Song From The Abyss

By Margaret L. Carter

Alyce always spent her summer break at her aunt’s beach house. It was there that she met Dean — her first love. She thought he loved her as much as she loved him, until the summer when they were eighteen and he vanished from her life. Three years later, Alyce’s aunt used her in an arcane ritual that opened a portal into another dimension. Now Alyce has inherited the house where she endured that terrifying night. She finds a recording of the eerie music from the dark rite. When she plays it, the portal opens again, and Dean returns. Their passion ignites, more intense than anything Alyce has ever known, but he has become not quite human. After so long trapped in an alien realm, what is he now?

• Language: Unknown
• Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
• Release date: Jul 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9781509250738

Margaret L. Carter

Reading DRACULA at the age of twelve ignited Margaret L. Carter’s interest in a wide range of speculative fiction and inspired her to become a writer. Vampires, however, have always remained close to her heart. Her work on vampirism in literature includes four books and numerous articles. She holds a PhD in English from the University of California (Irvine), and her dissertation contained a chapter on DRACULA. In fiction, she has written horror, fantasy, and paranormal romance, as well as sword-and-sorcery fantasy in collaboration with her husband, a retired naval officer. Recent publications include AGAINST THE DARK DEVOURER (Lovecraftian dark paranormal romance) and spring-themed light contemporary fantasy BUNNY HUNT. Her short stories have appeared in various anthologies, including the “Darkover” and “Sword and Sorceress” series. She and her husband live in Maryland and have four children, several grandchildren and great-grandchildren, a St. Bernard, and two cats. Please visit Carter’s Crypt: http://www.margaretlcarter.com

Book preview

The rhythm from the CD pounded on the network of light-strands while otherworldly music from the far side of reality played a counterpoint. One by one, the threads snapped and unraveled. The sphere that surrounded Dean shattered in a blinding flash.

Alyce yelled in pain and covered her eyes. When she looked again, through the afterimages of light and dark spots she saw Dean lying on the floor between her and the wall. She groped for the CD player and switched it off. For a few seconds the silence rang in her ears. The room snapped back to its normal shape and dimensions. The star-spangled void disappeared.

She crawled to Dean on her hands and knees. He lay on his back with his eyes closed. His face looked taut with suppressed pain, older than when he’d disappeared. Placing a hand on his chest, she found him icy cold. He was alive, though. His heart raced under her palm. He didn’t have any hair except for a blond tuft at his groin and the ragged mane of golden-white on his head. He did have tentacles.

She could hardly get her mind around that fact, even though she was looking right at them. Delicate and supple, they curled at his sides but would probably stretch to about ten inches if extended. The floor seemed to drop from under her again. This time, though, she knew the upheaval was happening inside her head. The sight of what Dean had become cracked her world wide open.

Song From The Abyss

by

Margaret L. Carter

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Song From The Abyss

COPYRIGHT © 2023 by Margaret L. Carter

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: [e-mail]

Cover Art by Jennifer Greeff

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Publishing History

First Edition, 2023

Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-5073-8

Published in the United States of America

Chapter One

Under the sound of surf wafting in through the open window, a voice seemed to whisper. It hissed words in a language Alyce didn’t recognize, yet it sounded all too familiar. Almost as if she’d heard those sounds before, maybe at the age of twenty-one, on the night before she’d left her Aunt Cora’s house for the last time.

Until today. Furthermore, it was her house now. It wasn’t a monster that would swallow Alyce whole and trap her like Pinocchio inside the giant fish. The waves did not sound like the hoarse breathing of a creature from an alien world.

Shut up, she ordered the imaginary voice. The phantom whispers fell silent. What was wrong with her, getting spooked in such a mundane setting? Sure, she was alone in a run-down oceanfront house built in the 1880s, but nothing could look less haunted than her late aunt’s cluttered office. Books overflowed shelves and tottered in precarious towers on the floor. File drawers gaped half open. Papers heaped on the desk almost hid the polished wood surface. The humid air smelled like mundane dust, not the mold of ancient tomes. Yes, some of those volumes might almost qualify, but Aunt Cora wouldn’t think of letting her tomes molder.

If she had magically foreseen dropping dead and leaving Alyce to rummage through the house, she would probably have tidied up the place and hidden or destroyed her most esoteric materials. Although much older than Alyce’s mother, Aunt Cora had seemed in excellent health, so the fatal stroke must have surprised her as much as it had her family. Actually, it was a wonder she hadn’t changed her will long ago. Why had she bequeathed her estate to the niece who’d fled from this house four years previously and refused to answer so much as a Christmas card ever since?

Most likely because I’m her only relative except for Mom, and at least Aunt Cora and I used to be close. She and Mom hadn’t spoken face-to-face in a lot longer than four years. Emails, phone calls, and holiday cards between the sisters hardly counted.

So she’d had a choice between leaving the house to Alyce, as originally planned, or willing it to some flaky cult. I’m almost surprised she didn’t do that. Such a choice would have been typical of the woman Alyce’s mother always referred to as my crazy sister. For the hundredth time in the past few weeks, Alyce tried to dredge up a proper portion of sadness. She felt she’d long ago lost the aunt she’d loved, the one who’d treated her like a younger colleague instead of an airheaded kid, the one who’d taken her on excursions to historic sites off the well-traveled tourist track and taught her to delve into research many layers deeper than the top page of a search engine. Alyce had lost that relative four years earlier, when she’d dragged Alyce into some kind of arcane ritual.

Shaking her head and raking fingers through her hair, she forced herself to focus on the immediate chore. Beside the desk, empty cardboard boxes and a giant trash bin waited to be filled. Got to plunge into this mess sometime. Might as well get started.

Rustling the papers, she sneezed at the dust they raised. Her hand brushed the edge of a half-open desk drawer.

Alyce!

She jumped. Now I’m hearing voices inside my head. One voice, more accurately, and it sounded like Dean’s.

He’s gone. He’s been gone for seven years.

Seven years since he’d vanished, four years since she’d fled from this house like the monster she imagined it to be. Maybe returning had triggered some kind of flashback. All along, she’d suspected Aunt Cora of secretly dosing her with a mind-altering drug on that last night. Why else would she have forgotten almost everything about those hours?

Open the drawer, Alyce.

She was having auditory hallucinations. Swallowing a surge of panic, she eased the drawer partway out and glimpsed a few CDs scattered among miscellaneous office supplies.

Pick up that disk. Yes, that one on top. Take it out. You want to listen to it.

A jolt of electricity coursed through her, making the hair on her arms and the back of her neck bristle. Her skin prickled,