“Rideon was halfway through digging up the grave when something came out of the darkness and attacked him. He was found in the morning, almost dead. He was sent back home and was never truly well again. One night, when he was lying in his bed, he had a heart attack and almost died. He always claimed that, on that night, he had awoken to see the creature from the Indian graveyard standing in his bedroom, and that it had tried to kill him again.”
Madeleine took a sip of her wine. “That’s the old family legend. I imagine that part’s totally made up. Graveyards.”
“But there’s more to it than that?” said Mary.
“Yes,” said Alfred. “They say that the creature, whatever it is, has haunted this house ever since. They say that in every generation, one of the Ashcroft family just drops dead in the prime of life, for no apparent reason. And the doctors can never say what killed them.”
Madeleine laughed. “And if you really believe the stories, every time one of these mysterious deaths occurs, the victim sees a shadowy, supernatural figure rushing towards them just before they die.”
Mary looked from Madeleine to her husband. “But there have been a lot of mysterious deaths, haven’t there?”
“There are always deaths in any family,” said Madeleine.
“Roger Ashcroft,” said Alfred. “They say he just dropped dead one day when he was on the landing. He’d never been ill a day in his life before. The doctor swore he could find no reason for his death.”
“So they say,” said Madeleine.
“And Michael,” said Mary. “The one who fell over the banister. You two must have been here when that happened.”
Madeleine pulled her cardigan around herself, shivering at a sudden chill in the room. “I was just tiny then,” she said. “I remember . . . it was horrible.”
“Why did he fall?” said Mary.
“No one knows,” said Alfred.
Madeleine decided she’d had enough of this. “I’m going to see where dessert is.”
At the bottom of the staircase, she heard a voice calling down to her.
“Aunt Mad. Aunt Mad.”
Madeleine trotted up the stairs, her heart rising at the sound of her nephew’s voice. The little boy was rushing along the landing. As she reached the top step, Madeleine bent and gathered him into her arms.
“You’re supposed to be in bed, young man.”
“I had a nightmare, Aunt Mad.”
Madeleine shivered again. That strange chill was even worse up here.
Madeleine . . .
What was that? Just now, it had almost sounded as if someone had called her name.
Get away from it . . . Get away . . .
Madeleine looked up, squinting as she saw the shimmering black shape break out from the semidarkness on the landing and come running towards her.
Jeremy Essex
Jeremy Essex is the author of the sci-fi/horror novella ‘The Sound Of Time’, as well as multiple short stories which have appeared in Kzine, Tales From The Canyons Of The Damned, Acidic Fiction and 9 Tales Told In The Dark. He lives in Suffolk in the U.K. where he spends a lot of time in Indian restaurants.
Website: www.jeremyessex.co.uk
Twitter: @byatis1
WEEP NO MORE FOR THE WILLOW
By Wulf Moon
7,200 Words
THROUGH THE COLD and glistening blue, the Spanish galleon El Pez Volador groaned with her heavy load of bullion under a bright Caribbean sun. Captain Don Capricho Delgado y Cervantes stood amidships, fists to hips, his coppery, shoulder-length hair whipping about his head like pennants in the wind. He was what Spaniards dubbed a rojo, his red hair and fairer skin considered regal, a unique contrast to the dark olive of his men. He stared over the gunwale and scowled at the horizon. His ship maestre, Salvador, stood to his right, and a grizzled sailor named Sanchez crouched beside him, dipping a ladle into the scuttlebutt.
“There it is again.” Capricho pointed at a surreal column that plumed in the distance. It transformed from peaceful blue into wicked flickers of scarlet. He shielded his eyes with a hand, squinted. “Have you ever witnessed its like?”
The burly Salvador hissed when he spotted it. “No. Never.”
The column continued shimmering on the horizon in bizarre shades of arterial red.
“Lightning perhaps?”
“No lightning does such things.”
“Waterspout?”
“A twister glowing with blood light?”
Capricho lowered his gaze, turned to the old sailor. “You, Sanchez? You have traveled this sea longer than any of us.”
Sanchez brought the dented dipper to his lips and drained it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, sighed, and squinted a rheumy eye at Capricho with suspicion. “Thought you didn’t want me tellin’ my stories.”
Capricho frowned. “I said hold your tongue because the men are twitchy from yesterday’s squall. They are a superstitious lot.”
“By all the saints, they should be after seeing that beast of a storm slice our flotilla apart.” Sanchez waved the dipper. “You want to hear about my watch last night?”
Salvador grunted a quick “No” but Capricho held up a hand. “Does it have bearing on this phenomenon?”
“Course it does!”
“Make it brief.”
Sanchez hitched his tattered britches up his skinny hips and tightened the rope around the waist. “‘Twas on the forecastle, third watch, when the ocean goes flat as a bedsheet. I’m telling you, Captain, the way that water reflected the stars, we could have been sailing on a mirror . . .”
A distant memory washed over Capricho, of a river that had looked like that, sweet memories that brought pain. Capricho shoved them away and listened.
“So you can imagine my surprise when, dead center in the moon's reflection, this sirena bobs up, hair floating behind her like kelp in a current. Well, she turned her lustful gaze upon me and my—”
“Stop.” Capricho pointed to the flickering column. “What does this have to do with that?”
“Just getting to it, Captain. This sirena, she raised her voice in a dirge that could have curdled blood.” He thumped his chest. “But I stood fast, I did, though lesser men would have run. She sang in a strange tongue, but I understood it like it was my mother's own voice. She sang that the Wind Howlers had marked us. Said they were hunting us.”
“Wind Howlers?”
“Sí. Local spirits, methinks.”
Salvador chuffed. “Bah. The only spirits here are the ones you get from a jug.”
Sanchez jabbed him with the dipper. “Ten cuidado! Do not taunt the gods. This New World is full of old life. Conquistadors are brutal to the natives. You think the locals don’t have gods just like we do? We robbed their temples! You think there won’t be payback?”
Salvador groaned, turned to Capricho. “I’m going. We need to get a man up the main to watch for lost ships.”
“Might as well stop looking for them,” Sanchez said.
Salvador’s jaw twitched. “And why is that?”