The Gate 2: 13 Tales of Isolation and Despair

THE GHASTLY BATH by Dawn McCullough-White

A young man dressed in black crouched in an alley between two city houses. The coming dusk cast deep shadows in every corner. Rain pelted him.

Off in the distance he heard an argument between a mother and child. Thunder rumbled overhead.

Jules sat in the shadowy darkness, watching the window of Gilbert’s house intently. There was a candle in the window of the one-room home, a dirty little picket fence surrounded the place, and the man apparently threw all of his garbage in the alley, because Jules was sitting atop a pile of it. He suspected the culprit had to be Gilbert, or his neighbors, a young couple who fought more than two people in love probably ever should. He’d been sitting there half the day, listening to them, beginning to smell like rotten eggs while he watched.

Someone snuffed the candle.

Jules smirked. He jumped down from his pile of trash and leapt easily over the fence. Glancing around, Jules saw that he was indeed alone, and with that he peered into the window that faced the alley.

Gilbert was shucking off his pants, getting ready for bed.

Jules pulled a dagger and a blackjack from his belt and crept up to the front door. It was unlocked. Without hesitation he walked right in.

The other man’s eyes widened when he saw Jules in his black clothes, with the emblem of the assassin’s guild, a red letter A, embroidered on the front of his cape. Water dripped all over the floor.

“Who—”

“Gilbert Marklegrove?” Jules hissed. Gilbert was an older man, a jailer and sometime executioner.

Gilbert turned suddenly to reach for a pistol but tripped on his way to the table and fell.

Jules stepped over to Gilbert, who was face down, struggling to free his feet from his pants, and cracked him in the back of the head with the blackjack, sending him reeling.

Gilbert lay on the floor, tangled in his pants and long underwear…not exactly the fanciest vestments to greet death in.

Jules stabbed him in the back. Without explanation. Without whys or hows.

After he was certain Gilbert had stopped breathing, Jules wiped his blade on the man’s blanket and tucked away his weapons.

He took a look out the window to see if anyone had heard the struggle, and he was in luck—no one around. That was certainly one nice thing about small towns like this; there were so few people, and most of them went to bed early. That’s what he’d been counting on. Generally he hated being sent so far away from Lockenwood for some simple hit, but this had been easy enough, he thought, chuckling to himself. Still though, he might’ve come in through the front door, but he was not going to carry a dead body out the same way. The window facing the alley would probably be the safest bet.

“And now,” he muttered, dragging the dead man to the window and gradually shoving him out. Gilbert got stuck about halfway through, and Jules contemplated cutting off some of the excess bulge so that he might fit, but after a minute or two of struggling, his victim dropped into the muck outside with an unceremonious slosh of mud.

Jules breathed a sigh of relief and slipped out the window himself, landing more gracefully beside the corpse.

The young man next door was dumping his garbage onto the refuse pile in the alleyway. Their eyes locked. He looked over at mud- and blood-streaked body and screamed.

Jules flung a dagger. It caught the man in the stomach but did not have the effect that the assassin was hoping for, and the young man staggered out into the street, screaming even louder now.

A guard, apparently out for a stroll when the neighbor went into histrionics, sprinted around the corner and spotted Jules carrying away Gilbert’s body. Usually Jules had no problem getting into places, killing people, and getting away unnoticed—it was the way he’d made a living for years, and he was good at his job—but this time his employer, or whoever hired his employer, wanted the man’s body brought back. Jules didn’t know why, and was a bit miffed at that part of the order, and as the guard came running at him he wished they had just asked for the head.

“Dammit.”

Jules panicked and hefted Gilbert, then tossed him over one shoulder and nearly collapsed under the weight. He had planned on bribing the coachman, loading up the body and making his way out of Plunyport in comfort, as the coachmen were quite used to working with the Association. But apparently that was not going to happen tonight. No, tonight he was going to have to lug Gilbert to the stables on foot.

Two lanterns lit the stable—one on a peg beside the main door, the other illuminating the bay horse tethered in a dirt hall between the stalls and the boy who was fiddling with the cinch.

Jules dropped Gilbert’s body to the ground and drew his dagger.

The child startled as the assassin ran toward him, brandishing the shining blade.

“Get out of here!” Jules pushed the boy roughly to the ground.

The lad scrambled to his feet, nearly knocking over the lantern, and raced out of the barn.

The horse proved difficult to control. It spun around outside the stable, and Jules caught sight of the sheriff and several of the locals running toward him. They were still on foot.

He kicked the gelding hard in the sides. This got its attention. It stopped spinning and picked a direction. At first it just leaped forward, but Jules kept kicking it and holding onto the reins with one hand, pulling them back too tightly and confusing the horse. With the other hand he gripped the saddle, straining to stay upright as the animal raced out of Plunyport and on toward Lockenwood and Wick’s tower.

He just needed to get into Lockenwood, back to the tower that was the heart of the assassin’s guild. He’d be safe then. Generally the guild was left alone, well protected by the crown. It was only because that stupid neighbor had actually seen him with the dead body, that’s what everyone was so up in arms about—that and the fact Gilbert was the town jailer. Apparently they didn’t like their citizens being assassinated, even if Jules was wearing the cape with the Association’s emblem on the front.

No one was behind him now. For one moment he felt his worry ebbing away, and then he snatched a glimpse behind him as the horse galloped blindly through the dark and pounding rain. As he did, he glanced down and saw that Gilbert’s body was sliding off the back of the horse, until just one hand remained visible, still tied to the back of the saddle.

The gelding’s gait shifted, and when the dead body slapped the back of its legs, it sped up.

“Dammit.” Jules pulled back on the reins.

The horse did not stop. It bucked, throwing Gilbert’s body into the air for a brief moment, putting pressure on the saddle as it fell back down onto the horse’s rear.

The horse bucked again and raced forward at a dizzying pace.

“Whoa!” Jules tugged harder, panicking.

The body was going to be so damaged by the time he got back to the tower that the man who wanted Gilbert dead wouldn’t be able to recognize him, and Wick wouldn’t get paid… and then Wick would be angry and he wouldn’t get paid, either.

“Why does this always happen to me?” He jerked on the reins again.

The saddle lurched to the side. A moment later he was floating, facing the sky, gazing into the darkness, and then he landed hard, splashing in the mud.

Jules covered his head protectively, but the gelding was gone. He stood up and wiped the mud from his pants. His ribs felt bruised, his legs muscles strained.

The saddle and Gilbert’s dead body lay on the muddy ground in a heap.

He pulled a stiletto from the top of his boot and cut the rope holding Gilbert’s hand to the saddle.

He examined the body, although it was hard to make out much in the near-complete darkness. It was definitely wetter than it had been before being loaded onto the horse, and muddier after being dragged, and a bit mangled and skinless in some areas.

Jules pulled the body up into his arms, as if carrying a child. He wished this guy weighed something closer to a child’s weight, but he didn’t, and to make it even worse, it was dead weight. Hauling Gilbert back to Wick wasn’t going to be fun. He’d probably be walking somewhere close to five miles.

The assassin set off in the direction he believed to be north. He needed to find the canal that ran past Wick’s tower. It couldn’t be too far; Plunyport was on the other side of the canal, and then due north was the Azez Sea.

He walked on, the rain continuing its assault. He was nearly blind in the middle of the night, listening for the sound of the canal, but all he heard was the constant thrum of rainfall. The path he’d been traveling turned into a quagmire that could suck the boots off of a man’s feet. Then the water began to get deep. He was sloshing through what seemed to be the edge of the sea. He wasn’t certain what he’d stumbled into.

Jules dropped the body with a splash and brushed the long, dark mop of his hair from his eyes.

How far had he walked? A mile? Maybe, maybe not—that corpse was damn heavy. But it seemed like it had been a mile, and he was soaked to the bone. His wet leather clothes were heavy and growing more and more uncomfortable with every step he took.

“This is ridiculous.” He reached down, searching in the dark for Gilbert’s body. Something appeared before him. He wasn’t certain what he was seeing, something shining in a sliver of light. His hands found water as he knelt down, but no Gilbert. Jules reached out as far as he could without leaving the place he’d been when he set down the body, calling out, “Where are you?”

He splashed forward, feeling around for anything that resembled his mangled victim.

“Gilbert!” He took a few steps to the right. “Wick is going to kill me—” he muttered just before he slipped.

There was no ground beneath his feet. His face raked over a rocky embankment as he fell. He was pulled underwater, sucked down into a fierce undertow into pitch blackness, and then propelled forward. His body twirled end over end as he fought the current.

In a panic he swallowed dirty water. He slammed into something hard and rocky.

Jules resurfaced, gasping for breath and clawing the murky water. He was in the canal. He must’ve walked right over the edge and fallen in. And with the storm, the undertow was driving him north at a furious rate. The idea of the canal emptying out into the Azez Sea did not sit well with him. That was much deeper water, and he wasn’t certain he’d have the strength to swim back to shore if the current took him there. He was going to have to gather his wits and get to one of the banks. That was his only chance.

Regaining his bearings, now feeling certain that he must be in the canal and moving steadily toward Lockenwood, he cried out for help. Unfortunately, he didn’t see the tower, which sat right on the edge of the Avon. What he saw were objects on one side of him that he didn’t recognize—tall silhouettes against a dark gray skyline as he was swept past, still gasping for breath, trying to control his spinning in the rough, rapid torrent.

“Help!” His voice faltered. He was knocked into something large and solid that seemed to be in motion under the water as well. His legs tangled up in it for a moment, and then he drifted past it. Jules didn’t have time to think about how badly his leg had been twisted as he slammed up against a hard, flat surface and then pushed up into some sort of wooden furniture, maybe a desk. It pressed him up against a tall, heavy object that crushed against his body as the current forced him along.

Jules felt himself spiraling. Then the back of his head smacked into the sharp edge of a building.

He groaned, reached for his wounded skull, and felt the slick, smooth side of the desk pound his face into the building again.

Confused, the assassin slid down into the rushing water. For a moment he was nothing more than a leather-clad rag doll, limp and washed away by the current, his long, dark hair twisting and swimming about him like ink. He buffeted against boulders and gasped for breath, filling his lungs with the tide.

His eyes wide and panicked, he pushed off a large rock beneath him. Breaking the surface, he managed to cling to another desk or table that had been somehow swept into the canal.

In the darkness he could make out the shape of a heavy, square sort of structure. Every so often a stone peaked out of the wash. He began to realize that he hadn’t fallen into the canal, and he hadn’t gone past the Association tower. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t going north at all. If he had been, he would’ve reached the sea by now. No. Somehow he must have slid into a ravine and gotten caught up in a flash flood.

The desk he’d been riding bashed into a sandstone peak and turned sideways, then it cracked open and a bloated white corpse slid out, once more knocking Jules under the waves.

The assassin tried to dislodge himself from the corpse, but the crook of its arm had become entangled with the hilt of the dagger on his belt, pulling him along under the water, deeper and deeper.

He unsheathed his dagger, freed himself from the body, and popped up to the surface once more. He slammed against a large structure. His face was sore and bleeding. Still fighting the current, he desperately grasped the wrought iron bars of the edifice’s only visible window. His legs were being pulled in one direction as he clung to the bars and attempted to climb up.

A bouquet of dead flowers brushed against him and was swept away.

He glanced up at the sky. The rain beat down into his eyes. Lightning flashed, and for one brief moment he saw clearly the upturned wooden boxes that floated past him, as well as the construction he clung go.

A cemetery. He was drowning in a cemetery. Those weren’t desks that he had been riding on the current, but coffins, the building he clung to a mausoleum. And then he saw, as lightning ripped open the sky overhead, the peaks of grave markers sticking out of the onrushing water. Stone shafts dotted his vision, and here and there were various wooden caskets, broken and leaking bodily fluids into the bath.

Jules scrambled to get a foothold in the tiny, false window of the tomb. His legs were like wet noodles, and they went out even as he forced them to continue to support his frame.

He slid back down the rough yet slick face of the tomb, gasping as a sharp pain shot up his leg. He fell back down into the water, trembling, clutching one iron bar possessively. The assassin now dangled by just that one hand, up to his mouth in the floodwaters again.

A dead woman’s hair streamed across his face as her corpse brushed against him.

In a panic he tore at the hair, clumps coming off in his fingers, and then lost his grip on the mausoleum.

“No!”

He was swept along with the dead body that, to his horror, seemed to be enveloping him. Tendrils of hair were everywhere, long and black and in his eyes. He thought of Wick, of her long red hair, her porcelain skin, her blue eyes, her young, lithe body. He was going to die here in this flood, in this graveyard, somewhere outside of a backwater like Plunyport. This was supposed to have been a simple thing. An easy job. Kill some ridiculous jailer and get gone.

He spat out the noxious deluge and grabbed onto an obelisk, wrapping his arms and legs around it as if it were a parent he never wanted to lose. The dead woman was still draped around him. She was newly dead, no longer bloated but covered with slime.

For a moment it seemed that he would be able to hold on. He braced himself against the unending tide as it wore him down. He cursed the name Gilbert Marklegrove.

The dead thing still attached to him was becoming cumbersome. He needed to pry it off, lighten his load. He squeezed his eyes shut, willed himself to let go with one hand, wiped the hair off of his neck, and forced the head down into the water. Then he let go of the marker with his legs and was nearly pulled away by the current.

“Gods!” He grasped for the top of the obelisk again.

The corpse slipped off of him and sped away on the current.

Jules fought to pull his legs in, to wrap them back around the marker, but he just didn’t have the strength.

Several panicked farm animals swept past him, tumbling against the headstones and coffins and disappearing into the darkness.

As lightning flashed again, he saw the demolished remnants of a barn coming toward him. The side smashed against the mausoleum, a portion of fence knocking into his hands, but he held tight. Then the barn’s frame loomed overhead. It creaked as it crumpled against the menagerie of rocks, snapping and shifting and coming down on top of him.

The stone that he’d been holding for support broke off under the weight of the crumbling wood, and he was lost under the ghastly water once more. His body was spent. He was unable to save himself as his back smashed into a gravestone, and then his right arm broke when it collided with another. He spun, limp, sucking water into his lungs as he writhed in pain… slipping under… consumed by the darkness… his hair twisting in the void, tickling his face. He felt the life leaving him replaced by a strange sort of lightness, drawing him away from the pain.

He then shot out of the water and slid up onto the side of the barn with such violence that it revived him from near death. The barn wall rocked from side to side, and more and more debris piled up beside him. Jules lay in the confused mass atop the makeshift craft, face down, one broken arm useless and lying at an odd angle to one side, a pool of blood gathering under his head.

He wished for death. In that one moment he had tasted it, however briefly, the sweetness, the peace. More than anything he’d ever felt before, he wanted that again. But instead he was in agony, too weak to move, with garbage and dead things surrounding him.

As he lay there, half clothed and broken, he spied a corpse lying beside him, stark white in the lightning, with a mangled face and a rope tied around one wrist.

Dawn McCullough White grew up in Rochester, NY, and is a keen observer of people. She spent her childhood listening to her father tell stories about history and ghosts. This left an indelible mark on her psyche. It is not such as surprise that, at the age of fourteen she penned her first novel and has never looked back since. Dawn currently has a Dark Fantasy series out—The Trilogy of Shadows—available in Kindle and Nook and in print through Amazon. In her spare time she enjoys watching documentaries and keeping EA in business by buying up every single Sims expansion she can get her hands on.

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