They were the feet of an old, old woman. An old woman whose feet had been permanently deformed through years of rigorous point dancing. The thick, yellow toenails were sorely in need of a cut; the skin between the toes was flaky and had split in places, exposing the raw, red flesh beneath. There were hard calluses on the outsides of both little toes, like barnacles clinging to a sunken ship, and she could feel swollen, pus-filled blisters threatening to burst beneath both her heels.
Chloe screamed and jerked away from those hideous feet that were hers and yet weren’t hers at all. She immediately slipped on the wet surface of the bath, feeling several blisters pop beneath her weight, smearing yellow pus and thin blood across the white ceramic. Her flailing hands gripped the shower curtain and she tore it down, rings and all, as she fell out on to the cold tiled floor in a pool of water. The impact jarred her horribly but she hardly felt the pain since she was struggling too desperately to sit up and examine every inch of her body, horrified at the prospect of finding that the rest of her had shrivelled up into wrinkles and calluses too.
But her body was still smooth and supple and young. Her body was hers – even her feet had gone back to normal – pretty and neat and dainty with pink-painted toenails and not a callus or a blister in sight. Chloe scrambled to her feet and wiped the steam from the mirror with the palm of her hand to reveal her own wild-looking face staring back at her. Her face and no one else’s.
Two days later – almost two months after moving into Arietta House – Chloe woke up in the middle of the night to find herself sitting outside in the garden. The cold was like a hundred icy knives stabbing into her flesh and the soles of her feet as she gazed down upon the still water of the filthy lake. Night-time mist slid past her skin like wet velvet, making her shudder, and she wrapped her arms around herself, stood up and turned back to the house. The single light shone from the middle upstairs window again. Chloe counted them and was sure this time that there were too many windows – almost as if another room had appeared inside the house while she’d been out. The non-existent fifth bedroom.
She started forwards so eagerly that she didn’t look where she was going, and instantly stubbed her toe upon something hard and cold. She’s assumed she’d been sitting on the stone bench as usual but when she looked down she saw the old wicker wheelchair right there before her, and for long moments she stared at it, wondering whether she could really have taken it down from the attic and brought it outside in her sleep without waking up. But then a shape passing across the lighted window upstairs drew her attention and she tore her gaze from the wheelchair. Giselle was there inside the house, Chloe knew it. She was there in the fifth bedroom, waiting for her.
Almost tripping over herself in her anxiety, Chloe abandoned the wheelchair by the lake and practically ran back into the house, throwing the front door open just as the bell rang, the red-and-white striped flag waving frantically in the dark little window for bedroom five. Chloe’s bare, frozen feet slapped loudly upon the wooden boards as she thumped up the stairs, and she saw the new door as soon as she reached the landing. She knew that it had not been there before, and she would have known it was the door she was looking for even if the music for Giselle hadn’t been drifting out of it, sweet and sad and soft. It wasn’t smooth as silk like it normally was. This time it sounded scratchy and rough – like a damaged record playing on an old gramophone. A thin beam of light glowed beneath the door that should not have existed.
Chloe placed a trembling hand upon the cold brass knob, took a deep breath, and twisted it quickly before her nerve could fail her. The door swung open soundlessly upon well-oiled hinges as the melancholy oboe continued to drown itself in guilt-stricken grief.
The first thing she saw when the door opened was the rack of costumes. Luscious fabrics in pinks and whites and blues, muslin, and tulle, and velvet, and voile, trimmed with the finest lace and the smoothest silk. Fitted bodices and powder-puff skirts – exquisite costumes, all lovingly cherished and preserved. Soft leather and pink satin ballet slippers were lined up beneath the rack, tied up with slim ribbons. By the light of a single candle placed in the window, the sequins and beads of the costumes sparkled and shone.
The room smelled of perfume and powder, and Chloe saw the glass bottles neatly positioned upon the dressing table, along with a silver-backed mirror and hairbrush – long, thick black hairs caught up within the bristles. Above the crackle of fine music playing on a scratched record, Chloe said softly, “Giselle?”
Her heart hammered with anticipation. She was going to see her. At last, she was finally going to see Giselle and to talk to her. She stared around the room wildly, wondering whether Giselle would appear to her as she had been before her accident – a young, strong, graceful prima ballerina – or whether she would look as she had when she died – a feeble old woman confined to a hated wheelchair.
But Giselle was not in the room. No eyes – young or old – met Chloe’s as she gazed around. There was just an empty bed and an empty wheelchair by the window, pushed right up against the wall, fixed to which was a brass bell push. And that was when Chloe realized that there was someone in the room after all.
The tip of one gnarled finger rested lightly upon the bell push. The liver-spotted hand rested on the arm of the wheelchair, one finger still laid upon the bell, as if someone was sitting there, but all Chloe could see was that veined old hand. The rest of the chair stood in a pool of darkness but it wasn’t so dim that Chloe couldn’t see that the chair was quite empty except for a hazy, smoky shadow that might almost have been human-shaped. If she really squinted, she thought she could see the dark silhouette of a head, but it was only for a moment before the image melted away and all that was left was that hand, pale and stark in the dimness.
As Chloe stared, the hand lifted itself from the arm of the chair, seeming to float in mid-air as it turned palm upwards and the bent old fingers curled back and then forwards again. The meaning was unmistakable – she was being beckoned closer.
This was not what Chloe had expected, and disappointment coursed through her. She could not talk to a hand, she could not receive the sympathy and understanding she so desperately craved from a hand, and yet she found herself moving forwards uncertainly anyway. When she stopped directly in front of the wheelchair, the hand stopped beckoning and reached up a little further, still palm upwards.
After a moment’s hesitation, Chloe reached out and took the lined, frail, bony hand in her own. The moment her fingers closed around it, she felt a jolt pass through her whole body. She gasped and tried to pull back but her fingers seemed to be glued into place for the briefest second, and then she found she couldn’t move her hand because she didn’t have one any more.
She tried to open her mouth to scream but she no longer had a mouth and so she could not utter a sound. She had no body whatsoever. All she had was a strange sense of lightness, as if she was floating. And when her eyesight cleared and her vision focused she saw her own face staring down at her, only it was not the face she knew from the mirror. The features were identical but this face was colder, harder, and looked strangely and horrifically triumphant as the red lips parted and the white teeth were bared in an awful smile.
Chloe was forced to watch in silence as, without a word, her body pirouetted on the spot with a sort of terrible grace before a cold laugh bubbled up from the imposter’s throat, and then, with one last glance in the direction of the chair, Chloe’s body turned and walked from the room, head held high, slamming the door behind her. Chloe struggled and struggled to scream and shout at her to come back but she couldn’t so much as whisper. When she looked down, she saw that there was nothing left of her. Just a smoky hazy outline of nothingness – the wisps of feelings and memories and emotions that had made her who she was before, all floating about loose like gases released from a sealed container. She could feel herself dispersing and dissipating already, becoming weaker and weaker – more and more like nothing every second.
In a
burst of panic and horror, Chloe mustered up enough strength to drag all the pieces of herself tightly back together, putting all her energy and willpower into keeping herself whole. After what felt like hours of ferocious concentration, she thought she could see the faint outline of one of her fingers. The bell push on the wall gleamed at her sullenly in the candlelight – just about within reaching distance – and, with an exhausting effort of will, she managed to push it, causing the din of the bell to echo through the now-empty house.
A short while later, the whole world marvelled as ex-model Chloe Benn took the world of ballet by storm. It was unprecedented for someone so late to ballet to dance with such exquisite perfection. She was a phenomenally gifted natural, they said, the like of which had never been seen on the stage before. She was expected to be awarded the rank of prima ballerina before her twenty-third birthday, and there were even murmurings of the possibility of the prima ballerina assoluta rank – an almost unheard of honour ...
In the aftermath of her newfound success she was approached by her ex-husband, cautiously seeking a reunion.
“You look well,” he said. “Different. Have you dyed your hair? Perhaps we could get a drink some time? Catch up . . . ?”
His voice trailed off uncertainly; he seemed unnerved by the look on his ex-wife’s face. She stared at him in chilly silence for long, long moments before she finally opened her mouth and said in a voice that sounded unlike her own, “So you’re him? You look just like I imagined. Come here.” She beckoned with one slim finger. Something about her definitely seemed odd, but at least she hadn’t told him to go to hell as he had expected. Chloe’s ex-husband approached with cautious optimism, a foolish grin already starting to form itself on his foolish face.
“I thought we could—” he began, but didn’t get the chance to finish the sentence before Chloe grabbed the front of his shirt in a surprisingly strong grip and dragged him closer to press a kiss to his mouth.
He remembered Chloe’s kisses being sweet and soft and warm and gentle, but there was nothing gentle about this kiss. Her lips and tongue were shockingly cold and dry, like a corpse’s – or a reptile’s – and that coldness seemed to spread all the way through him at her touch. Her nails dug into the back of his neck hard enough to draw blood – he could feel the warm trickles running down his skin to stain his collar. It felt as if she was trying to suck his soul out through his mouth. He could barely breathe with her clamped to his lips like some terrible succubus, hissing a little with gruesome pleasure as he struggled madly in her tight grip.
He finally managed to detach himself from her, although she tore a piece from his lip as he pushed her away as hard as he could. He staggered back from her, his chest heaving with a nameless horror. For he knew, with a dreadful certainty, that whoever this woman before him was, she was not the woman who had been his wife. His blood dribbled down her chin and he watched in terrified fascination as she slowly, seductively, licked smears of it from her teeth, not bothering to clean it from her face before smiling brilliantly at him and saying, “Chloe sends her regards.”
Trembling in every limb, with a terror that he had not known since childhood, Chloe’s ex-husband barely noticed the warm, wet patch spreading down his trousers as he stumbled blindly away and ran from the room. The cold, creeping, delighted sound of Chloe’s laughter behind him was one that would haunt him in nightmares for the rest of his life.
Meanwhile, back in Arietta House, the bell for bedroom five continued to ring frantically, day and night. No one ever heard it, since Chloe Benn had decided that the house should be torn down and a block of flats built in its place. The lost room would soon become part of a lost house. Just as it was supposed to.
Scairt
Alison Littlewood
The piper stood on the hill, all alone, his dark green kilt blowing in the breeze. Rannoch Moor was broad and windswept, great mounds disappearing into the distance, punctuated by the glisten of water.
Amanda couldn’t hear the bagpipes, only the continual grind of the car’s engine that had accompanied them for mile after mile. She saw the back of her grandma’s head in the passenger seat and Granddad’s sticky-out ears. There were white hairs growing out of them.
“Can’t we stop?” she asked.
Her grandma turned and Amanda pointed. Now she saw that the piper was standing in a lay-by. There was a line of parked cars, but there didn’t seem to be any people: only the piper.
Her granddad slowed, indicated, pulled in. There were brown spots on his hands. He parked the car and they sat there.
“Here, Amanda,” said Grandma. She opened her window, winding the handle around and around. Cold air and the sound of wind and the strange, strident call of bagpipes came in. Amanda twisted and looked out of the back.
“Here,” Grandma said again. She fumbled with her purse, undid the snappers and pulled out a coin. She pressed it into Amanda’s hand. It was twenty pence.
“For his hat,” said Grandma, gesturing. “There’s always a hat.”
Amanda slipped out of the car, jumping down on to the tarmac. Beyond the lay-by was nothing but tufts of grass, a line of green that gave way to burned orange and purple. The clouds were low and rippled and went on forever.
She walked towards the piper hearing a wheezing sound, a constant groan under the notes and the gulps of breath he took. She didn’t look at him. She saw only his legs, sturdy and bare. They were covered in curling hairs that shivered in the wind. She looked for a hat and saw a large black case with the shine of coins inside. She put down the twenty pence and walked away, feeling his eyes on her back. Still he played on, different notes each time, a tune she didn’t know.
Amanda climbed back into the car. The grind of the engine started and they drove away, onward, towards home.
“Well, isn’t that nice?” said Grandma. “A welcoming committee.” She started chinking china cups, putting them into saucers, her hands shaking.
There were three of them. They were Amanda’s new neighbours. She didn’t know if she wanted new neighbours. She wanted her old room, the house that was sold, the house that didn’t have a family in it any more. Now she had her grandparents, and this place: a white house with a low roof, a room under the eaves with a faded carpet and a musty smell.
“Scotland will be good for you,” Grandma had said. “A new start for us all. Plenty of fresh air.”
And here were friends for her already. Mrs McBride was the mother, and here were the two daughters. Morag leaned against the dresser, swinging her foot like a ballerina. She had brown hair and a long, pinched face. Kitty was older. She sat down at once on the sofa, sitting up straight, looking at Amanda with a direct gaze.
“What do you say, Amanda?” Grandma nodded towards the girls.
Amanda tried a smile. She couldn’t think of anything to say; then she saw that pointed foot, swinging and swaying. “Do you like ballet?” she asked.
Morag’s lips twitched and she shot a sidelong glance at Kitty. “Ballet?” she said. “No, I don’t like ballet. D’ye not know Scottish dancing?”
Amanda shook her head and watched as Morag skipped a few steps across the floor.
“Have ye no been to a ceilidh, Amanda?” asked their mother. Her tone was kind. “We’ll have to teach ye, won’t we, Morag?”
Morag pursed her lips.
“Have you heard o’ the ceilidh? Ye’d like it.” Mrs McBride laughed. “Ye’ll no be used to the accent. D’ye ken?”
Amanda frowned. “My name’s Amanda,” she said, and everyone laughed.
“Come on,” said Kitty, jumping up from the sofa and holding out a hand. “We’ll show ye where to play, won’t we, Morag?”
There were encouraging sounds from the adults. Amanda rose to her feet and Kitty grabbed her hand. The next moment they were heading up the lane towards a wooded hill, Morag and Kitty in front, Amanda following.
“We’ll go to the lochan,” said Kitty. “Ye do know what a lochan is?”
“No.”
They hurried on, past more small white houses, past a tiny store, past a cottage that was thatched in what looked like old heather. Water dripped from it. The sky was darker now, the clouds weighed down.
“Why’re your parents so auld?” The question came from Kitty.
“Why so auld?” said Morag.
Amanda knew she would have to explain: that they were her grandparents, not her parents, because her parents were gone. There was an accident, and only she was left. She imagined the words, held in her mouth only, never reaching her insides. Just going out into the cold air where they would disappear.
“Here,” Kitty cut in. There was a low bridge and the start of a wood. A path wound its way into the trees, fallen leaves lying wetly on the ground. The gold and red of tall trees mingled with the dark green of pine.
Amanda trailed after them, her smooth soles slipping on the leaves, revealing streaks of black mud. Dribbles of lichen hung from the trees. Away from the path the ground was covered in little mounds, old branches maybe, covered in moss and tight, star-shaped leaves. Everything dripped.
“A boy disappeared here once,” said Kitty. “But we’re not scairt, are we, Morag?”
“No.”
“Are ye scairt, Amanda?”
Amanda looked at them.
Kitty turned and smiled. “How old are ye, Amanda?”
“I’m eight.”
“He was eight, too. He was eight, wasn’t he, Morag? When he disappeared?”
The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books) Page 17