“Is this what you want?” Death reached into the water and sat her up.
“To have you hold me again? Yes.”
“I mean, are you ready to die?”
“Is that the only way I can be with you?”
“You’re only with me until I take you to the afterlife.”
“Like Heaven and Hell?” That made her sit up more.
“Something like that.”
“And then what? I never see you again?”
Death didn’t answer.
“Then no, that’s not what I want. I just want to be with you.” As with her first time, just being near Death gave her clarity and strength, despite her drugged state. She reached out to caress its skin-wrapped jaw.
Death caught her hand, paused, then kissed her palm before pushing her away. “We shouldn’t be…It’s not right.”
She clutched Death’s hand, feeling each of the bones pressing into her flesh. “Neither of us have an explanation for why I’m not afraid of you…and why you feel the way you do for me. Perhaps it is right.”
“I know it’s not.” Death did not pull its hand free, though Imogene was certain it could if it wanted. “It’s against all Laws of Nature, the Universe. Everything.”
Imogene began kissing Death’s hand, small kisses from each of its finger tips to the back of its hand. When she heard and felt it sigh and shudder, she whispered against its papery skin. “I don’t believe that. I love you.”
Its eye sockets had been dark, as if it had closed them in pleasure. When she’d said that, said those words, Deaths eyes exploded back into flames. “No.” It pulled its hand back and stood.
“No what?”
“You don’t know what you’ve just said.”
Imogene took a deep breath, fighting the returning effects of the laudanum, and stood in the bath. “Yes, I do. I love you.”
Death shook its head. Its fluttering gravecloths and hood and hair gave away that it trembled.
Fighting to control her own shaking, Imogene clutched the tub and tried to step out. Her foot slipped –
And she was in Death’s arms again. She took advantage of the closeness, wrapped an arm around its neck, and kissed.
Death kissed back, taking her to her bed.
When they were both left trembling again, Death bid her good-bye with another ‘last’ kiss and told her to live.
* * *
Thus passed, to Imogene’s reckoning, over a hundred and twelve years. With the time between her summonings growing less and less.
But lately…
Lately still nagged at her brain, and she couldn’t push it away. Lately, Death had not been the same. Sometimes she would lose consciousness and wake alone. Like last time.
She could not, she would not let that happen again. She and Death had a special relationship, and nothing could take that away. After all, Death had to come when she summoned. That was its entire purpose.
Foreverness drifted by before the small bathroom filled with familiar sensation of warm breezes carrying the scent of ash, earth, and dampness. In front of the sink, but not reflected in the medicine cabinet’s mirror, grey-white linen fluttered, shrouding the form that was neither male nor female. Hair, dark as a freshly dug grave, danced on the crypt wind. The shower curtain trembled in the dead breath’s wake.
Death folded its arms. Skin-clad skeletal hands tapped blackened nails on the burial cloth robe. “I said we were through,” said the voice as androgynous as its form.
Imogene winced from eyes that still flamed emotion and pain. Between drugs and blood loss, she spoke with a shaking, slurring mouth. “…Had t-to see you again.”
“You always have to see me again.” The being paced, bony feet tapping on faux granite tiles. After the initial glare, it kept its eyes averted.
“I – I…st-still love you…” Why was the proximity of Death not relieving her symptoms, clearing her head?
“You cannot fathom love.” It stopped pacing and turned its back to her.
“I d-do. And you said I understood, like n-no one else. I’m not s-scared of you.” Imogene’s heart thrashed in her chest like a panicked bird. Beside the tub, she could not see her hand inside the bloody bucket. “Please?”
“Please, what?” Death spun and glared again. “Do my job? How long have I given in to your games? Must we have this dance for another century?”
“P-plea-hshe?” Darkness tinged the edges of her vision and deepened every shadow. Each breath was harder work than anything she’d done in life.
Now that it looked at her, she saw Death’s face soften. She saw the familiar twitch of its mouth, its worrying lips. She watched the clenching and releasing of its hands on its arms. Most of the bubbles in the bath had dissipated, and the flicker in Death’s eye revealed that it had noticed her bare still-perfect body. Another aspect of Death’s gifts and the frequent summonings – she had hardly aged since their first meeting.
“P-p-pls…”
It jerked its head away with a scowl of defeat, blinked out its eye flames, and stepped toward Imogene. Water sluiced Death’s form as it knelt into the tub to join the dying girl. Moisture darkened the shroud, pasted it to Death like a second skin. Its lips brushed her forehead first: a tickle of dried rose petals. Cool, bony fingers with sharp nails tenderly dragged damp locks of reddish blonde hair from Imogene’s face. She found energy to lift her chin, meet its hard lips, and taste the life it breathed into her. With a gasp, she sat up, entwining arms around the skeletal body and pushing away the wet shroud to reveal the taut skin over bones and the pulse of life that still throbbed within Death’s being.
Death lifted Imogene’s cut hand from the bucket and brought the wound to its lips with a kiss. The left-over blood lent color, like lipstick, and Imogene kissed those lips once more as Death’s other hand pulled her hips against itself. There was pressure against her sex, but she never looked – and had had no other lover for comparison. It didn’t matter; their love was their own. She could feel sharp nails recede as its fingers caressed inside her. Imogene moaned at Death’s touch and arched against it. It kissed down her cheek and throat, leaving water-color imprints of her blood down skin that was not as pale as its own.
Imogene tangled and untangled her fingers though thick, wet, black hair, and caressed her hands down the sharp edges of ribs, pelvis, and joints. Death’s breath rattled from its mouth. Imogene felt tingles down her spine as Death pressed its face against her neck and shoulder with gasps. She tightened her grip around Death. Its body felt so fragile, as if any bone could break or its paper-thin skin should tear. As it came, she felt the shifting corporeality, its substance based on the end of her life, fading as it returned life through their union.
Shaking, she clung to Death, lying her head against its angular shoulder. Her trembling lips brushed its ear and she whispered, “See? You can’t leave me. Not ever…” Death stiffened beneath her. “You need me as much as I need you.”
Death breathed deeply against her face. It pulled from her embrace and took the hand she had cut. Imogene reached for another kiss, only to gasp as fresh pain burned down her arm. Her blood streamed sullying red ribbons into the bathwater.
Betrayed, she watched Death shake its head slowly.
“No more games; I can’t take them any more. It’s over this time. We’re over.”
“No-oh,” she managed before the dark edges of the world overtook her. Not so fragile, Death caught her in strong arms and rocked her lovingly – and without apology.
Biographies & Sources
E.F. Benson
Caterpillars
(Originally Published in The Room in the Tower and Other Stories, Mills & Boon, 1912)
Edward Frederic (‘E.F.’) Benson (1867–1940) was born at Wellington College in Berkshire, England, where his father, the future Archbishop of Canterbury Edward W
hite Benson, was headmaster. Benson is widely known for being a writer of reminiscences, fiction, satirical novels, biographies and autobiographical studies. His first published novel, Dodo, initiated his success, followed by a series of comic novels such as Queen Lucia and Trouble for Lucia. Later in life, Benson moved to Rye where he was elected mayor. It was here that he was inspired to write several macabre ghost story and supernatural collections and novels, including Paying Guests and Mrs Ames.
Ambrose Bierce
The Boarded Window
(Originally Published in the San Francisco Examiner, 1889)
John Bartine’s Watch
(Originally Published in the San Francisco Examiner, 1893)
Ambrose Bierce (1824–c. 1914) was born in Meigs County, Ohio. He was a famous journalist and author known for writing The Devil’s Dictionary. After fighting in the American Civil War, Bierce used his combat experience to write stories based on the war, such as in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Following the separate deaths of his ex-wife and two of his three children he gained a sardonic view of human nature and earned the name ‘Bitter Bierce’. His disappearance at the age of 71 on a trip to Mexico remains a great mystery and continues to spark speculation.
Daniele Bonfanti
Bones of the Dead
(First Publication; edited in English by Jodi Renée Lester)
Daniele Bonfanti is a science fiction and horror author from Italy. His English debut, the novelette Game, was published in the 2016 Stoker-nominated anthology The Beauty of Death. His Italian publications include two novels, short stories, and scores of articles for the popular magazine Hera. He is an active member of the Horror Writers Association and also translates from English: works by Ramsey Campbell, Brian Keene, Jack Ketchum, Peter Straub, Poppy Z. Brite and Clive Barker. An adventure enthusiast – mountaineer, kayaker, trail runner – and beekeeper, Daniele lives on the slopes of Mount Resegone, in an ancient house in the woods haunted by a ghost, a piano, evil daughters, and a wife.
Robert W. Chambers
In the Court of the Dragon
(Originally Published in The King in Yellow, F. Tennyson Neely, 1895)
Robert William Chambers (1865–1933) was born in Brooklyn, New York. He started his career publishing illustrations in magazines like Life, Truth and Vogue before abruptly turning his attention strictly to fiction. He produced works in numerous genres including historical, romance, fantasy, science fiction and horror. His best-known works come from his short story collection The King in Yellow. Everett Franklin Bleiler, a respected scholar of science fiction and fantasy literature, described The King in Yellow as one of the most important works of American supernatural fiction.
Carolyn Charron
Crossroads
(First Publication)
Carolyn Charron is a Canadian writer whose short stories have appeared in two other Flame Tree anthologies: Murder Mayhem and Dystopia Utopia, as well as in The Saturday Evening Post and Enchanted Conversation. She writes all forms of speculative fiction, and is getting to know the editor’s side of the slush pile by reading for the Hugo-nominated Apex Magazine, and acting as a juror for a writer’s grant for the first time. She spends far too much time on Facebook and not enough on her blog or Twitter. She lives in Toronto with her family and is currently working on a novel blending Canadian history with clockworks and potato batteries.
E.E.W. Christman
The Mourning Woman
(First Publication)
E.E.W. Christman lives in Seattle, Washington. She’s been published in RASCAL Magazine and won New Delta Review’s Creative Nonfiction prize with her essay, ‘Me & His Old Lady’. Her work is strongly influenced by Octavia E. Butler, Shirley Jackson, Neil Gaiman, and John Carpenter. In her free time, she watches horror movies – everything from Hollywood classics to South Korean zombie films – plays video games where you get to fly through space and hang out with aliens, and reads fantasy novels.
Kay Chronister
The Fifth Gable
(Issue #29 of Shimmer, 2016)
Kay Chronister is from Tucson, Arizona. Her fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, and Shimmer. She was the winner of the 2015 Dell Magazine Award, and is an alumna of the Alpha Workshop. As a graduate student in English Literature at the University of Arizona, her research interests include Gothic literature, folklore, and the politics of genre. She is currently at work on her first novel, a horror-western set in the American southwest. Find her online at kaychronister.com
Wilkie Collins
The Dream Woman
(Originally Published as ‘The Ostler’ in ‘The Holly-Tree Inn’, a jointly-authored group of linked stories that formed the Extra Christmas Number of Household Words, 1855)
Wilkie Collins (1824–89) was born in London’s Marylebone and he lived there almost consistently for 65 years. Writing over 30 major books, 100 articles, short stories and essays and a dozen or more plays, he is best known for The Moonstone, often credited as the first detective story, and The Woman in White. He was good friends with Charles Dickens, with whom he collaborated, as well as took inspiration from, to help write novels like The Lighthouse and The Frozen Deep. Finally becoming internationally reputable in the 1860s, Collins truly showed himself as the master of his craft as he wrote many profitable novels in less than a decade and earned himself the title of a successful English novelist, playwright and author of short stories.
F. Marion Crawford
The Upper Berth
(Originally Published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1894)
For the Blood is the Life
(Originally published in Colliers, 1905)
Francis Marion Crawford (1854–1909) was born in Bagni di Lucca, Italy. He is well known for his classically weird and fantastical stories. Travelling to and from Italy, England, Germany and the United States, Crawford became an extraordinary linguist and his first novel Mr. Isaacs: A Tale of Modern India was an instant success. His body of work in the horror genre is immense, with H.P. Lovecraft praising ‘The Upper Berth’ as Crawford’s ‘weird masterpiece’ and ‘one of the most tremendous horror-stories in all literature’.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Lot No. 249
(Originally Published in Harper’s Magazine, 1892)
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. As a medical student Doyle was so impressed by his professor’s powers of deduction that he was inspired to create the illustrious and much-loved figure Sherlock Holmes. However, he became increasingly interested in spiritualism and the supernatural, leaving him keen to explore fantastical elements in his stories. Doyle’s vibrant and remarkable characters have breathed life into all of his stories, engaging readers throughout the decades.
Morgan Elektra
She’s Gone
(First Publication)
Morgan Elektra grew up in New York, penning stories of monsters at the dining room table. A former reviewer for genre website Dread Central, she now writes dark fiction, paranormal romance, and LGBTQ+ erotica. She lives near Savannah, Georgia with her husband, their cat Harlequin, and – if the rumours are to be believed (and she sincerely hopes they are) – an awful lot of ghosts. Her story ‘Swim Lessons’ appears in the 2016 Women in Horror Annual anthology. A Single Heartbeat, the first novella in her Out in the Shadows series, is currently available from MLR Press. Find her online at bymorganelektra.wordpress.com
Hanns Heinz Ewers
The Spider
(Originally Published in Die Besessenen, 1908; first translated into English in 1915)
A German actor, poet and writer of short fiction, Hanns Heinz Ewers (1871–1943) was born in Düsseldorf, Germany. Though his interest in theatre led to him founding his own acting company in the early 1900s, he soon gave up on that field to focus on writing occult and horror stories, which i
ncluded a trilogy of novels. The second of these novels, Alarune, was inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and became his most well-known and highly acclaimed work. He also wrote several poems, plays and short stories, and has been praised as an influential author in the history of the horror genre.
J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Carmilla
(Originally Published in The Dark Blue, 1871)
The remarkable father of Victorian ghost stories Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–73) was born in Dublin, Ireland. His gothic tales and mystery novels led to him become a leading ghost story writer of the nineteenth century. Three oft-cited works of his are Uncle Silas, Carmilla and The House by the Churchyard, which all are assumed to have influenced Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Le Fanu wrote his most successful and productive works after his wife’s tragic death and he remained a relatively strong writer up until his own death.
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
The Southwest Chamber
(Originally Published in Everybody’s Magazine, 1903)
The American author Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman (1852–1930) was born in Randolph, Massachusetts. Most of Freeman’s works were influenced by her strict childhood, as her parents were orthodox Congregationalists and harboured strong religious views. While working as a secretary for the author Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., she was inspired to write herself. Supernatural topics kept catching her attention, and she began to write many short stories with a combination of supernatural and domestic realism, her most famous being ‘A New England Nun’. She wrote a number of ghost tales, which were turned into famous ghost story collections after her death.
Elizabeth Gaskell
The Doom of the Griffiths
(Originally Published in Harper’s Monthly, 1858)
Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–65) was born in London, England and is widely known for her biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë. In a family of eight children, only Elizabeth and her brother John survived past childhood. Her mother’s early death caused her to be raised by her aunt in Knutsford, Cheshire, a place that inspired her to later write her most famous work Cranford. Tragedy struck again when Gaskell’s only son died, and it was then that she began to write. All the misfortune in her life led her to write her many gothic and horror tales.
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