At the Edge of the Sea

Upon the great and immovable boulder that marked my present path a good mile from the manor, I laid out and took careful stock of my weapons. The knife, a dully gleaming old thing of more ceremonial and decorative nature, lay sheathed in worn leather that had seen more dust than daylight atop its usual place on the mantle in Father's study. I cursed myself a fool for not testing the sharpness of the thing before setting out but forced those thoughts away into the wind of the cold night. This was no time for such doubt.

Besides, if whatever vicious phantom or wretch I were to face this night wasn't availed by the pistol I hugged to my breast, the old blade would grant me little reprieve. Musings over the nature of what I would soon face, along with whatever possible damage any manner of human weapon could do, filled my head and made a fumbling comedy of my first attempt in preparing the flintlock pistol for battle atop the uneven surface of the boulder. As best I could I fought against my trembling hands while dumping the powder into the barrel. The breeze from the north rose to my challenge and sent the blades of grass all down the bounding hillside into a frenzied dance while grasping at my veil with winter's bony fingers and seeking to rip it from my head. Annoyedly I let the thing go and by the pale orange glow of my lantern light I watched it soar into the darkness. Black as the skies like the rest of my wear. Still in mourning.

Plunging the ball and bit of cloth down into the long barrel I jostled the heavy flintlock in my freezing hands, leveled it, and aimed into the darkness at a crooked tree in the barely visible distance. Closing one eye and grasping the grip with both hands now I pictured some unnamed thing coming to take me off into the dark. In my dreams I saw vague things; shapes, teeth, the devil's red eyes. I saw with such vitriol the thing that took Jessabelle and I pulled the trigger. When it was time, I told myself, I would not look away from the bright flash of the pistol nor would I shudder from the recoil. I would watch it die. I would rejoice in this.

I clenched my pistol and a good hold of my dress in one hand and held the lantern and blade in the other. Turning back for what could be one final glimpse of the manor I followed with my eyes the cobblestone wall that bobbed up and dipped with the bounding hillside of the country and watched it travel with great sections of overtaking hedge and grass all the way to its end, about the perimeter of our land. At the edge of the sea. A pitch sky with twinkling celestials and a great pale moon bathed the path before me in the cool tones of the night.

I walked. The cobblestone wall my constant companion and my horrific memories my constant curse. Jessabelle had bade me follow her only a fortnight past. How frightened her sweet face had been in the earliest of hours drenched in icy sweat that ran down and soaked her evening gown. Ashamedly I had tried to hush and hastily remove her from my chamber doorway by dismissing her fears as mere theatrics of an overactive imagination that gave nightmares.

"Mother, Iris, I have seen Mother!" she had cried so earnestly.

"Jessabelle, my love, you have found yourself confused," I had responded. "Mother rests with our Lord now. You know this as I do. Are you not one of 15 now? What childish fancies are these that keep you so present at my chamber door each night?"

"Spare me, Iris! I tell you earnestly that my dreams do not confound me. I have seen our Mother. She calls to us both!"

I ran my fingers through her golden hair and hugged her close to me. She had frightened me with her tales that evening. She recounted how our Mother, who had died of tuberculosis, was now speaking to her across great distances. Jessabelle, with a great passion, spoke to me of how Mother had told her that she lived again, having been reborn from the sea.

"I saw her, Iris. From my window and in a flash of lightning I saw our beloved Mother," she said. "At the cliffs, Iris. By the tree!"

There the very tree stood, jagged like the earth had rejected and spat the thing from her bosom yet still stood in defiance of its hideous shape. In all my years I have seen no leaves form nor fall from this wretched oak and in that moment it gave me a foreboding feeling of evil which I lack the tact to describe here. Mockingly, it stood just behind the parting in the wall from where I watched, helplessly, Jessabelle go on that gloomy day. I heard the waves as I did then, loudly above my own screams.