The Mammoth Book of Terror (48 page)
Read The Mammoth Book of Terror Online
Authors: Stephen Jones
“I fell, and twisted my leg.”
This was exact, if not decorous. Or true.
As she lay on her bed, her knee packed with the poultices of herbs, tightly bound, and beating like a drum, sometimes leaning to vomit in a chamber-pot, Ysabelle turned over in her mind what she
should do. But she was feverish, and could not be sure what had happened. How could Ernst have deduced, from their parting embrace, so much? Yet he had. Indeed, it could not be denied. Of course,
any woman who rejected him must be – unnatural. Already condemned. Hopeless.
She would have gone to his door, limping, crawling, but the girl, Gittel, had run out. Gittel, terrified, heaving Ysabelle up and bending under her weight like a young willow. Her thick accent:
“Go – go, Madame. She’ll calm him. She always does, the four years I’m with them.”
And Gittel had pushed Ysabelle away. And from the male house, no sound issued. The birds sang on. The clouds passed intermittantly across the sun. Eclipses.
It was Ysabelle he would condemn. She was a witch who had seduced—
H
ā
na, so ignorant, naive, unable to judge, to see the deadly snare—
He would reprimand and instruct. He might be cruel. He might strike her again, and lock her up in her room. Then he would come here. Ysabelle, her brain white with the lights that splashed over
her eyes, formulated what she must do. “Oh Ernst – Ernst – after our last time together – I thought you loathed me. Don’t you know how women sometimes
pretend
– so foolish – she let me, out of pity – she let me make-believe – that she was
you
!”
And then, stroking him, begging him to take her, his stinking filthy body, his disgusting tongue, and worse, the rest – the rest. But Ysabelle would have it all, she would do anything. For
that way, she could protect – she would even take his member, as she had heard tell a prostitute – a
mad
prostitute presumably – would do, take it into her mouth –
and choking down her revulsion, moaning as if with joy, become his utter slave.
She would die for him, if she must.
H
ā
na . . .
Mireio said to Jean that she thought that bad man, Monsieur Ernst, had led Ysabelle a dance, and cast her off. No matter. If there was a pregnancy, it could be dealt with . .
. Mireio was skilled. But after all the good food they had wasted on him – the devil.
Jean shrugged. None of this concerned him. A little over a hundred years before, these rich people would have been put under a honed blade. That would have settled their minds wonderfully.
Ysabelle tossed between oblivion and awareness. She thought the pillow was H
ā
na, because some of H
ā
na’s sweet scent had been left there. She thought the acid
voluptuous aroma of the cherries, plucked by Mireio, or bleeding in the grass, was the sharp catch of H
ā
na’s personal perfume in the moments of her ecstasy.
In her fever, Ysabelle spasmed in a deathly pleasure.
When the fever broke, pale and shuddering, Ysabelle sat by the window.
The nightingale still sang. She heard it all night long, as the swelling of her leg waned with the moon.
“No rain,” said Mireio.
Seven days passed, and then, Ysabelle went to her writing table, and began to try to compose a letter to Ernst. It was to be a love letter, confessing she could not bear not to see him. That his
disapproval broke her heart. He had witnessed her ultimate foolishness, kissing his sister, locked in a female fantasy that H
ā
na was himself. Would he forgive her, come to her? She did not
want marriage, never had, but to lose his regard – it burnt her away, like the summer leaves.
As she was writing this letter, over and over, attempting to make it right, Ernst’s letter to Ysabelle arrived, along with a package, its contents also wrapped over and over, in expensive
paper from the city.
“My dear Friend,” he began, “Ysabelle: I know what worry you must have endured, and as soon as the burden upon me was eased, I sat down to write to you. We
both of us care for H
ā
na so deeply. Let me assure you at once that now the terrible insanity which overwhelmed her has been alleviated. Could you see her, as I did, two days ago, look into
her face, clear of all shadow and every frightful thing, you would know, as I do, that this was for the best.
“You will understand, that morning I calmed her as well as I might. Luckily, I keep some opiates by me, for use in certain of my experiments. These rendered H
ā
na her first peace, and
after that I was able to convey her to St Cailloux. Here my friend, Le Rue, took charge of her at once.
“She had by now awoken, and on feeling her pulse, which was so rapid, he declared immediately this was enough to inform him such a passionate heart was unnatural, and could do her only
harm. He confided to me that, in the Dark Ages, she would have been supposed possessed by the Devil. But he is a man of science. The ‘Devil’ is merely in her mind, its disorder. He
acted before nightfall.
“I will not describe to you the operation, the details might alarm you, and besides you would not understand it. It involves certain nerve fibres in the frontal portion of the brain. A
delicate pruning away. My magnificent friend, he made the tender incision. He is adept, and although H
ā
na was his very first subject, the success with her has made him sanguine for the help of
others.
“It was a practice in Ancient Egypt, studied by him closely. Curious to think, that when they lay H
ā
na in the tomb at last, she too will bear this same scar upon her forehead and her
skull, as did those persons in that land of pyramids.
“Ah, Ysabelle. Dear sister. If you could see her. She is like a little child again. Everything is new to her. The flight of a bird startles, even that. She does not move from her chair. A
picture of repose, her drooping head, her folded hands. Le Rue says she does not quite know me – I fear she would not know you at all. But when I ask her to smile for me, she does. She will
be well cared for, there. And though I must soon be gone from this country, Le Rue will take thought for her like his own. As indeed, he does for all his charges in that place.
“A note on my gift, which accompanies this letter. You will have realized, it is her hair, which of course, for such medical attention, had to be cut off entirely. All the shining locks.
It seemed to me you might value them, dear Ysabelle, as you did when you were to her her closest and most intimate friend.
“Beyond this, my kindest wishes for your continued good health and the ending of your local drought.
“Your brother, if so I may call myself:
“Ernst.”
In her diary, her Book, Ysabelle wrote, “I sent for the old man, the charcoal burner they call
Doggy.
Having given him some coins, he went for me to the place,
which he names Wolf Valley. He was the only one I could trust. He, and his kind, keep away from the village. He has under his shirt an amulet, dried sticks twisted in a knot. Near dawn, he came
back. He had said there he was an old servant, and asked for her. Expectedly, they would not let him in, but said she was in the care of Dr Le Rue, and he need have no fears. When Doggy said, as
I told him to, that he hoped she was better, they laughed. He caught a glimpse of others, at some windows. Their heads were shaved. One was wrapped up tight, and seemed to have no arms. The old
man was brave. They hate that place.”
Under this Ysabelle, or something, has scrawled in a running jagged line:
Heart burst stifle and drown in blood
Perhaps a curse, or a wish for self.
There are records from the asylum. One may see them, if the tactic is carried out properly. There is a note on a woman, called only by her Christian name, to “protect” her.
“H
ā
na, the prey of uncontrollable, obscene and perverse desires, a danger to herself and others.” The operation, “The last possible resort” and “practised among
the ancients”, was a “success”.
Before the final page, Ysabelle sets out for herself some instructions on how best to hang herself. The strong beam in the lower room that faces the afternoon glare of the
mountains, and will hold her weight, which, she admits, is much less, as she cannot eat. Mireio and Jean will be sent away with a settlement of money, as the last page also explains. The hair, a
dead thing, still with its stranded mauve ribbons that she herself had helped, that morning of the ending, to tie there, is to be strongly plaited, not as before, woven, not with silk, but some
coarse twine, to make it sure. And she will be naked, lest the rigidity of her clothes impedes her.
Ysabelle understands, from her reading, that few people die quickly when hanged. They are choked and strangle. In this way, the hair will throttle her, and as she kicks and gags in instinctive
physical panic, her soul will remember that it is H
ā
na who is killing her, as she has killed H
ā
na. She affirms she will wear the silver locket with H
ā
na’s sexual hair. She has
polished the metal.
She says, as if she has forgotten it was mentioned before, and as she says again, too, on the last page, that she has heard of a goat being sacrificed to bring rain.
After that, she says the nightingale has flown away.
Then she says she has finished.
After which, there is the last page.
There are some further pages after that, blank, obviously.
Inevitably, one fills them with the mind – the presumed hanging, the woman choking and kicking, rocked violently from side to side in the white vacant empty house, then only turning,
slowing, still, a pendant, while the mountains and the sun stare in. After which, as it seems almost supernaturally, fire catches the house, and burns it to the ground, leaving only the puns
– St Cailloux – of the lower stone floors and stone chimneys and the stone hearths, and the stone under which the book is, until the old man, maybe Doggy, fetches it out and brings it
here, to me.
In a year’s time, a peasant, travelling up the lane on foot, will pause by the ruin of the house. The land by then will have been sold off, but no one, as yet, come to
restore or change it. The untended cherry trees will be leafy yet, although one or two will have succumbed to the ivy, with here and there a green young fruit hard among the foliage.
The man, a stranger, will not be troubled by any stories of the region, and going into the ruin, will poke about, since sometimes, in this way, he has found useful things others have overlooked.
He will find, however, nothing, and so sit down by a stone, part of one, now collapsed, chimney. He will eat his olives and bread. Then he will fall asleep, for the sun will be again very hot.
When he wakes it will be to great alarm. Across from him, in the wild grass, a small fire will have started. He must leap up to put it out, and do so quickly. For in this weather, another summer
drought, fire is the fiercest enemy.
This man is canny. When once he has dealt with the danger, he will find a soreness at his chest, and looking down, where hangs the little silver cross given him as a boy, he will come to see at
once what has happened, for he has heard of it before.
An hour after, in the village, he will tell his tale over his wine, and so unravel the mystery of Madame Ysabelle’s house. The truth will not make any difference to her burial place, in
fact, will only consolidate her rights to holy ground, since no one has generally told the plan of suicide written in her diary.
Now they will say without compunction, that some object- a glass, or mirror, carelessly left by the departing servants – caught the harsh light from the mountains, and cast it off in a ray
against the wooden wall. The concentration of this burning-glass presently sent the tinder of the drought-dry house up in a conflagration.
Most of that will be true. Not quite all. For it was no picture or glass that caused the focus of an incendiary ray, the lighting of a death pyre. It was the polished silver locket that lay
pendant on the breast of Ysabelle’s hanged corpse, once she had stopped moving, once she hung quite still, a pendant herself, naked silver on a silver chain of hair, from the beam above.
I have a lock of your hair.
I cut
It from you as you slept.
I kissed you there,
Where
The scissors met.
You never noticed it had gone.
It is all I have of you,
Your hair.
Blonde spirals in
A silver locket.
NEIL GAIMAN HORROR-HOSTED
the Fox Channel’s
13 Nights of Fear
during the fortnight before Hallowe’en 2004 and got to introduce movies
from inside a coffin. He thought it was cool.
His 2002 novel
American Gods
won science fiction’s Hugo Award and horror’s Bram Stoker Award, while
Coraline
, a dark fantasy for children which he had been writing for
a decade, was a huge success on both sides of the Atlantic and even managed to beat its predecessor in the awards stakes.
