Absence_Whispers and Shadow

by J. B. Forsyth

  ‘But how did it know my name?’

  ‘You said it took it from you.’

  ‘It did. But it recognised it – like it knew me.’

  ‘Are you sure it was recognition and not something else?’

  She thought about it. ‘Maybe. It’s all a bit blurry now.’

  He went to the window and looked out again. ‘It was running across Rinker’s Point when you first saw it, right?’ She nodded. ‘Which way was it heading?’

  ‘Toward Galleran Forest.’

  ‘Good. Away from here then.’

  ‘But that was before what happened? If it read my name right out of my head, it might know where we live as well.’

  He raked his jaw with his fingers. ‘I’ll have to go out and take a look… See if it changed course.’

  ‘In Absence?’

  ‘No. On foot. I track better that way.’

  ‘You can’t! It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘What else am I going to do? Just sit here and forget about it? Without knowing where it went, how will you sleep tonight or walk the lane in the morning?’

  He was right – they had to know. Even the thought of stepping back out of the front door filled her with dread.

  ‘I’ll pick up its trail before Rinker’s Point and keep my distance,’ he said, coming around the table to give her a hug just as a tear streaked down her face. ‘It’ll be alright. We’ve just got to be careful.’ He disappeared into the kitchen and when he came back there was a water skin strapped to his back and a knife belt buckled to his waist. ‘Lock the doors and bolt the windows once I’m gone. I’ll be back before dark.’

  She followed him out onto the stoop and kissed him goodbye, then watched as he strode through the garden and disappeared through the gate. A faint breeze lifted her hair, but despite its warmth she folded her arms and hurried back inside. To her the breeze was now the breath of the monster as it watched from its hiding place.

  The Spirit Lure

  She locked the front and back doors and went around the house closing windows. Alone and scared, she started to see the place through new eyes. She became acutely aware of the rotten wood around the windows and the cracks of light around the back door. Such things got her to wondering how the house would fare in a proper test. Would those rotten windows hold up against probing woody fingers? And were those cracks around the back door wide enough to enable a spying eye? An eye that looked just like hers. This last thought gave her such a shudder that she took a blanket from the cupboard and draped it over the door.

  When all was done and double checked she decided to retire to her bedroom. Halfway up the stairs she drew up and looked down at her leg. She had grown used to climbing stairs one at a time - leading with her good leg and bringing her bad leg onto the same step. But she’d taken the first steps with the sure footed pattern she always envied in others. It was another lifelong dream realized. But the action felt dirty and false and for the second time she wished the poison was back again.

  Her room was on the left at the top of the stairs. It was furnished only with a bed, desk and table, but it was filled with the trappings of her life. On the table was a book of pressed flowers with a gold maple leaf painted on the front. Some of the larger specimens were too big for the book and their pointed tips stuck out from the pages. Next to it was a jar of blue water that held three weasel hair paint brushes her uncle had made. Three of her most recent works were pegged to a drooping string above them and the title of each one was printed in the bottom right corner. There was Bridge at Dawn, Uncle Snore Face and her current favourite: Flowers on the Stoop. On a little shelf opposite her bed were three thumb sized bottles of perfume she made with flowers picked from the garden. She’d called one Meadow Scent and another Summer Glade. The third one was a work in progress. It smelled a lot like onions and she was considering throwing it away. A dozen polished river stones were spaced out alongside them, each with an animal face painted on the front. The latest – an owl and a fox, she finished only last night. Absence purged most of the poison and her pastimes helped her to deal with what was left.

  With no interest in these things she curled up on her oak window seat and looked out across the river, wondering where her uncle had got to. He could track an ant across a granite slab and it wouldn’t be long before he found the monster’s trail. The only question was whether he could stay safe.

  She had seen much she didn’t like in his face before he left, but the worst of it was disappointment. She had gotten them into something that could easily have been avoided if only she had exercised a little more caution. He had compared her encounter to an incident with a spirit lure in Lyell many years ago and that was where her thoughts went now. It had all started with an early morning walk and a man on a wagon...

  The lane that ran into Lyell was narrow and she pressed herself into the hedgerow to allow the wagon to pass. The driver smiled and doffed his hat, exposing a hairless dome that shone in the sun. She smiled back, but as he got closer it dropped away. His eyes seemed to have eyes of their own, pair after pair, lined up one behind the other - on and on forever and ever. And his smile was not the sort she had at first imagined. It was a hungry, predatory smile better suited to a starving wolf and it sucked the warmth from the day. She became acutely aware she was alone on the lane and as he passed by, she was imbued with a dreadful certainty that he was going to reach down and snatch her up. But then he was rumbling by; taking his wintry air away with him. She watched him disappear around a bend, then stepped out from the hedgerow and hurried home. By the time she stepped in through the front door she had convinced herself that what she’d seen in the driver face and felt in his smile, was just a product of her overactive imagination. And by evening time she had forgotten about him all altogether.

  That night, whilst in Absence around the village, she was drawn to the sweet sound of children: a merry mix of joyful screams and giggles that seemed to come from the other side of the trees behind The Tickled Pig tavern. Perhaps, she thought, the landlord had organised an event to which she wasn’t invited. She drifted towards the sound – never guessing she was being drawn.

  She passed through the trees, only realising her mistake when she emerged on the other side. There were no children in the field. Just a wagon - his wagon. And she could see him behind its flapping canvas, silhouetted by lamplight. Had she known the stranger with the predatory smile had pulled into the Tickled Pig after passing her on the lane, she would have given the tavern a wide berth.

  Absence allowed her to inhabit the invisible plane the exorcists called the Membrane. As far as she knew, the Membrane was everywhere and it was virtually empty except for the rare ghost that lingered upon it. If she ever got too close to one of these spirits she would start to feel its magnetism. The exorcists had a name for this too. They called it a draw and most days she could travel as far as she liked in any direction without feeling the slightest hint of one. And if she did; she would simply retreat, mark its boundary and try never to cross it again.

  But she had been captured by a different type of draw tonight. The sort created by spirit lures. And by the time she saw his wagon it was too late. The lure had generated such a well disguised and beguiling draw that not a single fibre of her had suspected it. She tried to fight her way out now, but she was already too deep in its field and it was like trying to swim back over the crest of a waterfall.

  He drew her quickly now, his silhouette form opening its arms to receive her. Faster and faster she travelled across the field, until, hopelessly flailing, she passed through the canvas and into his cold embrace. But she didn’t stop there. He drew her down into the centre of him; through the others that inhabited him. For the man was a vessel of many souls and she descended through them in layers - faces that ran like hot wax and reached for her with groping hands. The most distinctive among them was a wolf with a lolling tongue and a towering woman with a bald head…. Deeper still were children - the same children that had baited her with t
heir merry voices. But they didn’t look merry now. They looked bereft and frightened. Like stolen children; all huddled together with haunted eyes.

  She hit the core of him - an impossible depth where there was only his undiluted presence. His draw was now a sphere of force pushing in from all directions, fixing her in place. As a congregation of faces loomed over her his mind invaded hers. But she had one last defence. She fled into the deepest part of her mind, to the place where she retreated to when the poison in her leg turned to mist sickness and the nightmares returned. And there she hid whilst the driver scoured her.

  Hours later she found herself hanging in the air behind The Ticked Pig. Full dark was upon Lyell and the wagon was gone. A crescent moon was climbing the sky and from her perspective it looked like an approving grin.

  Della shifted in the window seat. They never found out who the spirit lure was or what he learnt from her, because as soon as she got home and told her uncle, he insisted they leave right away. By sunrise of the next morning they were twenty miles away. The spirit lure used and violated her, but besides the mental scars there were no other consequences. But as she looked out of the window she got a feeling that they wouldn’t be so lucky this time. The air had a feel of consequences pending; as if she’d stolen a dragon’s egg and it was taking to the air in search of her.

  She jerked around, sensing someone coming up behind her. The room was empty, but the sensation continued to build regardless. Had the monster got in whilst she was daydreaming? She stared at the dim opening framed by the door, waiting for it to materialize. But nothing came. The house was still and there was no sound in it but her own panicky breath. She wondered if it was hiding in her room and looked over at her bed. She crouched down to peek into the shadows beneath it and saw only dust balls and bits of chalk. But still the feeling remained.

  She convinced herself it was all in her mind – a symptom of being alone in the house with a monster prowling around outside. But as she sat back in the window seat to wait it out, there was a sudden inversion of the feeling and she realised that whatever was approaching, was doing so from inside her.

  She leapt to her feet in horror, swatting at her body as if plagued by a swarm of wasps. She staggered across the room, backed into her shelf and knocked one of her perfumes off. It shattered against the floor, polluting the air with oniony redolence. The feeling stopped and she froze in place with her hands held up in a warding gesture; ready for it to start again.

  But what she felt instead was a sudden heavy malaise, as if she were coming down with a potent illness. She looked back out of the window with leaden eyes then across to her bed. Knowing her uncle was out there tracking the monster should have vanquished all thought of sleep. But her bed was pulling at her with an enormous gravity now. She staggered over to it and collapsed on top of the covers. In the brief time before she fell to sleep, she saw the monster again. It was standing in swaying grass and she was flying away from it; pulling its shadow out from its feet as if it was black fabric on an endless reel…

  She awoke as if from hibernation, so thick was the sleep into which she’d descended. There was a hand shaking her shoulder and a voice close to her ear. ‘Della… Della… Wake up.’

  She sat up with a double vision of senses; her own wakening alongside that of something else. She was too sleepy to appreciate the bizarreness of it and her sluggish mind dismissed it as some kind of dream residue. She saw her uncle staring out of her window and swung her legs over the side, feeling a flush of shame for going to sleep while he was out. How she could have done such a thing was beyond her. She couldn’t even remember lying down.

  ‘Did you find it?’ she asked.

  ‘No. But it’s here in the village.’ She stared at him wide eyed, the last of her drowsiness shocked away as surely as if he had dowsed her with ice water. ‘I picked its trail up at Rinker’s Point. Never seen prints like it. It’s a damn heavy thing - the weight of a horse in the prints of a man. It was heading for Galleran Forest like you said. But after it grabbed you it took a direct line to the village.’

  She grabbed her shirt and gasped. ‘It’s looking for me!’

  ‘Calm down. We don’t know that for sure.’

  ‘Why else would it come here?’ He pulled a face that was probably meant to communicate bewilderment; but she could tell from his eyes that he was thinking the same thing she was. ‘How come you didn’t find it?’

  ‘It went into the river. I searched both banks for some way in either direction, but there was no a sign of it. I didn’t dare stay out any longer. I wanted to get back before dark. The river’s deep where it went in and it could’ve swum a fair distance.’

  Swum. In her mind’s eye she saw it swimming a shadowy river bend: its face, her face visible only from the eyes up, its soaking wet ringlets flat to its head and its horrible knotted wood hands, paddling through the water. ‘Where did it go in?’

  ‘A mile or so up river from north village…And there’s something else you should know. It ran out onto Rinker’s Point, but it walked off with a limp.’ Her breath caught in her mouth. ‘Same limp you had - foot turned out to the same degree ’n’ everything.’

  The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and black butterflies fluttered in her chest. Her uncle saw her alarm, crossed to the bed and sat down beside her. ‘I’m sorry. It can’t be easy hearing all this.’

  ‘We have to warn the village.’

  ‘And say what? You gonna tell them you went Absent after school; left your body in a field and found a monster at Rinker’s Point.’ She looked down at the floor. ‘But I agree we’ve got to do something. I’ll alert their trackers first thing in the morning. Those prints will soon get their guard up… I’ll walk you to school and come back for you at last bell. It’ll be the safest place for you while we’re out looking for it… But if we’ve still got trouble by the end of the day, we’ll get out of here.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  She smiled, wanting to get out of Agelrish more than anything. ‘Alright, but promise me you’ll sleep in here tonight.’

  ‘I promise. And if it’ll make you feel any better, I’ll pull my mattress in right away.’

  Hours later she was still awake, listening to her uncle snoring at the foot of her bed. The deep malaise was long gone and now she felt like she could stay up forever. She looked down at her uncle and wondered why she hadn’t told him about how the monster changed its face. It was of vital importance he knew, especially now the villagers might come across it. She sat up, intending to shake him awake and tell him. But as she reached for him her intention was smudged out in much the same way it had been earlier and she flopped back; wondering why she sat up in the first place. It was a long time before she fell asleep.

  No Place to Call Home

  Della sat on the worn planks of the stoop. The sky was a rinse of blue and the sun had not a single cloud to challenge it. It was going to be a day of sharp shadows and glistening water – her favourite type of day. But she took no pleasure from it. Her eyes surveyed the bright glory of the morning with a soldier’s vigilance – every tree and bush a hiding place, every change in the breeze an inhaled breath from where the whispers would start. Agelrish was poisoned for her regardless of what happened today. She might have been able to tolerate Ismara until she left school, but she couldn’t live so close to Rinker’s Point now, any more than she could have stayed by the Tickled Pig tavern all those years ago. Her uncle had said that if they still had trouble at the end of the day, they would leave. But she would persuade him to go, regardless.

  It was their second time in Agelrish. She had fond memories of their first time living there and it was her idea to come back again. Last time her uncle found work helping to build new houses on the hamlet that later became North Agelrish. In those days she went by the name Hetty and wore her hair short and straight. Her best friend was a quiet girl called Mindi; whose recipe for Meadow Sweet perfume she still used.

&nb
sp; But this time hadn’t gone as well as she hoped it would. It rarely did the second time around, because for the most part, it was the people that endeared her to a place and not the place itself. And those she knew in Agelrish the last time around were all gone now – reduced to bones in the earth and remembered only by a handful of older residents. Strange faces now worked their land and occupied their homes. Sadder still was the discovery of Mindi’s untended headstone in a far corner of the graveyard. The lichen encrusted inscription had informed her that Mindi died childless at twenty-eight, only two years after marrying Brin Hartoft; the red cheeked farmer’s boy who used to tease them at school. She had cleared Mindi’s grave of weeds and planted daffodils either side of her headstone.

  Last time in Agelrish was a happy time. But after six years they were forced to move on. For Absence sustained them in their youth, keeping them free of the insidious poisons that time left in its wake – allowing them to age, but not degenerate. It was the greatest discovery in the history of mankind, but it had been forgotten by all but the two of them. Its practice was once widespread, but times changed and in the end Absence became a secret on the grounds of self-preservation. Years ago her uncle passed a comment that made their situation clear. They were at the hideaway, each of them wrestling with their own melancholy after a reluctant departure from another village they had loved. It was the end of summer and they had stopped to admire the fruit on a row of apple trees.

  ‘Be ripe for picking soon,’ he said. ‘But do you think anyone would pick ’em if they were still hanging there in winter?’ He turned away without explanation and walked on with his head hanging down.

  She watched him go and it wasn’t until she looked back at the trees that she understood what he was getting at. People would only accept the fruit if its presence was in accord with the rules of nature. She imagined a fruit bearing apple tree standing in an orchard of leafless skeletons and surrounded by a crust of snow. Such a scene, even if nature were to allow it, would never come to pass. Those that tended the orchard would see to that. They would spot the tree much earlier in the year; perhaps praising it in summer for its healthy crop and shiny leaves. But as the autumn tightened its grip and the other trees dropped their fruit and cast their dry brown leaves to the wind, their praise would turn to suspicion. She could see the pickers holding the apples in their hands and shaking their heads, discussing theories about how the land could have been poisoned by the Black Eye or a witch’s tooth. Before even a suggestion of winter snow they would torch the tree and burn it to ash. And it wouldn’t end there. Fearing a spread of the abhorrence, the pickers would dig up the earth in which the tree was rooted and dispose of it many miles away.