Chapter 1: Latticework

 

A latticework creates a mesmerising pattern, to please the eye and draw the onlooker closer. Emotional lattices connect strands to amplify the human experience; our melancholy, our mistakes, and our residual power.

Fourteen lattices by a diverse author makes Latticework an occult treat, worthy of fans who dip into the disturbing and diabolical. This collection of soulful tales embodies the macabre and the metaphysical, with insights so serrated it cuts to the marrow.

Here's the full first story in this collection:

Lattice 1

FALLEN FROM THE SKY

 Based on a dream.

 

 

THE PILLAR FELT rough and pitted under Callie’s fingers. She knew it as rock, although she could not see anything in the blackness. She also knew the feel of this particular standing stone; it was akin to a friend, a haven, a beacon in the dark. There were no night noises, not even the resident frog to confirm where she was. She always listened for him when she came here in summer.

She had been here before. She was not lost.

Biting the inside of her cheek to contain hysterical sounds, Callie put her fingers to work. They were her eyes now and she could trust them. They reached up, sensing, exploring, and, yes, there it was. The small voice of doubt was stilled.

She had been here before.

She was home.

Callie slotted her fingers into the depression and used it as leverage to drag herself upright. Her bones ached and she was cold, shivering in the cool air, but she felt better, more confident, and ignored the discomfort. The cold was more than physical; it was inside her. Perhaps she instinctively came here to find warmth. She leaned against the monolith to take in deep breaths.

Old friend, you have rescued me once more. I have missed you. I have ignored you recently to keep others happy.

Callie always thought, and still believed, that the stones would protect her, particularly this one, the tallest in the ring. It did not matter what people said. Aw, Callie, they’re just stones (her uncle Ed when she was seven); Girl, those things are putting ideas into your head (her mother when she was twelve); How can silly rocks save you? (her older sister Cassie at least twice a year), and worst of all, the denouncement, What was is no longer, Callie, accept it (her father, recently, the one who believed with her for so long).

Her father gave up, she understood, because her mother insisted, and yet it hurt. She stayed away to keep her mother happy.

Her father brought her to the ring first as a little girl and leaned against this very rock to tell her the tale. How she loved the expression of happiness on his face then.

Listen carefully, sweet pea, listen well now. A long time ago there was nothing here, not even a blade of grass or a bird to sweeten the atmosphere with music.

Her father, the birdwatcher.

There was no one to see the desolation, until one day a man fell from the sky. He was hurt, I think in a battle, and had not the strength to return to his home, and he knew he would die in this place of nothingness. His pain upon seeing such emptiness was terrible; it was an affront to the powers, he thought. That pain was worse than his physical injuries.

He needed to explain ‘affront’ to her, and ‘desolation’. She remembered now his smile on doing so; it meant she listened well.

Sweet pea, the man crawled for a long time looking for something, anything, to fill the emptiness, but soon he would surrender because he needed water and healing more than he needed to find that something.

He did not find those things either and death found him eventually, but he did not die as we know it. We believe our bodies die and our souls go somewhere else, but he willed his body to become the building blocks of the something he sought, just as he willed his soul to remain to watch over the process of renewal. He possessed strong will and upon his death nubs of new rock sprouted from the barren ground.

Much time has passed, sweet pea, and the rocks grew and are still growing, and when the winds turns just so and if you’re lucky, you hear the sighs and soft murmurs of the soul standing watch to this day.

Callie wanted to know why the man from the sky would remain; when the grass was green and the sky blue and flowers grew and birds sang in the air, why would he still watch?

Because it will never be finished, sweet pea, not until the powers know of his sacrifice.

She understood sacrifice, but she wanted to know how he fell from the sky.

There are spaces like pathways out there, sweet girl, but we can’t see them. The man may have strayed off a path and fell over the edge. We know so little.

The most important question then was how her father could possibly know the tale. If nothing had been here and no one had seen it, how did he know?

I have been lucky enough to hear the murmurs, sweet pea. The tale was revealed to me.

And thus she wanted to hear the murmurs also. Now, standing here, Callie imagined the emptiness the man found.

Is emptiness black?

And yet the stone was at her back, she felt the rough surface, thus the darkness was not devoid of everything.

Where is the light?

She came frequently; she had since the day her father spoke to her about the man fallen from the sky. Always there was light, even in the darkest weather, even at night when it was starless. She measured the stones on each occasion, but now understood her time was too short to mark the growth. She came during the sighing of the wind, and had not heard the murmurs, but was not disappointed; she had to be patient.

And she felt safe here, sensing a presence that did watch … and protect. When she scraped her knee on the wall after falling from her bike, she came here to cry; when her little brother died with the all the kids in that bus accident, she came here to grieve; when her mother changed into a sour unbeliever thereafter, she came here to mourn the woman who was before; when her sister got married to a man she did not love, she came here to pray for her.

When her father stared at her with his big soulful eyes, trying to tell her something without words, a message she could not fathom, she came here to unravel it. She thought she might have understood once or twice, and glimpsed truths on other occasions.

Her father asked understanding for her mother’s surrender, just as he tried to tell her that Cassie needed to leave the depressive atmosphere at home, even if it meant further unhappiness. She, Callie, was no longer a child; she understood the ways of the mind.

Her mother rediscovered the fact that she had a daughter and tried to ‘sort’ her life out; the stones had no place in that new life. Her father wanted desperately for her mother to be sane and whole once more and was prepared to sacrifice his beliefs … and his daughter’s.

But no more. This time she fled to her haven to get away from the pain in her father’s eyes, the accusation. She told her mother to cease her interfering, days ago, and then was forced to watch her father witness her mother slide back into the void she created in her mind.

What was she supposed to do? Marry the vicar’s son? When she did not love him? She did not require escape as badly as Cassie did. The man was a bully, besides. No, this was her life, and sacrifice only went so far before it became insanity.

Callie sank to her knees as hysteria returned with thought of the events. She rested her forehead against the stone and it was cold to her, alien, as accusatory.

Her mother slit her wrists earlier today while they were out in town. Her father found her upon their return, already too late to change that fate. An initial scream gave way to paralysis, and she called the doctor, the vicar, the police, and hours later they took her mother away, while her father stared at nothing at all, unmoving.

And then, when all was so silent, a grave within the house, he turned those eyes on her. He told her without words who he blamed for this death. She denied her mother a second chance. She used the stones as a defence.

She fled.

For she blamed herself, too.

Outside it was dark, but whether night or day she did not then know and could not care. Her soul was black, a void, empty, alien. She stumbled to nowhere, but her feet led her here. Here, in the black, her fingers saw and her mind stilled … and then raced ahead once more. Her fault, her fault, and she lost her father along with her mother this day. Cassie would blame her also. Those dammed stones rule you, Callie! She could hear it already.

Her tears flowed then and she was lost.

There was nothing worth believing in.

The sound was loud in the stillness and she lifted her head. An instant later her scream was as soundless as the blackness was lightless.

A gunshot.

She knew without seeing that her father had taken his life, had followed her mother, had sacrificed everything. And a moment after that she understood he did so to protect her. How she knew, she could not say, but she knew it utterly.

He loved his daughter well and wanted to spare her the same kind of pain they lived with in the years since her brother died.

Callie drew breath, and another and another, and each was steadier than the one before. She could cope. She would go down and she would find what was left of him, and that would be harder to deal with than her mother’s suicide, but his eyes would not accuse her - that was his final gift.

She rose and pushed away from the monolith. It was time to finish this chapter so that she might go forth into the next, whatever it brought. She would leave, for nothing held her anymore, not even the stones, the silent stones. They would never murmur. Her father gave her magic and took it away; he lied and now the truth was revealed. Life is. What you see was what there was, no more.

It hurt.

There was nothing.

What an affront that was, really.

And then, as her fingers were about to leave the stone forever, she felt a hand stroke over her hair. She froze. The hand brushed her cheek and lingered there a moment before withdrawing. She could not move.

Yes, it is an affront, Callie, but the greater affront is to turn away from the magic and believe that there is nothing more.

“This isn’t real!”

The light returned then, as if it awaited the sound of her voice. It slid in softly and revealed a world bathed in evening glows. Down the rise her house was pink in the setting sun; tranquil.

No smoke curled from the chimney, no life resided there in the present, and yet it was serene, still, quietly accepting, waiting for the breath of newness. She frowned down at it, aware that pain had left her. She lifted her gaze to the mountains yonder to see them traced in brilliant gold, like a sign for the future. Was she being fanciful? Had freedom, and the terrible cost, warped her mind?

She turned. Her fingers abandoned the stone. She had no need to touch them more, because she knew.

There were eight of them, roughly of equal height, with only her stone higher than the others, taller than her - the watcher embodied. She saw the latticework, the spidery traces of amber sparks that connected the ring, making it one, a whole, complete. There was magic. No one had lied. She was uplifted and grateful. This was a wonderful gift.

“How? Why now?” she asked but did not expect an answer. It was enough to see the truth.

As long as one remains to feel the magic, the stones remain, an answer came. Your father knew and his mother before him and her grandmother before her, her father, his uncle, right back to the beginning of human life here. You are the powers, Callie, and thus I am completed. My sacrifice had value then and has value now. For as long as you remember.

She touched the stone … and smiled.

As long as I remember.

All was quiet then … and the resident frog burped. Life was about to be. Normality was a figment of the imagination, for all were on different paths.

Callie stared at the ring of stones. The amber connections had vanished, but she knew now they were there always. There was no further murmuring, but she knew now it was never silent.

She turned then and walked down to gift her father a final resting. One day, perhaps, she would hear the full tale, or her daughter would, or her grandson … or a descendent not even imagined.

As long as there was memory there would be magic.

LATTICEWORK