Toddlin’

1

“You’re dead,” three-year-old Michael said.

“Na-unh!”

“I got you!” He held up a complicated construction of red, blue, and yellow colored blocks, that, when you thought about it, had a design as universal as any machine. A long pointed shaft, a handle grip, and a place to rest your finger. Michael wiped wispy bangs of blond hair from his eyes, and smiled. He pointed his “gun” at his older brother, J.J. and expressed an equally universal sound effect, that of a major explosion from a small gentle mouth.

J.J., with a fuller mane of the same shade of blond hair, tilted his head back, and closed his eyes. He fell backward onto the carpet. Michael dropped his weapon, and pounced. J.J. grunted. “Michael, stop!”

The youngest child grinned wildly, a low-growl of laughter machine-gunning from his throat as he rolled across his brother. They completed two revolutions across the floor, before a lower voice announced a warning, “Boys! Settle down.”

Michael popped his head up, and saw his daddy walking in the front door. He jumped to his feet, and ran on light feet through the room.

“Daddy!!”

Stephen bent down, and scooped his son into his arms. Michael wrapped his tiny legs around his waist and his arms tightly around his neck. They held the embrace for a few moments, and then the boy wriggled loose. Stephen set him back on the floor, and announced in his whimsical three-year-old speech pattern, “Daddy, I gots a gun.”

He displayed the makeshift weapon proudly. Stephen rolled his eyes, and nodded. He hadn’t resigned himself to the fact that his boys were prone at such a young age to create weapons, especially guns, and hoped to wipe out that particular bent from their playtime.

“Hey, J.J. Bad!” he called to his oldest son.

The tow-headed lad didn’t look up from his blocks, but voiced his displeasure at the nickname. “My name is J.J., Dad. Not J.J. Bad.”

“I don’t think I should call you J.J. Dad,” Stephen countered. “I’m Dad around here.”

“No … not J.J. Dad! I’m just J.J.!”

“Okay, Just J.J.”

“No …!” the boy protested again, finally looking up at his father with a pained expression in his wide eyes. Stephen marveled again that his two boys could have been so beautiful to look at. Pure blond hair, vivid blue eyes, and fair skin. J.J., in particular, had large eyes, and a pale rim of white surrounding the pupil, that added an extra intensity to them. People had always commented on that feature.

“Come up here and say hello to your dad!” Stephen invited. J.J. stood, still looking with fervent concentration at his invention-in-progress, and walked to his dad. He wrapped one arm around his legs, and then sat back on the floor to continue his project.

Stephen set his briefcase down, and began extracting his daily objects from pockets: keys, sunglasses, iPod, and phone onto a common shelf that originally began its designated life as a depository for his things. Over the last few years, that shelf had attracted with magnetic proportions things that belonged to every individual in the house. Why on earth were there broken toys, cast-off rubber bands, and wrappers without any candy in them up there?

“Hi, honey,” his wife, Beth, called from the kitchen.

“Hey, babe,” he responded. A wild screech behind him made Stephen turn his head.

The boys struggled in a tug-o-war over a lengthy set of blocks. Michael let go, and smacked his oldest brother on top of his head. J.J. scrunched his face up in pain and extreme displeasure, and ran to his daddy.

“Daddyyyy! Michael hit me!” He held his head for emphasis.

“Don’t hit, Michael. Now, hug your brother and say you’re sorry.” Stephen left the brothers to amend this latest infraction of house rules, and entered the kitchen.

Beth stood at the oven, dressed casually in exercise shorts, and a t-shirt. She wore her hair short, with natural and abundant curls surrounding her head like a halo. She smiled when she saw her husband, and further greeted him with a kiss and embrace.

“How was your day?” she asked.

“Work day was fine, but my drive home was weird—”

(“J.J., that’s my toy!” echoed from the next room …)

—and I still haven’t shaken it off.” He leaned against the kitchen sink as he began describing his drive home.

Beth listened for a few moments, and then put down her spatula. “And they were just glaring at you? You didn’t honk your horn at them, did you?” she asked warily.

“No, but I wanted to. I just didn’t understand why they were pacing me like that. They had to be gang members.”

 “Just because they were minorities, doesn’t mean they were in a gang. That’s profiling, honey.”

“Five of them crowded in a car, like that?”

“I’m sure five people have never been seen in a car at the same time, before.”

Stephen frowned. “That’s funny, Beth.”

“I’m not trying to make fun of you, but I just want you to see that not everything is gang related. You’re probably being paranoid.”

Stephen shrugged his shoulders, and left the kitchen. He saw his boys in a huddle on the floor. He sat down next to them, and stretched his neck and spine. It cracked comfortably from a long day at work. Absently he gazed out the front window at the fading daylight. A little while till dinner, and then the nightly ritual of bathing and teeth-brushing for the boys.

A time yet, to play with his little guys.

For the next half hour, Stephen lost himself in an improvisational adventure inspired by every fleeting and changing thought his ADHD-prone boys could come up with, from building a far-reaching tower of blocks to the ceiling, to a superhero game of chase, tag, and chase some more. More often than not, he was the bad guy, while little scrawny J.J., and slightly smaller Michael, wrestled him to the ground. Stephen took turns one at a time of lifting each boy into the hair above him, lying prone on his back. The kids kicked their legs wildly behind them, waving their arms, pretending to either fly, or attempt escape from the villain’s vile clutches. After each turn, they chorused together, “Again, Daddy!” After several repetitions each, Stephen finally waved a hand, and slowly stood to his feet. The boys begged for more.

“No, go on a play for a few more minutes, guys. Dinner’s almost ready.”

“No!” J.J. declared.

“J.J., please, go, and show your brother how to make a tower like we did before. Build it as high as you can.”

“Okay!” he exclaimed, and ran to their room.

Stephen took another breath and flexed his arms from the effort of hoisting his tiny children. He smiled, and turned to the kitchen.

His cell phone rang. After a brief glance at the number, he swiped the screen and took the call.

“Hey, there, I can see you, so don’t even move, man!”

Stephen’s blood dropped several degrees, and his eyes darted out the window. A familiar car idled in front of his house in the growing darkness.

“Yeah, I’m talking to you, man, so don’t even move. I got you covered from every angle, so get ready…”

Then he saw figures pop out from every window in the car, dressed in dark clothes, and holding weapons, guns, oh, God, guns, were those automatic weapons?

Bright flares of orange and red light burst in staccato flashes from the tips of the guns, followed closely by sharp cracks of explosions. Instantly, glass shattered from the windows in vivid bursts of razor sharp shards. Plaster turned to small explosions of dust. He heard the passage of projectiles hurtling through the air at high speed.

Stephen threw his body to the floor, and screamed, “Boys, get on the floor, now! J.J. and Michael, drop on the floor and LIE DOWN!”

Behind him, he heard Beth shout in distress, and approach the room from around the corner.

“BETH, STOP RIGHT THERE! DROP, BABY!”

Bullets continued to spray through the house, the sounds of entry a haunting barrage that rattled his spine and filled his whole being with fear and flight-impulses.

Then a new sound, one he’d never in his life entertained hearing came from the next room.

Where his boys had been playing.

J.J. and Michael …

Then came the most horrifying crying and screaming they’d ever uttered in their short lives.

When the bullets continued, and the crying suddenly stopped, the ensuing silence was far worse.

 

2

The house on Virginia Avenue was strangely quiet. No one played a stereo loudly from inside its thin walls. There wasn’t as much as a clatter of voices enjoying a party. The windows were dark. A metallic, root beer brown ’67 Impala sat in the driveway. This wasn’t inordinate for this neighborhood. Many houses in the area had a custom job decorating a driveway much in need of decoration. In fact, in just about every house on this street, the only expensive allowance you could find were the cars, tricked out and painted in wild and garish street design, and big HDTVs.

At 1300 Virginia Avenue, not even the television was on. Instead, Manny Gutierrez sat quietly on the broken and worn couch in the living room, nursing a forty ounce beer. In between sips of the drink, he drew heavily from a roach cigarette. A low cloud of cannabis hung over his head in the dark. His thoughts sat just as heavily. He thought of Alicia, and their five year old daughter, Wendy. He didn’t get to visit her very much. Wendy was quite clear on that issue. They lived three towns away, on the other side of the county.

Manny pictured Wendy’s eyes, and her wavy black hair.

The TV news reported that two little boys had died as a result of a drive-by shooting. The news stunned the community. Never had such activity occurred in that neighborhood, or anywhere near it on that side of town. It was a mystery to everyone concerned, with no clear motive. The parents of the two little boys had been hospitalized with minor wounds. Neither would speak to the press about what had happened. The police organized a manhunt. Witnesses who’d heard the rapid-fire shooting claimed they saw a lowrider type car, but feared repercussions on reporting what they’d seen. As one eyewitness was videotaped saying, “If they came here to do this once, I don’t want to be the cause of them coming back.”

Manny grimaced at the thought. No chance of that.

None of his guys had looked in the backseat of the dude’s car. No one had seen a child’s car seat. Just that gringo, staring at them on the road. Like the dude was challenging them. Manny remembered thrusting his chin up at the white guy, as if to say, “What, homie? What you gonna do about it, ese?” Frankie at the driver’s seat paced the white guy, all the while Manny and Robby in the backseat gestured and glared. Finally, the white dude speed up and headed into the left lane. Frankie drifted a few cars behind and followed. They kept within sight of the man’s car, and followed him to his neighborhood. Once they saw the house the man pulled into, they marked it—marked it well—and headed off to collect some friends.

After leaving the guy’s house for the second time that night, they split off from each other, and laid low. No doping. No hitting stores for cash. Manny knew better. The cops were looking out for anyone stupid enough to add to the crime and draw attention to themselves.

Manny had hid in his small house on the corner of Virginia Avenue for the last four days. The first had just been wise caution. Then he’d heard the news. Two little boys. He pictured Wendy, running through her house, sprayed by bullets. He knew he’d go after any fool who dared shoot his daughter. White man or no, geek or tough, those two boy’s dad would come after him. It would be foolish, and probably the last thing that man ever did, but he’d come looking.

So, Manny lay low a bit longer. But while the day passed into two, and then three, he thought again, of the little boys. He couldn’t get his daughter’s face out of his mind. He kept picturing a fresh-faced five year old girl in that guy’s house, instead of the little boys.

“Stop it, man,” he chided himself. He took another hit off the roach, reached the end of the clip, and threw it on the table in frustration. Manny stood up, and put on his grey fedora.

In minutes, his Impala roared. He raced down Virginia Avenue to 21^st Street. He squealed to a stop in front of Frankie’s house. Frankie was the only one he let drive his car. Frankie had driven that night. He never had a gun.

Frankie stepped out his front door. “Man, where have you been?”

“Keepin’ low,” Manny answered. His friend nodded, and gestured to the house. Frankie was watching a movie on TV. “Where’s Joe?”

“Out at Lisa’s. It’s jus’ you and me, man. Wanna beer?”

Manny accepted one, and bummed a cigarette from Frankie. His friend threw him a pack. Flicking open a lighter from his pocket, many drew deep on the fag, and exhaled slowly. He flopped down in a chair.

“What’s eatin’ you, Manny?”

“Nothing.”

“You worried about the pops coming?”

Manny regarded his friend, and thought about his answer. Anyone else, he never would have admitted his fears. But Frankie had been around since they were little kids. No one else could understand him as well.

“Maybe.”

“I hear he’s still in the hospital. He ain’t coming out here. No one in that rich white neighborhood will talk if they even think they saw anything. We’re cool, man.”

Wendy, running, laughing, down a hall, her dress fluttering around her little legs, a doll in each hand. Suddenly falling, her head exploding open from the force of a high caliber bullet. Her body hitting the floor, spraying blood on the carpet and walls.

Manny shivered.

 

3

An hour later, Frankie and Manny split; Manny headed off to find Robby, while Frankie hit the liquor store for a drink and some chips. Frankie stopped his car in the farthest slot from the front door, checked his hair in the mirror, and sauntered into the store. His denims hung low, boxers exposed, a gray sweatshirt opened loosely over a L.A. Kings jersey. The store clerk gazed with a long stare as he entered the joint. Frankie shrugged, and gestured to the aisles with the food. He hovered, staring at the chips for a moment, and then selected a sizable bag that should last him all night. Then he slowly shuffled to the back row of refrigerated coolers. Frankie glanced once over his shoulder back at the clerk, and saw an older woman enter and stop at the counter. Good. Should keep that old fart busy. Frankie opened a glass door, and pulled out a tall bottle of beer, and slid it into his jacket’s deep pocket. Then he slid over two doors, and grabbed a large 1-liter plastic bottle of soda. With the large bag of chips and soda in front of him, he headed across the back of the store, to the farthest aisle, but didn’t stop his progress. He didn’t want the clerk to suspect that he might be working the merchandise into his clothes somehow.

As he turned the corner onto the aisle, Frankie stopped when he saw the kid staring at him.

“Hey, didja loose your mommy?” he said low. “She’s over there, little dude.”

The kid only stared, with big eyes and a frown on his face. The kid had dirty, matted hair. The kid’s mom was probably buying lottery tickets and booze, and would likely have no money left over to get the kid a good shampoo.

“Get going, man,” Frankie said. “It ain’t polite to stare.”

The boy tilted his head down, and seemed about to cry. Frankie knelt down. “Hey, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

The boy looked up again, sluggishly. He tugged at his red shirt.

“You gotta go to the bathroom?” he asked the little boy.

The kid turned his head back towards the front of the store. As he did, Frankie saw something wet stuck to the kid’s hair, like he’d fallen in the store’s cherry syrup for the soda fountain.

But nearly half of the kid’s skull was missing, ending in scraggly edges of red-stained bone, and crispy hair.

“What the—” Frankie whispered.

The kid looked back, and Frankie saw that the kid’s eyes were pale, gray almost white in color. His mouth and jaw hung askew, as if it had been partially ripped away, but left attached to the boy’s face. That mouth opened, and a high, screeching wail came out.

Frankie skidded backward, and fell on his backside. The stolen bottle of beer in the sweatshirt pocket slid behind him as he fell, and he landed on it hard enough to shatter it. The cool smell of hops and barley wafted up from the floor. He dropped the chips and soda, and tried to get back up, but the floor was suddenly slick with spilled alcohol.

The boy took several staggering steps forward.

“I waaaannnn …”

Frankie gripped the edge of the shelf beside him, and pulled. His foot slipped once in the puddle of booze, and then he was running back the way he’d come, by the coolers. Distantly, he heard the clerk at the front shouting at him. Frankie saw the woman drop to the floor, fearing a holdup and gunfire.

His gun. He’d kept it in the car. Manny had said not to draw any attention to himself, but he wasn’t going out unprotected. It was just under his front seat.

As he neared the front door, he chanced a look behind, and saw the little boy slowly plodding his way after him.

Frankie burst out the doors of the convenience store, and ran to his car. He reached into his pocket for his keys, and panicked when his hand got stuck in the pocket. Of course, he’d had to reach down low to grab them, and suddenly, the height of his pants waistline was a detriment. Bent in half, he struggled in an awkward angle to grasp the keys, and get in the damn car. As he pulled his hand free, the keys tumbled from fingers slick with beer, and clattered onto the pavement under his car.

He dived down, and searched.

On the other side of the car, Frankie saw a small set of bare feet running up the passenger side of the vehicle, towards the truck. He stood, and faced the weird kid. He never questioned his fear or the irrational situation. He never had time.

Frankie waited, and waited. The kid didn’t show from around the car’s truck. Slowly, keys forgotten, Frankie stepped toward the back of the car, meaning to dropkick the kid, and send him crying across the parking lot.

He jumped and landed at the back bumper.

The kid was gone.

Frankie, turned quickly to look behind him. No kid. He made a quick circuit of the car, and found nothing. Had he just imagined it? All that guilty talk with Manny had him spooked. Man, he needed some sleep.

Frankie slowly bent back down, and reached under the car, half expecting the kid to grab his arm from underneath. He found the keys, but no tiny hand, and breathed a sigh of relief. Quickly, he ducked into the car, and locked the doors.

After buckling his seatbelt, he started the engine, thrust the car in reverse, and turned around to check the parking lot behind him.

The little boy knelt in the seat in the back, holding a length of bungee cord. The kid whipped the cord out, and the metal hook slammed into Frankie’s left eye. He screamed. His foot slammed down on the gas. The car shot out into the parking lot. Frankie grasped the cord in a reflex action, and jerked. His eye popped out, stuck on the end of the hook. He screamed again, arms flailing. The boy stood on the back seat, a high whine building in his throat. “I waaannnnt mmmyyyy mmmooooommmyyy …” The whine turned into a cry of pain and fear. Then the kid began slamming his fists down on Frankie’s head in a petulant manner, grunting in displeasure every time he landed a blow. It almost had the appearance of the kid throwing a tantrum for not getting his way at play.

The car smashed into a street sign, and continued backward into the street. A speeding taxi didn’t see Frankie’s car until it was too late to turn or stop. It hit Frankie’s vehicle broadside, throwing Frankie across the seat, slipping out of his seatbelt. His head smashed the glass on the door, and a spray of blood shot out in all directions.

The taxi driver had been alone in the car, on his way to a pickup point, and running low on fares all night. He was severely injured, too much so to exit the car after the impact.

Frankie didn’t move.

Emergency responders arrived later, after the clerk from the convenience store called for help. They found Frankie slumped dead in the seat, the bloodstained bungee cord with his eye still hooked on the end lying on the floor of the backseat.

There was no sign of a kid, nor any reason to look for one.

 

4

If Robby had known that Manny would come looking for him, it might have changed the course of his life that night, for he might have gone running around town with him, instead of shacking up with his lady. But, life holds no guarantees, and Robby’s future was too much in flux to say for certain which way his path might have taken.

Robby had gone to see Jackie. Unlike Manny or Frankie, he hadn’t paid attention to the news the last few days. He hadn’t heard that two little boys had been killed at his hands. He had not seen the pictures of the little blond boys shown for the last three days on TV and in the papers. Therefore, he would never know the danger he was in.

After bedding Jackie, he shuffled across the room to the shower.

“Are you coming back to me?” Jackie asked.

“Not like we just were, otherwise why am I cleaning up? Stupid girl.”

He turned the faucet, and waited several moments while the water warmed. The shower was hardly more than an echo chamber for torture. He pushed the door nearly closed, and stepped inside.

The doorbell rang. Jackie slid out from the sheets, and covered her nude body with a robe. As she approached her front door, she cinched the belt tight. Jackie peered through the viewfinder set in the door, but didn’t see anyone standing there. As she turned away to go back to bed, the bell rang again. Frowning, she peeked out the large window set next to the door, first up, and then down.

A little boy stood staring in at her.

“Oh, my gosh!” she said. Jackie turned the locks open, and pulled on the door.

A short blond-haired boy stood in the glaring light of her porch.

“Little boy, are you okay?”

Dried tears tracked dirt on the boy’s cheeks. He held his hands clasped together in front of him, and he knocked his knees together, almost shy. He rocked slowly back and forth.

“Where’s your mommy?” she asked him.

At the mention of his mother, he looked up, and stared straight into her face. What she saw sent her taking several steps backward into the house. The boy’s eyes were bloodshot in the whites, and pale of all color in the irises and pupils. What she’d thought were vivid freckles was actually spots of dried blood. He opened his mouth to speak, and goopy blood dribbled slowly from his lips.

Jackie screamed. She turned to run, but felt the belt of her robe catch on something, a chair, maybe. She reached down to grasp the ensnared belt, and instead, felt a tiny hand. It let go of the belt and grabbed her wrist. The boy squeezed tightly, with unnatural strength. She felt and heard bones snap in her arm. Jackie cried out, and fell forward on her face. The robe tore open. Jackie tried to roll onto her back to face her attacker

(a little boy, it’s a freaking little kid!)

head-on. As she did, the boy fell on top of her, and dropped his knees into her soft stomach. The air gusted from her, and she gasped. The boy looked down at her, and spoke softly. It almost sounded like he’d said, “I see your booties …” The boy smiled mischievously. Then he placed his tiny hands on her face and shoved them into her gaping mouth. Jackie still hadn’t gained her breath back. Her eyes popped open wide as the boy grabbed the edges of her mouth, on each side, and began to pull. The seam at the corners of her mouth ripped upward into each cheek. Blood sprayed and ran in warm rivulets down her face into her ears and down her neck. She tried to call out to Robby, but choked instead on blood and saliva. The boy shoved his hand deep into her throat, and lodged it there. Jackie struggled and thrashed beneath the kid, but soon lost the battle, and fell limp. Her eyes remained open, staring emptily up at the ceiling.

 Robby shut off the water, and took up a towel to dry himself off. He paused, listening. Quiet. Jackie must have drifted off to sleep. He finished drying, and then walked softly into the bedroom. He stared at the sleeping form of his girl in the bed, and then shook his head. Too late now. He’ll have to go another round tomorrow. Robby sat on the edge of the bed, and pulled on his clothes. He’d just finished tying his shoes when he heard a sound from the front room.

He frowned, and turned back to the bed. Someone was in the house. He didn’t want to wake Jackie, but he thought she should be awake, in case something had to go down. He stepped around to her side of the bed, and reached down for the blanket.

He grasped the edge and pulled it back.

Empty.

“She’s in the kitchen,” he murmured. “Hey, babe. You getting something to eat? I’m hungry too, after what we did.”

He left the bedroom, and walked down the hall. When he reached the living room, he stopped.

The front door was hanging open.

“What the hell …” Robby stepped closer to the door, and looked outside. There was no one there, but that didn’t mean they weren’t in here right now. He turned, and looked back into the kitchen.

Jackie wasn’t there.

He took a step toward the next room, and stopped when he heard his shoes squish on the carpet. There was blood on the floor beneath his foot.

Robby looked all around him quickly. There was no sign of Jackie, other than the blood on the floor … if that was her blood at all. Something had happened. Suddenly, he felt sick. He rushed to the sink in the kitchen, and filled a glass with water. He drank deeply, almost choking on the liquid. He gasped for air loudly as he set the glass down on the counter.

A deep-throated giggle sounded behind him, sounding as if in a pool of water.

Robby turned back to face the living room.

It was empty.

“Jackie?” he called. He followed his voice into the next room, and stood waiting. “Baby?”

“Baby!” a tiny voice shouted from his left. Robby turned in that direction, and saw a small blond-headed kid running toward him. The boy’s hands were soaked in blood. He smiled as he ran.

“Oh sh—” Robby started, and then turned to the front door.

It was closed. He grasped the knob, and twisted. Locked. He fumbled on the lock set in the handle, and then turned. The door wouldn’t budge. The deadbolt, then. He turned it, but it was too late.

Something sharp shot into his leg, sending white-hot flares of pain up into his brain. He screamed, and looked down. The kid held a long butcher’s knife with both hands, like a…

“Sword!” the little boy cried out. He pulled out the knife, and then swung it mightily. It cleaved into the side of his thigh with a muffled thump. Blood sprayed in a fountain. Oh, God, he cut my artery … The boy tugged, and then pulled the knife back out again. The flood was enormous, running down his leg in a crimson fall, and pooling around his feet. Waves of dizziness washed over him, as Robby stumbled to the floor, and tried to crawl away. He collapsed near the back of the couch, and saw through steadily dimming eyesight Jackie’s still body stuffed behind, her face staring out, her mouth a sprawling rictus of horror.

Robby tried to scream, but felt himself fading too fast to do more than gasp a whisper. He flopped over onto his back, in time to see that the boy was gone, the door to the front of the house open, and he was alone.

Then he was no more, for the dark had taken him, too.

 

5

A few hours had passed since the death of his friends, (he didn’t know that part yet), and Manny cruised aimlessly down the main drag on his end of town. There were a few hookers still walking the street, bumming business in a town that knew better. Ain’t no way I’m catching some skank’s disease, he thought. That’s no way to go out.

The all-too familiar pulse of flashing blue and red behind him made Manny groan. Cursing, he pulled over. Better that, when wouldn’t find anything on him, than to try to run, knowing how gun-happy the cops were around here. He would never survive a car chase. He eased his Impala to the side of the road, and waited for the cops to walk up.

The officer stepped out, drew his gun, and hid behind his car door.

“Manny Gutierrez! Get out of the car! Slowly, and keep your hands where I can see them.”

“What the—?” Manny hesitated, looking in both his rear and side mirrors. The officer wasn’t messing around. Then, in the background, he saw another police vehicle park behind the first. They meant business. Had they somehow linked him to the shooting? Impossible. He’d wiped that slate clean, as far as he knew.

Waiting any longer was likely to get him shot, as well. Manny nodded his head once in acknowledgement of the instructions, and then opened his door. He put one leg out of the car, hands near his head. Then with practiced ease, ducked his head as he stood up out of the car. He turned and faced the car, his hands laced behind his head.

The officers moved quickly. As one spread his hands on to the roof of the car, and patted him down for any weapons, the second officer read him his rights.

“I also have a right to know what I’m being arrested for,” Manny said in a low voice.

“We’re going to determine that when we get to the station,” the first officer said. They walked him back to the police vehicle.

“Hey man, don’t just leave my car out here like that! Somebody’s gonna steal it!”

“Payback’s a b—” the first officer started to come back, but the second waved him off.

“We’ll secure it before we leave.”

They shoved Manny into the back of the car, and made him wait while they did as they promised.

The back seat of any police vehicle, for the uninitiated, was never made for a comfortable ride. In fact, it was more of a hard plastic bench, than a cushioned seat. There were seatbelts, of course, and Manny had been buckled into one, but sometimes, if a suspect was violent, the officer had the option and right to just throw the arrested person into the back unsecured to the vehicle. Of course, there was a steel mesh separating the backseat from the front, and no access to door or window handles. It was basically a box. Manny had been in a few from time to time. It was never cool, but for the first time tonight, he thought he just might escape further jail time and conviction.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement to his right, on the sidewalk. Looky-loos, trying to peep at the latest criminal. The officers were both at his car, turning it inside out. Oh yeah, securing it. Thankfully, he’d stashed the guns and dope. The car was as clean as it could be. Not even a beer bottle.

Manny looked up to tell the onlookers what to do with themselves.

He only saw a short boy, standing on the sidewalk, staring right back at him.

A little boy with blond hair.

“Hey kid! Get out of here! Get going! You shouldn’t be out here—”

The kid launched himself at the window of the police car. The boy’s hands splatted on the glass, and red stuff, dark and oily, sprayed and oozed off the kid’s fingers. Manny jumped back, but was tightly belted, and couldn’t scoot over. The boy started banging on the glass with his fists. Hollow echoes accompanied each thump, but Manny knew that the glass windows in these vehicles were pretty strong. The little kid continued slamming the window, which shook visibly each time. He wouldn’t stop.

Manny’s guts felt like ice. Who was this kid?

“Hey!” he shouted. “Officers! Hey, stop this kid!”

He looked up at the two cops, who lazily glanced back at him, saw nothing amiss, and went back to their search. Manny looked back at the window.

The kid was gone. The window was clean. No blood, if that was what had been on the boy’s hands.

Manny turned in his seat, searching as well as he could all around the back of the car. There was no one standing around.

A few minutes later, the officers returned to the car, having completed their search. They locked the Impala, and one officer got into the driver’s seat in front of Manny.

“You look a little freaked out before,” the cop said. “Something you want to say?”

“Just take me to the station,” he muttered.

At least there, he would be safe.

 

6

For the last hour, Manny sat in silence at the table, his hands cuffed behind his back. He was stunned, to say the least. Frankie and Robby, both found dead. Robby’s girl, too, whatever her name was. Murdered.

And the police thought he’d done it.

Hence the silent treatment. Manny knew better. If he had any hope of getting out of this one, it was to zip it up, and wait for a lawyer. The cops in this town knew how to twist your words, and trick you into saying something you didn’t want to say. The best way to combat that was a closed mouth.

After hearing about the deaths of his friends, it was difficult to think of anything to say.

Then he saw the kid … again.

This time he was sitting on a chair down the hall, near the front desk. Just swinging his legs back and forth like kids did when sitting on a chair too tall for them to touch the floor. Only once, had the kid looked up at Manny and stared. It was a strange look, like the kid knew him or something. How had that kid got to the police station so fast?

These things inspired Manny to shut his trap. He waited out the cops, until they’d lost their patience. A detective stood him up and walked him to a cell. Only after the cell door closed did Manny breathe a sigh of relief.

 

7

The hours drew long after his incarceration, and for Manny, sleep was fleeting. His thoughts dwelled on his homies, murdered, the blame laid solely at his feet.

How had it happened? Who was the culprit? Someone in the East Highland Kings? For years, they had been rivals with his gang, and it wouldn’t surprise him to discover that someone had found a way to frame him for murder, and get him out of the picture.

But that didn’t make sense. He never crossed with the East Highland Kings. He stayed in his own territory. Frankie and Robby were too smart to let something like this happen to them by a rival gang. It had to be something so shocking, that they couldn’t recover enough to gain the upper hand.

It seemed as though an hour had passed in the cell, and though Manny didn’t remember slipping silently into sleep, he now sat up on his cot, and stretched. It was still dark. The police had stripped him of all his belongings when they booked him, including his cell phone and his watch. Manny had no idea what time it was. There was light in the hall. He stood, and walked to the door of the cell. He leaned down to the tiny hole set in the door for food, and looked out.

Frankie was lying on his back on the floor, his sightless eyes staring up at the ceiling. His head was gashed wide open, and his left eye was missing.

“Frankie,” Manny hissed. “Oh man, what is this?”

At the sound of his voice, Frankie slowly sat up, and gazed with his remaining eye at his old gang leader.

“Manny,” he whispered. “Why’d you do it, man?”

His bowels twisted in a knot, and then dropped like a bag of rocks into his abdomen. “Do what, Frankie?”

Then Frankie moved, fast, and shot his arm through the opening in the cell door. He wrapped his hand around Manny’s throat, and began to squeeze. Manny gasped, and then began to choke. He pried at Frankie’s fingers, but his former friend’s grip was far too strong.

“Why’d you make us shoot them?” his friend asked.

Shock and panic fogged his mind. “W-who?”

Still squeezing his throat in a vice, Frankie turned his head to look down the hall. Manny, fighting unconsciousness, opened his eyes, and followed the gesture.

Two boys, both blond, walked down the hall hand in hand. Their bodies were coated with splattered blood, oozing from various wounds on their tiny bodies. Like twins, they walked in unified steps, halting and stiff, and yet resolute and continuous. Part of the shorter boy’s head was missing. The taller boy had a gaping hole in his chest, the telling result of an exit wound by a high caliber bullet.

Manny slipped backward, and pushed against the door with his feet. He managed to slide out of Frankie’s grip, and backward into the cell.

He bumped up against someone stiff and cold.

Manny looked up into the pale face of Robby, seated on the edge of his bed. Robby slowly tilted his head down to look at Manny.

“You doomed us, Manny,” Robby said.

The corpse on the bed reached down and grabbed Manny’s hair. He pulled with inhuman strength, and yanked the gang leader off the floor.

Manny pushed against him, and felt his hand sink into a wound in his thigh the size of a toaster oven slot. His fingers sank deep into cold, unyielding tissue, slick with coagulated blood. Manny cried out, and fell back onto the floor. His hair ripped out by the roots, hanging in Robby’s outstretched hand.

The cell door slowly opened. Manny looked up. Those boys stood there filling the doorway, this time accompanied by a young girl near Robby’s age. His old lady? She stood between the little boys, holding their hands, as would their own mother. One of her hands hung at an awkward angle, and didn’t seem to grasp the boy’s hand but sat in his little fingers. Looks broken, Manny thought. Then he saw her face. Her jaw hung straight down to touch her neck, the sides of her mouth ripped open wide to her ears, lips and cheeks stained a dark black color that could only be crusty, dried blood. She wore a robe laid opened, exposing her pale, bloodless body, that should had held some interest for him under better circumstances—that Robby always knew how to hook up with the hotness—but this time disturbed him to the core. That she appeared neither concerned by her nudity, nor even aware of it, was frightening in a way that seeing her walk around with her injuries had failed to do before. This was somehow real.

They entered the cell, followed by Frankie. They crowded around him in a loose circle. The boys stepped forward. The older and taller one began to cry. Only instead of tears, his eyes dripped blood. His voice quivered, and his mouth stretched open. His face distorted into a combination of pain and need that any parent would recognize.

“Owwie …” he whined, touching his chest wound. “ I want my mommy …”

Then he reached down for Manny, fingers slippery with blood tracing his cheek, marking him.

Manny screamed …

 

8

… then jerked awake, fighting phantoms that were not there. The cell floor had dissolved into the mind, replaced by a fabric seat cushion. The cold, hard accusing fingers of the boys became the steering wheel, pressed up against his face. What dimly felt like blood running down his chin was only drool from his sleep.

Then he remembered, sort of. Driving, aimlessly around town. Fatigue. He’d pulled over in his neighborhood, found his driveway, and fallen asleep in his car. Why hadn’t he gone on, stepped out of the car and into his house?

Manny stretched stiff, sore muscles, and recalled the dream that had haunted him so vividly. Frankie and Robby dead … and those boys.

No doubt, those news reports had fueled his mind with guilt, and the rest was explainable, though far from sensible.

He opened his car door, and walked quickly into the house. He stopped just inside the doorway, and listened. All was quiet. He turned on every light switch in the place, and searched in every corner and cabinet. There was no sign that anyone had been at the house.

Manny went to his closet in the bedroom, and pulled out a loose board above the top shelf. From the hole, he withdrew a short stack of tabloid style newspapers. He thumbed through yesterday’s, and found what he needed. The obituaries for the little boys.

Yes, the pictures matched how he’d imagined them in his nightmare. He re-read the text, and saw where they had planned to bury the kids earlier that day.

There was only one way to confirm that he had nothing to worry about. He pulled out his phone and dialed Frankie and then Robby. Neither one answered, and for a long moment, Manny entertained the thought that perhaps his nightmare had some truth to it.

No. Not possible. He shook his head to clear away the creeping insanity, and went back out to his car.

Then he gunned the engine, and screamed down the street.

 

9

The night was quiet at Ridgeview Memorial Cemetery. Manny parked his car near the east gate, not caring who saw it there. He had to know, and he didn’t have time to waste on details like someone discovering his car. He quickly scaled the gate, and slipped down on the other side.

It was a large property, and served a great many in town, one of four cemeteries for a population of over five hundred thousand people. If statistics were to be believed, this place had to have been the resting location of at least three people just this week. All he needed to do was find the most recent plot of ground disturbed. If the grass were still in place, then he would know that he’d only imagined the boys out of fear and remorse.

But where to begin?

The land sprawled out for dozens of acres in every direction, full of gently rolling hills and dotted with wide-reaching trees that by day certainly would look soft, and inviting, providing shade and comfort at a time of bereavement, but now in the thick of night, looked threatening, as sentinels guarding an asylum of the damned. Sounds carried far way out here on the edge of town, but Manny heard neither traffic nor animal. Yet something occasionally made some sound, a creak, perhaps, or the soft, whispering suggestion of a footstep.

“Just your nerves,” Manny scolded himself. His voice was barely discernable to even his own ears, and yet it seemed to crack loudly as the rock that dislodges the avalanche on the mountainside. He stopped walking, and waited to see what the avalanche would be in this lonely place.

Nothing moved, not even a breath of wind. Manny’s own breathing was shallow and low. He sucked in a sudden gasp of air, as his nerves tingled up and down his spine. He whipped his head around, and continued to see nothing but endless rows of headstones, and trees.

“Come on, Manny, get this done,” he murmured.

Swallowing his fear, he stepped off the asphalt drive, and started to work his way deeper into the gloom of the cemetery.

 

10

Stephen sat up in his hospital bed with a loud gasp. The nightmare, oh God, the nightmare, please let it be over. His mind reeled. The boys. His little boys. Oh, what had happened to them? Not his tiny, precious boys. He closed his eyes, and then opened them again, when he heard the noise just outside his room.

Stephen gasped again when he saw them standing at the door.

 

11

Manny wandered the cemetery for an hour, until he’d found a shovel. It was small, and the handle rough with splinters. It didn’t matter. He needed an end to this madness. Manny continued on through the burial grounds, stalking up and down row upon row, stumbling in his fatigue over each headstone, each divot or depression in the grass.

A faint fog filtered through the air just above the ground, lending a surreal quality to the night. Manny chuckled despite himself. How typical. He rubbed one hand across his eyes, trying to smear the tiredness that threatened to collapse him in the center of this place of the dead. He couldn’t stop. He mustn’t! There had to be an answer here, buried and safe.

Finally, he saw a deeper darkness in the ground ahead. Manny tripped over feet like lead weights, and nearly pitched down into the soft, loose dirt. The grass hadn’t been replaced yet, just a large square plot of brown soil.

“Ya better be in dere,” he drawled.

He drew back, and pushed the shovel into the dirt. It went easily enough.

As he threw the small amount of dirt to the side, he wondered that this was the first time he’d done any hard work by himself. His body wasn’t used to the effort.

After five shovelfuls of soil, he doubted that he could go one any further. It was so late at night. Sleep hovered over his brain, seeking to devoir him.

“No, Manny,” he chided himself. “Finish it. Finish it now.”

With a resolve he didn’t know he possessed, he put in the digging instrument again, and continued to remove the soil.

In the sky above, dark clouds drew together to form a blanket of cold. The moon and stars had disappeared. It wouldn’t rain this night. That might almost be a relief.

 

12

On this night, which seemed to last forever, Manny had collapsed into the hole he’d dug in the middle of the town cemetery. He couldn’t remember passing out, or how long he’d been out of it. All he knew was the disappointment and frustration he’d felt when he saw the massive concrete block that stood between him and his goal. In agony, he’d slipped away into the black fields of his subconscious.

It was the grinding sound of cement rubbing against itself that awoke him.

He sat up, and felt himself slide a little on the sloping sides of the hole he’d opened. Many looked down into the concrete box, now shockingly pulled apart, to see two small brown coffins.

Manny coughed, spraying dust from his lips and face. He slipped down, and stood on the ground between the boxes.

Swallowing hard, he slowly pried open the first box.

Lying peacefully inside was the older of the two brothers, J.J. His blond hair was matted down with the sudden exposure to the humidity of the ground and cemetery. Eyes that had been bright blue in the pictures he saw on TV were now forever sealed shut, never to open and gaze upon the world again.

Manny turned, and opened the other box.

It was the younger brother, Michael. He looked very much like his older brother. Same blond hair, same faint skin color, and body build. Eyes closed.

They were here after all! Both boys, sealed in their coffins for all time.

Many felt his initial guilt melt away.

Satisfied, he began the arduous and slippery climb back out of the hole. He stood on J.J.’s coffin, and tried to jump. He almost landed on his leg in an awkward manner. Manny took a deep breath, exhaled it slowly, and bent his knees.

He jumped.

A hand caught his wrist, and pulled.

 

13

Manny stared face to face with a dead man.

Two of them.

Frankie hissed low at his former gang leader. “It’s time.”

A thin trickle of urine ran down Manny’s leg. He hardly noticed. His skin had gone ice cold.

“F-Frankie!” he said.

“We buried them again,” Robby murmured through a throat filled with dry blood.

The leader looked back and forth between his two friends, hardly believing his eyes. Frankie pointed down into the hole. “The price is yet to be paid.”

“They deserve to rest.”

Frankie took up one arm, while Robby bound the other, and held up Manny between them.

“Guys, please, let me go.”

“Not here,” Frankie said.

They dragged him across the grounds a short distance, and then stopped. From behind a tree, a pale figure stepped out, walked up behind the trio, and raised a long object high into the air.

Stephen brought the shovel down on Manny’s head. Once. Three times. Six.

He slumped against the tree a moment, and looked to the two young men warily.

Frankie nodded once.

“It’s done, now. Go and be with yours. We’ll take care of ours.”

Stephen waved at them, and then turned slowly. He brought the shovel up over his shoulder, and shuffled carefully over the ground to return the dirt and dust from whence it came.

Frankie and Robby pulled the limp body of Manny through the cemetery, pausing near the mausoleum just in time to watch the slight glow of the sun beginning to rise over the distant mountain range.

 Vincent's Price

- An October Tale

by Christopher McCullah

 

To those who dreamed…

                                                        …and awoke in a cold sweat

 

Claire's Horrors

 

Spirits seem to drift up through a darkened sky,

drifting through dead branches in the night.

While in the moonlight we

go down upon our knees,

entwined together, only we can see their beauty.

Beneath the stars a bell begins to toll

for reasons which we really shouldn't know.

So take a walk with me down to the cemet’ry.

Wrap me in darkness,

Claire make love to me

I am thunder

I am rain

I am pleasure

I am pain

Only in darkness can there be light

Tell me angel have you prayed tonight?

In the dark I know you all so well

Beauty from Heaven wrapped 'round souls from Hell

So take a drink from me

My sacrifice to thee

Damned fallen angels,

always blessed with me.

 

- Sean Brennan

 I

I lived across the street from a virtual Storybook Land. 

This house of fairy tales lay firmly in the center of my dismal city.  In the summer, the heat easily reached one hundred plus.  In the winter, it could freeze, but normally fog reigned true.  Our street provided a popular avenue for everyone that didn’t know where they were going; they certainly were going nowhere fast.  Agriculture, prisons, and rednecks surrounded our city, which shall remain nameless because it’s not central to my story.

The house…I couldn’t imagine the blueprints, the long years of construction, the endless inspections from several city, county and state agencies, and the millions of dollars invested…all I could see was a house of dreams.  The façade, the elaborate and richly detailed gardens and landscaping, and the rustic ironworks wall surrounding the property perpetuated the dream in deep rich tones of money.

The girl who lived there made the dream alive.

 

II

For the first three years I lived across the street from her, I never knew her name, and only saw her intermittently.  It was the same every time.  She passed quickly and quietly through the iron gate on the edge of the property, metal railings tarnished an old England green.  I’d watch as she walked quickly through the winding cobblestone path, protected by thick bushes of oleander blooming white and pink, and overhead by majestic oaks.

Peering out of the shades covering my window, I’d catch her entry, and dream of the path I couldn’t see, beyond the wooden gate at the near edge of the house, and the doors she’d pass on her way to her room.  The princess arrived back at her castle.

I never learned her name during that time.  I never saw any members of her family.  No boyfriends, no girlfriends.  Just this one girl apparently living all alone in a huge Brothers Grimm mansion.  Ageless, she was, vital and sparkling.

On a day unplanned and -schemed, I entered her property, and walked along that same cobblestone path.  The foliage around me rustled minutely, protective of their charge, sensing me with growing urgency.  It seemed to me that the leaf would speak to the branch, the lily to the vine, passing word on ahead of me, until alerting the girl to my intrusion.

The stone steps of her porch kept their eternal silence, and held my weight firmly as I ascended the wide entryway.  The front door was redwood, with a stained glass inlay of the full moon and the ocean beneath.  A brass knocker hung in the center below it, and I rapped quickly with it three times.

I waited several minutes.

The door opened, but it wasn’t the girl.  A short woman, Hispanic, with long black hair, maybe in her forties stood there staring up at me.

“Yes?” she asked, faint accent of home.

“Is your mistress home?”

“Who calls for her?”

“Vincent,” I replied.

She looked me over from hair to shoe polish, and then stepped back and gestured for me to follow.  The house was as grand inside as I’d dreamed, and nothing like my imagining.  The floor was smooth, polished stone, with walls to match.  I felt cold, and shivered.  The woman led me to the parlor, and bade me sit down on a regal sofa.  I thanked her as she dismissed herself.  Large paintings of rich and exotic landscapes drew me out of my own reality, and further into the fairy tale this house ensconced.  A forested glen, which matched the landscaping outside the front door.  A majestic mountain, overlooking a river fed valley.  A scarred and hot desert, with towering rock formations.  A lake of fire, the reflection of the setting sun burning the reds and oranges deep into its waters.  Only one painting stood out from these others.

It was a tree, framed in ivory on all four sides, a broad oak.  Standing in its branches, a boy, clutching the limbs for dear life, a pained expression on his face.

The older woman returned, and looked down at her feet briefly before speaking.

“My lady will be with you soon.  Please, remain seated until she arrives.”  She glanced once upstairs.  “She won’t understand you, sir.”  Before I could respond to that, the woman left me alone in the parlor.

“She’s not the only one,” I muttered as I sat down once again.

 

 

 

III

An hour passed, with the greatest and most uncomfortable silence I’ve ever known.

Finally, I heard a door creak open somewhere above, and then light steps on wooden stairs.  I saw her feet first, descending the staircase, bare feet, long smooth white legs, and then a skirt that gently caressed the middle of her thighs.  Wide hips, slender waist, sloping stomach, and full breasts bobbing underneath a frilly lace top.  Graceful fingers gliding on the banister.  Her body defied me to identify her age.  Eighteen?  Twenty-five?  Then I saw her face, and my heart nearly stopped.  Pale brown eyes the color of honey, long lashes, high cheekbones and supple, pouting lips, all crowned by a veil of auburn hair like stained wood.

“Hello,” I gasped.

Her lips moved, her voice rang out, and I didn’t understand a single word.  I couldn’t even place the language.  Greek, French, German, or some bizarre mixture between?

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” I said.

She stepped lightly across the stone floor, and paused before me.  I stood only a head taller.  She looked up at me in earnest curiosity.  Again, she spoke in floating phrases beyond my ken, and I frowned.

“I still don’t…” I began, but she stilled my tongue with a gentle hand to my lips.  I felt her fingertips, soft and precise, adding pressure.  I waited.

This time, when she spoke, though I saw the foreign movement of her lips and tongue, my ears caught something entirely different.

“You’ve entered my home.  Now, tell me why I should ever let you leave again?”

 

 

 

IV

If not for the set of her eyes, and the slight twitch of scorn at the corners of her round mouth, I would have thought her joking.

“Excuse me?” I asked, and was further surprised when she reacted as though she understood me.  What on earth, then, had the older woman meant?

“No matter,” the girl said (still hearing her voice out of synch with her mouth), and then she pushed me slowly backward.  The sofa caught my knees, and I fell down.  Now the girl stood above me, head held high and firm.

“Vincent.”

I nodded, fearing the sound of my own voice.

“Vincent…” she said again, seeming to savor the sound of it rolling off her tongue.  With that tapering pink, she licked her lips and smiled.  “Appropriate timing.”

My eyebrows arched, and she smiled even bigger.

“You’ve watched me a long time, Vincent.”

“Yes,” I finally spoke.

“You’ve longed after my home, and my body, although, I’m quite certain, not in that order.”  She turned her head at some noise only she could hear, and then looked back down at me.  “Has everything met with your expectations?”

“More,” I offered.

“I expected you to speak more than one-word answers.  Don’t disappoint me, Vincent.”

“I don’t trust myself to say the right thing.”

“An honest man?”  The girl’s laughter shattered my nerves.  “This day is just full of surprises!”  She leaned down close to me, and I smelled jasmine and mint.  “The best surprises await you, Vincent.  Oh, yes…they await you eagerly.”

I forced myself to glance over her shoulder at the artwork decorating the walls.  She didn’t turn her head, but addressed my curiosity the same.

“I bought every piece from a woman.  She saw things most clearly.  Troubled, pained, and scarred…and yet she saw things most clearly,” she repeated.  “You’re curious about the boy in the tree.”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe in guardian angels?”  The girl reached out, and swept a strand of my hair out of my eyes.  “You should have, before you entered my home.  It’s too late for such beliefs now, I’m afraid.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.  “And how is it that I can understand you now, when I couldn’t before?”

“You understand when I want you to.  And as to what I am talking about…you’ll know soon.”

“What is your name?”

“You’re learning manners, as well.  Good.”  She stood tall again, and folded her arms across her chest like a jinni of old.  “My name is Maelyn.”

“How—” I began, but her fingers stopped the question again, a slight pressure on my mouth.

“It’s impolite to ask a girl her age, no matter how young she appears.”  She clucked scornfully.  “Shame on you, Vincent.”

Then she grabbed my hand, and mightily pulled me off the sofa.

“Come…I’ll show you to your quarters.”

 

 

 

 

 

V

Maelyn—I silently ran the name over my tongue, and found it not wanting—led me up the stairs, a spiraling affair of deep redwood and velvet steps.  The corridor above was long, deceptively so, and dark.  Four doors lined its length, at odds with one another in design.  Each was offset from the next, and made of differing materials.  Maelyn removed a key from a small pocket in her skirt, and unlocked the third door, on our right.  Though the stairs spun about, I tried to grasp my bearings, and understand how this part of the house lay with what I’d always seen from the outside.  I couldn’t comprehend it, and my feelings worsened when I looked inside, and saw what little light was left of the day casting shadows in the windows that defied my reasoning.  I was lost in the depths of the house, with only this girl as my guide and host.

The room was musty, and a beam of dust angled from the window to the wooden floor.  A large four-poster bed, with rich canvassing draped between occupied the wall on my right.  The fading light from the window caught the corner, illuminating a finely woven bedspread, and heavily lacquered framework.  A single painting hung on the wall opposite, a lonely tree standing on a needle-like peninsula of land jutting out high over a stormy coast.  I examined the details of the wallpaper—thin columns of alabaster, with people dancing in-between, cavorting and carousing with drink and merriment.  A closet door stood partially open, and I was not surprised to find the wood matched the bed.

“Does this not meet your approval?” Maelyn asked.

“I like the room fine enough,” I agreed, “but I wasn’t planning on staying here for very long.”

“I already explained to you, Vincent.  You left that choice at my front door.  Now, I’m certain you’ll find clothing suitable for your size hanging within the wardrobe, and I might add, much better suited to your style than what you have on right now.”

Before I could object to her low opinion of my fashion choices, Maelyn strode forward, and shut the blinds.  The room was dim, the dust out of sight, but not from my senses entirely.  Maelyn reached up and pulled on a thin chain.  A pale light shone from a lamp in the ceiling I hadn’t noticed.  She turned to me, studied my face carefully, and smiled.

Then she started unbuttoning her top.  She’d undone the fourth one down, revealing a rich canvas of skin, smooth and unbroken, enveloped in the loiterous curves every man desires, when I backed away, ducking my eyes in shame.

“Maelyn!  What are you doing?”

She stopped, but didn’t put right what had gone so badly wrong.  “What do you mean?  Isn’t this what you came here for?”

My heart hammered, and my tongue took on the quality of low grade sandpaper.  I licked inside my mouth, and winced.

“I don’t know what I came here for, honestly,” I admitted.

Maelyn frowned, and began buttoning up again.

“Thank you,” I breathed.

“Don’t thank me, yet,” she muttered.  She ran her hands over her top, smoothing it over her breasts, and the shape was distinct and distracting.

Then she nodded once, and stepped outside the door.  The bolt slid home, and then I heard her lock it securely.  Her footsteps echoed on the floor as she walked away, but I couldn’t tell where she was going.

Where on earth was I, and how the hell was I ever going to get back?

 

 

 

VI

I’m twenty-seven years old, but hearing the lock sounding fully in the door nearly made me lose bodily control.  I turned fully about in place, and discovered what I already knew was true.  The door was the only way out of the room.  I rushed to the window, and pried at the sill, but decade’s old paint and age had sealed it tight.  With nothing to do but wonder, I wondered my way through the room’s belongings.

I opened the closet all the way, and pulled on a chain similar to the one in the center of the room.  A dim light flashed once, loose in its socket, and then flickered to longevity.  Maelyn mentioned clothes more appropriate for a man like me, and she hadn’t lied.  Finely woven suits, expensive shirts, and a rack of leather shoes of various shades.  On the door, a smaller rack of silk ties with colors and designs that matched the house in both age and theme.  Upon the shelf above the clothes, I found two wooden boxes, locked with ancient hasps and keyholes in their centers.  Though I could probably pry them open with a pocket knife, I left them alone for a later time.  If there was one.

I shut the closet, and breathed out in exasperation.  I had to come over here to meet the girl.  The girl of my dreams.  The princess in her castle.

I went next to a short bureau, and opened the top narrow drawer.  White linens of the private kind were neatly folded inside, socks and undergarments.  The next drawer down held undershirts, both sleeves and without.  The third drawer held work pants, canvas, and khaki styled, worn, wrinkled, and so far, the least cared-for garments in the room.  The last drawer held two more boxes, smaller, and still made of finely carved wood, also locked by hasp and key.

A fancy mirror over the bureau showed me the darker side of my mood, a frown slowly etching itself permanently on my face, and wisps of premature gray hair.  I gave the mirror a silent warning to mind its manners, and turned away.

I sat on the edge of the bed, pleasantly surprised by the softness of the mattress.  I was careful not to lay down on it, for fear I would be lulled to slumber by the mere comfort of its caress.

So what was I to do?  Sit here all day, and wait for Maelyn to return?  What would happen when she did?  Briefly, a mental image of her breasts grew, the supple shades of curve provided by the cleavage between them, her hands working rapidly down the path of buttons.  Why had I stopped her?  By no means was I a prude when it came to the pursuit of women.  Otherwise, as Maelyn had voiced so succinctly, why had I come over here?  It was the girl who had attracted me so, not just this mysterious house.

But I had stopped her, as surely as I would have stopped a curious child from touching something hot.  Only this time, I acted like the child and Maelyn the object burning.  Burning, yes.  I felt it for certain.  I felt the simmering of her gaze, and the eagerness of those fingers to reveal her inner depths.

Though I refused to believe I had anything to do with it, the room felt warmer than I preferred, and I went to the door immediately.  With three solid raps on its smooth surface, I summoned my hostess.

I hoped.

 

 

 

VII

My hand grew weary after thirty minutes, but I quietly applauded my steadfastness so far.  Not that it had helped matters any.

After another half hour, I heard soft steps outside the door, and then the welcome click of the lock.  The door swept open to reveal Maelyn, dressed in a long black robe of silk, loosely belted around her middle.  That same view between her breasts held my attention from the gap in the garment above the belt.  The gap below showed her legs again, and the shadows higher up were too dizzying for me to tear my eyes from.  Maelyn smiled, and gestured towards the hall.

During that half hour after bruising my knuckles, I’d given up hope of freedom, and tried on the clothes in the room.  I’d settled on a black suit, soft blue shirt, and purple silk tie.  I found socks to match, and wore black shoes.  I could have done with a shower, but these circumstances were strange enough without me using someone else’s bathroom.

I stepped out of the room (my erstwhile prison) and Maelyn gently took my hand.  Only then did she begin speaking.  Once again, her mouth and the words I heard warred with each other.

“I’m pleased to see that you changed into something better.  You chose well, for your first time.”

“I’ve worn suits before,” I argued.

“Yes, but never like this, and certainly not for such a special occasion,” Maelyn said.

“Occasion?  You pretty much accused me of trespassing earlier.”

“Only a point of view.  I didn’t invite you…at least, you never received one traditionally sent by courier.  That would have been more proper.”

At the end of the hall, we started down the stairs, and once more, I felt that dizzying sense of losing trace of my directions.  It wasn’t just the spiral staircase—which way was west?  North?  My feet followed the path better than my brain could have, misguided by lying eyes.  At the bottom of the stairs, we passed quickly through the parlor, and out a side door.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“You ask too many questions,” she admonished.

“Not near enough,” I said under my breath.

Once outside, I felt a change in the very air I breathed.  It was sharper, colder, but cleaner.  I hadn’t realized just how much the very weight of the house’s atmosphere weighed down on me.  Maelyn led me down a small stony path, and then we emerged from behind a series of tangled brush, to a candlelit patio.  A glass table occupied its center, with china place settings for two.  Crystal goblets and fine silver provided the right accents.  Metal framed chairs with exquisite padding waited for us.  Maelyn stopped near one, and looked up at me.  For a brief moment, I didn’t know why, and then I sheepishly pulled her chair out for her, and guided her into place.  I reached my chair, and sat down slowly.

“Dinner?”

“Not just any dinner,” she said, “but a feast—a celebration.”

I peered out into the grounds beyond the patio, and shuddered at the many shadows hidden in its corners.  “What are we celebrating?”

“Your return, Vincent.”

Just then, a man in a white coat arrived with a bottle of wine and a tumbler of ice.  He inserted the corkscrew expertly and removed the seal with a tight pop! and then held out the expelled cork for Maelyn to smell.  She smiled her approval, and the man poured us each a glass.  Rich red wine sloshed into the goblets, a crimson wave of promised gaiety.

When the waiter disappeared back into the house, I said, “I’ve never been here before.”

Maelyn gave me a quizzical look, smiled, and sipped her wine.  The dark liquid clung to her lips in a moist invitation my mind played with for a moment.  She seemed to sense my thoughts.

“Vincent, you only don’t remember.  Otherwise, why would you come here at all?  In the three years since you were last here, you’ve always watched me from afar.  I saw you each and every time, peering out from closed shades.  I felt your gaze, your inquisitiveness prying at my mind and more, my clothes…all for what?  Why me, you have to ask.  Why is this girl of such interest to me?  Like you said, you’ve never been here before, and yet, here you are.”

“I followed the cobblestones,” I offered.

“Not for the first time— or the last.”

The waiter returned again, followed by two small boys.  Each carried a dish covered in an etched shell of silver.  They arranged the platters on the table before us, and then the man removed the covers.  How could I describe the meal, the smells?  Succulent beef, rare, but very hot, soaking in juices of mint and clove.  Artichoke hearts, steamed, with lemon and a spice I didn’t know.  Roasted potatoes, with vinaigrette dressing and parsley stems.  The waiter sliced the beef for us and served his mistress first, and then I.  When our plates were supplied suitably, we dined, and the feel of the tastes ignited a hunger I’d never known.  Maelyn and I dined in silence, the only sounds from the clatter of silver upon china, and the wine sluicing in our goblets as we poured seconds, and then thirds.

“You said I was here three years ago?” I asked after a short while.

Maelyn frowned, and gestured sharply with her fork.  “Eat now.  Talk later.”

I shrugged, and continued with my meal.

But I didn’t get to continue my questioning.  As soon as my hostess had completed her last bite, her eyes slid closed, and her head tipped down over her chest.

“Maelyn?”

She didn’t move.  What had happened?

Then she began sliding out of her chair.  I darted out of my own, and grabbed her arms, and then slid my hands under her, wrapped around her chest, and pulled her upright.  She didn’t wake.  I glanced once in the direction of the house, and saw no one watching, no one waiting to lend aid to their hostess.  The meal finished, I put an arm beneath her knees, and wrapped the other around her shoulders.  I hefted her up against me, and was surprised to find she was light.  I stood evenly, and started back the way we’d come.

I passed through the parlor and up the stairs without finding another soul.  Where had Elena gone?  The man and the two boys?  Where was Maelyn’s family?

At the top of the stairs, I paused, searching for direction.  Where would she have kept her own room?  I tried the first door, but it was locked, as was the second.  The third was my room, and the fourth remained shut against me, too.  I couldn’t see any other doors in the corridor, and only then did I begin to feel Maelyn’s weight in my arms.  I didn’t want to search any further.

In the back of my mind, I was afraid of what I’d find.

Instead, I tried the doorknob to my room—it opened—and I brought her inside.  I turned down the covers of the bed, and laid her inside.  I adjusted the robe (it slid apart more than my eyes could bear), and covered her with the blankets.

I grasped her hand to place it over her chest, and heard her voice, distinct, and yet spoken in my head.

Lay with me.  Give me your warmth for the night.

I gazed down at the girl, and saw the need stretched tightly across her skin.

I shut the door to the room, sat down, removed my shoes, and hung up my clothes.  I found a pair of pajamas in the bureau, and then slid into the covers.

Awake or not, Maelyn draped her hand across my chest, and pulled tightly against me.

I lay awake for hours it seemed, but the smooth persistent rhythm of her breathing lulled me to sleep, guided, of course, by the gentle caress of the mattress beneath me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

VIII

Of course I dreamed…surrounded by a house such as this and the nearness of Maelyn’s warm body to mine…yes, I dreamed.

I was still lying in the bed, but alone.  The covers had been removed, and I was nearly naked, just saved from total exposure by my gray boxer shorts.  Thin lengths of linen bound my hands and feet.  The room echoed hollowly, and the other pieces of furniture had been removed.  The closet door was gone, as was the door leading out of the room.  The window was boarded shut with plywood, warped and rotten.

Then I looked up to see Maelyn hovering above me, her back against the billowy material of the canopy.  She stared down at me as if not seeing me, but perhaps through me.  She breathed heavily; her narrow waist, ample bosom, and generous hips formed an hourglass shape, framed by a red blouse too small for her proportions.  A long black skirt hung down from her waist, and the far edge of it tickled my knees.

I tried to speak, and discovered a silk scarf wrapped around my mouth.  I shook my head, but it wouldn’t move.  I moaned through the material, and my breath, hot and humid, soaked the silk quickly.  I inhaled stale air, and gasped.

Maelyn waved long fingers, and I followed her gesture.

A small wave of tiny black and brown spiders flowed from the top of one of the posts nearest my foot, scurrying down towards the mattress…and me.  Panic surged through my body, and my muscles flexed in terror.  If there was anything I hated in the world, it was those evil creatures.  They were so small, their progress down the post slow.  Then I saw a second wave descending the other foot post.

I looked back at Maelyn.  Spiders crept out of her hair, and over her face.  They blocked her eyes, and ran into her nostrils and mouth.  Some crawled in and out of her ears.  They kept going, obscuring her face entirely, and beginning to do the same thing to her body.  Soon, her body was a writhing mass of brown and black.  Maelyn made a sound low in her throat, a mixture of a laugh and a pleasurable moan.  Some of the spiders dislodged from her face, and fell on mine.

I screamed.

Then the spiders below had reached my feet.  I felt the itch of their legs running up my legs.  I shook my head frantically, and some spiders flew away.  I looked down, and was horrified to see my skin had changed color.  Then they reached my groin, and I felt them running underneath my boxers.  In the most sensitive of areas, they crept.

Then the biting began.

Sharp, fiery stings pulsed through my skin, and I felt my parts swelling with poison.  A nauseating heat surged up my insides, and I thought certain I would vomit.  My body quaked, and my head pounded with terror.

Maelyn reached down and removed the scarf from my mouth, and that was the last straw.  The spiders crawled inside, and I couldn’t spit them out fast enough.  They bit my tongue, my lips, and my gums.  I mashed them in fear, and felt their bodily juices ooze on my taste buds.  It didn’t matter.  The poison had begun its deadly and final work.

Violent trembling overtook me, and I shook myself awake, screaming, “Maelyn!  Stop them!”

She stirred beside me, hands working over me in quick fashion.  Then I saw what I should have known.  The sheets had tangled up around me.

I can’t explain what had caused the sensation of crawling spiders.

Maelyn sat up and looked down at me.  She traced a hand across my chest, and a small grin set itself reluctantly on her mouth.

“You just had to come here again, didn’t you,” she whispered.

 

 

 

IX

 I think you have some explaining to do,” I said, rolling off to my side of the bed.  My skin still tingled with the unearthly feel of the spiders.  A shiver rattled up my spine.

Maelyn regarded me for a moment, and then touched my hand.  “Vincent, you’re not ready to understand.  You left three years ago because you couldn’t handle being here.  I—I tried to stop you, but you wouldn’t allow it.”  She stared down in her lap, and her lip trembled.  “You were always so stubborn.  I suppose it was that same stubbornness that brought you back to me.  Deep down inside…you hated to go as much as you hated to stay.”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded.  “I’ve never been here before.”

“You don’t remember…”  A statement, not a question.

She jumped down off the bed, and I saw a brief glimpse of flesh as the robe parted.  Maelyn straightened it, and opened the door.

“Come with me, Vincent.”

I hesitated, and then slowly set my bare feet on the cold floor.  I joined Maelyn at the door, and followed down the corridor.  She stopped at the first door.  As she laid her hand on the knob, Maelyn paused.

“You might reconsider…”

“Reconsider what?” I asked.  “This is all on your whim.”

“So be it.”

Maelyn opened the door.

It was a room smaller than the closet in my bedroom.  It was lined with stone, and held a smaller door on the far wall.  Maelyn removed a key from somewhere on her person, and unlocked it.  The door gave a loud creak.  It was dark beyond, and dank with mildew and other unsavory scents.

“I can’t see.  What’s in there?” I asked.

“Don’t you mean…down there?” she responded.

Then I could see them—stairs, crooked wooden planks leading far down below my level of vision.  Maelyn started down them, holding my hand, but I stiffened.  She glanced back at me with a disconcerting glare.  I shrugged helplessly, and went after her.

The stairs reminded me of the ones in Vertigo, wrapped around in square fashion, and long.  We must have crept down the steps for almost ten minutes.  During the passage down, I was aware of Maelyn’s fingers in my hand.  They stroked the palm of my hand every few moments.  I sensed a feeling of familiarity in her touch—not from me—but from her.  I didn’t understand.

I guess we’d reached the end, because we stopped suddenly, though I couldn’t see a damned thing.

“Wait,” Maelyn said.  Then she started murmuring softly to herself, the barest of breaths in the silence of the stairwell sounded as loud as military commands, and with the same authority.

A loud grinding noise began, a miller’s stone, then a hint of light forming where I sensed a door opening.  The grinding finally ceased, and Maelyn continued inside, tugging on my hand.

A flicker of flame, and then I saw that Maelyn held a tall drippy candle, lit from a match she’d likely secreted in the same place as the key.  The low light was more than enough.  I saw a room as long as the house, I thought, sealed in rough-hewn brick and mortar.  The stone floor was unfinished, full of pits and cracks.  She led me down the length of the room, and we passed several odd looking wooden racks and shelves.  Each was bare, until we reached the end of the room.  I froze as the candlelight revealed what waited for us there.

It was a four-poster bed, just like the one I’d slept in the night before.  Near each corner of the bed were straps of linen.

Maelyn turned to me.  “Do you remember…?”

“No…” I sighed, but then the dream came back in full force.

Did I remember something?  “What is this place?”

“It’s where you and I…shared a powerful memory together—until you decided you couldn’t handle it—or me—anymore.”  She fell silent for a moment, gazing upon the bed with obvious longing.  “That was three years ago.”

My throat was dry.  “What…did we do…down here?”

The smirk on her face should have said it all.

“You have to ask?” she commented, slipping one hand inside the seam of her robe, and parting it.  As soon as I saw her body, panic seized me, and I staggered away.  My foot caught on a sharp edge of stone, and I landed on my back.

“You did this to yourself,” she whispered.

“Did what?” I asked.  My mind swam with delusion.

“I can see it now for what it is.”  Her voice grew lower, dominant, highly persuasive.  “You trained your mind to reject me, if you ever saw me again.  Correction—if you ever saw me like we used to be again.”

Then she slipped the robe off her shoulders, and Maelyn stood there in all her horrifying glory.  My teeth chattered, and a fierce ache seized the muscles in my back, as if exposed to the frigid cold of the arctic.  Before I could stop the process, I felt my eyes rolling back, and a sense of blackness overcoming my vision.

The last thing I saw before I passed out completely was Maelyn’s hands grasping me…and pulling me toward the bed.

 

 

X

When I awoke, I thought I was dreaming again.

I was dressed in nothing but my boxer shorts (black ones instead of gray this time), and the four straps of white linen held me firmly in place on the bed.

I looked up.

Just a canopy stretched tight above me from the four posts.  Maelyn was nowhere in sight.  For the time, I took that as small comfort.  That still didn’t help me understand what had happened.  She seemed to think that I would remember the past and something I had apparently done with her…but if bindings to the bed couldn’t jar my memory, I didn’t think anything could.

As I turned my head to the side, I disturbed a spot of dust on the mattress, and I sneezed.  I sneezed again.  And a third time.  I shook my head to clear the rhythm, and my sinuses relaxed.

I tugged on the straps around my wrists.  These were thin, but tight and strong.  My hands were swollen and red.  I needed to get some circulation to them, but there was no way to let slack the lines.  It was like pushing a rope.

A gust of air breezed softly across my bare skin, and I glanced to the entrance of the room.

Maelyn entered, and I couldn’t believe what she was wearing.

It was a lace bodysuit, with intricate web designs throughout, and quite see-through.  Woven spiders of black delicately rested over Maelyn’s breasts, and one hovered just below her navel, wrapping a gob of what could only be a fly in a thick mat of webbing between her legs.  She wore a black mask over her eyes, and I realized that it looked from afar as in my dream, with spiders obscuring her face.  She walked with feline steps, toes first, and then heels, calves straining in sweet feminine musculature, hips swaying slowly to the metronome of my heartbeat.  Beneath the fragile fabric of the lace, her breasts bobbed, and my pulse raced.  Maelyn’s rosewood hair flowed in subtle waves of silkiness on her shoulders.  Her eager smile unhinged the lock on my adrenaline.  The thought of thousands of spiders scurrying all over my body sent me into tremors of fear.  I raged against my binds, but to no avail.

Maelyn stopped a foot away from the bed, and the wafting of her perfume washed over me…something sweet and intoxicating.  It probably was.

“How long have I been like this?” I asked.

“Three years,” she sighed.

“No—in the bed.”

“Three years,” Maelyn repeated, deliberately obtuse.

I dropped my head on the mattress.  What was the point?  I couldn’t have expected her to understand me now, than before—

Maelyn had spoken.

I understood her.

And she hadn’t touched me!

Her smile widened, as if she’d followed the line of my thoughts.

“It’s finally starting again,” she said.

“What is?”

“Your transformation.  You and this house…and I, are finally going to be as one again.”

She leaned down, and traced her fingertips across my chest, stirring my hair, setting my skin ablaze.  Then she pressed her lips to mine, forcefully, without the elegance or gentility she’d possessed before.  I pulled away, but I was trapped beneath her.  She clenched her hand into a tight fist, with the right side muscle of my chest bound in her claw.  I screamed, and she laughed.

“Oh, yes…just like it was before!  How long I have waited for your return, Vincent!”

She pulled, and I felt hair rip from my chest, and then growing warmth.  I stared in mute terror at beads of blood where there had been hair and skin.

Maelyn climbed onto the bed, and wrapped her thighs around my waist.  The bodysuit stretched.  The mattress gave a little under our combined weight.  She pressed down with everything between us that touched.  I groaned from the strain.

“You remember now?” she gasped.

“No…”

She kissed me again, hot tongue darting through my defenses.  I fought for mind control—no, make that body control.  Strong, undeniable urges filled me, coursed through my veins like lava.  Maelyn sucked the very air out of my lungs with her kisses, and then breathed it back into me again.

I turned my head.  “I can’t—”

“Can’t what?” she responded.

“I won’t…” I tried.

“You already have, you will, and you will again.”

“What are you doing to me?”

“Taking you back, Vincent.”

She slowed her kisses, and then I felt a shift in her weight.  Lighter, softer…and then…not there at all.  I opened my eyes, and saw her start to float above me, up toward the canopy.

“No…” I moaned.

She clung to the posts by hand and foot, and stared down at me with undisguised lust.

I glanced down at the posts by my feet.

No spiders.

Yet.

“Vincent…I respected your wishes.”

“My wishes?  What did I ever wish?  Not to ever come back here again, because I can’t see that it did me any good.”

“I stayed away from you while you recovered.  Perhaps you’re not ready yet, and you’re here anyway.  Perhaps it’s fate, or shaol that wills it.  No matter.  I’ll guide you along.  I want you back, Vincent.  I’ve always wanted you back.  I’ve waited a long time for this, and now, we can begin.”

Her eyes darted downward, and I saw them then…tiny black spots moving slowly down the post.

 

 

XI

Oh holy damn, this wasn’t a dream!

They scrambled down the post faster than I had envisioned them (or been threatened by the promise of them, my brain told me), and when they’d reached the halfway mark, they began to grow larger.  How this was possible, I don’t know, but hell…how was any of this possible?

As they grew bigger, I recognized them for what they really were: black widows.  Male and female, they trampled down the bedposts and onto the mattress.  Long spindly legs, sharp and forbidding, they were the pinnacle of my greatest fear.  Oblong, fat bodies—and thousands of clear red hourglasses, turned down, the sands of poison draining to signal the end of my life.

They reached the linen bindings and fluttered along them in a dance macabre.  Before they even touched me, my skin itched and burned in dread anticipation of their caress.  An unmanly scream escaped my lips.

Maelyn said quietly, “Oh, don’t do that.  You’ll scare them.”

I gaped up at her in shocked amazement.

“You never did get used to this part,” she added.

Finally, they stepped out onto my toes, and covered my feet and legs in droves.  Forget thousands—millions of deadly black widows paraded across my body.

“What do you want from me?” I begged, trying in vain to still my body, and cease the hungering temptation my sweating glands must provide them.

“I don’t want anything but you, Vincent.”

“How the hell does this help?”

“Wait.  Watch.”

They made it to my chest without biting me…so far.  Strangely, they veered around the bloody patch where Maelyn had ripped out my hair.  The view was so disturbing, as the spiders moved in unity and one accord.

“They hate blood,” Maelyn informed me.

As they touched my neck, I suddenly remembered the last part of the nightmare—the part when they would enter my mouth, and bite me.  I held my mouth closed tightly, and breathed shallowly through my nose.

Then my hostess of the damned began to lower herself, and I saw a shining glimmer up behind her, a strand that could only be a web.  Before I could ponder that revelation, Maelyn gestured with her hands, and the spiders parted completely, left my body, and instead, rested on the mattress beneath, surrounding me entirely.

“They will wait there as long as I desire.”

“How long will that be?” I asked.

“How long do you want it?” she returned.

“Is there a wrong answer here?”

She looked up and down my face, licking her lips, and a spark of memory flared in my mind—I’d seen this expression on her face before…and it was a long time ago.  After that, the memory faded.

“There could be,” she finally said.  “But I don’t think you’ll take that risk.”

With that she kissed me again, softer than ever before, touching me only with her lips.  Out of the corners of my panicked eyes, I saw her hands begin to move, first upon the stitches of her thin clothing, and then down to mine.

 

 

 

XII

Many exhausting hours later, I awoke to Maelyn snuggling companionably to my side.  Blessedly, the spiders had vacated my bed.  My hands and feet were still bound.  My limbs were cramped.  My breathing was slow, sluggish.  Pain marked my neck and chest exquisitely.  I moaned.  Maelyn stirred beside me, and shifted.

“Maelyn…” I said.

She moaned in reply, and looked up at me.  The moan turned into a delicious hum of pleasure, and she grinned.

“Welcome back, Vincent.”

I tried to sit up—a purely involuntary reaction, believe me—and winced as a bright white hot flare of pain shot through my head.

“You need to relax a little longer,” she advised.  “It hasn’t had long enough to take full effect.”

“What are you talking about?”

In answer, she traced her fingers up my chest to a tender spot on my neck just below my right ear.  I felt the bumps in my skin contrasting against her gentle touch, and familiar sensations of having been bitten.  My earlobe felt swollen.

“You did that to me?”

“Yes.  If it had been the spiders, you’d be dead by now.”

“Why did you bite me?”

“You’ll understand soon enough.”  Maelyn sat up all the way, and I stared in wonder at her perfect body.  Once again, I tried to think of a proper age for a girl who looked like that.  My mind kept flipping between rationale and insanity.  Eighteen, twenty-four, fifteen, thirty…

She leaned down to the floor, and took up her robe.  She must have dropped it there after binding me to the bed—how many hours ago?—and now felt it was okay to cover up.  As she shrugged it on, a faint pang of regret filled me, and I wished to look at her a little longer…but my brain beat that idea out of me and into submission.

Maelyn untied me from the bed, first my feet, and then straddling my chest, my hands as well.  She sat a bit longer on my chest, and rubbed her hands on me slowly.

“There’s so much to do together,” she gushed.

“Not now I hope,” I said.  She frowned in response, and bit her lower lip in disappointment.  “I’m sorry,” I said.

She stood up, and lent me a hand to stand as well.  It was slow going.  I don’t know how long I’d been there, but it felt like days.

Maybe years, my mind quelled.

Shut up.

Maelyn stood me before the nearest wall, the last surface of the room I would have expected us to look at.  She waved her hand across from upper left to lower right, and then I heard a loud grinding noise.  The stones shifted in the wall, and then a seam appeared where there had only been a crack (a spidery thin crack), splitting open wide to reveal a doorway.  Maelyn turned to me, and whispered, “Are you ready?”

“What do you think?” I answered.

“You will be soon, I promise, Vincent.”

Taking my hand, we walked side by side into the darkness beyond.

 

 

 

XIII

It was a long tunnel, carved out of stone and earth, and I couldn’t see a thing.  Every few feet, I bumped into something—an exposed root, a jagged rock—and Maelyn steered me clear of the obstacles.

“I don’t understand,” I said.  “How come you can see and I can’t?”

“Vincent, I’m surprised at you.”

She didn’t say another word on the subject, and we walked on.  For the moment, I forgot that she’d completely avoided answering my question.  Instead, we stopped.  Maelyn whispered something, and then another door quaked open in the earth.  Dust hazed the air in front of us, illuminated by bright shafts of light pouring through from the other side.  I raised my hands to my eyes, guarding against the glare and airborne debris.  Maelyn stepped behind me, and pushed.

I stumbled out…and when I could see again, I fell back a step in shock.

We stood in a beautiful garden…only one that seemed to have grown out of a dank clearing in a haunted wood.  I turned around, and saw that we had emerged from a rough hillock, set up against a rocky cliff wall that rose straight up into the sky farther than I could see.  Gray fog obscured the rest, as well as the tops of the trees dotting the glen like corpse sentries still on duty.  In the garden, a stained stone bench waited for mourners to sit and ponder the afterlife; a dried up birdbath stood near it.  Dead rose bushes fanned out as skeletons of their former splendor throughout.  Tiny clumps of brown grass poked through the gray dusty earth.  The most startling feature of this wayward garden was the tall statue.

Three times as high as I stood, the sculpture was a lively creature, animated in all its stillness.  Raised wings bent to flight, leathery and bat like, and yet far removed from the conventional shape.  It was a biped, and stood on powerful feet with claws growing out of its toes.  Long, mighty legs cocked to take action, defense…but more likely, attack.  A thin barrel of a chest rippled with muscles, and sharpened arms extended from bulging shoulders.  But its face, the merest suggestion of humanity, perverted and twisted.  The creature was hairless.  I marveled at the artistry of the creation, and wondered for a moment if it was made out of stone at all…

Maelyn breathed deep, and exhaled in obvious satisfaction.  Then she turned toward me, and asked again, “Do you remember?”

“Should I?” I said, growing increasingly accustomed to her need for this.

“Yes.”

We entered the garden, and sat down on the mausoleum styled bench.  Like it’s made from the cold stone of a tomb—and, as if sensing my thoughts, a stiff wind gusted through, rattling the rose bushes, and scattering fallen leaves.

I realized belatedly that I was still in my boxer shorts.

“Is this a dream?” I asked.

“I hope not,” Maelyn said.  “You’re still dressed.”

“You call this dressed?” I shot back.

She frowned again.  “I don’t remember it having this kind of effect on you.”

“How’s that?”

“You’re hostile.  That’s never happened before.”  She looked quickly down at my bites, and then up at the statue.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Not a gargoyle, but that’s all you’d accept, I think.”

“That’s what it looks like to me,” I muttered.

“You’d better not let them hear you say that,” Maelyn warned.

I turned on the stone seat, and felt the thin material of my boxers bunch up under me, exposing me to more cold.  “Them?” I asked.

“That’s another story for another time, Vincent.”

“Just how old are you, anyway?”

The gleam in her gaze dulled, and I sensed her drifting.  Wherever her mind was just then, it wasn’t with me.  They grew wet with sudden tears, and Maelyn blinked them away.

“Vincent—that was a question you swore you’d never ask me again.”

I’d just about had enough.  I stood, and faced her.

“Well, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not getting any of this, Maelyn!  I certainly didn’t expect everything that’s happened so far since knocking on your front door.”

Maelyn turned away, looking…well, east seemed right enough.  I saw in her profile the disappointment of a young child, setting deep into her shoulders and back.  Maelyn clasped her hands together, and then wrung them anxiously.

“What?” I asked.  “What now?”

In answer, a distant noise sounded from the direction of her stare, something that reminded me eerily of a howl.

“What the hell was that?” I breathed.

A lone tear slid down her fair cheek, and disappeared into her hair gathered under her chin.  She lowered her head, returned to wringing her hands.

The next howl sounded louder, closer, and clearer.

“Maelyn…?”

Then another howl…and against my wisest wishes, I turned in its direction.  I heard the slap of paws on the firm, cold ground, and the raspy thin rattle of leaves driven under by the things approach.  I took one step forward, and then another, and gazed down at my feet in wonder and consternation.  You were supposed to be on my side!

At the next howl, one with far more depth and shape to it, I turned back to Maelyn…but she was gone.

“Maelyn?” I said, and then I saw her, entering the doorway in the hillock.  “Maelyn!  Wait!”  I stepped forward to run, but a large shape knocked me down from behind.  I crashed into the hard forest floor, and my breath exploded outward.  I gasped for air, wheezing with pain and terror.  The thing turned me over, and I stared up into the eyes of a far worse nightmare.

 

 

 

XIV

 A wolf…I thought.

And yet, somehow more than a wolf, and less than one as well.

It had the overall shape of a wolf’s body, but its fur was sparse, growing out in diseased patches.  Overdeveloped muscles bulged visibly beneath its skin, and it trembled as though sick with fever.  Its snout was stubbed and short, wet with humidity from its gaping mouth.  The wolf’s eyes were the worst part of the whole assemblage.  Swirling darkness pooled there, like oil, surrounded by jaundiced whites bulging with dark crimson veins.  The wolf growled low in its throat.

I couldn’t breathe or move.  I felt places on my body that had been scraped raw from its assault, and its sharp claws bore into my chest painfully.

A line of drool hit my face.

The wolf nearly smiled.  Then it lunged down, wrapped its vice-like jaws around my ankle, and pulled me out of the garden on my back.

“Maelyn!!” I screamed.

My head knocked on the edge of the stone bench on our way out of the garden of the dead, and the rest of the passage through the forest was laced with mind-blown haze.  Fog…darkwood reaching for the hidden skies…the cushion of dead leaves, which I learned later, had literally saved my skin during the course of our transit.

I faded in and out, but never lost the feeling of my ankle crushed in the mouth of the rogue wolf.  I don’t know how far we traveled, or for how long.  Later I awoke to darkness.  I was sprawled in a shallow cave, probably in that same length of cliffs I saw when Maelyn and I had emerged from the tunnel in the hillock.

Maelyn…what had she done to me?  Was it a set-up?  Did she take me out to that garden, just to wait for the wolf to appear?

I sat up, and stretched.  Muscles flared in protest, and my skin cried out.  The wolf—whom I could see sleeping at the mouth of the cave—had put me through hell.  I stood, and cautiously tested my limbs.  Nothing was broken.  Dried patches of blood stretched as I moved.  I’d have to be careful, or I would open the wounds again.  Overall, I seemed to be okay.

Now, I had to get away from the wolf.  I’ve always been a strong believer in letting sleeping dogs lie, and I wasn’t about to change my ways this time.

I stepped carefully near the mouth of the cave, and paused.  The wolf breathed deeply, slowly…sound asleep.

I stepped once more, a single step.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

I looked down at the wolf, and watched as it turned over…and it wasn’t as wolf-like as before.  Its face took on more human qualities.  Still, it was hideous and deformed.

“What?” I asked, dumbfounded.  It talks…

“I said it would be a bad idea for you to try to slip by me.  I’m bigger than you, stronger, and with four legs, I’m faster.  I drew you four hundred yards over unforgiving earth, and now I’m famished.  Try to run…it’ll be a quick meal.”

“What are you…a werewolf?”

“Truer than any werewolf you could imagine.  Discard the myth from your mind, whoever you are.  I’m the only one of my kind.  I don’t change from a full human form.  This is me.  I’m the guardian of the woods, you might say.  I came to take you away from Maelyn…for a time.”

“Why?”

“Maelyn asked me to.”

I tried a different tack—“What is your relationship with Maelyn?”

The wolf looked up at me.  “What kind of question is that?  I’m not a servant of Maelyn’s, if that’s what you mean.  She and I have a complicated friendship.”

“Seems a common story around here,” I muttered.

The wolf sat up on its haunches, and stretched.  “Care to elaborate?”

I regarded the wolf warily.  “Are you going to eat me?”

“Will you try to run?”  I shook my head.  “Then continue.”

I sighed, and then told him about what had happened so far…excluding the far too private and intimate moment Maelyn and I had shared just prior to going into the forest.  The wolf listened attentively, and then nodded in a disturbingly human manner.

“Now I know who you are…Vincent.”

I stepped back.  “You know my name?”

“Who in all of these woods does not?”

“I don’t know about anyone else in the woods, but I don’t remember ever coming here before.”

“Of course you don’t,” the wolf growled.  “After what you went through before.”  He leaned down and licked his paws carefully, and then chewed on one for several moments for good measure.  Satisfied, he sat up again.  “Vincent, you are the only resident to ever leave these hallowed grounds, and live to tell the tale.”

“But I haven’t known the tale to tell,” I argued.

“Then, with your permission, I shall tell it for you.

“It began many years ago, though in this place, time loses certainty.  A safe guess would be seven years ago—and really—how perfect a number could there be?  Understand, I’ve never seen you before this day.  When Maelyn requested I remove you from the garden, I obeyed out of our mutual respect for each other.  But this story has been told faithfully, for some, a lesson to be learned, and for others, a night time’s fireside entertainment.  Everyone knows the name of Vincent, and his love for Claire.”  At this, the wolf lowered his head in reverence, and I saw a gleam of mist in its eyes.

“Who is Claire?” I asked.

“Maelyn’s only daughter, and the prize of the household.  It was natural, then, for a young man such as you, growing up here with her every day, to fall in love.  Though it was never spoken aloud, the very thought of it working out for the good of all was forbidden.  Maelyn was a jealous woman, and steered her daughter clear of your path at every opportunity.  It didn’t do any good, for it’s spoken that you contrived chance meetings, and occasions to be alone with Claire.

“Let me describe the child, so you will understand anew—and perhaps, remember your tale.  Claire had her mother’s earthly beauty; the same eyes of warm honey, hair that matched in its essence, and a lithe, supple body that drew your lust, as well as your devotion.  But Claire hid a terrible secret, known only by her mother.  Claire feared of you learning her secret, and that you’d one day leave her.  You see, Claire began to have feelings for you as well, and looked forward to those arranged meetings behind her mother’s back.  But if you two thought anything done within that house was hidden from Maelyn, then it was due to your young and foolish hearts.

“The day everything in the house changed, darkness fell across these woods for six months without reprieve.  As guardian of the woods, this bode ill for me, and all the forest.  That day, I cursed your name, though I’d never seen you before.  I learned later that all of my curses, spoken continually for the rest of my life could never have outmatched the curse spat upon you by Maelyn, betrayed.

“On that day, you and Claire had secluded yourselves in the lower dungeon of the house.  You know the place, because it is the self same room you just described to me a moment ago.  Maelyn caught you two together on the four-poster bed, the only one of its kind within the walls of her house.  Maelyn had designed it for a special purpose, and that day was to be its unveiling.  Maelyn had intended that bed for you and her, not her daughter.

“Entwined as only true lovers will be, Maelyn found you, and her heart broke forever.  Indeed, the haze which encompasses these woods you see now are the work of her tears, weeping eternally for the loss of her two loves—you, and her only daughter, Claire.

“Maelyn brought the spiders, her servants, to your bed, and they surrounded you and Claire, binding you by your own fear.

“Then Maelyn brought out a mirror, an enchanted mirror filled with the shine of a full moon.

“And Claire began to change.

“She transformed right there straddling you in that bed, turning into such a terrible creature, that you panicked.  You began to push at her, crying out, screaming at the unholy demon she’d become to leave.  You even warded her off with the evil eye.

“Claire became like what you now see before you.  I say this in all respect for the person she was before.  I’m sorry I did that to her.”

I frowned.  “Did what?”

“You don’t understand, Vincent?” the wolf wheezed.  “Claire was my daughter, too.”

“Your daughter?”

“Yes…I was weakened by her very nature, Maelyn’s…I sullied the ancient bloodline out of lustful ignorance, and sheer desperation.  You see, I am the last of my kind.  It was vain hope that drove me into Maelyn’s bed.  The news of Claire’s conception made me buoyant, but it didn’t last long, when I discovered that she was more human than wolf.  Her transformations, occurring only at the first full moon of the year, were terrible to her.  She fought the change claw and nail; her screams dotted the woods with misery, and each creature here felt it as only the blood of animals could share.

“I was ashamed by what I had done.  I’d cursed my own daughter with something that had once been regarded as beautiful in my line.  Now she was enraged with pain each year.

“Maelyn managed to hide Claire away in this cave each year during the change, and it was my task to protect her without her seeing me, or knowing I even existed.  Maelyn did this to keep her out of your sight…and also to allow me to be near my own flesh and blood.

“On the day everything changed—when Maelyn caught you ensnared in lust’s bindings—she brought the curse upon the both of you.  For Claire, she made her change right before your eyes, to finally show you her true nature.

“For you, she brought the poison of the spiders.  As Claire collapsed to the floor, growling in exquisite pain, the spiders covered you head to foot.  They bit you, each and every one, but through sheer force of will—an evil demonstration of her control over the elements of her own household—Maelyn kept the poison from circulating through your body.  The spiders returned to their place beside you.

“Then Maelyn did what she had intended all along.  She climbed onto the bed, and made love to you, all the while holding back the poison from destroying you immediately.  And you would have died a painful death, but a fast one.  I believe your fear of the inevitable made you compliant.  When she’d finished, Maelyn stood, and asked you, ‘Will you leave, and never return, until I call?’

“ ‘Yes,’ you said, and so it is told.  You complied.

“Maelyn extracted the poisons from your body, and bade her spiders leave.  She stood you up, made you look down on Claire, and see her full form for the last time, and then…”  The wolf fell silent, and lay down, with his head tucked between its extended forelegs.

“What?” I asked.

“Maelyn destroyed Claire.  Nobody knows how, and with each telling, that part of the story grows ever more gruesome.  But the truth remained.  Maelyn destroyed her only daughter in a fierce jealous rage.  She made you watch, to force you to leave.  And you did, three years ago, and until recently, you never tried to return.  I would imagine her call was quite powerful to make you ever want to come back.”

“Why can’t I remember?” I inquired.

“Would you want to?” the wolf countered.  “If that time ever comes, it would likely be the second most horrifying of your entire life, second only to the day of remembrance.”

“Who am I?”

“You are Vincent.”

“But…who am I that I should have once lived here?”

“You haven’t figured that out?  You were Maelyn’s intended.  You were brought to her house, for the express purpose of becoming her lover and soul mate.  When you met Claire, that changed matters, didn’t it?

“I mourned Claire’s death like nothing ever before.  As I said, I cursed you…but you live with an even greater curse than I can give.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“You’re here, aren’t you, once again at her whim?  Once back in her clutches, there’s nothing short of death that can ever separate you two again.”

  

XV

An hour passed in welcome silence, for I needed that and more to absorb the story.  How could it be true?  Then again…I heard the whole story from a werewolf.  Plus, I’d seen the spiders myself.  I realized that Maelyn had merely repeated the haunting scene that plagued her heart and soul.  Maelyn brought me back here, to what end?  To kill me?  She’d already made love to me, but was that enough for a mourning mother?  What was the saying about a woman scorned?  Very soon, I expected to experience that fury.

But first, a minor detail…

“It occurred to me that I don’t even know what to call you,” I observed.

“Rather late, I agree,” the wolf said.  “My name is Kinh-mal, which, in my ancient tongue, means Proud Death.”  I shrank back.  “You shouldn’t fear.  You have larger concerns.”

“Kinh-mal, I don’t know how to deal with Maelyn.”

“I do not conspire with humans,” Kinh-mal said.  “I learned after my mistake with Claire.”

“Are you saying you do not hate Maelyn for murdering your daughter?”

The wolf considered a moment, and then said, “My hatred left with Claire.  Such grudges are pointless.  How would that prosper my life and well-being here?  Look around you, Vincent, and see what holding a grudge will do.”

“The forest?” I asked.

“Yes…the forest fell into utter despair when Claire was gone, shriveling under the weight of a broken and hate-filled heart.  That garden had been a favorite seclusion of Claire’s.  Once, every rose blossomed bright and full, larger than all other roses in the world.  The trees towered, mighty and strong, full of green life, and the ground lush with grasses.  The skies were clear, the air clean.  See now, the cost of holding a grudge,” Kinh-mal repeated.

I saw it clearly, considering my environment.  The forest wasn’t dead—it was dying, continually and painfully.  In these trees and dried, dusty earth, was the visible spectrum of Maelyn’s emotions.

“Then, as guardian of the woods, wouldn’t you rather see your home lush and true?” I argued.

Kinh-mal glanced around the forest, and sighed.  He said, “It’s difficult to argue with truth.”

“What is the truth?”

“Maelyn.  She’s all the truth we need to worry about.”  The wolf exhaled, and licked its chops.  “Damn you, Vincent, for coming back here again.”

XVI

During the long walk back to the garden, we maintained a mutually agreed-to silence.  I wasn’t sure what I could say under the circumstances.  One thing was certain—I never thought I’d find a way out of this waking nightmare.

I racked my memories, searching for an answer to this mysterious past.  Kinh-mal seemed incredibly genuine and factual.  Why couldn’t I remember?  What was the key?  Three years I’d watched her.  Three years of a lithe, quiet girl, passing quickly through an old ironworks gate, and disappearing within the reaches of the landscape.  Little did I ever know that this house held such secrets!  But that was the key, wasn’t it?  I didn’t know.  All of that time, living my meaningless existence, directly across the street from a woman who hated me as much as she claimed to love me.  Suddenly I couldn’t remember the life in the interim.  How had I lived?  Did I work?  Did I lead a sustainable social calendar?  A girlfriend seemed out of the question, otherwise, why would I waste away watching for the appearance of the girl across the street?

Kinh-mal mentioned a curse worse than any he could wish upon me.  Maelyn had ultimately insured I would never leave her side, even if I lived in a different house.  I hadn’t pursued any other women, and when the time was right, I knocked on her door again.

And Claire…who was she really?  How could I have lost so much?

What sort of creature was Maelyn to appear so young, and supposedly give birth to a daughter who would one day grow old enough to pursue a love relationship with me?  I’m twenty-seven, and according to Kinh-mal, I began that relationship with Claire when I was twenty.  How old was Claire?  The same age?  Younger?  I hope not too much, because I’m sure I would never have tried it.

When did I first appear on this insane scene of fantasy and bizarre reality?

“Kinh-mal,” I said, breaking the silence with due respect, “where did Maelyn come from?”

He stopped and looked up at me.  “I wondered how long it would take you to reach that issue.”  He turned and stared forward, seeing the unknown of our plan.  “ ‘As long as has stood the House of Gael, so it has been with Maelyn,’ ” he quoted.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Gael was the architect of that house…a man lost to history and time.  All that is known of Maelyn’s origins reside in that house.  She has a strong connection to it.  She and the house are inseparable.  It is said that the house feeds off her life-force, and vise-versa.”

“Who’s doing all the saying?”

Kinh-mal nodded toward the distant woods.  “The creatures of the forest.  And of course, the Nephili.”

“The what?”

“That statue,” the wolf clarified.  “The Nephili are creatures of utmost darkness, dwellers of time without time, a land beyond borders.  No one can willingly reach that land, not by choice.  Death contains the only door.”

“A land of the dead?” I said.

“Worse than that.”

“What can be worse than death?”

“Living without Life,” Kinh-mal said.  “The Nephili cross the borders, sowing the seeds of dissention and hate among us.  Violence, war, murder, deception, and perversion are their tools.  As I’m sure you must have guessed by now, Maelyn has been immersed in their arts fully.”

“She’s connected to them?”

“Vincent…where did you think she came from?”

I thought about that, and the visions, both real and imagined, made sense when placed in the proper perspective.  Still, a lingering thought crept forward…  “Why did you choose to lay with Maelyn, and father her child?”

“If Maelyn descends from the Nephili, then she and I aren’t that distantly related.”

We’d reached the garden again, and I saw with fresh eyes the statue of the Nephili, and shuddered.  What I’d once thought was a foul gargoyle for decoration was a stone tribute to a race of creatures that inspire fear, and breed death.

“I need to get back into that house,” I announced.

“She’ll know you’re coming,” Kinh-mal said.

I nodded.  “She knew when I left that cave, if everything you’ve said about her is true.”

“I have not deceived you.”

Slowly, I neared the hillock, and waved my hand across its surface.  Nothing happened.  Then I remembered that Maelyn had muttered silent words…

Or a single word.

“Claire,” I whispered.

The door shuddered open, dust flying, rocks and debris cascading.

“I can go no further,” the wolf said.

I peered into the blackness of the tunnel.  “I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again,” I said.

With that, I entered the dark, and only slowed when I heard and felt the door seal shut behind me.

XVII

For several moments, my legs refused to move, my feet taking root in the moldy ground.  I shivered in a cold draught that passed through with ferocity.  It had seemed before that this tunnel had no other branches but this one single vein, but suddenly I could sense the air opening before me, as in a broad chamber, with several possible tunnels breaking off from this main room.  I had no light.  And yet, I sensed the lay of the tunnels.  Cautiously, I raised my arm, and held my hand outstretched.  The air shaped itself around my hand, an invisible grasp that guided me forward.  I stepped out, and grazed my foot neatly over a sharp rock.  I managed to avoid a twisted root, and a low hanging abutment of calcium deposit in the ceiling.

By random choice, or by the fate that guided my hand, I entered the second of five tunnel choices.  The ground was smoother, worn down by repeated passing.  This had to be the tunnel back to the house.

The tunnel stretched out longer than I remembered, but then again, the vast chamber in the middle was beyond my recollection from the passage before.  Time grew funny, and the place seemed able to move on of its own accord.

Then I stuck out my foot, and fell into nothing.

Howling wind swept past me, and I lost all sense of placement—up or down—and the relative closeness of the rock walls nearby.  Had I found a great gaping void in the earth?  I tumbled head over hind, equilibrium thrown out of alignment.

And stopped just as suddenly as I’d fallen.

It felt like thousands of crisscrossing ropes and threads thrown together in a disheveled net had stopped my fall.  When I tried to move, my skin stuck fast to their surfaces.

A web…

As soon as the thought registered, I felt sporadic jouncing on the far end of the web, movement peculiar to the eight-legged dance of evil.

I couldn’t move.  I couldn’t see.

That didn’t stop the fresh influx of searing white pain that flashed in my leg when the spider bit me.

 

  

XVIII

My first sensations later were of a soft hand caressing my brow.  It moved slowly down my cheek, under my chin, and down my chest.  Teasing over my stomach, dancing down my thigh, and then a mighty force erupted deep inside me, heated, boiling, originating from my leg, then surging up into my innards, rising, flowing, burning…

I woke up retching, and finished feeling quite drained of all that I had ever been.  My throat was raw, my breathing ragged.  I gasped, and then winced at the sting of cold air in my lungs.  A small puff of air billowed in front of my face, and I realized I could see.  Faintly in the distance, a deep blue glow emanated from some far wall of the cave.

Where was I?

I craned my head, but it was secured fast by threads of webbing.

“Somebody…” I rasped.

“Shh,” came the response.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Be quiet, or you’ll wake her.”

Maelyn! my mind screamed.

“Please,” I whispered, “help me.”  The web bounced, and a figure neared me.  I couldn’t see it, but it couldn’t weigh so much, by the shift in the strands.  A hand slid over my mouth.

“Do not speak,” the person instructed.

I nodded my understanding.  “She will return shortly.  You must do everything I say.”

The figure moved quickly, and I felt my bindings loosen.  Blood flowed into appendages I hadn’t noticed, if only because they were asleep the whole time.  Painful tingling spiked in my limbs.  I tried to lie as still as I was able until this nasty sensation passed, but the person bounced the web so that it was impossible.  I cringed and cried out in the agony of it.

“Are you trying to get us both killed?” the figure demanded.

“Who are you?”

In the dimness, I could only make out a vague shape, and nothing more.  “That can wait for later.”

The figure grasped my hand in much smaller hands, and led me off the web.  It was thickly laid; I found I could place my feet practically anywhere as I would on solid flooring.  We traversed the sticky trap with careful paces, and then the figure boosted me onto an outcropping of rock.

“Now, crawl into that hole, and keep quiet,” the person hissed.

I obeyed silently.  In places it was a snug fit, but I passed through successfully.  After thirty yards, the small tunnel opened out, and I rolled down a gently sloping embankment.  My hands landed in a small body of water, and I took the opportunity to splash some on my face and cleanse myself of the dust and grime, to say nothing of the blood from my earlier struggles, the acidic aftertaste in my mouth, and the stickiness of the web’s residue.

As soon as I’d finished, the person stepped close to me.  Something about the shape…

Another white light flared as the person slapped me hard in the face.  I reeled, and nearly fell to my knees.  The person grabbed me instead, and held me up.

“What the hell was that for?” I yelled, ignoring the earlier admonition for silence.

A match light flared, and suddenly I saw a face of a girl, too familiar in all her features to be anyone else but—

“Maelyn,” I breathed.

“No,” the girl said.

I stared hard, and then…  “Claire??”

Eyebrows rose in eager anticipation.  “You remember?”

I shook my head.  “I’m sorry, but no.  I—how can this be?”

Claire removed a long staff from the wall nearby, and lit a wad at the end of it.  It caught in glorious flame, and I marveled at how beautiful light really was after all of this darkness.

“Kinh-mal told you, did he?”

I cocked my head to the side in confusion.

“What do you think he told me?”

“What you needed to hear to go back to the house, and face my mother finally.”

 

 

 

XIX

We sat together, Claire and I, facing each other, legs folded beneath us, knees touching.  I couldn’t believe how like her mother she was, and how much more beautiful.  Had I really wasted three years mooning over her mother, when such a magnificent creature existed?

“That was never my mother,” Claire said, interrupting my thoughts.

“Excuse me?”

“You always saw me entering the gate, not my mother.”

“Okay, Claire, now I’m very confused.”

She laced her fingers through mine and squeezed.  “The curse wasn’t just on you.  Yes, Mother insured that you would never stray very far from her reach; she was fanatical about you.  But she also cast me out of the house, and cursed me to forever attempt to breach its defenses, always entering the east gate, and walking around the side of the house.  But when I reached the wooden gate inside, and walked through, I was no longer in the house, but waking from a terrible nightmare in a cave…”  She looked around our surroundings.  “This one, in fact.”

“You’re saying you dreamed walking through a gate—something I saw in real life?” I asked.

“Vincent, after everything you’ve seen so far, you still feel the need to cling to some sense of reality?”  I shrugged.  “Consider the last three years of your life a poison induced coma, fed by visions from my mother, in which you would remember watching out of your window and seeing a girl you thought you didn’t know—but desperately wanted to—walking through a gate every day.  That was the curse, Vincent.  Watching the only girl you ever loved, and not knowing her name or anything you had previously shared with her…”

Claire broke off, and trembled into fitful tears.  I touched her shoulder, and she held my hand in silent gratitude.

“My mother must have enjoyed every moment, knowing that you didn’t know me anymore.  I wish you could remember me, Vincent.”

I watched as tears slid down her cheeks, glistening and sweet in their heartrending tenderness.  “Me, too,” I confessed.

“You know what my part of the curse was?” she said.  I shook my head.  “I was only entering the gate to the house, because I was convinced you were inside waiting for my return.  Finding myself back in this cave after every close attempt was my punishment for loving you.  Mother’s jealousy knows no bounds.”

“Why me?” I asked.  “Kinh-mal said I was intended for her.”

“I scoffed when I heard that nonsense, too,” Claire said.  “Kinh-mal told me.  He warned me that to betray Mother would only cause harm for both of us.  I should have listened.”

“You regret…what we did?”

She smiled.  “No.  I regret the timing, if at all.”  Her smile grew larger.  “Of course, that was in the past, and now…we’re back together.”  She shifted forward.

“But, Claire, I still don’t remember.”

“Dear Vincent…there’s always a way,” she whispered.  Then she leaned forward, and kissed me.  My first terrified impression was that of her mother, but then I realized my error.  The body was related, but it was not at all the same.

Our breaths exchanged between us, hot and sweet.  Claire wrapped her arms around me and pulled me closer.  We rolled onto the stone floor, bodies pressed together in sudden release.

“Help me forget the last three years,” she begged.

  

XX

In the darkness of our entwining, I saw the past clearly, as though through a window.  I saw Claire—beautiful, sweet Claire—leaving me notes, flowers picked from her blooming garden beyond the hillock in the woods, kisses in secret as we passed each other in the house.  So young, so innocent, so all unassuming, never minding the endless gaze and scrutiny of Maelyn, the jealous mother, the woman scorned in life and love.  The giddiness of newly discovered love, burning bright as the truest star in the heavens, lit our path.  We knew we should be cautious, but ignored only the most obvious signs of danger.  We’d spent much time out in the garden, holding hands, watching birds and creatures of the wood, feeling the sun’s warmth on our faces, inspiring warmth in our bodies.  It had been Claire who had suggested the basement, a dungeon of sorts.  Claire had discovered the bed, and the seclusion was tempting and all-too inviting.  Hand in hand we descended the stairs from the first door in the upstairs hall.  We practically ran down the length of the stone room, laughing, hearts beating fast.  No sooner had we reached the bed than we’d undressed.  It seemed natural to us, and we smiled in feigned shyness over our exposed bodies.  I discovered a young woman’s supple and pliant body for the first time that day.  Watched with glee as she shivered to a specific touch, trembled at a soft caress, and the heated whisper of her name from my lustful lips.  Fingers explored, tongues bathed each other in the warm glow of love.  Confusion over placement of arms, legs, heads—laughter over all, sweet, dizzying and intoxicating.  Then that most intimate of connections, the contact for which we’d envisioned.  The joining together of ourselves into one luminous being.  I felt the power there, our life-forces joined.  Like a wave it began, rolling, climbing, and escalating.  Too much, I thought (not near enough, I heard her mind cry), and then crashing, breaking, soaking in the turbulence of the tide.  Falling together, trembling in the subtle after-excitement, saturating the glow, the calm after the storm.

Only after…the interruption, and Maelyn’s powerful presence made itself known, with—

 

 

 

XXI

The return of the wayward lovers,” Maelyn said out of the darkness.

Claire spun out from beneath me, and I landed on my back.  Maelyn stood—not in the dungeon out of the past—but at the entrance to the stone cave.  The vision, the memory, had relived itself, and Claire and I had shared once again in our renewed love.

Once again, Maelyn had come to interfere.  This time she wore a long black gown with red lace edging.  She was barefoot, and her hair styled for a night out.  In her hand she held a round mirror.

“I’m so glad you had this opportunity,” she declared.  “Death is your next one.”

Maelyn raised the mirror, and pale blue shine burst forth from its smooth surface.  It lit the cave, and cast our shadows on the wall.  Claire screamed, and covered her eyes with her hands.  Then she cried, a long, low, moaning cry of utter despair…then it slowly turned into another sound.

It was a howl.

Claire transformed before my eyes, fair pale skin darkening, stretching to accommodate bulging muscles.  Her face elongated, her nose flattening, eyes becoming slits, mouth split wide open from ear to ear.  Long teeth sprouted from her jaws.  Delicate hands, which had caressed me in love, became knobby, short, and sharp with claws.  Her legs bent backward at the knees, and her dainty feet lengthened.  A short stub of tail erupted from her bottom.  Ears grew up and thin, curved inward.  Hair grew in stages all over her body.

By the end, Claire had ceased to be all I’d known in so short a time.

She laid low to the ground and growled deep in her throat.  Drool dripped from quivering jaws.  She glanced once at me, and her face softened in shame, and then turned to anger when she faced her mother.

“No!” I screamed.  I jumped to my feet and rushed at Maelyn.

Spiders burst from the seams and sleeves of her gown, and raced in my direction.  They grew in size quickly.  The black widows from my night spent in the dungeon.

“Have you had enough?” Maelyn asked.  The spiders formed a loose perimeter around me, separating me from Claire.

“Change her back!” I commanded.  “You jealous bitch!”

Maelyn advanced on me, and the spider army parted to make way.  She stepped to within a heartbeat of my sweating face…and smiled.

“Vincent, my dear sweet man.  You think I’m jealous?”

I hesitated.  It was enough for her.

“You really have no idea, do you?” she whispered.

She turned once to look at her daughter, who trembled in a corner, claws extended.  Maelyn gestured, and Claire laid down, tail firmly in place, ears lowered.  It broke my heart.  Then Maelyn reached for me, took my chin in hand, and pulled down hard.

“You disappoint me, Vincent.  I had such plans for you.”  She pulled harder, and tears squeezed from my eyes.  “You think this was all about me?  You’ve failed me, Vincent.  I brought you here, provided a home for you, nurtured you from a very young age.  I taught you, gave you lessons in life, love, and the arts.  Those days were the best of my life, Vincent.  It warms my heart still to think back on them.  Just you and I, laughing, eating meals together, embraced in the companionship that comes so rarely to people.  I loved you like no other before or after.  You were my soul mate.  You completed my house.

“Then Kinh-mal entered the picture.  This was fifty years ago, now.”  I started at the time reference, but she continued on without allowing me to interject.  “He proposed that we mate, and create an heir for him.  He was the last of his line, as you know.  I thought long about it, many years, and finally consented.  Claire was conceived, and born.  You have no idea what it does, becoming a mother…the responsibility, the intimate nurturing.  I never thought I could love anyone as much as I loved you—but a scary thought became truth.  I loved her more.  I had a daughter!

“But a time I dreaded was coming, and I had to act fast.  Do you know what that time was?”

“No,” I said.  “So far, I’m not following anything you’ve said.”

“Do you know where you came from, Vincent?”

Dead silence followed, broken only by my stuttering heartbeat.

“I thought so,” Maelyn said.  “The Nephili brought you to me.”

  

XXII

The Nephili, those black-winged creatures Kinh-mal told me about.  The peculiar race of evil-doers from some other land.  It was impossible.  How could this be?  There was no way I came from such as them.

“No…” I moaned.  “You’re lying!”

“Why would I lie now?” Maelyn countered.  “Your father is the leader of the Nephili.”  She allowed this thought to sink in, and it did—rather deep, plummeting with the emotional force of a tidal wave.  “He is sometimes called the Ageless Stranger or the Faceless Man.  Other people have known him as the Dark Man, or the Crimson King.  He dwells in a place no human can reach.  Not much is known about your mother, except she died not long after you were born.  You were raised in a place called the Shadows of Megiddo, until you had grown fully.  Over there, humans tend to age faster than here.  Though you had resided there for one of our years, you aged ten.  When that time arrived, your father sent you here so I could raise you.

“One of the peculiar conditions you possess, fathered by a Nephili, is something that occurs every seven years, from the time of puberty.  Your mind clears, you forget everything that has come before, and must begin anew.  When your father first told me about this, I scoffed.  Then, as time passed, and I grew more and more attached to you, and your personality, I grew frightened.  I didn’t want to lose you, not the you that I had trained, loved, and raised.  You hit puberty, and grew into the man you are today.  Your accelerated growth was only stifled a bit by living here in this house, but you still grew faster than any other humans did.  Within a year, you were fully physically mature.

“It was then that I fell in love with you, Vincent, mind, body, and soul.

“Claire was born just before the completion of that seventh year from maturation.  I knew that you would forget everything about me that had come before.  With the mental cleansing, you would begin all over again, this time with Claire as company.  You’d grow with her emotionally, and your eyes would never leave her.  You’d forsake me.

“After the cleansing, I did everything possible.  I filled your days with tasks.  I kept you busy, and separated.  I did not want you to become too attached to Claire.  I made you sleep in my bed at night.  You obeyed brilliantly.  It seemed I had nothing to fear.

“Except you and Claire had found a way, didn’t you?  You discovered a way to be together out of my sight.  But didn’t you know that my house sees all?  Every glass is a reflection on occurrences here.  I saw you two out in the garden.  I saw Claire lead you down into my basement, and saw you make love for the first time in your life.  My whole being shattered.  You destroyed me with that act of defiance.

“I banished you from my home just before the second time of your cleansing.  I set you in that house across the street, and when your mind cleared, I knew it would be all right again.

“But you came back, Vincent.  You came back here.”

Maelyn paused a good length, and I thought she had lost whatever it was she’d planned to say next.

Wrong.

“I cannot ever allow you to leave here again,” she said, echoing the first thing she’d said to me all those days ago when I came back to this house of madness.

Maelyn unbuttoned her gown, and slid it back from her shoulders.  Her body was smooth, as I’d remembered from that night in the dungeon.  Then something happened.

Two places in her side split open, flesh bursting.  Blood seeped from the wounds, and something long, spindly, and black emerged, slithered out of the wounds.  Then I saw a joint, and another length of black, then another joint.  Her arms and legs changed too, broke in four places each, hardening, turned black.  Her head shrank on her neck, withdrawing into her chest cavity.  She bent over, thrust her bottom into the air, and it enlarged, swelling, skin stretching into chitinous plating.

Maelyn had become the biggest black widow I’ve ever seen.

 

 

 

XXIII

Maelyn scrambled after me, accompanied by the spider army.  I darted out of the cave, and into the dark tunnel.  I heard a yelp behind me, and paused long enough to see that Claire had attacked her mother.  She’d bitten into one of Maelyn’s back legs, and broke it off.  Thick yellowish fluid oozed from the severed leg.  Maelyn spun around fast and swatted her with a foreleg.  Claire was thrown back against the wall.  She slid to the ground, and remained still.  Maelyn resumed her charge, and chased me into the tunnel.

I ran, legs pumping, sensing ahead of me the walls, the obstacles.  My senses had sharpened somehow.  I couldn’t see, but I could feel.  With hands outstretched, I made my way quickly down the tunnel, and into the broad chamber.  I paused too many long seconds as I tried to remember which tunnel I needed.

The thundering sound of legs clattering on stone spurred me into a rushed decision.  I chose a tunnel that didn’t seem immediately familiar to me.  I darted around stalactites and gaping holes in the floor of the tunnel.  Had I chosen wrongly?  What if it dead-ended?  Maelyn and her evil horde would consume me for certain.

Another twenty yards, and I did hit a wall…of earth.

I waved my hands over it, and whispered with all the love in my heart, “Claire…”

The door began to creak open.

Behind me, I heard Maelyn gaining ground.  The seam opened a little more.  Dirt settled, rocks were displaced, and faint light began to shine through.

The army grew nearer.

“Come on,” I begged.  “Open up!”

The door grew a little wider.

Maelyn was very close now.  Any second, and I was a dead man.

Finally the door opened wide enough for me to slip through.  I burst into the hazy light of the woods, and saw the dead garden before me, and—

A shot of pain exploded in my thigh, and I saw something sticking out of it in front of me, which meant…

I pivoted in horror at the waist, and saw Maelyn right behind me, one leg thrust outward, inserted into mine.  I fell forward, and felt her jointed limb slide out of me.  I hit the ground on my face, and rolled slowly over onto my back, clutching my injury.

Maelyn hovered above me, pincers, and fangs moving in hungry anticipation.  I felt dizzy and nauseated, and feared passing out without further defense.

Maelyn drew closer.

Then a long, grating howl sounded, very loud, and very near.

The guardian of the woods appeared from behind the statue of the Nephili.  He growled, teeth bared.  Maelyn shrank back, and then charged the wolf.

The battle was fierce and blessedly short.  Maelyn bit Kinh-mal twice before he could respond in attack.  When he did, it was the end of the affair for them both.  The wolf slashed at her large abdomen with sharp claws, opening wounds that bled the strange sap of her life.  Four paws swiped, several wounds appeared.  Then Maelyn mashed down with her fangs at his neck, pinning him to the ground.  The wolf shook with the throes of death, and then was still.  Immediately after, Maelyn collapsed on top of him, and bled out the rest of her blood.

The spider army fled at her death, and disappeared into the forest.

I passed out, closing my eyes on the seemingly brightening sky above me.

 

 

XXIV

When I awoke, a clear blue sky, lit by a blazing sun greeted me.

I sat up, stretched sore, aching muscles, and looked around.  The bodies of Kinh-mal and Maelyn were gone.  Perhaps the creatures of the forest had taken them away.  I stood, eyes squinting in the glare of the noonday light.  I stared at the garden.

Tiny buds had formed on the bushes.  There would be roses this season.

Then I remembered Claire.

I turned back to the hillock, and saw that the door had hardened, stones lining its edges.  It was permanently opened to those who would enter in.  This I did, not fearing what might find me.

Throughout the tunnel, soft, warm light glowed, guiding me.  I reached the chamber, and was surprised to see a small body of water in the center, lit from above by millions of twinkling crystals in the rock.  I saw the tunnel branch I needed and ran swiftly through it.  If only I could make it in time.

Claire was spread out on the stone floor of the cave, transformed back into her own body, unconscious, but no worse for wear.  Very carefully, I lifted her into my arms, and held her to my chest.  I carried her back down the tunnel, chose a differing branch in the chamber, and followed it.  I reached the door to the dungeon soon after.

Back in the house, I laid her down on the sofa in the parlor of the first floor.  Elena appeared from the kitchen, wringing her hands.

“Get me some water, and a warm cloth, Elena.  Hurry!”  The maid hastened to obey.

I turned back to Claire, and wiped my hand across her brow, teasing her hair out of her face.  She stirred just as Elena returned with the water and towel.  I placed the towel on her head, and sat her up slowly.  Claire opened her eyes, looked at me, and shrank back.  I sensed her shame at what had passed before.

“Shhh…” I whispered.  “Don’t think about that.  Drink.”  I offered her the glass.  She sipped at first, and then gulped, draining the water.  Then she looked down at my body.

I was still clad in my boxers, and a ragged seam of a scar laced down my thigh.  Just how long had I been out, anyway?

Elena made an uncomfortable noise, and excused herself.

“What happened?” Claire asked.

“I think the curse is broken,” I answered.  Then I wrapped my arms around her shoulders, and drew her to me.

 

 

 

XXV

 I awoke one morning, and found a strange woman I’d never seen before laying in my bed.  Soft auburn hair spread out around her head the length of a veil.  Rosy cheeks, supple lips, and the hint of a smile.  The woman possessed a lithe body, with generous curves, the swell of her bosom welcoming my eyes, the length and form of her hips and legs inviting the rest of me to remain.

The room was foreign, decorated in rich stone and wood.  The bed was fancy, old, and well-kept.

I was as naked as the woman.

Of the night before, I could remember nothing, nor the week before that, or any other time since.

The woman opened her eyes, and the glow of sun-warmed honey greeted me.

“Good morning,” she said.  “Sleep well?”

“I’m not sure,” I answered.  “Please don’t be offended by this, but I must know.  Do I know you?”

Was that sadness in her eyes, instead of womanly indignation?  A slight frown creased her full lips, and those honey eyes moistened.

The woman took my hand, and squeezed it gently.

“You will,” she whispered.

  

Mad World

 

All around me are familiar faces

Worn out places, Worn out faces

Bright and early for their daily races

Going nowhere, Going nowhere

Their tears are filling up their glasses

No expression, No expression

Hide my head, I want to drown my sorrow

No tomorrow, No tomorrow

 

And I find it kind of funny

I find it kind of sad

The dreams in which I'm dying

Are the best I've ever had

I find it hard to tell you

I find it hard to take

When people run in circles

It's a very, very...

Mad world, Mad world

 

Children waiting for the day they feel good

Happy birthday, Happy birthday

Made to feel the way that every child should

Sit and listen, Sit and listen

Went to school and I was very nervous

No one knew me, No one knew me

Hello, teacher, tell me, what's my lesson?

Look right through me, Look right through me

 

And I find it kind of funny

I find it kind of sad

The dreams in which I'm dying

Are the best I've ever had

I find it hard to tell you

I find it hard to take

When people run in circles

It's a very, very...

Mad world, Mad world

Enlarge in your world

Mad world.