It’s one thing to know you’re disabled.
It’s another thing completely to see it magnified in someone else’s eyes.
That’s why I couldn’t tell them about the shadows, the presence of the little devils. They were in enough pain over the survival of my broken body. It would be too much for them to see the ghosts I bought back, too.
***
The room was dark, but the shadows were darker. I watched the walls take a breath while the pitter patter of hooves scraped against the wood, their footprints large, twice the size of a full-grown man. I froze, my body tight against the sheets as I tried not to breathe, but my heart beat howled, their growling deeper now, hungrier.
I watched the red in the drapery drip to the floor in splashes of hot fire. I saw the lights of the trolley in the distance, the screams of its passengers forever written on the inside of my eyelids. I had prayed to God that day, begged him to let me live, to survive the horror of my broken body, the desecration of my womb.
But not tonight.
Not again.
I didn’t know how many of them were in the room with me, but the smell of ash, of burning, crawled into my nose, the scales of a snake warm on my tongue. My jaw trembled as bile collected in my throat, but I swallowed it against the nails that held me together.
“I k-know you’re here,” I said, my voice shaking. “I’m wasn’t ready before, but I-I am now.”
Laughter filled the room, the air thick, heavy with surrender.
“And what has changed, little Frida?” said a voice from the darkness. “You didn’t want me then. What’s to make me think you’re ready for me now?”
I saw myself haggard and withering away under my mother’s quilt, my skin like parchment, dried, aged. I’d never walk again, never have children. I would know no love that wasn’t in obligation. This body was my corpse, my grave. I had to leave it.
“Being like this? It’s not worth it. I’m in the same Hell I tried to escape. I’d rather be dead than suffocate in this body another night.”
A tall, thin man walked out from the corner of the room, his boots dragging against the floor as he came to my bedside. He had a cane made of femurs, his eyes two yellow moons under the expanse of a black top hat, fashioned with teeth.
“You taste different,” he said, dragging a fingernail across my forehead, his tongue like sandpaper against my cheek. “But even still, I cannot take you. You made your choice that day on the street when you turned away my hand.”
“I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what I was bargaining for.”
The man smiled a toothy grin, his mouth a hospice of rotted teeth.
“Tantos diablos,” he said. “My children have taken a liking to you.”
A high-pitched screech filled the room.
The sound of a thousand footsteps ran towards my bed.
“Please,” I whispered again. “Help me. Get me out of here. I’ll do anything.”
“I think you just might be telling the truth, little Frida.”
I collected what strength I had, held firm against my fear.
“Name your price,” I said.
The man pounded his cane three times against the floor and a child walked out from behind him, only it wasn’t a child. A little girl in a pink dress and a ruffled white collar walked to my bedside, a sunflower in her hand. Her skull was polished and white, the color of lilies and grandmother’s lace tablecloth. Chained to her foot was the head of a monster, a bleeding, decapitated ogre with bulging eyes and pinched ears.
“Take the flower and eat it. It will give you the sight you need to be able to walk, a reason to use your legs,” said the man.
The little girl held out the sunflower and Frida took it, the taste of the Devil’s garden on her tongue.
“In return, you owe me a soul,” he said, handing her a piece of paper, the edges burned from where his fingertips touched it. “Bring me this man, this frog, my little dove, and I will fill your world with fantasies beyond your wildest dreams.”
I nodded my head.
“You have my word.”
Rain fell from the ceiling, his laugh a clash of thunder as I pulled teeth out of my hair. He sank back into the shadows, the white of his cane the last thing I remember before a hand reached down from my canopy and grabbed my throat.
***
“Frida, mi hija. The doctor is here,” my father said as he knocked on my door.
I opened my eyes to the whitest light I’d ever seen and coughed so hard it turned into a gag. Cupping my mouth with my hand, I vomited, the bile scratching my throat raw as it came out in clumps.
What the—
In my hand were two molars and a crumbled piece of paper.
“Frida, did you hear me?” my father asked, his tone louder now, agitated.
“Just a minute, papa,” I said.
Shaking, I opened the note:
You are your subject. And Diego Rivera is mine.
Stand tall, my dove. I’ll see you burn yet.
“It was real,” I said.
“As real as you and me,” said a voice.
I looked to the canopy of my bed, watched how it sagged under the weight of a body. Leaves fell from the bed side as vines crept out from underneath my blankets, secured themselves around my neck. A figure crab walked out from under the bed, it’s body naked and in labor. Horrified, I watched my face rip through its vaginal walls while an adult version of me tore out the creature’s heart and then wore it around her neck as a prize.
All these versions of myself stood with me in the room, their reflections magnified in the mirrors that kept me company. They were my nightmares revisited, played out for me scene by scene. Self-portraits of pain.
This is how I get to him, how I seduce Diego.
I spun the teeth in circles in my palm. They reminded me of dice, rolls of fate. I had met Diego once, shortly before the accident, the communist pig. He was a brilliant muralist, a renowned misogynist, never faithful to one woman, but oh, could he paint. I used to find excuses to see him, teasing him while he worked on his piece, Creation, at the Bolívar Auditorium of the National Preparatory School in Mexico City. I even asked him if I could watch him work once, his wife, Lupe, ever jealous of my presence near her husband.
But I painted my demons, if I worked my Hell into my art, he’d never be able to deny me.
Not me, his little dove.
La chica con la mascara de muerte.
I slid the two teeth underneath the mattress.
“I’m ready,” I said. “Please come in.”
Both the doctor and my father walked in the room, his face a contortion of fear and concern as he looks at my body cast, the sweat dripping from my brows. My mother and sister walked in soon after, right as the doctor began to examine me.
“How do you feel today, Frida?”
“I feel like I’m going to walk again,” I said.
Nodding, the doctor smiled. “I think you may very well be right dear. After all, how else will the world see all the beautiful paintings you do?”
I smiled at this compliment while the eyes of the little devils watched me from shadows in the room.
“Beautiful, yes. But my painting carries with it the message of pain,” I said. “And one day, every soul in Mexico City will know my name because of it.”
The room fell silent, my promise hanging on the tips of their tongues.
“Now please, doctor, get me out of this cast,” I said. “I have an appointment with a frog that I very much intend to keep.”
ON A TRAIN BOUND FOR HOME
CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN
The late afternoon sunlight glinted off of the rooftops of Vienna, casting long September shadows onto the cobblestone streets. Harry Houdini sat in the back seat, twisted slightly to one side to make room for the travel cases beside him. In the front, his publicist on this trip, an enterprising young man named Ned McCarty, rode with the driver. Harry listened to Ned’s easy banter, so conf
ident at the age of twenty-two, and wondered if he had ever been as lighthearted as that. Ned spoke almost as little German as the driver did English, but somehow the two had struck up an easy camaraderie that Harry envied. When the driver pulled up to the train station, Harry was glad to have that particular journey over, even as he felt such dread about the one he and Ned were about to begin.
The auto had barely rattled to a halt before Harry unlatched his door and clambered out, closing it behind him. The sun had slid farther toward the horizon and dropped just behind the train station’s roof, silhouetting the building with golden fire and casting the street where Harry stood into deep shadow. Beyond the station, visible past the platform, the Orient Express awaited, hissing and smoking in preparation for departure, putting him in mind of a sleeping dragon. He took half a dozen steps toward that station and the platform and then hesitated, full of a trepidation he could not name.
Ned and the driver took the bags from the car and set them down. Harry glanced over in time to see Ned giving the man a tip and receiving a hearty pat on the back in return.
“Thank you,” Harry said, touching the brim of his felt hat in a little salute.
The driver waved in reply and climbed into the car, which gave a full-throated roar as he started it up. A moment later it clattered away, a strange sight amidst the horse-drawn carriages and carts on the street. Harry turned his attention back to the train station, automobile and driver forgotten.
“You speak German,” Ned said, frowning at him. “You couldn’t bid him farewell in his own language?”
“I speak rotten German,” Harry replied, “and not much of it. Besides, I’m an American. I speak English. We hired him to drive specifically because he spoke our language.”
All during the exchange, Harry’s gaze never strayed from the sight of the Orient Express, seething and steaming as it awaited them. He had admired machines and mechanisms of all kinds throughout his life—ingenuity intrigued him—and a machine as beautiful and powerful as this train impressed him. The handful of days he had spent in Vienna had been a pleasure thanks both to the loveliness of its architecture and to its near-constant gastronomic delights, particularly the tortes at Gerstner on Karntner Strasse. The night he had attended the opera with the city’s mayor had been the one disappointment. The performance had bored him, and he had spent its duration wishing that he had been the one on the stage, playing to a packed house at the Wiener Hofoper. But it wasn’t just the beauty of Vienna that made him reluctant to leave.
“Harry?” Ned said, nudging him.
“Hmm?” Harry glanced at him and realized that Ned had picked up his own valise and travel case and stood waiting, while Harry’s own bags remained on the ground beside him.
“Do you want me to get a porter?”
“You’re the publicist, kid. Do you want the Great Houdini to have his picture taken carrying his own bags?”
He smiled, just in case Ned hadn’t caught the sarcasm. On stage he would always be the Great Houdini, and he played that up for the crowds on the streets and in the bars in order to feed his fame. But sometimes he grew tired from the effort it took to inhabit the role. Ned hadn’t known him very long and he didn’t want the kid who was supposed to be drumming up the Great Houdini’s press to think that the Great Houdini believed his own press.
Ned studied him for a second or two, troubled and unsure. “You’re right,” he said. “Herr Diederich will have some journalists to see you off, for sure. Let me get the porter.”
Harry shook his head and bent to hoist up his bags. “Forget it, kid. It’s the Orient Express, first class. I won’t have to lift a finger while we’re on board unless it’s to cut my steak. I can carry my own damn bags.”
Weighed down with his cases, wishing he had packed fewer shirts, he started toward the front entrance of the station. He passed out of view of the platform and lost sight of the waiting train. A shiver went through him.
“You all right, Harry?” Ned asked as they approached the front doors, the people around them all in a hurry, whether they were arriving in Vienna or departing.
“Might be coming down with a cold,” Harry replied.
“It’s not that,” Ned said. “You seem . . . well, I’ve never seen you nervous before. If I had to guess—”
Harry raised his chin a bit and gave the kid a hard look. “I’m fine.”
An older man came out through the doors and was polite enough to hold one open for them.
“You know you don’t have to do this,” Ned said. “You’re feeling ill, right? We can cancel.”
Just inside the station, in the midst of echoing footfalls and the susurrus of voices, Harry paused to glare at him, using anger to hide the battle he was waging in his heart.
“How would that look? For Pete’s sake, Ned, you’re the damned publicist!”
For more than a decade, as he toured the world, Harry had been challenging local constabulary to lock him up in order to establish his reputation as an escape artist. In time he had begun to accept challenges from ordinary citizens. Most of them he ignored, because once he had publicly accepted such a challenge, anything other than success would be an embarrassment and a black mark on the image he had worked so hard to build. Sometimes, however, he simply could not resist.
Ned glanced around to make sure they were not being overheard and then shuffled toward a wall, tilting his head to indicate that Harry should join him.
“You’re on edge,” Ned whispered. “If it’s not the escape that’s got you worried, do you mind telling me what the hell it is? Take me into your confidence. It’s the only way I can do my job properly.”
Harry took a long breath, fighting the tension in his back and arms, forcing himself to exhale. He glanced past Ned and saw Herr Diederich across the station. The Vienna banker stood with several others whose clothing and bearing marked them as similarly wealthy. They were surrounded by a small gaggle of perhaps half a dozen reporters, all of them hanging on Diederich’s every word, save for a smartly dressed young woman with her auburn hair caught up in a tightly knotted bun. Of them all, it was she who spotted Harry, and she gave him a small, knowing smile, as if to say she didn’t blame him for hanging back and delaying his exposure to the small circus that awaited his arrival. That smile charmed him, even from thirty yards away.
He turned to Ned, studying the young man’s earnest blue eyes and the neat little mustache he had grown to make himself look not quite so young but which had had precisely the opposite effect. A young man, but smart and loyal.
“The reporters are coming over,” Harry said quietly. “They’ve seen me now and will be upon us in moments. But you deserve an answer, Ned, and it’s a kind of confession, I guess. I lived in Appleton, Wisconsin as a kid—”
“I know that.”
“—But I wasn’t born there. My real name is Erik Weisz. That’s Hungarian, my friend. I was born in Budapest and spent the first four years of my life there. I remember almost nothing of that period, of course. The Orient Express, the journey we’re about to embark upon . . . for me it’s boarding a train that’s bound for home, and it makes me feel like a charlatan.”
Ned gaped at him. “Wow, Harry, I had no idea.”
“Now that you do, you won’t speak a word of it to anyone. I’m no charlatan, Ned. I’ve worked as hard as I know how and nearly died a hundred times to get to where I am. But you wanted to know what’s gotten under my skin, and so I told you. It’s Budapest, kid. It haunts me.”
“You could have refused to—”
“But I didn’t,” Harry interrupted. “And we’re here now, so let’s give ’em a show.”
Before Ned could reply, the reporters descended upon them, firing off questions that Harry ignored with a magnanimous smile until Herr Diederich pushed through them with his rich friends in tow and put out a hand to shake.
“Mister Houdini, what a pleasure,” Diederich said in thickly accented English. “The train is to depart soon. I was afraid you
would not make it in time.”
“Not make it?” scoffed a gray-bearded man with spectacles and a ruby pin in his lapel. “You thought Herr Houdini had decided to break his word, that the challenge had frightened him away?”
Bristling inside, Harry managed a smile. “Not at all, my friends.” He glanced at the charming woman with the auburn hair, saw the notepad and pencil in her hand and realized for the first time that she was one of the journalists. He liked that: a girl with pluck. “Just saying farewell to lovely Vienna, in case I never see her again.”
The reporters exploded with excitement at this, as they always did whenever he dangled the possibility of his own death in front of them. The reaction never failed to elicit a strange combination of amusement and disgust in Harry. Only the lady journalist, in her smart suit with its buttons in a severe, slashing line down the front of both jacket and skirt, seemed to hang back, waiting for an opportunity to strike.
“Anna Carter of the Boston Globe, Mr. Houdini,” she said in the first lull. “Do you mean to tell us that a challenge this dangerous, circumstances in which most men would face almost certain death, doesn’t intimidate you at all?”
The question quieted them all as they awaited his answer. Harry directed it toward the lady who’d posed it.
“My dear Miss Carter,” he said. “The Great Houdini is not ‘most men.’”
***
Harry enjoyed the rocking of thuisine e train and the way the candle on his table in the dining car seemed to stay still, only the flame wavering back and forth. The first class dinner menu had been extensive, but he had chosen the duck with traditional Austrian dumplings and cabbage. Ned had ordered wild boar and somehow managed to consume the entire dish. He had a prodigious appetite for so thin a man, and Harry envied him his youth.
“How do you find the duck, Mr. Houdini?” Anna Carter asked, over the rim of a glass of Piesporter she had been nursing for half an hour.
“Delicious, Miss Carter. And your veal?”
“Very tender,” the reporter replied. “Honestly, I never expected to experience a meal so fine in such circumstances. The cuisine on board a train generally leaves much to be desired.”
Fantastic Tales of Terror Page 8