But when finally I got to sleep that night, I had no bad dreams for the first time in two years. And when I woke the next morning, there was a lightness to my movements that had not been there before. Atlas, with the weight finally lifted from his shoulders.
So I never found out who the Little Girl was. But I learned a load of other things during that period.
I learned that kindness comes in a variety of forms, not all of them expected. I learned that a love like Quinn and Cassie’s … it can blossom on the darkest night. And sometimes, there’s a very heavy price to pay for that, an almost unbearable one.
And a couple of months later, I learned something else as well.
Cassie was expecting her fourth child. It would have been Quinn Maycott’s first, if he’d still been around.
CHAPTER 67
Rain pounded on the flat roof of the low building where Cassie lived. A drumming noise filled her apartment. It was dark beyond the windowpanes. Cleveland was curled up on a sill -- his tail twitching -- looking rather smug about the fact the raindrops couldn’t touch him.
Cassie had the lights down low. She’d been strumming on her guitar -- an acoustic Gibson -- for a while. But then she got up and stretched. Went through into her clean but definitely untidy kitchen. She’d already given up on alcohol, and it was too late for coffee, so she poured herself a glass of grape juice. If you tried hard enough, you could get near to pretending it was wine.
But she practically dropped it when she went back in the living room. A few purple drops hit the old, faded carpet. Cleveland had vanished from the windowsill.
And Quinn’s faint outline -- devoid of color but the exact tall shape -- was standing by the coffee table.
She’d thought she’d gone insane when he had first appeared to her this way. It had been the day after the funeral. He had explained it to her carefully, but she had still taken a while to understand.
He had been composed of two things, it turned out. His flesh and blood, his corporeal body, which had been destroyed.
And the massive power inside him, which had not. His intellect and soul were able to reside there. And because of that, he was not gone completely from this world. Death was not an ending, not for him.
“So you’re … a ghost?” she’d managed to blurt out, once she had calmed halfway down.
He’d smiled. “Sort of. Call me that, if it pleases you.”
“And you can stay here …?”
“Always.”
The memory of that word -- it kept on resonating through her. She could hear it in her mind as clearly now as she had that first night. Cassie set the glass down, wiped her fingers on her jeans, and moved toward him happily.
“Jesus, do you always have to appear that way, so suddenly?” But she was grinning.
He tried to rap the tabletop in front of him. His knuckles passed right through.
“I’d warn you, but I don’t know how.”
“Well, you’ll have to figure something out. You keep scaring the crap out of Cleveland.”
She stopped in front of him and kissed the outline of his lips. All she felt was a mild buzz, like static electricity. God, she wished so much that she could touch him, taste him. Smell him. But considering the alternative …
As they did most evenings, they settled down on her old couch. Cassie thought that the lights went even lower. And she didn’t mind that, not one tiny bit. She snuggled back against the spot where his arm was, feeling his energy drift across her, caressing her. They sprawled there in the dimness, saying nothing for a while.
“I’ve decided on names,” she announced finally. “One for a boy, and one for a girl.”
“Do you want me to tell you which it is?”
“You know that?”
And he nodded. Cassie sat up, trembling with excitement.
“So what’s the big secret? Come on, Ghost-Boy, cough it up!”
He started whispering in her ear. And her eyes became wide, then delighted, then triumphant.
“Wow! It’s May Joanne, then!”
Quinn looked slightly pained.
“May Maycott? A bit repetitive, don’t you think?”
Cass laughed back at him sarcastically. “After a couple of sessions in the sack? Think again, mister. It’s going to be May Mallory.”
She folded her hands across her belly, and her gaze went distant.
“I know all mothers think this. But I get the feeling that she’s going to be pretty special.”
At which point, Quinn shook his head.
“With your strength and my powers? No. She’ll be a whole lot more than special. She is going to be …”
And he hunted for the right words.
“Just amazing.”
Tony Richards is the author of five novels, six novellas, and almost a hundred short stories, most of them in the supernatural and dark fantasy genres. His work has appeared in most major publications, and he has been nominated for both the British Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards. Widely traveled, he often sets his fiction in locations he has visited. He currently lives in London, England, with his wife. His previous publications with Dark Regions Press are the collections SHADOWS AND OTHER TALES and GOING BACK, and he has published two earlier Raine’s Landing novels, DARK RAIN and NIGHT OF DEMONS. You can find out more about him and his fiction at his website, www.richardsreality.com.
It may look like a perfectly ordinary New England town, a little larger than most. But Raine’s Landing, Massachusetts, holds some very dark secrets. The real witches of Salem fled here just before the Trials of 1692, and the place has been full of magic -- the good and the bad kind -- ever since. And a curse hangs over the whole population … there are so many people because nobody born here can ever leave.
Now the Landing is facing its worst peril yet, monstrous flying creatures in the service of an evil older than the Universe itself. They have an unpleasant way of getting people on their side. Their powers keep on growing until little can withstand them. Most of the major adepts succumb … there are only two left to defend the place. And the town’s chief troubleshooter, ex-cop Ross Devries, has an enormous challenge on his hands. He needs to get his former sidekick, Cassie, back into the fight. And if they are to have any slightest chance of winning through, they’re going to have to make some very strange new friends.
“A hell of a writer, one of today’s masters of dark fiction” -- Mario Guslandi, Horror World.
“Richards is a master at combining horror, fantasy and humor in a way that will mesmerize readers from cover to cover” -- Rhomylly Forbes, Romantic Times Book Reviews.
“The rest of us stand on the sidelines with eyes wide open at his audacity and wonder what he’ll do next” -- Peter Tennant, Black Static.
“By weaving this fantasy into a modern setting, Richards creates something unique” -- Clayton Bye, Alternative Reads.
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