The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

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The Big Book of Modern Fantasy Page 159

by The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (retail) (epub)


  The Nieces retreated to the kitchens under the orangery. They melted and clarified the fat, ground the bones into fine flour, chopped and baked the organ meats, soaked the sweetbreads in vinegar, simmered the muscle until the meat fell apart in flakes, cleaned out and hung the intestines to dry. Nothing was wasted. The Aunts were baked into cakes and patés and pastries and little savoury sausages and dumplings and crackling. The new Aunts would be very hungry and very pleased.

  * * *

  —

  Neither the Nieces nor the Aunts saw it happen, but someone made their way through the apple trees and reached the orangery. The Aunts were getting a bath. The Nieces sponged the expanses of skin with lukewarm rose water. The quiet of the orangery was replaced by the drip and splash of water, the clunk of copper buckets, the grunts of Nieces straining to move flesh out of the way. They didn’t see the curious face pressed against the glass, greasy corkscrew locks drawing filigree traces: a hand landing next to the staring face, cradling a round metal object. Nor did they at first hear the quiet, irregular ticking noise the object made. It wasn’t until the ticking noise, first slow, then faster, amplified and filled the air, that an Aunt opened her eyes and listened. The Nieces turned toward the orangery wall. There was nothing there, save for a handprint and a smudge of white.

  * * *

  —

  Great-Aunt could no longer expand. Her skin was stretched taut over the fat pushing outward from inside. Great-Aunt raised her eyes from her vast body and looked at her sisters, who each nodded in turn. The Nieces stepped forward, removing the pillows that held the Aunts upright.

  The Aunts gasped and wheezed. Their abdomens were a smooth, unbroken expanse: there was no trace of the telltale dark line. Great-Aunt’s face turned a reddish blue as her own weight pressed down on her throat. Her shivers turned into convulsions. Then, suddenly, her breathing ceased altogether and her eyes stilled. On either side, her sisters rattled out their final breaths in concert.

  The Nieces stared at the quiet bodies. They stared at each other. One of them raised her knife.

  * * *

  —

  As the Nieces worked, the more they removed from Great-Aunt, the clearer it became that something was wrong. The flesh wouldn’t give willingly, but had to be forced apart. They resorted to using shears to open the rib cage. Finally, as they were scraping the last of the tissue from Great-Aunt’s thigh bones, one of them said:

  “I do not see a little Aunt.”

  “She should be here,” said another.

  They looked at each other. The third burst into tears. One of the others slapped the crying girl’s head.

  “We should look further,” said the one who had slapped her sister. “She could be behind the eyes.”

  The Nieces dug further into Great-Aunt; they peered into her skull, but found nothing. They dug into the depths of her pelvis, but there was no new Aunt. Not knowing what else to do, they finished the division of the body, then moved on to the other Aunts. When the last of the three had been opened, dressed, quartered, and scraped, no new Aunt had yet been found. By now, the orangery’s floor was filled with tubs of neatly ordered meat and offal. Some of the younger orange trees had fallen over and were soaking in golden blood. One of the Nieces, possibly the one who had slapped her sister, took a bowl and looked at the others.

  “We have work to do,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  The Nieces scrubbed the orangery floor and cleaned the couches. They turned every last bit of the Aunts into a feast. They carried platters of food from the kitchens and laid it out on the surrounding tables. The couches were still empty. One of the Nieces sat down in the middle couch. She took a meat pastry and nibbled at it. The rich flavour of Great-Aunt’s baked liver burst into her mouth; the pastry shell melted on her tongue. She crammed the rest of the pastry into her mouth and swallowed. When she opened her eyes, the other Nieces stood frozen in place, watching her.

  “We must be the new Aunts now,” the first Niece said.

  One of the others considered this. “Mustn’t waste it,” she said, eventually.

  The new Aunts sat down on Middle Sister and Little Sister’s couches and tentatively reached for the food on the tables. Like their sister, they took first little bites, then bigger and bigger as the taste of the old Aunts filled them. Never before had they been allowed to eat from the tables. They ate until they couldn’t down another bite. They slept. When they woke up, they fetched more food from the kitchen. The orangery was quiet save for the noise of chewing and swallowing. One Niece took an entire cake and buried her face in it, eating it from the inside out. Another rubbed marinated brain onto herself, as if to absorb it. Sausages, slices of tongue topped with jellied marrow, candied eyes that crunched and then melted. The girls ate and ate until the kitchen was empty and the floor covered in a layer of crumbs and drippings. They lay back on the couches and looked at each other’s bodies, measuring bellies and legs. None of them was noticeably fatter.

  “It’s not working,” said the girl on the leftmost couch. “We ate them all up and it’s not working!” She burst into tears.

  The middle girl pondered this. “Aunts can’t be Aunts without Nieces,” she said.

  “But where do we find Nieces?” said the rightmost. “Where did we come from?” The other two were silent.

  “We could make them,” said the middle girl. “We are good at baking, after all.”

  And so the prospective Aunts swept up the crumbs from floor and plates, mopped up juices and bits of jelly, and returned with the last remains of the old Aunts to the kitchens. They made a dough and fashioned it into three girl-shaped cakes, baked them and glazed them. When the cakes were done, they were a crisp light brown and the size of a hand. The would-be Aunts took the cakes up to the orangery and set them down on the floor, one beside each couch. They wrapped themselves in the Aunt-skins and lay down on their couches to wait.

  * * *

  —

  Outside, the apple trees rattled their leaves in a faint breeze. On the other side of the apple orchard was a loud party, where a gathering of nobles played croquet with human heads, and their changeling servants hid under the tables, telling each other stories to keep the fear away. No sound of this reached the orangery, quiet in the steady gloom. No smell of apples snuck in between the panes. The Aunt-skins settled in soft folds around the sleeping girls.

  Eventually one of them woke. The girl-shaped cakes lay on the floor, like before.

  The middle girl crawled out of the folds of the skin dress and set her feet down on the floor. She picked up the cake sitting on the floor next to her.

  “Perhaps we should eat them,” she said. “And the Nieces will grow inside us.” But her voice was faint.

  “Or wait,” said the leftmost girl. “They may yet move.”

  “They may,” the middle girl says.

  The girls sat on their couches, cradled in the skin dresses, and waited. They fell asleep and woke up again, and waited.

  * * *

  —

  In some places, time is a weak and occasional phenomenon. Unless someone claims time to pass, it might not, or does so only partly; events curl in on themselves to form spirals and circles.

  The Nieces wake and wait, wake and wait, for Aunts to arrive.

  Marta Kisiel (1982– ) is a Polish writer whose first story was published in 2006. Her stories “Szaławiła” and “Pierwsze słowo” won the Janusz A. Zajdel Prize, awarded by the members of Polcon, the oldest convention of fantasy fans in Poland. Her books include the novels Nomen Omen (2014) and Toń (2018) and the short story collection Pierwsze słowo (The First Word, 2018). “Life Sentence” was originally published as a novelette and was later expanded into the novel Dožywocie (2010). This is the first English translation of Kisiel’s work.

  FOR LIFE

  Marta Ki
siel

  Translated by Kate Webster

  EVERYTHING WAS GOING WRONG.

  The higher power that was driving the world without a license had decided to demonstrate that she had at her disposal endless reserves of pure, apish menace. First of all, she had miraculously multiplied the luggage, equipping its owner with clothing for any season or occasion, including a cotillion ball and the next flood of the century. Just in case. She hadn’t overlooked the tableware set, carbide lamp, personal (and impersonal) hygiene products, inflatable mattress, and many other absolutely necessary things. Without a doubt, this power was a woman—an exceptionally resourceful one at that.

  Animated by her early success, she had somehow completely immobilized the lock on the VW Beetle’s gearbox. Only the neighbor’s son who was summoned to help had been able to shift the stick from reverse into neutral, and meanwhile the case holding the driver’s sunglasses, indispensable on a searing August morning, had worked its way under the seat. Loaded to the brim, the little car had finally headed out of the city; the traffic jam on the exit route could also be credited to the power, as could the various other attractions that had made the rest of the drive more enjoyable. These included several radar traps, a few pelotons of half-deaf cyclists, and some stress-free-reared cows that were frolicking along the highway. And finally, in the early afternoon, on an empty forest road, the power had gathered all her strength and broken something. Whatever it was, it was broken successfully. The Beetle groaned, grunted, and died.

  From underneath his elegantly trimmed mustache, Conrad drawled equally elegant curses, switched on the hazard lights and dug himself out from the enclave of empty space between the steering wheel, the back of the seat, and the ubiquitous luggage. He knew nothing about cars, so he didn’t even look under the hood, he just pushed the Beetle to the hard shoulder. He could pretty much rule out using his cell phone, there was obviously no reception in this backwater.

  He looked around, resignedly. Not a soul. According to the sign at the side of the road, his destination was a little over a mile away. The map, one of those that was impossible to fold, showed the nearest town was located a thumb’s width to the northeast. That meant nothing to Conrad, since his concept of cartography was as poor as his understanding of mechanics, but he had to take a decision. So he extracted his rucksack from underneath the pile of luggage, locked the car, and set off, ready to cover the fatal distance on his own two feet.

  Under the circumstances, observing the scenery seemed to be the only reasonably sensible, energy-saving pastime. On the left—forest. On the right—also forest. Up ahead—hot tarmac, the fifth element of the modern world. At last, something familiar and favorable to the civilized man. For Conrad was an indigenous urbanite, brought up in the culture of concrete, plastic, and escalators. He usually communed with nature via the Animal Planet and National Geographic channels. He could talk for hours on the mating habits of meerkats, or crater lakes, but the only tree species he recognized was the willow, and as far as he was concerned, bolete mushrooms grew in jars. He did, however, have a cell phone with a camera, an mp3 player, a laptop, and an electric toothbrush, which was all a real man needed in the real wilderness.

  After half an hour of walking, he reached a fork. The softened road turned in a wide arc to the left, while to the right, a sandy path proceeded through the forest. Something in the shape of a signpost was protruding from a ditch overgrown with brushwood. Only the sun-faded reminiscence of the inscription remained, but below it, some kind hand had carved an arrow pointing to the right.

  So the sweat-soaked wayfarer heaved a sigh and disappeared into the shade of the unknown trees. The sand and pebbles immediately stuck to his tarmac-covered soles.

  * * *

  —

  Everything was going wrong, even worse than wrong. If anyone could have heard the chuckle of the higher power, they would certainly have described it as exceptionally malicious.

  At the end of the path between the trees stood a house. Made of bricks, neither too big nor too small, just right for a family, with a veranda, an annex and…a turret. An eerie Gothic turret straight out of a bad horror movie. The higher power had triumphed; Conrad tried to snap out of his stupefaction. His efforts were futile.

  “Hey, mister!” came a sudden roar in his ear. He jumped, as if someone had stabbed him in the buttock with a red-hot poker. “Hell, I thought you’d had a stroke or somethin’. Friggin’ hot, huh?”

  A wild herd of doubt rattled through Conrad’s soul. The man, who was giving him a wide, friendly smile, looked like a full-fat parody of a Miss Wet T-shirt competition.

  “Tourist, huh?” He shook his head. “Folks comin’ down here, even in this heat…”

  “No, I’m not a tourist, my car’s broken down,” explained Conrad hastily. “Sorry,” he reached into his breast pocket, “but is this thing…I mean, this house,” he glanced at the crumpled piece of paper, “by any chance Bugaboo Hole?”

  “You’re darn right it’s Bugaboo Hole. No other place like it on Earth.”

  “I don’t doubt that…”

  “Well, shoot!” cried the fat man, beaming with joy. “You must be the life estate guy!”

  “Um…Ah yes, the life estate, right. Conrad Romanchuk, the new landlord of this…building.”

  “Old Harry, welcome, welcome.” He grasped the life estate guy’s hand and shook it vigorously. “Finally! We was startin’ to worry that those lawyers would never dig themselves out from under their paperwork. Hauled around the courts for that long, who saw that comin’? No luggage? Ain’t you stayin’?”

  “No, no, I’ve got tons of luggage. In the car.”

  “Heck, the one that broke down! You see, when a fella has too much on his mind, he loses track of his thoughts. Hold on, Mr. Romanchuk, we’ll drive down there and see what’s happened, see if I can’t fix it up. One of the tires, maybe?”

  “No, the tires are fine. It’s something inside, I don’t really understand that stuff.”

  “Don’t you worry, Mr. Romanchuk, we’ll fix it, you’ll see!”

  Minutes later, they were shuddering along in an oven-hot, ancient banger toward the road. Old Harry was spurting sweat, optimism, and ruminations.

  “…lucky that you was the only heir, no need for them bureaucrats to deliberate over who should get Bugaboo Hole. ’Cos otherwise, it would’ve gone on and on, till everythin’ fell to shit. And Bugaboo Hole, she’s already gettin’ on, needs takin’ care of, a nail drivin’ in here, a floorboard replacin’ there…Can’t just write her off as a ruin, hell no! That house has character, and class to boot! You know, Mr. Romanchuk, I sometimes think that if she were human, she’d be wearin’ brimmed hats and gloves that go up to the elbow. But these days, pff! They build differently these days. Some pen-pusher scrawls somethin’ and that’s that, you ain’t allowed to change nothin’. And Bugaboo Hole was built by the late Mr. Vincent himself, with his own hands, brick by brick, and no one even thought to interject. You know how old she is? Two hundred years! A rock could acquire a soul in that time, grow its own moss of traditions, let alone a house! Aha, I guess this is it?”

  He turned off the road and came to a halt in front of the dead Beetle. After a short brainstorm, and recognizing that there was no need to play at roadside mechanics, they hooked it up and towed it back to the house.

  The second, much closer encounter with this miracle of architecture afforded Conrad a new range of sensations. He lugged his baggage into the hall, looking around with a strange mix of curiosity, panic, and disgust. He wondered what on earth had possessed his great-great-great…distant ancestor to build something this peculiar, and then call it “Bugaboo Hole.” He could almost see the hordes of woodworm eating it away. The floors, the wood paneling, the door and window frames, the winding staircase, the furniture that probably belonged in a museum—everything wooden, ancient, and very stylish. The carved deta
iling, the little flowers, delicate stalks, rosettes, and bows were everywhere. The whole thing looked like a Gothic frenzy, the fulfilled dream of a mad carpenter. To make matters worse, the runner in the hall consisted primarily of holes, the sconces on the walls were held on with spit and prayers, and the entrance door had a regular hasp and staple instead of a lock.

  While Old Harry was searching for something in the annex, Conrad wandered around with the luggage, counting the number of basic repairs needed on the ground floor. He kept coming up with dreadful totals, leaving him more and more convinced that he couldn’t have met with a worse fate than this inheritance.

  The higher power was extremely pleased with herself, but she decided to finish with a flourish. Three rolls of toilet paper tumbled down from the pile heaped up in the middle of the hall and rolled straight under the deep chest of drawers, their daisy-print fluttering in farewell.

  “I give up…” Conrad sighed. “As if I haven’t had enough gymnastics for one day.”

  He knelt down cautiously to reach under the chest of drawers, noticing as his nose almost touched the floor that there wasn’t a single speck of dust. No fur balls, no spiderwebs. Not what he’d have expected from an old, weird house in the middle of nowhere. He heard a quiet sneeze behind him.

 

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