by Peter Beagle
With every step the earth welcomed her. The grass softened under her feet, grew lush with spring growth. The wind lost its cold bite, threading gentle fingers through her hair. Sweet night-time scents rose around her.
“Candy…”
He was following her. She didn’t look back at him. “That’s not my name.”
She heard him swallow. “Persephone. Please understand. I love you.”
You do not. She turned, the furious words rising to her lips. He was standing behind her, on the new grass she’d left in her wake, the entrance to his dark kingdom behind him. And his eyes, his face—they were so bleak he looked like one of his own damned souls.
She didn’t say those words after all.
“I know,” she said. “But you did it wrong.”
And this time, when she turned away, he didn’t follow her.
The Cold Blackness Between
by
Lucy A. Snyder
Mary Keller was exhausted but elated when Karl’s eyes finally flickered open. He rose up a little on his one good elbow, the plastic sheet crinkling beneath him.
“Mary?” he rasped. “Where’m I? Throat…hurts. Feel like…crap.”
She smiled. His voice was rough, but it worked. His head had been torn off when he lost control of his motorcycle and wrapped it around a tree up in the mountains. She’d not been sure she’d gotten his vocal cords reconstructed properly.
“Rest now. You don’t need to worry about a thing. You just need to get your strength back.”
She leaned down over the antique feather bed and kissed his still-cold forehead. At least the sleet that had slicked the roads that night had also meant he’d been wearing his helmet with the visor down. He hadn’t gotten anything worse than a bloody nose when his head went skittering down into the rocky ravine.
Shattered bones, punctured lungs, crushed organs and severed spines she could handle; damaged brains were hard. It was like trying to put custard back together. If she’d had to bring him back from a crushed skull, chances were she’d end up with a zombie on her hands that was only the barest revenant of the man she loved.
“What happened?” he asked, his eyes already fluttering into the sleep of the living.
She kissed him again, then straightened up and re-checked the position of the I.V. needle in his arm. Her hands were trembling; it was definitely time for breakfast. The saline-and-glucose drip was still three-quarters full. She’d put two units of O-negative blood into him during the night. He needed far more than that, but even if she’d replaced all his blood, he’d still be more dead than alive. It would be several days before his system recovered from the shock. For now, it was most important that she not let him dry out while she slept.
That the transfusion needle was steel was unfortunate but unavoidable; she’d made sure to put it in his good arm, where the steel’s interference with the life magic would cause the least damage to her work. Nothing else in the room contained inorganic iron; the I.V. stand was aluminum, the furniture put together with wooden pegs, the light fixtures bronze, the wiring copper. That floor of the mansion had its own breaker switch, and she’d turned its electricity off before she’d started work. Electricity had an unpredictable effect on resurrections.
She snuffed out the candles surrounding the bed and set her tray of bandages, sutures and ceramic surgical instruments up on the vanity. In the old days, she’d had to use instruments made from wood, ivory, and glass. Her mother had taught her how to chip scalpel blades from broken window panes, which Mary had always found a deeply tedious task. Modern ceramics were a wonderful invention.
Mary’s skills as a witch kept her in high demand as a healer, but she’d never hoped to work on Karl. Soon after they started seeing each other, she cast a ward on him to keep him from harm. Dogs would not bite him, bees would not sting him, drunks would not pick a fight with him. But the spell couldn’t protect him from the laws of physics, so she added a divination element to warn her when he was getting into danger.
She’d been downstairs reading a potboiler mystery when she had a vision of Karl sliding sideways on the icy highway. She sped out to Pineytop Road to try to intercept Karl before he crashed…but she couldn’t get there quite fast enough. At least she was able to get his body into her trunk before anyone else passed by and saw the wreck. The bike was a total loss, and far too heavy for her to lift; she rolled it down out of sight in the ravine.
Mary pulled the covers up to Karl’s bandaged neck and stumbled to the bedroom door. She locked it behind her to keep her lover from prying eyes and started down the stairs.
Yolanda, their housekeeper, came through the back door just as Mary got down the stairs. The younger woman’s eyes widened when she saw Mary.
“My God, are you okay?” Yolanda exclaimed.
Mary looked down at herself. Her sweatshirt and jeans were smeared with Karl’s blood. She’d been so focused on saving Karl that she hadn’t noticed.
“I’m fine,” Mary replied. “Some friends from the gym took me out to Lake Zurich for a party last night. We hit a deer on the way back, and I helped Joe pull it off the grille and carry it off the road. The car was wrecked; I only got home a little while ago.”
“Mr. Barrington doesn’t like you going out partying.” Yolanda’s tone was matter-of-fact.
Mary shrugged. “He knew who I was when he married me. He knows I won’t stay at home by myself. If he wants me here, he can stop going off on so many business trips.”
She brushed at the crusty stains on her sweatshirt. “I need to put on something clean—I’ll be back down in a minute.”
Mary trudged up to her bedroom on the third floor to change. She wondered how she was ever going to break the news of her affair to William. He was still more her employer than her husband. She’d started as his personal nurse, but when sex became a part of their relationship, he decided they should be married. She was fond of him…but he was not a passionate man and never had been. And he had grown increasingly cold over the past year; he hardly spent time with her anymore.
Karl was passionate, and sweet, and damn fine company. She first laid eyes on him at the gym; he was tall and lean and the smell of him made her blood sing. Karl had been reluctant to get involved with a married woman, but he was just as attracted to her as she to him.
At first she told herself it was just a casual fling, but the more time she spent with him, the more she knew in her heart that she couldn’t bear to be without him. And she could tell how uncomfortable he was about having to sneak around.
Karl deserved better than to be her dirty little secret. And William deserved her honesty. She didn’t know how she could do right by both men, so for now all she could worry about was keeping Karl alive.
“Is Mr. Barrington still coming back from Mexico City next Wednesday?” Yolanda asked when Mary returned.
“That’s his plan, last I heard.” Five days would suffice to get Karl strong enough to move to his apartment for the remainder of his recuperation. She shuffled into the kitchen and got a few slices of sourdough from the breadbox.
“I’m starving, and I’m exhausted.” Mary said. “Would you mind fixing me some breakfast?”
“Not at all.” Yolanda set a skillet on the stove to heat.
Mary got a butter knife from the draining rack, found her jar of herb paste in the refrigerator, and sat down at the blond oak breakfast table. Yolanda made a face as Mary spread the thick, green-black paste on the bread.
“I don’t see how you can eat that stuff.” Yolanda carried a bowl of oranges to the juicing machine. “It smells like shit.”
“It’s full of flavonoids and antioxidants and it’s just the thing for a killer hangover.” Actually, it was just the thing for keeping Mary from aging rapidly and drastically as a result of the resurrection she’d performed. “A little rosemary for the brain, valerian for the nerves, ginseng for strength, ginko for the circulation, garlic for the heart…”
…and a little con
secrated silver to fortify my spiritual strength, ground oak leaf to center my soul, and dried blood from my mother to preserve my flesh, she finished to herself.
Mary set the half-eaten bread aside and laid her head on the cool wood table. Her skull felt like it was filled with sloshing quicksand. God. She’d really pushed it this time. She’d done a rejuvenation on her husband only two weeks ago—she had no business doing a full resurrection so soon afterward.
But what else could she do? The longer she waited to raise Karl, the more decomposition set in, the bigger the risk he’d come out a twisted, soulless monster.
She worried about the effect her rejuvenations had on her husband. He’d been in his late sixties when they met and was recovering from a quadruple bypass. All the signs indicated he wasn’t going to see the end of the decade. But he’d heard about her special services through a spiritualist he’d consulted for stock advice, and he offered her more cash than she’d seen before to cast a spell to add a few years back onto his life.
She’d done twelve rejuvenations on him in the four years since then. He’d recently celebrated his seventy-first birthday and looked a fit forty-something. But with each rejuv she’d cast, he’d grown a little colder in manner and mind. He still smiled, still laughed, still took care in his foreplay with her, but when she looked in his eyes, she sometimes felt she was staring out into the cold blackness between the stars. Once upon a time, she was sure she’d seen something like love in those dark eyes of his. Now she wondered if it hadn’t been a figment of her imagination, if she’d never really been anything more than a favorite investment to him.
Or maybe she’d stopped letting herself see anything but his natural coldness to justify her affair with Karl.
Yolanda set a glass of fresh juice on the table beside Mary’s head.
“Now, don’t you fall asleep before I get breakfast ready,” Yolanda admonished.
“Don’t worry, I’m awake.” With effort, Mary sat up and took a sip of her juice.
Mary admired the graceful curve of Yolanda’s neck as the younger woman turned back to the fridge. They’d been friendly enough the past four years, but weren’t really friends. Mary had held Yolanda at arm’s length because she felt she had to keep too many secrets to cultivate a real friendship with her. Maybe that had been a mistake.
“William hired you right out of high school, so you’ve been his housekeeper for, what, ten years now?” asked Mary.
Yolanda nodded as she cracked two eggs into the hot skillet. “Yes, about ten years.”
“Did you two ever…? You know. Get involved.”
Yolanda gave her a sharp look. “What kind of girl do you think I am?”
“A young and pretty one. And don’t tell me he’s too proper to sleep with his employees, because I’m still on the payroll.” She paused. “Look, I’m not going to get mad; I’m just asking.”
Yolanda sighed, staring down at the coagulating eggs.
“I was nineteen,” she said quietly. “I couldn’t say no to him. I didn’t want to say no. I dreamed that he might fall in love, and make me his wife. But it was just sex to him, and he lost interest after a few weeks. Afterward, I felt like I’d been his whore, and thought about quitting…but jobs that pay this well aren’t easy to find. Not for girls like me, anyway. So I stayed.”
Yolanda gave her a quick, worried glance. “He hasn’t tried to touch me since he brought you here, if that’s what you thought.”
Mary shook her head. “No, it’s not that. I just wondered how well you knew him. Sometimes I don’t think I know him at all.”
“Why do you say that?” Yolanda turned the eggs and put two pieces of sausage in a separate pan.
“Yolanda…do you think he loves me?” Mary asked.
“He ought to love you, after all you’ve done for him.”
“I haven’t done that much. I’m just a nurse.” The savory smell of the frying sausage made her mouth water.
“Mary, I have eyes. I’ve seen the change in him. He was an old, sick man, and now he’s back in the prime of his life.”
“But do you think he loves me?”
Yolanda spoke carefully. “I think men like him know how to possess things and take care of things. They don’t know how to love as women need to be loved.”
Mary quietly sipped her juice while Yolanda grated sharp cheddar onto the eggs.
“Speaking theoretically,” Mary finally said, “how angry do you think he’d be if I took a lover?”
“He’d be furious. Mr. Barrington doesn’t like to share.” Yolanda brought the steaming breakfast plate to Mary.
“Oh, this looks yummy, you’re a lifesaver!” Mary picked up her knife and fork and started digging in.
“Mary…you’ve been going out an awful lot. Mr. Barrington might not have noticed yet, but…just please be careful. I would miss you if you were gone.”
The phone rang.
“If that’s William, please tell him I’m asleep,” Mary said.
Yolanda hurried over to the phone in the corner.
“Yes? Oh, hello, Mr. Barrington,” Yolanda said. “Is everything okay? Yes. She’s still asleep upstairs. Tonight? Yes, I’ll tell her. Are you sure everything is okay? Fine. Goodbye.”
Yolanda hung up and walked back to the table. “Mr. Barrington wants to talk to you about something. He’ll call back at 10, and he wanted me to make sure you’ll be here.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Even if she had the energy to go out, she wasn’t about to leave Karl by himself. “I wonder what he wants?”
Mary speared another piece of sausage. Mid-lift, her hand began to shake, and the hairs rose on the back of her neck and arms. Her heart began to pound, faster and faster.
“Are you okay?” Yolanda asked.
Mary’s chest felt constricted; it was hard to breathe, and harder to talk. “I—I don’t know—”
Suddenly, Mary was floating disembodied above Karl’s bed in the upstairs bedroom. The walls and curtains were on fire, but the flames were the wrong color, deep red and purple and green. The air was filled with thick red smoke and the stench of black magic. Karl was coughing and weakly calling for help. He looked old, his face sunken. He almost looked like William. Through the smoke, she saw a corpse lying in a wide pool of blood beside the bed. Her horror deepened as she realized the body was hers…
Mary came out of the vision and found that she’d fallen out of her chair and lay crumpled on the floor. Yolanda was beside her, trying to help her up, but her legs weren’t cooperating.
“What’s the matter? Should I call for a doctor?”
We’re going to die, Mary tried to say, shaking her head, but the words wouldn’t come. Her vision clouded, and everything went black.
Mary came to a few minutes later as Yolanda hoisted her onto the bed in the first floor guest suite.
“What—” Mary began, still disoriented.
“Shh, be still. I’m going to…call you a doctor,” Yolanda said between gasps, winded from the effort of carrying Mary down the hall.
“No, don’t. Don’t need a doctor. Just need to rest,” Mary slurred. She couldn’t keep her eyes open. “I’m fine…just need a nap. Please don’t let me sleep too long…”
Mary was running up the stairs of the mansion. Her legs moved too slowly, as if the staircase were covered in a foot of sticky tar that was sucking her down. The air stank of brimstone. From Karl’s bedroom, she could hear a low, slithery voice chanting in a language older than mankind. The sound chilled her to the core. Something terrible would happen to Karl if she didn’t stop it.
Mary finally got to the second floor and ran to the bedroom. The door was ajar, and a deep red light glowed from within. She pushed inside. The red light flared bright, blinding her, and the serpentine voice rose to a roar—
“Mary!” Yolanda was shaking her. “Wake up!”
“Oh God!” Mary jerked fully awake, breathing hard.
“Shh, shh, it’s okay, it’s just a nightm
are. Everything’s okay,” Yolanda soothed, laying a cool hand against Mary’s forehead. “I heard you call out in your sleep, and I thought I should wake you.”
“Thanks.” Mary sat up. A pain like someone had shoved an icepick behind her eyes lanced through her skull.
“God, what time is it?” Mary asked, clutching her head.
“Nine p.m.”
“Twelve hours?” Mary threw off the thin quilt. “That’s your idea of not letting me sleep too long?”
She rolled out of bed and staggered into the adjoining guest bathroom, turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on her face.
Yolanda followed her into the bathroom. “I tried waking you earlier, but you wouldn’t get up. I didn’t want to push you.”
Mary found a bottle of aspirin in the medicine cabinet, and gulped down four tablets along with a handful of water. Her nerves were still humming from the alarm his ward spell had set off. “You’ve got to get out of here. Something really bad’s going to happen.”
“Mary, what’s going on?”
Mary shook her head. “I can’t explain. There’s no time.”
She stepped back into the bedroom and stuck a hand in her pocket to find the key to Karl’s bedroom. Her fingers found nothing but lint. She’d left the key in her dirty jeans upstairs.
“You didn’t happen to bring the dirty clothes down to the laundry, did you?”
“I put them in the wash.” Yolanda reached into the breast pocket of her apron and pulled out the key. “Are you looking for this?”
“Yes.”
Mary reached for the key. Yolanda dropped it back in her pocket.
“No. Not until you explain,” Yolanda said. “I am responsible for this house when Mr. Barrington is away, and if there’s a danger here, I need to know exactly what it is. ‘Something bad’ isn’t a good explanation.”
