Concerning Ashton Moore
Joseph Bush
Copyright 2012 Joseph Bush
Smashwords Edition
They must have talked to the sheriff once they heard what happened. Maybe they were even waiting for it. Maybe they were listening, watching. You tell me.
Sheriff Cormac brought me to the house in his squad car at eleven at night. Between the wind and the fog and the eerie eyes of the forest animals in the headlights, I almost didn't make it. I almost asked to go back. But I didn't know what was going on. I hoped, in vain of course, that they'd be able to tell me what happened. I hoped I could see the girl I loved.
I remember wondering what connection they had to the Sheriff, but I didn't dwell on it. The gnarled, twisted trees were crowding in too close for comfort, even a few miles out of town. It got worse from there. I was clutching the seat with bone-knuckled hands, feeling the sweat seep into the upholstery as we sped through the night.
I wasn't a suspect, he had assured me many times, but he still showed up at my house late that night, asking about Ash. When I told him I hadn't seen him for a day or two, he told me they had found his body.
After a terrifying trip through the wilderness and up the long, winding, deserted path to Stonegrave Manor, I got out of the squad car and Sheriff Cormac led me up to the ancient looking door. The towering entryway glowed enigmatically in the fog, making me even more apprehensive. The sheriff walked up and made use of the giant door knocker which caused me to almost yelp in surprise.
A few moments later, a young man emerged from the gloom inside and opened the massive door. He was probably a few years older than me, but he glared at me with suspicion and contempt around the sheriff.
“Mael. Go get your folks. I brought John Ward. I need to talk to your dad,” the sheriff said. The young man, Mael it sounded like, pushed the door open, smiling congenially at the sheriff and letting us inside. I didn't like his smile.
Mael led us to a parlor off the foyer of the mansion and went to get his dad. Inside, three other teens were sitting playing some elaborate card game. There was no doubt that the three in that room, the one who answered the door, and the object of my affection were siblings. They shared a certain angular, exotic look, though none present had that unusual violet hue to their eyes.
They all looked up at me with sharp interest when I came in, barely sparing a glance at the police officer behind me.
“My kids are playing that game too,” he said amicably to them as a group.
“It's pretty good,” said the youngest girl. She had delicate features, but they were contorted in a face of intense concentration, absorbed in a strategy meeting with the eldest about the configuration of the cards on the table.
“Let us know if Erica or James want to trade cards with us sometime. We've got quite a collection,” said the other girl. She was older than her sister, I could tell, and she was very pretty and quite composed, even while concentrating on the game.
Just then, an older man, their father, came in to collect Sheriff Cormac. They left the parlor, deserting me with the intimidating siblings of the girl I had fallen in love with.
“So you're the other one,” the eldest said, straightening up from behind his younger sister and lowering his gaze on me.
“He doesn't look like much,” the little sister appraised. I bristled at that, but I bit back my comeback. It wasn't the time or the place to get in a fight. And up until recently, I held the hope of becoming friends with this family and earning their respect.
“John Ward, right?” asked the older sister.
“Yeah,” I replied, unsure of where this was going. I felt like they were inspecting me. As though they were judging my worthiness of their sister.
“I'm Armelle.” After a pause, she added, “How ironic that the survivor would be named 'Ward'.”
“You said it,” the youngest agreed. I was missing the joke.
“Did you say survivor? You know what happened already?”
“Sheriff Cormac called dad right after they found him.”
“Do you know what happened to him?” I asked grimly.
“Not really,” Armelle replied. Her sister prodded her under the table to make her next move in the game and we were silent until their father showed up.
“John Ward, isn't it?” he said, shaking my hand. His expression was solemn but gentle. “I am Algernon la Mort. From what I've heard, you're a close friend of my daughter, Coventina, aren't you?” he asked with a slight foreign accent.
“Yes. Well, kind of. I was. Now I'm not so sure.”
“Oh don't worry, I'm sure you two will get along fine. Once this is all over with.”
“Where is she? Is she okay? I'm worried about how she's taking this,” I asked.
“She's talking with Jared. Sheriff Cormac, I mean. He needs to take her statement. Why don't you come talk with us. We want to hear about you and Ashton,” he said, leading me into the vast kitchen. He fixed a couple of mugs of hot cocoa and passed one to me, leaning on the counter.
“Go ahead and start at the beginning, if you will. We don't know much about you; Coventina doesn't talk to us much about her friends.”
I held my comment. She doesn't have enough to talk about I thought.
“We met at school of course. She was in my class last year, with him.” I still couldn't say his name. It was hard to come to grips with my friend being dead.
“She was really nice, and she was very pretty. She's kind of mysterious. Charming. I like the way she smiles, the way things seem to delight her so much.
“At first she was really shy. Nobody in our class had met her before, so we assumed that she'd been transferred. We didn't know she was from around here until later. The class seemed to like her enough, but no one helped her with homework or anything, so it seemed like she wasn't making that many friends.
“He and I, Ash that is, we started talking to her, when we had a book report. We found her outside the library. She was acting kind of strange, like apprehensive or something. It was like she'd never been in a library. She seemed to think it was a very serious place. We helped her find the book she was assigned. She got Clark Ashton Smith, which is way cooler than Hemingway or Sinclair, so we hung out and passed around Lost Worlds, Spells and Philtres, and Zothique. We got to know each other over homework at the library.
“Ash and I were really the only people she seemed to ever hang out with. We kind of protected her from the other kids, who thought she was weird. Since the class has been the same pretty much since we were all in kindergarten, most of the others didn't know what to think of her. I think Ash and I made an impression since we were friendly to her.”
“We thank you for that, John. I appreciate your efforts to help her adjust to her new surroundings.”
He poured us some more hot cocoa and arranged a plate of cookies and led me through the luxurious house to an office-type room with a huge old desk and several leather chairs.
“So tell me about you and Ashton,” he requested, plying me with a cookie.
“Ashton and I have been best friends since I can remember. We grew up together since we're neighbors over in town. We're almost... we were almost like brothers.”
“We can change the subject if it's too hard to talk about, John.”
“No that's alright. I'll be okay,” I said, trying to buck up and find some courage. I'd been feeling meek and useless and miserable for the last few days, but I finally had found something I could do about it. If I told the story, maybe it would all make sense. Mr. la Mort could fill in the gaps and it would all work out.
I started again. “Ashton was a great guy. He was nice to everyone but always stuck up for himself. He didn't let others get picked on and preferred people to discuss things rather than getting angry or arguing. He was like a comic book good guy. Honest, you know?
“I was always his right hand man. I backed him up when he got in a fight. I defended him when other kids made fun of him behind his back.
“It's not like we had some kind of reputation at school. There's lots of cliques. Neither one of us was particularly known for anything. We were just normal kids.”
“We both liked Coventina. She's kind of naïve, but it was cute. She shy but she's really sweet when you get to know her. I don't think either one of us realized we'd fallen for her.”
I was lost in thought as I talked. I was distracted by telling the story. I didn't even notice where we were going. I didn't even think. I was stuck reminiscing about the past and my friends. But my description of her ended when we reached our destination. Algernon la Mort locked the cellar door behind us after we entered.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I want to give you the chance to tell me everything that you know, because I'm almost sure you're going to hold some of it back. I don't want you to think that someone's going to get in trouble because of what you tell me. We're in confidence. No nosy sheriffs or siblings. Nothing will interfere with you here. You're safe. So go on, tell the rest of your story.”
I tried to block out the surroundings, fixating on the past and trying not to let my memory of the happy times slip away.
“We started hanging out together after school around Thanksgiving. She was upset about something, so we just sort of wandered around the school grounds for a while. We walked around, talking about nothing.
“Her story made me sad, so I made some stupid promise that I'd always be there to help her, that she could always depend on me for support and all that crap. It was hopelessly pathetic. I couldn't make it sound right. Couldn't convince her that she could confide in us, in me.
“But Ashton stood up for me. He told her that I meant it. And he meant it too. That the two of us would always be her friends and that we'd always share her burdens if she'd let us. Cheesy, I know. But she finally believed us.
“After that, I always found myself wondering what the hell had happened to her that she had so much trouble placing her faith in someone. She found it so hard to trust people, even if she knew they were sincere. I always wondered what happened to make her like that.” I cast my eyes away from Mr. la Mort. Now, I knew the truth. I knew exactly why she had so much trouble trusting people.
“I always suspected she was off spending time with her friends when she stopped coming home early.”
“She was with us. We never did anything... risky,” I lied. But you and I are the only ones who know that now. “We found stuff to keep occupied. We were always going and doing stuff, as often as we could afford. There's not much to do or see in Arkham, but I'm pretty sure we've seen it all.”
“I trust you two kept her safe,” he said, leveling a stern gaze at me.
I looked him back in the eyes, accusing him of all the things Ash and I had been told about.
“We did.”
“Good. Go ahead and continue your story,” he said, walking casually around the cellar and running his fingers over the ancient mouldering tomes on the shelves.
I took a deep breath before continuing. “We were both already in love with her before we knew it. Ashton and I were already head over heels for her. There's something inside a boy that makes him want to protect someone. He wants to make a girl safe. He wants to save someone. And that's how she made us feel. She made us feel like heroes. Like we were her personal saviors.
“We always came for her. She called me one night in December, and I met her at the park where the old River Street Warehouse used to be with Ash. She was really upset and it looked like she'd walked there from here in the snow.
“We got her some coffee at the shop across the way and went back to the park. None of us drank the coffee. It was horrible, but it warmed us all up. It was good to be together. Back then we knew we could count on each other.
“Reluctantly, she started on her story. She was so upset it was hard to get a grip on what she was telling us, but we tried to make sense of it. Apparently, she was sad because she was happy. She explained that she never used to have friends and that we'd made her life so much better that she'd been punished for it. She said her family had lectured her about how she was supposed to be a good little doll and keep her mouth shut.
Mr. la Mort looked frustrated and a little angry, but I forged ahead. He wasn't going to stop me now.
“We asked what she meant. She said that she hadn't been a real person until she came to school. She was just a shell. She told us about her childhood. She told us about how as a little baby her family kept her in a secret chamber that no one knew about. She told us how as a little kid she was treated like a savage animal and confined in a cage in the-” I choked back my disgusted tears, “in the basement.” I wiped my face and set my jaw. His eyes had hardened into emotionless steel orbs.
“She told Ashton and I about how her family abused her for their own ends. She told us about the room with the chains where you did- Did those hideous, monstrous things to her. All for what? For the sake of science? For magic? What for?” I seethed.
“How could you do those things? How could you? She's such a sweet, innocent girl! How could you use her like that? Like a doll? Like a toy?”
He stood, walking over to me, clenching his fists. I expected to be hit, but instead he gestured at the door.
I walked over, trying it. It was still locked. In a moment of panic, I struggled with it, trying to free myself from the stifling confines of that nauseating place.
“It's no use, John. It's locked. The door over there is unlocked, if you'd like to try that one.”
I walked to the other door and swung it open. But instead of light and escape, I saw a slick stone staircase leading nearly straight down. The scent of earth and decay wafted out, making my eyes water.
“Do you want to see that room, John?” he said, just before he pushed me.
I woke up some time later, tasting blood in my mouth and feeling a bone numbing chill. I was soaked and laying on something hard and immobile.
“This is my wife, Marion. Marion, this is John Ward,” Mr. la Mort said to me in the darkness. I craned my head to see, struggling against something holding my arms and legs down.
“Hello John, it's such a pleasure to finally meet you. I hear the most wonderful things about you from Coventina. She seems rather taken with you and your friend,” purred a dangerous voice in the shadows.
Mr. la Mort walked forward, looming up out of the shadows into the light of the candles around the stone table.
“Now, John. We need to have an agreement here. In exchange for telling us the rest of your story, and never speaking of this place or our daughter ever again, we will let you leave.”
“What if I refuse?” I asked, with more courage than I felt.
“You remember what she told you, don't you? About us? About the basement?”
“I forgot where I left off,” I said to the darkness, closing my eyes to shut out the horror.
“What happened after she told you about her upbringing?” he asked.
I gathered my wits. If I was going to escape, I needed to be able to tell the rest of it.
“She had a breakdown that night. She sobbed and sobbed. We didn't know what to do. We just took turns patting her back and petting her hair and getting drinks from the convenience store. She clung to us like we might suddenly disappear.
“She cried herself out, and opened herself up to us. She told us how she felt so grateful for us being there for her and how she felt about us. She thought of us as her guardian angels.” I sniffled, but I couldn't reach my face to wipe my nose.
“She told us about how she had never been let out of the house as a kid. She was treated like a doll most of the time. She didn't know anything about the rest of the world, so you had to train her to be a real person. You brutally tormented her, beating lesson after lesson on how to be a normal girl into her. When you could have just let her be.”
“You don't understand. If we hadn't trained her to act that way, she wouldn't even know to act that way. She couldn't be a normal girl. Not ever. You don't know what she-”
“Algernon,” Mrs. la Mort interrupted.
“My apologies. Please continue, John.”
“She was just sad. She didn't think she was a real person. She felt guilty about lying to us, making us think she was normal. But we just accepted her. That's it.”
“Surely there must be more to it than that,” Mrs. la Mort said.
“This was last year. You've still got a way to go to get to last Saturday,” Mr. la Mort said.
“It was after that night that I realized that I loved her. I was out of town with my folks for a few days when it hit me. I made sure that Ash was there for her, since she seemed fragile and we didn't want to desert her with her family. But my parents wouldn't let me stay home from the trip, so I had to entrust her to Ash.
“We were driving along the beach and I just sort of realized that there wasn't anything I'd rather do than sit next to her. Not eating or driving or hunting or playing card games or anything. I'd rather spend time with her than any one else in the world. And when I realized that I'd rather spend time with Coventina than Ashton, I figured it out. I was in love.”
“How sweet,” Mrs. la Mort said. I shuddered and ignored her.
“I thought about it a lot on that trip. I wondered what would happen. I wondered if she liked me the same way, or if she just saw me as a brother or a protector. I didn't want her to feel like she owed me anything. I wanted her to be happy and free, but I also desperately wanted her to love me like I loved her. I spent a lot of the trip writing these terrible love letters and burning them in the fire ring in my aunt's backyard while the adults talked inside.
“In the end I just wrote her a note that said I couldn't write a poem to save my life. I never gave it to her.
“I came back from Bridgeport and called up Ash. I wanted to know how she was. He said she'd been okay, no major incidents. She was still fragile, but she'd been keeping it together. He mentioned her coming over to his place and for the first time in my entire life, I felt jealous of my best friend. I wanted her to come over to my house. I was nervous that they had done something. I wanted her to love me, not him.”
“Jealousy is a sin, John.”
“So is abusing your daughter,” I snapped.
After a while I continued my story. It was very hard talk about what I did to Ashton now that I knew he was dead.
“I started to move towards her. It was unconscious at first, just drifting in her gravity well. I had started to try to put myself before Ashton with Coventina. I started trying to tell better jokes, take charge more, and act more than his equal. I was trying to make her more interested in me than him.
“It felt like betrayal. Because it was. I saw it in his eyes. The way we both got a little more over-the-top in our stories, the way we vied for her attention. I could see that he was trying to catch her too. I hated myself for it, but the idea of having her all to myself... it was too much.
“I called her up a lot, I'm sure you remember that. She got a cell pretty soon, since Ash and I were always on the phone with her. It seemed to help. She was more cheerful when she could talk to us. I think having people who wanted to talk to her, who really cared for her helped stabilize her.
“Ash and I spent long hours on the phone with her. At first, we didn't really notice each other, but it didn't take long to start stepping on each others toes. I'd call while they were talking and she'd put him on hold. Or he'd do the same thing to me. Or she wouldn't answer for a long time and I'd get upset since I knew what she was doing.
“Our first attempt at fixing the mess was to start hanging out together as a group even more. We started taking Ashton's car around town after he got his temps. He drove us around all over, up and down the Miskatonic and over to Blake Pond when it was frozen over. But it was always him driving her. I was tagging along. I was the third wheel in the car.
“I grew more adventurous, trying to be more daring than Ash. I tried to act macho, climbing into the abandoned buildings on the south side, helping the others into private land, sneaking into condemned farms out of town. I was so desperate to lead, to have her look up to me the way she did at him, I did everything I could think of to get her attention.
“It didn't work of course. She got wrapped up in Ashton's natural charm. He always had more presence than me, and it made me feel like an idiot for trying to be as cool as him.
“I hated every minute of it.”
“You poor thing,” mocked the haughty voice of Mrs. la Mort.
“I watched them move past me. They grew closer to each other, farther from me. I became thoroughly friend-zoned. You probably don't remember what it's like to want to be loved. You probably don't even remember what it's like to love anything at all,” I spat at the dark figures.
Mr. la Mort leaned over me, a menacing smile on his face. I saw in his face the depravity of someone who would abuse their own child for their own personal delusions and fantasies. I set my jaw.
“Tell me how Ashton Moore died, John,” he said.
“I followed them when he took her out on a date last Saturday. She was already visibly upset by the time they parked the car by the river. I hid back a ways in the trees, but they wouldn't have seen me anyway. I watched, waiting for Ashton to do something she might not like so I could stride up and stop him. I wanted to be the hero for once.
“She got more and more upset though. He tried to calm her down, but eventually he just sat there, looking at her. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but she kept talking for at least fifteen minutes straight, while Ash just sat there and listened.
“After a while she stopped and they were both quiet for a bit. Coventina was crying into her hands. I was almost ready to walk up and take her home when he said something to her that made her stop.
“She looked at him and begged him for something, crying 'please, no' over and over again, but he looked steadfast. Whatever he said, he was sticking to it.”
Mr. la Mort let out an exasperated sigh. “Sounds like she told him all about it,” he said.
“It does. And he actually agreed to it,” Mrs. la Mort said.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Nevermind,” they said.
“Continue,” they ordered.
“She reached into her pocket and pulled something out. It was paper, small, like a check or a note or something. It had something written on it and had a seal on it, like something official.
“He shouted 'do it!' at her and she started crying again. She leaned over and kissed him, and put the paper in his head. Like on his forehead.”
“What happened?” they asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing at first. He just sat there. His head rolled back.
“But then, he started having this seizure. His arms started flopping around and he started shaking and making this horrible gurgling noise. He was scrabbling around so much she climbed out of the car to get away from him.
“She stared at him, thrashing around, tearing at the car, just like me. Transfixed. Stunned.
“His arms became a blur as he kept going. He was moving so fast I couldn't keep up. Suddenly he went stiff for a couple of seconds or minutes or hours. Then he was limp.
“She ran away.
“So did I.”
They looked down at me, suspiciously for a while. I had nothing else to say. It was as close to the truth as I could comprehend. I couldn't talk about the things he said, that mournful, horrible voice.
“I assume you're telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, John,” Mr. la Mort said.
Before I could answer, there was a knock at the door.
As the two adults walked to the hidden door I struggled against my restraints. I pulled ferociously, but I couldn't pull them loose or slip out of them. It wasn't like the movies.
Behind the door was Sheriff Cormac. There was someone behind him, but I couldn't see from my angle on the stone slab.
“We got her story straight, Al. Don't worry about a thing. She knows what to tell people,” he said.
They followed him out into the stairwell and I collapsed back on the table.
That's when you came in, Coventina.
You loved him. You loved him more than me, didn't you. That's why I'm here in your basement. Because you killed him out of mercy. But you can't do that with me. Why?
I see.
Do it, Coventina.
Just promise me this, don't let them push you around any more. Please. For me.
Do it.
I lov ¡ª
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