Doorways in the Gloom, page 1
Doorways in the Gloom
Dawn Vogel
"Coffin Coffee Table" and "Definitely Not Haunted" are copyright 2019.
"A Modern Mary Shelley" is copyright 2020.
"Just Smile" is copyright 2021.
All other stories and poems are copyright 2022.
All rights reserved.
Cover art photo by Ryan Gerrard on Unsplash. Cover layout by Dawn Vogel.
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Table of Contents
Content Notes
A Modern Mary Shelley
Swamp Witch
Coffin Coffee Table
The Briar Princess
What Will Happen Next
The Thing in the Swamp
Beach Day
Swing
Dangers of the Deep
Darkened Souls
The Sun Has Shunned Us
If the Light is Constant
Dark Readings
Lost Skulls
The House Provides
Definitely Not Haunted
The Elves on Solstice
Rory
15 Ghosts
Just Smile
About the Author
Content Notes
Many of the stories and poems within this collection include references to death. Some also include references to blood. In general, these are not graphic references. Additional specific content notes for some stories and poems are included below.
"A Modern Mary Shelley" includes body mutilation.
"Swamp Witch" includes implied animal death.
"Coffin Coffee Table" includes a physical, non-sexual violation of consent and an IV needle.
"The Briar Princess" includes unintentional self-harm.
"The Thing in the Swamp" references human sacrifice.
"If the Light is Constant" references mental illness and institutionalization.
"The House Provides" includes physical harm coming to children.
"Definitely Not Haunted" references animal death.
"The Elves on Solstice" includes non-graphic cannibalism.
"Rory" references child loss.
"Just Smile" includes body mutilation and implied cannibalism.
Thanks to Kelsey Dawn Scott and Rohit Kadam for reviewing and suggestion additional content notes.
A Modern Mary Shelley
Mary's the sort of girl most people don't really notice. She sits in the back of the classroom, always scribbling in her notebook. She sits by herself at lunch, though you're not sure she eats, because she's still writing while the chaos of the cafeteria swirls around her.
You track her down on social media, picking her out among all the other Mary S. accounts. She only posts beautiful things, but if you dig a little farther, you realize they're both beautiful and morbid—skulls and bones and decay, carefully arranged into something lovely.
She's got quite the following online, other artists like her, all with the same aesthetic. The compliments they pay each other read like poetry, and you lose yourself in their world for a little while.
Mary shies away from you the first time you say hello. She's not accustomed to people being friendly to her, nor is she much of a conversationalist. But she'll listen as you talk, prodding you to continue with appropriate nods and sympathetic noises. You've tried just sitting in silence in her presence, but her pen is always rasping over paper when she's not expected to participate in something, and even sometimes when she is.
You invite her over for dinner, because that's what new friends do, even if it means exposing her to your family and siblings. You hope they'll be on their best behavior if you bring home a guest. But it doesn't come to pass, because she demurs, citing other plans.
She never invites you over to her house. Maybe her family is worse than yours.
You follow her home from school one day to find out. You're not surprised to learn she lives in the old part of town, in a house that looks like it might only be held together by hopes and dreams. You're relieved she's never invited you over.
But you're curious, and you've already come this far, so you skulk around the yard a bit, trying to get a glimpse inside her house. They say eyes are the windows to the soul, and you suspect it might work the other way around too.
The first level windows are mostly covered with thick, elegant draperies. The ground level windows, however, lack such coverings.
You wish they had been covered. It was easier to think of Mary as a shy, eccentric artist.
There's artistry in what she's doing, to be sure, but you never would have guessed all that scribbling in her notebook was not poetry, but rather plans.
Plans for a patchwork human, lying prone on a slab, electrodes and wires attached to various parts.
You really shouldn't have followed her today. You didn't need to see this patchwork human jolt to life.
You didn't need it to notice you lurking outside the basement windows, transfixed.
You didn't need Mary to see you there.
It would have been much better if you'd just left her to her scribblings.
"A Modern Mary Shelley" was originally published in Burial Day Books (December 2020).
Swamp Witch
When you live in the swamp,
in a shack built on stilts,
on a narrow strip of solid ground,
the locals tend to call you a witch.
They think the bats that swarm around
are your familiars, or your pets,
and that they help you snatch
souls from unsuspecting victims.
And maybe they're not wrong.
But what they don't realize
is the bats are only bait.
You're waiting for them
to lure in something sinister.
You've constructed a skeletal chimerical beast
from alligators, possums, and herons,
to serve as the host for something grander.
And when this deadly soul comes
(and it will come, of that you are certain),
you can only hope you've done everything right,
for there are no second chances
when it comes to summoning the soul
of a suspecting, wary victim
that is just as likely to devour you
as you are to capture it.
Coffin Coffee Table
I found the schematics for the coffin on the dining room table. "What's this?"
He gave me a charming smile. "Coffee table, I was thinking."
I smiled back. "Kinda spooky, but alright."
"It's got hinges on one side of the top, so we can keep blankets and pillows inside."
"What for sleeping in?"
"No, for when we're watching movies and you fall asleep on the couch."
It sounded so sweet, I had to believe it.
~
The wood he picked was heavy and sturdy, not just plywood like I anticipated. "That's going to be a beast to move."
He frowned at the wood and nodded. "Yeah, but it means we don't have to paint it."
"What about the edges?"
"Oh, I'm getting some custom molding made. Same wood. For the lid and the corners."
"You've got this all planned out, huh?"
He shrugged. "More or less, yeah."
Should have worried about the less. Maybe the more too.
~
When the bolt of satin fabric arrived, I tried to tell the delivery driver that there must be a mistake. "I didn't order purple satin."
He swooped in from nowhere. "Yeah, that's mine, thanks."
After I closed the front door, I looked at him, my brow creased. "What's that for?"
"The inside of the wood's a little rough, and I don't want the blankets catching on it. So I figured I could whip up a lining."
"That's not as easy as you'd think. You want some help?"
"No thanks, I've got this." He kissed my forehead. "You look tired, go back to bed."
I was tired. I wasn't normally up at this time of day.
~
It was just after nightfall when I woke up, and I luxuriated in the soft sheets, stretching my arms out to the sides as I regained consciousness.
My left arm felt leaden, just before it thumped against something solid.
I fumbled for the switch on my bedside lamp, surprised at my clumsiness. I turned the knob but shoved the lamp off the table in the same gesture. My earlier trip downstairs had taken more out of me than I'd expected.
The coffin coffee table was on his side of the bed. In the bed.
An IV line in my left arm trailed through a small hole between the hinges.
"No."
I became aware of the blood leaving my body, even as I reached to pull the needle out of my artery. My hand froze when I saw the note propped on the lid of the coffin.
Joining you in the dark, my love.
I'd told him "no" a million times. It wasn't the life I wanted for him. For
I pulled the line from my arm, pressing my thumb over the hole the needle left behind.
The coffin's lid was heavy. He lay inside, arms crossed over his chest like a cheesy movie, the last of the blood he'd stolen from me slipping out of the IV line.
I lifted his eyelid to see how his pupils reacted to the light. They contracted like a human's, not lightning quick like mine. The transformation wasn't complete, but it was far enough along.
"This is not yours to take," I murmured. "It was mine to give, and I said 'no'."
He'd always kept stakes in his bedside table. To defend me, he said. On my more cynical days, I suspected he also kept them in case I lost control.
Either way, they were handy now.
But I moved him to the bathtub first.
Intentions aside, it was a gorgeous coffee table he'd built.
"Coffin Coffee Table" was originally published in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts (March 2019).
The Briar Princess
While the princess slept, the thorn hedge grew wide,
doubling the walls around her bedchamber,
a spell to protect her from the outside,
but also to protect outside from her.
The hedge cautioned those who travelled too near,
this was not a place for the cowardly.
The prince saw the hedge as only a spear,
no threat, sure he could set the princess free.
The prince slashed at the brambles with a frown.
No paths for him to navigate he knew.
Though his flesh was torn, and his blood flowed down,
he would not stop until he advanced through.
The princess awoke like a flower bud,
certain she had slept for too many days.
She sensed the prince, his battling, his blood,
and journeyed outside for a closer gaze.
He spied the princess on the balcony,
her snow-white skin, her coal-black hair and eyes,
he doubled his efforts, in agony,
that he must struggle through to reach his prize.
The princess watched the prince's slow advance,
growing more entranced by his reckless pace,
till he stumbled through into the plesance,
and collapsed into her languid embrace.
The wise old folk whose hair had turned to gray
knew truths that would have kept the prince rapt.
The briar hedge that kept the prince away
also kept the fair vampire princess trapped.
What Will Happen Next
The descending notes echo ominously.
They're just notes. They can't hurt you.
That doesn't stop the hairs on the back of your neck
from standing on end when you hear them.
The first repeat was eerie.
The second becomes unnerving
A third time, it's frightening,
And the notes keep repeating.
Music in a horror film,
but you can hear it.
Something is coming.
But when will it strike?
And then it stops short.
The silence is worse,
because you don't know
...
The Thing in the Swamp
"You going to the thing tonight?" The way Jimmy Collins said it, you'd think it was a party. I knew better. Laura didn't.
"Thing? What thing?" Laura asked, her eyes aglow.
"No, we're not." I slammed my locker, hard enough to make Jimmy jump from where he was leaning a couple of lockers down.
Laura whirled to face me. "Oh, c'mon, Abigail. You never want to do anything fun."
"You really think anything Jimmy Collins wants to do in the swamp is fun?"
"Wait, swamp?" Laura asked. She turned back to Jimmy. "You didn't say swamp, did you?"
"Naw, but Ab's right. It's a thing in the swamp."
"And I said no, we're not going. C'mon, Laura, we're gonna be late for Pre-Calc." I grabbed her fluffy angora sweatered arm and dragged her toward the classroom, leaving Jimmy Collins in our wake.
Once we were near the classroom door, Laura wrenched her arm away from me. "Seriously, Abigail, have you ever considered that the reason no one asks you out is because you're always turning down invitations to parties?"
I shook my head. "It's not a party, it's a thing. There's a big difference."
She crossed her arms over her chest. "Enlighten me."
"After class." I nudged her into the classroom ahead of me.
~
The moment the dismissal bell rang, Laura was glued to my side. "Alright, tell me about this thing."
I rolled my eyes. "There's not much to tell. It's a bunch of the adults from the old families in town who go out into the swamp and catch up with each other, maybe share some gossip, tell some old stories. It's not a party by any stretch of the imagination, and the only people our age who go are the ones who get dragged with their parents, and Jimmy Collins, who considers things the pinnacle of his social life. So, basically, losers."
"So are your parents dragging you?"
I arched an eyebrow at her. I detected sarcasm. "You calling me a loser?"
She smirked and arched her eyebrow right back. "If the shoe fits."
"Well, they're not." Far as I know.
~
"Abigail, you're coming with us to the thing tonight?" Mom asked as soon as I walked through the door.
I grabbed a bag of chips from the counter and started rummaging through the fridge for something to wash them down with before I answered. "You've phrased that as a question in the form of a statement, Mother. Which means I'm going whether I like it or not."
Mom shrugged. "Your father and I thought it would be a good idea for you to start learning the old ways sooner rather than later. You know we won't be young and spry forever."
"Yes, and I look forward to sending you postcards at Shady Acres from my travels abroad." I waved, chip bag flailing. "Ciao, Mama."
"We're leaving after dinner," she called after me.
~
Laura called me ten minutes before dinner. "I talked to Jimmy after school. I'm going with him to the thing."
I grimaced. One thing about Jimmy Collins that I'd never let slip at school was that he was my third cousin, once removed. For some people, that's good enough distance for considerations of dating and even marriage. But he was a Collins, and that was the swamp side of the family, which meant no self-respecting Vine would consider him dateable or marriageable. If I were even planning on settling down here.
Laura's family had moved to Selbyville midway through the summer. She didn't have any sense of the history of this place, or the family dynamics. So it was hard to explain to her why a non-repulsive male member of our class was not dripping with girlfriends and crushes. And Jimmy had zeroed in on that the first day of school. Being swamp side, it took him a while to make a move.
"You still there, Ab?" Laura asked.
"Yeah, yeah. I guess I'll see you there, because this loser's parents decided to drag her to the thing."
I tromped down to dinner, a dour expression on my face. It wasn't that different from most nights, but it must have been extra fierce, because the first words out of Dad's mouth were, "What's up, buttercup?"
"The thing, apparently." I slumped into my chair and studied what Mom had made for dinner. She'd been watching a lot of cooking shows lately, so we'd started to get the same old meals, now plated in an extra special way. I pushed the whole green onion stalk to one side of my plate and dug into the meatloaf, which looked like it was studded with carrots and peas, not as the gods intended it.
