InkStains January (12 page)

The woman is mumbling. She repeats the same
phrase over and over as she leans over the balustrade. “Moon dragon
rubies for breakfast,” she says, as though it makes sense, as
though the absence of those things makes her sad. She kicks off her
heels and climbs.

“
Maybe you shouldn’t,”
Stephanie says.

The woman pauses, caught, exposed, suddenly
uncertain. She looks at Stephanie, but she’s seeing someone else –
a fairy tale prince, a lover, a friend. She stands straight and
says, one last time, “Moon dragon rubies.”

Then she falls backwards, over the side, arms
outstretched like some suicidal god.

Stephanie’s on her feet in an instant, her
breath disrupted, but the woman never hits the ground. There’s no
woman. Stephanie’s alone on the balcony, alone with a melancholy
violinist.

“
Did you see that?”
Stephanie asks. But the violinist dances away and the tempo of her
song changes.

She peers over the edge, but there are only
fireflies and moonlight reflected in the pool.

No, it’s not only that.

There’s the woman, clinging to the wall, her
dress fluttering in the wind. She looks up at Stephanie. She
smiles. It is not the smile of a woman. Those are not human teeth
in that grin.

Stephanie steps back and away. She recognizes
wrongness and wants no part of it. She finds her way blocked by the
violinist. The music has stopped.

In the moonlight, the violinist’s face is
harsh and angular, beautiful and ugly both. Her lips are so red
they’re black, just like her gown, just like her eyes, which are
almost completely devoid of color.

“
You may be a good one,”
the violinist says.

Stephanie narrows her eyes. “You don’t know
me.”

“
I know enough.”

The night goes quiet and dark. The moon hides
behind unexpected cloudstuff. The music of the house, the chatter,
the dancing, the laughter and innuendos and illicit proposals are
gone, beyond reach if ever they were there.

The violinist says, “Step sideways, while you
can.”

It’s a step away from reality, into shadow
and dust and ash and mist. Stephanie steps because she’s too
frightened not to. She’s off the path, away from the unreal house
and its cars and its fancy fleshy guests. The woman laughs behind
her, though the sound of her fades. The violinist is playing
again.

Here, where things are strangely saturated,
stark yet vibrant, uneven and unsteady, Stephanie staggers like a
drunk. She sees horsemen and owls flying in formation and pearls
instead of stars in the sky. She tries to steady herself, but
there’s nothing to grab onto. She doesn’t fall. The woman laughs
again.

Stephanie slips sideways and everything comes
crashing back. She’s alone on the balcony. She’s alone in the
house. The swimming pool has been emptied and the bricks are
stained and weathered. No cars lines the driveway, not even her
own. She sits on the front step. Slowly, the sun rises on a new
day.

She’s tired.

Stephanie goes back in the house. She roams
the halls, she enters rooms, she opens doors, she calls out for
someone, anyone, to answer.

In the backyard, under the balcony, Stephanie
finds a violin. The strings are gone. It’s only the body, but it’s
familiar. It’s warm to the touch. She sits, cradling the
instrument. The day proceeds without her until a girl appears on
the porch. She comes walking around the side of the house.

The girl stops when she sees Stephanie. She
looks nervous, but brave. “Are you the violinist?”

“
Me?” Stephanie asks.
“No.”

“
Then you’re the
ghost.”

Stephanie smiles. “Is that the only other
option?”

The girl seems confused. She doesn’t answer
right away. She says, “You were here that night?”

“
What night?”

“
The party. The wandering
violinist. My grandmother used to tell me stories.”

“
What happened, that
night?”

“
You were
there.”

“
I was.”

“
You are dead.”

Stephanie shook her head. “I don’t think
so.”

“
But you’re not the
violinist.”

“
I don’t think there ever
was a violinist,” Stephanie says. “I think that’s a story your
grandmother made up.”

“
My grandmother was not a
liar,” the girl says.

Stephanie puts down the violin and stands.
“What else did she tell you?”

The girl grins. “That you should step
sideways while you can.” She steps closer. She carries a knife that
had been hidden until that moment.

Another step away from reality, Stephanie
hears the laughter and the music. When she stumbles back, she falls
into the pool. No one comes to her air. She crawls out of the water
and hears the violins drifting further and further away. She goes
into the house, but they’re all dead. Out front, the chauffeurs are
dead. The woman who didn’t fall when she jumped sits on the hood of
Stephanie’s BMW. She sees Stephanie approaching. She looks up from
wiping blood from her hands with a hand towel. It’s saturated. She
says, “Moon dragon rubies for breakfast.”

“
What did you do to me?”
Stephanie asks.

The woman smiles. She lays the towel beside
her, covering a knife on the hood of Stephanie’s two-seater. She
hops off the car. She rushes Stephanie.

They tumble together onto the grass and slip
sideways.

It’s a long, painful moment, a clump of
Stephanie’s hair in one of the woman’s hands, her throat in the
other.

When they drop back, the cars are gone, the
house dilapidated, the girl waiting with the knife. She buries it
in the woman’s back.

Stephanie pushes herself free of the woman’s
corpse. The girl smiles. She says, “That was the ghost.”

Stephanie says, “Thank you.”

“
I didn’t do it for you,”
the girl says. “I did it for my grandmother.”

Stephanie nods. She thinks she understands.
There’s only one more step sideways to take, though there are no
other survivors to meet her there. Except maybe the wandering
violinists.

But they’re long gone.

Stephanie gets into her car and drives away.
The towel and knife, both blood-stained, fall off the car before
she reaches the open gate and escape the eddies of a house built of
dream stuff and whispers and champagne bubbles.

ABOUT THE PROJECT AND AUTHOR

InkStains is a random collection of stories –
fiction and nonfiction of any genre – handwritten daily over the
course of a year.

John Urbancik is a writer and photographer
currently residing in the Florida panhandle. He has lived in other
places and is probably best known for his fantasy, dark fantasy,
and horror stories and books.

An InkStains will be
released at the beginning of every month to correspond with the
months in which the stories were written. The author is completing
a second year concurrently with the release of these. You can
follow his journey on
www.darkfluidity.com
.

ALSO BY JOHN
URBANCIK

NOVELS

Sins of Blood and Stone

Breath of the Moon

Once Upon a Time in Midnight

DarkWalker

NOVELLAS

A Game of Colors

The Rise and Fall of Babylon (with Brian
Keene)

Wings of the Butterfly

House of Shadow and Ash

Necropolis

Quicksilver

Beneath Midnight

Zombies vs. Aliens vs. Robots vs. Cowboys
vs. Ninja vs. Investment Bankers vs. Green Berets

Colette and the Tiger

COLLECTIONS

Shadows, Legends & Secrets

Sound and Vision

Tales of the Fantastic and the
Phantasmagoric (Volumes 1 and 2)

INKSTAINS