Shadow Over Sea And Sky

by K H Middlemass

  With her hands wrapped around the cold porcelain, Emily sat for a long time, just thinking. Then the weight of her eyelids became too great to ignore, and they fell shut. Her body relaxed into the chair as she sank down further into sleep. She dreamt of blood that crept slowly down her face, her arms and from between her legs, where it dripped onto the stripped wood of the kitchen floor. The scarlet puddle that formed there spread wider, seeping into the floorboards and into the foundations of the house where it soaked into the soil and poisoned the earth. In her dream, she saw a red flower bloom. Its petals were delicate and inviting, but in its heart, was a set of sharp, gnashing teeth.

  ***

  Sometime in the mid-morning, there was a thud at the door that snapped Emily out of her dream, her neck aching and her back unbearably stiff from her awkward position. She shook the dream out of her head as she realised that the post had been delivered. With a sigh, she dragged herself from the kitchen table and padded through to the hall where fresh, white letters were scattered on the welcome mat. She caught sight of herself in the hallway mirror and shuddered at her sickly skin and the heavy circles pitted under her eyes, before turning away. Bending down to pick up the post, she saw that there was an envelope addressed to her in the pile, her name written across the white paper in a hand that she recognised instantly.

  It was from Volkov.

  Placing the rest of the post in a neat pile on the kitchen table, she took her envelope up to her room and shut the door. Ridiculously, she contemplated barring it shut with something but swiftly cast the idea from her mind. Her father had gone to the Wilson house to give his condolences and Victoria was sleeping next door, showing no signs that she was getting better. Under her father’s instruction, Emily had contacted the doctor in the morning for a house call and he obligingly agreed to come as soon as he could. She had checked in on her earlier and had found her mother’s face to be alarmingly pale. The shadows beneath her eyes were so dark that they had taken on a purple hue. Her lips were almost entirely without colour, the skin cracking and flaking in little shards that had scattered themselves on the pillowslip.

  Emily tore open the envelope and unfolded the paper inside to find a handwritten note with a cheque attached to the bottom. Her eyes quickly scanned down the elegant handwriting.

  Miss Emily,

  I trust that you slept well. The Fairbanks house, I have noticed, is prone to peculiar sounds and disturbances during the night.

  I apologise for my poor hosting skills. I keep unconventional hours and am often called away on business when least expected. It is a rarity to spend an entire evening without some form of summons. When I returned to the house late yesterday evening, I found that in your haste you left your drawing materials behind. Very careless.

  I hope you will not be offended, Miss Emily, but my curiosity compelled me to look over some of your sketches. I shall say nothing much for fear that you might blush and doubt, but I believe that your work shows promise. I anticipate great things to emerge from this collaboration.

  I have enclosed a cheque for you. Let us call it an advance of sorts, as well as an assurance of faith on my part. I suggest, as your benefactor, that you put your newly acquired funds to good use.

  I do not require your presence this evening, but we shall resume our work tomorrow night.

  Until then, Miss Emily,

  Richard Volkov

  Emily’s eyes then landed upon the cheque, neatly clipped to the blank strip of paper where the letter ended. The amount written upon it was enough for her to look it over twice, three times, to assure herself that her sight was still in working order. As she fully began to process what was happening, what he was giving to her, she was overcome by a rush of excitement that she had to hold inside her. The urge to scream and to jump up and down, to run to the nearest person and tell them her news, was not to be expressed right now. Not with her mother so sick, not with Caldmar reeling from such bleakness as it was right now.

  Everything happened very quickly; the excitement and euphoria swiftly subsided into a nagging sense of doubt, leaving her clutching at the cheque with more panic than elation. She held in her hands more money than she had ever had in her life, more than enough to start things over, if she wanted. She recalled Volkov’s request that she put it to good use and immediately thought of moving out of the house and into a place that she could call her own, but there was something about it that was bothering her. Was it right to accept such a generous advance? Could she really accept it in good conscience when she lacked such confidence in her own abilities? She placed the cheque down on her dresser drawer, smoothing out the creases she had made carefully. As she continued to stare at the formidable number, she realised with a sickening clarity that it wasn’t just her self-doubt that was giving her cause for concern.

  She had a clear view of what lay beyond her window, and for a while she silently watched the house on the hill. Nothing had been quite right since Volkov had taken up residence in the Fairbanks house. She remembered the dream that plagued her the first night she met him and how easily she had forgotten it, how easily she had forgotten many things since meeting him. It worried her to think of how he always made her feel so strange, both compelled and repelled all at once, and that she could not make a fixed decision upon his character no matter how she tried. Then her mind turned to the strange events that had occurred since his arrival; Sarah’s death, Victoria’s uncharacteristic sickness, the wolf, the dreams, the painting in the attic…

  Emily shook her head in surprise. She had forgotten the painting in the attic, too; only now did she remember. She recalled the rat that bit her hand with perfect clarity, but that was all she had been able to recall. These unexplained blanks in her memory were always filled again too late after the fact, and Emily was beginning to suspect that there was something amiss that was perhaps beyond her understanding. The memory of that attic, the sight of the painting with the impossible date emblazoned on the canvas, was enough to turn her insides to water.

  She sat on the bed and tucked up her knees beneath her chin, suddenly feeling very cold and alone. She remembered her drawings, the ones that she had so stupidly left behind when she had run off in the middle of the night. She couldn’t help but linger on the final words of the letter. The part that said her work showed promise. She shook her head aggressively like she could knock her thoughts back into a sensible order, but she couldn’t move past it no matter how hard she tried. Whatever was going on, she was a part of it now and she had a very particular role to play even though she didn’t exactly know what that was yet. She sensed that she was in danger, but that sense wasn’t enough to overpower her resolve. She had to complete the project, she realised that now.

  But this wasn’t over. She needed to keep things clear in her own mind, needed to stop forgetting things. Volkov had a kind of power over her, some strange enchantment that he could sprinkle over her eyes whenever he saw fit, but what was it? How could he make her forget things so easily? She ran through the last few days, everything that she could recall since Volkov’s arrival. Then, taking a piece of paper from her drawer, she frantically wrote down the hazier memories in a scrawl that was very different from her usual handwriting; it was all she could do to keep her hand steady. There was the fainting spell, the dream, the wolf and the painting. Things she had witnessed with her own eyes, and yet her mind had betrayed her, withholding memories like that.

  They were there now, in front of her. They were concrete and immovable. She stared at it for a long time, reading the list from top to bottom over and over. Faint, dream, wolf, painting. Faint, dream, wolf, painting. She did this until the images were truly fixed in her mind, cemented there for certain. If she forgot them again, and she suspected that she might, she resolved that she would consult it again. To make sure, she folded it up into a little square and slipped it into the pocket of her jeans.

  There were two calls that she had to make, and she had to make them today.

  10


  Emily was thankful that her father had left his office door open. Usually he kept it locked when he wasn’t occupying it, only allowing himself and Victoria access to the key, but with everything going on he must have forgotten, and Emily was easily able to enter and make use of Christopher’s directory, which he kept on his incredibly organised desk, carved from the richest mahogany. Reverend Abrahms was, of course, near the beginning and she found his phone number quickly enough. The call was brief, during which she arranged to meet Abrahms at the church vestry later that afternoon. The second call was to Simone, who was waiting out the day for her shift at The Anchor that night.

  “I spoke to Nick,” Simone said. “He’s coming down on the train this weekend and he’d love to meet you. I mean obviously he doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into but the less he knows, the better.”

  “That’s great,” Emily said, trying to inject some enthusiasm into her voice. “I was thinking we could all go to the pub. Maybe have a drink and a chat? There are some things I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “So long as it’s not The Anchor, I’m sure that’d be a delight,” Simone replied. “But what sort of things? You’re not pregnant, are you?”

  Emily wanted to laugh, but her throat constricted instead. “It’s a… it’s a secret.”

  “Well you know how I’m a sucker for a good bit of gossip,” Simone said, “So I suppose I’ll just have to wait and see, won’t I?”

  “You will. But just so you know, I’m not pregnant,” Emily said with a light laugh.

  “Way to burst my bubble. Nick’s train comes in on Saturday morning, so we can meet down at the docks at half twelve and show him the glorious sights of Caldmar. Hopefully he won’t run away screaming.”

  “That’s perfect.” Emily sighed.

  After she hung up, she spent a few minutes thinking. She listened to the silence of the house and knew that the silence was wrong. Were her mother well enough then instead it would be alive with noise and signs of life, the clattering of cutlery and the sound of her strong voice permeating in every room.

  She picked up the phone one last time and dialled for the doctor. When she was done, she closed herself in her room and spent the next few hours sketching a wolf howling beneath a huge, yellow moon.

  ***

  The doctor arrived shortly after lunch. Emily led him up the stairs and into her parents’ bedroom, saying little. She didn’t know his first name; she had only ever known him as Doctor Sewell. He was a personable man that she had known since she was a little girl, a gentle faced bear of a man that always gave her a lollipop after a check-up, successfully distracting her from the ache that the needle left in her arm with funny faces and voices. Of course, she was too old for such things and she didn’t have to visit his surgery so often now that she was an adult, but she appreciated his kindness in retrospect.

  After looking over Victoria’s sleeping body and carrying out some small and un-intrusive tests, Doctor Sewell determined that she was suffering from a severe form of anaemia and needed iron supplements and a change in diet post haste. He told Emily where she would need to go to buy the supplements and offered some cursory advice that she did her best to absorb, but he would also need to take a blood test to confirm his suspicions and didn’t have the right equipment with him at present. He promised that he would send a nurse over in the next few days if Victoria was still unable to move out of bed, which Emily strongly suspected would be the case, but she thanked him anyway and saw him out of the door. She made her mother a cup of tea and left it for her on the bedside table, where it would grow cold. She was worried about leaving her alone, but she had no choice. She had to go and see Abrahms and finally talk things out with him; she suspected that he knew something that she was missing, that everyone was missing. She felt deep down that he was the key to unlocking this mystery and she couldn’t put it off any longer. Christopher would be gone all day, unable to ignore the storm that the discovery of Sarah’s body was about to bring upon Caldmar. She couldn’t call him and ask him to come home.

  Emily kissed her mother on the forehead; the skin was cold and clammy despite the flush on her cheeks, and she did not stir, sleeping too deeply. When she left for town not long after, she couldn’t ignore the feeling of dread that sat heavily in her stomach.

  The vestry was a small room with stone walls that has been built in at the back of the church, a perpetually cold and uncomfortable place that had once been the chosen venue for the short-lived Caldmar Youth Group. Emily had gone along at her mother’s insistence when she was thirteen years old and bored out of her mind, but only because she’d managed to get Simone to agree to go with her after a protracted session of begging over the phone. They had played a single, agonising game of Ping Pong during which they had nearly come to blows more than once. The match culminated in Emily letting Simone win when their friendship was on the verge of crumbling if she didn’t. Simone had never been a graceful loser, whereas Emily didn’t much care if she won or not and certainly not enough to ruin a friendship over, so it was a worthy sacrifice to her mind. After that, they had leaned against the wall and drank weak orange squash, straining to listen to the tinny music coming from the worn-out tape player.

  It had not been a good evening. Some of the boys kept stealing surreptitious glances at the pair, particularly Simone. Even as a teenager she towered over the boys her age and was constantly in trouble for going into school with ‘unnatural colours’ in her hair, so to see her somewhere so painfully uncool as the Caldmar Youth Group was baffling to them. There were two of them, skin marked with acne and hair greased with cheap gels, whispering with their heads together and looking their way with unpleasant smiles on their faces. Their eyes were always on Simone. Emily had felt like a pigeon standing next to a peacock; obscure and dull, barely worth any attention, but Simone quickly caught on to what was happening and was visibly unimpressed. She gave a loud, contemptuous snort and rolled her eyes as if she just couldn’t believe how beneath her all of this was, then crunched up her plastic cup and threw it down. She turned her head slowly until she was looking over at the boys.

  “I’m going,” Simone said, loudly. “This is shit.”

  With that she stomped across the floor and through the door, the tables shaking beneath her heavy footfalls. Emily had followed, secretly thrilled that she had an excuse to leave but keeping her head down so no one could see her grinning. In that moment, she had wanted to laugh, but her eternal shyness kept her silent. Instead she followed Simone into the night and back to her house, where they listened to music they liked and giggled together about the immaturity of the youth club boys like they knew any better.

  They had never gone back again and the club fell apart not long afterwards due to lack of interest. Now the vestry was used for committee meetings, book clubs and the occasional rehearsal for the amateur dramatics group in preparation for the annual play or the Christmas pantomime. When Emily opened the door, her nose was tickled by the faint smell of sweat and skin that permeated through the room and was reminded instantly of her classrooms at school. The little room was filled with a long, wooden table surrounded by chairs, and a small alcove led into an even smaller communal kitchen. Emily could hear Abrahms clattering about in there and called to him. He leant his head around the alcove and smiled when his eyes landed upon her.

  “I’m making coffee,” he said by way of an explanation, “So we don’t freeze to death in here. Take a seat, please.”

  “Can I help?” Emily asked. Abrahms waved a dismissive hand in her direction and disappeared back into the kitchen, so she obediently sat down at the closest end of the table, wary of the scraping sound the legs of the chair made against the stone floor. Such sounds always set her teeth on edge and sent unpleasant shivers running through her. She had stopped by the Chemist on her way down to pick up her mother’s iron supplements and she set the little plastic bag down on the table so that she wouldn’t forget them when she left.


  As the kettle trilled away in the kitchen, Emily looked at the few biblical pictures that adorned the walls and marvelled at their banal portrayal of cruelty. How many times had she seen Jesus suspended on that cross with the crown of thorns digging themselves so viciously into his forehead? That kind of imagery had been littered throughout her formal education: suffering was a treasured theme amongst her peers.

  As she contemplated the pictures, Reverend Abrahms emerged from the kitchen with a fully loaded tray in his sturdy hands.

  “Here we are,” he said. With surprisingly deft hands he placed two large and steaming cups of black coffee, a sugar bowl and cream jug down on the table before them, and followed it up quickly with a plate of slightly dusty looking biscuits. Emily smiled in thanks and gratefully wrapped her hands around the mug, shifting it so that the rising steam gently caressed her face, giving her warmth she hadn’t realised she needed.

  Abrahms sat in the chair opposite her and began heaping sugar into his own mug; only after four big helpings did he stop to stir.

  “Thank you for finally coming to see me, Emily,” he said.

  Emily smiled. “It’s my pleasure, Reverend.”

  They exchanged a few more pleasantries and made a little small talk whilst Emily prepared her own coffee and politely took one of the dusty biscuits to nibble on.

  “So,” Abrahms said. “I understand that you would like to talk about our late friend.”

  Emily nodded eagerly. “Yes. No one will tell me anything about what happened.”

  “You knew him well, then?”

  “I thought I did,” Emily replied carefully. “With my father being the mayor and Hugo being the town’s benefactor, it was sort of inevitable.”

  “I imagine that your mother and father wished to avoid upsetting you,” Abrahms said. “They are good people, if a little misguided.”