ENTRY ONE
The refrigerator’s chronic hum faded away and a sharp, clear silence emerged in the living room.
The hallway light flickered, flashing bright for a moment and dying out, casting a shadow down the wall by the entryway. The burners on the stove hissed and sizzled and four bright plumes of fire emerged like dancing crowns of blue and orange. Karen’s hand reached out for my arm, blue-painted nails in the dim light. And then the rumbling came from the basement.
The walls of the house filled with a fine vibration that grew deeper and heavier by the second. Pictures on the mantle crashed and clattered and fell to the carpet. The family portrait came free from the hook on the wall and smashed on the kitchen tile and her grip tightened.
The water from the swimming pool lapped over the sides and spilled onto the ground. The last lights in the house went out as the whole kitchen table rattled on its legs, the pool’s water forming great, sloshing waves that crashed against the sides and sprayed a fine mist in the dim moonlight.
And the shadows parted to an even darker blackness, a silhouette of impossible void standing in the kitchen.
Karen gasped. Her hand was trembling.
I whispered, “It worked.”
The solidity of absent light infected the kitchen as it drew closer and the gas-borne heat of the stove was suddenly absent. Within the cocoon of darkness, the faintest outline I could grasp shifted. The chill of the room intensified under the appraisal of this ethereal lack. The abyssal creature or being before us was exactly as I had imagined it would be.
“What do you want?” Karen said as her hand grasped my shoulder now. She shifted behind me. A safe bet. Her fingers on the ridge of my form shivered and flexed, my presence being the only wall she could imagine being enough to keep the darkness away.
The arrangement shalt be honored.“What?” I said, blinking. I hadn’t heard the creature say a thing, but that sensation of signing that deal was now resonating from my core. The vibrations that had shaken the house moments ago were now emanating from the silhouette dangling from the kitchen ceiling like a broken chandelier.
“Did. Did you say that?” Karen asked, gripping tighter.
“No, beloved, it, it,” I started, my chin tightening. How could I explain this, “It was. That. I’m pretty sure.”
“Should we run?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then do something. Whatever that thing is it. What is that?”
Fear not. Thine groom knows of mine countenance. “What is that?” Karen asked again, shrinking her body behind mine.
“I. That is,” I said, struggling to say the right answer. The deal. It was here for the deal. “An ancient thing. I asked it to come here, but not quite this way,” I said questioningly, my voice shaking and shivering as I spoke. The impenetrable shadows loomed closer without movement. Was it growing or was my perception of the space it took up adapting?
The creature shifted in the complete silence it had created. The chirps of crickets that punctuated every evening up in these isolated hills were gone. The whistle of the wind replaced by the creaking of the floor under unquantifiable weight. The grandfather clock in the hallway, the only inheritance I had from the man who had raised me, stopped, mid-swing.
“Is that Death?” Karen asked, her eyes wet from nervous tears, “Did you bring Death into our house? After what happened with Victor?”
This was too much for me to bear. I had to tell her, I had to say something. Would she forgive me? Could she after everything I had done? What hadn't I done?
My thoughts were broken up by the sound of glass breaking, a sudden burst from the soundless echoes that had seeped into the room. Both Karen and I quickly looked to the floor where the portrait of our family lay after the creature’s dark entrance, yet the frame was not there. Floating through the air before the shadowed expanse, the picture frame slowly repaired itself, entropy reversed as the picture was made whole again. Almost.
Floating in the air was a cut out from the portrait. Our son.
“For Victor?” my darling asked, “Is this thing here to talk to you about Victor? What did you do?”
Nothing is ever truly gone, Lady Warner.
“How does it know my name?” Karen whispered to me with a tone of accusation I’d never heard her utter before.
“Dear. Calm, calm down. I know this, this is really, really scary right now, but you have to calm down or this won’t work,” I said, turning to embrace her. In my arms, I could feel angry, hot tears drip on my shoulder, but she made no effort to leave. Karen pressed her head against my neck, rocking me side to side as I stroked her back. “Things are going to be okay. But only if you stay calm. Okay?”
Karen’s eyes slowly opened as she nodded, only for her to freeze in my arms. “Where did it go?”
As I let go of her, my body shifted around to see the scene in the kitchen, only for “it” to be gone. In its place, a lightly glowing figure emerged from what was formerly shadow. A familiar face. That same salt and pepper hair that had taught me my first spell. His face crinkled with mirth, his wide grey eyes appraising his surroundings as if he’d never been here before. His robes were a tangled mess of knots and pockets, holding untold numbers of flasks and ingredients. The bright, floral colors contrasted with the sunburnt grinning face that looked straight toward their next adventure. Human eyes beheld mine.
My grandfather, a wizard of great power and might. Legendary in his day for his skill with alchemy, James Warner had been the fourth of his line to own that name. That line of James Warners ended with him and was silenced years ago. The funeral had been the worst day of my life. Was, before Victor’s.
“My boy, you never did take satisfaction with a story’s end, did you?” my grandfather said, standing in place as he clutched his hips. His form flickered in and out of my vision, yet he stood before me still. His warm eyes filled me with a comfort I didn’t remember I had lost. A feeling of safety and love. He’d always been so confident in my abilities, in what I could do, but he was gone. Not here. Gone.
“What are you doing here?”
“Remember what I told you about using your knowledge-ridden noggin. Didn’t you read the deal before you,” he began to say, cut off with another flicker. As he returned, an object in his left hand glinted in the fading light that had gilded his body before. I couldn’t quite make out what it was, but the object in his hand looked familiar.
A sharp light emanated from the object and a small burning sensation stung my eyes as I tried to see the item better. Burning steam clouded my vision until I looked away from it once more. Karen, still behind me, buried her face in the crook of my neck, trying to keep it out of her sight. What did she see that I did not?
“-Signed it?” he finally said, his eyes locking with mine. He looked sadder now. My grandfather’s body was sallow and sunken. He had been aging quickly in the short span of time I knew him.
“Of course I did,” I said with a mumble to my voice, “but, well. What is this supposed to be, another one of your lessons?” I tried to joke, my hands shaking at my waist. My vision shook as I looked at my grandfather. I’d never gotten to say goodbye. There was so much I wanted to say. But I couldn’t. Not here, not now. Not to him.
The room’s temperature dropped and the familiar hum of the refrigerator returned, intensifying until that same warm and wizened voice spoke again, the same even after all these years.
“All things must end, Malcolm. Some things sooner than expected. Some because of what they expect to happen.”
I could feel my throat constrict as he said my name. A feeling of dread washed over the room as he raised the object higher. The metal glinted in the bare light. The shape was beginning to come to me without pain, yet it was still blurry. Unclear, as if it had not yet decided what it was supposed to be. The door of the fridge cracked open, long slivers of ice bursting from the cold and puncturing the metal frame. My grandfather leveled the weapon he held against his own skull. And fired.
Chunks of bone and grey matter erupted from his head in slow motion. The light from the muzzle’s fire brightened the room up so I could see every gruesome detail. His skin burst open as more chunks of bone, brain, and flesh erupted from the ridge of his forehead, a crackle opening up across his face as the damage evolved in front of me. His right eye, still locked with mine, slowly disintegrated in its socket from the pressure, its inner workings erupting into a fine mist.
It had been a closed-casket funeral.
It was dark again. The bottom half of the refrigerator door cracked off and fell, just as the abyssal form replaced the form of my grandfather once again.
There be a price for all things, Warner.“I know that.”
“Do you?” my wife asked, finally peeking her head out from behind me. “What did you do to get this thing here?
My vision blurred for a moment before I could speak. “My,” I said, my eyes flexing with urgency. “My Magic! I gave it my magic. All of it.” How had I forgotten?
Until thine decision is final. “What?”
“Honey?” a new voice, a softer voice said, emerging from the shadow. The form was another familiar one, but much younger than I expected. A woman emerged out of the abyss, glamorous and glowing as she stepped into the kitchen. She wore luminescent pearls and her ears were adorned with smooth emeralds. Her eyes matched the earrings in their shine and life. The figure wore clean, white gloves as she held her hand out to me, an unfilled wineglass perched precipitously just beyond my reach. She was too far to reach out to, yet I could feel her presence in my heart always.
“Mom?”
“My little Malcom. Not so little anymore, right?” she said with a fake laugh, taking a sip just as the glass filled up. “It must have been a long time since I saw you last. And you are married, lucky boy you are.”
This wasn’t my mother. Not the one I kept in my memories. She’d never been so teasing and fake, yet that form and voice were unmistakably hers.
“Why are you here?”
Behind me, Karen looked at the new figure in surprise. “I thought your mother was much older when she- “
“Died?” my mother interrupted as the earrings on her head dropped to the floor with a resounding crash. She looked older now. More familiar, yet not quite there. “Why yes, I believe I was. So young and full of life, yet,” she began, gulping down the entire glass, “I am the poor woman who died alone. Your father was happy that it happened that way, I’ll bet,” she said as a new, more venomous resentment entered the way she spoke. She looked even older now. Another glass emptied.
The white gloves on her hand were now torn at the tips, rips flowing up her fingers until they reached the base of her elbow, with darkness beneath them. The glowing pearls that had been around her neck dropped one by one until a small cloth string was all that remained. The finery aged along with her, as the young, vibrant socialite more resembled a retiree than a young woman.
“Mother?”
“Don’t you ‘Mother’ me, boy. Your father has you wrapped around his finger while I’m left to fend for myself, alone. He never cared about anyone, least of all me once I was too old for him.”
Her skin began to droop and yellow, my mother’s condition worsening as she took one, two, three full gulps of the wine. Her eyes turned sallow and her grip on the glass trembled.
“Age is the final testament to a person’s life, son. Some age too quickly and die too soon. Some want to get it over with so that they aren’t suffering anymore.”
“Mother, please, not again. I don’t want to see you like this,”
“Like this?”
An inebriated grin crossed my mother’s older, faker face as she stepped forward toward me, a barely loving look on her face as she tripped. The woman who had been my mother before this and other transformations fell forward toward the floor, wine glass in front of her face. She refused to even move it away as she crashed, glass shards cutting deep into her skin. The glass migrated slowly through her cheeks, her lips, cutting up her forehead and leaving her face down in a puddle of her own blood.
I couldn’t help but shut my eyes. The day she’d been found, she was in that very position. It had been investigated as a homicide at first. I insisted. They ruled out foul play after a short autopsy. She’d hadn’t quite died accidentally, but she had tripped over her own drunken feet and broke the wine glass she was holding on her face. It didn’t kill her instantly. The report confirmed all of my worst fears. She’d lain there, capable of getting up, for hours. My mother had died alone. For a total of five hours, she slowly bled to death on the carpeted floor of the house I’d grown up in. Suffocating. Cold. She’d died on her own terms.
By the time our eyes, my wife’s and mine returned to the body that was had been my mother’s, it was gone. The abyss of death and the beyond stood there, somehow staring into our eyes.
Karen couldn’t speak. Behind me, she gripped my shoulders and bore her face into my neck. She and I knew what would be next.
I closed my eyes. And finally opened them.
And there he was.
Standing alone in the kitchen.
Our son.
Victor.
Unlike the others, he didn’t speak right away. The boy that was our young son, our angel, our golden and only child. Victor.
“Son, are you cold?” I found myself saying. He stood next to the fridge as the ice crystals cracked through most of the remaining visible metal. I knelt down, a hand on his shoulder as he looked at me in silence.
He cannot speak.“What?”
Tell him. He will listen.“This wasn’t part of the deal. I, this wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
Think not about what should be. This be what is.My wife spoke first.
“My brave little boy, I’ve missed you so much,” Karen said, kneeling next to him as she grasped our son’s small hands. I moved out of the way. For her sake. “I know you can’t speak. I love you and I don’t know what your dad did to get you here, but I’m happy to see you one more time,” she said, blistering tears barreling down her cheeks in thick rivers. “I just wanted to say that I will always love and care about you and I was never mad or upset with you. Okay?”
She’d hardly spoken about him since his death. To me, anyways. The room flickered, the lights so dull now that the room was barely visible. The frigidity bursting from the fridge spread more, the cold embrace of an icy death blowing throughout the room. That same snow from that frozen mountain. That damned mountain.
But…
He looked so much like his mother at that age.
Victor gave his mother a small, wry smile as she held him tightly. His arms escaped hers and he patted her on the back and leaned forward into her embrace.
And they were both gone.
In their place stood Victor again, but as I saw him last.
“You couldn’t remember my voice from back then,” he said to me, my eyes widening as he spoke. His body shone like he was covered in a thin layer of ice.
He is no longer that which you hardly knew. He is as he became.I closed my eyes again and turned my body away from him. How could I face him like this? After everything I’d done, I. Everything I’d missed in his life.
“I never blamed you, Dad.”
“Then why did you do it?”
He was silent.
“Son, you knew I’d be there for you, please answer me,” I said desperately. I turned my body back to him. There had to be something, some reason. “Please.”
“You ever just get really tired?”
“Tired?” I asked. He sounded so neutral about this. Why didn’t he seem to care?
“Just tired of everything. Tired of school. Of work. Just tired. I think I’ve always been tired, but I finally found a place I could just sleep my problems away. Only I couldn’t wake up. But that’s fine. Everything’s okay now.”
“Victor, you don’t want to live?”
“You didn’t really care until I died.”
My mouth opened. I wanted to scream no, to tell him that I always cared as much as I possibly ever could. The darkness encroached further and further, the cold pressing deeper into my skin. My eyes slowly drifted towards his as he stared placidly toward me. The biting snow of that mountain flowed past us from the broken fridge reminding me of the day I’d lost him. There was nothing of that life I’d seen in him when he was younger. I couldn’t meet his sight now. All that was left to see was the darkness and the being my son had become.
Victor had been one of the most excellent students that the Academy had ever seen. He’d learned spells quickly, burning through the basics so fast that they put him in the advanced courses by the end of his first semester. Victor had struggled at first, but he was treated well because he was his son. The General’s Son. They were willing to help him with his strife.
He had ended that final Fall at the Academy perched at the top of his class. He was going to graduate with honors.
And I had hardly been in the picture. Work always kept me busy. I missed public exams, festivals, his birthday once or twice, all because of work. Work was more important to me, or rather, working to make sure that he was in the best environment to learn how to be the best he could be. That was important to me. Seeing him was a formality. It had become one, at least.
“I did care, Victor,” I said, crumpling to my knees as my will was finally strong enough again to lock eyes with his. “I just. Thought I was showing it. I wasn’t, really, was I?”
“No.”
“What can I do to make you want to come back to life, to stay with me? Anything. I promise I’ll do anything to make this right. Please. Give me this chance. Please. Son.”
His stare bored into me, eyes looking straight into mine like I was something to disregard. His answer was clear.
“Father. Let me go. If you do this and bring me back, I won’t remember why I died, but you’ll be tossed aside. No purpose. You can’t have me as something to clench into your bosom when you think of what you’ve done in life. Not anymore.”
“Please, son. Victor. I love you.”
“Not enough to let me decide. I’ve made my decision. It’s over.”
He’d never been good at lying. Victor was lying about something, but I couldn’t detect quite what it was. His form glowed with a thin aura in the abyssal eternity that we were trapped in. If it was over, then why did it feel like I still had a choice to make?
It wasn’t over.
“There’s nothing I can say or do?”
“Nothing.”
I was silent for a time. How long did I stare into the nothingness behind my boy’s eyes? The disregard was gone, replaced by what could only be the sort of idle curiosity I’d only seen in him when he was little. Victor was waiting for me. He’d always been waiting.
The choice hast been made.“If you are sure, son.”
The first time I’d seen him smile in a lifetime crossed his face as the darkness reenveloped his form.
Alone, the darkness, harrowing and tense, slowly washed over me and drifted through my body until I was alone again in my kitchen. The five candles I’d set out before in front of the refrigerator were burnt out and black in the pentagram I’d made around myself. Everything in the kitchen was as it should be. Except.
The picture of my son, our family whole, was gone. The frame was empty and the tears that streaked down my face were barely dry now.
“Some things were meant to be, I suppose. Even if they were meant to be like this.”
“Honey?” Karen said, groggily walking into the kitchen. There was a nervous worry in her voice. Had she always looked so kind? “Are you still awake? Come back to bed. We have a long day tomorrow.”
“Right. I’ll be there in a moment, darling. Just have to clean things up.”
“Don’t be long. I’ll see you soon, dear,” she said. She only talked like this after a bad dream.
“Soon. I promise.”
The clean-up was quick. With a small drag of my fingers, the pentagram etched into the floor was gone, the candles in the trash. As I walked to the bed, I looked back to the refrigerator, humming softly to an unseen tune, I couldn’t help but wonder if I could ever do anything to atone for my sins.
Probably not.
