“Will it?”
“It will.”
…tap…tap…tap …
The summer day began to unwind into the ember-and-shadow palette of dusk. Celeste was lying with her head on her sister’s lap. The raspy shallowness of her breathing sounded grave to Desdemona’s ear. She stroked her hair and struggled to stay alert.
…tap …
“Celeste, do you remember when you called the stone statue ‘Queen’ and I asked you if Father had ever told you the story about the White Queen?”
She shook her head slightly against Desdemona’s thigh.
“Oh, it was one of my favourites when I was small like you. It’s called ‘The Lovers.’ Would you like to hear it?”
Desdemona looked down to see her sister nod once more.
“It was in another time; not the past, present or future, but a different time. There the disciples lived under the rule of the Black King. This Black King was benevolent but sad, sad because his nature confined him to the shadows. His loneliness soon became unbearable. So he went to the bank of a poisonous river, planning to drink a hearty swallow of the deadly water.
“But as the Black King was reaching a cupped hand into the river, his eyes were met with an impossible sight: reposing there, just beneath the surface of the poisonous river, was the most beautiful woman the King had ever seen. She was willowy and as pale as snow. She reached up and took his hand. He pulled the woman up from the river.
“She explained to the Black King that she had come to drown herself to alleviate her loneliness. The King confessed his reason for coming there, and the two fell deeply in love right there on the bank. Together they walked to the temple of the Hierophant so they could be married that very day.
“The Hierophant was delighted to perform the ceremony, but the moment he declared them the Black King and the White Queen, the Hierophant shocked everyone by uttering a magic spell that caused the White Queen to instantly vanish.
“The Black King was infuriated and ordered the Hierophant arrested. The guards dragged him into the royal dungeon and the Black King demanded a thorough search of the lands. But before the parties could even begin their hunt for the White Queen, winter fell heavy. Every corner of the kingdom was plagued with snow and wailing winds. The blizzard raged for so long that the kingdom began to run low on rations. Distraught and feeling helpless, the Black King ordered that the Hierophant be tortured until he confessed what he’d done with the White Queen.
“The Hierophant did not resist the torture chamber, but his confession was not believed by anyone. He claimed that he had cast the White Queen to a deep grave on the Moon. This sudden, unnatural winter was the result of the White Queen trying to dig her way out of her grave, which sent Moon dust down onto the Earth. The howling winds were her cries of distress. The Hierophant assured the Black King that this separation was necessary, that the Black King and the White Queen had to be apart so that they could eventually know the bliss of reunion.
“The Black King did not believe the Hierophant and decreed that he should be executed at dawn. The next morning, just as the royal executioner was about to deliver the fatal stroke, the Black King announced that he’d had a change of heart. He said he’d had a dream where the White Queen and he found one another again and that peace and happiness were restored in the land. So he decided to spare the life of the Hierophant and allow him to go free.
“Immediately upon showing mercy, the blizzard ceased. The sun broke through the dark clouds and began to shine across the kingdom, melting the snows. And then, the White Queen returned. She came rushing through the gates of the kingdom and she and the Black King knew the bliss of reunion.
“That is how time was born. Each year the Black King and the White Queen enjoy the heated summer of passion, the sorrowful autumn that precedes the White Queen’s confinement in the Moon. And then, the joyful rebirth of spring.”
Celeste was sleeping soundly. Desdemona felt herself wanting to doze as well. A great drift of sleep was piling up at the corners of her mind, filling her thoughts with visions of a lunar grave. It was on these thoughts that Desdemona willed her focus. Doing so helped her ignore the incessant tapping on the windows.
*
It was silent when Desdemona woke; silent and bright, too bright in fact. The light spilled unrestrained into the master bedroom. Desdemona snuffled, grimaced against the sunbeams, and indulged in a deep stretch. She must have fallen asleep while cradling Celeste.
Only after she called for her sister did the panic begin to sink its claws into Desdemona’s innards.
Celeste was gone.
The shutters on one of the large windows had been unlatched and opened. Desdemona could see the scratches and gory streaks left by Mother’s swords. The view through the pane weakened her, nearly broke her.
Autumn had fallen over the island, and it was clear that this seasonal change had not been recent, for the leaves had long since lost their fiery colours and were now browned and desiccated, a dirty carpet stretching across the yellow lawn. The sky was cloudless and bright, but there was no warmth from the sun, even as Desdemona stood directly in its rays.
Questions flooded over her. She was driven to her knees under the weight of her own confusion and helplessness.
She scrabbled on all fours for the door and flung it open. Her mind only faintly registered the piled dust and the cobwebs that now marred Mother’s once-pristine foyer. She raced down the spiral stairs, across the main floor, and finally out through the scullery door.
Damp winds lashed her the moment she stepped into the open world. The lake was choppy and was the colour of cheap tin. When she discovered that the motorboat was indeed no longer tethered to the dock, that it was gone (long gone no doubt), Desdemona began to pull her hair and plead with Fate, praying that the hand she’d been dealt was nowhere near as cruel as it now seemed.
But as she made her way to the dock to confirm that the motorboat had indeed ferried her sister away from the island, Desdemona literally stumbled upon an even crueller leaving: Father’s corpse had been left to putrefy on the muddy slope of the lawn where the Mother of Swords had felled him. Time and the elements had transformed his handsome face to an unidentifiable mass of something like congealed roast drippings. The skin was as colourless as the mud on which the body lay. The nose had deflated and the eyeglasses sat askew over the empty eye sockets. The crows had visibly been supping on his eyes and the meat of his uncovered back. The blood, all that blood, had run out to slake the earth or had become indistinct russet stains on Father’s pyjama bottoms.
In some final symbolic gesture, whose meaning Desdemona could not parse, the thing that had once been Mother had driven several long knives into Father’s remains, pinning it to the ground.
Only after she’d begun to recoil in pity and disgust did Desdemona realise that Father’s positioning was identical to the figure in the Ruina card. He was pinned to the soil by blades, his head was turned to face some mysterious expanse of unknown terrain (in this case, the lake and whatever lay beyond it), and then Desdemona saw them; the colourful scraps of fabric that Mother must have culled from her sewing room. They were tied to the hilts of the swords and now fluttered in the wind like the flags of some fallen kingdom.
She thought of the Tarot card, of Celeste’s ‘feeling’ toward it, and a glimmer of hope brightened her soul. Could the child be hiding out there? Perhaps she had tried to put the matryoshkas back in place?
Desdemona turned on her heel and raced toward the family vault.
The crypt door was still an open passage, but the colourful vine that had hatched from the buried card had shrivelled and turned grey and now laid on the vault steps with the other dead foliage of autumn.
“Celeste!” Desdemona was pleading with the darkness in the tomb. The realisation that the Mother-thing might be waiting inside there did not occur to her until it was too late. She was inside the vault now. The various matryoshkas were nestled among the leaves and grit. Th
e altar bowl was empty, as was the vault itself. Desdemona sank down onto the cold stone floor and curled into a foetal position and prayed with Fate to erase her. Her sobs bounced off the unfeeling stone walls and echoed back as if to mock her anguish.
Now almost catatonic, Desdemona was sprawled across the vault floor, staring emptily at the autumnal world outside.
She doubted her eyes when the first snowflake fell, but in time the flakes multiplied.
Desdemona pulled herself out of the crypt by her hands. When she reached the outside she rolled onto her back and stared up at the slate-tinted sky and allowed the snow, wet and weak as it was, to fall upon her.
The White Queen must be stirring in her lunar grave.
The vine from the Tarot card was pressed into Desdemona’s back as if to somehow prod her, toward what she could not even fathom. She thought back to how this entire ordeal had started with the burial of the Ruin card, and how the Victory card had saved them…though only temporarily.
Inspiration seized her. She bolted up, stood, ran.
The lake had grown even rougher, for its pounding surf was almost deafening to Desdemona as she ran to the great house.
Up the stairs and back into the master bedroom. Mother’s scattered cards were now coated with dust. She knelt down and rifled through them. Unlike before while she and Celeste had been stalked by their entity-possessed Mother, this time she did not know which card to look toward for guidance. She closed her eyes and began to assess each one by touch alone, hoping that Celeste’s knack, which the child called simply ‘feelings’, was part of her makeup as well.
Finally, after enough attempts to cause Desdemona to believe this whole thing might just be an exercise in futility, she lifted a card that seemed heavier than the others. She laid it flat across her left palm and felt (or believed she felt) a strange warmth trickling through the inside of her arm.
She opened her eyes.
Sinum currus. The Chariot.
The card was laden with images of Cancer, the crab, and of the element of Water. A water sign somehow meant that this card could not buried in the earth. Should she carry the card to the lake? Could divination really be rooted in so simple an act as following an impulse (or a ‘feeling’) that felt appropriate? Surely there must be more to the Gift than this? But in her desperation Desdemona found solace in the minor gesture of holding the Chariot card tenderly against her breast while she made her way toward the water.
She froze mid-step the instant she saw the Sign.
The Chariot had been readied for her. It floated just above the surface of the lake, which was now unnaturally still, from maelstrom to millpond in a matter of moments. Autumn mist crawled leisurely across the water, giving Desdemona the impression that she was now among the clouds.
Willing her weak legs to carry her to the dock was a chore, and when this new proximity confirmed the nature of her Chariot, Desdemona began to cry.
Father’s corpse now floated upon the water. It was laying facedown and its limbs had been reconfigured in a manner that would have been agonising in life and was indignant in death. The arms and legs were bent backwards and held still in rigor mortis. From the wrists and ankles several silken cords had been wound, forming a rudimentary boat. A pair of long and bloodied swords lay crisscrossed upon Father’s back. These, Desdemona felt, could serve as her oars.
The wind blew low and eerily. It was no longer snowing. She stared at Father’s remains, simultaneously entranced and repulsed by the sight. She knew what must be done.
“I…can’t…I can’t…”
Her protest was small, and a moment later she realised how insincere it was, for as soon as she heard Celeste’s distant cry from somewhere out on the water, Desdemona submitted herself to her duty.
She climbed down onto the rotting Chariot, wincing at the feel of the soggy meat coming apart under her weight. Only Father’s bones seemed to keep her from falling into the water. But these bones were raft enough. Desdemona took up the swords and pushed away from the dock.
The fog banks piled up all around her like drifting snow. Desdemona rowed herself far enough from the island that the sound of the surf disappeared. For a long span the only noise she heard was the rhythm of the blades slicing the unseen water, propelling her deeper into the unseen. But she did not lose faith, for every so often she could hear Celeste’s unmistakable voice seeping in from this direction or that. Sometimes Desdemona would call out to her sister, but more often she would simply do her best to steer her morbid raft in Celeste’s direction.
*
“Hush now, my dear girl,” said August, the pellar. His voice was soothing. It was the kind of tone that Charles knew well from their long work together. “You are safe now, Celeste,” August continued, “perfectly safe. The ugly spirit is gone. It can no longer harm you.”
Charles moved alongside his partner and love. He placed his hand upon August’s back, both to congratulate and comfort him after this draining exorcism.
“Can you hear us, Celeste?” Charles called into the dim parlour. “Please give us a sign if you can.”
The flame inside the red signalman’s lantern (the room’s only light source) flared in response.
“Very good, Celeste,” said August. “Rest now, sweet child. We thank you for speaking with us. We will call upon you again soon.”
Charles extinguished the lantern once August had deposited the spirit bottle into a small pouch. They exited the chamber and made their way into the kitchen. Charles lit two cigarettes and handed one to August, who accepted it with a trembling hand.
Familiarity with his lover’s post-séance condition had trained Charles well. He removed the tea towel from a plate of cheese, bread, and chocolate. He pushed the plate toward August.
“Eat,” he said. “I’ll get you some coffee.”
The two men sat and talked until dawn, for even though August had successfully ensnared the ugly entity that had been plaguing the ghost girl who called herself Celeste, he still felt that this work was not yet completed.
“What’s left to do?” Charles asked him.
August rubbed his face, sighed. “That first Sitting we did, the one right after I had the dream about Celeste and that awful spirit-possessed Mother travelling across the water from the spirit world, Celeste said something about a family vault on an island somewhere, that she and her sister had released something that had been stored inside that vault.”
“The malevolent spirit?”
“It’s possible. Once I banished the evil spirit, I saw a clear image of a woman standing behind Celeste, like a protector, a mother. Maybe whatever the girls freed from the vault possessed this woman and now the woman is free.”
“Yes, but it’s doubtful that the woman that Celeste referred to as Mother was her actual Mother,” Charles said. “Remember, Celeste appeared consistently as a girl in an antiquated-looking dress, whereas the woman was wearing modern clothes.”
August nodded. “I know. I don’t believe she was Celeste’s actual mother, even though from what Celeste has told us, she certainly filled the role. And there’s something else I didn’t fully comprehend until just now: when I was under and trying to purge that harmful spirit, the woman, Celeste’s quote-unquote Mother, was helping me.”
“Helping you how?”
“She knew the gestures, the words of purging.”
“You think that in life this woman was a pellar?”
“Or a medium, a spiritualist. I think she became a caregiver to Celeste’s spirit long after Celeste had died on Earth.”
Charles sat back in his chair. The wood popped. “That’s interesting…a very interesting observation indeed. But where does that leave us?”
“I have a theory,” August said after a long pause. “It’s a long shot, but it’s the only way I can see truly putting this matter to rest.”
“I’m listening.”
“We dig through local history books, old maps, anything. I believe Celeste is a local sp
irit of place, a genius loci. So we look for a private island somewhere in the province; a private island with an old mansion and a family vault.”
“You’re right, that is a long shot,” Charles returned. “But let’s just say for the sake of argument that we find such an island, assuming of course that Celeste’s messages and your visions haven’t all been purely symbolic, what then? What’s the next step?”
“We travel there. We bring the spirit bottle with us, then we secure it back inside the family vault.”
“To what end?”
“Maybe doing so will put an end to what Celeste feels she started. Maybe she’ll be able to go back home again. I believe she truly loves that house on the island. I think this woman was tending to Celeste and her sister and that haunted island. Maybe it was Mother who first bound that chaotic spirit in the family vault, but the spirit began to tempt Celeste, preying on her childish curiosity, urging her to free it from the vault. Perhaps if we right this error, Celeste will find the peace and happiness she knew on that island.”
“Perhaps, but wouldn’t it be better to urge her on? To send her to the realm of the dead?”
“Ordinarily I’d say yes, but in this case, I think Celeste has found her paradise on that island. It’s a soft place; she can probably partake of the spirit realm and the material world in equal measure there. It was abandoned, except when Mother and Father made the trip to feed and communicate with them.”
For a long span the only soundtrack was the ticking of the clock on the living room mantle. At last Charles spoke.
“Okay. We’ll do it. We’ll start the search. But right now sleep is what we both need.”
*
They searched; first through maps and websites and history books, then later upon rural highways and back roads. Every spare day they had, the pair would be traversing. They parked at countless beachfronts and fields so that August could stand and Sense. He carried the spirit bottle with him and would call out to Celeste, and then wander like a dowser in search of occulted waters.
Grotesquerie Page 25