August's Gardens

August's Gardens

Michelle Barclay

Copyright © 2015 Michelle Barclay All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, transmitted or distributed in whole or in part without the express written permission of the copyright holder. Front cover image by betibup33 Design. This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters or events to real people or events is purely coincidental. Smashwords Edition Printed in the United States of America First Printing 2015

This one is for you, Adrian.

PROLOGUE

Years went by after Morrigan mysteriously left town.

The restaurant that once belonged to Morrigan Fuseli flourished under the care of her friend Monty. At first, customers were coming back because they loved the Greek dishes that made the restaurant popular. After Monty gave in to change and developed a new menu, they came in to experience his creative nouvelle cuisine. Soon, he was the most talked about up-and-coming chef in town. He opened two new locations, making a decent profit and setting aside a sizable savings account for his lost friend. If she ever came back, she would have plenty of money, but it didn't look like she was coming back.

Before Morrigan left, she told Monty she was leaving, but not where she was going. She signed over the restaurant to him, happily departing with an oddly tall and otherworldly man. This was after a superhuman dead guy attacked them and put Monty in the hospital, but he had felt assured that Morri was safe from whatever weirdness had overcome her life and leaked into his over those last few months. Now, he was starting to think he was wrong.

He received a few phone calls after she left. However, after a few months, even the calls stopped. The worry did not creep into his mind until then. When he thought of her, he felt chilling emptiness in all the places she once filled. He just could not imagine Morrigan staying out of touch unless something had happened to her, but he had to accept that she was gone—at least for now. When Monty reported her missing, a police officer informed him that there was nothing they could do to help.

She packed, told you she was leaving and didn't tell you where she was going? The officer was alert, attentive and looked Monty in the eye, but it was obvious that Monty would not be able to move him to action.

Right. I've told you this before, Monty said, looking directly back at the officer, determined to get results.

And I have told you before that she is not missing. You just don't know where she is, The officer said, realizing that he had been callous. He added a low, Sorry. as he turned to go back into the bowels of the police station.

That was the last of Monty's pleas for them to look for her.

A lone homeless man sat in silence on a corner near Monty's restaurant every day. There were once two strangers, two truly nightmarish monsters on close inspection, on the corner with him, but they were gone now. They abandoned him the day the cook lady stopped walking by his spot. They were only interested in her, not in Doomsey. Back when Morrigan's daily walk to work took her past him, he was a little bit crazy, but full of energetic insults. Now, he was a shell of a man blending in with all of the other downtrodden homeless of the city. No-one ever bothered looking closer at the vagrant in their midst, but if they did, they would see that there was more to old Doomsey than most derelicts. The man had a languished look about him, but underneath there was terror and the knowledge of something so traumatizing that even his old obsession with the end of the world could not move him.

On the other side of the city, Dr. Tynan Bateson sat in his tidy office waiting for a late patient to arrive. His right index finger curled around his chin. The palm of his left hand rested on a book from his personal collection. European Mythology in Art was open at an artist's rendition of a man with wings, but Tynan's blank stare was directed out of his office window. His focus was turned inward, his thoughts on Morrigan, a tall woman with black hair who sat next to a man with similar features in this very office a few years ago. He hadn't seen or heard from his former patient since that day.

All of these people felt Morrigan's absence—even those who, like Doomsey, did not know her disappearance was a significant event. Nonetheless, none of them came as close to knowing what became of her as the rapidly deteriorating homeless man who was barely visible to passers-by and even his grim imaginings came nowhere near the truth. The terror that had once made his life so bleak left the same day as Morrigan, but her demons would never leave him.

Life went on without Morrigan Fuseli. Her kitchen is now full of cooks she would not recognize. Monty changed the decor of her restaurant to suit emerging trends and so she may not even recognize that. The apartment in the city she used to live in is now inhabited by a lonely man who found a single can of ravioli tucked into the corner of the cupboard when he moved in. He discarded it without a thought for the person who put it there. Far away, a kind old man sold the truck Morrigan drove to escape her life with a man she met in her nightmares. He could not find any next of kin and had to pay the mortgage somehow. The happy couple he rented a small house to simply disappeared one day, the only evidence of their ever having lived there being a lovely garden in the back. It never grew weeds and none of its flowers ever died, even in the cold of winter.

No one living knows the truth about Morrigan Fuseli. None of them know that she married that strange man or that they had lived happily together until a monster from her past caught up with her. Most importantly, no-one knows that deranged thing murdered her and that her body is now buried in the backyard of her cottage. The rest of whatever Morrigan was is now in the closest thing there is to hell. Just outside of that desolate place, her strange husband, the maker of dreams and nightmares, waits for the chance to take her back and kill everything that plotted to take her away from him.

CHAPTER ONE

Wide green eyes sparkle with cold tears. Filth and blood cover the skin around them. The once beautiful but now sallow face they belong to grinds against thick gore. A sigh escapes past the bleeding cracks on Morrigan's dry lips and her features relax. Seconds later, she screams and spit slithers out of her mouth to collect with the excretions and slime surrounding her.

As the brutal pain subsides for a moment, Morrigan feels as if she's dancing in a ballroom with a small child in her arms. The sensation is very real and for the briefest of moments, Morrigan is away from this awful place with its endless swelling blackness. The terrible agony of her death immediately follows her vision of the ballroom, as it always does. She lies there weaving in and out of bliss and horror in a prison of which she is unaware. She has no concept of time. Day and night do not exist for her. She has no idea that there are countless others trapped in the darkness surrounding her. They too are reliving the last moments of their lives over and over.

Death snatched Morrigan from life and put her in this place nearly a year earlier. Before a monster dared to kill her, Morrigan was happy. It was a feeling with which she was relatively unfamiliar. Being pregnant and in love helped her find her place in the world just before her existence became a cycle of torment.

One night, while the living Morrigan Fuseli slept comfortably in a cozy cottage, a walking corpse tore her spine from her body. Evil matched the beauty in Morrigan's life and so her life ended. That walking corpse, once a man named Eric, now exists in a state very similar to Morrigan's. Morrigan doesn't even know he killed her. She has forgotten him. She has even forgotten her beloved man of nightmares. She forgets their child too, though it still squirms in her womb in this shadowy place. All of those thoughts fled her consciousness long ago. Here and now, she's simply the girl who dances and screams while the orchestrator of her demise sits nearby and watches with keen interest.

The Fiend, as his brothers and those like them know him, is, by all rights, the uncle of the child Morrigan carried with her into death. He is the creature who made sure she came here and who ensured that the child came with her. Nearly a year ago, he walked away from the tangible barrier between where he once lived with his brothers and the dark realm, where he now lives. Here, in the world of the Dark Man, he was safe from the wrath of his more vengeful brother, but all who dwelled here shunned him. He spends most of his time watching Morrigan and savoring her pain. Such is the creature that the Fiend has become, though it is hardly a stretch from the creature he had been before he set about to kill his brother's wife.

Today, if one could even measure time in days down in the black pits of despair, the Fiend sits in his usual place, pondering, plotting, scheming and otherwise seeking to cement his position in the dark realm he now inhabits. He means to stay, but his ambition refuses to let him be content in his current lowly position. He will try to elevate himself, as he always does. He was never able to ascend with his brother, the accursed Winged Man, around, but there was both dark and light in that ferocious creature. With the Dark Man, he's in known territory. He could relate to depravity and hubris and planned to use these qualities in his foe to bring the Dark Man to his demise.

Long ago, the Fiend realized that he hated the Winged Man, the ruler of the dream realm and his strongest brother. After years of resentment, he decided he would overthrow his brother's enemy, the Dark Man, and take over the dark realm. Maybe he didn't want to overthrow his own brother, maybe he knew he would lose or maybe he just wanted a place for himself that was more suited to his sadistic tendencies. Whatever his logic, he found his tool for conquering the adjacent realm when he found Morrigan. Through her, he took his revenge on his brother and held out a rotten olive branch for the Dark Man to seize.

The Fiend lowers himself onto the ground with a squelch and slithers over to Morrigan. He waits for her eyes to glaze over and a sigh to escape her lips. When her face begins to contort again, he licks her cheek delicately, as a lover would. Smiling sickly with pleasure, he rises to his full height and disappears into the darkness.

Slowly, the Fiend finds his way to the throne of the Dark Man, who humans know by so many names as to render him unnameable, yet unmistakable. The Dark Man is a creature that manifests itself in every sentient being. He is the reason for instinctual dread of death. He is that dread. He is that death. He is creeping fear. He is the voice telling murderers to kill. He is filled with utter disdain for everything and everyone, save himself and his captive wife.

The Fiend is foolishly unafraid of this being. While sulking in the dungeons of a realm he never cared for, he did not bother to see the Dark Man as a threat. His brothers handled that. It is unclear whether he will live to regret this shortcoming, but the Artist, the more compassionate of his brothers, has an idea of what is to come. He is not confident the Fiend will survive.

Choosing to stand erect, rather than keep himself close to the ground, as is his wont, the Fiend steps almost gaily through the scores of the dead, the stones of unutterable origin, the pools of sludge and the shifting winds of the Dark Man's land. Frantic thoughts assault his mind as those of a businessman about to give the presentation he is sure will be the one that gets him his boss's job. Maybe that is exactly what he is doing, and why not? This is the only place for him—a place where he can rule without his brothers.

Ah, my slimy tenant. What possesses you to abandon your leering and come see me? says the Dark Man.

The Dark Man leans forward in his seat to stare down at the Fiend as he approaches. His disinterested black eyes bore into the smaller creature, as the confident little schemer squirms below the elevated throne of his former accomplice. Clicks echo in the stony chamber as his wiry frame shifts back and forth, his fingers tapping awkwardly on the carapace of his torso.

Stop that racket! If you do not say something that interests me soon, I will send you back to your realm and let your brother torture you for eternity. The Dark Man is almost out of his seat now.

The Fiend stops his nervous fidgeting immediately, embarrassed by the reprimand, but more determined than ever to follow through with his plans. Ha— the Fiend begins.

Shut up, you infernal creature. The Dark Man's long fingernails cut through the air above the Fiend's slender head. You have no call to address me by name. You are wasting words and I will only allow so many from you. Spit it out now or you will have the misfortune of being in the care of the Winged Man before you can draw another breath.

I have reason to believe that the Artist has found a loophole.

What sort of loophole? The Dark Man sighs, his grim temper sated for the time being.

The kind that would allow Morrigan to return to the Winged Man.

No such loophole exists. I banished your brother from my realm under the same terms upon which he banished me from his. No meddling, remember? He intended to engage in affairs that are rightfully mine to mind. For that, I can and have closed off this kingdom from him. You know that there is no going back on that.

Well… the Fiend stops himself from using the Dark Man's given and loathed name. It wouldn't do to embarrass himself a second time in