Prologue

The townsfolk all knew there was something sinister about Voenwick Manor. It was a blight on their sleepy little community, eerily looming over them on the north hill. Many had talked of burning it down, but no one dared try.

The news that the manor had been purchased by a distant associate of the Voenwicks was met with suspicion and fear. It melted away when the new tenant arrived to claim her estate. Plain of dress but fair of heart, the new mistress was soon beloved by all.

Until the whispers began…

Some said they saw her roaming the woods at night in bloodstained tatters. Others told of strangled birds left in her wake. Her polite manners twisted to dark muttered curses, then to frenzied malice, until she at last drowned a child off the banks of the Alabaster Creek.

In despair and fury, the townsfolk set out to lynch the mistress of Voenwick Manor.

Little did they realize that the woman was already long dead.

Serenadē’s nightmares had grown worse recently, the figments more surreal and alarming than ever: a loretreader with an eye like a die, a porcelain woman with only half a face, omens screamed by a freak circus of marionettes.

She’d stayed up as late as she could bear for several nights in a row to stave off the dreams. She passed the time with dance, violin, archery, and even painting when she felt particularly ambitious. But, mostly, she read, searching for a new horror to unleash on an unsuspecting canon, as if inciting chaos in a real world would quell the storms she saw behind her own eyelids.

She was in a near-trance state of exhaustion when she came across a faded little book she had somehow missed before. A card fell out when she opened it. It bore a black spade on one side.  Her eyes drifted from the curious bookmark to the story of Voenwick Manor, and she knew at once that she had found her next target.

The trip to the dismal, remote canon was made without a second thought, and Serenadē soon found herself trekking through an overgrown courtyard toward what had once been a grand old house. Now it lay derelict, every door and window sealed—and not to keep out trespassers, but to keep the single resident of the house within.

A touch of distortion on the door melted the lock, and the dark interior yawned before Serenadē. Musty air settled stickily into her lungs as she strode into the tomb-like house, her heels clicking on the marble floors.

“I know you’re here, shade,” she breathed.

The house giggled. Shadows slithered on the floor. Serenadē watched them warily, following them with her eyes toward a dark corner where a figure was beginning to form. She set her bow on the strings of her violin, preparing to play the enchanted song that would send her quarry whither she pleased.

“Where’s Daddy?” asked a soft, high voice that warbled unnaturally. The shape squirmed like a host of creatures trying to escape a tar pit.

“Your daddy can’t help you now. But I can. How would you like to be a loretreader?” Serenadē said with a mirthless smile. “A body of your very own, and one that can travel worlds.”

She drew her bow across the strings, easing out the first few notes of the corrupting nocturne. Without missing a beat, the slithery mass hummed the next few bars of the tune. Serenadē paused.

“You know this song,” Serenadē said, perplexed.

“It’s Daddy’s song.” The shade advanced, its gait at once maladroit and menacing. “Ooh, you’re so pretty…I want to be just like you…”

It kept trying to hold the shape of a small child as it slowly approached Serenadē, but every time it nearly accomplished the feat, part of it would bulge and rupture, warping into a new monstrous silhouette. Serenadē let out her breath shakily and began to step back, trying to maintain distance as she resumed playing.

“Don’t come any closer,” Serenadē said.

“I could just take the diamonds from your eyes and keep them in a JAR!” the childish voice dropped to a raspy roar as the shade lunged at the Distortioness. Serenadē uttered a short scream and leaped out of the way.

“No backsies, no backsies!” the shade laughed, maniacally enraged. It submerged into the shadows and bled up the wall and out of sight. Serenadē scrambled to steady herself. She launched into the nocturne again with greater urgency, slurring the notes at nearly double-time. Her eyes shot around the room, trying to find her assailant. Distortion rumbled through the manor, threatening to collapse the house around her.

An inky tendril burst out of the chaos, missing Serenadē by a sliver. Ensnared in a deadly pasodoble, Serenadē stepped and pivoted to avoid lash after lash. The shade pursued, reaching out after her in the form of a mottled hand. Serenadē flung herself straight up in the air and the hand snatched around nothing, but another erupted forth, clawing after her arc. Not a moment too soon, Serenadē tore the final notes from the nocturne, and a shockwave of distortion ripped through the grasping shade, dragging it to a far canon.

Serenadē landed hard on the marble floor and collapsed to her knees. Her panting breaths punctuated the remaining echoes of the song.

Gradually, the dust settled back on the room and onto the shaken Distortioness. The house, devoid now of its ghastly occupant, returned to its slumber.