Ep. 2 Souls and Shades

Dark as Dawn | Bright as Night, a dark fantasy serial

DARK AS DAWN, BRIGHT AS NIGHT is a dark fantasy novel serialized in seventeen episodes. This is Episode Two.

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Previously: A mysterious entity pursues Ten causing him to fall and injure himself in a remote forest, while Blythe makes an unwelcome delivery to her local keeper’s mornrill.

Up ahead: Mae navigates the afterlife. Ten remembers the day he lost everything. And Blythe realizes the powerful tool that’s just fallen into her grasp.

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MAE

I watch as Mom disappears into the mist on the other side of the water. I think I should cry or scream, but I can’t seem to feel or do much of anything except keep my eyes locked on her until the last. She’s trying to speak, and I can tell she’s desperate for me to understand. For better or worse I do. How could I not? I’ve hung on her every word since birth.

We all did.

When Mom spoke, her voice surprisingly raspy and deep, people listened. And I listened harder than most. I got so I could practically read her mind, so reading her lips now is not a problem. Not that I liked what they said.

I’m surprised by the look on the Hunter’s face. She stands at the edge of the river, shoulders taut, her eyes intense but not with their usual predatory hunger. They’re softer, sadder. Regret, I think, finally. She looks like she regrets turning my mom over to that green creature in the water. Strange to think of her showing any kind of empathy. But then, I’ve been able to predict very little that’s happened in the last month. I’m not sure why I expect any different at this point.

The Hunter breaks out of her trance and pushes into the dense forest. She passes within feet of me, her ghost-detecting instincts failing. Which is weird because, as far as I can tell, she spends her days and nights stalking the dead.

Me included.

Or maybe me especially.

I’ve been running away from her since the day I died. But in the few weeks I’ve been in this newfound state, my ability to elude detection by the powers that be has been the most interesting development. Not that the Hunter and that other monster, the Wright, haven’t tried to rein me in.

My body was barely cold on the hospital gurney when the Wright called me to her for the first time. I was disoriented, distraught. I’d just seen myself with a bullet hole in my chest. How messed up is that? No one should see themselves that way. I was freaking out, a mess. So when I felt a pull, I went. Why not? I didn’t know better. Plus, I thought maybe this was a sign. Maybe I’d follow the feeling to the place I was supposed to go now that I was adrift in this in-between.

But, yeah, no. That was definitely the wrong move.

I could tell right away the Wright was a piece of work. Mom must have been desperate or blinded by grief to trust her. Probably both. But at least the demon lady explained a few things. Like how Mom more or less sold my soul to her in the hopes of keeping me on this earthly plane. How the Wright was going to help me and that together we’d do all these great things, like taking over the world or some nonsense.

What she didn’t understand is that, honestly, I just wanted to go home and be normal again. I made my dislike of her and her messed-up plans pretty clear. She didn’t like that. I got the impression that I was the first person in a long time that’d defied her.

Anyway, I left. Just slipped through the walls of that spooky house of hers. The feel of it made me nauseous. Or at least the ghost of that feeling. I’m struggling to label a lot of what I can and can’t do now. It sucks, starting over from zero. I mean I was just growing into a functioning human when this all happened. Now I’m clueless all over again.

So sometimes, when I feel that telltale tug of the Wright’s call, I almost give in. It’d be nice not to feel so alone. But then I remember her creepy black eyes, the smile that seemed just a bit too wide, the voice tinged by something old and dangerous, and I manage to ignore her. I’ve gotten pretty good at pretending she doesn’t exist. Plus, the thought of how angry that must make her brings a smile to my face, and not much can do that for me lately.

The Hunter’s been more problematic. She doesn’t make the dead come to her. She seeks them out. Again, being totally naive, I made it easy on her at first. Getting caught by the Hunter was different than responding to the pull of the Wright. That felt a little like going home, if home was somewhere beyond the looking glass. When the Hunter found me it was more like the way two opposites, when they’re far enough away from each other, eventually meet around the other side.

But even she couldn’t hold me.

She keeps trying though.

And while I haven’t quite figured out how to avoid her altogether, at least I can tell now when it’s coming. I’ve started to figure out how to cut it short, too. I lean hard into my dark side, into the feeling I’ve always had of not belonging, of being a part of something different. Something beyond.

The Hunter has a tough time with that for some reason, but she always manages to get a few words in regardless. Her talk is a lot like the Wright’s too. A bunch of jiberish about revenge and power.

There’s zero reason to trust her, but just like with the Wright, it’s nice being seen, to feel like I might have a place to go, even if it’s by the side of a psycho. Because this version of the afterlife is crap. It’s absolute crap, and I’m lonely. Lonely and afraid, and I really want to go home.

I just don’t know where that is anymore.

I know where it used to be, though.

I went back once.

But I was too late.

I should have gone home sooner. When I finally worked out how to navigate on my own in this new form, I immediately wished I’d never returned. What I found was awful. That word doesn’t really do what I saw justice, but I don’t think anything could.

Thinking of it now, all I see is blood. So much blood. And my beautiful mother in the middle of it all. She still had the knife in her hand. Dad was on his knees, crimson soaking into the fabric of his pants. Great, shuddering gasps making his chest heave.

I spent that night wandering our little town. I was looking for her. The ghost of her. What I found wasn’t anything like me. But it wasn’t nothing either, that shimmering kaleidoscope of black and white. I stayed by her. I could tell she was confused, frightened, adrift. I knew those feelings well, so I tried my best to let her know it’d be okay. That I was okay. That I was sorry I’d stayed away too long. That this was all a minor detour.

After all, I always knew that death wouldn’t be the end. Shadows have been haunting me for as long as I can remember.

As a kid, I’d see figures. And they were, if not friends exactly, then familiar faces, silent company in a childhood that was often isolated. And I knew without knowing how that they were waiting for me to die. Not in a bad way, but in the way you wait for rain when storm clouds roll in. An inevitability, and when it happens, almost a relief.

Where we’d all be going when death finally came for me was a bit harder to understand. But wherever it was seemed expected, normal even. Although now that it’s actually happened, I wonder where my shadowy friends have gone. Seems like they’ve disappeared just when I actually need them.

When Mom and I needed them.

We stayed near our house, but neither of us ventured in again. I knew she stayed because of Dad. The times he did come outside he looked progressively worse. He disappeared more and more frequently. Sometimes he’d be gone all day then shamble into the house, mud caked on his boots, pine needles in his hair.

This last time, Dad looked truly awful. His face was bloated, his skin waxy. And there was something in his eyes, a look like giving up. A look like nothing mattered to him anymore. I think that’s what got Mom to follow him even though traveling as a ghost is complicated. Kind of like getting towed along across bumpy paranormal connections. I tagged along too despite the awkwardness, reluctant to be apart from the one aspect of the afterlife that made it more bearable.

In the woods, she finally showed herself to him. Of course Dad didn’t understand. He ran, she followed, I tried to keep up. But then the Hunter appeared. Dad fell and Mom got caught.

Now I have her last words from that watery crossing stuck in my head.

Your dad needs help. Go to him.

I’m not sure how a dead girl is supposed to help anyone. But I go back to the ridge and settle down at the bottom of the gully where dad’s lying. I get as close as I dare. His head wound looks bad, but his chest is rising and falling so I’m hopeful he’ll come to soon.

He doesn’t stir for hours. Doesn’t leave the ground until daybreak the following morning. All the way back I trail him, wondering what I’m going to do. For the time being, he doesn’t seem in danger of ending himself. At least not imminently. Though the way he drinks himself into a stupor when he gets home might be paving the way to an early grave.

Inside our house, I keep to the shadows. I don’t want to spook him. He’s been through enough as it is. I’m pretty sure he should get some help from a doctor, but he just stays on the couch, his eyes fixed blurrily up on the ceiling. The only time he moves is to take a drink. When he finally nods off, I slip out of the darkness.

Oh, Dad.

What are we going to do?

TEN

When I woke up in the bottom of the gully after a night of fitful rest, I pulled myself to my feet, head pounding, knees wobbly, and tried to orient myself. I’d covered a surprising amount of ground in my haste to get away from…whatever it was I’d seen.

Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, I thought about staying where I was. Laying back down in the muck and letting consciousness wash away from me. Oblivion seemed like a welcome respite from the throb of my head and the ache of a hundred scrapes and bruises.

But then something deeper than the sadness and pain had tugged at me, turned my boots in the direction of home. It took a little longer than usual to find my way back, slowed down by injuries and the increased distance I’d trekked into the forest. By the time I got back to my car it was dark, and the whole incident seemed like the creation of my pounding, addled brain.

Back home now, I let myself flop back on the couch. Not the bed. Never the bed. That was a place for Helena and me. And she’s gone.

Gone.

Fuck.

I reach out an uncoordinated hand to the coffee table, and my fingers find the neck of the whiskey bottle. I take a messy swig, rivulets of Jameson filtering through the stubble on my chin to stain the collar of my already-filthy shirt.

I let my heavy head loll back, try to focus. I have zero sense of time. I remember that when I crashed back through the front door, pursued by my memories of the day before, the light had been low and gray.

It’s still that color, but that’s a mostly meaningless observation. Nearly every hour of the day is that same color in a Pacific Northwest autumn.

I lift my arm and it swims through the air, and then my watch is in front of my face. I put a steadying hand on my wrist. 5:30 pm. Jesus. I’d drank away the day.

I take another swallow from the bottle and let it drop to the floor. All the little lights of the useless devices littering the living room double themselves and shimmer in and out of focus, creating constellations. Pretty in a messed-up way, but it means that I’m close to throwing up or passing out, and I’m not in the mood to do either.

I want numb oblivion, and I want to be awake for it. Prove to myself that I can be conscious and not wracked by guilt or visited by awful memories or attacked by things that shouldn’t exist. Stupid really. I’m not proving anything but how much the mighty can fall. Ten out of fucking ten. I laugh to myself, a mirthless noise in the cold dusk of the house.

Focus. Stay awake. The lights are constellations.

I should name them.

So I do.

The ballerina.

I crack open a warm can of beer.

The warrior.

I chug half.

The fairy.

I blink.

Then blink again.

The fairy’s eyes, two dots of electronic green in the dark. I squeeze my eyes shut and open them once more. And then something shifts, and I see a sliver of pale skin in the dying light. A crescent moon to add to my night sky. It takes me a breath or two to realize that the eyes, the skin, shouldn’t be there.

That someone is looking back at me.

“Shit.” I sit bolt upright, the room careening around me. A shape darker than the rest of the room skitters away, leaping shadows and streaks of halflight as it disappears down the hall.

My heart’s in my throat. I stand, teeter, catch myself against the wall. Tilting over, unsteady as hell, I find the spent whiskey bottle on the floor and raise it in front of me. Pointless. Nothing’s going to protect me from whatever I just saw. I don’t want to admit that to myself, but I know it anyway.

I take a deep breath. Another.

The house is silent. Then a distant cry, of pain or joy I can’t tell. But I recognize the voice.

“Mae,” I whisper.

I take a step, waver, take another. Silence closes in on my ears. I feel claustrophobic. My foot crunches into something unidentifiable on the floor, a wrapper or the shells of the peanuts I vaguely remember cracking open and eating earlier in the day. It doesn’t matter. I’m just grateful for the noise, a reprieve from the heavy stillness. A distraction from the echo of that sound that’s finding all the raw places inside of me and tearing them open again.

I reach the narrow hallway and run a hand against the wall to keep my balance. The doors on either side of me shift and stutter in my vision. I feel nauseous, and beneath the suffocating flood of alcohol, my nerves are jangling with the first stirrings of panic.

I only want to get out of this stillness, the growing darkness, the gray walls of the constricting hall. Get out of this hellhole. But even as I think it, I realize with a sick sadness that it’s not true. All I really want is to hear that sound again. Hear Mae again.

Even if it tears me apart.

One door. Two doors. The last one at the end of the hall is Mae’s room and it’s ajar, creaking a little on its hinges, like something’s disturbed the air inside. A clumsy footfall and I’m falling into the space, catching myself on the knob with both hands and practically ripping the door from its hinges.

I’m half-lying on the bare floorboards of her room. Nothing’s changed since the day she died. All her world, everything she loved: the posters of bands, the framed photos of friends, her books, and jewelry. It’s all here in the dim light, curtains drawn against the waning day, the unforgiving light.

My vision is blurred from the whiskey, and beer, and now the tears. I feel sick, so I rest my head against the smooth wood. Her sweater is there, a favorite, tossed down weeks ago and never picked up. I reach for it, suddenly wanting to feel the familiar fibers, when something shifts in the corner, a bit of darkness a deeper black than the rest.

A shift and a turn and then those eyes with their eerie glow pin me to the floor. She’s reaching for something on her shelf, but she lets her hand drop to her side, the expression on her face unreadable.

“Mae,” I say, but now it sounds like a question. She’s not here. I know it. I’ve drank too much.

And yet.

I can’t keep my eyes open any more. They’re too heavy, just like this house, like my life. Everything’s too heavy, and I just want to melt into the floor. Instead, the shadow of Mae melts into the soft black behind my eyelids. The black fades to gray, then to the pale light of a distant summer afternoon.

I’ve been here before.

In my nightmares.

I’m home. Back from being away. Not from a tour like before. I’d left the service after my last assignment left me just this side of fixable. No, this is a different kind of mission. A dirtier, messier job. But bills need to be paid, and nothing else fits this ten-out-of-ten warrior no matter how much I try to shrug myself into civilian life. And nothing pays as well either.

We’d had a fight about it before I left for that last job, Mae and I. She was too smart, too observant, and she didn’t want me to go. She was scared. For her it came out as anger. I know, because I’m the same. She said things. I said things. She cried. I raged. We never used to fight, but things had felt fragile between us. Unspoken worry had soured into a cold fury.

When she heard my car door slam, she came outside and stood on the front porch. Arms crossed, face sullen.

“I made it back, Mae,” I call to her from beside the car. “Just like I said I would.”

“You shouldn’t have gone in the first place,” she growls back.

“C’mon, it’s been a long day. Let’s not fight.”

“Fighting’s all you understand,” she says.

That wounds me a bit, but it’s not far from the truth. Fighting. It feels like it’s all I’ve ever done. Maybe all I’ll ever do.

“I’m fighting for us now, though, Mae. A couple more jobs like this, and I can find something else. Something stable and normal.”

We both know that’ll never happen. Stable and normal have never been for me, and those closest to me have paid the price. I take a step away from the car, hold my hands out to her.

“Stop worrying, and come give your old man a hug.”

She doesn’t budge from the front stoop. I let my hands fall back down to my sides. I want to tell her she’s a kid, that she should leave all the worrying to the adults. But I’ve demonstrated time and again that I care little about putting myself in harm’s way if it means taking care of my family. Worry is for the future. I live in the present.

“C’mon,” I try again. “Give me a hug.” I pause then decide to drop my secret weapon. “We can go get a chocolate shake from Burger World.”

Burger World is our place. Chocolate shakes are our thing. I can see her icy expression melt a degree, and I raise my hands once more. She huffs and then slouches down the steps. I cross the distance between us and wrap her in a big bear hug.

She doesn’t immediately hug me back, but after a little she slinks her arms around my back. I pause, just to enjoy this moment, the kind that comes less frequently now that she’s a teen. Then I give her sides a playful poke, just to see her smile.

Finally, that beautiful grin widens across her fine, open face, crinkling the edges of her almond eyes. I lift her off the ground, spin her around. She’s light in my arms, and I spin and spin, enjoying her wonderful laugh.

We spin. She laughs.

Then there’s a crack. The sound of screeching tires. Something wet on my hands. She’s not laughing. I stop spinning.

“Mae,” I say, and when I say her name it’s like a spell is broken. I understand. The car, the sound. I know she’s been shot. Another crack. I throw myself over her. The car is moving now. Moving away. And there’s blood. So much blood.

“Mae!” I scream. “Mae!” I cradle her head in one arm. Grasp her hand in the other. “Someone help!”

I’m screaming, screaming, but no one’s coming. And Mae’s slipping farther away. I hold her tighter, squeeze my eyes shut against the glare of that awful summer sun.

When I open them again, I’m back in her room. The light’s almost gone, but I can still see her. She’s holding my hand, that shadow Mae, and there’s a bullet hole in her dusky chest, a jet stain spreading from an obsidian wound.

I start upright in terror, ripping my hand from her grasp. I blink and she’s gone, but in the split second before, I catch a complicated expression in her strange glowing eyes.

There was anger there, and maybe even love.

But above all, there was pity.

BLYTHE

The human is talking.

I imagine all the ways I could decapitate him, catch his ruby blood in my cup and swallow. Instead, I take a sip of the swill that passes for drink in this backwater world, and grit my teeth, hoping it passes for a smile.

He’s middle aged, but not unattractive for his kind. This has probably served him well in life. An almost-handsome face and a job that pays well enough that he’s found my studio and is willing to drop serious cash on one of my paintings. He’s done a bit of research and is disguising his shallow knowledge of art history with equally shallow compliments.

He’s one of the thousands like him that I’ve met over the years. In my experience, few humans are remarkable. Some are kind, some cruel, some intelligent, others dull, all equally dangerous in their own way when they find themselves with money to spare.

Most are just like this man, pretenders, empty chambers resonant with empty words. Imagining their demise at my hands is one of the few forms of solace I have in this ridiculous world.

In the Dawn, humans are nothing but fodder for my kind. Diessences are the main form of sustenance, a combination of soul and shade, light and dark. They came to us across the mornrills in their multitudes. Freshly dead and each with a particular bouquet of personality and life experience.

In all likelihood, the man before me now will one day be consumed and quickly forgotten. The scent of his banality reminds me of the servants’ kitchen in my family’s great house. We never would have dined on such as him. At our table we supped on the diessences of royalty, heretics, shamans, and voyagers, among other exceptions to the human rule. And on our most sacred days we did not stop at soul and shade, we took the whole quintessence, the five parts of a human life including their name, passion, and blood.

In short, we ate them whole.

Sheltered naïf that I was, I never thought of how the harvest was accomplished. Of course, on those special feast days, the humans brought themselves to us as sacrifices on their stone altars. I was there, and I remember well the sweet, viscous drip of hot blood down my chin. But the rest of the year, our tables were laden with a thousand souls and shades and we gorged and gorged.

I was to learn much later that it fell to the lowest among us, the wardens, to fetch the diessences from their purposeless wanderings about the Earth and bring them to the mornrills for the keepers to cross.

I learned because that is what I became, what I have been for these countless centuries. Because of a single error in judgment, committed innocently enough, long, long ago. I sometimes think it was because I was so favored that I was punished so harshly. Sentenced to walk this forsaken planet, gathering diessences I will never get to taste. A courtier turned laborer.

“Your brushwork is superb,” he says, interrupting my revelry. “It hardly seems like a painting at all.”

“My technique is very old-school.” I grimace harder, my teeth gritted into that forced smile. “Wash upon thin wash of color, built up one translucent layer at a time. And I make my own colors. It’s how I was taught, but not many people work that way anymore. Too time-consuming. It took me a long time to learn how to do it right.”

I finger the necklace around my neck. The stone is a raw opal. The finest in my collection. I have others though, of different colors and qualities. It’s by grinding those stones into fine powders that I create the special pigment I use for the souls and shades I paint into my work. Painting them helps me focus, draws me closer to them so I can find them faster when the time comes.

“It’s amazing, truly,” he says. He turns his gaze to me. I can tell he thinks these compliments are going to loosen me up. I know all the signs by now. The spark of interest tinged with greed in his eyes. There’s a bit of hunger in his look too. It’s been a while, then, since his efforts have been rewarded. Unfortunately for him, he’ll be waiting a bit longer.

I step away, turn my back, busy myself with tidying the counters. With the more perceptive of his kind, this signaling works. I doubt it will register with him.

“I hate to rush you,” I lie, “but it will be closing time shortly.”

“What is someone with your talent doing out in suburbia?” He comes close to me again and leans against the counter, folding his arms. His air of nonchalance irks me.

“I like being away from the art snobs in the city. And I find this little town charming in its own way. I’ve had enough of big cities to last me lifetimes.”

“The way your paintings glow, though, and their unusual subject matter. You could make a killing someplace with a livelier art market.”

A sly smile has quirked the corner of his mouth as he says this. This little dance has worked for him before, I’m sure. He’s far from clumsy; his eyes haven’t wandered from mine, and he’s kept innuendo out of our conversation, but I can tell where his mind is.

Taking an artist to bed seems like an exciting proposition to those who haven’t had the pleasure. He’s annoying, but not threatening. This is lucky for him. Those that have made the mistake of menacing me have been quite sorry, at least for the last several hundred years. I learned my lessons, artistic and otherwise, early.

“I’m not really in it for the money,” I say, heading toward the door. He’s still propped against my counter. I dig a business card from my pocket and hold it out as I open the door, a gust of autumn breeze blowing a handful of curl-edged leaves onto my floor.

He looks at me for a moment longer than is entirely comfortable, then pushes off to stand at his full height. He’s tall, well-built, he’ll find someone to satisfy him, but it certainly won’t be me.

He saunters over, zips his jacket. He’s about to take my card when I see him glance at the shelves set into the plaster surrounding the large brick fireplace that warms my studio. The fire is dying, its embers throwing off a dim red light that leaves the deep alcoves shrouded in shadow. But I know he can still see the outline of those bone-white forms.

“What are those?” he asks. Gone from his voice is the undercurrent of flirtatiousness he had earlier. In its place is genuine curiosity, shot through with a touch of fear. I glance outside. It’s twilight. Damn, I should have been closed by now.

“Just some works in clay made by an associate of mine,” I say. “I’m a bit of a collector myself, you see. I like keeping things around the studio that remind me of what’s possible when a skilled artisan puts her creative powers to the test. They keep me inspired. Motivated.”

He stares at them a few breaths longer, his pupils expanding in the gloaming. With his eyes round and his lips pressed together in a tight line of stifled unease, his expression mirrors the faces of the votaries before him.

I always thought the statues looked rapt, expectant, even worshipful. But, now that I see the same mien written in flesh and blood, I realize that perhaps the figures are meant to reflect a more sinister sight.

They’re not expectant as much as anxious.

I open the door wider, hoping to remind the man of where he was headed before the votaries distracted him. Another gust of chill wind blows in and seems to awaken him from his daze.

“W-well,” he manages, his voice breaking, “I’ll be on my way.”

He sees the business card in my still-outstretched hand but darts his eyes away, pretending not to have noticed. I slip it back inside my pocket, relieved that the votaries seem to have discouraged him from any future contact.

I close the studio door firmly behind him as he walks off down the cracked sidewalk, the speed of his footsteps belying the disconcerting feeling I’m sure he’s still trying to shake.

Any other time of the day the votaries are nothing to fear, and honestly, I thought their ability to scare humans had worn off by now. I’ve returned the shades that were attached to the statues to the nearby river decades ago, one of the few times the keeper of that mornrill was pleased to see me. Now there’s only the residual blush of death about them, and no lurking ghosts to haunt my studio. But the man must have been more attuned to the layers surrounding his world than I gave him credit for.

I turn the lock, switch off the bright lights overhead, letting the burnished light of the end of the day fill the space instead. It’s sunset, the time of shades.

Her time.

Perhaps I have been too careless with the Wright as the keeper in the forest said. The mornrills are becoming crowded with her handiwork, that I can’t deny. And the keeper’s warning that the waters holding the fractures could burst their banks and flood the world is a sobering thought.

But even that concern isn’t enough to keep the man in the woods far from my thoughts. I can’t seem to rid my inner visions of him. In my mind’s eye I keep seeing him fall from the ridge, a look of surprise on his haggard face. There’s something about him. Something that keeps tugging at my attention, that constantly drags him back into focus.

I try to push the thought of him away once more. I have better things to do than waste my time and brainpower on him and his modicum of potential. But then I glance up at my votary trophies and suddenly I understand.

I’ve seen him before.

I cast my mind back. Yes. He’s changed since the last time I saw him. He hasn’t handled the hand fate dealt him well. No wonder I didn’t recognize him at first. But now that I’ve made the connection, it’s so obvious.

On the ridge I had hoped he would die, and I have to laugh at my own shortsightedness.

I should never have left him in those woods. Stupid.

Now that I see the consequences of what’s happened, I wonder how none of this ever occurred to me before. Obviously, I’ve been too long in this hellhole, and it’s dulled my senses.

But never mind. If he survived his fall, all my suffering may finally come to an end. And I needn’t worry about letting him slip through my fingers. Touched as he was by that snag, he became tied to a new world.

My world.

And while to the Dawn I may matter little, here on earth, an emissary of what lies beyond life is something of a magnet to those touched by death.

He’ll find me. And when he does, I will need to be ready.

He may be my best chance to end the Wright and her shade-making for good.

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It’s a privilege to share my work with you! Thank you for taking the time to read the second episode of DARK AS DAWN, BRIGHT AT NIGHT.

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ONWARD TO CHAPTER 3 ==>

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