She Walks in Shadows (18 page)

“Eunice,” she said. “You can come down now. I got rid of him!” And there was an ironic look that took after her father so much it was unbearable.

“We’re rid of his tired, old body. Help me bring it back up here.” She eyed me closely to see if there was any trace of euphoria rising within me. “Well, don’t look so glum. Your kind aren’t that sentimental.” She walked back down the stairs, iron step following iron step, whistling Mother’s song. It was mockery! All mockery! This was not the Asenath I’d known. Adolescence and Ephraim’s supervision had made her bigoted and cruel.

I followed her down the stairs and into the library. It was in shambles. Books were splayed open on the floor, their ancient spines cracked down the middle. The globe had somehow become dislodged from its axis and had rolled, dented, into the corner. Chairs were upturned and on the long, oak table lay Old Ephraim’s crumpled body. Asenath stood before him, her hands on her hips.

“Such a sad sack he was.”

“Are you sure he’s dead?”

“Not really. I hit him over the head with the globe, so he may just be world-weary.” She chuckled now, instead of the trickling cackle she had as a child. “But it’s nothing a little arsenic can’t fix. Why don’t you see to that? I have to get my things together. Next week, I am to start school at Kingsport. Father left it in his will that I am to be the ward of Hall School.”

“What about me? The Gilmans?”

“You’ll stay here. Keep the house running. Make sure that thing stays dead, for one. This isn’t one of your goldfish.” She gave me a wink and nodded at the body. “And make an inventory of the library. It appears we’ve had a little thief purloin some important tomes I will need in Arkham.” She leered at me. “I am on the cusp of a great discovery, Eunice. The greatest discovery of my entire life.” Speechless, I stared at the body.

“You will see to it, then?”

I looked at Asenath transformed — a young woman with murder on her hands and mayhem in her heart. She had become her father’s daughter. Or, more like, just her father.

“Well?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Mistress. Good, we understand one another,” Asenath outstretched her arms and yawned. “Oh, me! I am due for a nap.”

After dragging Master Ephraim’s body up the stairs and back into the attic, I laid it on my bed and assessed the damage. There was a huge lump on the back of his skull and a few superficial scratches on his face, but there was a faint sieve of breath. I’d seen worse with Mother. I retrieved some smelling salts from the kitchen and waved them under Master’s nose. No response. He was catatonic. I sighed and went fishing.

That night, my line seemed magical. At first, I caught several puny smelt. I decided to cut them up with my knife and use them as bait. By dawn, I had thrown back bluefish and perch until I caught a black gill. In the soft, rosy light, I could see its stripes were a
pointillisme
of the periwinkle center of each scale. Rather than throw it back like I’d done its brethren, or bash its head against the dock’s edge immediately, I held it up and stared into its flat eyes that flickered with every drowning gulp of air. I could see my body looking back, my harsh, flat face with protruding eyes that now seemed dim and stupid, gulping and hiccoughing and losing its grip. All I sensed was sexlessness, yet a drive to spawn and swim. When I hit against the dock, I was instantly back within myself watching the thrashing fish. That was when Asenath knocked on my skull and I realized what the struggle had really been about.

I strained to block her. While I didn’t think she wished me harm, she was that maniac’s daughter. In my blood was magic; in her blood was madness. What would she do with my body once she occupied it?

But if I am to survive
, she tapped into my skull,
I need a thriving body
.

I muted her with more concentration, but her will had grown stronger over the years.

It
’
s like drowning on air,
‘
Fhalma. I want to go to sea! Help me,
‘
Fhalma! Help me go to sea! Help —.

The black gill’s flapping replaced Asenath’s communications. Inspired, I scooped it into my basket and ran up Washington Street.

V.

Then what happened? Why, it’s obvious, isn’t it Officer Shea? My sister is a fish. I trapped her in my body long enough to trap her into the black gill and keep my glow. She swims somewhere deep in Innsmouth Harbor, perhaps around the devastated remnants of Devil Reef. If I am truly romantic, I’d like to think she swims with our mother. For a while, I entertained I could evict Ephraim from her body and return her glow to its rightful place, but on the night that I saw Mr. Derby dragging Asenath’s body down into the cellar, I lost hope for that dream. But I was able to bring her body justice against Ephraim, although at Master Derby’s sacrifice. The despicable and horrid form that justice took only Mr. Upton can attest, but in Master Ephraim’s failure lies the only small success I could aspire to. When a bit of evil is smote from this earth, we’re all avenged. At least, the forgotten people.

How do you know I am not Ephraim? You don’t, but rest-assured, I have no interest in traveling body to body to body. Perhaps I could glow inside a banker, or a pretty schoolteacher, or even Mr. Upton and build beautiful things, if I were a mind. No. I am content in this body, and I welcome its change and its birthright — for whatever happens to my body, it is happening to me. It’s my story.

MAGNA MATER

Arinn Dembo

IT IS AN
ingrained habit of the human species to spin tales about the origin of the universe and to exaggerate the importance of their own place in it. One can collect the evidence of this essential narcissism the world over and find it in any set of cultural folk tales, but in no culture has the practice of self-worship been honed to such perfection as among those of European descent. Europeans call the worship of their own species “Humanism,” and have been building great temples dedicated to this peculiar cult and its idolatry for many centuries. Of these, there is none still standing which is greater or more revered than the one that stands on Great Russell Street in the heart of London. They call it “the British Museum.”

I walked up to the collection of marble galleries on the afternoon of September 30
^th
, dressed in long skirts and a gray trench coat. I kept my shoulders hunched, my head covered by a gauze snood; the day was too dry and warm, too sunny to use the usual black umbrella to shield my face. After I mounted the front steps and passed through the doors beyond the Ionic columns, a guard stepped up to me.

“Excuse me, Miss.” He was moving to block my path. “But you’ll have to check that case.”

I looked up to catch his gaze and his eyes widened, pupils immediately dilating. He stepped aside for me, getting out of my path — an almost unconscious gesture of deference. Blood flushed his cheeks and his thick neck. For a moment, I saw myself reflected in the mirror of his corneas, seeing what he must see: a woman of his own race, young and fertile, with pale hair and piercing eyes.

The long raincoat with its deep pockets, the leather suitcase I carried in one hand — these were the things that had concerned him moments ago. If he was later questioned by the authorities, he might remember having seen them, but it was likely he would not. He would only remember that I was beautiful. Selective blindness and amnesia — most convenient for this sort of work.

I walked away quickly, releasing him from my gaze, toward the north wing. I was stopped three times on the way to the Library of the Royal Anthropological Institute, twice by guards and once by a well-meaning clerk. I sent them all stumbling away from me confused and blushing, not certain who I was but convinced that I was not subject to their authority, and continued through the echoing halls unmolested.

I had been following my prey for some time, studying his patterns and waiting for the moment to strike. Today was the perfect opportunity. I spotted him immediately as I entered the large reading room, a portly older man in a tweed suit, his head bowed over a recent journal while a stack of similar journals waited on the table at his right elbow. He sat in his favorite leather chair, a lock of long, fine, white hair swept boyishly over the bulging dome of his forehead, a pair of glasses in his hand. The tip of one black plastic earpiece was tucked into the corner of his mouth like a pipe, as he sat idly reading and chewing.

I crossed the room casually, stopping here and there to admire the stacks. There were over two hundred thousand volumes in this collection. Part of me yearned to turn aside and satisfy my own curiosity. I hesitated more than once, thinking of the rare books in the Christy collection and how easily I could spend this day hunting among them. How long would it take to find evidence of my people among those volumes, all written by the first European explorers of Africa, Asia, Oceania? How difficult would it be to pass the guards with one or two of those priceless volumes in my empty case? At minimum, there might be a surviving copy of
Observations on the Several Parts of Africa
hidden away somewhere behind glass.

When I was close enough, I took the chair beside the old man. Oblivious, he continued his reading until I spoke.

“Excuse me, sir.” He raised his head raised sharply, like a gazelle startled at the watering hole. “But aren’t you Louis Beatty?”

He turned toward me, already pleased: There was no sweeter sound than his own name spoken by a young female admirer. He had not yet put his glasses back on and it was obvious he could not see me clearly. I waited for his pupils to dilate, opening for me like black flowers blooming for an invisible sun ... but he only squinted at me with a grandfatherly smile.

“Yes! Indeed. Guilty as charged, Miss.” His voice was bluff, jovial — a voice for funding committees and university deans. “And you are —?”

I sat for a moment, vexed and fumbling for words. Robbed of my powers, I would have to improvise. “A student of your work,” I said at last. “I enjoyed your lecture on the Olduvai finds last year.”

“Ah, excellent.” I could see him begin to dismiss me, his attention already slipping back toward the journal in his hand. His thumb still held his place. “So glad you enjoyed it, dear.”

“I was quite interested in your theories,” I said quickly. “Particularly the notion of separate pre-Human species in Africa.” I cleared my throat nervously. “I am very interested in primatology. Humans are just another primate, after all.”

It was a gamble. The old man had invested a great deal of energy in his female protégées over the past decade, sending one brave, determined young woman after another out into the wilds. He had already dispatched three of them over the last decade to study other living apes, two to Africa and one to Borneo.

“You are referring to my arguments regarding
Zinjanthropus bosei
and the other australopithecines of that period?”

Victory! I had earned a second look. The old man shifted toward me in his chair. It was a thoughtless reflex to lift his glasses and put them back on.

He looked into my eyes, blue as the skies above Leng, and then he was mine.

“I was actually referring to your suggested re-classification for
Pan jermynus.
” I dropped my voice, pitching it to a conspiratorial murmur. “I’ve read your memorandum in favor of
Homo jermynus
. I quite approve.”

His pupils had expanded like pools of black ink. “But it was secret.” It was a weak protest, his voice boyishly high. “That report was only for the Secretary of the Archive ....”

“Secrets are hard to keep, Doctor Beatty.” I bared my teeth in a triumphant smile. “I’d like to go to the examination room, please.” I put my hand, still covered in a gray calfskin glove, on his arm. “I need to see her. Now.”

Within twenty minutes, Doctor Beatty and I stood in a brightly-lit basement room in the bowels of the Museum. In the center of the room, there were two dissection tables, one empty and the other with a hinged lid. The lid was closed, and held shut with a chain and a padlock.