by Cheryl Low
THE
MIDNIGHT
LULLABY
THE
MIDNIGHT
LULLABY
CHERYL LOW
A
Grinning Skull Press
Publication
PO Box 67, Bridgewater, MA 02324
The Midnight Lullaby
Copyright © 2020 Cheryl Low
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. All characters depicted in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons — living or dead — is purely coincidental.
The Skull logo with stylized lettering was created for Grinning Skull Press by Dan Moran, http://dan-moran-art.com/.
Cover designed by Don Noble, Rooster Republic Press LLC.
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-1-947227-50-7 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-947227-51-4 (e-book)
DEDICATION
To my partner in all things. All love stories are tragedies. Every great romance has a horror waiting at the end. But even knowing that, I wouldn’t want my story to go any differently.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Acknowledgments
A huge thank you to Grinning Skull Press for taking on another of my books and for being so fantastic to work with!
Chapter One
Benedict was eight years old, sitting on a stiff chair in the dark hallway of a house he didn't know. He clamped his hands around the edges of his seat, trying to press his bones so tight that they wouldn't shake. His head whipped from side to side, unblinking as he searched for shapes.
"Tell me where it is!" Gloria's voice boomed from the room down the hall. Benedict winced, squinting to see through the doorway and into the wild flicker of candlelight.
The witch screamed, writhing on the floor at Gloria's feet. She chanted between her howls, head thumping back against the floor and narrow chest pushing high. Even from this distance, and even with her screeches in the air, he heard her bones cracking.
"Give me the book!" Gloria roared.
Wind rushed through the house, knocking the pictures from the walls. Windows cracked in their frames. Doors opened and closed with furious bangs upstairs.
"Can you see them?" Elysium whispered.
Benedict gulped ragged breaths, fear marching a parade through his chest with the big drums in his ears. "No."
His brother sighed, the teen crouching in front of Benedict. "Benny, there." He pointed down the hall, toward the open doorway and their mother's booming voice demanding to know where the spirit-wielder hid her book of secrets. "There. You see that one? He's big. You have to see him."
Benedict cried but didn't blink at the tears, staring down the hall through a liquid haze. He saw the doorway and the lights inside and his mother's shadow cast across the twisting woman on the floor. "There's no one in the hall," he confessed.
The floorboards squeaked; he saw them straining and heard the heavy footfalls coming toward them, but he didn't see the ghost.
"What's happening?" Benedict begged, small voice almost lost under the raging of the house. He jumped at a scratching sound, claws on hardwood, and a sickly meowing.
"The witch is calling the spirits she's trapped here," his brother explained.
"Will they hurt Mother?" Benedict asked, still staring down the hallway. The heavy steps getting closer.
"Do you see him yet?" Elysium asked rather than answering, head whipping back and forth, watching something in the empty hall and studying his baby brother.
Benedict wrinkled his nose, trying not to cry.
The floorboards creaked closer and closer, his little heart fluttering wildly in his chest.
"Benny, you see him, right?" Elysium shouted over the groaning walls and wailing woman—over the scratching and the creaking and that awful meowing. "Benny—"
Benedict screamed when something pulled Elysium away from him and dragged his older brother down the hall, tossing him into a dark parlor with a heavy thud.
Benedict jumped down from his chair and ran after him, tears spilling over his lashes. He didn't see whatever they saw, but he knew it was real. He looked around at the empty chairs and couches, his hands balled into fists against his sides. "Elysium?" he whispered.
A thump on the wall drew his gaze up, eyes straining and vision blurring at the edges.
His brother was there, pinned against the wall by an unseen force and held so high up that the top of his head almost brushed the ceiling. Elysium rasped in ragged breaths, heels kicking against the wall.
Benedict backed up, unable to look away until he bumped into a closet door. The scratching grew louder, the yowling from inside desperate. He twisted around and stared at the doorknob.
He knew he shouldn't open it, but a whisper told him he had to. Something was inside…something that needed out.
The boy reached up and used both hands to turn the knob. The door opened with a pop, and he shuffled back from it. For one blessed moment, the scratching stopped, the meowing went silent, and then the mangy monsters poured out. Cats, twisted and thin, half-decayed but still moving. Their claws scratched against the floor, never retracting into their paws, some with no meat to call a paw anymore. One looked up at Benedict, an empty socket and the glint of bone flashing at him. It meowed, and he could see the vocal cords rattling in its neck where the fur and flesh were missing.
He screamed, but the house only grew louder, trying to smother him.
And then he was off his feet.
For a second, he choked on his sounds, terrified that the ghost had snatched him up like it had Elysium, and then he inhaled and knew exactly whose arms he was in. His brother held him against his shoulder and ran from the room, kicking the door shut behind them. He didn't stop, running straight down the corridor and toward the sound of their mother's voice. Benedict buried his face in that shoulder, rubbing his tears out in the fabric of his shirt and hoping even now that Mother wouldn't notice how he had cried.
Elysium put him down on his feet in a corner of the room, kneeling in front of him and pulling a piece of white chalk from his vest pocket. Benedict, drowning in his own fear, couldn't stop gasping for air. Elysium drew a half-circle on the wood floor from wall to wall, closing Benedict into the corner, and then started sketching runes over the edges of the circle. "Don't move," he yelled over the storm of spirits.
Benedict bit his lip to keep from whining, looking past Elysium at the woman writhing in the middle of the room. She clawed score marks into the floorboards like the cats had, her orange hair long and knotted around her face and shoulders. Her boots thudded and kicked, but she couldn't get away, pinned there on the ground by Gloria Lyon's will. His mother stood over her, her dark hair braided over one shoulder and her sharp, black suit making her look like a shadow come to life. "Relent the book. Release the spirits. And I will spare you," Gloria shouted, unmoved by all the shows of power the other woman had displayed—by all the fury of her creations in this house.
The woman on the floor screamed, and Benedict could hear windows breaking.
Elysium cupped the sides of his face in his hands, making Benedict look at him rather than them. "Okay, Benny. You know how this works."
Benedict swallowed hard, trying again not to cry. He nodded once, and Elysium flashed him a smile.
Benedict closed his eyes.
The battle of wills continued to rage on, screams and thuds rampant in the house, but he didn't open his eyes to see. He pressed the heels of his palms into his ears when the screaming grew to be too much, shaking his head when he heard Elysium cry out in pain and gasping for air when those horrible yowls grew closer and closer.
But he didn't open his eyes. Not until the house had finally gone quiet hours later. Not until his mother picked him up from the corner and carried him out of the house. She put him in the back seat of the car, and he waited. When she came back, Elysium was with her, one arm broken and folded to his chest and the other carrying a worn, leather-bound notebook.
Benedict blinked out the window. The sun peeked over the houses down the hillside in bright wisps of pink and orange. When the house they had come from went up in flames, it wasn't wisps of orange like the ones in the sky. There were no shades of pink. Just violent, furious heat.
Gloria had not spared the woman inside—not even when she gave up her book and released the spirits she had bound to her home.
Even Benedict, at eight years old, had known she wouldn't show mercy. It wasn't her way.
Chapter Two
Twenty Years Later
Benedict circled the room, inspecting a fireplace almost as high as he was tall. He scrutinized the matching ceramic vases on either side, the white chesterfield sofa and chairs arranged around a marble coffee table, and finally, the massive gilded mirror dominating one wall. The home, recently purchased, was impeccably furnished for the design of the estate without giving up the antique feeling this place oozed. Benedict Lyon liked it. He could see himself living here, if it weren't haunted.
"It's a bit much," Emmeline commented, as though hearing his thoughts, which she could not do. In his life, he'd met just about every spiritualist there was and never found one that could really read thoughts, though he had had the pleasure of meeting a few mentalists who had certainly made it look like they could.
Benedict ignored her remark and paused in his inspection of the house to give himself a once-over in the gilded mirror. He ghosted fingers across the black wave of his hair, swept up and sprayed into place, back from his face. He had been told his wide, red mouth had a lustful quality; he didn't see it himself, but he liked knowing it was there. His vest hugged his waist, creating the cut of a silhouette he chased with unhindered vanity. His family had never been inclined to fear sins, only what they left behind on the world. As long as he knew himself well enough to see those flaws, neither his vanity nor his pride would bring him down.
Emmeline coughed, a forced sound to remind him that he was on the clock and not at home.
He spun away from the mirror and considered the room as a whole. He had made a show of studying the last four rooms on the first floor with the same intensity.
Mr. Whittle followed him closely but stayed breathlessly quiet, no more than a whisper of silk trailing him through the house. The man, well into his fifties but fit enough to shame most thirty-year-olds, had called through his network of associations and friends to reach out to the Lyons—a family known for being gifted. Benedict had giggled at that term as a boy, and he still did sometimes, when no one was around to notice. Mr. Whittle and his husband had been hoping for Benedict's eldest brother, Elysium, or even his cousin, Theodore, who had become a flashy medium with his own TV special. Instead, they got Benedict, the runt of the illustrious ghost-hunting family.
Luckily, no one, including Mr. Whittle, had any idea just how much of a psychic dullard Benedict was.
Emmeline groaned, twirling in frustration near the door. She got bored easily. "There's nothing in here but tacky furniture!"
Benedict flashed her a frown. He liked the furniture.
Emmeline's dress fluttered around her thighs, falling back into place when she stopped spinning. The blue cotton ballooned out at her hips, creating a bell-shape that accentuated the narrowest part of her body just under her bust. She was far from a slim girl, that bell of skirt full of hips and thighs. Her dark hair was in a messy tie, always caught in the moment before it fell to obscure her heart-shaped face.
"There is definitely a presence here," Benedict said solemnly, countering her outburst of boredom. He turned toward Mr. Whittle.
The man held his hands to his chest, clutching at an invisible lump. "We had to move the kids back to the house in the city," he complained. "It was just a few sounds and things disappearing at first."
Emmeline rolled her eyes and spun away from the room, turning up the staircase and stomping away on bare feet. "If you have a house in the city, then move back to it!" she shouted before grumbling, "Rich people…"
Mr. Whittle let out a groan of distress, sliding closer to Benedict. "Please, your brother said you'd be able to clean the house—"
"Cleanse," Benedict corrected quickly, not liking the sound of cleaning any house that wasn't his own. "I can sense something amiss, but there doesn't seem to be anything rooted in these rooms. May we continue upstairs?"
"Of course. Please." Mr. Whittle nodded eagerly and led the way to the second floor. "We were planning to do a remodel. Do you think that could have caused the unrest?"
Benedict smiled gently. "From the beautiful state of your home, I suspect you did a bit of remodeling when you moved in."
Mr. Whittle flashed a pleased grin, proud of his home.
"I doubt the spirit minds then. It's not like you're planning to knock the house down, are you?"
"No, no. Nothing like that."
They reached the second-floor landing, and Mr. Whittle opened the first door to the right and disappeared inside. "This is my daughter's room."
Benedict stopped before he reached it, staring straight down the hallway to the very end.
Emmeline stood there, staring up a narrow staircase. She seemed frozen, stalk-still and holding her breath.
Mr. Whittle poked his head back out of the bedroom. "Mister Lyon?"
Benedict ignored him, taking measured steps toward her. Her lips moved, the faintest of whispers rushing out. He could nearly make out her words, the flood of them so hurried, almost hissing. Her head snapped to the side, gaze locking with Benedict's, and he jerked to a stop.
"What's up there?" he asked.
"A playroom for the kids," Mr. Whittle replied. "Haven't really used it in years, not since they outgrew it. We're planning to turn it into a guest apartment."
Benedict continued to hold Emmeline's gaze. She was unreadable, with too many emotions beyond the understanding of the living. She turned away as though drawn from him in a trance and went up the stairs. Benedict's stomach dropped, certain that something awful would happen as soon as she was out of sight.
He knew he was frightening Mr. Whittle now, but he couldn't wait to explain. He hurried after her with the older man on his heels.
Benedict took the stairs two at a time and came up in the attic playroom. It was bright, lit from the half-circle windows dominating the triangular wall on the far side. A bright blue rug spread across the white-painted wood floor while mirrors and pictures dressed the walls. A comfortable couch sat to the left and little play furniture had been pushed to the far end of the room. A large chest of toys and a stack of board games were arranged in the corner. It was the sort of messy that looked designed, ready for a photoshoot.
"There's a child's ghost here," Emmeline said quietly, staring at the corner with the games and toys. "He likes this room the way it is but misses the other kids." Her fingers curled slightly, and Benedict realized she was holding the spirit's hand, pressed into the side of her skirts as though to hide it from him. She does that sometimes, hides ghosts fro
m him. She told him once that not all spirits were harmful, that they're just not ready to go and need a little more time. She didn't like the idea of them being pushed out and would rather he leave them to walk about the place between worlds until they faded on their own.
"He died in the woods outside. He got lost and couldn't find his way home. He was happy when he saw the other kids playing and followed them back here. He says he didn't do any of the bad things in the house." She paused then, a shadow of worry crossing her features when she looked down at the apparition at her side.
Benedict couldn't see it. Only her.
"The boy says there is a…scary man."
Benedict pressed his lips. That sounded promising for the job but unpleasant for his own sanity.
He swayed on his feet, eyes fluttering shut and hand going to his temple. Mr. Whittle jumped closer, catching Benedict's elbow to steady him. "Are you okay, Mister Lyon?"
Benedict took an exaggerated swallow of air and steadied himself, pressing a hand to his chest. "You have a little spirit here, in this room with us now…"
Mr. Whittle sucked a breath and turned, looking about as though he might spot it. His fingers pressed tighter on Benedict's arm.
"A child," Benedict went on, gasping and opening his eyes. They were teary. He could cry on command. He had mastered that little talent years ago to help sell the experience. "He's young, and he means you no harm. A tragic soul. He was lost in the woods, died there, and continued to search for a way home—unaware of his own state. He was alone for so long, searching for the warmth of home, until one day he heard the laughter of your children playing. He followed the sound from those dark, lonely woods and came here." He turned toward Mr. Whittle, catching his hand when it left his sleeve. "Your family has given him such a sense of peace and safety," he said, peering deep into the older man's eyes and seeing that fear and pity blossom into pride. "He'll move on soon. He's so grateful to you for letting him be here. For letting him come home."
