The Night Dredes

By Shayna Grissom

The island is all Destiny Sallows has ever known. It is her birthright to become the next matriarch and leader of her isolated family. The only catch is that she must marry Daniel, Mother insists on it. It's not that she dislikes Daniel, he's kind and clever. The problem is with her. Destiny suffers from a reoccurring night terror about a monster with green eyes. One glance in Daniel's eyes sends her spiraling into a severe panic attack. Mother calls them the night dredes. Mother says Destiny will get over them, but when the monsters come out, the night dredes come for them all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sands Press
• Release date: Oct 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781990066061

Book preview

Chapter One

Helicant’s arthritic bones ached as the lye soap stung her thin skin. She gritted her worn teeth and ignored the distress of her knees as they bore into the kitchen floor. She was too old for the housework, but there was no choice at Sallows Hall. Either she would break her back with work or let her home fall into further decline. She’d sooner launch herself down the grand staircase that centered the mansion than leave her daughter without home or hearth.

The bristles on her scrub brush rasped against the stones as Helicant worked her way around the cast iron oven in the corner as well as the wooden worktable in the center of the kitchen. The stones glistened momentarily before wicking the moisture away to places unknown. The biting odor of the soap remained even with the addition of the lavender. Next time, Beth would need to add more fragrance.

On most occasions, this wasn’t a chore the leader of Sallows Island would be doing. Her knuckles were so swollen she had to rub butter on her finger to take off the ruby ring that signified her position, but that didn’t matter. She would never wear the ring again after this night.

She insisted on helping with the chores on this day regardless of her age. Destiny argued the topic often, but Helicant would not have it. All last night her daughter had raged against her wishes over dinner. Destiny should have known by now that her mother always got her way in the end.

If you won’t let me help, at least call Sophie over, Destiny’s voice echoed throughout the empty dining hall.

The once white bone china had turned an earthen color over the years. She noted the river of wine-tinted liquid running from her boiled beets and sighed. Dreariness was all that lived her now, but she refused to die until her daughter was safely married.

Helicant set her fork and knife down and dabbed her face before replying, Sophie and Beth are both arriving early to set up for the party.

Destiny’s flat blonde hair shielded most of her face, but she could see enough of her daughter’s dark furrowed brow to know she was not done. Not even the expanse of the sixteen-chaired table could hide her daughter’s disapproval. Still, she approved of Destiny’s fight. The girl’s timid demeanor was culled by her urge to protect her loved ones.

I don’t even know why we’re doing this, Destiny muttered.

Young ladies should not mumble, Helicant said.

Why are we doing this!

Ladies should not shout at their mothers either. Under normal circumstances, Helicant would never push her daughter into marriage. Being a widow was far preferable in her mind, but Destiny was not a normal girl. She was the heiress to Sallows Island. The direct descendant of Nathaniel Sallows, and this island was hers, as was this mansion. You need to marry.

Aunt Sophie didn’t.

She also has nothing but a small cottage to care for. You’ve seen how hard it is to care for this place between the two of us. It was more than that. Helicant could no longer afford the time to indulge her daughter with lies. You’re not strong enough to go it alone.

Destiny sat back in her chair, clicking her tongue while looking at the floor. You don’t know that.

Helicant stared at the withered old hands in her lap. Once again, she’d hurt Destiny’s feelings. She was too sharp, too harsh for children. Then again, at the age of twenty-three, Destiny was no longer a child. She hadn’t been for some time, and Helicant had ignored that fact because her daughter was simply not ready for adulthood.

I am to blame for this. I’ve coddled and sheltered you due to your … She struggled to find the words. Disposition.

She loathed bringing it up. It was not her intent to club her daughter over the head with her malady. Destiny didn’t ask to have the night terrors. They’d arrived shortly after the fever and endured through her teenage years. At least, that was what she assumed. Perhaps she was wrong.

She regarded her daughter, sad and in a fit of twitches and fidgets. How desperate Destiny was to control what ailed her. She closed her eyes slowly. She was so stupid to think her daughter’s problem had vanished on its own. You still have them, don’t you?

Destiny’s eyes squeezed shut as she nodded. She hated this. It made her want to cancel the engagement party altogether, but she couldn’t. Time was running out. As the days wore on, the occurrences became more pronounced. It would only be a matter of time before everyone else noticed the discrepancies too. Time must be set right.

Setting her napkin on the table, Helicant stood and walked to Destiny’s end of the table, closing the gap between them. Pulling out a solid, hand-carved chair with a worn cushion, she sat next to her daughter. Only the sharp edge of the table separated them now.

My mother had similar fears, she said. Not over green eyes, but of birds and vines coming up through the pipes. Curious things. She feared these things like no other but knew it to be nonsense. They had a grip on her as tight as the beast’s jaw.

Destiny’s eyes opened and she tucked her hair behind one ear. Her brown doe-eyes were watery, but her curiosity was undeniably peeked. Such a beautiful girl. Soft and innocent with an edge of defiance in her jaw. If there was one joy in Helicant’s life, it was her daughter.

What did she do about it?

She went hunting, Helicant said with a smile.

One corner of Destiny’s mouth lifted as if she suspected it was all a jest.

I’m serious, your father took her hunting. It didn’t get better right away. Sometimes she’d come home in a state of hysterics, other times she would return with a dead pheasant in triumph. It took time and patience with herself, but she eventually alleviated her own fears.

Destiny was smiling sadly as she wiped the tears from the corner of her eyes. You must be so annoyed with me.

Oh, I get plenty annoyed with you, her mother admitted. but not over something you can’t control. It’s just unfortunate that your best match also happens to have green eyes. She tucked a few loose strands of Destiny’s hair behind her ear. If there was anything that made her happy in this dreadful life, it was the ability to soothe her daughter’s fears. If only for a moment. Just give him a chance. Can you do that for me?

Destiny nodded. Helicant resumed her place at the table and they finished their dinner without more tears. There was no further discussion of the details surrounding the engagement party. She slid her index finger over the emerald cut ruby on her ring finger. She could force her daughter to marry Daniel, but at her age, she didn’t think it wise to try and force anything.

She was indeed old, Helicant thought, as she brought herself back to the present. Not too old to scrub the floor spotless as she had just done, but old enough not to survive another winter on the island. If Destiny did not marry, she would be taken advantage of by the beasts on this island who disguised themselves as men.

Stepping onto the back porch, she dumped the excess water into the lawn and set the bucket on the cellar steps. Wiping her pruned hands on her apron, she could feel the perspiration running down her back. She still needed to light the stove, dust, bathe and dress for the party. Her sisters would be here any minute to begin cooking.

Helicant needed to rest for a few moments. She sat in a chair beside the worktable and rested her head in her hand. Destiny would have no choice but to overcome the phobia that marred her happiness and self-esteem. The groom had green eyes—the only one with green eyes on the whole island.

As she nodded off, a peculiar sight formed before her. Water pooled along the indentations on the dried stone as if it had been washed all over again. Too tired to contemplate it, Helicant assumed her eyes were weary and playing a trick on her. Water didn’t just leak from solid stone, did it? There went one of those discrepancies again. All would return to the natural order once Destiny married Daniel; though, she couldn’t quite remember why.

Chapter Two

Destiny stared down the long formal black dress hanging on the closet door. It was nothing like the colorful styles she wore, and it made her resent its stark, rigid shape even more. The only signs of life were the white pearl buttons that ran up the back, and even they were hidden by layers of black lace.

Taking a deep breath, Destiny shut her bedroom door. The dress was beautiful. Lacy in the right places and sheer in others. It was traditional and high collar like her mother requested, but it had a sort of roguish modern style that Destiny thought was so couture.

The island’s seamstress often scoffed at the sketches she brought as examples. She was rather good at drawing, especially women’s garments. The problem was that she wasn’t quite able to explain how such garments worked. Grace would study her sketches from every angle with a deeply furrowed brow.

Where in god’s name did you come up with this? Grace had asked while examining the top Destiny was wearing now.

It just sort of came to me, she’d said, pulling at her fingers. To tell the truth, she had no idea where these ideas came from. It was as if they came to her in dreams, but she’d only ever had the one. They were more like deep-seated memories from a time she couldn’t fully recall. She had all sorts of these designs and Grace readily accepted the challenges.

Grace’s spectacles had fallen to the bridge of her nose, How do you put it on?

The neck is wide enough that I simply pull the garment over my head. It would come in handy during the fall.

It’s not the shapeliest top. More like a bag with a hood than anything, Grace said, holding the design up.

She draped her arms around her aunt’s shoulders, If you make my shoes, you can do this.

Oh, Grace chuckled. You know, I made Abigail a pair. She saw them sitting on my desk and fell in love. I hope you don’t mind.

Not at all! They’re far more comfortable than those formal boots and corsets.

Abigail was to be the next doctor on the island. If anyone needed a good pair of shoes it would be her. Shoes, coats, even stockings. Grace was able to make it all, but the dress laying before Destiny was her finest gown yet.

This dress must have taken Grace half a year to construct. It was too bad it was for this day of all days. If it were any other event, Destiny would never want to take it off. She couldn’t bring herself to love the black lace gown, not when it was meant for an engagement she did not want. Poor Daniel was probably beside himself with nerves. Destiny didn’t mean to be so difficult; he deserved better.

She would need to wear a corset with the gown—something she never did. She couldn’t even lace a corset without help. With a decisive slam of the closet door, she decided she would deal with that when Abigail arrived. Reuniting with her favorite cousin was the only thing about today she looked forward to.

Outside her room was a long, winding corridor identical to the dozens of other hallways in Sallows Hall. She cringed every time she had to go down one. They gave her the sensation of iron scraping against glass. Her hallway was the one closest to the stairway on the third story of the house, but there were five stories not counting the cellar and Destiny avoided most of them.

Any one of the nearly identical hallways could lead her to the room and source of her nightmare. It was an absurd notion, she often reminded herself of that, but her mind loved to play tricks on her. She was in charge of maintaining all the rooms most often used, the kitchen, the entryway, the drawing-room, washrooms, and the stairway.

Several wings of the house were closed off with partitions to indicate their conditions were unsuitable. The remaining hallways were her mother’s responsibility, which entailed dusting, polishing furniture, and hanging rugs on the stairway for a beating.

The red brocade carpet runners were identical throughout the halls and she found it disorienting. The way the rooms wrapped around the hallways created a labyrinth with little to differentiate one from the next. The founders of the island built this house according to the plan of the founder, Nathaniel Sallows. They claimed he was a genius, but after finding herself lost in her own home more than once, she deemed him a madman.

On the occasions where her mother’s headaches crippled her, Destiny was forced to take up her mother’s chores with dread blooming in her belly. The dark alder wainscoting squeezed what little air the narrow hallways had and made it difficult to breathe. The narrow windows didn’t open and only provided a scant amount of daylight that the wood greedily absorbed.

It got so that the third or fourth turn down a corridor disoriented her to the point where her mind screamed at her to run—but which way? Each direction was identical to the last and threatened to be equally suffocating. At any turn, she could find herself in the wrong corridor, the one with only one door at the very end with a peephole and several locks to contain the monster within.

She coped in ways her mother said were clever. If she had to take up the matron’s chores, she would tie a bit of yarn to the stair post and dole it out as she went. This way, she always found her way back. She also resorted to rolling up the runner in her hallway and throwing it in one of the unused rooms.

Why can’t we leave the carpet alone? her mother asked after several attempts to roll the carpet back out.

Because in the dream I’m running through hallways with carpet, Destiny had explained. If this hallway doesn’t have a carpet, it’s not the corridor in my dream.

Her mother had bitten her lip to stay her tongue, but ultimately, it came down to the notion that Destiny felt safer in the corridor unlike the ones in her dream. Her mother wouldn’t choose a carpet over her daughter’s peace of mind.

Last night at dinner, her mother had discovered the truth. The nightmares had not abated. Destiny had simply quit talking about them to avoid Uncle Edward’s remedies. When she wasn’t drugged, she could wake herself sometimes, but sleeping droughts made that impossible. With them, she was forced to endure the horrid nightmare from start to finish in the empty halls where no one could hear her screams.

How long had it been since she’d rolled up the carpet outside her bedroom? Since the last time she’d tied her mother’s yarn to the stairwell? Her mother’s headaches were occurring more frequently as were her own, but she couldn’t recall a specific day. The days bled into weeks and the months spilled into years—all while the hours of the day stretched like a wet hide on an overcast day.

The pounding in her temples threatened to crack Destiny’s skull, so she stopped trying to pinpoint specific times and days. Still clutching the front of the armoire, she took several deep breaths until the pain abated. Initially, she suspected Edward’s concoctions were to blame for the headaches, but she had stopped taking them and the headaches continued. She and her mother both suffered from the same condition, but her mother was less able to let go of the past than she.

Do you remember the name of Grace’s cat? Helicant had asked. It could have been months or days ago, but they were eating eggs and berries, so it must have been breakfast.

Destiny remembered the cat in question. They had a few cats that lived in the stables with the livestock, but Grace caught one as a kitten and tamed it to live in her workshop. The seamstress also did taxidermy, and she needed a cat to keep the mice away.

I thought she named it Tabby, Destiny replied.

It was a curious question. She had no idea why her mother had even asked. She supposed it was the eccentricity of old age. That night, her mother had the worst headache that either of them could remember. She spent three days in bed and Abigail had to wait on her hand and foot. On the evening of the fourth day, her mother, full of morphine, shouted, I cannot remember the name of the cat!

It was only then that the headache ended, and her mother was free.

Descending the grand staircase was a workout. Her heart was beating a lively rhythm by the time she reached the bottom. It was a wonder her mother managed to do it all the time, and from the fourth floor!

As Destiny passed through the entryway, with its marble floors, to the white-washed double doors of the kitchen, she stumbled to a halt. There was her mother, fast asleep in a brittle wooden chair. Her hands were inflamed and peeling. The woman had been working herself to the bone for this day, yet she wouldn’t let her daughter help because she didn’t want Destiny’s hands to look like that when Daniel slipped the ruby ring on her finger.

After that moment, it would be her and Daniel taking care of the island. She supposed she should be grateful to be the leader and not the one pulling weeds or chopping wood—and her mother could relax for once. The poor old woman couldn’t go on like this much longer. It all added up in Destiny’s head, but those green eyes undid her every time.

A mixture of anger over her mother’s exertion and nerves for the day’s events was taking its toll on her. She struggled to breathe as her ribs closed in on her lungs and her diaphragm heaved on its own accord. She felt dizzy and leaned against the doorway for a moment as she tried to regain her composure.

Focus on something else and just ignore the feeling. She tried to take the advice others had given her, but the eyes curved in a mocking grin. Her grandmother had been able to shoot what she was afraid of, but Destiny couldn’t shoot anyone, let alone Daniel. Maybe she could get used to him somehow. Her hands shook as if they disagreed.

Relief came in the form of footsteps on the gravel outside. Destiny put aside her thoughts of peering green eyes and focused instead on the muttering old woman who approached. She rushed out the back door to stop her Aunt Sophie from disturbing her mother’s much-needed nap.

Sophie had braided her soft, greying hair into a single French braid and was wearing a faded blue house dress lined with holes and patches, suggesting she was here to work. She carried a bucket of potatoes, carrots, and onions.

"Shh," Destiny urged the woman.

Sophie regarded her niece quizzically and Destiny whispered, Mother fell asleep in the kitchen.

Her aunt rolled her eyes and dropped the bucket on the ground. She’s overdone it, hasn’t she?

I told her I could help, but she wouldn’t let me.

Not on your special day, Sophie agreed. I would have come much sooner if she’d let me. Aunt Beth, myself, and Coral would have done it all but …

Bile rose in Destiny’s throat and it took several swallows to overcome. She nodded. I know how Mother is.

A smile formed on Sophie’s waxen face, Well, I need to make another trip to the cottage for my formal dress. Want to come with me?

Destiny smiled and agreed, ever eager to visit her aunt’s little cottage and get away from the mansion. They rounded the corner of the building but stopped short of the stone wall where the climbing roses were planted. Someone—or something—had torn down a section and stomped all over the blooms.

What happened? Sophie gasped.

Rendered speechless, Destiny could only stroke a sad, broken branch. She didn’t want to let her aunt know she was so upset over some foliage, as her mother would say, but she truly was on the verge of tears. This was the closest thing to a pet Destiny had ever had.

Sophie said nothing for a moment but rested a gentle hand on her shoulder.

Your father helped you plant these, I know.

Now there was no stopping the tears. Destiny wiped them away sloppily with the sleeve of the hooded sweater. I’d tried planting them on the trellis at the maze entrance, you see, and they just would not grow right. No matter how much light or good soil they had, I could never get them to grow fully.

"Father said the