Lucian Carver

The world is still as I wake.

No morning birds. No wind through the shutters. Just the heavy breath of night weighing on my chest like the old hag that stalks from dream to dream sapping life as we stare helplessly at the backs of our eyelids. My bones crack and complain as I sit up. My limbs resist my will to move, and ache as they begin to yield as though I’d been buried under sleep for days. The air tastes stagnant, reminiscent of mould and dust and something faintly metallic. My nightdress clings damp to my skin. I rub at my eyes but the haze won’t lift.

Careful not to wake Eric, I don’t bother with the lamp; no need to wake a sleeping husband with light to navigate my way through our cosy little home. I shuffle down the hall, the cold floorboards groan beneath my bare feet. The fire in the hearth has died. Most unlike that husband of mine to let the house go cold.

By now, Thomas will have kicked off his quilt again, and Amy has most likely twisted herself tight in blankets like a moth in silk. I smile at the thought, though it’s cut short by a sudden pain in my stomach.

I ease the children’s bedroom door open, wincing at the creak as it announces my arrival.

The room is empty. Their beds untouched. Cold and barren. The smell of them is gone. No hay-sweet strawberry hair, no sweaty little boy. Just dust.

My heart lurches.

My calls to my children are punctuated by heavy footfalls as I cross the room and pull back the blankets to find nothing. No sunken pillows. No sign of little bodies. Just silence and silence called back from Eric. Also missing.

I rush outside, ignoring the wind cutting my nightdress like a sickle through corn. The hitching post stands bare, staring back at me like a stranger in the darkness. The reins hang slack on the ground like an old scarf.

Why is our Mare gone?

Where in Heaven is my family?

I scream. Howling and sobbing until I am hoarse and my cries vanish into the tree line, swallowed by the black woods. No answer comes. I waste no time with dressing and push through the gate, the gravel biting into my feet, pain climbing my legs like a snake.

I need my brother. William will help me. He must.

The moon looks down upon me. An unblinking eye through slowly shifting clouds. Stones dig into my soles. Branches whisper overhead, their twisted limbs clawing at each other.

The trees lean in, as if straining for a closer look. Watching me.

‘What kind of mother are you?’ I can hear them whispering. ‘What kind of woman lets her children vanish into the night?’

I stumble forward, biting my lip to keep my composure. The wind howls its laughter at me, and the forest listens with cold judgment.

Behind my feet I feel a low and steady rumble. Hoofbeats. Wheels. A wagon.

Relief washes over me. I’ll be able to reach my brother’s cottage faster.

I turn and wave, voice hoarse. ‘Sir! Please! My children, they’re missing. I need help.’

The wagon slows to a stop before the driver steps down, his lantern swaying like a man after too much drink. As the light ebbs back and forth, I catch glimpses of him through the haze. A derby hat, a long coat. His eyes hidden in shadow, but he is as unsteady on his feet as the lantern.

‘You alright, miss?’ he says, with calm, slurred speech. ‘Why, out here… All alone?’

‘Have you seen them?’ I ask. ‘A boy and a girl, on a horse. Please, I need you to take me to—’

He tilts his head and reaches slowly into the wagon where his feet rested moments before.

The trees begin to whisper. Are they telling him?

His mouth springs open, a drunken bellow as he begins his charge. The lantern falls and dies upon the roadside, leaving us in darkness with the sharp goodbye of breaking glass.

I turn to run, but he’s upon me in a breath. A hollow cracking sound as his cane hits me in the shoulder, the handle grabbing at my cheek and pulling me backward. I fall, trying to scream. Again, he strikes me again and again. Arm, leg, face. Bones splinter. My body curls. I can’t breathe.

He roars nonsense, frothing curses, as he kicks me into the dirt.

I reach up, trembling, and grab his pants. I drag him close and do the only thing I can think of. I bite. His thigh, waist, anywhere I can find until I reach his drunken murderous neck. I feel skin tear under my teeth. Blood fills my mouth as his screaming ceases to bombard my ears. Amidst his choking he squeezes out a gurgle, one final protest. I bite down harder and my teeth meet in his muscle. A heavy nothingness fills what little space there is between us, then swells and pervades the night air, finally ending the tormenting whispers betwixt the pines.

I clamber to my feet. My left arm dangling lifelessly, twisted and sad. The taste of copper and strong liquor sitting in my mouth, the gentle sweetness having disappeared as if it were never there.

The wind carried the sound of the bolting horse and wagon to my ears, the sound leading me toward my brother. Toward help. My children.

The road stretches on like an endless nightmare. Fog creeps in slowly, curling its delicate fingers around me in an almost loving embrace. Not like the trees, or the giggling wind. The moon slowly blinking as it watches over all from behind passing clouds.

Behind me, I hear a new sound; dragging footsteps. A wheeze and a drunken gurgle.

I look back. To see the wagoner. Staggering after me. Head lolling. Blood pouring down his chest like warm treacle. His eyes catch the moonlight, his pale eyes staring back at me.

I cannot stop. I force my broken body to move, limping faster. Every step brings a new wave of pain as even the road begins to betray me, stabbing at my poor naked feet. The forest speaks again its judgment.

The wind whispers the accusation. ‘What kind of mother sleeps while her children cry out?’

I scream back my defiance.

The trees only lean closer, their hands reaching for me from either side of the long dirt road.

At last, I see the fire light in the window of William’s cabin far in the distance, glowing like holy salvation. I stumble toward it. My breath comes in rasps. My skin sticks to my bones. I don’t feel cold anymore. I begin to forget my pain and allow myself to hope.

---

I reach the gate and throw it open with bloodied fingers. One front window radiating with the comforting warmth from the hearth, the other bathed in soft lamplight.

I set my hands against the latter and look inside.

My very soul seems to freeze and die within me.

There is Thomas, sitting cross-legged on the bed with Amy tucked under the blanket beside him. With William reading to them, calm and quiet.

My babies are happy… In my brother’s home.

I scream, slamming my hands against the glass. ‘Let me in! They’re mine!’ I cry my fury. ‘You stole my children. They’re mine. Mine!’

William’s face pales as he turns to look at me. His mouth agape, devoid of joy.

With horror. He knows his guilt. My brother, the child thief.

My babies scream as they rush to their feet and bolt, fleeing from my sight. Poor Amy knocks the lamp in her haste. The lamp dies as it falls, and the dark night outside invades the little room.

And I am greeted by a face; a woman foul and filled with rage.

Glaring back at me from inside.

A face… Long and hollow. Skin blackened with mould. Eyes sinking, falling into blackening pits of decay, shored up by the remains of her eye sockets. Her mouth smeared red, and broken. Clumps of dark hair clinging to a mostly rotted scalp.

Around her neck, rests a silver locket.

My mother’s locket…

I reach my hand out to take back what is mine from the demonic visage. In some unholy mockery it does just the same. My reach is interrupted by glass. Glass, between our hands.

I remember the fever. Last winter, when Eric and I fell ill. The sweating. The shaking. The slow fade of the world. I remember the coughing, struggling to catch my breath. I wanted so badly for sleep.

I mustn’t have awakened.

I died.

Not in some peaceful, whispered way. Brought low by disease then swept out of the living world by fever and rot and silence. Like dust. And now I am this. A husk in a woman’s skin. A shadow that walks. A dead thing.

They don’t see their loving mother anymore.

Just a monster. The thing they fear after dark, the reason to keep one last candle burning to see them safely off to sleep.

I am the thing that haunts doorsteps, barefoot and broken, clawing at windows, howling names that no longer belong to me. I chase voices that once cried “Mama” now only shall I be “Monster”.

I want so badly to go inside. To feel their arms around me. To kiss their heads. To tell them I tried. God, I tried.

But I would bring with me nothing but cold and terror.

They’re safe inside. And I’m the danger.

So, I step back from the window, silently… I belong out here. With the dark.

From inside, I hear them scramble, bolting the door, hiding, sobbing. And I don’t blame them.

A new sound rises behind me. Not from the house. From the road.

A soft, wet shuffling.

I turn.

There, just beyond the gate, the wagoner stands, as though waiting.

His body a grotesque silhouette in the mist. Crooked. Slack-jawed. His chest still leaking thick, dark blood down the front of his coat. But he’s standing. The soft wet sucking sound as his body continues the now futile act of breathing.

And he is smiling.

A wide, knowing grin stretched too far. The grin of someone who understands exactly what I am and what I’ve done.

And he’s not afraid of me.

Because he’s part of me now. Born from my desperation. And we will never truly die.

We are the things of night. I hear the wind whisper its soft laughter, and the trees around point their accusing fingers at me. The unnatural, undead thing.

---

Born in Queensland, Lucian Carver has always harboured a deep love of storytelling; a passion ignited by childhood obsessions with Digimon, Pokemon and his collection of picture books. As a boy, he would craft his own tales, meticulously folding and sticky-taping A4 paper into makeshift books, each filled with imaginative stories and crude drawings in pencil and crayon.

More tantalising stories are waiting for you…
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