Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. The fog had a hunger of
its own that evening. It curled around the battered sign
for the Larkspur In, swallowing the black paint and swallowing
the last hope foreorrainge of the sunset. My breast looked
solid in the cold, and each step up the mossy
flock stones crunched louder than felt possible, the kind of
sound that if you aunt Kevil, swells up in your
mind and convinces you not alone, even when you know
you are. I managed to key from the manilla envelope.
It's paper, gritty and damp from the journey stuffed in
my back. The old iron key looked like a prop
from a play about which is heavy ornate rust tickling
my palm. The lock didn't want to turn, croaning once
twice before jerking open with a metallic snap that seemed
to echo much further than it ought. The door pushed
and in the thick mineral scent of old stone dust
and something faintly sweet swept over me. My first view
inside was clutter and half light from the insecure gray
outside the wall shadowed an indistinct I stepped forward, swallowing
any hesitation, and dumped my duffle just to the left
at the door. The main hole was nearly silent, some
dick of hidden pipes, the faint static whine of ancient
wiring above the tiled ceiling. A heap of meal sprawled
over a narrow table Beside the stairs envelopes their coroner's curl,
stark windows showing governments, stamps, and messy handers and addresses
in my aunt sloping style. I barely glanced at them,
walking further in my eyes caught on a photograph propped
against a lamp. Margaret, younger than when I'd last seen her,
arm curl tied around a figure. I didn't recognize. The
two of them, half caught in laughter at the porch,
I just stepped through. Beside it, a scoff hum like
a flag, left behind red wool and mistakably hers displayed
as though blown there by a rough wind, not folded
or forgotten at all. I held the scarf up, run
me them over. Its chewed up tassels still smelled impossibly
like the lemon sage soap she favored. Placing it on
minual posts. I forced myself to get a grip. This
was just a house, I told myself, and I reminded myself.
I'd promise Margaret one day I would return here. I
owed her that much. As I started upstairs, my footsteps
seemed to rouse a soft, uneven rustping somewhere below. I paused,
straining to listen, but all that surfaced was the house's
shallow breeding, the layer of hush that sits just up silence.
By the time I set my bags in Margaret's my room,
the fog had surrendered to full night. One lamp and
another flocked weakly to life. I peered out through the
mottled window glass, seeing nothing but my own face. Staring back.
For a few moments, I tried to believe the inn
was only exactly what it appeared. Four warm walls, well
love furniture, the small triumph of having a roof over
my head that wasn't a friend's to seuze fruit on,
or rendered room with too thin walls. But a minute later,
as I wandered back down stairs to hunt for the kettle,
anothers grape touched my hearing the faintest moors transient scratching,
maybe below the foreboards, maybe beside my feet. I pressed
my pomp to the scuff paneling, but felt nothing except cold.
The kitchen offered little comfort, only more still in the
empty cupboards, remnants of tin soup, and the stark flood
of a silent refrigerator. After poking around, I gave up
shoot away fatigue and decided food could wait till morning.
I found myself wandering, passing through old territory without meaning
to the mussy loungeul the breakfast nook with its winds bench,
finally circling back to the central entryway. There in the Dame,
I caught my faint, ghostly reflection hovering over Margaret's scarf
in the photograph. Again, as I studded the image, my
mind wandered to the reason I come here, not just
out of obligation or inheritance, but out of a hope,
a foolish child like one, perhaps that here I might
start something resembling the future I'd left behind, a city
that didn't want me any more, and a relationship with
too many cracks to fix, no matter how stubbornly I
try to patch it. Sometimes a place can grow so
sharp around you that it's safe to fee before it
cuts you to nothing. I resolved to get supplies and
meet him of a still cold this little mountain village home,
if only to tie myself to the well beyond the inn.
I needed faces and voices, boundaries marked by mundane routines,
and recognizably humanize. The next morning, the fog had receded
just far enough to reveal the disheveled trees bordering the
gravel drive. I picked my way down the path boof
slippery would do, and found the village by roads barely
wide enough for two cars. The general store waited near
the cross roads, a chip flickering sign reading Monday and Daughters,
its window thick with aging advertisements for bread and kindling. Inside,
a practical warmth greeted me an iron stove, faint smell
of ease and paraffin, and shells crowded with jars for
I goods, buckets and inch of magazines. Two women stood
behind the counter. The older one, hair iron gray and
coiled in a tidy knot, sized me up as I entered.
Her companion, probably around my age, offered a brisk knot
good morning. I managed, setting my list down. I've just
arrived at the locksbury in the exchanged to look quick
but not unfriendly. Margaret's niece argue. The older woman asked,
not quite smiling. Her accent drew the words out middle
vowels buried under centres of mountain speech. That's right, Lee Addison.
The younger woman ride my items through tea bags, bread candles,
and a battered coil of rope without comment, but glanced
my way as she searched for change. When will they
inn reopen? That caught me off balance, though I tried
not to show it. Not sure, I'm not decided yet.
It's been closed since Margaret, since my aunt passed, hasn't it.
The older woman nodded, lips thinning, shame about Margaret, good woman,
Some houses the best left to rest, though she added,
almost to herself. She shuffled my groceries into a waxed
paper bag. Some say the larks wass got its own mood.
Margaret had trouble the last winter, or toothed, her voice
trailed off. The girl frowned but said nothing. They hesitated,
exchanging another glance, this time uncertain, as if they crossed
some invisible line. The old old woman finally looked up,
faced cautiously kind. If you need anything, dear, just say names. Annesley,
don't mind if frook seemed brisk outside, hers never stay long,
not since she stopped again, the silence suggested an unfinished sentence.
I wasn't welcome to finish for her. I paid and left,
with the mixture of gratitude eneknease, trotting back through the
slick morning to the inn. There was nothing overtly menacing,
not yet, but the conversations felt rehearsed, the air of
a village, keeping certain doors closed back inside with provisions
tucked away, I woke the holes again, my boots scuffing
over a scuffer on her rugs and cracked tiles. The
main lounge, even with sunlight, felt too cold, though the
chimney stood tall and broad above the mantle. I tested
the damber, rearranged kin ling, and after three frustrating attempts,
finally coaxed a weak flame from old locks. As I paced,
I tried to recall where everything had been in my childhood.
Margaret's lamp ere her collection of al figurines. There, the
bat at green arm chair, where she'd read my fortune
from a deck of carts. The air was colder now
than I ever remembered, like something had shifted indelibly since
my last visit upstairs. I checked the bedrooms. Most were bearages,
spase bears, and dust motes, the faint shadow of long
gone guests in the throat bear quilts. My own old
room had a shelf lined with children's books, their covers
modeled by age neglect. And half way up the staircase,
right where I used to leave it, lay my stuff bare.
One button eye ere newly severed from the head. I
had left it here when I was twelve, and Margaret
had promised to keep it safe from me. I scooped
it up, surprised at how the fabric scene cool and
strangely damp. The hallway beyond grew colder as I moved,
icy plumes trailing my breath. I tested every radiator, finding
them all cold and inert. In Margaret's room, the fireplace
offered my only hope. As I arranged the firewood, I
noticed the singular key, ringed in black tarnish, hung on
a nail side her dresser. It fit the lock trunk
at the foot of her bed. Hindus squealing as I
lifted the lead. Beneath stacks of netting, I discovered what
looked like old journals, the covers marked with heavy, inky strokes,
crooked constellations, tall circles, words etched in herds. Gripped the
veilless thinness at night guard the threshoulder, I brushed dust
from a cluster of pages. The journals were dense with
scrawled notes, observations about boundary places, what must have been
weather records, and sketches of odd symbols had twisted branched
wise shape mirrored in my antscafful draft. Again and again,
the day faded, bringing early darkness. I moved about, trying
to warm the other rooms, but nothing seemed to take.
At one point I crossed into the kitchen to fetch
an if, only to find the pantry door wide open.
When I was certain I had left to chat, I
closed it, bracing a heavy chair against the latch. Someone's joke,
I told myself, Except who there was only me here?
That night, sleep circled but didn't settle. I fought off
the strange shills with every cold I could ground from
the cob of linen closet, but the feeling only thickened
cold radiating from the walls, itching at my skin. I
lay awake, convincing myself there was no pattern to the sounds,
just an old house, suggesting some animal beneath the floor boards,
the wind funnel between rage and roof beam. But the
scratching did not follow the mindless rhythm of an animal.
It started and stopped, dancing behind the lath and stone.
I would close my eyes, and then in a moment,
in the thin edge of sleep, the soft tap tap
tap would return, as if testing the walls for wheat points.
I counted the beats, convinced myself nothing would happen if
I just stayed very, very still. Morning brought with it
a low haze, as if the sun, like the villagers,
was unwilling to cross the threshold entirely. I forced myself
into pattern's weeping, dusting, mending leaks, anything to ground myself
in tasks with beginnings and ends. My first mission was
to tend to the main fireplace. I shuddled cinders into
a steel bocket. But when I returned to the lounge,
the fire would i'd fetch had vanished, as though spirited
away in a brief moment, had stepped out in its place.
A bundle of damp sprouting twigs sat on the hearth.
The sense of emptiness intensified, not just a lack of people,
but a lack of prisons, as if the rooms were
bleeding away whatever warmth they held for more Margaret. That afternoon,
the bell at the front door startled me out of
a days. An older man with the basket of apples
he left us in the steps, offered a hurried greeting,
and walked off without accepting a single word of thanks.
A while later I saw him through the front window,
trudging down the driver with his collar up in his
dog press close his glance, never once returning toward the house.
I made the best at the food he'd left. When
I took the remains of the corps outside to the
com hose teep, muddy prince caught my eye in a
faint light. Not the neet ocks left by deer or raccoon.
These were heavy, wide, clearly made by boots. I knelt,
pressing a hand beside them for size. They faced toward
the back entrance leading to the cellar's latch doors. I swallowed,
scowning for neighbors or passing hikers, but the woods were
empty and utterly still, animal tracks, I told myself, but
the patterned infit. The cellar door was drawn tight with
a rusty padlock, same as always. Still. I checked every
window twice before nightfall. As dusk fell, the house drew
back inside itself, shadows lengthening, corners thickening with gloom. The
scratching returned, now joined by a faint dan thumping, almost inaudible,
beneath the mammur of wind and rain knocking at the
glass banes. I paced to the dining room, comforted for
a moment by the starter of my own reflection in
the ancient side board mirror. Then I noticed, beneath the
faded floral curtain, the wall was marred, a rough gouge
running up from the floor, about three inches long, dark
beneath the wallpaper, the edges flaked out, jagged, as though
claud or scraped. I tore back the curtain for a
closer look. Nothing about the damage, said settling o mouse.
Not With the paper hanging in strips and fresh plaster
dust flecking the baseboard like pelsner, I pressed my finger
tips into the groove and jerked back at the cold,
colder than the rest of the room, an icy core
that throbbed with my racing pulse. The darkness came thick
and early again. I bolted the doors tightly and try
as best I could to sleep. My dreams were splintered.
Fivted a candle that stucky, spiraling down, objects flickering in
and out of focus at the edges. At the bend
of the stairs, a tall figure masked, chanting in a
ton I instinctively mistrusted. The voice sharpened into Margaret's saying
words I almost understood, but not quite, the syllables, and
spooling like ropes around my chest. I woke sweat up
that she twined round me. In that instant. The scratching
reverse mirrored my heartbeak, softer but unmistakable, coming from behind
the baseboard. Had it always been there? Or was it
only once I'd quieted every other noise that had found
away in When sunlight finally won against the gray, I
woke the village again, Now searching for information. I nodded
at folks near the market. Most met my eyes, but
only briefly. Some offered the insulated politeness of people who
long ago resolved not to know their neighbors too deeply.
I stopped at the little post office, handing over a
few of Margaret's letters to forward. As I waited, two
men by the sorting room bounded in low whispers, their
voices turning flat. As I entered, I half caught a
phrase the ritual, and then the silence as they noticed me,
matching expressions of awkwardness and worry. I paid and left
my errand unfinished. Walking back, I followed a winding path
around the village edge. An accidental deter brought me to
a neglected hillock. Brambles concealed an ultrine, a slab of
mossy rock like a needin, and half submerged. I knelt, curiosity,
overcoming nerves, and push brush aside to uncover a shallow carving,
maybe six inches across the same symbol from Margaret's journal
of the Wye branch joined at the base with two
crescent circling either side, something tight and lead. And clenched
my gut. I hurried home, clutching the finding like a
secret in my fist, and clean furiously. For an hour
of scrubbing out, Floorda never seemed to lose its grit.
The villagers aloftness stuck with me. The warning from missus
Annesley at the store echoed with the new edge. Some
houses are best left to rest. What did she meant
by that? Was it simply grief or something older? That night,
I glanced over my notes and listened. Realized uneasily that
things weren't lining up. Surely I'd written that I locked
the front door before going out, yet the bolt was
open when I stepped in. My mental check is swabbled
in memory. I stood in the parlor, anxious, and scribbled
a quick note for tomorrow. In the morning, the skull
looked faintly different, this slant off center. I shook myself
and turned to Margaret's journals. Againe under the uncertain yellow
of a bedside lamp, her handwriting scene to tremble and flare,
as if written in haste or fear more. Passages darted
between weather records and receipts. The tapping grips rose every night.
I fear the old promise will be broken soon. If
anyone finds this. There in one brittle entry was my
own name Lee. If you ever come back, do not
trust the mirrors off dusk. Do not open the west door.
Above all, do not light the black candle. It is
not what it seems. The words crawled under my skin.
That night, I left every mire covered with bed sheets,
my heart pounding each time I passed a sliver of glass.
The scratching searched from the walls so loud. At one
point I pressed my palm over my ears, desperate for quiet.
Early morning blurred into us a real half dream. I
was half way down the stairs, journals pressed to my
chest when I spotted in a mirrored hall wisconce a
person shaped blur at the far end, block against a
deeper black indistinct and shifting. My throat clamped tight. But
when I turned nothing the air hunt almost sang with
a charged silence. Left behind, I started searching, frantic for
explanations that made sense. In the attic. Amid the piles
of Matheian curtains and trunks of account books, I found
Oddmond's margaret must have hit, and wax candles tucked into
holes behind beams, a chipknife that looks horremonial as point broken,
but its blades stained darker at the tip, and a
handful of strange nubby clay figurines, each painted with loops
and lines. Like the cymbals in the journals, A piece
of fabric Margaret's unmistakable was not of round. One candle
with a tag. Do not let the flame go out
before dawn. As I rotated the objects in my hand,
a memory roars, mbidden and so out of place. I
nearly laughed to bonfire once Margaret's arms around my shoulders,
seeing its dusk sweat the yard, my child's mind full
of shadows, made safe by her presence, That comfort fell
far away now. The last journal entry, dated March nineteen,
the Knight of Margaret's death, thread simply I fear I
failed the boundaries week then later squeezed between frantic Penmarck's
If you find this, do not light the black candle.
The sharp snap of fire was splitting below reminded me
I'd left the lunch hearth burning in a rush, hot pounding,
I hurried down. The flames had shrunked, smaller, orangey light
flickering over the tails. Among the ash logs in the grate,
a candle had melted. Thick air, black edged with wax,
puddled and spread in a way that looked almost intentional.
The arab of the hot wist rank a minutely sulfurous,
a bitter scent that didn't belong. I gathered the pieces,
extinguished the last ember with water. My fingers prickled anxious
as I wrapped the remains in an old towel and
tossed them outside to the compost. Only as I shut
the door did I realize how late it was, only
a few minutes to midnight. My watch as second hand,
staggered and stopped, as if incertain it wanted to move
forward at all. Sleep was elusive, the vision of the
bramble shrine in Margaret's warnings following me into every feverish doors.
The fog grew thick again outside, until it pressed against
the glass with the weight of water, muffling every noise
from the village beyond. It was as if the house
lay at the bottom of a slow rolling sea. A
sharup frantic knocking, and my front door startled minard on.
I jerked upright, pausing for any sound, but the loud.
I hadn't dreamed that echo in my chest Through the
warped glass. Miss s Annes's face snapped into view, pale,
her hair askeue, eyes wide and wild. In a harsh
porch bulb that seemed to be swallowed by the fog
even a few feet away. She pressed her pomp flat
to the door. You have to leave, she hissed, between
ragged breaths. Now, Lee, they were awake. It's awake. You
don't understand, You're not safe. Not hearer. I stared, frown
by the volume and the terror in her voice. What
what's awake? But missus Annesley only shook her head, looking
past me to the depths of the inn. Don't stay,
do you hear me? No one stays now, not even
the debt. Please for your own sake. Then, almost as
suddenly as she arrived, she rushed off, boots, splashing through
puddles that weren't there the day before. The fog sucked
her away until she was little more than a streak
of motion in the gray. Behind me, the walls reverberated,
not just with scratching, but pounding, now deep and insistent,
a rhythm like something massive beating at the boundary between worlds.
In the whole mirror, words was crawled, reversed and streaked
with moisture. Not enough, not yet, I spun, gasping hard,
a trap burden my chest. Each direction I face seemed
to shift and blow. I was stepped forward, only to
find myself one room further than I meant to be do,
always whipping and lengthening, Impossibly drawn toward the noise, I
gathered the richual items almost without thinking, clutching the broken
dagger journal and half burned candle to my chest as
I moved, compelled towards the source. The pounding led me
down the kitchen steps, flashlight trembling in my hand, bass
boxes of canned goods, and the cold, earth floored cellar
with the stone wall's pooled moisture year round, the sun grew,
swelling and with it a spreading chill that sunk into
my bones. At the far end of the cellar, behind
shelves of rusted tools and jars, stood a bricked off alcove.
It had always struck me as ot a wall within
a wall, bricks mismatched and morter, newer thin the building's
other bones. The bounding now shook us from the ceiling
and on the brick surface, crack spider to the net first,
then too, wide bleeding blackness, not just shadow, something pressing out, hunger,
distorting the stone, trying to find the weakness The air
was thick, almost vibrating, filled with voices whispering, not foreign
but familiar, snatches of Margaret's voice in my own, strung
together with words I'd never said. I stumbled backward, flashlight
beam wavering. The boundaries here, I realized had always been fragile.
Margaret had tried to keep what heaver lay within knse
walls contained. Maybe the burning candle had been the last
link in the chain, and I, by failing to understand,
hadn't done what little protection remained around me. In every
crack and shire, the fog pressed deepest swhirling now not
just outside but inside, snaking along the baseboarts and in
its depths, A caught for the first time the gleam
of eyes. I could not move, not forward, not back.
The pounding rose to shifted on ancient beams Above the
black cracks widened, something pushing through with a desperate, hollow strength.
At night, the dupe, the interloper, the girl who wanted
so foolishly to begin again, stood at the threshoulder. As
the chains began to break. I was alone, For at least,
I was the last thing standing between the thing behind
the wall and the rest of the waking world, the
house half mad with cold and grief, bent beneath the
weight of something ancient and hungry, and I sensed, deep
in my marrow that the true Knight had only just begun.
My feet slid backward on the earthen floor, the beam
of my flask fight chasing after its own trembling shadow,
as the pounding from behind the bricks turned almost wet,
as if something was cawing at the stones with more
than nails claws. I didn't want to imagine the voice
ringing in my head now. It splinters of Margaret's cadence,
fragments of how I sung lullabies, but looped through. It
was my own voice, low and strange, ferretting sentences I
had never spoken. Fog trickled along the scenes where floor
met wall, swirling in line with tendrils, as if drawn
by a slow breath from deeper in the earth. I watched,
helpless as cruxwoiden. A thin line of inky moisture seep
from the bricks, slick and viscous. My hand clutching the
broken dagger felt numb. Somewhere above, a door slammed. I flinched,
the sound, shaking me loose enough to take a single
step backward. But the fog behind me cult dense now,
and when I spawned, the stairs seemed impossibly far. The
way you collapsed into a blur of shadowed distance. The
cellar wall shuddered. There was a sharp physostatic in my ears,
then a voice, then a near lee, Lee, don't answer.
The voice definitely margarets, ragged with warning, drifted not from
behind the wall, but bafflingly from inside my own chest.
I pressed my back to the damp stones, sharp de
bribiting through my coat. Every urge creamed for escape. Instead,
my mind clawed for anything I could do, recalling the
journal's InCD warnings of the veil as thinnest at night.
A circle must not be broken. I scrambled to fish
the piece of chalk had taken from the upstairs basket
out of my pocket. My breath heaved, ghosting white. I
circled in place, knees buckling, and with shaking fingers, began
to scroll one of the white shaped figures on to
the ground before the brick duck of my first line wobble,
chalk splintering beneath my grip from the black gap, I
whisper threaded into something almost like a word, a syllable
press against flesh. My teeth ached as my hands worked faster,
looping the crescents, closing the circle again and again. The
pounding faltered as my last chalk line closed, and for
a heartbeat out of silence, drop up like a stone.
The next instant, something struck out from inside the brick
wall of how definite blow knuckles or something that wanted
to mimic knuckles mortar has shivered onto my face. The
gap in the brooks gaped black and slick. The voice warped,
slipping between Margaret and my own voice again, but lowered
now and strained. You can't close it alone. The candle,
the boundary. I jerk my head, scounting the dark for
the piece of blackened candle I tossed in my pocket
in my panic. Reflexively, I placed it just outside my
new chalk circle. Then, despite a rising sense of rowness,
thicked my lighter. The flame caught slow and sullen blue,
and the air at once seemed to flatter, suddenly thick
and solid as stone. In that locked instant, the whispers
pulled away from words to become high keening pressure, vibriting
just behind my eyes. The fog sat backward, coiling into
the cracks as though sucked by a tide. The pounding
pause for a moment, nothing move except the candle's tiny
oily flame. Cold swap my buns shop. We are now
almost surgical in his shell. The memory of Margaret's arms
ran my shoulders. Summer time, the earthic with the scent
of cut grass are singing washed over me, so forcibly,
a stagger falling to my knees. Another memory, not from
my own mind, a young Margaret digging with trembling hands
in wet earth, burying something in a wooden box, just
outside the same bricocco of her lets moving in frantic prayer.
As quickly as it came, the image went, leaving a
hollow ache grief, cut with terror. I forced my stiff
legs to move, My fingers pried the chalk's doub blues,
and I drew another figure, this one awkward and huge,
just as I'd seen in her most frantic sketches. That's
when the temperature plummeted, it breath frosting before my lips
in the thick, dark air from deep within the wall.
I faint rhythmic thud began, as if something vast, impatient
press to spolke into an endless pattern. The voice, now
no voice at all, slithered up my spine, hungry, always hungry,
let us out, let us in in it. My hands
spasmed around the dagger's hilt. Nail scraped the mortar somewhere unscene.
Thus sifted subtly across the circle I'd made. Not yet,
I croaked, echoing the words from the mirror, you are
not getting out. My own voice sounded paper thin and foolish.
I was talking to the very thing. Every piece of
this house's history was designed to contain a blinding, white,
crackling race from my left shoulder to major static memory cold.
The flame gout of sideways, and in that flicker, the
shape in the blackest behind the bricks pressed forward with
renewed force. Two points of reflected fire. Twin Ember's wet
would need a form swelled, filling the widening hole with
bottomless shadow. The champ rows were less straining, writhing. The
circle held, the whispering built further. Now layers voices not
just of myself and Margaret, but voices I felt must
be every woman in our blood line, stretching back, each
bearing a shape of my face, each ringing hollow with
exhaustion and fury. Then the pounding stopped, sudden quiet, so absolute,
my own heartbeat sounded like a drum. For a beat,
the world itself seemed to pause. A soft trickle of
mortar slough to the floor, and in it spass. I
heard a different sound stairs above, creaking under someone's weight.
I froze every hair along my arms, standing prickly and raw.
Another living person, a villager Annesley, come back from me,
or was at the house, shifting in sympathy with the
fog plea. It was a whisper, fragile, and not quite ray.
I wanted to believe it was Annesley, but something in
the tone echoed. The voice from the mirror flat, slightly blurred.
Every vewl guttered at the edge. Who was there? My
voice was barely about a choke. The coal filled my
lungs like water, foots that patched above, moving along the
hole toward the kitchen. A shape flickered at the base
of the stairs, a silhouette just beyond the reach of
my candle. In distinct and listing the circle's heat pressed
against my skin, pushing me to stay within its perimeter.
The silhouette stopped outside the open cellar door. A soft
shuffling sound, then a cold one tumbled in. The fog
swirled again, drifting between the upper steps. The voice with
it almost playful. Now come away, lee, leave that thing.
I gripped the dagger tier until my knuckles ached. Show
yourself a snarl, furious teeth rattling together in my cold,
numb mouth. There was a beat of silence when the
figure moved. At last, I saw, for just an instant,
a face glimmering with the suggestion of Margaret's features, but strange, slick,
with an unnatural sheen. The eyes, though, were wrong, deep pits,
stillness within stillness, reflecting the dull blow of the candle.
Finish what she started, though not quite. Margaret pleaded for
swelling above the cellars. I see hash before it's too late.
A vibration rippled through the concrete below me, a low resinance,
like a groan from deep underground. The thing behind a
wall pressed again, restless, and small flakes of stone tumbled free.
I don't know how what did she do? I asked,
desperate voice, cracking along. It seems sacrifice, the specter answered,
too quick. In the next breath, the draft changed, sweet
and rotting, almost as if the house itself exhaled. I
saw out of the corner of my vision more symbols
lying scratched into the stonework by hands or claws or bow.
I've completed circles hastily, clothes, all radiating up from this
very room. Don't trust it. Another voice interceded, this one
definitely Margaret, faint but fier, sir. Somewhere inside my own ears,
it wants a body, a mind. Adrenaline searched through me.
I reached for the journals, flipping frantic pages with clumdy
freezing fingers, searching for anything, an incantation, a sequent, a
final passage she might have scribbled in her last hour.
On the back page of the oldest journal, nearly torn
by the press of the pen, I found a single
line in Margaret's sharpest scroll. A hunger cannot create torny feed.
The ward must endure, not break the chain. The candle
at midnight marks the boundary until dawn. I read it again,
slowly aloud, as if the words themselves could build a
wall from behind the bricks. Something howled, not in anger
but an aching animal yearning, as if the very sound
would coax me across my own chalk line. Then not quite,
Margaret pressed at the edge of the candlelight faceless and
then suddenly dissolving, swept up and away in Augustus. The
wind raised heavier through the cellar, sending the flame streaming sideways.
My legs carried me, instinctively, joking to renew half faded
lines of shock, voice, mumbling every line of Margaret's notes
I could recall, over and over, a shield built of
the only things I still trusted. The pounding sank to low,
steady thuds. In the fog thick silence. I realized my
watch had stopped against Jack, as if this place had
cut itself loose from time. The only light was the sick,
receding glow of the candle, now nearly spent, and the
scrambling gleamed from deeper in the split bricks. I didn't
know how long I sat like that, guarding the circle.
Margaret's journal's griptites were at freezing in my clothes before
something inside the wall shifted with a final rending sigh.
The hunger for now faded behind layers of stone and night.
When finally I staggered upright, bones, ash and thoughts splintered.
The fog at my ankle seemed to thin by inches.
The pain in my right ankle flared as I limped
up the stairs, desperate for air, for morning, for a
way to pull myself together with the dawn. At the
top step, the silence was brittle, no pounding, no whispering,
just the distant clatter of the windies in the porch.
Sign Once again, I embraced myself against the old refrigerator,
letting my breath slow. Had I repaired the boundary or
merely delayed what was coming? There were things in its
older than Margaret's notes, things older perhaps than any warning
the village's cut muster. I scanned the kitchen counter top
to skew doors hanging slightly wider than before. A muddy
prince mudge faintly on the linoleum at the edge of
my vision. The fog thickened, pulling at the back window,
and then I swear it retreated, as if it sensed
I was watching. The faint town of burnt wax and
bitter herbs filled the air. I caught my own reflection
in the dusty pane, hare wild as far too wide.
I pushed a chair under the handle of the back
door and collapsed into the nearest seat, hugging Margaret's journals
to my chest. Alone in the waning dark, I forced
myself to log in my notebook everything i'd seen, the
pattern of the cracks, what Margaret's voice had tried to
teach me, the words from the old pack. My handwriting
was jagged, half unreadable. Above, somewhere in the eaves, the
now familiar scratching continued, softer, almost subdued. I waited for
the first confidence bark of daylight to break over the mountains.
I did not move. The air felt less frigid for
the first time in days, but I knew better than
to imagine the house was only resting. I gathered what
courage I had left and checked every door, every window,
every hidden seen where cold might slip through. The scars
on the warclaw marks symbols child wax would not vanish,
no matter how many times I wiped it them. I
wanted so badly to run, to find a neighbor, to
make another plea for help, but I'd seen now the
thing that lived within the brickdlcove. I knew, with the
cold certainty of the marrow, that running would not save me.
Margaret had tried to run, and in the end all
she could do was buy a handful of knights for
the village for me. Later, as the new day asserted
itself against the mist and hunger behind the wall, an
aimage crystallized Margaret sitting in this very kitchen, quilt, tip
in hand, face drawn with purpose and love. She'd never
really wanted me to have this legacy, yet she'd left
me every piece i'd need, if only I understood how
to use them. The true question rose and circled, cold
and unanswerable. What exactly sleeps within these walls? And when
not a foot it wig again? My legs refused to steady.
Every muscle seemed to buzz with the memory of what
oppressed and clawed from behind the ruined bricks below. There
was grit in my mouth, in my hair. It took
me effort to breathe anything but that cellar stenchriff, wet stone,
bitter wax, and the iron tang of fear bight at
the window had begun to bleed. Blue dawn tickling past
the fog, promising a day that my behave like days
were supposed to do. The morning passed in blurred fragments.
I washed the soap from my hands over and over,
though the chill wouldn't leave wiskin. Up Stairs, the air
held that bruise flavor of old storms. Charged restless, I
pressed my ear to the walls and heard nothing but
the faintest hash, just the shifting of the old In settling,
I told myself I could sleep, that everything was contained,
if only for a little while. But sleep was thinner
than a dream. I drifted in an out of shallow,
colorless rass. Sometimes I'd snap awake, convinced. I felt a
hand hovering close to my face, the tickle of breath
on my cheek. Sometimes I jerk upright at the softest
twitch of the floorboards, expecting fresh pounding at the basement wall.
When the chiming of the old clock told me it
was mid day, loneliness crushed against my bones so fully
it left me hollow. Food felt impossible, but necessy pushed
me ontoun steady feet. The kitchen waited a quiet and
raw ethie with spent smoke. I shewed bread and apples
so slowly, and nearly wept with relief when nothing tried
to drag me under the table, upon me through a
rift in the wall. Still, every window offered up visions
of shifting, mister curling, retreating, but never so far as
I wished. It was only after I found my voice again,
after a full eye was slumped by the half Margaret's
journals found in a semicircle around my knees, that I
realized I needed someone else, human eyes, human warmth, not
just a voice whispering from memory or the wavery hush
of fog filled holes. Dressed in yesterday's jeans and Margaret's
old shawl, I stepped into the day. The cold outside
was cleaned by comparison, bracing enough to bring color to
my cheeks as I headed for the main road. Like
sore and weak with fear, I hadn't shaken off. The
village seemed abandoned at first, doors, bolted windows, clustered with
all curtains or thick glass, Dead leaves bowled along the gutter.
I knocked at the shop and got no reply. Walked
past the post office, the padlock hanning with finality from
the chain. My footsteps were swallowed by the mist, and
above the hushest birds hitter left completely. Finally, at the
well behind the market, I spotted missus Annesley, hunched over
three shopping baskets, struggling to coax a handguard over the threshold.
She looked up as if she'd been expecting me for days.
He shouldn't be here, she said, in a rasp crashed
by fatigue, yet her eyes softened the words I didn't
know where else. I croaked, wanting to spill everything, wanting
her to reassure me that what I had seen and
felt could fit in the world everyone else inhabited. She
gestured with her chin, drawing me into a thin strip
of sunshine behind the shop. The cobbles there were dry.
We leaned against some warm stone, just long enough for
her to light a stub of cigarette, the smoke tumbling
away too quickly in the returning breeze. He saw it,
she said, deliberately, not a question. Something in my posture
gave me away. Or maybe it was the smudge chalk
on my cuffs. The soot rinsed only halfway from my nails.
I nodded. She let her breadth out slow, as fixed
in the shop window. You weren't told, she murmured. No
one tells outsiders. We want wanted to believe the package
just hold run on its own. She pressed her hand
to her chest, thumb hooked in the edge of her scarf.
Your aunt, poor soul. She tried a different way. It
cost her. I bit my lower lepentil pane grounded me.
What is what's down there? My words fumbled, every syllable,
lace with disbelief and new terror. What is it that
feeds there? Older than the village, she replied, older than
any of us, always hungry, always testing. We built over it,
thinking stones and presquataine, hunger. But it's not stopped, only
quite so long as the bargain holds. Her fingers wore
the fringe of her scarf. A ward stays keeps a
circle candle at midnight every night, the one left behind Margaret,
she was the strongest we'd had. My voice cracked. Why
didn't anyone tell me? Why didn't she? A sadness creased
her face so profound I almost jerked away. What use
would it have done, she hoped? I think you could
be spared. She seen too much, lost, too much. Annie
was gay sharpened. She tried, child, They always do wasn't fair.
It had to be one of us from here, always,
someone with a seed in the soil. And when she
when she died, things got thinner, the hunger started pressing worse.
The street had quite it absolutely around us. I lowered
my eyes, struggling for composure. I can't I don't know
what I meant to do, I confessed. Anneselef flicked her
cigarette lips twisting. Say alive first, keep the circle closed,
the Flamelet don't break the chain, for all our sakes. Ended.
She reached out hand rough and bon lights, squeezing my wrists.
If you get the chance to leave, take it. Don't
look back. Something behind us clattered as shut a baryant
shot or just the window, and she bolted upright. Go home,
she whispered, and don't open your door after sunset. I'll
bring what help I can. With that, she bundled up
her baskets and disappeared, head low, voice lost to the hush.
A hollow resignation followed me as I made my way
back up the hill. Every corner tousted too far, every
step a little heavier than the last. I passed the
shrine again. Its cymbals, staring bluntly from beneath draggle vines.
I touched the stone fleetingly with two fingers and let
what little hope I had trickle into the rock a
silent bar again, if there could be such a thing.
By the time I reached the end, the light was
curt in gold at the edges the air and knife shop.
I shut every window, braced every door, checked and rechecked
the cellar padlock. The house felt twice its size, each
room bigger and empty them before the scratching was back
the evening, before the sun had finished abandoning the house,
A furst light like mice, restless behind the woodwork, But
soon enough it slid into low, guttural whispering, as if someone,
now several someone stood breathing just behind a faded wallpipper.
I pressed my hand there no not expecting one, but
something much darker. Even the notion of running felt utterly impossible,
trying to ground myself as spread Margaret's journals out in
the dining room table, lining up entries and sketches like
a puzzle. The roll seemed simple, but every time I
traced the ink, a new line suggested itself cymbals must connect,
circle must never break. A flame must burn each midnight
till dawn. Once darkness stirs, the hunger will test for
dream and waking alike. I tore through the kitchen drawers,
scavenging every candle I could find. Some were fat and shapeless,
others twisted in yellow with age. At the stroke of midnight,
as the clock fell from above the stairs, I drew
chalk and loops, marking the circle on the cellow tiles,
and backed it up with a ring of Margaret's salt,
her old canister heavy in my palm. The candle never
black quacks again, not if I could help. It stood
at the circle's edge. The match flow blowed in the
swollen silence the first ire, I sat knees, hunched to
my chest, reciting half remembered lullabies and childhood prayers. Nothing
happened except the tick of my heart. But near two
in the morning, the fog pressed and so thick at
the window wells I could barely see the hand before
my face. The whispering began, anew, this time skirling, inviting,
said an icy fingers, chasing up my arms behind my ears.
Each word was a coaxing and finished promise shown fragments
tumbling and rejoining at the edge of sense, let us
and let us out. Margaretly lead the candle. I slammed
my eyes shut. Behind my eyelids, visions formed figures in
the hallway. Masks look with candle lights spinning slowly in
a stately circle, Margaret beckoning me, her hands, trumbling, her mouth,
uttering warnings at once clear and shrouded. When the candle
gutted and stretched, tall shadows swept the walled, all fingers
and grasping hands, and then re seated. Just before sun
split the sky open. I stumbled to my feet. More
sleep served monster than girl, and buried my face in
the couch cushions as the first bird dared its absurd
song outside again a day of false comfort, the hungerer.
Whatever it was needed, darkness needed dream. I went about
the muhs, brushing my teeth, coiling Margaret's scarf tight, chopping
apples that nearly tasted sweet. Each movement was hollow. The
rooms began to twist it they air just, always covering
further than their limits. Reflections flickering and glass were none
belonged in the mirror of the mantle. That afternoon, I
saw not only myself, but the glimmer of another presence,
Margaret's familiar shape, eyes wild with warning lips mouthing something
I could not hear. I covered the glass with a
towel and retreated, wishing desperately for a friendly neighbor or
a world not governed by invisible, fooricious things. Just before sunset,
another knock I jumped, the old, fierce, swamping my gut.
I considered not answering, but couldn't shake the idea it
might be Annesley come back with Enso's war at least
company instead. On the other side of the doorstoir two villages,
a man I'd only seen distantly, his eyes locked on
my nose, and a woman with braided hairtock firmly under
her cap. They looked almost sheepish or guilty, the stiffness
of their posture speaking louder than any words, Miss Addison,
the woman said, with a brittle politeness, we understand your
staying on at Larsborough. Her companion show her asidelong glare.
He held a bundle swaddled in brown paper, which she
shifted to place in my arms. Bread cheese, the traditional peace,
offerings of people who hoped to keep disaster at bay.
We know the night along, Margaret, she paused, voice trembling.
She was good to the village a beat. He should
keep the light burning after sunset, not just for power outages.
It's safer. I nodded, hoping I'd mass my panic. Thank you.
Neither said more. They left as quickly as they come,
heads duck low, shoes, scuffing the bath. I stood with
my hands full, half longing to beg them to stay,
to help, to explain, to simply not leave me. As
the darkness thickened once more. Down in the kitchen, the
shadows were already stretching thin. I bolted every door, checked
the circle in the cellar, refreshed the salt, set out
three candles, one as Margaret had described to his back.
The fear by now felt less like panic and more
like an ache, familiar and constant. When midnight told, I
sat inside the circle and watched the flame fight every
twitch of wind. This night, the hunger pressed harder, whispered,
scraping like calls in my mind, a pressure behind me,
my eyes threatening to burst into visions and memory. The
candle nearly died twice before writing itself. At last, near dawn,
the pounding began again, softer than before, a rhythm set
to the pulse of my heart. I could almost convince
myself it sounded like Margaret knocking from the other side.
I tried at first to last the day upright, with
nothing to show for my sleepless efforts, but a mounting
pile of strange, useless trivia scold over every other surface.
How long the candle burned, where the pounding originated, the
shape of the fog at dawn, The words made sent
as I wrote them, then swam and twisted off the
page whenever I tried to read them back. Then I
found myself drawn to Margaret's journals again. I shuffled through
her earliest entries, piecing together the fever of her preparations.
She spoke of a first sacrifice, a seeker the village
still tried to bury. Each year, the pack required someone
to ensure the boundary held, Someone chosen all left behind.
Margaret's handwriting, previously neat, turned ragged near the end. I
can't keep it back alone. The hunger mounts, The villagers
look away till it wants to be seen. Every generation
one left, but then to hold or die trying. I shuddered,
bone deep, realizing what she risked, what she chose, my
own family, our blood twisted through every brick and prayer.
As dusk crawled in, I found myself pulled to the
old chest in the attic, one place I had not
searched since the first hour day. I wrenched open the lid, half,
expecting only dust and fan. Instead a small lidded wooden box.
It was carved with those same white branching cymbals, edges
worn by hands desperate o loving inside a wisp of
white hair wrapped in linen and tied round with what
looked to be a child's friendship bracelet. Three old coins,
tork with age, a slim bone needle, a lock of long,
reddish hair that could only have come from Margaret herself.
My hand shook a memory crash, Margaret sitting cross like
it before a roaring fire, telling me stories of the
logs burn at secret hat, of traditions that had to
be kept, even when no one understood why She'd hid
in the tokens, not as mementos, but as Anka's familial
ceremonial land. I suspected as a desperate backet to the
circle of he weaken. They melted, dreadfolding itself into the
folds of my skin. The house vibrated with tension, as
though waiting for the worst to arrive. As darkness thickened,
I laid out the tokens around the candle's base, bring
them with a fresh sifting of salt, and for the
first time whispered my own prayer, Nothing from any book,
just the ropeli of some one who had lost everything
and could not bear to lose a scrap more. Midnight,
once more, dread, now both familiar and enormous. As the
candle burned, the false Margaret appeared in the corner, her
shape at thoughts, with her shadow features rippling, liquid and defined.
Her words were sharp, urgent circles. Not enough, give it memory,
give it grief. Her head cocked a natural as if
listening to music beneath the floor. It knows you, it
wants you. I spat it a nial, gripping the dagger
so tightly my finger nail split at the beds. It
can't have me or any one. Her smile bloomed, sickening,
and no sacrifice, no boundary. We all go fog poured
from every hallway. Outside the village lay shouted, still and unresponsive.
Red globehole slow and deep. From behind the cellar door,
an animal heartbeat. The hunger began to press. No longer
just drew vorses, but sent and shape as weakness, so
rawy clad at the lining of my throat promises, strong
and ugly, glittering words. Let us out, Let us in.
Remember Remember I fell back, staggering, mind dizy. As the
walls pressed in through my terror, I saw it. The circle,
thinning liner raised in a gap of salt and shruck
had once overlapped the candle's flame, jumped spat, then shrunk
into hard blue corkscrew. In that moment, the cellow stares
to solved longer than they should be, sharper with each
descending tread. I tried to retreat, but invisible hooks spun
me towards the basement below. The pouding rose, not just
a clawing, but shuddering through the entire structure of the inn.
The braked alcove bulged spout out more to and dust.
My memory twisted with every step. Margaret leading me by
lantern light, my mother younger than I remembered locking a
cellar door with her body. Distant relatives, a deep percession,
with hollow eyes urging me forward, all sharing a piece
of my name. Fog lake, the cellars each swell, more
solid than the last, a congregation of hungry shadows. The
circle had breached. The burning kendle guttered out, My heart ceased.
Then from behind the fracture wall a voice, not Hunger's
not mine, but Margaret's, steady and define. The chain isn't broken.
A few shoes to bear, I screamed, angry and afraid,
both child and grown woman. I won't. I can't let
me go, Let us go, all of us. But the
pressure grew, pulsing. The vision of sacrifice sharpened, Margaret kneeling
on this very floor, drawing her own blood into the dust,
chanting not to defeat the hunger, but to keep it
pleased at bay and away from the world above. In
a friends of tumble, a snash who tokens the hair
at the coins, the needle, the bracelets lay them once more,
not in a perfect circle, but in the only patter
my mind could make sense of a spiral in what
meant to draw something home? Blood well from my split
finger nail. I pressed it to the linen. The flame
flickered back to miserable life. As I whispered, let me
be the ward, not the feast. The pounding hesitated Fogg's world,
close faces blinking in enough, Margaret's my own a different ages.
Dozens of unfamiliar eyes, lipped mouthing the word holt. I
repeated the plea again and again, until it was hardly words,
but animal need holt, Let me hold it. What followed
was not an answer, but an exhalation of sucking silence,
the pause of the houses if listening for judgment. The
brooks shivered, the back stopped spreading. The voices dropped to
low mutterings, less needy, more tired. The candle spotted, but
kept its glow, small and land The coal persisted, now gentler,
heavy but not deadly. The fog retreated inch by inch,
curling a long windows and under doors, until by the
time the first pink streak split the sky, the cellar's
only company was mean ees, silk, sweat, and salt, stinging
every open nick head. Sagging under the confession that I
would not now be leaving, I climbed to the kitchen
muscles shuddering, barely registering my own weight. Outside stillness spurred calls,
emerging one by one, as if embarrassed to sing after
such a night. The village had not burned. The inn
creaked and groaned. Beheld later that morning, as I sat
with Margaret's journals in the last crust of bread missas
Annesley knocked, slow and soft. She hadn't the words for
what sat between us. Her eyes wet and haunted. It
told enough. She brought me a sturdy candle and a
coil of fresh white cord. He the ward now, she said,
a chimley gentle. He won't be able to go, not
for a time, maybe not ever. In my bones, I
believed her. The world beyond the indoor seemed impossibly far.
I'd already tried to wander away past curled back horizons
folded into the fog, my steps always soaking home. No
bus cane, no cur stopped. Even phone calls faded to static,
as though my voice existed elsewhere. Annesley lingered a moment,
I searching my face for cracks, ring. The belle fits bad.
The rest well, we'll remember, We'll bring food when we can.
Her hand on my shoulder was warmer than any candle.
She left, and I resumed my new routine, cleaning, sorting
through neither hope nor despair, sitting the circle waiting for night.
The weeks blurred. Each evening, as fog slid up the hillside,
I made ready, laying out the candles, ringing, the warts
were sawed, anchoring the tokens. At midnight, the flame flight,
The voices swelled, the scratching returned. Sometimes the pounding threatened
another breach. Each night, I pressed back, with every answer
will left me. After a time, the hunger learned the
shape of me. The temptations grew sly for his promising escape.
Secrets whispered in my mother's lilt, future visions where the
patch was broken and the village prospered. So long as
I gave up my post, I resisted because to do
less was to deliver a world to a thing that
would never be sated, only emboldened. Sometimes I told myself
I was strong. Sometimes I only wept. The villager was
visited rarely. They always left gifts at the stoop, baskets, jaws,
once even a fat tabby cat that made itself at home,
purring in the warm patch. When my shadow fell. Miss
Sessa Ennesley brought books, puzzles, rusting tins of tea. She
stayed only so long as the wind remained mild and
the like gold never After dusk days grew sire and slow. Then,
with the turn of summer, almost bright, I kept my vigil.
The hunger did not sleep, but it grew less, greedy,
a satisfied perhaps by the presence of sommon Wille, while
simply biding its time, patient as old mountains. One day
I tried the road again, walking down hill for fresh
clayed air. For hours, I wandered, always hopeful, but every
path bent gently back to the crumbling sign at the ingates.
I laughed, then, short and sharp, and named myself what
I had become. The Addison lockspur'snow stancher, blad and bunshaped
to an old urge in need. At night, I sometimes
dream of the cellar, not as it is, but as
Margaret first found it, clean stone, fat candles, as warm
as any holding place could be. She sits by my side,
pale but content, her fingers warm in mind, whispering we
keep it so we hold for them for us. All
the women before her flicker and out of sight, nodding solemnly,
hands clasped, And then the dreams rot at the edges,
splitting into shadow, hunger, wetting through cracks, voices sliding up
to a break. We want no more wards, only open doors.
I wake, sweating, hollow eyed. But each time I go
to the cellar and light the candle once more. Each
time the pounding wanes, Months pass, the cat grows fat
and sleepy. I tend Margaret's garden and the old Chrina's sidetown,
scrubbing moss from the y shaped carving, placing a coin
and twist of yarn where the roots breakstone. I see
faces in the fog sometimes, but none troll close, none demand.
One night, near the edge of sleep, I hear voices
in the walls, clear and beckoning, sounding not hungry now
but mournful. You are us, they murmur, you are now,
the line resigned. I take out Margaret's last batted ledger
and begin my own warnings. I write simply in my
own settling hand. If you come here, be worry mind
the symbols, keep the flame. Do not trust the hunger,
no matter whose face it wears below me. As the
night stretch is taught scratching begins, a new, insistent, clever, bolder.
I place my hands over the fresh chalk lines, steady
my thought against the coming irons. The window panes tremble
at the weight of gathering fog. I cannot see the village,
nor the path out, nor any promise beyond the bounds
of this coast tethered in. But as I left my
candle to the glass, in what shadows call at the walls,
I tell myself, as Margaret must have one morn, I
one more circle closed, one more dawncat safe in that
lonely vigil. I keep my place, unsure if I hold
the hunger at bay, or only give it new ways
to dream, but knowing the work must go on until
someone wiser or stronger relieves me. At last, the scratching
results pauses and resumes, always there, always hungry, waiting for
the day, perhaps when it learns what comes next. The
scratching rose in pitch, the rhythm shifting, not random, not
animal any more. It sounds like fingers spelling out a
message snared in some ancient psychical code. Even the cap
brestled at the baseboard, haunches, quivering, ears flat. I watched
his peoples go wide, reflecting what little light had cooked
from the kerosene lamp. It went still, then darted in
a low, crowed scuffle toward the parlor ver, brushing the
leg of a chair Margaret used to claim as her own.
My hand tightened compulsively, and the notewk I had left
up and on the kitchen table, a list meant to reassure,
now only evidence of how few tasks remained to distract
me beyond the model of gas. The night was thick
with fog, the windows reflecting overlapping versions of my face
layered and uncertain. I could not sleep. I tried to
read a chapter, made tea I left cooling beside the sink,
watched the candle's flame strain against every stray breath. The
house performed its leturgy, a very quiet, then a creek,
then a drawn out exhalation from the pipes deep beneath
the stairs, and after a while those ever boulder scratches
stitched upward, sending tides of shivers through the floorboards. When
at last, exhaustion forced me into a fragile drouse, my
dreams provided no solace. I walked circles through a home
that rearranged itself behind ify closed door. Holes there bent
into vaults, bedrooms that opened into damp forests, cellars, and
froling in impossible calls. Each step took me back to
the beginning, the braked alcove, now crumbling, now restored, always bleeding,
a blackness that poles to Yonn like a mouth. I woke, shivering,
my pillow, gritty with salt from tears of sweat. The
cat had pressed up against my knees, trembling. The candle
nearly spent, guttered low. I touched my temples and found
them raw, as if I'd been pressing my skull against
rough plaster all night. From somewhere else, the room I
hadn't entered, or perhaps the stair while, I heard the
hush of words, not the slurred, luring voices of hunger,
but a single, deliberate phrase, It's almost timely. I jerked up,
heart lurching. Margaret. The name burst up before I could
weigh the risk. Silence. Then in the hallway, another insistent
round of scratching, this one traveling arking across the wainscoating,
Drawing nearer to the cellar door. I steeled myself and
rose slippersoft over the warped ward, hands bold in the
pockets of my dressing gown. The lamp I clung uncertainly
to me, my own shadow, the only thing moving in
the brittle hush. I reached the mouth of the stairs
below the hear I looomed black, heavy than it should be.
I drew a breath and stepped down the cat hestating
at the top before letting out a choked owl and
vanishing behind a bookcase. Coward, I thought, with a flicker
of envy. The cellars, cold chewed at my cheeks sharped
the memory. The sword of cold that feels personal each
day sounded hollow, though I'd have sworn the last time
I checked the planks with thick and sturdy. Down I went,
feet careful, the circle of lamp light shrinking as I descended.
The bricked alcove was visible even before I reached the bottom.
Its outline had changed more boilting now, the mortar pail
with the fluorescence, the air thick, with the scent of stone, earth,
and something newly rotten. The spiral of chalk had drawn
only a few nights ago, lay mostly intact. Both foamy
moles crept in along its edge. As soon as I
stepped on to the last stair, the scratching stuttered, then stopped.
The silence was so profound I wondered if the world
above still existed. I crouched beside the circle, breathing shallowly.
You aren't getting out, I whispered, a lassifiant moriply, not
to night. The voice that answered slid just beneath here, ring,
and yet every word was clear. Let me in, lee,
let me out, chewt. I closed my eyes, clutching the
spiral of tokens at my throat. No. The house responded
not with rage, but with a juttering, exhausted sigh. The
brick swalled, a thin crack glancing up the center. Mister,
something like it leaked through coiling and within the fog.
Faces pressed children, women, men, each holding my gaze for
a terrible and soon before dissolving into the mass. You
cannot keep me forever. Sleep with us. The fosses sign
no longer strictly Margaret's no precisely my own. But a
chorus and inheritance forced ung generations of wardens and daughters,
and frightened villages to paralyzed by history, to intervene. I
swallowed and traced the chalk lines. A new hand shaking
soul quivered on the stone, though they are remained perfectly still.
Against my wishes, memory stowed shop as Ie smuggers faced
the knight she'd sent me away as a child, her
voice rough, her hand shaking as she nodded the red
scarf at my throat, goat lee, don't come back, not
until you must. I bent low and pressed my forehead
to the stern, letting my tears run into the cracks,
Take me if you wish, but leave them alone. The
reply was unclear. A sudden building of Prussia that made
my nose bleed and metallic trickle across my lip. I
let the blood fall, coloring the chalk line red. When
the drops touched the air twisted the chorus to solving
into a single brittle voice word warden anchor stay. I
remained croached, half defeated, until the first inkling of sunrise
reached the high window. Light soft and wlane, filtering through
dust sold It might have been borne alongside the hunger itself.
Only then did the oppression lift enough for me to
breathe easy. I staggered upstairs, half blind teeth chattering and
shirts soaked in sweat. The rest of the day was
like passing through invisible water. Every movement weighed down, every
attempt at normaltly shrunk into gestures of habit, not hope.
I went through the routines, breakfast lost in taste, herpes
gathered in the garden, the cats stalking at my heels.
Once more, Missus Annesley did not come that day, nor
the one after. The villagers, when climpsed, true fog or
between slats, and the shutters stepped out of sight, their
offerings thinning. Even the shrine at the edge of the
wood hunch lower, as if overwhelmed by the responsibility of
standing God. One morning night, late one afternoon, as the
light lost its grip, a new sound threaded the in
sush a chime, metallic, faint but insistent. At first I
thought of the bell from the post office clock, but
as I listened, I realized it told not from outside,
but from the upper floor. I almost ignored it. One
more artifact of a mine ground down to the stub,
but it would not cease. Upstairs, the hallway was longer
than it should have been, Shadows peeled away from the baseboards,
a door at the end I didn't quite remember, opened
onto a narrow room nursery or something like one with
a single wooden cradle, Its sides pinned it with faded,
vinted flowers. The bell rested atop the cradle's head board
of Margaret's hole skull bell, the one she'd used to
wake me on winter mornings for hot chocolate and stores.
I blinked, staggered closer, and saw the bell was ringing gently,
though no hand touched it. As my fingers reached, a
chill deepened, and then a vision took me Margaret kneeling
at the cradle, drawing chalk cymbals on the floor, as
a baby, as shadow, remembering slept eyes wide and unblinking,
silent as a stone, her face pinched and tired, bent
over scrolls of white branches and double crescents. I jolted
back behind me. The air horned more presents than n emptiness,
more threat than comfort. The hungry thing beneath the m
was not patient, ed had waited, and now pressed against
every scene, every memory, every answer of while I had
tored it over the lonely months. The scratching louder now
traced up the stairs, stick ticked to collighte. The dull
edge of a knife dragged a long bone. I reeled, clutched,
the bell nearly fell as I raced downstairs. Below the
kitchen windows boiled with fog. The cellar door rattled in
its frame. The candles supply was low. Only two remained,
stark and stubby. They wak snicked by teeth in the hoop,
that nothing would come from me before I burned through
the last night. I went to the table, sat the
bell beside the candle, and began the circle again, salt
chalk tokens placed in their careful spiral. I drew in breath,
held Margaret's journal, and whispered her words, my own voice
joining hers circle unbroken candle Alie anchor in blood and
memoryle at this line hole no answer, not a verse.
Then the wall's moot contracted inward and outward in a
rhythm that pressed on my lawns. The cat shreaked, bolted
for the pantrary, eyes wide with terror. Out of the
corner of my vision, forms flickered to Margaret, my own child,
a shadow, strangers wherein the look of family, each one
rooting me. Here a chain I could not break. The
cellar door burst inward on a gust of wind so
cold it burned, exposed flash. The brick galco shuddered, mortar bancing,
loose cracks, yawning as they had in the first worse night.
The hunger pressed forward, impatient, jubilant. The voices overlapped in
a babble, all versions of myself and every woman who
had come before. But now the shape behind the wallgrew deliberate,
less brute, more cunning. It croon, let me out, be free.
The world owes you nothing, glee, Ye keep this place
for what. I shut my eyes, hands clamped over my ears,
knees pressed into the spiral full of I said, not
sure if I meant Margaret, the village, myself, or all
those nenameless voices in the fog, to keep the circle
so no one else has to break. A reptor through me,
pained beyond the body, memory, history, desire, jumbling into a
final brittle command, Stay or open? Stay or open? Stay
or opening? I sobbed, pain, rippling from scalp defeat, Stay,
I begged, I'll stay, just let the village be. Something shifted,
The cracks in the wall wept black, Then ebbed, The
forces settled to a steady thrum. The fog outside hesitated
at the window, then slowly, sweetly unfurled, streaming away over
the hills. I thought I heard Margaret's voice again, gentle,
exhausted but relieved, thank'ye. The candle brightened slumb blue to
steady gold. The bells still clutched in my shaking hand,
ran once the most ordinary, humly sound in all these years.
I slept that morning, cold beside the table, cat curled
on my chest, A first sunlight sense, who knew when
spilling canded yellow over the mottel tiles. After that, things
changed subtly, but for good. The scratching slowed. Villages began
to leave gifts at the steep again, bread bundles of
Chad's jaws of summer preserves. Misseses Annesley returned, this time
with a basket of duck eggs in a tent to smile,
and sat with me while Tea steamed the dust from
our ferts. She said little, but her hand on mine
told me the rest. You can ask for help, she said, softly,
will come now you've done enough alone. The hunger and
the walls receded, not vanished, packaged, pacified by understanding not
just the ritual, not just the candle, but choice. Each
night I built the circle, lit the flame, and said
my prayer, and found the way a child lighter, not absent,
never that, but possible to bear. The house yielded to
me and you. Margaret's room swelled with peas, and the
mirrors reflected only my own face, drawn sober but recognizably mine.
The fog when it came, slid past, as if respecting
the boundary set by hopeful, tired hands. I did not leave,
but I was not alone. When I gardened, the laughter
of children drifted up from the village below. When I
walked the edge of the trees, I felt watched, yes,
but not with mouse, only witness memory warning. Every so often,
near midnight, the scratching would sharpen, just long enough to
remind me. The hunger learned and waits, But so do we,
the wards, the keepers, and to night the boundaries hold.
For now, that is enough, and that is the end.
Thank you for listening, and I will see you in
the next one.