Though small, the key was heavy and intricate, almost needlessly ornate. Its tangle of curlicues wrapped and twisted like overgrown brambles.
“Are you sure this is the one?” she asked, turning the key in her hand doubtfully.
“Without a doubt,” the merchant said cheerily. “The key to the heart!”
“To any heart?”
“Perhaps not quite any,” the merchant conceded. “But most, by far.”
She remained unconvinced. “But how would I know?”
“The same way we know anything, my dear,” he laughed. “By trying, and trying again. It will not be long before you find its proper match. It is always nearer than you think.”
She was not quite sure that she believed him. But neither did she wish to leave empty handed. Not when there was hope for sale.
***
Trying proved to be a messy, uncertain process. True, the key fit many a heart. But so far those hearts seemed hollow, more show than substance. She tried each time to imagine she had found her treasure, only to leave with her regrets and that heavy key back in hand.
But worse were the hearts it didn’t fit. The hearts broken and bloodied by trying too hard. She stepped away from another still-writhing body and regretted the blood-stained key that had caused so much pain.
After a time, she stopped trying. She washed the blood from the key’s ornate tangles, polished it as best she could, hoping the merchant might yet buy it back. But she returned to the market only to learn that he had long since disappeared.
***
She wore the key around her neck, not knowing what else to do with it. Not ready to try, but not ready to part with the hope.
She pondered the hearts she had known. The empty disappointments. The broken, bloodied mysteries. What had she hoped to find there? What was it she was missing?
How strange to realize that she did not know. Did she even know the state of her own heart? Could she? Did she have the courage to find out?
Her hands shook as she took the key from around her neck. Looking in the mirror, she traced her fingers down from her clavicle, saw her own locked heart. She thought of the empty many. She thought of the bloodied few. Which was she?
The pain was worse than she could have imagined. Though small, the key cut deep. For a moment, she wondered if knowing was worth the pain. But even in the pain, she felt the contact, the release. She felt her heart opening.
She looked down to see herself, wide and empty and aching. But at last, she knew. She knew that she was empty. And she knew that there was hope. With that heavy key, she could begin to fill the emptiness herself.
The only time I truly feared my wife was when she saved my life. In our courtship, I had always thought her demure. I had thought her propriety was what kept our rendezvous under the bright light of day, where none could whisper of clandestine meetings by candlelight.
Yet even then, in her modesty there was an air of mystery. Of possibility. Intriguing, alluring—a question waiting to be asked.
It seemed more strange, then, when her moonlit modesty extended into marriage. When we spent our wedding night apart, I worried that she may be a question without answer. She set those fears to rest as she woke me with the full heat of her daylight passion, and all thoughts of the cold night were pushed from my mind.
And so our not-quite-typical marriage passed in days together, nights apart, but I was too enamoured to wonder at it all. Why question perfect contentment?
Until that night of the broken glass. The fear woke me before I could identify the sound. Muffled by distance, but sharp and sure. I moved to the door without thinking, driven only by my deepest fear. Not for me—but for her.
At the end of the corridor, the glass glittered in the moonlight. But there amid the light was a darkness—a person. He looked at me. And lunged.
I hit the ground with such force that my breath left my body. As his hands wrapped around my throat, I was not sure that I would have the chance to draw breath again. He was bigger than me, stronger than me. But then a still-larger shadow fell across us.
I do not know which chilled me more: the scream or the growl. His weight was lifted from my body, and I gasped for breath. But as I watched him flail against the hold of teeth and claws, I felt a new breathlessness overtake me. His blood pooled dark in the moonlight. His flailing shuddered and stopped.
I could not move. Not as the great shadow tossed his body aside. Not as the creature turned towards me, its fur darkly gleaming, its eyes bright, its muzzle bloody. It moved slowly now. Sniffing at me gently, softly. Demurely.
I reached out slowly, and her massive head nuzzled against my hand. My fingers were lost in the warmth of her fur. Her eyes were changed, but she looked at me with a love that I knew well. And in that moment, all my questions were answered.
It was a slow thing. A subtle thing. Almost imperceptible. If he had tried, or so they said, he could have pretend it wasn’t there. Just try. Try harder. And yet, there he was—and there it was. Almost close enough to touch, but only almost.
It was that dread that unraveled him. His unraveling was another slow yet inevitable thing. The moodiness. The sleepless nights. The pacing hunt for peace.
He never said what it would be, if it found him. He only spoke of escape. Away, away—but to where? No one had the answer.
That was the mystery of my father. The mystery of his hunted life. His tired, tired life of running from something no one could name, running to somewhere no one could find. He died scared. Terrified.
And now, I feel it. That slow, inevitable thing. And try as I might, I know there’s nowhere to go.
What I remember most from my last relationship is his eyes. They were blue – pale at the center, dark around the edges. Sometimes they would change, lightening when he would smile or darkening when he was angry. Oh, how I miss those eyes!
Well, missed those eyes.
I fixed that problem soon enough. Now I can see his eyes whenever I like. Of course, it’s not quite the same. They don’t change when he smiles, but then again, he doesn’t smile these days. Instead, I keep them in a jar, hidden away in my room. I take them out every now and then, for old time’s sake.
But not too often. I don’t want my new boyfriend to get jealous. As it is, I’m worried that things aren’t going too well between us. And I must admit, I would really miss his lips . . .
He had never learned to dance. Perhaps a lack of skill, perhaps a lack of opportunity. Perhaps only a lack of courage—he did not know. But he felt his lack most keenly when he watched the others. They moved without thought, without fear, without shame. He wondered what that must feel like: a body unencumbered, a mind unbridled, a life untethered. His wonder reached out to them, but his fear drew him back into himself.
Perhaps . . . he thought. But it was always an unfinished thought. Instead, he hid himself and watched the others from his secret place.
The village was filled with stories of the others, but no one claimed to believe. Those who knew best said that the others were only air and tales, only good for filling the empty spaces, for filling the hollow places in village life with imagination and possibility, for filling the dreams of the gullible with childishness and fancy. Yet all those wise and worldly minds did not risk going out in the rainfall, did not dare to visit those places where tales danced at the edge of the wild. No, for all their certainty, they did not risk encountering those things they did not believe.
And so he always came alone. The forest was dark and dripping around him, alive with the sound of rainfall. Yet he did not mind the wet chill as he crouched and peered out into the clearing. He only saw the others dance when the raindrops fell. He could hear their footfalls among the patterings of rain as they danced between the drops. They moved like a mist, furling and unfurling beneath the moonlight, their mesmeric undulations filling the empty spaces. He crept through the trees and shadows to watch—alone, but not unseen.
She was fresh as the rain, ancient as the rain, timeless as the rain. She knew all the creatures that scurried through her forests, and he was no exception. She had seen his soul-deep hunger, seen the joyless scraps life had fed him. Through the music of the rain, she could hear the rasping, rattling knell of his spirit’s hunger pangs. It was a sound that she knew too well: time after time, soul after soul. Souls that had found their way to her forests, begging for scraps of a new beginning. Souls that had struggled, choking, against a life too tightly wrapped about them. Souls still young, still fledgling, encaged in bodies of dust and bone and age. Countless souls she had gathered into herself, tended, restored. Lost souls, now found.
On these nights, she breathed those souls into the rainfall, spun them amid the falling drops. There, they found their steps, their freedom, their life. There, they would soon find him, recognize him as one of their own. They would be the ones to draw him in, step by dancing step. But she would be the one to draw him out—out of his mortal vessel and into their endless dance.
When Marie first saw the raven struggling under the mound of pebbles, she thought it was the strangest thing she would see that day. She couldn’t imagine how the raven had gotten there, its wings pinned at strange angles as it struggled under the weight of countless stones. Yet the stones themselves were stranger still. They were worn smooth, gleaming as if polished. They were unlike anything Marie had ever seen in this forest.
Marie’s grandmother had told her stories of ravens. Stories of how they kept the deeper evil of the forest out of their homes.
“When a raven calls, you listen,” she would say. “They speak in warnings to help us.”
But this raven seemed to be the one in need of help. Marie moved the stones, careful around the writhing bird. At first it snapped its beak at her. But as she made progress, it seemed more resigned to her help. It was disheveled, disgruntled, but unharmed. As Marie cleared the last of the stones, she was glad to see the raven shake its wings, clearing the bits of debris from its body. She watched it fly out beyond the treetops, certain she had seen the last of it.
Returning to her home, Marie thought nothing of the passing shadows, nothing of the cawings of corvids overhead. But when she arrived at her porch, she saw them: three stones, smooth and gleaming, waiting on the porch bannister.
Marie considered the stones carefully. She was sure they were the same strange ones that had trapped the raven. She remembered her grandmother’s collection of small and shining things left for her by the birds.
“Sometimes nature tests our gratitude,” her grandmother would say, “but the ravens repay their debts.”
Bringing the stones in, Marie had barely closed the door behind her when there was a knock. She opened the door, and there stood a young girl.
“Please,” the child said, “might I come in for a piece of bread?”
But Marie heard the raven call a warning. She gave the girl a stone. The stone turned to bread in the young girl’s hand, and Marie closed the door.
Again, she heard a knock. Opening the door, Marie saw a young woman standing at her doorstep.
“Please,” the stranger said, “might I come in for a drink of water?”
But again, the raven called. Marie gave the woman a stone, and it became a goblet of water. She closed the door.
Again, a knock. This time, Marie opened the door and saw an old woman.
“Please,” the woman said, “might I come in and rest for a time?”
Still the raven called, and Marie gave the woman her last stone. The stranger took the stone and sighed deeply. As Marie watched, the woman crumbled bit by bit, leaving behind a pile of stones, smooth and gleaming.
From all around, ravens came. They gathered the stones one by one. At last, only three stones remained. Just for her. Just in case.
She pondered again how he might taste. It was a distracting thought, and the more she thought about it, the more loudly the subtle pulse in his throat seemed to beat. She nodded to all he said, but heard only the rhythm of his blood.
Could she still contain her hunger, or would this be the day when she sank her fangs into his throat? But that seemed too quick, too simple. Perhaps instead she could start at his chest. Peel back the skin and muscle, pop the ribs out of her way, pull his heart right from his body. She imagined how it would feel in her hand—a warm, wet weight to hold, to crush, to drink oh so deeply. Salty-sweet, perhaps. Thick and pulpy, certainly. She shuddered at the thought, the thrill, the thumping of his heart that beckoned her closer.
Even so, she sat. She sat, she nodded, she smiled. She continued as she always had. Reminding herself that however sweet he may be, her imaginings of him were sweeter still.
Evelyn hated that she couldn’t remember his eyes. All her memories were painted in broad strokes, leaving out the precious details. Some nights she could find him in her dreams. There, he’d be as he once was—still young, still innocent, still alive. She would pull him close, breathe in his scent, sob her joy and relief into his tousled hair. But always he would look up at her with two empty holes where his eyes should be.
“David,” she’d say, “what happened to your eyes?”
Each time she would wake without an answer, gazing into the dark of her too-empty home.
David, she wondered again, what happened to you?
***
It was now ten years since the boys had started disappearing. Their faces had been everywhere: nightly news, shop windows, church pinboards. They were impossible not to see, but even harder to look at. Each one had made Evelyn think of David, made her grateful for his safety, made her ashamed of her own selfishness.
Then the posters started coming down. That was even worse. In those posters there had been hope: the boys’ smiling faces captured in time, safe and whole. But one by dreadful one, those hopes disappeared. The town’s whispers said what the news could not: the bodies that were found were not safe, not whole.
“Why their eyes?” the neighbours had murmured.
Why their eyes? Evelyn wondered still.
***
Maybe the answer was there, in his childhood. She had searched her memories so many times that they were starting to fray, to unravel, to fall to pieces all around her. Evelyn tried to knit them back together, but she doubted herself more each time.
Those eyes that she could never remember, was there something there? Something she had ignored? Something she hadn’t bothered to see? There were too many questions she had never thought to ask until it was too late. Now they hung about her—heavy and unanswered.
She wondered what others had seen, looking at him. What he had seen, looking at them. In those eyes was the mystery, the truth.
Those boys, what had they seen with their missing eyes?
***
The eyes of the town were all around. She felt them every time she left her home, which wasn’t often. She tired of being seen, of the unheard but constant whispers that accompanied those eyes.
There had been a time when she was unseen. As a single mother, she had gone through the paces of work and home in quiet obscurity, leaving little to be seen.
David hadn’t been so lucky. He had told her he didn’t fit in. He had said the other kids picked on him, singled him out. He had felt all too seen.
A rite of passage, she had thought.
Now, she wondered.
***
She had tried to ask him once. That last time she had seen him alive.
“Why their eyes?”
David had met her gaze through the glass partition, those unknowable eyes creasing in a smile that chilled her more than the prison, more than his scarlet death row uniform.
On the lower steps, you could just barely see him. A gray smoke. A whirl of ghostly gnats and ashes. Faintly glowing. On the move. Adrift but seeking. Rising up from the cellar’s darkness.
In the light. In a narrow place. Beneath the rococo wall of gold, he became invisible. And he waited. To take a lover. To kiss the first mouth that passed through him. To sup upon a soul and become manifest. To feast upon life so that he might return to flesh, and become a god.
Knock on Wood Marge Simon
I return to the house of my youth, where the newel post still stands at the foot of the stairs. Dear memories of childhood, that staircase with its banister, the game of Knock-on Wood. Down and around we children used to slide. At the landing, knock on wood, then change directions, plunging onward shrieking to the very bottom stair. There, we’d touch wood once more at the newel post, then scramble up to do it all again. The fastest one would take the win, such a lark in bygone days!
All too well, I remember Cousin James, who too often won the game. How he’d crow about his win, until the day I’d had enough, and pushed him downstairs to his death. I tell myself I’d meant no harm; it was just a game gone wrong. I go to leave, but a whuff of chill air stops me in my tracks. Suddenly afraid, I turn to see that newel post knows otherwise, a fiendish leer within its carved design. And, after all these years, there’ll be the devil to pay.
After Dark Nina D’Arcangela
In darkness there is patience, a quiet that waits; a moment pregnant with pure malevolence.
I lay in the dark, sheet tucked to my chin on this sweltering night. The small bulb fixed to the tin wall barely a beacon, let alone a source of comfort. I can hear the crick of the wooden stairs as it stealthily begins the climb. Eyes shuttered tight, breath fetid by fear, my muscles seize — I feel it watching me. Minutes pass as I count slowly in my mind. Finally, I hear it turn, I hear its bones and crepe paper skin as it scrapes the railing and planks. I hear the slight squeal of the hinge as it opens the hatch set into the stairwell. I let out a small sigh and immediately regret my mistake. As I throw the sheet over my head, the thing pounds back up the treads and across the room; bones slamming every surface it passes. It leaps onto the bed, and in a frenzy, begins to pound and slash at my body; the bruising from the last assault not yet healed. Both of us scream. Mine, a high-pitched shriek of terror; its, an unholy wail that splits the night.
Abruptly, the onslaught stops. As I lay panting beneath the torn and bloodied bedclothes, it retreats to the stairs once more. In the near silent room, I hear the latch click as it pulls the door shut behind it.
Locked-In with Dreams Louise Worthington
I eagerly wait for a new day inside my cold cell, even when the sun’s face is ready to give up on me. As usual, the sheets are unhappily twisted around me, hiding imprints from the vigour of my dreams. My secret light pollution. Only I can see them travelling on the train of my life going by, cabin by cabin. On waking, they are water spewing from a hose until it’s cut off mid-stream.
I am thirsty. So very thirsty.
Today I imagine myself escaping from a tower. I have grown my hair, and I lower myself down gently to the ground like precious cargo.
Outside, free from walls, stairs, and doors, I build a new country out of mirrors that heal fragmented reflections, like Picasso. I steal silver foil like magpies to protect my skin.
I skip stones across the pond – one, two, three – and bury seeds in the garden and water them in, then secure trellis for black-eyed Susans and ivy to spread over the ugliest and roughest of brickwork until this house disappears.
The precious things which I have lost shower like cherry blossom, and gusts of wind blow the soft-scented petals indoors, dispersed like breadcrumbs up the stairs, along the dark landing, to confetti beneath my locked bedroom door. If I try hard, I can catch their sweet scent.
Rebirth Lee Andrew Forman
Each footfall echoes with unnatural intensity as I ascend. The newfound light draws me, body and soul—this first dawn to repel the suffocating darkness in which I exist, is irresistible. The edge of all my eyes have witnessed have been no more than shadows and illusions of the psyche. I climb, against all struggle, into the blinding gleam, to flee this domain of suffering and feast on all that is within my grasp. I hunger for more than the rotten scraps the cold metal tube provides. As I reach the barrier I’ve never dared near, I wonder how their flesh will taste—the mother who expelled me from her womb as though I were pestilence, and the father who scorned all I am.
In My Darkness Miriam H. Harrison
The first time I saw her, she was little more than shadow. Walking through our sleeping city, she was a companion in my insomnia. A hope in my darkness. We had many more sleepless nights together, but the sunrises are what I remember best. The daily glow of warmth and colour filling her smile.
That was before the sickness came. Before it drained away her colour. Before all warmth faded to chills and aches. Still we spoke of our sunrises, but she was too weary to see new dawns rise. And without her, I saw no beauty in the light.
The longest, darkest night was when the sickness won. I dreaded the light of a new day, the start of my first day without her. But then, just before dawn, I saw her.
That last time I saw her, she was little more than light. Glowing like a sunrise in my home. Like hope in my darkness.
The Upper Room AF Stewart
He lived in a small room on the top floor of the monastery. A small space beyond narrow winding stairs that smelled of sour, musty age. The upper room they called it, at least the monks that spoke of it at all. Few wished to acknowledge its existence, nor the presence of its occupant.
“A holy man,” they sometimes murmured.
But no one truly knew. No soul saw him, not even the monks that brought him food, slipping it inside his darkened space. After all, who would wish to disturb a hermit lost to silent mediation and prayer?
Strange how the truth can be distorted over time. Equally strange how no one questioned the occasional missing traveller or how dissenting monks sometimes disappeared. Sin calls to sin after all.
For the creature that lived in the upper room was no holy man, nor even a man. Not any longer. Once perhaps, a devout monk seeking enlightenment, seeking the divine. But pride drove him beyond sense and he found only demonic secrets. Ones that devoured his soul. Now he waits in the upper room, a prisoner, consuming the sins of occasional fools that venture too far inside his lair.
But he knows one day someone will make a mistake. They will forget to replenish the wards, or he’ll devour enough sins to break his bonds.
He knows one day he will escape.
Stairwell of the Liquid Souls Harrison Kim
Edema steps up and down, up and down the stairs between the walls, under the light that never turns off. At the top, Edema cannot turn the corner because there is no corner. She can’t go through a door because one doesn’t exist. No turning, because her forehead’s becoming larger, her belly too, and her knees. Her body’s filling with liquid, what sort of liquid, she doesn’t know, all she does know is it is heavy and thick, seeping through from the walls, and it sloshes inside and slows her movements. Within her ears she hears a wailing, a crying in despair,
For God’s sake, get us out of here!
Her heartbeat thumps faster as the wailing rises, a heart that slops and slips as she climbs the stairs ever more slowly, hoping she may escape to freedom if she hits the walls hard enough, in this sick brown coloured stairwell with no night or day. Her forehead droops, her belly sags.
It’s her knees that first drag on the floor, her huge liquid filled knees. Then it’s the belly that drops, and now the forehead, pulling her head down, its creases lie flat on the upper stairs, her feet on the lower ones. Edema’s fluid engorged body fills the entire stairwell, a swampy miasma of skin, liquid soul and bones, she can’t climb any more though her legs continue in spasm. In her head the only thought is “For God’s sake, get me out of here!” how much time does her body lie there… ten days, a month, in stench and stink, seeping into the wood and plaster. Afterwards, the only indication that anything filled the empty space is a slightly brighter light atop the hallway of the liquid souls, an alabaster shimmering in the wall.
The Clearing RJ Meldrum
They parked, grabbed their gear and headed down the trail. Walking for about a mile, they reached a fork. Peter consulted the map. He was unfamiliar with the area, but their destination lay to the east, so he decided to follow the trail heading in that direction. Compared to the path heading west, this one was overgrown with grass and other foliage. It was clearly rarely used. Amanda was worried they were literally leaving the beaten path, but he had the map. Her instinct was correct; he’d chosen the wrong trail. It led to a remote, unpopulated part of the forest.
After an hour they entered a clearing. In the middle sat a ruined cabin. The lumber had decayed into indistinct piles. Only one part remained; a flight of stairs. In perfect condition, they climbed to a floor which no longer existed.
The sight was so incongruous, Amanda just had to take a closer look. She touched the bannister, but quickly withdrew her hand. It had vibrated. Peter placed his hand on the wood too, but felt nothing.
She started to climb the stairs. Her eyes were glazed and distant, as if she was seeing something Peter couldn’t. She reached the top and extended her hand. Her fingers mimicked opening a door. She stepped forward. Peter shouted she was about to fall. Instead, she simply disappeared. He ran up the stairs, but there was nothing. He had to get help. He headed back down the trail.
In the clearing, the ruined cabin sat quietly. The fresh varnish on the stairs reflected the evening sun, sending shafts of light to sparkle amongst the green leaves of nearby trees. There was a sense of calm and tranquility. The offering, although unexpected, had been acceptable.
The Servants’ Staircase Elaine Pascale
“I keep dreaming about the stairs.”
“The servants’ stairs?” Clay asked even though he knew the answer. His wife had complained of being haunted by the narrow staircase ever since they had been forced to relocate. She said there was bad energy trapped in the stairwell. He had caught her performing a ritual at the foot of the stairs.
“I wish you wouldn’t call it that…” Julia sighed.
“It’s historically accurate. Besides, neither of our families could have afforded servants. We have a clean slate.”
“Then explain the dreams.”
He tapped his forehead. “Your witchy brain, my dear.”
She frowned. “Can you try opening that weird cubby again? Maybe if I see the inside, the dreams will stop.”
“I’ve tried. It’s sealed shut.”
“Break the seal,” she pleaded.
Knowing that the landlord would not be thrilled with the act of vandalism but wanting his wife’s superstitions to stop, Clay tried the small door again, only to find that it opened easily.
“See, nothing—” Clay stopped when he spotted what looked like a sapphire ring peeking out of the dirt. “How did your ring get in there?”
Julia shrugged. “I bartered.”
Clay was confused. “Bartered? For what?”
As Julia swung the hammer at his forehead, Clay saw that the ring was garnishing a gnarled hand.
“Your life insurance policy.”
The hand grabbed Clay’s shirt just as the pain set in.
The last thing he heard was Julia say proudly, “Thank god for my witchy brain.”
She sat straight, legs crossed, palms filling with rising moonlight. Each in-breath had the cool chill of autumn night. Each out-breath had the warm hunger of her heart. Breathing in nightfall, breathing out hunger, she reminded herself that she was controlled by neither.
And yet, the moonlight had its plans.
The moon rose higher, and she felt her hunger rising to meet it. Her breath came faster now. New scents, new possibilities drifted on the night air, and she breathed them in, savored them through her sharpening senses. Her savoring turned to panting. As her breathing sped, swift and shallow, she found herself losing all count of in-breaths and out-breaths. Losing all sense of control. All sense of herself.
Her hunger howled within her, and as the last of her humanity slipped away, her limitations went too. She lost herself, but gained the night. She had no need for counting or control. She was the moonlight made into flesh and fur and fang.
Pen of the Damned 