The Beyond

An entry to the Lunar Awards Series 11: HORROR

Introduction

This story struggled to find its way to the end I had in mind, and before I finished it, the call for the amazing WEATHER REPORTS came, and I knew that Mark’s story after this would be perfect for that - and so The Widower was written and now the Lunar Awards was inspiration for me to finish the original story. Arse about face I know!

With thanks to Winston Malone and Shaina Read and Garen Marie for all they do with the Lunar Awards and the fiction community generally - better world because of you.

Good luck to all who participate.

---

The Beyond

For a while, Livvie thought her dad would never come back from his shadow-clad existence. He wasn’t a believer, not like her mother. He never looked beyond the immediacy of his surroundings and the void left by Mum was a merciless vacuum. He would sit for hours fixating on a fading horizon, a past where she was still alive. Ahead, he saw nothing; Livvie was alone. Then his father died; not unexpectedly, not cruelly; not suddenly or unfairly, like it had been for Mum, and Dad returned.

“She was my life, Liv. That’s all I could think about, all I could see.” He crushed her to him in one of his huge hugs and she cried into his shirt. “We’ve got to make the most of each other. I thought we could have a holiday? Go somewhere we’ve never been, get out of the house. Give Mum a rest?”

“That would be great, Dad,” Livvie sniffled through snot bubbles. “Where’re we going?”

---

The ferry docked in St. Malo early and they drove west through Brittany. “Looks a lot like Cornwall; it won’t rain all week will it?” Dad was non-committal. As they arrived at the Air BnB, yards from the shore, the smell of the sea and dawn breaking on the horizon greeted them. They soaked up the beauty of the view as the engine ticked and cooled, then dad took her hand. They looked at each other, their tear-worn eyes smiling, their sadness lifting to the warmth of a joyful sunrise.

“Swim, or unpack?” Livvy asked.

“Race you!” He grinned.

They erupted from the car, flinging clothes from their cases in their haste for the brisk waters which shocked away their breath and the dust of sorrows. After a numbing swim, with skin tingling and warm, they settled in and explored the house. It was much larger and more rambling than it had first appeared.

“Hard to tell how old these places are.” Dad poked his head through an ill-fitting door in the kitchen, opening onto dark cellar stairs. For all its size, the house had only three bedrooms, and one of those was on the ground floor; an afterthought tacked onto the side of the original building.

“Mum would like it here,” Livvie said, as they sat on the veranda later, enjoying a salad, some cheese and bread. Wilding gardens enclosed the house: a squat, rectangular thing with sturdy pink granite quoins and a steep-pitched roof of slate. A kiwi vine embraced the veranda, delighting Livvie with ripening fruits dangling, velvet and promising between the broad leaves.

“She’d have loved it.”

---

That night, Livvie slept well. On their second night, she noticed the light, but it didn’t trouble her.

“Did you leave a light on last night, Dad?” She asked over breakfast.

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“There was just like a weird orange glow in the corner of my room. Maybe it was something shining through the window. Never mind.”

She read until her eyes felt heavy. The house was alone by the sea and the night was black. The thick darkness and distant hiss of waves soon brought sleep. She wasn’t sure what woke her or what time it was, but as she uncurled to stretch, there it was again: in the far corner of the room, high up on the wall, an orange glow, like a streak of fluorescent paint.

She rubbed sleep from her gluey eyes but couldn’t make sense of it. She stumbled crossing the unfamiliar room and with a flapping hand found the pull string light under the medicine cabinet. She had to turn it off again to see the glow. She traced it with a finger; it wasn’t something shining onto the wall, it was coming from inside the wall, from behind the floral wallpaper.

A thin line like the top of a door.

She tapped the wall; there was a hollow wooden sound. It must be an old doorway into the kitchen. But when she tiptoed to the kitchen, it was dark; dad wasn’t to blame. She returned to her bed and dragged the covers over her head.

The next day they had an early start for a day-long trip to the standing stones at Carnac. The sky above the stone-fields was solid white, the bright white of sunlight diffused through featureless cloud. They squinted up at the glow of a hidden sun. The ranks of standing stones cast no shadows and kept their secrets. The air above felt charged like a storm brewing. When they laid hands on the menhirs, Dad insisted there was buzzing in his ears, but Livvie couldn’t hear it. Instead, she said it made her feel tense, like something was coming.

On the way back, she was overpowered by tiredness and kept nodding off. “Did you not sleep well?” Dad asked.

“The light was there again. It shines through the wallpaper, like there’s a room behind or something. I’ll show you when we get back.” Then she dozed. After dinner, she went to bed early, mumbling red wine and sea air.

That night she didn’t wake. Instead, she dreamt of her mother. She couldn’t catch hold of it when she woke up to sunlight filtering through the shutters, but it left her disquieted. It was a sense of her mother trying to tell her something, but she couldn’t hear the words. She remembered the last sing-song message she’d left on Mum’s phone. She hadn’t tried to call again, never wondered why mum didn’t call back. How could she have known why? Guilt still had hold.

Over breakfast she cried a little and they talked about Mum. Livvie didn’t get out of her dressing gown; it was going to be one of those days. Dad hugged her. “Let’s have French toast –your favourite, and tell me about this light?”

“I’ll need to show you,” she said.

After breakfast, they went to her room. “It’s there, in the corner where the sink is.” Dad ran his hands over the wall. “You might be right. You can feel something under the wallpaper, look.” She followed his lead, tracing the outline of the doorway beneath.

“You know, this wall is an outside wall. This part of the house looks like it was added later. The brickwork’s totally different.” It was the sort of detail Dad noticed.

They went into the kitchen, then back into the room; something didn’t make sense. There was no sign of another doorway where there should be one. It was baffling. There were cellar steps down and rickety wooden stairs up to the first floor. Dad paced it out. “There’s space here, behind the stairs,” he concluded. “Another room, or maybe old steps into the cellar.”

“Why is there a light on in there, though?”

“Maybe some dodgy wiring? If it comes on again tonight, wake me up and I’ll have a look.”

---

She dreamt of her mother again. Obscured in mist or vegetation, she was shouting something, shouting silently. Livvie ran towards her but she never got closer, and death…death was coming. She awoke with a start; the duvet had slipped off and she was cold but as she reached for it, she saw a gleam in the corner again. The light pulled her from her bed. As she reached out a hand to the glowing streak, the light grew brighter, warmer even. Something like radio static whispered and she pulled back her hand, shook her head. She stomped into the kitchen and yanked open the cellar door. Its darkness yawned up at her, the dim kitchen light illuminating only three or four steps before it was consumed.

A torch hung from a nail on the wall and she took it and sent a thick beam into the depths. Down she went. Standing at the bottom, the torchlight probed into far corners, sending shadows crazing. The cellar seemed larger than the house above and there was a raw dampness to the cavernous space. Piles of junk, crates, kayaks and tools lay heaped about. Things hung and drooped from ancient beams, but there was no source of light, no door, no steps but the ones she had descended.

“Livvie?” Dad’s voice made her jump. “You all right, kiddo?” He started down the stairs.

“Jesus Dad! I nearly wet myself.”

“Sorry love. What are you doing down here? Christ! It’s massive.” He sniffed and grimaced at the dank air.

“The weird light came back. I didn’t want to wake you. I thought I’d check it out, but there’s nothing down here. Just junk and stuff,” she said. “But there’s kayaks!”

“Let’s sort it out tomorrow; have a proper look.” He shivered and hugged himself. “Do you fancy hot chocolate?”

While they sipped their cocoa, Livvie told him about her dreams. “They’re awful, Dad. It’s mum; she’s trying to tell me something, but I can’t hear her. I can’t reach her, and I know she’s going to die. It woke me up this time. And then the light was on again. Could we swap rooms?”

She spent the rest of the night on the sofa, sleeping through the sunrise. Dad let her slumber and went to investigate the cellar. He found a light switch, and bright fluorescent tubes flickered and chink-chinked on. He studied the wall. There wasn’t any sign of a door or stairway, but there was something about it. It bulged into the cellar at one side, like the base of a round castle tower. The stonework was rough; rocks fitted together, not dressed stone blocks like the rest of the walls. He looked for cracks in the mortar, thinking the cellar lights might be shining through, but the wall was solid.

He woke Livvie with a coffee. “Come on, I need your help.” With her mug in hand and the window shutters closed, she studied the bedroom wall while her dad flicked all the light switches on and off, one by one, around the house. “I can’t see anything” she shouted to him, slumping against the doorway. As her shoulder touched the wall, she felt the crack of a static discharge and white noise hissed in her ears. She jerked away with a yelp.

They swapped rooms. Livvie worried she would dream of her mother again. She was fearful of the light –would it stir the dream from the shadows? Dad’s only concern was for Livvie; he wasn’t bothered much by dreams, but a dream came to him, and Evie was in it.

She was the dead Evie of his waking nightmares, but also alive and trying to speak to him above the crackle of flames. Her voice was muffled through curtains around a hospital bed and behind gauze bandages. Through tangles of wires and liquid-filled tubes he glimpsed weeping eyes, weeping burns, lips moving soundlessly. A monotone machine drowned the urgency of her voice, slowing and deepening in tone to a single never-ending sound. He started violently from the dream, sweating and hoarse. In the corner, a light was glowing through the wall.

He rubbed his eyes, blinked hard, twice, but it was there. Livvie had not imagined it, nor the dream of Evie. What had she been trying to say? Memories of that night stirred sullenly from the corner where he had left them. He went to the sink for water and studied the wall; the wallpaper was peeling back at one corner. He moved to touch it–did the light brighten as his hand approached? It seemed so. It began to curl away from the wall as he stared, as if invisible fingers were pulling at it. He pinched the corner between a finger and thumb, and it effortlessly folded down, flakes of dry plaster coming with it and scattering to dust on the floor. The top of the doorway was revealed and an orange glow leaked from it.

He pushed his face close, to see through the crack into the space beyond and a static hiss filled his ears, intensifying, then fading as he pulled away. The whole length of wallpaper sloughed off bringing the plaster with it. He watched it, mesmerised, as it crumpled onto the floor in a swirl of ancient dust, the door undressing itself before him, baring its wood. An invitation.

Both edges of the door were still obscured by wallpaper, but he couldn’t resist, not now, and whisperings coaxed him. As easily as the first, two more strips of paper and dusty plaster fell to the floor, revealing the doorway fully. Crude, iron flat-head nails studded it and bracing strips leached rust into the wood. There was no handle. He counted the nails: eleven rows of eleven nails.

This is not a door.

As if something sensed his resignation, the static in his head coalesced into a single distorted word: “Mark!” then burst into white noise again. His stomach spasmed and he choked out “Is someone there?” He pressed his head to the wood, his ear to the crack at the top, and called again, into the static: “Hello? Is someone there? Answer me!”

Nothing…No…what was that? Perfume? Evie’s perfume?

---

Come the morning, Livvie found him in a blanket on the sofa, head down, empty brandy glass and a mug of coffee by his side. She sat beside him but he didn’t look up, and when he spoke it was monotone. Defeated, like before.

“I had a dream. About Mum. Just like yours. She was trying to tell me something. She was dying and I was there, like I was watching it happen to her. I was desperate to help her, but I couldn’t do anything. Nothing. I’m so glad you didn’t…you didn’t see her… like that.”

“Oh dad,” Livvie began, but he turned to her, more urgently, gripping her shoulders, wet eyes fixed.

“There was a sound, a sound like hissing, like waves. Then I heard someone say my name and then there was the smell of perfume. Mum’s perfume!”

Unspoken thoughts passed between them and they went to the room to look at the door. Their faces showed the same fear. Why would someone nail it shut?

---

Dad called the owner of the house, a Monsieur Le Guen. The conversation was difficult given the subject matter, but he agreed to come and soon arrived. He hadn’t understood dad’s attempts to explain “A hidden door and strange lights,” and his face showed it when they took him to Livvie’s room.

“I didn’t know about this. But it was my grandmother’s house. I never live here.”

“Never?” Livvie asked. He shook his head.

“No-one live here after grandfather die. It is empty for years.”

They explained about the light that appeared at night and woke them, and the strange noises.

“What? You think there is a ghost? Pfff!” He laughed and banged on the wood with a fist. “Alo? Monsieur le Fantôme?”

“Why don’t you stay here tonight, if you think it’s funny,” said Livvie.

“I will speak with my mother. She live ‘ere when she was young. Perhaps she know something. I will call someone with the tools for it, and we see what is in here? Ok?”

---

They ate dinner in silence with little appetite and conversation swallowed up in thoughts. “Can we both sleep upstairs tonight, Dad?” Livvie asked as they did the washing up. ”I don’t want to go back in there.” They gathered their bedding and clothes and made up the single bed for her in the smaller upstairs bedroom. As he said good night, she asked him to promise not to stay up late, not to drink on his own. He nodded but his face looked drawn, eyes black.

“Don’t go back there Dad.” She held on to his hand to stop him leaving the room. “It wasn’t your fault.”

When she heard her father come up she turned off her light and closed her eyes, praying not to dream. Sleep came eventually, but a sound roused her, close to dawn. Through a waking fog, a grating sound; metal on stone. Sitting up she called out then got up and fumbled her dressing gown on when there was no reply. In the hall, the sound was more distinct, coming from downstairs. Dad wasn’t in his room–his bedding lay strewn on the floor. She ran down, the noise growing louder with each step.

At the bedroom door, reluctant to enter, she called out “Dad?” There was a clang of metal hitting the floor. Her father cursed and muttered and she rushed in.

“DAD!?”

He was kneeling before the doorway with a crow bar in bloody hands, scraping at the wood, levering out an iron nail. She stood in baffled horror. “What are you doing!?”

He flicked her a mad-eyed glance, but didn’t stop. A thick, black nail squealed out from the wood and joined others on the floor. “She’s in there! Don’t you hear her?” Grunts of effort punctuated his speech as he started on another nail.

Livvie threw her arms about him, pinning his arms to his side. She pulled him away from the door and they fell backwards. In the fall, the crowbar struck Livvie in the face but she didn’t let go. He struggled to get back up but she hung on, strength in her desperation. He gargled meaningless sounds but his will to resist, to struggle back up, ebbed as she whispered in his ear “Dad! Stop. It’s all right, it’s all right,” over and over, imploring him gently. With a rattling sigh, he gave up the ghost and wept.

“She’s not in there, Dad. She’s at home. She’s at rest,” Livvie said when his crying had stopped “But I’m here now. I’m with you.” She stroked his head and tasted a trickle of her own blood. He saw the bleeding and the realisation of what he’d done brought him upright in shame, but she told him it was fine, she understood; the dreams seemed so real, after all.

They went to the sea to swim; to escape the madness of the room.

In the cold water, they gave themselves to the swelling mass of waves between jutting granite fingers. The sea lifted them up and let them gently down. It owned them and everything was real again. Simple and clear. They held hands and trod water, feeling the smooth fronds of bottle green kelp on their legs. They cried happy tears at their togetherness, at their bond; they were a father and a daughter and alive. Their tears joined the sea and they laughed until the coldness was too much.

Holding hands, they walked themselves dry up the coastal path to the nearby village where, like everywhere, there was a bakery. When they returned to the house with breakfast, the owner, Le Guen, was there together with a grisled workman leaning against a battered van, smoking. Le Guen didn’t look pleased to have found the door locked and nobody home.

“I’ll make coffee,” Dad said, “We have pain au chocolat?” He offered up the bag of pastries with a rustle. The workman stubbed out his cigarette and pushed himself forward.

“Erwan,” he said, offering a hand to Dad.

“My cousin,” said Le Guen. “He will open it.”

Livvie and Dad went into the kitchen while Le Guen and Erwan rattled away in French and went to the bedroom. Le Guen returned immediately, brandishing the crowbar.

“You ‘ave tried already, I see.”

“There were noises again. Last night. But it was too difficult,” Dad replied after an uncomfortable silence.

“With this? But of course!” Le Guen inspected the dried blood on it, flicked a glare at Dad then dropped the offending tool. The sound of Erwan clomping down into the cellar and the percolator choking to a boil interrupted the growing tension. “Coffee?” said Dad. They sat and Livvie found a plate for the pastries.

Le Guen explained he’d spoken with his mother but she had drifted off into the past. When her mother had died, some seventy years before, she and her twin brother were only five or six years old. Their father took them to live with an aunt. She remembered very little about the house. But then she had told him something she’d never revealed before: the man she thought was her father - a bitter, solitary man - was not in fact her father. Whoever her father had been, the truth had died with his grandmother.

Erwan came into the kitchen and flopped like a sack onto a chair. He poured himself coffee, dunked a pain au chocolat and pushed most of it into his mouth while reaching for another. As he finished the second he motioned Le Guen to follow him and they went to the bedroom. Livvie and Dad exchanged glances and went outside.

It would have been a perfect day for lounging on the beach, or a trip to Treguier for the market, but the anticipation of what might be behind the doorway kept them there. The sun crawled past noon and into lunchtime. As they sat on the veranda with some bits and pieces, too distracted to make a meal, Erwan appeared. He sat and rolled a cigarette. They heard Le Guen’s car leaving in a spray of gravel.

“Are you enjoying your stay Brittany?” Erwan asked. Dad stopped, mid crunch on a celery stick and Livvie took the bread from her mouth to answer.

“Very much. Apart from the house, anyway. The sea’s lovely.”

“You English, you like it here, no? There’s a lot of you, buying up all the old houses, old farms. I get a lot of work, so I practice the English.” They weren’t sure what to say and he went on. “Don’t worry- better an English than a Parisian; that’s what I say.” He lit up and caught Livvie eyeing the tobacco pouch. “You want one?”

She nodded, ignoring the side eye from Dad. He didn’t say anything, not this time. He knew she smoked on the sly, and he fancied one himself.

“So, Monsieur, this door. My cousin tell me you say there has been a light coming from behind and strange noises?”

“The light only comes at night.” Livvie butted in. “It wakes us up. There are sounds, like static. And voices.” She drew on the cigarette. “And we are both having strange dreams,” she finished, exhaling smoke.

“I worked in a lot of old buildings, you know, but I never see a door like this.”

“Why so many nails, iron nails, in the door? Eleven rows of eleven, did you see?” Dad asked.

Erwan shrugged. “It is maybe not a door. There is no frame, no hinge, no handle. And the wood is very thick. This was made not to be open.”

“To keep people out?”

“Or keep something in. Hidden.” Erwan leaned in towards them over the table. Lowering his voice. “You know it does not surprise me what you say. About strange things.”

“How so?”

“There is some history here. My father would tell me my grandmother, who live here, was “mari-morgan”. Like a witch, from the sea. They say she could cross over. People would come to her here, with silver, to speak with the dead.”

“Why would they say she was a witch?”

“When she disappear, they say she go back to the sea, to her people.”

Erwan let this sink in then leaned back in his chair. “But these things are just superstitions. A lot of gossip. It was said her husband was not the father of her children. It could happen that when a woman disappear, like she did, it was the husband–” he rolled his hand in the air, “-the husband that make the wife…disappear. Because of the honour.”

All of them looked back towards the house, towards the nailed-shut door.

“Maybe we will be calling the gendarmes when I get it open, eh?”

Livvie gasped and covered her mouth.

“Or maybe she did just run away,” Erwan blurted, trying to claw it back, sensing Livvie’s horror. “Grandfather was a connard. Violent. Maybe she just leave him. Maybe she throw herself in the sea–” he pointed in the direction of the shore, “-to escape.”

The rustic house loomed behind them, no longer quaint. It seemed sullen, misshapen, twisted by the past. The kiwi vine wrapped it like a wreath and the black slate roof above was now a cowl, not a hat.

“That poor woman,” said Livvie quietly, desperate to break the silence.” Does nobody know what happened to her?”

“Maybe once. Not now.”

“What was her name?”

“Morganne; an old Breton name, but still you find it.”

As Erwan spoke the name, fingers of mist clawed through and over the bushes and trees bordering the garden, dragging thick fog behind. Within a few moments, the sunny space was engulfed in chilly, roiling greyness.

“Perhaps I have raise up her spirit, no?” said Erwan, gesturing into the thickening fog.

“Oh stop it!” said Livvie. She ran inside.

“It’s just a sea fret, love,” Dad called after her “It’ll pass.” The french door slammed shut.

“I think I have said too much,” said Erwan, holding up his hands.

“You know, we lost her mother. Last year. It’s been a difficult time. For both of us.”

Erwan was aghast. “You must excuse me and my foolish talk of ghosts and spirits and dead grandmothers. Oh, the poor girl. And monsieur! I am so sorry!” He shambled off cursing himself.

Through the open window of Livvie’s room, Mark could hear her crying. He knew she would prefer to cry it out alone. He poured himself more wine; one glass, then another. The salty mist lifted as suddenly as it had fallen and he went back to the house, craving a smoke. In the bedroom, Erwan was standing back, arms folded, looking at the doorway. To one side of him the heavy slab of wood was propped up against the wall. The black nails lay strewn across the floor. But the doorway was not open.

“This is a door,” said Erwan, jabbing a finger.

Mark came close. Filling the doorway there was another door –clearly a door– with hinges and an inset handle. Instead of nails, there was a triple spiral motif, a single strip of grey-green tarnished metal, hammered flat into the wood. He’d seen the pattern before. The surface of the door bore the gouge marks of the iron nails hammered through the slab in front.

Erwan grasped the edge of the slab of wood by his side, “This? This was to keep the door closed. It was never to be open.” He looked troubled.

“And what about this?” Mark rubbed his hand on the inlaid spiral.

“La Triskele. You see it everywhere ‘ere,” said Erwan, rubbing the back of his head. His voice was taut, his French accent more pronounced. As Mark traced the spiral with a finger, Erwan grew more uncomfortable.

“Maybe it is better you don’t touch. This symbol? Made like this, in silver? It is–I don’t know ‘ow you say it, but in French we say ‘un sceau’.”

“What’s that?”

“It mean a sign, made for a purpose. Per’aps to protect, per’aps to curse? The door is Historique; very old. We must leave it close. We must notifier –give a notice– to the Mayor. It is the law for, you know, l’archaeologie.”

“Can’t we just open it now, see what’s there? A little peek? Who’s to know?” Mark grasped the door handle but Erwan slapped his hand away.

“NO! Fait chier! You must not touch. We must not go in. Allez-allez!” With uncharacteristic anxiety for a man who had been so jovial only half an hour ago, Erwan shooed Mark from the room and fished his phone from a pocket. He called Le Guen, spoke rapidly then shouted at the phone. It was obvious to Mark what was said: Get back here and don’t fuck about.

---

Le Guen arrived and immediately there began a quarrel between the two Frenchmen. Erwan, gruff behind folded arms, Le Guen nasal and flapping, pointing first at the house and then at Mark. He tried to intervene.

“What’s going on?”

There was silence for a few moments as Le Guen looked back and forth between Mark and Erwan, but it was Erwan who spoke first. “He is sorry, but you will ‘ave to leave.” Le Guen spluttered, strode off then paced back and forth, hands on hips.

“What do you mean, we have to leave?”

“We cannot ‘ave you stay here. Because of the door…”

“...But we’ve got five more nights. We’ve paid. We haven’t got anywhere to go. I’m sorry, it’s out of the question.”

Le Guen walked back over, arms open. “You see? Of course they ‘ave to stay.”

Erwan pushed him away, held him back with one hand and threw menace at Mark in a low, earnest growl. “You don’t understand. It is not safe. It is not safe for anyone to be in there.”

They came to a compromise: Erwan would put a lock on the bedroom door, Mark and Livvy could stay the night and the next day, Le Guen had a friend who had a place they could go –nicer than this. He would arrange it.

---

After Erwan and Le Guen had left, Mark went up to see Livvie. As he passed the newly bolted bedroom door he felt a pulse of static and a thickening of the air. Small hairs rose on his arms and the back of his neck and the padlock on the bolt twitched. He reached for it and a spark bridged the gap with a crack. He backed away, sucking his finger, and the sensations died down.

Livvie lay on her bed when he poked his head round the door, and she bade him come in. He told her about the door and that they were going to have to leave. She was not disappointed.

“Oh god, I wish we could go tonight! I knew there was something wrong about this place. You feel it too, don’t you?” Dad said nothing; he walked over to the window.

“Tell me about this door then Dad? Why did they say we had to leave? Not that I mind, of course. Where is the new place, do you know what it’s like? Is it far? Dad? Dad!”

He wasn’t listening. He was leaning out of the window, looking to left and right and up into the sky.

“DAD! Answer me!”

She got off the bed when he still didn’t answer. “What are you looking at?” She said, slapping his back and nudging him so she could get to the window too.

“Have you ever seen clouds like it, Liv?” They craned their necks to see the globular formation darkening the sky above. On the beach, a couple with a dog had stopped; they were looking up too. Livvie and Dad went into the garden. From there, it seemed like the cloud was forming directly above the house.

“Rain’s coming. You can smell it.” said Dad, turning to the sea behind. A steel grey wall closed, dense and seamless from the horizon to the sky.

“Oh, look Dad, lightning. Purple lightning in the cloud.” Dad turned back; after a few seconds it came again, flickering fingers tracing the contours of it. “Will there be a thunderstorm? I love lightning but the thunder always scares me.”

“Looks like it,” Dad said, putting an arm around her. “You fancy pizza? Don’t want to be cooking if we have to leave in the morning. We can watch the storm over the sea.”

---

They drove to Treguier –the closest place for pizza– Dad driving back as fast as he dared to beat the storm. Livvie held the boxes, hot pizza almost burning her bare legs through the greasy cardboard. The sky was darkness under pressure, almost glowing at the edge of vision, as if the sun was trying to burn a way through it, a curtain call before sunset. The road descended to the sea and above the village the globular cloud roiled motionless above. It looked heavy. It seemed impossible it could remain in the sky; at any moment it must pour down and engulf the cluster of houses below. Purple lighting played across and within it, but rain didn’t come, the storm didn’t break. Thunder held itself back, seething, prowling across the back-drop of the dark horizon, dark as the end of the world. Tension hummed just beyond audible range in air thick with the threat of it.

“When it breaks, it’s going to be immense, can’t you feel it?” Said Dad as the car rolled up to the house.

They ate their pizzas from the box, sitting in the conservatory gazing out over the veranda, out to sea, not wanting to miss the first flash of lightning, but the storm did not break. Livvie stood and pressed herself to the french windows. The sea was a flat slab of grey, smooth as oil. The only waves were at the shore, not a fleck of foam out in the bay. The beach was empty.

“I’ve never seen the sea so calm. It’s like glass. How can there be a storm but no wind?” Livvie returned to the sofa.

“I don’t know, but the low pressure, the charge in the air? It’s giving me a headache.” Dad pressed his temples. He could feel crackling inside his mouth, through his jaw bones to his ear. He opened his mouth, wide as a yawn and; static whispered from it.

“Oh my god Dad! What’s that?”

“I think it’s my fillings.” He rubbed his jaw.

Livvie leaned closer, “Open your mouth again.” As he did, the fluorescent strip light above began to glow and the sound of static hissing from his mouth modulated, like an old radio tuning. Then they both heard it.

“Mark…M-m-m-m-m-aaaaark.”

They were stunned for a few seconds. “That sounded like Mum.” Livvie whispered.

The light above glowed brighter still, flickered, died then blazed. Dad groaned then yelled out in sudden pain, clamping his hands to his ears, screwing shut his eyes. The light fizzed hot white, there was a ‘pink-pink’ sound then ‘crackkk’. The tube exploded, wafer thin shards of glass showered them and a heavy thudding bang sounded from the bedroom. Livvie screamed and hugged Dad, hand clawing at him. There was silence then the drum of rain on the glass above.

“What’s happening Dad? I’m scared.”

“Stay here, Liv. I’ll go and see.”

In the hall beyond the kitchen soft light seeped out from the edges of the bedroom door. Dad reached for the padlock –again, a static discharge shocked his hand back. The radio in his head whistled and hissed.

Right. Enough.

In the cellar, the fluorescent lights strobed and jinked giving movement to the rough stone wall; it appeared to bulge in peristaltic waves. He found the crow bar and returned. Livvie called for him as he attacked the bolt, each blow of metal on metal punctuated with a burst of static, half words, screaming frequencies. The bolt was fastened well and resisted, so, gripping the crow bar with both hands, he wedged it into the loop of the padlock. The metal buzzed painfully but with a grunt and all his determined weight behind it, the lock gave with a pop and skittered on the flag stones. He opened the door and cool light streamed out into the hall. Livvie peered from behind the kitchen door, catching the silhouette of her father as he entered.

“Don’t Dad! Don’t go in there!”

In the bedroom, the heavy slab lay on the floor where it had fallen, revealing the door behind. The silver triskele glowed within the wood so brightly he felt sure it would burn when he touched it, but it was cold. Livvie appeared at the bedroom door as he reached for the handle.

“DAD!” she screamed.

“He turned to her, wide-eyed but smiling. “She’s in there. Can’t you hear her? Touch it, touch the silver and listen.”

She laid a wavering hand on the spiral motif and there it was, beneath the hissing like waves under water - a voice, a quiet voice. It was her mother, calling Dad’s name, cut with slices of static amidst other words, meaning lost to warbling and distortion. But there was something else, something beneath; another voice, a woman speaking in a language that sounded like French but was not.

“What did I tell you?” Dad saw the recognition in her eyes.

He wrenched at the door but it needed the crow bar to crack the rusted hinges into movement; it opened to the smell of sea and the wet slap and echo of water on rock. Before them was a circular chamber, a dark pit from which dim light rose. Flat stones protruding from the wall formed a spiral stair down into the depths. Dad did not hesitate; for Livvie, the fear of being left alone was only just more powerful than the fear of what lay below; she edged down after him, pressing her back to the wall.

After one full circle of the pit, the top of a standing stone emerged in the darkness, rising from the centre of the pit. Crystals glowed within the rock - the white light of the silver spirals. The light pulsed brighter as he descended deeper, white noise in his head like wind beneath waves and voices…voices: Evie’s, but now another voice, the voice Livvie feared, the voice of another woman, insistent, deep.

What are they saying?

Another circuit of the pit and the massive stone grew thicker, he saw the surface of water below him, the stone disappearing below it and the steps following on. At the water’s edge he scrabbled to a stop: a skeletal hand gripped the step, the arm descending beneath, sightless eye sockets of a skull gazing up at him, distorting as the water rose and fell. An iron hoop was around its neck and a chain snaked down, out of sight.

“Evie, where are you?!” He screamed. Livvie shouted back at him to come back up, terrified to go on, terrified to remain.

Mist formed above the water and rose; light beneath it, from the stone grew brighter. Dad’s vision split into layers of perception one atop the other, cycling flickering: first the skeleton, then the woman mouthing her strange words, chained below the waves, then the despairing face of Evie, beseeching, but he could not hear her over the water and the strange foreign tongue.

What was she saying? He thought he understood it: “My love, my love, come to me”

Above him, Livvie pressed her back to the wall. The air in the chamber thickened with ozone and mist, pressure built in her head. Her mother’s voice grew clearer through the static. She smelled her mother’s perfume but the sense that something terrible was coming grew stronger too, the same sense she had had amongst the stones at Carnac. Below, in the water, a crack of light in the stone rippled upwards through its centre, up to the tip of it. The reality of the stone thinned, its physical presence took on transparency, as if her hand could sink into it if she touched it. Something was coming, coming from within, from beyond. Her mother was there, but something else too.

“Dad!”

She screamed down at him. He was leaning forward, reaching for something in the water —something reaching up for him. It moved, snaking, pallid, black hair swirling. It was a woman but also not. It flickered in and out of being but when Dad grasped its hand, it manifested. Livvie screamed again and peeled herself from the stone wall and down the last few steps to reach him.

“Dad, no! It’s not Mum!”

The woman looked up from beneath the water, beautiful and terrible. Its mouth peeled open, too wide, too hungry now, hungry for the need her father had, his death wish stronger than the bottle he had made for it. Its mask slipped, its movements became urgent, animal and he saw it was something…other. His mind filled with the taste of what it wanted. He tried to let go, to pull back but it would not let him.

Livvie closed her eyes and saw her mother as she was, the day before it happened.

Are you there, Mum? Is it you?

Beneath the cacophony in the chamber her mother’s voice could not be heard but her smile was a truth and it said that soon they could be together always. All of them. Livvie jumped into the water, into the light of the stone, into the beyond.

In the pit, all was dark. In his hand, only bones. In the air, only the echoes of her name and the vanilla biscuit scent of her perfume.

End….?

---

This story struggled to find its way to the end I had in mind, and before I finished it, the call for the amazing WEATHER REPORTS came, and I knew that Mark’s story after this would be perfect for that - and so The Widower was written and now the Lunar Awards was inspiration for me to finish the original story. Arse about face I know!

With thanks to Winston Malone and Shaina Read and Garen Marie for all they do with the Lunar Awards and the fiction community generally - better world because of you.

Good luck to all who participate.