Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror (47 page)

“Are there any local sites of interest?” Cara asked.

Judy shrugged. “Not really.”

Determinedly, Cara said, “Perhaps you could tell me something about the book I’m working on? It seems to have a history!” She laughed a little.

“It’s just a relic,” Judy said.

Cara gave up any pretense of conversation and finished her lunch.

§

A winding lane led down to Mordarras, past the Morbenyn Farm. A sharp wind hurried clouds across the sky, making the watery sunlight dappled. Early spring flowers groped for light beside the path. Above, seabirds surfed the air, uttering those bleating cries that always reminded Cara of childhood holidays. Did people still have holidays like that? A hotel at a seaside resort, buckets and spades, ice cream melting over cardboardy cones? Cara’s walking boots crunched upon the loose gravel of the lane. Gorse bushes spiked the sides of the roads stiffly. And to her left, far below, surged the sea. Mordarras was held in a circle of rock providing a natural harbor. It looked bleak, though, small white buildings cowering beneath the black cliffs. Perhaps in summer it was different. Cara hoped there would be a café she could sit in; she’d brought a novel with her.

Halfway to the village, she heard the hard tap of horses’ hooves behind her, paused and turned. A pony and trap was approaching; how quaint. Cara saw it was driven by Minny from the farm. The woman pulled the pony to a halt. “Want a lift, m’love?”

“Oh… oh yes, thank you.” Cara climbed up beside the driver. “I’ve never had a ride in one of these.”

“People take the car, don’t they,” the woman said, “even when it’s two steps down the road. What’s the rush?”

“It’s far nicer to go to the village like this,” Cara said. “Thanks, Minny.”

The woman laughed. “Oh, I’m not Minny, I’m Tally.”

Cara stared at her.

“Her sister,” the woman said. “Twin.”

Cara shook her head. “Sorry, the resemblance is… well, of course I’ve only met your sister today.”

“Our own people still make the mistake,” Tally said amiably.

“I’m Cara…”

“Yes,” Tally interrupted, “she told me.”

The café was still closed for the season, but Tally said that the local postmistress served tea to visitors. “Not that we get many at this time of year, but I take a cup with Sissy when I’m in town.”

Cara suppressed a smile.
Sissy. Town.
She didn’t need a novel to read; she was in one.

Tally dropped her by the door to the post office. “If you want a lift back up, I’ll be an hour or so.”

“No, that’s fine, thank you. I could do with the walk.” Cara patted her stomach.

Tally stretched a wide-lipped smile, clucked to her pony, and moved on.

§

Sissy the postmistress was clearly a relative of the Morbenyn mermaids, since she shared the same appearance, except she was older and wore her hair in a neat bun. Also, her eyes bulged so much, she seemed not to blink. Cara half-expected a nictitating membrane to slip across Sissy’s eyes. Like the others, she was friendly and perhaps bored, all alone in her shop in the empty season. The makeshift tea room amenities comprised two small tables at the back of the store, with chairs crammed round them. It quickly became clear that Cara would not be allowed time to read in silence. “How’s your work going?” Sissy asked, looming gauntly over the table.
Really, these specimens should be secretive and aloof
, Cara thought. Their sociability seemed incongruous, but then, she reflected,
most fishes swim in schools
. At least now she could look them square in the face and not feel faintly freaked.

“Oh, the treatment is going well,” Cara said. “Does Mrs. De La Mere make the book available to tourists in the summer? It seems quite a local celebrity, in its way.”

“Oh no,” Sissy said, “it’s not for them. The children like it. Do you have any children?”

“No.” Cara hoped the hardness of the word would stem any further enquiries down that path. She decided to make some of her own. “Does Judy De La Mere have no parents?”

Sissy’s wide mouth opened and closed a few times. “The missus is all she has now,” she said dramatically.

Perhaps they drowned out in the bay
, Cara thought, rather maliciously, and wished she could ask, but realized the question might be offensive.

§

Leaving the post office earlier than she planned, because Sissy refused to leave her alone and wanted to witter on about the problems of running the place, Cara decided to explore the village. Rain clouds had begun to threaten the horizon again. She hoped they’d hold off, or perhaps she should seek out Tally for a lift home shortly. There were hardly any people about. The shops, mostly for tourists, were closed. Small houses clung to the cliff walls like barnacles, and there were lights in the windows of some of them. Cara saw figures down on the beach, perhaps shellfish-gathering, as they were stooped over rock pools, panniers hanging from their shoulders. All of them were women—from a distance appearing tall and strong, their long legs clad in heavy thigh-length boots. Cara hadn’t seen a single male since arriving at Maples the day before, but then she’d hardly been out. Perhaps the men worked away in a larger town.

§

Later over dinner, Mrs. De La Mere—again fortified by sherry—offered more information about her family. “In days gone by, there were fortunes to be made,” she said. “De La Meres brought many strange and wonderful things home from their travels and used to sell them. Not here, of course—not much call—but in the towns, and even up in London.”

“And your book came to you in this way?” Cara asked, then added, “Minny said it depicted a local legend, though.”

Mrs. De La Mere laughed. “Well, not exactly that. There is a local story of a city beneath the sea, but then there are stories all over the world like that. The families here like to think the book is about this area,
their
sea, but that’s romance, isn’t it?”

“The language in the book,” Cara said, “I didn’t recognize it.”

“No one does,” said Mrs. De La Mere.

“Have you ever thought of having the book examined by experts?”

“I understood
you
were an expert.” Mrs. De La Mere’s tone was somewhat tart.

“I meant someone who knows languages, antiquity… Aren’t you curious?”

“It’s a much-loved old book that means a lot to my family and, as you have seen, to others. I don’t want
experts
tramping about, thinking they know it all, and I wouldn’t let
Marvels
leave this house.”

Cara sensed the slight hostility entering the conversation, inspired, she thought, by the drink. “Of course, that’s understandable,” she said in a soothing tone. “I’ll start work on the pages tomorrow. It’ll soon be mended.”

§

Cara went to bed early to read her novel, but she couldn’t concentrate on the words. She had always made up stories in her mind, and a new one was forming now, of a town comprised of peculiar land-walking mermaids, where there were no men, and a sacred book resided in a wind-scoured old house on the cliffside. The lady who lived there was the guardian of this book and her grand-daughter? What role did she play in this story?

Laying her open book facedown on the bed, Cara blinked at the ceiling. The grand-daughter must be the oracle, the sea priestess, and at night the sea moaned, lit up, and something came from it.

Cara smiled to herself.
Yes, that idea worked
. She turned off her bedside light and turned onto her side. After some minutes, the tapping began.

Roused from a half sleep, Cara lay for some time listening to the hollow knockings from the radiator. They sounded too regular to be random noises from the plumbing, and were softer than what she’d heard the previous night. She turned on her light again and padded across the room to the radiator.
Tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap.
Pause.
Tap.
She ran her fingers over the rugged, painted metal, which was again comfortably warm. Almost without thinking, she rapped back:
Tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap.
This was repeated to her. She shook her head, remembering then how when she was young, staying with her cousins, they had communicated with each other like this at night, pretending to be secret agents. Code through the radiators. Now she rapped out a different code:
Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.
And it was sent back to her.

Could this be Judy? She doubted Mrs. De La Mere would be responsible.

Cara rapped again, a more complicated rhythm, but all was silent. She looked out of the window at the sea, but it wasn’t shining.

§

At breakfast, Cara told Judy bluntly. “I heard the noises in the radiator again last night. And the strangest thing was, when I made the same tappings, they were copied, sent back to me.”

Judy glanced up from her meal inscrutably. “You think so?”

“That’s what it sounded like.”

Judy shrugged. “Well, I doubt it was.”

No further interrogation seemed possible.

§

In the library, Cara was pleased to see that her work the previous day had been successful. The cover boards looked good—not new, of course, but
restored
, which was the idea. Now she could start work on the pages. Reverently, she opened the book. She would resist looking through it now, but would discover each illustration as she worked. She laid out her materials and plugged her small Teflon iron into the nearest wall socket to heat up. Then, from a package of protective sheets, she peeled a single tissue, which she trimmed to the relevant size. This she laid carefully over the first page. When her iron was ready, she applied it to the tissue gently but firmly, so that resins within it were released and adhered subtly to the fibers beneath. What odd fibers they were too. When the page had cooled, she turned it and bent down to peer at the other side. It wasn’t fashioned from wood pulp, that was obvious, but neither did it seem to have the exact consistency of linen, or any plant derived fiber. Some kind of treated animal skin? Yet the laminate had behaved as if it had been applied to a linen paper page. Must be that, just somehow altered by storage conditions and age.

Pausing to allow some time to gaze upon the illustrations she’d seen previously, Cara worked to the point where she reached a new picture.

Beyond the city gates, a wide avenue of tall, branching corals, like a processional way, unrolled before her. Ahead, an immense building reared. It was roughly pyramidal, but built of tiers. Statues similar to those at the gate guarded its walls. They were almost angelic, Cara thought, but for their obviously aquatic features.

She turned the page.

This building was a temple, she could see that now, and she had reached the steps that led to its yawning entrance. Beyond was only darkness. But from within, faint sounds emerged, chanting perhaps, or singing.

As on the day before, Cara jerked from the dreamlike state she was in, finding herself in reality. And didn’t a faint song still tantalize her ears? She went quickly to the stained-glass window, put her hands against it. No, too indistinct to hear now. The sounds must have been the wind, the distant waves. Her grandmother used to say to her:
Too imaginative, young lady. That’s your trouble.
Cara had always preferred make-believe to reality. As an adult, she hid this more effectively than she had as a child.

At this point Minny manifested at the doorway, today already carrying a tray of tea things. She came silently, but Cara was aware of her arrival, nonetheless. “Hi,” she said, turning from the window, “I thought I heard something. Like singing.”

Minny glided to the table and put down the tray. “They say that seals can sing,” she said, and smiled. “You’ve been looking at the pictures. Don’t get lost in our old book, now, will you?”

“I think I already am,” Cara said with a laugh that sounded too bright, too loud.

Minny smiled back as she poured the tea. “They weave a spell, that’s for sure. When we were girls we were always playing in that world, down on the shore.”

“You look like a mermaid,” Cara said, unable to stop the words. She was pushing the story, she knew. Perhaps this was unwise.

Minny’s smile widened to a grin. She lifted her long skirt a little, struck a pose with dainty feet. “You see, no fish tail. Don’t be disappointed.”

“Maybe you can change, shed your skin,” Cara said.

“Maybe I can,” Minny said mischievously. “May I see what you’ve done?”

Cara returned to the table and showed Minny the first few pages she’d laminated.

“Oh, that does look better,” the woman said. “How clever.”

“Minny,” Cara said tentatively, and the woman glanced up at her, a little sharply, perhaps because of Cara’s tone and what might follow.

“What, m’love?”

“Oh… nothing. I’m just fanciful!”

“It’s this place,” Minny said warmly. “Mordarras is like a little dream in the cold of the world. And there’s nothing wrong in being like a child again, full of wonder.”

“You’re lucky to live here.”

“Well, perhaps, but surely others choose to live where they do?”

Cara was silenced by these words, thinking about them.

Minny said, “Well, must get on. Judy won’t be here for lunch, but I’ll lay something out for you. Eat when you’re ready.”

“Yes. Thanks.”

§

Cara didn’t feel like eating lunch. She worked on, part of her wanting to proceed swiftly, while another part—perhaps the child Minny had spoken of—wanted to delay, to prolong the work. Yet
Marvels of the Deeps
was a remarkably cooperative patient. The protective sheets slid onto the pages, hardly needed moving or shaping, never wrinkled, but adhered perfectly.