A Terrible Beauty

Her wings ghosted across Whitethorn Mountain.
Datan arrives as the hills darken.
A secret love vanishes.

Charlie Crowe, a young man strong in body, tender in heart, is haunted by his lonely past growing up in the Bain Orphanage. On Whitethorn Mountain, he discovers a bat-like presence inside a long glassy object swaying beneath a dark New Hampshire sky. This presence, the menacing Datan, claims to 'eat men like air.' She communicates her powers to Charlie through a thought-noose.

Datan has never been far from the mountain and spends her nights swinging above the grassy-green knolls near the orphanage where Charlie and 'little Clare' lived as children, delighting in their puppy love as they would share cherry Life Savers and steal a kiss. Until one starless night when the autumn goldenrod wilted in the frost, Clare went missing.

Years later, as Charlie encounters Datan on Whitehorn Mountain, he still burns with the heartbreak of losing Clare. What will he learn from this menacing presence when the sun sinks? Will he finally find his Clare or will he succumb to a reality of defiant loneliness?

Lovecraftian-inspired, this tale of cosmic terror, isolation, uncertainty, and the maddening human desire will propel you into a dark winding foreverland, and bring you face-to-face with a terrible beauty.

A Terrible Beauty was originally published by Unfading Daydream in 2019 in the Possession Issue.

Paula Cappa has been termed a master of the metaphysical mystery genre...an extraordinary and original storyteller of the first rank by Midwest Book Review. She is a multiple award-winning novelist of The Dazzling Darkness, Night Sea Journey, and Greylock published by Crispin Books, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her short stories have been published in numerous literary magazines and anthologies, and many are reprinted as ebook singles.