Midnight Snack and Other Fairy Tales (8 page)

Caroline paused. A woman taking off some item of clothing. A snake shedding its skin. And a sudden memory of her mother’s voice: just a phrase or two.
And she told them to light a fire in the bridal chamber, and hang a pot of lye over it, and leave on the hearth three strong scrub brushes –

Caroline’s mouth dropped open.

Lindworm!
That
was the name!

Her eyes narrowed, and she smiled; and this time the smile was real. She remembered the whole story, now. And now she knew how this story could end—if she was smart about it.

In the kitchen, the coffeemaker chimed. Caroline closed the closet door, and as she went back through the living room, she looked over at the fire, which was burning brighter every minute.
You really
are
with me here all the time,
she said silently to her mother.
Now we’ll find out if you’re here enough…

“You want a mug, or a cup?” Caroline said.

“A mug’ll be fine,” said the lindworm, slithering down so it lay against the couch, in front of the fire.

Yeah,
Caroline thought.
You get yourself real comfy there while I think this through.
She got two mugs down, filled one of them two-thirds full, one nearly full: dropped three sugars in that one, poured the other one nearly full of milk. She brought them both over by the sofa and handed the milky one to the lindworm, which took it with some difficulty in those delicate little claws. Then she put the other one down on the hearth.

“Would you excuse me for a moment?” Caroline said. “I want to go slip into something… different.”

The lindworm smiled.

So did she, as she vanished into the bedroom and shut the door.

It took about ten minutes to do what she had in mind. At the end of that time she came out into the living room again and sat down on the floor, in front of the sofa, next to the lindworm. And instantly Caroline broke out into a sweat: because she was now wearing, over her Friday casuals of oxford shirt and jeans, a total of six more pairs of pants, five shirts, two sweaters, and a hoodie.

“How’s the coffee?” she said, picking up her mug and sipping at her own.

The lindworm stared at her with those great chilly golden eyes. It was impossible to make out expressions in them: but the voice, when it spoke, was a little rough around the edges: the sound of a surprise which the speaker was trying to conceal.

“I think,” the lindworm said, stretching some more of the length of its body out toward the fire, “that you should really take all those clothes off.”

She gave him as level a stare as she could manage. “
I
think,” she said, “that
you
should really take all yours off first.”

He smiled, slowly, and the front fangs glinted in the firelight. “Mmmm… kinky.”

“Not half as kinky,” she said, working to keep her voice steady, “as a one-night stand with a giant snake.”

He held absolutely still.

“Oh yeah,” Caroline said. “You think I didn’t notice?”

“Uh,” he said, sounding very much like he was trying to find a way to respond that wouldn’t give anything away. “Maybe you’ve had a little too much to drink.”

“Oh no,” Caroline said. “Just about enough. And as for you— You think I couldn’t just about hear you thinking, anyway? Asking all the right questions, finding the right answers. Your dream date, huh? No parents. No kids. Perfect. She vanishes and it’s just another missing person. And when you’re hungry again—a couple of weeks from now, a month, I don’t know or care—you find yourself another date. And then before too long, you change companies, because it’s smart to get out before anyone who might start investigating these murders starts seeing a pattern.”

The cold, brassy, blank eyes rested on her, just watching her with that dry unmoved gleam.
That’s what freaks people out about snakes,
she thought suddenly.
The eyes aren’t wet. At least that’s what’s freaking
me
out…
At the same time, she was watching the way the rest of the lindworm’s body was coiling away from the fire, getting a little closer to her…

“Oh no you don’t,” Caroline said, standing up. “That’s not how it’s going to go down.”

“And what makes you think you get to say how it’s going to go?” the lindworm said.

“Because I ‘read the F-ing manual,’” Caroline said, “and I know how this curse works. If we’d gone to your place, this might have been a whole different story. There’s still a game to be played, sure. There are some moves that have to be gone through. You’ve got your chance to win. You’ve just got to get the clothes off me first… because only a nonmagic snake would be stupid enough to eat someone with their clothes on: it’d come down with a case of gastroenteritis that’d kill it stone dead.” She grinned—a far more savage look than the one she’d been holding in place for the last half hour. “Problem is, those little claws aren’t strong enough to do much more than hold a menu. And type, I guess. Any clothes that come off me, I’m going to have to remove.”

“And why would I go along with you on this?”

“I’m betting,” Caroline said, “because having gotten this far…you just can’t resist the challenge. How many other poor women just fell into your arms, pulled their clothes off, never had the wherewithal to resist? Easy meat. But this time—this time you get a crack at someone who knows what’s going on. You get to see how good a curse you are. Can I wear you down before you do the same to me? Let’s find out.”

“And suppose I decide to force the issue?”

Those golden eyes were somehow looking bigger than they had any right to as they bent close to her. The mouth opened, slowly…

Caroline reached under the hoodie and whipped out the vintage eighteen-inch carbon steel Henkel kitchen knife, the one that her father told her Julia Child had used to refer to as “the fright knife”, holding it right in front of the lindworm’s nose. It shied back sharply. “This isn’t stainless, Slinky-boy,” Caroline said. “Cold iron. You betting you can try something cute with me before I do you some serious damage? Let’s find out.”

The lindworm closed its mouth, saying nothing: but the eyes started to look angry.

“So,” Caroline said. “When I take off a piece of clothing, you take off something too.”

“Like what? I have no—”

“Snakes,” Caroline said, “shed their skins. That’s ‘like what.’”

The glare became more furious still—but this time Caroline saw what she’d been waiting for: a tiny glint of fear.

“And just to make sure that everything goes ahead in a nice organized kind of way—”

She turned to the sideboard up against the wall, pulled a drawer open, rummaged, then shut the drawer, turned, and onto the shining mahogany surface she dropped a pack of cards on the table.

“I’ll deal the first hand,” she said. “Five card stud?”

The lindworm’s eyes narrowed. Again it said nothing… then glided around to the far side of the table.

Sweating, sweltering, Caroline sat down. To her left, the fire burned bright. It glinted on the snake’s scales, burned in those golden eyes. Caroline tapped the deck of cards out of the pack, tapped them even on the table, started to shuffle, dealt.

They played. Caroline studied her cards, watched her adversary do the same. It was not the best hand she’d ever had, not the worst.
Thirteen hands to play,
she thought.
The law of averages may be my best friend tonight. At least half the deals are mine…

It proved so on the first hand, at least: her ace-high flush against the lindworm’s three of a kind. It stared at its cards as if it couldn’t quite believe what was happening.

“Well?” Caroline said.

The lindworm glared at her again. Then it put the cards down, lowered its head…

The skin split all down one side of it with a weird, wettish sound like a nylon zipper. The lindworm scrabbled at itself with its little claws, and scratched and scraped against the edge of the mahogany table as the translucent old skin started to peel away.

“Hey, watch the finish,” Caroline muttered: but the lindworm paid her no mind. Finally the skin was off, and the much shinier, damper-looking lindworm seized the cast-off skin in its little claws, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it onto the table.

“Your turn,” it said.

Caroline stood up, pulled off the hoodie and the old ski pants that made up the outermost layer, rolled them up and chucked them onto the table too. Then she pushed the cards across the table to the lindworm.

It shuffled, though not terribly well: the claws seemed to interfere. Then it dealt.

She picked up her cards, shook her head. Straight: nine, ten, jack, queen… “Hit me,” she said. But the draw didn’t improve matters. The best she could come up with was two pair to the lindworm’s full house. It laid down the cards with a nasty look of triumph, and said, “Your turn…”

Caroline let out an annoyed breath and pulled off a sweater and another pair of pants, three years-ago’s superannuated baggies. She took the cards and started to shuffle…

…and had to stop, for she found herself feeling an increasing sense of pressure, and not anything to do with those tight clothes, either. She glanced up quickly, and then glanced down again, realizing that that had been a mistake. Those golden eyes were fixed on her, huge, insistent, and it was from them that the sense of pressure came.

“I gave up staring games in grade school,” Caroline said, resuming her shuffle. “Let’s go.” She dealt—

The cards were much better this time. But somehow she had trouble feeling good about it. She already felt very hot, and suddenly she started to feel very tired as well
. And why not? It’s been a long day. It’d be great to just lean back in the chair and close my eyes for a moment…

Caroline shook her head.
Not right now.
She studied her cards, glanced across the table, looked no higher than the delicate little claws. They were rock-steady: she supposed it was too much to ask to see her opponent trembling with any kind of emotion. She hung on, keeping herself still. When the cards went down on the table, she had four of a kind against the lindworm’s straight.
Not bad. Stay with it…

The lindworm hissed, straightened a little at the table. Then it hissed again, and the skin split again down its other side, a louder sound this time, as if the split was deeper. The lindworm shuddered, as if this time the splitting bothered it more. This time, when the skin came away, it wasn’t dry: the tissue under it wept, and a faint strange metallic smell started to fill the room.

The skin went into the middle of the table, and Caroline stood up, her eye on the knife, and pulled off another layer of clothes. She was getting cooler, which was a relief, but she was also wondering whether the story was going to be right about how many skins this thing had.
Oh, mum…it had better be!
She sat down again, pushed the deck across to the lindworm.

It shuffled, gazing at her. Once again Caroline started feeling that strange drowsy pressure, and along with it, a feeling, not of tiredness this time, but of hopelessness. She won that hand, and the next: and, hissing more loudly each time, the lindworm split its skin away. But somehow it didn’t seem to matter. 

Twice more she got up and pulled off a layer of clothes: and once more she dealt, and once more the lindworm did: and somehow none of it seemed to matter. The cards hit the table before her, face down, and each one seemed to say in a whisper, as it hit,
What possible difference will this make? As if, even if you did win, as if whatever was left over, whoever was left over, would want
you
. Just give it up, just let it go. You’re going to lose anyway. Why prolong the inevitable?

But Caroline concentrated on those cards, and particularly on their backs, the designs on them, graceful and precise. She picked them up and studied them for meaning. It seemed to take longer than usual, a lot longer.

“You’re stalling,” the lindworm said. “It’s not going to help.”

Caroline wavered in her seat, staring at the cards.
How many hands now?
she thought. But this one, anyway, this one was good.

“Just give it up,” said the lindworm. “What’s the point? Let it happen. You know it’s going to…” It sounded almost kindly. The voice reminded her of Matt’s…

Caroline swallowed, sat up straighter. She dared a glance at the lindworm, not so much at its eyes as at the rest of it. It looked bigger, somehow: taller, wider. But also somehow it looked more bloated, less substantial, less scaly. There was something less solid about it. Caroline stared at her cards one last time, laid them down. “Four of a kind,” she said. “Show.”

The lindworm hissed, laid its own cards down. Two pair.

Caroline grinned, but the grin felt weak. She stood up to slip out of one more layer of clothes. She started to feel chilly as she sat down again, despite the fire burning right beside her.

Across from her, the lindworm squirmed, coiled, uncoiled. It made a thin high whining noise for a few moments, like a power saw, and then its skin split again, with more force, as if something was pressing it more forcefully from inside, almost pushing to get out. The creature that came out of that skin was even less scaly, more like a slug or worm: only a few scales seemed to cling about the plates of the head, and only the eyes kept that brilliant gold: everything else about the thing was going wet and leaden, like the sky outside.

Caroline took the cards to deal again, but her concentration was starting to fail her.
All that wine, all this stress…
The fire burned brightly behind her: she tried to keep that firelight in her mind as well. But it kept fading. She glanced up at the bloated, pallid thing coiling and pulsing across the table from her. The eyes…

Caroline looked away, and kept nearly looking back again, and had to stop herself and concentrate as best as she could on the shuffling.

Snake and bird… snake and mouse.
The images kept occurring to her. Those “fascination” stories were, well, just stories. But at the same time, what if they had some basis in truth? What if they had the same kind of basis that the lindworm story itself had? If there were actually serpents who were the expression of some kind of curse, why couldn’t they have unusual powers over the minds of their victims, why couldn’t their eyes swallow you up like, like—