Best New Horror 29

by Stephen Jones

  “But you can talk, make this light…”

  “And small, bitter consolation that it is. As I said, I can’t haunt anyone. Hepsibah Ballantyne knows her business too well for that.”

  Isobel startled at the name, thinking about the poisons mistress who came to St. Dymphna’s and taught the girls to brew dark potions. There were whispers that the woman was a coffin-maker, too, and indeed that was where her renown lay; the facility with poison was a happy coincidence and a secret for St. Dymphna’s headmistresses and students. A lucrative habit borne of her more-than-passing interest in death.

  “My, what interesting things you keep hidden in your heart and head. I only knew her name from conversations I’d heard Adolphus and his mother have as they crossed the floor above my tomb—they’ve a fondness for plotting in the chapel, perhaps it makes them feel justified and holy.” The corpse sounded sad.

  “Poison,” said Isobel.

  “And there are these jewels, of course. Not contented with paying a premium for death-beds to keep us beneath, they laid these cursed gems over us.”

  Isobel prodded at the attachments to her canines, and the dead bride said, “Those are to stop us from becoming vampires or some other such blood ghosts. They made us saints against our will, the ecstatic dead to cover their crimes, to keep us from haunting them, from ever getting vengeance.”

  “But I’m not dead,” said Isobel softly.

  “No, indeed you are not!” Gleeful now. “None of the chains the living have placed upon you have taken, sweet Isobel, and you are fit for my purpose!”

  Isobel listened, watched the still form; there was only the sickly pulsing green light to tell her she wasn’t truly alone, that the voice wasn’t simply in her head. But what if it was? What if the light was an hallucination too? Perhaps this was her punishment.

  Punishment for what?

  For leaving St. Dymphna’s the moment her mother died?

  For denying her duty?

  For falling in love with the man she was meant to murder?

  For being so foolish as to trust?

  “Why did you do it? Trust him? You were better off than any of us. You were trained. You had a goal, a duty.”

  “Get out of my head! I’m conscious now and I don’t appreciate you using it as your playground!” Isobel shouted so loudly that her ears hurt in the confined space.

  “I’m sorry,” said the dead bride. “There’s little call for etiquette down here so I forget.”

  “For him. He was older by a little, funny, sweet and smart. He didn’t care that I was fat. He was…kind. I met him before I was sent to St. Dymphna’s. I knew almost from the cradle what I was meant to do, that the very point of my life was to destroy another’s—to avenge an ancient and dusty death, an ancestress of mine murdered at the hands of his forefathers.” Isobel paused. “But I met him and I loved him from the first even though I knew I shouldn’t. I thought…I thought I might draw it out, put off taking his life until after my mother died, until there was no one left to care. Then he and I could be happy, the past forgotten, dead and buried.

  “Then my mother did die, sooner rather than later, before I’d even finished my schooling. I left St. Dymphna’s the very day after the news arrived. I went to him, went to his home, we planned our life together.”

  “They’re not as fabulously prosperous as they appear, you know. There’s much tat and shine for show, but the vaults are empty, more often than not with but a few pieces of gold, candlesticks and crested salvers. The family silver has been pawned and redeemed time and again—the silversmiths of Caulder know the Wollstonecrafts of old.”

  “But—”

  “Rich brides are this family’s business. We’re lambs to them, meat on the table, money in the bank, brides in caskets. Did you not wonder that there were no friends invited to your nuptials? None there but Wollstonecrafts? That they live so far from anything despite their supposed wealth? It’s hard to keep secrets in cities where everyone’s watching to see what move you make, where the well-to-do keep better track of their daughters.” A long sigh. “You signed over everything, didn’t you? All the riches your mother gathered, the businesses she built, all the prosperity and majesty that clever merchant queen reaped from her investments over the years, and you signed it away for a piece of cock.” A giggle, rueful. “Don’t feel too great a fool, I did the same, and brides before me and thee who were otherwise reckoned clever. I…I was ugly, yet he convinced me he loved me, that he cared not a jot for beauty.”

  “But Adolphus loved me. He didn’t know what I gave up for him, that I put his life first.” But she thought of the tiny moments, the signs she’d ignored: all the occasions when plans for what came after the wedding were put off, discussions avoided. Don’t you worry about that, my dear, we’ve plenty of time for that later. Yet how quickly he’d begged she sign documents that transferred her ownerships to him in case of a dreadful tragedy, which would of course never happen.

  “You think not? The poison he used came from Ballantyne, who knew you at the school, who outfitted this very coffin-tomb, this death-bed just as she did the others—she’s not so skilled with stone as wood, but she did a good enough job to trap me. You let him live Isobel, but no good deed ever goes unpunished.” The skeleton gave a rueful chuckle. “And I doubt you’re the first poison girl to flee that venerable institution, to choose love over duty.”

  “I was, you know. The Misses told me with great relish and umbrage,” confessed Isobel.

  “Ah. My tale is your tale, or at least so close that the differing details barely matter. But at last something can be done.” The voice rose like a victory hymn.

  “You’re dead,” said Isobel, toneless, lifeless. “You’re dead and I’m trapped. Even if he’s betrayed me”— if?— “nothing can be done.”

  “Do you have the engagement ring he gave you? An enormous sapphire, if memory serves correct, blue as a hot afternoon sky?”

  Isobel examined her fingers, looked to where the item in question should be, but there were only the ornate rings joined to each other by golden chains, the things meant to hold her in place. She pulled them off, added them to the glittering pile beside her.

  “No. Just the wedding band,” mused the dead bride. “The same for all of us. No point in wasting an engagement ring when you can re-use it, like a dog collar. They don’t want to trouble themselves with a costly replacement, and they can’t use these”—Isobel knew she meant the cursed things—“Gods forbid anything should happen to the lamb before the wedding, before the Wollstonecrafts get the fortune for which they’ve worked so hard!”

  Isobel looked at the other’s skeletal hands, wrapped around a posy of dead yet somehow intact roses. A strong breeze would interrupt their carefully held structure. On one finger she could make out the dull gleam of a ring identical to hers.

  “I’ll die here,” she said. “I’ll starve as a trusting fool deserves to. I’ll suffocate.” Suddenly the air felt thinner, staler, her lungs more demanding. “But I’ll go mad first.”

  “And what a delightful change that will be,” sniggered the dead bride. “You’ll not likely starve any time soon, although you’re looking thin, yet not so thin as I. There’s plenty of air, you silly bint. As for madness, sometimes by taking refuge in it for a time is the only way to maintain a modicum of sanity.”

  Isobel realised then that her own dress—with all the ribbons and frills and bows meant to make her beautiful, but which just made her look even more enormous—was terribly, terribly large on her. That none of the weight she’d carried around all her life, that drove her mother and nannies to despair, remained.

  Reading her thoughts again, the dead one said, “Bet you never expected you’d be grateful for that fat! What do you think kept you alive all these months?”

  “I don’t want to live,” wailed Isobel, knowing it was stupid as soon as the words were out.

  “Ye gods, the stock at St. Dymphna’s is poor. A man betrayed you and you
want to die?”

  “No. I…I betrayed my mother, my teachers, by trusting him, by choosing him.” Isobel thought of the Misses Meyrick and their steely countenances.

  “And you think dying is the choice they’d want you to make? You, upon whom so much effort was expended to make you more active?” The dead bride tut-tutted. “It would be easier, certainly, to expire, but St. Dymphna’s girls, as I understand it, aren’t made for easy paths. You weren’t descended from milksops or weeping maidens; the women before you carried sword and shield, they fought in the open, their blood was red and rich and violent! It’s in your veins, Isobel, so pull yourself together!”

  “But I can’t get out—”

  “Of course you can, there’s a way, a way for the living.”

  Isobel sat up at straight as she could, stared at the unmoving form. “How?”

  “Ah, now that’s information for which you must bargain, Isobel girl.”

  “Tell me now or I swear I’ll scatter your bones, I’ll grind them to dust even if it makes my fingers bleed!”

  “That’s the spirit! Now calm down. In return for my very useful knowledge, you will make me a promise, a promise by which you’ll set more store than any ever before or so help me—”

  Isobel did not pause. “I will promise you anything, just get me out of this tomb!”

  The song is one the dead bride advised, tried to teach until Isobel comprehended that she already knew it from her old life, a tune sung by this nanny or that governess. Her husband does not stir, so she sings louder still for there’s no one to wake but Adolphus. She wonders how he’s spent his days since her death, then decides she can probably guess. Sings more loudly, more sweetly, until her patience runs out and she fair shouts, “Adolphus!”

  He sits up, stunned, blinking in that strange mix of darkness and moonlight and receding sleep that render him blind for long moments. He does not notice the still bodies of his cousins on either side of him, does not spare them a glance. He sees only Isobel.

  She imagines she must look close to the spectre he tried so hard to make her. She smiles and follows the script. “Adolphus, my love, fear not. You’re simply dreaming.”

  She can see him struggling to recognise her and she remembers how changed she is from the lumbering lumpy girl he said he loved above all others. That all those places he caressed and fondled and fingered are so much easier to find now.

  “It’s Isobel, my love. See you dream me how I truly was, how I truly wished to be. Still you know my heart!”

  “But you’re dead, my Isobel.” Fear silvers his tone.

  “Oh yes! So very dead and you do but dream me, but there is something I must tell you, something that threatens your very house and future. My love has drawn me back. Will you follow and see?”

  “But of course! That you should still care for me beyond death! It warms my heart,” he says and creeps to the end of the bed so as not to disturb his cousins’ rest. He reaches for her and Isobel holds up a warning hand.

  “The living cannot touch the dead, my love! Lest you be drawn down to lie beside me.” Adolphus nods. Isobel smiles. “Then come and allow me to render you this last service.”

  The moment she turns her back she knows it for a mistake, but she was brimming with confidence that her deception had worked, that she’d won. She can almost feel Orla and Fidelma’s disapproving stares just as she can feel the steel of her husband’s fingers closing around her left wrist.

  “Little fool, little bitch! Do you think I’ve not created enough ghosts to know one? That I cannot tell the smell of warm blood from cold? ‘My love has drawn me back.’ Gods, what a lackwit you must think me, as much of a one as yourself.”

  Isobel struggles, but her strength is so depleted from her long slumber that she cannot make any headway.

  “Fear not, sweet Isobel, I’ll put you back where you belong.”

  Isobel kicks him in the groin, watches with not inconsiderable delight as he doubles over, then she remembers to flee. She flings the door closed behind her, starts towards the grand staircase. She is halfway down when she hears the crash of wood against wall that says her husband is in pursuit. Her strength is fading, her speed bleeding to nothing. At the bottom of the stairs she must cross the marble floor, pass through the darkened arched doorway, and down the few worn steps into the chapel, and thence to the altar.

  What if he catches her first?

  What if he takes it in his head to strangle her then and there for there’s no one who might look for her, no one to suspect she lives, there are no appearances to be maintained. Even if some family member of his might wander by, they’ve no cause to save her. From behind comes a growl, a roar of such surpassing anger and viciousness that she finds her feet have wings. An extra burst of speed gets her to the entrance hall, almost skidding on marble tiles as she goes. When she passes through the doorway she does not touch the steps, but rather flies several yards into the chapel, landing at the third row of pews, the impact jarring every bone in her body, so much so that she’s sure she must rattle. She stumbles her way towards the altar with its shimmer of precious plate, and splashes of colour on the bright white cloth covering where moonlight pierces the stained glass window.

  Adolphus is enraged, he’ll not see the open tombs, the floor slid back by dint of the secret switches the dead bride told her about, a handy bit of knowledge plucked from one of the passing ghosts of the Wollstonecrafts’ castle, a stonemason who’d built the secret passages and the tombs at the request of a great-great-great Wollstonecraft grandfather whose terror was to be buried alive. But such escapes are no use to the dead, and the grandparent was indeed thoroughly deceased when put into the tomb—although his bones and those of other departed were shifted and shuffled when the present generation began their business of burying brides. The stone mason himself, another trusting fool, had been put to death as soon as the work was completed.

  This plan, fumes Isobel, was not best thought-out and she resents the dead bride for not having formulated a better strategy in all her time lying in the crypt. Then again, perhaps she never was very practical in life. Isobel, St. Dymphna’s drop-out though she might be, is quite certain she’d have come up with something—anything—better.

  Adolphus does not see the four figures slumped in the front pews, and Isobel runs past them, skidding to a halt before the altar. Her husband comes to a stop a foot from her, cursing and spitting and telling her precisely what he thought of her in life and death; if she had any lingering doubts about his role in her demise they are dispelled once and for all.

  “I will put you back in the ground, sweet Isobel. Although these months beneath have done you good, who’d have thought under all that fat you were so terribly lovely?”

  “Would it have stopped you from murdering me?” she asks out of sheer curiosity.

  He shakes his head, his grin a wolf’s. “No. But I might have taken a little more fun with you. I might do so now. I have, after all, a husband’s rights.”

  “Will you exercise them on all of us?” Isobel says so quietly, so calmly that he is thrown off by her lack of fear, her lack of panic.

  “Us?” He tilts his head. “Madness, I suppose, from the darkness.”

  “Madness no doubt, but one you will share, my love. Come, greet your maidens. They wait at your back like good wives.”

  Adolphus, seemingly unwilling to take his eyes from her, turns his head only a little, but it is enough for him to see what waits in the periphery. Four of his spouses, skeletons all, released from their beds and gilded cages by Isobel, stand with effort, bones a’clacking and a’creaking, hair falling from heads to shoulders, and thence into empty rib cages. Their frocks have entirely decayed, leaving only threads and rags caught here in a joint, there on a bone, as if they might show their husband their nakedness entire, in mimicry of the wedding night he denied them. There is, however, no sign of cartilage or tendons or muscles to show how they might be held together. Sheer will and malice, imag
ines Isobel, and not a little magic resulting from both.

  She takes in the skulls with their hairline fractures, the stains decay has left, the wisps of hair that was once so glorious. At least one has a limp, another lacks an arm; a brigade of the halt and the lame, the obese and the damned ugly, all especially susceptible to any scrap of kindness, and unwary that their value to their husband was no greater than monetary. She wonders if the dead bride—her companion and guide—was a witch in life, undiscovered, for her powers to remain so long after death. Or perhaps she was simply a girl with hopes and dreams that curdled dark and sour and kept the strongest part of her, the bravest part, the worst part, alive.

  Adolphus has gone astonishingly pale, as if his blood has turned coward and fled. His lips move, producing only, “Whuh, whuh, whuh.”

  “‘Whuh?’ What are you trying to say, my love? What is this sorcery? None but what you created yourself by murder and deceit.”

  The brides shuffle forward, closing in on Adolphus who backs away, hands raised as if that will stop their awful progress with its accompanying symphony of clacking and rattling.

  “What I want you to know, my love, is this: tonight your house will fall. I will put every Wollstonecraft here to the sword. Then I will make it my business to hunt down every bastard, bitch and by-blow who fell from your family tree and destroy them too. Your bloodline will be wiped from the face of the earth, and I swear before you and your wives that I shall make this my life’s work.”

  The corpse brides reach towards their husband, thin fingers, bony arms, ravaged joints, and with a cry Adolphus steps backwards. He does not see the open maw behind him, so he falls, arms windmilling, then there is a silence as he drops, then the whump! and crack! as he lands, dust flying into the air.

  Isobel and her sister-spouses peer over the edge.

  Adolphus lies in the tomb Isobel so recently occupied, recumbent upon the form of the dead bride, her own cursed jewellery removed. Isobel is sure she can see some broken bones on the skeletal girl where the impact has been too much, but while Adolphus remains stunned the dead bride’s arms begin to move. They curve up and over, around her husband before he realises what’s going on. The fingers of her right hand clench together into a spear and this she plunges into Adolphus’ chest, the flesh of which parts as if it is no more than warm butter. There is the breaking of ribs prised apart and the wet sucking sound of red muscle meat being found and enclosed by a bony cage of palm and fingers.