Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Bream gave vent to his outrage. “What was that? Who is she? Did you see that? Those ants jumped off her onto me! She can control ants!” He sputtered. “What does she use—did she throw sugar at me, so they would go after it? Are such things allowed here? Barbarians,” he muttered, brushing himself down to make sure no insects remained.

  McClellan stopped under a tree and turned to him. His usually serene face showed concern. “She’s a shaman, a priestess. You shouldn’t antagonize her. Even if you don’t believe in the gods, then believe in the priests and priestesses. This is their world, their rules. You may have violated a taboo, or made some kind of challenge.” McClellan wiped the rain off his face. “You have to respect what is older and stranger than you.”

  Bream frowned; he eyed McClellan sideways. “You don’t believe this stuff about gods, do you? Little gods?”

  McClellan sighed and began to walk towards the river. “It’s not about what I believe or you believe. If they believe, then it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not because they’ll act as if it is true. And priestesses protect their charges, and people of every belief destroy heretics. So it pays to show respect.” He looked around with concern. “We should get away from here as quickly as possible. There’s a reason they left, don’t you think? Afraid of what would happen next. Didn’t you say you wanted to show me your other property? Let’s get away from here.” They were at the dock, approaching their panga, the canoe with the outboard motor that the town Indians used to ferry goods and people around the river settlements. McClellan’s voice was clearly anxious; he kept putting his hand on Bream’s shoulder to hurry him along.

  Bream nodded. That had been the plan; he had wanted to show a white man what he had accomplished so far, and McClellan would have to do, whatever his weird ideas. No other white man had shown up in the months Bream had been here. He glanced at the river, swollen and muddy, almost over its banks. The land in town was higher than his own land—and it irritated him, as if he’d been tricked into it. A slight elevation, and they owned it.

  He tried to shake off his annoyance. The whole thing had unsettled him. Those ants! How and why would a woman wear ants? In his own land, where a man could be clean and dry, where ants and the uncivilized knew their places, such a thing would be impossible. This climate was ancient and sapped a civilized man’s intelligence. And his temper as well.

  I want to rip it all up, he thought; this teeming, massing place. Nothing is ever still here. It is all relentless growing, relentless mouths.

  His thoughts battered him as hard as the rain, which whipped itself into a frenzy once he and McClellan settled into their boat. Lightning ran horizontal, across the tops of the damned trees, sparing them. Had it been up to Bream, the lightning would have struck every last tree and burned it. Burning trees was necessary, and it gave him pleasure. The land was wasted on trees and vermin. Burn it all, clear it out, grow crops or beef or anything with value.

  The most immediate irritation, however, was that he was sure McClellan was a fool. McClellan and his interest in tiny gods, his pretense at studying peoples’ beliefs. His private income couldn’t be much or he would have left as soon as he’d landed. A sensationalist, by all signs. That woman in the market was just an impoverished Indian with primitive magical items. Really, just leaves and flowers though of course leaves did have medicinal purposes here, where real doctors knew better than to roam. Things were out of proportion.

  The pilot took them up the river for a while and then the motor slowed down so they could pull into a tributary, which they followed through the heat and the squawking of forest animals—birds, monkeys, frogs and for all he knew or cared, the trees themselves.

  He could smell smoke long before they reached the clearing. He scratched at his wrists and picked out an ant from under his fingernails.

  “I smell smoke,” McClellan said, surprised. The man was slower than he should be.

  Bream nodded. “I have them burning trees down, clearing the land.”

  McClellan pursed his lips. “In this rain? How can you do it in all this rain?”

  “I have them pour enough kerosene to get it started.”

  “That must run off into the river,” McClellan said. “No wonder they think you’re killing everything.”

  “I’m not killing everything. I’m clearing land.”

  They turned a bend in the river and looked at the burning land. Wisps of smoke drifted up from each individual smoldering tree, as if the clouds were forming from them, as if feeding and creating the clouds.

  Bream’s itching was unendurable. “Why are there so many ants in the boat?” he complained. The Indian who was piloting looked at him briefly. The man wore only a tattered pair of shorts with not a bite or mark showing. Even McClellan’s bare arms looked blotchy from the sun but not from bites. Bream scowled at the burning trees. “They can burn every last tree in the jungle as far as I’m concerned. What do ants eat? Destroy whatever they eat, all of it.”

  “I think they eat leaves,” McClellan said. “Whatever lives in the trees.”

  “And me,” Bream added bitterly. His eyes roamed morosely through the burnt acres and their streamers of smoke. “Look,” he said abruptly. “That woman in the market! She’s here!”

  McClellan looked where he pointed. “I see her,” he said sadly.

  The men who should be burning more trees were gathering around her. She was higher than they were, Bream could see, standing on a mound. “What is that?” he asked. “What is she standing on?”

  “Termite nest,” McClellan answered. His voice had gotten a little nervous since they’d seen the witch woman, witch doctor, priestess—Bream didn’t care what she called herself, but he did care that his workers were putting their cans and lighters down, listening to the witch woman.

  “Pull up, right now!” Bream shouted to the pilot, who kept his head down and drove on very slowly, dipping left and right, as if looking for a place to land. Bream felt a line of pinches at his neck, as if a collar made of needles had been tightened. He swatted at his neck and saw blood on his hand, but no ants. Perhaps these bites were from mosquitoes or gnats. He’d once been bitten on his tongue. He had a horror of swallowing one intact. What would that be like, stung somewhere on the inside?

  “Get his oil,” Bream ordered McClellan, pointing at the canoa Indian. “I’ll set the fires myself if I have to! The men are leaving, look! What did she say to chase them away? Superstitious fools!” He was no good at balancing himself on a moving boat; he lost his footing and sat down heavily.

  It took him a moment to right himself again. When he looked up, the woman was gone.

  “Did she just vanish?”

  McClellan shook his head. He hadn’t tried to get any oil at all; he hadn’t moved at all. “She turned and walked away. Look, you have to be more careful here. You’ve angered her with all this. I hope you haven’t ruined it for me, either. She’s got influence, power. There’s something to it, something is going to happen. Can’t you feel it? She’s a priestess after all, she’s in tune with everything alive here. Haven’t you ever wondered why ants are so organized, how they can act together? Even what their intentions are? It makes you think.”

  “For God’s sake, McClellan, think about what?”

  McClellan stared at him intently for a moment. “It makes me think about what they might plan on doing.”

  It began to rain again, all at once, a waterfall of rain. “Let’s get back before the big rain starts,” McClellan said finally, turning away from him and instructing the pilot.

  Bream wanted to shout, This isn’t the big rain? But he’d been there long enough to know. It would get bigger.

  One of his floating lawns had pulled off and away and he didn’t care. Let it all rot. His ear throbbed, red and swollen. He didn’t remember that bite. He ordered insecticides to be sprayed everywhere, even though the stench annoyed him. He ordered the servants to find more ants, to go out into the jungle and find ants, to find ants a
nd find ants and find ants, he wanted to see all of them dead, all those vile and hateful beings. He gave his orders and stalked along the veranda as the blistering rain poured. Each drop seemed needle-sharp. Let them leave their bowls of dead ants in front of his door. He would drink gin until he couldn’t stand, he decided.

  Which he did.

  He woke in the morning to a thin sun and a fierce headache and a mouth that felt like rot. There was an acrid odor in the air. The sun was heating something up, he thought, and rubbed his eyes. He looked blearily straight ahead, at the palmwood wall of his room, which shimmied in his hung-over state.

  To his horror, the wall wavered and slid down to the floor. He rubbed his eyes again, and the wall (now the floor) moved towards him.

  They were ants! Millions of ants! A great moving blanket of horror, heading for him.

  “McClellan!” he shouted, throwing himself off the farthest side of the bed. “McClellan!” There was no reason for McClellan to be there, but Bream yelled his name because McClellan was the only other man around who belonged to a world where things like this couldn’t happen.

  His teeth chattered. Every inch of his skin was red with bites. He went to scratch them automatically and saw to his horror that what he thought were welts on his arms were ants in rows, biting down. He looked wildly at the doorway. Surely a servant or someone had heard him? Surely someone would come for him?

  The door creaked open and a figure stood there, surveying the scene.

  It was the woman from the market, with that orchid in her arms. The orchid blinked the eyes in its flower face and smiled. It must be a hallucination! More ants swarmed in behind her, heading for Bream.

  “Go, my daughters,” she commanded. When had she learned to speak English? He flailed against the stings and bites and eyes—all the tiny eyes intent on him.

  “Go, my daughters,” she repeated, and he could hear shrill insect cries now, at his ears, at his mouth, the tiniest shouts of joy, the savage grinding of their ceaseless jaws.

  Dearest Daddy

  Lois H. Gresh

  The mushroom jiggled on its stalk, bobbed behind two men, then popped back into view. My voice faltered. To my right, Daddy untwisted from his pretzel shape, and his fists hardened. His bruised knuckles flew at me just as the mushroom stalk blurred, and a bald man’s face loomed, sneer on the lips and lust in the eyes. I was nine.

  Daddy uncurled his fingers and yanked the tattered bow from my hair. “Sing,” he screamed, and he crushed my bow beneath his foot.

  I shrank back and blinked the tears from my eyes.

  Mommy, why did you have to go? Why did you leave me here?

  Memories gurgled up. All I knew of Mommy was what Daddy always told me.

  Drunk.

  Drug addict.

  Whore.

  Mommy, why did you have to die?

  Dead on the street, Daddy always said, dead in the gutter where she was born.

  But—

  Don’t believe Daddy. He’s a drunk.

  “Sing, Clarisse!” Daddy snapped me back to the present.

  I blinked once more, and my vision cleared. The mushroom came into focus. I saw that it was actually a man’s face. A bald man. The stalk was his body, and he was skinny like me.

  If I gazed at the man while I sang, maybe he’d toss me a coin—after he pinched my ass, of course.

  A pack of them, all twice my height, gathered around me. They ignored Daddy, but I knew he didn’t care. He just wanted their money, and I could get it for him more easily than he could. Listening to a girl sing pleased them more than watching a man twist himself into odd shapes and walk on his hands.

  Anyone would prefer me over Daddy. He was creepy and weird. Maybe it was the way his limbs twisted backward at the joints. Maybe it was his chipped teeth or his whiskey-fogged eyes. Maybe it was his greasy sourness, the filthy clothes. Or maybe it was the skin on his fingers, so thick and rough, like animal hide, I thought. Or maybe it was how he treated me, as if he hated me and wanted me dead, but kept me around to sing for money.

  The usual catcalls started up. Eyes raked down my body. I knew what they wanted, and it wasn’t a song.

  “Earn your supper, girl.” My daddy knew what the men wanted, too. He would sell me for a swig of booze, he would.

  If I refused to sing, he would beat me until I passed out. He would abandon me again, and I’d be all alone in the city, just another lost girl.

  And so I sang:

  Don’t want no fears,

  no tears,

  and no fake smiles.

  The stars have died,

  the men have lied,

  the moon is dead,

  the sky is lead.

  Never let me go,

  treat me kind,

  and you will find

  in my eyes

  a rainbow.

  I hit the highest note and then sank to the lowest, my voice sweet but robust, and the men thundered their approval and pelted me with coins. I protected my face with my right arm. My body was already badly bruised from peltings and beatings, but my face—

  I couldn’t let anything hit my face, not ever, because the gashes and bruising would make it harder for me to sing.

  Daddy grunted and scooped up the money. I had done well, and he was pleased. For now, I was safe.

  Or so I thought.

  After Daddy left for the bars, I went looking for the trash cans. I had a few favorites. One was by a weathered house with boarded-up windows and a sagging roof. Out front were the stragglers, people like me, who lived in the rubbish. I dug through the can and found a scrap of bread, sweet from mold. I knew it wouldn’t hurt me. I’d eaten enough rotting bread to know.

  The night was cold and brittle. The stars hung like icicles. The moon shivered low in the sky. I curled up in the alley next to the house and fell asleep on a blanket of garbage.

  I dreamed that my daddy loved me.

  But it was just a dream.

  When I awoke, the sun glared at me and the sky wept ice, and pinning my knees to the cement was an old hacking man whose spittle was brown.

  I kicked him off and jumped up.

  All my fault Daddy was a drunk and hated me. All my fault Mommy died when I was born. I screamed and beat my fists against the weathered house, and I cursed as splinters drove into my flesh. Bloody raw, my fists were, and they hurt, and I knew it would be hell to get the splinters out. And yet…

  And yet, the pain calmed me. This was worth everything. Physical pain took the edge off emotional pain, and I was alone and empty with no hope for the future or for joy of any kind.

  The old man slumped onto his left side. He probably wouldn’t live much longer. Men had beaten him down, and nature would finish him off.

  Sapped of strength, ice battering me, I hobbled from the alley onto the main street. Ice clung to my hair and thin dress. I would get pneumonia. I would die.

  Police with ice-coated whiskers and caps were rounding up all the men on the street, for what purpose I didn’t know. Some struggled, others went willingly, probably figuring they’d get a meal and a roof over their heads during the storm.

  I pushed aside three little kids and took their place beneath a shop awning. Ice clanked off the awning and clattered to the street. The sky darkened from white to gray, and the sun went into hiding.

  A figure darted from the group of men being herded down the street. He looked familiar, but though I squinted, I couldn’t make out his features through the wind and ice. He slid toward me, waving his arms like a mad man.

  I clutched the door handle of the shop and pulled and pulled, but the shop was closed.

  And then someone grabbed my arm.

  I struggled to break free, I kicked and I flailed, and I started to scream, “Let go! Let go! What do you want?” but the words broke in my mouth.

  It was my daddy.

  He reeked of whiskey and body stink, and I recoiled.

  He stood directly over me, bent at the waist, and his
black eyes bored into me, and his mouth was close to my face.

  “You’ll always be mine, Clarisse,” he said. “I’ll never let you go.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “War,” he said. “They want us all to fight. I have to run away. I’m leaving for a faraway city.”

  “But what about me, Daddy? I have to go with you!”

  “No. You’ll slow me down. They’ll get me, and I’ll die at war. I can’t fight. I refuse.”

  “But—”

  “Go to Madame Francesca at Second and Main.”

  “The whorehouse?”

  I clutched his jacket and begged, but my daddy was too strong for me and pried my fingers loose. He held both of my wrists in one hand. A grin spread, the broken teeth parted, and as he turned to go, he released my wrists and hissed, “I’ll come back for you, Clarisse. Remember, I’ll never let you go.”

  And then he was gone.

  The last thing I remembered was a scrape of whiskers and a whiff of whiskey and unwashed flesh.

  He disappeared into the ice and the crowds, past the police and all those who were heading to war.

  My daddy left me there. To die.

  I cried, and the tears froze on my lashes and cheeks.

  I’ll be honest. I was crying from fear. I didn’t really care if I died, even at nine. Living wasn’t so great. But we all have a survival instinct—most of us, anyway. And so there remained a tiny part of me that always percolated up from the depths and helped me fight on.

  My lips were chapped. They hurt. My teeth chattered, and I couldn’t stop them. My fingers were numb from cold.

  I forced myself to stop crying, for what was the point? Crying would do me no good. Life was what it was, and it was always bad.

  I would take refuge at the whorehouse, and when the storm ended, I’d escape from the Madame’s grip and get lost in the city streets again. That was my plan, and so I slipped across the ice toward Second and Main.

  All the girls knew Francesca. She tried to recruit us into the whorehouse as early as eight. My daddy had never allowed it, though other girls, those without daddies, weren’t as lucky.