The Elementals (2 page)

Terrifying elemental spirits that can take on the shape and aspect of either the living or the dead, at any hour of the day or night, haunt Beldame itself, revealing themselves at first to India McCray, the visiting daughter of Luker McCray, one of the heirs. An assiduous follower of McDowell’s later work might think they had seen the bones of India McCray lying beneath the portrait of Lydia Deetz in
Beetlejuice
, a slightly jaded Upper West Side sophisticate wielding a Nikon as a shield between her own vulnerability and the often frightening and confusing world of adults around her.

But the world of Beldame and its three identical houses perched on an island of brilliant white sand on the edge of the Gulf hides horrors beyond anything that even India McCray can conceive.

In the words of Odessa Red, the family retainer housekeeper who serves as the novel’s “Van Helsing” figure, “
What’s in that house
,
child
,
knows more than you know. What’s in that house don’t come out of your mind. It don’t have to worry ’bout rules
,
and behaving like a spirit ought to behave. It does what it does to fool you
,
it wants to trick you into believing what’s not right. It’s got no truth to it. What it did last week it’s not gone be doing today. You see something in there
,
it wasn’t there yesterday
,
it’s not gone be there tomorrow. You stand at one of them doors thinking something’s behind it—nothing’s behind it. It’s waiting for you upstairs
,
it’s waiting for you downstairs. It’s standing behind you.
”

And all of this under a blazing Alabama summer sun where shade and shadow are hard
to come by.

Earlier I mentioned that the sheer bounty of paperback horror fiction in the ’
80
s was a treasure. In many ways it was, but my own, very personal view is that, when the treasure became a glut, it killed it.

Eventually it became impossible for readers to immediately distinguish, on the surface, between work like the novels of Michael McDowell and his genuine peers, and the offal of increasingly bad fiction by talentless writers, published by publishers without discernment or taste, trying to stuff the maws of the book-buying public with what had basically become product. In spite of the same sorts of titles, the same sorts of covers, and even, in some cases, the same sorts of plots, the reading public eventually clued in to the fact that they were being sold a bridge. It wasn’t to say there weren’t still wonderful, literary horror novels being sold as paperback originals, just that it had become impossible to distinguish between them, and the sterling variety, until it was too late.

The republication of the best of these novels by Valancourt Books is an occasion for joy for any of us who truly loved that era, and miss it every time we visit what remains of the bookstores, let alone the remains of the bookstores that sell horror fiction.

In my opinion, this very noble and worthwhile undertaking is perfectly exemplified by this edition of Michael McDowell’s brilliant The
Elementals
. This is a horror novel for the ages, a
20
th century haunted house that belongs in the company of Hill House, Hell House, or the Marsten House. Classic literary horror fiction simply doesn’t get better than
The Elementals
.

It has its peers, but Beldame and its inhabitants—both living and dead—cast their very own, very long, shadow.

Michael Rowe

Toronto, Ontario

April
29
,
2014

To lead us farther into darkness, and quite to lose

us in this maze of Error . . . the Devil maketh men

believe that apparitions, and such as confirm

his existence are either deceptions of sight,

or melancholy depravements of phansie.

— Sir Thomas Browne

Pseudodoxia Epidemica

In memory of

James and Mildred Mulkey

Prologue

In the middle of a desolate Wednesday afternoon in the last sweltering days of May, a handful of mourners were gathered in the church dedicated to St. Jude Thaddeus in Mobile, Alabama. The air conditioning in the small sanctuary sometimes covered the noise of traffic at the intersection outside, but occasionally it did not, and the strident honking of an automobile horn would sound above the organ music like a mutilated stop. The space was dim, damply cool, and stank of refrigerated flowers. Two dozen enormous and very expensive arrangements had been set in converging lines behind the altar. A massive blanket of silver roses lay draped across the light-blue casket, and there were petals scattered over the white satin interior. In the coffin was the body of a woman no more than fifty-five. Her features were squarish and set; the lines that ran from the corners of her mouth to her jaw were deep-plowed. Marian Savage had not been overtaken happily.

In a pew to the left of the coffin sat Dauphin Savage, the corpse’s surviving son. He wore a dark blue suit that fit tightly over last season’s frame, and a black silk band was fastened to his arm rather in imitation of a tourniquet. On his right, in a black dress and a black veil, was his wife Leigh. Leigh lifted her chin to catch sight of her dead mother-in-law’s profile in the blue coffin. Dauphin and Leigh would inherit almost everything.

Big Barbara McCray—Leigh’s mother and the corpse’s best friend—sat in the pew directly behind and wept audibly. Her black silk dress whined against the polished oaken pew as she twisted in her grief. Beside her, rolling his eyes in exasperation at his mother’s carrying-on, was Luker McCray. Luker’s opinion of the dead woman was that he had never seen her to better advantage than in her coffin. Next to Luker was his daughter India, a girl of thirteen who had not known the dead woman in life. India interested herself in the church’s ornamental hangings, with an eye toward reproducing them in a needlepoint border.

On the other side of the central aisle sat the corpse’s only daughter, a nun. Sister Mary-Scot did not weep, but now and then the others heard the faint clack of her rosary beads against the wooden pew. Several pews behind the nun sat Odessa Red, a thin, grim black woman who had been three decades in the dead woman’s employ. Odessa wore a tiny blue velvet hat with a single feather dyed in India ink.

Before the funeral began, Big Barbara McCray had poked her daughter, and demanded of her why there was no printed order of service. Leigh shrugged. “Dauphin said do it that way. Less trouble for everybody so I didn’t say anything.”

“And nobody invited!” exclaimed Big Barbara.

“Dauphin is even making the pallbearers wait outside,” Leigh commented.

“But do you know
why
?” demanded her mother.

“No, ma’am,” replied Leigh, ignorant but uncurious. “Why don’t you ask Dauphin, Mama? He’s sitting right here, hearing every word that you speak to me.”

“I thought you might know, darling. I didn’t want to disturb Dauphin in his sorrow.”

“Barbara, shut up,” said her son Luker. “You know very well why it’s a private funeral.”

“Why?”

“Because we are the only people in Mobile who would have come. There’s no point in advertising a circus when everybody hates the clown.”

“Marian Savage was my best friend,” protested Big Barbara.

Luker McCray laughed shortly and punched his daughter in the ribs. She looked up and smiled at him.

Dauphin Savage, who had attended not very closely to this exchange, turned without rancor and said, “Y’all please be quiet, here’s the priest.”

They knelt to receive the priest’s summary blessing, then rose to sing the hymn “Abide With Me.” Between the second and third stanzas, Big Barbara McCray said loudly, “It was her favorite!” She turned to Odessa across the aisle and a curt bobbing of the dyed feather confirmed this opinion.

As the others sang the Amen, Big Barbara McCray said, “I miss her already!”

The priest read the service of the dead quickly, but with appealing expression. Dauphin Savage rose, moved to the end of the pew—as if he were unworthy a place nearer the coffin—and spoke briefly of his mother.

“Everybody who was lucky enough to know Mama real well loved her very much. I wish I could say she had been a happy woman, but that wouldn’t be the truth. She was never happy after Daddy died. She raised Mary-Scot and Darnley and me with all the love in the world, even though she always said she should have died on the day that Daddy was buried. And then Darnley died too. Everybody knows she had a hard time of it in the last few years—chemotherapy really does something bad to you, everybody knows that, and even then you’re not sure it’s working right. Of course we’re all sorry she’s dead, but we cain’t be sorry that she’s not in pain any more.”

He took a breath and glanced at Marian Savage in her coffin. He turned back, and in a sadder softer voice, went on: “The dress she has on is the one that she wore when I got married to Leigh. It was the prettiest dress she ever had, she said. When she took it off after the reception, she hung it up and said
this
was what she was saving it for. She would be real happy to see all the flowers here today, to see how much people cared for her. Ever since she died people have been calling up at the house and asking whether they ought to send flowers or make a donation to cancer research, and Leigh and me—whoever answered the phone—would say, ‘Oh, send flowers, Mama didn’t care anything about charity, but she always said that when she died, she hoped there would be a churchful of flowers. She wanted the smell to reach right up to heaven!
’
”

Big Barbara McCray nodded vigorously, and loudly whispered: “Just like Marian—just like her!”

Dauphin went on: “Before I went to the funeral home I was all upset thinking about Mama dead. But I went in there yesterday and I saw her and now I’m fine. She looks so happy! She looks so natural! I look at her and I think she’s gone sit up in that casket and fuss at me!” Dauphin turned toward the coffin and smiled tenderly at his dead mother.

Big Barbara grabbed her daughter by the shoulder. “Did you have a hand in the eulogy, Leigh?”

“Shut up, Barbara,” said Luker.

“Mary-Scot,” said Dauphin, looking toward the nun, “there anything you want to say about Mama?”

Sister Mary-Scot shook her head.

“Poor thing!” whispered Big Barbara. “I bet she’s just bowed down with grief.”

There was a troubled pause in the proceeding of the funeral. The priest glanced at Dauphin, who still stood at the end of the pew. Dauphin looked toward his sister, who only fumbled with her rosary. The organist peered over his railing above them, as if waiting for a cue to play.

“
This
is why you need a printed program,” whispered Big Barbara to her son, and looked at him accusingly. “When there’s not a printed program, nobody’s got the least idea in the world what to do next. I could have used a printed program for my scrapbook.”

Sister Mary-Scot stood suddenly in her pew.

“Is she gone speak after all?” asked Big Barbara in a hopeful voice that everyone heard.

Sister Mary-Scot did not speak, but her rising was evidently a signal. The organist, with a clumsy foot sounding discordantly on a couple of bass pedals, clambered down out of his loft, and disappeared through a small side door.

After nodding to Dauphin and to Sister Mary-Scot in somber conspiracy, the priest abruptly turned on his heel. His footsteps echoed the organist’s out of the sanctuary.

It was as if these two functionaries had suddenly determined, for a specific and overpowering reason, to abandon the ceremony before it was finished. And the funeral was certainly not over: there had been no second hymn, no benediction, no postlude. The pallbearers still waited outside the sanctuary. The mourners were left alone with the corpse.

In her vast astonishment at this unaccountable procedure, Big Barbara turned and said loudly to Odessa, who was a dozen yards distant, “Odessa,
what
do they think they are doing?
Where
did Father Nalty go?
W
h
y
has that boy stopped playing the organ—when he gets paid
special
for funerals, I know he does!”

“Miz Barbara . . .” said Odessa with pleading politeness.

“Barbara,” said Luker in a low voice, “turn around and just shut up.”

She started to protest, but Dauphin said to her in a pained unhappy way, “Big Barbara, please . . .”

Big Barbara, who loved her son-in-law, sat still in her pew, though the effort cost her.

“Please, y’all, pray for Mama for a few minutes,” said Dauphin. Obediently the others bowed their heads.

From the corner of her eye, India McCray saw Sister Mary-Scot pull from beneath her scapular a long narrow black box. She held it tightly in her hands before her.

India flicked a long painted fingernail against the back of her father’s hand. “What has she got?” she whispered to him.

Luker looked over at the nun, shook his head in ignorance, and whispered back: “I don’t know.”

For many seconds then there was no movement in the sanctuary. The air conditioner started up suddenly, drowning the traffic outside. No one prayed. Dauphin and Mary-Scot, embarrassed and evidently most uncomfortable, stood staring at each other across the central aisle. Leigh had shifted a couple of feet down and turned sideways. With her elbow resting on the back of the pew, she held her veil raised so that she might exchange perplexed glances with her mother. Luker and his daughter grasped one another’s hands to communicate their wonder. Odessa stared fixedly ahead of her, as if she could not be expected to evince surprise at
anything
that was done at the funeral of a woman mean as Marian Savage.

Dauphin sighed loudly and nodded to his sister. Slowly they moved toward the altar, and took stations behind the coffin. They did not look down at their dead mother, but stared grimly ahead of them. Dauphin took the slender black box from the nun, unlatched it and lifted the top. All the McCrays craned but could see nothing of its contents. In the faces of the brother and sister was something at once so terrified and so solemn that even Big Barbara refrained from speech.

From the box, Sister Mary-Scot withdrew a shining knife with a narrow pointed blade about eight inches long. Together, Dauphin and Sister Mary-Scot held the dagger by its polished handle. Twice they passed it over the open space of the coffin, and then turned the point of it down over their mother’s unbeating heart.