“Nuts.”
“Aren’t you coming?” he asked, plaintive eyes, voice quivering. “I don’t want to go alone.”
“No.”
I went home, concentrated on my studying. Tried not to think about the Necronomicon, La Bola going to the factory by himself.
Cultists.
What if the hobo was hanging around the factory?
Monsters.
A strangled cry.
And I had seen something through the greasy, milk glass window panes, that one time.
Two figures . . .
And then I had rushed to class. Don’t be, don’t be late.
But back there, in the factory.
Back there . . .
I saw nothing. I saw nothing. I saw . . .
My mother arrived from her late shift a little before midnight. I was still up, reading my textbook in the kitchen.
“Big test tomorrow, huh?” she said.
“Yep.”
“Did you finish the spaghetti?”
“Yeah, Marilu warmed it up for me.”
My mother took off her shoes and rummaged through the refrigerator. The phone rang. I picked it up at the first ring thinking it was La Bola. I was feeling kind of lousy about our fight and I wanted to apologize.
I held the receiver next to my ear. It was one of those yellow Western Electronic Princess Telephones that my mom had owned forever and sometimes the damn thing did not work right.
“Hello,” I said very loudly. “Hello.”
There was no answer. Just a crackling, which was not unusual. What was unusual was the other sound I heard. Only it was not really a sound. More like a vibration which went up and down my arm.
“Bola?” I whispered.
I didn’t think it was him. Or it was not only Bola.
There was something else trying to get through the line.
The receiver, as I held it between my fingers, felt rubbery and pulsated.
I dropped it. It dangled from the cord, brushing the linoleum floor.
“Is that Marilu’s boyfriend again?” my mother asked. She picked up the receiver quick as lightning and yelled into it with a loud, stern voice. “You stop calling here! You hear me?!”
She slammed the receiver down, grumbled about Marilu and made herself a sandwich.
I went to bed.
I did well in my exam the next day. La Bola missed it, but that was his tactic. He tried to miss as many exams as he could so I could tell him what the test had been all about, and he could get a decent grade when he took it the next week.
I was not too concerned about his absence. And I was not too worried when he did not go to school the day after that. He was probably still sore at me, nursing his wounds by staying in bed and watching videos all day long.
But he did not go back to class. We heard he had been expelled for drug use. Someone had found him dealing pot or coke or some shit inside the pantyhose factory and he was kicked out of school. Other folks said he went nuts and killed his whole family, then microwaved the cat. I did not think that was very likely because it would have made the front page of La Alarma and I did not see La Bola’s wide eyes staring at me from the newspaper stand.
One lady who was a friend of my mom said it was a mental breakdown and she mentioned the pantyhose factory, and the guy there and there was . . . maybe she said pederast. Maybe she said nothing. I like to believe she said nothing.
And then my mom, she asked me pointed questions about La Bola and I didn’t have the answers, so I shook my head no.
No.
Somebody called a few days later. Heavy metal music played in the background. But the caller didn’t say anything and I hung up.
Nine years later. Enough to misremember.
I had long finished my bachelor’s degree and moved out of my mom’s place and into a little apartment. Overall, things were going fine and I was considering applying for another scholarship, this one for a master’s degree.
Marilu was married and living in Monterrey. She had just had a second baby. My mom was going to go live with her and watch over the grandchildren. Mom told me that she was getting rid of everything in my room and I better go help her throw out my old crap.
I put a few precious things aside, then piled my old books into a box, including the horror paperbacks La Bola had given me in junior high. I took them to one of the used stores where they buy books and newspaper by the kilo, and got a couple of pesos out of the whole effort.
When I was handing the guys who bought the books and newsprint my stuff, I discovered that at the bottom of one of the boxes there were a few photocopies of La Bola’s Necronomicon. I folded them and took them with me. Out of a sense of nostalgia I walked through the old neighbourhood, patting the wrinkled photocopies.
The area was still shitty but they were starting to build nice condos here and there. Gentrification was creeping in.
I stopped at the street with the pantyhose factory. That block had not been touched by the cranes and construction crews. The old buildings remained stubbornly in their place, peeling paint and all. The factory itself was even more ruined, dirty and with more shattered glass panes.
I glanced at the photocopies I was carrying, at the building and then back at the squiggly lines that passed for writing.
I heard the tinkering of glass bottles and a panhandler sleeping nearby shuffled to his feet.
“Hey,” said the man and I raised my hand to tell him that no, I didn’t have any cash to spare but I stopped.
The man was very, very skinny. Bone thin and he looked at least a decade older than me, so he couldn’t possibly be La Bola. But he looked like him, only hungrier, his dark eyes very large and fixed on me.
“Hey, long time no see,” said the man. “I got some nice stuff for you. You want to take a look?”
I was born and raised in a neighbourhood with its fair share of drunkards, hobos and hookers, and none of them ever scared me, but this man who looked a bit like La Bola sent me shivering like a five year old; and I swear I could feel a cold, cold rubbery thing slipping around my neck when La Bola stared at me.
I tossed the papers in the air and ran away, only pausing once to see if the man was following me. He was too busy picking up the pages that I had dropped, fiercely clutching them against his chest and mumbling something I could not make out.
Three blocks from there I hailed a cab. When I was boarding it, my cell phone rang. I answered it, but the line was quiet. I thought I could hear someone breathing on the other end. There was expectation in the air, like the pause after you say “I accept” during a collect call. Then there’s a little click and you are connected.
I threw the cell phone out the window and told the driver to go, just go. Where? Not downtown, to buildings and streets three centuries old, not through the old colonias like la Roma. To the outskirts of the city, past Santa Fe, past the DF and into the places where condos and houses are barely going up.
Sometimes the phone rings in the middle of the night and I wake up, and I think I’m a kid again back in the apartment with the hallways smelling of urine and if I look out the window I might see the shadow of the old factory.
Strange things happen there and there are monsters.
I think then, still wrapped in the haze of dreams, that somewhere, Bola’s dialing my number, trying to connect. And I’m never taking that call. And I never did.
And I shouldn’t have run away.
And I didn’t see anything.
And I cry sometimes, but I don’t remember why.
bella beaufort goes to war
LISA L. HANNETT & ANGELA SLATTER
Volume Twelfth, 2nd Series, No. 312. July 19, 1873
QUERIES, cont’d: ——
MAKING FATE & THE INFLUENCE OF NORNS IN THE NEW WORLD
In pursing research for my book, IN THE FASHION OF WOLVES, I come,
time and again, to the same pressing questions: Does the Norns’ power stop when certitude does? When the idea that they decree FATE and tend to YGGDRASIL weakens, can such myths continue to exist? When faith in them ceases, to what thread might they cling? Without the lifeline of credulity are these things no more than the smoke of memory dispersed on the wind? Or are they weaving still, out of sight and mind, but not out of the world? Opinions and responses are most heartily desired.
—Valdís Brynjólfsdóttir
South Carolina, United States of America
“What do you see?”
Black things flap and snap on the wire fence running around the vacant land adjacent to the Laveau place. The sun is harsh, reflecting on the hard-packed dirt street, glaring off the two-storey house’s peeling white paint; yet the old woman insists upon sitting out on the verandah with the heat and light bouncing up at her, hitting the great diamond hanging like a monocle on a silver chain around her neck.
Sweat creeps down Bella’s skin, soaking the armpits and back of her green gingham work dress, trickling from her temples, making her scalp itch worse than the lice she’d been afflicted with last summer. What she wouldn’t give to scratch like a dog right about now, or to lift the thick russet hair off her crown like an unwanted hat. But she ignores the urge and concentrates on the widow’s question. She squints, stares across overgrown cotton fields, and focuses on the shreds of—what?—writhing in the distance. While she gathers her thoughts, Eugenia, as usual, leaps in.
“Dead birds. Ravens. Big ones.” This last was added in an uncertain tone, as though she realises she’s wrong once again. The old lady’s lip curls—she doesn’t even bother to conceal it from her great-granddaughter nowadays—and then she slides her eyes to Bella, who senses the expectation in that look, just as keenly as she feels Eugenia’s resentment seething off her. Within the first few days of their apprenticeship, she’d overheard the other girl moaning to her mémé, saying it wasn’t right, her teaching the two of them together. Her own rightful heir and Bella No-Blood. Bella Know-it-all. Bella Who-wasn’t-even-family.
Such a waste of effort, staring so hard at someone else’s flaws, the Widow Paris had said. Take a close look at yourself, Eugenia Laveau, and tell me—what do you see?
“It’s skins,” says Bella, who wasn’t even family, as she smoothes the white pin-tucks of her apron. “Skins taken so they can’t fly anymore.”
“They?” Eugenia sneers, white-blonde hair a striking contrast against her bronze skin. She props her elbows on the porch railing next to Bella, leans down to take another look from that vantage. Her sharp nose crinkling like there’s a bad smell.
“They. Witches. Witches with their wings clipped, with their soul suits taken.”
As if in answer, the feathered things wave in agreement, agitating like house-rugs left out for beating clean. The old woman nods brusquely, the closest she ever gets to showing approval. But Bella knows her mentor is pleased, though she covers a smile with her fan, a handsome thing of lace and mahogany. A gift, perhaps, from a grateful follower. The woman’s fluttering hands are smooth, ageless. Unlike her face which, in recent months, has sagged dramatically, its rich brown becoming greyish. Against doctor’s orders, the widow won’t slow down. Knocking on eighty, and still she insists on sitting out in the heat, teaching them, trying to make sure they’re receptacles of the knowledge only she can pass on. Truth be told, Bella thinks, Miz Marie feels her time running away.
“There you have it, child,” the old woman says, peering over accordion folds at Eugenia, barely keeping the disappointment from her tone. “Focus. Pay attention. This isn’t hairdressing school, no matter what folks been told. Make a mistake with this craft and you’ll suffer much worse than burnt curls. You need to concentrate: be certain before you speak. Words are weapons, girl—you can’t just fling them around, willy-nilly. Wield them carefully, accurately, else you’ll unleash a world of hurt—on others, sure enough, but first and foremost, on yourself. Stop and think.”
Eugenia’s mouth tightens like she’s fit to spit nails. A few seconds pass as she wrangles her temper. Splotches crawl up her neck, blooms of anger and shame. She straightens, pushes away from the bannister, away from Bella, and turns to stand with hands folded, white-knuckled, before the Widow Paris.
“Yes’m,” she says through gritted teeth. “I’ll bear that in mind.”
“You do that. For now, go on in. Tidy up the brushes and arrange the curling rods by size—largest to smallest, handles out, on a tray near the fire—then scrub the combs and scissors. Miss Whats-her-name from Olafsson House is coming ’round in an hour, and I haven’t yet sussed if her appointment is for plaits or potions.”
Eugenia, thus dismissed, bobs a curtsey, and flounces inside. Soon they hear utensils rattling into jars, iron tools clattering against tin, water splashing, the occasional grumble and mutter. When the screen door finally swings shut on its slow hinges, Bella looks over at the widow, whose rheumy brown eyes are fixed on her. Reduced to slits. Assessing.
She freezes like a hare, resists the desire to gulp. Be certain before you speak. . . . The Widow Paris had been chastising Eugie, but Bella has a feeling the old herbwoman was talking double. Directing the dressing-down at her great-grandchild, but expecting them both to listen. Telling Bella that she’s onto her. That she more than suspects, she knows.
That even though Bella’s answer was right, it was obvious, to the widow at least, she had guessed.
She did it a lot, actually. Guessing. It wasn’t laziness, not really. It’s just, she can pick ideas out of the air. Sometimes. Most of the time. Very broad hints. And more often than not, they are precisely right. They are enough. Enough to ensure her instinct wins out over Eugenia’s increasingly desperate shots in the dark.
Bella tries to distract the Widow Paris with a smile. It withers on her cheeks half-formed.
What if Eugenia finds out, that Bella guesses? Oh, rage, rage, such a rage. And lightning, no doubt. Whirlwinds. Hail. What Eugenia lacks in reading vibrations, ripples in water, tremors in the earth, the story of human expression, she more than makes up for with dark-limned magic. Spells of destruction, thunderous conjuration, explosions of fire and lava. These were her forté. These came to her easy as living.
Eugie would make a powerful ally, if she wasn’t such a pain in the backside.
“Lemonade?” Bella asks, getting up from the white wicker chair. The old lady holds her gaze another instant, then shakes her head.
“That’s enough for today. Better get home, young Isabella, before your uncle starts a-wondering what can possibly be taking so long.”
As Bella collects her satchel and packs away the book in which she writes recipes, for hair tonics and potions alike, two men stroll down St Ann Street. Both pretend they don’t know they’re being watched, but they stand a little straighter, puff their chests a bit as they walk. One’s a local parish boy, spends Sundays ushering people into church. The other’s a regular jack-of-all trades—does everything from working the cotton gin to digging graves. The sight of him sets Bella’s heart to pounding, as it no doubt does to most girls in town. Tall with blue eyes and bone china skin, a spill of Black Irish hair and a smile that makes the day brighter. Bella averts her eyes, but not soon enough.
“Careful, girl,” says the old widow. “The worst thing in the world is getting what we desire. Help me inside before you go.”
As she bends close to assist her teacher, their faces almost touching, Bella can smell the decay on the woman’s sigh, the gust of death soughing up from inside. She squeezes the old lady’s hand.
The trellis on the exterior wall is rickety, so Bella chooses the oak tree instead. Its branches are strong and thick and spread everywhere; one in convenient reach of her bedroom window, another trailing like a truncated staircase, with just a foot-long drop to the ground at the end. She’s standing on the sill, ready to make the leap, when a single lou
d knock shudders the door behind her. Arms windmilling, she manages to hop back down and carefully arrange her face, a mix of umbrage and respect, before the knob slams into the wall. Only one person barges into her chambre so abruptly, trying to catch her out.
“Uncle Augustin.”
“Evening, Bella. Have I disturbed you?” Her uncle’s expression is hopeful, slightly lecherous. A distant cousin of her father’s—not a true uncle, not a Beaufort—Augustin Fabron was willing to adopt poor, orphaned little Bella, after the accident. To take her in, not as a full family member, of course, but as a high level domestic in his plantation house. Daughter and servant and something else altogether. Something in between, not quite pure, existing in the social limbo dictated by her colouring. Hair red and irises green enough to say “white,” but skin a shade too dark, features a tad too Creole, to let her pass without question. Without the protection of papers and a wealthy not-uncle to vouch for her. To provide a room of her own. A safe enough space for now. She’s got house duties and other . . . duties . . . Augustin hasn’t commanded her to perform. At least, not yet. Not with Aunt Claudette around, and Uncle Augustin’s tenure as lord of the manor secure only so long as she is—the property deeds being written in her name, after all, not his.
He blinks with eyes like a winter sky, close-set in a long cadaverous face framed with lank hair that greases down to his collar. They are of a height; Bella statuesque, Augustin spindly. It’s been a few years since he’s been able to look down at her, so he tilts his head slightly back whenever he speaks. Lines her up in his sight, and peers.
“Did you do your chores today?”
“Yes, Uncle,” Bella says, hoping she remembered them all.
“Only, your Aunt said Evangeline couldn’t find you when she wanted her hair done before dinner,” he says smoothly. Bella doubts that Claudette’s maid reported anything of the sort to him. “It’s not that we mind you learning a trade—indeed we think it a sensible idea. After all, we won’t be around to support you forever. But we are, however, here now. You must not forget your first duty.”
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