by Terry Griggs
“The treatment is worse than the affliction?”
“Indeed. For that one, he makes you swallow a slice of bacon with a piece of string attached to it.”
“Argh, don’t tell me—he then pulls it back up, and makes the victim swallow it again until the sore throat goes away.”
“Right. Or until he runs out the door.”
Grif was beginning to feel more at ease. “I have a cure for colds you might want to try.” He did, too, a “prairie cure” that Jean had passed on to him. “I hope you have a hat, Miss Polly. You’ll need one for this.”
“Certainly, doctor.” She mimed twirling one on her finger, a phantom hat. “Go on, please.”
“First thing, you place your hat on a table. Next, you have to take a drink from a very good bottle of whisky. Then another drink. Then another. The thing is, you have to keep at it until you see not only one hat but two. At this stage in the cure, you must go to bed and stay there until completely restored to health.”
“Wonderful!” Her laugh was full and deep. “That one does bring to mind Mrs. Motely, from the village. She’s president of the Ladies’ Temperance Union, and tenacious on the subject, absolutely terrifying. But she’s pickled most of the time herself, as she’s a great believer in Dr. Pinkham’s Elixir for Female Complaints, which is constituted mainly of gin, Mother says.”
“Ha.”
“A dreadful woman. With a moustache. Did you know, by the way, that if you take a dried and powdered frog and mix it with water to form a paste, that it makes an excellent depilatory?”
“Perhaps I should try it.”
“Father once lured several flies out of Edgar’s head by holding a lit candle up to his ear.”
She smiled, but his faltered.
“He is a doctor, you know. Some of his treatments are considered … unorthodox. At least where we came from. Where we used to live.”
And left in a hurry, Grif didn’t doubt.
“Every night before bed we strip completely and Father curries us with a brush. A flesh brush it’s called; it stimulates circulation and purifies the blood. It’s most invigorating, Mr. Smolders.”
Grif did not need his blood stimulated, as it had all rushed up into his face. In his experience a young woman, well brought up, veered with expert precision away from indelicate subjects. That a woman had a body at all, and attendant bodily functions, was not widely acknowledged, let alone considered to be subject matter for civilized discourse. Avice’s sisters, he recalled, would not eat apples in company, supposedly for the unseemly noise made chewing them, but he suspected it had more to do with the spectacle of full lips on ripe fruit. Avice herself had no such compunction. Nor did Polly Cormany appear to have any qualms about tackling the forbidden head-on. Unless of course she was just a child, an innocent.
“Do you know what a man must do,” she said, unperturbed, “if he has a bone caught in his throat?”
“Eat a slice of bread?”
“No. He must repeat thrice nine times the words, I buss the Gorgon’s mouth.” She herself then proceeded to repeat this, several times, her intonation incantatory and sibilant.
Such play-acting. He tried not to grin. He also tried to look appropriately intrigued, and why not, for here was an antique remedy, a physic that might have come straight out of his own journal, a prescription penned in the spidery hand of his fellow author. Then—damn, he remembered, the journal. He had left it in that wretched dining room.
Polly made a move toward him, out of the lacy shadow cast by the curtain, and she was twiddling that bright needle of hers between thumb and forefinger. For a moment he thought she was going to stab him with it, and he took a quick step backwards.
“Whatever is the matter?” he said.
“You’ll never find me,” she said, her voice catching, as though she were the one with a bone stuck in her throat. She then moved briskly around him and strode through the door, slamming it behind her as she went, its crystal knob rattling loosely.
Grif was flummoxed. Something had transpired, but he had missed what exactly it was. More Cormany games—a challenge, a taunt, a bit of fun, didn’t the mother say? This one a grownup version of hide-and-seek, down corridors, in a back bedroom. With a flesh brush.
What Grif did not guess was that Polly might be telling the truth. Not the simple truth—the design of it twisted too much out of shape for that—but the truth nonetheless. Once she passed through that door, she was as good as gone, and he didn’t find her ever again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
wickedness
What was it that eluded him? Certainly the Cormanys were fine people, charming and amusing, and God knows that was a boon to any family. They were just peculiar, and immature, all of them together, which was excusable surely, living in isolation as they did, keeping their own company. This, Grif decided (not entirely convincing himself), accounted for that sense he had of missing something, of not perceiving what it was about them that might be obvious to another visitor less raw and uncouth than himself. Grasping this revealing detail was like trying to pluck a single transparent current out of a flowing river. It could be that what defined them and troubled him was nothing more unusual than the mystery of childhood itself, with its many concealed fears.
Yes. (Maybe.)
As the youngest (Master Rumwold didn’t count) and the prettiest, Polly was undoubtedly spoiled, bored, a troublemaker. Or simply given to yarning. Many times during the course of the day he had chanced to observe William Cormany, and had seen only a man with an easy manner and an unclouded temperament, not a lascivious parent overly appreciative of his children’s physical attributes. Nor had the man offered any occult medical advice, except to comment when Grif enquired about the current state of the medical profession, “My boy, the best physicians you will ever encounter are Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet and Dr. Merryman.”
Grif did not take up Polly’s challenge, in any event, but went instead in search of his journal, which was no longer in the dining room when he hurried back to retrieve it. He found Albert there eating a rolled pancake, licking a dribble of syrup off the heel of his hand. Seeing Grif’s distress, Albert offered to help search for the missing book, and immediately dropped the pancake on the floor at his feet and began opening cupboards, rifling through drawers, frisking the curtains, tossing aside pillows. It was more of a mock search than a real one, and soon he had exhausted whatever sport there was to be had in the activity. He then suggested a game of croquet instead.
“Your book is sure to turn up. I’ll bet you Edgar nicked it for a lark.”
This was how Grif’s day slid away into distraction. He flew down a winding path of pleasures slick as ice. Croquet in the back garden led easily enough to badminton, until a small black dog appeared out of nowhere and ran off with the only shuttlecock; but no matter, for then it was time for luncheon, and an eating contest, which Victoria won by eating her height in cobs of corn. Afterwards there was crambo and whist—“Hunt the Lady,” appropriately enough—followed by charades and conundrums.
“Where did Charles I’s executioner dine, and what did he take?”
“Why, that’s easy. He took a chop at The King’s Head.”
Afterwards he helped Maud paint a pastoral scene on a chunk of fungus big as a cow flap. He attended a grammar lesson in the stable, amid much hilarity, as Edgar attempted to teach the rudiments of English to his horse, Enrico, who understood only Italian. With Ina Cormany, Grif spent an industrious half-hour picking apart a dress, to renew its life, she said. He supposed this activity actually qualified as work, although it seemed too enjoyably destructive to be that.
Polly did not put in an appearance and join in any of this. He didn’t even think of her but once or twice, and then only with some wonder that she was being so stubborn, sticking to her game, staying hidden, her face pressed into the corner of some remote web-wreathed room, while the walls of the house reverberated with everyone else’s laughter.
Except Hattie�
�s, of course. She passed in and out of his view, a laden tray in hand, or a duster, fiddle-faced and resolutely disapproving. He wanted to ignore her as the others did, but she seemed to carry—on her back, in her eye—whatever it was about this place that he couldn’t fathom. She was a thorn, an irritant, a smarting pinch. Contention boiled in her. One word, the wrong word, and it might rip through them all.
By dinner that evening he was worn out. Amazing how they kept up the pace. It had been like attending a marathon birthday party, a hectic high-energy circus for which only children could have the stamina. The muscles in his face had begun to ache from the punishment of holding his smile constantly and widely in place. A tight band of pressure was clamped around his head, a wasps’ nest of anxiety, a headache gaudy and constricting as a turban too tightly wound. He didn’t think he could tolerate any more of their laughter. Whether open or insinuating, it whipped around the room like a zephyr. It buffeted and ate away at him. He longed for muffling dullness, for the gloomy repose of his own lost home, even for the seriousness and sanctuary of prayer.
The Cormanys did not preface their evening meal with grace, however. Secretly they might be thanking someone, but God did not appear to be a candidate for their gratitude. Before joining in the scrum that evening—arms reaching, elbows flying—William Cormany did voice an aphorism of sorts that was unconnected thematically to the current table chatter (mesmerism, grape catsup, curling irons) and completely ignored.
He said: “There are none so wicked as represented; none so good as they should be.” He winked at Grif, and grinned, giving his saying an equivocal teeter, before he made a grab for the peas.
Grif was surprised when Polly also failed to show up for dinner, although his suspicions about her tale-bearing were confirmed. Not only was Hattie present at the table, but the other missing person from the previous night, the “deceased,” put in an appearance. At least that’s who he thought it must be, the granny he had envisioned stretched out in the larder, trussed like a fowl. This woman did not at all resemble his conjured picture of her, or any of the Cormany family for that matter, and she might as easily have been their cook or washerwoman. She was introduced to him simply as “Rosie.” What she did resemble most was her name, as she was a roundish, red-cheeked, cheerful old woman, warm as the steaming bowls on the table.
If she was Grandmother Cormany, death held no terrors for her as she scarcely seemed to believe in it. Her conversation bore this out, persistently. Leaning toward Grif, she confided numerous stories of death circumvented or defied. She knew of a woman, she claimed, who had been roused at her own wake. Sheer indignation had reactivated her heart. The shameful racket the gathered mourners were making, the drunkenness, the irreligious songs, the mud tracked on her clean floor, caused the woman to sit straight up in her coffin and tell everyone to clear out and leave her in peace.
“It’s not uncommon for people to be buried alive,” said Edgar.
“Go on.”
“You do hear of it, some corpse or other being disinterred and then the inside of the casket is discovered to be shredded and clawed.”
“Lord, you mean …?”
“Yes, the poor sod snaps out of it, a coma or what have you, and finds himself six feet under.”
“Imagine that.”
“I know of a man,” said Rosie, “who came back to life during his own funeral, and all because his sons were clumsy. They were the pallbearers, you see, and bumped the coffin into a pew on the way out of the church, and then one of them tripped going down the stairs and away it flew. It crashed on the ground, the lid sprang open and the poor man rolled out. And then he jumped up and started to stagger around.”
“Maudie, pass Rosie a bun, will you please.”
“But the family must have been overjoyed,” said Grif.
“Shocked, really. The wife died of it right on the spot.”
“And then they buried her instead?” said Edgar. “How convenient.”
“No, no. Although they were more careful the second time around.”
From her end of the table Maud shied a bun at the old woman, which glanced off her forehead.
“Maudie!” said her mother.
“Sorry, Rosie, I meant it to land on your plate.”
“Never mind, dear. I know of another woman …”
“Tell me, Mr. Smolders,” said Victoria, “did you find your book?”
“No … I didn’t.” He thought only Albert knew about his missing journal.
“Your Wicked Bible,” said William Cormany.
“My, what was that?”
“It’s old enough to be one.”
“Have you heard of such a thing, Mr. Smolders?”
“I’m afraid not. A bible of some sort?”
“An edition that was published in the seventeenth century. There was an unfortunate misprint in it. The seventh commandment reads, ‘Thou shalt commit adultery.’”
“Thou shalt not honour thy mother and thy father,” laughed Albert.
“Thou shalt kill,” said Edgar, rubbing his hands together.
“A collector’s item,” said Grif.
“Indeed.”
“Where is Polly, anyway?”
“Couldn’t tell you, I haven’t seen her all day.”
“How odd.”
“Maybe she ran away.”
“To the city—she’s threatened to do it often enough.”
“To become a type-writer, wasn’t that it?”
“She wants to be a doctor,” said Hattie.
“A female doctor?” barked William.
“A witch doctor, more like,” said Albert.
“I wonder where she is, though.”
“So was I,” said Grif, “wondering that.”
“You were the last person to see her,” said Hattie.
“Was I?”
“Yes.”
“Check the well.”
“Edgar, really.”
“You might be surprised.”
“Bah!” blurted Master Rumwold, forgotten as usual in his bucket in a corner of the room, and everyone—almost—laughed merrily.
Conversation soon whisked the subject of Polly’s absence away out of reach, as it did seem to do here. Talk was a vehicle more of delivery than of discovery, although it didn’t take Grif anywhere but around in circles.
When the meal was over, he excused himself once again from participating in the evening’s diversions, and went up early to bed. Before going, he snatched a book from their library, which was meant to suggest that he had no intention of spending all the hours of revelry ahead buried in the tedium of sleep. When he got to his room, he saw that he’d chosen something called The Finchley Manual of Industry. His hosts would take him for a serious young man; anyway, more serious than they were. What they actually took him for shortly became a more vexed issue. He spotted his lost journal on the bed, sitting square on the pillow like a precious object on display. Someone at the table knew it had been found. This person had obviously put it in his room and should have said as much.
He set Mr. Finchley’s manual on the washstand and walked over to the bed, eyeing his journal for signs of violation. With something he valued so much, he felt he should be able to tell right off if it had been opened, and read. Not that it contained any secrets of his own, unless one considered the titchy details of a butterfly’s genitalia a personal matter (as it might well be for the butterfly). He picked the book up and began to flip through it. He saw then that it had been interfered with. The empty page he had paused over that morning was now complete, filled in, his day recorded. More incredibly, it was written in his own hand, but was not of his mind, or not of his mind as he knew it. It was a forgery obscene and callous. It contained a thief’s inventory of goods in the house, and was interspersed with crude remarks about the family, especially the women. One passage, most fantastic, recorded an unspeakable act:
Cornered youngest in d. room. Made sure beforehand door wd lock. Shoved her up agst. the
wall and got my fill. Cd. tell she not unwilling. Gagged her anyway, with her own drawers (ha ha). Promisd to slit her throat if she told. She wont talk. Better than a sporting house this place.
Grif slapped the book shut and hurled it from him as if it were on fire, as if it were alive and scheming, plotting wickedness all on its own. The journal bounced off the wall and fell open again, but at an earlier, centuries-old passage, the ravages described therein long forgotten.
It was only a practical joke, of course. He knew that, and knew he shouldn’t let his headache think for him, and make more of it than it deserved. But it was fashioned out of a humour that was too queer and soiled for his liking. Which one was responsible? Edgar, probably. Surely the girls themselves weren’t involved. Although Hattie was a possibility. Even Polly herself. Or the whole blessed family. To the very bottom of his sorry soul Grif regretted not finding the front door as he had intended that morning, and he vowed as he put out the light and slid under the covers that tomorrow he would be gone from this place with the dawn, that he’d vanish with the mist.
Again in the middle of the night he was awakened. He thought he could hear someone calling him. He had been walking on a lake bottom, walking for years, it seemed, his shoes encrusted with shells, his jacket trailing fronds of blanketweed, his skin furred a dull green with algae. Around his head his hair pulsed black and silken as he pushed up through currents soft as cloth, up into the sharp night air. He heard then, not a voice calling, but a muffled moaning sound coming from somewhere in the house. The sound defied interpretation. It might have been a cry for help, or a plea for mercy, or an exclamation of enjoyment entangled with one of hopelessness and despair.
What he did know for certain, what he finally understood, was that nightmare in this house lay somewhere outside of dreaming. And knowing this, he held his breath and plunged back to the lake bottom.
Not for long. Shortly after, a bolt of pain shot through his jaw as he was struck with something hard—an axe handle, the butt of a rifle—and he had no choice but to surface once more, breathe deeply, and open his wary and reluctant eyes.