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Back Gallows Hill Save as PDF
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Of course. My parents owned a small winery. It makes sense to have wine at the reception.

The bottles were dark, which let the stark-white label stand out. The logo was simple: a tree’s silhouette, leafless, its dead branches twisting into unfathomable and arcane shapes. Below that, in a formal serif font: Gallows Hill Winery.

That logo touched something at the back of Margot’s mind. A memory. Or perhaps the impression of a memory. Maybe even a dream. Dark and dead branches, enormous, twisting, writhing—

She turned away from the table, her heart racing as she tried to catch a hold of it, a fleeting memory from the first eight years of her life. It flowed away from her like water between her fingertips, and the harder she tried to hold on, the faster it vanished.

A cold, bony hand landed on her forearm. Fingers dug in. Any noise Margot might have wanted to make died in her squeezing throat.

The woman before Margot had to be at least eighty. She barely came up to Margot’s midchest. Her skin was an unsettling white and heavily creased, and Margot had the impression of bleached, crumpled crepe paper. Long, white hair had been plaited and then pinned into a knot behind her head. The only respite from the white came from her green eyes, blurred with cataracts, and the loosely layered black clothes.

“I’m so very sorry.” The hand on Margot’s forearm was so translucent that blue veins were visible as they pulsed beneath. The grip tightened a fraction. “You’re the daughter, aren’t you?”

She struggled to smile. “Ah, yes.”

“Ooh.” She made a faint shushing noise. “Poor thing. I am so sorry.”

I am so sorry. Those were common enough words at a funeral, but something about the way she said them made Margot’s skin crawl. As though it wasn’t just a platitude. As though she was apologizing. “What…”

“I should have been there that Friday.” A rasping, coughing noise caught in her throat. The woman closed her eyes and leaned nearer. “Should have. But I was sick. Pneumonia, yes? Couldn’t get out of bed. Couldn’t be there. And now…”

Margot’s pulse beat hard, a tempo that pushed until she thought her very veins would burst.

“Such an awful thing,” the woman murmured, and the coughs returned, deep, slow, and rasping, like a saw drawn through dry wood. She struggled to speak through them. “They weren’t perfect people but they didn’t deserve that.”

“Do you…” Margot’s voice cracked. She was acutely aware of the bodies around her. The glances. The whispers. The pressing heat of a hundred strangers crowded inside the tent. “How did they die?”

The woman lifted her head. Her eyes were narrowed and, beneath the cataracts, sharp. One hand came up and pressed against Margot’s cheek. The flesh was cold. Clammy.