Licking his lips, he turned to the right.
She sat there on the couch, La Doncella, facing him, her legs drawn up and encircled by her arms. Eyes, dark, hollow eyes stared at him, glittering dully in the dim light of his family room.
For a moment, he thought he was dreaming, must be dreaming…
And then his heart lurched in his chest.
La Doncella…here? In his house?
Dear God, what have I done?
His mind raced, raced through how he got home. He had no memory of leaving the lab, getting in his car, certainly no memory of taking her from the cold chamber, hustling her into his car.
What had he been thinking? Why would he have done such a thing?
The hand on the glass began shaking uncontrollably, this time not from cold. To steady it, he brought the glass to his lips, took a drink. The alcohol cut through the dryness of his mouth, scoured its way down his constricted throat, pooled like hot blood in his stomach.
The damage, he thought about the damage he had done to her, La Doncella. The effect the warm air, the humidity would have on her perfectly preserved body. After 500 years high in the dry, cold rarified air of Llullaillco, this air, here, now, would destroy her.
And the lab…how to explain what he’d done to his colleagues, his employers, his benefactors, government officials? His career would be over, done, after 30 years in the field.
And for what…?
He drained the glass, set it onto the table near the bottle, cradled his head in his hands.
Daddy…?
Wha…huh?
Daddy!
Yes…honey?
Daddy, I’m thirsty…so thirsty.
Sweetheart…umm…
Daddy, I’m so dry…so thirsty…my throat is full of dust…
Baby…are you here? Where are you?
Right next to you, silly…
Sanford took a gasping breath, his hands trembling over his face.
Slowly, slowly, he uncovered his face, turned his head to the right, faced her.
Daddy?
Yes, baby?
Do you know who I am?
Silence.
Daddy?
… Toctollssica?
You remember!
Of…of course, I remember you, honey…I told you I would…
Daddy, I’m so dry, so thirsty.
Can I get you a drink, baby?
Yes! Yes, a drink. I need to drink…so thirsty, daddy.
OK…I’ll get you a glass of water.
Water? No, silly. I don’t want water. Water won’t help me.
What do you want then? Soda? Juice? Chocolate milk? You love chocolate milk.
No. None of that now. It’s too late for that.
Then, what, baby?
Silence.
…is mommy upstairs?
*****
Still later…
Dr. Sanford slumped in the corner of his bedroom, facing the bed. One pale, white arm fell over the side of the mattress, limp fingers grazing the carpet.
A single, dark runnel of blood snaked down the arm, curled around a finger, dripped to the rug in little plip, plips.
It had been too awful, too easy. She had been so drugged, so drunk that she hadn’t even awakened, hadn’t lifted an eyelid or uttered a single word. Only the deep gurgling in her throat, the bloody bubbles that burst on her lips showed that she was still breathing, showed that she had stopped breathing.
Nothing horrible, mind you, nothing violent. No slitting of a throat or stabbing over and over again. No, just a small poke of the penknife he’d always carried with him, right in the swelling of her jugular vein. A brief, extravagant jet of blood spattered the ceiling before he was able to roll her over, position her over the normal household bucket he’d taken from beneath the kitchen sink.
But aside from that, no mess, no thrashing or wrestling.
In the end, he was amazed that death came to her as quietly, as easily as it had to his daughter…his daughters. It was almost as if she had willed it, embraced it.
Now, he sat on the carpet, scrunched into the corner of his bedroom, tacky blood still dotting his hands, staring at a plain plastic bucket, which normally held mop water or Pine-Sol; staring at a plain plastic bucket that now sloshed with his wife’s blood.
A drab, melancholy ordinariness that belied its depth.
Daddy? Daddy!
…
Daddy!
…honey?
Where are you? I’m so thirsty, Daddy…so dry…I need to drink…
Alright, baby…Daddy’s coming…just give me a minute…just a minute.
Dr. Sanford pulled himself to his feet, leaning his weight against the wall at his back to support his quivering legs. He stood there, stood for a moment looking down on the body of his wife, sprawled atop the bed, her face hanging somewhat off the side so that her blood would drain into the bucket. A few drops of blood, just a few here and there, dotted the sheets, the pillowcase, her one drooping arm.
Dr. Sanford went to touch her and as his hand swam into view, he saw, saw as if it were in a movie, that it still grasped the penknife, the blade out, slicked with blood.
His fingers unclenched and he dropped it to the carpet as if it were hot, infected.
That hand empty, he let it fall onto his wife’s head, her hair, so cold now, like cold silk, like her hair…and her hair.
Stifling a sob, he drew his hand away, lowered it to the handle of the bucket, lifted it, grunting at its weight.
A juice glass, that’s what he decanted the liquid remains of his wife into, an ordinary juice glass from the cabinet above the sink. He sloshed a bit of it onto the countertop, where it pooled, dark as her eyes.
Taking the glass into the family room, he sat down onto the couch beside her.
…Toctollssica?
Daddy?
Yes, baby.
Did you bring me something to drink? My throat is so dry.
Yes, baby.
He lifted the glass to her wrinkled, parched mouth, lifted and tilted it. Red ichor dribbled across her dark lips, slipped between them, fell into the hollow inside her. He poured the liquid into her, slowly at first, then more quickly as it seemed to find its path.
When the glass was nearly drained, he noticed something about her, something…
…her lips moved, compressed and relaxed, as if smacking at the deliciousness of what she drank.
Alarmed, the glass slipped from his grasp, fell to the floor, spraying dark blood that dewed atop the carpet fibers. He pushed himself away from her, slid across the couch until his back hit its far arm.
Dr. Sanford watched in avid, horrid fascination as La Doncella’s lips moved, moved around a small, wizened black tongue that poked between them to lap at the smear of blood around her mouth.
Daddy? Daddy?
He knew that he was not her daddy, that she was not his daughter.
And yet…
Daddy?
Yes…baby?
I’m still so thirsty, so dry. Can I have more? I need more.
Sure, sweetheart.
I feel so hollow inside, so empty. So dry.
I understand, honey.
Do you?
Yes…absolutely. I feel…have felt empty, too, until now.
Empty?
Full of dust…as if I were full of nothing but dust.
Yes! That’s how I feel, too.
I know.
But we don’t have to feel this way, do we, Daddy?
…no. Not anymore.
May I have some more please?
Yes, baby. Yes, you can have all you want…
…all you need.
*****
Much later…
Dr. Sanford wiped away the sheen of sweat that covered his forehead, his neck. Perspiration trickled down his back. It was so damn hot down here, so humid. In a dozen or more years excavating in South America, he’d never gotten accustomed to the weather. He preferred the higher elevations
, the cold, the dryness.
But this is what she wanted, where she wanted to be.
He had brought her home.
Well, close.
He watched her play in the dusty yard outside the small, ramshackle building that they had made their home, in a small, ramshackle little village at the outskirts of the Atacama Desert in northern Argentina, Llullaillco glowering on the horizon. Why she had wanted to come here, where she had been lead up the mountain to her death, was beside him.
But they came, fled his home, his job, his life, crossed borders, evaded police and authorities along the way.
And all along, he was forced to quench her thirst, slake the dryness inside her. His penknife was no longer enough, though, and he had acquired a gun along the way, then a machete when the bullets ran out.
It was his act of purest love, denied him with Rebecca.
But the need inside her, the dust, was impossible for him to allay fully. He knew, watching her skip in the yard like any girl, like an ordinary girl, knew that his need to provide for her, her need to be provided for, would never end.
Just as the dust inside of him, packing his heart, blowing through his veins, could never be fully eased by her.
In that thought, he realized, he was like any father, like an ordinary father.
And she was truly his daughter.
Tucking the handkerchief, soaked with sweat, into his back pocket, he stepped out from the shadows cast by the eave of their home.
“Come inside, now, Toctollssica,” he said gently, holding his hands out. “It’s too hot out here in the sun.”
She stopped where she had been skipping, looked at him.
She wore one of Rebecca’s old dresses, sun yellow and edged with lace, delicate wildflowers patterning it. Her dense, black hair was tied up in a bow, and she wore a pair of ankle socks and a new pair of patent leather shoes he had found at a market in Salta.
Her form had uncurled, straightened into that of a normal girl. Her hair still bobbed and shimmered in the sun.
But her skin, even though her body had plumped out, was still leathery, still loose, smooth as plastic, dark as old brick.
And her eyes were still small, glittering orbs at the back of their sockets, giving her stare an otherworldly cast, which, he supposed, was about right. No amount of blood seemed able to make them anything other than what they were.
“Aren’t you hot, baby?” he asked her, taking her small, rubbery hand, so wrinkled, so dry.
“Yes, Daddy,” she said, her mouth moving around the strange syllables just the way he’d taught her. “I am very, very thirsty.”
“Are you now?” he smiled down at her.
“Yes,” she looked up at him, her mouth stretching into a rictus that approximated a smile.
“Well, then I’ll need to go out and find you something to drink,” he said, leading her into the dark of their hut, where the temperature dropped and became almost cool. “Now you stay inside, won’t you?”
“Yes, Daddy. I’ll stay here until you get back. Will you bring me back something else? Something from the market?”
“Perhaps.”
“A doll? A little doll?”
He smiled, stroked her hair.
“We’ll see, we’ll just see.”
Dr. Sanford strode to the far corner of the single room and reached under his bed for the machete. Its blade was rusted, notched, stained. He hefted it, swooped it through the air once, twice, then walked to the door.
She was back curled on top the small palette where she slept, only the bright yellow dress visible in the darkness.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too, Daddy,” she replied.
He went out into the bright, effacing sunshine, tucked the machete behind the seat of his Jeep, climbed in.
As he drove away, he turned back again, thought he saw the outline of her form framed in the black rectangle of the doorway. Thought he saw the glittering of her tiny, obsidian eyes.
And shivered despite himself.
No, she would not be enough to ease the dust inside of him, that he knew.
And perhaps he would not be enough to ease the dust inside of her.
But they would be enough, for each other.
Enough.
It would have to be because there was nothing else left; nothing else within him.
For inside him, there was dust…only dust.
No amount of blood would dispel, could dispel the dust within his heart…or hers.
For dust, as he knew, lay at the center of all things.
*****
John F.D. Taff is the author of more than 60 stories in publication, in such markets as Cemetery Dance, Eldritch Tales, Aberrations, Deathrealm and 2 A.M. He has also been published in anthologies such as Hot Blood: Fear the Fever, Hot Blood: Seeds of Fear, and Shock Rock II. Four of his shorts have been selected as honorable mentions in the Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror. He also has seven novels in print. His recent sales have been to One Buck Horror, Box of Delights, Big Pulp, Call of Lovecraft and Horror for Good. Little Deaths, his first collection of short fiction, will be published by Books of the Dead Press this spring.
EVIL JESTER DIGEST VOLUME ONE’S
BEST IN VOLUME
THE END OF AUTUMN
A Novelette by
ARIC SUNDQUIST
Prologue
Halloween had finally come to the town of Sterling Springs. It was a time of costumes and laughter and childhood pranks. Every year from his window, Mr. Ridgecomb watched all the kids trot door to door, dressed as vampires or witches, and every year he opened his window to inhale the autumn air and hear the echo of “Trick or treat!” infest the streets. He watched silver-haired gypsies sing and dance, witches cast spells with a wiggle of a finger, and grim reapers swing plastic scythes at lampposts and fire hydrants and ultimately—unsuspecting friends. He watched goodies dropped in paper bags and smiled as the kids smiled, laughed when they laughed.
The wind had picked up outside, scraping leaves across the street, dropping them in the town square under Old McMurphy's clock. It was under those ticking hands and oiled gears he saw three kids chatting and digging in their bags, brandishing candy apples and saltwater taffy. Mr. Ridgecomb recognized one of them.
The boy in front was dressed in a black cloak. Long incisors jutted from his mouth, bending his lower lip. His name was Christopher Sandstrom. Mr. Ridgecomb had worked at the town library for over thirty years, charting and reading and recommending books to children and parents. That was where he had first met Chris. Mr. Ridgecomb had loved his job very much, but after hurting his back last spring, he had to retire. For the last six months, he realized how much he missed the smell of all those aged books, the feel of paper between his fingertips, drying his skin, page by page until his hands hurt. Of course, he missed all the kids, too.
“Hello, Chris!” he shouted, leaning out his window.
Chris took out his plastic teeth. “Hello, Mr. Ridgecomb!”
“That’s a nice costume you got there. Let me guess. Dracula, right?”
“I prefer Prince of Darkness.”
Mr. Ridgecomb laughed. “Actually, the Prince of Darkness is right behind you.”
Chris whirled, cape billowing.
His friend wore red makeup and pointed ears and leaned against a pitchfork, which bent under his weight. “I told you!” the Devil replied, glancing at the gypsy.
“Who are your friends?” asked Mr. Ridgecomb.
“This is Mitch,” Chris said, draping his arm around the Devil, “and this is Sarah.” He motioned to the blonde gypsy girl wrapped in red and orange linen, silver glittering on her smooth cheeks and nose.
“Well, it’s a delight to meet all of you! So, how is the evening treating you bunch of ghouls and goblins? Get a lot of candy?”
“Tons. My bag is almost full!” Chris held up his bag, and Mitch and Sarah held theirs up, too, and then they argued about who had more.
“
Why don’t you three come on in for a while? Greta is gone for the evening. She baked some cookies and I can brew up some hot chocolate. You can be my ghoulish guests on Halloween!”
Three faces lit up.
Mr. Ridgecomb, cane in hand, closed the window and went to greet his three young guests.
*****
Mr. Ridgecomb passed around a plate of sugar cookies and gave them each a cup of hot chocolate. They thanked him and sat on the living room floor, next to the fire. The sun was just beginning to set beyond the oaks and pines, and the sky was filling with reds and oranges.
“Mr. Ridgecomb is great at telling stories,” Chris said after finishing his first cup of hot chocolate. “Last year he told me a story about a town that doesn’t age. Everyone gets younger. And there is this shadow that collects their souls in a glass jar. You should tell that one again.”
“Do you know any stories about gypsies and Egypt?” Sarah asked. “That’s where I want to go when I grow up. I want to travel to the pyramids and find lost treasure and marry a handsome pharaoh and...”
“I like stories about sprites and leprechauns!” Mitch interrupted, fending off a push from Sarah. “They live in the woods and eat fruits and berries and hide pots of gold coins. You should tell a story like that.”
“Hold on,” Mr. Ridgecomb said. “One at a time. Now Chris, you want to hear the story about the Timekeeper, right?”
“Yes! The Timekeeper! Tell that one!”
“And Sarah, you want to hear about gypsies and fortune tellers, right?”
“Yes!”
“And Mitch, you like stories about sprites and good luck?”
“Yes!”
“Well, how about I tell a story with all three?”
Three kids stared back in disbelief.
Mr. Ridgecomb laughed and filled his pipe. With a wooden match, he lit the tobacco and blew out a few smoke rings. The sky outside was beginning to turn dark. He saw Old McMurphy’s clock across the street and pointed with one crooked finger.
Evil Jester Digest, Vol.1 Page 14