That evening, the snow unmelted, she came down from her nest, the dead woman’s shoes on her feet. The corpse was still there beneath its covering of snow. The dog wagged its tail, panting. She cut off cleanly the cheeks and the flesh of the arms; she opened the abdomen and gave the liver to the dog; then swiftly re-covered the woman with snow. Having eaten, she went back up into the park hoping to find, in place of the dirty streets and harsh lights of the city, a true desert like that in her dream. She was disappointed, of course. She descended once more and went off with the dog along the railway line she now explored less often. Several times she found herself thinking of the body, and those parts of it that were still intact: the lungs, and above all the legs; soft legs and thighs. These she cleaned the two following evenings before burying what was left of the woman as far as possible from her nest.
Fresh dreams, or perhaps not dreams. First the dog, which ate three fingers of her left hand, something that in the end might actually happen. Then something seated itself over her eyes with such force that they were driven into her brain. The cells of her retina, jumbled in disorder, bored into the grey matter, silent witnesses to the destruction of her spirit. Blindness was coming down on her. The migrating eyes re-emerged from her mouth. She died twice or three times. No, she did not die, she woke up in a limp chill. The other woman: was she really beneath the ground? When hunting with the dog she could not find the place where they had hidden the carcass.
Some days, scratching her head among the feathers and the imperfectly tanned hides, she saw herself entering into the dark perspectives of the dog. Or he into hers. Of what did he think, or dream? They went off to kill rabbits. The transmutation failed to occur. Her skin remained hairless; the ways open before her remained many. She thought of disappearing into the ground or into the lake, easy to do in this season of great hunger. Or should she depart from the city? But by what means? Or leave the nest? Or carry it off into a genuine forest? The stones of the wall were seeping and green. For the present she’d stay where she was.
The memory returned of the meat, of the woman whose bones she had scraped, of the dead cells of the woman in her own body, of their progress: stomach, mucous membranes, dispersion through her blood, black faeces already forming in her intestines, in addition to what they had already deposited on the trackside, she and the dog. In these two bodies, complicit in infamy, demons were feeding blazing furnaces with giant shovels. It was a fire of which she had previously had no inkling. She slept impatiently, the dog lying up against her stomach.
Song of the Huntress:
Man or beast dead and best of all alive I am your fate I am your fate I snatch you from the earth and give you back to it your heart full or empty I eat and your soul
I drink it
I annihilate it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘Child of Evil Stars’ (‘L’Infortunée’): first French publication in Lamont (Le Visage vert, 2009). First English publication in Postscript no 24-25, April 2011 (PS Publishing).
‘Fox into Lady’ (‘Fox into Lady’): first French publications in Le Zaporogue no 6 (June 2009) and The Quarterly no1 (Zanzibar, mars 2010).
‘The Old Towpath’: first publication in Black Herald Magazine no 1 (January 2011).
‘The Opening’ (‘La Brèche’): first French publication in Le Zaporogue no 8 (June 2010).
‘Meannanaich’ (‘Meannanaich’): first French publication in Le Visage vert no 9 (October 2000). First English publication in Strange Tales (Tartarus Press, 2003).
‘Passing Forms’ (‘Le Cortège’): first French publication in Lamont (Le Visage vert, 2009).
‘Under the Lighthouse’ (‘Au pied du phare’): first French publication in Le Zaporogue no 10 (June 2011).
‘Pan's Children’ (‘Sur la Thay’): first French publication in Lamont (Le Visage vert, 2009).
‘The Invention of Brunel’ (‘L’invention de Brunel’): first French publication in Lamont (Le Visage vert, 2009).
‘Shioge’ (‘La Fin de la nuit’): first French publication in Le Visage vert no 12 (October 2002).
‘What the Eye Remembers’ (‘Mémoire de l’œil’): first English publication in Strange Tales, volume II (Tartarus Press, 2007); first French publication in Le Visage vert no 15 (June 2008).
‘Hilda’ (‘Hilda’): first French publication in Lamont (Le Visage vert, 2009).
‘Lamont’ (‘Lamont’): first French publication in Lamont (Le Visage vert, 2009).
‘Feral’ (‘Vivre sauvage dans les villes’): no previous publication.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many of these stories would not have written but for the wry and inalterable support of my friends Xavier Legrand-Ferronnière, Anne Guesdon, Blandine Longre, Paul Stubbs, Florence Prévost and Stepan Ueding. To Sébastien Doubinsky I owe the thrill of being considered a ‘genuine Gothic lady’. And to Willie Charlton a nimble translation into English of all these tales and pieces, except for ‘The Old Towpath’, which was written directly into some sort of Saxonic language. Darkscapes would not, of course, exist without Rosalie Parker and Ray Russell, gatekeepers of Tartarus and much, much more.
Contents
CONTENTS
Darkscapes Page 17