The Tallow Image

by J. T. Brindle

  Concentrating on the road ahead, he thrust all else from his mind. Nervous at the speed he was doing, he glanced into the mirror, his sharp eyes on the look-out for police cars. The motorway was curiously deserted. He swung his attention back to the road, after a moment peering into the rear-view mirror once more. Something was troubling him. Yet he saw nothing alarming. Hot and uncomfortable, he ran his finger along the edge where the collar of his shirt met his skin. He could hardly breathe. Convinced that the police must be following, clocking his speed, he glanced furtively into the mirror again. No. There was nothing. No one. Yet he was not alone.

  Close enough to reach out and touch him, she bided her time, a black menacing form curled in the deeper recesses of the rear seat, her dark, sinister eyes watching his every move, her presence permeating the air with evil, reaching inside him. Merciless, she watched his discomfort with pleasure. Her power was tenfold now. She was relentless.

  Emily had stood at the door until the bright red lights had gone into the distance. When she could no longer see the vehicle, she went back into the house; at the foot of the stairs she listened awhile. All was quiet. Satisfied, she returned to the sitting room, collected the tray and took it into the kitchen, where she placed it on the draining board. Checking that the house was secure, she then took a moment to tuck the tallow doll into her skirt pocket. As she did so, Bill’s words came back to her… ‘It could be a partner to the doll that Cathy brought back from Australia, except… hideous… creates nightmares.’ It occurred to her in that moment, how Maria herself had lived in Australia for many years. Maybe Bill had not been far wrong, then? Perhaps the dolls were sold in the craft shops there? Certainly, Cathy’s artefact had originated in Australia and if, as Emily suspected, this more attractive one did belong to Maria, then it was more than likely that it too was born in that country, being brought to England when Maria herself came here.

  When, a few moments later, Emily tiptoed into Maria’s bedroom, it was to find her wide awake, and the nurse fast asleep, her ample form oozing over the armchair and her head lolling to one side, the small white cap askew on her neat dark hair. ‘Shh!’ Maria warned softly, putting a thin scabrous finger to her lips. ‘She tried so hard to keep awake, poor thing.’ As Emily drew nearer, the old face spread into a pixilated smile; in the yellowish glow from the nearby night-light the old lady’s face looked shockingly aged, even the eyes that were once so vividly blue were painfully blanched and bulbous. Death was an ugly predator.

  ‘Oh, Maria, I thought you were asleep!’ Emily gently chastised. Coming to the bed and seating herself on its edge, she stretched out her arm to stroke the lank grey hairs from Maria’s forehead.

  Emily thought the small unintelligible sound to be a chuckle. ‘You thought wrong, then, didn’t you?’ Maria teased, her voice croaked and hollow. The bloated eyes swivelled upwards, exaggerating the plication of dry skin in the hollows beneath. In the gloom they searched out Emily’s face, fixing themselves there with unnerving directness. ‘Tell him,’ she whispered, ‘it wasn’t his fault, nor the dogs’. My time was running out long before.’

  Understanding, Emily nodded. ‘Rest now,’ she said, ‘you mustn’t tire yourself.’ She bent forward to kiss the high pale forehead. ‘I won’t be far away,’ she promised. A sudden movement behind made Emily turn.

  The nurse woke with a start, an expression of horror on her puffed, sleepy features. Scrambling out of the chair, she quickly offered her apologies, frantic fingers straightening the cap on her head, smoothing the crumpled skirt, then plucking nervously at the cuff of her blouse. ‘Oh dear,’ she kept saying, ‘oh dear.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Emily assured her, taking her to one side. ‘You mustn’t worry. I don’t expect you to sit with her every night. Remember our arrangements? We will share the night duty. You get some proper sleep now.’ When the nurse began to protest, Emily insisted, ‘Go on.’ Reluctantly, the nurse withdrew, but not before first checking her patient, then extracting Emily’s promise to call her at any time should she be needed.

  ‘Huh! I said all along I didn’t need no nurse,’ Maria retorted when Emily came back to stand by the bed. Shifting her eyes to stare at the door, she asked in a furtive whisper, ‘Has she gone?’ When, quietly amused by Maria’s intolerance, Emily glanced to the closed door before affirming that yes, ‘she’s gone to her bed’, a slow devious look crept over the old one’s face, her eyes narrowed to dark slits as they searched the four corners of the room. ‘Are we alone?’ she asked hoarsely.

  ‘Just you and me, Maria,’ Emily told her.

  Maria made a small noise, moving her head slowly from side to side, looking about the room, searching. For one awful moment she imagined there was someone hiding in the corner. Now, when she shuddered, Emily drew the quilt over her small frail arms. ‘No! Don’t go, Emily. Don’t leave me,’ she pleaded.

  ‘I won’t,’ Emily promised, thinking how Maria was like a child again, with a child’s fears.

  ‘Come closer,’ she urged softly, withdrawing her arms from beneath the bedclothes and holding them out as though to cradle Emily to her heart. When Emily seated herself close to Maria, her face only inches away from that familiar aged face, the anxious voice went on in a whisper, ‘I have a confession to make.’ Thinking on all the awful things she must now confess, a chill rippled through her old bones. She had never been so afraid, but time was short. There was too much hidden away inside. She could feel her life ebbing away, but she must not give in. Not yet. How could she rest in peace when there was evil all around? It rose in her now, stifling her.

  ‘A confession?’ Emily was intrigued, her deeper instincts telling her that the old lady’s mind was beginning to wander. ‘Please, Maria,’ she said softly, ‘rest now. We’ll talk in the morning.’ She could see how desperately tired Maria was.

  ‘No!’ Maria tugged at Emily’s sleeve. ‘Mr Barrington… all of them. I know.’ She was growing frantic now. ‘It’s all there. Oh, Emily, Emily, you must warn them!’ In her excitement she had raised her head from the pillow. Now she sank back, exhausted, her breathing erratic.

  ‘I won’t listen any more,’ Emily warned, ‘not tonight.’ She suspected that Maria was about to reveal how she had kept Cathy and Matt’s wedding photograph and all the other snippets of information. Emily had been made curious about that strange discovery, particularly about the notebook. She was curious now, but she would not let Maria distress herself any further. ‘I want you to sleep now,’ she told her, thankful at least that Maria had closed her eyes. The abject terror in them was too unnerving. The old, the dying, their fears were so different, so intense.

  ‘NO!’ The voice was a small scream. The eyes popped open.

  ‘Please, Maria, you mustn’t be afraid.’

  ‘You don’t understand. I’m not afraid. I am terrified!’

  Alarmed, Emily leaned forward to soothe her. She hoped such terror would not be her companion when it was time to leave this world. She saw it in Maria’s face and it was an awesome thing. ‘I’m here,’ she said. ‘I won’t leave you, I promise. There is no need for you to be terrified. It’s been such a long wearying day for you, Maria. Won’t you rest now?’ She forced a lightheartedness into her voice. ‘And then in the morning, who knows, you might feel strong enough for me to wheel you into the back bedroom where you can look out of the window and see the garden. Oh, Maria, it’s a delight!’ She remembered the tallow doll. ‘Oh, and I have something to show you.’

  She took the doll from her pocket and stood it in the palm of her hand, sensitive fingers tightly supporting it. ‘The gardener found this doll, Maria. It was tangled in the roots of that old apple tree. I think you must have lost it long ago. It’s a delightful thing.’ She smiled when the blue eyes sprang open to stare at the doll, the flickering glow from the night-light bringing its face alive. ‘Bill said Cathy has one that’s very similar, only hers is old, ugly. She brought it back from Australia…’ She stopped when the withered fingers clu
tched at her, the blue eyes big and dark, the wrinkled mouth twitching open and shut as though the words were trapped inside.

  Alarmed, Emily opened the cabinet drawer and laid the doll into it. ‘We’ll talk about it in the morning,’ she murmured, angry with herself. She had been all kinds of a fool! ‘I shouldn’t have shown it to you,’ she said, ‘not now.’ Sliding the door shut, she made to rise from the bed, but the fingers kept her there, pressing, restraining, and still the words would not come, the eyes stark and staring. ‘What is it, Maria? What are you trying to say?’ Emily had never been more afraid. She would have gone for the nurse, if only Maria would let go of her.

  ‘The… doll?’ She was struggling now, her frantic eyes glancing to the drawer, her voice rasping, painful.

  ‘Tomorrow, Maria.’ With determination, Emily bunched the gnarled fingers in her fist, her free hand stroking Maria’s forehead, sticky wet beads of sweat beginning to burst and trickle down the jutting temples.

  Maria pulled away, reaching both misshapen hands to her throat, tugging at the fine silver chain. ‘The key,’ she croaked, tapping the small barrel-shaped key at the end of the chain.

  ‘All right.’ Emily leaned forward and slipped the chain from Maria’s scrawny neck. ‘I’ll put it here,’ she said, ‘on your bedside cabinet.’

  ‘No!’ The fingers closed round Emily’s small fist, locking the chain there. ‘Open the… chest.’ She was gasping for breath, but nothing that Emily could say or do would stop her, not now, not when she could feel Death’s cold breath calling her. ‘Bring it, Emily… the chest.’ Her eyes grew wider with every frantic word, until now they dwarfed every other feature. ‘Can’t sleep… won’t sleep.’

  Frustrated, Emily was convinced that Maria would not rest until the old chest that had belonged to her grandmother was beside her – something of the past, a treasured relic to give her comfort. ‘Shh, I’ll get it,’ she said, ‘but only if you will promise to rest then?’ When the grey head nodded, Emily went to the place where she knew the old chest was kept. In a moment she returned. ‘There,’ she whispered soothingly, ‘I’ll leave it here, where you can easily see it, but don’t you go trying to reach it, Maria, or I will have to take it away again.’ She began clearing a space on the cabinet.

  ‘NO!’ The voice startled her. Pausing, she turned. Maria’s expression was frightening. ‘Take it… away!’ she moaned.

  Emily was astonished, especially when she remembered how closely Maria had always guarded the old casket. For now, though, she realised it was essential to humour the old one. ‘All right, Maria, I’ll take it downstairs.’ And alert the nurse on the way, she thought. Tucking the object in the crook of her arm, she leaned down. ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ she said, her anxiety eased a little. Certainly Maria seemed much calmer now, a more peaceful look in her eyes, although the fear was still there – the fear of dying, Emily thought bitterly. She did not want to leave her, not even for the few minutes it would take to carry the chest out of the room, out of the old lady’s presence. The chest, or its contents, had seemed to disturb her. It would be better put away for now. She swept silently out of the room, purposely leaving the door partly open, her steps taking her immediately to the nurse’s room. Emily had been terrified just now, it might be as well if the nurse kept vigil with her through the night.

  In the semi-darkness of her room, Maria stirred. There was terror in her, the same terror that had driven her to bury the tallow image where she believed it would remain for all time. Nothing had changed. Not on that night fifty years ago, nor on this night. The lifetime between was only a single frantic heartbeat. It took every ounce of her dying strength to drag herself from the bed and struggle across the room to the doorway. Every faltering step was a new agony. For every second, every painful shuffling movement, she was in dread that Emily would come back too quickly. Emily must not stop her! Not now. Not when the chaos in her mind had begun to shift into a semblance of order. Not when the words were at long last piecing together, making a sense that was denied her all these years.

  She whispered the words now, the very words that had issued from the icon itself. From the image, the black-eyed evil that had visited in the depth of her nightmares… ‘Through the flames… eye to eye…’ The rest was lost to her, but it made sense now. Eye to eye. More than anything these words had haunted her. Now she knew the secret. There was another doll! Another. The partner, like right and wrong, black and white, young and old. Wasn’t that what Emily had said?… similar… but old and ugly. Fashioned by the same fingers, out of the same mould. Beauty and the beast. The beast!

  Quickly now, Maria pushed the door to and turned the key. The cabinet was only a few steps away, yet it seemed a million miles. Slowly she fed her way across the hard flat carpet, her bare feet making a weird sound, like shuffling sand. She felt wonderfully old, bent at a peculiar angle, her neck arched upwards so she could see her way. Breathless, she paused, the tissue-thin skin stretching grey over her knuckles as she clung to the hard rail at the foot of the bed. The weight of her own head was suddenly unbearable. Sighing, she let it droop, digging her chin into the folds of her neck, hard blue eyes staring at the stiff dead flowers in the carpet pattern… through the flames, eye to eye… she smiled. At last, at last the fragments made a picture in her mind. Two dolls. Two tallow images! The thought stabbed her like the point of a knife. The other one… eye to eye. No matter. One was the other, the other this one, the same. What had Emily said? Oh yes. The other… ‘old… ugly’. She chuckled. That was her now. She and the doll. Beauty and the beast. All part of the same intricate plan. She had paused for only a moment. It was enough.

  When, having regained her breath, she started forward again, her eyes were inexplicably drawn towards the cabinet drawer. It was open. She chuckled again. She was not afraid. Not now. She would never be afraid again. Inch by inch, relentlessly she advanced; in the half-light a slight movement, only the slightest flutter, caught her eye. Her quizzical gaze swung from left to right, now it settled on the pillow where only a short while ago she had rested her head. Black malevolent eyes stared back, secretly smiling. The doll was there. Maria wondered whether her pillow was still warm with her scent. Her scent, musty, alive, mingling with the doll. There was a time when that thought would have struck horror in her. Now, it was a comforting thought. It made her smile.

  ‘Maria!’ Emily was at the door, afraid, bewildered.

  ‘Tell him,’ Maria called, a sudden strength surging through her, ‘the doll is evil.’ Belying her old tired bones and with the deadly speed of a snake’s tongue her arm shot forward, hard aged fingers locking round the doll’s throat. The black eyes stared up, glinting brilliantly in the flickering light. As her bony fingers tightened, Maria felt it shudder, felt its awful strength. In the softest whisper she spoke to it… ‘Through the flames.’ It knew. It knew! Roles were reversed. Triumphant, Maria reached into the drawer and drew out the box of matches. ‘The other one,’ she thought fearlessly, ‘like me.’ She was momentarily startled by a low gasping sound.

  Turning her head she roved her gaze about the room. ‘Are you here?’ she whispered. There was only an eerie silence. And above it Emily’s voice calling, frantic, pleading. Hasty fingers fumbling with the lock, then the sound of footsteps running down the stairs. Banging fists now, tearing at the door. ‘Tell him!’ Maria called. Then, ‘Forgive me, Emily.’ Without releasing her hold on the doll’s throat, she shook a match from the box. With calm deliberation she struck the match alight. At once it was blown out as though by a draught, but there was no draught, no open door, no window ajar, only the catastrophic silence and the presence of evil, of terror. But the terror was not hers. Not Maria’s.

  Drawing the matchbox closer to her body, she struck another match, quickly feeding the blue-yellow flame to the long flowing hair. It crackled and spat. She lit another, flaming the hessian garment and laughing defiantly when the doll squirmed and twisted in her stiff clutching fingers… ‘Thro
ugh the flames, eye to eye,’ the old one chanted, her vivid blue stare delving deep into the black hollow sockets, not pure black now, but alive, and lit from within.

  When the flames licked at her hand, scorching the skin and devouring the loose folds of her nightgown, Maria feverishly chanted the words, her voice excited, shivering with apprehension, her old heart elated… ‘Through… the… flames… eye… to… eye.’ It was screaming now, such awful screams, terrible to hear, and still Maria taunted. There was no pain, no compassion. Only a soaring sensation of joy. Her strength was indomitable. Soon, very soon, when the flames licked over her old dry skin, Maria’s own screams would not be stifled. ‘… Through… the… flames… eye… to…’

  ‘MARIA!’ Emily’s scream was one more. It might as well have been a whisper.

  The tall straight-faced nurse regarded him with quizzical eyes. ‘No, Mr Barrington, your son-in-law has had no other visitors.’

  ‘I see. Thank you.’ He followed her along the corridor, his emotions in turmoil. Strange, he mused, he had been desperate to find Cathy by Matt’s side, and now, for no obvious reason, he was almost relieved. The nurse pushed open the ward door and peered inside. Satisfied, she whispered, ‘How long do you intend staying?’