The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories

by Michael McDowell

  THE HEAD AND THE HAND by Christopher Priest

  One of the most acclaimed science fiction authors of our time, Christopher Priest was born in Cheshire, England in 1943 and first gained notice with his stories in magazines such as Impulse and New Worlds in the late 1960s. He has gone on to receive widespread praise for his novels, including the modern classics Inverted World (1974), The Affirmation (1981) and The Glamour (1984). Priest is probably best known for The Prestige (1995), the only novel to win the mainstream James Tait Black Memorial Prize for best novel of the year and the World Fantasy Award; it was later adapted for a major Hollywood film. The Separation (2002), which tells the intertwining stories of two brothers in World War II across alternate timelines, won both the Arthur C. Clarke and BSFA Awards for best novel. ‘The Head and the Hand’, which the Times Literary Supplement praised as ‘a fabulously disgusting story’ worthy of Roald Dahl, was first published in New Worlds Quarterly in 1972 and first collected in Real-Time World (1974). Four of Priest’s best novels are available from Valancourt in paperback, and The Prestige is available as an electronic book.

  On that morning at Racine House we were taking exercise in the grounds. There had been a frost overnight, and the grass lay white and brittle. The sky was unclouded, and the sun threw long blue shadows. Our breath cast clouds of vapour behind us. There was no sound, no wind, no movement. The park was ours, and we were alone.

  Our walks in the mornings had a clearly defined route, and as we came to the eastern end of the path at the bottom of the long sloping lawn I prepared for the turn, pressing down hard on the controlling handles at the back of the carriage. I am a large man, and well-­muscled, but the combined weight of the invalid carriage and the master was almost beyond the limit of my strength.

  That day the master was in a difficult mood. Though before we set out he had clearly stated that I was to wheel him as far as the disused summer lodge, as I tried to lift him round he waved his head from side to side.

  ‘No, Lasken!’ he said irritably. ‘To the lake today. I want to see the swans.’

  I said to him: ‘Of course, sir.’

  I swung the carriage back into the direction in which we had been travelling, and continued with our walk. I waited for him to say something to me, for it was unusual that he would give me untempered instructions without qualifying them a few moments later with some more intimate remark. Our relationship was a formal one, but memories of what had once existed between us still affected our behaviour and attitudes. Though we were of a similar age and social background, Todd’s career had affected us considerably. Never again could there be any kind of equality between us.

  I waited, and in the end he turned his head and said: ‘The park is beautiful today, Edward. This afternoon we must ride through it with Elizabeth, before the weather gets warmer. The trees are so stark, so black.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ I said, glancing at the woods to our right. When he bought the house, the first action he had taken was to have all the evergreen trees felled, and the remainder sprayed so that their greenery would be inhibited. With the passage of years they had regained their growth, and now the master would spend the summer months inside the house, the windows shuttered and the curtains drawn. Only with the coming of autumn would he return to the open air, obsessively watching the orange and brown leaves dropping to the ground and swirling across the lawns.

  The lake appeared before us as we rounded the edge of the wood. The grounds dropped down to it in a shallow and undulating incline from the house, which was above us and to our left.

  A hundred yards from the water’s edge I turned my head and looked towards the house, and saw the tall figure of Elizabeth moving down towards us, her long maroon dress sweeping across the grass.

  Knowing he would not see her, I said nothing to Todd.

  We stopped at the edge of the lake. In the night a crust of ice had formed on its surface.

  ‘The swans, Edward. Where are they?’

  He moved his head to the right, and placed his lips on one of the switches there. At once, the batteries built into the base of the carriage turned the motors of the servos, and the backrest slid upwards, bringing him into a position that was almost upright.

  He moved his head from side to side, a frown creasing his eyebrow-­less face.

  ‘Go and find their nests, Lasken. I must see them today.’

  ‘It’s the ice, sir,’ I said. ‘It has probably driven them from the water.’

  I heard the rustle of silk on frosted grass, and turned. Elizabeth stood a few yards behind us, holding an envelope in her hands.

  She held it up, and looked at me with her eyebrows raised. I nodded silently: that is the one. She smiled at me quickly. The master would not yet know that she was there. The outer membrane of his ears had been removed, rendering his hearing unfocused and undirectional.

  She swept past me in the peremptory manner she knew he approved of, and stood before him. He appeared unsurprised to see her.

  ‘There’s a letter, Todd,’ she said.

  ‘Later,’ he said without looking at it. ‘Lasken can deal with it. I have no time now.’

  ‘It’s from Gaston I think. It looks like his stationery.’

  ‘Read it to me.’

  He swung his head backwards sharply. It was his instruction to me: move out of earshot. Obediently I stepped away to a place where I knew he could not see me or hear me.

  Elizabeth bent down and kissed him on his lips.

  ‘Todd, whatever it is, please don’t do it.’

  ‘Read it to me,’ he said again.

  She slitted the envelope with her thumb and pulled out a sheet of thin white paper, folded in three. I knew what the letter contained; Gaston had read it to me over the telephone the day before. He and I had arranged the details, and we knew that no higher price could be obtained, even for Todd. There had been difficulties with the television concessions, and for a while it had looked as if the French government was going to intervene.

  Gaston’s letter was a short one. It said that Todd’s popularity had never been higher, and that the Théâtre Alhambra and its consortium had offered eight million francs for another appearance. I listened to Elizabeth’s voice as she read, marvelling at the emotionless monotone of her articulation. She had warned me earlier that she did not think she was going to be able to read the letter to him.

  When she’d finished, Todd asked her to read it again. She did this, then placed the open letter in front of him, brushed her lips against his face and walked away from him. As she passed me she laid a hand on my arm for a moment, then continued on up towards the house. I watched her for a few seconds, seeing her slim beauty accentuated by the sunlight that fell sideways across her face, and strands of her hair blown behind by the wind.

  The master waved his head from side to side.

  ‘Lasken! Lasken!’

  I went back to him.

  ‘Do you see this?’

  I picked it up and glanced at it.

  ‘I shall write to him of course,’ I said. ‘It is out of the question­.’

  ‘No, no, I must consider. We must always consider. I have so much at stake.’

  I kept my expression steady.

  ‘But it is impossible. You can give no more performances!’

  ‘There is a way, Edward,’ he said, in as gentle a voice as I had ever heard him use. ‘I must find that way.’

  I caught sight of a water-­fowl a few yards from us, in the reeds at the edge of the lake. It waddled out on to the ice, confused by the frozen surface. I took one of the long poles from the side of the carriage and broke a section of the ice. The bird slithered across the ice and flew away, terrified by the noise.

  I walked back to Todd.

  ‘There. If there is some open water, the swans will return.’

  The expression on his face was agitated.

  ‘The Théâtre Alhambra,’ he said. ‘What shall we do?’

  ‘I will speak to your solicitor.
It is an outrage that the theatre should approach you. They know that you cannot go back.’

  ‘But eight million francs.’

  ‘The money does not matter. You said that yourself once.’

  ‘No, it is not the money. Nor the public. It is everything.’

  We waited by the lake for the swans, as the sun rose higher in the sky. I was exhilarated by the pale colours of the park, by the quiet and the calm. It was an aesthetic, sterile reaction, for the house and its grounds had oppressed me from the start. Only the transient beauty of the morning – a frozen, fragile countenance – stirred something in me.

  The master had lapsed into silence, and had returned the backrest to the horizontal position he found most relaxing. Though his eyes were closed I knew he would not be asleep.

  I walked away from him, out of his earshot, and strolled around the perimeter of the lake, always keeping a watch for movement on the carriage. I wondered if he would be able to resist the offer from the Théâtre Alhambra, fearing that if he did there would he no greater attraction.

  The time was right . . . he had not been seen in public for nearly four and a half years. The mood of the public was right . . . for the media had recently returned their interest to him, criticising his many imitators and demanding his return. None of this was lost on the master. There was only one Todd Alborne, and only he could have gone so far. No one could compete with him. Everything was right, and only the participation of the master was needed to complete it.

  The electric klaxon I had fitted to the carriage sounded. Looking back at him across the ice I saw that he had moved his face to the switch. I turned back, and went to him.

  ‘I want to see Elizabeth,’ he said.

  ‘You know what she will say.’

  ‘Yes. But I must speak to her.’

  I turned the carriage round, and began the long and difficult return up the slope to the house.

  As we left the side of the lake I saw white birds flying low in the distance, headed away from the house. I hoped that Todd had not seen them.

  He looked from side to side as we moved past the wood. I saw on the branches the new buds that would burst in the next few weeks; I think he saw only the bare black twigs, the stark geometry of the naked trees.

  In the house I took him to his study, and lifted his body from the carriage he used for outside expeditions to the motorised one in which he moved about the house. He spent the rest of the day with Elizabeth, and I saw her only when she came down to collect for him the meals I prepared. In those moments we had time only to exchange glances, to intertwine fingers, to kiss lightly. She would say nothing of what he was thinking.

  He retired early and Elizabeth with him, going to the room next to his, sleeping alone as she had done for five years.

  When she was sure he was asleep, she left her bed and came to mine. We made love at once. Afterwards we lay together in the dark, our hands clasped possessively; only then would she tell me what she thought his decision would be.

  ‘He’s going to do it,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen him as excited as this for years.’

  I have known Todd Alborne since we were both eighteen. Our families had known one another, and chance brought us together one year during a European holiday. Though we did not become close friends immediately, I found his company fascinating and on our return to England we stayed in touch with each other.

  The fascination he held over me was not one I admired, but neither could I resist it: he possessed a fanatical and passionate dedication to what he was doing, and once started he would be deterred by nothing. He conducted several disastrous love-­affairs, and twice lost most of his money in unsuccessful business ventures. But he had a general aimlessness that disturbed me; I felt that once pressed into a direction he could control, he would be able to exploit his unusual talents.

  It was his sudden and unexpected fame that separated us. No one had anticipated it, least of all Todd. Yet when he recognised its potential, he embraced it readily.

  I was not with him when it began, though I saw him soon after. He told me what happened, and though it differs from the popular anecdote I believe it.

  He was drinking with some friends when an accident with a knife occurred. One of his companions had been cut badly, and had fainted. During the commotion that followed, a stranger made a wager with Todd that he would not voluntarily inflict a wound on his own body.

  Todd slashed the skin of his forearm, and collected his money. The stranger offered to double the stake if Todd would amputate a finger.

  Placing his left hand on the table in front of him, Todd removed his index finger. A few minutes later, with no further encouragement from the stranger – who by this time had left – ­Todd cut off another finger. The following day a television company had picked up the story, and Todd was invited to the studio to relate what had happened. During the live transmission, and against the wishes of the interviewer, Todd repeated the operation.

  It was the reaction to this first broadcast – a wave of prurient shock from the public, and an hysterical condemnation in the media – that revealed to Todd the potential in such a display of self-­mutilation.

  Finding a promoter, he commenced a tour of Europe, performing his act to paying audiences only.

  It was at this point – seeing his arrangements for publicity, and learning of the sums of money he was confident of earning – that I made the effort of dissociating myself from him. Purposely, I isolated myself from news of his exploits and would take no interest in the various public stunts he performed. It was the element of ritual in what he did that sickened me, and his native flair for showmanship only made him the more offensive to me.

  It was a year after this alienation that we met again. It was he who sought me out, and though I resisted him at first I was unable to maintain the distance I desired.

  I learned that in the intervening period he had married.

  At first I was repelled by Elizabeth, for I thought that she loved Todd for his obsession, in the way the blood-­hungry public loved him. But as I grew to know her better I realised that she saw herself in some messianic role. It was then that I understood her to be as vulnerable as Todd – though in an entirely different way – and I found myself agreeing to work for Todd and to do for him whatever he requested. At first I refused to assist him with the mutilations, but later did as he asked. My change of mind in this instance was initiated by Elizabeth.

  The condition of his body when I started to work for him was so bad that he was almost entirely crippled. Though at first he had had several organs grafted back on to his body after mutilation, such operations could be carried out only a limited number of times, and while healing, prevented further performances.

  His left arm below the elbow had been removed; his left leg was almost intact beyond the two removed toes. His right leg was intact. One of his ears had been removed, and he had been scalped. All fingers but the thumb and index on his right hand had been removed.

  As a result of these injuries he was incapable of administering the amputations himself, and in addition to the various assistants he employed for his act he required me to operate the mutilating apparatus during the actual performances.

  He attested a disclaimer form for the injuries to which I was to be an accessory, and his career continued.

  And it went on, between spells for recovery, for another two years. In spite of the apparent contempt he had for his body, Todd bought the most expensive medical supervision he could find, and the recovery from each amputation was strictly observed before another performance.

  But the human body is finite, and his eventual retirement was inevitable.

  At his final performance, his genital organs were removed amid the greatest storm of publicity and outrage he had known. Afterwards, he made no further public appearance, and spent a long spell of convalescence in a private nursing-­home. Elizabeth and I stayed with him, and when he bought Racine House fifty miles from Paris, we went there w
ith him.

  And from that day we had played out the masque; each pretending to the others that his career had reached its climax, each knowing that inside the limbless, earless, hairless, castrated man there was a flame burning still for its final extinguishment.

  And outside the gates of Racine House, Todd’s private world waited for him. And he knew they waited, and Elizabeth and I knew they waited.

  Meanwhile our life went on, and he was the master.

  There was an interval of three weeks between my confirming to Gaston that Todd was to make another appearance and the actual night itself. There was much to be done.

  While we left the publicity arrangements to Gaston, Todd and I began the job of designing and building the equipment for the show. This was a process that in the past had been one of extreme distaste to me. It wrought an unpleasant tension between Elizabeth and myself, for she would not allow me to tell her about the equipment.

  This time, though, there was no such strain between us. Halfway through the work she asked me about the apparatus I was building, and that night, after Todd had fallen asleep, I took her down to the workshop. For ten minutes she walked from one instrument to another, testing the smoothness of the mechanism and the sharpness of the blades.

  Finally, she looked at me without expression, then nodded.

  I contacted Todd’s former assistants, and confirmed with them that they would be present at the performance. Once or twice I telephoned Gaston, and learned of the wave of speculation that was anticipating Todd’s return.

  As for the master himself, he was taken with a burst of energy and excitement that stretched to its limits the prosthetic machinery which surrounded him. He seemed unable to sleep, and several nights would call for Elizabeth. For this period she did not come to my room, though I often visited her for an hour or two. One night Todd called her while I was there, and I lay in bed listening to him talk to her, his voice unnaturally high-­pitched, though never uncontrolled or over-­excited.