The Woman in Silk

by R. J. Gadney

  He took three spare blankets and a pair of pillows from the wardrobe and turned the largest bedroom chair into a makeshift bed.

  Francesca fell silent. Once asleep, she breathed audibly.

  His brain teemed with plans to fight the spirits and rid The Towers of their insidious aura. Why not employ a full-time caretaker? Night watchmen? Install security CCTV cameras and a bank of monitors? Around-the-clock surveillance?

  He wanted to reconnect the telephone to establish normal life when morning came and he wanted to retrieve the photographs. Fired up with loathing for the horror at the top of the Gothic staircase that had temporarily destabilized him, he grew the more determined to begin the pressing business of doing battle to save The Towers from self-destruction.

  He’d present a plan for an altogether speedier program of restoration to Warren and Sophie Peach:

  The immediate reconstruction of the living quarters. A resurrection, no less. A proper modern kitchen. A comfortable living room, sensible dining room, modern baths, new boiler, an altogether new and efficient hot-water system, new wiring and a powerful, albeit limited, central heating plant.

  He thought of all this as the creation of a house within a house. An immediate sale of some of the paintings would provide the necessary capital to start work immediately after Christmas. If the local builders refused to work in January then he’d import a team of Polish builders from London or nearer home if he could find any.

  A new look, the new broom, an altogether new atmosphere of lightness would soon persuade the spirits to pack their bags and bugger off to some other unwitting place of dereliction and insanity offering sanctuary to the living dead and their perverse disciples.

  *

  The chair was uncomfortable and, even though he was fully dressed, his clothes and the heavy blankets offered little warmth.

  Francesca had dropped into a noiseless sleep and the only sounds were of the sleet beating against the windows, the rattling of the shutters, a low mumbling in the chimney breast and the deadened chimes of the clock below.

  It was shortly after the clock chimed IV that he heard the noise.

  28

  It was hard and sharp: crack-thwack-crack of grit against the window.

  At first he dismissed it as a freakish gust of wind.

  When he heard it the second time, then a third, he could think of no logical explanation other than that human hands had lobbed grit against the glass.

  Without disturbing Francesca he used his shielded flashlight to find his way across the room and drew the shutters open.

  The light was adequate enough for him to see the figure in the driving sleet standing on the graveled terrace below.

  Hollow eyes flashed him a look of recognition. The signal from one eye, a pointed glint; the figure’s tortured stance and the stillness of it, in spite of the heaving wind, suggested supernatural strength in the skeletal frame. Obviously alive, it was a deathly figure.

  The mask of putrid flesh he’d seen at the top of the Gothic staircase was summoning him.

  He held the flashlight as steady as his shaking hand allowed, projecting its beam straight into the sockets of the sunken eyes, challenging it to make some comprehensible gesture.

  The figure must have understood his challenge because it raised an arm from its white shroud, gestured at the walls and then began to tap a claw against its breast to signify All-This-Is-Mine.

  Every spirit is original; its disgusting carapace bears its signature. Each spirit is in a different place. I think of it as warfare hand to hand: one false move and the enemy’s hands will seize me.

  He pointed toward the gravel, the gesture the command: Stay-Where-You-Are-Don’t-Move-I’m-Coming.

  The amorphous creature looked up into his eyes and slowly gave a willing nod:

  I’m-Waiting-For-You.

  He fled the bedroom, running along the corridors, down the stairs and careered across the slippery stone to the Gun Room.

  29

  By his calculation the ground-floor window nearest to where the figure stood was in an anteroom adjoining the Billiard Salon.

  He fed a cartridge into the chamber, checked the safety catch and telescopic sights and walked silently along the passage to the darkened anteroom.

  Taking his time to part the shutters, he removed the horizontal locking bar and lowered it sideways against the wall.

  The windows were blurred with a fine film of ice, though not blurred enough to prevent him from seeing the figure had changed position in the storm.

  Good, he had time to ease the window open to the sleet and wait for its inevitable reappearance.

  He held the gun in his right hand, behind the trigger’s guard. His left hand was further down the shotgun, under the barrel.

  He raised the gun, settling it comfortably against his shoulder. With his dominant eye, his right, he peered into the telescopic sights, taking careful aim at the space where he’d last seen the specter. He kept his right eye a short distance from the aperture, the crosshairs of the sights centered on the target’s general position, then released the safety catch and waited, his finger ready to squeeze the trigger.

  30

  Fewer than forty meters distant, he saw the shroud. The very moment he set eyes on it triggered the signal: CHIP OPERATION: REMOTE CONTROL FAMILIAR, condescending, patient, free. Come not to sojourn, but abide with me.

  —light cut into the anteroom and he twisted around to face the beam.

  —a still small voice behind it said: “Don’t.”

  Francesca stood in the doorway, erect and very still.

  “Get out,” he yelled.

  She was tight-lipped and unmoving.

  Then, with great suddenness, she hurled her flashlight across the room at him. It struck the wall beside the window, crashed against the floor, and rolled a short way along the baseboard.

  “Don’t move,” he ordered, jerking around to face the window again, and as he peered into the sights, his eyes were filled with a far stronger light from outside, as if the storm had exploded behind his eyeballs.

  Instantaneously, he squeezed the trigger.

  The gun recoiled, throwing him off his aim. He prepared to take a second shot but the residue of the dazzling light from within the turmoil of the sleet played havoc with his eyesight.

  —for a moment he was blinded.

  —the big N as in nada nil zero zippo Nothin’ = N = big 0e0. Nothing.

  The light from outside dimmed, then went out altogether leaving the beam of the flashlight Francesca had thrown shining feebly across the floor.

  “I saw,” she said. “You were trying to kill her.”

  “Bloody right.”

  “Do as I say. Put that gun down. I said, put it down.”

  “Not before I get another shot.”

  “Let me see her.”

  She walked across the room and stood close beside him in the gloom.

  Setting the shotgun carefully aside, he never saw the syringe she was clutching behind her back.

  She drew close to where he was seated at an angle in the alcove.

  Head tilted, she smiled at him. “Oh, Hal, what are we going to do with you? Let me make you a nice hot drink. Close the window.”

  He shifted his position in the alcove, slightly off balance, steadied himself on the window-seat cushion, and stretched out his hands to lift and refasten the heavy bar across the shutters. His arms were fully extended when the needle found the vastus lateralis muscle on the outer edge of his thigh between his knee and hip bone.

  The heavy shutter bar thudded against the wall.

  With her free hand she gripped him around his neck, the bone of her forearm tightened against his larynx as if she intended to asphyxiate him.

  “There-there,” she said softly.

  He clutched his throat.

  “Didn’t hurt, did it?” she said.

  He felt blood seeping inside his trouser leg; his thigh had become sticky and he looked at her in dis
belief.

  She said: “No worries, my love.” She was folding a paper tissue carefully around the needle. “Given my love a little something to make him happy.” She stepped away from him as he struggled to his feet.

  He said: “What the hell have you done … what is it you’ve—?”

  “—what is it Francesca’s given you? An advance Christmas present from Santa’s little helper.” There was the edge of warning in her banter. “You’re coming up to bed.”

  He reached out for the shotgun.

  “Leave it,” she said, setting it out of reach.

  He tried to snatch the ball of tissue containing the syringe away from her and failed. A deep lavender liquid oozed through the tissue in her fingers.

  He swung his arm at her frantically—trying to hit the viper very hard with his fist, stab her with fingernails in the softness of her throat—

  “Stand up carefully now,” she was saying.

  Her hair brushed his cheeks and he sensed her warmth and the scent of jasmine oil. She drew a wristband of white silk thread toward his eyes so he was forced to look at the small ornament dangling from it. His thigh began to throb. No doubt about it—definitely a Levantine viper. Or, was he looking at the image of an Indian cobra’s head, a Naja Naja’s severed head? Kill. Kill it.

  “Girls in white kimonos; with white silk … I want you,” she whispered with an intimacy that said I’ve-Got-You. “Now I’m your Sumiko.” Then she drew his lips toward her open mouth and rubbed her tongue slowly across his teeth.

  Possessed of a natural gift for physical seduction, she was disponible and generous and wanted to pleasure him.

  Naked, they slept in each other’s arms oblivious of the raging storm.

  And no one would’ve been any the wiser had the storm not run out of energy.

  MacCullum delivered Teresa to The Towers as it weakened.

  SIX

  I came into the world naked, man.

  That’s how I’m a-leavin’ it.

  KEN D.J. MOSES

  31

  At about ten o’clock in the morning, finding no sign of Francesca in the kitchen or her bedroom, Teresa opened the door of Hal’s room to be confronted with the sight of her daughter and Hal naked in each other’s arms. Her reaction to this discovery was to remain silent.

  She didn’t raise her hands in horror; neither did she walk out of her daughter’s room in a huff. She undressed without ceremony, lifted aside the eiderdown, and drew Hal to her.

  They took their time.

  Francesca offered no protest.

  She showed neither shame, guilt, nor embarrassment, as Hal and her mother became lovers beside her.

  When finally they lay still, Francesca stroked his lips and then kissed him gently.

  He heard her saying:

  “He’s sleeping like a king.”

  Teresa whispered: “Don’t wake him, love.”

  They were standing by the window.

  Hal stirred and listened.

  “I’ll come down for coffee, Mom.”

  “I’ll make the coffee,” Teresa said. “Run a nice hot bath for him.” She sounded remarkably matter-of-fact. “We must get on with what’s left of the day.”

  “It’s not that late, Mom.”

  “There’s lots to do.”

  “Busy. Busy. Busy. Are you all right, Mom?”

  “I’m fine, love. Fine. Yes. Just fine.”

  “Ryker all right?”

  “Everyone’s all right, Francesca. Don’t keep on about everyone being all right.”

  “I’m only thinking of others.”

  “Then you freshen up, girl. Make yourself nice. I’ll be in the kitchen. I’ve got to clear up the mess that puppy’s making. It’s shit itself.”

  “It’s only tiny.”

  “It’s still shit.”

  “Roads clear, are they?”

  “Yes, yes, yes. Main roads anyway. There’s a likelihood of floods. More snow too. I can feel it in my bones.”

  “Me too. We had a bad time of it here in the night.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “That storm. And worse things besides … I thought it’d be the death of us.”

  “You don’t have to tell me, sweetheart. Ryker’s had a look-see at the damage. There’s a whole lot of muck and water in the picture galleries. He says we should be careful the plaster doesn’t fall in on us.”

  “There’s more than water that came in last night.”

  “You had a visitation, didn’t you?”

  “You know?”

  “Of course I know.”

  “She was as clear as daylight.”

  “I know she was. I knew she was with you two. It was Monday yesterday, wasn’t it? You should’ve been warned. Monday. Monday. That’s what your father used to sing. Idle bastard. Monday Monday … Monday morning …”

  Francesca joined in: “… Oh, Monday Monday …”

  “Don’t need to remind me, girl.”

  “Monday always turns out bad.”

  “Turned out all right for you though, didn’t it? I might’ve guessed what you two’d be up to.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  “He’s nice,” said Teresa.

  “You don’t mind, Mom?”

  “I was young once.”

  “You’re still young, Mom.”

  “I think so. Others mightn’t.”

  “You won’t tell anyone, Mom?”

  “Tell who?”

  “Priscilla.”

  “Priscilla? She’ll be happy.”

  “Think she knows?” Francesca said with pleasure.

  “What d’you think, love? ’Course, dear. Of course she knows. There’s nothing she doesn’t know. You’re a good girl.”

  “Take after you, don’t I, Mom?”

  “So Ryker says. He’s right about most things. At least someone’s got a brain in that bloody village. Some old oaf was saying last night we must be mad to stay out here. Going on and on and on about how Christmas is the cruelest season. That old man Stirling should’ve been up on a charge of serial murder. How he was a pervert. Kept Priscilla his prisoner. Believed in the Great Beast. Had 666 tattooed on his chest. How Priscilla was a witch. That the Vicar should step in. The police should carry out a search. Leave no stone unturned.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. Kept mum. Ryker says that madness is normal around these moors. Inbreeding and all that. Incest. How everyone’s related and everywhere blood’s turned sour. Livestock wouldn’t be diseased otherwise, would it? Foot-and-mouth disease. Mastitis. Brucellosis. TB …”

  He heard the bedroom door open, then close, and their voices fading as they went downstairs:

  “Swine vesicular disease. You name it. The country-side’s sick and dying on its feet. No one wants to know …”

  32

  His arms had stiffened. The sweat in his eyes was sometimes hot, sometimes cold.

  What happened in bed was one thing. The appearance of the specter at the top of the Gothic staircase was another. So was the violence of his reaction to it.

  Similarly, the figure in the storm he’d attempted to annihilate. By definition, he reasoned, the thing would anyway have been impervious to gunshot wounds.

  The first advice he gave himself was to discover what Francesca had injected into his bloodstream. True, he was taking his Velamorphine, but quite what else she’d injected he’d no idea.

  Two things were for sure. At best, if best it was, the revenants, the wandering souls back from the dead, were bent on persecution. At worst, the sighting, the physicality of the dread and horror had shot unadulterated fear into his bloodstream as if it had been venom from Francesca’s syringe. To prescribe an antidote was as difficult as prescribing a catch-all antidote for the toxins of real life.

  In Afghanistan the “real life” vacuum had been filled with the singular arousal of warfare only men and women on active service experience. Civilians prefer not to be reminded of it
because military combat embodies violence at its most intense.

  It’s animal versus animal, creatures slaughtering other living things. To understand it fully you have actually to do it and keep on doing it. Once it’s over all you find is simplicity itself: living proof you’ve survived. Soldiering, for Hal, meant getting the job done or the big N.

  Then, always lurking in the ether, was the worst, the greatest threat of all: someone somewhere, one day, might whisper: “He’s a coward.” Fighting men may confess to many things. Cowardice most definitely isn’t one of them. Fear of it attaching to you ranks on a par with incest—not something to talk about over the family dinner.

  A confusion of guilt and shame decided him to visit Dr. Mackle, the local GP who’d attended his mother’s death.

  Successfully avoiding Teresa and Francesca, he let himself out of the house and drove straight to Mackle’s surgery.

  The receptionist said the doctor would see him in half an hour.

  *

  What would he say?

  “Whenever I feel the likelihood of the things appearing my throat and mouth tighten, so does my chest, I feel nauseous. My legs turn leaden. It’s getting worse. Is it connected with the Velamorphine?”

  That was something the GP could easily determine.

  The paunch and smoker’s cough identified Mackle as an old-fashioned doctor.

  Hal recited what he’d rehearsed, told him about the apparitions, and added: “I don’t want it getting around the village.”

  “That you’re off-color?”

  “I’m one hundred percent fit. I’m not off-color. I’ve never been fitter. That’s what’s so bloody weird about these things defeating me.”

  “They won’t defeat you.”

  “Then how do I deal with them?”

  “By realizing that fear’s a protection. It’s one of the most normal things in the world.”

  “I’ve no control. I can’t take those things—those spirits—apart. I can’t defuse them. It’s fear. It’s a psychosis.”