Every Foul Spirit by William Gorman

Author:William Gorman [Gorman, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
Published: 2019-10-24T04:00:00+00:00

8

KATIE SAT IN her car on the darkened road, holding the hand-stained glass fragment in her lap. Her thumb hovered over the darkest of the etchings upon it, the rose with black-red petals. Crucian Crowe. She longed to touch it, stroke its surface, and to feel the climbing roses shimmering and warming to her caress . . . but she hesitated, knowing it would bring them forth, snatching them from their home inside the ancient glass—

—The Rosarium Glass, world unto itself, sustained by its own garden’s bewitchments, and by the illusive ones partaking of its magic who might or might not be immortals.

Katie stopped herself, and wrapped the piece of rose glass within its coarse red buckram again, slid it under the front seat of the Avenger. She got out and locked up the Dodge with her key remote, left the car there with its alarm light blinking. Started walking.

She wasn’t even sure where she was—the street sign read Rebecca Avenue.

Leaves were moving in the night wind. The day’s clouds had blown clear, taking the drizzle with them, and now a hazy moon was visible. The air temperature had fallen considerably, and condensation was helping to form a vaporous mist which clung close to the ground, finely blurring the houses and bushes, the maples and elms.

Katie Franklin walked the small Illinois town, enshrouded in fog, eating vending machine Junior Mints from the motel as she went. The heels of her knee-high boots clocked against the pavement. Every so often she’d tip the box and pop a few more chocolate mints into her mouth. Twice she saw a police patrol car moving slowly by, twice she retreated from sight. She ran her fingers through her hair, wondering what she thought she was doing out here.

She briskly covered the South Reach Mids and came up and around, not sure exactly where she was going. Television screens flickered behind dark, curtained windows, keeping company to those still awake within. It seemed a pleasant enough little town on the surface, but Katie knew that wasn’t the truth. She had seen what lay beneath the skin, knew the kinds of things this quaint place attracted.

It was nearing midnight, and Katie glanced up to see a very small boy in an upstairs bedroom window of a house, watching her through the late-hour mist. She raised her hand, then realized the dwelling stood abandoned and in disrepair—and that the child was not of this realm. She waved despite this; the boy merely stared out his window, watching in death, as he surely must’ve done in life.

Katie moved off the tree-lined streets and climbed a grassy ridge, ascending steadily until she was higher than most of the surrounding homes. From this vantage point she could make out the old bell tower looming in the thickening fog, and now had a better idea where she was. There was very little light here. She thought about trying to find Brazier Drive, where her grandparents had once lived, wishing to see

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