The Siren and the Specter

by Jonathan Janz

  They fell into a comfortable sleep, but David awoke a few minutes shy of two a.m. and realized what had been nagging at him. He stood in the dark bedroom, naked, his pulse racing, and stared out the picture window into the inky blue night.

  He put on his cargo shorts and sandals. Careful not to wake Sebastian, who slept atop the covers at Jessica’s feet, David slipped out of the bedroom and moved to the kitchen. He poured himself a glass of tap water, hands trembling. He guzzled it, wiped his mouth, and went out the back door. The moon was overlarge and tinged with scarlet, the stars like avid eyes watching his every move.

  Watching to see if he’d lose his nerve.

  He wouldn’t, though. Couldn’t. In spite of how much he felt for Jessica, the truth had been digging at him with greater urgency each day. It had gotten so he could scarcely sleep, no matter what measures he took. He had to do this.

  David crossed the backyard and entered the trail to the wooden steps, which he descended purposefully, eyes straight ahead, his will concentrated on the necessity of this, no matter the peril.

  He reached the dock and removed his sandals. He spread his arms and brought them together as he leaped. The summer water was a tick warmer than the air. David kicked, cupped his hands, and parted the water before him, the moonlight full on his face. He pushed on, moving deeper into the bay. He knew the Alexander House would appear soon in his periphery, and though it took an effort, he kept his eyes from drifting in that direction. In between strokes he caught glimpses of the dappled water, silver coruscating on black, and when he’d swum for a while, he finally allowed himself to look at what lay straight ahead.

  The island.

  If it were to happen, he knew, it must be here. The Alexander House, though rife with grisly memories, was now restful. Or at least he believed it to be. He certainly wasn’t going to return to test his theory. More than once Jessica had suggested burning the place down, but as the Shelby property had proved, houses could be rebuilt. If evil could survive death, it could survive fire.

  Under the water’s surface, his fingertips scraped sand. David stood and strode toward the shore.

  Funny, he thought, but when he and Anna had been here many years ago, and again when he and Jessica had visited the island this summer, he hadn’t noticed a gap in the trees, much less a worn path where they could enter the forest.

  But here it lay, as obvious as could be. Knowing he’d lose his nerve if he delayed further, David took the path.

  The island trail was smooth and weedless and meandered for perhaps twenty yards before opening to a vast clearing he wouldn’t have believed possible, for from the water and the shore, the forest appeared unbroken. Yet now he stood on the verge of a broad stretch of packed dirt as wide as…

  …as some ancient temple. Yes, he thought, stepping into the clearing. There was something holy about this place, something awe-inspiring. The soil was packed so firmly that the earth glimmered. He realized as he advanced that the far edge of the clearing rose in a mound, beyond which the ground plummeted for maybe fifty feet before being overtaken once more by forest. Atop the mound lay a sprawling deadfall of alabaster branches, likely washed up by a long-ago flood and bleached pale by the sun when the noonday light blazed straight down.

  David performed a slow revolution, surveying the scarlet-tinged leaves of the towering trees, their boughs intertwining like the arms of kindred gods, their trunks so closely massed that they seemed like parts of the same organism.

  He cast a glance backward to make sure the trail on which he’d entered was still there. It was, of course, and he smiled at himself for doubting it would be, and when he turned to face the clearing he discovered a figure striding toward him, only twenty feet away.

  Anna Spalding.

  As she had the night he’d encountered her in the attic of the Alexander House – the night she’d saved his life by distracting Judson – Anna’s long dark hair was swept back from her face. Unlike that ghastly night in the Alexander House, however, Anna no longer flickered and blurred before his eyes. Now she wore a simple black dress, her feet bare as always, on her face an expression he couldn’t interpret. At one moment he detected a hint of knowing good humor around her mouth, and a dozen happy memories would flood through him; the next moment he’d sense a predator’s cunning in her eyes.

  But when she drew nearer, these musings vanished and were replaced by the time when he and Anna had spread a blanket on a bridge and watched the sun sink over the Rappahannock…the day the two of them had played tennis, David getting huffy because Anna had whipped him, David eventually apologizing for his immaturity…the weekend they’d spent on Chesapeake Bay, David spending more money than he should have to rent a cabin on the water…making love to Anna, and afterward, the two of them sitting side by side on the deck, cocooned in a blanket, the full moon not as lurid as this but just as dazzling.

  Now Anna stood a mere three feet away, and David realized he was weeping. He lowered his head, shook it slowly, and muttered an apology.

  Anna didn’t stir.

  He saw her bare toes, remembered how she’d taken off her flip-flops even in movie theaters and nested her bare feet on the seatback, and the memory warmed him, and he looked into her face and saw she was smiling.

  Yet for some reason, this brought fresh tears to his eyes. He saw her through a shimmering curtain, his throat and chest seared by jagged sabers of heat.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

  Her smile went away, but the expression that replaced it wasn’t hostile. He said it again, his voice cracking. Anna watched him.

  “Please forgive me,” he continued. “I don’t deserve it, but please…I’d give anything to take it back.”

  His chest shuddered. He fought it as long as he could but realized this was elemental, as unconquerable as the tides. Anna merely watched him weep, and after a time, her hand rose, her fingers nearing his face. Her expression was warm, generous. He didn’t deserve forgiveness, he knew, but that was Anna. One of the kindest human beings he’d ever met. Not a pushover, not a quiet, saintly figure – when enraged she could cuss and storm violently – but at her core, where it really mattered, her heart was beautiful.

  Her fingertips touched his cheek, caressed him, and he dared to meet her gaze. Her smile was subtle, but it was there, and what was more, there was a satisfied placidity in her eyes. Whatever she’d been looking for, she’d evidently seen it.

  Anna drew nearer, nearer, only inches from his face. She was shorter than he, but because she stood uphill from him, they regarded each other eye to eye, equals in the scarlet moonlight.

  She cupped his cheeks in her hands, leaned closer, and for a moment he believed she would kiss him. Though a part of him would always love her, a wave of guilt rolled through him at the prospect. He’d just made love to Jessica for the first time; how would Jessica feel about David accepting a kiss from her long-dead sister?

  Anna seemed to sense David’s reticence because her wry smile appeared, that sardonic curving of her lips. Her nose two inches from his, she fixed him with her large, liquid eyes. Her smile faded, in its place a gravity that brought a chill to his spine.

  Staring into his eyes, she uttered a single word.

  “Run.”

  Around the clearing, the trees convulsed as if they’d been gripped by a fatal ague. The ground underfoot vibrated, and releasing him, Anna retreated slowly, her expression alarmed. As a terrible, deep-throated hum reached his ears, he realized something was coming, something from the forest ahead, beyond the rising mound of earth, beyond the clearing.

  The meaning of Anna’s message, as simple as it was, finally took root in him, started his feet to backpedaling, his eyes riveted on the forest, where he heard sticks breaking, the crack of pine boughs. David set off in a nerveless jog, his gaze over his shoulder at the place where the earth rose, that shimmering mound of dirt that
reminded him so forcibly of an altar.

  He was ten feet from the woods when the Siren exploded over the rise.

  The wraithlike figure sent a shockwave over the clearing, soil and pebbles spraying over the earth. The weeds at the forest’s edge were flattened by the concussive force. Even the trees leaned away.

  The wraith gleamed a dreadful bone-colored white, garbed in flowing garments of the same hue. Even from this distance he could see the straight black hair parted down the middle and radiating out behind her. If not for the hideous expression of loathing stamped on her features, the face would have been lovely.

  The mouth yawned open, revealing teeth like glowing scimitars.

  Gasping, David plunged into the forest.

  He heard her swooping progress in the clearing behind him and a deep, machinelike roar. But this wraith was older than any machinery, older even than the trees. This, he thought with frantic terror, was the Rappahannock woman who’d been banished to this island so many centuries ago, the one who became a Siren, luring untold men to gruesome fates.

  David leaped around a curve, his bare feet slapping the trail in mindless terror. The pile of branches he’d glimpsed atop the mound wasn’t a deadfall after all, was a pile of human bones accumulated over the many years the Siren had ruled the island. He recalled the ferocity in those white eyes, knew if he didn’t escape that his bones would be gnawed clean and heaped upon the mound.

  David burst out of the forest and heard the Siren winging after him, her taloned fingers ripping through leaves and branches, her awesome vitality bending the trees and groaning their stout trunks.

  He took three leaping strides and dove into the river. His chest scraped the shallows, but he barely noticed it, only kicked as he’d never kicked before, his arms swinging wildly. Even with his ears underwater he heard the deep bullhorn blast of the Siren as she rocketed out of the forest. He didn’t need to glance over his shoulder to see the wraithlike figure floating toward him over the water.

  David swam for his life. He gulped water, spluttered and gasped. The river grew cooler with the Siren’s approach. David was halfway across the bay when he realized the water had turned frigid, the wind bringing gooseflesh despite the vigor of his strokes.

  His strength began to flag, his arms like blocks of marble. He kicked against the increasingly freezing water, and when he was fifty feet from the dock, he sensed it, the stare of the Siren on his back. Frost tingled his shoulder blades, the Siren’s talons harrowing his flesh. David sucked in breath, plunged beneath the water’s surface, breast-stroked with arms he no longer felt. Frantic, David rolled in the water, glanced up and saw the floating Siren, the features turned bestial, the mouth a monstrous leer, the scimitar fangs curved and dripping, the eyes glowing Jack-o-lantern orange, the face a nightmare of lunatic hunger.

  At sight of it, David’s body went limp. Through the water sounded the dirge he’d heard that first night on the peninsula, the melody no longer sorrowful, but instead gloating, the infernal aria of demons.

  The Siren’s claws groped for him.

  David pushed lower, going deeper despite the water flowing into his throat. In an ecstasy of terror, David heard the sound of something hit the water nearby, but maybe that was imagination. Above him the claws curled, extended, the Siren’s face a mask of delight just above the water’s surface. Gagging, David slapped at the talons, felt his hand sliced open, the blood awakening an even more perverse glee in the Siren’s face. The water went fizzy with his expiring breath, the Siren’s claws scrabbling for him, and then his chest spasmed, someone grasping him from behind and hauling him upward.

  His face breached the surface, and he vomited water in a sizzling gout. He barely noticed.

  He realized it was Jessica grasping him under the arms, Jessica kicking them toward the dock, which was very near. The Siren hovered over the water a few feet away, her face etched with wide-eyed fury. The Siren brayed at them, a soul-freezing combination of misery and desire, the voice otherworldly. David joined with Jessica’s efforts to reach the dock; within seconds, they did. Twenty feet away and deprived of her quarry, the Siren bellowed in rage. Jessica scaled the short ladder, helped David do the same, and once they were out of the water, she wrapped an arm around his side in a protective gesture, both of them watching the Siren. David shivered uncontrollably, his limbs enervated by his flight.

  “Come on,” Jessica whispered.

  David nodded and allowed her to lead him toward the staircase. Together, they climbed the steps, Jessica’s arm never leaving his waist. Several times, he glanced back at the Siren, and each time he found her hovering over the water. His great fear was that the face would become Anna’s.

  But it didn’t.

  As he and Jessica reached the top of the stairs and completed the short jaunt through the woods to the backyard, he decided that Anna would finally rest.

  Hand in hand, David and Jessica made their way through the soothing carpet of grass. The moonlight bathed them in its healing light, their wounds still aching, but the pain no longer impeding their progress.

  Sebastian was waiting for them at the back door.

  Together, the three of them went inside.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to Don D’Auria for believing in me; Brian Keene for mentoring and supporting me; Tod, Tim, and Kimberly for being fabulous pre-readers; Joe Lansdale, Tim Waggoner, Paul Tremblay, and Jeff Strand for being so helpful; and Stephen King for inspiring me to read and write. Thank you most of all to my amazing wife and my three extraordinary children for being the best parts of my life.

  About this book

  This is a FLAME TREE PRESS BOOK

  Text copyright © 2018 Jonathan Janz.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  FLAME TREE PRESS, 6 Melbray Mews, London, SW6 3NS, UK, flametreepress.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Thanks to the Flame Tree Press team, including: Taylor Bentley, Frances Bodiam, Federica Ciaravella, Don D’Auria, Chris Herbert, Matteo Middlemiss, Josie Mitchell, Mike Spender, Will Rough, Cat Taylor, Maria Tissot, Nick Wells, Gillian Whitaker. The cover is created by Flame Tree Studio with thanks to Nik Keevil and Shutterstock.com.

  FLAME TREE PRESS is an imprint of Flame Tree Publishing Ltd. flametreepublishing.com. A copy of the CIP data for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  HB ISBN: 978-1-78758-007-7, PB ISBN: 978-1-78758-005-3, ebook ISBN: 978-1-78758-008-4 | Also available in FLAME TREE AUDIO | Created in London and New York

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