Imp (Day Three)

Short Serial Fiction - Horror

Greetings, Talebones Readers!

DISCLAIMER: This is a horror tale, and therefore may contain themes and situations that are darker than my average fare.

Reader discretion is advised.

This is the third part of a multi-part short story.

Read Day One, or

Read Day Two.

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Photo by Michael Pointner on Unsplash

DAY THREE

“Again?” Richard chuckled over his plate of scrambled eggs and toast, shaking his head. Despite his nocturnal wanderings he looked bright-eyed, energized. “Believe me, Thornton, if I had known the sleepwalking would be this bad…”

In the cold light of day, a high alpine sunshine streaming in through the dining room windows, the whole thing didn’t feel as infuriating or frightening. Cal softened, even laughed. “Yeah, it’s pretty remarkable. I guess you have a lot to say, spills over into your sleep.”

The old man nodded. “I’ve got sleep medication with me just in case, but I haven’t needed it in ages. I’ll take one tonight. That should help me stay put. I’m so very sorry.”

For the second time in so many days, Cal waved away the apology. 

“How’s the work coming along?” Richard asked. 

Cal swallowed a bite of his toast. “Good, actually. Better than I expected. You?”

“Oh, sublime. There’s just something about this place.”

“You know, you keep saying that.” Cal tried to keep his tone light. “But I’m still not sure what you mean when you say it.”

Richard wiped his fingers on his napkin and sat back, thinking. Forming a careful thought. “Do you believe in the concept of the muse, Cal?”

Cal hesitated. “I believe in whatever it takes for an artist to get their shit done.”

“A diplomatic answer.” Richard chuckled. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“It’s never worked for me. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work for other people.” Cal took a sip of coffee. “I’ve had author friends who swear by the idea of a muse.”

“It can be very powerful.” Richard paused there, and Cal wasn’t sure if he was done talking or if he was going to continue. 

Just when Cal opened his mouth to change the subject, Richard said, “My muse lives here. In Graft Creek.”

Cal nodded, slowly. “Yeah?”

“Yes.” Richard glanced out the window. “I met it years ago, the first time I came here. It was November 1988. I’ve never experienced such a…such a fervor. I completed five pieces that first week. Five.”

Cal didn’t know much about painting, but Richard gave this number so much weight that he decided that it must be impressive. 

That said, he couldn’t shake the phrase I met it. 

“I came back whenever I could,” Richard said. “Years would pass between visits, sometimes. Life gets in the way. But every time I came back, I would be gripped with it. A creative madness. Except…last time. Last time I was here, two years ago, it was quiet. As if I had offended it somehow.” 

This seemed to be a painful memory. Richard’s eyes gleamed with the hint of wounded tears. “But I’m happy to say that…it seems to be here again this time. For me.”

“Good.” Cal said the word, but wasn’t sure he meant it. The thing about muses—in his experience—was that the idea externalized problems that were often internal. Writer’s block, muses, daemons…in Cal’s view, they were all just pathologizing psychological obstacles to creativity. 

Cal was no expert, but it all just seemed like easy excuses. Some days the work clicked, some days it didn’t. There wasn’t any magic or mysticism involved. 

So he disagreed with Richard. But the old painter was so deeply affected by the sting of his “muse’s” movements that Cal decided it wasn’t worth an argument. 

“Well, let your muse know I’m in the market for some productive hours this week, will you? If he can spare some.”

Something flashed across Richard’s face—was that anger? fear? jealousy?—before it softened again and he smiled. “Would you like to see some of my work?”

Not really. Cal nodded. “Sure. I’d love to.”

“I’ll bring my latest to lunch,” Richard said. “I would love your thoughts on it.”

There was a pause, and then Richard set a liver-spotted hand on Cal’s arm where it rested on the table. 

“Imp,” he said, softly. Like a correction. 

Cal blinked. “What?”

“My muse,” Richard said. “It’s not a ‘he’, it’s an it. And I call it Imp.”

*******

If he could give Richard credit for anything, it’s that the old man was right about the creative madness that seemed to take hold when Cal sat down to work. 

It was wild. Electrifying. After breakfast, Cal was back at the cabin by eight-thirty, sat at the desk, and the morning completely disappeared, devoured whole, hours passing as silently and swiftly as the water of Graft Creek itself. By the time his watch alarm tittered, reminding him about lunch and his promise to look at Richard’s painting, he was amazed to find thousands of words added to the new manuscript. And they were passable, for a first draft. Good, even. 

Muse or not, this place is working like a charm. 

The page, his words, stared at him. But he instantly regretted thinking about muses. Richard’s insistent face, his firm hand on Cal’s arm, his soft voice. 

Imp. 

“Nope.” Cal stood up from the desk. He wasn’t about to get spooked by an old man’s coping mechanism. He zipped his coat with shaky fingers. On some level he wished he could just keep working, blow right through lunch. But he had told Richard he would look at his work, and he didn’t want to disappoint him. 

Outside, the sky was ice-blue like the undercarriage of a seabound glacier, the foothills frank and black and standing in sharp relief. Their tops appeared to be dusted with a light overnight snow, and the sun bathed it all in a deceptive late autumn warmth. 

Cal felt the uncertainty and strangeness of the start of the week beginning to fall away as he walked up the trail to the lodge. It really was pretty, here. He hadn’t noticed before, probably because he had been so focused on his bias against the whole idea of a silent retreat, the way he had been gently forced into this. But the dark thoughts—the end of his career, the stupid movie adaptation, all of it—seemed to pale in comparison to the bright sky, the glowering foothills and mountains beyond, even the dark, twining arms of both the river and the creek, pulling him closer to himself. 

The soul-organ. Cal didn’t go in for mystical shit, but he was starting to kind of get it. Why not? Why not a muse, hovering over the treetops of this place or rising from the banks of the creek? Why not? It made as much sense as anything did, and Cal had lived long enough to know that very little made real sense, when you boiled it down.

When he reached the door, Cal was almost sad to enter the lodge and leave the crisp, quiet beauty of the grounds, but he did so. 

Richard was waiting in the sitting room in his signature cardigan and jeans. A fire crackled in the fireplace behind him, and the smell of lunch wafted through the halls.

The old man had leaned a canvas against the couch, carefully, and he smiled widely as Cal entered the room. 

“Ah, there you are!” he said. “I hoped you weren’t just humoring me.”

“Not at all. Curious to take a look.” As Cal said the words they became true. He removed his coat and hung it on the hook inside the door, then stood and waited, obediently.  

Richard bent and picked up the canvas. It wasn’t large, maybe twelve inches by eighteen, and he turned it reverently so that he was holding it against himself, facing out so Cal could see. 

Cal wasn’t an art guy. He could recognize skill when he saw it, though. The painting was a portrait of a woman, bare shoulders upward, face turned away from the viewer’s gaze, as if listening for a voice calling behind her. Soft brown skin, black hair in swirling abstract, eyes cast downward. There were pieces of the image still missing, vanishing into brushstroke mist, a work in progress. Still, Richard’s talent was obvious; he had a studied hand, a slightly stylized way of seeing the world, and the painting was very evocative. 

But there was something about it that Cal found difficult to put his finger on. The colors, maybe? The painting had a muted, muddy, almost sinister quality. As if what the woman was listening to was unpleasant, overbearing. But Cal didn’t know enough about art to know what was bothering him about it, or how the effect was being achieved. He only knew he probably wouldn’t hang it over his mantel at home.

He met Richard’s eyes and gave him a sincere smile. “Really great work, Richard. Seriously. You’re a master.”

The old man flushed. “Oh, now. No need to inflate my ego. Thank you, Thornton.”

“Pretty lady,” Cal said. 

“Yes, she is. That’s my ex-wife, Tanya.” Richard turned the canvas slightly, wistful, to look at the woman’s face. “Gorgeous. But unprepared.”

At Cal’s quizzical look, Richard added, “Some women aren’t cut out to marry soldiers, police officers, and firefighters, Cal. And some aren’t cut out to marry artists, either.”

Cal balked ever so slightly at the implied sexism, but he knew from experience that no good conversation ever came from telling an old man he’s wrong about women. Besides, Cal still had to co-exist with this guy for another few days. Richard had clearly made his mistakes, and he had to live with them, now. 

“Never married, so I can’t say as I relate,” Cal said. “But I’ll keep it in mind.”

“See that you do.” Richard set the canvas down again. 

Right on cue, Eileen entered. Lunch was served. 

*******

Cal’s fingers itched with desire as he neared his cabin. Lunch had taken longer than he wanted it to—Richard had talked his ear off, all technique, all artist goloss—and it was past one, now. Cal had quietly told Eileen that he planned to work through dinner, and she had sent him back to the cabin with a doggy bag of bits and bobs from the kitchen so he wouldn’t go hungry. 

Once inside, the leftovers stowed in the mini-fridge, Cal checked the laptop in spite of himself. No dust, thankfully. 

He prepared his cup of instant coffee and sat down, opening the laptop. He had lost some momentum during the lunch pause, so he scrolled back up in the manuscript to re-read the last few pages, to get himself back into the proper headspace to continue. 

About halfway down the page, he stopped reading. Went back over the paragraph he just read, ice water trickling slowly across his shoulders as he took in each word. 

I didn’t write that. I don’t remember writing that. 

He looked at it again, unease rising in his stomach with the chicken pot pie he had eaten for lunch. The words were just south of correct. They sounded like him, sure, but…but he didn’t remember writing them. 

He continued to read, and the fear deepened. Over the thousands of words he had written that morning, large blocks of them he didn’t remember. At all. 

Cal had the thought, then, that someone was absolutely playing a prank on him. First the weird dust, then this. Feeling a little too safe in this remote spot, he had made a habit of leaving the cabin unlocked during the day. But who could have done this, and why? Richard and Eileen had been in the lodge the whole time, within sight. He had seen the kitchen staff doing their thing, as usual. Were there other staff members he didn’t know about? Folks lurking around? 

His thoughts drifted to the empty cabins, and his stomach flipped. 

He had no reason to suspect that there was anyone hiding out in the empty cabins, waiting for an opportunity to screw with him. But once the thought took hold, it would not budge. 

Cal stood up from the desk and located the flashlight he had brought in his suitcase, just a small maglite for emergencies. If he was going to get any work done this evening he needed to assuage his morbid curiosity. 

He left the cabin. The sunshine of that morning had dimmed slightly, the sun tipped low past its zenith and shrouded in high white clouds, and Cal turned down the trail, toward the empty cabins. He walked quickly, trying to adopt a braver attitude than he felt. 

At the first cabin he climbed the porch steps. He tested the door; locked. Then he clicked on the flashlight and peered in through the front window. 

The small cabin was an empty echo of his own. Same furniture, same decor, same layout. It was expectant the way all empty rooms are expectant, but there was no one inside, and no evidence that anyone had been for quite a while. Dark, clean, and quiet. 

Cal moved on to the next one. And the one after. The deeper down the trail he went, the deeper the hush and the chill. It was as if moving away from the lodge was like sinking further into the earth, away from the sun. The woods leaned in, and the trail swerved slightly, obscuring his own cabin fully from view. 

And also, there was the sound. 

It was faint, at first. Cal thought it was just the beating of his own pulse in his ears. But he realized that it was coming from—where? The air? The woods? 

A thrumming sound. Like a beating of wings against glass. Frantic and arrhythmic, beetling and inconsistent. 

The sound never grew closer, never got louder. It stayed just on the edge of his thoughts, fluttering out of reach. And it came with a feeling: he was being watched. Observed. 

It was drawn to us, I think. 

Richard’s hollow voice in the middle of the night. Sleepwalking? Or wide awake and telling some shade of ghastly truth?

It’s an it.  

The remaining cabins seemed to stare at Cal with dark, empty eyes. Daring him to peer within, to prove what he already knew. 

There were no people hiding in the cabins.

Whatever was haunting this place didn’t need to hide. 

Spooked, heart pounding, Cal turned and loped back up the trail to his own cabin, drawn to the warmth and light of the familiar like a desperate moth toward a flame. 

*******

That night, when he finally fell into bed after expelling every word onto the page, Cal dreamed again.

The dreams were cold. Frost. Dark mountain water seeping up from the floor of the cabin, rising like the creek and leaving sludge and scum on the familiar surfaces: the desk, the walls, the kitchenette, the black bears and salmon decor. The face of the water carried fallen leaves with it. 

No, not leaves. Wings. The dusty tattered wings of moths, thousands of them, sliding along the flow of the dark water, spilling out of the cabin and down the trail.

Cal stood on the cabin’s roof under a moonless sky and felt arms surround him. They were soft, at first, but tightened. Tighter. Tighter. 

Richard’s cardigan. Tanya’s painted hair. The river on one side, the creek on the other. 

Let it be printed, said the voice. His own voice. 

When the arms drew away, Cal was covered with shimmering dust. But his hands…

His hands were crimson with still-warm blood. 

Cal woke, sweating and cursing aloud, when the utter black silence split with the knocking. Sharp, heavy, insistent.

Three in the morning, like clockwork.  

“Dammit! This is bullshit, Richard,” Cal shouted, hoping the old man woke up from his reverie startled, hoping the old bastard had a heart attack right there at the door. The dreams still clung to Cal’s knees like wailing children. The cold. The dark. The blood.

Damn him. Damn that old man! 

Cal crossed the floor in a rage-filled bound, slammed open the lock and nearly threw the cabin door open hard enough to wrench it off its hinges. 

The night was silent and still, the frost lying undisturbed on the porch. Cal’s breath curled from his lips like smoke and vanished. 

There was no one there.

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Continue to Day Four…