The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2016 Edition

by Paula Guran

  You are not a fate-spun heroine from one of those Gothic Romances you so despise . . .

  MARY, MARY

  Kirstyn McDermott

  The woman in the bed makes a soft, parched sound that might be a groan, that might be a name long carried, never forgotten, or else a name more recently brought in careful, eager hands to the heart-shaped cage in her breast. Fanny, she might be saying, or William. Or perhaps she merely moans as thin rivers of fire course beneath her skin and her throat closes dry around each breath. A minute passes, or several, sickroom time stretched far beyond compassion, before her eyelids rasp open once more.

  “Patience,” she mutters. “A little patience.”

  In a chair near the door, a man sleeps slumped against the curl of his fist. Carlisle, the woman remembers, her husband’s surgeon-friend with his large, kindly hands and eyes that fail altogether to mask his dismay, no matter the words of comfort he proffers. Carlisle, the good doctor, not the one who came before: those brusque and brutal fingers scraping at her womb, tearing the reluctant placenta loose piece by grisly piece; eighteen hours of labor and she would have suffered that pain tenfold in trade for its bloody aftermath.

  Bear up, Mrs. Godwin. We must have the whole of it out.

  The woman has crafted her life in words; she can find none with which to approach such an agony.

  A movement by the window on the other side of the room snares her attention and she rolls her head on the pillow. At first she surmises that a witching-hour breeze has billowed the drapes—though they have been drawn close now for days, the glass behind them a shield against the noxious vapors of London’s air—but now a tall, dark shape frees itself from the shadows and moves towards the bed. Tallow-light flickers across a familiar countenance; narrow hands clasp and unclasp.

  “I cannot help you this time,” the Grey Lady says. “This is not a mouthful of laudanum. It is not the foul waters of the Thames with boatmen ready at hand. This is . . . beyond me.”

  The woman in the bed swallows. “I have never asked it of you.”

  “And yet.”

  “And yet.”

  The Grey Lady leans forward, nostrils flaring. Perhaps she smiles.

  “I apologize.” The woman in the bed averts her gaze. “The . . . odors are unpleasant.” Sweat and blood, the stench of putrid flesh; she is rotting from the inside out and knows it, catches the smell of herself whenever she moves: arms lifted to steady a glass against her lips; the anguish of negotiating the chamber pot. Her body tells more truths than a priest—ah, how William’s jaw would clench at such superstitious fancies. I feel in heaven, she recalls confessing, words floating on the tincture Carlisle had administered. A turn of her husband’s mouth, his hand swaddling her own: I suppose, my dear, that is a form for saying you are in less pain. Her own dear Horatio.

  “Mrs. Godwin?” The good doctor himself, as though stirred by these recollections, rises from his chair. “How do you feel, may I enquire?”

  “No worse,” she says. “I fear, no better.”

  “There’s naught to be gained from such conjecture, Mrs. Godwin.” He crosses to the bed and presses a hand first to her brow, then to her left cheek. The coolness of his skin is welcome; the accompanying concern that pinches at his face, less so. “I shall rouse your husband. He wished to be fetched when next you woke.” Carlisle leaves the room in hurried strides, sparing not a glance for the tall figure standing opposite.

  “He did not see you,” the woman in the bed remarks. Her tone is one of confirmation rather than surprise. “Good men would see angels, would they not?”

  “I am not an angel,” the Grey Lady says. “We have traversed this ground many times.”

  “A devil then. A demon.”

  “I know of no such creatures.”

  “Nor of Heaven, nor Hell.”

  “I cannot say such places do not exist, only that I know nothing of them.”

  “Yet, if shades such as yourself exist, might not angels? Might not Heaven?” After so many years, the conversation is rote; it has worn grooves in her tongue.

  The Grey Lady smiles. “I cannot say otherwise.”

  “I—” The woman in the bed grimaces against a sudden spike of pain. “I am dying.”

  “Yes.”

  “You are the first to speak it.”

  “There have never been untruths between us. There should be none now.” Again, she leans close. Again, her nose twitches. “Mary Wollstonecraft, you smell of burnt sugar, and hyacinth, and . . . ” Those colorless eyes widen. “And hope? Even at this juncture?”

  “I am frightened,” the woman in the bed whispers. Within her, a renewed heat builds and she can feel sweat beading fresh on her skin. The pain worsens. “I am very frightened.”

  The Grey Lady smooths a place in the rumpled bedclothes and sits. “I will not leave.” A small yellow wasp emerges from the collar of her blouse to crawl over her clavicle and along her throat. She moves as though to swat it, then pauses, hand hovering by her face. The insect takes flight and describes a slow, buzzing circle before alighting on the Grey Lady’s knee. Its segmented body twitches. “She, too, will stay.”

  The woman in the bed closes her eyes. Blood simmers in her veins. This is not her end.

  “This is not my end.”

  “There is always an end,” the Grey Lady reminds her. “What fascinates is the beginning.”

  Rehearsing the words of aggrieved indignation she would consign to paper the very moment she returned home, Mary Wollstonecraft stalked across Westwood Common. How bitterly disappointing to have believed Miss Arden worthy of the highest friendship, only to find herself scorned once again in favor of other girls. Those whose better circumstances, no doubt, saw them placed unforgivably higher in Miss Arden’s affections.

  Mary could scarcely be blamed for her family’s diminishing standing, or her father’s foul temper and weakness for gambling. She suspected the whole of Beverley made barbed sport of Edward Wollstonecraft, yet it wasn’t a single one of them who slept sentry on the landing outside her mother’s door those nights he staggered home with pockets barren and fists full of drunken rage. On brash, abrasive Mary, he would not dare to lay a finger, and often she found herself regarding a new bruise on her mother’s face with seething, unexpected contempt.

  If only Elizabeth Wollstonecraft would refuse to yield to her husband. If only she would not succumb.

  If that soulless bond was marriage, Mary wanted no part of it.

  Nor friendship either, certainly not friendship with Jane Arden, who deigned to offer tea and lemoncake to Mary merely as an afterthought, it seemed, having first seen to the care and comfort of the evidently superior Miss Jacobs. Even Jane’s mama had behaved with more politeness towards the girl, complimenting her pretty muslin petticoats and the stylish manner in which her blond hair had been curled and cleverly pinned.

  Mary fumed. She would demand the letters she had written Jane Arden be returned forthwith, lest her words pass between vulgar hands and be made the subject of gossip and scorn. The very notion of enduring such slights from a person she loved—and which affection she had supposed returned!—was too much to bear.

  Her foot splashed the edge of a puddle and she recoiled, breath hissing sharp through her teeth at her own carelessness before a bright scrap of yellow attracted her eye: a bee struggled on the surface of the murky water, damp wings aquiver in their valiant effort to attain the sky. Sympathies aroused, Mary bent closer. Not a bee, she realized, but a wood wasp. Autumn winds had shed the surrounding oak trees of most of their foliage and it took Mary scarcely a moment to find a suitable leaf, brown and curled at the edges like a small boat. Gathering her skirts about her, she crouched by the puddle and extended the makeshift vessel.

  “Do you suppose that a wise course of action?”

  The voice was unexpected and Mary started, dropping the leaf in the puddle and almost toppling backwards. Regaining her balance, she looked up to see a tall, elegant lady in a grey s
ilk redingote and matching gloves standing but a few yards from where she herself crouched, undignified as a washerwoman.

  “That is a wasp, child,” the lady said. “Rescue it and you’ll likely be stung for your trouble.”

  “I am not a child,” Mary retorted. “Nor do I see why the poor creature would have any reason to do me harm.”

  “It is a wasp. What greater reason would it seek?”

  Ignoring her unwelcome interlocutor, Mary retrieved the leaf and positioned it beneath the creature in question, which was now clearly tiring. Carefully, she raised the leaf up, allowing the water to drain over an edge while the wasp remained safe, albeit sodden, within.

  “There,” Mary said, gaining her feet as she brandished her trophy for closer inspection. “She merely needs to dry her wings.”

  The lady stepped closer, right to the edge of the puddle. She bent forward as if to study the proffered leaf but her gaze never shifted from Mary’s. Her irises were a pale, watery grey and strangely flat, without hint of sparkle or sheen, as though they drew light into themselves yet, covetous, hoarded all outward reflection. After too long a moment, her eyelids shuttered and she sniffed; a subtle, delicate motion that reminded Mary of nothing so much as the family’s tabby cat taking scent of the kitchen while supper was being prepared.

  At last, the lady opened her eyes. “Ah,” she said. “You see?”

  The wasp had crawled from the leaf and was making cautious progress along Mary’s palm. Mary held her breath as spindly yellow legs tickled her skin. “If I remain still, she shall not sting me.”

  “But is that within your nature, Mary Wollstonecraft? To remain still?”

  Startled, Mary glanced up. “I did not give you my name.”

  Without warning, a gloved hand snaked out and plucked the wasp from Mary’s wrist. Wings pinned together, the insect twitched furiously between gentle fingers, its black-barbed abdomen seeking a target. “You smell of rising dough and jonquils and, ah, such willful ambition,” the lady in grey said. Then she thrust the wasp into her mouth as though it were nothing more than a boiled sweet and began to chew.

  Mary looked on in horror. And with no small amount of curiosity. “But does it not sting?” she asked.

  The lady’s thin lips spread into something resembling a smile. Scraps of semi-chewed wasp blackened the gaps between her teeth. “I intend to keep a watch on you, Mary Wollstonecraft. I believe there will be much of interest to observe.”

  William Godwin, eyes red-rimmed and puffy, encloses her hand within his own. “Mary, my dear, it is necessary to talk of the children. Respecting their care while you are ill, as you may be for . . . for some time to come. Are there especial instructions you would leave me? For the children?”

  The woman in the bed blinks. “The children?” He has a kind face, her husband. She has always thought so.

  “The children,” he echoes. “Little Fanny, and the baby. Remember, they have been sent to stay with Mrs. Reveley until . . . until you are well once more.”

  She remembers, of course she remembers. Her daughter, Fanny, named in dearest memory of one by whose side she herself had kept helpless vigil so many years ago. Watching day and night while her sallow friend sickened and rallied and sickened once more. Watching, too, as the weak little creature her friend had birthed succumbed with barely a whimper, his gummy mouth limp against the wet nurse’s breast.

  “The baby is dead,” the woman in the bed whispers.

  “No, Mary,” William says. “Our daughter is strong and in good health. Do not weep for her sake, I beg you; she is in no danger.”

  “The baby is dead,” she insists.

  On the other side of the room, the Grey Lady speaks up. “It was Fanny’s baby who died, Mary, not yours.”

  “And Fanny, too. Fanny is dead.”

  “Yes, Fanny is dead,” the Grey Lady agrees. “But your daughters are both alive.”

  Her husband pushes more words across the coverlet but the woman in the bed pays them no mind. “So many dead babies, and their poor mothers with them.” Tears scald her eyes. “Oh, for naught, for naught.”

  On this matter, the Grey Lady remains silent.

  In Lisbon, the late November weather was more clement than what London might have offered, but Mary Wollstonecraft nevertheless harbored a deep chill in the marrow of her bones. She stood with her arms crossed, her back turned away from the bed where Fanny Blood—nay, Fanny Skeys, as her tombstone would newly have it—lay motionless and cold beneath the coverlet. If she had permitted herself a glance, Mary knew that she would see a yellow wasp perched on the dead woman’s brow, its forelegs bent as though in prayer. But she would not look. Around her finger, she curled and uncurled a lock of brown hair, recently snipped.

  “If Skeys had but married her sooner,” Mary said bitterly. “If he had brought her across to Portugal a year or two ago rather than leave her behind to languish in London, her health might have been perfectly restored.”

  Beside her, the Grey Lady tilted her chin. It was a gesture approaching acknowledgment more than agreement, and one Mary had come to find exceedingly irritating. “Fanny was consumptive for a long time,” the Grey Lady said. “An earlier marriage—an earlier pregnancy—might have equally exacerbated her condition.”

  Mary exhaled sharply. “You cannot know this.”

  “No, but I may decline to play such fateful games.”

  Pressing her lips tightly together, Mary shook her head. Her heart felt empty, scoured out by this most recent blow. Surely, if she closed her eyes and allowed her imagination free rein, she might follow once more the footfalls of her sixteen-year-old self. Might step into that neat little house and meet afresh the slender and elegant girl who had instantly and irrevocably captured the entirety of her passion, of her desirous soul, with the turn of a gentle cheek and diffident flash of a smile.

  And might Mary not then hold this girl in safer keeping than the world hence had done? Might they not set up a home together, alone, Fanny with her painting and clever seamstress fingers, and Mary able to find like employment perhaps, or perhaps even secure a teaching position? Might she not be permitted to then love Fanny as she truly wished, wholly and without censure or rejection, to feel that small, flushed hand clasped tight within her own, until their breaths jointly expired?

  Instead of this. A fractured and disparate decade, so small a span, passed in such grievous haste.

  “What will you do now?” the Grey Lady asked.

  Mary wiped tears from her face. “Once matters here are settled, I expect I shall return to Newington Green—though I fear my sisters will have sorely neglected our little school in my absence. Everina does well enough if someone is nearby to drive her along, but Eliza . . . Eliza is a helpless thing.”

  “Your own contribution to her state is not insignificant.”

  Mary stiffened. “My contribution was to remove a near-deranged young mother from her oblivious husband lest she commit some dreadful harm to her own person. She did not wish to remain with him; you heard her speak it on several occasions.”

  “She might not have wished to leave her infant daughter behind.”

  “Do not scold me for that in which I was given no choice. If children were not deemed to be the property of husbands, how many more wives might seek to escape their arduous marriages?”

  The Grey Lady tilted her chin. “I apologize. This is not the time to remonstrate on such subjects.”

  “I could not know the baby would die. It was always my hope to reunite them once my sister was well.”

  “That is true, but it provides no comfort to Eliza.”

  Mary pulled the lock of Fanny’s hair even tighter around her finger until the tip darkened and swelled. To attend so frequently upon illness and death might be thought to numb a person utterly, but Mary had been left in a state of raw sensitivity. It was she who had nursed her abject, querulous mother throughout the months of her final lingering disease, changing dressings that did little mor
e than hide the seeping necrotic flesh beneath, all the while managing her father’s ill-tempered impatience. It was upon her shoulders that care for poor, distraught Eliza had fallen—care and responsibility and blame for executing the only plan she thought viable, the sole desperate avenue of escape at their disposal.

  And now Fanny, dearest Fanny, and her tiny newborn son.

  Mary was exhausted, in her body and in her heart. “I cannot continue. Not without her.”

  “And yet you will,” the Grey Lady said. “As you always have.”

  “Has it grown dark?” the woman in the bed asks. “I cannot see you.”

  “I am here, Mary,” the Grey Lady says. Her tone is smooth as velvet curtains.

  Deeper, more strained voices entreat from the wings, but the woman in the bed pushes them aside. She will no longer be corralled by the demands of men.

  “I am here,” the Grey Lady repeats.

  When she’d set off for St. Paul’s to see her publisher that evening, Mary Wollstonecraft’s mood had been one of anxious despondency. As much as the decision grieved her, she would need to abandon her rebuttal of Edmund Burke’s recent attack on the French Revolution, on the principles and passionate character of a people determined to dismantle a pernicious monarchy. Who was she to tackle so protracted and presumptuous a project, one so removed from her usual territory of pedagogy, fiction and the criticism, however barbed and insightful, that she regularly contributed to the Analytical Review?

  Joseph Johnson had been encouraging of the proposed pamphlet, certainly, and she was painfully aware that he’d already had her first pages printed in anticipation of their completion, but her mind now floundered within its own argument. Clamorous ideas buzzed and batted within the confines of her skull, refusing to be pinned to the page: feckless parents, irresponsible aristocrats and spoiled eldest sons—her own brother, Ned, came readily to mind—who inherited familial wealth yet neglected to care for poverty-struck sisters; the inherent privilege entrenched in class and gender that bred selfishness and injustice within men, and forced desperate women into marriages little better than legal forms of prostitution; the dire need for social and economic reform, rather than dependence upon charity, which did merely gratify wealthy sensitives seeking to congratulate themselves on their benevolence while continuing to indulge in the vices of inequity.