Fusion: A collection of short stories from Breakwater Harbor Books’ authors

by Scott Toney

  In a fury, I ripped out my brushes and I grabbed the final four blank cards that needed an image. They would be the last reminder of this world I would have, the last visible tokens. For Lorenzo was gone: and I started to lose my sight.

  Perhaps it had been coming all along. A culmination of the long nights, working away by the feeble candle glow.

  But though I blamed it on that and on my husband, I knew it was simply my will to see. Nothing could ever compare to such beauty, and now Lorenzo’s beauty was fading into the night whilst my rage swept me up into a fiery vortex. I didn’t have his portrait. I couldn’t see his face. I had nothing to hold on to and my memory was twisted by the tingling rage of betrayal and insanity.

  It could have been perfect, with Lorenzo. If I’d nurtured that feeling, truest of true, bringing happiness always and forever.

  But life isn’t like that, life isn’t smooth, life stabs at you and cuts you and lets you down time and time again.

  Sometimes you manage to hide it, and shut out your troubles. Concealing them beneath a smiling mask, you hide the flaws even from yourself. Ignore them. The cracks, the tiny fissures that with time will only grow into a vicious rupture that splits you apart.

  And in those times when you really need strength, when you really need to show courage and hold yourself together just for a minute, that is always when your mind fails you. Giving way to heartache. Pain.

  A burning hot bubble of fiery shame and frustration seizes hold inside your chest. Tears burst from the corners of your eyes and scar your cheeks as though they were acid.

  You tried. You thought you’d conquered the world. That you were invincible and finally all those complicated pieces of life had just fallen into place. The puzzle solved, problems resolved. Everything just fine, or more than fine – perfect.

  But perfection itself is flawed. The mission to capture it reveals your incompetence. The closer you look the more you realise your inadequacy.

  There had been no problem, but I’d created one. I’d fabricated a problem within myself. Because he’d been too perfect, and I’d wanted to capture him.

  Tears stormed from my eyes and I pressed something to my face to try and muffle my grief. I realised it was a card: The Tower, struck by lightning. Some oil paint that had not quite dried yet smeared upon my face.

  I struggled to my feet, but my legs wouldn’t hold me and I tumbled back down to the floor. My arms had swung around in an attempt to stay balanced, but it only served to bring a box of tools crashing along with me.

  I gripped a palette knife. I looked towards the window. Glimpsed a figure, a shadow slightly darker than the night outside.

  * * *

  Before my marriage, I’d been free as an autumn leaf, whipped up by the breeze and roaming wherever the wind took me. My talent flourished, I was happy, I was fertile. At ease with the world, unconstrained by expectation, calm and content to float where fate would take me.

  And then, then my spirit froze within a cage of loneliness. I shut out emotion, for it hurt too much, and feeling nothing was better than pain. But when I don’t feel, I can’t paint. Not truly, not in the way I was born. I know I can’t paint because I can’t picture things in my mind. Images are sterile, colours stark and refusing to blend together. I was ceasing to exist, as the emotion that defined me disappeared.

  Then my lover, he had warmed me. Nurtured my bleeding soul and melted the icy shackles of bitterness and abandonment. Gave a kiss of life to a barren womb, awakened feeling in a numbed heart and eased those lips once more into a smile, out of their expressionless line.

  But the damage was already done. My life had already been defined for me, fixed by those long winter months, alone and afraid. Defined by my brushstrokes, by the blended paints on my palette. I was and could be nothing more.

  The eyes that once saw beauty, holding me together and fuelling my soul, are blinded. Furious desire and raging ambition burns my sockets, so I will never see again.

  * * *

  Lorenzo held the girl’s frail body in his arms. He whispered her name, ever so gently.

  Cecilia.

  She cried up to him, said she couldn’t see, that her vision was fading and plunging her into a world, darker and darker.

  He rocked her back and forth, like a child. He told her she was just tired. Her response was a feeble sob of acknowledgement. That she was in fact exhausted with life.

  He stayed there, afraid to let go. And when they finally did part, in the mournful predawn light, he took four cards with him. Four cards, soaked with tears and blood.

  * * *

  She couldn’t describe things for herself. She preferred to show them, actions louder than words and images so much more powerful.

  And so I tell her story. I tell it for her as the life seeps out from the cuts she carved into her wrists with the too blunt palette knife.

  She told me things, as she lay dying, while I sat helplessly there. Frozen in time. Unable to move, unable to leave her, there was no going back and we both knew it.

  Somehow she conjured visions in my mind. I saw her face in intricate ways, new ways. Every fibre of her being sang its unique song, spinning a miraculous web of multi-coloured light before my eyes.

  I kept on blinking, wondering what it was.

  She said she died so I would be free. She didn’t want to imprison me.

  And I’m still struggling to understand.

  Note from the author

  This is a work of fiction. Though specific events referenced in this story are loosely based upon historical events in Renaissance Milan at the time, the author makes no claim to factual accuracy. There was a period of conflict and instability, however the details of this are not explored, and are only used for inspiration.

  All characters are fictional, with the exception of several named historical figures who play no prominent role in the story.

  Note that details of the tarot deck mentioned are based upon fact. Early tarot decks are believed to have originated in Renaissance Italy in this region, the most famous of which is the Visconti-Sforza deck. Renaissance artist Bonifacio Bembo is thought to have painted it, although this is not known for certain. The author does not suggest that the protagonist in this story is in fact that artist, and means no disrespect to their work.

  Seventy-four of the original seventy-eight cards in the Visconti-Sforza deck are missing, and there is some debate as to whether they ever formed part of the deck, or if they were removed or lost.

  At the time when this deck was created, tarot cards were used for playing the game tarocchi and not for divination purposes, however the missing cards and their use in this story are intended to bear a symbolic significance.

 

  *About the Author*

  Cara Goldthorpe, founder of Breakwater Harbor Books, is a novelist and poet. Her current project is a literary fiction/fantasy series telling the tale of a war between two races. It is a story about people, emotion and survival, infused with hope and optimism. Personal struggle is portrayed equally alongside the struggles of empires, to highlight the individual’s importance and role in the universe.

  The main themes in Cara’s writing concern finding ‘balance’ through an understanding of multiple perspectives, and peace by living harmoniously with Nature. Drawing inspiration from real-world history, science, and religion, her work subtly provokes reflection on society and human nature.

  For more about Cara and her upcoming releases visit the link below to her Author Page at Breakwater Harbor Books.com.

  https://breakwaterharborbooks.com/cara-goldthorpe.html

  Until the Ninth Hour

  by C.M.T. STIBBE

  Chapter 1

  Detective David Van Straubenzee watched the man closely. He had a weird feeling in the pit of his stomach and if he could put a name to it fear was the first thing that came to mind.

  “On the night of Monday, June 25th at around eleven o’clock,” he said, glancing briefly at his notes, �
��did you take Kizzy Williams from a tent in Cimarron State Park?”

  “Yes,” the man said. His slate-grey eyes were dull as if he was already dead.

  David chewed absent-mindedly on his bottom lip. He couldn’t help wondering if the prisoner was the right man. There was something in his demeanor that didn’t quite sit right. He was too pensive in David’s opinion, dazed as if he had been hypnotized.

  “Morgan, I know this is difficult but when you took Kizzy from the tent was she asleep?”

  “Yes.”

  David was relieved. There was no way the little girl would have gone willingly with a man like Morgan Eriksen. His hair was shaved at the sides except for a thick braid that ran from the tip of his forehead to the crown. His arms were covered in Celtic knots, more colorful than a downtown bus stop.

  “Where did you take her?” David asked, looking at his watch. It was ten thirty in the morning.

  “About fifty yards downriver there’s a ranch,” Morgan said, staring at David’s bald head as if he could see his face in it. “I parked my pickup there.”

  “Frank Tolby’s ranch, right?”

  “Yes.”

  David listened to the Nordic accent, softer now since he had been living in the States for eighteen years. “Did you hurt her?”

  Morgan looked down at his hands. His skin was sallow in the harsh light of the interrogation room and the constant clink of the cuffs reminded David that his prisoner was well-shackled.

  “When she woke up I had to choke her. She was making too much noise.”

  “Did she die when you choked her?”

  “No.”

  “When did she die, Morgan?” David gritted his teeth. This was the part he dreaded the most.

  “Not until the ninth hour.”

  That’s how it was with Morgan, indecisive, taking his sweet time with everything. Sometimes he would look up and sniff the air and sometimes he would just flex his hands, big hands, choking hands.

  The rest of Kizzy’s remains had never been found not even after a pack of sniffer dogs had swept the entire countryside with volunteers from the county sheriff’s department. All they found was a statue of a goat with a pentagram on its forehead and eight human faces carved in tree trunks. There were four areas where upright stones marked some kind of ritual ceremony, only they were mostly grown over with grass. The shadows gave a man that feeling, that keen instinct that something wasn’t right and the dragonflies with their membranous wings that wafted just above the surface of a small pond were no longer beautiful. There was a jaundiced blush about the place as if the sun would never set.

  A tired old barn sat on the property with two doors that creaked in the wind. David remembered creeping forward with a gun in his hand, back pressed against the doorjamb until he was sure there was no one there. A commercial fridge stood in the center, light flickering on and off. It was quite out of place with its hideous display and David couldn’t speak, he couldn’t move. Four shelves filled with human heads, eight he counted, and all girls. A knackery with axes and knives spread out on a wooden trestle table only there were no hanging carcasses on the meat hooks.

  “What happened then?” David said quietly.

  He knew what happened then. One of the victims survived just long enough to confine her thoughts to paper and to hide a little red notebook in the straw. A girl, no more than nine years old, had been decapitated. Her head was one of the eight in the barn.

  David’s daughter was ten years old, same afro hair, same deep-brown eyes . . .

  “I put her to bed.” Morgan brushed his front teeth over his bottom lip. He half-smiled then.

  “Whose bed?”

  “The caretaker’s. He comes midweek to empty the traps.”

  David remembered the day they drove in to examine the ranch. The caretaker gave a long hard stare, the kind that lingered long after the car had gone past. Well over six feet tall and at least two hundred and fifty pounds, he was not a man David was willing to wrestle with.

  “Did she go willingly?” No, of course she didn’t go willingly. She was dragged kicking and screaming by a half-wit three times her size.

  “She asked for her dad.” Morgan said with a prick of irritation. “I told her he would come for her in a day or two. I told her he knew where she was.”

  Darryl Williams had no clue where his daughter was. He was fifty yards upriver, wide awake and rousing half the campsite. “Did she believe you?” David said.

  “No. She bit me. She always bit me.” The bow of Morgan’s lips stretched in a generous curve.

  “Where did she bite you?”

  “Here mostly,” Morgan said, pointing at his wrist and the underside of his arm.

  There was only a slight indentation now, so tiny anyone would have thought it was a birthmark. But the scar would have been different then, deeper, redder. They arrested Morgan soon after Kizzy’s head was found. There was enough DNA on those teeth to incriminate him.

  “Did you have occasion to hit her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “Uh, I told her to be quiet and she kept talking. So I backhanded her.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I backhanded her,” Morgan said, making the motion with his hand.

  It would have been a hard slap, David thought, looking at the size of those hands. “That would have shut her up.”

  Morgan narrowed his eyes as if warding off the sun. “You have no empathy for what I did, Detective Van. That’s why I’m here.”

  “What did she talk about?” David said, refusing to be sucked into a battle of wits.

  “Transformation.”

  The word made David shudder. It was a big word for a child to articulate unless she had heard it a thousand times. Kizzy had been educated at Valley Christian School, a place where children much younger recited Bible verse from memory, a school his daughter also attended.

  “Transformation?” David repeated.

  “Dead to self.” Morgan dropped his chin and looked at David sideways. “Weird stuff, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know, Morgan,” David said gently. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

  CHAPTER 2

  Darryl Williams gripped the revolver and stared at the picture. A patchwork of blues and greens so intense, it made his eyes water. Bluebells in a wood, a painting Kizzy had done at school. He had accepted many things in his life but never forgiveness. He had hated a whole life-time’s worth in those first few months until he was completely burnt out.

  The phone call came two weeks ago. Detective Van Straubenzee called to confirm they had the killer in custody. They had enough evidence to prove he had killed Kizzy, owing to the discovery of a journal they found on the site, a journal they assumed was hers. Now Darryl would understand what happened. He would relive Kizzy’s nightmare through her own words.

  There can’t be any more hate in me, he thought, until a new day came bringing a fresh portion of it.

  He still saw Kizzy doing cartwheels in the sun and he could still smell the scent of her hair. Only he couldn’t quite see her face. It was a shadow now, unless he found a recent picture of her, and he was tired of crying if he was honest.

  Tears don’t bring back the dead.

  There was a knot of pressure in his chest when he recalled a recurring dream, a face with milky eyes like the one on the autopsy table. It was always without a body and he would wake suddenly and be cruelly reminded he was the one that had survived. There wasn’t even the barest threshold of life in that face and thinking of it made him dizzy, disjointed. The nightmares were always the same and a scream would catch in the back of his throat choking him awake.

  Pastor Razz said hate makes a man sick. Forgiveness means letting go, lessening the grip of bitterness and pain.

  I won’t forget. I’ll never forget, Darryl thought, brushing a hand over his close-cut hair.

  His wife had died after the youngest was born
and his three daughters were his pride and joy. But there were men out there preying on the innocent, men like Andy Bordman, Oliver Dinaris, Sam Raines and Peter Strong, men still at large and men so evil; their very faces were enough to keep a child indoors.

  Kizzy was baptized a month before she was taken. Darryl supposed that was a fluke. But in his heart he knew it was meant.

  “Up is better than down,” Kizzy used to say. “That’s where the bluebells are.”

  “Heaven, Kizzy,” Darryl corrected. “Where there’s no more crying or pain.”

  “But dad, there are bluebells there. I’ve seen them.”

  Kizzy was determined there were carpets of them in the mountains spreading beneath the giant pines. Only bluebells thrived in English woodlands not the sandy loam of New Mexico. Still, they went camping to look for them, the summer she died.

  Kizzy was like him, big eyes and a big nose. Darryl began to laugh at that for the first time in seven torturous months. Deep in his throat the sound came like rain beating on the roof tiles and he almost lurched forward in his chair. His mind was suddenly a blur of memories, fishing, hiking, horse-riding and as he looked out of that window where a tall maple tree groaned in the wind, he could still see Kizzy’s swing dangling on a burly branch. The seat was powdered with snow now and there were large flakes in the air like the molt of a cottonwood tree.

  Best not think about what that man did to her. Best not think of her last moments.

  A small part of him always did―especially the last moments. He wished he could have been there if not to save her then to hold her whilst she died. During his darkest times, he would hesitate in his thoughts, pausing to wonder. Why her?

  Did that man have a swing when he was a child?

  The thought took him by surprise. What did he care? The man was a monster. He was never a little boy with rosy cheeks and a swing to sit on. Was he?

  He’s someone’s son. He’s someone’s brother. He’s. Some. One.

  Darryl batted the air with his hand. He didn’t want to hear it. Not when Detective Van Straubenzee showed him Kizzie’s little green blazer all covered in blood. She was proud of that blazer and the gold embroidered bird on the pocket. It had the words Valley Christian School, Home of the Doves written beneath it.