Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror (31 page)

Which he did.

He woke in the morning to a thin sun and a fierce headache and a mouth that felt like rot. There was an acrid odor in the air. The sun was heating something up, he thought, and rubbed his eyes. He looked blearily straight ahead, at the palm-wood wall of his room, which shimmied in his hung-over state.

To his horror, the wall wavered and slid down to the floor. He rubbed his eyes again, and the wall (now the floor) moved towards him.

They were ants! Millions of ants! A great moving blanket of horror, heading for him.

“McClellan!” he shouted, throwing himself off the farthest side of the bed. “McClellan!” There was no reason for McClellan to be there, but Bream yelled his name because McClellan was the only other man around who belonged to a world where things like this couldn’t happen.

His teeth chattered. Every inch of his skin was red with bites. He went to scratch them automatically and saw to his horror that what he thought were welts on his arms were ants in rows, biting down. He looked wildly at the doorway. Surely a servant or someone had heard him? Surely someone would come for him?

The door creaked open and a figure stood there, surveying the scene.

It was the woman from the market, with that orchid in her arms. The orchid blinked the eyes in its flower face and smiled. It must be a hallucination! More ants swarmed in behind her, heading for Bream.

“Go, my daughters,” she commanded. When had she learned to speak English? He flailed against the stings and bites and eyes—all the tiny eyes intent on him.

“Go, my daughters,” she repeated, and he could hear shrill insect cries now, at his ears, at his mouth, the tiniest shouts of joy, the savage grinding of their ceaseless jaws.

The mushroom jiggled on its stalk, bobbed behind two men, then popped back into view. My voice faltered. To my right, Daddy untwisted from his pretzel shape, and his fists hardened. His bruised knuckles flew at me just as the mushroom stalk blurred, and a bald man’s face loomed, sneer on the lips and lust in the eyes. I was nine.

Daddy uncurled his fingers and yanked the tattered bow from my hair. “Sing,” he screamed, and he crushed my bow beneath his foot.

I shrank back and blinked the tears from my eyes.

Mommy, why did you have to go? Why did you leave me here?

Memories gurgled up. All I knew of Mommy was what Daddy always told me.

Drunk.

Drug addict.

Whore.

Mommy, why did you have to die?

Dead on the street
, Daddy always said,
dead in the gutter where she was born.

But—

Don’t believe Daddy. He’s a drunk.

“Sing, Clarisse!” Daddy snapped me back to the present.

I blinked once more, and my vision cleared. The mushroom came into focus. I saw that it was actually a man’s face. A bald man. The stalk was his body, and he was skinny like me.

If I gazed at the man while I sang, maybe he’d toss me a coin—after he pinched my ass, of course.

A pack of them, all twice my height, gathered around me. They ignored Daddy, but I knew he didn’t care. He just wanted their money, and I could get it for him more easily than he could. Listening to a girl sing pleased them more than watching a man twist himself into odd shapes and walk on his hands.

Anyone would prefer me over Daddy. He was creepy and weird. Maybe it was the way his limbs twisted backward at the joints. Maybe it was his chipped teeth or his whiskey-fogged eyes. Maybe it was his greasy sourness, the filthy clothes. Or maybe it was the skin on his fingers, so thick and rough, like animal hide, I thought. Or maybe it was how he treated me, as if he hated me and wanted me dead, but kept me around to sing for money.

The usual catcalls started up. Eyes raked down my body. I knew what they wanted, and it wasn’t a song.

“Earn your supper, girl.” My daddy knew what the men wanted, too. He would sell me for a swig of booze, he would.

If I refused to sing, he would beat me until I passed out. He would abandon me again, and I’d be all alone in the city, just another lost girl.

And so I sang:

Don’t want no fears,

no tears,

and no fake smiles.

The stars have died,

the men have lied,

the moon is dead,

the sky is lead.

Never let me go,

treat me kind,

and you will find

in my eyes

a rainbow.

I hit the highest note and then sank to the lowest, my voice sweet but robust, and the men thundered their approval and pelted me with coins. I protected my face with my right arm. My body was already badly bruised from peltings and beatings, but my
face
—

I couldn’t let anything hit my
face
, not ever, because the gashes and bruising would make it harder for me to sing.

Daddy grunted and scooped up the money. I had done well, and he was pleased. For now, I was safe.

Or so I thought.

After Daddy left for the bars, I went looking for the trash cans. I had a few favorites. One was by a weathered house with boarded-up windows and a sagging roof. Out front were the stragglers, people like me, who lived in the rubbish. I dug through the can and found a scrap of bread, sweet from mold. I knew it wouldn’t hurt me. I’d eaten enough rotting bread to know.

The night was cold and brittle. The stars hung like icicles. The moon shivered low in the sky. I curled up in the alley next to the house and fell asleep on a blanket of garbage.

I dreamed that my daddy loved me.

But it was just a dream.

When I awoke, the sun glared at me and the sky wept ice, and pinning my knees to the cement was an old hacking man whose spittle was brown.

I kicked him off and jumped up.

All my fault Daddy was a drunk and hated me. All my fault Mommy died when I was born.
I screamed and beat my fists against the weathered house, and I cursed as splinters drove into my flesh. Bloody raw, my fists were, and they hurt, and I knew it would be hell to get the splinters out. And yet…

And yet, the pain calmed me. This was worth everything. Physical pain took the edge off emotional pain, and I was alone and empty with no hope for the future or for joy of any kind.

The old man slumped onto his left side. He probably wouldn’t live much longer. Men had beaten him down, and nature would finish him off.

Sapped of strength, ice battering me, I hobbled from the alley onto the main street. Ice clung to my hair and thin dress. I would get pneumonia. I would die.

Police with ice-coated whiskers and caps were rounding up all the men on the street, for what purpose I didn’t know. Some struggled, others went willingly, probably figuring they’d get a meal and a roof over their heads during the storm.

I pushed aside three little kids and took their place beneath a shop awning. Ice clanked off the awning and clattered to the street. The sky darkened from white to gray, and the sun went into hiding.

A figure darted from the group of men being herded down the street. He looked familiar, but though I squinted, I couldn’t make out his features through the wind and ice. He slid toward me, waving his arms like a mad man.

I clutched the door handle of the shop and pulled and pulled, but the shop was closed.

And then someone grabbed my arm.

I struggled to break free, I kicked and I flailed, and I started to scream, “Let go! Let go! What do you want?” but the words broke in my mouth.

It was my daddy.

He reeked of whiskey and body stink, and I recoiled.

He stood directly over me, bent at the waist, and his black eyes bored into me, and his mouth was close to my face.

“You’ll always be mine, Clarisse,” he said. “I’ll never let you go.”

“What do you mean?”

“War,” he said. “They want us all to fight. I have to run away. I’m leaving for a faraway city.”

“But what about me, Daddy? I have to go with you!”

“No. You’ll slow me down. They’ll get me, and I’ll die at war. I can’t fight. I refuse.”

“But—”

“Go to Madame Francesca at Second and Main.”

“The whorehouse?”

I clutched his jacket and begged, but my daddy was too strong for me and pried my fingers loose. He held both of my wrists in one hand. A grin spread, the broken teeth parted, and as he turned to go, he released my wrists and hissed, “I’ll come back for you, Clarisse. Remember, I’ll never let you go.”

And then he was gone.

The last thing I remembered was a scrape of whiskers and a whiff of whiskey and unwashed flesh.

He disappeared into the ice and the crowds, past the police and all those who were heading to war.

My daddy left me there. To die.

I cried, and the tears froze on my lashes and cheeks.

I’ll be honest. I was crying from fear. I didn’t really care if I died, even at nine. Living wasn’t so great. But we all have a survival instinct—most of us, anyway. And so there remained a tiny part of me that always percolated up from the depths and helped me fight on.

My lips were chapped. They hurt. My teeth chattered, and I couldn’t stop them. My fingers were numb from cold.

I forced myself to stop crying, for what was the point? Crying would do me no good. Life was what it was, and it was always bad.

I would take refuge at the whorehouse, and when the storm ended, I’d escape from the Madame’s grip and get lost in the city streets again. That was my plan, and so I slipped across the ice toward Second and Main.

All the girls knew Francesca. She tried to recruit us into the whorehouse as early as eight. My daddy had never allowed it, though other girls, those without daddies, weren’t as lucky.

Could I really view my life this way, that my daddy brought me
luck
?

Even at nine, I was jaded enough to dismiss the idea as pathetic and childish.

When I pushed on the door at the corner of Second and Main, it opened easily. Madame Francesca’s house was always open for business.

I stumbled inside, and it was warm.

My body started to shake. The room whirled, a blur of red velvet and plush sofas and thin rugs with stains on them. Crackling fire, all orange and red and yellow, heat beckoning me. I staggered toward the fireplace, arms outstretched. Almost fainted. Stopped in mid-step.

And now whirling toward me were girls with hard eyes and bruised limbs, frizzed hair and red glossy lips. Breasts and bustiers. Red. Garters without stockings. Black. Skimpy underpants, concealing little.

Arms encircled me, and the bodies were soft, warm, and fragrant. I sank into those arms and against those bodies, and my eyes fluttered shut. Red, all I saw was red. Flowers, all I smelled were flowers. Voices, so soft and sweet, and no whiskers and no men pinching my ass.

“Bring her to the pink room, and let her rest.” Madame Francesca wavered into view, and the girls backed off, fear flickering in their eyes. She studied me intently for a few seconds. Close up, she smelled of tobacco and lilacs, a nauseating blend that I would later find comforting. Her hair was long and black and wound into old-fashioned spirals. The red painted onto her lips welled in the cracks carved by old age. White powder and bright blush did little to hide the wrinkled cheeks and forehead. Huge blue eyes with heavy liner and mascara blinked at me. “She’s young.” The eyes softened, and I imagined them in her youth, so alluring to all the men she’d serviced. I could tell that she had once been beautiful.

Had my mommy been beautiful, too?

 “I said, bring her to the pink room, didn’t I?” Red-tipped nails, long finger pointing at one girl and then another. They scampered back to my side, looped me over their soft, soft arms, and dragged me down worn carpet to a pink, pink room.

My eyes blinked on a yellow-stained pillowcase of cherubs. The wallpaper in the top corner of the room hung limp and flaccid, a drooping pink. The blankets were rough but warm, and they smelled like tobacco, but in this room, there was no lilac, only tobacco tainted by male body stink. As my eyes shut, I fell into a dream of Daddy, and I heard his words.

Drunk.

Drug addict.

Whore.

Over time, I would know nothing else.

With the war raging, business lagged, and the customers I serviced in my first few months tended toward the elderly and sagging, men I could barely tease into payment. Madame Francesca pushed us to do more and more for these men and for smaller amounts of pay. I was barely alive, and during work, I learned to giggle and gasp while flatlining my thoughts. I told myself that, if I wasn’t really there, then I wasn’t really participating, was I? I might as well have been dead.

“You don’t belong here, Clarisse. Your heart isn’t in it. The other girls do much better for me.”