Unspeakable

by Graham Masterton

  "In the morning the lonely king presented the daughter with the silver comb, and she was so furious that she made smash of every dish on the breakfast table-smash! smash! smash!She said, 'You shall not have me unless you keep safe these scissors and give them back to me in the morning.'

  "Again that night the lonely king found that the scissors had disappeared out of his pocket.Boo-hoo, boohoo. But again the red-haired man put on his dark cloak and his slippery shoes and followed the daughter to the seashore, and rowed out to the island. He caught the scissors with the tip of his sword just as the giant tossed them into his treasure chest, and took them back to the lonely king. The next day the daughter was so angry that she smashed every dish on the breakfast table and all the chairs as well-smash! crash! smash! crash!-and threw a whole box of Cheerios out of the window.

  "On the third day she said to the lonely king, 'Very well I will marry you in the morning if you bring me the last lips I kiss tonight.' The lonely king thought that this was probably hopeless, but agreed to try. That night the red-haired man put on his dark cloak and his slippery shoes and followed her down to the seashore, and across to the giant's island. The daughter said to the giant, 'Kiss me, to make sure that your lips are the last lips I kiss tonight.'

  "Once the daughter had rowed back to the mainland, the red-haired man took out his sword of white light and with one blow he cut off the giant's head-whackkk!He dropped the head in a sack and carried it back to the lonely king, who stored it under his bed.

  "The next morning the daughter said, 'I don't suppose you have the last lips that I kissed last night.' But the lonely king tossed the giant's head onto the breakfast table and said, 'There they are, and weren't they ugly enough?' The daughter smashed every dish on the table-smash! smash! smash!-and threw a plateful of fried eggs and the cat out of the window. But she had given her word, and she had to marry him.

  "The red-haired man said, 'Take her out, and strap her to two trees, and beat her with branches, because she has six devils in her.' And that is what he did, and when he beat her, great balls of fire came roaring out of her mouth. But when the fire was gone, she was the sweetest girl that you could ever have met; then he let her loose, and they were married.

  "The lonely king said to the red-haired man, 'I must pay you for this.' But the red-haired man said, 'You already have. I was the man in the coffin, lying dead and unburied, and you paid for my funeral, and this was the only way I could thank you.' "

  Daisy stared at Holly and said, "Wow. Seriously spooky."

  Mickey's Gift

  Later, in the living room, with her shoes off and her feet tucked under her, Holly said, "That was some story."

  "That was the edited version. The way my grandmother told it, it went on all night, with giants jumping through prison bars and getting themselves cut in half, and mad goblins, and talking fish, and God knows what else."

  "Daisy adored it. You're really good with her."

  "I have a little girl of my own someplace. About a year older than Daisy."

  "I didn't know that you and Sandy had a daughter."

  "We didn't. She was somebody else's. That was the reason Sandy and me split up. Well,oneof the reasons we split up."

  "I'm sorry. Don't you ever get to see her? Your daughter, I mean?"

  Mickey shook his head. "Her mother and I had what you might call a tempestuous relationship. Screaming, fighting, smashed dishes."

  "Boxes of Cheerios out of the window?"

  "Oh, yes. Cats and fried eggs too. In the end I thought it was better if I graciously bowed out."

  "I didn't mean to pry."

  "No, forget it. I don't think about it anymore."

  "Ever thought of marrying again?"

  "Got to find the right woman. Hair like a raven's wing, cheeks as white as snow, lips as red as holly berries. Here ," he said, passing over the shiny gold box with the silver bow. "Why don't you open your birthday present?"

  "All right," Holly said, and untied the ribbon. She carefully took off the paper, opened the box, and folded back the turquoise tissue paper. She lifted out a porcelain doll over fifteen inches tall, dressed like Cinderella in white lace and gold, with glass slippers and a sparkly tiara. The doll's face was almost ridiculously sweet, with heart-shaped, hand-painted lips and bright green eyes. "I'm stunned," said Holly, and she was.

  "I hope it wasn't a stupid thing to buy you. It was just well, I was stopped in traffic at the corner of Ninth and Multnomah and I saw it in KB's window. Staring at me. For some reason, I don't know, I just thought of you."

  She shook her head and said, "It must have cost you a fortune."

  "Police discount."

  "She's beautiful. I don't know what to say." Nobody had given Holly a doll since she was seven years old. After she had lost her hearing, her relatives had always given her picture books for her birthday presents, and boxes of paints and raffia-weaving sets, as if she needed occupational therapy. As if she were no longer a pretty and playful young girl but a retard.

  Mickey volunteered, "They had a Prince Charming doll, too, but he looked as if he batted for both sides."

  "Daisy's going to be so jealous. Look, her glass slippers come off. And look at her tiny earrings!"

  Mickey watched her with a lopsided smile. "Cinderella," he said. "Just like you. Frumpy welfare worker by day, ravishing princess by night."

  Holly stopped tweaking Cinderella's bright blond hair. There was an expression in his eyes which she couldn't quite interpret. Amusement, partly. And flirtation too. Butcalculationas well-as if he were planning something mischievous that included her. "All you have to do is wave that magic wand," he told her.

  "Yes but what happens when the clock strikes twelve and I go back to being a frumpy welfare worker again?"

  "You're still the same person, aren't you? Under the frump."

  She laid Cinderella back in her box and folded the tissue paper over her.

  Mickey sat forward. "You're not just pretending that you like it?"

  "Of course not. She's wonderful."

  "I kept the receipt."

  "Don't be silly. Iloveher."

  "I saw an apron and I nearly bought that. It had printed on the front:You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet."

  She laughed and gave him a playful slap on the arm. She couldn't think of anybody else who would have had the nerve to say that to her. He snatched hold of her wrist and said, "Hey I could arrest you for that. Assault and battery."

  There was one of those moments when the clock hesitates, as if it can't decide if it ought to carry on ticking. Then he let go of her and reached for his wine-glass. "Listen I have to go. It's an early call in the morning."

  At the front door he gently held her elbow and kissed her on the lips. "Thanks for this evening. Good food, beautiful family. What more could a guy ask for?"

  "I'll see you in court tomorrow."

  "Sure," he said, and went downstairs, raising one hand behind him in casual salute. Holly went back into her apartment and closed the door. She stood for a long time in the middle of the living room, her fingertips pressed against her mouth, wondering what she ought to be feeling.

  Omen

  She had a dark and knotty dream that night-a dream in which she was tangled up in nets and snares, and her struggles alerted the attention of something terrible. It lurched and fluttered unsteadily toward her: something black, something utterly inhuman, something that made the nets tremble and sway.

  At seven-thirty the next morning, when she let up the primrose-yellow blind in her bedroom window, the sun was eating away at the upper slopes of Mount Hood. The mountain looked remote and enigmatic today, like the unfinished pyramid on the back of a dollar bill, and the sun looked like its mysterious shining eye.

  She felt it was an omen. But an omen ofwhat,she couldn't even begin to imagine.

  Daisy sat in front of Holly's dressing-table mirror, screwing and unscrewing her lipsticks while Holly braided her hair.

  "IlikeUncle Mick
ey," Daisy declared. "Can he come around for supper again tonight?"

  "I don't think so, pumpkin. He's very busy."

  "But he said he'd tell me another story, about a mermaid. I liked the story about the lonely king and the dark cloak and the slippery shoes. I wishIhad slippery shoes."

  "Well, if I see him today, I'll ask him."

  "He has a cell phone. He gave me the number in case I ever needed him."

  Holly was having difficulty with Daisy's braids. For some reason she couldn't remember whether it was right over left or left over right. She had managed to plait only about two or three inches and she simply couldn't do more. It was like seeing a familiar face and completely forgetting the person's name.

  She tried again, but all she succeeded in doing was tying Daisy's hair into a knot. She pulled it free and Daisy squealed and said,"Ow!That hurt!"

  "I'm sorry . I think you'll just have to go to school with ribbons in your hair."

  "I don't want ribbons! I don't like ribbons: They're babyish!"

  "Listen, I don't have time to do your braids. I have to be in court at eight-thirty."

  "I'm not having ribbons!"

  "All right, then, don't have ribbons! If you didn't have your hair so long, you wouldn't have to tie it up at all!"

  "Barbie has long hair! Barbie always has long hair!"

  Holly tossed the comb onto the kitchen table.Screw Barbie,she thought. She felt so strange, so disoriented, that she had to go through to the living room and stand by the window and take deep, steadying breaths.

  Object of Desire

  The court buildings were crowded and noisy, with people rushing in all directions like an episode ofHill Street Blues. A senior official in Portland's planning department had been accused of accepting a 5-series BMW and a three-week vacation on Oahu from a wealthy local developer, and the marble hallways echoed with desperate questions from reporters and the clattering of feet.

  Doug was waiting for Holly outside the juvenile division, along with a bespectacled young attorney with a Multnomah Bar Association necktie and a raging red zit on his nose.

  "You know Ron Williams, don't you?" said Doug.

  "Sure. How are you doing, Ron?"

  "Fine, thanks. I don't think you're going to have any problems at all with this one. Dr. Sokol sent over all the necessary medical files and X-rays first thing this morning. And Judge Yelland is presiding. She doesn't believe that parents should evenfrownat their children, let alone jump on them."

  "What time are we scheduled for?"

  "There's only two more applications before ours. The Thompson case could go on a while; kid had his head squeezed in a workshop vise, but the father says it was a party game that went wrong. You know the game: You crush some kid's head flat and then everybody else has to guess who they are." He sniffed and checked his watch. "Say, forty-five minutes."

  "Okay, I think I'll go find myself a coffee."

  As she was going back down to the lobby, she met George Greyeyes coming up. "George I didn't know you were going to be here."

  George was wearing a smart navy blazer and smelled of Tommy Hilfiger. "I want to keep an eye on this one, that's all. I don't want National Indian Child Welfare Association looking negligent in any respect nor the Children's Welfare Department, either."

  "George, this is only going to be a formality."

  "Sure. But you know me: I don't like surprises. The last time the Indians took the white men at their word, they lost ninety percent of Oregon."

  They went downstairs to the coffee shop and took a table in the corner. On the other side of the room, four young lawyers and a woman paralegal were huddled over a heap of papers, obviously trying to hammer out a divorce settlement before their case came up in front of a judge.

  "-maybe we can cut you some slack on the marital home. Maybe sixty-five, thirty-five. But that's as far as we can go."

  "What about the cabin?"

  "Same deal."

  "My client won't accept that. She wants the cabin one hundred percent. What does he think he's going to do,time-share?"

  George said, "We need to learn some lessons from this Daniel business. Maybe we need to set up a regular interface between your people and my people, so that we can share any kind of suspicion about a child at risk, any kind of gut feeling, whether it's medical or cultural, whether it's substantiated by prima facie evidence or not. I mean, let's get in therebeforeit happens, not after."

  Holly said, "Sure." She was interested in what George had to say, but she knew that it would do very little good. All the interfaces in the world would never stop a parent from staggering home, drunk or high or simply angry, and thrashing a defenseless child. For some reason she couldn't take her attention away from the conversation on the other side of the coffee shop.

  One of the lawyers was saying, "It's seriously going to disorient the kids, isn't it, if they spend the first week in August with mom and her partner and then the second week in August with dad and whatever bit of fancy goods dad has decided to bring along with him, both in the same vacation environment? I mean, we're not just talking moral values here; we're talking bedroom farce."

  "Then maybe they should sell the cabin and split the proceeds."

  "No way. That cabin is an integral part of the children's recreational life. My client thinks that they've lost enough already, losing their father. She doesn't want to stunt their emotional development too."

  "Jesus. I didn't even have a treehouse when I was a kid, and do I look stunted?"

  Two of the lawyers and the paralegal stood up and left the coffee shop, obviously off to consult with their client. The two remaining lawyers sprawled at their table, one of them breaking the corners off cookies and nibbling them like a chipmunk.

  George said, "It isn't easy for me to explain how important the spirits still are to most Native Americans. Spirits of water, spirits of wind, spirits of rocks and trees. In some ways they're more important than they ever were, because they're the only link we have left with the people we once used to be, and the country that once used to be ours."

  One of the lawyers nudged his friend. "That Indian guy, do you know him?"

  "I've seen him a couple of times. Big Chief In-Tray, from the Native American Children's Society, or something like that. Looks like a noble savage, but he's ani-dotter and at-crosser."

  "How about the tail?"

  "Yeah I was checking her out. I think she works for Children's Welfare. Great gazongas. That really lights my fire, you know: a tailored suit and great gazongas. Nice legs too. Seriously nice legs."

  "Hey what do you think? She'd be great for one of the old man's parties, wouldn't she? I mean, take a look at those lips. She looks like she's permanently puckering up to give you a blow job."

  "Her?Are you shitting me?"

  "No, it'd be a real challenge, wouldn't it, someone like that?"

  The second lawyer grinned in disbelief and shook his head.

  "No, I mean it. What a challenge. I'll tell you what I'm going to do: I'm going to find out who she is. I mean, that would be a gas, wouldn't it? A Children's Welfare officer for one of the old man's parties?"

  George touched her arm. "Holly Holly, you're not listening to me."

  "Sorry, George. Guess I got a little distracted."

  "Lipreading again? Remember it's a gift, Holly. Not a right."

  "I know, George. Sorry. What were you saying about this interface?"

  While George went to the bathroom, Holly made a performance of leafing through her court papers, but every now and then she glanced across at the two lawyers to try to work out what they were saying. She had often picked up compliments before, and sometimes she had picked up crude remarks about her figure, and once she had lip-read an assistant district attorney calling her "a goddamned nit-picking nuisance with an ego as big as her tits," but what did these two mean when they talked about "a challenge"? And what were "the old man's parties"?

  The cookie-nibbling lawyer said emphaticall
y, "I can ask. If not, -- will know who she is." He was swallowing at the time, and Holly couldn't quite catch the name.

  "Yeah, you're right," agreed the other one. "He works with Children's Welfare, doesn't he?"

  The cookie-nibbler nodded a few times and then started talking about his new Cadillac Escalade.

  George came back, smelling of industrial soap. "Are you all right?" he asked her.