Unquiet Dreams (26 page)

"How does it begin?" The big hand asked the little hand.

"With laughter," said the little hand, "But it always ends in tears."

"A true to life story then?"

"Life never makes for a good story," the little hand cautioned, slipping backwards from the six to the five. "It's messy, circular and seldom makes much sense."

"Is that why Sekhmet left the desert?" The big hand whispered so the lion-headed goddess might not hear him.

The goddess, however, had keen hearing. A bee's wings ten miles away vibrated audibly in her ears. The hands' words might as well have been trumpeted. "I left the desert because the people of Ra stopped worshipping me."

The big hand trembled at the goddess' address, too abashed to make a peep. The little hand sought for a respectful tone with which to address fearsome deity.

"When did you become a postcard?" The little hand had pondered the question for so long in her mind that a giddiness vibrated her metallic shape at the thought of learning the truth.

The goddess pondered so long that the hands began to think she would disdain to answer. The gentle sound of Schubert from the flat next door filled the space of time. Just when the little hand had begun to think about telling the big hand that perhaps the goddess slumbered, the answer came.

"1937: I remember it now." The lion-headed deity spoke in sonorous tones that evoked the dusty vistas of the red desert. "I remember someone remarking upon the year, because of the new flying car—the Arrowbile."

"That was some time ago," the little hand offered cautiously.

"After an eternity," Sekhmet said, nodding her golden head ever so slightly, "one does not notice the smallness of time."

The little hand felt emboldened by the gracious mien of the goddess. "Red Lady, can you tell us how you became a postcard?"

The goddess growled softly in her throat. The hands quailed, fearful that her ire had been stirred. But her anger belonged to the past. "Their names were Gaddis and Seif. They took my picture. I was at that time in a statue in the Temple of Phtah in Karnak. I had been there centuries."

The hands exchanged a glance. "Why were you there, oh Great Lady of Terror?" the little hand asked at last.

The goddess of the red desert closed her eyes. Was it sorrow or only fatigue? No, perhaps memories overwhelmed her: the smell of the sand, the warm of Ra's rays and the cool depths of the stone temple walls where she had stood so long. "The last of my born acolytes had made offerings to me there. Where else would a goddess go?"

"Oh, Powerful One! When did your last petitioner pray to you?"

"They pray to me even now," the goddess retorted, tapping her staff of papyrus once for emphasis on the mantelpiece below them all.

The little hand considered this. The big hand, timid so far, risked a question. "When did your last born acolyte pass away?" He pronounced the words haltingly, conscious of each one's weight.

Sekhmet rewarded his efforts with a beneficent smile. "Oh, centuries—I forget how many. But I remember her last offering, a bowl of red beer, the pomegranate juice sharp and fruity, the colour rich as blood. Though she had grown quite old, she got down on her knees and begged my help as she beat her chest."

"What did she ask for, great Lady of Pestilence?"

Sekhmet barked with laughter. An unusual sound to come from her lion's head, but the mirth reminded them of the fact of her human body and its languorous form. "What do my acolytes usually ask for? Sometimes healing, true—I can heal, the storytellers so often forget." The magnificent one shook her head. "No, she wanted blood. Death to her enemies."

The hands paled, but the little one couldn't help asking, "Did you give her this sacred gift, oh Eye of Ra?"

The goddess smiled. The teeth of a lion—sharp canines, bright points perfect for tearing flesh—glinted in the afternoon light. She held aloft her staff of papyrus. It had become a pale green as she spoke. "I gave her blood indeed."

The hands remained silent, but held their breath, waiting.

Sekhmet stretched her arms wide and spoke words the hands could not comprehend. Her robes, once a dim grey in the black and white photo, had taken on a pinkish hue. The disk upon her head began to shine with the pale light of a midwinter dawn. "I manifested before her, as she cowed, shaking on her knees. It shall be, I promised. I lifted her up and placed a kiss of blood upon her brow."

"And then?" The little hand whispered, breathless.

"I faced the west and I walked out into the desert." A warm scirocco wafted across the sitting room and a fire arose in the coals that no one had lit that day: indeed, it was an electric fireplace. The Lady of the Tombs spoke. "I walked across the sands and I sought out her enemies. I knew them from the thoughts in her head, I knew them from the kiss of blood."

The two hands met at the six and held one another tightly.

"I ripped the first one limb from limb," the Eye of Ra said with grim satisfaction. "I drank his blood, but it did not slake my thirst. I followed the others who ran shrieking to the river, but they could not escape me."

The sun disk upon her head glowed now with the desert sun's heat.

"The small ones I devoured. The few who were left sought refuge on the bridge the ancients had built. They thought I could not cross water. They imagined themselves safe from my wrath."

The two hands gasped.

The Mighty One of Enchantments brandished her staff, the papyrus once more a lush green, dewy with life. "I called forth the awesome fire of Ra's light. The flames surrounded them on the bridge, herding them into the centre until their shrieks formed a threnody of suffering."

"Did you pity them in the end?" The hand could only murmur.

"I did not." The blood red robes of the destroyer flapped in the wind, which had grown stronger and carried with a fine abrasion of sand. "I burned them until their bones lay blackened and the bridge beneath them fell into the river and the crocodiles gnawed the smoky shards."

"She who burns eternally," the little hand said, her voice heavy with awe.

Sekhmet roared. Her white teeth gleamed and red red mouth gaped. She had grown too large for postcard and stepped into the middle of the carpet, her feet smoking on the worn red threads. "Preserved beyond death, I take the throne of Silence."

And she walked through the wall and disappeared from view.

The postcard, empty now, fell from the mantelpiece and into the fire. In a trice, nothing remained but ashes. The coal fire died. The room became silent but for the faint sound of Schubert's etudes.

The little hand cried. "We will never see her again."

"But we will know she is out there," the big hand soothed. "And we have heard her secret name."

The other horse, his heart aching yet, held the ball ready, trusting that love would one day return. Far in the distance another clock chimed.

 

 

for Ramsey Campbell

It always started at sundown. Tap, tap, tap at the window, as if someone sought access to the warmth indoors. At first it was on the dining room window, but later it happened on the second floor, too. Campbell couldn't imagine someone would really be hanging from the tiny ledge, fingers strained and knuckles white, lifting a digit to tap insistently at the pane, but he rolled out of bed and twitched aside the curtains to look out nonetheless.

Nothing but the ink black night ever gazed back.

Lately another sound had been echoing inside the house as well, but it wasn't until he was outside pouring feed into the trough that he realized what the new sound had been. As the chickens pecked in the trough and scratched on the ground, Campbell felt a sudden chill. That was the sound he had heard, that persistent scratching noise, so familiar and yet—and yet, he had not recognized outside its usual setting. As he moved around the yard feeding the stock, he was able to shrug it off. After all, it was only chicken scratching.

But it didn't feel that way in the dark, when he awoke with a start, the latest McDermid mystery pillowed on his chest as he sat in the big easy chair by the fire. It took only seconds to recognize it. The silence of the house seemed to magnify the scratching. Worse, Hobo, his big grey cat, stared intently at the sound, tracking its progress around the room, growling softly. Annoyed at his own timidity, Campbell threw himself to his feet and stomped to bed, willing the noise to end.

Campbell found himself leaving the radio on as he went to bed, making the excuse that it would soothe him into slumber, but he knew the real reason. It didn't work anyway, as he woke around four to the now-familiar sound: not a tap, but a peck. He didn't get up and eventually it died away, leaving him to toss and turn dispiritedly until dawn. Fatigued by the restless night, Campbell trudged out to perform the morning chores. He grumbled to himself as he clanked the bucket of feed against the trough as the chickens pullulated around his feet, then straightened up, a hand clamping onto a sudden twinge in his back. Campbell felt a curious sensation prickle the back of his neck and turned slowly around.

It was the Wyandotte, one of the pair he got from old Fanny Cave a few weeks back. It was gaping at him with a very un-chicken-like intensity. “Go on, go eat,” he shooed at the bird, but it ignored him, stepping aside but making no movement toward the trough. In the dull brown of the yard, its bright red comb stood out starkly against the intense black and white of its mottled plumage.

It was that distinctive coloring that had made the breed a favorite with Fanny. He had taken the pair off her hands when they had not settled. “Mostly good,” she had said of the breed, “docile, impervious to the cold, good layers, but this pair, the sisters.” Fanny twisted her mouth into a bow. “Aggressive to the others, not laying much.” As they chatted in the yard, the two in question held themselves aloof, scratching in the dirt by the fence far from the rest of the flock.

He had taken them; why not? They looked so elegant beside his Rhode Island Reds, and though they maintained that sense of detachment, the two began to lay quite well. He called the sisters Salt and Pepper. Inseparable as school girls, the two seemed always in intimate conference, telling tales about the rooster, he used to chuckle to himself.

Until Salt suddenly sickened and died. Like that she was gone, nothing lingering and fortunately, nothing contagious, though he kept Pepper apart for good measure until any danger seemed past. He did what he always did—you don't waste a perfectly good chicken. Well-fed and cared for, Salt was full of fine flavor.

His gaze returned the chicken's glare. Was she angry? In all his life as a farmer, Campbell had never given stooped to that regrettable tendency to treat animals like people. He might be fond of some individuals, but in the end, they were all food or food providers. Yet as he regarded the hen's unblinking stare, Campbell began to feel uneasy.

The noises at night were beginning to rob him of more than sleep. He found himself waking tense and irritable, anticipating the nightly pecks and scratches. It made him think about the haunts his grandmother told, tales of vengeance from beyond the grave. In the morning, it seemed stupid, but at night his heart raced as the slow tattoo commenced and his flesh crawled as the scratchings on the floor approached his bed, Hobo watching intently.

Vengeance, Campbell thought as he poured out the feed on yet another morning and bore the chicken's evil eye as well as he could. They always want vengeance. What kind of vengeance could a chicken want? He tried to be kinder to Pepper, give it little treats, but the chicken ignored him, gazing into the distance as if it mourned alone.

Campbell no longer woke at dawn, but using the old alarm clock only infuriated him and made him sleep later after slamming his hand down upon the button. After three completely sleepless nights in a row, he had come to hate the black and white chicken and would not rest until it joined its sister.

He grabbed the little red hatchet and strode across the yard where Pepper stood gazing impassively. She never flinched as he grabbed her neck, never made a peep or cluck as he threw her down upon the stump, brown with the blood of hundreds of chickens, and brought the hatchet down in a swift arc. The head—red, white and black—flew off and landed in the grass, but he left it there, pacing back to the kitchen to pluck the feathers with a gleeful fury, hacking off the feet, and ripping out the entrails as if to beat a now-ticking clock. He poured a bunch of new potatoes into the pan around the carcass and shoved it into the oven. He sat on a kitchen chair watching the bird bake, his gaze as fixed as the hen's had been, ignoring the attempts of Hobo to drawn his attention by rubbing against his legs.

Campbell took the bird out of the oven too hot and savagely sliced into the meat. It was delicious. He gave a wing to Hobo who chased it around the kitchen floor with glee. As his stomach filled, Campbell began to relax, and to consider another possibility. Perhaps the hen had been lonely without her sister. It may be, he thought, that I have done the kindest thing, reuniting the two who could not bear to be apart. He was actually smiling when he saw Hobo's head swivel around suddenly at the sound of clucking. As Campbell jumped to his feet, a bone stuck in his throat and he started to cough. The clucking of chickens grew louder, stopping only when Campbell's choking died, leaving only Hobo busy licking his paw in the silence.

 

 

for Mildred and Susan

As another bottle went whizzing by my head I knew that I had made some serious miscalculations. I knew too that Jim was like to kill me because of those miscalculations, but at the moment the shambling wreck of a corpse was a much more pressing issue. I had unloaded most of my pistol into it already when Jim shouted that I should quit wasting bullets like they were made of manure and throw something more substantial, but somehow guns still seemed like a good idea. Cursing his illustrious forebears, I finally holstered my beloved pearl-handled Colts and looked around for something heftier. The dead guy continued his staggering plunge toward me, so I grabbed a chair and flung it wildly across the room. It fetched up a glancing blow on his shoulder, which spun him around to the left. Jim took advantage of this momentary turn in events and hefted up another chair, bringing it down with a little more venom on the old guy's noggin. He crashed to the floor with the splitting wood and lay there twitching and broken, but at least no longer mobile. Jim muttered something under his breath that could have easily been “stupid fucking white man,” but I tried to believe that it was aimed at the corpse and not me.