Hello everyone,
A couple of weeks ago I said there probably wouldn’t be a short story posted this month - turns out my subconscious knew more than I did, because it put “probably” in front of “wouldn’t”, and I didn’t blink. So here is the story!
I wrote this one for the Macabre Monday writing contest, because I don’t write much horror and thought it would be a good exercise. Also, music was the starting theme, and while I love writing poetry, it doesn’t really give me a chance to incorporate, say, Vivaldi. It was surprisingly fun to write, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.
Finally, I’m currently planning a new section for Long Oddities, specifically for shorter poems. I expect I’ll do a post about this in the next week.
Until then, thanks for reading!
Iris Shaw
Judith
*
Multiple Vanishings in Keynes County
Jamesville police seek information about disappearances in Almsford, 20 miles south of Keynes Mills. The area is closed to the public…
Almsford Tragedy: Dozens Missing
… names of the missing include almost the entire population of the town… Mr. and Mrs. Ames recently hired handyman Robert Ambrose to construct a new fence around their property. How the entire town became involved in the subsequent pool party, and why, is unknown, but new evidence suggests a large number of people passed through the Ames’ backyard…
*
November 2nd, 2017, 5:11 PM
Tempo: Allegretto
*
Judith
Im breaking up with you
Mark T
Hahahaha
That was a joke right
Judith
No
Mark T
Sorry?
Judith
No it wasn’t a joke. I’m breaking up with you
Mark T
What the hell
Seriously?
Judith
Duh
Mark T
What the hell Judith
Why?
Judith
I feel like things have taken a bad turn lately. Weve been going out two months now Probably time to end it
Mark T
Probably time to end it? r u crazy?
Judith
No
Mark T
I love you
Judith
Id say it’s not you its me but it kind of is you
Mark T
What have I done?
Judith
Nothing really
That kind of says it all
Mark T
Im not even going to say anything else
U r a freak
Have a nice awful life u complete arse
Number blocked
Number blocked
*
I felt numb after breaking up with Mark, but that’s not a novelty these days. The breaking up or the feeling numb, I mean.
When I got home from work I put on Mozart. I can bellow out Don Giovanni, a cenar teco with the best of them, and while it doesn’t make you happy, exactly, it definitely doesn’t make you feel numb.
My brother Simon came downstairs a few minutes later, his hair flat on one side and standing up on the other. His eyes were still heavy-lidded from napping.
“What’s up?”
“I broke up with my boyfriend.”
He went to the stereo and turned the music down. Don Giovanni’s final scream faded away.
“Matt?”
“No, Mark. The cellist. Matt was the engineer.”
“I can’t keep them straight.” He yawned. “Too many.”
“You never could. God knows how you’re in university. Hey, I thought you weren’t going to be here for supper.”
“I changed my mind. You mentioned pizza?” He sniffed, hopefully.
I pointed to the oven. “It’s warming up. Mercenary.”
“Rake.”
Oh, he was proud of that one. “Liar.”
“Mark, Matt, Mirabelle, Morris – that’s just the M’s.”
“You’re studying geology, not relationships. Real life is hard.”
He mimed playing a tiny violin.
“You just watch it, or I will play.”
“Do you even know where it is?”
I froze. He said nothing.
“No,” I said shortly, but he knew I was lying, and I knew it too.
*
After supper, Simon was in the kitchen doing homework, and I was cleaning the toilet, when my phone rang.
“Is this Judith Ames?”
I blinked.
“How the hell did you get this number?” I hissed, so Simon couldn’t hear.
The smooth, nasal voice continued, undisturbed. “I am speaking to Judith Turner, formerly Thorne, formerly Ames?”
“Who are you?”
“Nathan Yates, Jamesville Chronicle. I was wondering if you had any comment on the Almsford Vanishings. Almost ten years ago, now. Nine since that interview.”
I said nothing. What a horrible voice it was, disgustingly placid. It paused as if waiting for me to speak.
“Never solved,” it said, when nothing happened. “Don’t you feel that there’s something lacking? A sense of closure, of justice?”
“God, there’s none, not for this,” I said, before I thought.
“That’s very good,” it said encouragingly. “Could I get a quote from you on that, Miss Ames? Something like –”
“Judith Ames is dead,” I snapped, and hung up.
It must have been Matt. No, Mark. Maybe I said too much.
“What’s wrong?” Simon called.
“Nothing,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”
I rested my head on the wall, my knees up against the cold toilet, and swore very softly for a long time.
*
The Last of Almsford
No efforts to locate the people of Almsford have succeeded. The sole survivors are Judith Ames, age 15, and her brother, Simon, 8. Simon Ames was in bed with the flu at the time of the disaster, and his sister was looking after him… police have asked at this time that the Ames’ privacy be respected.
Judith Speaks Out – Her Shocking Claims (Exclusive)
Judith Ames, 16, best known as one of two survivors of the Almsford Vanishings… claims Robert Ambrose built an extra gate in the fence… Judith alleges the entire population of Almsford went through the gate, invited by Ambrose. Police reports confirm the presence of a second gate… Judith Ames received an invitation to the prestigious James Academy of Music to study the violin, and lives in Bowville with her aunt.
*
Tempo: Misterioso
*
Simon was in bed by midnight that night. He was a good kid – too good, too responsible.
I didn’t know how much Simon knew, or remembered. I did wonder sometimes, though I’d never ask. We’d moved a lot after Almsford, since there were always reporters or podcasters or just people who stared and annoyed our aunt. One name change didn’t work so we did two.
My aunt had died three years ago and left me the house. I could barely afford it, but it was ours – the seventh, and last, place we’d had in ten years.
I had work the next day, but had too a weird indifference about it. I showered at eleven-thirty and wandered down to the kitchen to sit up against the bottom cupboards with a bag of salted almonds.
That was when I heard the music. Softer than a French horn, sweeter than an oboe, too deep for a flute, coming from nowhere in particular. Vivaldi. Gelido in ogni vena. I used to love that piece, loved the long shivers of the strings.
I stood, scattering the almonds. I looked out the window, but there were no lights in our neighbours’ houses, and as I crept halfway up the stairs the sound became fainter and colder.
Terrified beyond reason, I rushed up to the top of the stairs.
“Simon?” I called.
There was a stir, a thump, a sliding of blankets. A light came on.
“What?”
“Did you… were you…”
“What is it?”
I listened again. The music had stopped.
“Nothing,” I said. “I thought I heard something.” I’d felt it, too, like ice in my veins.
He grunted, and his bed creaked as he got back into it. The light turned off.
“Go to bed, Judith,” he said.
I did, but I couldn’t sleep.
*
I sleepwalked through work the next day, even stocked shelves without even complaining about the parody of music on the Week’s Top 40! Hits. Simon came home late from class, and I avoided him until I knew he’d gone to bed. At 12:15 I went down to the kitchen and waited.
At exactly 12:30 the music began again. Handel, this time. Will the Sun Forget to Streak - the Queen of Sheba’s farewell.
As soon as it started I rushed outside and circled the house, but I saw nothing, and the music was just as faint and tantalising outdoors. It stopped in the middle of the aria – All the splendour she has seen – mockingly.
“I know you,” I said. “I know what you want. The answer is no.”
There was nothing but a proud, skeptical silence.
I shut the front door with a bang. Simon, though, never woke.
When the music began the next night, I didn’t wait to hear what it was, just covered my ears. If anything, the music only seemed to grow louder. Cum dederit dilectus sui somnus – for so he giveth his beloved sleep. The rhythm of the lullaby pierced my eardrums, and I cried out.
Then there was a crash from down the hall.
“Simon!” I shouted, but a sudden wind blew through the house, and drowned out my voice. Then, just as suddenly as it had come it was gone, and with it the music.
“Simon?” I called.
There was no answer.
I opened my door slowly and stepped out into the hall. I gasped at a pain in my foot, and when I looked at it, a tiny bubble of blood appeared. Glass lay scattered all along the floor.
I picked my way through it carefully, down the hall to Simon’s room. The door hung open. His blankets were wrinkled (the sheets still warm), but he was gone.
At the other end of the room, the mirror that had stood there was shattered, and the glass lay all about the foot of the frame. Instead of the blank wall behind, which I should’ve seen, I saw through the frame to a world beyond. I saw cracked roads and abandoned cities, and strange constellations. And I saw, on the frame, smears of blood.
“No,” I said. “No. Not him. You can’t take him.”
Another blast of wind blew through the house, coming from the other side of the mirror, achingly cold.
“God, no,” I said.
I heard the same strange instrument I’d heard three nights ago, only now it played music I couldn’t understand. Tonally, it made no sense, it was sweet and horrible and it made me want to scream. I’d heard it before, ten years ago, the most wonderful music in the world, until I understood exactly what it wanted.
And this time I answered. I stumbled through the frame on bleeding feet, into another night.
*
Survivors of the Strange: Episode 6, Judith Ames
So, let’s talk about that interview.
Yeah. So no one knows why Judith gave it, but it was huge, obviously. At first Judith was game; she claimed that she’d been grounded. She was looking after her brother, uh, Simon, who was sick, and she happened to look out the window.
Was it open?
Uh-huh. So she could, like, hear everything too. She says Robert Ambrose, the handyman, was making a speech.
Robert Ambrose. Who was he?
Nobody knows. No one’s heard of him since that day – I mean, the police were looking for him for years, but he never turned up. There aren’t even any photos. So, anyway, he was making a speech about the gate, and how he’d built it specially, and, like, how it would take you anywhere you wanted to go.
You could find everything you wanted on the other side, he said.
Judith said she couldn’t see anything on the other side – it was just the field behind the house, I mean. But everyone vanished as soon as they went through.
Then she said there was music.
Yeah, the music. She was never clear on what kind of music it was.
She was a musician, wasn’t she?
Yeah. Anyways, that was when everyone else in Almsford showed up. Like they were in a dream, sleepwalking, almost. They all went through the gate, Judith says, her parents last, and then Ambrose went in too, and shut the door.
Why didn’t Judith do anything? It sounds like she just stood there. Why didn’t she go too?
The interviewer asked her that, and she wouldn’t say anything. She refused to talk after that, actually.
Well, that’s quite the story. I’m sure people are wondering, what now? Where is Judith?
So nobody knows. She went to university to study music, but dropped out after a year. The theory is maybe she left the country, or, like, changed her name. We just don’t know. After she gave the interview, she dropped under the radar, and a few years later she just disappeared…
*
Tempo: Larghetto
*
I found myself on the roads that have no name, the roads lying in the cracks between kingdoms. The air bent and changed around me, so that one minute I saw dead towers spiraling up into the sky, and the next I stood in the middle of a tarn, underneath the ruins of bridges.
As I walked blindly along the road, faces appeared to me. I saw my aunt, my mother, my father, my old neighbour’s daughter, only one when she crawled through the gate. I saw my first lover – Marcus, his name was, I’d almost forgotten. I saw Simon’s terrified face, and I cried, and after him came all my other lovers. They told me what I’d done to them, and I shut my eyes so I couldn’t see.
All the while that strange instrument played, sometimes carried on the wind, sometimes keening in my ear. Gelido in ogni vena, it played, the frozen wail, and I shivered, and licked away my tears. I was cruel, to an innocent one.
I didn’t know how long it was before I found myself at a castle. The gates had long since crumbled away, and I walked through them unopposed, passing under Gothic arches devoured by dead vines. The wind had died away, but the music still led me on, and the air grew colder with each step.
I came to the hall, where the stone doors hung open, and there he sat at the end of it. His face was still the same, only hungrier than I remembered it, and he didn’t need to pretend anything anymore. He sat in a throne, with his court all around him sitting stiff as corpses – a king, a builder of doors, smiling a painted smile.
“Where’s Simon?” I asked, before he could speak.
“Simon? Who?”
“My brother,” I ground out.
He waved a hand, and the musicians put down their instruments. “I’ve no idea. He’ll be dealt with presently. I’ve waited for seven years for this.”
“Ten years.”
“Has it been that long? No matter.” He stood. “Welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Bring him to me, and I’ll leave.”
His smile flickered only slightly. “Do you still play the violin? Or have you forgotten everything I taught you?”
“I left school because of you. No, I don’t play it anymore.”
“You still dream of it, don’t you?”
I bit my lip.
“A pity you wouldn’t listen to the dreams. I could have given you everything you wanted, if you’d only ever listened.” He snapped his fingers, and my old instrument appeared in his hands. “Will you play now?”
I put my hands behind my back. “Give me Simon.”
The violin vanished. “Oh, no. I’ve been contriving for ages, to get you here – I even brought you out of time. Your mother and father, too, so anxious to see you. At least they were when we last spoke.” He gazed vaguely over the crowd. “They seem to have perished since then.”
“Simon,” I said. “I want him.”
“You wouldn’t even say your name for the longest time. I needed your name, you see, without that I’d no idea where or who you were. I built that gate for someone extraordinary – did I ever tell you that? Only you wouldn’t come. You wouldn’t listen.”
“I was in a bad mood.”
“And we have wasted so much time since then.” He licked his pale lips.
“You killed all those people for me,” I said.
“Yes,” he murmured, “such a pity. They weren’t worth a tenth of you.”
“Give me Simon,” I said, at last, “and I’ll play for you.”
He smiled.
“My love,” he said, “you’ll do so much more than that.”
I felt myself being dragged towards the dais by an invisible force. No-no-no-no, I meant to say, but the words froze on my lips, and I tried to get away, but my hands were numb, and so were my feet – had I feet? I couldn’t feel them – and I struggled, but the cold came for my mind, and it burned, and that was all I knew. And then everything was soft and sharp, and I could see for a thousand miles, into the heart of every star, and it was like a crystal knife. I wept.
Gelido in ogni vena.
Ice in every vein.
*
1835
from the journal of Matthew Halbroke, magician
Out of necessity I paid a visit to the prince of Amber, and was received most graciously. By his side there sat a young lady whom I had never seen before, with dark hair and curiously vacant blue eyes which, as far as I could tell, were fixed on nothing within three miles. She was human, and, moreover, under an enchantment.
Seeing that I pitied her very much, the prince bid me to undo the enchantment if I could, and I therefore endeavoured to discern its nature. To my dismay I could make nothing of it; it was marvellously, indeed hideously, complex, the layers bound about with time as well as persuasion. I was aware of two sources of power that it fed upon – the prince himself, and another. I suspect that the other was the lady, and I am sickened by it. In trying to lift the enchantment, incompetent that I am, I should certainly have undone her.
The prince laughed and leered, and said that when I next come I may try again, but this did far from ease my conscience. He is fickle in everything, and by the time I return she will be long gone, poor lady.
She did not speak, except once, as I turned to leave. She seemed to rouse herself, and though her eyes were wide and horrified as before, I perceived they saw, and saw truly.
“Simon!” she cried. “No, not him, no.”
Then the prince laid his hand on her arm, and her eyes closed. I took my leave of him, yet as I departed I heard that same voice speak more, sunk perforce to an absent-minded mutter – but I confess, I hear it still.
Kill him, it said. Drag him down to hell, oh, kill my king, only let me kill him first, and I’ll have his head, I will bury him in ice.
Loved this multi layered story. Unexpected , original, unconventional. Lots of creative inspiration here and unnerving too. Thank you for writing and submitting.
Woah! I love to write to Vivaldi, the words come out faster than I can write. I love that it starts out as horror (almost horror adjacent as nothing is ever really seen) and then goes totally Dark Fae.