Beyond the Sea: A Modern Gothic Romance Read online

  Beyond the Sea

  A Modern Gothic

  By L.H. Cosway

  Copyright © 2020 L.H. Cosway.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover design by L.H. Cosway. Cover image from Shutterstock.com.

  www.lhcoswayauthor.com

  “I hold a beast, an angel and a madman in me.” – Dylan Thomas.

  Contents

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  25.

  Epilogue.

  PLAYLIST

  To listen to L.H. Cosway's playlist for Beyond the Sea, CLICK HERE

  1.

  All through his life my father believed he was cursed.

  This belief began with his mother’s cancer diagnosis when he was ten. Dad made a promise to God that he’d join the priesthood if He saved his mother from the vicious disease. She went into remission, and Dad’s fate was sealed. However, when he was sixteen, he met my mother and his promise fell by the wayside. The two of them were head-over-heels in love, and a year later Mam became pregnant with me. Nine months after that, she died from complications during childbirth.

  Then, his mother’s cancer returned, and this time she didn’t win the fight.

  Both deaths broke Dad’s heart, and he swore it was God’s punishment for him not becoming a priest. Over the course of the next couple years, the few family members he had left passed away, leaving him alone in the world with a child to raise and protect. It was just the two of us for a long time until he met and married Vee. I gained a stepmother who tolerated my presence but was far from loving.

  The tolerance turned to resentment when Dad’s curse finally came full circle. Two years ago, he lost his life in a collision with a drunk driver, leaving me a modern-day Cinderella, though I didn’t hold out hope for a fairy godmother.

  I did, however, have a wicked stepmother.

  “My brother is coming to visit,” Vee said as she sat by the weathered kitchen table, smoking a cigarette in a holder like a red-headed Cruella de Vil. “You’ll need to air out one of the guest bedrooms and make it up for him.”

  I was stunned by what she’d just said. “You have a brother?”

  She pursed her lips before exhaling a plume of smoke. “Yes, a younger brother. Sylvia had him late. He hasn’t been home in a long time.”

  Sylvia was Vee’s mam, though she always called her by her first name. Never Mam or Mammy, and not even the more formal Mother. It was a little cold and distant if you asked me, but that was Vee for you. A total ice queen. I felt bad for Sylvia who was left to live with such an uncaring, cruel daughter.

  Vee treated me like an unwanted, ratty little servant girl at the best of times, but at least it wasn’t going to be forever. In a few months, I’d finish school and finally be able to break out from under her tyranny.

  “What’s his name?” I asked in a quiet voice, making sure to not look her directly in the eye. Quite like a wild animal, she sometimes saw that as a threat. I pulled some tinned soup, a bread roll and a banana from the cupboard and set to work on my dinner. I kept a stash of chocolate bars hidden under my mattress, mainly so Vee wouldn’t find them and berate me for eating too much junk. My stepmother wasn’t big on grocery shopping, or food in general. I rarely saw her eat anything aside from the olives she sometimes put in her martinis, so I usually had to fend for myself.

  “What makes you think I’m in a mood to answer your questions today, Estella?” she asked with cutting bluntness.

  “Sorry,” I murmured, opening the tin and pouring the soup into a pot to heat up on the stove. Some days I wished for a microwave, but aside from the few items Dad and I brought when we moved in, everything here was stuck in a previous century, dusty and old. That was what you got when you lived in a big, creaky, creepy old Victorian house on the coast.

  Vee continued smoking, watching me through her narrowed green eyes.

  “Your uniform is looking a little snug. Perhaps go to Foley’s and have them take it out for you on the weekend.”

  “Mm-hmm.” I bit my tongue to keep from snapping at her, running my hands down my navy and forest green uniform with the Loreto Convent crest over my left breast. The crest was made up of the cross, an emblem of salvation, the heart of Jesus, to symbolize his love for us, the pierced heart of Mary, to depict her courage in guiding us, and lastly the anchor, a symbol to encourage us to trust in God.

  Vee knew good and well I had no money to go to Foley’s. What little she gave me barely covered food. And sure, I wasn’t the thinnest girl in the world, but that wasn’t the reason my clothing was tight. It was tight because I’d been wearing the same uniform for the last four years.

  A girl didn’t have the same body at eighteen that she’d had at fourteen. It embarrassed me because my appearance was so opposite to Vee’s. Her chest was flat, her hips narrow. She had the body of a catwalk model.

  Once my soup was heated, I took my things down the hallway and shut myself in my room. It was on the ground floor, the smallest in the house, and not really a bedroom at all. It was more like an old, unused utility closet which Vee tried to pawn off as a bedroom. There was barely a foot between the bed and the walls, and it only had a small window above the bed.

  Before Dad died, I slept in a big room upstairs. However, several weeks after he passed, Vee made up some story about mould in order to move me into my current minuscule lodgings. I suspected the small cruelties brought a tiny sliver of happiness to her black heart, but I didn’t complain. I was biding my time.

  I’d be her whipping girl. For now.

  Sitting on the thin mattress, I ate my dinner while completing my Maths and Geography homework, before settling into my favourite subject, History. I loved learning everything about the past, but not for the notable events or the wars. I liked to study how culture and technology changed, but human behaviour rarely did.

  Psychology had become something of an obsession of mine lately, and the more I learned, the more I wanted to discover. Maybe it was because Vee was my stepmother and trying to figure out the reasons behind her actions would keep even the most qualified psychologist busy scribbling down theories and notes.

  Take her hatred for me, for example. I’d never done anything to harm her, but she hated me, nonetheless. There was also the way she treated her mother, Sylvia, who was in her sixties and suffering from multiple sclerosis. Her body was under attack by its own immune system, and she was confined to a wheelchair. Her carer, Irene, came every morning to help her through her daily routine, while Vee more or less ignored her completely.

  If my dad were still alive and had an illness like Sylvia’s, I’d spend every waking moment making sure he was cared for. I missed him so much some days that I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I’d give anything to have him back.

  Dad married Veronica when I was fourteen, so what little he had went to her after he died. She also received a settlement from the car accident, as well as his life insurance money. A modest sum was set aside for me, but even thou
gh I turned eighteen last year, I wouldn’t receive my inheritance until I finished school. That was the stipulation set out in Dad’s will. It was frustrating because, while legally an adult and well able to take care of myself, without any form of income or place to live I had no other choice but to remain with Vee for the time being.

  I tried to focus on the positives though. One day soon I’d finally be free of this big house, where the ghosts of old horrors seemed to echo in the night.

  I didn’t know much about the history of Ard na Mara, except for its name which in Irish meant a house on high overlooking the sea. It sounded pretty, but aside from the view there was very little pretty about this place. I could feel its corruption in my bones. Horrible things had happened here. Dreadful things. The six-bedroom Victorian residence sat close to the precipice of a cliff on the east coast, overlooking the vast Irish Sea. Sometimes I dreamt of a woman running from the house toward the cliff and jumping to her watery death.

  Was death less scary than what she was running from? The thought made me shiver. Other times I had nightmares of a man drowning. He struggled for breath but was pushed down by strong, disembodied hands.

  I wrenched my thoughts away from my frequent and disturbing dreams and concentrated back on my homework. A few hours later, Vee knocked on my door as she passed down the hallway, her voice high-pitched and airy, like a ghostly banshee.

  “Don’t forget about the guest bedroom, Estella,” she called, and I grimaced, having forgotten. I’d been just about to fall asleep, still in my uniform with a textbook resting beneath my chin.

  Grumpily, I got up, rubbed my eyes with my fingertips, and went to gather some cleaning supplies. Upstairs, in the guest bedroom at the far back of the house, I switched on the light, illuminating the large room and high ceilings. The curtains were open, revealing a dark view of the sea beyond. I remembered my dream of a woman diving off the cliff, and a shiver trickled down my spine.

  It smelled a little musty in here, like all the rooms in this house. I opened the window and let the cold night air flow in, the sound of waves crashing against the shore eerie amid the quietness.

  Sylvia’s carer, Irene, would have tucked her up in bed hours ago, and Vee would be locked away in the study, drinking herself into oblivion like she did every night. Her alcoholism had always been apparent, even when Dad was alive, but these days she didn’t even bother trying to hide it.

  Dad had tried in little ways to help her, but he was taken before he succeeded. He’d been such a kind, soft man. A hopeless romantic. Ripe for the picking by the likes of Vee.

  Still, in a strange way I felt like she had loved him. What she didn’t love was his daughter. It was tragically comic I was the one she’d gotten stuck with in the end.

  I cleaned the guest room from top to bottom, hoovering every nook and cranny and putting new sheets on the bed. As I worked, I thought about Vee’s brother, and what he might be like. She said Sylvia had him late. Did that mean he was a lot younger than Vee? I imagined a male version of her and barely held back the shudder that crept through me.

  Yes, no matter his age, I had a feeling I’d be keeping my distance from Vee’s sibling.

  ***

  “Eww, somebody’s on their period. I can smell period,” Sally O’Hare crowed as I stepped inside the classroom for English the following afternoon.

  “The fact that you know what a period smells like indicates you suffer the same monthly fate,” Sister Dorothy commented dryly, her tortoiseshell glasses hanging off the tip of her nose. “So have a little empathy for the girl who’s currently bleeding from the womb.”

  I wrinkled my nose at her graphic description as I took my seat next to my best friend, Aoife. Sister Dorothy had always been a straight talker, especially for a nun, but I thought this time she might have taken things a little too far. Sally looked like she was about to vomit up the pickle sandwich she ate for lunch.

  “The womb, Sister? Really? Are you trying to make me ill?”

  “If it means I don’t have to listen to your obnoxious prattling, then yes, perhaps I am.”

  A few students chuckled. Sally O’Hare gaped at her.

  “I’m reporting you to Principal Hawkins. You can’t talk to me like that.”

  “Yeah, you can’t talk to her like that,” Claire McBride added, who was Sally’s best friend and constant sidekick.

  “I’ll talk whatever way I like,” Sister Dorothy replied, and she was right. She would and could talk whatever way she liked to us students. The all-girls Loreto Convent school I attended was probably one hundred years old, and I was sure Sister Dorothy had been around for at least fifty of them. She was an institution in her own right. Nobody was going to fire her, and if they did, I imagined she’d sail on out of the place in a blaze of glory, her arm hanging out the window of her red Ford Focus as she gave us all the middle finger, a seventy-year-old bad arse.

  “Now, everyone, please open your textbooks to page fifty. Today we’re going to learn all about Medieval poetry.”

  Several groans sounded. Sister Dorothy’s lips curled at the edges, and I wondered if she didn’t have a little bit of a sadistic streak.

  Later that day, I walked home along the beach, collecting a few interesting seashells that caught my eye. The shiny, pearlescent ones were my favourite. Sometimes when I was bored, I’d make jewellery and other knick-knacks from them. And given I was an eighteen-year-old living in an almost two-hundred-year-old house with no mobile phone and no internet, that was often. I had quite an impressive array of creations.

  Something else shiny glinted in the mild evening sun at the front of the house, snagging my attention. Usually, I went in through the back door, but today curiosity had me walking around to the front. There, by the entrance, right next to Vee’s seldom used blue sedan, was a shiny black motorbike. I took my time perusing it, spotting the name Yamaha on the side.

  Holding onto the straps of my school bag, I turned to go inside and was assaulted by a plume of smoke. A young man leaned against the house, one booted foot resting on the brick as he watched me.

  I swallowed and took him in. He was dressed head to toe in black, which showcased his startlingly green eyes. His hair was dark, his expression inscrutable. He was undoubtedly an interesting specimen to appear in my world. I’d never been particularly confident around boys, or men for that matter, and in that moment, I just about lost the ability to speak. I was blushing, too, just because he was looking at me.

  “So, you’re the ward,” he said, lifting his cigarette to his mouth and taking a drag.

  I stared at him for several seconds before finally finding some words. Well, one word. “Ward?”

  “My big sister’s little obligation,” he elaborated, and the penny finally dropped.

  “You’re Vee’s brother?”

  He laughed, but there was something missing from it. “Not what you expected?”

  “You don’t look alike.”

  “I take after my dad,” he said flatly as he flicked the cigarette butt to the ground and stubbed it out with his boot. Now he looked at me again, but this time it was slower. His eyes started at my feet and travelled all the way up until finally arriving at my face.

  I quirked an eyebrow and repeated his own words back at him, only mine were whispered, “Not what you expected?”

  “No,” he answered before muttering something under his breath. The only word I could pick out was ‘uniform’. Crap, was it really that bad? I knew it had gotten tight, but I hoped it might last me until the end of the year.

  I was still standing there, gripping the straps of my bag firmly, when a taxi arrived, idling out on the road. The front door opened, and Vee stepped out. Unlike most days, she’d actually made an effort to dress up nicely. Her short, red hair was clean and washed, and she wore a spangled dress that made her look like a flapper from the 1920s.

  I hadn’t seen her look so polished since Dad was alive.

  “I see you’ve met Estella,” she sa
id with a hint of disapproval as her gaze landed on me. “We’re going out. Irene left early today, so you’ll need to keep an eye on Sylvia. Her catheter needs changing,” she said, and I nodded, internalising my grimace. “Oh, and would you please clean the oven. You’ve left it so long the grease is inches thick now.”

  Vee’s brother, whose name I still hadn’t been told, cast his gaze on me curiously. Maybe he was wondering why I was taking orders from Vee like a meek little mouse. He didn’t realise it was a survival tactic, and as soon as I graduated, I’d be waving goodbye to Vee and her orders. I might even give her a little piece of my mind before I went.

  “Nice to meet you, Estella,” he said, eyeing me again as Vee strode toward the waiting taxi. “I’m Noah.”

  “Like Noah and the Ark?” I asked. Ugh, why did I say that?

  He laughed once more, and again there was something missing. “Yeah, except I wouldn’t waste my time saving the animals.”

  Vee barked a laugh as she slid inside the car, like it was the most hilarious thing she’d ever heard. I stood there, oblivious to the joke, as Noah turned and joined her.

  ***

  “Vee’s gone out. It’ll be nice to have the place to ourselves,” I said to Sylvia while I removed her catheter strip and replaced it with a new one. She stared at me with wise green eyes, the same eyes both Vee and Noah had. She didn’t speak though. She rarely did these days since it was hard for her to get the words out. Whole sentences took her a lot longer than they did the average person.

  Once I was done, I put some dinner on for both of us. I left mine in the oven, feeding Sylvia first. As far as I knew, her MS had presented in her fifties, and she’d slowly deteriorated since then. She had bouts when her hands were extremely shaky, so sometimes it was hard for her to eat without help. I always encouraged her to try though, because there was something in her eyes that told me she found the activity of being spoon-fed humiliating.

  Since it looked like Vee and her brother would be gone for the night, I took the opportunity to spend some time in the living room. I didn’t want to force Sylvia to watch something without having any say in the matter, so I held up DVDs until she saw one she liked. Funnily enough, Buffy the Vampire Slayer caught her eye, but I didn’t complain. I’d always had a soft spot for Spike.