Lyrical Darkness: 11 dark fiction stories inspired by the music that rocks your soul Read online

  “Like threatening to hold her breath?” David asked with a tinge of sarcasm. He didn’t buy what Eric was selling, not about Emmy.

  “I mean like I have scars from where she scratched me. I had bruises sometimes. She was flat-out scary. There was no way I’d ever propose to her. There’s no way to be in love with a woman who’s fifty percent demon and one hundred percent Lizzie Borden.”

  David had no response. He was torn between furious and unsettled. He had known Eric since high school; Eric might have been a jerk of the first order but the one thing he wasn’t was dishonest. Especially if he could use truth as a weapon, which he might be doing right now for his own private enjoyment, just to push David off balance. But the bottom line would still be that Eric was telling the truth.

  “You don’t have to believe me,” Eric said, and drained the last of his beer. “But it’s true. Neither of us should ever see her again.” He abruptly stood and left without saying goodbye.

  But David did see Emmy again. Several days after that last beer with Eric, and they hadn’t met for drinks again since, she turned up at the sidewalk café and sat down at the table as David was finishing his sandwich.

  “Hello,” he said, uncertain. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Here and there. How’s things?”

  “Same old, same old.” He smiled at her and gazed into those brown eyes. They were soft as he remembered, but did he see something else there, now? An edge, maybe? Some sort of shadow? Maybe Eric had gotten to him more than he realized. He shut his mind firmly against everything Eric had said, but he wasn’t quite quick enough.

  “What’s wrong, David?”

  “Not much,” he said, voice light. “What could be wrong?”

  She tilted her head and regarded him. “I know you better than that. What happened?”

  “Eric and I went for drinks the other week.” He hesitated. “He said some stuff about you.”

  Her eyes narrowed, then softened. “He told you, didn’t he?”

  “Told me what?”

  “Did he tell you I was possessive, or jealous?”

  “No, not that.”

  “Or that I was a madwoman? A clinging vine?” There was bitterness in her voice and that nettled him. “He told you I was crazy, didn’t he?”

  There was no denying it. “Yes.”

  She turned her head away for a moment, regaining her composure. When she looked up at him again, there were tears in her eyes. “David, can I ask you a favor?”

  It was a question he had waited years to hear. “Name it.”

  “Do you think there’s a way you could get Eric to meet with me? Just one last time? I’d like to make things right between us.”

  He remembered Eric’s parting line. Neither of us should ever see her again. But there she sat, hands in her lap, gazing at him with wet, beseeching eyes.

  “Bloody hell,” he said without thinking.

  She laughed in spite of her tears. “You sound like someone from home.”

  He smiled back. “I’ll try,” he said. “That’s all I can say. But you know Eric. No one pushes him around, as I’m sure you know.”

  Her smile grew rueful. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. But I’d appreciate it if you tried.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Tell him to meet me Friday around five-thirty, at the last place we saw each other. You know.”

  David remembered three years ago when he had carried a similar message from Eric to Emmy, a request that she be at a specific place late on a Friday afternoon. Eric had led him to believe that he was going to propose to her. Now it was three years later and he was being tapped to do it again, but in reverse. He sighed inwardly. “I’ll tell him.”

  “And can I ask you one more thing?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Could you be there, too?”

  “Me?” He was surprised.

  “I mean, kind of in secret. You know, so that Eric doesn’t know you’re there. I might need a good strong shoulder to cry on after it’s all over. But if you’re right there, he might not be as candid with me as he would if he thinks we’re alone.”

  Sneaking around. The idea was just the slightest bit distasteful.

  “Please?”

  He sighed. “So I get to hide and listen to you two declare your love to each other?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “Eric got over me long ago. I hear he’s found someone else, eh?”

  David winced. “Yes. They’ve only just started getting serious.”

  “Rumor has it he’s planning to propose to her.”

  “So it does,” he agreed, carefully neutral.

  “I wish her all the best in the future,” she whispered. “But I’d like to clear things up with him before we all move on, you know?” She took a deep breath. “Although I think I’ll always love him.”

  “Okay. I’ll tell him. Where do you expect me to hide?”

  She made a face at him and it was adorable. He felt his heart twist. “You’re clever enough to find a place. Just make sure you keep us in sight. And can hear us.” She caught the way he was looking at her. “I want this on record, David. You’re my record. If you already know what we’ve said, you won’t need me to repeat it to you while I’m weeping all over your shoulder.”

  He conceded the point.

  *

  That night he dreamed about Emmy. It was late spring, the end of term, and she was standing on the small hill past the student union, backlit by the sun so that her hair took on a sheen of dark fire and her features were shadowed. He squinted against the brightness of the light and could see that she was smiling. She waved at him as he approached her, climbing up into the sun, climbing up to her, but before he reached her she vanished. When he jolted awake, stunned by her sudden disappearance, he found he had been crying in his sleep. He wiped his face with his hand and wished to his deepest depths that he had not agreed to be there when she finally confronted Eric. He wished he had never delivered any message, the one three years ago or the one this week.

  *

  “What’s going on?” Maggie’s voice was as brusque as she could make it: her voice pierced his cell phone like an arrow.

  David did what he always did. He dodged. “What’s going on?” he repeated, making his tone deliberately light and changing the inflection to casual conversation.

  “Never mind. I’ll be right over.”

  “Wait, Mags?”

  She had already hung up. David thumbed the button on his phone with a sigh, not sure he wanted to deal with Hurricane Maggie in his present state of mind, but there was no point in leaving his apartment. She would simply hunt him down and she was good at that. Resigned, he foraged through his ice-crusted freezer for something dinner-like in appearance and was rewarded with a forgotten frozen pizza. That would work. It was just becoming fragrant when his doorbell rang.

  He buzzed her in and went to the refrigerator to pull a beer and a diet soda. He hated when Maggie was dieting. It made her cranky.

  The three sharp raps on his door underscored that observation.

  “Come on in. Want some pizza?”

  She sniffed. “The cheese is burning.”

  “I didn’t put it in that long ago. That must be stuff that fell to the bottom of the oven.”

  “Or stuff left over from the last time you made pizza.”

  “That’s unkind.”

  “That’s you.” She sat down at the table in front of the can of soda and looked at him. “Tell me what’s going on,” she demanded.

  David twisted the cap off of his beer and took a swig. “Tell me why you ask.”

  She softened her voice to match his. “We haven’t talked since last weekend. I know you said that Emmy was on your mind. And I know something happened when you spoke with Eric last week. So what’s going on?”

  “A mess,” he admitted. “I saw Emmy again, almost right after I saw Eric. You’d think they timed it that way, or something. I mean…” He let his voice
trail away. “I could have used more time,” he finally said.

  “For what?”

  “When I had drinks with Eric, he said some stuff about her.”

  “Really? Like what?”

  He hesitated before answering. “Like that she’s crazy. Full-bore nuts.” The look on Maggie’s face did more than nudge him. “Eric says he never proposed to her because Emmy is crazy. Mood swings and aggression. And very needy.”

  “Wow. I didn’t expect that.” She was studying him. “And you don’t believe him? You don’t think she’s like that?”

  “I don’t know what to think. Eric’s a lot of things, but a liar isn’t one of them. He’s the kind of person who’s more likely to beat you over the head with the painful truth just for kicks.”

  “Do you think he was doing that here? Knowing that you always had a thing for her?”

  “I don’t know.” David thought back to the evening in the bar, remembered the sound of Eric’s voice, the look on his face. “I don’t think so.”

  Maggie let a few silent moments pass before hitting the crux of his dilemma. “And you also said you saw Emmy right after you talked to Eric?”

  He looked away from her. “Yeah. She found me at lunch, like before.”

  “Why didn’t you guys just swap phone numbers, or something?”‘

  “I don’t know.” His answer was honest. “We just never did.”

  “It doesn’t matter. She finds you when she wants to, I guess.”

  “Yes.”

  “And she found you after Eric said all that stuff about her?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’d that go?”

  David frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “Just that you’re about the lousiest liar on God’s earth. She must have known something was up as soon as she looked into your baby blues.”

  “They’re green,” he reminded her.

  “Quit hedging. How’d it go?”

  “She asked me about it. I mean, she figured out that Eric had told me she was crazy.” He could picture her face in detail, down to the look in her eyes. Sadness? Bitterness? Disappointment? “She wasn’t happy about it.”

  “Was she surprised?”

  “Not really. I mean, she knows Eric as well as I do.”

  Maggie put her hand on his, something she never did. “David, do you believe him? Do you think she’s crazy?”

  He shrugged, unhappy. “Maybe. I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  “Does it? I mean, are you thinking about starting a relationship with this woman?”

  There it was, spoken out loud. He imagined the words coming from Maggie’s mouth in comic book balloons with bold black lettering for emphasis. “I don’t know,” he said again. What he meant was that he hadn’t allowed himself to think about that. He knew Emmy was still in love with Eric; how could he possibly stand a chance with her?

  “Is it Eric? Or is it her mental instability?”

  Ouch. She should have been a war-time surgeon: all precise incisions without the bother of anesthetic. “I don’t know.” He put an edge into it. “Besides, what do you care? Are you jealous?” he added just to be annoying.

  She rolled her eyes. “Well, make a decision soon,” she said. “You’re such a pain when you feel stuck. And I think your pizza’s burning.”

  They talked of other things after that, but came around to the same subject shortly before Maggie left. “There’s one more thing,” David found himself volunteering. He had hesitated to mention Emmy’s requests but found that as Maggie was preparing to leave, he felt a sudden need to tell her. “Emmy asked me to set up a meeting for her with Eric, so that they can clear the air before she moves on from him.”

  “And did you?”

  “Yeah. Eric didn’t want to do it, but I got him to agree to tomorrow evening.”

  “That might help both of them.”

  “There’s more.”

  “So?” she prodded him when he grew silent.

  “Emmy wants me to be there, too, but somewhere that Eric won’t see me. She thinks he might not be as open with her if he knows I’m there.”

  “Well, that’s just weird on a couple of levels, isn’t it?”

  “You think so?” David’s relief that Maggie agreed with him about Emmy’s request was like a second wind to him. “Why?”

  “Well, wanting you around in the first place is just strange. It’s between the two of them, isn’t it? And then wanting you to hide?”

  “I thought so, too. But I said yes to her anyhow.”

  “Why? Are you their non-marriage counselor?”

  “She told me she might need a shoulder to cry on afterward.” He felt like an idiot saying it, but he was always frank with Maggie.

  She thought it over. “Okay. Maybe not so weird. I guess I could see where she might want you around. You’ve got good shoulders.” She smiled at him then and for just a second, David wondered why they hadn’t been able to stay together.

  *

  Getting Eric to agree to the meeting was an act of Herculean endeavor. Just giving him the message taught David why the age-old tradition of not killing the messenger had become necessary. But in the end, Eric had said, “Okay, okay, I’ll be there. But only because I know she won’t show up. No way.” He had glared at David as he spoke.

  “You think I’m setting you up? Having a joke?” David demanded.

  “I don’t know what you’re doing. I’ll be there. But she won’t.”

  Now David paced along a small bluff, occasionally glancing down at the water below. The area felt so isolated it was easy to forget that this little slice of country was still within the city limits. And although people knew about it, somehow it never got very crowded. In hot weather, there were too many trees harboring mosquitoes for anyone to stay around for long without serious insect repellant. David figured for all that trouble, most folks would probably just go to the real country. In winter, the snow-laden trees were beautiful, but the path to the view became a nightmare of slush, or worse, ice.

  David rubbed his arms against the chill that came off the water now that the sun was just above the horizon, casting pink and orange fingers into the sky. He knew the area well—all the university students did—and had always been able to picture that dusk three years ago when Eric had proposed to Emmy, or supposedly had. David had always seen the two in silhouette against the rosy, darkening sky, Eric on his knee, Emmy with her hand to her mouth as she gazed down at, in David’s imagination, the huge diamond-and-platinum engagement ring offered up to her with a mix of hope and joy. Like a flipping greeting card commercial, he thought cynically, but his imagination suggested no alternatives. Now that long-held picture had been smashed to pieces by both parties, but it wasn’t leaving his mind easily. He still didn’t know what to think. He certainly didn’t know what to feel.

  “Come on, you guys,” he muttered, pacing back and forth over a small distance. “Just get this over with.”

  On cue, there was a scrambling sound at the base of the path. David snuck a quick look before retreating into the trees. Eric had arrived and was not happy with his lot in life. He pushed and struggled his way up the path, complaining to himself in an undertone the whole time. David nearly let out a nervous giggle. He wasn’t often treated to the sight of a disgruntled Eric LaMark. There was still enough light for David to see streaks of drying mud on the lower legs of Eric’s pants and the sight made his mouth twitch again with suppressed amusement. Weeks later Eric would still be pissing and moaning about his dry-cleaning bill.

  Eric brushed himself off and glanced at the trees, the water, the sky, and then back down the path. “C’mon, Emmy!” he called out. “If you’re really here, let’s just do this!”

  There was no response.

  “Emmm –mmmy!” He called out.

  Did David hear a mocking tone in that voice? He frowned as he listened.

  “David says he’s seen you a few times. Maybe he dreamed you, I don’t know. But I don�
��t think you’re gonna show. Somehow I know this.”

  Not mocking, David thought. Eric had been drinking. Drinking and then driving. What an idiot.

  “Now you know as well as I do, Emmy, there’s no coming back for you. No. Coming. Back.” He hurled the words out into the wind, his voice loud and somewhat slurred. David risked a peek and saw that Eric was standing in the wide-legged, slumped stance of the inebriated. “You can’t come back. Not now. Not ever.”

  The import of Eric’s words was beginning to sink into David’s conscious thought and he felt unexpected goose bumps come up on the backs of his arms, the base of his scalp. He didn’t want to follow his uneasy thought to its logical conclusion.

  “Eric.” Her voice came from everywhere, soft and unmistakable. “Eric, I’m here, lover.”

  David saw his friend jump. “You can’t be.” No more slurring in his words. Simple shock.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, darling.” The British accent was no longer warm and inviting. There was only coldness, an undercurrent of dark promise. “I’m coming to you right now, aren’t I?”

  David slipped out from behind the tree, giving up all pretense of hiding, and saw Eric standing still, his posture one of frozen disbelief. “Emmy?” he whispered, not caring if Eric heard him or saw him next to the trees.

  And then she came, but not from the path. As both men watched, one incredulous, one in horror, a pale hand appeared at the edge of the bluff, scrabbling and clutching for a handhold. At last it found purchase and the other skeletally pale arm appeared, clothed in a torn and muddy sleeve. In the last of the daylight, David could just discern the bright floral pattern now caked with muck. Awkwardly, she clambered up to even ground, pulling herself in disarticulated fashion. The smell of decay and water-rot wafted to him on the breeze and he choked silently on it.

  The repulsiveness of the vision chilled David, paralyzed him in cold horror. The part of his brain that continued to function noted that several of her bones were broken. He could see that, he realized with a shock, because some of her skin and underlying tissue was missing in chunks. Her hair, long, snarled, and tangled with twigs, rotting leaves, and strands of limp weeds, hung down past her shoulders. “You made me wait so long, Eric. That was amazingly rude of you.” Her voice was raspy now as it issued from the torn and mangled throat. “It took me so long to get back to you…” She shuffled closer and raised one half-shattered arm to touch him.