Douglas Clegg - Isis
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New York Times bestselling author Douglas Clegg brings us Isis, a beautifully illustrated, unforgettable novella that is sure to become a classic tale of the supernatural.If you lost someone you loved, what would you pay to bring them back from the dead?Old Marsh, the gardener at Belerion Hall, warned the Villiers girl about the old ruins along the sea-cliffs. Never go in, miss. Never say a prayer at its door. If you are angry, do not seek revenge by the Laughing Maiden stone or at the threshold of the Tombs. There be those who listen for oaths and vows.What may be said in innocence becomes flesh and blood in such places.She was born Iris Catherine Villiers. She became Isis.From childhood until her sixteenth year, Iris Villiers wandered the stone-hedged gardens and the steep cliffs along the coast of Cornwall near her ancestral home. Surrounded by the stern judgments of her grandfatherthe Gray Ministerand the taunts of her cruel governess, Iris finds solace in her beloved older brother who has always protected her. But when a tragic accident occurs from the ledge of an open window, Iris discovers that she possesses the ability to speak to the dead...Be careful what you wish forit just may find you.
Douglas Clegg: author's other books
Who wrote Isis? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Iris Johansen
A B de Villiers
Murdoch Iris
Peter de Villiers
Arabella Carter-Johnson
Johansen Iris
Dyer Charles H
Marq de Villiers
Douglas Clegg
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Table of Contents
For
Mindy
Mindy
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With thanks to Raul Silva, M. J. Rose, Glenn Chadbourne, Simon Lipskar, Francine LaSala, Roger Cooper, Amanda Ferber, Georgina Levitt, and all of Vanguard Press.
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Part One
The Window
Jack, swing up, and Jack swing down
Up to the window, over the ground.
Swing over the field and the garden wall
But watch out for Jack Hackaway if you should fall.
Up to the window, over the ground.
Swing over the field and the garden wall
But watch out for Jack Hackaway if you should fall.
Nursery rhyme, 1800s
Beware a field hedged with stones, our gardener, Old Marsh, told me in his smoky voice with its Cornish inflections, as he pointed to the land near the cliff. See there? The hedge holds in. Will not let out. Things lurk about places like that. Unseen things.
A house, I suppose, is a stone-hedged field.
A tomb, as well.
The place where the stone-hedges ended, as they grew round our house and the gardens, was an old cave entrance that had been turned into a mausoleum beneath the ground, carved out for centuries for the bones of my ancestors.
The locals called it the Tombs, although it was much more than merely a series of subterranean burial chambers. It had been carved from rock by the local miners for some early Villiers ancestor and had been used just two years before my birth, when my grandmother had died. Her coffin was sealed up in granite and plaster within the Tombs, and there were spaces for other Villiers to come. My mother made me swear that I would never allow her to be buried there. I dont like that place, she told me. Its cold and horrible and primitive. Put me in a churchyard with a proper marker. Do you promise me? Certain that her death was years away, I promised her whatever she asked. I coaxed a smile from her when I demanded that upon my own death, she have the rag-man cart me away to the rubbish pile.
What lay below the Tombs had once been a sacred site to the Cornish people, more than a thousand years earlier. It had been a cave, leading down the cliff-side through a series of narrow passages out to sea. It was believed to be an entrance to the Otherworldthe Isle of Apples, it was sometimes calledwhere a stag-god and a crescent-moon mother goddess ruled.
There had been a legend, once, of a Maiden of Sorrow, who had traveled deep in the earth to the Isle of Apples to find her lover who had died a terrible death in a distant battle. When she had returned, she brought him with her and held his hand as they emerged from the winding caves into the sunlight. But when others saw the couple, they cried out in terrorfor her lovers eyes were black as pitch, and he had no mouth upon his face, just a seal of flesh as if he had not formed completely upon his journey back to the land of the living. The villagers knew he was not meant to be among them, yet the Maiden would not allow him to return to the earth. The legend went that the Maiden lived with him there at the edge of the sea, but he could not speak, nor did his eyes return to life, nor could anyone look him in the eye, lest they be driven mad from seeing the Otherworld reflected in his glance.
When someone in the nearby village was near death, the Maidens lover would appear at their doorway and seek entrance, as if trying to find his way back to his soul, which had remained on the other side.
There was also a large round granite stone in the field at the edge of the sunken garden, not ten paces from the Tombs. Called the Laughing Maiden, it was believed that once in early times of the Christians, another maiden went out and laughed at the priest on Sabbath day and was turned to stone there.
I went to this stone as a girl with our gardener, who believed all the old tales. Old Marsh was thought of as the local colorthe crackpot old-wives-tale man of the earth who believed all the old stories and would walk backward around a graveyard to avoid upsetting the dead. He had been known to plant sheep-nettle at the stables when one of the horses had gotten sick, to keep out bewitchments, hed say quite proudly. He knew a story for every stone, every fountain, every plant, and every tree at Belerion Hall. Old Marsh took it all seriously, and he warned me against upsetting spirits by changing the old gardens too much. They like their flowers as they like them, he said when I had been uprooting the weed-like milk thistle. Bad luck to do that, for the saying goes, Set free the thistle and hear the devil whistle.
At the Tombs, he gave me the most serious advice. Never go in, miss. Never say a prayer at its door. If you are angry, do not seek revenge by the Laughing Maiden stone, or at the threshold of the Tombs. There be those who listen for oaths and vows, and them that takes it quite to heart. What may be said in innocence and ire becomes flesh and blood should it be uttered in such places.
I looked upon the rock chamber with its small double doorways and its chains and lock, a ruins more than a mausoleum, sunken into the grassy earth with a view of the wide gray sea beyond it, and remembered such stories.
I did not intend ever to cross its threshold.
I was born Iris Catherine Villiers, and in the days before we came to Belerion Hall, my parents were still in love with each other. My older brothersthe twin Villiers as old Mrs. Haworth would later call themSpencer and Harvard, and my eldest brother, Lewis (whom I rarely saw once we had left our first home), made up the children. To tell them apart, Spence parted his hair on the left, and Harvey, on the right. Harvey had a birthmark behind his ear, while Spence had none. Spence smelled, in the summer, distinctly of dirt and pond water, while Harvey had a fragrance as if hed rolled in lavender.
I could tell them apart from the moment my memories beganfor Harvey had always been pure warmth and gentleness whereas Spence was casually cruel and often cold, though perfectly nice in his own way. At my birth, Lewis was six, and Harvey and Spence were three. I did not have a moment in my life when one of them did not occupy my time in some way, whether for good or ill. Of the three, Harvey loved me from the moment I could remember. I loved him in the sisterly fashion for he was my protector in many ways from the rough-and-tumble of other children, and from his own twin, who resented the new baby in the family.
My earliest memories were of delight and love. We had a happy, bright, and beautiful mother who hailed from Chicago and had been, briefly, an actress and then a pianist. She had married my father, a British citizen, when they ran into each other outside of the Carthage Club in Manhattan before lunch. They fell in love over soup and roast beef at the Bellamy on Fifth Avenue, spoke of the future after cocktails at the 26, and were married before City Hall had closed, much to the chagrin of my mothers parents. My mother never again played the piano, and her only acting would be later, in local amateur theatricals that often thrilled me, for they seemed to be made of magic and stardust.
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