Between us flows a tide. Years and my family’s blood. The twin weights of fear and guilt, carried always. My father’s fingers fumbling on the needle, seeking the vein. And all the others whom I did not know. My mother’s love. Treading through the generations, wading through our lives, devouring us as easily as knocking the heads off dandelions. It has all been this. You. The reek of her rises in my nostrils. It’s rot and hurt and burnt rope.
What is it that you want? I ask. Take me, by all means. Where will you go, now that you’ve driven us all into the earth, one by one… What will you do when you have no one to torment? Too bad. I’ll not give satisfaction. What can you take from me that has not already been taken? Nothing. I am bereft, without limits.
She shivers as if with pleasure. Dark blots and shadows chase across her thin, enfolded form. It’s moonlight and cloud playing through the window, perhaps, or perhaps not. I’m uneasy, of a sudden. What exactly is this? And I can’t quite recall how I got here.
Something unfurls toward me. It lies between us like a deep cut. It’s an arm, scabrous and wasted. The bone-white hand opens. I am already reaching for her, eager. The tips of our fingers meet. The sensation is surprising, smooth, familiar. She and I stand so, arms outstretched, fingers stiff and spread in formal refutation.
Then I hurl myself at her, teeth bared, fists clenched. I smash into her, and she’s hard as glass. But I go on. I rain down with crashing blows. I scrabble deeper, seeking the heart of her. The world is full of shining and blood and inhuman sound.
I claw her smooth surface, beat her with my fists, elbows, skull. A cracking sound like the world opening. The truth comes slowly, as if through water. As Papa used to say, There is always an answer. It’s simpler than I thought and worse than I could have imagined.
Pieces of the mirror come loose from the great gilt frame. They fall, blade-bright, to the floor, ringing, breaking. Each silver piece shows me back myself. Scattered, disassembled. My scabbed head, an evil moon, crossed with the many lines of old scars. My pale, wizened frame. The black eyes crawling like beetles—they are my eyes. I see her now for what she is. She isn’t sending me dreams.
I thought I was haunted. It’s the other way around.
My hands are bruised, bloody, shaking. But I don’t stop. The thuds I hear are the deep thuds of my fists as they beat upon the floor, on the bright ruins of the mirror. I roar and smash. I smash until there is no treacherous surface to show me myself, to show me her, who are, after all, one and the same.
I was wrong. There was something left to take from me after all. What have I become? Martin’s voice, Goodman’s voice in my mind, now of all times. “There is no her. There is only you.” I am roaring again, my voice so hoarse, it sounds like stone grinding against stone. So he won in the end, because I died in there after all.
• • •
I go through the ways and halls of Rawblood. As I pass each room, I hear the voices within. My uncle Charles, playing with a little dog. Mary Villarca reading to her husband and laughing. I could reach out and touch them. I could do worse than that. I have done it.
In every fiber, I feel the hurt. What was done to me was unfair, unfair. Long years, I was taken bit by bit. Flesh, bone, organs, and brain. For what? For sport. To prove or disprove some thin, half-formed thought.
My rage grows, a warming flame. I am lit from within. The house opens up as I go. Rawblood reveals itself. The corridors grow long and strange to me. Doors lead off. There are many more rooms than I knew. Some doors stand ajar.
A white, many-paneled door chased with gold. Through it, an empty ballroom. The strains of distant music. Evening sun pours through tall bay windows. A gentleman stands in the center, in a great powdered wig. Sapphires wink at his neck. He stares at his severed wrists and weeps. Blood splashes onto the parquet, falls in gouts on his blue satin shoes, drips down his elegant heels, pools in his sapphire buckles. His eyes are dark and longing. He looks at me. He raises an elegant hand and points. His accusation like a knife. I turn away in haste. I don’t know him. I’ve never met him. But I remember him. I recall the dark flower of rage that budded, that opened in me. Then he died.
Farther on, a rough stone arch set into the wall. Through it is a high wooden hall with a minstrel’s gallery. Two men sit at table in brown hessian robes. They dine off silver plates. Some meat, dark and rich. Their soft chins shake, and juice runs down. Candlelight plays on the silver and on their tonsured pates. Behind them, on the rushes that cover the floor, are the bloody corpses of two young girls. I both know and do not know what they did here. And what I did. The rage stirs; she stirs. I hurry on. Behind, the crunch of teeth on bone.
There’s a gap in the wall. Door-shaped perhaps, but not a door. Rawblood simply stops. It is dizzying. The place beyond bounded only by the night sky. Three small dark men sit on hides spread across the grass. Firelight plays about their tattooed faces. Their features are achingly, instantly familiar. I can trace my father’s lineaments in theirs. Long-ago Villarcas, Hopewells, whatever name it was we first bore… But no, they are of a time before names, long before Rawblood was. The tips of their spears gleam. One of them weeps. The others raise burning brands above their heads and peer into the night. Their eyes meet mine. Their mouths open, long, impossibly wide, great black holes. They shriek. They run. Their torches trail through the night air.
I let her in. I run after them over the hills in the dark, beneath the stars. The hunt. I catch them, in the end. I turn their faces to me, show them her eyes. In them, vastness. Rage, and nothing. I did it long ago. I remember.
The corridor undulates and hums with time. For it is not Rawblood alone. There are doors to cities, high mountains, wherever my family are. The walls cannot be trusted. They flicker like reflections on water. They are brick then granite then aching blue sky then cellar walls… All the places laid over one another. So many. I had not known there were so many. There is no end to it. Dark paths, trapdoors, corridors. Rawblood creeps outward like ivy, stretches ever back and back in time.
Everywhere, there are doors and walls and forests and pavilions and voices. Everywhere peopled with my family. All the generations that led to me. I touch them all. I am in them like a drop of ink spiraling in water. They bring me into being, and I end them… It’s an endless, hellish circle. She is a wheel.
I have tied us here. My family pine for Rawblood; they love it with a fervor. They sicken when away from it. All because I cannot bear to be parted from my home. Those who live before the house is built: they see it in their dreams and yearn for it, always. Aching desire that cannot be fulfilled.
All the doors are singing. Dark and strong. I am called by them, deliciously. I’ve heard this song before, of course. But that was years ago. It sounded like water then, behind cave walls. The ones that stand ajar… They are inviting, and their song is very loud.
There is a certain door. I know it’s here. I remember it. This is what happens. I go through to a blue-and-white nursery. I am tight-gripped in a blue blanket, looking up into my mother’s face. Her arms are loving about me. For the first and the last time. But her face changes as she looks at me. Horror spreads slowly across it. The scent of blood and lilies all about us. My mother dies. I am left squalling in her arms with my grieving father, and it all begins again… My life. My death. Her. This happens. Has happened. I remember.
She stretches herself with pleasure at the thought. She loves to go around and around. Describing circles through time.
No. I won’t. Keep it simple. I am Iris. And Rawblood is my home. I place my palms on the shuddering walls. I close my eyes and feel for the rough walls of my childhood. I seek them with my fingertips and all my being. Where Papa and I were everything to one another. My house. If I am very still, I can feel the familiar granite. I keep my eyes closed and follow the wall. My fingers trace my old ways. I go on, down toward the great hall. I go by the ways I know. I keep my e
yes closed, and I don’t turn or stop for the voices that call through the years.
In the hall, the fire glows red. I crouch by it. Papa always said there was no heaven, no hell. But there is. I’m in it. In the dark beating heart of it all.
I feel him before I see him. Something vast and dark, lying in the shadow of the hearth just outside the firelight. No, anything but this.
“Papa,” I say. My heart is cold.
The black pile stirs, heaving. Something runs shining in the runnels between the flags. It touches the toes of my boots, and the scent of it rises, hot iron cooling.
His face is pale and streaked with blood by the light of the dying fire. But of course, I would know it anywhere. Years collide and memory. My father, the first person I killed. Or the last, depending on how you look at it. He’s here, and I will not let it happen, I will not.
He turns his head with a groan. His breath whistles in and out. The syringe gleams, buried in his chest.
I throw myself to the floor beside him. I try to take his head in my hands. I cannot grip; my fingers slip on the blood. But he sees me. I smile. “Papa,” I say. “It is I, Iris. Hush, I will help.”
He convulses at my touch. He is white with fear.
“I see,” he says and coughs. “Her.”
My father’s last words: I hear them with new meaning, now. I see, he was saying to me. You are her. In his eyes, I am reflected; the monstrous ruin of me. My fingers are not slipping on the blood after all but slide through him, insubstantial. He claws at me in terror, but we cannot reach each other, to hurt or to comfort, and this is worst of all. My father dies once more, long ago, beyond my reach, here, before me, the blood pooling warm on the flags.
And then he’s gone. The flags are clean and bare, and I’m alone, in the crackle of the dying fire. For how long? Some acts have such power that they never really end. Rawblood’s not a house, any more than I am who I was. We are changed. Here, my father is always dying.
I run for the front door, unbar it with a crash, heave on the great iron latch. I kick. It won’t open. I beat at it. It holds. I try the window. It’s welded shut. I take up the cast-iron doorstop, arms trembling. I hurl it at the panes. It bounces off and hits the floor with an ear-splitting crash. I am sealed tight in my tomb.
I look at the high, quiet hall of Rawblood. The fire cracks quiet in the grate, plays warm on the flags. The great marble mantelpiece, white as snow, a riot of griffins, falcons, archers. The staircase curves elegantly up into the dark. These are sights I have longed for. Now, I would do anything to get out. But I don’t get out, of course. I remember. I’ve done all this before. Around and around we go.
There is always an answer. There must be something I haven’t tried. I dash the tears from my face and think. I search the long and terrible depths of my memories. There is something, something… Years and colors and thoughts dance before me, intermingling, the threads of all I’ve done.
And I have it. It’s very simple. It’s sad. I can’t bear it. I have never been able to go through with it. Each time around, I have neglected this necessary thing. No more of that. I am Iris, and I must get out. I can govern my fate. Burn it, Papa murmurs.
“All right,” I say.
The house shifts about me, a growing thing. Can Rawblood hear my thoughts? Does it know what I intend? I collect chairs, tables, hatstands, whatever is left. I bring them to the shadowed, flickering hall where the fire burns. I crack them over my knee with numb hands, pile the timber in. The flames tower into airy heights and spit hot. Old curtains, oil paintings obscured by the grime of years, anything. I crush the remains of a wicker chair. It all goes on. Dust and sparks fill the burning air. All the while, I weep. Rawblood. My bones, my heart.
In the study, I find old bottles of spirits under cobwebs. They shatter in the fire, and it roars, explodes its confines, licks up, blackening the white marble mantelpiece with hot tongues. Once more, I sift through memory… There’s nothing. We are in uncharted territory now. What will happen?
I thrust two chair legs into the flames. They catch like torches, and I run up, along the snaking staircase, touching flame to everything as I go. Rawblood burns behind. Heat at my back. I am blackened and breathless. When the torches are burnt down, I let them fall. I race ahead of the fire.
Through my old room. Someone is in the bed. A man, pale behind his mustache, shaking. A little dog growls and leaps for me, teeth gleaming. I hurl it from me. It disappears, snarling, into the thick smoky haze. I reach the window, gasping. Out into the cool night air. I crawl along the ridge of the roof toward the stable until I can no longer feel the heat.
I turn.
The house is afire, a great candelabra. The windows are white with flame; it licks out and up. Spears of fire pierce the night. The doors are singing, high…all ablaze, all burning. My home, my prison.
Grief pulls at me. Rawblood burning to its bones, a dark skeleton against the tower of flame. Everything I have left in the world, all that I am.
A great crack as something vital gives. The house screams. The roof caves gently in. Slates fall from the roof in showers, hot into the molten center. Smoke boils out, great acrid clouds. I roll away, and the black follows, billows, filled with sparks, a multitude of tiny red eyes. The fire reaches up. It blossoms into the sky, towering over me. The air’s too hot to breathe, and my lungs are bursting. Good. It’s right to die with Rawblood. Neither of us has a place in this world anymore.
I fall through walls and waves of black. Red stars everywhere.
• • •
I come to slowly. Warm light on my face. I sit upright, heart hammering. Rawblood rises quiet around me. I’m in the hall. Flames dance neatly in the hearth. Everything is as it was. It didn’t work.
I could burn it again. I could throw myself into the fire. It will make no difference. I will never get out. I am trapped. My howl rings through the rafters and shatters the air. My terrible face reflected in the windowpanes, repeated darkly, over and over. A skull, mouth agape. A reflection on water.
Where would I go, if I could? Where do monsters find refuge? I look long at myself. I trace the white ghastly lines of my face. Papa was right, at the end. I’m not Iris. Iris died. They made holes in her head, and she died. I am all that’s left. It’s too hard to cling to memories, to life. The void is all there is. You gleam for a moment as you fall. You wink out in the black.
My hand holds an ornate silver doorknob. All about me, the song. The door itself is mahogany, prettily carved. Through it, I hear weeping. A woman. Her cries mingle with the music. Delightful. Why should I not go in? It all happened, long ago. Surrender need not be a gentle act. She’s in me like a pulse.
The knob gives a pleasurable little squeak. I open the door.
A dark room heavy with the scent of disturbed sleep, still-warm wax, a candle recently extinguished. I move quietly to the bed. Two white bundled shapes. A man, a woman. There has been an argument. She weeps quietly, turned away. Piles of golden hair. My business isn’t with her anyhow. Her turn comes later. A glowing poker, flame.
The man sits up. Watchful, elegant face. You, he says. He is leaden, pale, and sweating.
Come, I say. I’ll show you my eyes.
I don’t touch him. I don’t need to. I show him. The pick on my skull, the bone dust. A half-life in the underworlds of the mind. Days and years. I spread my knowledge through him like sickness, spoiling everything I touch. I rot his heart.
He cries out like a child and runs from the warm room, from his weeping wife. I cling to him like smoke. She cries after us, Leopoldo! In the stables, he flings saddle and bridle on a startled horse. The horse shows the white of its eye. It shies and curvets and tries to throw him. It knows that death is near. He beats its quarters with the whip until it leaps forward, sweating. I curl about his shoulders as he rides. Faster and faster under the moon, as though he could outrun
the thing that sits all about him. Me. When the ground begins to soften, the horse knows and slides to a halt in a tangle of legs and hooves. He flies over its head and into the mire. He’s waist-deep, struggling.
It wasn’t the holes in my head alone, I say. In the end. Malnourishment. Infection. Strokes. Abscesses in the brain. It was slow. I’ll show you what it was like to die my death.
The bog takes its time. He goes under after some hours. Before that, he claws his eyes out, rather than see what’s in mine.
When it’s done, I am alone and cold on the desolate land. Despair drops like a hawk from the sky. The rotten bog fills the air. I am sick and shaking. What have I done? How do I get out? How do I stop? I clutch at the tussocks of sedge. I look to the horizon, a line of pink where the day’s pushing in. If I go now… How can I escape her, who travels with me always? But I must try. I must.
The little thing stirs inside me, the dark flower. It grows, unfurls. Too late to think of flight. She strokes me, comforting. She seeps through my organs, my limbs and eyes. She spreads like a hundred little fingers, little tongues. The dawn, the land, my memories all fading, receding into nothing. The black rises once more. It fills me, gentle. She comes.
I will take them all. Then I will never have been. Door after door and high hills and cities open before me. I show them my eyes. Some rave, some plead. Take others’ lives as they go. Many trembling hands grimed with blood. In the end, it’s the same. Their soft hearts stop beating. And I am at peace. I tumble through nothing, full of dark and song. How long have I fallen? Was I ever anything but this? Her.
• • •
Tom Gilmore starts up, coughing. Something in his dream has made its way into the waking world. Through the window, it’s red in the east, but surely it’s not yet dawn. He presses palms against the freezing glass, leaving white ghosts. The sky is red above Rawblood. But Rawblood burned months ago… He was dreaming of fire. Or red hair, perhaps. His mind is heavy with it still. Orange, red, roaring. The dream world and this lie atop one another. Red hair. Fire.
The Girl from Rawblood Page 33