The Taxidermist's Lover

by Polly Hall

  When we reached a small dip in the path that widened as if the bank had been carved away, we sidestepped in unison to let the walkers pass by in a rustle of sensible clothing. You stood next to me and we nodded our greetings to them as they stomped and puffed away down the track. It was rare to see people on this route deep in the woods, and they were the first sign of human life we had seen all that day. A woman with Nordic walking poles and a hat set at a jaunty angle thanked us in a loud, plummy voice, eyeing your moustache with a giggle.

  Then, we were alone in the woods.

  I felt strangely aroused by the tranquility as I pressed my back to your chest and you slipped your hands into the pockets of my thin cotton dress. We were standing alone and the pathway lay silent, stretched like a gash among the hard tree trunks and mad chaos of undergrowth. You nuzzled your face into my hair and started sucking my earlobe, kissing my neck in hungry mouthfuls. The world thickened with the thud of blood pulsing through my veins. I wanted you closer. I wanted you to strip me like you stripped the hide of an animal from its limp frame. You pulled me around to face you and kissed me so hard I had to break free to gasp some air, but I felt heat spread up from my groin, and that thrilling pulse between my legs. You grabbed me by the hand and led me through the bracken at the side of the path, hacking with your free arm like a machete through the jungle. You were leading me to the dark interior of the wood.

  Once through the mesh of undergrowth we found a clearing untouched by ramblers. The stillness purred all around us. It became our private domain. You pressed your mouth against mine, both hot hands clasping my cheeks. You tasted of salt and sweat and meat.

  Then you were upon me like a wild boar, all teeth and spit. And your weight pushed me up against a fallen trunk, hoisting my dress up over my back. I steadied myself against the rough bark. You grunted a low, hard rhythm, the slap of your hips on my backside. I imagined steam coming off us, flames licking at our loins. We were rocking in madness. I thought I might explode.

  My eyes were closed but I sensed the trees, our only witness, unmoved by our primal orgy. “We’ve seen it all before,” they seemed to say, with leaves turned upwards to the light. “We’ve seen it all before.”

  It must’ve been over in minutes, but I felt like time had expanded, as if we had tumbled into a place long ago reserved for non-reason. I collapsed onto the moist red earth and layer of fallen pine needles, listening to your breath slow down to become a pattern of high and low, inhale, exhale. The world reappeared around us more vibrantly than before, pierced by our lust. A blackbird sang a noisy chatter and in the distance I heard the roar of a chainsaw. We were never far from life.

  We said nothing to each other as you buckled up your trousers and I brushed my dress with my hands, retrieved my ripped panties and shoved them in my pocket. You held my jacket for me to enrobe like we were leaving a restaurant. I smoothed your hair back and you did the same with mine. Then we made our way back from where we had come, through the bracken, this time carefully holding the brambles between cautious fingers so they would not catch on our clothes. We returned to the path in silence. That was when we saw the perfect tree for our home this Christmas.

  You carved the letters “S” and “P” onto its expanding trunk, and we sealed its fate.

  There were a few fine days of sunshine in September. My body was winding down toward hibernation as the leaves mutated into autumnal oranges, ochres and yellows. One such fine day I was studying Wensley’s taxidermy book outside on the lawn that sloped toward the trees.

  I was about to turn the page when a tiny bug landed on the frilly edge of paper separated like a delicate fan. Instead of flicking it with my finger, I observed its movements. It was a small fly but none like I’d observed so closely before—striped with yellow and black but not furry like a bee. It was more like a manufactured piece of machinery, neat, squared off and shiny. Its eyes were black dots and a small proboscis made its head look eccentric, as if it were smoking a tiny cheroot. The legs were like micro-fine dark hairs and I didn’t want to trap them between the pages of the book, so I turned it toward the light. The bug moved in unison as if it were on a revolving stage, its entire body getting its bearings.

  For a moment I worried it would fly at my face and become waterlogged by the liquid coating of my eyes, or enter my mouth or nostrils or ears to be ingested accidentally or retrieved by a clumsy finger that would most probably crush it. But it didn’t fly toward me. When it didn’t move, I spoke to it. “You’re beautiful,” I said, imagining my whispering voice a booming tannoy to its compact features. Upon hearing my affirmation, it lifted its wings and flew off toward the trees.

  A small piece of paper slipped from the pages of the book. I don’t know how I’d missed it before then. Written in old fashioned handwriting, quite similar to the scrawling type in Wensley’s book, was one sentence:

  Never underestimate the power of love over death.

  The book was over a hundred years old, and yet it spoke directly to me. I sensed the hold love had over the ages, and I hoped and prayed our love would never die.

  Upstairs in our bedroom I went to retrieve the petals of the dying geraniums on the windowsill that had been placed there over the summer, but something moved next to my fingers. A buzzing sound met my ears, intermittent like a phone noisily set to vibrate. As I came closer, I could see it was a dying wasp on its back, the tail of its sting set into a rhythmic throb of anguish. It swam in mock upside-down flight, and I sensed its fatigue, the end of its days. Another two lay dead next to it, and as I surveyed this wasp Valhalla, another materialized and flew lazily toward the window, tapping fruitlessly against the glass. It seemed, that day, a visitation of insects sharpened my attention to the smaller details in our life.

  Dying wasps were everywhere attempting to crawl slowly up the wall. As one landed, another appeared in a slow, steady flight toward the window, dropping down in exhaustion. Two, three, four were dotted across the duvet on our bed, some crawling, others expired. I shuddered and stepped back out of the room to fetch you.

  “You need to destroy the nest,” the wasp man said, “or they’ll keep coming back year on year. If the queen remains, you’ll always have a problem.”

  He had dispensed his white killing powder and now all the wasps were dead. They had apparently set up home in the loft space above our bedroom. This was the buzzing I could hear at night, I thought. It wasn’t in my head after all. It offered a brief respite from my fears, a rational explanation.

  Yet a few nights after, when I had cleared away all the dehydrated dead insects and aired the room of its chemical smell, the buzzing returned. At first, I was angry that the wasp man had not fulfilled his promise, and the poison powder had not worked. But it was not the wasps creating the incessant buzzing. I knew it was from another source entirely. Another dimension. No matter how hard I tried to ignore the creatures you had made, they continued to remind me that they would keep returning. They wanted answers just as much as I.

  I flicked through Wensley’s book and scanned the chapter headings: “Awe of the Exotica,” “The Healing Power of Relics,” “Conversing with the Dead,” “The Transition of the Soul.” There were hand-etched drawings of the specimens he had researched.

  I returned to “Conversing with the Dead” and read:

  Accounts of conversing with the dead are rarely recorded due to the invalidity of their authenticity or the intense personal link that the conversee and converser has or had. Deceased humans are most likely to be the recipient of first contact, not the initiator of contact themselves, unless there is direct association. On the rare occasion when a living subject is contacted by the dead, there will also be a strong, physical link, for example, an object or item belonging to the deceased, or, in rare cases, the deceased’s bodily parts.

  I was sure I wasn’t the initiator of contact; those creatures were bothering me, not the other way. I thought of keepsakes such as hair or religious relics that were once regarded as
powerful totems of healing or significance. I read on:

  In the case of deceased animals, the principle remains. There is a physical body, which can be sensed with normal earthly faculties; the etheric body, which is the light transitional body that floats nearby after the physical’s demise; and the astral or soul body, which traverses to the afterlife. In the cases of “taxidermic suppression” one has encountered, it is the faint etheric body of the creature that does not have the sufficient energy to travel alongside the astral body to the afterlife, hence a series of stages need to be enacted to allow the specimen to be free of its “ghost soul” should it be causing problems with live entities.

  One would like to emphasize that traditional taxidermy does not seem to encounter as many occurrences of taxidermic anomalies as hybrid or mythical taxidermy, which one believes may be the result of soul, or astral, confusion that arises when species are mixed together shortly after physical death has occurred.

  There was a picture of a rabbit with antlers and the legs and wings of a bird, with the inscription—Wolpertinger, just like Felix’s front cover image of his book, Wolpertinger Dreams, which I hadn’t actually read in full but just flicked through, fingering the glossy pages to see if there were any shots of him. There weren’t, but the images were self-aggrandizing and fantastical, much like the man himself.

  Wensley had published his book in 1898, and it was quite unremarkable in appearance at first glance. It was a thin booklet. The print was small and I imagined readers squinting in the yellow haze of candle or gas lighting. That’s when I thought about the humming sounds, the wasps, and noises I had been hearing. There would not have been much electrical interference in Wensley’s day, yet he referenced the buzzing sounds quite frequently and recommended candlelight as the purest source of escalation. It stated:

  Escalation is a process whereby a natural source of ignition, such as fire or candlelight, can be used to help the etheric body transcend, or be released to the afterlife, and henceforth acquire unity with its astral body. The most successful escalation attempts have involved complete destruction of the physical matter in which the etheric body resides. The easiest and safest way to enact this process is to burn the specimen in a furnace or fire so only ash remains. The soul is then able to travel freely without being harnessed to the physical mount within which it has been tethered. One has witnessed cases where the owner of a taxidermied prize specimen, suffering from taxidermic suppression, has waved a lit candle before the subject in the hope that the etheric body will latch on and be removed. However, while this has the perceived effect of success, the light itself is not enough; it is necessary for the flame to touch the entire specimen in order to have an effect.

  My thoughts turned to Parker. I had reunited the speck of fur with his body, but this was not enough. His poodle soul would still be tethered, and the division he had experienced with the swans meant he was doubly confused. I was confused too. What did all this mean for the mountains of creatures you had made? All those hybrids of cats, dogs, hyenas, cows, rabbits, birds, rodents and reptiles—not to mention the exotic creatures you had sourced. They would be struggling and gaggling and squawking and scratching and hissing and tearing and biting to be free, and it was entirely my fault. All this had been my idea.

  I checked my mobile. Three missed calls from an unknown number. No messages.

  “You’ve lost your appetite,” you said as we ate dinner in front of the TV. I was cross-legged on the sofa watching you devour a plate of ribs off a lap tray, ripping the meat from the bones and sucking the juices. I looked at my plate, picked up a bone and nibbled the end but nothing seemed to satiate me. All the food I ate seemed to have a metallic edge that coated my tongue; my enjoyment of taste had been affected as well as my hearing.

  “I have a little surprise for you,” you said between enthusiastic mouthfuls. I knew you sensed something was not right. I normally finished my food before you, wolfing it down and staring hungrily as you finished yours. I could clear your plate too like a ravenous scavenger ready to pounce on any discarded scraps. But now I placed my dish of untouched ribs back on the side table and sat back onto the cushions.

  “What kind of surprise?” I tried to sound enthusiastic.

  “You’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

  “You can’t tell me I have a surprise then tell me I have to wait a whole day to find out what it is!”

  “Scarlett, you are unable to muster any ounce of patience in that beautiful body of yours.”

  “I know. So tell me what my surprise is.”

  “No, I will not be harangued into submission.” At first, I had a sinking feeling that you had created another hybrid like the Valentine’s Day swoodle. So I decided a bout of tickling might get you to reveal the secret surprise. I grabbed your belly and made my fingers wriggle up to your armpits and down. You tensed up trying to grab my hands but I was too quick. “Stop—Scaaaarlett—no ho ho ho.” You sounded like Santa.

  Then, as if jolted by a strike of lightning, you sat upright and almost flung me out the way with your bulk. I bounced back onto the cushions.

  “Oh my God!” your voice boomed in my ear. Your shift in mood startled me as you leaned forward to get a better look at the TV screen.

  “What? What is it?” I looked at you looking at the TV screen. I followed your gaze, but it was just a reporter outside a big stately home. “What’s the matter?”

  “Shhh, shush.” You grabbed for the remote control and turned up the volume.

  “. . . said to be one of the world’s most famous artists, specializing in mixed-up taxidermy, also known as rogue or hybrid taxidermy, is wanted in connection with several inquiries. It is thought that he is the subject of an investigation in the illegal import of rare or exotic species of animals in order to create his multi-million pound artwork . . .”

  The camera switched to a close-up shot of a wolpertinger next to Felix’s book.

  “. . . De Souza has led a high profile, often controversial, life and police say they are keen to establish his whereabouts . . .”

  They flashed an image of the hybrid crocodile hanging from the ceiling of the exhibition. I recalled the slow, cool tear sliding down its cheek. The news continued but your face had faded to ash. You looked at me, then back at the screen, then back at me.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked you, “That’s good news isn’t it? He won’t be number one in the taxidermy world anymore.” A flicker of excitement was soon replaced with foreboding. You sat rubbing your hands over your face as if digesting something rotten.

  I knew that look. I attracted that kind of energy. Call me a bright shining beacon of menace, a brilliant, dazzling lure that only knew one conclusion: trouble. I brought discord where there was harmony, doubt where there was true faith. I hardly knew Felix, but I knew his allure. You must believe me, my darling Peppercorn. He was nothing to me, yet he was the sort of man that held me captive like a wild cat in a cage.

  You remained speechless so I had to ask you, “You haven’t done anything—you know—illegal have you?”

  You puffed out your cheeks, exhaling slowly, your face resuming some color, but I could see the shadows of worry working underneath your features. I had grown more and more sensitive to your moods. I thought back over all the exhibits we had documented, all the licenses we had received and the paperwork we had filled out.

  “This could be your chance to knock him off the top spot,” I said and snuggled up to you, pressing my shoulder up and under your arm so you could rest it around my back. You said nothing, but your hand lay heavily on me like something playing dead. You had offered me a surprise but had got one yourself instead.

  The morning after, I was still waiting for my surprise but it seemed you had been sidetracked by the news that Felix was missing. You had lit the fire early, way before I surfaced from sleep, and I noticed you had burned a stack of papers. When I asked you about it, you told me it was nothing.

  I squeezed you and gla
nced behind at the rows of stuffed creatures all staring back at me with expectation. I scanned their body parts as if I could dissect them and reform them into what they used to be. A piercing pain shot through my head. I winced, but you took this as an affectionate squeeze and held me tighter with your big arms around my back, crushing the air from my chest.

  The image in Wensley’s book flashed across my mind—our etheric bodies were merging more tightly together like an unbreakable cord. I set out to buy plenty of candles and matches and start my experiment to release the stuffed ones’ trapped souls.

  This would be a new start. First, I needed to bring life back into our relationship. So, I spent the day preparing myself. After my bath, where I had defuzzed my entire body of unwanted hair, I rummaged around in my cosmetics bag. It had not been touched for months, and a light film of dust had settled on the contents. I found my tweezers and plucked out the hairs that had grown stray and ugly on my eyebrow line. When I finished, I scanned my face for any other unwanted fluff and plucked that in the same quick motion. I applied some foundation across my cheeks and down my neck. I now looked like a canvas ready for color. My skin tone looked more even, but I dabbed some lighter concealer beneath my eyes to blot out the dark shadows and down my pointed nose to make it seem smaller. Finding the only eyeshadow, a cracked green tablet, I used a little bud to paint my eyelids to the corners. My mascara was gloopy and thick, but I pumped it in and out then brushed the black liquid on to my lashes, opening my eyes like a surprised doll.