by Scott Hale
“Someone’s coming, Mummy,” Edmund cried from the living room. “Someone weird!”
Amelia shushed her children—they had begun to squeal and concoct elaborate tales amongst themselves—made her way to and through the front door, and waited. A carriage led by two large, black horses pulled up beside her squat house, their hooves clapping against the hard earth. At the front of the vehicle sat a gaunt man clad from head to toe in raggedy black clothes too large for his person. Looking closely, Amelia saw that his skin was soft and pink, like a newborn’s.
Intrigued, Edmund and Ruth burst through the doorway, glanced at the man, and then hid behind their mother’s dress. Here and there, they peeked out around her. Each time, without fail, when their eyes met his, they went stiff, as though the sight of the driver’s horribly blue eyes were paralyzing.
“Can I help you, sir?” Amelia asked, disturbed by the man’s behavior.
The man offered no response. Behind him, the horses grunted and snorted, steam rising from their wet noses and dispersing into the brisk autumn air.
“If there’s nothing, then I must ask you to leave. I’m not one for games and I will show you if needs be.”
“Mother is ferocious today,” Edmund whispered to his sister, fingers clinging tightly to the fabric of Amelia’s dress.
“Quiet you,” Ruth hissed back.
Suddenly, without any visible provocation, the man’s vacant eyes stirred to life. “My apologies, ma’am,” the driver said as he bowed repeatedly. “I’ve a condition. I don’t truly understand it, but I’ve had it all my life, or so I’m told.”
Upon hearing the driver’s voice, Edmund and Ruth emerged from behind Amelia to properly introduce themselves. They looked like diminutive adults in their suit and dress. Ruth curtseyed as Edmund outstretched his arm like a proper gentleman.
“Lovely children, ma’am,” the driver said, tipping his head in their direction.
“What is it then?” Amelia snapped, placing one hand atop each child’s head.
The horses sneered behind the driver as though they were insulting her for being so daft. “I was sent by your uncle Amon, ma’am. I was told to pick you up at this hour, on this day. I was told that you would be awaiting my arrival.”
The driver watched as confusion spread first across Amelia’s face and then the children’s.
“Did the letter not arrive, ma’am?”
“It did.”
“Oh, I see. Well, I should be going then, to inform your uncle of your decision. Farewell, ma’am, and I apologize once more for the fright I gave you.”
Amelia went to turn away, and then didn’t.
The carriage crossed the drowned land, throwing mud upon mud and leaving deep tracks and hoof prints in the road. Amelia looked through the window, at the field of green beside her and sea of gray above, and sighed. Ruth and Edmund sat opposite her, asleep upon one another, their bodies heavy with exhaustion. Occasionally, the carriage would dip into a hole, and in response the children would mumble incoherently as they threw their limbs about in sleepy agitation. This made Amelia laugh—something which she had not done in quite some time. She wanted to join them in their sleep, to hold and see them through troubling dreams, but the driver had warned of violence on the roadway, so she sat as a sentinel at the window, not trusting a man to see dangers only a mother’s eyes could.
Amelia found herself thinking of the family estate, but she knew that what she remembered would no longer be when they crossed over onto the property. For a moment her heart fluttered at the idea of being reunited with her mother, father, sister, and brothers, but even this would be impossible. Through disease, brutality, and unexplainable circumstance, each member of the Ashcroft family had been taken from this world. Death had begun with her mother, who had succumbed to an infection and an irrational fear of doctors. After that, once having tasted Amelia’s bloodline and finding it favorable, Death became a glutton of it, and one by one, her siblings and relatives fell to its hunger.
It had grown dark when Ruth and Edmund came to, drool still wet upon their lips. It took them a moment to recognize their surroundings and to remember their departure. The sound of wood bending rose from the floor of the carriage as they crossed a bridge over a surging stream.
“Mummy,” Edmund mumbled as he wiped his eyes, “Mummy, I’m so very hungry.”
“We’ll eat soon, Edmund. Ruth, are you hungry?”
“I can wait,” Ruth responded proudly, even as her stomach rumbled.
“Of course you can.”
In what remained of the failing light, Amelia saw the outline of a small house atop a small hill. All about it were sticks and branches protruding from the earth, like makeshift headstones or bits of shrapnel from some long forgotten trauma. There were no roads to the house, and the land it sat on was fallow. Amelia thought about who might have lived there and if they lived there still, if they were happy or if they had been shunned there. She wondered if whether they, too, had sat at the edge of despair and, worn by the sights beyond, fell from its ledge.
Amelia searched the dark of the carriage for stowed-away food. Finding it, she broke the bread into three pieces and poured the soup into three bowls. Together, the Ashcrofts ate their late meal ravenously and then slept into the morning hours.
When they reached the outskirts of an upcoming town, the driver stopped the carriage so that they could stretch their legs and relieve themselves in the overgrowth that had sprung up around the road. Despite her upbringing, Amelia had no qualms about squatting in the bushes beside her daughter, nor would she mind shoving the driver’s nose into his skull if he had wandered over to watch. She had been accused many times of not being a lady, but Amelia saw nothing ladylike in silence and willful stupidity.
“How far now, sir?” Amelia asked the driver later as they both stood staring out at the town in the distance. A thick fog clung to it, so much so that, had the driver not warned of it, Amelia would have never known the town was there until they were right upon it.
“A day or so. Maybe more, ma’am. The land is strange here and seems to have a mind of its own.” The driver scratched at the white stubble that had formed on his tender skin.
Amelia gasped. “Is this Parish?” She knew the town from her youth; her family had acquired many properties here. “Will we have any trouble passing through?”
The driver smiled as he patted one of the great black horses on its rear. “No, I expect not.”
Eager to show the awful things it hid, the fog began to part as the carriage drew closer to Parish. At first, Amelia covered Edmund’s and Ruth’s eyes, but the town had more road than she had patience to keep her children restrained. It seemed as though a pestilence had passed through, a pestilence that had affected not only the people there, but their creations as well. The buildings themselves looked diseased and decayed, their collapsed roofs host to countless weeping sores. Stone walls ran through Parish like dividers between the districts. Each one was mottled, encrusted like they had scabbed over. But what Amelia found most disturbing were the strange vermillion veins that ran between each of the houses. The pulsating, root-like structures were everywhere, and the lattice they formed over the ground had choked out any life that had once dared to rise out of the land.
Edmund and Ruth coughed and gagged as they surveyed the blight. Even the air smelled and tasted of wet, sour decay. Amelia went to her children; worried about airborne infection, she pounded her fist on the wall of the carriage until the driver got the hint and sped up the horses.
“We’ll be through this soon enough,” he yelled back.
“I don’t like it here at all,” Ruth said, crossing her arms tight against her chest.
“Sissy! I like it here very much,” Edmund teased.
“No you don’t!” Ruth paused and looked at her mother. “Does he?”
“Of course he does, he’s a boy.”
“No I’m not!”
“You’re not a boy? Edmund, there are man
y things I don’t know in this life but of that I am certain.” Amelia laughed nervously, hoping that a bit of humor would distract them.
Amelia’s words, however, washed over Edmund with no effect whatsoever. Ruth jabbed her brother’s side. The two began to quarrel over how much they annoyed one another and who their mother loved best. Amelia moved to silence them as the carriage came to a sharp halt, jerking its passengers forward.
After calming Edmund and Ruth, Amelia stepped out of the carriage to confront the driver. Before she could find the man or the words to throw at him, however, she was stunned. Beside the road, where the mist was thin and pink, a cemetery sat, each of its graves gutted. Towards the center of the cemetery, amongst a circle of chipped headstones, a silhouette stood, ragged and bent, plunging its crooked shovel into the sweating earth.
“Why have we stopped?” Amelia asked aloud, unable to take her eyes off the figure.
When the driver did not respond, Amelia marched around to the front of the carriage and found that he was missing. The horses stood there indifferently, their jaws clamping down hard and chewing on the veins tangled around their hooves.
Ruth called out from inside the carriage, “Mummy, what’s happening?”
“The horses are tired, Ruth, and want to rest a bit,” Amelia lied.
From out of the fog the driver came, hobbling onto the road.
Amelia noted the bright red stain on his lips. “What the hell are you doing?” she yelled.
“Relieving myself, ma’am. The horses tire quickly here, like you said to the children. We will be off soon enough.”
Amelia glared at the withered man. “What… has happened here? Where is everyone? I’ve seen Parish and this is not how I remember it.” She exhaled and gathered herself. “What is that man doing to the graves?”
“He’s searching for the bodies of his wife and daughter,” the driver said nonchalantly. “The rest, as you can see, have been carried off.”
It was true: The graveyard had been upturned, hollowed out; each casket broken, busted open, and left to rot beside the hole it was meant to occupy.
“How do you know this?” Amelia inched towards her compartment, her children waiting on its edge like hounds to be set upon the digger. “What happened here?”
“He does not think,” the driver continued, ignoring her, “he digs. And when he stops, he will die. That was his command.”
From inside the carriage Edmund shouted, “Mummy, I’m scared now.”
“It’s fine, darling,” Amelia assured her son.
She felt herself almost fall backward as her heel became caught in a bundle of veins.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said through her teeth to the driver.
“It’ll be dark soon. Master Amon will explain all. Please, for your children’s sake, let us be on our way while the sun still holds the sky.”
Amelia moved to argue with the man, but she was willing to abstain from demanding his explanation if it meant leaving this place sooner. She nodded, repulsed and enraged, and climbed into the carriage to be with her children. What was she doing? How could she let herself be brought into this situation? She felt no true danger, but her senses, all five of them, were poor barometers in a place so senseless.
In seconds, hours passed, and when all the light left the world, Amelia finally succumbed to the rhythmic rocking of the carriage and slept. A dream overcame her, as though it had been lying in wait. In a matter of moments, she shed her years until she was nine again. Amelia, with a candle in one hand and the side of her nightgown in the other, was now no longer in the carriage, but in the Ashcroft estate. She moved through the house quickly, quietly, her presence no more than a shadow upon the curtains, a creak upon the stairs—a whisper of life in the dead of night.
Amelia found the basement easily enough, but what she could not understand was why she needed to find it at all. Her parents had forbidden entry into it, and that had always been enough, as the only promise the basement held for Amelia was one of spider bites and cobwebs. But that night had been a restless night. As she lay in her bed, bored and burning up, she began to think, to consider things she hadn’t before, as though some invisible entity were by her bedside, whispering details into her mind she had otherwise missed.
The candle was of little help to Amelia in the basement. Somehow, it seemed the darkness had taken on the properties of light, leaving her tiny, flickering flame all but useless in that stygian place. It was strange, and it made her feel uncomfortable, so naturally she turned on her heels to go. But before she could, she felt it, the air rushing past her legs, like something was breathing it in at the center of the room. Shivering with anxious curiosity, Amelia swallowed hard and padded across the basement, until she reached the center and the source.
She went to her knees to see it more clearly, the gaping hole in the floor that was taking up all the air in the room. Her arms started to itch. She felt a tickle on the soles of her feet. She set the candle down beside the hole and leaned forward, the sweaty strands of her hair sliding past her face. Beyond, in the darker darkness there, Amelia heard a rustling of cloth and what sounded like metal grinding against stone. She leaned in closer, felt her knees slide forward, as though the air had become the ocean and she was caught in its current. Her ears pricked; there was another sound, further down—were they words?—and when she went to answer their summons, something wrapped itself around her.
Amelia screamed. In defiance, not thinking, she threw herself toward the hole. She gasped as the grip tightened around her stomach.
“Stop, stop,” she heard a man say.
Amelia looked over her shoulder, and through her tears she saw her father. He shook his head, picked her up, and held her across his arms. Amelia muttered a half-hearted apology. Her father smiled back. It felt good to be held by him, so she put her head to his chest and didn’t say anything, not even when she felt his hot tears falling down between her braids.
Amelia’s father carried her back to bed. Between the two an unspoken promise was made.
Amelia woke up, her face wet and mouth dry, the dream still fresh in her mind. Thinking back, she realized that had been the only moment her father had held her. How had she forgotten it? What else had she forgotten? What other silent signals and strained exchanges had she misinterpreted in her ignorant youth and selfish adolescence? The basement—what secrets did the basement hold, and why, with one uneventful night, had her curiosity been suddenly satisfied?
Cracks of morning split open the dawning sky. Amelia’s eyes fluttered open and she looked through the window to find they’d finally reached the end of Parish.
How is that possible? Slowly, she opened the door and leaned out to have a look back at the way they had come. Parish, the town that had taken them an entire day to cross, stood behind her, the entrance in sight, no more than a kilometer away.
Between the carriage, the Ashcroft estate, and the hill it sat upon, was the swath of marshy land that Amelia and her siblings had spent so much time playing on. The Ashcroft estate itself was located at the hill’s summit, which was now crowned with the very same trees Amelia’s father had worked so hard to keep at bay. With no ax to stifle their growth, the trees had flourished and reclaimed the point as their own.
Unfortunately, the same could not be said for Amelia’s family; their time had come and gone. This meeting, this strange and unexpected meeting with Amon would be nothing more than one ghost acknowledging the other and feeling all the worse for doing so. There would be no growth, no reclamation; just climbing into graves that had long been dug.
“Are you happy to be going home, Mummy?” Ruth asked dreamily as she stared at the soft blue sky.
“I am happy, because I am with you, Ruth, and your sneaky brother,” Amelia said as she reached over and pinched Edmund’s already reddening cheeks. It seemed they had forgotten about Parish, so for their sake, she would, too.
“Will he like us?” Ruth’s voice shook.
Edmund shrugged. “Why should I be?”
Amelia thought of their fathers, of every cruel and callous individual in their lives, and felt her innards twist and constrict at their memories. In that moment, she saw her son not as he was but as he would be, a man grown and sculpted from his experiences, and knew that her efforts alone would not be enough. Ruth, too, would prove problematic, but those days of raggedy dresses and loveless nights would come much later to the girl who kept close to her mother’s side. Could Amon, surely still a man of means, offset this future or delay it entirely? Is that why she let herself be whisked away by the driver with violent blue eyes and translucent flesh to this nightmarish part of the country? Perhaps these ghosts could mend the damages done after all and salvage what life was left for those still living.
They were still far enough away from the estate that the forest and the hill it sat upon fit comfortably between Amelia’s thumb and index finger. One by one, worn down by the rays of the sun, the carriage’s passengers answered the summons of sleep.
When Amelia, Ruth, and Edmund awoke, they found that the open countryside had been replaced by a corridor of trees. They had reached the hill, which was the only piece of the world Amelia could truly say was her own. Looking out, she found the forest path aglow with the golden shafts of light cutting through the canopy. Entranced, Amelia rapped her fist upon the wall of the carriage until the driver brought it to a halt.
