Seven Strange Stories

by Rebecca Lloyd

  I would describe them as beautiful, the smaller one in particular, the one Eddie could not keep his eyes off, but I can say for certain that I didn’t like those faces. Several times I squeezed his elbow to try to get him to come away. He glanced at me once and frowned. His eyes were literally shining, and I shivered.

  ‘We were just talking, Ross. You were standing right there!’ Eddie said on our way home. ‘How could you not hear us?’

  ‘I wasn’t paying attention to their words, but their hair . . .’

  ‘Fantastic wasn’t it?’

  ‘Freakish,’ I replied. ‘Freakish.’

  Eddie laughed. ‘Not your kind of women, eh?’

  I moved my sack of wood onto my other shoulder and quickened my pace. We’d wasted a good part of the day and I was irritated and feeling shuddery. ‘Did you see their clothes?’

  ‘A bit Amish, I agree, Ross. But so what?’

  ‘Not the kind of women who’re asking to be touched,’ I replied, ‘and you’re a bit keen on that, aren’t you?’

  ‘Does that mean you’re not coming?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘They invited us to their house tomorrow afternoon.’

  ***

  Our argument went on into the night. I couldn’t persuade him not to go. He suggested we both take a day off as we’d been working on the house for a couple of weeks with no breaks, and were beginning to get fatigued. In the end, I decided I was going to walk around town and see if I could find anyone I knew from when we were young, and he could do what the hell he liked. I watched him go. I watched him walking fast down the wooded lane, and when he disappeared into the first of the trees, I picked up my coat and headed for town.

  I spent the rest of the day arguing with myself. I sat in the park for a while and then followed our old route through the back streets. I didn’t meet anybody we used to know, although the place itself hadn’t greatly changed. It was only when I became aware that I was walking aimlessly and with very little interest in anything other than what was in my mind that I returned home.

  A great jumble of contradictory thoughts battered my head. The most part of me was seized with horror made more terrifying because I had no idea how such a powerful reaction had come about. I could almost feel the reasoning voice I’d conjured up as Eddie walked away that morning fading into silence: so, my brother had met a couple of deadly strange women and found them to be charming, while I thought they were grotesque. Was it not just evidence of how differently we saw the world? Maybe . . . but what had they done to him in those moments when we stood with them that he should be so eager to return? I tried repeatedly to bring their faces to mind so I could search for expressions on them that would explain something . . . explain anything. All I remembered was a curious blandness of expression, while Eddie’s face was alight with interest and pleasure. The bloody fool.

  I left the kitchen and went to stand on the veranda, dusk was falling and the local frogs were beginning to get noisy. Eddie had not returned. God damn it! I wasn’t going after him. What was the point? Soon it would be pitch black. Just as I was thinking that, I saw him.

  He was wandering towards the house, taking his time—and he was whistling.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, where the hell have you been?’ I shouted at him, and I realised by the expression on his face, that I’d badly over-reacted.

  ‘I told you. You know. You were invited too. What’s the matter with you?’ he asked, almost whispering at me and with such a dismissive expression on his face, that I felt curiously ashamed of myself.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, following him into the kitchen.

  ‘I’ve eaten already. Have you?’

  ‘No. I’m not hungry.’

  ‘I ate with them.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said I ate with them.’

  ‘Those women?’

  ‘Don’t call them those women.’

  ‘What did you eat?’ I asked, moving around the table to get a better look at him.

  He seemed startled all of a sudden, and he frowned. ‘Hey, guess what? I haven’t a clue, Ross; isn’t that strange? They are so . . . engaging, I don’t think I noticed the food.’

  ‘You must be joking!’

  He seemed tired, and before I could get anything much out of him, he edged towards the door. ‘I’m whacked, Ross. See you tomorrow,’ he said, and closed the door extra quietly, and was gone.

  I remember shaking my head in frustration about him for some few minutes after he’d left; he’d seemed so calm, almost luminous, as if he’d risen slightly above the normal dirtiness of human life. I made the decision not to talk to him about it the following day. We’d just get on, each with our separate work, and stop for short coffee breaks when the time seemed right. But I didn’t sleep that night, only roamed about in my thinking, ricocheting from one awful thought to another.

  ***

  We were working on the living room the following morning and I had a lot of shabby-looking window frames to deal with in there. Eddie was priming the opposite wall. We hadn’t spoken at breakfast, but every time I glanced at his face, he seemed perfectly normal, as if somehow he’d come down to earth during the night. I well knew that if I brought up the subject of the women directly he’d take pleasure in thwarting me. Back in Holesville Nine he had a girlfriend. She was as different from the women in the wood as could be. Her clothes were ill-fitting and badly chosen and often garish, she walked with little tittering steps as if about to topple, in shoes that looked as though they’d been deliberately designed to harm the wearer. Yet, her face was childish and kind of sweet and I know she adored Eddie.

  ‘Cherie doing okay?’ I asked after some time.

  ‘She’s good. She’s doing good. Yeah. Thanks.’

  ‘She’ll be glad to see you back,’ I suggested. ‘I was wondering if we should forget the upstairs. Sometimes people are keen to get hold of places they can do up themselves.’

  ‘Not what you said when we first talked about it.’

  ‘Yeah, but how long have we been here now, three weeks isn’t it?’

  ‘Ross, I think we should do what we planned to do. What’ve you got to get back to in Holesville Nine?’

  ‘Nothing in particular,’ I agreed. I turned my head to look at him and was surprised to find that he was no longer priming the wall, but standing facing me with his arms folded and his face pale in the poor light. ‘Nothing,’ I said again. ‘Hey! How about asking Cherie to come and visit us? She could cook for us; I’m tired of scrabbling about trying to make our meals.’ Eddie stared at me with an expression so hostile, that for the first time in my life I felt afraid of my little brother. ‘It was just an idea, Eddie. I mean, she used to help out in Cygnet’s Café, didn’t she?’

  Eddie shrugged and seemed to relax. ‘I’ll tell you what, Ross. How about, after this wall, I start on the upstairs. I’m way ahead of you now anyway, since you’ve got those windows to tackle.’

  ‘So no Cherie, then?’

  ‘She wouldn’t like it here. She doesn’t care for trees.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Insects, mosquitoes, things like that. She’s a woman, after all.’

  ‘Are you serious about her?’

  Eddie laughed, and stooped down to move his painting gear further along the wall. ‘I can see where this is going, Ross. D’you think I’m an idiot?’

  I turned my back on him and stepped up to the window. The wood was of course no closer than it had been before we stumbled upon those women, but now it was omnipresent in my mind.

  ‘It was gritty stuff,’ Eddie said suddenly. ‘It came in little balls.’

  ‘What?’ I turned about again.

  ‘I don’t know what it was. And then we had fruit of some kind . . . sour.’

  ‘Sour?’

  ‘Like gooseberries or something. They grow their own stuff behind the house; they’ve even got a stand of corn. They’d like to see you too, Ross. Why don’t you come with me?’

 
; ‘Look, Eddie . . . they gave me the creeps.’

  ‘You should open your mind to them.’

  ‘Fuck off!’

  ‘You’re so closed. They thought you looked like a mean and sad person. Are you a mean and sad person, Ross?’

  ‘What the hell would they know? They’re freaks, Eddie. How long have they been living there?’

  ‘The family has been there for some generations. People in town know about them, but no one bothers them. And that’s as it should be. Free country, you know.’

  ‘Fuck!’

  We left it on that note; he’d taken my breath away. I had no idea what to say to him. He took his stuff upstairs in the early afternoon, and from time to time, I could hear him whistling.

  I moved Mum’s old radio into the living room and listened to whatever jumble came out of it and worked on. I’d stripped all the outer frames, and the paint was coming off well with my tungsten blade, before I became aware of the quietness upstairs.

  I knew even before I pushed the door open that he wouldn’t be there, and sure enough, he wasn’t. Eddie must have climbed out of the window, slid down the little tiled roof below, and jumped to the ground, just as we both used to do as children.

  ***

  I didn’t know how long he’d been gone for, and although I was sure I could find my way to the house in the wood again if I wanted to, I didn’t fancy the idea of turning up there unexpectedly. I was really angry with him; he was beginning to fuck up our work plan. So I sat on the step of the veranda and stared down the lane, and it was exactly then that I discovered we had woodworm. When I understood the extent of it all along the veranda on the east side of the house, I knew we had to get it treated immediately, or we’d have a lot of trouble selling up. So while Eddie hung out with the hairy forest women, as they had become in my mind, I went into town to see what could be done about the house.

  He turned up late-afternoon shortly after I’d arrived back.

  ‘What the hell?’ I said.

  ‘She called me,’ he replied, ‘and I went.’

  He looked peaceful—slightly disengaged. I shook my head slowly at him. ‘We’ve got woodworm in the veranda, and no one can get here to treat it for two months,’ I told him, as if it was his fault.

  He didn’t laugh, but I could see some sly calculation on his face about it. ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Now, that’s a shame. How much will it cost us?’

  I shrugged. ‘We have no option, we can’t sell the place untreated, so it doesn’t matter what it’s going to cost. So, what have you been up to?’

  ‘I was helping Domescia and Carboh turn some earth over.’

  ‘No kidding; so our work just becomes nothing because of those women?’

  ‘I’ve asked you before, Ross, not to call them those women.’

  ‘What did you say their names were?’

  ‘Domescia and Carboh.’

  I realised I was trembling, but I didn’t think Eddie could see it. He was standing some fifteen yards away. ‘God damn it, Eddie, what’s going on with you?’

  ‘No. What’s going on with you, more like. Carboh says you’re haunted by your own meanness.’

  ‘Which one was that, Eddie?’

  ‘The smaller one.’

  ‘I thought so. The one you kept staring at.’

  ‘The one I’m going to be joined with, Ross.’

  ‘God damn, Eddie, God damn! What the hell has gotten into you?’

  I could not speak further. I stared at my brother, and if I’d thought all along that I never really knew him, I could not have wanted a heavier, more sinister conviction of that fact now. I turned and went inside. It was getting towards early evening and I set to lighting the kitchen stove with shaking hands, when a thought struck me. Eddie had come in and was looking in the fridge for something to eat. ‘What d’you mean she called you?’ I asked. ‘You don’t have a mobile and the house phone is disconnected.’

  ‘Hard to explain, Ross.’

  ‘Try me,’ I replied.

  ‘I don’t think you’d get it, and I don’t want to make you madder than you already are with me.’

  ‘Damn right, I’m mad with you. What about Cherie?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, now you bring her up. But really, you’ve always been dismissive of her in the past.’

  I could feel my face heating up and I rubbed my hands over it to control the redness; he was right. ‘Yeah, that was mean of me,’ I murmured.

  ‘There you are you see—mean.’

  ‘Hey now, look here, Eddie, have you gone crazy or something, you’ve only met those women a couple of times, you can’t be thinking of marrying one of them. You hate the idea of marriage, you’ve always said that.’

  Eddie looked at me evenly and I could tell he was enjoying my dishevelment. ‘Come and dine with us tomorrow night, Ross. Domescia is going to prepare a grand feast, the five other sisters will be there, and their mother will be joining us for a short while too.’

  ‘Dine with us?’ I repeated, ‘come and dine with us?’ I could do nothing but laugh.

  ‘You’ve been invited, and the other sisters really want you to come; they want to see you,’ Eddie explained.

  So far I’d understood there were a whole bunch of women in that scratchy old house and somehow living off the land. Who the hell lived like that in the twenty-first century? ‘The others—have you met them?’ I asked, trying for all I was worth to stay calm.

  ‘Yes, Carboh took me to them. They were in one of the upper rooms.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing, Ross. They were engaging. Really engaging.’

  ‘Engaging, Eddie? Where are these weird words coming from all of a sudden?’

  ‘Well, are you coming or not? I mean, where’s the harm?’

  ‘Where’s the harm, you say?’

  ‘Loosen up, big brother, why don’t you?’

  ***

  Domescia and Carboh were to meet us on the bend of the main track, by the plaited path at around nine. We found Dad’s old heavy duty torch and set out in good time. I was frightened and angry, and could not bring myself to look at Eddie or talk to him. I was intent on examining these curious women and looking for evidence of cultism, so I had some ammunition to lob at the stupid jerk who was my brother.

  When we reached the stopping place, I really did not see the two of them standing there although I’d shone the torch all around slowly. But they were there all right. I think their hair must have made them resemble the trunks of trees. As we approached, they turned abruptly and made their way down the plaited path, with us in the rear. I kept the light from the torch on the ground, not wanting to shine it on all that swaying hair. Nobody spoke, and it wasn’t until we stepped into the hall of the house that the atmosphere between us all changed. Domescia and Carboh turned to face us and bobbed a neat little curtsy, and Eddie inclined his head gravely in return. I stared at them and then at my brother and I must have been frowning hard, as finally Carboh said: ‘Ross, you will frighten my sisters if you look that way at them, it is not friendly; it is mean.’

  Caught by some faint movement on the wide and elegant staircase behind us, I looked up and saw, standing in a line, five women of different sizes, all of them sheaved in curtains of hair that gleamed in the faint light as if they’d dressed it with something oily. The sight of them was worse than the thought of suddenly disturbing a snake’s nest and discovering a coiling mass of vigorous young when you least expected it. I stared upwards in horror and my heart began a shuddering thump that I could not make quiet for a good while, although later, I believe the women connived in rendering me calm.

  Eddie raised his hand and showed his palm to them, and in return, they each curtsied as the first two had done, and as they did, they made a flurry of small noises—squeals and sighs and whisperings that pitched my stomach over.

  I turned to look directly at Domescia and Carboh to find them studying me with keen intensity, and at that moment my impulse was to run from the hou
se, but as much as I despised Eddie, I could not leave him there alone.

  The five at the top of the stairs shifted away and we four moved through a wide doorway and into a large, poorly-lit room. The windows in there were tall and curtain-less, and through them I could see the moving forest trees and the different ever-changing shapes they were making. I kept close to Eddie on one side and was aware that Carboh was sticking close to him on the other, while Domescia guided us to the centre of the room and had us all sit down together in a nest of cushions. I could see no other furniture, and its absence alarmed me further.

  I decided that Eddie was getting off on the novelty of the situation, it being so opposite to his normal life of bars and drinking and gambling with men who had big opinions but led sloppy, repetitive lives—and the whole woeful mess propped up by restless, troubled women who waited vainly for the men to morph into guys they could admire.

  Domescia was touching my arm. I cringed, and she saw that, and took her hand off me. But I felt the imprint of her fingers all through that evening.

  ‘Domescia was asking you if you were hungry, Ross,’ Eddie told me.

  ‘We have plenty of food tonight,’ Carboh said.

  I looked from my brother’s face to that of the woman beside him and could not abide the closeness I felt there. Her hair was now arranged so that very little of her was visible. In the shadows of the room it was like looking at a mask-like disembodied face.

  ‘It certainly is hungry work fixing that house,’ I exclaimed, attempting to smile at her. ‘Eddie had thought of asking his girlfriend, Cherie, to come and help us out with the cooking.’

  Although she regarded me steadily, it wasn’t consternation that flickered across Carboh’s features, but pity. It was as if I was very far behind in this game. She knew about Cherie and didn’t care, perhaps. Ross laughed in a light and happy way, and taking Carboh’s hand in his, he played with her fingers, while she gazed at me with what I took to be disdain.