstained floor.
   The next morning, the Inspector stood in the main room of the inn with the small group of villagers surrounding the corpse, carefully sheeted on a table.
   “Here’s his personal effects,” said the innkeeper, handing a suitcase to the Inspector. “You should find his address and whatnot, for the family and such.”
   “Yes, thank you,” said the Inspector. “Constable, would you see to the official things? I’ll sign any papers later.”
   “What are you going to do?” asked Constable Murray.
   “I’m going to find the killer,” said the Inspector.
   The Constable said nothing, but all of the villagers’ eyes held despair and pity.
   “Were there any deaths directly prior to the first victim?” the Inspector enquired of the haunted assembly. “Deaths from sickness, violence, suicides?”
   He was met with thoughtful stares.
   “There was old McGuffrey,” said the doctor. “He died of natural causes a week before the poor Murgusson girl.”
   “And Dalia Nyllis,” added the cobbler. “She drowned the month before.” The Inspector raised an eyebrow.
   “Are they both buried in the local graveyard?” asked the Inspector. Nods. “And you’re sure there were no other recent deaths?” More nods. “Very well. Thank you gentlemen. Let me know if you need me, or think of anything else of importance. Two of you come with me, bring spades, we’re going to the cemetery.” He hefted his bag and marched out the door.
   The graveyard was on the edge of the village, just beyond the last sagging house, choked with shrubbery and watched over by the tilting church with its grey steeple. The green fields sloped away from the vine-tangled cemetery fence and ambled away to the thick trees and foggy hills beyond. The air was damp and slightly sour.
   The headstones were worn and moss covered. He found the recent ones quickly. Only wooden crosses marked the four graves of the killer’s victims. Their dirt was freshly turned. And the grave of Dalia Nyllis had a fresh little headstone, clumsily carved with her name. It had grass freshly sprouting across its little mound. And the grave of McGuffrey was not far away, surrounded by weeds.
   He settled on Dalia being the most likely suspect. “Dig her up,” he ordered the cobbler and innkeeper, who had followed him there reluctantly. They both drew back, their faces contorted with repulsion. “You know what blight has come to your village, do you not?” the Inspector insisted. The two men met his eye with trepidation. “Dig her up, that we may ascertain whether her death is final or not.”
   Silently, the two men set to work. The Inspector set to making sure his tools were in readiness for the task ahead. At last they heaved the coffin out of the earth and broke it open.
   Dalia had begun the degradation of the grave. She was not unnaturally fresh. She was not bloated or coated in fresh blood from the meal the night before. She was not the Olwick Slasher. Inspector Daveign placed certain articles into her coffin with her before closing her up, just to be sure. “Put her back in.”
   They refilled her grave and dug up the old man. After he had been replaced in his final rest the Inspector surveyed the graveyard. He wiped his forehead with his kerchief and turned to the cobbler.
   “Are you sure there was no one else who died before this all started?”
   “Not recent…” said the cobbler.
   “There was Sarah James,” said the innkeeper. “Remember? She was old, fell down the stairs, year before.”
   “And Barry!” said the cobbler. “More a year before. Crushed by a tree.”
   So they dug them both up. And still nothing. The two villagers shook their heads sadly and wandered off, dragging their shovels behind them. The Inspector sat on a mound and thought. There must have been another, a recent one somehow forgotten or not spoken of, buried perhaps in some secret place. Had there been a visitor to the village that had met a violent end unbeknownst to most of the town? He would have to make inquiries.
   Daveign stood and collected his things back into his case and set off. He would speak to the families of the victims first.
   After interviewing the parents of Mary and chasing down the cobbler for some questions, he arrived at the curtained home of the Murgussons. The first to be struck, they were still in shock, it seemed.        They could add little to Mrs. Ryver’s story, other than touching odes to their eldest daughter. They could also tell him nothing of visitors to the village. They were sure that they would have remembered any, as the village received so few. They knew nothing of any hushed up deaths. No suicides, no disappearances. All they knew for certain was grief, harsh and enveloping.
   Inspector Daveign could not find words of any use, and so he left them at last, in their cocoon of sorrow and stepped out into the darkening street. He glanced over at Mrs. Ryver’s house, thinking perhaps she might have more information, but the windows were all dark; there was no red glow from her husband’s study.
   He turned back towards the graveyard, thinking to search the whole cemetery for disturbed graves.     Perhaps it was entirely possible that the monster was not a recent death, but an older one awakened by some sinister force. He borrowed a lantern at the inn and continued on into the solidifying dusk.       There were few people out by now and mist curled around the edges of the buildings. There were almost no streetlamps, just a random spluttering oil flame here and there, hanging from a corner.
   As the Inspector passed one of these guttering, putrid lights, he drew up short, staring down a dark alley. For a moment he’d thought he’d seen someone, standing at the edge of the light. His heart tapped out a quick march and his breaths clouded on the chilly air.
   The face he’d seen but for a moment had borne a look of sorrowful intelligence, it’s pale eyes boring into him as if they recognized him. The Inspector had certainly recognized it’s majestic nose and fine cheekbones framed by dark wavy locks.
   Inspector Daveign shivered and set down his case. He fingered his necklace and stepped towards the alley, raising his lantern high. Blackness gave way to blackness and silence was supreme. The Inspector held out the pendant on his necklace and stepped into the quiet dark.
   The shuddering lantern revealed only emptiness.
   Had he seen what he’d thought?

   Perhaps a creature could be drawn from the grave by a loving relative unwilling to let them go…he returned to his case and continued towards the graveyard at a clipped pace. Perhaps the widow had unknowingly raised her husband with her obsessive remembrances, mourning and candles.
   He searched the graveyard frantically in the dark, looking for Captain Ryver’s resting place. At last he found it, a modest little grave tucked away in the corner, nearly hidden by a flowerless rose bush.     The earth was old, but certainly not three years. It had been disturbed since then.
   He could dig it up now, to be sure, but if the Captain was the creature, then he would not be here. Daveign turned and made for the village. It might already be too late. But there was no way to tell where it might strike next.
   He ran to the widow’s house, shadows leaping and chasing him all the way. The fog was thick as a shroud now and where the rare streetlamps burned, all was soft, white, and murky. No sound echoed through the empty streets, even the Inspector’s footfalls seemed strangely mute on the muddy stones.
Daveign was afraid he would become hopelessly lost, but before long, he came to where he thought the widow’s street was, and saw a faint red flicker. A breeze stirred the thickening fog and Daveign caught a whiff of cloying rot. He hurried to the widow’s door and banged upon it furiously. The fog rolled past the dim glow of his lantern, curling and whispering…his lamp flickered, sputtered, and died. Darkness swarmed around him, the ruddy glow of the widow’s window all but choked off by the mist that seemed to caress Daveign’s cheeks, chuckling sinisterly.
   He held his breath, trembling.
   The door creaked open.
   “Who is it?” asked Mrs. Ryver. “Is that you, Inspector?”
   “Yes. I know it’s late, but may I come in?”
   Mrs. Ryver let him in and led him to the parlor. There was a fire roaring in the grate but the lamps were all dark. The door to Captain Ryver’s study was open, the candles and incense blazing bright and red. Inspector Daveign closed the parlor’s door and locked it, hanging his necklace on the knob.
   “Mrs. Ryver,” he said, moving to the window and taking another crucifix out of his case. “No attacks have yet occurred two nights in a row, correct?”
   “Correct,” agreed the widow.
   “I think I saw the monster,” the Inspector said, hanging the second crucifix over the window.              “Tonight, on the street. I think I know who it is.”
   “Who?” asked the widow. Her veil still hung over her face and he couldn’t see her face. Just the twinkle of her eyes through the black lace. He strode into the Captain’s study and picked up the small framed painting of the young Ryver. The spicy, mysterious odor of incense wafted around him. Those were definitely the same eyes. He glanced over the little shrine, noting the incense burner tucked away behind the picture frames. He set down the picture frame and exited the study, closing the door behind him.
   “That’s incense you’re burning in there,” he said.
   “Yes, Eric loved the smell of incense.”
   “Did you think what such practices might perpetrate?” the Inspector asked, pulling another crucifix from his bag and looping it around the doorknob. “There, we should be safe in here until morning.”
   “Inspector,” said the veiled widow. “Who is the monster?”
   “You mean who was the monster, before death? I’m afraid you won’t like the answer. How long have you held your little services in his study?”
   “I beg your pardon?” said Mrs. Ryver, her voice rising. “I only keep his memory alive, you cannot know how much I miss him, or what little comfort I derive even from my collection of pictures, medals, and favorite scents!”
   “Indeed, Mrs. Ryver,” interrupted Daveign. “Indeed. But I fear you may be keeping his memory alive to a much greater degree than you had thought. I fear you need to let him go, now.”
Mrs. Ryver trembled, her veil rippling about her black clad form. She clutched at her chest. “You do not imply,” she said, “that I have caused the deaths of my friends and neighbors merely by mourning my dear husband. Three years is not too long to weep! It is not long enough! No tears can heal his passing.”
   “And he has come back!” said the Inspector. “I will need your permission to do the necessary cleansing of his body. I will need your blessing, your release.”
   The widow’s veiled head sagged. She nodded imperceptibly.
   “Now, do you wear a crucifix?” asked the Inspector.
    A sudden noise at the window made him turn. He approached the window cautiously.
   “No, but I leave Eric’s in his desk drawer,” replied Mrs. Ryver.
   “Please put it on,” Daveign said, peering out the dark glass. The widow took the crucifix away from the study door.
   “I will never wear such a thing,” said Mrs. Ryver bitterly, seizing Inspector Daveign’s case from the floor. “I will never allow such things to come between us!” She made for the roaring fire. Daveign leapt after her, knocking over a lamp in his haste, but it was too late, she’d heaved them into the fire.      The lamp shattered on the floor. Mrs. Ryver laughed, a mad, dark laugh and ran for the door. Daveign caught her veil, but it ripped from her bonnet and fell like a shadow to the floor.
   “My friends!” guffawed the widow, her eyes alight with glee. “My neighbors! Why shouldn’t they suffer and die?” she ripped the crucifix from the parlor door and ran to the window. Daveign charged across the room. “They ostracize me and call me a witch,” Mrs. Ryver chortled, snatching the last cross from the window. “Maybe they’re right. But it’s a damned unfortunate thing to be right about.”
   “Mrs. Ryver,” said the Inspector, stalking towards her and the window. “Give me those.”
   “What?” asked the widow. “These little things? These trinkets of holiness?” She opened the window. “I won’t let anything come between me and Eric.” She threw the crucifixes out into the street.
   Daveign stopped in the center of the room.
   “It’s not Eric,” he said. “It’s not Eric anymore. It’s a demon and it will destroy you.”
   “Maybe I want destruction, Inspector,” said Mrs. Ryver, her eyes blazing with madness. “Maybe I want to flame with glorious love, with life, with fire, one last time. Whatever the cost: I want Eric!”
   The study door opened.
   Daveign froze. Mrs. Ryver’s shining eyes, dancing with the reflected flames in the hearth, were fixed upon the figure in the study doorway. Her lips formed silent praises.
   Daveign turned slowly to face the terror.
   The creature’s eyes shone with hellish imitation of the deceased. Its hands were curled at its sides, obfuscating its terrible demon claws. It’s red lips curled into a sneering smile, revealing the vicious teeth that now sprouted from the regenerate jaw of the late Captain Ryver.
   “Destroy him, my love,” Mrs. Ryver squeaked, and the monster stepped towards Inspector Daveign. Dirt from the grave crumbled from his trouser-leg and speckled the carpet. Daveign backed towards the door as the creature advanced.
   “Mrs. Ryver,” he rasped, “please, get the crosses, save yourself!”
   The creature lunged.
   Daveign slammed into the door, scrambling for the knob. It was locked. By the time he’d twisted the key, the creature was there, it’s claws enfolding him, throwing him to the floor. The Persian carpet met his face and he caught a whiff of dust and old pastry crumbs. The creature rolled him over and pinned him down as he struggled, kicking, punching, screaming.
   But it was no good. The thing was astride his chest, pressing down, choking off his breath. The fire seemed to dim, darkness flooded around him, breathing, sentient, malicious. He tried to scream. He tried to fight. His limbs fell limp and his lungs were bursting. The thing on his chest crushed him, pushing him down, down into the pastry crumbs and the burbling darkness and the sinister laughter.  
   Only now he realized it wasn’t the thing on his chest that laughed.
   It was the widow.