Pennies for Charon

By F.K. Marlowe

A prophetess steals from the Boatman of the Dead to regain her powers. A god who has never known human emotion falls in love. Guilt, fear, passion and revenge ripple through this collection of dark tales shrouded in a darker love story.

 

The river Styx separates the living from the underworld. To cross it, the dead must pay the ferryman. Some are lucky, buried with coins on their eyelids to buy their passage. Some arrive unprepared. For them, their coin is their story; the confession of who they were, how they lived, the regrets and guilt they carry, how they died.

 

Dark tales laden with great, secret power. But someone knows their secret. And she's come to claim their power for her own.

 

For three thousand years the careless gift of a long ago god kept her alive. Alive, but ageing. Withering. Until she was nothing but a husk, sealed into a bottle, like a genie in a stoppered lamp. The god's gift kept her alive, but it is the memory of the fear she use to wreak, and the power it gave her, for which she has lived.

 

That and the desire to feel it again.

 

Find all your favourite tales by the Queen of Creepy, F.K. Marlowe, here: the body horror of Calyptra Mortiferum with its vampire moths, and the psychological torment of Buried, where hidden guilt comes back with a bite. The Monster, The Hollow and The Warehouse are all waiting for you, along with five brand new tales of murder, obsession and death.

 

Feast on this collection of horror stories, wrapped up in a fairytale romance darker than the river that flows through the underworld.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Evalena Styf
• Release date: Dec 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223434399

Book preview

Pennies for Charon

F.K. Marlowe

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Copyright © 2023 F.K. Marlowe

All rights reserved

F.K. Marlowe asserts the right to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved under Canadian and International Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without written permission by the publisher.

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

Cover Art © 2023 Deni Weeks

Edits & Desktop Publishing by Evalena Styf

www.libertaliapress.com

eBook edition Copyright © 2023 F.K. Marlowe

Version EV1: 2023-10-01

BOOKS BY F.K. MARLOWE

Calyptra Mortiferum

The Hollow

Buried

A Deathly Dark Hour

The Monster

The Warehouse

Pennies for Charon

Persephone

Precious shade

you are

going down into the dark

without me, or

leading me the way

still

your hand slips

from my fingers and you leave

no thread, no skein of voice behind.

For Mum

Contents

1.

Buried

2.

Heat of the Moment

3.

The Canker Blossoms

4.

The Tithe

5.

The Monster

6.

Ocean

7.

The Hollow

8.

The Warehouse

9.

Love Letter

10.

Ourobouros

Epilogue

Penny...

Acknowledgements

Reviews

Thank You

About the Author

1.

The sibyl twisted in a bottle for three thousand years. Once, she was a mortal woman, but never ordinary, even when she had her freedom, when she could move amongst other living souls. They were afraid of her, of her visions. For three thousand years the careless gift of a long-ago god has kept her alive, but it is the memory of that fear, and the power it gave her, for which she has lived. That and the desire to feel it again.

Three thousand years is a long time to think, to remember, to desire. A sibyl was sealed into the bottle, but something else came out: a creature transformed. A mortifa. The word rose up in her mind from the black mass of pain and anger that writhed over and through her in her captivity, warping time until it had no meaning anymore. Time in the bottle was nothing but waiting; watching and waiting for the sliver of a chance to be free.

When it came, she’d had her plans made for centuries. She knew what she wanted and she knew how she’d find it and make it her own.

It hasn’t been easy to get to the river bank, though she, of all human souls, knows the way. There is only one path that leads here, and it’s a hard one to retrace. She has risked everything to come. When you have waited three millennia for freedom, that is no slight gamble. Yet, here she is.

Along the misty shore, grey tendrils of willow trail their obscure fingers in the cinereal water. The air is full of the sound of sighing, wavelets from the river, a damp breath of a breeze moving through soughing leaves. Gradually, another sound creeps through the half-light, the dragging slosh of a pole trailing water, the lapping of ripples on wooden boards.

She watches the hooded form hook a loop of rope around a post on the riverbank, sees silhouettes appear from the mist in a shivering line. The style of their clothes, the cut of their hair is different to the people of her own day, but she recognises the weight of emotions upon them. The shape of regret, of fear, does not change. Several of the figures are silent, their heads bowed. Some look frantically from side to side, as if searching for escape. One or two are weeping. A few, smaller creatures clasp the hands of taller shapes.

One by one, they file past the hooded figure and take their seats upon the skiff. Each one pauses before boarding, as the figure holds out a hand. Sometimes, the silhouette will simply pass something small into the boatman’s palm. For others, there is a moment of confusion, even panic, until the boatman rests emaciated fingers on the arm of his would-be passenger, explains something briefly, kindly even, from what the mortifa can tell. The figure will exhale, begin to speak, its shoulders untensing, its whole form relaxing, as the other silhouettes stand silent and patient on the shore, or sit unmoving in the boat, sometimes for a long time, sometimes only for moments.

When they’re done speaking, the boatman will open his hand to show them something the sibyl can’t see, but can guess at. It’s what she’s come for. Payment. Pennies for the crossing, or in their place, a tale that becomes coin instead, the words transforming, condensing into a small, glowing disk like a flat pebble that the boatman puts with the other pennies in a deep, hidden pocket of his funereal robes. The mortifa’s eyes gleam. She sees her prize, but no way to seize it.

The last hunched figure boards the boat, tells its tale, takes its seat. At the front of the skiff, the hooded shade pushes the long pole into the water and the skiff slides away from the bank. In a moment or two, it is swallowed completely by the thick grey mist that roils up from the water.

The mortifa paces and ponders. Curled in her bottle all the long ages, she formed many plans, most of them desperate, violent. Now she is here, on this dank, hushed riverbank, they all seem foolish. Nobody overpowers the boatman. If it were possible, would any soul make the crossing to the land of the dead? She walks, head down, puzzling and fretting. To come so far, be so close and be thwarted is a frustration she cannot bear.

Her mind is so set on the problem she hardly sees the path under her feet, and almost walks into the stone wall of the cottage. Her fingers trace its rough surface to a wooden door that stands carelessly ajar. She pushes it open and creeps inside.

It is the boatman’s home, there is no doubt. What other soul would choose to linger here, in the drab wasteland between worlds? Dying coals smoulder in the hearth, sending out grey smoke to mingle with the ashen fog of the river, but there’s enough warmth in the cinders to light kindling, bank up the fire until it casts a little light around the hut.

It’s a poor enough place. Curtains of brown sack cloth hang in flitters at the small window, a rough table and lone stool sit near the warming hearth. At the other end of the single room is a plank bed, a coarse woollen blanket neatly folded at one end. But as the mortifa’s eyes adjust to the gloom, she picks out other things that draw a crooning joy from her throat.

All along the walls of the hut are shelves packed with clay pots and jars, each glinting with round disks that gleam in the growing light of the fire. Beneath the shelves are chests and barrels filled to overflowing with more of the coins. The mortifa claps her hands, moves her spindled limbs in a macabre dance of delight. Each coin is a feast in itself, a banquet of sadness, of fear. To consume one is to harness its dark energy: regrets, bitterness, deeds done, or left undone. This is what she came here for.

She reaches a hand to the nearest jar, snatches up a glowing disk. Her eyes glint as she gloats on the treasure in her palm. One finger reaches out to touch its strange surface, stroking it reverently. The mortifa kneels as if receiving a blessing, opens her mouth, places the disk on her own shrivelled tongue.

The disk fizzes.

As it begins to dissolve, her head is filled with voices that take on flesh, become real people, more solid than the boatman’s shack. She melts into the vision with a sigh, watching it unfold as if it is happening for the first time, again.

Buried

The cloud of flies lifts uncertainly as paraffin splashes down onto the little corpse. A match flares, and flames leap from a blue halo beneath which the body twists and curls. The flies dissipate, the reek of rot scourged by hot smoke.

Ron stands and watches until the flames die down and the rodent is just charred black scraps and ashes. He puts on gloves and sweeps the remains into a dustpan, double-bags them and tosses them into the bin, which he wheels to the front of the house even though collection’s not ‘til Wednesday. Carefully, he takes one glove off with the other, turning the second one inside out to remove it, so his fingers never touch a dirty surface. He throws the balled gloves in with the rat debris then goes inside to double-wash his hands. On the way, he checks the garden. The flies seem to have gone.

Later, cracking open a beer while he leans back in a garden chair, he stares at the dark, burned patch on the concrete. He’s remembering the way the flies swarmed, how the grubs squirmed out of the rat’s eyes and belly. The blue-green tinge around its mouth. Goddamned rat poison. He wonders which one of the neighbours is using it. If he knew, he’d go round and give them a piece of his mind. It’s not like he has a soft spot for rats, hell no. Hates them, filthy creatures. But poison? He shakes his head in disgust at the stupidity. Don’t people know better these days?

It makes him kind of glad he’s being forced into moving away. Feels strange, after all this time. Always thought it was impossible, but now? He pulls an envelope from the back pocket of his jeans. It’s creased and scuffed, and when he opens it there’s grime along the folds. The words leap out stark in the bright sunshine, but he knows them by heart anyhow.

Expropriation Notice No. 6374

Take notice that the City of Westview intends to expropriate land in respect of which Ron Coren is the registered owner, the particulars of which are as follows…

Ron closes his eyes against the sunlight, the image of the white concrete yard still burning on his retinas. He imagines it flooded with water, drowned under the dam the city wants to build, fishes swimming across it, through the windows of his house where the bug nets are. Half dozing, he watches pond weeds break through the kitchen floor, reach up through the ceiling to his bedroom, sees barnacles cover the bathtub. Can he really leave? They’re offering decent compensation, enough to move somewhere nice on the coast, start over. Maybe just retire. In his mind the waters sway and stir, blotting out the light as they fill deeper and deeper, the surface of his yard turning from white to black, until he can’t make it out anymore. There’s a strange sort of peace in the image, but he can’t shake the feeling of something in the darkness, tugging at him, refusing to let him go. His eyes open on the letter again and he sighs. No choice anyhow.

He drains the beer, drops it in the grey recycle tub. When he goes back in the house there’s a blowfly beating against the kitchen window, trapped by the net. He takes a piece of kitchen towel, folds it in half and half again, then walks to the glass slowly and waits. It bumbles, lifting and dropping, tiring itself out. Ron judges the moment and moves his hand, slow and deliberate, crushing it against the pane. It’s big enough that he feels it crunch under his fingers. Grimacing, he presses harder, making sure it’s good and dead. He folds it inside the tissue, tosses it down the toilet, flushes and watches ‘til it disappears, then washes his hands again.

When he was growing up this house had dead flies curled on every windowsill. Fly papers hanging over the table in the kitchen, from the light fitting in the lounge. He hears again the soft tapping of the long, yellow-brown ribbon as it fluttered in a breeze from his bedroom window, like fingernails against the glass. Half dried out, useless, with tiny, desiccated corpses studded along it like dark pearls. He shudders. Doesn’t take much to keep a house clean, he thinks. Keep things from getting a foothold. Stop them getting out of hand. She never understood that, of course. By reflex, he pushes away the old thought almost before it registers: maybe she did, she just didn’t care.

That night he dreams of maggots, blue-green vomit clumped around a small mouth, a buzzing that swells and grows ‘til it wakes him, sweating and nauseous. The clock says 4am but he takes a shower anyway, scrubbing and soaping long after the water runs cold. It’s years since he’s had that dream. Goddamned poison. Goddamned rats. Goddamned stupid people. He wonders again which one of his neighbours it was, and where the nest is. There’s a good chance he’ll be able to tell by the smell in a day or two, he thinks grimly.

When he climbs into bed again, his body feels smaller than it has for a long time, shrunk back across years. The ghostly shadow of a tree long chopped