He was almost safe when a huge body crashed into him, sending him rolling under the hooves of a panicked carthorse. Terrified by the tumult around it, it reared and the last sight that filled Vladimir’s eyes was a woman in white, standing at the corner of the square and watching him with a strange expression in her beautiful green eyes. Then the hooves came down and there was only darkness.
* * *
Vladimir stared down at the newspaper headline.
Immigrant Family Burnt Alive in Firebomb Attack!
He had seen the signs, the politicians talking about those who were different, painting them as the enemy. The looks in the street, the sideway glances and the hard faces. He had seen it before, so many times, in so many different places, the hatred building and festering until finally it burst. The Jews. The imperialists. The terrorists. Always some enemy. Always someone to be made the Other.
Vladimir remembered the Singhs, how they had welcomed him into their homes, taking pity on a lonely foreigner like themselves. He remembered the spicy home-cooked meals and the friendly conversations. Those memories were blotted out by a mental image of the family cowering in their home as angry voices shouted and cursed outside, then the sound of breaking glass, and finally screams as the flames rose.
How many friends had he lost over the years? How many people had died while he lived on, decade after decade?
“I can’t do this anymore. Why won’t you just let me die?”
His cry echoed off the rafters, shocking in the silence of the house.
Rage burned incandescent in his voice. “Death! I know you are there. I can feel you, I can smell you. I can see your work in the streets outside. Show yourself!”
His voice cracked and he fell to his knees. In the far corner of the room, where the light barely reached, shadows drew into themselves, becoming inky pools of blackness, pregnant with menace. They rippled, like a stone thrown in a pond under moonlight, and she stepped forth. Svetlana was exactly as he remembered from all those years ago, the same stark white dress, the same raven hair, and most of all, the same emerald eyes. She glided across the room and stopped just before him.
“Many would envy a man who cannot die and thank me for my gift. Why is there such anger in your voice?” She seemed genuinely curious.
He stared at her, incredulously. “How can you ask that? I have had nothing but pain and suffering from your gift. Everyone I have loved is gone, every place I’ve called home destroyed, leaving me alone. I haven’t aged a day, and I am terrified that I will never know release from this world. Please, let me die.”
“Why should I?”
”I will give you a gift in return.”
For the first time she smiled. “What could you, a mere mortal, offer me?”
He looked directly into her eyes. “A dance. I will dance for you.”
Her eyes widened in surprise, then a look of desire filled them.
“So be it.” She raised a pale hand, and soft music filled the room. It had been many years, but still he recognized it, it was the music that he had danced to the night they met.
Slowly at first, he began to move, his steps faltering and his movements rusty. But, as the music’s seductive song began to work through him, sending its tendrils along his blood and bone and sinew, his body remembered its calling and once more he and the dance were one. With each moment and gesture the patterns became more and more intricate, as if he was the instrument and the music played him.
He saw that Svetlana was mesmerized, emerald eyes unable to look away. The dance brought him closer and closer to her, and with one final step he was close enough to take her in his arms.
Before she could pull away she was captured and he began to whirl her through dance after dance. As the music changed, he changed with it, spinning her through each set of movements, a waltz followed by the tango followed by a rumba as he showed her his mastery of all the dances of the world. He could see that she felt the music too, their bodies joined by its power. Her flesh was ice against his, leeching away his warmth as they moved together.
Without missing a step, he leant forward and whispered in her ear. “Release me. Please.”
He felt rather than saw her nod, and a drop of moisture ran down his cheek. For a moment he was confused, and then he realized it was a tear, and that she was crying for him. The cold from her body began to rise, and he cried out as he felt it burrowing to his core, stealing the last of his warmth. The room began to dim, and as blackness fell, he smiled. This time he could dare to believe that he would not wake.
* * *
David McDonald is a professional geek from Melbourne, Australia who works for an international welfare organization. When not on a computer or reading a book, he helps run a local cricket club. He is a member of the Australian Horror Writers Association, the IAMTW and the SuperNOVA writers group.
Death Doll
by Lois H. Gresh
Don’t fear me. Don’t hate me. You see, I’m not what you think I am. I’m actually a kind and gentle person, not anything like the monster in your mind. If it were up to me, you’d grow up, play with your dolls, eat chocolates and cookies, and spend your nights in dreams so pleasant you wouldn’t want dawn to bleed through your window and wake you up.
I always make myself forget the ones who slip past me, but in this case, I have no choice but to remember. Those who dance around me insist that I correct my error. I can’t argue with them, or they’ll hound me until I go mad. They have that power, the shadows. They clutch, they shroud me with dankness and dark, their eerie howling and laughter rattles my mind. I’m a shadow as well, but only one amidst many, and I’m slim and frail, an inky thread slipped into a thick cloud.
“She was to be stillborn.”
“You had your orders, and you disobeyed.”
“You screwed up.”
“It was her time.”
For four years, they’ve taunted me. And for four years, I’ve insisted, “No, I didn’t disobey orders. I did my best. She should have been ours, but the doctors interfered. They have new ways of doing things. How was I to know?”
And now…
I’m here. At your side. I won’t let you down. I’ll protect you from all ills. I want you to dream the most pleasant dreams.
I watch you from the crack where the walls join, and when your mother comes into the room, I slink closer, anxious to feel the warmth of breath as the two of you speak. I don’t feel much warmth anymore.
I once grasped your mother’s hand as she gave birth to you. Annabelle LePonte Bourbon, a beautiful and fragile woman, too delicate to carry a child to term.
You were never supposed to… be.
Soft breath of life and the gentle beating of her heart, I ache to be this close to your mother. When I was her age, the shadows came for me, and the air wheezed from my lungs, broken accordion, and it was painful, so painful, to feel my heart beat in those last few moments. Loud in my ears, reverberating, tapering off until that final beat, the sharp pain rising in my chest, my mind vivid with colors and nobody there to clutch my hand. Fluid in my skull, and my brain swelled.
It won’t be so bad for you. I promise.
Your mother, Annabelle, brushes honey hair from her eyes. My hair was black as crows’ wings. Her eyes look at you with such love and tenderness. They’re wide and round, grey as if the color has drained out of them. My eyes were black, I painted my lips red, and I wore the Spanish skirts of my ancestors. I danced calypso and tango in the clubs, and in the audiences were women like Annabelle, pale flowers next to my rose. I was life. They were shadow.
“Beatrice dear, let’s color the train red, shall we?”
You cast hollow eyes at your mother, lift the red crayon, fingers shaking as you color. A delicate sparrow, gaunt face, washed-out, the color of weathered wood. You’re four going on a hundred.
Does it giv
e me pleasure to take the wealthy, to pluck a daughter from her mother’s arms? No, and why would anyone think that? I pity the wealthy. They lack a true understanding of life. They’re spared the struggles, the agonies, the scrappiness. They don’t have a clue what it means to do everything for themselves, to start with nothing and end up with something. But to take you, sweet Beatrice, the one gem in your mother’s dull existence, hurts me almost as much as when I take a child from the poor.
The maid brings cookies. This woman is resentful, though she hides it carefully just as she hides her fat beneath the folds of her heavy black skirt and apron. When you come with me, the woman won’t be as resentful. She’ll reach out to Annabelle, and together, they’ll cry, the poor and the wealthy joined by common human grief.
I do have some virtuous attributes. I do serve a purpose.
After cookies — chocolate chip, your favorite but you don’t eat any — we get in a car with black leather seats. You wear the kind of coat I wished I had when I was a little girl. It’s as soft as a teddy bear, a lush pink that reflects off your sallow face. Your hat has hearts on it, your tiny feet wiggle in patent shoes with bows on them. I huddle between you and your mother. Annabelle has her arm around your shoulders. Your faces are close. Annabelle murmurs. “What do you want for your birthday? American Girl doll with all the outfits and the book?”
You shake your head, no. For a moment, your eyes light, then flicker off again, a 20-watt bulb that’s all spent.
“Some bright new clothes? Video games?”
The child who has everything…
You shake your head. No.
Annabelle switches topic, obviously trying to provoke some joy in her daughter, some positive response that will lift her own spirits. “I bet you can’t wait for kindergarten in the fall, right?” I catch a whiff of her perfume, multi-layered with the scents of Mediterranean flowers, expensive. It floats in the air along with your scent, ivory soap and innocence.
The other shadows are correct to harass me, of course, because doctors can do nothing when we come for souls. What we want, we take. When it’s time, there’s nothing medicine can do. I suppose that I did disobey my orders.
I gave you these four years, Beatrice. Four years of playing with toys, of clowns and music, of everything good in life that your rich parents could provide. Annabelle won’t see it this way. She’ll blame me when I take you. She won’t understand the beautiful gift I bestowed.
You look right through me and up at your mother. You shake your head again, and say, “I probably won’t go to kindergarten, Mama.”
“But, why? Of course, you’ll go!”
“No, Mama, I won’t,” you say firmly, as if you know.
The car stops, the chauffeur opens our door, and we clamber out, mother, daughter, and me. The air is brisk, a few snowflakes fall, and the city is quiet. It’s Sunday morning, I realize, the one day when the city lies dormant and shuttered, pretending to be at peace.
Inside the apartment of Annabelle’s friend, Gretchen Pritchard Standish, direct descendent of Miles Standish of the Mayflower era, we wait for the maid to remove the coats and hats, then sit quietly in the parlor by the grand piano. This one room is larger than the house in which I grew up, and my family occupied only one room in that house. You sit on a burgundy velvet chair, kicking your pink patent shoes. You almost look happy as you gaze at the oil paintings, the flowered curtains, the gold bowls in their cabinets, the cherubs engraved all over the front of the mahogany desk.
I hope I can do it this time. It isn’t easy for me when it’s a child, especially one that I already spared. Even in death, with no heart beating in what was once me, I have more heart than most people.
Gretchen enters in a swish of lavish silk with her husband, William Trevor. He has a matching pocket square. Her perfume is denser than Annabelle’s, and you sneeze once and squirm. Annabelle clasps your hand.
I perch on William’s shoulder and marvel at the smooth skin of his face, the perfectly sheared hair, the wool of his jacket. “How are you, Beatrice? Have you been playing with the Raggedy Ann and Andy I bought for you? Have you been having tea parties with all your dollies?” His voice is lighter than I expected, almost a tenor, and his cheeks flush as he talks. His wife darts a glance at him, then looks away. I stare at her as William stoops by you and takes your hand from your mother’s. Gretchen is older than her husband and beneath the makeup, old acne scars pickle her face. A bulge at her waist, she probably wears a girdle, as they called it in my time; veins like yarn beneath the skin of her legs, concealed by the gloss of silk stockings.
You snatch your hand from William and snuggle closer to your mother. “My dollies are all dead,” you say.
He stands and looks down at you. “Dead? But why?” He reaches into a pocket, removes a white handkerchief, and dabs at his nose. The silk square remains perfectly folded in his jacket pocket. It’s for show, I suppose.
“The dolls aren’t dead. They’re perfectly lovely, William,” says Annabelle. She frowns at you, as if wondering what you mean.
Of course, I know what you mean. We understand each other, you and I.
“Mama, I want to go home.”
The adults chuckle as if this is cute. Only I know that it’s anything but cute. I can tell this is a serious matter, but I don’t know why.
“We’ll go home after tea and pastries,” says Annabelle. “I want to catch up with Gretchen for awhile.”
“We have bears’ claws, cheese pockets, and blueberry muffins.” Gretchen tries to sound perky but fails. She walks across the room and rings a bell for her maid, who appears with a tray, which is solid silver. The teapot and matching china centuries old. Dainty napkins. The maid doesn’t look at us — it’s as if she wants to disappear into the walls — and she retreats, to appear again moments later with pastries. She bows slightly, then leaves us alone again. Nobody has thanked her. Nobody has acknowledged her existence. Gretchen and Annabelle continue to chat about upcoming social events, their latest clothing purchases, and their figures. William fidgets with papers on the mahogany desk, the one with cherubs carved all over it.
I sit with you and wonder if I can go through with what I must do, and if so, when. You look through me, of course, but I look into you, straight through those hollow eyes to your soul.
It’s against the force of nature to let something live beyond its time. Someone else went four years too early so I could give you a small space of life. But he was already old, twice Gretchen’s age at least, and four more years of pain, loneliness, and senility wouldn’t have brought him any pleasure.
It’s hard for you to eat, even blueberry muffins which I remember from my own childhood. You nibble fragments. Gretchen eats heartily, your mother takes one pastry but doesn’t eat it, and William remains at his desk, pretending to sort through mail and leaf through magazines. Perhaps the wealthy still get paper mail, but of what type I can’t imagine. Investment statements?
I float, shadow that I am, from you back to William, and see that the mail is nothing more than advertisements. The magazines are unlike any I’ve seen, all devoted to masculine pursuits such as guns and ammo, hunting, fishing, and golf. I can picture William playing golf, but little else. Perhaps polo? If I were alive, I might think him amusing in a pathetic sort of way. I bet you’d see things the way I do, too.
Had circumstances been different, had time been aligned better, I suspect you and I would have been the best of friends.
“Gretchen’s going to show mama her new curtains. Be a good girl and just wait here quietly, okay?”
You nod, eyes downcast. The air around William shifts almost imperceptibly, just a frisson of tension in his neck and shoulders.
The junk mail slips from his hands.
You fall from the burgundy chair to the rug. On your side, you look up, and he towers over you. I crouch, the rug softer than any bed I s
lept in while alive, and I see the dangerous flip of your tulle skirt, pink with gold flowers, and it’s too high on your legs. This shouldn’t matter because you’re only four, but somehow, it does matter.
Taunts clatter around the room.
“If you’d taken her when we told you, this wouldn’t be happening.”
“Why didn’t you obey orders?”
“If we do as we please, this is what happens.”
“You’re dead. Your role is to take, nothing more, simply to take.”
“Is this what you want?“
No. No, and no again!
The silk square is gold with flecks of crimson. Slender fingers remove it from the jacket pocket. William wipes your tears, and the gold stains to ochre and the crimson deepens.
His skin glows. His sooty eyes widen. His wife’s perfume drifts over you.
I’m not supposed to take him. It’s not his time.
And what becomes of one like me, who doesn’t do as told? Nothing. Yet the result ripples forward in time, causing problems such as this one. Everything is balance, you see. Give one day here, take one day there. If I take William before his time, then what becomes of his wife, Gretchen? And of their children, as yet unborn? It would be as if I’d killed those children, don’t you see?
You whimper, then your tiny chin firms, your eyes still gleaming with tears. I see myself reflected in those tears. As his fingers flit through your hair and down your back, you whisper, “P-please…” and it’s almost a lisp, and it’s so drenched in sorrow and pain that what was once my heart can bear it no more.
William can’t have you.
You’re mine.
I’m to take you. Not William.
Blessings come in different forms. I lift you from his arms, and you’re my pale flower, and I’m a rose. His fingers shake, and I see that he’s forty going on a hundred, and do I see the tiniest of smiles upon your face, do you know, do you?
His time will come, and let it be soon. I won’t take him. But I know they’ll send something far worse than me, and it won’t be pleasant.
Expiration Date Page 9
