Ave thought of the limbo of nothingness Sheridan had to have come across to return to her. She shivered, damp from her bath in the humid chill.
And maybe just a little frightened?
Ave realized she was waiting for Sheridan to call her name again. This close, she would recognize his voice. Or know if it was something else that called her.
But nothing called.
The cell phone was back in the bathroom. Maybe she should go get it and call her aunts in San Francisco, to ask if one of them had ever made it into the attic at Mardi Gras midnight. Maybe they would tell her what waited there, once they discovered it was too late to stop her from coming to the townhouse.
Ave let go of the rope.
And the music of the ghostly ball started.
So faintly at first that she wasn"t sure she heard anything, only that pleasure and sweetness had stolen into her mind and eased away her worry, the music seeped through gaps between the attic door and the ceiling just above her head, and swelled into fullness as she listened.
"How lovely." Ave could not recognize a tune. Only the tinkling harmony of archaic instruments. A mandolin? A harpsichord? Bells?
The ghostly ball had begun! Was Sheridan just a few feet above her, even as she hesitated? Would she soon be in his arms in the attic?
Excited now, Ave reached for the rope, pulled it, and opened the attic door.
Blackness and melody surged down the descending doorway and engulfed her. The flames of the candelabrum guttered out as the music drew Ave up the ladder.
Topping the last rung, Ave climbed forward onto the attic floor, into the blindness.
Far below, she heard the front door slam.
Ave swung the useless candelabrum around. "Sheridan?" The attic door creaked shut behind her bare feet. "Sheridan, it"s Ave." Her voice shook. "We can be together again."
Silence.
Why would Sheridan frighten her so? She would ask him as soon as she could unclamp her throat and speak again.
And then, so faintly she wasn"t sure at first that she felt it, a touch on her ankle.
Lighter than a wisp of dust. Weightless as a gossamer insect"s wing floating upward on a draft, a trickle of feeling drifted against gravity along her leg.
She wasn"t sure she felt anything until it spread behind both knees and clambered up to seize the insides of her thighs.
She screamed and hurtled the candelabrum. Heard it crash as she tried to backpedal toward the ladder, out of the attic.
Found she couldn"t move.
What had happened to the music? When had it stopped?
And what was this that roiled just in front of her? Darkness boiled thicker than the darkness it drew from.
She whimpered, mute with terror and hope. And sudden, deep, humiliated pleasure. Her trapped legs spasmed.
"Ssshhh." Oddly, the sibilant shush quieted her as the pitch ma.s.s surged against her trembling, welcoming limbs.
It eased her to the floor, pierced her body with white-hot chill and splintered her mind with light. Pleasure fled before awe. She succ.u.mbed in amazement, unsure that this thing that embraced her could ever have been Sheridan, gathering ethereal fragments of himself to swarm back to her from his oblivion.
Alexis Brooks de Vita has published literary theory in Mythatypes, an historical murder mystery t.i.tled The 1855 Murder Case of Missouri versus Celia, a translation of Dante"s Comedy, beginning with Dante"s Inferno: A Wanderer in h.e.l.l, and has contracted with Double Dragon/Blood Moon to publish a series of Atlantic Slave Trade dark fantasy t.i.tles, beginning with The Books of Joy: Burning Streams and Blood of Angels. She can be found at: alexisbrooksdevita.com.
Objects & Mementos.
"As we hastened from that abhorrent spot, the stolen amulet in St. John"s pocket, we thought we saw the bats descend in a body to the earth we had so lately rifled, as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment. But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and we could not be sure. So, too, as we sailed the next day away from Holland to our home, we thought we heard the faint distant baying of some gigantic hound in the background."
"The Hound", H.P.Lovecraft.
The Ba-Curse.
By Ann K. Schwader.
They asked him if he feared the mummy"s curse,
That blameless maid he"d stolen from her tomb.
The excavator laughed; he"d heard far worse
In every local souk. As twilight"s gloom
Suffused the valley like the Nile at flood,
He lit a lamp & tied his tent-flaps tight,
Then, with a flourish fit to freeze the blood,
He poured a dram & bade his prize goodnight.
They never knew what savaged him, although
He shrieked it very clearly as he died: "Ba! Ba!"
"Ba! Ba!" A madman"s babble ... Even so,
His men won"t speak of things they saw inside,
For neither time nor whiskey can erase
That black-winged nightmare with a maiden"s face.
Ann K. Schwader is the author of five speculative poetry collections: Werewoman, The Worms Remember, Architectures of Night, In the Yaddith Time, and Wild Hunt of the Stars (Sam"s Dot Publishing, 2010). Twisted in Dream, a comprehensive collection of her weird verse, to be edited by S.T. Joshi, is forthcoming from Hippocampus Press. Ann lives and writes in Colorado, USA. For more about her work, visit her Web site, ~schwader/ or read her LiveJournal, Yaddith Times: Nelly Geraldine Garcia-Rosas.
"The pupils dilate and shine with the thousand facets of a kaleidoscope with an abyss in the centre."
- Clemente Palma.
The fire that floats in the hallways purrs, whispers my name.
I was in the last stages of writing a thesis about j.a.panese literature. The cla.s.ses were over and the summer, which one could foresee would be severe, reminded me of the imminence of the deadline.
I read, as part of my investigation, an odd little novelette t.i.tled "Hitomi", written by a woman called "Tsukino" during the first years of the Edo period in j.a.pan. It was a complex text with a plot revolving around insomnia; the characters seemed to be one alone, repeated infinitely, who, with a different costume, moved from house to house to escape the impossibility of sleep. I, insomniac by election, did not wish to escape, but had no option.
Like the infinite faces created by Tsukino, the rigour of summer forced me to find a new place to live: a return to my parents" home was not an option. Besides, Mexico City had something that demanded I stay, search for a roof atop the ancient lake, traverse its subterranean veins inside suffocating, sweaty trains; the same "something" which took me that day to Donceles Street.
The squires, the donceles, are no longer that sweet nor young. From the parking lot that bears the same name of the street, it seems a labyrinthic cave opens up; at its entrance, an impa.s.sive, worn, three-story building stares back: three heads which question my entrance, but allow my pa.s.sage. I penetrate a web of centuries-old neocla.s.sical constructions, which close above me. Although it is noon, the sun barely lightens the sidewalk; there is a cold that slices the bone, but I keep walking. I walk by the theatre, Fru Fru, amidst a thick rain of black feathers. I see, on each side of the street, photographic businesses in niches full of humidity, some which are, ironically, illuminated by candles of trembling light. The bookstores of used books, like angels of a cemetery, open voluptuously. Amongst the angelic businesses shines "Miracle Alley". I enter this store as though an external force conducts me to the shelf at the back. On the third bookshelf dusty, damp and covered with a black jacket is the book. I pay 13 pesos. I walk. The street also smells of mildew; it is cloudy, full of dust. The used bookstores invade the sidewalks. I walk as if possessed. I walk.
I stand before a newsstand. On the right side, a thin, very-white sheet is pasted. With beautiful calligraphy, it offers a room for rent. There is no phone number, only an address on this same Donceles Street. I take the rice paper and ask the newspaper seller for the address.
"Right ahead, miss," he says, pointing to a moth-eaten wooden gate.