“You see?” she says, placing her hand on the spot. “I’m not in the slightest embarrassed, but I wanted him to know right away. Now the war is over, he’ll be free to return with me, won’t he? I don’t imagine his commanding officer can keep him here that much longer—although, come to think of it, his commanding officer might perform the marriage himself? Don’t they have that authority?”

“His commanding officer is dead! Everyone in the unit is dead!” Saskia shouts.

Her mother blanches.

“You said you saw him alive!”

“He’s dead! He’s dead!”

“You said you saw him alive!”

“... He must be dead by now. No one can live in there.”

“Sosska, I’ve been told there are people living there.”

No response.

“Isn’t that true?” she presses.

“Yes, yes, but they’re all insane. And so will he be, by now, if he still lives.”

“He won’t go mad,” her mother says. “You didn’t. You escaped. It can be done. Perhaps you and Orvar will go soon, and help him. You must help him if you can.”

Saskia drops jerkily onto a bench by the window, her eyes averted.

“Sosska, you should rest. We all must rest, and be strong,” she says, stepping outside. She doesn’t look up at the mountains tufted with fog. Orvar strides past her, to fetch the carriage she insisted they bring with them on the ship. He brings it forward, harness jingling.

“Your sister is a good soldier. When the family is back together, she will teach you to be a good soldier, too. She and your father, both.”

As the carriage pulls up to the porch, she is distracted, her hand on top of her abdomen, listening down into her stomach toward the baby.

About the Author

Michael Cisco is the author of novels The Divinity Student (Buzzcity Press, 1999, winner of the International Horror Writers Guild award for best first novel of 1999), The Tyrant (Prime, 2004), The San Veneficio Canon (Prime, 2005), The Traitor (Prime, 2007), The Narrator (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2010), The Great Lover (Chomu Press, 2011), Celebrant (Chomu Press, 2012), and MEMBER (Chomu Press 2013). His short story collection, Secret Hours, was published by Mythos Press in 2007.

His fiction has appeared in Leviathan III (Wildside, 2004) and Leviathan IV (Night Shade, 2005), The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases (Bantam, 2005), Cinnabar's Gnosis: A Tribute to Gustav Meyrink (Ex Occidente, 2009), Last Drink Bird Head (Ministry of Whimsy, 2009), Lovecraft Unbound (Dark Horse, 2009), Phantom (Prime, 2009), Black Wings I (PS Press, 2011), Blood and Other Cravings (Tor, 2011), The Master in the Cafe Morphine: A Homage to Mikhail Bulgakov (Ex Occidente Press, 2011), The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities (Harper Voyager, 2011), The Weird (Tor, 2012), and elsewhere. His scholarly work has appeared in Lovecraft Studies, The Weird Fiction Review, Iranian Studies and Lovecraft and Influence.

Michael Cisco lives and teaches in New York City.