MIST AND SHADOWS
Short Tales from Dark Haunts
Yasmine Galenorn
Copyright
A Nightqueen Enterprises LLC Publication
Published by Yasmine Galenorn
PO Box 2037, Kirkland WA 98083-2037
MISTS AND SHADOWS—SHORT TALES FROM DARK HAUNTS
Collection One
Copyright ©2014 by Yasmine Galenorn
First Electronic Printing: 2014 Nightqueen Enterprises LLC
Cover Design by Yasmine Galenorn
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any format, be it print or electronic or audio, without permission. Please prevent piracy by purchasing only authorized versions of this book.
This is a work of fiction and is entirely the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, or places is entirely coincidental and not to be construed as representative or an endorsement of any living/existing group, person, place, or business.
A Nightqueen Enterprises LLC Publication
Published in the United States of America
Table of Contents
Introduction
Ghosts
Mortuary Man
Siobhan & the Siren
Minor Deaths
Willoborn
Memory’s Child
Biography and Complete Book List
Introduction
Years ago there were a lot of venues for short stories, but over the years, those wells have dried up and publishers are reluctant to print single-author anthologies. So I decided that I would give you the chance to read some of my short stories via publishing them myself.
Please visit my website for information on the books, my forums if you want to interact with other readers, and my blog for my daily ramblings. And see the booklist included for my complete bibliography. You can find me on Twitter and in my forums.
I plan on creating more of these collections, for my series books, as well as original short stories.
These collections are dedicated to you—my readers. I hope you enjoy them.
Bright Blessings,
Yasmine Galenorn
August 2014
Ghosts
“Do you dream of me?” She whispers in my ear. I brush the wind from my neck and pull my jacket tighter. Invisible bitch. I can’t see her but she’s there. Always there, and I am always aware. Her presence, a flutter of lilac and narcissus. Her voice, the choir of a thousand nightingales singing in the moonless sky. And when she beckons me I lose my will, lose control, lose all sense of self.
“Do you dream of me?” Her eyes pierce my soul, scarify my heart. Two obsidian coals, glowing in the wash of skin so pale that should she fade and I awake, there will be no forgiveness, no return from core of her abyss.
I want to tear her voice from my thoughts, to rip her questions out of the wind and set them in stone. Drown her in the ocean again and again. But she’d win. She’d come back to me as a kelpie, leading me into the tangle, to my death in the moors. Or a siren, sunning on the jagged rocks against which the sea foam crests, and I’d wade willingly into the deep to taste her lips one last time.
We met in another life, my tormentor and I. Well, another life for her—for me, I remember our time together, all too clearly. But now she’s got it made. I can see her, but never touch. She’s laid the chase for me. Playing the quarry, she’s become the hunter and I’m her prey. Cat and mouse. And though I’ve sought her in my sleep, reached out to lay claim to her when she calls me out into the naked night, I’ve never managed to take her down, to make her mine.
You might think I’m mad, and you’d be right. After all, only a madman can fall in love with a ghost who lives in a picture he found in an old shop by the side of a barren road at midnight.
Drive down the coast. My Porsche burns up the road. One-twenty in sixty seconds flat. Sunset hovers over the Pacific shore as the highway winds alongside the ocean below. I hug the curves, slow for no one. There is a freedom to this road, an intoxication from speed. Leather gloves grip steering wheel, tight as I held my girl, tight as I bruised her wrists. She hated the leather, hated the bindings, but I persuaded her to play a little longer each time, always just a little longer.
Interesting effect, leather on skin after an hour. Leaves colored rings on the flesh, bruises by proxy. Tight cinch, knots prepared with precision. No escape. No safe words either, not in my game. But all games have a winner unless you call stalemate. And as much as I tried to break her, to teach her my loving discipline, Joanna was intractable. She would not cry, and I would not relent.
Oh, these tests of strength and endurance. She compliantly allows me to strap her down, to bind her body. But her heart? Inviolate. Her feelings, she reserves for herself. She hides her love behind glass walls and cellophane wrap, her devotion aimed at the one man who can hurt her with his words. He can hurt her with a single sentence more than any pain I might inflict.
We fight, loud and long. Each time she swears she’ll never return. Each time I tell her to leave, tell myself I do not love her, can not love her, will not love her. Then, a few weeks, a month later, she’s back in my bed again. Power games. Truth or dare for the damned.
The last time we meet she’s in a dark mood. Walking in shadows, walking in fury. Blackened eye, bruised lip. He did a number on her this time. I tie her up, start slow. Go through the motions when all I want to do is gather her in my arms and beg her to be mine. She clenches her teeth, stares me down. I burn her with hot wax, drop by drop down the pale line of her stomach. She takes it, takes the pain in, turns water to wine, agony to ecstasy, but not once will she give me what I want. What I need to hear.
“Beg me.” I bark orders at her. “Beg me to stop.” One word and I’ll stop. Or tell me you love me. That would do more than any obeisance ever could. Silence. Another drop. More silence. A splash of wax.
Talk, damn you! Worry here, the skin inflamed, the welts from the candle wax rising to form speed bumps on her smooth silken skin. And now I can’t stop…have to hear the words. Please say you love me. Please say you won’t go back to him. I can’t ask, this is something you have to give it to me freely. Tell me you want me for more than the pain I can cause you. I’m so rigid with desire there’s no going back.
Joanna looks up at me and smiles, a slow lazy smile. Her eyes are unnaturally bright and a strange flicker glints across those verdant orbs.
“No.” Her voice racks with pain but she won’t give in. Two hours and counting. Her joints must be in agony.
Why won’t you just say what I want you to say? Why won’t you be the woman I need you to be? You wanted me to teach you my art and now you won’t let go. You have to let go or you’ll force me to hurt you. Damn you to hell, Joanna. I love you and you…will never love me.
She opens her lips. Will she speak?
“I can’t let myself fall in love with you. You know that. I can’t leave him.”
Can’t leave his money, she means. Can’t leave the mansion and the furs. Gold digger. She can have my heart, can have anything I own, can have my soul if she asks, but it’s not enough to offset his line of credit.
The storm breaks. Frustration cracks. Mount the bitch and be done with it. Hands on her shoulders, holding her down. Hands on her neck, squeezing. And then, realization strikes. Horror. Her face, a frozen mask of pain and ecstasy. Her lips part, forever. Her screams reverberate in my ears and I can’t silence them. Back away and stare at the lifeless form on my bed. Joanna no more. Joanna nevermore. Raven hair and green eyes. Poe’s vision. My nightmare.<
br />
Her husband doesn’t know where she is, thinks she’s on a trip back east. She won’t be missed until Monday. Two days of safety, two days to plan Joanna’s burial. I untie her, carefully. Unbind the bindings, untwist the braids. I can unknot the evidence but the fact remains: she’s dead. Cold stone dead.
What to do? Take her to the ocean, send her on a pilgrimage to the deep? Out in the woods where the mountain lions will feast? Bury her under an oak and pray for her soul? What to do? Where to go?
I wash her body and prepare it with the love she never allowed me to show her in life. Her ring still glitters on her finger. Promises broken, oaths not kept. He’s a bastard. He beats her when he’s drunk, gives her diamonds when sober. She loved the diamonds, grew used to the beatings. I taught her to withstand the pain, since she wouldn’t leave him. Very rich men often attract compliant wives. So she became my pupil and I led her into the ecstasy of anguish, developed her strength to withstand any punishment he could throw at her. I trained her how to handle him.
Now she’s free but she’ll never be mine. Maybe I saved her from a life of agony. The only way I can look at it. I’m not really a murderer. I’m not a sadist. I just like to be obeyed. I just want to be loved.
I decide to drive Joanna up the coast. Take her to the edge of the western shore and cover her with seaweed dreams and pearls. Set her afloat in the ocean, send her down to the depths. There aren’t any links they can pin on me. We met in a dark bar. She lived close enough to come down once in awhile, on the weekends when she wasn’t playing trophy wife.
Drive up the coast. Porsche doing a mild sixty. Don’t push it, not with her in the trunk. Hell if I could explain to the police what I’m doing with a dead woman in my car. Somehow, I don’t think they’d understand. Would I want them to? Not sure. Not sure of anything, except my Joanna is headed on a long journey and I’m alone again.
Reach the cove I remembered from childhood near sunset. No one here. No couples loving, no children playing. No cars to intrude. A private spot, owned by a friend of a friend of a friend who’s always out of town save for two weeks every August. No one to notice.
I carry Joanna’s limp form out to the water’s edge and place it in the rowboat. Climb in, row out to where I can set her free facing the cliffs of the shore. The house is up on the hill, overlooking the water, but it’s almost dark and nobody’s home. The sun sets against the horizon, long fingers of light fading as it sinks into the water.
I struggle and finally manage to turn her over the side. I hold onto her to keep her from drifting. This was meant to happen. We were fated to be here. She couldn’t go on with her life, and I couldn’t go on if she left me. And she would have left me at some point.
Waves wash over her body. Long tendrils of hair float on the surface of the water, raven hair drifting like jellyfish fronds. Joanna’s eyes are closed and I wish I had coins for them. I’m sending her across Acheron, after all. She’ll need payment for the boatman and Charon’s services don’t come free. I fumble in my pocket and pull out two quarters. Toss them into the waves, whispering, “For Joanna.”
She floats, her dress a cotton shroud, buoyed up by the currents. Has she been baptized? Will she descend into the Underworld or ascend to glory? A sudden fear strikes me that perhaps I’ve cut short her chance for paradise and I draw a cross on her forehead with the stinging salt water.
She is still…wax…the Lady of Shalott without her boat. Her eyes are forever closed. She breathes no more, and I utter a prayer for her soul. I don’t know who I’m praying to. Perhaps to no one but myself. I am the one who took her life. Only I know where she’s buried. Only I know what happened to her. In a sense, I’m her god, and she’ll drift forever in the realm of the unclaimed unless I set her at peace.
And then I realize, I can never set her at peace. I killed her in anger, rather than love. That makes all the difference in the world. I tie ropes to her ankles one last time, weight them with bricks to drag her down in the deep. The waves pull her under and suddenly, she’s gone and I’m alone. And it’s over.
I drive along the coast again and again. I return to the edge of the water, time after time. Come back to Joanna, to sit and watch the ocean. I know where she is. Sometimes I can smell her perfume. Expensive. Neroli. And lilacs. Midnight gardens and lush oasis. Palm trees and dates and scampering monkeys. My Joanna was a woman of taste. I can still taste her lips on my own.
And then, on the way home, I see a shop alongside the road. A grocery store, I think. Mom & Pop business. Though it’s near midnight, the lights are on. I stop, pull in because I need something to eat. Adjacent to the mart is an older building, and while I wait for them to fry up a burger for me, I wander into the outbuilding. Antiques. Heavyweight oak. Bed-frames and rocking chairs. Spinning wheels and Tiffany lamps and Persian carpets.
And on the wall, a picture catches my eye. Framed in gilt bronze, a woman stares at me.
Joanna, fair and pale. Translucent skin, and her eyes mirror the sky, obsidian black with diamond pupils sparking in the iris. She’s come back to me, clothed in a gossamer gown that swirls to mix with the background. Cloaked in wind, in mist, in dreams. Cloaked in mystery. Her hair haloes raven wings, a nimbus of passion flowing past her shoulders.
I drift in her gaze. She’s tired of journeying. She’s come home to rest. I carry the picture to the counter and the old man looks at me, then at the framed image, and then back at me again.
“Are you sure you want this?” he asks. He’s serious. It’s not just some offhand question.
I nod. Pull out my wallet. “Where did you get it? What’s it called?”
“Well, let’s see.” He peers in the corner at what looks like chicken scratch. Takes his time, thinks before answering. “Ah…name of the picture appears to be Ghosts. I don’t really remember where we got it and I can’t read the artist’s name. One day, the wall was bare. Next day, there she was. Missus might know who brought it in, but she’s busy. I don’t like it, myself. Woman looks cold.”
She has every right to be. My Joanna’s been journeying through the ocean for months. Why shouldn’t she be cold? I carry the picture to my car. Eat my burger. Think about the last time I touched her; about how much I miss her. Did I weep when she died? I don’t remember. I should have wept. If I didn’t, I don’t want to know. I’m not a bad man. I’m not hard hearted.
And so I bring Joanna home. Hang her on the wall across from my bed where I can lie there and look at her, hands under my head, then under the covers. Her eyes stare down, mocking me. That’s troublesome. Joanna never mocked me. I’m not sure, is this really her or some other woman? There are little differences—the crease of the smile, the flutter of an eyelid. Taunting? Joanna wouldn’t taunt me…or would she?
And then I realize that Joanna no longer is confined to the realms of the dead. Now she stalks me in my dreams. I’ve invited a hunter into my house.
Most things like this start insidiously. During the weeks after Joanna’s death, I scan the papers for mention of a missing woman. Nobody finds her body. But her soul, I know exactly where it went. Not to heaven, not to hell, but straight into my dreams.
Each morning I wake in a fog. Brush hand over eyes. Where have I been? Where have I come from? Drifting in the currents, I suppose. Dreams of ocean waves and mournful gulls haunt me. I shouldn’t be surprised. Joanna turned my life upside down. I keep wondering if the cops will find her. Will they find me? And if they do, how can I explain that we were just sparring? Matching wits, matching wills. Matching bodies for the kill.
I don’t look at women quite as much. Not worth it. Too much trouble for the sport I crave. And Joanna…how can I ever find anyone else like her? She spoiled me for anyone else. I begin to hate her. Just a little.
One night I stare at the picture for a long time, wondering who posed for this portrait. Who painted her? I’ve searched the painting from top to bottom. There’s no signature. I want to name her, want to call her something, but she w
ill not tolerate anything but Joanna and I’ve become superstitious about uttering that name aloud.
She watches me in the evenings as I surf the net or watch TV or read. I glance up, see her gazing down at me, a smirk on her lips. Beckoning. Taunting. She wants me to want her, wants me to look at her, to notice her. I curse at her, throw books at the wall but miss. Thank God, I miss. I don’t want to hurt her again, even if she’s hurting me..
That’s the trouble, you know, with women. They make you want them. They make you reliant on them. You long for their approval, jump through the hoops to get them just to say good boy. Buy them gifts, praise them, help them and they still turn on you and send you away. They make you hard, make you crazy and then refuse to let you touch them. Or they let you have their bodies but don’t share their souls. Yeah, that’s the trouble with women. I begin to hate them. Just a little.
Joanna watches me from the picture when she thinks I don’t notice, and she laughs, her voice a choir of nightingales. A symphony of dreams. One night, I stand before the portrait. Reach up, finger the long-dried oils. Her skin, cool under my fingers. Her lips, burgundy and full-bowed. Her eyes follow my own as I trace the outlines of her body. I can feel her fury. Touching where I should not touch. Approaching where I should not approach. Drunk, I press a finger to my lips and then to her own.
“Luv ya babe…you’re mine and I can do anything I want with you.”
Her eyes flash with anger. “We’ll see about that. You are playing a chess match with the Queen. Don’t toy with me, boy. You can never win.”