And at last, toward dawn, the idea came. Like white light.
It may not work. I think it very unlikely that it will work. But it may win us death in the open.
At dawn I rose and walked out of the house. I walked on and on. Up the mountain; to its crest and over.
From this high rock where I am writing I can look down upon the little ledge where the hut stands; that vulture’s nest that we all thought was salvation, paradise. It lies there black under the red morning light; still in shadow. Shadow less black than what it holds.
If Ronnie does not follow me I will go back tonight. I will watch and try to surprise them; I will do whatever man may do. But Ronnie will follow me. He will be worried and come in search of me. And then, with my two sound legs, it ought not to be hard for me to keep ahead of him. With luck – incredible luck! – I may lead him on such a chase that we will fall into the Germans’ hands. A prison camp would seem like heaven now.
But will he follow me so far? Or will he turn back – to Aretoúla? He would only think me mad if I tried to tell him what I know.
He is coming. I see him clearly, down there in the morning sun. Climbing the mountain, shading his eyes with his hand as he looks about him. For me . . .
5 p.m.: I am very tired. All day I have played this ghast ly game of hide-and-seek with Ronnie, here in the mountains. With out food, without any more rest than I knew we had to take. For if Ronnie’s leg crumples under him again we are done. This game in which our lives are the stakes will be over.
He must think me mad indeed, the boy. Deranged, after our hardships and my long, low fever; by the shock of Bert’s death. But he keeps after me with a blind, sweet stubbornness; he will not desert a comrade.
He is resting now, on a ledge some three hundred feet below me. He has not the strength, I think, to climb up to this rock where he must know that I am hiding; I moved once and let him see me. I wish, desperately, that I could see some house, some sign of man. But there is nothing. The peaks press close about us, like enemies; dark and implacable now in this failing light. Great masses of spiky, barren rock at best indifferent, alien to man.
What will happen when night falls? But it was not night be fore, when—
God, I dare not think of that! If only we can stay alone, in the darkness and among the rocks, meet no dangers but those that nature planned for these terrible, desolate heights!
The sun is setting. The clouds above the peaks are as red as fire, as red as blood. The sky itself gleams like a vast sheet of white light. No speck of darkness on it anywhere.
No, no! There are two specks, far to the north. Two black specks, blotting the shining red-and-whiteness of the heavens. They are coming closer, growing larger – and my heart is tightening into a knot of terror in my breast!
Birds!
Later: It is over. It all happened very quickly after that. They came and flew low and circled over Ronnie’s head. I was scrambling down toward him as they came. I do not know what I thought I could even try to do; I knew he would believe nothing that I said.
I was in time to see his face as they circled above him. To see its first puzzled look fade and turn into a smile. A very gentle, very boyish and trusting smile.
“Two of you this time, you little beggars! What is it? Do you want me to go back – to her?”
For a little while he lay watching their weird weaving, the pattern that their black wings seemed to be making in the air above him. And then slowly, his eyes still fixed upon them, he rose – like a man entranced, not moving by his own volition.
He turned back – back the way we had come.
I showed myself then. I sprang up and called to him – loudly, desperately, in anguish.
“Ronnie! Ronnie!”
He hesitated. He turned again, and looked at me, and in his eyes there was a strange struggle – bewilderment and friendliness and recognition, all fighting with a strange charm that moved him as if he had been an automaton, no longer in control of his own limbs.
I called him again: “Ronnie – Ronnie!”
He took an uncertain step toward me; then another and another. He said, “Johnny – old John!”
And then the birds swooped. With a terrible, shrill cry of rage one of them leapt at me, her long bright beak aiming at my eyes. I saw hers as she came, and knew them, for all their red fierceness – the eyes of Aretoúla!
Then my hands were over my face, and I could feel her sav age beak tearing them, biting through muscle and flesh and bone. Could feel her claws slashing at my chest like knives, while her great wings beat my shoulders and head.
I heard Ronnie give a cry of horror – and then another cry, a long-drawn, horrible cry of pain. And knew that the other bird’s swoop had taken him.
I forgot my own danger. I lowered one hand and looked.
She had him by the chest and throat. Her long claws held him by his shirt-front, and by the flesh beneath it, and her beak was in his throat. He was reeling, staggering, trying to fight her off, but that beak was sawing ever deeper . . .
And then I heard another shriek, the most terrible of all. The fiercest sound of rage and hate, surely, that ever came out of any throat, human or beast’s or demon’s.
The bird that had been attacking me had left me. Had launched herself through the air, a black, whirling missile, straight for the other’s throat!
Her beak closed just beneath that other beak, which was set in Ronnie’s throat; sank deep into the black feathers just below that savage, red-eyed little head. And the bird let go of Ronnie. He staggered back, blood streaming from his throat and chest, and fell.
I ran to him. I worked to staunch his wounds while the battle raged above us.
And not only above us. Over the ledge and over the heights above it they fought, sometimes breaking apart and staring at each other, red-eyed, and then springing back upon each other, with mad, savage cries. Sometimes they fought almost over our heads, so that bloody feathers fell on us and I covered Ronnie’s face and my own eyes; and sometimes they flew so far away, a whirling, battling black ball of awful, self-destroying oneness, that we lost sight of them, and hoped that they were gone.
But always they came back. Always we heard those shrill, deadly cries again, saw the beating of those black, threshing wings.
They whirled in battle above the depths below the ledge, shrieking and biting, clawing and tearing, pounding each other with their wings.
And there one of them fell. Sank down slowly, softly, like a dropped ball of down, into the depths below.
The other staggered in the air, then turned and flew back toward us, its wide wings black against the shining heavens.
I crouched over Ronnie, shielding his head with my body, peeping through the fingers that I held before my own face.
Which had won – which?
The bird reached the ledge. Swung in the air six feet above us. I could see its head quite clearly against the darkness of the great, outspread wings. And the reddish-black little eyes were glazed and queerly glassy; no longer menacing. Its beak was red – red as the wounds that covered its body.
It looked down once, as if seeking something it could not find – Ronnie’s face, that my body hid. And then its eyes closed and it fell.
But as it struck the earth it trembled and spread out as water spreads. It quivered and changed and grew in a strange, transforming convulsion. And then, where the dying sun had glistened in a bird’s black feathers, it glistened on a woman’s black hair. Aretoúla lay there, pale and torn and bloody, her mouth redder than the wounds that disfigured her lovely face.
With a great cry Ronnie tore himself away from me. He ran to her. And as he came she lifted slim, dripping fingers and tried to wipe the blood away from her mouth. She seemed ashamed.
When he dropped to his knees beside her she smiled at him, and once again her mouth was lovely and tender, a woman’s mouth.
“I – loved you, Ronnie. I could not let her kill you – when the moment came. I was
– more woman than striga.”
He could only gasp, “Aretoúla – Aretoúla!” and hold her close. He could not understand.
I came to them, and she looked up at me. “Is – my mouth all right now, Johnny? Not – ugly? I would like him to remember me as – beautiful. As beautiful as – any of your English girls.”
I knelt and wiped the last of her grandmother’s blood from her mouth. Ronnie kissed her, sobbing. His grief-stricken eyes were dazed.
She said gently, explaining, “My grandmother would have killed you, Ronnie. She did kill Bert. And now I have killed her – for you. And I – am dying. But there is a village – yonder – beyond that peak – to the west.” She tried to raise her hand, but could not. I had to raise it; with a great effort she pointed the shaking fingers.
“They will – hide you there. From the Germans. They are – clean. No strigas – there. And no – woman who will love you as much as – I—” And then the words stopped, and the breath rattled in her throat. She never spoke again.
She has been dead since moonrise. Ronnie and I have dug her grave. We will not go down into the abyss and try to find the other; the birds of prey, her kin, may clean her bones. We will rest here tonight, and in the morning we will go on. To the village. To another day.
THANA NIVEAU
White Roses, Bloody Silk
THANA NIVEAU LIVES IN the Victorian seaside town of Clevedon, where she shares her life with fellow writer John Llewellyn Probert in a Gothic library filled with arcane books and curiosities.
This is her second appearance in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Other stories have appeared in Magic: An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane, Terror Tales of the Cotswolds, The Seventh Black Book of Horror, The Eighth Black Book of Horror, The Ninth Black Book of Horror, Death Rattles, Delicate Toxins and the charity anthology Never Again, in addition to the final issue of Necrotic Tissue.
She is currently working on a short story collection to be titled From Hell to Eternity.
“‘White Roses, Bloody Silk’ was written for the Hanns Heinz Ewers tribute anthology Delicate Toxins,” explains the author. “A controversial figure, Ewers was fascinated by themes of obsession, transformation, decadence and blood.
“I enjoyed his weird fiction and really wanted to write something Gothic and decadent myself. I’m also a huge fan of the Italian giallo films of the 1970s and there’s nothing more Gothic or decadent than those Grand Guignol sex-and-murder extravaganzas with their strange, evocative titles.
“A single image came to me – that of a girl clutching a bunch of roses in her bleeding hands. I didn’t know how or why she had come to be in that situation, but I knew that it wasn’t entirely unpleasant for her.
“I hit on the idea of writing her into a Victorian giallo and it all fell into place. Black Static reviewer Peter Tennant likened it to ‘a P. G. Wodehouse story filtered through the lens of Hammer Horror’.”
“AND WHO IS your German guest, Elizabeth dear,” asked Harriet Dalrymple, narrowing her small piggish eyes at the hand-written list of names, “Wilhelm – Cross, is it?”
Frédérique Cheniere giggled from behind a cloud of face powder at the dressing table. “I believe they pronounce it Krauss,” she offered in heavily accented French, “and I hear he is quite the roué!”
Cornelia Myler nodded in enthusiastic agreement. “Yes, a positive scoundrel! Why ever did you invite him?”
Their hostess, Lady Elizabeth Rossiter, continued to admire herself in the cheval mirror, turning this way and that as she kept her friends in suspense. At last she finished smoothing down the heavy brocade gown and turned to face them, her crinoline swinging round her like a bell. “He was once a doctor,” she said, her birdlike features producing a malicious grin, “but a scandal with a certain lady patient led to his disgrace and exile.”
“I hear she was the wife of an archduke,” said Cornelia. “Or whatever they call it over there.” She waved her hand dismissively. Gossip was always more important than facts.
Frédérique sniffed. “No, she was only the wife of a clergyman,” she corrected, “but he was – how do you say? – ex-communicated. And later the church, it burned down.”
“It did,” Cornelia was quick to confirm, as though she’d seen it with her own eyes. She added in a scandalised whisper, “They say he’s in league with the Devil.”
Harriet gasped and fluttered a hand to the ample bosom straining beneath the confines of her apricot gown.
“I have it on good authority,” said Lady Elizabeth, “that when his lodgings were searched they found the skulls of a dozen maidens in a velvet hatbox beside his bed.”
“Oui! And hidden inside a big black piano, he kept . . . other parts.”
Harriet’s face was contorted with both horror and fascination. “Good heavens! And you have invited this man to dine with us? And stay the weekend? Elizabeth, are you quite mad?”
Frédérique laughed and Cornelia immediately joined in with her.
“Now, now,” Elizabeth said, placing a hand on Harriet’s meaty arm. “My dear, you’ll work yourself into a state. Who knows what the truth of it is? But I find the prospect of his company rather stimulating. His manners are impeccable after all even if he is a bit . . . eccentric.”
“You haven’t paired him with my Jane for dinner, have you?” Harriet asked suddenly. “The child’s only sixteen and—”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Of course not, dear. Nor you,” she hastened to add, seeing Frédérique’s worried expression. “I’ve put him between Aunt Florence and me. That grizzled old harridan is in no state to complain and she’s lucky George and I don’t keep her locked in her room all weekend. His little maid can amuse him if he finds Florence too tiresome.”
Cornelia’s head jerked up immediately, like an animal scenting prey. “Maid?”
“Oh! I quite forgot to tell you. He travels with a female valet. Never lets her out of his sight and he won’t allow anyone else to serve him.”
“Goodness me,” Cornelia said archly. “Where does she sleep – on the floor at the foot of his bed?”
They all giggled at the thought and fancied themselves quite decadent.
Elizabeth dabbed her throat with scent and grinned at the others. “I’ve given him the room at the end of the east wing. It has an antechamber and Perkins was just able to fit a small bed in for the maid.”
Frédérique’s eyes glittered as she fingered the black velvet choker at her throat, her mischievous thoughts obvious to everyone.
“Well, perhaps they do things differently in Germany,” Harriet conceded.
Cornelia grinned. “He might at least make some concession to decency by disguising her as a boy!”
There came a soft knock at the door and the ladies stifled their giggling as Elizabeth called out “Yes?”
A dull-eyed girl shuffled inside and stood staring sullenly at the floor.
Harriet swooped down on her at once. “Jane darling, I thought we agreed you looked best in the yellow silk! This green is far too sombre for you. I wonder you even brought it!”
“I don’t feel very well,” Jane moaned, clutching her stomach.
“You’ll feel much better out of that dreary green,” Harriet insisted. “Now come along and let’s find you a nice summery frock.”
The remaining three rolled their eyes as the garrulous woman dragged her daughter off down the corridor, prattling incessantly.
Wilhelm Krauss was a man of imposing physique and imperious countenance. His dark hair was combed back and his temples and sideboards were shot through with silver. His eyes were deep pools of black that seemed to reflect no light. He rose from his chair by the fire as three of the ladies entered the library with a rustle of skirts.
“What did I tell you, Krauss?” said Lord George Rossiter, clapping his companion on the shoulder with a hearty laugh. “I believe they call it ‘fashionably late’.”
“George!” Elizabeth scolded, affecting a debutante’s po
ut that was dramatically at odds with her ageing features.
Captain Charles Myler and James Dalrymple glanced up from a game of chess in the corner. Myler aimed a polite smile at Cornelia and immediately returned his attention to the game while Dalrymple didn’t seem particularly bothered by the absence of his own wife and daughter.
“Good evening, my lady,” Krauss said with a sharp little bow to Elizabeth. “I want to thank you for your generosity this weekend. I am aware that my company is unwelcome in certain circles.”
Elizabeth inclined her head graciously, ignoring his indiscretion despite the flutter it provoked in her friends. “You are indeed very welcome, Mr Krauss,” she said, unable to avoid glancing at the maid who stood like a ghost behind him, her hands folded demurely.
Cornelia and Frédérique were sizing her up too. The girl was certainly fetching – a pretty, petite creature with delicate features and wide blue eyes. Her hair was pinned beneath a scrap of lace and she wore a white pinafore over a plain black uniform.
Elizabeth seated herself on the chintz-covered sofa opposite the fireplace and Krauss resumed his seat in the chair beside it. Cornelia and Frédérique arranged themselves on the sofa next to their friend. They each accepted glasses of sherry from the butler in turn.
“I do hope you are enjoying your visit to England,” Elizabeth said.
“I find your countryside most invigorating,” Krauss replied, his voice deep and resonant. “And you have a most impressive estate. Exquisitely furnished. However, I am not merely visiting.”
The lady had just raised her glass to her lips. “Oh?”
“Yes, I intend to make my home here. There is nothing for me back in Germany.”
The ladies exchanged glances, recalling their conversation upstairs.
“How delightful,” Elizabeth said. “Then perhaps we shall be seeing more of you.”
He smiled slyly. “Perhaps you shall.” As he drained his sherry glass the maid took it from him and set it on the little mahogany table beside him. The butler was quick to follow with his tray, collecting the glass and hovering beside the maid until Krauss waved him away.
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