From the Godless Abyss (The Dread Void Book 7), page 1
FROM THE GODLESS ABYSS
The Dread Void Book 7
ABE MOSS
Grim Heart Publishing
Copyright © 2022 by Abe Moss
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover Design by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design LLC.
NOVELS BY ABE MOSS
THE WRITHING
BATHWATER BLUES
BY THE LIGHT OF HIS LANTERN
LITTLE EMMETT
UNDER THE WICKED MOON
GILLS
A GHOST ARRIVES
RUBY HOLLOWAY READS AFTER DARK
Contents
1. Justine
2. Nell
3. Tessie
4. Nell
5. Lisa
6. Tessie
7. Nell
8. Lisa
9. Tessie
10. Nell
11. Tessie
12. Lisa
13. Tessie
14. Nell
15. Tessie
16. Lisa
17. Nell
18. Lisa
19. Tessie
20. Nell
21. Tessie
22. Lisa
23. Nell
24. Lisa
25. Tessie
26. Lisa
27. Nell
28. Nell
29. Tessie
30. Nell
31. Tessie
32. Nell
33. Lisa
34. Nell
35. Tessie
36. Lisa
37. Nell
38. Tessie
39. Nell
40. Tessie
41. Lisa
42. Tessie
43. Nell
A SPECIAL THANKS
Sneak Peek for Until the Dreaded End (The Dread Void Book 8)
1
Justine
In a cold, small, empty white room, cross-legged on her squeaky little cot in the corner, she watched the meager, sunlit emptiness before her with anticipating eyes. Watching for something to appear. Someone to appear. It was all she waited for these last couple days. Even in her daughter’s absence, without her miraculous touch to clear the madness from her mind, Justine remembered her. She remembered their meeting, though scattered and hard to focus upon in her memory now. There was a brightness there, in her mind. In a space usually filled with tedium, filled with time, filled with terrors she could never escape from, there was a brightness she now latched onto. She could think of nothing else. Most would find such obsession torturous, but it was a refreshing break from the usual mental wanderings in which she found herself entangled.
And so when that other light appeared in the room’s emptiness—a marvelous silver scar upon the lonesome air—Justine shivered with excitement. Her ghostly face drew itself into a mad, lopsided grin. Her heart doubled its beating, a familial warmth spreading through her still body. Like a tippy-tapping dog that could hardly hold itself still, she fidgeted toward the edge of her bed, bathed in the silver light she recognized now as her daughter’s entrance, the in-between realm that could link them.
The light wedged open. A violent parting. It jangled in the room’s oppressive silence, like glass chimes hung in a breeze, and a gust of wind swirled through Justine’s frazzled hair as she crept ever closer to the edge of the bed. An oval of silver light hung before her. A mirror without reflection, although a dark figure gradually took form in its frame. A form which, little by little, approaching the opening with greater and greater detail, resembled Justine’s daughter less and less.
Justine’s quivering smile fell slack. Her anxious fidgeting froze momentarily, paralyzed with confusion. A looming fear. A looming understanding.
The woman who stepped from the silver portal was not a stranger, but was a far cry from the sweet girl Justine waited for. A face she recognized, but did not fill her with warmth or adoration. A face from Justine’s distant past, one she recounted in her mind’s eye more often than she liked, altered now by time and hardship. It was a face Justine once associated with deception and wickedness, but was now marred with fresh injuries—blackened burns around her eye and cheekbone—rendering the woman incapable of concealing her nature, and as she moved into the room Justine’s confusion gave way to hatred, as clear and unflinching as the last day she laid eyes on her.
With a voice as twisted as a coiled-up snake, Anne-Marie said, “Long time, no see, Justine.”
2
Nell
“Nathan?”
Nell swallowed once more, her mouth so dry that her tongue smacked glue-like against the roof of her mouth. Her voice hung suspended on the telephone line, a terrible silence between herself and the young man on the other end—a terrible distance, however many miles separated them.
Then he spoke, and a slight relief came over her as she realized she hadn’t already lost him.
“Yeah. Who is this?”
Nell swallowed again, trying her damnedest to wet her mouth so that she might speak clearly. Something nudged her. A hand. Nell flinched toward the body beside her. Lisa’s body. Lisa offered her something. A glass of lemonade, left by Mrs. Harbour, the old woman of this house. Nell nodded gratefully, took the glass, took a swig of the sharply sweet beverage inside—winced as its sour tang bit at the edges of her tongue—and quickly handed the glass back to her friend.
She cleared her throat and tried again.
“My name is Nell Parrish. You don’t know me, but…” She paused. Hurricane thoughts. Hard to grasp. “I’m calling on behalf of your dad.”
On behalf? Really? What the hell?
“My dad?”
Nell caught herself nodding with the phone to her ear, as if the young man on the line could see her do it.
“Your dad,” she repeated. She took a deep breath, collecting herself. “Yes. You called and left your number, but… he never called back. Right?”
Again, a length of silence unspooled. Nell allowed her eyes to wander nervously around Mrs. Harbour’s parlor, until they settled on the bright yellow telephone sitting on the end table beside her.
“That was a while ago,” Nathan said. “Months, actually. Why are you calling and not him?”
Nell cringed. This was the hard part, wasn’t it? The explanation. The convincing. Impossible not to sound crazy. So easy to dismiss over the phone like this. He’d hang up in an instant, surely, and their chance would be lost.
“I need to see you,” Nell said. “It’s really important.”
“See me?” Nathan’s voice was pinched with skepticism. Wariness. He had every right to be wary, of course. She’d be wary too in his shoes. “Just tell me what this is about.”
Your dad is dead, Nell nearly said, but held her tongue. Somehow in the frantic swirl of thoughts inside her mind, she figured such honesty wouldn’t translate well.
“Your dad is in trouble,” she said instead. “Like… bad trouble. And I think you’re the only person who can help.”
What if he hates Hux, she wondered next. It had been months, like he said. Their chance to rekindle had staled. What did Nathan care if his estranged father was in trouble? He owed Hux nothing. Hux was as much a stranger to him as Nell, surely…
From the other end of the line, Nathan seemed to shift around. A whisper of the phone against his face, or the rustle of his clothes as he took a seat or paced about.
“What do you mean, trouble?”
“It’s…” Nell hesitated. “It’s a lot to explain, but…”
But you’d better explain it, and you’d better explain it well.
“Who are you?” Nathan asked suddenly. “How do you know my dad?”
This was more difficult than Nell anticipated. She wished she’d had more time to come up with a plan, or a script at the very least. She supposed the honest truth would sound absurd, but any lie would require a dozen more to keep the story straight, right?
“I’m just a friend,” she told him.
The silence that followed was the deepest yet. Nell suspected Nathan might have held his breath, listening, processing.
“I don’t know what all you might know about him,” Nell went on, “but I do know if I tell you the whole truth, you’ll think I’m crazy. That’s why I need to see you. I can explain everything in person, I think. And this isn’t a weird scam or anything, either, I swear, it’s… well, it’s just important, is all. More important than you could possibly know.”
The line filled with a harsh wind as Nathan exhaled noisily on the other end.
“And where exactly are you located, Nell?”
“Oh. Um…” She had to think about it for a second. “Massachusetts. Marrow Falls, Massachusetts. But it won’t really—”
“Ah. Well I’m in Portland, Maine. I don’t suppose you’re going to drive all this way to see me?”
“I can be there sooner than you think.”
Okay, now he’s really gonna think you’re crazy…
“How’s that now?”
Nell scrambled for something else to say. Something more reasonable than that. He didn’t need to know her method of transportation, did he? No. Not yet. A white lie would do splendidly for the time being.
“I can drive,” she said. “It
“How old are you? You sound really young…”
Nell clenched her jaw.
“Just trust me,” she said. “I know that’s a lot to ask, but it’s—”
“But it’s important,” Nathan finished, his tone bordering on impatience. “So I’m guessing you want my exact address, then, is that it?”
It did sound weird, Nell knew. Not just weird, but suspicious. Dangerous. She didn’t know what else to say, how else to convince him. Luckily, she didn’t have to think on it much.
“Okay. You have something to write it down?”
Nell’s heart sang with unexpected relief. Was he serious? She chose to believe he was, though she detected a definite lack of enthusiasm in his voice, as if he still suspected this all might be an elaborate ruse. For all he knew, she was plotting some convoluted scheme to steal his identity or something of that nature…
“One second,” she told him. She put the phone to her shoulder, muffling herself to him, then said to Lisa, “I need a pen.”
Lisa darted into the kitchen, where Nell could hear hers and Mrs. Harbour’s indistinct voices. In a matter of seconds Lisa returned and thrust a blue ballpoint at Nell, which she took hastily and dropped to her knees beside the end table, the notepaper with Nathan’s phone number before her. She flipped it to its blank side.
“Okay, I’m ready.”
She wrote the address carefully as Nathan recited it in that same halfhearted tone of his, then asked him to repeat it once more just to be sure.
“I’m not giving you my apartment number,” he said. “But I can keep an eye out. When’s a good time? Personally I’m free in the evenings—”
“Hopefully in the next few minutes,” Nell told him.
“Huh?”
“Please just trust me,” she said again. “I know I sound insane, but… well, you don’t know the half of it yet.”
Nell hung up the phone before Nathan could utter another word. She picked up the notepaper with his address, reading it over once, twice, three times as Lisa stood waiting patiently before her.
“Maybe not the best way to end a conversation,” Lisa said.
Nell shrugged. “I don’t think he believes I’m coming. Probably thinks we’re prank calling him or something.”
“How messed up would that be?” Lisa said. “Calling someone about their dead dad just to prank them.”
“He doesn’t know Hux is dead. I didn’t tell him that.” Nell read the address a couple more times. “Now I just need to figure out how to take us there. I don’t know how to find some random address I’ve never been to before, or if maybe the Void will meet me halfway…”
“Can you do it?”
“I dunno. Maybe. Maybe I won’t even need this, now I’ve talked to him. If I can find you in the Void, maybe I can find him, too…”
Nell recalled Hux explaining his own power to her once: unless the Void was summoning him, he had to know where he was going—either by having been there before, or by first having a clear vision of the place. Nell had never been to Portland, Maine, nor did she have any vision of it. Perhaps Mrs. Harbour, the elderly woman eavesdropping in the next room, owned a computer they could use. Perhaps if Nell saw a picture of the city, she could take them there. Anything would help. The Void in her blood would do the rest.
“Mrs. Harbour?”
Nell started toward the kitchen as the old woman appeared near-instantly in the doorway, having been standing just around the corner already.
“Yes, dear,” she said.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a computer, would you?”
“A computer?” The old woman’s mouth scrunched, lips pursed, head shaking slowly. “No, I’m afraid I don’t. But the neighbors do, as I recall. Is it an emergency?”
Nell sighed. “That’s all right. Thank you for letting us use your phone.”
“And for the lemonade,” Lisa added with a smile, which Nell thought peculiar. Politeness wasn’t a muscle Lisa flexed often.
“Of course,” Mrs. Harbour said. “Is everything all right?”
“Yeah, everything’s fine,” Nell said. She looked toward the entry, reluctant to head outside again where she and Lisa would be vulnerable—she had just rescued Lisa from the Marrow Falls Police Department, after all. Regardless, Nell positioned herself in that direction as Lisa was already making her way there. “We’ve gotta meet a friend now, is all.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Harbour said, a clear sadness to see them go. “Well I’m so glad you decided to stop by. You’re welcome to visit any time.”
Nell stopped near the door. Mrs. Harbour followed closely, hands held anxiously against her belly, one hand clasped over the tips of the fingers on the other. Nell turned to her one last time, saw the way her anxious face pulled itself into a smile to conceal her loneliness, and couldn’t help but throw her arms around the old woman—perhaps a little too aggressively. Mrs. Harbour gasped, surprised, then giggled softly in Nell’s ear.
“I’ll visit again,” Nell said. “I promise.”
As she embraced the old woman, Nell blinked slowly, and from the corner of her eye she glimpsed something in the parlor where they’d just left.
A strange, silver light.
Oh shit.
It sprang open beside them with a gust of wind. Nell and Mrs. Harbour both pulled away from one another as they turned to see it. A Void portal. A dark figure already stepping through. Mrs. Harbour gasped, caught stiffly in place. More familiar with the phenomenon, Nell gave the old woman a gentle push.
“Mrs. Harbour, you need to hide. Please.”
The old woman said nothing. Her bright eyes remained fixed to the silver light, mouth agape and trembling. She withdrew a little as the figure stepped out of the portal and into the light of the parlor. Then the front door opened at Nell’s back.
“Nell, come on,” Lisa said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Stop!” Anne-Marie moved toward them. Her slitted eyes darted between Nell and Lisa, then the old woman beside them, only barely taking note of her. “Don’t move.”
“Try and stop me,” Nell said, taking one step back.
“Walk out that door and your mother dies.”
Nell’s brain hiccuped. All thought escaped her. Had she heard that right?
“What?”
“Try to run again,” Anne-Marie continued, “and your mother will be killed.”
As her words finally registered, Nell scoffed.
“Whatever. You don’t have my mom.”
“Oh, but we do. Snatched her right out of that sad little asylum.”
As Nell and Lisa stood in utter silence, Mrs. Harbour jabbered meaninglessly beside them, a torrent of questions and accusations and bewilderment piling up in the back of her throat.
“It’s time to stop running,” Anne-Marie said. “You need to come with me. Now.”
Nell looked to Lisa behind her, as if she might have an answer, some kind of reinforcement, but found her face blanched and terrified. Lisa’s sparkling eyes met her own and a grimace formed on her mouth.
“It’s okay,” Lisa said. “Go. I’ll be all right.”
Nell didn’t doubt that. Lisa could get by for the time being, she was sure. But everything else—Hux, Tessie, the whole world, maybe?—was less certain. Would submitting to Anne-Marie save her mother? Knowing Anne-Marie, probably not. And what would ultimately come of her cooperation? The end of everything?
But if I resist, Nell thought, the killing surely won’t end with my mom.
The next best collateral was standing just behind her.
