Darkest Grace of Midnight Shadows

By Shane D Reichmann

The beauty of the night, the moon, and the forest: ever have these granted me solace, shelter, and inspiration. For the last decade, my quest has been to express their collective beauty, and to embody in words how they invoke my deepest, fullest emotions. The result is the book you see before you now: ten years of nocturnal experiences incarnated in fifteen short-stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shane D Reichmann
• Release date: Aug 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310617423

Shane D Reichmann

Shane D Reichmann is an American author of Gothic fiction. He began writing at the age of sixteen, in the summer of 2004, after a life-changing, spiritual experience he had one full-mooned night while wandering in the woods by himself. His inspiration awoken, he wrote for ten years before publishing his first volume of collected short stories: Darkest Grace of Midnight Shadows. He currently lives in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

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Darkest Grace of Midnight Shadows

A collection of fifteen Gothic stories

By: Shane D Reichmann

Copyright 2014 by Shane D Reichmann

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permissions requests, write to the author, with the subject Permissions request, at the e-mail address provided below.

Author contact: [e-mail]

Author website: www.facebook.com/shanedreichmann

Cover image: Brynn Elizabeth Art (www.facebook.com/Terminarosa)

Published by Shane Reichmann at Smashwords

The print version is available at most online retailers.

For you, My Goddess…

Table of Contents

The Wind Speaks of Her

The Saffron Moon

A Sepulcher of the Sea

September's Grey Skies

Fading Twilight, Faint Starlight

Sleep-Walker

Snow-Blinding Clouds of January

Luna Llena

Dawn Touches Her Pillow

Siren of the Moon

Moonlight upon Her Windowsill (Portrait of a Midnight Pearl)

Darkest Grace of Midnight Shadows

To Die into the Stars

The Sorrow of Sarah

Her Eyes like a Sea (Slept on Her Heart's Silvered Shore)

About the Author

A Message from the Author

The Wind Speaks of Her

Alone, I pace amidst the congress of tombstones, as the golden light tempers the field beyond and creates an aura atop the deep green of leaves, adorning them with pearls, whilst tranquility roves freely, conveyed by the gentle breaths of springtide wind. The grasses – those half-aurulent, half-verdant pillars – blaze with such resplendent hues that they are the pure coalescence of earth and heaven, rooted within the birthing of soil, yet imbued with life sent from higher spheres, their gazes raised thereunto. The trees, in silence, seem as time-suspended cascades of emeralds, each leaf jeweled by the transmutation of light, and in animation wave in unison with the grasses – both swaying unto the cradling hymn of wind, collectively seeming as banded, waving veils of vernal brilliance that, in multitudinous voice, sing airy-toned celestial songs, the notes of which sweetly linger as the very fragrance of spiritual peace, and pass into my soul like light. So innocently, so graciously, is this ineffable divinity displayed, that I feel my soul, in successions of impassioned impulses, bare itself spontaneously, rendering itself open in totality, so that the truth of its life manifests, without compunction, unto the surrounding Spirits of Nature, as they reply with the euphoria and bliss that is their life, chanting their lofty, far-away verses of quiescent love and acceptance.

In the purity of these moments, wherein the colors of the sky, born by airy decree, fill my soul and dissolve the strain of bitter remembrance, I feel returned to my child-hood soul and realize the boundless hope with which I once lived, and that I hold inwardly again. Those years of idyllic youth I lived in secluded wonder, encompassed by a great, vast forest, as a child of wilderness, communing with Nature’s blessings, meandering within night-filled meadows, and roaming enthralled throughout moonlit forests. Upon most nights, I sought repose over the moon-washed hills, witnessing and feeling the sight of the stars, and dreaming of the multitude of possibilities that existed. The expanse of life seemed so boundless and infinite that I looked upon my future possessed of an ardent hope, an earnest anticipation, to assume a part in the wondrous world I envisioned beneath the stars.

Now, bathed in elegiac light, remembering the tribulations that persuaded my departure, I feel the very same soul is resident once again, delivered from the pall which obscured the truth of its life, in the ending of a journey and the dissolution of sorrowful remembrance, once brought by virtue of the grasses, that is replaced by the divine life with which my veins now are teeming. Reflecting upon this sorrow, my vision narrows and affixes itself unto a single strand of grass, bowing and rising with the wind, wherein I can see lucidly the melding images of the past be summoned into the light of the present. Thus I stand embraced amidst the whirl of savorous unity, and feel the caustic memories be bereft of their former power, yet present themselves in image once more, in dear remembrance. I embrace the beauty they contain, once held by despondence, as it reveals itself as a succession of images, permeating my every vision, which ceases upon the one that resigns the rest to obscurity…one held so dearly, my soul resonates at its very imagining.

Verse I: In September’s Twilight

The image, beloved upon its first moment glimpsed, is of her – Kaylee. I still recall, in the red-emblazoned skies of late September, sitting by a latticed window, watching as the sun-lighted rains fell like the heaving breath of a celestial Spirit. Whilst a lecture proceeded in a murmuring haze before me, my attention was drawn past the window, past unto the languid, crepuscular light as it tossed surreal, serrated shadows from the boughs and bedecked the ground – whereon my gaze was set until, as though conceived of my own dreams, the delicate cadence of foot-steps arose behind me, arresting my attention. My eyes, averting from the window, turned and opened with gentle curiosity, and were filled with a warming and stirring light, as they took sight of a slender figure, arrayed in even-tide shadows, held by a darkened frame in the doorway, with pearlescent eyes set upon me. Her eyes, momentarily affixed, diverted from mine, seeking the sight instead of the ivy-shaded window, beyond which dwelt the deepening twilight, wherein they, as star-dancers, waltzed upon an Elysian floor adorned by cascades of carmine shades, coruscating with every movement. In a veil of intimate surreality, she gazed upon all with a whimsical fascination, marveling at its collective existence, as the lambency resident upon her eyes scintillated, illustrating in illustriousness the depth of her thoughts that, like her eyes, turned upon me once more.

Searching her luminous eyes for that which did so enthrall me, I saw, though they existed in a tangible state before me, there was coextensively a quality, exalted beyond the form or hue, that was revealed firstly as scintillations, yet deepened thereafter, as each scintilla coalesced into one, throned as a nameless glimmer upon her eyes – that which receded upon its completion, occasioning her gaze to be downwards cast. Sunk below the shimmering horizon of her brow, a faint, tremulous glow bespoke its presence still: the presence which I felt, knowing it within my soul to be a full-orbed life which withdrew itself in timidity, awaiting the dauntless power to be bared. Unto this, she sighed, as though in languishing, and pressed her lips tightly together.

With her eyes affixed unto all sights but that of mine, she proceeded from the doorway, and assumed a seat next to mine, her lips and gaze bound alike in tender threads of secrecy, straining against the impulse which would give the display of her beauty in fullest aspect. In ardency veiled unto me, she sate with delicate breath taken, her eyes darting and tracing the movements of her heart and thoughts upon the ground – until, as though there were a proclamation, a grander movement, they met my gaze once more. Her fathomless blue eyes, veiled in their turning, were in their deliverance unto me exposed, revealed with the quivering removal of her gossamer lids, unfurling their beauty, their silent power, like an autumn-silenced forest inspired to summer in a single moment.

Her beauty was such that one glance, one vision, given unto innocently gazing, discerning eyes with love deep-seated in their possessor’s heart, imparted its fathomless depth and complexity, as a crystalline pond, bereft of thought’s careering wind, affords an enravishing view of the secrets, the memories, the extent of beauteous life contained therein. Hers was a beauty that denied replete comprehension unto the mind – for its existence spanned higher, ethereal spheres than thought could encompass – and instead was felt an infinitely unfolding passion, whose true nature was made spontaneously manifest, known unto the beholder of its bared fragility: this understanding was reflected within my passion, tempered by tender affection.

As I gazed intently into her eyes, and saw not only their lambent orbs, but again into their depths, wherein their image grew and time froze a wondrous still, the drapery betwixt her soul and its outward expression lowered – the expression glinting upon those azure jewels. I had witnessed the same before therein, yet the reflection then shimmering was deeper: and I saw then, that her beauty and her soul were one flowing life, an expression wherein the essence and its very act of expressing were together, in self-revelation. I had witnessed enrapt, as her eyes blazed like earth-ridden stars and glinted with the essence of their beauty, which was the soul, beyond confining form, that she harbored within. I gazed upon that soul and sate in dream-suspended silence as the drapery fell entirely; and the dreams, emotions, and wonder contained within her shone brilliantly upon her eyes, leading me again into their love-invoking glow and into her soul. A flowing realization she was, with her essence and expression all the same – a beauteous presence whose meaning never shifted, and which fashioned her everything as the subject of my love.

I felt my heart be summoned from its barred confines to unite with hers, as a grander movement carried itself throughout me. In those moments, her ocean-hued eyes beamed their light upon me and caressed as softly as the ocean waves they reflected, whilst her beauty’s fingers graced an enchanting harp and flung its harmonious tone unto my ear, like a sirenical call echoing through blue-misted airs. It was then that her eyes held illimitable domain upon my heart through such intrinsic warmth, and were entrancing – their aspiration so pure, as though they were the very form of soft-bodied beauty. The tenderness of her graceful air, which she displayed in silent aspect, warmed infinitely more within than my soul yet did dream; and she seemed as a feeling herself, the essential emotion of beauty’s soft power, with a smile half-turned upon me in bashfulness.

Shining, as though composed of cosmic sands swept by star-wind, she was beauty’s angel at my side; and suffused over her, like a film of Elysian light, there was the same entrancing smoothness, the same ravishing elegance as the scintillas upon her eyes possessed. Her lips bore a perfect symmetry and held a glossy sheen, as the beams of dark-red light glanced upon them…those lips, which I envisaged would speak the words of her soul, the longings of her heart, and sigh upon the confession of each. Her voluminous, midnight hair was struck by a luminescence – an array of beams divinely graceful – and each tress gleamed as does a river under the moon’s watch, streaked by luminant paths that traversed the flow of ebony, elegantly spiraling unto her shoulders, whereon they collected. So many mystical shades arrayed her hair, contrasted by her porcelain skin that with a sculpted paleness curved upon the smooth luster of her cheeks and shoulders alike.

It was then, in the rain-misted, twilight shades, that I saw her and her beauty as an unfurled rose with splendor in full-bloom, as it maintained a fabulous and deepening radiance amidst any surrounding, but owed its nameless shades of beauty to no other. I saw her, a blessed and beautiful rose, blooming with magnificent shades and teeming with love, life, and warmth. Though possessed of mortal strength within the wind of life and its ushering, it withstood the withering sorrow and blighting cold by virtue of its own hopeful power, never resigning itself unto an ashen ground and always unbridled in resplendence. I beheld a soul teeming with innocence, true and uncorrupted love, and an inner majesty which shone unto me despite all else as testament to that soul’s beauty. And I saw myself as the observer, witnessing as the beautiful rose unfurled itself and opened unto the world with wonder, still confiding whilst enveloped by the turbulence of the wind. I hastily fell in love with that rose and the soul inherent therein, and longed to hold it in embrace forever…to feel its beauty stir without words the poetry of autumn from deep within me. I wished for my touch to be delicate enough to grasp such a rose, and to ever grace its ethereal petals with tenderness.

Upon my face played the concerns of my heart; yet such concerns did not displace the vibrancy of her smile. No aspect of her betrayed the angelic air, the heavenly stare she gave unto me as she drew nearer unto my side – her eyes, never averting from mine, revealing it was I whom was in her heart’s gaze. She spoke not, and my throat clenched at any syllable. Through that silence, the feeling which I regarded as she herself gently descended within my being, and the deeper being which she held within spoke unto my soul, softly, like the sanguine petals of a rose shed upon the silent ebon of night-waters. Our eyes interlocked, hers compelled my gaze to retrace every outline of the portrait they encased, whilst my lips pursed to form what was to be the first word uttered between us, brightening her gaze; and she shone the mystical and ethereal being who breathed as the woman before me. Her lips replied, and her ivory, delicate bosom heaved, raising in sensuous beauty and lowering in returning sweetness, upon which an array of shades – a blending multitude of shadows and light – dwelt with aspects which shifted in concert with her, appearing as a full-orbed moon whose effulgence pulsed between the spaces of vagrant clouds.

We spoke not thereafter, until the conclusion of the lecture. Thereupon, she timidly approached me as we stood to exit – and I asked if she wished to accompany me on a walk that night.

Verse II: Airs of Moonlight

Such was the mystical night where our love first passed between us. Where we were to find one another was removed from the domiciles of our neighborhood, sequestered in a field that possessed a lofty view of the adjoining land and yet was sightless, as a forest, in its reach, eclipsed the crown of the hill, over which the field laid. In this field we wound our adjoined way, our darkness met only by the other, confiding the truest extents of our souls and passing from our lips words that had never been met by another’s gaze. Upon that night, the moonlight shone brightly and with its gaze set her pale skin aglow in its silvery splendor, shining in tandem with her – both lit the grasses below, beaming with surreal radiance. Her beauty, in subtle grace of light, increased itself with time, accompanied by my love thereof that flowered as my eyes followed her, admiring how, wherever she ventured, each facet of the surroundings only served to accentuate her beauty. Whilst I possessed this admiration, I found our hands clasping as one, sending her touch shivering across my arm, whose hand delicately enwrapped hers, as I looked into her eyes to express how dearly, how sweetly, I treasured her heart and its touch upon mine. All time was banished from mind, and those ardent feelings seemed to endure everlastingly, walking with her until we reached the wood’s precipice, and the deep, ashen shade of the forest afforded a sight of the moon – and we paused.

What is it that you see, when you look upon the moon? She asked, reposing herself within my embrace. A change arose from the subject of her question whilst she, with lightness, was embosomed by my embrace – a soft-beaming smile sent by the seraphic maiden above resting upon her adoring eyes. How those eyes taught the night to impeccably receive that light, and inherited a transformation flowered from the atmosphere of the Goddess’ gaze, which augmented the romance of their aspect. At this, I paused in reflection, and began:

As I gaze upon it, I see a captivating beauty portrayed; one that, with a magical and musing gaze, surveys the night from the ledge of a distant balcony beyond our world and leans to watch over my soul, binding me in soothing strain with its very presence…something that is so beautiful, and so exquisite, yet unreachable. I cannot hold it or arrest its hand, but nevertheless remain in complete enthrallment of it. Our relation to the moon is, in its manner, much alike the way in which we love another soul.

Her eyes stilled and gleamed in their jeweled space, growing brighter at my every word. From that gleam there arose a life possessed of boundless wonder, whose fervent shimmers no shade of night could venture to disguise, and whose deepened expression held my heart within our vista like the maiden of the moon, upon an elevated balcony in a distant land, held my gaze. Peering therein and witnessing the clouds, like my heart, letting the moonlight pass through them entirely and reflecting its supernal spectrum, I felt the nightscape spring to glistening, poignant life, with beauty that bade me to weep at the devotion I felt for it and for her. And she, with moon-illumined eyes, gazed intently upon the source of that light, in contemplation of that which I uttered and, speaking with a voice mellowed by softening awe, said: That was beautiful…

Her visage assuming a tender air, and her eyes teeming with such sweetened expression, she raised my hand – still within her grasp – and clasped it with her other hand, looking upon me once more whilst she persuaded:

Though the moon is silent and dwells a distant beauty, and you cannot embrace it to relieve it of its solitude, I am yet here – and my heart is yours.

To see those words of love pass from her lips beautifully as moonlight through silent and clear waters…was everything to me. And savoring her words, I felt sensations of gentle, spellbound admiration and looked upon her lucent eyes, wherein I saw all that I had ever seen within the silvery stars, the moonlit land of night, and felt all the dreams of possibilities that existed – all the wonder within the dark heart of night – be present within their recitations of her soul. They were angels of light widening their embrace of scintillating arms, descending to my heart with the tranquil passion of the teeming seas within her, so that I might feel as though I could with her meld and become one utterly. Sinking within my soul to imparadising depths of love, all shone with a newfound life, an augmented luminosity – and I was enthralled, watching as a slant of moonlight fell upon her and lent her its brilliance, suspending her visage in glittering contrast to the shadow’s domain. Yet within that, there was a luminostic quality, a light arising from her flesh, as though inner-beauty were coextensively expressed outwardly, in the blurring of separate spaces…as though there were a secret of her beauty which could be read only by moonlight. And as I adorned with my touch her coruscating necklace, her eyes, amidst that secret, augmented their mystery and gazed with celestial aspect upon me, their tender radiance falling as moonlight, encompassed by lashes whose ends were like pointed stars and formed a constellation which spun its lambent orbit about her eyes.

I felt the warmth of her skin as she pressed it upon mine, gazing into my eyes with hers flaring as calm supernovas, whilst a sweet warmth arose and her soft bosom ended its breaths over my own, her heart pulsating against mine. From that angelic bosom there swelled, more desirous than all, the waltz of her heart and soul: this entrancing melody commanded her eyes to close as though a soft-seducing hymn were thereby sung, and bade me to glide my finger-tips along her flawless cheek. In so doing, I did not simply grace the surface of her skin: rather I graced, with love commanded, the landscape of her heart which, at the height of its tumult, imbued her with a white fire that burned rampantly over her flesh – that which presented from a spiritual world and through translucency shone into our world, like a moon kindling a myriad of ivory fires upon the gentle waves of night-waters it stirred.

Set aglow by the lurid moonlight, she peered into my eyes for a long while in the same awe with which I gazed into hers, and at length resigned her own eyes to rest, with her face drifting forwards – that precious face which I held and brought her velvety lips to mine. The moon set its poetic light upon our union and cast our silhouettes upon the ground, forming a glowing heart thereon, like swan-necks arched at their shadowy meeting; and that heart, with its exquisite shine, mirrored perfectly the grace with which our hearts did entwine. Emulously, our bosoms emptied themselves of breath, and our hearts pulsed in unison; emulously, our lips tremulously sought to impress themselves upon the other, without the knowing of our eyes. Her lavish red lips, inspiriting me, bade me to feel as though I had departed from existence altogether and drifted into an elevated dimension, beyond the confines of separateness, through which she and I soared within our kiss. As though suspended in air, she reclined her head and resigned her sea of black hair unto the whims and wills of the gentle wind, each swell ebbing into a fall as do whispering tides upon the sand. I felt just as the grass, the emerald gown that robed the land, as it waved with the supple grace of a velvet curtain, displaying its tranquil dance unto the night, as though it echoed an essence which would forever be so peaceful. I felt as though I could hear the night whisper of her, and in listening, perceived her beauty; it was within the wind as it soothingly embraced the grass, as her silken arms caressed me, spiriting