Stephanie. It’s a wide balcony, so it’s not unforgivable. An empty wine bottle dangles from one hand, a cigarette from her mouth. Her perfectly done make-up seems garish in the soft outside light, almost clown-like, an exaggeration rather than an accent.
The woman is mumbling. She repeats the same phrase over and over as she leans over the balustrade. “Moon dragon rubies for breakfast,” she says, as though it makes sense, as though the absence of those things makes her sad. She kicks off her heels and climbs.
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Stephanie says.
The woman pauses, caught, exposed, suddenly uncertain. She looks at Stephanie, but she’s seeing someone else – a fairy tale prince, a lover, a friend. She stands straight and says, one last time, “Moon dragon rubies.”
Then she falls backwards, over the side, arms outstretched like some suicidal god.
Stephanie’s on her feet in an instant, her breath disrupted, but the woman never hits the ground. There’s no woman. Stephanie’s alone on the balcony, alone with a melancholy violinist.
“Did you see that?” Stephanie asks. But the violinist dances away and the tempo of her song changes.
She peers over the edge, but there are only fireflies and moonlight reflected in the pool.
No, it’s not only that.
There’s the woman, clinging to the wall, her dress fluttering in the wind. She looks up at Stephanie. She smiles. It is not the smile of a woman. Those are not human teeth in that grin.
Stephanie steps back and away. She recognizes wrongness and wants no part of it. She finds her way blocked by the violinist. The music has stopped.
In the moonlight, the violinist’s face is harsh and angular, beautiful and ugly both. Her lips are so red they’re black, just like her gown, just like her eyes, which are almost completely devoid of color.
“You may be a good one,” the violinist says.
Stephanie narrows her eyes. “You don’t know me.”
“I know enough.”
The night goes quiet and dark. The moon hides behind unexpected cloudstuff. The music of the house, the chatter, the dancing, the laughter and innuendos and illicit proposals are gone, beyond reach if ever they were there.
The violinist says, “Step sideways, while you can.”
It’s a step away from reality, into shadow and dust and ash and mist. Stephanie steps because she’s too frightened not to. She’s off the path, away from the unreal house and its cars and its fancy fleshy guests. The woman laughs behind her, though the sound of her fades. The violinist is playing again.
Here, where things are strangely saturated, stark yet vibrant, uneven and unsteady, Stephanie staggers like a drunk. She sees horsemen and owls flying in formation and pearls instead of stars in the sky. She tries to steady herself, but there’s nothing to grab onto. She doesn’t fall. The woman laughs again.
Stephanie slips sideways and everything comes crashing back. She’s alone on the balcony. She’s alone in the house. The swimming pool has been emptied and the bricks are stained and weathered. No cars lines the driveway, not even her own. She sits on the front step. Slowly, the sun rises on a new day.
She’s tired.
Stephanie goes back in the house. She roams the halls, she enters rooms, she opens doors, she calls out for someone, anyone, to answer.
In the backyard, under the balcony, Stephanie finds a violin. The strings are gone. It’s only the body, but it’s familiar. It’s warm to the touch. She sits, cradling the instrument. The day proceeds without her until a girl appears on the porch. She comes walking around the side of the house.
The girl stops when she sees Stephanie. She looks nervous, but brave. “Are you the violinist?”
“Me?” Stephanie asks. “No.”
“Then you’re the ghost.”
Stephanie smiles. “Is that the only other option?”
The girl seems confused. She doesn’t answer right away. She says, “You were here that night?”
“What night?”
“The party. The wandering violinist. My grandmother used to tell me stories.”
“What happened, that night?”
“You were there.”
“I was.”
“You are dead.”
Stephanie shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“But you’re not the violinist.”
“I don’t think there ever was a violinist,” Stephanie says. “I think that’s a story your grandmother made up.”
“My grandmother was not a liar,” the girl says.
Stephanie puts down the violin and stands. “What else did she tell you?”
The girl grins. “That you should step sideways while you can.” She steps closer. She carries a knife that had been hidden until that moment.
Another step away from reality, Stephanie hears the laughter and the music. When she stumbles back, she falls into the pool. No one comes to her air. She crawls out of the water and hears the violins drifting further and further away. She goes into the house, but they’re all dead. Out front, the chauffeurs are dead. The woman who didn’t fall when she jumped sits on the hood of Stephanie’s BMW. She sees Stephanie approaching. She looks up from wiping blood from her hands with a hand towel. It’s saturated. She says, “Moon dragon rubies for breakfast.”
“What did you do to me?” Stephanie asks.
The woman smiles. She lays the towel beside her, covering a knife on the hood of Stephanie’s two-seater. She hops off the car. She rushes Stephanie.
They tumble together onto the grass and slip sideways.
It’s a long, painful moment, a clump of Stephanie’s hair in one of the woman’s hands, her throat in the other.
When they drop back, the cars are gone, the house dilapidated, the girl waiting with the knife. She buries it in the woman’s back.
Stephanie pushes herself free of the woman’s corpse. The girl smiles. She says, “That was the ghost.”
Stephanie says, “Thank you.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” the girl says. “I did it for my grandmother.”
Stephanie nods. She thinks she understands. There’s only one more step sideways to take, though there are no other survivors to meet her there. Except maybe the wandering violinists.
But they’re long gone.
Stephanie gets into her car and drives away. The towel and knife, both blood-stained, fall off the car before she reaches the open gate and escape the eddies of a house built of dream stuff and whispers and champagne bubbles.
ABOUT THE PROJECT AND AUTHOR
InkStains is a random collection of stories – fiction and nonfiction of any genre – handwritten daily over the course of a year.
John Urbancik is a writer and photographer currently residing in the Florida panhandle. He has lived in other places and is probably best known for his fantasy, dark fantasy, and horror stories and books.
An InkStains will be released at the beginning of every month to correspond with the months in which the stories were written. The author is completing a second year concurrently with the release of these. You can follow his journey on www.darkfluidity.com.
ALSO BY JOHN URBANCIK
NOVELS
Sins of Blood and Stone
Breath of the Moon
Once Upon a Time in Midnight
DarkWalker
NOVELLAS
A Game of Colors
The Rise and Fall of Babylon (with Brian Keene)
Wings of the Butterfly
House of Shadow and Ash
Necropolis
Quicksilver
Beneath Midnight
Zombies vs. Aliens vs. Robots vs. Cowboys vs. Ninja vs. Investment Bankers vs. Green Berets
Colette and the Tiger
COLLECTIONS
Shadows, Legends & Secrets
Sound and Vision
Tales of the Fantastic and the Phantasmagoric (Volumes 1 and 2)
INKSTAINS
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