The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books)

by Marie O'Regan

  “‘She’s dead,’ says Mrs Dennison, clutching hold of me hard. ‘She’s dead; my sister is dead!’

  “She was. We hurried upstairs as fast as we could go, and she was dead in her bed, and smiling as if she was dreaming, and one arm and hand was stretched out as if something had hold of it; and it couldn’t be straightened even at the last – it lay out over her casket at the funeral.”

  “Was the child ever seen again?” asked Mrs Emerson in a shaking voice.

  “No,” replied Mrs Meserve; “that child was never seen again after she went out of the yard with Mrs Bird.”

  The Ninth Witch

  Sarah Langan

  This was back in the old days, when women weren’t worth anything. First came the wars, then the floods. Molluscs made homes out of rotted dolls. After that came the plague; moss worms riddled all the animal lungs. By the time things began to clear, and the sun burned out from its sulphurous pocket, everyone was hungry and cold. They’d forgotten what it meant to be human, and had no sympathy left to spare.

  Like all witches, Jane was born the ninth daughter of a ninth daughter. This was rare, because back then, few women carried anything but stones to term. What Jane didn’t know, and what no one remembered, was that the line carried farther: she was the ninth daughter of a ninth daughter nine generations back. With each generation, the magic got stronger until the last ninth was born with a misshapen womb that could only expel animals, so that no tenth would compete with God.

  Though ninth of nines, nine back, were prophesized to change the world, most squandered their birthrights. They were women, after all, and rarely met their potential. Some, rejected by their families, wandered the borders of Sudamorstralia like lunatics, shouting of visions. Others were murdered because of their third eyes. Some denied they were different. Jane was like these last. As soon as she was old enough, she clotted closed her third eye with beetle fat, and if she’d been sure it would not grow back, she’d have cut it out.

  Because her mother’s power was nearly as strong as Jane’s, each of her eight siblings was also born with a special talent. These varied from music to words to grace. Strength and beauty were obvious; those less obvious didn’t tend to get expressed. Jane’s third eye was a blue freckle high up in the centre of her forehead. A black cowlick covered it, and it only opened, its skin parting to reveal a cornflower blue pupil, when she was sleeping. Her father might have sacrificed her to Ve for this strange affliction, but the kind spirits of her ancestors began combing the skeletons in the Perth fallout for offerings on her behalf. They left trinkets such as round, metal bands affixed with rocks so shiny they reflected rainbows, and hunks of gold shaped like teeth, which the family traded for food. Other, less kind spirits rocked the child too hard in her crib, and knocked her out. When that happened, Jane’s sixth sister, the healer, would pick her up and rock her, crooning a popular lullaby so softly that none of the other children could hear:

  Sleep child.

  Close your eyes.

  They covet our miseries

  Because we are alive.

  Darling dear,

  The end is near.

  Do not fret.

  Soon we’ll all disappear.

  Because Jane’s mother died in childbirth, her father’s heart had dried and shrivelled inside his chest. He worried about his payments to King Herod IIXX, who raised taxes every year. He worried about the price of radishes and potatoes, which kept falling. He put the girls to work. They toiled during hours of light, bare-backed and slick with sweat like men. The eldest, who at night made music from jars filled with water, quickly died. The second and smartest ran away. The third, querulous and lazy, who could track the stars by fractions of millimetres and ought to have lived on a boat, he married off to a grey-haired priest, just to be rid of her. The fourth, a rare beauty, he sold, parading her on the town auction block with her dress lifted, so the men could admire her muscular thighs. The fifth, he kept by his side, because she was strong, never complained, and had the disposition of a horse. The sixth, and Jane’s favourite, made a career of medicine by studying the books she’d found in the bombed-out library. There was a room deep underground filled with untouched texts that she translated from Latin, then ate each page one by one, so that it would become part of her, and because she was hungry. She saved her father and three sisters when plague passed through the countryside, boiling down willow bark and feeding it to them as a stew, along with two-week-aged mould from bread. She stayed until Jane was old enough to speak, so that the youngest child might defend herself. Momma, Jane called her when she was twelve months old. I love you. With a heavy heart, the sixth packed her unguents and left that very day, before her love for the child overpowered her. Jane mourned her absence, standing vigil at the space on the floor where she’d slept, like a wild animal missing its poached mother.

  Taxes came due on the farm. The old man and his five remaining girls got down on their knees and begged for a reprieve, but the soldiers, dressed in rusted, cut metal sheets from dismantled old-world buildings, refused. They were thrown out, their house chopped down and used for Herod’s castle.

  Because the farm had been in the man’s family since before the flood, and even before the continental drift, he went a little mad. He murdered the seventh child and peeled off her skin, then hung it from a blue spruce tree, like the legends told him. Then he made his wish, and prayed all night to Fulla that his prayers would be answered, and the child’s hanging husk would be filled by a living boy-child, who would save them from starvation. But by the next morning, something had stolen the child’s dangling husk. He considered lighting what remained, her flesh and bones, over a fire to quell his rumbling stomach, but by then his daughters had buried her, and would not tell him where. For this, he beat them. Each bore the whip silently. Six lashes apiece. The strong fifth child, having never complained, did not tell them that a child had quickened inside her. Their father was the father, though not even the fifth child knew this. They’d never seen animals or the sex act, except when perpetrated upon them, and did not know what it meant. At the sixth strike, something broke inside the stalwart daughter and she fell dead. The life ran out between her legs, a perfectly formed boy-child, unbreathing and too small.

  The eighth and most courageous child stripped the whip from her father, and used it to lash him. He took it back, of course, and hit her until she fell beside her sister, barely breathing. To release her from this horror, if only for a short while, Jane’s third eye cracked open. Her skin wrinkled and parted like hot milk at the top of a boiling pot. The eye blinked, and showed her a glimpse of the past, where metal machines on wheels zoomed down smooth rock roads, and humans were tall and stocky from eating animal flesh. A world where fathers loved their daughters, and mothers sang lullabies. A dead world.

  At last, there were only two children left. The woods were dark, and so scavenged that all they ate was dirt and ants that they lured with their monthly blood. Weeks passed, and they travelled in circles while the old man raved. The eighth child said to the ninth, Let’s run away while the old man sleeps. But spirits had come to Jane, and told her that she would not find a better life beyond her father’s thumb, and that the world was a cruel place. So the courageous eighth ran away in the night, and Jane stayed. She and her father trudged through snow like wretches. The dirt by then was frozen, and there was nothing left to eat but their own boots. Barefoot and in snowy weather three days later, they passed a band of robbers, who largely ignored them, because their clothes were tatters. But then Jane noticed, just like her dream had told her, that the tallest robber wore the eighth daughter’s flaming red scalp over his flea-bald head. He and the others looked well fed, though the forest was cursed, and no animals on four feet roamed.

  For the first time in all her twelve years, Jane screamed out loud.

  The band looked at the wraiths more closely. The father had withered inside his flesh from years of misery, but Jane had grown strong and beautiful. Wear
ing the eighth daughter’s flaming red hair, the lead robber wiped Jane’s face with snow until it was clean, then offered to buy her for three gold pieces.

  But if you take her, I’ll have nothing, and everything I’ve ever lived for will amount to ashes, the father said. I cannot part with her. She is my suffering to bear. And I must admit, now that there is only one left, I am lonely for the rest, and her value has accrued.

  Take six gold pieces, the robber with false red hair said, and you will both live for at least another year. Or take nothing, and die tonight of hunger.

  The father took the deal.

  The cabin in the woods where the robber and his brother lived was small, with an apple cellar in its basement, a wood stove that kept them warm, and eighty-one scalps hanging from the front door, to warn away strangers. When he took Jane home, he fed her meat, even though this forest was cursed, and live animals had not run its woods in centuries. She thought that night that she would gag or die from shame, but she did not. Instead, her third eye opened, and took her to the old place, where houses leaned row on row, and upon each lawn were flowers. This is beauty, she thought. It lives inside us, trapped.

  Two and then five years passed. The robber loved her in his way, and Jane loved him in return, because she was lonely and young and did not know the difference between a whip and a kiss. At night when he and his brother were away and the wind howled, she listened to the spirits of the woods, who had died there, and lingered. Their stories were worse, for at least she had survived, and no one had loved her so deeply that she missed them.

  As she grew older, Jane’s beauty became so great that the robber sewed eyeholes inside a burlap bag, which she wore over her head to market, so that no one would steal her. He also branded his name into her thigh and coached her to walk with a limp, so that men in town thought she was a worthless cripple. After each hunting expedition, he and his brother returned with fresh meat despite all the rest of the countryside, that was starving, and nailed another scalp to the door. Life is ugly, Jane thought, but it’s better than nothing.

  When she reached sixteen years old, Jane had still not borne a child to the robber. He came home one night and sat down heavily. I love you, he told her, but if you don’t quicken with child within the year, I’ll have to kill you and marry another. I will peel off your flesh and hang it from a spruce, so that my wish is fulfilled, for I cannot go on each day, knowing I might die without an heir, or a taste of the eternal.

  Weeks passed. Jane plied the robber with drink every night, and fulfilled her wifely duty even when disgusted by his scent. Months passed, and still her blood ran. She sopped this with dry leaves stuck high inside her cavity, but always they leaked, and he discovered her. She said prayers; she begged the impassive spirits, but her ancestors had burned up with the old house, and the murdered ghosts that haunted these woods were not kind. Eleven months passed. At a loss, she stole into town looking for her father. An imp disciple of Loki led her to a brothel, where whores without teeth or hair lounged on stained piles of hay, and a drunk old man swept the stable.

  Father, she said to him, taking off her burlap cloak, and revealing her face. Help me. I’m to be killed tomorrow, for I do not have an heir inside me.

  The old man turned to her. His eyes had been gouged. Her third eye informed her that he’d done it to himself the day he sold her. Child, he said. We all suffer. When I was young I was foolish, and murdered my family. The one wish I made was eaten by the same robber who stole my heart. You must tie yourself with stones and dive into the river. Or stay here, and spread your legs.

  The girl left disheartened because her father had not recognized her and there was no one in the world who loved her. I will go home, she thought, and join my red-headed eighth sister on the wall. On her way, her third eye opened and she got lost. The woods folded and unbent. She came upon a log cabin with a fire burning from its chimney. Flowers adorned boxes under its windows. She knocked on the door. A fat old woman with warts and missing teeth answered. Behind her, the house was full of jars and tinctures and children’s cauls. And on the kitchen table, Jane smelled a fresh, hot pan of something soft as cotton that made her mouth water.

  She’d heard of witches, and even been told that she was one. They ate children and bathed in blood to stay young. But the smell was so good here, and she had no place else to go. I’m lost, she said. I’m to be killed tonight because I have no child.

  The old woman nodded and took her in. Strange animals scurried on four legs. Jane only knew they were cats because of her visions of the old world. They purred along the sides of her legs as she ogled at the cotton blobs fresh from the oven. The old woman took one and handed it to her. Eat this, she said. It will blossom inside you.

  Jane picked up the biscuit. She’d never eaten fresh bread before, and already her stomach rumbled like a spiked, spinning mace was inside it. Is it poison? Jane asked.

  The woman cackled. I should hope not! she said. You summoned me, remember? Then she looked closely at Jane, and tsk-tsked: Poor child, you don’t even know what you are.

  Jane couldn’t restrain herself. She bit into the biscuit. Sweet, red juice ran down her chin.

  But, remember, the witch said. It will give you what you truly wish for, so be careful. This is the only pregnancy you will ever have.

  Jane gobbled the rest, for she knew what she wanted: twin boys to raise, who would set her free from her robber husband, and keep her fed and happy. Blood ran down her chin and stained her throat. When she finished eating, the woman was gone. So was the cottage. All that remained was a single black cat.

  When she got home, she hid the cat in the apple cellar, then told her robber husband to stay his knife for she was pregnant. The robber was overjoyed because he’d grown to love the kindness inside the woman, and had not wanted to skin her.

  Nine months later, Jane bore two daughters. One was stunningly beautiful. The other was so ugly that the midwife spat. Her feet were webbed; her hips wide. Her double joints and long arms pressed her centre of gravity against her knees and elbows, as if fit only for walking on all fours. The robber took aside the beautiful daughter and kissed it. Then he tucked the ugly daughter under his arm, to slaughter it.

  Jane, still dizzy, pushed the midwife aside and stopped her husband. It’s my duty, she explained. I must be the one. So, still bleeding, with neither placenta yet expelled, she carried the newborn to the apple cellar, nursed it, and stuffed cotton too big to swallow in its mouth, so the rest did not hear its cries. Then she slaughtered the cat in its place, and brought back its heart to her husband, who ate it raw, for strength and good luck. We’ll have more children, he reassured her. Sons.

  But the sons did not come. The beautiful child was enough for the robber, for even monsters can be moved. The family of three lived happily for some time, in the woods, until another blight took hold of the town. Hunger travelled like a wave, so that each could hear the other’s stomach, growling. They gagged and wept and beat their breasts. The robber killed his brother and they ate him. Jane visited the cellar often, in secret, and when there was no food left, began to feed the abomination her own blood. Then she opened her third eye, and carried them both away to the old place, where life mattered. They saw libraries and universities and crowds of dancers wearing soft shoes who pranced in tiny circles. That ugly child grew up without the knowledge of suffering. Jane had only ever showed it love. When it spied on the family, it pitied them.

  With the famine, the robber of human life lost his muscle and could no longer hunt. His accomplices left him. The family became destitute. I must sell our daughter to the whorehouse, he told his wife. Then we will live another winter, and you will bear me a son who will help me earn her back. Jane fought and cried and prayed, and chanted meaningless words, hoping to cast spells, but their situation did not improve. The night before the child was to leave, a murder of goblins tore south through the woods, and knocked down their door. Hungry and too weak to stand, the family saw that
they would be eaten.

  The cellar door opened just then. With a war-cry so loud and terrifying that their nerves retracted inside their bodies, leaving their arms and legs numb, the abomination lifted her father’s scythe and sliced through the necks of all eighteen men-monsters, then hung them upside down by their feet to drain, so the family could cure and eat them. She’d grown wide-backed over the years, and walked on all fours. She was stronger than any man. Her face was the same as the robber’s.

  The robber did not recognize his daughter, for it had been twelve years, and women did not matter anyway. We owe you a great debt, he told her. Name anything it is within my power to give you, and it is yours.

  I want my sister’s freedom, the abomination said. For you will be well fed now, and have no need for her prostitution.

  He understood then that he’d been tricked and he raged, slamming his scythe against the walls of his house and opening them to the wind. But he was superstitious: the gods curse those who break oaths. At last, he agreed.

  You are free, the abomination told her sister. In that moment, the beautiful sister’s back opened up into enormous white wings. She flapped, bursting through the top of the house, and was gone. While the robber screamed obscenities, Jane smiled. A tiny fire ignited inside her for the first time in her life.

  As punishment for stealing his most valuable possession, the robber kept the abomination chained to his cellar wall. He beat her daily, until her skin slid from her bones. A week passed, and the moaning became intolerable. The wife missed her children. She missed her sisters. She missed the mother whom she’d never met. The spirits reminded her of the priest her lazy sister had married: smug and full of rage. They reminded her of her sixth sister, who had abandoned her. They reminded her that life could be worse: she could be dead. Don’t fight, they told her. The alternative is almost always worse than what you already have. Tearing away hooves from goblin legs to stave the rumbling in her belly, she curled herself small on the floor, and listened to the smack!-smack! of the whip. The sound hurt her breasts especially, because the child had suckled there for two years.