AN: Here I am again! Surprise, eh? I am so, so sorry it is taking me such a long time between chapters. I love this story, and I intend to finish it, so no worries there - it just is obviously very stubborn. Since the gap between the last post and this one is so large, and since it might be a bit until the next chapter (I am dealing with a major move in the next few weeks), this one is extra long for your reading enjoyment. Many thanks for your patience with me!
Also many thanks go to Morohtar and the Gwethil for their invaluable help in betaing and making sure this is fit for public consumption - you're all amazing!

For DK, FTW!

9. Some Enchanted Evening

The ocean swam with color, muted auburns and tans and beiges and sage greens and dirty blues, all swirling together in ecstasy, running and blending and melting as though their very essence was akin to paint doused in turpentine. Maureen was standing on a drab spit of land, miles and yet inches above the surface of the water, and the acidic, chemical smell of the brine stung her nose. Somewhere deep, she knew she was dreaming and this place had no substance in the waking world, but every sense prickled to the reality of her state.

Two people stood facing one another a short distance away: a tall, slender woman with glossy, thick black hair, woven with flowers and falling to her feet, and a man of average height and build, slouched slightly and blinking at the woman with sleepy, light blue eyes. A sense of menace emanated from him like the putrid, insidious stench of decay from a rotting corpse, though nothing in his physical make-up or attitude or posture suggested he was anything close to a threat.

“And your brother the High King?” he asked, his voice carrying – but only barely – over the glutinous plopping of the waves. “Your brother the Just? Tell me, have they had any visitors lately? Anyone to bring them a bit of cheer from their far-away kingdom? From their far-away god?” His tone was contemptuous, but an undercurrent of intent interest ran beneath the disdain. “How do they fare in this cold, cruel world, so far from home?”

The woman recoiled slightly, her face white as rice paper. “I know not what you ask,” she replied, her voice unwavering, though bleak, in spite of her obvious nerves.

The man smiled as if he knew the answer. “They have beautiful children,” he said, “and well-matched helpmates. How is it you cannot say the same?” Each word had the balance and thrust of a poniard, with a keen, cutting edge.

The woman bit her lip, and a drop of purple blood welled up, dully gleaming in the brown light of the sad, old sun. “I know not what you ask,” she repeated, her hands clenching into fists and opening again convulsively. “I know not what you say.”

The man narrowed his eyes briefly with just a hint of impatience, as if abandoning a particular line of questioning as too slow and unproductive. “We’ve been watching,” he said mildly, “And we will see when he finally finds you, for you see, we know he is coming. Your denials mean nothing – and are nothing – to us.”

The woman faltered a bit and then drew herself up, squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin. “I know not what you say,” she said firmly.

And then the man shifted slightly with the fluidity of a nightmare, straightening, standing a bit taller, his eyes sharpening and hardening into ice, his stance becoming more aggressive, and a small goatee appearing on his chin, a loop of silver imbedding in his ear.

“Yes, you do,” he hissed, and suddenly, from everywhere and nowhere, a horde of squalling grey goblin-like creatures engulfed the woman, grabbing at her skirts, pulling and climbing her luxurious hair, entwining their hideous, long-fingered hands around her arms and legs and throat, squeezing, crushing, lacerating.

All throughout, the woman did nothing and made no resistance. Her countenance was pained, but calm, and she held the man’s eyes with steady strength, even as he drew a crackling bronze sword from thin air and ran her through. The same purple blood erupted in a fountain, burning and sizzling where it struck the drab, grayish-brown earth and covering the man in a trickling coating that ran from his arms and face and clothing in thick, viscous streams.

Completely and utterly terrified by this horrible turn of events, Maureen opened her mouth and tried to scream, feeling as though she were moving through sludge, shaking with frustration at her silence, no matter how hard her effort. Yet when the man turned his head and pierced her with the intensity of his gaze, she knew he had heard her and more awful still, he had seen her. He lifted the sword and pointed it at her and then snarled a command in a strange language. The goblin-creatures instantly discarded the woman’s body, as one turned their blind eyes in her direction, and began to swarm towards her.

She could have sworn later that her heart actually stopped with fright. She rose against the malleable walls of the dreamscape and began to claw frantically for escape, and just as it seemed she was successful, as the tans and sages and beiges ran together into a blissfully appealing dim awareness, she felt an arm snake around her side and press her body into a soft, yielding surface.

"Eddie?" she asked frantically, hopefully, her question slurred with sleep and her senses dim. There came a hiss in answer, and suddenly with a stab of cold fear, Maureen knew whoever was with her now was not her husband. She jerked, the prelude to violent struggle, when something wet and clammy touched the back of her neck. The arm around her waist tightened and, iron-hard, kept her still while a loud snuffling noise broke the tense silence.

Then a voice spoke - queer, sibiliant grating. "Thees' ss net au zjus ou au nezngr."

"Neh?" said another, and Maureen took a deep breath and opened her mouth to scream for help, actually feeling her lungs expand with air and gather force instead of smothering beneath the immobilizing dream-silence. A hand, wide, skeletal-fingered, tasting of dust, clamped over her lips and pinched, stifling her cry. She thrashed, but to no avail. The wet touch came at her neck again, and she realized with a horrid shiver that it was a nose.

"'Es sent ss ff au zjus. Meh net em. Es au zjus pepety."

A grunt. "Neff ten. Kme."

And the hand released her, the weight of the arm disappeared, and with a faint scrabbling sound and what might have been a whisper of window curtains, the mysterious assailants were gone.

Maureen blinked and opened her eyes, realizing she had woken at last. She lay in bed shaking, lifting a trembling hand to her forehead, a low whimper escaping her lips and tears leaking from her eyes. Never before had she even been threatened in such a physical manner, and the terror she felt was quite overwhelming. She felt unsafe and sullied somehow, even though she had not been hurt. What an unspeakable, appalling nightmare! Had it really been only that? She wanted desperately to think so, but something about the end, with the sniffing and the voices, made her uncertain and even more afraid.

After another second or two of bolstering her courage, she swiftly untangled herself from the bedclothes and went immediately to the hallway, noting with great relief that the children’s doors seemed untouched. Entering, she quickly checked one small room after the other, noting that the windows were still closed and that their toys and clothes were undisturbed. She stopped for a moment at each of their beds and watched her son and daughter sleep, her arms wrapped tightly around her middle. While Moira lay as peaceful and serene as an angel, her rosebud mouth partly open, Ian presented a perfect miniature of his father’s preferred sleeping posture, tangled helter-skelter in his blankets with arms and legs akimbo. Tenderly, she bent and brushed a stray lock of sooty hair back from the six-year old’s forehead. He grumbled in his sleep and squirmed onto his side, his thumb automatically popping into his mouth.

Maureen smiled tremulously and went cautiously to check the rest of the flat, putting on all the lights she could. She still felt the clinging miasma of the dream hanging over her like a diseased cloud, and every shadow and sound took on shivery, ominous shapes and sinister meanings. Once or twice, she almost thought she saw and heard something move, but found nothing.

When she entered the kitchen, the clock over the sink read ten minutes past two, and she breathed in a heavy sigh of relief as she leaned back against the countertop. Edmund should be home soon, thank God. She wasn't at all sure she could handle being alone much longer.

Just as Maureen made up her mind to fix herself a cup of tea, she finally heard footsteps coming up the outer stairs to their door, a pause and the scrape of shoes on the mat, the rattle of keys, a thud against the door, and finally the scraping screech of the door itself opening as quietly as possible.

There came the small, ordinary sounds of Edmund stepping inside and shutting and locking the door behind him, and then he came down the narrow hallway towards the kitchen, drawn no doubt by the oddity of every lamp at full blaze. He peered around the door jamb at last and jumped slightly in surprise upon seeing her. She made a small noise of relief at seeing his face, though she couldn’t help noticing how tired he looked - there were black smudges beneath his eyes and his complexion was waxy and pale. "What are you doing awake, Mo?" he asked.

She went to him without a word in reply and slipped her arms around his waist, burying her face in his neck, smelling pipe and cigarette smoke, sweat, brass, and the faintest trace of bergamot. "Come now," he said, and she felt him bend to set his instrument cases down. "What's wrong, Maureen?" His arms wound about her, strong and supportive, anchoring her, and his hand came up to stroke the back of her neck.

"I had a horrendous nightmare,” she said tremulously into his collar, and he turned his head to press a kiss on her ear.

“I’m sorry, love,” he said, “Was it really all that bad?”

She nodded and hugged him tighter against her, wondering if she should give voice to her other suspicions. Hang it all, she was probably just being silly.

Edmund seemed to sense her hesitation. “Do you want to tell me about it?” he asked, “Sometimes that helps.”

“No, Eddie,” she said, biting her lip, “I…I think the end of it wasn’t a dream… I think…I think someone broke in.” Her voice spiraled a bit into hysterics before she regained control, and immediately Edmund stiffened.

"What?" he asked, his voice changing instantly from a soothing murmur to a low, dangerous threat.

"The children are all right," she said, and she sensed him relax slightly, although tension still thrummed through his body like a high-powered electrical currant. "I checked the whole flat, and I couldn’t find anything or that they’d taken anything or done any damage."

"They, plural?" The short question lashed out as fiercely as a whipcrack, though it was spoken in a quiet, even tone. Feeling ridiculously relieved and comforted by her husband's carefully controlled fury, she nodded against his shoulder.

He gave her a gentle squeeze and then disengaged enough to look her in the face. His brown eyes were blazing, and she was abruptly thankful he wasn't angry with her. "Were you hurt?"

Maureen bit her lip, the awful, complete helplessness she'd known earlier crashing back into her with the force of a freight train. "No," she began, tears threatening again, much to her shame. "They didn't...do anything, and like I said, it was probably just the nightmare, I’m fine, but it felt much more real, so real... I'm fine, just..." Shaking now, she turned her head away and tried to control her berserk emotions.

"Ssssssh, there," Edmund said softly, "You're safe now, Mo. Here..." He maneuvered her to one of the rickety kitchen chairs and eased her down into it, reaching into an inner pocket of his tuxedo jacket for his handkerchief. She took it gratefully and pressed it to her face, embarrassed by the depth of her reaction. How could she be so weak over something so stupid? Desperately, she kept hold of Edmund's arm, wanting to touch him, to know he was there.

Her husband went down on one knee before her and stroked her hair with his free hand. "Take a deep breath, hold it - that's it - now let it out slowly," he instructed, "Good - now, again." He waited as she obeyed and then said once more, "Again. Good." He lifted her chin with the tips of his fingers and met her gaze. "That's my girl," he said, smiling and getting a watery twitch of the lips in response.

She wiped her eyes and blew her nose and then crumpled the soggy square of linen in her fist. "I feel so foolish," she whispered. "It's really nothing, and here I am, all in pieces."

“It’s hardly nothing,” he responded with a slight edge, “Don’t diminish this, Mo – you have every right to be upset. Tell me what happened – tell me everything, from the nightmare to the part where you thought it became real to the end where I came in just now. Can you do that?”

Drawing in one more unsteady breath, Maureen opened her mouth to answer, glancing to the hallway over his shoulder. “I was standing on this terribly ugly bit of land,” she said slowly, a frown creasing her forehead as she peered into the dim recesses beyond the circle of kitchen light. Had that shadow moved?

Edmund nodded patiently, waiting for her to continue. “There…there were two people, talking – a man and a woman…and…” She halted short, taken aback. “…and the woman was your sister! I don’t know why I didn’t recognize it before…how thick-headed of me…but it was she, I know it…”

“You dreamed of Susan?” her husband asked sharply.

Maureen shook her head in assent, her eyes straying once more to the hallway, little prickles of apprehension crawling up and over her skin. “I…I think so. In fact, I’m almost certain. They were–”

Abruptly, she broke off and gripped her husband’s arm so tightly that he winced, startled. She hadn’t been mistaken. That shadow had moved…of its own accord. “Edmund…” she said, low, tense, and then her eyes widened in sudden shock and horror.

“Edmund!” she screamed, just as a hideous, squat little thing came flying down towards them from where it had been clinging to the molding along the hall ceiling, its obscene hands reaching, ugly, misshapen mouth grinning repulsively below a pair of ghastly white eyes.

Edmund must have taken the warning in her expression seriously, as she had barely opened her mouth when he dove at her in a lightning tackle, catching her around the waist and propelling the both of them to the linoleum in a clatter of furniture. He landed atop her, and she felt the extra impact of the creature and the huff of Edmund’s breath hot against her neck, and then he rolled away, leaving her wheezing and fighting the stabbing pains in her back from the chair’s knobby spindles.

When she finally recovered enough presence of mind, Maureen scrambled up and over the fallen chair in a frantic, reverse crab-walk, watching in unbelieving fright as Edmund grappled with the emaciated fingers locked around his neck. He twisted into himself, before uncoiling with the tensile spring of a steel blade and smashing his elbow behind him, catching the creature in the upper arm and eliciting a gargling, spitting hiss. Another such blow brought forth only the same, and so Edmund twisted again, backpedaling into the refrigerator and crushing the thing against it, slamming it into the buckling metal several times as it burbled menacingly and clung to him like grim death. He must have sensed something shift then, for he reached over his head and latched on to the folds of grey skin at the back of his assailant’s neck, his long fingers hooked into claws, the motion so quick Maureen could hardly follow. An explosive ‘hah!’ burst from his lips as he yanked with all his might.

The creature ripped free, its weirdly long arms torqued forcibly in a direction they were clearly not meant to go, and it squalled in pained fury. Edmund let the momentum generated by his action swing his right arm down and back, and then he flicked the thing forward almost as if he was playing a particularly vicious game of nine pins, putting the entire weight of his body behind the savage throw. “Mo!” he barked, never taking his eyes off the creature as it crashed into the door jamb with enough force to crack plaster. “Knife!”

Maureen clambered to her feet, panting and nearly sobbing in her haste, and fumbled with the right corner drawer pull, hoping and praying she had the right one. Jerking the sliding compartment open, she exclaimed in relief, seeing the long, lethally sharp bits of cutlery arranged in their neat rows. There came a nasty crunch, and she whirled to see Edmund had followed up his advantage and brutally kicked the creature out into the hallway and against the wall on the other side. “Knife, now!” he snapped, holding his hand back to her, palm up, and she swung around, chose the longest and thickest, and plucked it from the drawer.

She had just slapped the handle in his grasp and was about to arm herself with the square cleaver, when a distressed cry went up from the direction of the children’s rooms, a frightened, despair-stricken wail. Moira. Edmund froze, and Maureen’s breath caught in her throat, and they both watched in dread alarm as the creature picked itself up off the floor, trembling and wobbly, but still quite mobile. It looked down the hall and sniffed, its oversized nostrils quivering, and then turned its disconcerting milky eyes back towards the two of them and smiled.

Edmund uttered a harsh, guttural howl and lunged, his movement so fast that the hem and sleeves of Maureen’s nightgown and the leaves of the wall calendar fluttered with the wind of his passage. He caught one of the thing’s wasted, overlong arms in an unbreakable grip as it tried to dash towards the children’s bedrooms and swung the stubby form up and into the bookshelves lining the hallway, the impact sending a shower of books, confettied paint, and splintered wood to the floor.

He let it drop and kicked it again, emitting a steady, threatening growl as he advanced to where it lay in a huddled pile, stunned. Reaching down, Edmund took up the creature by the neck and slammed it against the wall, his fingers constricting, throttling, the butcher knife held ready in his other hand, and a terrible expression on his face. “Mo, see to the children,” he ordered, not looking at her, his entire focus bearing down upon the thing in his possession.

Shaking, Maureen scuttled down the hallway, slipping past him into Ian’s room and shutting the door behind her. Just as she’d suspected, both of the children were there tucked in beside the dresser, clutching one another in a panicked embrace, their eyes huge with fright.

“Mummy!” Moira shrieked, disentangling from her big brother and flinging herself into Maureen’s arms.

Ian came to her just as swiftly, and she pulled her two babies tightly against her body, wrapping her arms around them and squeezing them fiercely. “What’s happening, Mumma?” he asked fearfully, burying his nose in her neck.

“A burglar,” she replied, moving to sit on the bed and cuddle them to her, not at all certain if what she said was the truth, but equally uncertain as to any other answer. She wasn’t sure calling the police was quite appropriate at this juncture. “Daddy’s taking care of things,” she said with as much confidence she could project, though she knew she was trembling. “We need to stay here – everything will be fine.”

Indeed, her husband was handling the situation with a speed and ferocity she had never seen from him before, and the discovery of this heretofore hidden side was, quite simply, as scary as it was comforting. They could hear him in the hallway, spitting questions in a rough, gravelly tone she’d never heard him use, almost bestial in its inflection and diction – was it possible his voice had even deepened a fraction?

“What are you?” thump “Who sent you?” thump “What do you want?” thump No response. “Answer me, dammit!” And then again. “What are you?” thump “Who sent you?” thump “What do you want?” thump

Maureen clamped her hands hard over her children’s ears, wishing she could do the same for her own. Nausea struck the pit of her stomach as the routine began for the third time and then a fourth, and then awful, meaty snapping noises began to take the place of the thumps. The creature screamed with each blow, a reedy, screeching noise like nails on a chalkboard, but otherwise said nothing, though Maureen wondered if they would have been able to understand it even if it had spoken. The speech of the creatures who had assaulted her earlier had been indecipherable.

There came one last flurry of crackles and then an ominous silence. “Very well,” Edmund said, and Maureen shuddered at the flat promise of darkness in those two words. “Try this on for size, you abhominable bastard.”

She heard his grunt of effort, the knock of the creature’s body up against the thin wood of the wall, a piercing death-wail, and a completely unexpected muffled bang, almost as if a cloth balloon had been punctured. Maureen squeaked in surprise, which caused Ian and Moira to shriek in turn and burrow deeper into her sides. She held them close and waited for several hitching breaths, hearing nothing further.

When Edmund began coughing, she gently, swiftly extricated herself from her children, jumped up, and made to open the door. “No!” he said loudly at the rattle of the glass handle, “Wait! It…it exploded…into this strange dust – no, I don’t want you or the children out here until I’ve cleaned it up.”

“But Ed,” she began in protest, “Please, let me help you.”

“Wait,” he said again, “It won’t take me long – ooh, ahh – ow!” His sudden exclamation was hoarse and full of pain.

“Eddie!” she exclaimed, turning the knob, all sorts of terrible thoughts leaping into her imagination.

“No!” he said, and by the sudden resistance, she knew he had placed his hand against the door to keep it shut. “I’m fine, Mo, really. It’s just–“ he paused and actually uttered a dry, amused chuckle. “I haven’t done this in a long, long time. I’m going to pay for it in the morning.”

“It is morning, Eddie,” Maureen reminded him, smiling in spite of herself as well and thanking God her husband had returned when he did.

Edmund chuckled once more, and the floor creaked as he moved down the hallway towards the tiny broom cupboard. “So it is, Mo. So it is.”