The Grim Passing

A short story

This is a short story that I have written in response to a prompt that A.M. Blackmere and I created. A.M. Blackmere | Author is an author of gothic and medieval horror who, amongst other projects, serializes his novel A Procession of Ashes.

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On a foggy night in the middle of winter, the mist rolled in from the Inner Ocean. Creeping through the streets of Carapaethyn, it turned solid objects into smoky suggestions - sounds beyond sight inspiring something akin to fear.

The Grim Passage had arrived. Both moons had gone dark, leaving the sky to stars too weak to penetrate the fog. The city had prepared in its way, lighting the enclosed street lamps early, each one creating its own small island of visibility in an ocean of nothing. The torches inside the glass flickered like trapped souls, which, given the night, might have been exactly what they were.

Even the name made Kytes’ skin prickle - the Grim Passage. On the first night of every year, when Aldoryn and Zephyra both turned their faces away, the dead wandered unwitnessed.

He’d heard the stories. Everyone had, even orphans who had to piece together traditions from scraps and rumors. Don’t look out the windows during the Grim Passage. Don’t answer if you hear your name called. Don’t follow anyone who walks backward. Don’t trust anyone whose feet don’t touch the ground. The list went on, rules for surviving a night when the boundary between living and dead grew so thin that sometimes it was possible to see across.

The priests said it was when souls that had been lingering finally found their way to whatever came next. The old women in the market said that, on that night, the dead come looking for what they’d left behind. The thieves said it was a great night for business if you didn’t mind risking more than your neck.

Kytes minded.

But his stomach offered its own opinion on the matter, a long, hollow complaint that had been building since yesterday’s breakfast, a small loaf of bread he’d lifted from a baker’s cart while the man argued with his wife about whose mother was worse. Hunger was its own kind of ghost, following him through the streets, conjuring fantasies of pork sausages and sugary cakes.

But not tonight. Tonight, the city had battened down like a ship before a storm. Every door locked, every window shuttered, every family huddled together waiting for morning to chase away whatever walked the streets. Even the taverns had closed shop.

Kytes turned into an alley narrow enough that he could touch both walls if he stretched his arms. It was the kind of passage that existed because nobody had bothered to plan properly. More importantly, it ran behind a row of houses.

He tried the first door. Locked, naturally. The handle was cold, having sat in the fog all day. The second door was the same. The third had a bar across it.

The light was failing properly now. Soon it would be full dark, and the only light would be those trapped torches, and you would have to run between their light, hoping nothing grabbed your ankles in between.

Kytes tried another door. Locked.

The darkness was deepening, and somewhere, something that might have been the wind whispered sounds that sounded like they could have been words.

Then, he saw it. A chimney rising from a house at the alley’s end, wide as a wine barrel and, more importantly, no smoke.

No smoke meant no fire. No fire meant a way in that didn’t involve breaking anything or picking locks he didn’t have tools for.

Kytes grabbed two crates and stacked them atop one another. He climbed them with the ease of someone who’d been using the city as a playground since before he could remember. The wood groaned but held, and from the top crate he could almost reach the second-floor windowsill.

He jumped, caught the sill and for a moment hung there - feet scrabbling against the wall like he was trying to run up it through sheer determination. Then his left foot found what it was looking for - a decorative bit of stonework that some long-dead mason had thought would make the building look fancier than its neighbors.

He got an elbow over the sill, then the other, hauling himself up. The window was right there, close enough to fog with his breath. He tried it, but he handle didn’t budge. The window was locked tight as a miser’s purse.

The sill was wide enough to crouch on if you didn’t mind that falling meant breaking things that didn’t heal right when you couldn’t afford to see the surgeon. He pressed his back against the window frame and slowly stood.

Above him, the roof edge hung just out of reach. Kytes bent his knees and jumped.

His fingers caught the edge of the roof tiles, one of which immediately slid free and dropped into the fog below. He heard it shatter somewhere down there. If someone was walking around on the Grim Passage, a falling tile was probably the least of their problems.

He dangled for a moment, arms already burning. Then he found the wall with his feet, walked them up until he could hook an elbow over the edge, then dragged himself onto the roof, scraping his belly across tiles.

He crawled on all fours toward the chimney, staying low. It stood before him in the murk, a darker shadow among shadows.

He touched the bricks. Cool as the fog around them. He peered down into the darkness and saw nothing. The opening was just wide enough for someone his size.

Kytes swung his legs over the edge and began his descent.

The smell hit first - soot and old smoke and something that might have been a bird’s nest. The bricks were rough against his palms, offering grip but taking skin. He braced himself between the walls, moving down inch by inch, trying not to think about what would happen if someone decided to light a fire right now.

Halfway down, something skittered past his face. He bit his tongue to keep from crying out, tasting copper. Rat, bat, or something worse - it continued on its way. The darkness was total now, and he navigated by touch alone, his world shrunk to the few inches of brick under his hands and feet.

Then his foot found metal - a grate. The bottom.

The grate swung open on hinges that had been oiled recently. He lowered himself through and dropped the last few feet.

The room materialized around him as his eyes adjusted. A main room, humble but neat. A table with three chairs, one mended with rope where the leg had broken. A few shelves holding dishes that didn’t match but were clean. And there, in the corner, a sight that made his chest tight with something that wasn’t quite envy but was definitely related.

A family, sleeping together on a pile of straw covered with blankets. The father against the wall, protective even in sleep. The mother curled against him, one arm thrown across a child maybe five or six.

They’d pushed their sleeping spot as far from the windows as possible, right into the corner where two walls met, like they were trying to make themselves a smaller target for whatever might look in.

The father stirred.

Kytes froze.

A small door, probably a closet. Kytes moved toward it, holding his breath, willing himself to put as little weight as possible on the floorboards.

The father muttered something in his sleep, rolled over, one arm reaching for his wife. She made a small sound of contentment, burrowing closer. The child between them didn’t stir at all, lost in whatever dreams came to children who had parents to stand between them and the dark.

Kytes reached the closet door, eased it open just enough to slip through. Inside was darkness and the smell of leather and oil. Working clothes hanging from pegs. Boots that had been mended several times.

He pulled the door almost closed, leaving just a crack to see through.

The father began to snore.

Kytes’ stomach reminded him why he’d come. Food. These people had to have food.

He waited until the snoring developed a rhythm, the kind that meant deep sleep. Then he eased the closet door open again and crept toward the other room, the one that had to be where they kept their food.

The door was open. Inside, shelves that should have held plenty but held almost nothing. A jug that might have had milk but now held just enough to color the bottom. A heel of bread that wouldn’t feed a rat properly, let alone a person. Some roots that looked older than Kytes, withered to the point where even cooking wouldn’t save them.

These people had less than he did. At least he could steal. They just had to endure, had to make nothing stretch into something, had to pretend their stomachs weren’t eating themselves while they smiled and told their child that everything was fine.

The window in this room looked out onto the street. He could see fog pressing against the glass like it wanted in. Something moved out there, a shadow that might have been a person or might have been something that used to be one.

Then he heard it. His name. Soft as breathing, clear as breaking glass.

“Kyyyytes...”

Not outside. That would have been bad but explainable. Wind did strange things. Fog played with sound. But this came from inside, from the main room, from where the family slept.

He turned, and through the doorway saw the child sitting up, eyes closed, mouth moving. Saying his name. How did she know his name? He’d never seen this family before, never stolen from them, never even walked past their house that he could remember.

“Kyyyytes... come here, Kytes...”

The smart thing would be to run. Climb back up that chimney and take his chances with the fog and the dark and whatever walked the streets tonight. He took a step toward the main room. Then stopped. The child’s eyes were still closed. She was still asleep. And the voice…

The voice was coming from behind her, from the corner where shadows gathered thicker than they should.

No. No, no, no. This was exactly what the stories warned about. The dead calling your name. The dead trying to trick you into looking, into answering, into acknowledging them so they could...what? He didn’t know, but he was sure it was worse than starving.

He backed into the storage room, closed the door as quietly as he could. His hands were shaking now, and not from cold. The window was right there. He could break it, deal with the noise, run into the night and hope that whatever was in the corner was more interested in the family than in him.

But the family…

The father who put himself against the cold wall. The mother who held her child. The little girl who slept between them, safe and loved and completely unaware that something dead knew a street thief’s name and was using her voice to say it.

No. He couldn’t leave them to that.

But he couldn’t fight it either. What was he going to do, stab a shadow? Threaten empty air with his little knife?

So he did the only thing he could think of. He went back to the closet, pulled the door shut, and made himself as small as possible in the back corner behind the hanging clothes that smelled of honest work and careful mending.

The voice kept calling, soft and insistent. Sometimes it sounded like the child. Sometimes like a woman.

Then he heard movement. Real movement, not ghost movement. Footsteps. The mother, getting up, moving around. He peered through the crack and saw her going to the fireplace. She knelt, began arranging kindling with the patience of someone who’d done this every cold morning for years.

The Grim Passage was cold, and cold killed as surely as ghosts, just slower. The flame caught, small at first, then growing. Smoke began to rise, pulled up through the chimney he’d climbed down.

The firelight did something to the shadows in the corner. Made them dance. Made them look almost like a person, if people were made of darkness.

The mother returned to her family, curling back up against her husband, pulling her daughter close. The fire crackled, eating wood, making the kind of normal sounds that homes made when they were lived in properly.

Kytes sat in the closet, trapped but oddly not minding as much as he should. The fire’s warmth reached even here, just enough to take the edge off the cold. He could hear the family breathing, the father snoring, the child making small sleep sounds that suggested better dreams than before.

His stomach had stopped complaining. Or maybe he’d stopped listening. Hard to tell the difference sometimes. He pulled his knees up to his chest, wrapped his arms around them, made himself into a ball of boy in the corner of a closet in a house that wasn’t his, hiding from things that might or might not be real while a family that didn’t know he existed slept on the other side of a door he couldn’t open without ruining everything.

But he was warm. And he was, in his own way, keeping them safe. He’d taken nothing from people who had nothing to take. He’d left their food for their child, their wood for their fire, their morning for their waking.

The Grim Passage would end with dawn. Zephyra would return to the sky tomorrow, thin as fingernails but there. The dead would go back to being dead.

But for tonight, he would stay here in the dark that wasn’t quite dark, in the warmth that wasn’t quite warm, in the family that wasn’t quite his. He would listen to them breathe and know that somewhere, in houses all across Carapaethyn, other families were doing the same thing.

Outside, something that might have been wind howled his name one more time.

Inside, nobody answered.