The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Volume 1

by Paula Guran

  “All the old big houses in Wainscott are the same,” Ana says adamantly, “—all my friends, they work in them, they tell me. It is nothing special to this house.”

  Nothing poisoned or haunted in this house. We know.

  It has fallen to Elisabeth to make such appointments since Alexander is often in Boston on business. Indeed Elisabeth is eager to shield her husband from such mundane tasks for he is easily upset by problems involving his beloved house, and it is increasingly difficult to speak to him without his taking offense.

  Also, Elisabeth is the wife of the house. As Mrs. Alexander Hendrick she feels a thrill of satisfaction, she is sure that her emotionally unstable predecessor took no such responsibility.

  The new wife is nothing like—her! Alexander didn’t make a mistake this time. This Elizabeth—“Elisabeth”—is utterly devoted to him and the child and the household, she is a treasure . . .

  Listening, but the voice trails off. Always she is hoping to hear And Alexander is devoted to—her!

  Methodically, dutifully calling these local tradesmen and (oddly) no one is available to come to the house on Oceanview Avenue just then. All have excuses, express regret.

  But we can pay you—of course! We can pay you double.

  Calling a local plumber and the voice at the other end expresses surprise—“Hendrick? Again? Weren’t we just there a few months ago?” and Elisabeth stammers, “I—I don’t know, were you? What was wrong?” and the voice says, guardedly, “Anyway, there’s no one available right now. Better try another plumber, I can give you a number to call.”

  But it is a number that Elisabeth has already called.

  “Try Provincetown. They’ll charge for coming here, but . . .”

  None of this Elisabeth will mention to Alexander. It is only results he cares to be informed of.

  So much to do each day. Like a merry-go-round that has begun to accelerate.

  Vague thought of having a baby of my own, someday, a little sister for Stefan. About this she feels excitement, hope, dread, guilt.

  So many distractions, Elisabeth has (temporarily) set aside her scholarly work she’d been doing at the Radcliffe Institute. Research that once fascinated her. Elusive and shimmering as a mirage in the desert, her PhD dissertation on the experimental verse of H.D. and H.D.’s relationship to Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. She has written drafts of the (seven) chapters but must revise, add footnotes, update the already extensive bibliography.

  No end to fascinating research! But she must be careful that she does not stray from H.D. to N.K. She does not intend to snoop.

  It is uncanny, some lines of poetry by H.D. echo lines of poetry by N.K. Or rather, some lines of poetry by N.K. echo lines by H.D.

  A case of plagiarism? Or—admiration, identification?

  I have had enough.

  I gasp for breath.

  When they were first married and Elisabeth came to live in her husband’s family home in Wainscott it was with the understanding that Elisabeth would return to her scholarly work when things “settled down.” The director of the Hendrick Foundation is a feminist—of course. In the past most Hendrick fellowships went to male artists, but no longer.

  No one has urged Elisabeth to complete her PhD at Harvard more enthusiastically than Alexander. When Stefan is older, and doesn’t require so much attention, Elisabeth might find a teaching position at a private school on the Cape . . .

  It is true, Stefan requires attention. The fact of Stefan, the surviving child. Elisabeth knows that she must be indirect in watching over the elusive child, not obvious and intrusive. She must never startle him by a display of affection. And she must never intervene between father and son.

  If Alexander is chiding Stefan, for instance. It is painful to Elisabeth to hear but she must not intervene.

  As she sometimes overhears Alexander speaking harshly on the phone, so she overhears Alexander speaking harshly to Stefan. Chiding him for being dreamy, distracted—other-minded. For sometimes Stefan is surprisingly clumsy—slipping on the stairs, spraining an ankle; falling from his bicycle, badly cutting his leg. Objects seem to twist from his fingers—cutlery, glassware that shatters on the floor. He is often breathless, anxious. Nothing annoys the father so much as an anxious child who shrinks from him as if in (ridiculous!) fear of being struck.

  At such times Elisabeth bites her lower lip, straining to hear. She should not be eavesdropping, she knows. If Alexander caught her . . . .

  She rarely hears Stefan’s reply for the boy speaks so softly. If there is any reply.

  Yet it is true as Alexander has boasted: Stefan appears to be happy in the house on Oceanview Avenue. At least, Stefan is less happy elsewhere.

  Indeed he is reluctant to leave on short trips, even to Provincetown. It is all but impossible to get him to stay away overnight. If forced he will protest, sulk, weep, kick, suck his fingers. Even Ana is shocked, how childish Stefan becomes at such times.

  The house is an epicenter, it seems. Stefan will allow himself approximately a mile from this center before he becomes anxious.

  From her third-floor aerie Elisabeth has observed Stefan pedaling his bicycle to the end of the block, turning then to continue around the block. Though he quickly passes out of her sight Elisabeth understands that Stefan must keep the house at the epicenter of his bicycling. Soon then, he will reappear, coming from the other direction along Ocean-view, pedaling fast, furiously, as if his life were at stake.

  Once waiting for Stefan to reappear, waiting for—oh, how long?—an hour?—an anguished hour?—Elisabeth can bear it no longer and hurries downstairs, rushes out onto the front walk to look for him; and stands in the avenue waiting for him—where is he? Until finally she glances behind her and sees Stefan hovering at the front door watching her.

  She is embarrassed, and blushes deeply. When she returns to the house Stefan has disappeared, damned if she will look for him.

  8.

  Convulsed with something that looks like passion we tell ourselves, Love.

  A high, skittering sound as of glass shards ringing together. Unless it is laughter. Steps back and in the next instant the cut-glass chandelier in the front hall loosens, falls from the ceiling, crashes to the floor narrowly missing her.

  In the aftermath of the shattering glass, that high faint laughter so delicious, you want to join in.

  Surfaces, and beneath. Elisabeth is learning not to be deceived by the elegant polished surfaces of the house.

  A place of sickness. Don’t breathe.

  Walls look aslant. Doors stick, or can’t be closed. Doorknobs feel uncomfortably warm when touched, like inner organs.

  Light switches are not where Elisabeth remembers them to be—where Elisabeth knows them to be. Fumbling for the switch in her own bedroom.

  You will never find the light nor will the light find you but one day the light will shine through you.

  Finally, her fingers locate the switch. Blasting light, blinding.

  In the mirror, a blurred reflection. Wraith-wife.

  No: she is imagining everything. In the mirror there is nothing.

  For several days her skin has felt feverish. A sensation of heaviness in her lower belly, legs. No appetite and then ravenous appetite and then fits of nausea, gagging. The worst is dry heaving, guttural cries like strangulation.

  The most peaceful blue sleep. Hurry!

  * * *

  Midway in the shower in Elisabeth’s bathroom fierce sharp quills springing from the showerhead turn scalding-hot with no warning.

  Elisabeth cries out in surprise—and pain—and scrambles to escape before she faints . . .

  A previous time, the shower turned freezing cold.

  Slipping and skidding on the tile floor, whimpering in pain, shock.

  In fear of her life—almost. Hearing in the pipes in the walls muffled derisive laughter.

  Safer to take a bath. Always in the morning and (sometimes) before bed as well if she is feeling sullied, bloated.<
br />
  Fortunately there is, in another adjoining bathroom, an enormous bathtub in which she might soak in hot (not scalding) sudsy water curling her toes in narcotic pleasure, letting her eyelids sink shut.

  Tub is too crude and utilitarian a word for such a work of art: a marble bathtub. Faint blue veins in the marble like veins in flesh. Ancient, stately, six feet long, and deep. Eagerly Elisabeth tests the water, lowers herself into it taking care not to slip, not to fall. It is such pleasure, pure sensuous delight. Almost at once she begins to sink into a light doze. Her hair straggles into the steamy water, her pale soft startled-looking breasts begin to lift . . .

  Hurry! We have been waiting.

  Finds herself thinking of an Egyptian tomb. Mummified corpses of a young wife and her baby wrapped in swaddling laid solemnly in the tomb side by side.

  Sinking into the water, the enervating heat. Her mouth, nose beneath the water . . . Too much effort to breathe . . .

  I have had enough.

  I gasp for breath.

  Waking then. With a start, in shock. No idea where she is, or how much time has elapsed in this place.

  Hovering above the naked female body. The body is white, wizened. The fingers and toes are puckered, soft. In panic she must return to this body . . . .

  The bath water has turned cold and scummy and smells vile as turpentine. The marble has become freezing cold and slippery. In her desperation to climb out of the deep tub Elisabeth’s feet slip and slide, her strength has been sucked away. Loses her balance and falls onto the floor nearly striking her head on the marble rim.

  Oh!—pain has returned, and humiliation. For she is trapped inside the wizened white naked female body again.

  In the winter many nights Alexander is away. Bravely, Elisabeth is the wife of the house. Elisabeth is the stepmother of the surviving child.

  Dining together, evenings by the fireplace. Like something animated the child will speak of school, books he is reading, or has read. Safe topics for stepmother and stepchild to navigate like stepping stones in a rough stream.

  The father forbids television in the house on Oceanview Avenue. No internet for Stefan. No video games! He will not have his son’s mind (he knows to be a brilliant and precocious mind like his own at that age) polluted by debased American culture.

  (Alexander watches television in his Beacon Street apartment but the sort of television that Alexander watches is not debased.)

  As if he has just thought of it Stefan says, “That room—where you are—that was Mummy’s, too.”

  Elisabeth is surprised. That room?—she’d chosen because it is so spare, so unattractive. Two flights of stairs, the second flight to the old servants’ quarters steep and narrow.

  She’d assumed that N.K. had worked in another room. Her room shows no signs of human occupancy.

  “Oh, Stefan. I—I didn’t know . . .”

  “Mummy wouldn’t let us in, mostly. Not like you.”

  Is this flattering? Elisabeth wants to think so.

  But who is us, she wonders. Little Clea, also?

  The remainder of the meal passes in silence but not an awkward silence and when Elisabeth undresses for bed that night she finds herself smiling, a frothy sensation in the area of her heart of uplift.

  Not like you like you like you. Not!

  And later, as she is sinking into a delicious sleep—Live like it’s your life.

  Solemn ticking of the stately old Stickley grandfather clock in the hall.

  Yet Elisabeth begins to hear the ticking accelerate, and hesitate; a pause, and a leap forward; a rapid series of ticks, like tachycardia. (She has had tachycardia attacks since moving into the house, but in secret. Never will she voluntarily confide in her husband that she has what is called a heart murmur.) In the night she hears the clock cease its ticking and lies in a paroxysm of worry, that it is her own heart that has ceased. A whisper consoles her—Quick if it’s done, is best. Most mercy. Blue buzz of air, the only symptom you will feel is peace.

  Ignores the whisper. Very quietly descending the stairs barefoot to check on the clock, to see why it has ceased ticking; why the silence is so loud, in the interstices of its ticking.

  The clock face is blank!—there is no time . . . .

  It has already happened, Elisabeth. That is why time has ceased. It is all over, and painless.

  But no: when she switches on the light she sees that the clock is ticking normally. (Elisabeth is sure: she stands barefoot in the hallway shivering, listening.) And there is the clock face as always, stately Roman numerals, hour hand, minute hand, a pale luminous face with a lurid smile just for her.

  The wife of the house.

  The well water has been diagnosed by the township water inspector: an alarmingly high degree of organic and fecal material. Decomposing (animal?) bodies. Excrement. Contaminated water leaking into the well and until the well can be dredged and the water “purified” it is recommended that the Hendrick household use only bottled water for drinking and cooking purposes.

  Informed of this humiliating news Alexander flushes angrily. Elisabeth steels herself to hear him declare This house is not poisoned. But he turns away instead as if it Elisabeth who has offended him.

  9.

  The next evening meal with Stefan. Elisabeth has given Ana the day off, wanting to prepare the meal herself.

  Though she takes care to prepare only a variation of one of the few meals that Stefan will consent to eat, that doesn’t involve chewy pulpy meat in which muscle fibers are detectable, or anything “slimy” (okra, tomato seeds), or small enough (rice, peas) to be mistaken by the child for grubs or insects. To Ana’s vegetarian egg casserole Elisabeth has added several ingredients of her own—carrots, sweet peppers, spinach.

  But Stefan isn’t so talkative as he’d been the previous night. When Elisabeth brings up the subject of her third-floor room, and the view of wind-shaken trees outside the window, Stefan says nothing. Almost, Elisabeth might wonder if he’d ever spoken to her about the struggling figures in the trees or she’d imagined that remarkable exchange. Just slightly hurt, that Stefan is suspicious of the casserole she has prepared, examining forkfuls before lifting them to his mouth. And he is taking unusually small bites as if shy of eating in her company, or undecided whether he actually wants to eat the food she has prepared.

  Yet he’d once nursed. Imagining the child as an infant nursing at the mother’s breast.

  Or, at Elisabeth’s breast.

  She feels a flush of embarrassment, self-consciousness. What strange thoughts she has! And she is not drinking wine with the meal, as Alexander often urges her to do, to keep him company.

  Tugging at the breast of life we must devour.

  Helpless otherwise, for dignity’s not enough.

  Surrender dignity and in return royally

  Sucked.

  In person, when N.K. read this abrasive poem, or recited it in her smoky, throaty voice, audiences laughed uproariously. (Elisabeth has seen videos.) The enormous wish to laugh with the woman declaiming such truths, like a tidal wave sweeping over them.

  Since Alexander has been spending more time in Boston, Elisabeth has been on the internet watching videos of N.K. Doesn’t want to think that she is becoming obsessive. Knows that Alexander would disapprove and so has no intention of allowing him to know.

  Fear of being sucked and fear

  Of sucking.

  Stefan’s silence is not hostile nor even stubborn but (Elisabeth thinks) a consequence of shyness. Stefan may have felt that at their last meal he’d revealed too much to her, and betrayed his mother.

  No betrayal like loving another.

  No betrayal like love of the Other.

  Distracted by such thoughts Elisabeth has taken too much food into her mouth. Trying to swallow a wad of clotted pulp in her mouth. Her casserole is lukewarm and stringy, unlike Ana’s. Something coarse-textured like seaweed—must be the damned spinach. Chewing, trying to swallow but can’t swallow. Horribly, s
trands of spinach have tangled in her teeth. Between her teeth. Can’t swallow.

  Trying to hide her distress from Stefan. Not wanting to alarm the child. (Oh, if Alexander were here, to witness such a sight! He’d have been dismayed, disgusted.) A deep flush rises into Elisabeth’s face, she can barely breathe. This clump of something clotted, caught in her throat—horrible! The harder she tries to swallow, the more her throat constricts.

  “Excuse—”

  Mouth too full, can’t enunciate the word. Desperate now, staggering from the table knocking something to the floor with a clatter. With widened eyes Stefan stares at her.

  Must get to a bathroom, thrust a finger down her throat, gag, vomit violently into a toilet . . . .

  And then you die. And then

  it is over.

  So much struggle so long—why?

  At last in a bathroom, no time even to shut the door behind her as she manages to cough up the clotted pulpy mash, stringy spinach, in a paroxysm of misery gagging as she spits it into the toilet bowl. Though able to breathe again she is distressed, agitated. Too weak to stand, sinks to her knees. Her face is flaming-hot and the heaviness in her bowels like a fist.

  In the aged plumbing a sound of faint laughter.

  Then, Stefan is standing beside her. Without a word soaks a washcloth in cold water from the sink and hands it to Elisabeth to press against her overheated face.

  Too frightened, too exhausted even to thank the child. His small-boned hand finds hers, his fingers in her fingers clasped, tight.

  Oh Stefan thank you. Oh I love you.

  10.

  Impossible to sleep! Bile rising in her throat. That which she has bitten off, she cannot swallow. The muscles of her throat gag involuntarily, recalling. Cannot believe how close she’d come to choking to death.