The Dark Corner

The cat’s sitting in the doorway, yelling at me to make it stop raining, and I’ve drunk so much coffee my legs are tingling and I can’t quite feel my cheeks. My memory’s full of holes, like it is this time every year, but at least there’s that to hold on to. 

The drops are slopping onto the patio from the eaves, and the leaves in the woods around us bang out like drums. “You’re the one who wants to go out, cat,” I say. But the cat just looks at me like it’s my fault, and who knows, maybe it is. 

It always seems to rain when we do this. The family’s only together once a year if we’re lucky, twice if we’re unlucky, and it always seems to rain. There’s a moral in that story somewhere, but it’s lost on me. 

The house is a fat, dread thing of dark wood and overlapping steeples, like it had been looted from some Norwegian outpost on the outskirts of civilisation. It’s at the end of a narrow valley laden with trees that hold some semblance of green even when the world around has turned to orange and flame red. One trail leads in and out, and no matter which way we walk if the mood takes us, we always end up back at the portico. Whatever lives we lead beyond the valley, we hold barely an idea of them while we’re here. The stone and dirt hold the rest for safekeeping. 

The cat fixes me with this burning green-eyed glare, yells one more time, and slinks outside though she doesn’t go beyond the eaves until a heavy splash catches her between the ears. She dashes off into the pines, stalking deftly along the narrow limestone wall around the pit. I can smell it from here, and something’s already rustling around among the fallen leaves, early though it is. 

The next pot of coffee is nearly ready on the gas stove. I’m not sure it’ll be enough. 

Two days ago, I think, I was watching a good but faded actor lead a play on Broadway; the next morning I woke in my usual room in the valley house without remembering even falling asleep. Tomorrow morning, most likely, I’ll find myself at an overpriced coffee house in Manhattan with only the dimmest memory of what I’ve seen. Every year I promise I’ll figure it all out, and every year the promise drifts away like grass on a river. 

I hate this constant feeling of drift, the gaps in my memory. If I were a sleeper, would I remember the waking world? If I were dead, would I remember what it was like to be alive to curse whoever took it from me? 

Is that what hell is – dying and continuing to go through the motions, without ever truly remembering why? 

The coffee cup’s in my hands, full though I could have sworn I’d emptied it. 

The cat finishes her inspection of the pit, and darts off into the endless expanse of trees that feel so old they probably saw God drown the world. It’s humbling, and mollifying, and strangely infuriating to have achieved such peace at so little cost. Trees never make bad decisions. But then, I wonder, do trees envy us our power to leave the forest and make mistakes? 

There’s shuffling and low chattering from the dining room, and from the drawing room and living room as well: there are too many of us to fit in one space, and we’re all restless anyway. The light step followed by a thump is my uncle Ralph, who lost his foot in a war he can’t recall; the double-time step is great aunt Eliza, who was a dancer; and from somewhere under us are irregular bangs and shouts from the older relatives who’ve started to wake up but aren’t there quite yet. None of us know how many there are in the tunnels, we just know we are an old, old family. 

Drowning them out is the constant elephant stampeding of the little ones upstairs. They’ve all been up since dawn at least, and will fuss and resist when the nanny, Karl, ushers them into their rooms later. If he can, and they’re cooperating, he’ll keep them contained with candy and costumed games. With his yellowed eyes and steel mask erupting from his skin he’s already their favourite, as he was mine, and maybe my father’s before. He’ll keep them occupied. I don’t like the subterfuge, I don’t think any of us do, but it’s for the best, even if one always seems to escape long enough to report some half-understood bits and pieces to the others. It’s how we all learned about the Awakenings, or how we started to at least. And our parents were always surprised we knew what we knew, even though they’d done the same once upon a time. 

“Fine day for it, Dash,” says Anna, making me jump. She’s quieter than the cat. 

She’s almost at my elbow, eating yoghurt and honey from a cut glass bowl. My stomach rumbles; I’ve forgotten to eat again.  

“Cat’s gone out,” I say. She nods. Anna’s a head taller than me, and stronger. We’re cousins, but neither of us is quite sure how removed. Some branches of the family tree got crossed over the years. The cat’s seen us all. 

“She’s going to miss all the fun.” 

“She’ll get over it.” 

I lean against the doorframe, wrapping my arms around my chest, and take a deep pull of the damp air. It’s so fresh compared to the house; every breath outdoors is renewal, and every breath indoors is stagnant. There’s no rule about who gets here first every October, so sometimes things in the kitchen will be moved around, and other times they’ll be covered with a film of dust when we arrive. We always argue, playfully, about who moved them, or why they weren’t put back, though in all likelihood one of the sleepers down below in the tunnels had dreamed hard enough to want a taste of their old life, and gone back to sleep when the dream was done. 

But it’s not waking, really. Not living. We gamble every time we go through the Awakening: some of us may turn to dusty sleeping hulks, some of us may come back among the living, some of us may be so warped and damaged that we’re beyond both life and death. It’s a small price to pay for immortality, we keep telling ourselves. But who was the first one to tell us that? And what have they gotten from us in return? 

The odds are small, we all know that; but we’ve all seen someone lose, and we’ve all felt it when they do. And the dead have even longer odds again: they’ve been dragged from wherever they fell and buried in the catacombs until they stir into whatever passes for a half life. If they ever awaken, surely it would be into a nightmare. 

Anna scoops the last of her yoghurt out, drops the spoon in the bowl with a clink, and ruffles me on the hair. “Come on, little cousin. Codd’ll be here in a few minutes.” 

His name’s not Codd, not really. Father introduced us, way back when, and if he told me the name I’ve forgotten it. But he always smells faintly of fish, and his face and eyes sort of bulge like something’s trying to pop out of his skin, so when I was younger and foolish – or younger and crueler – I gave him a new name. I have others I keep to myself, darker ones with just cause. I’ve never told him, though he looks down his nose at me every time we meet.  Nobody uses his name during the Awakening anyway.  

Four stout knocks ring through the house, along with the slow, heavy clank of the bolt being drawn to let him in. Anna’s already turned and strode away to greet him; I shut the door, smooth out any creases in my wool grandfather shirt and herringbone trousers, set my cup down regretfully and follow the swish of her linen dress and click of her wedges on the old wood.  

“You made it,” she says brightly, standing back the requisite five paces and bowing gently.  

He mumbles something, flicking water off his coat until there’s a little pool around his too-shiny leather shoes. His brimmed hat is just as damp, and his thin beard has been teased into an almost perfect V shape. The dull reek of fish catches in my nose; I have an image of him bathing in water that’s been holding fish guts, but it might be as simple as a cologne that turns bad once it hits his skin. Still, if Anna’s caught the smell, she’s not showing it. It’s never occurred to me it might be in my head. 

“Hello,” I say, letting my toes get just a little closer than they should before I bow. He’s shorter than me and I wonder, not for the first time, what it would be like to just smash my face into his. 

“Yes, yes, awful weather but such is life,” he says, beckoning our doorman, Elgin, over without even looking. Elgin has a towel already in hand, ready to mop up. He’s done this before. The forearm sutures mostly hidden by his crisp white shirt and black uniform are searing red; Codd knitted location stones into them years ago, when he found Elgin on the side of the road. They stop him from leaving, though he’s never tried. He and Karl will sleep against the door when we’re gone, to stop any intruders. 

The door is still open, letting in a cold snap of a breeze. There’s a pumpkin on either side of the door, yellow in a dusty sort of way they shouldn’t be. I can never tell if they’re under-ripe or already rotting. Four men, their lips stitched shut, carry in a black oblong box bound in iron chains. Is it the same one as last year? Likely – I recognise that deep scratch on the side. It doesn’t matter anyway. The sigils have been freshly painted, keeping whoever’s inside sedated and ready for the ritual.  

Before the door swings shut I can see the clouds parting, where the veil is parting between worlds. It’s still raining but it’s nearly time. 

“Come along, boys, down the stairs into the cellar like last year, you know the way.” They march on without breaking stride, footsteps echoing down the stone steps.  

“Well,” says Codd, clapping his hands together after Elgin takes his coat. “Any chance of a drink?” 

Anna waves him toward the drawing room, where one of the elder uncles is already decanting similarly elder scotch into a glass ten times older than I am. Anna smiles tightly at me while shrugging and following. The lines around her eyes are bigger than they were; there’s a weariness in her shoulders that I haven’t seen. Is she seeing the same things in me? I feel dried out. We are, all of us, decaying, though some are decaying faster than others. Wouldn’t that be a fine thing? But I can’t go yet – not by myself.  

The drawing room is long, stretching all along one side of the house. Paintings of familiar faces line the walls, small portraits built into wainscotting. Some look like me, or how I might look when I’m older, younger, somewhere in between. There were years painted under them once, but they’ve been scratched out, making them immortal in the strangest way. Beneath them ten elders and spouses sit in threadbare chairs, mulling over glasses or aimlessly chewing on breakfast pastries. 

They rise one by one, doddering and bent over some of them, and greet Codd like a returning hero. And to him he is – the one who keeps them going long beyond nature, the one who holds the promise of youth. If only they’ll bide their time, and go along, and trust the old words, the old ways, and the man who guards them like a jealous secret. 

It’ll be like a lottery, soon. We’ll all get a little younger – some more than others – but only some of us will get a restart. And it’ll depend on whoever Codd’s brought with him. Some years we all get a real jolt, some years it’s like butter scraped over too much bread. One sleeper will wake, for sure, and one of the living will get to live it all over again, but one slip and one missed word, even one bad mood and it’ll take one of us in exchange. I can’t have it happen again. I’ll do anything.  

There’s a banging from downstairs, from the tunnels. There’s always restlessness once he sets foot in the house. Probably the dead ones, the ones gone beyond saving. Some have been down there long before Codd was ever found. I can almost hear how hungry they are, how angry and thrashing. Maybe they’ll start on one another – it’s happened before, and everything needs to eat sometime. Or perhaps they and the sleepers are both just clamouring for another shot at full life, or perhaps the one who brought him into the fold is making all the noise. Is it joy or is it remorse? 

Miriam stares at me from the corner, mouth open slightly like she’s about to speak, perched at the edge of her seat as if she’s about to stand and come toward me with one of those great, sweeping hugs I’d cross the country to receive. 

But she can’t stand, and she can’t speak. Her skin’s grey like ash, her lips white. Spiders have spun webs in her tousled mousy hair, hair that could never be tamed by a brush no matter how many times she or I tried. If I touch her, I know my fingers will come away caked in dust. She’s been there for so long I’ve lost count of the years – she should be down in the catacombs with the others like her, but Codd’s kept her where she is. He catches me looking, smiles, gives a mocking little salute with his glass and I think about smashing it into his eye and grinding it in there. 

But I can’t. He’s the only hope of bringing her back. And when he does? We’ll run.  

Hope springs eternal. 

The older folks – like Aunt Deborah who was ancient when I was a child, and is a shade younger now, Uncle Sawyer with the teeth that are slowly growing back, even my granduncle Andrew with the arthritic knees – genuflect like they’ve been granted an audience with the baby Jesus himself. The walls are painted with sigils and mason marks and crudely painted images of the weirdest creatures imaginable, but there isn’t a cross among them. Not that the baby Jesus would want to look at us anyway. I’m not sure he’d even be able to find us. If there’s anywhere on Earth that’s out of God’s sight, surely it’s here. 

Codd does a full turn of the room, enjoying the audience and lingering a hand over a crude winged statue here, a twisted bronze there, while other relations try to cram into the room. He stops before Miriam, fussing over the angle of the painting above her, the one of my father on the eight-legged horse we kept in Maine when I was a child.  

Codd sweeps a web from behind Miriam’s ear.  

“Play nice, Dash,” says Anna quietly. “We’ll fix it up yet.” 

I look at her earnest, stern face, and realise I’ve had my hands in fists the whole time, jaw clenched hard enough to bite steel. I breathe, and breathe, and wait for him to remove himself from around her. 

“It might go your way this year,” says Anna. “Maybe they got a really strong one this time, not like last year.” 

My eyes flick from elder to elder, brow furrowing as it dawns on me that, even after everything, Anna and I are the youngest among them. The children clatter and thump upstairs in joyful giddiness, but they don’t count. The Awakening won’t affect them, not until they’re older. Not until they’ve had their first real taste of bitter life. 

Who would I give up? Any of them. Even Anna? Maybe. Maybe. I have a hollow in my chest where Miriam is supposed to be.  

Aunt Deborah breaks out into a fit of coughing so fierce she has to sit down. There’s much turning of heads and hurried whispers in words I can’t understand, even though they sound like English. From before my time, maybe.  

Looks like she’ll be the one to watch this year. If she’s going into it depleted, she’ll find it harder. Maybe she’ll have to spend a few years down among the sleepers, waiting for a chance to wake. Or maybe she’ll end up with the dead, too far gone to come back and angry at knowing what’s happened to them. Depends on what she’s bringing with her, most likely. 

Crystal decanters clink on crystal glasses and red liquid that smells of iron and cinnamon splashes out, then smears across Aunt Deborah’s lips as she sips enough to restore her strength. Smiling, she raises the glass as a toast to the room, but her eyes don’t smile, nor do the eyes staring back at her as they all drink from the glass in turn. She looks like the portrait on the wall that could be – must be – her as a young woman. It’s cracked oil on wood, darkened with a layer of soot or burnt oil, and she’s wearing a wide yellow dress with streaks of red that makes me think of Queen Elizabeth. How old is she? How old are any of us? She knows the odds are stacking against her the longer the day stretches.  

But with Codd here, and the sacrifice already down in the pit, she won’t have to wait much longer to find out. 

I take the proffered glass, gagging on the stink of it as it washes down through me and makes me feel like I’m floating. Anna lifts it out of my hand and I watch the pools of her eyes spin like galaxies as the drink takes hold.  

The wood on the walls begins to melt, a hundred small painted figures dance out of their frames and around us all until their eyes turn green and teeth razor sharp. 

I close my eyes and wait for the world to stop spinning. When it does, Codd’s gone – we keep a dressing room for him upstairs, and only he has the key. It’s the only room I’ve never seen. You can’t even see the lock when he isn’t here. Maybe it’s not there at all when he’s not. 

Someone’s put me in a chair. A weak, creaky thing that feels like it’s going to break under me, even if I’m a dried up husk. My hand’s holding something dull and waxy, stiff and unyielding. Miriam’s fingers. They’re cold in a way that makes me want to rear back but firm in a way nobody’s held me in years.  

The room’s empty. I could stay here with Miriam forever. Who’d know?  

But it’s starting. There’s a weakness in the air, a sort of electric crispness that tells me the Awakening is coming. So I could stay, and miss it. Or go, and maybe bring her back. 

I stand. I go. 

The hallway is packed shoulder to shoulder. Codd sweeps down the stairs to murmurs of acclaim, the deep purple gothic cape he wears draped over a crimson cassock trailing behind him but somehow not catching on his feet no matter how much I beg it to. A simple gold lattice sits on his brow, the metal twisted into shapes I’ve only seen in books on dusty shelves in the house. I could crack his skull with it, drive it down into his brain while he bleeds.  

There’s a hole in the cape, up by the hood. A small one that nobody else notices, not even Codd. Every other moment of the Awakening he is the master and commander. But maybe he’s fading too. I hold on to the thought, burying it down before my face betrays me. And if he’s fading, it means he’s just a man, and men die. 

The skin hangs loosely from his jaw and neck, flapping slightly as he raises a hand and smiles at the cluster of elder folks gathering around like hens waiting for meagre blessings of grain he bestows as the laying of hands. For the first time he’s old to me. Even the smile looks worn. For a second, as the rain comes down and thunder rolls over the distant hillsides, Codd wears other faces: lean ones, scarred ones, delicate ones. I wonder how many times he did this before us. Do immortals get bored? Would they welcome the sweet taste of death? I’m ready to offer it. 

“Is everybody ready?” he asks, to a sea of nods and murmurs. The voice is sweet and thick as honey.  

He raises a palm to the ceiling, looking up as the house groans and the skies crash. As the sounds fade he gestures toward the back of the property, toward the pit, and thumping and slopping and shuffling rise up from beneath us. 

Codd, with a cold flick of a single finger, parts us like Moses dividing the Red Sea and heads for the cellar door, the elders clustering together to help each other along. “Maybe I’ll get my new knees this time,” says granduncle Andrew. “Or I might get a bit more feeling back in my fingers,” says cousin Francis, the one who used to be a pianist when America was begging for railroads. A dozen whispered hopes and dreams swirl around me.  

Anna prods me in the back. “I’m happy as I am,” she says. “And it’s worked out for me so far. I’m pretty sure that’s the secret: not wanting anything.” 

“I think it’s when you want something too much,” I say, voice so scratchy I cough into my bicep. “I think that’s the only way to really get what you want.”  

Miriam’s out of sight when I look over my shoulder, and maybe it’s for the best. She’d never wanted anything either, and look where it got her. 

Anna shrugs lackadaisically and lets me take the stairs ahead of her, though there seem to be a legion of relatives ahead of me, and not all of them much beyond our own age. Their names escape me. 

Footsteps echo on smooth stone and brass-clasped lanterns light our way with pathetic, flickering flames. We fan out into what I think of as the lobby, a sort of wide, semi-circular room at the bottom of the stairs that branches off in six directions, and branches down into the earth who knows how many ways after that. We don’t know how many sleepers or dead things wait in the catacombs. As we mill about, waiting for the final march, I wonder if any of them were here before us, and if they’re still hoping somebody, somehow, will wake them. 

It’s cold and bitter, with dry mud and old, meaty smells competing with one another. Aunt Deborah coughs hard, whole body wracked with more force than her frail form should be able to take. Heads turn and feet shift but there are no words of encouragement or solace, only a slight hum of anticipation. I feel it when I press my thumb into my hand, shrivelled thing that I seem to be. 

Not long. The drizzling hiss of rain comes toward us along the tunnel to the pit. It’s short, and more or less straight from the lobby. It wouldn’t do for any of us to get lost or mauled right at the very end, would it? The coffin bearers stand at regular points, each holding an iron torch that gives enough light to see by as we parade, single file, behind Codd. 

There’s a deep snarling from way down in one of the other tunnels, and one of the bearers darts off after it. I pass only long enough to see him standing in front of a green-skinned, legless creature that’s attempting to gnash at his ankles before he kicks it away. A heavy metal clanking tells me the man’s closed a gate behind him; any sleepers staying that way are out of luck this year. 

Anna nudges up and tugs at my elbow. “See anyone you know yet?” 

A dusty, shuffling thing with closed eyes to the right might be my cousin Matilde, who we were told died of tuberculosis when I was ten. She looks haggard but far from dead just yet. “You?” I ask. 

Anna shrugs. It’s always so familiar, that casualness, and I wonder if we see each other away from this place and just can’t remember. “I keep looking for my mom, but I’ve never seen her. How many times have we done this, anyway?” 

Codd has stopped and is fiddling with the lock of the door leading to the pit, leaving us all standing like penitents. I puff my cheeks out. “Thirty? Forty?” 

“I think it’s fifty-three, easy,” she says with a confidence I admire. But that would mean my Miriam has been sitting on the edge of that chair for fifty-one years.  

Something occurs to me but it’s gone before I can put it into words as the door to the pit opens and Codd leads us out into the open air. 

The rain’s stopped, like it always does in time for the Awakening. 

He floats down ancient steps toward a bed of damp leaves and old branches that sags under his feet. 

We file left and right into what we call, grandiosely, the viewing gallery. It’s like a U-shaped cloister and the stone pillars are old and covered in moss, but there’s a metal grill mesh drilled into the spaces between them that still looks fresh. 

The cat mews down angrily at me, wondering how I managed to stop the rain and why I couldn’t do it earlier. “Hello cat,” I say, to the hushings of a man who looks old enough to have fought in the revolutionary war. Maybe it’ll be his turn tonight. Maybe he’ll get to turn the clock back all the way, if one of the sleepers doesn’t beat him to it. 

In the centre of the pit, on a filthy damp altar, lies a naked man. He’s perhaps thirty, veering toward heavyset, and has a bloom of a bruise across his temple that stretches down to a swollen eye. He’s drawing long, slow breaths. Black candles stand at his head, his shoulders, and his feet. Codd glides over the leaves and lights them with his fingers, sending up green flames that throw off more light than they should.   

The watchers murmur as Codd takes his place behind the man’s head – they’re normally not marked or damaged, what’s that going to mean for the ritual? “Calm down,” the gravelly revolutionary warrior says, “they’ve been cut and bleeding sometimes and it’s always worked.” 

Has it? I can’t recall. The cat mews, then pants. Do cats drink blood? Maybe it’s an addict needing its fix, just like the rest of us. A faint form shifts about next to it, reaching out to scratch the cat’s ears: one of the children is watching, even though they don’t want to get caught peering over the lip. Nobody else is looking up. Anna’s tugging at the metal mesh softly, craning forward for the ritual to begin.  

One last shock of thunder and the clouds blast apart to reveal stars revolving in shapes that don’t belong here. Do any of us? 

Stop drifting, I tell myself. Think of Miriam. 

And I do, even if the images are dusty and crude, like rough sketches instead of oil paintings. Coffee and croissants on a drizzly street in Paris, towering church spires on summer mornings, fingers knitted together while stalking endless museums crammed with statues that don’t belong in human hands. In the haze, I can’t tell if they’re dreams or memories. 

I’ve missed the start. Codd’s reciting the old words, the gnashing words that hack and slash the air around him as he sweeps his arms above him and back to the man on the altar. 

The others around me have their heads bowed in prayer, even Anna, whose lips are moving fervently. She’s been wishing for something after all – they all are, and I’m the one who’s missed my mark. 

 The leaves rustle and split apart as half-eaten dead things dig themselves free. Torsos with ragged arms and heads that have barely enough flesh left to count emerge, reeking of decay and other, fouler things. Codd doesn’t miss a beat or a word, eyes closed and hands continually shifting from the sky to the sacrifice. 

The man is stirring but his eyes are shut. 

They don’t open until the first of the dead bites down hard on his arm, sinking blackened mossy teeth into the flesh and spilling thick red blood. Codd’s chant begins to hum softly as flecks of gold manifest in the air above the man and begin to drift on a breeze only they can feel. 

The man screams as the second dead one rakes a skeletal hand across his abdomen, greedily gulping the blood as third jaws clamp down on his leg. They struggle to find purchase, and the thing gnaws on him like corn on the cob.  

I’ve lost my train of thought. Nobody else is watching and I’ve lost my train of thought. 

What was I thinking? Miriam? Always. But what was I praying for? Anything, I’ll do anything to set her free again. Please, please let she be the one who awakens this time. Anything, I’ll do anything. I lean forward, grabbing my hands together and pushing the thought down into the earth with every tense muscle. 

The first little golden flake hits my skin. I feel it tense, rejuvenate. Around me, shallow gasps erupt as one by one, the elders get the faintest taste of renewal. But it’s not over, not yet; some of them will get more, some will get less. 

Please, please let Miriam be the one who awakens this time. 

The man on the altar is screaming and thrashing now as Codd laughs, howling at the sky which twitches in an abyss of purple and pink that reaches down to caress his hands as the sacrifice’s skin peels away in one movement but a dozen directions. The dead grab it and wrap themselves in it, some of them chewing and some of them pulling it tight as they burrow back down beneath the leaves.  

The skins begin snapping to their frames, moulding to their bones as a dozen stiff forms plod down the steps like dreamwalkers: Six men and six women, clothes dusty and ripped in places by the claws of the dead as much as the passage of time. They’ve been down in the catacombs for a long time, long enough that I can’t even guess at their names. But I recognise one. 

Miriam, moving more stiffly than the rest and eyes closed, is a pace behind the group. I press myself against the mesh, calling her name, but the only one who looks up is Codd, who leers at me with a vague smile. His face shifts and dances in the light, like he’s more than one person at once.  

The remaining dead give way, digging back into their graves and curling on their sides like infants as they pull blankets of dirt and leaves over themselves. The sleepers take places at the side of the altar; the sacrifice is still living, still writhing and sobbing as Codd holds him from death with one open hand.  

With his other he slides the face right off of the man and wears it, shoulders shuffling as the flesh binds itself to his own, dragging both into a shape like the one he wore this morning, but different enough to be a brother or a cousin. 

From the abyss, a dozen tendrils of light stretch down and wrap themselves around the sleepers. Another, darker shaft catches the sacrifice’s body, quivering as it dies, and raises it into the air. The bones and viscera crack and burst into long, snaking lines of deep purple that plunge into the chests of the watching elders, lifting them until they’re sagging backwards with feet off the ground. Even Anna has her head thrown back in rapture, a slow smile creeping along her lips as the creases around her eyes smooth just a little. Maybe that’s all she wanted: one more year of youth, though we’ll all start to fail in the end.  

Countless smiles join her as the bodies hang suspended. They’re all marionettes, being hoisted by their puppeteer. 

Codd’s face is turned to the sky and up above him, so impossibly far away and yet so close I feel I can reach out and touch it, a vague serpentine shape spins. I’ve never seen it; I’ve never been able to look up. What does it mean? Why am I the odd one out?  

Where gold flecks once drifted out to touch us, shards of amethyst and mulberry are pulsing along the tendrils as they grip my kin, back up toward the abyss and the great, shadowy shape that coils and spins. Is it laughing? I think it’s laughing.   

I’m still grounded. A sleek tendril is probing the air, searching, but it passes right by me and slips along the ground like a snake. 

Aunt Deborah coughs and splutters. The tendril tightens, squeezing her as thick dark blood bubbles out of her lips. Even in the light of the abyss it’s dark red, followed by spraying foam as her body convulses and her skin shrivels and dries, her jaws snapping and gnashing at the air as her dying flesh begins to peel away and she rots from the inside out. Death has come. 

But as they all descend back to the ground, the assembled eyes aren’t looking at her, not even as one of the pallbearers emerges from the shadows and drags her away in chains. They’re all looking at me. 

The last tendril is lodged in my chest, and I feel it squeezing me from within, draining the life out of me. It branches off, whipping through the sleepers around the old altar, lashing them in turn until it settles on one: Miriam.  

Her dusty skin warms, the colour returning slowly and her face flickering until her eyes open. 

“Oh,” I say, as it all goes black. 

It’s so cold I’m numb, like I’ve forgotten how to feel. But something is touching my fingers, almost tentatively, like it’s not sure what to do with me. 

My eyes open, just a crack. I’m in the living room, a hundred painted eyes watching me from the walls. But I can’t raise my head – can’t even turn. My lungs burn to take a breath but they’re frozen, and a rising tide of panic nearly blinds me like I’m drowning and suffocating all at once.  

Someone’s running their hands across mine, and it brings me back for a second. It’s like the lightest feather travelling over my skin but the fingers touching me are almost white with strain. 

“Dash? Dash, can you hear me?” 

In my head I’m screaming, but nothing moves. Not even my heart. My fingers are as shrivelled as ever – or were they something else, once? 

“Dash? Dash?” A gaggle of shadows pass over us as voices clamour and cajole, drowning out slow sobs. 

“I’ll get you back,” Miriam says through tears as hands and unseeable faces drag her away into the shadows. “I’ll get you back.”  

There’s a faint odour of old fish, and a rough laugh that borders on melancholy as a hand passes over my eyes and I drift. Somewhere in the distance the cat mews assertively, searching for a place to sleep. 

I thrash without moving, rage without a voice, pray without hope of deliverance. As the house clicks shut around me, the shutters closing in and keys turning in myriad locks on every floor as feet march down the staircase and back to the outer world, I sit, and smoulder, and pine for the day when somebody rouses me from dreamless slumber. 

David O’Mahony is a horror and dark fantasy writer from Cork, Ireland. He has had more than 60 stories published or accepted across the globe, with his work available or forthcoming from Graveside Press, Temple Dark Books, Cloaked, Parabnormal, Dragon Soul Press, Rogue Planet Press, Dark Holme Publishing, Wicked Shadow Press, Exquisite Death, AntipodeanSF, and others. He has written non-fiction at irishexaminer.com, where he is assistant editor. He is the author of two collections – The Ties That Bind (2024) and What Gets Left Behind (2025) – and the novelette House of Sorrows (Graveside Press, 2026). He can be found at davidomahony.ie or threads.com/david.omahony