Sleep, Pale Sister

by Joanne Harris

  Suddenly I was jolted by a scraping of feet against the floorboards outside the door. My heart began to beat wildly. It was Henry, not with poison but with something more effective to still my troublesome heart: a knife, a cleaver, a rope cunningly knotted. The door swung open. His face was greenish in the gaslight, like a child’s painting of a witch, his eyelids drawn down into long flaps of shadow. Thankful for the discipline I had learned in years of sitting as a model for Henry I forced my face into an expression of sleepy quietude, and yawned.

  ‘Is that you, Tabby?’ I murmured.

  His voice was gentle, almost tender. ‘It’s me. Henry. I’ve brought you something.’ His hand brushed the nape of my neck, scorching me with his fever. ‘Chocolate. For my little girl. I didn’t want you to be neglected just because Tabby is away.’

  ‘Chocolate. Thank you.’ I smiled vaguely. ‘That will help me to sleep, won’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it will. Sleep well, Effie…’ He kissed the top of my head and there was his breath, hot and moist against my hair. I felt his smile.

  ‘Goodnight, Mr Chester.’

  ‘Goodnight, Effie.’

  When he had gone, I threw Henry’s chocolate away and, as I lay on my bed, I willed my subtle body to rise. I could do this effortlessly now and, moving from room to room, I flew all over the house then out into the snow. I felt the snowflakes rush through my body but I felt no cold, only the burning exhilaration of my soul’s flight. I waited: in my present state I had little notion of time and I might have been drifting for hours, rocked in the arms of the storm, before I saw them coming out of the house. My heart gave a leap as it recognized Mose, with his old hat jammed down over his eyes and the collar of his greatcoat turned up against the cold. Henry was beside him and from my whistling eyrie I could see him clearly.

  He was grotesque, a dwarf, comically foreshortened by the odd perspective, an eye glancing up from beneath his hat, a pair of mittened hands upheld to ward off my wind, my storm…I began to laugh. To think that that was all it took: a change of angle, to convert my terror and awe into contempt. I had been so used to looking up at the thin line of his mouth, the cold tunnels of his eyes, that I had forgotten the weakness, the cruelty and deceit which flawed him…From above I narrowed the gaze of my new perception to focus on things unseen and I saw the shifting cloud around his head, the murky halo of tortured colours which was his soul. From the mouth of the night I laughed—and maybe this time he heard me, because he glanced upwards and, for a moment, his wild gaze met mine in an instant of pure and hellish understanding…

  But the dark delight which flooded me then lasted only for a second, for Mose was standing behind Henry, carrying the body of poor little Effie on his arm as if it weighed no more than the cloak which covered her from head to foot, and the face of my lover was half obscured by brightness, flawed by the spectral band which masked his face in a splash of brilliant scarlet, like the executioner’s crimson hood.

  47

  She was lying on the bed with her hair loose, her breathing so light that for an instant I thought she was really dead. The vial of laudanum was beside her on the bedstand, with the empty chocolate-cup next to it, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Henry touch the discarded cup with a hand which seemed as brittle and translucent as the china. Effie was wearing her grey dress and against the colourless fabric her skin seemed luminous, her hair touched with pale phosphorescence as it coiled across the bedspread and to the floor. For an instant my eye was caught by the brooch at her throat, a present from Fanny, a silver thing shaped like an arched cat, which mirrored the greenish light. Behind me I heard Henry make some inarticulate sound, like choking.

  ‘She’s asleep.’ I spoke briskly, not wanting Henry’s resolve to weaken. ‘Where’s her cloak?’

  Henry pointed to where the cloak hung behind the door.

  ‘Help me wrap her in it. Does it have a hood? Better find a bonnet.’ Henry did not move. ‘Hurry, man!’ I said impatiently. ‘I can’t manage her on my own.’

  Mutely he shook his head in disgust.

  ‘I…I can’t touch her. Take these,’ he added, thrusting the cloak and bonnet at me. ‘Put them on her.’

  I shrugged irritably and set to work with the bonnet-strings and the cloak-buttons. She was light, and I found that I could carry her on my arm like a child, her head hanging against my shoulder and her feet barely touching the ground. Henry was reluctant to touch her even then; he opened doors for me, shutting them behind us with his usual prissy attention to detail, rearranged ornaments, turned down the gaslight in the hall and pulled on his boots and his coat without once looking at either her or me. Some ten minutes later we stepped out into the snow and Henry locked the door behind us. Now there would be no turning back.

  Suddenly I saw Henry stop, his body stiffening. A cat had sprung out across our path, one paw held high: I recognized Effie’s cat Tizzy, yellow eyes gleaming wildly with excitement at the big snowflakes whirling about her. A strangled sound came from Henry’s mouth as he saw the cat. Looking at his face I was convinced that he was about to suffer some kind of an attack: his features were unravelling like a piece of knitting.

  ‘Aahaah…’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, man!’ I snapped more sharply than I intended. ‘It’s only a cat. Pull yourself together, for God’s sake.’ The whole situation was beginning to work upon my own nerves. ‘Get your arm around her,’ I ordered, deliberately brutal. ‘When you’ve got rid of her, then you can indulge in remorse if you like, but now…’

  He nodded and began to move again; I saw hate in his eyes, but I didn’t care. It would help to take his mind from other things.

  The walk to Highgate would only have taken me ten minutes or so in normal circumstances; that night it seemed endless. The snow was heaped in irregular drifts across the road; powdery, treacherous stuff which had turned to ice beneath the surface and sent our feet out from beneath us. Effie’s toes dragged against the snow’s thin crust, slowing our progress still further. In spite of her lightness we found we had to stop to rest every few hundred yards, our breath ribboning out around us, our hands icy and our backs drenched with sweat. We saw hardly anyone; a couple of men outside a public-house watched us with incurious eyes, a child stared out from behind a plush curtain at the window of a dark house. At one point Henry thought he saw a policeman and froze in panic until I pointed out to him that policemen were not usually issued with boot-button eyes and a carrot in place of their nose.

  Half an hour later we came to the cemetery which was unnaturally bright, almost luminous against the dull orange sky. As we approached it, I felt Henry begin to hang back, dragging against my shoulder so that I was almost supporting him along with Effie. Casting a last glance around us I saw that no-one was nearby. In fact, the visibility was so poor that I could hardly see the light of the nearest gaslamp, and the flurrying snow had already begun to fill our footprints with new snow. I shifted Effie’s weight from my shoulder and took the unlit lantern from my belt.

  ‘Here,’ I said shortly to Henry, ‘hold her for a minute.’ I saw him almost collapse as Effie’s head rolled on to his shoulder: the bonnet-strings had become loosened and her hair streamed out into his face, ghostly as the snow. Henry almost dropped her in his sudden panic. With a strangled cry of loathing he thrust the body from him so that it toppled backwards into the snow and he sprang back, his hands raised in an almost childish warding-off gesture.

  ‘She’s alive!’ he whispered. ‘She’s alive and she moved.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I agreed, ‘but she isn’t conscious. Help me to get her up.’ In spite of my growing irritation I kept my voice gentle. ‘Not far now.’

  Henry shook his head. ‘I felt her move. She’s waking up. I know she is. You take her. Give me the lantern,’ he articulated painfully, and I realized that he was close to collapse.

  I thrust the lantern at him and picked Effie up out of the snow, pulling the bonnet once more over her loosened hair. Behind me Henry f
umbled in his pocket and pulled out his bottle of chloral, upending it into his mouth. Then, with trembling fingers, he managed to light the lantern, and with a final glance behind him he followed me through the gates and into the cemetery.

  48

  Behind the wall of the cemetery and the endless, exquisite tension of the wind, the silence was immense, deafening. The sky above me was filled with flying things like jigsaw pieces; no moon, no stars, only the dark flakes flying like moths into the lantern. And the ground beneath was livid as the moon, as if somehow the earth and sky had changed places for this one monstrous night.

  I watched Harper’s back as I followed him. In spite of the deep snow his stride was long and even; he was carrying Effie in his arms, her hair falling like a shroud over his hands and wrists. For the first time in my life I was possessed of a sudden envy of this man who seemed to have no fear, no remorse, no guilt. For he was guilty, just as much as I was, but somehow he had accepted his guilt, made his peace with it…How I longed to be Moses Harper! But as the chloral began to take effect I found that I was once more able to accept the enormity of what we were doing. Absorbed into the silence of myself, I realized that I was facing a Mystery, a return through tides and currents I had travelled once before, through the waters of my childhood and my sin, back to the room with the blue-and-white doorknob and the source of all my hate and misery…my mother.

  I had long since ceased to feel the cold. There was a tingling in the tips of my fingers and in my feet, but apart from that I had no body—I drifted a few inches above the snow, dragging my feet a little against the thin crust. I realized that St Paul was right: original sin was passed on through to the soul from the body. There I was, out of my body, and I felt quite pure; the word murder danced before me in a volley of bright lights: stare at the word for long enough and you’ll find that it becomes quite meaningless.

  I remember passing through the Circle of Lebanon; sepulchres on either side of the path, thatched with snow, were outlined in the fire of the lantern. Then Harper stopped, dropped the bag of tools from his shoulder into the snow and turned towards me.

  ‘Cover the lantern,’ he said tersely, ‘and keep watch here, by the path.’ Nodding towards the door of the sepulchre in front of him, he gently lowered Effie on to the ground and began to search in his bag. ‘No-one comes to this grave,’ he explained. ‘All the relatives are dead. It’s the ideal place.’

  I did not answer. All my attention was focused on the little sepulchre. It was a chapel of sorts, the name isherwood emblazoned across the rotting stone in Gothic script. Briefly I saw a stained-glass window in the back wall, illuminated into sudden brilliance by the lantern in my hand. By the window stood the remains of a footstool, its once-fine brocade rotted into finest filigree by age and damp. Mose had opened the door without difficulty and, with mittened hands, was sweeping the floor clear of the accumulated snow and leaves which littered the marble.

  ‘See?’ he said, without looking round. ‘This is the opening.’ Over his shoulder I could just see a slab of marble, slightly paler than the rest, in which was set an iron ring. ‘There must be dozens of people down here,’ continued Mose, beginning to pry at the sides of the slab with the help of a small chisel. ‘Damn!’ he exclaimed irritably as the chisel slipped in his hand. ‘It’s an old seal and it’s tight. I’ll have to chip the stone.’

  Suddenly the night was at my throat like a hungry wolf. Sensation flooded my frozen limbs once more and I began to sweat. I knew what we should find in the vault when Mose finally opened it. As the bitter air seared my lungs I thought I caught the elusive scent of jasmine and honeysuckle…

  Then Effie moved.

  I know she did: I saw her. She shifted her posture slightly and she fixed me with her terrible, verdigris eyes. I tell you, I saw her.

  Harper had his back to her. He had managed to dislodge the marble slab and was working it away from the hole, his breath a dragon’s-plume of pale steam around his face. He heard my cry and turned, scanning the path for any sign of a witness.

  ‘She’s awake! She moved!’

  I saw Harper make a gesture of impatience. But she was moving; almost imperceptibly at first, though I could guess at the coiled hatred unwinding through her thin white body; and her face was my mother’s, was Prissy Mahoney’s, was the Columbine doll and the dead whorechild, their mouths moving almost in unison to form words of black invocation, as if, at their command, the earth might open and loose a fountain of blood on to the immaculate snow…But Harper had noticed her at last; the somnolent turn of her cheek against the dark cape, the fitful clenching of her fists. In a moment he was beside her with the laudanum bottle, his arm around her shoulders. I heard her murmur something, her voice blurred like a sleeping child’s.

  ‘Mo…ose, I…’

  ‘Shh, be quiet. Go back to sleep.’ His voice was a caress.

  ‘No…I don’t…I don’t want…’ She was closer to wakefulness now, struggling through shades of consciousness. Harper’s voice in the shadows was gentle, seductive.

  ‘No, Effie…go back to sleep…shh, go back to…’

  Her eyes snapped open and, in that moment, I saw the Eye of God behind her dilated pupils. I felt His Eye focusing upon me like a magnifying glass in the sun. I faced His immense, monstrous indifference.

  I screamed.

  49

  Cursing inwardly, I tried to keep my voice soft and soothing. Damn her! A few minutes more and the whole affair would have been concluded. I pulled the cloak over her face to try and limit the reviving effect of the cold, put my arm around her and whispered gently. But Effie was coming round quickly, her eyes moving fretfully beneath her closed lids, her breathing rapid and irregular. One-handed I opened the laudanum bottle, trying to coax her to take a few drops.

  ‘Come on, Effie…shh…just drink this…come on, that’s a good girl.’ But I could not persuade her to take the drug. Instead, disastrously, she began to talk.

  Henry wasn’t far away; he had panicked when Effie opened her eyes and run a few steps down the path, but he was still within earshot. If Effie let slip a single word about our plan I knew that even now Henry was shrewd enough to guess at the rest. I put my arms tighter around her and tried to muffle her words.

  ‘Come on…’ I said, more urgently. ‘Drink this, and be quiet.’

  Her eyes focused into mine. ‘Mose,’ she said quite clearly, ‘I had such a strange dream.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ I hissed desperately.

  ‘I…’ (Thank God, I thought, she was drifting again.)

  ‘Look, just drink your medicine, like a good girl, and sleep.’

  ‘You will…you’ll come back for me, won’t…won’t you?’

  Damn her! Henry was coming back along the path. I tried to pinch her nostrils and force the laudanum down her throat, but she was still talking.

  ‘Just like…Juliet in the tomb…like Henry’s painting. You’ll come, won’t you?’

  Her voice was suddenly very clear in the night.

  You have to understand: I never intended her any harm. If only she had kept quiet for a few minutes more…it really wasn’t my fault. I didn’t have the choice! Henry was almost at my elbow: another word and the whole thing would have been ruined. All our effort for nothing. I couldn’t keep her quiet.

  Understand that I acted purely on instinct: I never meant to hurt her, simply to keep her quiet for the few minutes I needed to get Henry out of the way. It was dark; my hands were numb from working with the stone, and yes, I was nervous, anyone would have been nervous.

  All right, all right. I’m not proud of what I did, but you’d have done the same, believe me. I hit her head, not very hard, but harder than I intended, against the edge of the sepulchre. Just to keep her quiet. She wouldn’t have thanked me if because of me Henry had tumbled to our plan; she would have wanted me to do what I could, for her sake as well as for mine.

  The bitch could have ruined everything.

  She crumpled
into the snow and, as I picked her up I saw a bead of blood darkening the hollow where her head had rested; just a single round patch the size of a penny. I fought back panic. What if I had killed her? She was frail, already close to collapse…it would not have taken much to finish Henry’s work. I brought my face close to hers and listened for her breathing…there was none. What did you expect me to do then? I couldn’t react: Henry would immediately have suspected. There was nothing I could do but wait. Ten minutes, and Henry would be gone. Then I could see to Effie. I couldn’t believe that little tap on the head had killed her: more likely I hadn’t heard her breathing because of the noise of the wind. I couldn’t afford to panic on account of something so trivial.

  Gently I brushed the snow from her and carried her to the vault. Looking into the opening I could see that it was dark in there, and I hung Henry’s lantern above the entrance so that I wouldn’t fall. There were a dozen narrow stairs leading down, some broken and rotted with age. Carefully I carried Effie’s limp body down and looked around in the gloom for a place to put her. It was slightly warmer in the vault than outside, and it stank in there, of age and mould, but at least the coffins were out of the way, hidden behind stone slabs on their shelves and sealed with cement. I carried her to the back of the vault where there was still an empty shelf wide enough to lie on. I made a pillow for her head with my knapsack, wrapped the cloak tightly around her and left her there as I made my way back up the steps towards Henry.

  I sealed the vault again, scattering earth and dead leaves over the slab so that my interference would not be noticed. Then I shut the door and wedged it with a stone. Turning to Henry, I handed him the lantern and smiled.