Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Magdalena doubted this: she was an American-born girl. Except by an accident of family, she was not “German.”

  At such times the dour-faced nurse, whose name sounded like “Helge,” remained close by in an adjoining room, knitting; the rapid click of her needles sounded, to Magdalena’s sensitive ear, censorious. Except for a few hours a week, Helge seemed always to be on duty; she was devoted to her patient, if often exasperated with her, as if Mrs. Kistenmacher was a willful child who needed constant watching. Helge had taken up residence in the Kistenmacher house after Mrs. Kistenmacher’s stroke nearly two years before. Clearly she was jealous of Magdalena and resented her presence in the household, her place in the invalid’s affections, and Magdalena supposed she could not blame her. Not once had Helge smiled at Magdalena, nor would she call her “Magdalena” as the girl had asked. Aunt Erica would embarrass them both by addressing Helge in her rasping, urgent voice, “Isn’t she pretty, Helge? She’s come to me—I knew she would. Do you like her hair? I wore my hair like this, too—when I was a girl.” The nurse’s slitted eyes moved onto Magdalena for the briefest fraction of a second; her nostrils pinched; she could not be induced to reply to such ridiculous remarks but said, with dignity, “Well. It’s time for your nap, Mrs. Kistenmacher. You’ve made yourself feverish, Dr. Meinke will have to be told.” Between the nurse and her invalid patient was the figure of the formidable Dr. Meinke, who came to the house on Charter Street to examine Mrs. Kistenmacher every ten or twelve days.

  Sometimes Magdalena had breakfast with her aunt, and sometimes a midday meal called “dinner” at 2 p.m.; these meals were served in the smaller of the two dining rooms downstairs, or, if she was feeling unwell, in Aunt Erica’s airless, overheated bedroom on the second floor. Walking with a cane and assisted by Helge and Magdalena, Aunt Erica insisted upon being “up”—“up and dressed”—as often as her strength allowed; she could not manage stairs, of course, but the house was equipped with an elevator. This was an alarmingly creaky cagelike structure that could hold no more than two people comfortably. Required to ride with her aunt in the elevator, while Helge grimly trod the stairs, Magdalena felt, suffocated, panicked. What if we’re trapped in here together? What if we fall? It was the first elevator in which Magdalena had ever ridden and she’d heard that terrible accidents happened sometimes, elevators stuck between floors or falling down shafts, crushing their occupants. By the time the little cage creaked to a stop, and Magdalena fumbled for the latticework door to unlatch it and swing it open, and help her aunt shuffle out, she was breathless and trembling.

  Aunt Erica whispered, “Thank you, dear! You’re so kind.” Gripping Magdalena’s wrist with her claw-fingers.

  Meals shared with her aunt were awkward for Magdalena because the older woman ate so slowly. Dinner, invariably a hot, heavy meal in the German style, might last more than an hour, at the end of which Aunt Erica would have eaten only a few morsels. At these times Magdalena was acutely conscious of the nurse Helge hovering just outside the door, and of Hannah in the pantry, waiting for her mistress to ring a little silver bell to summon her (Hannah also prepared meals, a duty she took very seriously. Magdalena had several times offered to help her but had always been rejected: “Miss Schön, I am Mrs. Kistenmacher’s cook”). On Mondays there came to the house on Charter Street a husky red-haired woman of about forty named Mavis who did laundry and heavy cleaning, and this woman was friendly with Hannah, who hired her, and often Magdalena could hear the two whispering and laughing together, in Magdalena’s very presence. One day at dinner, Magdalena was miserable hearing Hannah and Mavis in the pantry, peeking through the swinging door at her, and under the pretext of seeking out a glass of fresh ice water for her aunt, before the older woman could ring her little bell, Magdalena stormed out into the pantry and confronted her startled tormentors—“Why don’t you like me? What have I ever done to you?” Tears brimmed in the girl’s eyes but the women turned away embarrassed and sullen.

  Following that, relations between Magdalena and the household staff would be more strained than ever.

  Aunt Erica, aware of far more that happened under her roof than one might imagine of one with sight and hearing deficiencies, scolded Magdalena for such behavior—“Child, it isn’t fitting.” Her admonishments were playful but accompanied by light slaps on Magdalena’s wrist clearly meant to evoke more solid blows.

  §

  On the second Sunday of Magdalena’s residence at the house on Charter Street, her aunt invited a number of people for “afternoon tea”. Magdalena was surprised to learn that Erica Kistenmacher knew so many people. What a flurry of faces, names, handshakes! The majority of the visitors were women of her aunt’s age, widows like her, and neighbors; but there were gentlemen as well, former business associates of the late Mr. Kistenmacher, and legal and financial advisors of Mrs. Kistenmacher; and the formidable Dr. Meinke, white-haired and garrulous. Among the guests was a youngish man of about twenty-seven, a junior associate of Mrs. Kistenmacher’s accountant, whom eventually Magdalena Schön would marry; but, at the time of their first meeting, Magdalena scarcely heard his name in her confusion, and scarcely saw his face, and forgot him, as she forgot most of the others, almost immediately afterward.

  3.

  Now the day is over

  Night is drawing nigh

  Shadows of the evening…

  From her room at the top of the brick house on Charter Street, Magdalena Schön looked out restlessly upon the mysterious city of Edmundston. Repeatedly her attention was drawn to the Merrimack River, glittering like a snake’s scales, and the Merrimack Bridge that seemed almost to beckon to her. Now the weather had turned warmer, now the evenings were longer, she dared to open her windows wide, and leaned out, breathing in an intoxicating fragrance of lilac laced with fresh, chill gusts of air from the ocean. Her eyes were widened, sharpened. It seemed to her that she could see vividly a long distance; in hazy-gloomy Black Rock where the air was singed with smoke and fumes from the iron foundry, she’d hardly been able to see a quarter mile. And how acutely she could hear!—sounds from miles away.

  Crystal-like chimes of a church’s bell. And another bell deeper, more solemnly tolling like a great, ponderous heart.

  A rougher, more rhythmic music—an accordion?

  A beautiful voice, lifted in song. Difficult to determine at this distance if it was male or female. Now the day is over, night is drawing nigh… The voice was blown on the wind, now distinct, now fading. She leaned out her window dangerously far, cupping a hand to hen-ear like her deaf Aunt Erica. How exquisite, how beautiful this music, how it called to her: Magdalena, come! Hurry!

  These sounds were wafted to her from the direction of the Merrimack Bridge, and beyond: “lower Edmundston,” “lower town.”

  §

  “Just for a walk. Just for an hour.”

  So Magdalena told herself, late one afternoon when the commingled smells of lilac and the sea made her blood rush so she felt almost faint with longing. And her pretty shimmering-white room at the top of the house on Charter Street seemed to her a box, a cage, suffocating.

  “I won’t go far, I promise. I won’t get lost—”

  It would be Magdalena’s first venture outside of the house on Charter Street since her arrival weeks before. Out of the high, hilly residential district of dignified old houses and elegant tree-lined cobblestone streets. Out of the fair, blossom-fragrant air of upper Edmundston and into the denser, more brackish air of lower Edmundston. Magdalena had spent more time than usual with Aunt Erica that day, both in the morning and in the early afternoon following dinner; now she was free for what remained of the day, and eager to have her adventure. Draping a russet-red silk shawl around her shoulders, one of her aunt’s numerous gifts; leaving her head bare, despite the wind and the uncertain spring sky, alternately bright with sun and roiling with thunder-bearing clouds. She should have waited for a calmer day, she knew, but her pulse raced, she was filled with longing, yearning, f
or—what?

  “Just for a walk, really. I promise not to get lost.”

  Like a guilty child she was explaining herself to Aunt Erica, who, if she knew, would have disapproved. Not fitting, child! Not fit for a lady, to walk on foot into lower town!

  But Aunt Erica had retired for the day; even now Aunt Erica was napping in her room that smelled of talcum, medicine and mildew, blinds drawn tight against the afternoon sun. Even as Magdalena had been reading to her from the Bible, the Book of Psalms, the old woman lapsed by degrees into a light, snoring doze, her papery-white doll’s face empty of expression. Magdalena had gazed upon her aunt with sympathy, yet horror. She’d calculated that Erica Kistenmacher wasn’t so very old—in her late sixties. And you could see that once, not so long ago, she’d been a youthful attractive woman with eyes, a sweet mouth. Magdalena shivered despite the overheated room thinking I will never be so old! I will never be you, Aunt Erica!

  A grandfather clock in the hall was quietly chiming the hour of five o’clock as, stealthy as a cat, Magdalena descended the stairs from the third floor to the second, and from the second floor to the first. Except, in the foyer, at the front door, she had difficulty working the lock. Glimpsing Magdalena as she passed in the hall, Hannah called out, startled, “Miss Schön! Where are you going?” Magdalena said, guiltily, “Just for a walk, Hannah. In the neighborhood.” Hannah approached, her hands folded in her stiff-starched white apron; she was frowning as if she had more to say, but did not speak at first. Magdalena’s cheeks burned pleasurably—it was the first time Hannah had spoken so directly to her, and looked her full in the face. Magdalena said, “I won’t get lost, I promise. I won’t go far.” Hannah hesitated, biting her thin lower lip; then murmured, “Here, miss. I’ll get the lock. You’ll have to ring to be let back in, you know. This door is always double-bolted.”

  So Magdalena escaped the house on Charter Street, walking downhill in the fresh warm lilac-intoxicated air, trusting to instinct to make her way toward the Merrimack Bridge. Noting how, before long, the houses she passed were smaller, less “historic”; there were woodframe bungalows, row houses, shops and stores and a wide, traffic-heavy street called Fayette, upon which streetcars clattered. This street led to the Merrimack Bridge which Magdalena crossed with some hesitation, for she had to walk on a narrow, mesh-floored pedestrian walk of a kind she’d never seen before, beneath which, all too visibly, the river rushed, not luminous or glittering in sunlight but slate-colored, oily-looking. How harsh the river smelled, close up—there was no fragrance of lilacs here. And how noisy the waves, not rhythmic, slapping at the stained foundations of the bridge. Magdalena crossed with a rapidly beating heart, wondering if she should be doing this; so far from the beautiful old house on Charter Street, and from the safety of her window on the third floor; there, she’d had no idea of how broad, how windswept, how formidable a presence the river was; across the distance, the Merrimack Bridge had looked almost delicate, its vertical girders like lacework; up close of course they were heavy, coarse, and badly rusted; and traffic rumbled past noisily, in a continuous stream of enormous trucks, delivery vans, automobiles out of which the eyes of strangers moved upon Magdalena bareheaded in the wind, wrapped in a russet-red silk shawl, hurrying on foot in a place where few pedestrians walked. Hey! Girl! Want a ride, girl? Magdalena didn’t hear, staring down transfixed at the mesh walkway before her and the river rushing beneath like destiny.

  Noises on the bridge were so distracting that Magdalena no longer heard any music; by the time she reached the other side of the river, panting, wiping grit from her eyes, adjusting her windblown hair and clothing, she’d forgotten the music; and, beginning to hear it again as she turned onto a street of row houses and small commercial shops, she was surprised and gladdened. Not a single music but numerous musics, predominantly now the rollicking rhythmic sound of an organ grinder, which made her smile, and led her into a neighborhood of crowded brownstone buildings in which tenants leaned out of upstairs windows shouting gaily to one another in the street, and rough, dark-haired but beautiful children played boisterously in the street, and men in shirtsleeves sat smoking in front of their shops, and gathered at corners where there were taverns. How like Havass Street in Black Rock—Magdalena smiled to see a greengrocer’s shop, and a baker’s, and a tailor’s, and a butcher’s; she shut her eyes as she passed the butcher’s, smelling familiar odors of raw meat, blood, sawdust. Often she’d been sent on errands to the butcher’s and had had to endure the butcher’s rough teasing, and the sights of things in his shop, shiny, squirmy, glistening, oozing blood, her eyes refused to see. But the language or languages Magdalena was hearing spoken here were not familiar to her, not English, not German, not Hungarian though similar to these languages. Nor were most of the people fair-skinned like her but darker in complexion, or olive-pale, with black hair, gleaming black eyes. And how they looked at her, the men’s eyes cast like nets at her. At an outdoor cafe men sat at tables playing cards, smoking and drinking and talking loudly among themselves and as Magdalena passed by on the sidewalk she was aware of their voices dropping to murmurs, or silence; and, in her wake, resuming again, with an intensity she didn’t want to consider. She noted how couples walked openly here, arms around each other’s waists—a sight you would never see in Black Rock.

  The source of the rollicking organ music was in a side street narrow as an alley, where an elderly white-haired man sat on a stoop playing a hand organ for a small gathering of appreciative listeners, mostly children. How happy, how thrilling, the organ grinder’s music—there was nothing like it in Black Rock!

  Yet Magdalena walked restlessly on, drawn by the smell of water, and found herself in a riverfront area of warehouses, docks, fishing boats; for some fascinated minutes she watched men gutting fish on the dock, and wondered that she wasn’t repelled; everywhere was a strong garbagey odor of fish. Yet she thought, standing at the end of a dock, shading her eyes staring into the infinite distance, I can breathe here.

  Still Magdalena walked on, hearing the mysterious words Now the day is over, night is drawing nigh… borne on a gust of wind. Soon she found herself in a neighborhood of very old, mostly abandoned buildings with part-collapsed roofs, and thistles and young trees growing everywhere in profusion; no one appeared to be living here now. Over the street was a curious carved archway across which monkeylike figures scuttled daringly, giggling; seeing Magdalena, they whistled and hooted at her, and vanished. Children?

  As Magdalena stared upward, a handful of pebbles fell at her feet. She hoped they hadn’t been meant for her.

  Quickly Magdalena walked on, climbing a steep hill at the top of which was a very old church made of crude, weatherworn stone; the singing seemed to be issuing from the rear of this church, so Magdalena hiked into the churchyard, a tangle of wild rose and briars amid which grave markers tilted at crazy angles. On the markers were chiseled words too faint to be discerned but the numerals were clearer—1712, 1723, 1693. Magdalena stared. So long ago! She had been born in 1912. It made her feel dizzy to contemplate the emptiness before she’d come into being, like a geometry problem of incalculable complexity.

  The singer was close by, voice lifting in pure, heartrending sound. A tenor voice. Singing a church hymn, obviously a Protestant hymn, not known to Magdalena. Now the day is over, night is drawing nigh… There was a shadowy recess where the church walls formed a three-sided rectangle with the crumbling stone wall of the churchyard; or perhaps it was an actual entrance into the interior of the church; the singer stood just inside, oddly in the dark, practicing, rehearsing. A young man, Magdalena thought. She strained to see him without drawing too close, her heart beating quickly. Shadows of the evening… steal across the sky. There was a pause, and a sound of hoarse breathing, and again the song resumed, at the same pitch and in the same tempo. Now the day… This time there seemed to be a just-perceptible strain to the singer’s voice, an undercurrent of agitation, though it was no less beautiful than before, and
perhaps even more beautiful. Magdalena listened, transfixed. She seemed to know that the young tenor would be handsome, dark-haired like the men she’d been seeing in lower Edmundston, with bright dark eyes, thick-lashed eyes. Yet she was fearful of revealing herself to him, even to walk casually across the churchyard so that she could, by glancing sideways, peer into the church. He might abruptly cease his singing if he knew he was being heard. And Magdalena had no business in the churchyard of a Protestant church, after all.

  But she listened for a daringly long time, taking care to keep herself hidden, until at last she crept stealthily away, for it was nearing dusk.

  Thinking, as she made her way back to Charter Street, to the high, hilly residential neighborhood above Edmundston and to the massive front door of her aunt’s house at which she had to ring the bell to be admitted, Who is he? What does he look like? Why didn’t I try to see him, at least?

  4.

  So it happened that Magdalena Schön fell in love. Though she was never to acknowledge the fact.

  Hearing the singer’s seductive voice not only as she stood leaning out her window lifting her face to the fresh, gusty air, but as she slept in her bed of white linens, white satin and wool; and during the day, at odd, unpredictable moments elsewhere in her aunt’s house; sometimes even in Aunt Erica’s presence as the old woman hoarsely, excitedly chattered. So faint as to be almost inaudible, yet unmistakable. Now the day is over… Shadows of the evening… She who had not once felt homesick for Black Rock, for the crowded rooms of her childhood, nor even for her parents, sisters and brothers she believed she had loved, now felt a heart-longing for lower Edmundston; for the Merrimack River and the Merrimack Bridge and the waterfront docks and the ancient weather-stained church with its crazily tilting grave markers and the faceless singer in the church whose surpassingly beautiful voice haunted her like the very beat, beat, beat of her blood. Again and again he sang his utterly simple verse. Now the day is over… Now the day is over…