She turns, and the policemen are filling the room, blotting out the light. The dark, stuffy space, and nowhere to go—
scrabbling for the latch in Klüpfel’s carriage, she had wanted the ride and his kiss but not that, how could she have forgotten? She had tried to make him stop, how had she forgotten? As if he had taken her very will with her virtue—
with a furious growl she leaps forward once more and the shot catches her shoulder, tearing through muscle and skin all along her side. The force sends her spinning backwards, crashing into a pile of books and skidding over the crates to smack against the door in a heap.
The door swings open.
A rush of dry heat pours into the room, followed by a host of braying howling dogs that leap over her to throw themselves at the men in a frenzy of foaming mouths and wild eyes. The room filled with flailing bodies, the air reverberating with screams of terror and beneath them an incessant snarling and barking that seems to come from a hundred animals at once.
Julie tries to rise but the dogs are pushing her through the open doorway. As she staggers backwards the light increases to a soft glow; the shrieking cacophony becomes muffled, distant. The ground beneath her feet a soft, dry dirt.
Two strong arms pick her up, a deep female voice hushing her as she snaps and whimpers, still trembling in impotent fury.
‘That’s my girl,’ Lyssa says, but her words are jumbled in Julie’s mind with the firm tone in her voice, the feel of her arms caging Julie’s body. She turns Julie one way and another, stroking her injuries and smoothing them away; helplessly Julie nips at her, she cannot check herself, but Lyssa only coos and continues to stroke her. The others crowd around now, sniffing and licking. Julie can feel the fierce joy and hunger in their bodies and she wags her tail in response, eager to join them even as exhaustion finally starts to overtake her.
‘That’s my Julie,’ Lyssa says again. ‘I knew you would come back to us.’ They move deeper into the glowing warmth, her fingers rubbing Julie’s head. ‘I told you, my girl. No fear, no hope; only your rage can free you. Just your rage, as sharp as a blade. A taste of their own, eh?’ She laughs aloud, her deep, full laugh, and eases Julie amidst the others’ snuggling bodies, each curling nose to tail, forming a warm furry patchwork atop the Turkish rug. ‘All my beautiful angry girls,’ she declares proudly. ‘You can run and hunt as you please now. This world, this enlightened, reasonable world! There’s more than enough prey to go around.’
THE GRAVE HOUSE
Steve Rasnic Tem
Your head was like a house, Annie thought. Livin’ inside was your teeth and tongue, your eyeballs and a whole lot of foolishness. Like in any other house, what lived inside could ruin it. And what died inside, stayed.
Back when Annie’s grandma was still alive, between the two big wars and before all those little ’uns, if you built a house in the hills you built it fast and you built it simple: four walls, floor, and ceilin’ all pretty much the same, a roof with some tin on it, and a good size sittin’ porch. How you divided it up inside was up to you: most went with a kitchen in back and a front room married to it with a hall (that’s where the family pictures went). Bedrooms come in between, two to each side if the house was deep, sometimes two on one side and one on t’other (the big one for the parents and maybe the baby). If you wasn’t too lazy you built yourself a big back porch. The outhouse was outside (‘whar hit belongs’, accordin’ to Grandma). Most houses was pretty much the same when you first built them—they kept your head dry.
If you started doin’ good you might do a fix-up, add on a parlour and a dinin’ room, or maybe even go with an inside toilet off that kitchen. Maybe you’d replace the newspaper on the walls with somethin’ better. Like everythin’ else, some did and some didn’t. But most folk back in the hills was stuck their whole lives in whatever they built that first time out. ‘So best build it right,’ was what grandma told her sons and daughters. Which they pretty much did, except Annie’s own pa. Every time in her memory, at least, when her grandma came to visit, at some point she’d hear her say, ‘Well, Jake’s no carpenter.’ Annie didn’t like that—it made her feel unlucky. But she guessed it was true.
Another thing she’d hear her grandma say, especially when she drank too much to be polite, was ‘Remember I want me a nice grave house, so don’t let Jake build it. If Jake built it, it wouldn’t be worth a lick.’
So of course when grandma died Jake got the job of buildin’ the grave house. That’s the way things worked out in her family. No one else wanted to spend that much time in a graveyard, especially not for that sour old woman, but Annie’s pa didn’t seem to mind.
So her pa Jake set to buildin’ that grave house, makin’ it big enough not just for Grandma but for all the rest of the family too when they passed on. A grand old grave house just as big as the ones for the most important families down in town, one that would be passed down for generations. But he just plain didn’t have the talent for it. Annie’s pa built a shaky grave house just like he built a shaky house for his family. Grandma had been right. Nothin’ her pa ever made was worth much. Annie hadn’t made up her mind yet if that included her. She’d never had the guts to ask Grandma her opinion.
Now, seventy years later, still livin’ in this dark and shaky old house, Annie was wonderin’ if she’d become her own grandma.
Even though it happened pretty regular, it always came as a sad surprise. She’d get up to use the bathroom in that poor shack of her family home, the responsibility of it all now hers, the beaten wooden floor crackin’ loud with each step so she’d feel like the house was about to explode. She’d walk the hallway of gray pine walls, bare now of wallpaper or paint or any other wall coverin’ you’d expect of a proper home. At the end of that hall was an old-fashioned bathroom, built with all kinds of crazy corners and slopes that ought’n a been there, like the carpenter was drunk (which he had been, she could be pretty sure), but still a luxury to have one indoors. The hall was fat with pictures, frames a lot finer than the walls they were on, scattered like they got thrown and just stuck there, kids and babies, teenagers, mothers and fathers, aunts, uncles, cousins galore, grands so old they looked more like tree stumps than people, all of the frames full of dust. And each time just before openin’ the bathroom door her lantern would pick out the photo of her grandma mounted eye-level, trapped inside the best frame ever, just like she was the queen of Sheba. And each time Annie would forget that was a mirror she was starin’ at, and forget that hair full of ice and those eye holes full of wrinkles was her own. Until she blinked, and knew, and started cryin’ because it snuck up on her, and she had no idea how she’d gotten so old and lonely inside this mess of boards, this house barely standin’ deep in these southwest Virginia woods. ‘Applesauce? Why do you cry so, Applesauce?’
She looked up from her plate smeared pretty yellow with egg and found her pa’s eyes: big and grey and slow as slugs. ‘Don’t call me that, Pa. Momma says it ain’t proper,’ she said, although in truth she loved the name he’d given her. She just didn’t want him to get in more trouble with Momma.
‘Never mind your momma.’ Then he grinned. ‘Nope. I mean you to mind your momma; just don’t worry about what she might say for a half a whisker. Why are you cryin’, is what I want to know.’
Annie never lied to her pa except maybe oncet, so she just told him, ‘I don’t want to clean up the grave house this mornin’—it’s all messed up in there.’
He sat down beside her, smellin’ of strong soap, tobacco, aftershave, and just under, that forever whiskey stink. She leaned against him, but she’d run out of tears. Her pa always said tears wasn’t the kind of water what did the crops any good, so she’d always made it a point not to waste much time cryin’. ‘You ain’t scared o’ haints is you?’ he whispered.
She looked up at him and saw that he wasn’t jokin’. ‘Not much,’ she said. ‘Maybe a little.’
‘Ain’t no haints in there, Applesauce. That’s your grandma down in
that grave house, and your grandpa Old Charlie, and your baby sister.’
‘She never had a name, did she?’ she asked for the dozenth time.
‘I reckon the Lord gave her his own, secret name,’ he said again, for the dozenth time. But this time he leaned forward and whispered, ‘I always call her Lilly, but that’s my secret, Applesauce. Don’t tell your ma. It’s probably agin our religion, or some such.’
‘Oh, I won’t,’ she said, thinkin’ that’s what she’d call her dead sister from now on, but quiet, in her heart, just like Pa. ‘Do you think Grandma knows little sister’s secret name?’
‘I reckon she must. The Lord probably told her when he gave her your sister to babysit.’
Annie sat thinkin’ quiet about that a little while. One of the things she loved best about her pa was that he was patient enough not to interrupt her when she was thinkin’ about important things. Then she said, ‘They’s all kind of twisty dead weeds balled up in that grave house. What if it’s got snakes and spiders, too?’
‘You can take a stick in there with you and you can move things around slow—we’re in no hurry here. I’ve been checkin’ it out every day and I ain’t seen a snake yet, but you know what to do if one come along. I just got to take that cow over to Gibson’s this mornin’. I’ll be helpin’ you soon’s I get back.’
‘Cause cleanin’ up the grave house is important.’
‘Sure is. It’s shameful how neglectful we been while your momma was ailin’. We have to show our dead the proper respect if we want them behavin’ proper. That way they stay in their little house and keep us good company. You want them to keep us good company, don’t you?’
Annie didn’t know if she wanted such a thing or not. She couldn’t even decide on her favourite colour so how could she know what she wanted her dead family folk to do?
‘Miz Willis? You in there?’
Annie opened her eyes onto a tangle of dead white weed, her hand clutchin’ it with her palsy. She wondered if maybe she’d fallen into the ditch line again—it got so embarrassin’ layin’ there waitin’ for somebody to haul her out. Then she realised it was her own hair spread out over her bed pillow.
‘Miz Willis!’
‘Who’s that callin’?’ Her own voice scared her with its brittleness. She twisted her neck and pointed her face toward the door. She could see a big man outlined in the rusty screen.
‘Jack Tolliver! I come to do the grave house! Like you wanted, remember?’
She was mixed up for a minute. She didn’t want the grave house at all. She was stuck with it. She didn’t know what to say, so she said, ‘I’m not dressed!’
‘I’m terrible sorry, ma’am, but I need for you to show me what to do in there. Some of them old stones been moved around, and broke—I just don’t want to do nothin’ disrespectful, or mess things up more!’
‘Wait a minute!’ she cried, ‘I’m not dressed!’
‘Ma’am, I swear I’m not comin’ inside. I just needs you to come outside, you hear?’
‘I told you I was comin’ out, Jack Tolliver! You just be patient! I ain’t dressed yet!’
‘Yes’m,’ he replied, so soft she could barely hear him.
She couldn’t remember where she’d put her housecoat, or her overalls, or anythin’ else. She stumbled over her old boots—those had been Pa’s, back when he was alive—but she could hardly go outside, in front of a man, with just her boots and her nightgown on. Although she did feel just a ghost of a thrill, to her great surprise, to think there was a man just outside her front door, and she just getting’ out of bed. She’d never known men, never been married. Most folk would say she’d never had a real life, locked up inside this old farm, this house, inside her rough old head. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to town, and company was as rare as a hen’s tooth. The thought made her grin. When she was a girl she hated chickens—they got on her nerves.
‘Applesauce, you done drawed that chicken with a mouth full of teeth!’ Her pa sounded both shocked and tickled. ‘What’s Miz Gibson goin’ to think when you bring that picture into school?’
‘Pa, I drawed that chicken with teeth cause chickens is evil and I hates ’em!’
He crouched down beside her so that his head looked like a big old melon on the edge of the table. He looked serious. ‘What makes ’em evil, Applesauce?’
‘ ’Cause they squawks all the times and they chases me around the yard.’
Then Pa opened his mouth so wide it looked like he was goin’ to eat her, and eat the whole rest of the world after, so it scared her, but then he was howlin’ loud and slappin’ his knee with his eyes shut so tight and the tears leakin’ out. It was still kind of scary but she knew that was the way he laughed when he heard a good ’un, so she must a just told a good ’un and it made her feel all growed up and proud.
Then her pa squeezed her nose and ran out the door and she screamed and chased him out the door because that’s the way they always did it. Annie stumbled out into the dark yard but her pa was nowhere to be seen. Jack Tolliver was nowhere to be seen neither. No one was anywhere she could see no matter how hard she tried. She looked down at the way she was dressed—just the boots and the nightgown—and thought it was probably a mighty good thing that nobody was there to see her.
She looked around the yard, at the old barn and the chicken coop—that last chicken, Glenda, died at least five year ago, but still, when the wind come up, you’d find little puffs of chicken feather stuck up in every little cranny and snag on the farm. Like special seeds to make new chickens, but Annie wasn’t havin’ no more of them evil chickens, not if she could help it.
She looked back at the house and was surprised at how purty it looked with the sun just down, like your best memory of the ugliest thing in your life. She hated that old house as much as she hated to be thinkin’ the hate, but it wasn’t too bad right now. This farm wasn’t such a bad place for spendin’ your days—she just wished it didn’t have to be every last day you had to spend in your life.
She’d always wanted to travel. Maybe to Kansas where the tornadoes lived, but anywhere, really. But who’d be left around to tend to the grave house?
She spun around then, like some windup thing what spring done broke, so’s she was dizzy and ready to lose her breakfast, ’cept she didn’t think she’d had breakfast that mornin’, couldn’t remember the last mornin’ she’d had a breakfast, not even some nasty egg after that last evil chicken died. But dizzy or hungry she made herself look at the grave house, and staggered out toward it, almost fallin’ when she started up the hill, and had to grab onto an old fencepost, so rotten it fell apart in her hand, fillin’ the air with little pieces, like she was one of them magicians done a trick.
Mad as spit, she looked down at the pitiful thing. Here she’d stayed all this time because she was the only one left to take care of the grave house—Pa said it had to be her job—but she’d always hated the thing, didn’t like to go near it, so when she remembered, she’d hire somebody to tend to it, but that was about it. So why’d she have to stay?
It was a little house, kind of like the family house she’d always lived in, but even smaller. Big enough to stand up inside, swing a pick or sling a spade, haul a headstone in there. The floor was dirt and they was benches all around the inside against the walls, so the family could visit the ‘dearly departed’—like the preacher called ’em, or the ‘dead kinfolk’, like her pa always said. Sometimes they might have a picnic in there on a hot day. It was shady, and nice, and you brought flowers for the family members what wasn’t eatin’, cause they was too busy bein’ dead.
Annie hated the grave house, but she’d always kind of liked them picnics, the shade and the food, just as long as she didn’t have to eat no evil chickens, who once they got inside her they might haint her with their squawks and their evilness. Like her pa used to say, ‘Sometimes you gotta make the best outta a bad sigiation!’
But nobody had stood up in that grave house i
n a very long time, or sat on them benches, or had no picnics. That grave house was full of weeds, and brambles, and animal houses, and probably snakes, and probably worse, and bushes, and little trees what grew up right through the roof, and dark places, and stinkin’ places, and lonely places, and the scariest places in the world. All because Annie didn’t take good care. She didn’t take care at all. So now when she died, where was she goin’ to go? Would they burn her up like some did, or would they just grind her up and feed her piece by piece to the evil chickens?
It was almost like her momma and her pa, her grandma and grandpa Old Charlie, and Baby Sister Lilly, wasn’t buried in there at all. How could they be? You couldn’t even see their stones no more, you didn’t know if they still had stones.
Maybe the only place they was buried now was inside that tiny, rough head of hers, all of ’em waitin’ at the picnic, wantin’ to be fed.
‘Miz Willis? You in there?’
Just like she’d been buried on this farm, in that awful old shaky shack, all her damned life.
‘Miz Willis? You in there?’
‘I told you I ain’t even dressed! What kind of man is it go botherin’ a lady what ain’t dressed?’
‘Now now, Applesauce, don’t go bitin’ off heads. The man jus tryin’ to do a job for the family.’
Pa’s voice came wet and soft into her ear, heavy with liquor and somethin’ stronger. Formaldehyde, maybe, or worst.
Annie looked up at the tin ceilin’ of the grave house, the way all the little nail holes in the metal let the sunlight through like they was stars. She didn’t like the grave house, for sure didn’t like livin’ in the grave house, but she did like this part, makin’ the best out of a bad sigiation.
Strange Tales V Page 5