The Empath's Tale: The Whole Story

By Steve Dillon

This is the first time we've published the whole set of parts 1-6 of The Empath's Tale. Approximately 50,000 words of paranoia, occult horror, monsters and mayhem as Joe Dolan tries to unravel the mysteries of Refuge... Horror Heads art by Steve Dillon, (C) 2016.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Dillon
• Release date: Nov 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370641529

Steve Dillon

I was born when the world was a lot younger in Liverpool, England, and now live mostly in Tasmania, having had the amazing opportunity to live in Belgium and Canada. I enjoy my horror with a supernatural and psychological flavour; my main inspiration comes from the workings of Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, HP Lovecraft, M.R. James. More recently I have focussed on writing and publishing short stories. My most recent project was the Things in The Well series of anthologies and collections which comprise 28 books in total, including my own collections 'The Beard and Other Weirdness' and 'Deeper, Darker Things and Other Oddities,' the lead story from which was nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award for best novella in 2020.Prior to the above, I was series editor and contributing artist and writer on 'The Refuge Collection', a selection of 36 short stories about a mythical dystopian future shared-world set in a town called Refuge: Heaven to Some.. Hell to Others - All the proceeds for both anthologies went (and still do) to support refugees in need of help through two established charities: Sanctuary Australia Foundation and Refugee Action UK.In 2013 I published 'Book of the Tribes - a Tribute to Clive Barker's Nightbreed,' and in the 1980s I was publisher and editor for a monthly magazine called 'Adventurer'.

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The Empath’s Tale 1-6

The Whole Story

By Steve Dillon

Part of the Refuge Collection

Copyrights

‘The Empath’s Tale 1-6’

© Copyright Steve Dillon

Artwork: Steve Dillon

All other art and text © Copyright Steve Dillon

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

It may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

Please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

All author and publisher proceeds go to:

Sanctuary Australia Foundation (http://www.sanctuaryaustraliafoundation.org.au)

"For over 25 years, Sanctuary has sponsored, provided interest-free travel loans, and resettled Government approved humanitarian entrant refugees, helping them to rebuild their lives in Australia from war zones around the world. Sanctuary is an award winning organisation,

run with the utmost integrity."

The Empath’s Tale 1-6

by Steve Dillon

Part One

A Headful of Hornets

Joe Dolan woke with a headful of hornets.

An entire nest of them had invaded his brain and made his body contort in agony. He clutched his head with clawed fingers, screwed his eyes tight and bashed his head down into the pillow…

The last digit on his bedside clock flipped from 3:14 to 3:15 and Refuge went deathly quiet. Joe threatened to wake everyone with his screams. The 3, the 1 and the 5 blinked at him, warning him to keep quiet.

He cursed his gift at times like this. The daydreams and visions threatened that something big was coming, like a church bell tolling a plague warning. The problem was, the church bell rang all too often lately, so he ignored it. What was that story, he wondered? That’s it—the boy who cried wolf.

And with every tolling of this bell, every attack launched by the crazed hornets, that awful smell. Like vanilla, but with an underlying stench that was sickening. He’d never known it before coming to Refuge, never met the hornets before.

He’d been a single man and a successful doctor back home, but the qualification meant nothing here, despite six years of study and three more years in practice. Hard practice. Wartime practice. Despite all that, his doctorate certificate was only worth the paper it was printed on. Well, less really, because one side had been spoiled by ink proclaiming his ‘Doctor of Medicine.’

Joe had used his life’s savings (and more) to move to Refuge two years ago after the family home had been blasted to firewood, giving his mum a major heart attack, and badly burning his brother Jack’s lumbar region, hamstrings and calves. Joe had been lucky, he realised. He’d rushed out minutes earlier to attend to victims of a road traffic accident. The impact of the missile still managed to knock him off his feet, it was that close. It had been aimed at the police station next door, or so the news reports made out, but Joe wasn’t certain. He’d attended too many victims of indiscriminate killings. In his experience, explosions didn’t differentiate between civilians, the military or the authorities.

The missile had demolished their home and hospitalized his mum and brother, but it had also robbed Joe and his family of their possessions, their sleep, their sense of security, and their dignity. Afraid for his life, and theirs, he’d been lucky to find a position as a care-giver in the Asylum near the small town of Refuge. This meant he’d have to leave his family and start afresh in a different country, but he would send for his mum and brother to join him later. Their dad hadn’t been seen in five years and the family presumed he was dead.

The remainder of Joe’s savings, boosted by financial assistance from a wealthy family member had meant he could move to Refuge and rent part of a house at number 15 Acacia Avenue. The agent had described the house as a Victorian-style Kentish cottage, bordered by a traditional English rose garden. A true chocolate box of a cottage. Shared kitchen. Private Bathroom. No social security tenants.

Joe shared the cottage with the Frankson family, who’d been blessed with three kids, although they were so quiet and well-behaved that—at times—Joe could hardly believe it. When he met Elspet and their baby was born, it had become a bit cramped and he’d hoped to move to a larger house, one where they might have room for his mum and brother.

The rental agent’s spiel had continued:

"Its sunny aspect permits reflected light to spill into the alleyway separating it from an 18th Century Inn at the corner of Acacia Avenue and Wimpole St. The quaint, shaded frontage of the Blue Frog tavern yields to the brighter atmosphere of a walled garden, home to numerous butterflies and the last of the summer’s bumble bees."

It hadn’t described how the lavender-lined path failed to overpower the foul smell from the broken sewer pipes feeding into the waste confluence from higher up Acacia Avenue. Or the rotten window frames that allowed the pong, carried by the wind, to visit them whenever it liked. The leaking roof above the shared kitchen also went unmentioned. Neither they nor the Franksons had the spare cash to get this fixed, but luckily the agents ‘were onto it.’

They’d been onto it for six weeks now.

Joe had foolishly chosen to ignore the warning signs over the past few days, but he hadn’t expected anything as bad as this. The distant buzzing of the hornets and accompanying vanilla smell; he should have guessed something big was on its way.

It was by far the worst hornet-blitz ever—that’s how he’d come to think of these recurrent episodes when he’d wake from troubled nightmares, screaming and sweating. It was a portent; an omen and a summoning from the lassitude and indolence of the past few weeks since Elspet had disappeared.

The normal dreaming of an hour or so ago had receded, replaced by random images. In his semi-consciousness, he’d been devising plans for where he should next search for his wife. These had yielded to a thick migraine cloud, carrying rainbows of abstract colour swirls, crashes of thunder and lightning flashes that made his eyeballs quiver.

In turn, the migraines were replaced by lucid fantasies and nightmares, so depraved he almost wished the migraines would return.

Vivid imagery of appalling, as yet uncommitted atrocities were acted out for his private viewing. Horror stories projected against non-descript and desolate backgrounds in the theatre of his mind. At one point in his dreaming, a disfigured dwarf, painted and dressed as a Pierot clown, was obscenely gesticulating in slow motion while perched on the end of the bed. Images of grotesquery blazed through his eyes, painting illusions on the front of his skull that were so convincing and meticulously detailed, they could be clinically defined as hallucinations. It was like Delirium without drugs, he explained to the few friends who remained true.

Joe’s teeth were clenched, and he unwittingly muttered expletives, in danger of waking the Franksons in the room next door, and his 7-month-old daughter, Amy. He used her wooden cot to haul himself painfully and stiffly from his bed, with all the athleticism and enthusiasm of a centuries-old corpse summoned from its grave.

Looking after Amy had been Joe’s main preoccupation and sole responsibility since Elspet disappeared. His wife had been enjoying a weekend cruise with some girlfriends three weeks earlier. Where had this gift been then, he’d cursed both gods and demons alike.

The hen party had been organised and paid for by the bride’s best friend, Nan, a beautiful Thai Princess, Joe thought. Elspet was slightly older and was one of only a few non-Asians aboard the Bengaria. He’d been anxious for his wife’s safety as he’d heard tales of pirates in the area where the cruise-ship would be sailing. But the hornets hadn’t invaded his headspace, so he’d assumed there’d be no trouble and she’d be safe. It was only a weekend trip, after all.

Joe had driven to the Cruise Ship terminal the following Monday evening, as planned. The café where they’d arranged to meet was closed. He waited outside for a while and sent her a text. When there was no reply, he’d left a note on the dashboard of the car to say he’d meet her in the Kraken, a nearby hotel and bar. It was full of sailors and dock workers, and a faint smell of herring filled the place. This was one of the downsides accompanying the major employer in Refuge; the Cannery. Joe had waited for ninety minutes, but Elspet didn’t show. He’d rang her phone, but it was turned off. He’d been worried and annoyed, but remembered she’d often had problems with the signal at this end of Refuge, and it was possible her battery was dead. He’d gone back to the café steps in case she was hanging around there, but there was no sign. He looked closely in case she’d left a note on the door.

The hornets were quiet.

He’d rang Ashwar—their baby sitter—and anyone else he could think of, but no-one had heard from Elspet since Friday.

The authorities had told him his wife had no opportunity to leave the boat and she’d been seen an hour or so before they’d arrived at port. There was little chance she’d fallen overboard, but, they’d assured him, they’d check the CCTV and conduct enquiries.

He’d found the numbers for the other girls on the hen party and quizzed each one. They’d all seemed as perplexed as him. The girls had shared rooms as a way to reduce costs, and Elspet had shared with Nga. Joe had rung her back and grilled her for what would be an embarrassing length of time if it hadn’t been for the seriousness of the situation.

Nga recalled that Elspet had been laying on the lower bunk bed, playing with her phone because she’d had problems with it. Nga was applying her makeup. Elspet was saying what a lovely time she’d had, and how she’d been made welcome by the other girls, whom she’d only recently met. Nga had smiled and replied, but when she’d looked in the mirror, Elspet was gone.

Nga kept repeating the same words to Joe, over and over while sobbing… Pirate slave boat must have her.

Joe had been taken aback; he’d heard of the illicit slave trade and rumours were rife that Refuge’s mayor, Emeritas, was turning a blind eye to it. It was scary business. Poking around and asking questions could be lethal.

Joe’s confusion had mounted. As beautiful as his wife was, she was 27 years old, married with a child.

Surely one of the younger girls would have made a more likely target?

***

The shower worked best when it was so cold as to be barely tolerable, gradually dispersing the hornets in his head. Joe curled in the shower cubicle into a foetal position, holding his head to prevent the hornets bursting out.

Amid the chaos of the hornet-storm, he wasn’t sure if he was recalling a dream, or experiencing a vision…

Alien vistas and dreamscapes overwhelmed his reality.

A giant apple dropped from the clouds, before decomposing and morphing into a giant ship, while the land turned from solid to water.

Metal fish-people burrowed through from underground and bore holes in the sky, causing it to peel like wallpaper, revealing another distant landscape.

A ladder was carried by a stage-hand across what had become a theatre, and propped it up against the sky.

Giant apples were hung from clouds

as they floated by.

The dream’s meaning drained as quickly as the water from the shower.

He reached up and his fingers found the last of the body-wash Elspet had made up especially for him. She’d blended a few drops of an invigorating eucalyptus with a salving lavender, the universal cure-all among aromatherapists. To this, she’d added a touch of jasmine for its uplifting effect. It reminded Joe of his wife’s perfume, pulling him back in time to when they’d first met.

Shortly after arriving in Refuge, like so many others, Joe had a lot of time on his hands, despite working long hours at the asylum. A small group of his countrymen were working at the cannery and, like him, they were mostly single men, displaced and living in a country where the main language wasn’t their own. To avoid feelings of isolation and to keep themselves motivated and healthy, they’d organised their own badminton nights at a room in the Pool Hall.

Following a minor injury, one of the other guys recommended Joe arrange a consultation with one of the trainee therapists at the Refuge School of Beauty. Elspet, freshly arrived in Refuge and seeking a fresh start, was studying for her diploma in night classes and Joe could just about get to the school after work in time to be one of her practice clients. At first, some of Joe’s mates ridiculed him for signing up for such a girly therapy, but the benefits to both his physical and emotional well-being were obvious. The number of unforced errors he made dwindled, and his game improved as a result.

Joe scored off the badminton court as well—with Elspet, his gorgeous therapist, and his ranking among his mates also rose.

Something else was rising now; the hornets had disappeared, washed away as he gradually turned up the dial. With the steady warming of the water and the balmy aromas so reminiscent of his wife, Joe’s hand wandered to his groin.

He’d only recently suppressed the guilt brought on by the act of self-pleasure.

***

What is it? Elspet asked him when he’d grunted and sat bolt upright at their second session of aromatherapy massage. Was I too hard on your adductors? You have to tell me if it hurts, so I can ease off. I must get this right if I’m to pass the practical exam.

No, he’d replied, No—you weren’t—too hard, it’s quite the opposite. Not that you were too soft, just that I wish I was. Well, what you’re doing is absolutely wonderful, but erm…I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me.

What on earth is the matter? Should I stop? Elspet was puzzled, didn’t you feel like coming today? The double meaning was unintentional.

Joe lay down, brought the back of his knuckled hand into his right eye and groaned, God, look—I’m going to have to be straight with you. What you’re doing, it’s great, but it’s a bit too enjoyable. You know what I mean? I don’t want to give you any unpleasant surprises. Down there!

Finally, Elspet understood. A lovely, unforced glow reddened her cheeks as she mouthed a single syllable, Oops…

She blew the