The Fair Folk - Part Two of Two

Short Fiction - Suspense/Supernatural

Greetings, Talebones Readers!

This is the second half of a two-part story.

Read Part One.

If you like this story, and you want to see more like it, please let me know with a like, comment, share, or restack!

And for more fiction fun of various shapes and sizes, subscribe for free!

Click here for more stories set on Ferris Island!

---

Photo by Gijs Coolen on Unsplash

In the days that followed, Dr. Kenneth Strand was plagued with feverish dreams.

Every night his bedroom crawled with low-slung hunting creatures on silent feet, ears twitching in the shadows under the window, too-knowing eyes watching him with a cat’s disdain. His blankets writhed with wormlike tails, soft and spiraling in silhouette, and the sound of Old Putnam’s final scream of rage became a scratchy, tuneless song. By dawn, the cries of the varied thrushes—seasonal visitors to the island with flames leaping at their breasts—took the song up and threw it back against the walls of Sellowmere Hall, echoing along the wooded edges of the lake wreathed in mist. 

The doctor would wake, then, soaked in sweat. He shivered in an unnatural draft from below his bedroom door. He wiped terrified tears from below his sunken eyes. There was sleep, yes, but no rest. 

The days were no better. Every view from every window seemed to look out upon a shrinking world: the woods leaned in, appeared to grow closer to the house with each passing night. When he walked the grounds the birds fell silent, listening. Eating became a mechanical act, soon easily discarded. Food had no flavor. Wine did not soothe. 

And the ghost of Mother Strand gave no comfort. Not even in her consistency, her presence, sitting straight-backed in a corner, always staring. The quality of her gaze seemed to have shifted, as if Kenneth was the ghost. 

As if she was staring at something following along behind him, at his ear.  

A dark thought crossed the doctor’s mind, not long after this change had shown itself. It was as though his bargain had made Kenneth truly visible to the island for the first time, had drawn the attention of some infernal roving eye deep within the very stone, and it was keeping a very close watch upon him, indeed. Some veil that had guarded him from childhood no longer remained. He had torn it aside, and it lay in tatters, powerless to protect him. 

But—when the shadows of the night would pass and the light of the day made everything less frightening—Kenneth would reason that all of this was a disguised blessing, a sign that he had succeeded. Did not Christ also tear aside the curtain of the temple, to draw the eye of God to His people? To leave humans free to pray, to ask, to weep, to beg?

To seek power, one must become naked to the cosmic, the divine. One must not shy away from the inconceivable. One must reveal, and be revealed.  

Kenneth believed this, and was comforted…until night fell, again, and phantom paws fluttered across the sills, and the tuneless song of Old Putnam’s dying cry echoed through the corridors of the house, a dim, guttering lantern carried in the hands of his mother’s watchful, pacing ghost.

*******

Nearly a week had passed since the bargain had been made. September slipped easily under the chill tide of true autumn, the days crisp and cold and blue with a scent of rain on the edges. 

It was late afternoon. From his perch in his study, Kenneth heard the firm steps of his housekeeper in the entry hall downstairs, the front door creaking open, and her muttered conversation with the guest upon the threshold. He recognized the reedy voice, even if the words were inaudible.  

It was Walter. Kenneth had sent an invitation days before, and his brother had finally answered.

He gave a brief glance to his mother’s ghost in the hearthside armchair—her eyes flicked to a spot over his shoulder—and left the study, down the corridor to the parlour where he knew the housekeeper would take the reverend to wait, shabby shoes and all. 

When he reached the parlour Walter was there, his black bowler in his thin hands. Everything about Walter was thin: thin face, thin hands, thin voice. He had always been quiet and bookish, and Kenneth truly hadn’t the faintest idea what a woman like Annabelle saw in him. 

Walter rose from the settee with a smile, but his eyes were wary.

“Kenny,” he said, cautiously, but Kenneth crossed the distance and folded his younger brother—muscles tensed, surprised—in a fond embrace.

“My deepest congratulations,” he said into the reverend’s ear, perhaps a little too loud, and little too jovial. “I was so pleased to get your news. So pleased.”

Walter pulled away, gently, and nodded. “I wasn’t…certain you would approve.”

“Approve? Nonsense. It’s high time you settled down.” Kenneth motioned for Walter to sit, and he did so. Their mother’s ghost was in the corner chair, watching the proceedings with an unreadable expression. 

“And,” Kenneth added, “you could do no better than Miss Jones. A lovely girl.”

If this fell strangely upon the reverend’s ear, he made no sign except a slight twitch of his lip, easily dismissed as an attempt at an indulgent grin. 

“She is my strong right arm,” the reverend said, emboldened by the mention of her, his thin voice taking on a richness that it only enjoyed in his sermons. His eyes shone. “As good a friend and companion as I could ever ask for.”

Kenneth felt his throat tighten. Friend and companion. What rubbish. His brother would make a pauper of Annabelle Jones, miserable in his hovel of a cottage on the lake, while a woman of her beauty and breeding should enjoy every luxury as the Lady of Sellowmere Hall.  

He saw her clearly, as if she floated past the parlour doorway, wrapped in pink silk, heirloom pearls shining at her throat. He saw her stop, turn to look at him, all of her attention upon him with none remaining for the reverend on the brocade settee. Behind her, the wallpaper was bright as new, the cobwebs gone, the smell of mold and mildew vanished. Annabelle Jones, a good wife indeed. 

Friend and companion. What utter rubbish. 

“When is the wedding?” Kenneth asked. 

“Two weeks, a Sunday morning. In front of the congregation, of course. I’ve asked my colleague from the mainland to officiate. Simple and sweet, as we try to be. As Annabelle is.” Walter paused. “You’ll come, won’t you?”

Kenneth shook his head. “I’m a bit surprised at you, Walter. A simple church wedding when you have all of Sellowmere Hall’s grandeur at your disposal.”

Walter looked slightly stricken. “I…I did not think you would—”

He paused, and Kenneth did not blink. He waited for his brother to finish his thought. 

“I did not think you would…want us. Here.” 

Kenneth gazed upon his brother, mildly. “And why not?”

Walter opened his mouth, then closed it again. Then, he said, with care, “We have not…always…agreed. Especially in these latter years, since Mother passed.”

“Grief is a strange beast. We dealt with it differently, you and I. That’s all.”

Each man lapsed into their own memories of their mother’s decline, and each emerged with their own lessons and philosophies forged in that particular crucible.

Walter broke the brief silence first. “Do you still…see her?”

In the shadowed corner she sat, unblinking. 

“Is that so strange?” Kenneth asked. “This was her home, after all.”

Walter sighed. “Kenny…it cannot be her, that you see. This house…it drove her mad. By the end she spent more time in the woods than she did indoors, speaking into the trees and whispering her bloody tales to no one. If phantoms exist—something I confess, I still cannot quite believe—our mother’s spirit certainly would not linger here in this house. You know that, don’t you?”

Kenneth shrugged, a twitch of his shoulders, and something in his expression made Walter inhale, sharply. 

“You don’t see her now…?”

Kenneth smiled. “She’s always about.”

Following his older brother’s glance, Walter looked over his own shoulder at the chair in the corner, brows creased in confusion. “That’s not even her chair. Why would she sit there and not in the wingback under the window?”

Kenneth shrugged again. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Kenny, this house is making you ill.” Walter stood, wringing the brim of his bowler in his fingers. “I should be on my way.”

“No, no. Wait.” Kenneth stood as well, hands spread graciously. “I’m sorry. What a beastly turn this conversation has taken.”

He sighed, contrite, then said, “Walter, I want you and Annabelle to be married here. On the grounds of your ancestral home. It’s only right, and it would be such an honor to me, truly. I know just the spot, and I would very much like to show you. Will you at least come and look, before you make up your mind? Please?”

The reverend’s posture had changed, slightly wilted and wary, as one who believes they are being hunted by something hiding in the ceiling. But some unspoken brotherly calculus—some mix of loyalty, of memory, of how things once might have been—made him nod, slowly. 

“Yes, Kenny, I’ll come and look. But I make no promises.”

*******

The trees had truly drawn closer to the house, Kenneth was sure of it. But he made no remark on this, kept his hands in his pockets—attempting nonchalance—as he and Walter strode across the grounds side-by-side for the first time since they were children. They passed the potager, summer’s crops faded and brown while the evergreen herbs stood tall, and wound their way through the manicured garden bordered by clipped hedgerows. 

The further they walked, leaving the tame parts of the grounds behind and entering the overgrown meadow, the more uneasy Walter seemed to become.  

“Where exactly are you planning to have this wedding? In the woods?” Walter asked with a breathy chuckle, a hopeful joke. 

Kenneth smiled. “Trust me. I have the perfect place.”

Walter glanced back at the house and ornamental gardens only once, but followed his brother through the meadow to the dark line of Mothwood. 

“Do you remember what Mother used to tell us,” Kenneth asked, casually, “about the Fair Folk?”

Walter shuddered. “Oh, yes. What yarns she could weave. She did have a knack for it, didn’t she? You always seemed most interested in the ones about kidnapped children and dark bargains, as I recall.”

“Dark bargains,” Kenneth echoed, thoughtfully. He felt the roving eye of the island following his footsteps, a vibrating pulse in the earth. He felt the birds watching, silent. The trees leaned down, bearded and scrutinizing.

They drew near the forest boundary, and Kenneth felt his heart beating wildly in his chest. 

Walter said, half to himself, “I couldn’t stand the worst of them, though. I liked the ones about the animals, mostly. Birds. Hounds. Fish. Cats.”

The word cats made Kenneth’s stomach cramp, but he said nothing. 

“The cats were the best. Little hunter-gods, passing back and forth from this world to the next,” Walter continued, fondly. “It’s true, I’ve always thought cats had that look about them, a sort of knowing look. Maybe mother was right about that, after all.”

Kenneth was only partially listening. He was leading them into the line of the trees, the darkness filling in around them. He was looking for the flat stone, the offering place. He would fulfill his part of the bargain and pray that the Fair Folk did their bit. 

“I think she loved us,” Walter said finally, a thread of sorrow snaking through his tone. “I really do. I think she found it difficult to see past her own sadness, but...”

There it was. The stone. 

Kenneth drew up to it, and Walter followed. When he stopped, his younger brother looked around them, confused. 

“It’s…it’s a bit dark and crowded with trees in here for a wedding ceremony, Kenny.”

Kenneth nodded. “It is. That’s true.”

“I don’t…think it will work too well,” Walter said, gently. “Maybe out on the lawn? Or in the garden? I should think those places would be…better.”

Kenneth ignored him. He was listening for the sound of approaching feet, the hiss of the wind, the signs of approach. He waited, held his breath. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, ruining his ability to hear properly. 

I brought him. I promised I would. I paid for this in blood. I made a deal. 

Walter said, “Are you…all right?”

Kenneth knelt, placing his hand on the stone. “This is the perfect place, Walter.”

“It’s…it’s a little gloomy,” Walter said. “For a wedding.”

Kenneth looked up. His brother was backing away. He was going to leave. The bargain was going awry.

“Stop,” Kenneth said. “Stop there.”

“I need to go home,” Walter said.  

He knows. Kenneth stood again, took a step forward and grabbed Walter’s thin arm. “Stay here, Walter. Stop.”

But the reverend had caught the scent of danger, like a deer, and pulled against his brother’s hand, which tightened like a coiled snake. 

“Let me go.” Walter’s eyes widened. “Please, Kenny, you’re hurting me.”

“I made a deal,” Kenneth said, desperation curling around his voice like smoke. “I made a bargain. I paid in blood.”

Kenneth grabbed his brother’s other arm and the two became locked together, grunting, one attempting to escape and the other to pull closer, to draw him to the stone. Walter managed to pull a hand free and lashed out with it, wild and unpracticed, catching Kenneth in the chin. The older brother reeled back, dazed, and then—enraged—dragged the reverend down to the earth. 

The ground beneath them seemed to rumble, hungry, as Kenneth pinned his brother, kneeling over him, and struck him in the temple with a closed fist. 

I made a deal. I deserve her. I deserve it all.  

The lust, the rage, the envy, and the pain coalesced in the surprise of that fist, the feel of flesh against knuckle, and Kenneth began to pummel, one strike after the other, screaming into the silent treetops. Walter covered his face with his hands, but blood flew from his nose, his lip. 

The birds were silent. The very air seemed to tremble. 

When Kenneth—under-nourished, deprived of sleep from days of nightmares—exhausted himself, he sat back on his haunches. Walter lay still, groaning, his face swelling. 

“It shouldn’t be,” Kenneth said, breathing heavily. “I’m only making things right. I’m only doing what Mother said to do.”

Walter began to weep, staring up at the dark treetops. “You’re mad, Kenny,” he said, sobbing. “This is madness. Mother never said anything like this. You never listened. You never saw. You never do. Dear God…”

Kenneth felt the two-word prayer like a slap, a deep offense, and he rose up again, hands poised to wrap around his brother’s throat. If the Fair Folk refused to fulfill their part of the bargain, he would finish this himself. 

“Damn you,” he said. To his brother, to the woods, to the sky, to the silent birds. To his mother. To his house. To every fairytale he had ever been told. “Damn you all to hell…”

But no sooner had his fingers touched the flesh of Walter’s neck than he felt a stirring, a presence, and he looked up, blearily. 

They were not alone. 

Before him, behind him, all around, they were encircled by shadows. Monstrously tall, heavy legs, shoulders furred, edges and boundaries blurred by gloom as though they were made of the same stuff as the trees were cloaked in. The sepulchral gleam of bone—deathly, cryptlike—evoked the glow of exposed skull, or antler, or bare cage of slim ribs. 

He could not be certain of how many there were. And though there were no eyes to speak of, mere glints in the dark, Kenneth knew for certain that all of the attention had fallen upon him. Upon the two of them, and the stone nearby.

The figures did not move. They stood motionless, watchful, as if waiting for this bit of fraternal theater to play out to its logical conclusion. 

“Good Neighbors,” Kenneth said, pushing himself off of Walter and climbing unsteadily to his feet. His voice and hands shook, but his heart was practically leaping with perverse joy. “Are you here to take my brother away? The bargain?”

A voice spoke, then, all smoke and brass and age, the click of bore-beetles in dead wood, the dull thud of stone on stone. Kenneth could not be sure which of the figures was speaking. The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

“We are here, indeed, to fulfill a bargain.”

Kenneth laughed, a shrill laugh. “I knew it!” he cried. “I knew it! May God see and shiver, I knew it!”

But the Folk still did not move. 

Kenneth stood back away from Walter, who had pushed himself up to lean heavily on one thin elbow, spitting blood into the earth, peering terrified into the trees and the encircling figures. 

“Take him,” Kenneth said. A slight panic had set roots. He was so close. “Take him now. What are you waiting for?”

The voice came again, crisp as leaves underfoot. “We are not here for your brother.”

As quickly as his joy had kindled, it doused.

The Fair Folk feel no sting of obligation. Hadn’t his mother said that? Had he heard her properly?

Kenneth whirled, jabbing his finger at the circling figures. “Cheats! Liars! We made a deal! I paid in blood!”

But there was a tiny flicker of movement at the edges of the circle. A snip of bright color, and a flash of eyes and curling tail, a golden knick-eared blur weaving between the figures’ heavy legs. A little hunter-god, a messenger of old, passing back and forth between this world and the next. 

When the voice spoke again, it was patient, as one might speak to a child who refuses to mind.

“Yes, Doctor,” it said. “A deal indeed was made. But it was long, long ago. And it was not with you.”

The little shape revealed itself, peering out from the circle, purring.

“You should have listened to your mother,” the voice said.  

Kenneth blanched.

All at once the circle closed, like the trees around Sellowmere Hall, all hungry mutterings and greedy, reaching claws.

The wails of Dr. Kenneth Strand shivered through the woods and across the lake, like the peal of the church bell, high and clear, but ceased sharply. 

In the quiet that followed, Reverend Walter Strand—a horrified prayer dying on his lips—slipped, unconscious, into the leaf litter and lay still. 

*******

When Reverend Strand did not return to his cottage before dark, Annabelle Jones took up her lantern and set off to find him. She knew that he had gone to Sellowmere Hall to see his brother. And when she arrived, and the housekeeper told her that she had seen the two men heading to the woods earlier that afternoon, Annabelle’s fears spun into dark imaginings. 

She strode through the gardens, not minding the dew and the mud, glancing up at the empty windows of the Hall. Black, unlit, and cold. She had never quite trusted Dr. Kenneth Strand. He had always seemed rather peculiar to her, in ways she could not name. 

Whenever he looked at her, he did not seem to see her.

Whenever she spoke, he did not seem to hear.

She saw the edge of Mothwood and knew, somehow, that this was where the trail must lead. She entered the woods with the grave reverence of one born and raised in the shadow of the island’s wildness, holding tightly to the lit lantern in her hand, following an instinct more than a clear track.

Thankfully, it did not take her long to spot him. 

Walter Strand was leaning up against a wide fir tree, face bloodied and swollen but chest rising and falling with breath, and he held something in his arms that Annabelle could not recognize from a distance, in the darkness. 

She practically flew to his side, striding over the flat offering stone, kneeling in the leaf litter. She lay a gentle hand on his face, taking note of each bruise, each swipe of dried blood. Wounded, yes, but alive.  

“Walter,” she said, quietly. “Walter, dear, wake up.”

He did, the sound of her voice seeming to animate him more than the blood in his veins, and he sighed.

“My brother is gone,” he said, and his tone was complicated. Bereft. Wondering.

The thing in his arms moved, shifted, looked up at Annabelle. 

It was an old cat. Brassy ginger, a little hunter, with a long-healed chunk missing from one ear. Walter held it gently, affectionately, and the cat seemed to rumble happily in his arms. 

Annabelle reached out to stroke the animal and it lifted to her touch. Calm. Satisfied. 

“Anna,” Walter said, quietly. “I don’t know…how to speak to what I’ve seen, today. I would not know where to begin.”

She nodded. She could feel it. She had lived on the island her whole life, and she knew the stories. She had told a fair few, herself. But she also knew that some things were better left to the earth, to the memory of the trees, to the gossip of the birds. Some things could not be explained. Not properly.

“Then let’s not speak of it,” she said, smoothing his hair away from his brow. “And let the beginning of the story be ours alone.”

She kissed his cheek, and then helped him to his feet. The cat lingered near, weaving around their legs as they limped through the woods, back toward the place where the forest gave way to open meadow, to starlit autumn skies and a whisker of a moon.  

As they walked, the old cat peered up at them every so often with a too-knowing expression, something just a little too wise in the eerie, flickering glow of the lantern.

But Annabelle Jones couldn’t really be sure. 

Maybe that’s just how all cats look. 

---

Thank you for reading!