Candle in the Attic Window(26)
He walked through the chapel. It was the fastest way out, although he feared what he might find there. He walked quickly through the nave with his head turned away from the apse. He got only a few blinks of the red ruins of the rest of the Benedictine Abbey of St. James. They had paid for keeping a sinner so long from the Devil’s grip.
It was still the deep of night when he stumbled outside, but the sky had cleared. He stepped past the gate. The moment his foot touched the road, he sat down in the dirt to wait for her.
She flowed from the eaves of the beeches, still a thing of midnight. But the green of her skin had flushed red. She was more beautiful that way, fulfilled in her wrath.
“You could not drive the knife in yourself.” The words came easily now. Hate no longer held onto her.
Richard nodded. “You are the Devil.”
“Only a servant.” The redness began to fade. “‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.’ But that is a lie. The Devil may also repay, when he has been falsely accused and long denied. Some men do not need the Devil to make them do what they do. What they have done.”
Her eyes – was this the first time he had seen them? – were filled with sorrow but not for what had just happened.
Richard looked toward the open doors of the church. The scent of blood wafted from it. “Revenge should be – cleaner.”
Her eyes were on her own body. “The crime was unclean. Yet, I was no maiden at the time. And I took my own life. God would not have me, but the Devil welcomed me. He welcomed revenge. It is repaid. And you are still clean.”
Richard Davey did not feel that way. But he was the weapon that did not want to be drawn. The sword did not have the guilt of its wielder, no matter what the blood said.
She spoke: “At dawn, it is finished for me. But I have a reward for you.”
From behind, passing through her body to reach him, trotted a familiar horse with bulging saddlebags. Richard stood up and placed his hand onto the animal’s forelock.
“The thieves – they did not get far.”
It was the last sound he heard from her. When he turned to ask what she meant, he saw only the orange glow of the dawn.
As he mounted the saddle, he tried not to look at the claw marks that crossed the leather, or the bloodstains on the animal’s hoofs. He turned in the direction Regensburg. He did not enjoy the thought of crossing its bridge and the icy waters below.
Ryan Harvey has crossed the Regensburg Bridge and seen much of Bavaria (thanks to his sister living there), but has spent most of his life in Los Angeles, where he resides with an ever-growing and space-gobbling collection of books and Blu-rays. He is a recent winner of The Writers of the Future Contest, and his winning entry, “An Acolyte of Black Spires”, is collected in L. Ron Hubbard Presents: Writers of the Future Vol. XXVII. He has worked as a columnist for Black Gate magazine’s website for three years and has two upcoming stories in the print edition. His fiction will also appear later this year in the anthology, Roar of the Crowd (Rogue Blades Press). Aside from writing, Ryan is a pulp literature nut, avid swing dancer, and wearer of 1930s fashions in LA’s vintage scene. His Latin is far better than his German.
Lovers & Desire
“O what a black, dark hill is yon,
“That looks so dark to me?”
“O it is the hill of hell,” he said,
“Where you and I shall be.”
The Daemon Lover, Popular English Ballad
Obsessions (or Biting Off More Than One Can Chew)
By Colleen Anderson
Dream, dream divine, my dear
of dark’s loving, sheltered clasp
immortal hopes in mortal sleep
gaslit vapours drape, shape
the land restless
with its secrets
lurid phantoms shift within
a discordant haze of consumption and gambled lives
hollow hooves ring cobblestones
turn and there is nothing
the dust of Morpheus mists your vision
while Poe and Wilde linger at the tomb
discuss portraits and Annabelle Lee
You will descend, my dear
steps from reality to mad cacophony
hidden laughter chimes its manic bell
your perfected self is heedless
until spectral hands chill your face
a sibilance of whispers writhe and burrow
hook their glinting cause within, though you are the apple
from which that worm has crawled
your bosom white as casket lilies shudders, yet
you cannot, will not pull free of darkling touch
the canvas more garish as you work, daub in
Venus’s flytrap, the nightshade bloom, narcissus
at its center, the inferno melts your brain and heart
Try to turn away, my dear
Elysian fields hold no mystery once you’ve tramped eternal blooms
you pollinate your dreamworlds with blood dust
cradled in blossoms soft as funeral silk
bony fingers that snare your imagination, then your arm
are mutilated, corrupt and it is paper that you feel