Welcome to part 6 of my serialized story. This took me way to long to put out. My apologies, but maybe when you read it you’ll see why. Read the earlier parts if you would like:
part1
part 2.
part 3.
part 4.
part 5.
February 1927
Their destination looked like a hole into which nothing that entered would ever return. Arthur was regretting this journey, but Ethel slept peacefully now and that was some consolation. Next to her, Randall leaned against the wheel, looking far more eager to drive into the darkness ahead than anyone had expected. Arthur was frightened of the power this place seemed to be gaining over his friend with each minute by which the distance closed.
“There it is.” said Randall. “This changes things.”
The river opened to the bay, the far side of which looked alive as the night approached the morning. Ships entered the passage between the breakwaters and steamed up to the docks on the far side. Lights sparked to life as stevedores arrived and relieved these low slung hulls of their cargo.
Ahead stood a patch of shadows and silence pushed up along the water. At this hour the contrast between that uninhabited head of land and the city and bay surrounding it was stark. Its sullen house was visible only because of the moonlight. It stood with its back to them, preferring to sulk as it stared at the endless ocean.
“If I’d known…” said Arthur. “I wouldn’t have come.”
“Sorry, Arty.” said Dorothy. “I knew you wouldn’t.”
Randall sighed. “Now it’s me that won’t turn back.”
“Even for Ethel’s sake?” said Arthur.
“If Ethel knew where we’re headed, do you think she’d stand for this? Now’s the time.”
The little girl made of clay and porcelain and glass sat next to Arthur, by the window. This put the big man in the middle, but the girl was so warm that he’d insisted she be nearer the cold. Yet the small hand that held his became warmer as their conversation progressed.
“Randall,” said Dorothy, “We’re only here for money.”
“Believe me, I want money. But I want more than that.”
Dorothy chuckled, but she wasn’t really laughing.
“I’m supposed to be the one who doesn’t have enough sense to stay out of trouble. This isn’t like you.”
To that Randall responded with silence. The girl’s skin rippled, as though there were worms burrowing beneath it.
“I’m afraid of what’s happening to me.” she said.
“Don’t be afraid.” said Arthur. “We won’t let anything hurt you. Will we, Dotty?”
His sister looked into the girl’s eyes for a few moments before answering.
“No.” she said. “If that means no money, so it is.”
“I don’t know if you can stop this.” said the girl.
“She’s not even…” Randall started.
“Not even what?” said Dorothy. “She speaks. She’s afraid. She has feelings. Who made you judge over what is or isn’t a real life? This place makes you mad, but for the same reason it should make you see…”
“I understand!” said Randall, throwing up a hand. “Not that you haven’t made yourself judge and executioner.”
“She’s innocent. Charlie wasn’t.”
“Like I said.”
“Where are we going?” said the girl. “It’s making your friend very angry.”
“Ethel and I grew up here.” said Randall. “Everyone thought the family was doing something good by taking orphans in, but they treated us like slaves.”
He shook his head, the clench in his jaw so hard it looked as though it might crush his teeth. The girl turned away and put her free hand on the cold window. Arthur could see the the ripples, ever so subtle, undulating up her arm and along the back of her hand. A fog spread from her fingers across the glass. It was as though her fear was spilling over the window.
“What is it we can’t stop?” said Arthur.
“I fill up with what everyone else feels.” she said. “And all the stuff you ever felt. All at once. I don’t even know which feelings are mine, besides being afraid.” Her chest heaved and Arthur realized that this creature actually breathed. “It hurts. It really, really hurts. I think I already took too much.”
“There’s nothing we can do for you?” said Dorothy.
“Our father says we need it to live, but if we get too much…we stop.”
“Stop?”
“Then we feel nothing at all.”
Dorothy held her hand over her mouth and said, “Who would make such a thing? Why? Randall, stop the car, just for a minute.”
“What is that going to do but get us all in trouble quicker?” He glanced back. “She looks fine. This was your idea, Dotty.”
“I know what you’re thinking, but we’re only getting money, if we even get that. It isn’t like I’ve never wanted revenge. Or got my revenge.”
Randall pushed his words through a stiffened jaw.
“One man cheated on you. He pushed you out of a business you loved. I know, Dotty. But these people spent years making me sleep in the hay and dragging me out before sunrise to work until I was falling over. Only one person in that family ever showed any kindness, but even that didn’t last.”
“Don’t do this to him.” said the girl
“And what about our mother?” said Arthur. “Everyone in this car had a terrible parent. Even the girl.” He held up his hand, showing Randall the knotted triangles. “It’s why we’re together.”
“Please stop.” said the girl. “It’s too much.”
“We’re the circle of three.” said Dorothy.
Randall slammed his hand on the wheel and the girl shouted. “Stop making him angry!”
Her words stunned them all to silence. Ethel stirred, but did not awake. The car rolled up to a stone wall. Its storm damaged gate, encrusted by frost, appeared to float in the weak glow of headlamps and moonlight, like a shipwreck falling under a human gaze for the first time since the storm that drew it into the depths.
“You both know what happened to me.” said Randall. “No matter what else we may share, I don’t think I will ever stop being afraid of the day you leave me and Ethel and go back to your own kind.”
He got out and fetched a tire iron. The three remaining in the car watched him work at the chains as billows of exhaled air obscured his face. Dorothy looked her brother in the eyes.
“I’ve seen this happen to people.” she said. “I don’t know if we can trust him right now. Do you see how he’s different? It usually isn’t that easy to push him from a dead calm into a rage so quickly. If he loses control…”
“He saved my life once.” said Arthur. “He’s my best friend. I know him.”
“But I know the power haunted places have over haunted people. Memories have a way of overpowering the present, Arty. After all, there is only one present and so much of the past.”
“Randall can do this. He’s carried on for a long time.”
“If it all comes in at once, no one stands a chance. What thoughts do you think I put in Charlie’s head to drive him to suicide? Sure, the man was a hack, but his stuff sold because inside all those smug words there was real fear. Charlie himself was like that. Why do you think I was ever drawn to him? No man with a power to evoke such darkness lives without terrors that can undo him.”
“No wonder your writing sold so well.”
They heard a crack and the sound of the chains on the gate falling to the earth. The hinges whined as Randall pushed it open. He sat in the car again and piloted them all through the mouth of that wreck. As they passed a great stone post, there was a bronze plaque reading: “The Lower Withens.”
When Randall spoke, his voice was low and flat, as though he had expended so much energy that he was now only able to muster the minimum effort to communicate.
“Where now?”
“Up the hill.” said Dorothy. “To the burial grounds.”
“It’s just as well.”
“I don’t like it here.” said the girl. “It’s good I can’t see it.” She stretched her hand out in front of her. “Everything past here is blurry.”
She pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged her legs against herself, making her look so much like any normal child that Arthur had seen.
“You should give her your coat, Arty.” said Dorothy.
“She’s not cold.” he said. “She’s scared.”
“I’m very hot.” said the girl. “But I would still like your coat.” When Arthur gave it to her, she took a deep breath and said, “It smells good.”
They drove up a shallow slope and found the family plot at a place where the hill leveled off before continuing upward again. A tall monument supported angels watching over rows of smaller stones. Behind the monument stood a small granite building.
“It’s in there.” said Dorothy.
“We’re going to break into a crypt?” said Arthur.
“It’s just storage. They wanted it to fit in, I guess.”
“Dotty, just how did you find out about the money?”
“Charlie used to leave letters for his lady friend in a locker at the train station before he left for the publishing house. I… seduced a key from the station agent. I couldn’t check the locker until I came in. Lucky that Randall had come out to meet me so late.”
“We are the circle of three, after all.” said Randall.
She got out and walked over to the stone shed. The lock was broken and the door swung open. Randall went out, lit a cigarette, and leaned against the cab. His eyes were fixed on the monument.
Arthur remained in the cab with Ethel and the girl. The girl’s knees were pressed against her face and Arthur’s big coat covered her like a tent.
“Are you feeling better?” said Arthur.
“Your coat helps a little. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He smiled. “Can I ask… why did your father make you this way?”
Randall flicked his cigarette in the darkness. A spot of orange light arched through the air for a moment before going out. He walked into the graveyard and knelt down by a headstone near the monument. He brushed the snow and dirt away, revealing the name “Clara Henshaw”.
The tension drained from his face, replaced by sadness. He closed his eyes and placed his forehead against the cold rock. Arthur was so struck by the image that he had forgotten his question to the girl and she startled him when she spoke again.
“I think I am supposed to live forever.” she said.
Arthur thought about the sight of her brother getting his face ripped off, then put the thought away. He wasn’t sure what was worse.
“I can’t see your friend.” she said. “But I think I feel him crying.”
“He lost someone he loved.” said Arthur. “Someone he hurt.”
Arthur noticed a moving light in the corner of his eye. He turned and looked through the rear window. A pair of headlights was following the riverbank, coming in the direction of the house.
Dorothy emerged from the shed empty handed.
“It’s not there.”
Randall lifted his head
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said, Randall.”
He marched up to the doors and peered within. Shaking his head, he disappeared inside. There was some rattling and Randall came charging out a with a shovel slung over his shoulder and a face so furious that Dorothy jumped back.
“Something in you changed.” said the girl as she touched Arthur. “What’s coming?”
Randall swung the shovel over his head. It hit the wing of an angel on the monument. Bits of rock flew away and left a little chip. Randall yelled and swung again, making the chip deeper.
“Randall stop!” said Dorothy.
“There is something coming!” The girl placed her palms on the rear window. “I can’t see! What is it?”
Dorothy noticed the activity in the car and urged Randall to come back. He kept swinging and yelling, oblivious to anything else. The girl pounded the window.
“Take me away from here!” She turned to Arthur and put her clay face against his chest, gripping his shirt in her fists. “Please, Arty.”
It was the first time Arthur recalled her using his name, and she had chosen to call him what only Dorothy called him. She looked up and her eyes met his. Her face was covered with sticky tears. She gasped as though she were trying to hold back a tremendous force. Then she opened her mouth and released a scream that shook the cab’s windows.
This at last awoke Ethel. With bleary eyes, she pushed herself up and saw the girl losing her mind and Randall doing likewise.
“Arthur!” she cried. “What’s going on?” Before he could answer, she saw the house. “Arthur…?”
He was looking at the headlights rolling towards the house. The girl was still screaming. Dorothy was trying to pull Randall away from the statue, but had to duck as he flung the shovel. Arthur rolled down a window.
“Dotty, Randall!” he said. “Someone’s coming.”
“Arthur!” said Ethel. “Are we at the Withens?”
At these words the girl curled herself up into a ball and rocked back and forth on her tailbone, repeating “no, no, no.” over and over. She began hitting her forehead with the palms of her hands. The blows left dents on her brow, below the thumbprints. Arthur tried to stop her.
“No, please.” she said. “It all hurts so much inside. I need this so I can feel something else.”
Randall, panting and covered in sweat, dropped the shovel and said, “We will not have come here for nothing. I want to see Clara, but I can’t without you two.”
“We need to go.” said Arthur.
Randall scanned the darkness. The headlights had disappeared behind the house.
“I don’t see anything.” he said. “Dotty, your mother taught you to conjure before she died?”
“Randall, no.” said Dorothy. “Not now.”
“It’s easy for you to run away. But the first thing I loved is buried under my feet. Please… is it possible to speak to her, just the least little bit?”
Ethel said to the girl. “Why does the name of this place scare you?”
“This is the house of wheels.” she said. “The Drifter is here.”
Dorothy turned back to the car and Randall caught her by the arm. The look he gave her said everything. Dorothy sighed.
“I can call Clara.” she said. “Arthur can guide her here. You can understand what she says. Moma tried alone and it destroyed her. She created the circle so together we’re stronger.”
“Then this is how it should be.” said Randall. “On the same night she told us why she brought us together, she died and sent us here.”
“Charlie sent us here.”
“And who helped you speak to Charlie?”
Dorothy nodded. She wrapped her hand around Randall’s. She reached towards the car and the open window. Arthur knew she was reaching for him. He shook his head.
“Arty.” she said. “To do this, I have to come near to death. Someone has to pull me out.”
“No.” said Ethel. “We need to leave.”
“Ethel, please.” said Randall. “This is the moment, right now. Arthur, can’t you see what’s lead up to it? Don’t worry about the girl. She isn’t real.”
“She’s more real than a ghost.” said Ethel.
Arthur felt the pull of his sister through the air between him and her outstretched hand. Despite what she had said before, he knew that in the end there was always something she wanted more than money, just like Randall. He saw the change in her face when Randall started talking about what was meant to be. Arthur also felt the girl tugging at him, and heard Ethel urging them to leave.
“Not long ago you both made it clear how you feel.” he said “I don’t think it’s changed because you’ve put all that behind. You each want something from the other, but that’s it. Do you really think the circle will work that way?”
As soon as Arthur said this, Randall’s face changed. Arthur saw the friend he remembered and he knew that he was wrong. When someone turns their back on you and walks away, they’re gone. Randall had been walking away, but he was walking backwards, eyes fixed on Arthur. He wanted to be called back. Dorothy, however, was still just after an opportunity.
Randall’s grip on Dorothy tightened. Dorothy saw the hesitation in Arthur and pulled her arm back. She turned around. She was going to do this without him. The girl felt the same hesitation. She reached for the door handle.
“I need to go. I can’t trust you.”
Before anyone could react, the girl was outside and running further up the bare hill. Dorothy pulled away from Randall.
“Shit! Shit!” said Dorothy. She looked at the others. “I’ll get her, the rest of you get back in the car.”
Dorothy climbed the hill. Somehow, she had come to place that girl above money or even her desire to conjure the dead. She saw the pain. She saw the abuse. She saw herself. Randall got in the car. He rested his head on the wheel.
“Okay.” he said. “When she gets back, we go.”
“It will take too long.” said Arthur, sliding to the door. Ethel grabbed his arm as he passed behind her and he said, “I can’t leave my sister behind.”
“I know.” said Ethel. “Just don’t forget about me, or our baby. Don’t walk over that hill and disappear.”
“I won’t.” he said.
He left the cab and ran up the hill. At the top was a flat but rough expanse of rock and lichen with a single bare tree clinging on despite all the squalls that had passed over it. The girl was standing beneath that tree. Dorothy stood over her. It looked as though she had calmed the girl, but as Arthur approached it became clear that it was quite the opposite.
The little thing’s porcelain teeth were chattering. Some were breaking and white bits flew away from her. The undulations that resembled burrowing worms covered every inch of her skin. Her mouth hung open but there was no sound. The worst of it was her feet, which had become shapeless and seemless where they met the rock below. She was fixed there, no more able to escape than the tree above her. When Arthur came, his sister called out to him.
“We have to do something. Get the shovel!”
The girl’s eyes met his. Those sticky tears were falling across her face. Is this what it would be like to become a parent? Given her father, he could hardly imagine his own child not being caught in the same web of otherworldly darkness that entangled everyone else on this hill, whether human or not.
“Arthur!” shouted Dorothy. “We can’t leave her! This is my fault! That creature by Charlie’s car was the Drifter’s man come to collect him. She got to him before me. I didn’t kill him; she used me to lead us all here.” She pushed away a lock of hair blown in her face by the gathering wind. “I think I knew that all along.”
The girl screamed. She was looking over Arthur’s shoulder. He turned and saw Grosvenor, the immense hearse driver, climbing the crest of the hill. The sun was beginning to dawn behind him and a brisk wind was picking up strength.
He was pushing an ornate wheelchair. In it sat a young woman dressed in a scarlet robe. Her face bore an olive complexion and her dark hair was tied back with silver ribbons. Arthur had rarely seen someone so beautiful. Arthur turned back to Dorothy. The look on her face was not fear, but a sadness he had not seen from her before.
The girl had turned to stone. It had finally become too much for her and her little body had given up. Now she felt nothing at all, just as she had said. Her glass eyes, so poorly built for sight, saw nothing now. Dorothy knelt by the statue and wept as Randall had done at the stone marking his own lost love.
Arthur tore Dorothy away from the girl and tried to find a way out. Grosvenor helped the scarlet robed woman stand and she walked, unsteady on her feet and yet projecting such power as Arthur had never felt. A whisper of music came from her. She was singing without moving her lips. Now it was Arthur who felt unable to move.
Dorothy slipped her hand in her pocket and removed the hourglass jar she had taken from their mother’s house. The chamber from which the drops flowed was nearly empty.
“Just in time.” she said, handing it to Arthur.
The crippled monster unhooked a clasp at her neck and the robe fell open, revealing not a woman’s body but a form made entirely of spiders crawling all over each other. Their seething mass made the rough shape of a human and moved together as if in unison the swarm was a single body.
“The thing about conjuring....” said Dorothy. “There are no crystal balls. No trumpets. No bullshit. To reach death, you have to approach it first.”
She produced another bottle, a tincture of opium.
“Dotty, what…?”
In the center of the Drifter’s chest, the spiders surrounded a hole. They crawled in and out around its rim, but there was nothing on the inside. Arthur felt the wind turn stiffer. Fluffs if snow and bits of rotted undergrowth flew away from the hill and disappeared down that gaping maw.
“It would be better if we had Randall.” said. Dorothy. “But I’m sure you’re strong enough. Hold on to me.”
Dorothy opened that medicine bottle and downed it. Arthur yelled and ran to her. He caught her as she fell. He heard her breath grow shallower and shallower. He heard her heart slow and stop.
The air around them grew still and warm. The sound faded to a hush coming from everywhere. Arthur heard a voice calling his name. He raised his head. Beyond the tree and the stone girl, there was another woman. She was tall and strong looking. She was young and she glided across the hill with such ease in comparison to the Drifter.
“Mother?” said Arthur.
Dorothy spoke even though she wasn’t breathing and her heart wasn’t beating.
“Mom… ma.” she whispered.
It was their mother, looking as she did in Arthur’s earliest memories. She walked to him. Meanwhile, the woman made of spiders stumbled in their direction. She may have been crippled, but it was clear she was never deterred. Moma put her hand on Arthur’s shoulder.
“If you pass over alone, you never come back right.” she said. “It destroyed me. Don’t let the same happen to your sister. Draw her back.”
She leaned in closer and whispered a word in her son’s ear. Then she stood and marched towards the Drifter.
“What are you doing?” said Arthur.
Without looking back, she responded, “This isn’t me. It is only what is left of me, the last letter of a dead woman.”
As she approached the Drifter, the storm that had begun upon the creature’s first arrival resumed. The wind howled and over the wind came the Drifter's song, delicate and melodic despite its strength. A crunching sound came from the hole in her chest. From that cavity emerged thin white threads. The tendrils spread out across the ground and the air above Arthur’s head. They wrapped around the tree and the stone girl.
He felt them entangled with legs and then he felt them start to pull. Arthur fell onto his side. He held Dorothy and grasped the stone surface of the hill. More threads wrapped around his arms. They encased Dorothy so thoroughly that she looked like a cocoon. The threads pulled harder, towards the hole and the beautiful song coming from it. If he disappeared inside, would the mass of spiders devour him like an insect?
Moma’s voice called out, singing to the Drifter an odd and macabre nursery rhyme that Arthur remembered from his childhood.
“Little spider wind your web round and round the tree
“Eat my bones and eat my eyes, but please eat only me
“I’ve said my prayers and my goodnights and mended my regrets
“For two shall share this silken cell and eat this pain that’s left!”
She reached into the hole and millions of threads shot out around her arm, sewed her up inside a sack, and pulled her inside. Everything turned to darkness. There was no more rising sun, no more Drifter. Arthur could feel but not see the ground. He crawled along it until it felt as though it was dropping away from him, as if he’d reached the edge of the hill crest. Is this how it felt for that little girl to navigate the world?
Below he saw a faint globe of light. He could make out the graveyard and Randall’s cab. There was another car next to it, a police car. One cop was peering into the window and talking to Ethel. The other was pushing Randall against the cab and hooking cuffs around his wrists.
Arthur tried to call out, but his voice failed him. Randall, nonetheless, seemed to hear him. He turned his face up and gave Arthur a look that told him they were no longer friends. His head turned away. If he had been walking backwards before, his shoulders were now facing Arthur. His eyes, like the decayed house, were looking out to sea.
“Arty.” came Dorothy’s voice.
He crawled back the way he’d come until he stumbled across his sister. She was still wrapped in the Drifter’s threads, save for her face. Her words came from somewhere besides her mouth.
“I feel myself falling. Pull me back.”
Arthur remembered what his mother had whispered to him. He knelt by Dorothy’s ear and said, “Praemonitus.”
She breathed and moved. She tore the threads away and stood, offering a hand to Arthur to help him up. All the morning light returned and they could see everything again. For a moment Dorothy could not take her eyes from the tree and the stone child beneath it.
“I’ve failed in everything I set out to do.” she said.
In silence they walked back to the ledge, where they saw two cars driving away, a cop at the wheel of each.
/* ----------------------*/
Yes, there is more after this! We are a little more than halfway through. Parts 7 and 8 are mostly complete, so hopefully they take a lot less time than this one. Thanks to everyone who has stuck through!
