Ep. 4: Visitations
Dark as Dawn, Bright as Night, a novel
DARK AS DAWN, BRIGHT AS NIGHT is a dark fantasy novel serialized in seventeen episodes. This is Episode Four.
New to the story? START HERE.
Previously: Ten makes an unsettling discovery and ends up in an equally unsettling conversation with Blythe.
Up ahead: Blythe makes Ten an offer, and otherwordly visitors pursue Mae.
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TEN
The woman should have been impossible to believe.
Captive souls and an ancient ghost-maker she wants me to murder.
My brain tells me to walk straight out the door and put a healthy distance between myself and this stranger. But my gut believes it. She’s skilled at reading my responses, changing herself to influence me. But maybe not as good at it as she believes herself to be.
It’s those eyes.
They’re an arresting amber, and behind them is a presence, otherworldly, almost predatory.
Maybe she can fool others more willing to write off their icy depths as simple bitchiness. Me, though, I can’t explain away that gaze so easily. Years of running high-stakes missions gets you pretty good at parsing people. Sometimes your life depends on making those kinds of judgements. And right now, I can’t shake the feeling that my life means little to this creature in the guise of a beautiful woman.
But however disconcerting I find her, she talks about Mae like my little girl still needs my help. Dead or not, I’ve seen my daughter, and she was too real for it to have been a dream. I need to know more.
“What’s your name,” I say.
“Call me Blythe,” she says.
“Just Blythe?”
She gives me a small nod, the light of the fire reflecting off the rich auburn of her hair and flushing her golden skin. Blythe. An odd name for something like her. She’s about as far away from lighthearted as you can get.
“Why have you been tracking my daughter?”
“It’s my job as a warden of the Dawn,” she says. "Normally, I collect diessences, souls combined with shades, the parts of humans leftover after death. I pass them across bridge-waters called mornrills to the Dawn beyond.
“Lately, though, I’ve had my hands full. I let the activities of the Wright go unaddressed for too long, bringing to the mornrills only the souls leftover after she stripped the shades away. Those halved diessences are called fractures, and they stay in the bridge waters until they can be reunited with their shades and crossed fully.
“There are keepers of the mornrills, and they do not take kindly to so many of the uncrossed in their waters.”
She pauses, wondering, maybe, if I’m still with her. And it is all a bit much.
But she made Mae sound present tense, and the truth is I would believe just about anything, do just about anything, to bring my girl out of the past and into the here and now where she belongs.
So, I swallow my skepticism and listen, hungry to find a path to Mae through this maze of strange words and convoluted explanations.
“Go on,” I say, and I can see she’s pleased that I’ve followed her this far.
“The whole system has become unbalanced. The fractures pollute the mornrills and weaken the keepers. The shades melt into the fabric of the Wright’s world. Once a part of it, they are nearly impossible to retrieve. Even for me. The fruits of my struggles against the Wright have been…lacking.”
Here she gestures vaguely at some creepy statues around her fireplace. I hadn’t noticed them before, but now that I do, it’s hard to take my eyes off them. Or shake the feeling that they’re watching. I drag my eyes back to Blythe. I need to focus on what she’s saying.
“I perform my duties as warden on behalf of the Dawn, but really it’s a service to the people of this world. Their souls and shades must be paired so that they can be crossed over the bridge waters to what lies beyond. This is the nature of things. The balance that must be maintained.
“The Wright, demon that she is, promises the scared and the vulnerable an eternal afterlife. What waits for those souls is a watery suspension between this world and the next. And the shades? Well, the ones she can use become mindless servants. The vast majority, however, are little more than threads woven into an awful tapestry of her design.
“When she strips away those shades, the souls wander, voiceless and without volition, invisible to the majority of humanity. As a warden of the Dawn I not only see the Wright’s leftover souls, I feel them. Like little vibrations on a great web that stretches from me throughout your corner of this world.”
She uses her hands to emphasize the extent of her territory, spinning her elegant fingers out through the air. Combined with that predatory gaze, the web metaphor makes more sense than she realizes.
“Now the shades,” she continues, “are a different story. Once they become part of the Wright’s darkness, they disappear from this world and from my perception. At least, that’s what usually happens.”
“Usually,” I repeat.
“I say usually because your daughter– ,”
“Mae.”
“Mae,” she allows, continuing, “I can feel her still. She’s special, different. Somehow she’s managed to escape the Wright’s pull. I never knew it was possible. But as soon as I realized what she was, I knew I had to seek her out.”
Special. Of course Mae’s fucking special. I’ve known since the day she was born. But it isn’t just because her shade escaped the clutches of some boogeywoman. Nah, she’s special because she’s mine. But I don’t say this out loud. I don’t need to. This woman, this Blythe, she knows what Mae means to me. It’s written all over my face.
“I found her,” Blythe continues, “the desolation rolling off of her was extraordinary which is not so strange. Our shades embody the darker emotions: sadness, anger, misery. But the astonishing thing about Mae was that she appeared to have retained her sense of self, and not only that, she was able to exercise free will.
“She can and does actively avoid me, behavior that is truly remarkable for a shade. But I understand now that she’s the key to ending the Wright. I just need to figure out how to use her.”
Use her. What the hell. She’s a child. My child. No one should be using her. My frustration comes out as a kind of strangled cry, and Blythe pauses at the sound, studying me.
With an almost imperceptible shift in her posture and demeanor she seems to take on the role of concerned friend, predicting, perhaps, the outrage that hammers at my heart at the thought of my sweet Mae dead and alone, being used as some kind of tool in a fight that has nothing to do with her.
But it’s too little, too late. She’s already said too much. Mae is an interesting anomaly, a possible key to a problem. She means little else to this woman.
“It must be hard,” she says, “hearing all this about Mae.”
I don’t say anything. I can’t. There’s a ball of cold fury choking my throat. How dare this creature presume to know anything about Mae, to understand how learning about my daughter’s life after death makes me feel like even more of a piece of shit than before.
A flash of what might be anxiousness crosses Blythe’s face. She seems to sense my anger and isn’t sure what her next move should be. Before she can change tack once again, I manage to force words out of my mouth.
“Why should I believe any of this?” I manage to croak.
She seems to think better of affecting another disguise and simply becomes what I imagine is as close to her real self as I will ever see: distant and cold, yet still with an underlying hunger that rouses my sense of self-preservation.
“Because I know ever since you were touched by that snag in the woods, you’ve caught at least a glimpse of my world, the world that everyone else is blind to. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. Mae needs your help, Ten.”
“My help?” The words only just make it pass my fury-choked throat.
I swallow. Everything she’s said, it’s too much. None of it makes sense. I swallow again. Focus on Blythe’s eyes. The more that I look into their impossible darkness, the more I know. No human could have eyes like that. I can feel it in the pit of my stomach. I can feel something cutting through the anger gripping my heart.
Curiosity.
Hope, even.
“How can I help?” I ask, and there’s a hint of interest below the sharp sarcasm.
“I need to stop the Wright,” she says. “You want to help your daughter. And maybe more than that, you want peace, to quiet your demons.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“True,” Blythe says. “I don’t know the particulars of your situation, but you don’t need to be from the Dawn to feel the guilt that you wear like an iron jacket, to feel the grief that rolls off you like thunder from a cloud. Your daughter is dead. Your wife’s dead too, isn’t she?”
At this I explode out my chair; a primal yell tears out of my throat. My hands are on each arm of her chair in an instant, tilting it back, my face pressed up against hers.
“Death is so easy for you,” I snarl. “Well, it tore my family apart. Tore me apart.”
She has the decency to seem startled, even afraid, but she blinks and her composure is back.
“I apologize,” she says. “I forget, sometimes, that death and life have a different value here.”
I’m breathing heavily, my heart hammering against my ribs. I think seriously about choking her right there in her chair; my fingers itch to force the air from her slender neck. But, no. I’ve been a murderer before, and I promised I never would be again. I step back, letting her chair slam to the floor.
“I’m leaving,” I say.
I stride for the door, grasp the handle, wrench it open.
“Would it help to see her?”
I pause, my back to those pitiless eyes.
“I can call her,” Blythe continues.
“I don’t know if she’ll respond. Like I said, she’s not like any other shade or soul I’ve known. And she can’t stay long. She’s still bound to the Wright, however loosely. Hesper will certainly feel my presence next to one of her shades if Mae lingers in my presence. The Dawn and the Dusk can never coexist for long. It’s essential that the Wright suspect nothing of our work together.”
“See her?” I breathe.
It’s all I’ve wanted since she died, but I’m not sure I want to see her like she was back at the house. That wasn’t my Mae. It couldn’t have been. But I realize I’m nodding before I’ve even consciously decided.
“Yes,” I murmur, my words catching up with my body.
Blythe stands, turns off the lights. The only glow is from the dying fire and the faintest tinge of an orange sunset in the black sky outside the window. She strides to the center of the room, surrounded by her jewel-like canvases.
Each one, I can now see, is a painting not unlike the one that drew my attention from the window: beautiful scenes of forests, beaches, and streets, among others, complicated by the presence of a shadow, a shimmer, a ghost.
She closes her eyes. I can just see her chest rising and falling, otherwise she is still, the air around her preternaturally calm. I’m not sure how long we stay like that. She, silent like some idol on a pedestal in the center of the room. Me, stranded on the edge of some unseen barrier, feeling like an intruder in a sacred space.
Finally, I notice the darkness in front of her is growing darker, more solid. By degrees it becomes opaque until suddenly I know it’s Mae. She turns those lamplight eyes on me, and I melt to the floor.
“Mae.” My voice cracks with emotion. It’s her. My beautiful, wonderful child. But changed, changed so much it’s hard to bear. Gone is the olive skin from her lithe limbs, the sheet of black hair that cascaded down her back. Now she is nothing but a dark smudge against the wall. More than that, her spark, that bright light at her core that warmed everything it touched, that melted my heart—it’s gone.
Something inside me breaks.
“You see her,” says Blythe, her voice somehow like an echo, reaching me as if from a great distance.
“Yes,” I say, choking on tears. “Yes, I see her.”
Mae’s mouth moves, but I don’t hear a sound. I shake my head, and she tries again, but still nothing.
“She’s saying something,” I tell Blythe, “but I can’t hear it.”
“You’ve been touched by the Dawn, but you are not of it. Yet,” she says, and comes to stand near me, putting a hand on my arm. Her touch is cold, the promise of morning, not the warmth of a fully risen sun, and I want to draw away. But then Mae speaks again, and this time, I hear her.
“Daddy, I’ve missed you,” she says on a sob. I break down fully at these words. I stand and rush forward to throw my arms around her, but they pass through without meeting resistance.
“I’m so sorry, Mae,” I whisper, reaching out again for her cheek and then pulling my hand back when I realize once again there is nothing left of Mae to hold on to.
“Daddy, it’s okay,” she says. “I’m okay. I want you to know that I don’t blame you, that I love you.”
She pauses and glances at Blythe, a strange look passing across her ghostly face. Then she turns back to me, and the sadness in her eyes crushes the air out of my chest.
“I love you,” she says again. “I’m okay, really. I promise. I’ve learning to make a strange sort of life out my death. Don’t worry.”
“But—” I begin but Blythe interrupts me.
“That’s enough for now,” she says in that strange echoing voice, and I notice that she seems pale, sickly even.
Mae throws another quick, hard glance at Blythe, and then looks back at me.
“Daddy, be careful, she—” but I don’t hear the rest. Blythe has taken her hand away from my arm and Mae’s voice disappears.
“You must go now,” Blythe says. The light from the fire grows brighter, swallowing up Mae’s legs and creeping up the rest of her before she turns her dimming eyes on me one last time, her expression unreadable as she fades away into the disappearing darkness.
I close my eyes, take a great shuddering breath and then exhale, trying to find some calm in the storm of emotions inside me. As my breathing slows and the last of the tears dry on my cheek, I find an unexpected lightness lifting my heart.
For the first time in too long, I can feel an opening, an escape, from the guilt and shame that have been my constant companions. Mae exists in this world still. She exists in this world, and she needs my help. There is no way I can let her linger on that way, a literal shadow of her former shining self.
I open my eyes and turn toward Blythe. She’s slumped to the floor in the middle of the room. In the pale light of the sunrise she looks tired, her cold-burning energy sapped and the icy depths of her eyes thawed. Looking at her now, I can believe she’s centuries old.
“Tell me what I need to do,” I say, and the ghost of a smile lifts her faded cheeks.
“Take Mae’s place,” she says.
“Die and set your daughter free.”
MAE
The lights are low.
The music’s loud.
I enjoy the thump of the bass in my chest, the ghost of a heart.
I sit in the rib cage of some long-dead creature, its bones now repurposed for a chandelier hanging above the dance floor. I sit and I watch.
No one in this club is quite human, unless they’re part of the appetizers.
I found it a while ago when I’d wandered farther than usual, and I could tell right away it was the kind of place that only somebody like me would be able to find.
It seemed to exist on the fringes of this world and some other, more monstrous one.
It’s kind of terrible, but sometimes it’s better than being by myself. I learned a fun trick here, too. I call it slipping.
The first time it happened was accidentally, when I forgot myself for a minute and tried to join the dancers all crowded together in their solid-flesh-and-bone glory. A chance nudge and I found myself inside one of them. No pain, no pause. And they didn’t even notice. Now I come here most nights, just so I can lose myself like that again. Slip inside someone and remember what it’s like to have a body for a little while.
And tonight I really need that escape.
Seeing Dad has thrown me. He looked so bad. I could practically see the guilt weighing down his broad shoulders so they stooped under the burden. I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t his fault, that I didn’t blame him, that I loved him still.
But I also needed him to know that he was playing a dangerous game getting involved with the Hunter. And true to form, she silenced me as soon as I tried to tell him. Pushed me back along her damn spider web of hers, then tied it in knots to keep me away.
That was something new. She’d only ever wanted to draw me in before, never lock me out. I can still sense the tangles, screening Dad off, but they’re fading. I should go back, make it clear to him that the Hunter can’t be trusted.
But without the Hunter’s intervention, my ability to communicate with him is limited. At the house, after the forest, he saw me, and it hadn’t gone well. He’d freaked out and started to tear the place apart. And even if he didn’t lose his mind now, what was I going to do—play a game of charades with him? I needed a better way.
Right now, though, I need an escape even more.
Tonight, I have my eye on this guy.
He’s tall and lanky and gorgeous, and he’s dancing with everyone and drinking and just being in the moment. In the movies, people call what I’m about to do possession, but that’s not it.
I don’t take hold of them and try to make them mine. More than anything, I experience them as they experience the world in a way I never will again. I guess I could hurt them if I wanted to, but why? I just want to be a part of a world that never stopped trying to push me away, even if it’s just for an hour or two.
So I slide off my perch, slip to the floor. He throws a hand into the air, and I reach out and grab hold of it, not just with my fingers, but with all of me, what’s left of me anyway. I feel myself collapse into him. Once inside, I stretch out, let his aliveness wash over me: the pounding of his blood in his veins, the electric thrill of attraction, the joy of just moving, of being young. Everything that was stolen from me.
He’s watching someone, another beautiful boy, and I can feel his heart beat faster as they get closer and he draws up next to him, reaches out an experimental hand, drawing him close.
The touch is electric, and I get a vicarious thrill. Soon they're moving together, we’re moving together, and I love the feel of it. Bodies pressed together, hips grinding into hips, lips barely touching and now kissing hungrily, anything to satisfy that deep-down desire.
He was a good choice. I knew he would be. And I’m congratulating myself on my good taste in live bodies when I notice them.
The Gray.
I’m so startled I almost lose my grip on my chosen host, but I manage to hold on. I think I should be happy to see them. I’ve been waiting weeks for them to show up. I was ready for them, hoping for guidance, needing direction. And they weren’t there.
Now I had the Hunter sniffing around Dad and Mom’s warning ringing in my ears. I feel more confused and uneasy than ever. I don’t know whether to be angry or hopeful to see these specters from my childhood again. I surprise myself by mostly feeling afraid. Trapped.
Sad Girl’s at the edge of the dimly lit dance floor, staring at me. She knows where I am, can see behind this gorgeous boy’s eyes. He dances on, oblivious to the watching wraith. I stay put, frantically weighing my options.
Finally, I decide to remain where I am. When the dancer leaves, I should be able to hitch a ride out of the club. I’ll be harder to catch out there, away from the supernatural sinkhole of the club’s dance floor.
The rest of the night, Sad Girl keeps watch. I try to ignore her and enjoy myself, but it’s impossible. She’s colorless, expressionless, but there’s something entrancing about her even so.
The pure black of her eyes, maybe, or her doll-like features, the way her simple shift flutters in some secret breeze, or the exquisite sorrow written into every curve and hollow of her body, drawing you to her even when you know you should stay away.
Suddenly, I’m no longer studying her from a distance; my beautiful boy and I are standing in front of her. We’re reaching for her hand, longing for her touch. When our fingers meet, I feel her reach through the flesh and bone and grab hold of me. An ashen hand on his chest and she shoves him away, but I remain in her grasp.
I gasp at the sudden change. She stares at me. I want her to shriek or smile, anything, really. But she just fixes me with that empty gaze of hers, and I wonder for a moment if I should just give in.
Going with them would mean an end to my aimless wandering, my hiding, my solitude. And maybe a week ago, I would have just relaxed into her grasp and let her lead me away. But that was before the Hunter had called and I’d gone to her, and Dad had been there.
Now I have a reason to stay.
I take a chance and quickly pull back the arm she holds in her pallid fingers, then snap it forward as fast and as hard as I can. She whips forward with the motion and collides with a woman dancing nearby, disappearing beneath her skin.
Merging with the living can be intense, especially when you aren’t expecting it. She’ll be disoriented for a moment, and I take the chance to pour myself into a girl leaving the dance floor with a group of friends.
Behind her eyes, I can see more of the Gray. Lonely Man is here and a couple of others that I’ve maybe seen once or twice. They’re in the shadows, searching the place with those staring eyes. My host pushes her way to the front of the bar, and I’m glad for the press of people surrounding her.
The club’s exit is up the stairs and down a narrow hall, but no one seems interested in leaving. Going that way without the cover of a breather would make it too easy for the Gray to catch up with me.
I glance at the walls. Contrary to popular belief, passing through walls isn’t high up on my list of new tricks. Even floating through thin plaster is tough for me. We’re below ground here and the added wood and brick of the building make escaping that way a nearly impossible proposition.
My breather has her drink and is making her way to the edge of the crowd at the bar. The Gray I can see are looking away, at least for a moment, so I push myself from the girl and make my way to the stairs. I risk a glance back, and they’re already following me.
Shit.
I move faster, crest the last of the stairs, and hit the hallway at full speed.
A sharp tug on the hood of my sweatshirt, and I’m swung around. Lonely Man is in my face, emotionless but with an intensity to his blackhole gaze that gives me pause. He’s older, with a gentle, hangdog face and stooped shoulders.
Since my earliest days he’s never been threatening, just disconcerting. Too patient. Too expectant. But now, I can tell he’s ready. But for what, I can’t be sure, and I don’t want to find out.
Thinking quickly, I reach up and grab his bony shoulders and, with effort, swing us around, using our momentum to send him crashing through the hallway’s brick wall, hoping that the thickness of it will be enough to hold him long enough for me to find another breather.
A group of partiers is at the top of the stairs on their way out of the club. I slip into one of them, and we exit into the cold night air. I take a second to enjoy the feel of it on my borrowed skin, the calm thud of her heart bringing me back down from the edge of panic.
She links arms with a friend waiting on the curb and heads north on the rain-slick sidewalk, sharing an umbrella. I hold steady and let them pass on to whatever the rest of the night has in store, then turn south to the dark streets of the bordering industrial district.
There’s no sign of Lonely Man, but I’m worried it’s only a matter of time before he’s out on the street and after me again. I pass by the open door of an empty warehouse and decide to slip in to rest.
The damp interior is strewn with trash and broken-down machinery. Ahead there’s a rickety metal staircase, and I follow it up, cross into an interior stairwell, and finally out onto the roof, pockmarked with puddles.
The rain prickles as it slides through my next-to-nothingness. The light sting of it is strange but tolerable, especially since there are so few things I can feel now. But as the shower picks up into a downpour, I cast around for a place to take shelter, the wet making me feel unnervingly solid and vulnerable.
A nearby alcove has an old metal awning overhead, half-detached from the wall, and I sink down underneath it. The lights of the city shining through the November mist make an appropriate backdrop for my bleak thoughts.
I’m so lost in figuring out how to help Dad that I don’t even register the figure walking toward me through the rain.
And it's still longer still before I realize he’s looking right at me. As soon as I do, though, my mind’s clicking through escape routes, and I begin to press myself into the wall behind me, gritting my teeth against the terrible feeling of drowning in concrete and rebar.
“Horrible thing, that” the figure says, and something about the voice, rich and commanding, and a little mischievous, makes me pause. “All that squeezing through solid walls. So much discomfort and effort. Not worth the bother, really. Especially when there’s an open door right next to you.”
I retreat from the wall, happy to shrug off its smothering embrace but less thrilled at the prospect of this stranger in my midst. He’s not much taller than me, with a slight build and a face of incongruous features that manages to be both impish and serious by turns. And not all-together unhandsome. It’s not until I meet his too-black gaze that I realize what he is.
“You’re one of them,” I say. “The Gray.”
He tilts his head to the side, lifts a corner of his wide mouth in a bemused smile.
“The Gray?” he says, and the words roll out of his mouth like he’s savoring their taste on his tongue. “My kind has been called many things, but never that particular moniker. Though I rather like it.”
I wonder if I should go now, take my chances. I don’t know how fast he is, but I do know this corner of the city inside and out. Literally.
I study him from beneath my half-lowered lids. The rain passes through him too, but only just. And his feet seem to touch the ground almost like a breather’s do. No wonder he hates passing through walls. I might be able to lose him that way. But then what?
“What do you want?” I ask, squaring my shoulders, hoping if I look braver, I’ll feel braver too.
He stares at me, his expression unreadable. I want to look away, but I make myself gaze back until he finally glances away. He wears a dark gray greatcoat, old-fashioned but striking with its high collar and large silver buttons. He fiddles with one now, rolling it between his long, elegant forefinger and thumb.
He seems unsure of what to do next, and the uncertainty in his face makes me realize how young he appears, maybe only a few years older than me. He stops playing with the button and smooths his hands down his chest, runs those long fingers through his immaculately styled hair.
“You’re younger than I thought,” he says, finally.
It isn’t what I was expecting to hear.
“I am- was seventeen when I was shot,” I say.
“Seventeen,” he says on a disbelieving laugh, shaking his head. “Unbelievable.”
Something about the dismissiveness of his attitude irks me, and I cross my arms over my chest, lift my chin like I used to when Dad tried to treat me like a child.
“What do you want?” I say again, but this time there’s a definite edge to my voice. He catches it and lifts an appreciative eyebrow.
“Allow me to introduce myself.” He steps back into a neat bow, raises a hand to his chest, and the gesture is so antiquated that my mouth quirks up a little despite my annoyance.
“I am Bram,” he continues, coming back to a stand.
“And I’m here to take you home.”
It’s a privilege to share my work with you! Thank you for taking the time to read the fourth episode of DARK AS DAWN, BRIGHT AT NIGHT.
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This is wonderfully gothic! I was right there inside the whole thing. Love it.