“Linette.”
From the hallway came a dull crash, as though something had fallen down the stairs. He fled the room while the fairy music ground on behind him.
In the hall he stopped, panting. The insects moved slowly through the air, brushing against his face with their cool wings. He could still hear the music, although now it seemed another voice had joined his own, chanting words he couldn’t understand. As he listened he realized this voice did not come from the speakers behind him but from somewhere else—from down the corridor, where he could now see a dark shape moving within one of the windows overlooking the lawn.
“Linette,” he whispered.
He began to walk, heedless of the tiny things that writhed beneath his bare feet. For some reason he still couldn’t make out the figure waiting at the end of the hallway: the closer he came to it the more insubstantial it seemed, the more difficult it was to see through the cloud of winged creatures that surrounded his face. Then his foot brushed against something heavy and soft. Dazed, he shook his head and glanced down. After a moment he stooped to see what lay there.
It was the kinkajou. Curled to form a perfect circle, its paws drawn protectively about its elfin face. When he stroked it he could feel the tightness beneath the soft fur, the small legs and long tail already stiff.
“Linette,” he said again; but this time the name was cut off as Lie staggered to his feet. The kinkajou slid with a gentle thump to the floor.
At the end of the hallway he could see it, quite clearly now, its huge head weaving back and forth as it chanted a wordless monotone. Behind it a slender figure crouched in a pool of pale blue cloth and moaned softly.
“Leave her,” Lie choked; but he knew it couldn’t hear him. He started to turn, to run the other way back to his bedroom. He tripped once and with a cry kicked aside the kinkajou. Behind him the low moaning had stopped, although he could still hear that glottal voice humming to itself. He stumbled on for another few feet; and then he made the mistake of looking back.
The curved staircase was darker than Haley remembered. Halfway up she nearly fell when she stepped on a glass. It shattered beneath her foot; she felt a soft prick where a shard cut her ankle. Kicking it aside, she went more carefully, holding her breath as she tried to hear anything above that music. Surely the grandmother at least would be about? She paused where the staircase turned, reaching to wipe the blood from her ankle, then with one hand on the paneled wall crept up the next few steps.
That was where she found Gram. At the curve in the stairwell light spilled from the top of the hallway. Something was sprawled across the steps, a filigree of white etched across her face. Beneath Haley’s foot something cracked. When she put her hand down she felt the rounded corner of a pair of eyeglasses, the jagged spar where she had broken them.
“Gram,” the girl whispered.
She had never seen anyone dead before. One arm flung up and backwards, as though it had stuck to the wall as she fell; her dress raked above her knees so that Haley could see where the blood had pooled onto the next riser, like a shadowy footstep. Her eyes were closed but her mouth was half-open, so that the girl could see how her false teeth had come loose and hung above her lower lip. In the breathless air of the passageway she had a heavy sickly odor, like dead carnations. Haley gagged and leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes and moaning softly.
But she couldn’t stay like that. And she couldn’t leave, not with Linette up there somewhere; even if that horrible figure was waiting for her. It was crazy: through her mind raced all the movies she had ever seen that were just like this, some idiot kid going up a dark stairway or into the basement where the killer waited, and the audience shrieking No! but still she couldn’t go back.
The hardest part was stepping over the corpse, trying not to actually touch it. She had to stretch across three steps, and then she almost fell but scrabbled frantically at the wall until she caught her balance. After that she ran the rest of the way until she reached the top.
Before her stretched the hallway. It seemed to be lit by some kind of moving light, like a strobe or mirror ball; but then she realized that was because of all the moths bashing against the myriad lamps strung across the ceiling. She took a step, her heart thudding so hard she thought she might faint. There was the doorway to Lie Vagal’s bedroom; there all the open windows, and beside them the paintings.
She walked on tiptoe, her sneakers melting into the thick carpeting. At the open doorway she stopped, her breath catching in her throat. But when she looked inside there was no one there. A cigarette burned in an ashtray next to the bed. By the door Lie Vagal’s stereo blinked with tiny red and green lights. The music went on, a ringing music like a calliope or glass harp. She continued down the hall.
She passed the first window, then a painting; then another window and another painting. She didn’t know what made her stop to look at this one; but when she did her hands grew icy despite the cloying heat.
The picture was empty. A little brass plate at the bottom of the frame read The Snow Queen; but the soft wash of watercolors showed only pale blue ice, a sickle moon like a tear on the heavy paper. Stumbling, she turned to look at the frame behind her. La Belle et La Bête, it read: an old photograph, a film still, but where two figures had stood beneath an ornate candelabra there was only a whitish blur, as though the negative had been damaged.
She went to the next picture, and the next. They were all the same. Each landscape was empty, as though waiting for the artist to carefully place the principals between glass mountain and glass coffin, silver slippers and seven-league boots. From one to the other Haley paced, never stopping except to pause momentarily before those skeletal frames.
And now she saw that she was coming to the end of the corridor. There on the right was the window where she had seen that ghastly figure; and there beneath it, crouched on the floor like some immense animal or fallen beam, was a hulking shadow. Its head and shoulders were bent as though it fed upon something. She could hear it, a sound like a kitten lapping, so loud that it drowned out even the muted wail of Lie Vagal’s music.
She stopped, one hand touching the windowsill beside her. A few yards ahead of her the creature grunted and hissed; and now she could see that there was something pinned beneath it. At first she thought it was the kinkajou. She was stepping backwards, starting to turn to run, when very slowly the great creature lifted its head to gaze at her.
It was the same tallowy face she had glimpsed in the window. Its mouth was open so that she could see its teeth, pointed and dulled like a dog’s, and the damp smear across its chin. It seemed to have no eyes, only huge ruined holes where they once had been; and above them stretched an unbroken ridge of black where its eyebrows grew straight and thick as quills. As she stared it moved its hands, huge clumsy hands like a clutch of rotting fruit. Beneath it she could glimpse a white face, and dark hair like a scarf fluttering above where her throat had been torn out.
“Linette!”
Haley heard her own voice screaming. Even much later after the ambulances came she could still hear her friend’s name; and another sound that drowned out the sirens: a man singing, wailing almost, crying for his daughter.
Haley started school several weeks late. Her parents decided not to send her to Fox Lane after all, but to a parochial school in Goldens Bridge. She didn’t know anyone there and at first didn’t care to, but her status as a sort-of celebrity was hard to shake. Her parents had refused to allow Haley to appear on television, but Aurora Dawn had shown up nightly for a good three weeks, pathetically eager to talk about her daughter’s murder and Lie Vagal’s apparent suicide. She mentioned Haley’s name every time.
The nuns and lay people who taught at the high school were gentle and understanding. Counselors had coached the other students in how to behave with someone who had undergone a trauma like that, seeing her best friend murdered and horribly mutilated by the man who turned out to be her father. There was the usual talk about sa
tanic influences in rock music, and Lie Vagal’s posthumous career actually was quite promising. Haley herself gradually grew to like her new place in the adolescent scheme of things, half-martyr and half witch. She even tried out for the school play, and got a small part in it; but that wasn’t until spring.
Elizabeth Hand fell in love with rock and roll when she was six years old and first heard the Beatles’ “She Loves You” on a NYC AM radio station. As a teenager in the 1970s, she was a participant observer in the nascent punk scenes in New York and Washington, D.C. Her award-winning novels and short stories have featured characters and bands inspired by Syd Barrett, Joey Ramone, Richard Thompson, the Velvet Underground, Mayhem, Gorgoroth, Brian Wilson, Elvis Presley, and Amy Winehouse, among others. She divides her time between the Maine coast and North London, and still owns every vinyl single and LP she ever bought. Her most recent books are Available Dark, Radiant Days, a newly revised edition of her 1997 novel Glimmering, and the collection Errantry: Strange Stories, all published in 2012.
We Love Lydia Love
Bradley Denton
She knows me, and she’s happy, and she’s not asking how or why. She’s clutching me so tight that I can’t keep my balance, and my shoulder collides with the open door. The door is heavy, dark wood with a circular stained-glass eye set into it. The eye, as blue as the spring sky, is staring at me as if it knows I’m a fraud.
From down the hill comes the sound of the car that brought me, winding its way back through the live oaks and cedars to Texas 27. Daniels didn’t even stay long enough to say hello to his number-one recording artist. He said he’d leave the greetings up to me and the Christopher chip.
Stroke her neck. She likes that.
Yes. She’s burying her face in my shoulder, biting, crying. Her skin is warm, and she tastes salty. She says something, but her mouth is full of my shirt. Her hair smells of cinnamon.
“Lydia,” I say. My voice isn’t exactly like Christopher’s, but CCA has fixed me so that it’s close enough. She shouldn’t notice, but if she does, I’m to say that the plane crash injured my throat. “I tried to get a message to you, but the village was cut off, and I was burned, and my leg was broken—”
Not so much. We’re the stoic type.
The whisper sounds like it’s coming from my back teeth. I’ve been listening to it for two weeks, but that wasn’t long enough for me to get used to it. I still flinch. I told Daniels that I needed more time, but he said Lydia would be so glad to see me that she wouldn’t notice any tics or twitches. And by the time she settles back into a routine life with me—with Christopher—I’ll be so used to the chip that it’ll be as if it’s the voice of my own conscience. So says Daniels. I’m not convinced, but I’ll do my best. Not just for my sake, but for Lydia’s. She needs to finish her affair with Christopher so she can move on. The world is waiting for her new songs.
And as a bonus, they’ll get mine. Willie Todd’s, I mean. Not Christopher Jennings’. Christopher Jennings is dead.
You are Christopher.
Right. I know.
She’s looking at our eyes. She thinks we’re distracted, and she wants our attention. Her lips are moist. Kiss her.
You bet. I’ll concentrate on being Christopher.
Being Christopher means that Lydia and I have been apart for ten months. She has thought me dead, but here I am. She kisses me hard enough to make my mouth hurt. Her face is wet from crying, and she breathes in sobs. The videos make her look seven feet tall, but she’s no more than five-four. Otherwise, she is as she appears on the tube. Her hair is long, thick, and red. Her eyes are green. Her skin is the color of ivory. Her lips are so full that she always seems to be pouting. I would think she was beautiful even if I hadn’t admired her for so long.
I meaning me. Willie.
You are Christopher.
To Lydia I’ll be Christopher. But to myself I can be Willie.
You are Christopher.
“I didn’t believe it when Daniels called,” Lydia says. She’s still sobbing. “I thought he was mindfucking me like he usually does.”
Say “That son of a bitch.” We hate Danny Daniels.
“That son of a bitch.” It seems ungrateful, considering that Daniels has just now returned us to her.
She’s trembling. Hold her tighter.
A moment ago she was crushing me, but now she seems so fragile that I’m afraid I’ll hurt her. It’s as if she’s two different women.
And why not? I’m two different men.
Carry her to the bedroom. When she gets all soft and girly like this, she wants us to take charge. You’ll know when she’s tired of it.
She weighs nothing. I carry her into the big limestone house, leaving the June heat for cool air that makes me shiver. When I kick the door shut I see that the stained-glass eye is staring at me on this side too. I turn away from it and go through the tiled foyer into the huge front room with the twenty-foot ceiling, the picture windows, the fireplace, the expensive AV components, and the plush couches.
No. Not in here. When she was a child, she went to her bedroom to feel safe. So take her to the bedroom. It’s down the long hall, third door on the right.
I know where it is, and I’ve already changed direction. But the chip’s yammering makes me stumble, and Lydia’s head bumps against the wall. She yelps.
“Jesus, I’m sorry,” I say, and think of an excuse. “My leg’s still not right.”
“I know,” Lydia says. “I know they hurt you.”
Who are “they,” I wonder? There was a plane crash, and—in this new version of Christopher’s life—a village. A war was being fought in the ice and snow around the village, but all of my injuries were from the crash. The villagers did their best for me, but there was no way to get me out until I’d healed, and no communication with the rest of the world. The soldiers had cut the telecom lines and confiscated the radios, but had then become too busy fighting each other to do anything more to the village. So if the soldiers didn’t hurt me, and the villagers didn’t hurt me, who are “they”?
There is a “they” in Willie’s story, but while what they did to me was painful, they did it with my consent. Getting my album recorded and released is worth some pain. It’s also worth being Christopher for a while. And it’s for damn sure worth having Lydia Love in my arms.
On the bed. Pin her wrists over her head.
That seems a little rough for a tender homecoming, but I remember that the Christopher chip is my conscience. I let my conscience be my guide.
I still worry that she’ll know I’m not him, but it turns out all right. If there’s a difference between the new Christopher and the old one, she doesn’t seem to be aware of it. The chip tells me a few things that she likes, but most of the time it’s silent. I guess that at some point, sex takes control away from its participants—even from Lydia Love and a computer chip—and instructions aren’t necessary.
She’s sweet.
And here I am deceiving her.
But this pang is undeserved. In any respect that matters to Lydia, I am Christopher. I will live with her, recharge her soul, and give her what she needs before she sends me away. And then, at last, she’ll rise again from the ashes of her life to resume her work. Willie can be proud of that.
You are Christopher.
Lydia and I have spent most of the past six days in bed. It’s been a repeating cycle: Tears, sex, a little sleep, more sex, and food. Then back to the tears. According to what Daniels and the Christopher chip have told me, everything with Lydia goes in cycles.
But this particular cycle has to be interrupted, because we’ve run out of food. Despite her huge house, Lydia has no hired help; and since no one will deliver groceries this far out in the Hill Country, one or both of us will have to make a trip to Kerrville. But Lydia isn’t supposed to leave the estate alone without calling CCA-Austin for a bodyguard . . . and if she were to go out with me, the hassle from the videorazzi would be even worse than usual. The headlin
es would be something like “Lydia Performs Satanic Ritual to Bring Boy-Toy Back from Beyond the Grave.” I don’t think she can handle that just yet.
But if I slip out by myself, I tell her, I’ll be inconspicuous. Christopher Jennings is an ordinary guy. Put him in his old jeans and pickup truck, and no one would suspect that he’s the man living with Lydia Love. I have the jeans, and the pickup’s still in Lydia’s garage. So I can hit the Kerrville H.E.B. supermarket and be back before the sweat from our last round of lovemaking has dried. It makes perfect sense.
But Lydia shoves me away and gets out of bed. She stands over me wild-eyed, her neck and arm muscles popped out hard as marble.
“You just got back, and now you want to leave?” Her voice is like the cry of a hawk. She is enraged, and I’m stunned. This has come on like storm clouds on fast-forward.
She’s waiting for an answer, so I listen for a prompt from the Christopher chip. But there isn’t one.
“Just for groceries,” I say. My voice is limp.
Lydia spins away. She goes to her mahogany dresser, pulls it out from the wall, and shoves it over. The crash makes me jump. Then she flings a crystal vase against the wall. Her hair whips like fire in a tornado. All the while she rants, “I thought you were dead, and you’re going out to die again. I thought you were dead, and you’re going out to die again. I thought—”
I start up from the bed. I want to grab her and hold her before she hurts herself. She’s naked, and there are slivers of crystal sticking up from the thick gray carpet.
Stay put. We never try to stop her.
But she already has a cut on her arm. It’s small, but there’s some blood—
She always quits before she does serious damage. So let her throw her tantrum. It’s a turn-on for her. She expects it to have the same effect on us.
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