Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Could I really view my life this way, that my daddy brought me luck?

  Even at nine, I was jaded enough to dismiss the idea as pathetic and childish.

  When I pushed on the door at the corner of Second and Main, it opened easily. Madame Francesca’s house was always open for business.

  I stumbled inside, and it was warm.

  My body started to shake. The room whirled, a blur of red velvet and plush sofas and thin rugs with stains on them. Crackling fire, all orange and red and yellow, heat beckoning me. I staggered toward the fireplace, arms outstretched. Almost fainted. Stopped in mid-step.

  And now whirling toward me were girls with hard eyes and bruised limbs, frizzed hair and red glossy lips. Breasts and bustiers. Red. Garters without stockings. Black. Skimpy underpants, concealing little.

  Arms encircled me, and the bodies were soft, warm, and fragrant. I sank into those arms and against those bodies, and my eyes fluttered shut. Red, all I saw was red. Flowers, all I smelled were flowers. Voices, so soft and sweet, and no whiskers and no men pinching my ass.

  “Bring her to the pink room, and let her rest.” Madame Francesca wavered into view, and the girls backed off, fear flickering in their eyes. She studied me intently for a few seconds. Close up, she smelled of tobacco and lilacs, a nauseating blend that I would later find comforting. Her hair was long and black and wound into old-fashioned spirals. The red painted onto her lips welled in the cracks carved by old age. White powder and bright blush did little to hide the wrinkled cheeks and forehead. Huge blue eyes with heavy liner and mascara blinked at me. “She’s young.” The eyes softened, and I imagined them in her youth, so alluring to all the men she’d serviced. I could tell that she had once been beautiful.

  Had my mommy been beautiful, too?

  “I said, bring her to the pink room, didn’t I?” Red-tipped nails, long finger pointing at one girl and then another. They scampered back to my side, looped me over their soft, soft arms, and dragged me down worn carpet to a pink, pink room.

  My eyes blinked on a yellow-stained pillowcase of cherubs. The wallpaper in the top corner of the room hung limp and flaccid, a drooping pink. The blankets were rough but warm, and they smelled like tobacco, but in this room, there was no lilac, only tobacco tainted by male body stink. As my eyes shut, I fell into a dream of Daddy, and I heard his words.

  Drunk.

  Drug addict.

  Whore.

  Over time, I would know nothing else.

  With the war raging, business lagged, and the customers I serviced in my first few months tended toward the elderly and sagging, men I could barely tease into payment. Madame Francesca pushed us to do more and more for these men and for smaller amounts of pay. I was barely alive, and during work, I learned to giggle and gasp while flatlining my thoughts. I told myself that, if I wasn’t really there, then I wasn’t really participating, was I? I might as well have been dead.

  “You don’t belong here, Clarisse. Your heart isn’t in it. The other girls do much better for me.”

  “But where—”

  The eyes glinted, hard and sharp. “There’s a bar. Underground in the tunnels. They need girls. I know the owner. He’ll take most anything I send. He was once a special customer of mine.”

  “Underground? In tunnels?” I couldn’t grasp what she was saying. How long would I have to live in subterranean gloom servicing yet more old men, those who were strange and sick enough to live beneath the streets?

  “You’ll go tonight. Trust me, you’ll be much happier there, my dear.”

  I left with nothing, just the clothes I’d worn the night Daddy left me. The girls gave me powders to sniff, and this relaxed me. Some of the girls cried for me, and to this day, I love them for it. They’re probably all dead, of course.

  A horse and buggy driven by one of Madame’s customers dumped me off in the middle of nowhere. Gloom was settling across the ravaged trees: naked limbs, clawing fingers, a red-tipped sky. The air was cool and damp and scented with pine. On either side of the dirt road, dark forest blocked my vision. Branches crackled. Animals whispered warnings. I didn’t know how to find Madame’s friend, this man she had serviced long ago.

  I inched my way down the road, which dwindled to a path, and every few minutes, I paused and peered in all directions, even behind me, for I feared that at any moment, something would pop out and attack me.

  The sky grew black. A cold mist settled on my skin. My shoes were ancient, too small for my feet, and had holes in them. Rocks jabbed my soles. Branches tripped me.

  When I felt I could no longer walk, I sank against a tree, and I cried.

  I cried for myself, pathetic as it was, only nine, an orphan, a whore, cold, sick, hungry, and lost.

  I cried for all the girls I’d known in the city and then at Madame’s. Those who slept with me in the alleys, those who ate from the dumpsters with me, those whose daddies sold them off and whose mommies didn’t care.

  I cried for us all.

  When finally I could cry no more, I heard in the silence faint laughter, and it was deep and hearty like men laugh when drunk. I pushed away from the tree, and I hobbled toward the sound, and eventually, I came to a clearing, and in that clearing was an expanse of rock stretching in both directions. Drilled into the rock, or blasted into it—I didn’t know which—was an opening the size of a medium-sized man. This must be the entrance, I thought, to the tunnels and the bar.

  I ducked inside.

  Black gripped me. I stretched my arm to the rock wall and felt my way down the corridor. It was cold, dry, dusty. I stepped slowly, frightened, though the floor seemed smooth. I came to a sharp right turn, looked over my shoulder and inched forward, and I watched as the charcoal of night receded behind me.

  Black on black now…

  The male laughter echoed through the tunnel, luring me on. Being with drunk men, those who cozy up to whores, would beat being alone in the woods, especially during a war.

  A light flickered in the distance. I moved as quickly as I could on bloody feet, and finally, when I neared the light, what I saw was breathtaking:

  A large cave with low ceilings and a few torches set along the walls, a rough-hewn wooden bar held aloft by stacked slabs of rock, barrels for stools, and three men drinking from bottles and smoking cigars. Branches shaped like antlers decorated the walls.

  The tunnel spasmed, and I lost my footing and fell. I spread my arms, cushioned the blow, but the rock slammed against my right hip, and I winced as pain shot down my leg.

  All three men swiveled. A fourth man—the bartender, I presumed—jerked up a section of the bar and hurried over to me. He lifted me in his arms, and he stared as if not knowing what he had found.

  I held my breath so I wouldn’t whimper. I didn’t want them to know I was scared. But although this fate was better than a fate outside the tunnels, I was scared, for I was now at the mercy of these men.

  “What do we have here?” The bartender’s voice rasped as if his throat was sore, and his words puffed out in white mist. His eyes were a blue so light they seemed almost transparent. Long hair, dark and thick, hung down his back, and from each ear dangled a tiny gold loop. I peered at the patterns of his black whiskers across his cadaver-pale skin.

  The other men, all as cadaver-pale and all in heavy coats, surveyed me and then set their bottles down. “Who is this, Andre? Why has a little girl come here?”

  Their accents were archaic. I barely understood.

  “Madame sent me, from Second and Main.”

  “Ah, Madame Francesca. I see.” The bartender, Andre, placed me on a barrel and propped me up. He didn’t leave my side. Perhaps he feared that I might fall and injure myself. Or perhaps he just wasn’t done studying me.

  A rustle of cloth, and a girl entered the bar from the tunnels. She was perhaps five years my senior. Brown hair, brown eyes, scrawny, and wearing a tattered pink dress. I recognized the lilac perfume. This girl had also been sent by Madame Francesca. I wonde
red how long she’d been here.

  “Gloria, take this new girl to a room, let her rest, feed her, and prime her, get her ready. Then bring her back to me.”

  The girl nodded, her expression like wax. She looped an arm around my waist and helped me limp into the gloom. I wondered how she would prime me, and why.

  She said nothing, and I was afraid to ask.

  The tunnel sloped downward and angled to the left and then twisted right a few times. Gloria knew her way. Was she counting her steps?

  She half-dragged me into a cave lit by torches. What might pass as girls slept on the rock floor. Skeletal, they slept like bones heaped into mounds. Each wore a ripped dress. One appeared badly burned with her face half-melted. Another was missing an arm. And yet a third had only one breast. All were deformed in one way or another.

  I slept, I ate what Gloria gave to me—white button mushrooms that were firm and sweet—and I grew stronger. Gloria did not train me in the ways of men. Andre must have told her that I’d already served as a whore for Madame Francesca. Periodically, Gloria took one girl, then another from the cave, and hours later, the girl would return, depleted and exhausted. While awake, they ate the white button mushrooms.

  From time to time, I had the feeling they were trying to talk to me but that words could no longer form in their mouths. Haunted eyes, downcast, that avoided me and gazed vacantly at the rock walls. During meals, they sat like wax dolls, expressionless, bony fingers sliding mushroom slivers into the cracks of their mouths, chewing absently as if sustenance no longer mattered.

  One night—or was it a day? I had no way of knowing—Andre told me that I was ready. He set me to work in his bar, wiping the booze off the wood and pouring alcohol into dirty glasses. There was no question that the deformed girls were whores, with Gloria serving in Madame Francesca’s position.

  Would I become deformed as well, a scrawny whore incapable of speech or life? Was that what this place was? An outpost for whores who couldn’t make it elsewhere?

  And then came the needles.

  The whores pinned me down while Gloria injected me, with what I did not know. But the buzz was euphoric, and I was happier than I’d ever been. I learned to look forward to the injections, which Gloria administered after bringing me back from the bar. In time, she gave me needles, and I injected myself whenever the euphoria slipped. Along with wine, the drugs helped me shift myself elsewhere when the men wanted sex. And yes, whoring was a big part of my day, every day.

  I went on like this for a very long time.

  White button mushrooms. Sleep. Whore. Wine. Injections.

  I loved the drugs. The euphoria killed the emotional pain. It worked even better than physical pain.

  And the drugs and wine were free, as much as I could shoot up and guzzle.

  Honestly, I couldn’t believe my good fortune.

  And that’s when I began to sing again.

  It started as humming, but quickly, I was singing the melodies I’d sung on the streets for Daddy.

  The men couldn’t get enough of my singing, and I became more animated, playing to my little crowd. Andre poured drink after drink, which the men swilled. We whores were busier than ever, and I was the favorite. Gloria woodenly walked the tunnels, bringing the girls from the bordello to the bar and then back again. Only I stayed in the bar between men. I sang, and I swear they seemed to love me, and I drank with them, and always, we laughed. Every so often, the tunnels spasmed, and we would lurch and then regain our balance. It was just something else to laugh about, and it all became routine.

  I forgot about the outside world. I mean, I knew about it in the back of my mind, but it no longer mattered to me.

  It was easy to avoid Gloria and the other girls. They weren’t a friendly crowd. They serviced the men, they ate, and they slept. They seemed to have no other interests, and while this puzzled me at first, in time, I just didn’t care.

  Given enough time, anything can become normal.

  One night, after my last singing shift, I grabbed a torch from the bordello wall and slipped into the tunnels. I wasn’t sleepy, and I was anxious for a little fun, a deviation from the routine.

  I wound my way through a maze, passing through large rock rooms stacked with wines. The floor sloped steeply several times. I knew that, if the torch burned down or flickered out, I would be doomed. I wouldn’t be able to find my way back in the dark. I would certainly die down here, and nobody would know how to find me. Nonetheless, I continued on my adventure, thinking the odds of life and death were about equal, and perhaps life held a slightly better chance. Despite my reasoning, I was acutely on edge. The deathlike silence of the place horrified me, and I swear I heard my own heart pounding. I mean, what if a madman, a killer, was on the loose down here? He could jump out, grab me, and then torture me to slow death and nobody would be the wiser.

  I steeled my nerves as best I could. I told myself that only a little girl would be scared. But such is childhood, when often, we’re afraid of unknown monsters but not of our own reality. I think it’s because we don’t know much about reality when we’re little, and it’s easier to be afraid of monsters.

  I peered behind me into gloom. Perhaps I should go back to Andre and his bar, back to the bordello. Perhaps I should venture out another time and be more careful to mark my way. Perhaps…

  The torch light cast faint orbs across the rock.

  The ceiling dipped low. The tunnels narrowed.

  That’s when I saw the first chiseling. Where the wall met the ceiling, someone had chiseled “No 2 1917 Verdun,” and beneath this sign, a chart detailing the harvests of assorted mushrooms during the Great War fought long before my Daddy’s time.

  Perhaps men still lived down here.

  Perhaps one would jump out and…

  I cut the thought short.

  I wanted to see what was ahead, and now I felt confident that I could find my way back. I’d return to “No 2 1917 Verdun,” and from there, make my way to the caves stocked with the wines.

  I passed a poorly rendered cartoon, also etched into the rock wall. It featured a man with moustache and goatee, tailcoat, top hat, and a walking stick. In front of him was a chicken head. Behind him was a headless chicken’s body. Not understanding the cartoon, I moved on.

  Whenever I neared a fork in the tunnels, I trained my torch at the juncture of the walls and ceiling. At the next such fork, someone had chiseled “No 3 1917 Marmitte a Popol et Grenier de Mommartre.” Men must have lived in these tunnels during the Great War. Is this how Andre had come to live down here? Had his father’s father hid in the tunnels? I’d have to remember to ask him upon my return.

  Shortly past the juncture, my torch illuminated what must have been many hundreds of white mushroom bundles packed across the floor. I crouched and held the torch directly over the mushrooms, which sprouted in tight clusters from black earth. I plucked a few, wiped them on my dress, and ate them. They didn’t taste like mushrooms found in city dishes. These were like candy.

  The mushrooms grow best in the caves. Slowly and with just the right amount of moisture, Andre had told me. The rock of the tunnels was dry everywhere with no evidence of water. I assumed Andre had a secret source, a trickle hidden deep, deep within the tunnels.

  I ate about twenty mushrooms, then continued, and after a few more twists and turns, entered an open area packed with brown mushrooms growing in tan earth speckled with black. I didn’t eat these mushrooms because Andre and Gloria never provided us with this type. They might be poisonous, I thought.

  And then I came across another room, this one packed with upstanding blocks of black earth, from which sprouted huge spiraled mushroom growths. Ridges of filthy gray mushrooms, growing one on top of the other and wound in huge whorls. Again, I didn’t eat these mushrooms, fearing poison and death.

  And then later, there were sacks from which gigantic mushrooms protruded in clusters of a hundred or more. Yellow, with formations half a meter long and half a meter thic
k.

  I staggered through the tunnels, thrusting my torch into one cave after another. Most of the caves were empty. A few held mushroom sacks and caches of wine. I memorized road sign after road sign, intent on remembering the route back to the bordello.

  Eventually, I crept into a cave which held large blocks of black mold from which thick brown mushrooms sprouted. The mold reminded me of the hair on the greasy old men I serviced. The mushrooms were as large and yellow as the ones I’d seen earlier, the gigantic mushrooms in clusters of a hundred or more. But in this cave, some of the mushrooms were even larger, and filaments coated the walls like thick mesh. The ceilings flaked powder and I sneezed. Sawdust, mold, and filaments seemed to breathe in here, in some harmonic rasping melody… as if I was trapped in a giant, diseased lung.

  I set the torch into a rusty iron holder quivering upon the wall. From afar, the rock spasmed. Eerie sounds echoed down the long, lonely corridors into the cave where I cuddled on mushroom mold. The filaments were soft and thickly knitted. They cradled me.

  I slept soundly, and when I awoke, took my torch, which had burned down to the hilt, and made my way back through the tunnels.

  Every night for weeks, maybe months, I crept off to my special cave, and I fell asleep to the rocking of the tunnels, the echoes, and the comforting softness.

  I was dizzy from the injections and the wine, with my belly full of mushrooms, when one day, while staggering toward Andre’s bar, I heard something odd.

  It was my song. But I wasn’t singing it.

  Never let me go,

  treat me kind,

  and you will find

  in my eyes

  a rainbow.

  Men laughed. “Aw, knock it off, would ya? We prefer the girl. Wait till you hear the girl.”

  I lurched around a corner. I entered the bar.

  The stars have died,

  the men have lied,

  the moon is dead,

  the sky is lead.

  My head reeled. “That’s my song!” I cried.

  “No. It’s my song. You were only borrowing it.”