Before either John or Hannah could stop me, I leapt to my feet and raced to the window, pulling back the heavy drapes so I could see. A host of sangsue had gathered down there, all of them staring at our villa with glowing eyes. They were shadows in a shadowy landscape, moonlight barely defining their shapes. I couldn’t tell where one monster ended and another began.
I could make out one of them, however, standing away from the others and close to the house. This one had startled, like wild beasts do when prey is near, as soon I appeared at the window, and now he had a steady gaze fixed upon me, a hungry expression on his face.
It was my beloved. Percy. And he was most certainly one of the sangsue now, for his eyes glowed just like all the others and I felt that same sense of dreadful enchantment as last night beginning to overtake me. I could not look away, no matter how much I longed to.
He raised his arms and he called to me then, his words like an irresistible song.
“Mary, my love,” he said. “Come down and join us.”
Four
There’s a rumor that when you’re about to die, your mind fills with a series of images—almost like illustrated postcards—of all the mistakes that you’ve made in your life. People say it’s God’s way of giving you one last chance for repentance. I don’t know if this is true, but as soon as Percy called to me I saw one image after another, all of us together—him kissing me, him unbuttoning my blouse, him running a finger leisurely up my inner thigh. And what I felt was far from repentance.
It was overwhelming desire.
I instantly forgot everything that had happened in the past months—the death of our child, the suicide of his wife, his recent affair with the scullery maid, the horrible feeling that our union was cursed. All the hurt and shame and guilt vanished. In its place, I felt only the passion I had been neglecting. The glow in his eyes burned through my soul and, like a pile of kindling when the tinder sparks, I caught fire.
I turned, ready to run down to him, to embrace him, not caring what he had become. He wanted me. That was enough.
Hannah caught me in a steely grip and John barred the doorway.
“Where do you think you’re going, girl?” she demanded.
“Let me go!” I clawed and bit and kicked, knowing she was no match for me. When I wasn’t looking, John locked the door, and the solid click of the tumblers caught my attention. Together, they had trapped me in this room. I might be able to break free from the old woman, with her gnarled hands and slight frame, but John posed another problem. I focused my gaze on him, letting a slow smile curve across my lips. My chin lifted as I spoke to him, “Come with me. They’re not what you think. We could be together, you and I.” I watched as a curious expression entered his eyes, my desire stirring a fire within him. Unfortunately, he managed to push it aside.
“She’s enchanted,” he said to the old woman, his voice a growl of disgust.
She slapped me across the face, more strength in her arm than I expected. I reeled backward, barely catching my balance before my head struck the wall. Then, once I righted myself, I reared up, putting all my weight into a blow that should have knocked her unconscious.
The old woman surprised me with her nimbleness as she veered to the side.
While I was recovering from my lunge, she slapped me again.
This time the pain was a shock, like jumping naked into a cold lake, and it rolled through my frame from my head to my fingertips. It made my vision cross and everything in the room doubled, then wavered, then finally steadied. I clung to one of the bedposts, trying to catch my breath when she slapped me one more time, even harder than the first two times.
“Wake up, girl! Come out of it, now, before I have to do something more desperate,” the old woman said. Her face was close to mine, her skin like leather, her blue eyes so pale they looked like frost. “Those sangsue have been telling you lies. They don’t want you to join them. They want to feast on you. They’re never looking for new members to join their clan when they come hunting in a pack, like tonight. The King of the sangsue, himself, must have told Percy to call out to you, knowing you would fall for the bait.”
John stood before me, shaking me, both hands on my shoulders.
“Block them out, Mary, I know you can do it,” he said. “That’s not Percy down there. He’s gone. And he’s not coming back.”
I glanced over my shoulder, longing to see out the window again, hoping that Percy was down below. But the old woman pulled the drapes closed.
“You can’t look them in the eyes,” she said. “No matter what. Even if you’re fighting them, face to face. It’s hard enough to block out their twisted words, but no one can resist them when they’ve got you fixed in their gaze.”
My strength failed me and I sank to my knees. “I’ll never see him again, will I?” I asked. “Is there no cure?” My senses returned, though I was as weak as a newborn and instantly glad I was safe indoors. If this had happened when I was alone, outside, they surely would have overpowered me.
John still had his hands on my shoulders and he knelt in front of me, sorrow in his eyes. He seemed to know more about this than I did, perhaps from all the folklore books he had been studying. But neither of us knew the full truth, not like this old woman I’d found in the village.
“Some can be saved,” Hannah told us. “If the bite was done when ripping flesh—”
“Like the wolf,” John said, as if suddenly understanding.
“And others might survive, if they’ve been used like vaches—they’re like cows, kept for regular feeding. These victims are drained of blood and kept weak, but they’re not allowed to feed or to join the pack. Vaches can be saved, but they’re often under a deep enchantment and are never quite the same again, even after they’ve been rescued from the sangsue.” She smoothed the folds in her dress while speaking, avoiding my eyes, as if dreading the next thing she was going to say. “But once a bitten human has joined the pack and started hunting, there is no turning back.”
“Maybe he hasn’t hunted yet,” I began. I couldn’t remember anything but his eyes, that longing gaze that had set me on fire.
Her firm hand was on me. “He has hunted, girl. I saw him when you were at the window. You must never look in their eyes, instead, look at their mouth. That way you’ll know how hungry they are and whether you might be able to escape.” She paused, taking a deep sigh before she spoke again. When she did, her words were like fists of stone, each one striking me and driving away all hope. “Your Percy had blood on his chin and his shirt. He has most certainly fed and recently, whether he has supped on human blood or animal blood or that of another sangsue makes no difference. He is one of them now and you must put him out of your heart, forever—if you want to live.”
If I wanted to live.
I never thought that would be a hard decision. But at that moment, it was. His enchantment had worked within me so deeply I didn’t know if I would ever shake it off. The turmoil inside me could be condensed into two sentences…
Did I want to be reunited with Percy?
Or did I want to live?
Five
Part of me was still numb when we heard Claire’s cries from the parlor. At first, I thought the sangsue had broken into the villa and were feeding on her. I pushed away from the old woman and John, hurrying toward the door, eager to save my stepsister. She would never be able to resist their enchantments. She would be like a lamb led to the slaughterhouse.
Hannah caught me and slid a bony hand gently over my wrist.
“Her time has come,” she said. “The babe is trying to be set free.”
“Are you sure? It sounds like one of those monsters has gotten inside the house—”
“I know the cry of birth well enough.” She turned toward John. “We haven’t checked the other upstairs rooms yet.”
He nodded, ready to finish the job.
“They can only be killed if you cut off their head or rip out their heart,” she told him, noticing that
he had reached for a rifle Percy kept in his wardrobe. “Or if you have something like this. Here.” She handed him her scythe and she put her string of ivory beads in my hand.
“But you’ll be defenseless,” he argued.
With a sly glint in her eye, she grinned. “I’m never defenseless.”
A few moments later, the three of us were in the hallway, each of us carrying a blazing oil lamp, found by scavenging the nearby bedrooms. I had my rifle and a sword, though I would have preferred that ax I had used to fight off the wolf earlier. John and I were going to search the upstairs rooms together, while Hannah tended to Claire.
“Wait,” I told him, just before we set off. I slipped the necklace of ivory beads around his neck. I had to stand on my tiptoes to reach over his head and in the process my forearm brushed against his cheek. His eyes were ever on mine when we were this close and that familiar pang of guilt rose up in my throat. I looked away.
“Don’t you need it?” he asked.
I shook my head, lifting my cross necklace for him to see. I wasn’t sure why this relic was enough to protect me, though I trusted Hannah’s word that it was. I started to walk past him, ready to begin our search, but he blocked my path.
“Mary, I’m sorry. About everything,” he said. “If I had bound Percy the moment we got inside, maybe I could have stopped him from joining the pack and feeding. But I was afraid you would think I was being too harsh on him. And after last night, after what I did, I didn’t want you to think that I would intentionally harm Percy, just to—” He paused, staring at the floor between us.
I didn’t want to forgive him, probably because I couldn’t forgive myself. “You didn’t know,” I answered, my words wooden and without feeling. “If you had, certainly you would have done everything differently.” But at that moment doubts began to rise to the surface as I thought about all the times I had seen him leafing through the books on local folklore.
He could have known. He could have intentionally set everything up so Percy would be lost to me forever.
And if he did, then he was a worse monster than the King of the sangsue.
Hunger drove me to work quickly—for I hadn’t eaten all day—searching each room as best as I could, under beds, behind doors, inside wardrobes. And as I passed each window, I would pause and glance outside—always when John wasn’t looking.
Percy followed me around the house, as if he instinctively knew which room I’d be in at any given moment.
I refused to look into his eyes again and he didn’t call out to me, perhaps realizing that I’d stuffed my ears with down, pulled from my own pillow. He was a siren, hoping to steer me into a rocky cliff where I would be destroyed. I refused to listen or to look at him, though the images of passion that he had ignited continued to burn in my mind. I wished that I could pluck them out!
John wouldn’t let me enter a room on my own and part of me wondered if he’d ever trust me again. Twice within twenty-four hours I’d been easily enchanted by the beasts that now surrounded us.
“What are they, John?” I asked at last, unable to bear the silence between us anymore. “Are they human?”
We paused in one of the servants’ rooms, plain and simple with the barest of essential items—bed, washstand, pitcher, hook for hanging clothes, mirror. The walls were empty of embellishment, unlike our rooms, which were decorated with lavish tapestries and paintings. The only decoration in the room was a large crucifix that hung above the bed. I realized with a start that each of the upstairs room had contained a crucifix.
Percy had taken his down the moment we arrived and set it out in the hallway for one of the servants to tend to. The wall above his bed now had a pale shadow, outlining where the cross had once been.
John hadn’t answered my question. He too stared at the crucifix as if he’d come to the same conclusion. I noted that the crown of thorns on Jesus’ head was made of ivory, like the blade John carried. “There are crosses in every room,” he said. “The owners must have known that these would offer some sort of protection.” He took the icon off the wall and held it in his hand as if testing its weight. “Perhaps we should keep a few of these with us. I don’t think we should be sleeping up here in our rooms alone anymore—it would be too easy for us to be attacked if we were separated. After we’ve searched the last few rooms, you can go downstairs and see what we have to eat. I’ll drag some mattresses down into the parlor and we can all spend the night there.”
We’d be in close quarters, but at least that room had a corridor door we could lock and a window to outside, if we needed a way of escape.
I nodded, although I knew my assent meant nothing right now. We were in survival mode and he was taking the role of leader, which made sense since both he and Hannah probably thought I’d open the front door and join the sangsue at any moment. John and I moved down the hallway, toward the side of the house that bordered the stable. I realized that I hadn’t tended to my horse. He needed water and food and his saddle removed.
“I don’t know what they are,” John answered my earlier question then. We were at the end of the hallway, beside a large window, the curtains drawn. “Several theories I found read like Greek myths, one claiming that the sangsue King escaped from Hades by cutting off one of the heads of Cerberus, a three-headed dog who guards the entrance to the underworld. Another similar theory says the sangsue live in an underground kingdom, where they sleep like Greek shades, waking once a year to drink blood.
“But from everything I’ve read, no one is quite sure how the transformation takes place from human to sangsue. The folklore experts think it begins with a single bite, but it seems there must be a feeding ritual, as well, like Hannah said. Some books say the new sangsue must drink human blood, others say they must actually be given the blood of their sangsue brothers and sisters before they can join the flock.” He paused, as if he didn’t want to say more but couldn’t stop. “I didn’t know the sangsue were this close to the villa, Mary, you must believe me. When the wolves were attacked, even then, I wasn’t sure. Not until you opened the front door and we both saw one of them standing outside. That was the first time I truly believed the legends I’d been reading.” He paused for a long moment and I thought I heard scuffling on the side of the house. He must not have noticed it, for he continued talking. “I wanted to stitch up one of the wild dogs as a test. I thought maybe it would come back to life and I would find out the truth behind galvanization. But I didn’t realize the beast could be carrying the sangsue curse in its bite.”
The sounds outside grew louder and the horses in the stable begin to whinny with fear. I pulled back the curtain and peered outside.
“What is it?” John asked. He stood at my side, both of us framed in the window, our breath frosting the glass.
A chill ran over me as I realized what was happening down below.
The sangsue were trying to break into the stable.
Six
“If they get our horses, we’ll be trapped here,” I whispered.
One of the sangsue fretted with the stable door, howling and whining as if being burned, steam rising from his fingers. All the other sangsue formed a circle around him. Meanwhile, the horses inside the stable panicked, screaming and banging their hooves against the walls. An echo began downstairs, my horse responding to their cries.
John glanced behind us. “Is there a horse in the house?” he asked.
I quickly told him about my journey back from the village and how I’d been chased.
“I knew I didn’t have time to get to the stable,” I said. “But Hannah must have, for she was already in the house when I arrived and her horse was nowhere to be seen.”
“Could she have done something to the stable door?” he asked.
We peered down through the gloom, trying to see what was happening below. It looked as if something was barring the door. The first sangsue screamed, his entire body writhing and smoking and turning black. I lifted my lamp high, letting the light fall to th
e ground below.
“There’s the King,” I said, careful to turn my gaze away from his eyes when the lantern caught his attention. He looked up at us, and then focused back on the stable door, pointing and growling in a language I couldn’t understand. “I think he’s ordering one of his men to open the door.”
The creature tried one last time to pry something off the stable door. But he failed and with a final, ear-splitting scream, he dissolved into a pile of ash.
I blinked and rubbed my palm against the window to clear the steam from our breath. “What happened?” I leaned even nearer and blinked again. “Did you see that?”
John met my gaze, both of us perplexed. Then he raised his lantern, as if curious what was on the stable door.
A large iron crucifix had been latched with twine, fastening it to the door handles.
We stood transfixed, as one after another of the sangsue unsuccessfully tried to remove the cross. For a moment, I thought we were safe. One at a time, several of the monsters sacrificed themselves at their King’s instruction. I hoped they would move on soon, looking for a new hunting ground. Or that they would all perish here and now, trying to remove that crucifix.
Then a shadow ran into the backyard and swiftly returned, holding something that gleamed in our light.
It was the ax I had used to strike that wolf.
Percy carried it like a treasure, stopping only long enough to get permission from his new demonic King—which was quickly given.
“What’s he doing?” John asked.
I couldn’t answer. Whenever Percy appeared, all I could do was fight against the vortex of pornographic images in my memory, each one as bright as the flames of hell and each one driving away rational thought.
John wrapped an arm around my waist. “Don’t look at him,” he whispered. “Look at me instead. I’ll tell you what’s happening.”
Dusk: A Re-Imagining of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (The Frankenstein Saga Book 2) Page 3
