by Allyson Bird
“We’ll talk whilst I work.”
Lotte remained silent for a moment whilst Mrs. Grimshaw cut open a plucked goose.
“What are you doing?”
“Making something from goose grease.”
“Making what?” asked Lotte, wide-eyed and genuinely interested.
“An old remedy. Goose grease—fat from around the kidneys used for many ailments. I use it for sore throats.”
Lotte turned up her freckled nose.
“Now don’t you make faces, Lotte. When people were poor and because they always had, folk used all sorts to get better.”
“And did they?”
“Sometimes, but it was all most people had. It would get rid of things occasionally. There’s a new demand for it now.”
Lotte began to think about something that she wanted to get rid of and she didn’t care how it was done.
“What sort of things have you got rid of in your time, Mrs. Grimshaw?”
“Many things, Lotte. And I’m not going to go into the ins and outs of them all. I’ll teach you to make goose grease though.”
Mrs. Grimshaw’s offer to show her how to do that reminded her of her own mother, who had taught Lotte how to paint little houses and trees when she was little. She missed her mother and once more suppressed all thoughts of her; Lotte bit her lip until it bled. She always did that when she remembered the last time she had seen her mother—in the funeral parlour. Lotte had sneaked past her father when he was talking to his brother and gone to kiss her mother goodbye again. But she didn’t kiss her mother goodbye. Her mother was all grey around the jaw, had bright red lipstick on (which she never wore when she was alive) and she smelt funny.
“Do you ever wish anyone away or to come back?” asked Lotte.
“Sometimes—why?”
“I want my mother to come back and my stepmother to go far, far away.”
Mrs. Grimshaw looked at her sympathetically.
“Have you ever heard of a story called “The Monkey’s Paw?”
“No.”
“Never mind. There’s no bringing your mother back, Lotte, but if you are so unhappy with your stepmother, I can think of a plan to send her far away.”
“You’d do that? You don’t mean to kill her do you?”
“No—nothing that extreme, but I can assure you that she will never cause you upset again.”
“What about daddy?”
“We’ll fix him up with a new wife, someone you will like.”
“You?”
“No, not me, Lotte. You’ll see. But first we have to think of a way to get rid of Daria.”
“Without killing her.”
“Without killing her,” agreed Mrs. Grimshaw.
Mrs. Grimshaw made Lotte a drink that looked pretty awful: purple berry coloured, but tasted rather nice. They set to—to devise a plan to get rid of Lotte’s not-exactly-wicked, but not-so-nice stepmother.
“We’ll need hair from her brush and something else. You know the kind of thing, Lotte.”
Lotte indeed knew the kind of thing that they would need, and she knew where she could get it from too.
That night the ‘family’ ate takeout ham and pineapple pizza. Daria was all over Lotte’s father as usual, and Lotte saw the signs that they were both going to have an early night again.
“Dad—” began Lotte.
Daria was bent over Martin; she was whispering something into his ear. His eyes began to glaze over as they usually did when she did that. Daria’s red hair kept brushing the side of his neck and Lotte reckoned she had a one, possibly a two-minute window of opportunity.
“Dad, can I have some money for the science school trip, please?”
Martin blinked briefly but otherwise didn’t budge as his new wife continued to whisper in his ear. Her right hand was clutching at the table in her urgency and Lotte looked on as the red nails began to lightly scratch the surface of the wood. Martin was staring down at the hand and the nails with a faraway look on his face.
Too late—the moment had gone as Daria dragged Martin up from the table.
“What—what was that, Lotte—?” said her father.
Lotte was about to reply when she saw the look of sheer hatred on Daria’s face, and Daria yanked him out through the kitchen door. That look chilled Lotte to her core.
Later, when her father was snoring in the armchair and Daria was having a bath (the kind that took hours), Lotte sneaked into her father’s bedroom. She took the hair from her stepmother’s hairbrush, together with a tiny golden earring from amongst the many earrings in Daria’s jewellery box, and turned to leave the room. Then, Lotte noticed a large box which she had never seen before, just jutting out from under the bed. Carefully, she slid it out over the thick carpet and raised the lid. Within the box was a smaller box, which she took out. She placed the hair and the earring on the carpet, put the smaller box next to them and closed the lid of the larger box quietly, pushing it back under the bed. She took the box, hair, and earring back to her bedroom and pushed them under her bed. Lotte then went downstairs.
For a short time she picked at the pizza, poured herself a glass of milk and then finally went off to bed, eager to look inside Daria’s box. She could still hear Daria singing in the bath, so Lotte thought that perhaps she could take a quick look in the box and put it back before anyone was any the wiser.
This box was dark brown in colour, with a few funny symbols on the lid which Lotte didn’t recognise. It was also unlocked, which surprised her.
Nestling within six little compartments were the most beautiful Russian dolls that Lotte had ever seen. When her father had gone off to Minsk she had hoped that he would bring one back for her. He never did. Each wooden doll was painted in a different manner: a peasant girl in green, a bride, a blue-green mermaid, an elderly wise woman and a princess.
She took the sixth and last one out of the box. It was exquisite—a lady in a long, gold gown and sleeves trimmed with white fur. She looked like the Snow Queen, with a crown made of icicles.
It took a few twists to get the wooden doll open, Lotte fully expected to find another identical doll inside, with yet another identical doll inside that. There could have been around six, but there were no more dolls inside the first. Lotte put it back and chose another of the six, the bride. With all her effort she felt the doll give a little and held it up to eye level so she could see more clearly as she opened it. One twist and the top was off, to reveal the strangest of sights inside. It seemed to be doll-like enough, but was curled up a little and had closed, sleepy eyes and a tiny cord sticking out from its middle. It was a dark tan colour, leathery in texture, smelled, and looked revolting—not a pretty doll at all.
Lotte carefully put it back, quickly screwed the top of the doll back on and looked at the remaining four. She found that three out of the six wooden dolls had the other kind of dolls inside. When the coast was clear, she put the small box back in the larger box, in her father’s bedroom.
The next morning Lotte was up early and out, without seeing Daria. She wanted to speak to Mrs. Grimshaw as soon as possible. It was the May school holidays and Daria would sleep late, lounge around the house watching reality TV and read magazines with the latest celebrity gossip.
Lotte let herself in the back door of the farmhouse, where Mrs. Grimshaw was potting herbs. There was soil all over the table and spilling onto the floor as Mrs. Grimshaw enthusiastically continued her work whilst Lotte told her of what she had seen in the dark brown box.
“If I do something about her it won’t be very pleasant, Lotte.”
Lotte looked thoughtful for a few seconds. “Mrs. Grimshaw—”
“Yes, Lotte?”
“Remember when I said that I didn’t want anything too terrible to happen to her?”
“Yes.”
Eyes downcast, Lotte fidgeted a little with a drawer, opening it to survey the gruesome contents. “Well. I don’t think that I mind at all now.”
The plan was stra
ightforward enough, though not as simple as Lotte thought it would be. Still, it was interesting in its procedure. They heated wax and formed it into the rough shape of the Russian woman.
There were a few things that Mrs. Grimshaw did that Lotte didn’t like, but she never would dare say so. And although Mrs. Grimshaw was kind to Lotte, she could spin on a coin and be nasty. Lotte had seen her do so with people who called uninvited.
Mrs. Grimshaw took a dead sparrow, cut out its heart and placed it into the warm wax under the right arm of the effigy. She then cut out the bird’s liver and tucked it into a small cavity under the left arm, sealing it in with her thumb. They both placed three sharp pins into the effigy. Next they wrapped the red hair around the neck, and for good measure, sealed the small earring into the back of the wax doll too.
“There—done. Take it home with you—and whatever you do, don’t let Daria find it. If she thinks you’ve seen what is inside the Russian dolls she will hurt you before this can take effect. You don’t have to go home just yet do you? No? Good. Come on, let’s go feed the chickens.”
When Lotte got home later that evening the effects of the spell were already evident. Daria looked pale. She was helping herself to a glass of red wine when Lotte entered the kitchen.
“So it is you. You will have to help yourself from the fridge. We will not be ordering anything in tonight as your father is away on business and I am ill.”
After picking at leftovers in the fridge, Lotte went to bed and settled under the bedclothes with her favourite book, A Hundred and One Ways to Experiment with the Elements. She artfully conjured up a light breeze that blew the Egyptian cotton sheets into the air to form a tent over her head. She had just begun to make a more elaborate township out of the sheets, moulding them into individual houses, when she heard some strange sounds coming from downstairs.
She ran down in time to see Daria clutching her chest and grabbing the side of the kitchen table. “I must go upstairs, help me, Lotte!”
Lotte did as she was instructed, aware that the wax effigy was still lying in her bag in the hall. She hadn’t found the time to hide it yet. As they crossed the hall Daria kept looking down at Lotte with a puzzled expression, in between taking deep breaths to ease the pain. As they passed the bag Daria muttered something in Russian and glanced furtively around the hall, but nevertheless insisted on getting up the stairs as quickly as possible.
Once outside the bedroom she seemed to breathe a little easier.
“Go away, Lotte—I don’t want you near me. You are bad for me. I can feel it.”
When Daria pushed the door closed behind her it didn’t click shut and Lotte could see quite clearly through the gap. Daria was on her knees on the other side of the bed, fumbling for the box and mumbling to herself. Sweat was pouring off her face and she wiped it on the white damask bedcover. She paused to take a deep breath and when she did so she used the bedcover again to wipe her face. Each time she did, it was as if a whole layer of her face was coming away. There were bits of skin and blood lying like the thinnest of apple peelings upon the cover.
Daria finally got the large box open and removed the smaller strange box containing the Russian dolls. She placed it upon the bed. Lotte could see it clearly; she could also see Daria’s face clearly too. It reminded her of her mother’s dead face, as she had looked in the funeral parlour. But the flesh was pink and coming away as if it was being sliced with a razor blade. Whatever she had felt about her mother’s face that day, her stepmother’s face was far worse. It was as if she were being stripped alive by unseen hands, and she, with immense willpower, and a mumbling of spells, was trying to keep the pain away.
Lotte was terrified, but she couldn’t stop watching. She wanted to know what Daria was going to do with the dolls. A thought partially formed in Lotte’s mind—but she pushed it to one side.
The answer came all too soon as Daria twisted the top half of a Russian doll open and picked out the dead thing from within, lifting the tiny form to her face. Lotte could not bear to look. Daria’s flayed face then seemed to soften and she whispered to the tiny form in a soothing voice. It was a voice that Lotte had never heard from her before. Daria began cooing to it, telling it something that Lotte didn’t understand, something about goodbye. It reminded Lotte of what she did with her worry-doll made of wood. She could see tears falling from Daria’s sunken eyes as she stroked the little object. This didn’t seem to be the stepmother that Lotte was so afraid of, the one that had replaced her in her father’s affections. Lotte pushed the door open slightly and stepped inside the room. It was getting dark outside and although she was still afraid of her stepmother, she was more afraid of not knowing what was happening. She had to know the truth.
Daria looked up. Thin ribbons of skin were still peeling off her face. She sobbed but continued the soft chanting and placed the tiny thing back into the Russian doll.
“I’m sorry. I thought that—that—” Lotte moved closer.
Daria blinked a snake-like blink that caused Lotte to falter in her steps.
“You thought that I—used these?”
Lotte nodded.
“No. No—I would never do such a thing. They are—” Daria tried to explain in English, and Russian, but Lotte was only ten years old and could not fully understand.
Daria—in her madness, had kept her dead offspring.
“But you are a witch?”
Daria nodded.
“These are yours, and don’t belong to other people?”
Daria nodded again.
It was all beyond Lotte’s comprehension. “We need to see a friend, a woman. Will you come with me?”
Between sobs of pain Daria answered, struggling to her feet. “I doubt if she will be able to help. She would have to be a very strong woman.” Then Daria started the soft chanting again, to reduce the pain.
Lotte half smiled as she sealed the Russian dolls into the box, picked it up and turned to face Daria, whose torment from unseen hands had subsided, for the time being at least.
“Don’t worry about that, she is.”
Before they left the house Lotte got dressed and gently draped her own mother’s silk scarf over Daria’s head. They made their way through the garden, across the road and down the track towards Mrs. Grimshaw’s farmhouse. Nobody saw them. Lotte didn’t forget to take the bag containing the wax effigy. Out of sight of Daria, Lotte had removed the wax effigy from the bag, and pulled out the three pins. Daria seemed a little stronger then and was able, with Lotte’s help, to make it to the farmhouse.
In The Wake of the Dead
“And thereupon we all entered the cave. It was a large, airy place, with a little spring and a pool of clear water, overhung with ferns. The floor was sand. Before a big fire lay Captain Smollett; and in a far corner, only duskily flickered over by the blaze, I beheld great heaps of coin and quadrilaterals built of bars of gold. That was Flint’s treasure that we had come so far to seek and that had cost already the lives of seventeen men from the HISPANIOLA. How many it had cost in the amassing, what blood and sorrow, what good ships scuttled on the deep?” Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Published 1883 Cassell and Company Ltd.
In silent halls and sheltered dells the air was thick with the fear of cholera. From the corrupted city of Sligo it had spread with leaden wings, bowed down with a history of a thousand corpses, to the very perimeter of Holland Park. It sought fresh victims. The iron gates of the park were locked and the lady of the house (who had just given birth to a tiny daughter) refused any person to enter or leave under any circumstances. Even the vicar was refused entry and all his letters returned unopened. The letters had never been placed into her ladyship’s hands; such was her fear of contamination, and her ignorance in believing that cholera was contagious. No one person could convince Anne Halifax otherwise and, in accordance with the wishes of the Mistress of the house, the gates stayed firmly secure. The father of the child, John Halifax, Captain of the 1st West India Regiment, had be
en killed in action and Anne Halifax had retreated, in her grief, to her private apartment to wait out the rest of her confinement.
The great house was made of blue-grey limestone and looked out at the flat-topped Ben Bulben. Lavender-edged pathways led to the most wondrous ships’ figureheads: Ares, god of war; Boreas, god of the northern wind; a rampaging lion; and the once, most-beautiful mermaid—all beaten by the pounding waves of the Bay of Biscay, and the cruel winds of many storms.
Within the great house life carried on at its languid pace, slower even, due to the day being heavy with the heat and the fact that the new babe was born to a fatherless household.
No governess ruled the older Halifax children and the only movement about the place that afternoon was when the gardener gave white roses to the maid, to place on the mahogany table in the entrance hall. Sometimes, only the sound of the pollen bees could be heard as they lumbered from flower to flower. However, the sickness was an ever-present threat to the peace of the great house.
Tilda Florence, cook to the family for seven years, often wore the expression of one of the figureheads in the garden—that of the wooden sea-maiden, looking as though she didn’t know in which direction to go. Tilda was wondering who would be the next to die from the cholera. She pulled apart the pages of the Sligo newspaper and scoured it for a familiar name and found one instantly.
“Look now, another one gone down.” For a moment her lost look was displaced by an alarmed one. She pushed back a lock of black hair under her cap and glanced up at the gardener, Dewy, looking for a response. No one called him by his real name of Algernon Patrick Moran. He seemed to prefer Dewy.
“Who is it this time?”
“Of cholera, at his residence in Sligo, on Tuesday last, Thomas Little, Esq. Surgeon of the County Infirmary. For upwards of thirty years he enjoyed, deservedly, the highest position as physician and surgeon in this province.”
