Dark Sister

by Graham Joyce

  Alex had ordered a U-shaped trench to be dug round the skeleton so that it could be worked on from three sides. Now the bones stood out on a promontory of earth, a clay bed attended by a team working in hushed concentration. Something other than a dig now, the enterprise had become an operation of delicate flensing of the earth around and between the bones.

  It had become clear that Minnie was not an infant or a child after all. It was an adult of small stature, whose awkward burial posture was due to having been squeezed into an unnaturally small space.

  "Stop!" said Alex.

  They all stopped.

  "What is it?" asked Tania.

  "What's up?" said Richard.

  Alex stroked an imaginary beard and looked hard at the earth on one side of the remains. Then he walked round the other side, crouched, touched the soil, and then straightened his back. "Carry on," he said.

  The delicate flensing resumed. Alex had an irritating habit of letting ideas boil inside his head. He distracted everyone by jogging from side to side, getting in close, stopping individuals with a gesture and then retiring without a word.

  "Shit!" he said. "Stop! Everybody stop!"

  Everyone let their brushes and implements hang at their sides. Alex got in close, eyeballing the earth near the still-covered skull.

  Tania exploded on everyone's behalf. "For Christ's sake, Alex!"

  Alex rubbed sweat from his eyes. "It's not your fault, it's my fault."

  "WHAT isn't our fault?"

  "Just nobody touch anything for a moment." He folded his arms and stared at the trench. Tania turned away and mouthed silent words at the sky. He saw her. "Come here. What's this?"

  He pointed at the earth below the back of the skull. Tania got in close, everyone else huddled behind her. "I don't see anything."

  "Exactly."

  "What do you mean, 'exactly'?"

  "I mean you can't see anything, but I can. I should have noticed it before. See this ragged pattern in the soil? The dark stain? It's the imprint left by rough-grained wood. Packed hard against the earth, see? Where wood has rotted and compacted into the soil. Everywhere else it's been broken up by worms and the like. But not here. Or here. And we've been so eager to get at the old bones we've ruined any traces of whatever it was buried in."

  "Is that a tragedy?" said Tania.

  Alex looked at her as though she were a child. "Minnie here was a full-grown adult squeezed into a small box. Some information about the box would have helped."

  "We haven't disturbed the area behind the skull," Richard put in. "Or underneath. That might turn up some information."

  "Let's hope so," Alex said glumly. It was true. He should have known better.

  By late afternoon, another discovery was made. The set of bones was missing its left hand. Attention turned to the other side to reveal the right hand was also missing. The two feet had also been amputated before burial. They'd each been lopped off with blade strokes that cleanly severed bone.

  At Omega, Ash was vainly trying to maintain an attitude of business as usual. It was difficult. The evangelists took it in turn to press their noses up against the window to see what he was doing. He was writing in a ledger, and this was clearly causing speculation outside. He deliberately affected a demonic grin, and made a great show of dipping his pen in the veins of his forearm; but he was actually preparing no more than his accounts.

  Lunchtime had come and gone and not a single customer had passed through the picket. Then in the afternoon a young man braved the storm. He was so enthusiastically received by Ash that he went out and came in again.

  Ash didn't know whether to close up and go home, or grit his teeth and stay on. He thought that closing would be giving in to them; on the other hand, by staying open he was only playing their game. By late afternoon he'd decided to close early, but to confuse them by leaving the window blinds up and the sign declaring the shop open.

  He came out jangling his keys and the picket parted.

  "Excuse me! Excuse me!" It was a plump, elderly lady addressing him, a woman with a heavy overcoat and a sweet, round face. "Would you be good enough to tell us if you're closing now, because we don't want to wait here unnecessarily."

  Ash was astonished. Then he laughed out loud.

  "Well, we can be civilized about it, can't we?" she said. Ash was about to reply when the glimmer of a silver brooch lying at her feet caught his eye. He picked it up.

  "Is this yours?"

  The old woman was taken aback. Then she smiled at him and gently rested a hand on his arm. "Do you know, my husband gave me that before he died. I must have dropped it and I'd have been heartbroken if I'd lost it. Heartbroken." She was beaming at him.

  Ash pinned it back on her coat. "Well, at least one of you doesn't hate me."

  The tall woman, "Lest Ye Forget," stepped forward. "You want to throw that brooch away, Mary, now he's touched it. It's tainted. You want nothing to do with it."

  The sweet smile died on the plump lady's face. He saw her look from him to the interlocutor, and to the brooch. A tear began to form in her eye. He was outraged. He stepped toward the tall woman. "You," he said. "You'd have been there, wouldn't you? Cheering them on at the hangings and the burnings. It's how people like you enjoy yourself. It's good sex for people like you, isn't it? You'd have been at the front of the queue!"

  Ash marched off along the catwalk, watched all the way by the silent picket.

  Maggie had cleared an area to make a small, smoky fire, as instructed. Liz had told her to study the smoke from the fire before beginning the ritual. She followed this with a relaxation exercise, before commencing her serious preparation.She unzipped and emptied her bag. First she laid out her circle with the long length of white rope leaving the ends open so that she could enter when the time was right.

  She lit incense and repeated her banishing ritual.

  Outside the circle she marked the four points of the compass. At north, at the station of Earth, she deposited a handful of soil she'd brought from the site of the Dancing Ladies, and she spoke the name of Uriel. South of the circle, at the station of Fire, she set a beeswax candle in a ceramic wind-protector. She lit the candle and invoked the name of Michael.

  At the station of Water, at the eastern point, she set a jar of rain-water, earlier consecrated with salt. Here she spoke the name of Gabriel. The last point, on the western side of the circle, was the station of Air. Here she placed a sprig of mistletoe in flower. Liz had told her that the seasonal fruit of the mistletoe was preferred, but that if Maggie insisted on this particular time, then the mistletoe in flower would have to suffice. It was dedicated to Raphael.

  She still had an hour or so before dusk. She sipped a little wine in which mistletoe had been steeped, and waited.

  It was approaching five o'clock at the site of the Maggie dig, and everyone wanted to stay on. After discovering the absence of hands and feet on the skeleton, they'd pressed on to reveal that some kind of device was attached to the skull. Alex held up that part of the operation so that he might record the exact position in which it lay. Having done so, he was ready to give permission for them to uncover the device.

  He was as eager as everyone else to stay on and work in the dark if necessary. But he had a problem.

  "No, I won't," said Tania. "I'm not missing this. What do you take me for anyway?" She thought Alex was just using her.

  "No, I can't," said his childminder when he telephoned. She thought it was high time Alex faced up to his responsibilities.

  "No, I'm sorry," said Anita, when she too received his telephone call. She thought it was Alex's way of trying to rekindle things.

  "Not even for old times' sake?" he pleaded.

  "Especially not for old times' sake. Have to go; Bill's due back."

  Amy had already been picked up from school by the child-minder and was waiting to be collected along with Sam. That was the arrangement. Alex was running out of options. In desperation he tried to ring Maggie. First he r
ang the telephone in the hall of her bed-sit. Someone answered but told him Maggie was out. Then he looked up the number for Omega in the Gilded Arcade. There was no reply.

  He went back to Tania.

  "No, Alex. Absolutely not."

  He drew her away from the others. "Please, Tania. I'm going to make a big media buzz out of this and I promise I'll tell them it was your dig. You'll get a job somewhere on the back of this. It'll look good for you. Think about it. Please help me out."

  "I don't need this pressure, Alex."

  "Please. I'll never ask you again." He held out the keys to his car. Tania looked back at the dig, and then at Alex. Her cheeks were burning. She snatched the keys from him.

  "This is absolutely the last time." She was already marching away across the grass.

  "You're a life-saver!"

  "Fuck off, Alex," she shouted over her shoulder.

  He turned back to his skull, rubbing his hands together in satisfaction.

  Tania collected Amy and Sam from the childminder and drove them back to the house. At least she knew they'd become fond of her and were better behaved for her than ever they were for Alex.

  "Can we have Cowboy's Glory?" Amy said, climbing out of the car.

  "Yes, you can have Cowboy's Glory." Tania was too good-natured to dump her anger on the kids. So she opened cans and knocked out rounds of beans on toast. When they'd finished eating, she sent them off to play so she could get on with some clearing up. The house was a shambles. Sam reluctantly followed Amy down into the playroom.

  Liz stood on the doorstep of her cottage. She was chewing something. Chewing, and staring out across the fields into the gathering dusk. The cottage door was flung wide open. Behind her, the old collie sat whimpering. Liz turned slowly, and silenced the dog with a look.

  She was afraid for them. She'd worn herself out walking that great distance to the Sanders' house on Saturday, and then back again. It was too much at her age. She'd done her best to help Sam. But she'd been disturbed by the arrival of Alex's lover. That had been unfortunate. She just hoped that she'd done enough.

  Liz turned her attention back to the grey horizon, across the fields, and to the graded advance of dusk.

  Dusk came into the woods with stealth, insinuating itself into the smoke of her small fire. Maggie tied back her hair, slipped off her clothes, and stepped inside the rope, closing the circle behind her. It was cold, as she'd anticipated. In preference to the hogsfat mentioned in Bella's diary, she rubbed herself with an embrocation fluid, which numbed as well as warmed her. Liz had sanctioned this variation.

  She performed her banishing ritual for the third and final time.

  She unstoppered her new oleum magicale. It was filmier than the flying ointment, more opaque, highly scented with sandalwood and wisteria. She applied it to her body as before, to her temples, wrists, ankles, glandular points, intravaginally, but also a smear under her eyes, and a single drop on her tongue. Already the oil on her face stung her eyes. On contact with her skin it released strong vapours. She was forced to close her watering eyes as a bitter, acrid taste spread over her tongue, numbing her mouth and depositing a pellet of bile in her throat.

  She struggled to open her eyes against the vapours. She needed to stay alert to what was happening in the physical world around her. Liz had told her that she must respond to the first thing to appear.

  "What if nothing comes?" she'd asked.

  "It will," Liz had said. "It will."

  It could be an adder. It could be a bird. She would know when it approached the circle. But it would not enter the circle until she invited it in. She forced her eyes open against stinging tears. She waited, gazing at the smoke from her small fire as Liz had instructed her, visualizing forms rising from the smoke, weaving smoke and dusk into a single grey tapestry.

  The most hideous feature of the discovery was not the amputation of limbs, but what was strapped to the skull's head.

  Alex had decided to get the generator going and fix up a floodlight before allowing any more progress on the excavation. When everything was set up, they had returned to exposing the back of the skull and discovered the brank—a metal cap, fitting like a cage across the skull and face, with a cruel spike protruding from the brank into the open mouth. A V-shaped lip extruded a few inches from the brank at the other end of the spike.

  With the skull itself half-bedded in the earth, Alex crouched down to take a close look. He'd seen a brank before, but not one quite so vicious as this. The floodlight scored stiff shadows on the white skull behind the bars of the brank.

  "What's it for?" someone asked him.

  "For keeping the victim quiet, I should think."

  Turquoise light. Everywhere, turquoise light, shot through with deep blue veins. Maggie's heart hammered. A numbness coursed through her body, leaving only the sensation of a thrumming heart. Her body was anaesthetized, but her senses were keen. She had to keep her head still; any swift movement brought white-hot knives of pain. Despite the ethereal light, she could see every leaf, every branch, each blade of grass with absolute clarity. Details took on an artificial, plastic quality, an imprint of design, as if placed there by some unseen hand; but her eyes had been sharpened to the uniqueness of each leaf, each fern and log.

  Waves. The woods were subjected to a gentle swell and fall like waves, a swell and fall she took to be the rhythm of her own breathing. The waves rippled in sympathy with her, as if part of her; she could no longer feel the extremities of her physical form. Her sensations extended as far as the range of her vision. She was what she could see. If an upper branch swayed in the wind, she felt the movement deep in her bowels. If a fern moved in a breeze, she felt a string drawn through her heart. The rotting of a log she savoured as an infinitely slow burn somewhere inside her belly.

  The upper fronds of the closest ferns waved, and she sensed a slow, sinuous progress along the earth toward her. A cold underbelly pressed to the leaf mould, moving closer. A sinuous rippling through the dead leaves. Would this be it? The first thing, Liz had said, the very first thing. The slippery, gliding sensation continued through the ferns, moving closer to the rope circle. Then it stopped, suddenly.

  It had been beaten. Something else alighted outside the circle ahead of it.

  It was a bird. A blackbird, but seeming brilliant blue in the turquoise light. Sleek feathers, still moist from the day the world was first made. It had stopped at the edge of the circle, head cocked, looking at her, eye to eye. Maggie knew this creature. She'd known it for a long time.

  "Come in," she said.

  The bird hopped inside the circle.

  Maggie felt an unexpected wave of sadness inside her, and a hot, salt tear squeezed from her left eye, nestling on her cheek. She could see the moisture there, lensing turquoise light. The bird flew at her, hovering near, wings vibrating the air and fanning a wind at her face; beak dangerously close to her eye, it dipped and sucked the teardrop into its beak. Then it was gone.

  Maggie stood up and looked around her, around the circle. The objects she had placed outside the circle remained in place, but there was no bird. It had gone, and with it, she thought, her chance. She felt unsteady on her feet, so she crouched down again, her knees drawn up to her ears.

  A scorching pain racked her body and she had to spit a string of black bile from her mouth. Then an abdominal pain, of the type she'd not experienced since the birth of her son. She found she could relieve the pain by puffing her rib cage up and out and forcing her arms behind her back. Her body trembled violently. Sweat broke out on her brow and she couldn't stop the shivering. She puffed her chest out again and hawked another string of blue-black bile from her throat.

  Then vomit. She was panting uncontrollably. Her chin retracted into her neck and she lost its shape. Her breathing was being constricted. She hawked again, trying to loosen the sensation of choking. She felt her feet scrabbling claw like in the soft earth, trying to keep a foothold as her body convulsed. Suddenly she couldn't
breathe. She gagged.

  She panicked. She tried to shake her head out, shake it free of what was happening. But she was paralyzed. She was retching. Spit; if only she could spit she might loosen what was choking her air passage. But in the effort of spitting, her mouth puckered and extended outwards, her nose curving into a sharp point.

  It was too ugly. She shook in terror. Then she felt a series of clicks in her joints, a sound like the cracking and resetting of bones. Please stop! She wanted it to stop! She tried in vain to reverse what was happening to her by dint of mental power. She felt her heart sink inside her into a tight ball, threatening to burst. Blood sang in her ears. Her skin flushed from scalp to toe, gooseflesh standing high, rippling across her body in a wave. Blue-black feathers erupted from her white skin as she scrabbled in the earth to keep her balance. She was turning in circles now, struggling against the metamorphosis, gagging for air. Stop! Oh stop!

  Her wish was granted. The process was arrested halfway. She sobbed in relief, breathing heavily now. She'd managed to stop it. Then she tried to straighten her back, but was unable. She strained, but the effort only produced a cracking of bones and sickening pain. She waited. Tried again. She was unable to move.

  Panic took her again. Liz! Ash! She wanted to cry out, but there was only a terrible gagging, and no one to answer. The metamorphosis wouldn't move forward, and she couldn't reverse it. She was stuck.

  No air. A gagging in her throat. Her lungs compressed. Choking. Panic. She couldn't scream, she was unable to make any kind of noise.

  Her eyes began to bleed. A jellylike substance formed across them. She was choking. She was paralyzed. She was going to die. Then she tried to relax. Think through what had happened. Think the process through from the beginning. She gave a final push, trying to heave herself into another world.

  Only the brank was holding the skull in one piece. Alex identified a clasp at the side of the contraption, and attempted to clear the loose dirt from it with a fine hairbrush. The jaw of the skull gaped in a lopsided rictus. Alex put the brush aside, pursed his lips and blew delicately on the dust around the clasp. The metal cage of the brank fell apart. The lower jaw slipped from its bed of earth and bounced at the bottom of the trench, followed by half of the disintegrating brank.