shadows and stones - an original fiction series of gothic, horror, dark fantasy

Isn’t it strange. Just when you think life has thrown everything possible at you, it manages to come up with a new tragedy to destroy your dreams. Five days ago Mama and I were throwing snowballs at each other on the front lawn and building lewd snowmen in the back. Two days ago I buried her.

She and Aunt Marcia had gone to the movies, one of those feel-good flicks I can’t stand. I stayed behind to work on some writing I was doing for a local music zine. They never came home. Instead a cop knocked on the door around midnight. Both of them were killed instantly. A drunk driver, only eighteen years old. He wasn’t injured at all. Of course.

I vaguely remember calling Liz, my best friend. Somehow I held on long enough for her to arrive, before I lost all control. The police had stayed at the house, holding my hands, so to speak, until someone could arrive and care for me. When she walked in I grabbed on and wouldn’t let her go. I never heard the cops leave, I never noticed anything at all.

It must have been Liz who called Rath. Edward’s number was listed in Mama’s book by the phone, and as my only living relative she must have felt he needed to know. Then again, maybe he simply felt it when my world fell apart. While I was with him in England, I could have sworn he read my mind. Either way, I didn’t really care. He was suddenly just there for me when I really needed someone the most, and wearing the face of Edward, whom my mother had loved.

As Edward he handled everything for me: all the arrangements I couldn’t bear to think about. I’d never discussed it with Mama, never even wondered what her preferences might be, yet he found them all out and made sure everything took place as she wanted. Mama was to be buried beside Dad, which made sense, of course. They have a lovely plot beneath an evergreen tree. Dad always loved trees. Mama loved flowers; there were hundreds at the funeral.

Edward dealt with Aunt Marcia’s arrangements, too. She was to be laid to rest beside her husband. The only difference was he was buried in Texas where they had lived before his death. Edward managed it all beautifully. My aunt’s funeral was the same day as Mama’s, eliminating the need for me to go. I think he realized it would have broken me.

There was a wonderful turnout for Mama. She had many friends from her job and the senior’s club. So many of them patting my hand, kissing my cheek, reassuring me that she was in heaven now with Daddy. I mustn’t be sad, they told me. One day I would be there too and we’d all be together again. The first few times someone uttered those words they went through me like a knife. Had Rath, still wearing Edward’s form, not stood behind me, lending me his strength, I think I would have fallen. By the hundredth time I became numb, not even connecting the platitudes with faces anymore. They couldn’t understand, they couldn’t know; I was never going to die, I would never see them again.

When I thought I would begin screaming at the kindly old ladies with their somber bonnets and Sunday-best gloves, Rath rescued me, removing me from the crowd, taking me home. I responded like a robot as he got me to my room, tucked me in bed and brought me a warm cup of tea. It was chamomile. Mama’s tea. It spilt all over the covers when I dropped the cup, burying my face in my hands as another fit of weeping overtook me.

Heedless of the spilled tea, Rath sat on the bed beside me pulling me into his arms. So powerful, yet so gentle, I buried myself in his strength, getting tears all over his suit and silk shirt. He didn’t seem to care, he just kept holding me, murmuring something I didn’t understand in a soft voice people reserve for animals and children. After a while, as the crying left me too weak for any movement, I realized he was actually singing something soft and low above my head. I’d never heard Rath sing before, I hadn’t known he could. It reminded me of when I was very small, and Dad used to hum a lullaby to me every night before he turned out the lights. Calmed by the tune and the memory, I finally fell asleep.

When I awoke, I was still clinging to Rath. It was late at night, the digital clock showing 1:15 am. Wide awake, Rath looked down at my movement, eyes glowing slightly in the darkness, and smiled.

“Feeling better?” he inquired in those perfectly proper tones he uses as Edward.

“No.” It was true, I still ached inside, an awful burning ache. “Will I ever?”

“A little, but never perfect.”

How sad that sounds. Reaching over, I turned on the light on the nightstand. Rath’s Edward suit was wrinkled and stained from where I’d been venting my grief. I realized he hadn’t moved at all while I’d slept; he must have been stiff from the inactivity. Looking up into the wrinkled face surrounded by steel grey hair I felt disoriented suddenly.

“You look so old.”

“Edward is,” he answered, with surprise in his light blue eyes. “I thought he would be best, being your mother’s friend. Would you prefer Michael? You did not exactly part on the best of terms.”

No, we hadn’t. I had hated him when I left England, and told him so in no uncertain terms. But I didn’t want Michael.

“I’d prefer Rath.” He understood what I meant, though he looked surprised. Michael is another act, a face he wears to protect himself from discovery. I didn’t really understand that while I was in England, but after returning home, I began to. Rath is what he really is; Rath would understand my pain.

Nodding he shifted, the outlines and features of his body out of focus for just a moment and then sharp again. Younger, black haired, black eyed, almost the face he wears as Michael, but not quite it, not quite human. The moisture at the corners of his eyes was very human though. I’d always thought he couldn’t show any emotions except sarcasm, arrogance and anger, but those remarkable black eyes were full of sorrow. Of course they would be, he knew my mother well, watched her all of her life.

“Will it always hurt like this, losing someone?”

“Only if you love them.”

Only. Suddenly I wanted to be away from Denver, away from sympathizing friends, intrusive telephones and the normalcy of people going about their lives as if no one around them were hurting. I wanted to be alone somewhere, someplace private where I could remember and think. Jumping out of bed, I pulled my suitcase from underneath and started pushing random clothes in. Dimly I heard Rath calling my name questioningly. I ignored him and kept packing.

“Eva!” Rath’s voice this time was a sharp command, pulling me back to reality as he closed the suitcase.

“I need to go. I…” Where did I want to be? “I want to be in the mountains, Rath. I need to be closer to God.” I didn’t expect him to understand how I felt, how the mountains make me feel, but he nodded in agreement.

“Then in the morning we will go there, or anywhere else you want. But not like this, Eva, not frantically, or you will end up hurting yourself.” Sliding off the bed he came to my side, embracing me again. “Tomorrow we will go. I promise.”

I started to say I didn’t want him along, when it dawned on me that I really did. His presence, oddly enough, was comforting. Still, I didn’t want to wait.

“Can’t we just go now, just fly up there and find someplace to hide?” I pleaded.

“No, Eva. Firstly, Edward has two appointments tomorrow which he cannot fail to attend. Secondly, should we both suddenly disappear without having taken a vehicle of some kind or any other means of transportation, people will panic and believe either that you have hurt yourself or, ” he chuckled wickedly “that Edward has abducted you.” He was right, of course. I hated him for being right.

“Besides,” he continued, “I shall have to purchase some new clothing. I brought along only Edward’s, and I am afraid they do not fit me very well at all.”

I finally looked and realized he was right. The suit was now far too large for the man inside it. As Edward, he was taller and heavier set – now, he looked ridiculous. Even if he sized his body to fit, the suits which are Edward’s standard would be terrible on him. Rath requires a much more rugged look.

Nodding, I agreed to his terms then, together, we went to the kitchen to drink tea and talk until the sun rose.

Here I am then, deep in the Rockies where no one will be able to find me unless they have wings. Rath and I flew to this remote area after leaving our car parked at the resort where we registered. Standing on the edge of a small peak, I look out at the glorious vista of snow and trees surrounding me. Breathing deeply of the freezing air, I feel alive again.

“This is God!” I shout, just to hear the echo.

“Watch your volume Eva, do you want to start an avalanche?” Rath scolds.

“What do we care,” I respond sharply, turning to glare at him, “It isn’t like we would die.”

“Speak for yourself.” He glares back from where he reclines on a single bare stone rising from the snow.

I puzzle over his comment for a moment, then it dawns on me. What is snow, after all, but frozen water? Water, the one element which could kill Rath, as I’d once had frightening proof. I’ve put his life in jeopardy with my whim of going to the mountains, yet he’s never said a word about it, merely followed along, being there when I need him. Guiltily, I push through the snow to where he’s sitting. Rath makes room on the stone so I can scramble up beside him.

“I’m sorry, it never occurred to me. One just doesn’t think of snow as being water.”

“One does when one is endangered by it,” he grumbles, but not with ill humor. I give him a little hug, which earns me another grumble. Rath really isn’t physically demonstrative; it annoys the hell out of him when I do this sort of thing, which is precisely why I do it.

“Thank you then for taking the risk.” I gesture out at the panorama of mountains before us. “Isn’t it beautiful? When I’m in the mountains like this, I just know there can’t be anything wrong with the world. Pain simply doesn’t exist.” Of course it does, deep inside, but the beauty allows me to forget, if only for a moment or two.

“I’d like them better if they were green. All that snow is positively obscene.” He shudders, but I know it isn’t with cold, though if he were a normal human he’d be a popsicle by now, underdressed as he is. Nothing but jeans, boots and a hockey sweatshirt in subzero temperatures is not standard attire, but then, neither of us really feels temperatures unless we want to. I’m dressed to the hilt in winter gear: parka, gloves, snow boots. I love to feel the briskness of cold on my exposed face compared to the toasty warmth of the coat.

“It’s so quiet. And I don’t feel alone here, not the way I do in Denver.” Funny how the more people you have around you, the more lonely you can feel.

“You are not alone, Eva, nor will you ever have to be if you come back with me.” And there is the crux of it. One of the main reasons I am here in the mountains. With Mama gone, I must choose between staying in the states and trying to live a normal life, or going to England with Rath and accepting the fact that my life will never be normal again. It should be easy, but it isn’t.

“I like being normal again, it’s simpler.”

“Is it?”

Is it? I sit and think about that for awhile. I suppose if I’m going to be honest, it isn’t. In England, it had been easy to fly about from place to place as a bird, or reshape parts of myself to make tasks easier. Here, I have to keep remembering that no one knows the truth about what I’ve become. Since trying to explain would have been even harder, I had to be careful not to slip up. Several times I had nearly been caught changing shape as Mama walked in on me.

In England, I had been able to shift forms whenever I wanted. Everyone in the household and village know what Rath and I are and respect us. But never to see Denver again, never see the mountains covered in snow. Could I bear to be parted from something I love so much?

“I would never see the mountains again.”

“There are mountains all over the world, Eva, and you could come back here any time you want to. Money is not a problem, it never will be. You could even keep the house as a place to stay.”

I shake my head, I’ve already decided the house will have to go. There are too many ghosts for me to ever live there again. Whenever I turn around I would be looking for Mama; I couldn’t live with that kind of pain. No, if I stay I will have to move, but move where? Mama wasn’t poor, but neither was she rich. Her life insurance barely covered the funeral expenses, so the house is almost all I have, along with its contents. At eighteen and unemployed, I can hardly qualify for any kind of loan. I’ll have to take an apartment, get a full time job and still manage school. I can do it, but it will be hard.

If I go with Rath I will have everything. He doesn’t boast when he says money is no object – in 2,000 years he has learned how to earn it, as well as how to keep it. Accounts probably exist in dozens of places under dozens of names, all his. Do I want to live that way, though, dependent upon his generosity?

“Oh, Mama, what should I do?” I whisper. I should have known he would hear it.

“That is the real problem, isn’t it.” Rath doesn’t touch me, but he knows he has my attention. “You think that by leaving here, where she always was and now lies, you will be leaving her behind, forgetting her.”

“You forgot yours, didn’t you?” Immediately I regret my words, I had hurt him once several months ago by reminding him of his mother. “I’m sorry Rath, I didn’t mean to say that.”

He waves off my apology with a gesture.“It doesn’t matter, Eva. The situation really isn’t the same. My mother and I were not ever very close. Even when she was alive, we were seldom together; her death had little impact on my life.” Moving closer, he takes my hand, as he often does when trying to make a point. “But Eva, when it really matters, where I truly have cared for someone, when I have loved them, I do not forget, not even if we have been parted by a thousand miles or a thousand years.”

Releasing my hand, he pulls a small box out of his pocket. Before I can see more than a glitter of gold he has removed something from it and swung the object around my neck. I feel him closing a clasp at the back of my neck while I look down to see what it is.

“Now they will be with you forever, Eva.”

It is a locket which appears to open from both sides. Opening the front, I see on one side Mama’s face smiling up at me. It was one of my favorite photos of her, taken when we went to Disneyland last year. Opposite, encased in glass is a single curl of Mama’s hair. With shaking hands I open the back. No hair here, only photos, a portrait of my father, taken a year or two before he died and a miniature of the three of us, together, a happy family caught for eternity on film. I close it. On the gold I see their names, engraved in a beautiful script like part of the border work, invisible unless you look. I cannot speak to thank him, it is too much.

I almost knock him off the rock with my sudden embrace. Momentarily startled, he stiffens, then relaxes, accepting what I cannot say in words, taking the gesture as it is meant. When I finally let him go and look at his face I actually believe I see tears in his eyes. Maybe Rath is human after all.

Slipping off the stone, I go back to the peak’s edge, looking once more at the scenery below. There can’t possibly be anything more beautiful than this in the world, can there? I will never know if I don’t go out and look.

The crunching of snow warns me of his approach long before I feel the heat of his body behind me. Rath stops at my side, sharing the view.

“I promise not to interfere with your life, Eva, whatever you choose to do. But I would very much like to have you come back.” For a moment he is silent. “I have missed you.”

Many times since I returned home I had wondered if he was lonely. He must have been, to have waited so long for one of the women of my family to inherit the powers which passed from generation to generation. Here I am, barely beginning my life, while he has been alive for centuries. I think he must know a great deal about the pain I am feeling.

“That must have hurt.”

“What?” Score one for Eva, he actually sounds confused.

“Saying you missed me. That kind of confession doesn’t come out of you everyday.” Now it’s my turn for an evil grin.

Laughing, he bows, acknowledging the score, which gives me the perfect opportunity to shove the snowball I’ve been holding down the back of his sweatshirt. Before he can react I’ve taken off, racing across the snow as a hare. A lupine howl warns me I’m being pursued, mid leap I become a wolf as well, stretching hard and fast to keep ahead.

Rath is right, I will never leave Mama or Dad behind, so long as I carry them with me, not just physically, in the locket, but within my memories and my heart as well. Suddenly I feel a bird’s claws burrow in the fur of my back. Rath, of course. Now that we’ve reached deeper snow he isn’t about to risk getting sunk in it. I don’t try to shake him off, I just keep running with the bird as my passenger. Only when I reach a snowless clearing do I finally stop, exhausted, and feel him dismounting.

Grinning, Rath offers me a hand up. I laugh at him, his hair is windblown from the ride, making him look more demonic than usual. Declining the offered hand, I continue to lie in the wet grass. It’s time to decide, I feel it. Stay here, in Colorado, live in predictable normalcy for the next several hundred years, or go with Rath to a place where nothing is certain except that nothing there will ever be normal. I reach up to him.

“I’ll take that hand up now.” He proffers it with a gentlemanly flourish, pulling me to my feet without effort.

“So, brother,” I say, still holding tight to his hand, “do we fly to England on our own power, or do you actually use a plane?”

Pleasure and surprise light his eyes, as well as relief. He really did care what I would choose to do.

“I fly in the plane, Eva, you go in the luggage compartment with the other pets.” Howling, I am after him, as this time it is he who flees. Both of us descend the mountain in one shape, then another, laughing loudly and not caring at all if we start an avalanche.

�

episode i: journey into darkness - episode ii: tea party - episode iii: awakening
episode iv: the book of grief - episode v: paterfamilias - episode vi: breaking points
episode vii: the dark of the mind - episode viii: decisions
episode ix: momentary distractions - episode x: exorcising demons i
episode xi: porcelain visions - episode xii: the nature of jackals
episode xiii: exorcising demons ii - episode xiv: the invitation
episode xv: body & soul - episode xvi: mothering sunday
episode xvii: imbalance of power - episode xviii: interlude
episode xix: between life and death

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