Poe's Children: The New Horror: An Anthology

by Peter Straub

  “Indeed well spoken,” says the Widow Ivenes.

  Mr. van der Lee. Come see. He moves closer to her and he sees. It is the moth pupa she brought with her other specimens on the journey from Amsterdam so that she might witness the completion of their transformations. There in a cage in the Surimombo study. The moth has broken through its shell, broken out at last from chrysalis, after these months since its ocean crossing. The small, delicate moth clings to the wires of the cage with its wings wildly flapping. It is the Phalaena tau, its wings appearing moist in the light from the candles, and the flames flare up and cast shadows on the wall. Of the moth. Of the woman. And the man.

  The next day she has an accident. She reaches out for a caterpillar on the leaf of a tree in the forest near to the main house. It is a vibrant blue-black, inky and depthless, two ruby stripes along the sides of its body. Sensing her presence, it lifts its head, raises it high as if surveying, then lowers and lifts it again, and then it stops with its body rigid and its head raised. She quickly cups it in her palm and is met with a stinging pain so severe she can barely open her hand to release the caterpillar into the cage. Her body flushes hot. Her hand swells to twice its size and she can hardly remain standing. There is the feeling of sinking, of wanting to let go to the ground and let sleep come, of wanting the floor of the forest—green and lush like the sofas of dowagers, thick and soft in rich velvets and muted shades of olive—to receive her. She sinks down to the bottom of the tree trunk and waits for the dizziness to pass. Almost immediately an apprehension wells up inside her. She feels a sensation on her legs. She pulls the fabric of her clothing up and sees small black wood ticks that despite the layers of her skirt have in seconds covered the flesh of her lower legs and are swarming towards her thighs and her abdomen. She leaps up, surprises a giant macaw on a branch not far above, the bird lifts its wings and shrieks, the shrieks soar up through the branches, and the bird follows. She leaps up and walks as quickly as she can, though she is still unsteady and somewhat dizzy from the poison still in her body. Breathing is difficult. The air is thick with moisture, it is all moisture, the air turned fluid, a substance not breathed but swallowed into the lungs, the chest cavity fills and congests. She is moving forward, returning to the Surimombo main house, in any case she wasn’t far, had not gone far. And to the bathing house where she applies an ointment to her legs and her belly following a washing treatment with a brush and harsh liquids. The skin red now, scrubbed raw. Reclaimed. Clean. The bathing house is cool, the water strained through sieves to keep the sand out, the floor polished stone and cool on the bottoms of her feet, and the small black parasitic insects, all to the last one, fallen to the floor, inert, a little pile at her feet, then washed, washed away by the water. She balances herself, holding on with one hand to the wall of the dressing room in the bathing house, the dressing room with its conveniences, small round soaps in smooth clay dishes, jars of salts for soaking, fragrant oils, fresh-cut peacock flowers, a bath sheet for drying her body, a white muslin robe for wrapping up in, the bathing house itself shaded by palmetto leaves falling like folds of fabric over the wooden structure. Now a lizard appears on the outside of the window, it is one of the small lizards that are everywhere in Surinam. Its body is pressed against the mesh that serves as a screen, the sun’s rays make it glow, crystalline, the body transparent, shot through by the sun so that she can see the insides clear and shining, and the long thin vein that runs from its head down to its tail and extends out to each of its four legs and to each of the toes of its webbed feet. Dear lizard, remarkable beast, lit by the afternoon sun, pierced through by a ray of white light, human eyes are blinded by so much light, by so much heat and brightness. She goes over to the window to view the lizard more closely and sees Mathew van der Lee off a ways in the distance; she sees his figure in the white sun, against the bleached out grasses near the sugar fields. He is walking with his hands clasped behind his back. Later, he will ask if he might accompany her again up the coast to the ocean on one of her hunts there for shells. They will set out as if on a picnic, carrying charcoals and vellums, specimen boxes and killing jars. They will walk over sand strewn with branches and mollusk shells, nests of seaweed, dead fish, ghost crabs heaped together on the shore. She will walk erect with her back straight, with her shoes caked with mud and the bottom of her dress wet and dragging. Mathew van der Lee will make a lighthearted comment about the mud on her shoes, and just as he does his own feet will sink some inches into the ground. He will reach out as if to touch her when she looks down at his feet, but then will quickly withdraw his arm.

  And a running off of water in the bath house, her legs good, her waist narrow, her feet long, slender, somewhat bony, a running off of water, scented powders, the tortoise comb, her hair undone and hanging down below her shoulders in dark wet pieces, like a witch she thinks, die Hexe, bezaubernde Frau.

  She descends the staircase from her second floor suite of the Surimombo main house, the interior copied faithfully in the style of her adopted city of Amsterdam, her city of Amsterdam with its cold nights, and with its gabled, corniced structures, and with the canals with their bodies of dead waters. And the German township where she was born—Frankfort am Mein—where she spent all her early life and formed her identity, is distant now, and she will never return there again, and will have no cause or wish to return. She is pale and fatigued, and the last of the light is fading; night is falling, and a blanket of blackness will soon cover the house while the lodgers are gathered for the evening meal. The candles in the dining room will draw to the window pale moths, as pale as she is, unable to resist the fiery center, and their wings will beat against the glass, pounding and bruising their plump bodies; they will look like ghosts in the dark, eager and hungry, seeking their shadow selves there in the flame. And all the while the other moths, the specimens she has collected, will remain safe in their cages, quiet in the darkened room. And when the night has fully fallen, the lantern flies will come out with their lights glittering.

  She lifts her hand to the back of her neck to wipe the beads of perspiration away. She drinks boiled water left to cool, dips her fingers into the water and touches her brow, her neck. The heat is draining her of blood and spirit, sucking the marrow out from her bones and leaving them to ache at night, her arms and her legs ache each night and she is restless on the bed. She no longer sleeps well from the aching and the restlessness.

  She descends the stairs now down to supper, to where the others are already seated in the dining room.

  “You are pale, Madame Sibylla. Are you unwell?”

  “It is nothing, Doctor Kolb. It is only the heat. No. Nothing. Or if anything, the heat.”

  “Yes, the heat. How is your work progressing?”

  “Well.”

  “And your hand? Has it healed from the accident?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am a physician, Madame Sibylla. Will you permit me to have a look at it? You would not want it to fester.”

  “It is nothing, Doctor Kolb. It was only a reaction to the pathetic creature’s venom. As you see, it has completely subsided.”

  Drums are beating. Drums are beating in the night. The sound of the drums comes from the forest beyond Piki Ston where the runaways have erected their settlements. The drums cannot come from the plantations; on the plantations the black slaves are forbidden to drum, forbidden to send their rebel messages. She has seen what happens to those who disobey. She has seen the bloody stump where a hand once was, and the body flogged skinless, and a raw, pulpy mass where the flesh once was, and the body kept alive in ruin.

  She is fatigued. It can be seen on her face, and in the way she comports herself, in the way her breath comes labored, and her eyes appear clouded and distant.

  It is the heat. And the poison still in her body from the caterpillar’s sting. Night has fallen and the window is covered with moths that are drunk on the light from the flames of the candle. The moths will die, just as she believes that she will die, t
hat the heat of the sun will kill her, that the harshness of this place will end her life. She is still weak, and still vertiginous from the caterpillar’s venom.

  The venom in her body has increased her fatigue, and her nights are beset by dreams, and by visions that appear and disappear, alternately beautiful and terrifying.

  In a dream she is menaced by an animal, it comes around in front of her, an aggressive look in its eyes.

  She is standing listening to the river, the still, glassy surface shining in the sun, the sun’s rays rippling on the surface, she is standing looking out to the bend in the river, a distance farther and white waters start to form, the current goes crazy with white waters, a little while more and rapids, a little while more and the water gushing and pounding, crazy water, a little while more and crazy water, dashing against rocks, the falls to take you to the bottom, and the devil’s egg, the rock that is perched above the water, the dashing crazy water, the falls are Piki Ston Falls, along the riverbank the monkeys with their perpetual screaming, is it with warning? is it with ill intent? the violent screams of the monkeys, but here where she is standing the river is still, there is no ripple, the sun shines in streaks on the placid surface.

  Small, sweeter than the alligator pear, the sweet red fruit of the yucca.

  The butterflies are made of feathers. She points to all the tiny little feathers.

  In her drawings her themes come slowly into focus, a merest outline, a shadowy creature, and then she adds light.

  The theme of primulas with nun moth, plum branch and pale tussock, cotton leaf jatropha, mimicry moth, antaeus moth.

  The theme of the lantern fly, meadow larkspur and pease blossom moth, various beetles and a harlequin beetle.

  The theme of four dead finches. The birds are pathetic the way she portrays them. There is no question they are dead, quintessentially and permanently dead. Flight no more. For the small brown birds.

  And the sun breaking through enormous,

  it sears the flesh, the ground, the wooden frame of the Surimombo main house.

  In a clearing in the forest Marta has wrapped herself in salempouri cloth, and the bright blue of the fabric is shining, and she is dancing, she is spinning in front of Maria Sibylla. The dance can stop the fierce thunderstorms and the torrents of the rains, and Marta is dancing to bring an end to the rains.

  But the sky is gray, and the heavy rains are again threatening.

  There is a crocodile somewhere in the meh-nu bushes with its jaws snapping. There is the sound the leaves make when the wind blows through them. A storm rising up. The scream of the toucani. In the Surimombo jungle there had been a trail of dead toucani. Or had they fallen randomly? And the crocodile is creeping out from the swamp onto the jungle floor. And the rain will cause a lake to form in the jungle.

  The leaves of the Ku-deh-deh fortify the heart. Marta holds the fingers of her right hand outstretched above her heart, her eyes are dark and excited as she picks the waxy leaves and crushes them.

  And all the while Maria Sibylla is searching among the vines and the creepers.

  But what about the moth, the newly hatched Phalaena tau? Ah, the Phalaena tau has been recently transformed. Has broken through its shell and been released. It was Maria Sibylla herself who released the moth. Into the heat. Into the harshness and the freedom of the jungle.

  The Phalaena tau has flown to make her own way in the jungle.

  And Maria Sibylla is searching for the new moth, the stranger.

  Among the vines, the creepers, the rosettes of leaves, the night-smelling orchids, the mora excelsa.

  Along the branches of the unnamed tree.

  The blossoms are red and the tree is unnamed. And the roots of the tree are buried. In the jungle earth that turns to water. The ground is soft, the leaves are shimmering.

  And she is silent now and waiting. The voluptuousness of the time of waiting.

  She has been walking for so long her feet are burning, but her eyes are searching everywhere. For you, the stranger, for the promise of what she has come for.

  She is looking for you, bewitched by you.

  In the green, indistinct light of the jungle. That filters down through the branches of the trees.

  The screaming birds, their calls harsh, piercing.

  The jungle orchids, the delicate tree orchid, the air-borne orchid with its tentacles dangling, and covered in small white flowers, its musky scent, its mouth that never opens.

  She is breathless and her heart is beating rapidly.

  The heat pours down but she no longer notices, she is intent on finding you.

  You are her loadstone, her wish, her temptation, her consummation.

  Entranced she is looking, in a fever she is looking.

  For the slanted traces that will lead her to you.

  The small paroxysms, the silent heartbeat, the throbbing.

  But where is it that Maria Sibylla finds you? So quiet. On the branch of the unknown tree? It is a secret tree, so secret even the Amerindians do not know its name, the Tree of Paradise? The tree of the fall from grace? The tree the serpent wrapped itself around and whispered, offering its fruit, and the leaves stinging like nettles, and you clinging with your tiny feet, having taken hold to suck the sweetness, the snake there with you all the time, all wound around its branches, and you as you had always been, from that first hour, when you were the first one, the first to take hold upon that branch, the first to nourish on that unknown, unnamed genus, and having had your fill of eating to spin and spin the silk that would enclose you, and keep you safe inside that first of all enclosures, protected and unharmed, to sleep for the season of your transformation.

  II

  There is a beast, there is a beast in Surinam. A white beast seen prowling in the grasses near the sugar farms. The Indians say it is the jinn of a demon that lives under Piki Ston Falls. That it will come and slash slash with its teeth as large as Waha leaves. That it will come to take its dwendi, its lady mama girl, to make its wild monkey bride, to make its wild monkey bride girl running. It has hair that is white and sticks out like the shoots of white copal; it has hands that are claws and it stands on its legs like a man.

  The beast stalks the sugar farms while the day steams with heat, or at night stalks the shanties of the slaves.

  It is the slaves who see the beast, but sometimes it is one of the Europeans. Like the white overseer at Plantation Davilaar. The man was relieving himself near the edges of the sugar field when he saw an animal crouched a distance from him. The beast reared up and the man turned on his heels and ran.

  “It is only an hysteria of the Africans and the Indians,” Esther Gabay tells the others over morning meal.

  The serving girl brings trays to the table, sets out platters of ham, baskets heaped high with breads, eggs, cassava cakes, green tea, coffee, chocolate.

  “It is only an hysteria,” Esther Gabay repeats, “or a fabrication that has been hatched by the runaways.”

  “Hatched to what purpose, Madame Gabay?” asks Doctor Peter Kolb.

  “To stir unrest among the slaves, Doctor Kolb.”

  “It is more likely a wolf, Madame Gabay,” says the doctor. “It would not be the first time that a lone wolf, displaced from the pack, or with its instincts otherwise upset, has been known to attack humans.”

  “There are no wolves here, Doctor Kolb.”

  “It is a species capable of turning up, Madame Gabay, of one day simply making an appearance. There are many forces that will drive a pack, or that will provoke a lone wolf, to wander into a new territory.”

  “I have lived here all my life, Doctor Kolb, and have never heard rumor of wolves.”

  “They have been known to turn up, Madame Gabay.”

  “We have never had wolves, Doctor Kolb.”

  “We may have one now, Madame Gabay.”

  “What is your opinion?” the Widow Ivenes asks, turning suddenly to Maria Sibylla. “Do you believe it is an hysteria?”

  “I
believe we should not waste our days with speculation on a creature that may or may not exist. I, in any case, shall not waste my days on it. We must trust in the will of the Divine Being, Widow Ivenes, and in our Fate, and I in my work that it is necessary I continue.”

  “Will you continue in the forests?” asks Doctor Peter Kolb.

  “I shall continue as I must, Doctor Kolb.”

  “Would it not be wise, Madame Sibylla, to avoid the forests?” asks Mathew van der Lee.

  “Would you dissuade me, Mr. van der Lee?”

  “For your safety it would be cautious, Madame Sibylla.”

  “For my safety, Mr. van der Lee, I should never have left Frankfurt am Main for Amsterdam, and later Amsterdam for Friesland, or Friesland for Amsterdam once again, and now made this journey to Surinam. Safe, inside my house, Mr. van der Lee, might I still not fall ill and languish and die?”

  She prepares after morning meal to travel with Marta into the forest right outside of Paramaribo. The other slaves have begged not to have to accompany them, apprehensive as they are now of the beast.

  Marta, who has begun to copy the makeshift style of Maria Sibylla, wears an overall that she has sewn, and under it a shirt Esther Gabay has given her left behind by a previous lodger. Both women wear hats. Their feet and their legs are well covered.