The Things Betwixt...

Aimee Rivery's Séance

"Daily Flash Fiction Challenge"  Winner! 11-24-2015

I sat betwixt a gathering of the sullen well-offs of Abbey Wood on midsummer’s eve. Lightning flickered through the windows of a dark, dull, and dreadfully silent room wherein we circled around a small table. Our hands stretched before us, each tip of thumb and finger touching our neighbors’. Our spirit link, a decaying woman veiled in black sat at the head of the table. Her eyes were shut and she convulsed and undulated as she whispered some inaudible incantation in effort to invoke the spirits of the deceased.

I held morbid fascination whilst the others were wide-eyed and afraid, or vexed and skeptical. It was upon the swirling vortex of smoky blue liquid escaping our lady’s lips their skepticisms were abandoned. The room quaked a violent, bone shattering rumble as a candle ignited in the center of the table. It was then I felt it. A foreboding it was. An utter abandonment of all thought and reason that would beget the root of a trepidation so palpable, I felt its cold touch against my skin.

Upon the wall, our shadows danced about as the flame swelled. A pencil thin line of black rose betwixt us, swelling to the shape of a child.

“I speak for the dead,” I heard the woman rasp with a low, rattling voice.

I felt their hands tremble as the lady’s eyes opened, and focused upon the woman on my right. Adorned in fine scarlet silk she was, the Lady Aimee Rivery.

“Your daughter has a message.”

Aimee’s face went ashen as she rose from her seat. Blood streaked betwixt her bosom as intangible claws raked across her throat. Her eyes lost their luster and she fell to the floor.

“None can escape their guilt,” the lady rasped as the gathering fell from their seats.

Word Count - 300
Aimee Rivery was the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner of Martinique, who mysteriously vanished in 1788.