Gwen stepped back as Ben stood up, inside Lou’s body. As he flexed his arms, stretching, cracking his neck, straightening his shoulders, loosening the muscles in his face, Gwen was reminded of a man waking up from a long nap. He did a little jig, bending his legs and swinging his arms lightly. As he did, Gwen saw dark swirls appear on his arms and she noticed the flab of Lou’s body began to solidify into a more of a muscular appearance. He closed his eyes and ran his hands over his bald head and Gwen noticed the hideous, distorted skull rounded beneath Ben’s hands and for the first time she saw little bits of stubble appear, casting a silver sheen over his head. When Ben opened his eyes, Gwen saw that they really were silver, not blue, not grey, but a vivid, sparkling platinum that she had never seen before. His face seemed to narrow, the cheekbones raised, the nose less tomato-like, more streamlined and hawkish. Ben did not look as he had in life. But, the changes were infinite improvements. He reached his arms out to her, taking her hands and kissing each palm. He smiled and pointed at the Gibson Girl. “Please give me back my Bess?”
The Gibson Girl, Bess stepped away from Crystal who was blinking like an owl and staring at the man who had been her husband. While Crystal couldn’t see the shadows or the blue fire, she did see the change in her husband’s form. She tried opening her mouth to shout and scream, but no sound came out. Tears and panic raced across Crystal’s face, but she sat motionless.
“Ah, my Bess,” Ben reached out and through Bess as she tried to hug him. “You’ve made the quim easy.”
“She was all buttock and tongue, the doxie. She’s got no right to breathe when I’ll be stuck here without you, my Ben,” Bess whispered with an accent Gwen could not place. It sounded like a mix of every brogue she had ever heard on the BBC.
Turning her heart-shaped face toward Gwen, Bess narrowed her green eyes slightly. “Will you help us, miss? I’m no duffer and I’ve no mind to fleece you. Will you help?”
Gwen held out her hands, palm out, and stepped into Bess. This time the flames were green and gold, shimmering up Gwen’s arms and spinning up and down the length of her body. When she spoke, it was Bess’ voice that simply said, “I’ve no mind to share my tale. My life is my own.” She stood over Crystal, Bess’ hands on Gwen’s hips and leaned forward to look into Crystal’s upturned, terrified face. “You’re a right bat, a dog’s wife, and an utter waste. I make my claim.” She placed her hands on each side of Crystal’s head and placed her lips to the petrified woman’s forehead. As she did so, Crystal was engulfed in the green-gold flames.
Gwen backed up, a feeling in her arms and legs unmistakably like Jell-O. She felt the electric shock of a seizure grip the right side of her body, but instead of falling backward, she felt strong arms catch her. Looking up and expecting to find Scotty, she was met with Ben’s silver eyes. “Thank you, miss. There are others that need help, are you willin’?”
Initially, Gwen began to nod that she was, but she stopped. She didn’t think she could physically. She looked around the room and was horrified at how fit to bursting the attic had become with shadows and spirits and shapes she could not discern. Her own voice was a bare whisper, “I can’t take any more inside me. Killing me won’t do you people any good.”
She wasn’t sure if she should be angry, but she did feel a sense of satisfaction when she glanced back at Crystal’s body shifting, augmenting to make the form comply to Bess’ own aspirations. The hair tightened into glimmering golden curls, amending Crystal’s frizzy bottle blonde. The neck and face elongated just enough to give a certain gracefulness that Crystal never had. Looking at her feet, now on visibly longer legs, Bess took a moment to ascertain that the zippers on the sides of what Crystal had called shoes were what kept them closed and not the yard of lacing. Bess tore the shoes off her feet and stretched her bare toes, twisting and bending both feet, feeling the bones knitting themselves back together. Bess massaged her new ankles and the swelling, purpling flesh visibly receded, reduced, and after a few scant moments the only bluing that could be seen was from a few veins that could clearly be discerned beneath pale skin. Gwen wasn’t as confused with the situation as she was with the fact that Crystal wore those platform nightmares without socks.
“Gwen! What the fuck is going on here? You mind cluing me in, or what?” came Scotty’s voice in that high and hysterical way that his voice went when he was upset, confused, frustrated, and generally freaked out. It always reminded her of what her mother called her father’s ‘Micky Mouse’ voice.
Gwen could barely see Scotty where he stood clustered with Steve and Kenny in the corner. The men couldn’t be more than 10 feet from her, but it was as though she was trying to view them through a dense fog of soot and smoke. She stood up, turning to Ben who was now helping Bess to her feet. “I won’t help any more of you folk to bodies— ”
For the first time, Bethany found her voice in the chaos. She, Stefan, and Sean stood mutely by, as confused as the live folk in their little band beside the chalk drawings. Bess and Ben hadn’t bothered to speak with Sean, Stefan, or Bethany about their desire to oppress and possess any of the people in the attic. Bethany wanted rest, and even though she thought Stefan was a clout and a thorough-paced rogue, she knew his wishes were the same. Not this. She felt the tension of the spirits, many of whom she had thought went hollow, like her Matron. Many were, others had gone dark, into true shadows, with blackness in their hearts. She feared for the live men, even the dolt who had hit his head one too many times on the rafters.
“We don’t want bodies!” Bethany shouted. “This isn’t right, miss. We’ve been hampered here and needed help getting free, going to our rest. Not taking lives that were never our own. Bess and Ben have suredly pulled the devil by his tail with this. We lived already, miss. We’ve wanted your helpin’ us to sleep.”
Ben and Bess, their arms linked about each other’s waists, bowed slightly to Bethany, shrugged and simply walked away, disappearing beyond the shadows of the room.
“That is not a body I would want to inhabit,” Stefan muttered, pointing at Kenny, the only man near of a height to himself. “It is achterlijke,” and he spat on the ground.
“Nor, I. He was rocked in a stone kitchen and his brains are addled,” Sean growled. “The other one,” he pointed at Scotty, taking his pipe from his teeth, “he’s rum duke. I’ll take him.” Sean stepped toward Scotty, but Bethany held him back, shrieking a stream of words that Gwen could not follow. Other spirits began tightening around the three and Gwen saw the boy with the bowler hat, the one that had held hands with Bess earlier, come forward, stepping practically nose-to-nose with Scotty.
Gwen’s mind was staggering from what she had just experienced and from the seizure. She thought she heard Scotty shout her name, but didn’t know. She felt numb, fuzzy-headed, and her eyes momentarily lost focus. She knew any moment she would fall prey to one of her narcoleptic fits. She also didn’t have the patience to become a referee for an argument between ghosts.
At that moment the blue flames flickered in front of her eyes. They were not coming from her, not as far as she could tell, but they floated before her eyes in a taut little ball that flashed blue, purple, copper, and green. It bobbed slightly as if telling her to follow as it zipped away, a beacon in the black, down the length of the room to a doorframe Gwen hadn’t noticed before. The door had long since fallen back, off its hinges, and rested awkwardly against the wall. When the little will-o-the-wisp was certain Gwen was watching, it waited a moment or two for her to catch up, it rushed up and into the top of the doorframe, into the lintel above the door. As it did, Gwen noticed the same colors from the little ball of flame were now scuttling across her arms, extending out, and into the entire frame of the door. Where the little ball had passed, mere seconds before, was now an odd shape, triangular, with another shape inside it. It seemed to have been carved by an old resident, ages long since, but now it glowed with a kaleidoscope of colors. Gwen held her hands out, passing them over the air between the doorja
mb, above the threshold, and she saw the room beyond the door flicker and shift and she no longer recognized the space beyond. To her it seemed a flat grey that occasional shadows drifted past. It was as though she was peered into a murky pond, trying to make out shapes of swimming fish. She turned back toward the mass of spirits and shadows, and found the grey-haired woman had followed her and was now standing beside and a little behind Gwen, back to the wall. To Gwen it looked as though the stout woman was crying and whispering thank you.
Not all the spirits wanted to pass through the door into whatever beyond lay waiting for them. The boy with the bowler hat needed to be pried off of Scotty by the man in the stove-pipe hat, who had stayed by the chalk drawings on the far end of the attic and actively shepherded the spirits toward Gwen’s glowing door. The man with the one arm seemed irritated, but defeated by the grey-haired woman who called him a sapscull and a simkin, which Gwen supposed were insults because the man’s face flushed a deep red and he hung his head shamefully. The grey-haired woman locked her arm around his remaining arm and before they crossed the threshold together, the woman bowed her head to Gwen and softly said, “May you be ever blessed, miss.”
The attic seemed a yawning cavern once it was emptied. The man in the stove-pipe hat doffed it lightly to the three live men still standing in a frozen clump at the end of the room. As he walked slowly toward Gwen, he smoothed out his jacket and ran his hands over his trousers as though he were brushing away dust. Bowing crisply, clicking his heels together, he kissed her hand, a gesture that brought tears to Gwen’s tired eyes. Standing up, he faced the glowing doorway. Gwen thought for a moment she saw verdant fields and tall trees and smelled the salt tang of the sea beyond the door, but it shifted back to the murky pond. He looked about the room, and in his quiet voice said, “Verdomme this place.” As he stepped over the threshold, the gleaming colors ceased as readily as a snuffed candle. Gwen sank to the floor, drew her knees to her chest and cried. She felt raw. Here eyeballs were hot and her insides felt burned.
Scotty, Steve, and Kenny seemed to unglue themselves from the far wall. Kenny retrieved the camera that had fallen to the floor. He began dancing and skipping because as the camera fell, it was pointed toward Gwen’s side of the long room. It had been recording and he couldn’t wait to get it home to review. He seemed not to notice, or not to care, that his brother and sister-in-law had been possessed, altered, and had their own selves obliterated by the souls of two lovers long-since dead. As Kenny cavorted, Scotty rushed toward Gwen, and pulled her into his arms, rocking her just enough for her to feel safe and not nauseated. Steve stood in the center of the room and Gwen could swear she heard him ask Kenny if they should get a sample of Gwen’s brain tissue. She had to laugh, and said weakly, “Shut it Egon.”
Scotty walked Gwen over to where Steve and Kenny stood. “Time to go home, yeah?” She nodded and Steve shrugged.
“So,” Kenny blurted out as they all began leaving the attic. “Same time next week? I hear some pretty sick shit happens at Matron’s Cottage. And, did you know there are tunnels? I’d love to get some footage down there.”
~~END~~
The Lonely Boat
by Anthony S. Burdge
“The sun hung low above the Staten Island woods, and the bay was dyed with golden hues reflected from the sun-warmed sails of the shipping in the harbour.”
—“The Repairer of Reputations” from The King in Yellow by Robert Chambers.
“...on Sunday I made up for this undue domesticity by taking an all-day jaunt to elder regions...I embarked on the Staten Island ferry, and was soon in the land of quaint villages that might have been five hundred miles from any metropolis...I took a wheezy accommodation train for Tottenville, on the far tip of the island...”
—Letter by H.P. Lovecraft to his Aunt dated September 1924
~I~
June 6th 1984
The darkling stars glittered and I heard the sound of oars creaking, wooden…water lapping the sides of a boat. Stillness, save for the whirl of the stars encompassing all my vision. Swallowing, I tasted ozone and something dry, sooty—ashes. Looking down, I saw I was standing in the prow of a boat. I was shrouded in something dark and my body seemed detached, wholly separate. My hands were held at arm’s length, palm upward and I noted two identical marks on my upturned hands. As I looked, I saw they were symbols flared a stark, sickly gold, like urine in a white bowl. The signs seemed to have been both drawn and branded—but I felt no pain. Only a release, a weightlessness. The lapping water, the creaking wood grew louder, but there was something else just beyond my ability to hear, just outside my ability to perceive. Something sinister. Almost like a scream.
“Daniel, no!”
It reminded me of Dad’s voice…but it’s been so fucking long. It repeated. “Daniel! No!”
But this time it sounded like mom—but there was a pressure in my ears, almost like water… like when you’re in the bathtub and push your head under.
I looked up to take in the cosmic dance— of nebulas and pinwheel galaxies, planets and their satellites in a cyclical embrace, all consumed by the undulating, thrumming, dark stars— and I felt a myriad of somethings touch my face, whisper soft like snow, but warm. My throat was dry with that sooty, ozone taste which rose into my nostrils and reached down into my bowels. I felt the warm whispers on my hands, my wrists, slipping, sliding up the sleeves of what seemed to be a robe made of the same darkling stuff as the sky. Ashes. The dark stars rained ashes down to strangle the world in their warm embrace.
I awoke choking.
~II~
“I told you to be careful bringing that on board, Dan. Don’t want it droppin’ over the side or getting’ water logged. Last I checked salt water and leather don’t mix. Besides, just one splash’ll mess up all your fine fruity fountain pen, kiddo—then what’ll the doc think? He’ll see all the streaks and think you can’t handle recovery. He’ll think you still cry yourself to sleep most nights. Jesus wept boy, use your brains.”
Daniel knew when to take a hint and tried not to let his Uncle’s gruff voice, jagged from years of smoking two packs a day, remove the calm that Daniel felt. Inhaling the crisp salt air, Daniel Scott closed the smooth leather-bound, hand-stitched journal he had been writing in, secured the leather thong which kept the journal closed with his pen safely inside, and reached into the waxed canvas military-style shoulder bag resting between his feet. Daniel pulled out a ragged piece of oil-cloth which he folded judiciously around his journal. Both the pen and the bag had belonged to Daniel’s father. Daniel ran the tips of his fingers over the sleek, waterproof cloth of the bag as he tucked the bundle containing his journal inside. He couldn’t exactly recall how long ago Dr. Peterson had first suggested starting a journal. Probably some time before Daniel was released into the care of his Uncle Tim and Aunt Judy. But, now after being out for six going on seven months, Dr. Peterson made it a requirement of Daniel’s continued treatment —and recovery— to keep a running journal of everything possible: dreams, memories, thoughts, and, especially, those bizarre waking visions Daniel would sometimes have. Dr. Peterson was convinced those “visions” were really long embedded recollections, memories from that summer, and the Doctor said they were the most important things to write down. Better late than never. Today was the first entry in the journal. Maybe by the next appointment with Dr. Peterson, Daniel would have at least one of those episodes down on paper.
“Just like your Dad,” grumbled the older man with a slight shake of his head as he manned the tiller in the stern of the boat, aft of where Daniel sat. Despite being in his early fifties, Daniel’s Uncle Tim had the broad shoulders and burly arms of a man half his age. He wasn’t taller than Daniel, who himself stood a good head over his Uncle, but Tim dwarfed his spindly nephew in stature. The man didn’t have the showy muscles of a body builder, but the steely physique of a man who had been used to hard labor for most of his life. From construction work to clamming, Tim’s thick hands and ha
iry arms told his life’s story in a network of scars, calluses, and sunburn. His clean-shaven face had the wizened look of a piece of driftwood and his hair was a cornucopia of grey. He had a moderate paunch from too many weekends spent with his best friends, Budweiser and Coors, and his deeply calloused hands were stained with nicotine and grease. Through his pale blue eyes, Tim looked at his wiry nephew and regardless of Tim’s hardened exterior, he did have a warmth for his brother’s son. Whether familial responsibility, a lingering sorrow for the loss of his own brother, or sympathy for the boy’s situation, Tim had hope that maybe this time, giving Daniel an opportunity would help the scrawny, kid —all elbows and knees despite being nearly twenty-two— build a future for himself.
“Your Dad was always so damned anal about getting his stuff messy. He hated it when mom used to barge into our room and clean up or even just touch his shit. You’re a funny boy, Dan. So much like your Dad it makes me a little sick sometimes. Still, I love you like a son, you prissy pain in the ass.” The man gave a short, bark that was intended as a laugh, but served only to grate on the back of Daniel’s mind.
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