Shivaree (11 page)

TWENTY

Even though he couldn’t bear the light of day, the Judge hated it when the evening shadows started to descend upon his room. When Ruby died, he’d thought the darkness was the worst thing that could happen to him. Now he knew better. He prayed she’d rest in peace tonight, but he knew it was not to be. He could feel her stirring, even before the last of the sun’s rays had bent around the horizon. She was waking. Thinking of him. She’d come for him again, just as soon as the shadows outweighed the light.

He’d pretended to the old doctor that he believed his daughter only returned to him in nightmares, but that wasn’t so. She’d visited him every night since her burial. For a while, the signs had been subtle—her distinctive scent, a strange flicker against the shadowed wall—sensations he could deny, figments he could ignore. But these impressions of Ruby’s presence had grown stronger with time. Then, last week he saw her, saw her with his own two eyes. And she spoke to him, pleading with him to invite her in. He’d thought her visit a dream at first, then, feeling her cool touch, he began to consider the possibility that he might be losing his mind. But once she began feeding from him, he knew what Ruby had become.

Back when he and her mother had started dating, they’d gone to just about every movie Hollywood had churned out. Maybe the blame could be laid at her mother’s feet. Ruby had inherited her love for both the silver screen and the macabre. The Judge couldn’t have given a good goddamn about either. He had just been hoping to do a little spooning before dropping his date home at the end of the night.

A chilling spicy scent that reminded him of myrrh—sickly sweet, but still somehow woody and medicinal—told him that Ruby was on her way. He grasped at the bedclothes, pulling them to his chin. A tentative scratching, which he refused to acknowledge, on his door. His eyes pierced the shadows, taking in the sight of a luminous mist as it insinuated itself through the space between the door and its frame. He watched as the knob turned and the door squeaked open. The mist billowed into the room now, as thick as the fog from the mill, and his daughter’s animated corpse came riding in on the ethereal wave.

She floated a yard or so above him, her long hair cascading down, nearly touching his pillow. The Judge closed his eyes and held his trembling hands up, trying to shield himself from the phantasm, praying that his flesh would not meet with her coldness. “Daughter, I wish you’d leave me be. Let your father rest.”

“Oh, Daddy, I know how you feel,” she whispered, reaching down and running her fingers through his graying mane. “I do.” She leaned in and purred into his ear. “I felt the same way every night you came to me, pressing your flesh against mine. Smelling of just enough bourbon that come morning you could tell yourself nothing had happened, and even if it had, you weren’t really responsible.”

He clenched the edge of his covers with tight white knuckles as hot tears forced their way through his tightly closed eyes. “I was weak. I know that. I admit it. I’d do anything to undo the damage I’ve done.” A wail came from between his grinding teeth. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. My God, I am so sorry.”

“That is quite a show of contrition, Daddy, but if you’re trying to throw yourself on the mercy of the court, I gotta warn you, I am fresh out of forgiveness.”

Ovid opened his eyes, though he hated the sight of her, this thing his daughter had become. Her moonlight-blue skin, the burning cerulean of her pupil-less eyes and the light they cast on him.

“Leave me,” the Judge commanded, trying to take control of this living nightmare. “Go back to the hell that bred you.”

“But I already have, Daddy,” she said, her voice like wind through dry grass. “That’s why I’m here.”

TWENTY-ONE

The dour faces of Ruby’s ancestors challenged her approach. The dressing table where they sat strained under the silver and gold framed images of those who’d come before her, those who had long since turned to nothing more than dust and sour memories. There were no pictures of her in the collection; all of them predated her mother’s death, so Ruby had always reckoned it was her mother who’d assembled the photos there.

Ruby glanced in the mirror, past her own flickering reflection, at her father as he lay rasping and shaking in his bloodstained sheets. Did the Judge hold on to the photos because he truly felt some form of affection for the people depicted, or did he just care so little as to never have them removed? No, more than likely they’d remained in place as a testament to his own origins, witnesses to his own greatness, betrayers of his own vanity.

The portraits were all more or less familiar to her; she’d seen them many times during her life. One of them, though, had always fascinated her. This one she’d memorized by heart. A much younger version of the Judge sat in a paper crescent moon next to a woman—the woman wearing the only smile recorded by any of the photos there—she’d always been told was her mama. Ruby had to take this assertion on faith; nothing had ever stirred within her as she looked at the pale and lovely young face that stared back at her. Nothing in her heart had ever said, “This is your mother.” And if she’d hadn’t felt this quickening before, she knew she’d never feel it now.

Ruby bore absolutely no physical resemblance to the woman. She shared neither her coloring, nor the kindness she had always imagined she could see in her eyes. Ruby doubted she shared any of the woman’s moral or emotional traits either. No, Ruby was her father’s daughter, through and through. Her face carried his fine features, and she knew also his sharp and merciless regard. It was almost as if she, like Athena, had sprung from her father’s brow, or at least as if her mother had been nothing more than an incubator, leaving no mark of her own on Ruby.

It struck Ruby as inevitable that the Judge should have ended up destroying this fair and seemingly joyful creature. Ruby only regretted that she’d been his accomplice in the act. Maybe things would have been different, better, had the woman not died giving birth. Then again, perhaps it was a mercy to the woman that she’d died never knowing the depravity her husband was capable of. At least Ruby hoped this was the case. Regardless, Ruby’s mother hadn’t needed to spend her years pretending to be ignorant of the Judge’s crimes committed both in the
world and under his very roof.

She’d never learn of Ruby’s own crimes, or the thing that she’d become.

Ruby paused, lifting the portrait to examine it, but the metal irri
tated her skin, stinging like a paper cut. Ruby dropped the photo on the table, relieved when it landed lying facedown. She paused and focused again on her own flittering image in the glass. Every so many seconds, it would resolve into a seemingly normal reflection, the face she’d always known, though her complexion showed a strange silvery blue. Then the reflection would blur, as if she were moving quickly, though she stood perfectly still. Ruby intuited that the thing inside her, the force she’d been bound to, came from a blind realm. Her quivering reflection testified to either its attempt to shield itself, or light’s own attempt to reject it.

She closed her eyes and let her mind drift. She knew she and her father were not alone in the house; Lucille crouched fearfully in her mama’s old sewing room. Ruby could feel her fear, smell it like a magnolia flower on a warm afternoon, and although she had no intention of harming the servant, the scent of her fear brought pleasure to the thing inside her, a rich warm dessert to the feast of her father’s blood.

At first she’d loathed the sensation of it moving within her, but she’d come to accept it. No, cherish it. Those who had bound it to her thought they were punishing her. They could never begin to understand the great gift they’d given her. Her mind drifted back to the moment when she lay, nearly lost to the opium she’d so willingly accepted from the great Myrna King’s own hand. She found herself lying on a gurney that had been covered with a type of silk. She remembered it had been black, embroidered with symbols in crimson.

“You wanted to know our secrets. Now, my dear, you shall have your way,” King had said, leaning over her. A man approached them, and only then had Ruby realized they weren’t alone. No, the gurney stood at the center of a circle of men and women. Ruby was beyond the ability to count them, but she sensed they were numerous. She cast her eyes around, her head lolling. Sleep, oblivion, warm and wondrous, called to her. No, she couldn’t count them, but the glimpses that registered in her mind informed her that they were all young, and oh, so very beautiful.

Those gathered round them began drawing closer, tightening the circle around her in a synchronized yet lurching movement, too ungainly and awkward to be thought of as dance. The reedy whine of a high-pitched flute sounded in opposition to their movements, the rhythm of its atonal moan out of time with their steps. Had Ruby’s senses not been dulled by drug, she probably would have laughed at the sight of them; it was just all so overly dramatic, so Hollywood.

They began singing, or maybe chanting, the melody nothing more than a repetition of three discordant notes that seemed to share no relation to the tune played by the piper. The utterances they made were ugly, guttural, sounding more like the cries of a tortured beast than a proper language, but the repetition of these sounds told her that they must have been words that held meaning. A man’s face appeared before her, a cruel lopsided smile on his lips, and then drifted back. Another, this time a woman she knew from one of Myrna’s parties. She’d fetched her drinks and lit her cigarettes, laughed at her jokes, and even bore the brunt of a few of them in the hope of ingratiating herself.

The woman’s face receded, replaced by that of another man, one she recognized, a financier, she’d been told, to whom she’d offered herself at another of Myrna’s parties only the week before. She’d hoped to find herself a spot in his entourage, worm her way into his circle of wealthy acquaintances, and discover which of them might demonstrate behaviors in private that they’d pay to keep secret. His gaze had passed quickly over her without attempting even the most superficial appraisal of her form or features and settled on Dylan, who’d approached, carrying a mound of cocaine on a small silver tray. The financier watched as Dylan cut the mound into lines and snorted two of them. Dylan held the tray out to him, but the man only set it aside and took Dylan’s hand, leading him away into the mad throng of guests. Ruby had instantly begun to calculate ways to catch the men alone, in a well-lit room, with a camera in her hand. The financier should’ve led to a fat payday, but then Dylan had up and disappeared without a word.

The financier’s face gave way to another, then another, of whom she’d begun to collect bits and pieces of information, tidbits that might prove e
ffective in either befriending or blackmailing them. Others were strangers, people she’d never seen before even at Myrna’s parties, but she sensed they held something in common with the others she did recognize—the s
ame cool, unsympathetic expression. As the thought registered in her clouded mind, Ruby realized for the first time that this was more than a theatrical performance. These people intended to kill her. Still, the opium she’d smoked left her feeling distant and removed. In a dim and claustrophobic corner of her mind, a part of her was screaming, but the rest of her remained aloof, watching on with a nearly clinical dispassion.

“You won’t feel a thing,” King had said, as she slid the needle of a syringe beneath her skin. Ruby had never liked needles. Only real addicts did. She tried to draw her arm back. “Now don’t be a child. This, my dear, is your chance to become something greater than yourself. No longer just a darling backwoods hayseed hoping to make it here in Tinsel Town. No more a simple schemer, preying on the weaknesses of others.” She held up the syringe, and the man took it from her. “No, my dear, you are to be a gateway, an opening through which something much greater than yourself will come.

“Now this bit, you’ll feel,” Myrna said as rough hands forced Ruby up into a near-sitting position; others pulled her head back. She choked as another woman, with cruel black eyes lined with kohl and long, straight dark hair parted down the center, poured a liquid, a metallic taste, down her throat. She forced Ruby’s mouth closed, and massaged her throat in a downward motion. But Ruby had felt something. The burning cold.

It had been at her fifth birthday party that she’d first experienced this type of sensation. Impatient to taste the ice cream Marva was making, she’d touched the side of the ice cream maker’s metal cylinder, chilled to below freezing by rock salt and ice.

The cold burned, shocking and fascinating her in the same instant. She’d felt compelled to experiment, so she grabbed a girl’s hand—what was her name, Missy?—and held her soft pink palm against it until the girl cried out. Ruby wasn’t sure why she’d done it. She’d just wanted to see what it would feel like—both for herself and for her playmate. To experience the effect the surprising source of pain would have on the girl, and how she herself would feel as the one who forced the suffering on her. In the end, she felt nothing, not even when Missy slapped her with her free hand. Missy’s attempt at revenge had been half-hearted at best. The Judge witnessed the slap, and dragged the child outside, giving her several rough shakes along the way. Ruby seemed to remember that her little friend’s parents moved away sometime afterward; at least she couldn’t remember ever spending time with Missy after that.

For the first time in years, she thought of the nearly forgotten girl at her birthday party, and as she looked into Myrna King’s eyes, she finally understood how it must feel to be the one taking pleasure in another’s pain. She whined through gritted teeth, the numbing effect of the opium not strong enough to alleviate the sensation of being frozen and burned alive, at the same time and from the inside out. The hands propping her up then lowered her in a single rough drop, her head bouncing as it banged against the table.

“Careful, careful,” she heard Myrna say to the others. “This is a delicate operation here. We don’t want to damage the portal.” Then Myrna’s smooth and perfect face appeared over her, framed by blonde ringlets. “Great and ancient magic is passing through you now, my dear, magic first harnessed and forgotten long before the pyramids were planted on Giza.” She reached around her neck and unhooked the clasp of the necklace she’d been wearing, allowing it to dangle before Ruby’s upturned eyes. At first Ruby thought it was a cross, the kind the Catholics she’d met in California seemed so fond of wearing, but then she noticed the hoop shape at its top. The tip of the thing appeared sharp, a tiny golden blade.

“Life. Eternal,” she said, then laughed, “or at least a hell of a lot longer than any of us could ever expect otherwise. You’re about to house the source of it.” She dropped the necklace on Ruby’s breast, and let her finger run along her clavicle, up the sensitive skin of her neck to the side of her windpipe. “All that mummification nonsense the Egyptians got up to. It stemmed from the folk memory of the practices a debased priesthood forgot. Still what has been forgotten can be rediscovered, my dear.” She paused. “But let’s forget ancient history and focus on the now. Do you feel it awakening in you? Yes?” Ruby felt unable to move, even to blink her eyes in response. “You must be so frightened. Or at least you should be. We welcome the force into you by infecting your blood. It will take three times, just like in a fairy tale, to seal the charm.” She leaned over Ruby and placed a kiss on her lips. “But you’ll be no Sleeping Beauty. You’ll be aware. Trapped in there as your own life force fades. But we’ll be out here working to manage your transition, keep you alive as long as possible so to expand your period of usefulness. These sigils will help with that,” Myrna said as she let her hand slide back down Ruby’s breastbone to the rounded cross pendant she’d dropped there. Myrna lifted it and pressed its sharp tip into the skin of Ruby’s breast. The pain was enough to drive away the last of the opiate fog. Ruby bucked upward, raising her arm to fight.

“Secure her,” Myrna said in a flat, almost-bored voice. Ruby felt her arm being pulled back with nearly enough force to dislocate her shoulder. She fell back, trying to kick her legs or strike out with her other arm, but before that impulse could be realized, thick leather straps and cuffs were fastened around her limbs and tightened. Another strap was pulled over her legs near the knees, and two men, one of them the financier, moved to pull another over her chest. “No, not there. It will be in my way,” Myrna said. “Use your hands.” The two men leaned over her, using their weight to pin Ruby’s shoulders down as Myrna began carving out bits of her flesh.

“Don’t worry, my dear,” Myrna said, nearly cooing her words, “I will take it on as my personal duty to make sure that this experience lasts as long as it possibly can before we finally dispatch you to whatever hell is awaiting you.”