A Fine Cast of Characters - J. Dane Tyler [43]
“You see, you’ve met my benefactor before. In the forest, dear friend. It was he who flew low over your carriage, hiding in the dense fog, of whom the horses were afraid. He saw you, inspecting you as you might inspect your meal before dining.”
Another tear rolled over my lashes and raced down my cheek. I could not speak, could not move, and watched as the undead cadaver across the table began to shift, to pull itself from the silk-lined casket. And the ripple, the shifted shading which I perceived but could not apprehend with my eyes before—that ripple crawled over what was once my friend, and he desiccated before my very eyes, drawing gaunt and pale, just as the living corpse in its casket. His eyes burned with demonic fire, teeth pressing his crumpled and ruined lips forward and outlining them in his mouth, a black and purple, death-dry mouth, with those gleaming bony canines savage and raw and exposed within.
“It will all be over soon, my friend,” he whispered to me. “So soon. Just be still.”
And stillness overtook me.
Remember Me
Chapter 1
She was more beautiful than the sea, more beautiful than the moonlight that drizzled lovingly over her, more beautiful than the music she danced to. She was more beautiful than anything I’d ever seen.
The night wasn’t cold. It wasn’t warm either. I sat on the dunes, watching the flat full disc of the moon play off the water as it rolled, crested, crashed and foamed against the sands. The dark tree line sheltered the cove and shielded it from prying eyes, so only the sea watched me sit and stare. The lighthouse at the cove’s point, nestled among the rocks and shoals, shined its beacon to warn the hapless of the dangers beneath the deceptive calm. But the lighthouse keepers appeared asleep in the calm, cloudless night. I sat alone with the ocean and the trees and the black, stoic tower of the lonely lighthouse.
I love the ocean, I always have. I love the smell of the mist as it caresses my face. The breeze’s gentle, loving fingers run through my hair, tickle my neck and kiss my cheeks. I smile at the beach with no reason to smile, with no other company than the mysterious deep stretching away from me. It’s beautiful, powerful, alive. And she was all of those things, and more. So much more.
I noticed first a black spot, tiny, just beyond the crests of the incoming waves. It rose above the textured water’s surface, the small blackness, a bump or smudge, and grew higher. As the rolling, playing sea foamed and misted, it became more clear.
A form. A head. Shoulders. A body. A beautiful, shapely body, swaying while it moved, almost one with the water. It was like the ocean came alive and stood up and the tide carried its newfound shape toward the beach.
Toward me.
Strange, I didn’t hear her or see her among the waves. Her clandestine swim must have happened against the darkness of the woods to my left, her splashes and strokes lost to the throaty seduction of the surf. I only saw her now, as if she finally wanted me to, like she was ready to be seen. The waves overcame her, roared down and swallowed her, and I thought her a dream, a mirage. But she strolled on as if nothing happened, as if the sea were an illusion and the waves harmless visions. She came out of the water, the foam around her ankles, and the way she moved—the way she carried herself, with salty water running from her in tiny waterfalls, the curved outlines of her face and body, captured in the moon’s white-blue glow—was ethereal.
I knew then, even blinded by the dark and deafened by the surf, I knew then she was beautiful. More beautiful than anything I’d ever seen, more beautiful than anything I’d ever imagined.
And she was coming toward me.
I still couldn’t see her, not clearly, but she came up the beach and beyond the waterline. She seemed to float over the dunes to stand near me. I