The Shorecliff Horror and Other Stories
Page 19
***
He found her in her father’s drawing room. In his arms, he held her in a long embrace, not saying a word, hardly daring to draw a breath. From the open window a gentle breeze came that lifted her soft golden hair so that it rose around them, its delicate feathery touch lighting on his face like a hundred shining fingertips. Later on, this would be how tried to remember it. The soft breeze and her golden hair. The silent embrace that lasted forever.
The entire room was awash with blood when he burst into it. So much blood that it seemed as though the sun itself had turned red and bathed the town in the colour of nightmare. He saw Ursula’s mother first, torn in pieces and cast aside in the centre of the room, her dead eyes staring to the doorway in an expression of bewildered outrage. Then he found her father. Then, yes, dear friends, then Ursula herself.
He did not know how long he held her for, her lifeless body propped up unnaturally in an armchair in the corner of the room. In those minutes, all the hopes he had ever clung to in life disappeared. His mind itself left his body, too fragile a thing to comprehend the horror that was before him. When it returned, a change had come over him. He felt a rage rising inside him. A fierce anger overwhelmed him, cutting through his grief and pulling him to his feet. Gathering his flute in his hand, he turned and, not stopping to look behind him, set off in search of the ogre.
It did not take him long to find it. Following the screams of terror and trail of carnage it left behind it, he cornered the beast in a house near the town hall. It was crouched over the body of an old man, its talons dripping with blood and viscera, its great, black eyes wide and alert, the terrible red gown still hanging around its shoulders. With one defiant blast on the flute, he grabbed the ogre’s attention so that it turned towards him, scowling in irritation. A second blast brought a shriek of pain that shook the beast to its feet and brought it striding towards Philippe himself. A third blast stopped it in its tracks and a fourth and a fifth left the creature crouching in agony, its hands clutching at its ears as though to claw away the source of the pain. Seeing the beast so prostrate, Philippe dropped the flute from his lips for a moment and stood watching the monster writhe and twitch in discomfort. Steadying himself for the final blow, he raised the flute again, but before he could play a note, the creature sprang forward, reaching out towards Philippe with its long, filthy talons, its features twisted into an expression of pure hatred. Quickly, Philippe danced aside and blew, a fierce melody flying from his lips, a rising reel that wrapped itself around the ogre, winding its magic around and around until the beast was trapped in fury and agony. Still Philippe played, the tune racing through the air, twisting the fabric of the world as it went until what stood before him was no longer the hated ogre, but rather a glass statue of the beast, freezing it as it stood, arms outstretched in mad defiance, features twisted in disbelieving misery.
Philippe stared at the statue. In every bright facet of the glass, he saw himself reflected back. A hundred Philippes stood before him, each one with a flute in their hands, their faces their clothes all bathed in the blood of his loved one. With a shudder of distaste, Philippe made one final blast on the flute. A note so fierce as to crack the glass and shatter the beast into a thousand tiny fragments that flew through the air and crunched under his feet as Philippe turned his back and left the room.
***
And so our story ends, my friends. A little longer than I meant it to be, a good deal shorter than it might have been. It is an old story, that one, and one told a different way each time you hear it. On some days, it is true, Philippe has a happier end to his tale, reaching the town in time to kill the ogre and save his precious Ursula. But not today. Today I think the story ends just as I have told it. And as to what happens next? To that there is even less agreement. Some say Philippe threw the flute away, its magic spent, and settled down happily with a girl from a neighbouring town who loved him just as much as Ursula ever could have. Others say he kept the flute and passed the rest of his days wandering with broken heart from town to town, playing his magical tunes to raise the fruits from the earth and purge the region of all its monsters, never settling in one place ever again, right to the day of his final reward. Who can tell which one is right? Endings are such messy, uncertain things. I always prefer beginnings, myself. And, anyway, my throat is dry from so much talking. Will no one fill a glass to wet a poor storytellers lips? Will no one?