The Mindful Migraine

I’ve been experimenting with ways to help people understand what it’s like to live with chronic migraine. This blog is part of my endeavors, as are the short stories I write under the genre-name I refer to as “Migraine Gothic”.

After I’d written a few posts (here), I put several of them into a free e-book (over here). And as I was dabbling in the short stories, I discovered that I quite enjoyed the experience of fiction-writing. There was something cathartic about imagining myself into a whole other reality.

So, in recognition of Halloween, today’s post is a return to the uncanny, but this time, it’s less migraine-gothic… more eco-gothic… the beginning of a story… perhaps…

Enjoy.

*

THE DEMISE

Rain lashed the twin sisters as they stood before the open window.  Ebony smirked into the night sky, daring the wind to hit her harder as it rushed across the garden and towards the house.  Slightly behind her, Fidelia turned sideways and wiped Ebony’s long hair off her face, tugging tendrils from her mouth.

“Enough,” Fidelia said, pulling her sister backwards.  She took one last look at the full moon trying to reveal itself through scuttling clouds, then closed the glass and turned the lock.  After she had slid the curtains together, Fidelia walked slowly towards the fireplace and held her hands to the heat.

“It has to be tomorrow,” Ebony announced.

“It’s too soon,” Fidelia replied, “I’m not ready.”

“You’re as ready as you’ll ever be.”

Fidelia squatted down awkwardly to be closer to the fire and stared into the flames.  Her thoughts returned to the last time she had seen her parents… the last time she had seen him…  and, as her face flushed, she was grateful the fireplace was before her.

Ebony jammed a knee into Fidelia’s hunched shoulder, almost pushing her over.  “Tomorrow,” Ebony said again and then moved off towards the bed in the corner of the room.

Without turning to watch, Fidelia could see in her mind’s eye every move her sister made as she changed into dry clothes, brushed her hair, and slid into bed.  Fidelia fussed with the fire a little longer and waited until she was sure her sister was asleep.  She returned to the window to double check the lock and drew the curtains tighter.  Without bothering to change, Fidelia lay down damply on the green velvet lounge and pulled a throw rug up to her chin.

As the fire cast shadows upon the faded yellow wallpaper and cracked ceiling, Fidelia watched their dance macabre and wondered if there was any way she could alter her sister’s flawed plans.

*

The sun had barely pushed past the horizon when Ebony called her sister out of sleep.  In a sing-song voice, Ebony recounted the fairytale story of Hansel and Gretel as she poured tea into chipped cups and placed the last of their biscuits onto rose-lined saucers.  As she made her way through the tale, Ebony traced her dirty fingernails over the floral pattern on her crockery, round and round, her finger sliding past the painted roses, lingering on the thorns. 

Fidelia, meanwhile, finished her tea and read the future from the bottom of her cup.  “An anchor,” Fidelia said out loud, and to herself, “beside a heart.”

Ebony pulled the cup from her sister’s hand and threw the tea dregs onto the dying fire, smiling as they hissed.  Fidelia sighed but said nothing and moved to restack firewood, rearranging the already orderly pile, keeping her face turned from her twin who knew her better than she knew herself.

“It’s time,” Ebony said, and Fidelia stood slowly to join her.  The sisters laced up their own boots and then tied the top buttons of each other’s matching coats.  They pulled on their woolen gloves and hats and stood before the locked door.  Fidelia could hear her ragged breathing fill the room and did her best to calm herself down. Ebony waited a moment longer, then opened the door. 

*

Side by side, they stood staring. 

Even though the landscape receded into a heavy mist, it was apparent that the water had risen higher in the night.  The dead trees that had once marked the garden’s end were now submerged, a gentle wave lapping at the base of their trunks.  Whilst the jaunty little garden path of stepping-stones had sunk long ago into the mud, whispers of their white were still shining through the dark, random dots and dashes that resembled morse code, but meant nothing.  Nothing other than a message that bad news had arrived, and that was no longer newsworthy.

To the left of the house, the picket fence still stood sentinel, boldly staking a claim to the land that was, bureaucratically, theirs.  To the right, however, the fence had been reduced to kindling by the neighbor’s vehicle as he beat a hasty retreat during the terrible early days of The Demise.

In such a short time, an enormous property had been reduced to a claustrophobic, shrinking space.

Simultaneously, the sisters tilted their heads to the side, chins up.  The slightest of sounds, almost inaudible, came from Garden End. 

“Bird,” Fidelia whispered.

“Beast,” Ebony replied.

The sound came again, and Fidelia was proven right when a large Waverer flew out of the fog.  This long-legged adaptation of a heron cared nothing for the deep water on the grass.  Its long beak secured first one drowned worm and then another, tossing its head back on an extended neck until it reached its tail feathers.  The motion reminded both girls of a bent and twisted spine.  Without a word, each girl knew the other was thinking “broken”.  Not because of any shared psychic intuition, although that existed on occasion, rather, the ways of birds and beasts was a subject that had occupied many of their conversations over the last few weeks.

The Waverer started to strut in exaggerated slow motion across the watery lawn, straight towards the sisters.  They held their breath.  This was new.  Normally a Waverer meandered listlessly across the once-was-lawn, willy-nilly, this-way-that.  Straight lines were not in their nature.  Stranger still, a second Waverer flew from out of the dead trees at Garden End and began strutting in slow motion towards the first bird.  And then another.  And another.  A dozen birds now strutting in a straight line on their impossibly long legs towards the front door.

“Inside,” Fidelia said as she grabbed Ebony’s sleeve and stepped backwards.

“No chance,” Ebony screamed and lunged off the front porch, arms thrust out and up, waving them frantically in the cold morning air.  The Waverers stopped their strutting, but they did not retreat.  Two dozen red eyes on impossibly long necks, above bodies on abnormally long legs, all focused on Ebony where she stood flapping and floundering.

After a long pause, first one, then all the Waverers began to walk again towards Ebony, their pace quicker than before… or perhaps it was their proximity that made it seems as if they were moving… faster… faster.

“Inside,” Fidelia said again, and this time a wave of doubt flowed from her sister’s form and washed over Fidelia where she stood inside the house.  Ebony stepped backwards without taking her eyes off the birds.  “Inside!” Fidelia yelled yet again as the first Waverer, nearly as tall as Ebony, drew within striking distance.  Ebony turned and dashed into the house, and Fidelia slammed the door shut and locked it.

Ebony laughed, “since when have birds grown fingers?”

Fidelia shrugged, it was of course silly to lock a door against a bird, and yet…  She went to the window and pulled the curtains aside.  The Waverers were still there, still in a straight line, but they now ignored the house, and instead, went back to pulling worms from the waterlogged land. 

The Worms were some of the last of the Ground Dwellers.  Far enough below the surface to avoid most of the New Age pesticides that had caused so many other creatures to succumb to extinction.  Their numbers were reducing, but not before they, like so many other species, had changed.  The Worms that lived in the garden had morphed to become as long as an arm and thick as a thumb.

Fidelia hated The Worms.  Legless, eyeless, more physically handicapped than she was herself, there was something in their writhing helplessness that always felt feigned.  They seemed so weak and yet they persisted.  As they had grown and grown over the last few months, the seemed increasingly dishonest.  More sinister.  She thought of them sliding through an open door, between her bedsheets, around her feet… her face…

To break the cold dread that was turning her stomach, Fidelia turned away from the worm-eating Waverers and glanced to the far right of the garden and the splintered paling fence.  In the bland blankness that had once been a playland of color and fragrance, stood a pile of grey rocks on rocks.  The cairn marked the spot where Luna was buried.  

Her pet.  The notion seemed so silly now.  An animal that was neither work beast nor food.  A companion.  A mouth to feed.  A comfort.  A killer-eater of other beasts and birds.  A warm spot in the bed at night.  A carrier of lice, ticks, fleas, dirt and debris.  A sleepy creature, old in years, who had spent her last days lazing in the sunshine of the porch, her nose blistering in the winter sun…

Fidelia turned as Ebony threw her hat at the wall and screamed.

*

Round and round, Ebony paced the small room, muttering “lions, and tigers, and bears” under her breath, over and over.  A year ago, the action would have made Fidelia laugh.  Now, the image of a caged cat came to mind, Luna made large, angry, impatient… feral.

Abruptly, Ebony turned on Fidelia, “we need to move them out of the way and rush past.”

Fidelia shook her head, “there was something else out there, a shadow… behind the Waverers… beyond the water’s edge.”

“I saw it too, that’s why we can’t stay here any longer.  Today’s the day – I’m certain.”

“You’ve been wrong before,” Fidelia said, and instantly regretted it.

Ebony turned towards her twin sister, so alike, and yet so dissimilar, and whispered, “you’re a coward… a broken coward.”

“Perhaps,” Fidelia replied as she stood up straighter, “but I’m not a fool.  Something has shifted out there… the world is… different.”

Ebony released an exaggerated sigh, “I know that.  The Demise happened ages ago… we need to leave so we can…”

“No,” Fidelia interrupted, “I mean another shift, something more recent… I’m saying the details in the landscape have changed again… last night… and minutes ago.”

Without waiting for her sister to reply, Fidelia went to the window and pointed to where Luna was buried.  The rock pile that once marked her grave had tumbled over.  The ground was gouged in deep ruts, water filling the base of each gaping hole.  Behind the digging site, beyond the broken fence, the trees of the neighbor’s orchard had changed too.  Well above the dangers of the encroaching tideline of The Demise, the apple trees were nonetheless not only newly dead, but twisted, bent out of shape.  Not a single leaf clung to their bone-white branches.

“I don’t care,” Ebony replied, “one of the big beasties finally ate the cat carcass.  I’m only surprised it took them so long to find it.”

“What about the bitter-apple trees?” Fidelia asked, “they were covered in green leaves and fly-blown fruit just yesterday, where did they all go?”

“There was a storm last night, the wind was wild and…”

“Why aren’t the apples on the ground?  They were the size of our heads… they couldn’t all roll away.  And why are the leaves still green and clinging to the trees behind the house?”

“Who says they are?”

“Me, I saw them when I went to the bathroom this morning.”

“I don’t care,” Ebony said again.  She pointed to the empty wet lawn near the front of the house; “the birds are gone… we go.”

Fidelia was still unconvinced. Every fiber of her being rebelled against Ebony’s plan.  In a bid for change, Fidelia said, “then we start the journey backwards, not forwards,” and when Ebony frowned, she went on, “we go out the backdoor not the front.”

Ebony shrugged, but Fidelia saw that the alternation of her plans came at a great cost to her confidence.  Fidelia hid her smile behind a gloved hand as she watched Ebony retrieve her hat from the floor. 

As they turned toward the rear of the small house, they froze.  From behind the closed door that led to the back rooms and exit, there was the sound of someone scraping a chair across the timber floor.

“Am I hearing things?” Fidelia asked herself out loud.

“I’m hearing you,” Ebony replied impatiently as she placed a hand in the small of Fidelia’s back and pushed her onwards.

Fidelia moved closer to the door, but before she could reach for the handle, another sound split the silence, louder this time, as if someone had thrown the chair at the door.  She put her hand to her head and rubbed her temples, wondering if a migraine was coming.

“I hear it,” Ebony announced before Fidelia could ask, “what you experience, I do too… but I choose not to acknowledge everything you share with me… I choose to remain me alone.”

Fidelia pondered this confession for only a fraction of a second before the previous sound was repeated; a harsh smack as timber slammed against timber, accompanied by a loud grunt.  Again and again, someone, or something, was huffing and puffing and trying to break the door down.

“Turn the handle,” Ebony called out to the intruder, “the door’s not locked, you fool!”

Fedelia watched as the handle turned, and the room tilted.

*

In her mind, Fidelia travels.  The walls melt away, the tideline of The Demise has receded, and Luna sits nearby on the grass, beneath the blossom-laden trees at the end of the garden.

Fidelia is playing Little Witches, lining up sticks on the stepping-stones in combinations her grandmother had taught her, calling out to the dead, waiting for a reply.

From the front doorstep, the voice of Fidelia’s mother and her mother’s friend drift down.  They are analyzing each other’s dreams, laughing lightly as if such things were only playful diversions, rather than deep, dark, secrets dragged into the day.

One woman dreams her honeymoon cruise was shipwrecked on jagged rocks, and all aboard drown.  The other dreamt of a wonderful adventure in which her bed floated out the window on a rising tide, and after coming to rest on a mountain top, nothing but the trailing corner of her blanket was saturated.

Fidelia tries to separate the women’s words and voices… who was lost, who saved?  Fidelia’s churning guts tell her it was her mother who dies.  Wracked with a deep sense of guilt, she remembers that she is one half of the reason Father is gone. 

She knows she ought to quit playing and return to her mother before something serious happens, but Luna is demanding belly-rubs.  And the roses beside the paling fence need to be smelt.  The apple-trees next door deserved to be admired.  Tug-tug, her heart strings beat, tug-tug, they are ignored.

Ebony, meanwhile, bored of trying to bend spoons with her mind, has climbed the fence into the neighbor’s yard.  Here she is now, returning, a small apple secreted in each of the pockets of her skirt.  Her mother’s voice calls out for a bite of the forbidden fruit and Fidelia senses her grandmother is also nearby, cursing…

The line between the living and the dead, Fidelia thinks, has always been so tentative.  But the lines between the living and the living are also blurred.  One person plus one person is not always equal to two… 

A bang behind her breaks Fidelia’s reverie.  So many bangs and bumps in her life, she realizes, and for all their familiarity, those things that go bump in the night are rarely caused by what you imagine.

Ebony is here now, whispering in her head, her voice bouncing off the walls of her skull.  Fidelia tries to keep her out, but Ebony is bold and will not be pushed aside.  Her voice grows louder and more insistent, and soon a single word is being shouted over and over; “move!”

* * *

That’s enough for one day – thanks for making it this far – let me know if you want to know what happens next!

Happy Halloween everyone – may it be as pain-free as possible!

Take care taking care out there, Linda x

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PS – the whole story (7 chapters long) is now available to read for free online over on my blog’s GOTHIC page (here) – scroll to the bottom of the page & enjoy!