The Other World, It Whispers E-Book

Stephanie Victoire

• Herausgeber: Salt
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 256

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

From the secrets of the forest, to the magic of the sea, these nine stories tell of what happens when passion, desire, loneliness and imprisonment lead us on a search for freedom and empowerment – no matter what the cost. A woman makes a deal with gods and goddesses in order to bring a slanderous town down to its knees, a man who has lost everything finds himself in the graveyards of Paris, turning to dark magic to ensure success, an opulent masked ball becomes the stage of spite and revenge, a teenage boy who believes he is in the wrong body calls out to mermaids to enchant him. With strands of classic fairy and folklore weaved through, the unknown – the silent and dark – is explored. Where spirits, deities and witches lurk, but also where the beauty of life and renewal can be found.

Leseprobe

THE OTHER WORLD, IT WHISPERS

Stephanie Victoire

From the secrets of the forest, to the magic of the sea, these nine stories tell of what happens when passion, desire, loneliness and imprisonment lead us on a search for freedom and empowerment – no matter what the cost.

A woman makes a deal with gods and goddesses in order to bring a slanderous town down to its knees, a man who has lost everything finds himself in the graveyards of Paris, turning to dark magic to ensure success, an opulent masked ball becomes the stage of spite and revenge, a teenage boy who believes he is in the wrong body calls out to mermaids to enchant him.

With strands of classic fairy and folklore weaved through, the unknown – the silent and dark – is explored. Where spirits, deities and witches lurk, but also where the beauty of life and renewal can be found.

Praise for Stephanie Victoire

‘A hungry, glorious, fox-slinking book. This collection of new fairytales soothes you with its charm and elegance – until you find that it has you in its grip, and its teeth are sharp.’ —KIRSTY LOGAN

The Other World, It Whispers

Stephanie Victoirewas born in London to a Mauritian family. In2010she graduated with a BA in Creative Writing from London Metropolitan University. In 2014 Stephanie completed her collection of fairy and folk tales entitledThe Other World, It Whisperswhilst on the The Almasi League writers’ programme. Two of these stories were separately published in2015. Stephanie lives in London and is currently working on a novel,The Heart Note.

Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

12 Norwich Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0AX

All rights reserved

Copyright © Stephanie Victoire,2016

The right ofStephanie Victoireto be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

Salt Publishing 2016

Created by Salt Publishing Ltd

This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out,or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978-1-78463-086-7 electronic

for Norman

Time and Silence

“What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?”

–The Count of Monte Cristo

I saw herwhen I ran outside to dig my bleeding fingers into the snow. She was as pale as the pearl-painted landscape that ran for miles around us. If it weren’t for her matted black mane, I wouldn’t have noticed her. My first thought was that I had died; my mother had finally killed me and this is what the spirit realm looked like. I had found my first ghost kindred. At first she dithered back and forth between two pine trees before advancing a little towards me. I finally breathed and the cold air clouded my view for a second or two. I was not dead and she was still there. If Mother saw us there she’d chase the girl away and give me another hiding; as it was, I had abandoned scrubbing the soot from the stone hearth because I’d scraped my skin so much I couldn’t hold the scourer. When I did my chores, I wasn’t allowed to put on gloves or place a cushion down to save the skin on my bony knees.

The night before she’d had me cleaning the attic in the dark. “It’ll test your courage, boy,” she said as she descended the rickety wooden stairs and switched off the light by the door. I coughed from the dust and sweated onto the floor. I knocked a pile of things over when something ran across my hand; I didn’t allow myself to imagine what it was. I fumbled to put what felt like a valise, a box of blankets and a few books back into a tower. My mother had lied about not having any spare blankets. I’d asked for an extra one for my bed when the first snow cloud rested itself above our house, a dove-coloured puff telling us that winter would be harsh and long. “We’ve no blankets for you. Those sheets will have to do,” Mother said and slammed the door to my bedroom.

My room used to be the second bathroom just for Jenny; the oldest daughter had needed her privacy. When Jenny left home Mother said that there was no need for a second bathroom. At least I no longer had to share a room with Mindy. Mindy suffered from nightmares, and strangely, always woke up at two forty-five in the morning on the dot to scream. Mother would run in and stroke her back to sleep and scold me for just being there. “The poor thing, the poor thing, she’s plagued by these terrors,” Mother would coo, Mindy’s sweat-sodden hair stuck to her arm. Aren’t we all, I’d think to myself. But then I moved into the bathroom that was now absent of Jenny’s soaps and perfumes and potions. She had left behind her lemon flannel bathrobe, which I snuck under the thin sheet on my bed just to get a little warmer. The bathtub was ripped out and so was the sink. The toilet stayed because Mother said it meant I wouldn’t disturb her in the night if I woke up to go for a wee; and so there is a toilet in my room. The tiles have cracked around where the bathtub used to be. No longer supported by the grouting on the wall, they fall and thud down onto my pile of books, my six books that I cherish – they are the only things in the world that are truly mine. The librarian, Fred, gave them to me on the day Mother marched into the library and ripped me from a chair, the copy ofRobinson Crusoeflying through the air and causing such an echo when it landed, heads turned and tutted me. I shouldn’t have been at the library. I was supposed to be at the clockmakers getting our lantern clock fixed, which I had been, but Tom the clockmaker had said that it would take a few hours so I was to come back later. Well, I couldn’t have gone home without the clock, so I went to the library to wait out the time. Mother dragged me out of the library and back to the clockmaker’s, hissing, “Wait until it’s ready,” before turning on her heel to head home. Fred had watched her tugging at my scarf like she was pulling a leash on a dog, and followed us down the road.

A few minutes after Mother had left, while I was watching Tom fixing our clock and trying to avoid eye contact with me – judgment clearly rippling through his mind at what he had just witnessed – Fred poked his head through the door and handed me a bag and said nothing. He smiled at me the same way Jenny had smiled at me on the day she left home. It wasn’t a joyous “don’t worry about a thing” smile; it was a pitying smile, a “sorry for you” smile. Fred left quickly and I looked inside the bag. There was the copy ofRobinson Crusoealong withMoby Dick,Grimms’ Fairy Tales,Dracula,The Count of Monte CristoandFrankenstein. That was the best day of my life, the greatest gift – a perfect collection. After I’d read them all, I dreamt of sailboats and wolves and monsters. The wolves and monsters were my friends and they would come and murder Mother, and the sailboat would be how Mindy and I would escape, although I don’t know where the sea is. But that doesn’t matter; my swordsmen and monster friends will lead us there.

I wanted more books, I wanted to add extra worlds to the six I possessed, and when I was clearing the attic in the dark and felt those familiar brick shapes, stroked their spines and smelt their musty pages, I wanted to know what stories I held in my hands. Who else would accompany us in my sailboat? I had to leave these mystery books where they were because when the light was switched on and the sound of heels pounded up the stairs, Mother immediately checked my pockets and under my shirt and in the waistline of my trousers to make sure I hadn’t taken anything. “You’ve done an appalling job,” she had said. “You’ll continue this tomorrow.” Then she sent me to bed.

But the girl, the wild girl, would be my saviour. We were at a stand-off outside in the cold, my fingers stinging, my blood making crimson buttons in the snow, and the clouds seeping from my mouth, cracking my lips dry. And she, with pieces of the forest in her dense, black, shaggy hair, her pale skin and her blue and purple veins surfacing on her bare chest like a map spread out on a table. She was deathly thin and dirty and I wondered how she hadn’t frozen to death in what appeared to be just a slip or a nightdress. She was barefoot and her toes were the colour of charcoal. She moved closer still, but very slowly, staring at my red fingers. She must have escaped some horror out there in the forest, looking like she did. And so I asked her:

“Are you Red Riding Hood?” Perhaps she had lost her cape when grappling with the wolf. She shook her head.

“Are you Gretel?” Perhaps she’d managed to escape the witch that was trying to eat her. She got away, but her brother didn’t. She shook her head again and came a bit closer.

“Who are you, then?”

“Who?” she echoed back to me, sounding like an owl. She then gasped at the sight of my fingers. “Blood,” she breathed. The steam she exhaled into the biting air confirmed she was alive too.

“Yes, I hurt myself,” I told her, and then she knelt down and took my hands in hers; they were not cold as I’d expected, or warm either, but still they numbed me. Her nails had lines of brown in them as if she’d been digging the earth. Her bright ice-blue eyes showed concern. Not even Jenny or Mindy had ever looked at me like that, not even on days when they might have felt bad for me, like the time Mother cut off all my hair in chunks because I’d spilled my dinner all over the floor. The plate was too hot and it had startled me when I touched it; the plate slipped and my stew splattered onto the kitchen tiles. Jenny and Mindy just watched as Mother searched for a pair of scissors, wildly telling me how useless I was while I grew desperately hungry. As I sat in the corner of our then-shared room afterwards, Mindy came and sat beside me. And instead of putting her arm around me like I’d hoped she might, she just said, “You get into trouble because you’re a boy. Mummy said that boys are bad.” I imagine that Jenny didn’t feel this way because she married one. But then Jenny only ever got kisses and cakes from Mother so why would she dare voice her difference of opinion? There once was a time when Mindy shared her cakes with me and asked me to colour in pictures with her and begged me to read her to sleep. We haven’t done these things together in a while.

“Where did you come from?” I asked the wild girl, and at this, she took her hands back and tucked them into her lap; she didn’t like this question, it seemed. Just then, we both jumped at a loudthwackand it took a moment for me to realise that it sounded like a meat cleaver hitting a chopping board. Mother was in the kitchen and I needed to finish scrubbing: I was due to go back up to the attic soon. And then it occurred to me that I could keep the girl up there: she could hide and be with me there in the dark; she could be my friend.

“Would you like to come with me?” I asked her, and she nodded for the first time. I took her hand and led her around the house, ducking under the windows until we reached the other entrance that led us straight into the utility room, which was essentially a room designed to be used only by me. Oven trays were now clanging in the kitchen and I took the opportunity during that commotion to pull the girl up the stairs. Mindy was in the first bathroom pretending to be a mermaid, as she did for about an hour each day. She’d prepare for her bath by decorating herself in Mother’s pearls and putting flowers in her hair before writhing about in the water. She could be a mermaid all she liked if we ever made it to the sea. I managed to get the wild girl and myself up to the attic without being noticed. I told the girl to sit in the corner behind the old armoire, or inside it, if she preferred. She climbed into it and I instructed her to not leave that spot until I came back to her. I said I’d be back soon and would try to bring her something to eat. “There’s an evil woman in this house who won’t like it one bit if she finds you. She’ll punish us both. Do you understand?” She nodded again. Up there in that cramped space I could smell her: she smelt of sour milk, soil and that metallic tang that lingers on your palm when you hold coins for too long. “I must give you a name,” I told her. “I need to be able to call you.” She seemed to like this idea because she smiled; she had two grey canines, but otherwise her teeth weren’t so bad. She waited with delight while I mulled over a few ideas. Perhaps no one had ever thought to name her before. “I’m going to call you Snow,” I said finally, and she agreed, smiling wider – her eyes bluer and brighter like two globes. “OK, Snow. I will come back to you soon, I promise.”

“Lucas!” My name ripped through the house in a voice so shrill I felt it vibrate in my ribs. Snow’s pupils eclipsed the oceans of her irises.

“That’s her, Snow. That’s the evil woman.” Snow tucked her knees into herself and shrunk to the back of the armoire. “I have to go.”

I tore down the stairs and found Mother standing by the hearth, her black eyes locked on me. When idle they were a muted black, a misty black. When looking at me, they were fired up and shiny like polished onyx.

“Do you think you’re finished here?” She pointed to the tub of sugar soap and the scourer on the floor. She looked at my blood-crusted fingers but said nothing about them.

“No, Mother,” I replied. “I just went to find something to stop my bleeding. I wouldn’t want to stain anything with my blood.”

“You’ve got twenty minutes to finish this. Then up to the attic you go.”

Snow helped me clean. She helped me to see in the dark, helped me find my way around the attic. Her numb, bloodless hands took the cloth, put it in my hand and guided it over the dust on the boxes, cases and other surfaces. We whispered in the black afternoon. I told her about my plan to get to a sailboat and sail far, far away. She answered with small words like, “Yes, I’ll help,” and even though she was a quiet thing, I knew that she understood the weight of my situation.

“But how will I escape her, Snow?” I asked. There was silence. In this silence, I wondered how long it would be before I was running free through the forest. “We have to take Mindy,” I continued.

“Mindy?” she questioned; that name in her mouth sounded like the whip of a breeze.

“Yes, she’s my little sister.”

“Yes, I’ll help,” she repeated. She couldn’t see my eyes begging her silhouette to make it all OK. I tucked her into the back of the armoire and she immediately started gnawing on the biscuits I had brought her. I reminded her to be dead silent when Mother came up and she stopped nibbling straight away. I imagined she was holding the biscuit in her mouth with her earthy fingers, like a squirrel ready to protect her food. The light came on and I closed the armoire doors and resumed my position on the floor with the cloth in my hand. Mother appeared, looked around and said nothing about the state of the attic, which meant that I had done a good job.

“Time you had a bath, don’t you think? You stink of sweat,” she said as we went down the stairs.

In the tepid bath, I lay there imagining what the sea smelt like. In stories they said it was salty and they gave it all sorts of colours like marine, azure, navy, aqua and emerald. They said it was big – vast, even; I wondered just how small I’d feel against it. As I thought of names for the boat, a scream tore through the house, which was followed by a quick series of thumps. I panicked – I was sure Mother had found Snow. I jumped out of the bath and threw my dusty clothes back on, even though I was dripping wet.

“Mummy!” I heard Mindy cry. And there they both were, Mother at the bottom of the stairs on her back and Mindy crouched over her, checking her for scrapes. “What happened, Mummy?” Mindy asked frantically.

“Open the door! Open the door, Mindy!”

Mother had been walking down the stairs when she said she saw a girl through the pane of glass on the front door and the fright of it had caused her to lose her footing. Mindy opened the door and showed her that no one was there.

“There was someone there!” Mother insisted, as if it was Mindy’s fault the girl had gone. Mindy was frightened by Mother’s tone, perhaps because it was the first time a scolding was ever directed at her. I watched this all from halfway up the stairs and said nothing. Mother gathered herself up and stepped out of the house to look around. “I saw her,” I heard her say under her breath. I’d never seen Mother that pale; I was comforted by that.

“Get me a glass of water, Lucas.” Her voice quivered a little. I went to the kitchen and poured her a glass of water. All the while I was smiling.Well done, Snow,I thought to myself.

Over the next few days we heard Mother scream out often and I no longer worried about Snow getting caught. She was excellent at being a ghost, and after the third time she appeared to Mother in a wisp-thin apparition like she was from some unknown, dark world, Mother stopped saying that she’d seen a girl. Mother was keeping certain words in her mouth; you could almost see them, like they were made up of Scrabble tiles that spelled out “I think I’m being haunted.” They piled up behind her lips, jumbled on her tongue. After she fell down the stairs that day, she sat in the armchair in the living room with her feet up on the footstool, sipping her water and hoping that Mindy and I would vanish so that we wouldn’t see the terror all tangled up around her nerves – but I could see her desperately trying to steady her hands. Once she’d composed herself she soon found a chore that she could order me to get on with.

“Lucas, go and sweep the snow off the path outside. It’s piled up out there,” she said with her eyes locked on our now-working lantern clock. As I stepped out of the house holding the shovel with my gloved hand, I looked up at the attic window and I saw Snow standing there, waving at me. I couldn’t see her smile, but I imagined she was smiling at me, pleased with our first victory over my mother. And through the window like that she did look like a ghost; or perhaps she was actually an angel, because just in that moment snowflakes started to fall from the sky as if it was her who had made it rain tiny white feathers, just for me.

The next night Mother’s screech came from the bathroom. I don’t know how Snow pulled this one off, but she’d appeared to Mother through the screen door of the shower cubicle. Mother must have been in there, burning away the day in a hot shower, soaped up and basking in the steam, when she caught sight of Snow in the room, watching her through the haze. Mother screamed and slipped, but managed to catch herself, although she said she had banged her elbow. Before she could wipe away the steam, switch the water off or step out of the cubicle, Snow had vanished. I knew she had run back up to the attic without a sound, the way a mouse gets back into a hole in the wall. I never heard her footsteps, even though I listened out for her: not a creak she made. When Mother came out with a towel around her, her elbow red and her face puffed with steam, she was shouting, “Where are you?! Where are you?!” She woke up Mindy, who came out of her bedroom in her Winnie the Pooh nightie, weeping and rubbing her sleepy eyes. I had been lying on my bed, picking at the remaining tiles on the wall with one hand and holding my copy ofFrankensteinin the other, thinking about just how much I liked the voice of the monster and how he didn’t frighten me at all. I knew not to run out to her. I took my time, set my book down and prepared myself for playing dumb.

“Who are you talking to, Mother?” I asked, examining her face and noticing how much she looked like a terrified rabbit, her eyes large, her face twitching – searching left and right for a trace of the threat she was convinced was upon her.

“You’re scaring me, Mummy,” Mindy sobbed. Mother didn’t answer us but continued to shout at the walls. I took Mindy’s hand and led her downstairs to the kitchen to get her some hot chocolate. I was never allowed any, but on this occasion I thought I could take the liberty.

Mother took herself up to bed and, for the first time ever, she didn’t wake me up the next morning. It seemed she was still asleep, or perhaps just laying there awake with fear, when I tiptoed past her bedroom to take a bottle of fresh water and a piece of bread up to Snow. I tried to mimic how Snow had moved, so stealthy and silent; I worked on making my steps as light as possible. Snow seemed happy to see me, even though I couldn’t see her because turning on the light might have roused Mother. But I was sure I saw her teeth glint briefly like the twinkle of a star.

“It’s working, Snow. She’s frightened. I know she is. But now what? What do we do?”

“Just wait,” was all that her wispy voice said. And I knew that waiting was all that I really could do. Snow waited out the rest of the day and that night. She knew not to strike too often. It was almost like she could sense when Mother had untangled her nerves and resumed as normal before making another attack.

The next morning, Snow caused Mother to slice her own finger with a knife. She had been chopping apples by the window in the kitchen, intending to bake a pie. The window looks out onto the forest, which encircles the back of the house, and Mother happened to glance up and see Snow standing there between the trees. Startled and bleeding, Mother reached for a cloth, and when she looked back up again, Snow had disappeared. I watched it all happen because I was behind Mother, sweeping the kitchen floor.

“Are you all right, Mother?” I did my courtesy questioning. She didn’t answer me. Mother no longer had the breath to hiss at me, no longer had the mind to watch my every move. She had stopped paying attention to me completely, and I was enjoying that. I finally had a chance to watch her, to see her quiver – see her come undone.

Later on that day I caught her whispering to herself as she sat in the living room, staring at the fire as if she was reciting a chant to conjure up fire spirits. She even stopped getting dressed in the days that followed. She’d glide around the house in her frayed, peach-coloured dressing gown, her hair no longer neatly curled and coiffed but kinked and distressed. She jumped often, even at just the sound of Mindy entering the room, whom she now looked at sideways. Her shiny onyx eyes were perishing. She no longer looked at me at all. The chores were left; all the tedious tasks I was made to perform day in and day out weren’t being monitored anymore, so I stopped doing them. The banisters grew dusty, the mirrors didn’t sparkle and my bed remained dishevelled. I even managed to head to town and back without a beating upon my return. I went back to the library and bid Fred a good day. He seemed surprised to see me in such high spirits, so he watched me for a while, his mouth slightly agape. I was looking for another story, something that would give me an idea of where we’d go once we were aboard the boat. I wondered what it would be like to make it to an Arabian desert, or how we’d fare living out our days in an Indian jungle. Could we be happy on a deserted island, Mindy, Snow, and me?

By the time I got home, winter seemed to have turned to spring in one afternoon. The pines peeked green hats out from the top of their snow coats; the roads had thinned to a wet glaze; grass poked through the white blankets that had kept their heads down in slumber for months, and I no longer saw my breath cloud before me. And just as winter was receding, so was the life I had always known.

When I visited Snow that afternoon, she was cradling one of the books in the attic. She wasn’t reading it but rather feeling the pages with her bony fingers, with a look on her face that told me she was dreaming, just like I did when I felt the stories pour out from books and into me. We didn’t talk much, but she kept assuring me that we would get away. I left her with a cup of warm milk and some toasted bread.

The house was quiet that night. Mindy had fallen asleep on the sofa and Mother was sitting in front of the fire again. I couldn’t sleep, so I sat in the kitchen drawing swords and armour on the back of an old letter. I heard the crackles of the flame coming from the living room and the ticks of the lantern clock marking the silence of every passing second. And then Mother stabbed the air with another scream, making Mindy howl in response. Mother wailed and cried, “Go away!” and when I went into the living room, there was Snow standing behind Mother’s chair, her reflection gazing at her through the mirror above the mantelpiece. Mother saw me appear behind Snow, and as Mother rose from her chair to confirm what she was seeing, she clutched at her chest and her arm went limp. Mindy ran to her and I stood there not knowing what to do. And Snow didn’t move either, and we watched my mother cry and Mindy cry and the panic of that moment made the fire roar. Mother was having a heart attack. Two of her fingers were twitching and her eyes looked like black buttons about to pop. Her right shoulder dropped and her earrings swung as she convulsed.

“You!” The word was a whisper, but I’m sure it was meant to be serrated like a knife. Mother panted and clutched her chest some more and bore a stare into me. “You evil! Evil!” The words flew at me out from between her clenched teeth. Mindy cried at Snow to go away but I believe those words were also meant for me.

“Mindy, let’s go!” I reached for her hand but she smacked it away.

“She needs the hospital!” Mindy sobbed.

Snow pulled on my sleeve for us to go.

“Get out!” Mother collapsed down into the chair and I knew then that I could never stay.

“Mindy, come with us!” I tried one more time, but she mimicked Mother’s dark venomous voice and called me evil. Mindy would never forgive me for this and she would always love Mother more; I had to leave her.

Snow bolted out of the room and I called after her, but when I got to the hallway, the front door was open; she had got away. I couldn’t take Mindy, but I ran up to my room for the suitcase I had kept ready and waiting underneath my bed. I forced my feet into my shoes and lifted my coat off the rack. Before I left the house, I looked back at Mindy and Mother through the living room doorway one more time: Mother was curling into a ball in pain and Mindy shouted “murderer!” at me over and over again. And then the clock struck twelve. I felt that deathly tick of midnight like an anchor in my gut and I ran as fast as I could. Slipping on melting snow and holding my arms out to sense my way through the dark, I headed in the direction I thought Snow had gone.

As the forest deepened and the treetops blotted out the sky like a woven nest above me, I caught a glimpse of a nightdress up ahead – she had waited for me. When I reached her, she took my hand and pulled me along. I wasn’t cold and I was trying not to be scared. I heard movement in the grass some distance away and the dark greens of the forest were now indigo and blurry, pierced with jagged black spikes which must have been the tree branches. I wanted to keep up all the way to wherever we got to next, but I was suddenly worried that my legs were not strong enough. I looked up at the moon for some comfort; a piece of light that would always be there. All I had left behind was gone to me now; Mother and Mindy had each other and I now saw that’s all they needed. I wanted to give my baby sister a different life, but in the end, she didn’t want it.

As for me, there’d be new lands and the sea, and that thought got me excited. I only looked back once to see the small glow of light from the house disappear behind the arms of the trees. Snow tugged my arm, urging me on. There was no way I could let go of her now. I looked up one more time at the moon before moving quicker, because it was then I was sure I heard the howling of a wolf.