The Ivory and the Horn n-6

by Charles de Lint

  "Thanks."

  Jilly looked around the side of her easel, her welcoming smile turning puzzled.

  "Jim?" she said.

  "I hope I'm not interrupting anything," he said.

  So this was Jim Bradstreet, Wendy thought as she continued on her quest for a caffeine hit. He wasn't as handsome as she'd imagined he'd be, but there was a warmth about him that was directly evident. Mostly, it had to do with his eyes, she decided, the laugh lines around them and the way his gaze had immediately sought her own.

  Behind her, Jilly laid down the paintbrush she'd been using. Wiping her hands on her jeans, which left new streaks of a dark red on top of the other paint already on the material, she sat Jim down on the sofa and introduced him to Wendy. Wendy offered him coffee which he luckily refused, since there was barely one cup left in the carafe.

  "Well, this is a pleasant surprise," Jilly said. "I didn't think you even knew where I lived."

  Wendy brought her coffee over to where they were sitting and curled up on the end of the sofa opposite Jim. That was Jilly, she thought. Always happy to see anybody. Sometimes Wendy thought Jilly must know every third person living in the city— with plans already formed to meet the rest.

  "I looked the address up in the phone book," Jim said. He cleared his throat. "Uh, maybe I should get right to the point. I've been kind of worried about Brenda ever since you called yesterday. You see, I got the impression that you didn't even know she was out of town."

  Jilly's eyebrows rose quizzically, but she didn't say anything. Wendy stared down at her coffee. She hated getting caught in a lie— even one so well-intentioned.

  "Anyway," Jim went on, "when she called me last night, I tried to find out where she was staying, how long she'd be gone— that kind of thing. I was trying to be surreptitious, but I could tell she felt I was grilling her and she acted very evasive. We hardly talked for more than five minutes before she was off the phone."

  Nice-looking and kindhearted, too, Wendy thought. Obviously concerned. She wondered if he had a brother.

  Jilly sighed. "Well, it's true," she said. "We didn't know anything was wrong until yesterday when we found out her phone was cut off and she'd lost her job."

  "But it's the paper that's sent her out of town," Jim began before his voice trailed off. He nodded. "I get it," he added, almost to himself. "She just didn't want to see me."

  "I don't think it's quite like that," Jilly said.

  "She's been avoiding everybody," Wendy said. "I haven't seen her in three weeks."

  "And you say she's lost her job?"

  Jilly nodded. "Brenda will probably hate us for telling you about any of this, but you seem to care for her and right now I get the feeling she needs all the people she can get to care about her."

  "What— what's the matter with her?" Jim asked.

  "We don't know exactly," Jilly said.

  With Jilly having opened the Pandora's box, Wendy realized she couldn't hold back herself now. She just hoped that it wouldn't put Jim off and that Brenda would forgive them.

  "Brenda's got a serious case of low self-esteem," she said. "Way serious. She's always had money problems, but now we think she's quit smoking and gone on some weird crash diet. If you've done either, you probably know how it can make you a little crazy. With everything coming down at once on of that— losing her job, obviously way broke— God knows what she's thinking right now."

  "She never said anything..."

  "Well, she wouldn't, would she?" Wendy said. "Do you lay all your problems on a woman you've just met— especially someone you might like a lot?"

  "She said that?" Jim asked. "That she likes me a lot?"

  Wendy and Jilly exchanged amused glances. It was almost like talking to Brenda, Wendy thought. That'd be the first thing she'd center on as well.

  "When you were talking to Brenda," Jilly asked. "Did she say where she was staying?"

  Jim shook his head.

  "Well, I might be able to fix that, Jilly said. "Or at least, Lou might."

  She got up and dug her phone out from under a pile of newspapers and art magazines and dialed a number.

  "Who's Lou?" Jim asked Wendy.

  "A cop she knows."

  "Yes, hello?" Jilly said into the phone. "Could I speak to Detective Fucceri, please? It's Jilly Coppercorn calling." She listened for a moment, then put her hand over the mouthpiece. "Great," she told them. "He's in." She removed her hand before either Wendy or Jim could say anything and spoke into the phone again.

  "Lou? Hi. It's Jilly. I was wondering if you could do me a favor.

  "That's not true— I called you just last week to ask you out for lunch but you were too busy, remember?

  "How soon we forget.

  "What? Oh, right. I want to get an address to go with a phone number.

  "Well, no. I don't have the number yet. I need that as well."

  Wendy sat fascinated as she listened to Jilly deal with number traces and the like as though she were some TV private eye who did this all the time. Jilly passed on Jim's number and the approximate time of Brenda's call to Lou, then finally hung up and gave Jim and Wendy a look of satisfaction.

  "Lou'll have the address for us in about half an hour," she said.

  "Can anybody do that?" Jim asked.

  Wendy just looked at him. "What do you think?" she asked.

  "What's the big deal?" Jilly asked. "All I did was ask a friend to do us a favor."

  "But only you would think of tracing Brenda's call," Wendy said.

  "But everybody knows that the phone company keeps records on that kind of thing— don't they?"

  "And only you would know who to ask and have them actually do it for you," Wendy finished.

  Jilly waved her hand dismissively. "Anybody want some breakfast?" she asked.

  Jim glanced at his watch. "But it's almost noon."

  "It's also Sunday," Wendy told him. "Normal people are only just waking up about now."

  "So call it brunch," Jilly said.

  ***

  It took Lou closer to an hour to get back to Jilly, by which time they'd all eaten the somewhat complicated Mexican omelet that Jilly had whipped up for them with her usual careless aplomb. Wendy and Jim were cleaning the dishes and Jilly was back behind the easel when the phone finally rang.

  "You're sure?" Jilly said when she had finished writing down the information he had given her. "No, no. I'd never think that. I really appreciate your doing this, Lou. It's just such a weird place. Yes, I'll tell you all about it next week. Thanks again."

  She hung up the phone and then stared at what she'd written.

  "Well?" Wendy said. "Aren't you going to tell us where she is?"

  Jilly shrugged. "I don't know. The call was made from a public phone booth in the parking lot of a general store up Highway 14."

  "A general store?" Wendy said.

  " 'Ada & Bill's General Store.' It's almost in the mountains."

  Wendy's hopes fell. "That doesn't tell us anything."

  Jilly nodded her head in glum agreement.

  "I've got a car," Jim said. "Anybody want to take a drive up there to see if we can find out more?"

  All Jilly had to do was change her jeans for a clean pair and comb her tangled hair with her fingers. Wendy was dressed and ready to go in a record five minutes.

  23

  Everything stands still when the rusalka appears. She's tall and gaunt, a nightmare of pale flesh clad in the remains of a tattered green dress, hair matted and tangled, the color of dried blood, the eyes burning so that looking at them is like looking into the belly of a furnace.

  She's what's been haunting me, I realize. She's the curse of the well. It's not her granting wishes that makes her so terrible, but that she steals your vitality as a vampire would. She sucks all the spirit out of you and then drags your body down into the bottom of the well where you lie with all the other bodies of her victims.

  I can see the mound of them in the water, a mass of drown
ed flesh spotted with the coins that have been dropped on top of them. I know that's where I'm going, too.

  She steps up to me, clawed hands reaching out. I try to scream but it's as though my mouth's full of water. And then she touches me. Her flesh is so cold it's like a frost burn. Her claws dig into my shoulders, cutting easily through the skin like sharp knives. She starts to haul me up toward her in an awful embrace and finally I can scream.

  But it's too late, I know.

  That's all I can think as she drags my face up toward her own. It's too late.

  She's got jaws like a snake's. Her mouth opens wider than is humanly possible— but she's not human, is she? She's going to swallow me whole... but suddenly I'm confused. I feel like I'm standing on the edge of the wishing well and it's the mouth of the well that's going to swallow me, not the rusalka, except they're one and the same and all I can do is scream, and even that comes out like a jagged whisper of sound because I've got no strength in me, no strength left at all.

  24

  "That was it!" Jilly cried as Jim drove by a small gas bar and store on the right side of the highway. "You went right by it."

  Jim pulled over to the side of the road. He waited until there was a break in the traffic, then made a U-turn and took them back into the parking lot. The name of the store was written out in tiny letters compared to the enormous GAS sign above it. The building itself was functional rather than quaint— cinderblock walls with a flat shingled roof. All that added a picturesque element was the long wooden porch running along the front length of the building. It was simply furnished, with a pair of plastic lawn chairs, newspaper racks for both The Newford Star and The Daily Journal, and an ancient Coca-Cola machine belonging to an older time when the soft drink was sold only in its classic short bottles.

  Jim parked in front of the store, away from the pumps, and killed the engine. Peering through the windshield, they could see an old woman at the store's counter.

  "I'll go talk to her," Jilly said. "Old people always seem to like me."

  "Everybody likes you," Wendy said with a laugh.

  Jilly gave a "can I help it" shrug before she opened her door and stepped out onto the asphalt.

  "I'm coming," Wendy added, sliding over across the seat.

  In the end they all trooped inside. The store lived up to its name, selling everything from dried and canned goods and fresh produce to fishing gear, flannel shirts, hardware and the like. The goods were displayed on shelves that stood taller than either Jilly or Wendy, separated by narrow aisles. It was dim inside as well— the light seeming almost nonexistent compared to the bright sunlight outside.

  The old woman behind the counter— she must be Ada, Jilly decided— looked up and smiled as they came in. She was grey-haired and on the thin side, dressed in rather tasteless orange polyester pants and a blouse that was either an off white or a very pale yellow— Jilly couldn't quite decide which. Her hair was done up in a handkerchief from which stray strands protruded like so many dangling vines.

  "I wish I could be of more help," Ada said when Jilly showed her the photograph of Brenda that she'd brought along, "but I've never seen her before. She's very pretty, isn't she?"

  Jilly nodded. "Are there any motels or bed-and-breakfasts nearby?" she asked.

  "The closest would be Pine Mountain Cabins up by Sumac Lake," Ada told her. "But that's another fifteen or so miles up the highway."

  "Nothing closer?"

  "Afraid not. Pine Mountain is certainly the closest— other than The Wishing Well, of course, but that's been boarded up ever since the early seventies when the bank foreclosed on Ellie Carter."

  "That's the place where Brenda goes on her Sunday drives," Wendy put in.

  Jilly nodded. She could remember Brenda having spoken of the place before. "And she's got a newspaper clipping of it up above her desk in her apartments," she added.

  "I doubt your friend would be staying there," Ada said. "The place is a shambles."

  "Let's try it anyway," Jilly said. "We've got nothing to lose. Thank you," she added to Ada as she headed for the door with Jim in tow.

  Wendy stopped long enough to buy a chocolate bar, before following them to the car. Jilly had already slid in beside Jim so this time Wendy got the window seat.

  "What would Brenda be doing at an abandoned motel?" Wendy asked as Jim started up the car.

  "Who knows?" he said.

  "Besides," Jilly said, "with the way this idea panned out, our only other option is to go back home."

  The motel was easy to find. They followed the long curve of the highway as it led away from the store and came upon it almost immediately as the road straightened once more.

  "I don't see a car," Jim said.

  He parked close to the highway and they all piled out of his car again. The soles of their shoes scuffed on the buckling pavement as they approached the motel proper. The tumbled-down structure looked worse the closer they came to it.

  "Maybe she parked it around back," Jilly said, "Out of sight of the highway."

  She was trying to sound hopeful, but the place didn't look encouraging— at least not in terms of finding Brenda. It was so frustrating. She kicked at a discarded soda can and watched it skid across the parking lot until it was brought up short by a clump of weeds growing through the asphalt.

  "God, it's so creepy-looking," Wendy said. "Way abandoned."

  It did have a forlorn air about it, but Jilly rather liked it— maybe because of that. She'd always had a soft spot in her heart for the abandoned and unwanted.

  "I think it's great," she said.

  "Oh, please."

  "No, really. I've got to come back here and do some paintings. Look at the way that shed's almost leaning right into the field. The angle's perfect. It's like it's pointing back at the motel sign. And the lattice work on that roofline— over there. It's just—"

  "What's that weird sound?" Jim broke in.

  Jilly fell silent and then both she and Wendy both heard it as well— an eerie mix of a high-pitched moan and a broken whisper. It was so quiet that it disappeared completely when a car passed on the highway behind them. Once the car was gone, though, they could hear it again.

  "It... it must be some kind of animal," Wendy said. "Caught in a trap or something."

  Jilly nodded and set off around the side of the motel at a run, quickly followed by the other two.

  "Oh, shit," Wendy said. "That's Brenda's car."

  Jilly had recognized it as well, but she didn't bother replying. She had a bad feeling about all of this— the motel, Brenda's car, that sound. Worry formed a knot in the pit of her stomach, but she ignored the discomfort as best she could. Head cocked, she tried to place where the sound originated. It made her shiver, crawling up her spine like a hundred little clawed feet.

  "It's coming from over there," Jim said, pointing toward a thick tangle of rose bushes.

  "That's where Brenda said the well is," Wendy said.

  But Jilly wasn't listening. She'd already taken the lead again and so it was she who, after pushing her way through a worn path in the rose bush tangle, first found Brenda.

  Jilly almost didn't recognize her. Brenda was wasted to the point of emaciation— a gaunt scarecrow version of the woman Jilly had known. Her clothes hung on her as though they were a few sizes too large, her hair seemed to have lost its vibrancy and was matted against her scalp and neck. She was leaning over a crumbling stone wall, head and shoulders in the well, thin arms pushing on the stones as though something was dragging her down. But there was nothing there. Only Brenda and the terrible soft keening sound she was making.

  Afraid of startling her, Jilly waited until Jim and Wendy had pushed through the roses as well so that they could lend her a hand in case Brenda fell forward when she was touched. Speaking softly— just uttering meaningless comforting sounds, really— Jilly pulled Brenda back from the well with Jim's help. When they laid her on the ground, Brenda's eyes gazed sightless up at them, vision turned
inward. But the sound she'd been making slowly faded away.

  "Oh my God," Wendy said as she took in the change that had been wrought on Brenda in just a few weeks. "There's nothing left of her."

  Jilly nodded grimly. "We have to get her to a hospital."

  She and Wendy took Brenda's legs, Jim her shoulders, then they carried her back through the rose bushes, all of them suffering scratches and cuts from the sharp thorns since the path was too narrow for this sort of maneuver. Brenda seemed to weigh nothing at all. Once they had her out on the lawn, Jim hoisted her up in his arms and they hurried back to his car.

  "What about Brenda's car?" Wendy said as they passed it on the way back to the motel's parking lot.

  "We'll come back for it," Jilly said.

  25

  I don't remember much about the hospital. I feel like I was underwater the whole time— from when I hung up the phone on Jim Saturday night until a few days later, when I found myself in a hospital bed in Newford General. I don't know where the lost time went— down some dark well, I guess.

  The doctor told me I'd been starving myself to death.

  I was in the hospital forever and I've been in therapy ever since I got out. I'm really just starting to come to grips with the fact that I have an eating disorder. Have one, had one, and always have to guard against its recurrence.

  Thank god I had my health insurance premiums paid up.

  The thing that's hardest to accept is that it's not my fault. This is something Ellie told me and my therapist keeps returning to. Yes, I'm responsible for the messes I've made in my life, but I have to understand where the self-destructive impulses come from. The reason I feel so inadequate, so fat, so ugly, so mixed up, is because all my life I've had certain images pounded into my head— the same way that everybody does. Perfect ideals that no one can match. Roles to play that— for whatever reason— we can't seem to adjust to. When you don't toe the line, it's not just the outside world that looks askance at you; you feel in your own head that you've let yourself down.

  Logically, it all makes sense, but it's still a hard leap of faith to accept that the person I am is a good person and deserves recognition for that, rather than trying to be somebody I'm not, that I can never be, that it would even be wrong to be.