The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books) (17 page)

The girl left disheartened because her father had not recognized her and there was no one in the world who loved her.
I will go home
, she thought, and
join my red-headed eighth sister on the wall
. On her way, her third eye opened and she got lost. The woods folded and unbent. She came upon a log cabin with a fire burning from its chimney. Flowers adorned boxes under its windows. She knocked on the door. A fat old woman with warts and missing teeth answered. Behind her, the house was full of jars and tinctures and children’s cauls. And on the kitchen table, Jane smelled a fresh, hot pan of something soft as cotton that made her mouth water.

She’d heard of witches, and even been told that she was one. They ate children and bathed in blood to stay young. But the smell was so good here, and she had no place else to go.
I’m lost
, she said.
I’m to be killed tonight because I have no child
.

The old woman nodded and took her in. Strange animals scurried on four legs. Jane only knew they were cats because of her visions of the old world. They purred along the sides of her legs as she ogled at the cotton blobs fresh from the oven. The old woman took one and handed it to her.
Eat this
, she said.
It will blossom inside you
.

Jane picked up the biscuit. She’d never eaten fresh bread before, and already her stomach rumbled like a spiked, spinning mace was inside it.
Is it poison?
Jane asked.

The woman cackled.
I should hope not!
she said.
You summoned me, remember?
Then she looked closely at Jane, and tsk-tsked:
Poor child, you don’t even know what you are
.

Jane couldn’t restrain herself. She bit into the biscuit. Sweet, red juice ran down her chin.

But, remember
, the witch said.
It will give you what you truly wish for, so be careful. This is the only pregnancy you will ever have
.

Jane gobbled the rest, for she knew what she wanted: twin boys to raise, who would set her free from her robber husband, and keep her fed and happy. Blood ran down her chin and stained her throat. When she finished eating, the woman was gone. So was the cottage. All that remained was a single black cat.

When she got home, she hid the cat in the apple cellar, then told her robber husband to stay his knife for she was pregnant. The robber was overjoyed because he’d grown to love the kindness inside the woman, and had not wanted to skin her.

Nine months later, Jane bore two daughters. One was stunningly beautiful. The other was so ugly that the midwife spat. Her feet were webbed; her hips wide. Her double joints and long arms pressed her centre of gravity against her knees and elbows, as if fit only for walking on all fours. The robber took aside the beautiful daughter and kissed it. Then he tucked the ugly daughter under his arm, to slaughter it.

Jane, still dizzy, pushed the midwife aside and stopped her husband.
It’s my duty
, she explained.
I must be the one
. So, still bleeding, with neither placenta yet expelled, she carried the newborn to the apple cellar, nursed it, and stuffed cotton too big to swallow in its mouth, so the rest did not hear its cries. Then she slaughtered the cat in its place, and brought back its heart to her husband, who ate it raw, for strength and good luck.
We’ll have more children
, he reassured her. Sons.

But the sons did not come. The beautiful child was enough for the robber, for even monsters can be moved. The family of three lived happily for some time, in the woods, until another blight took hold of the town. Hunger travelled like a wave, so that each could hear the other’s stomach, growling. They gagged and wept and beat their breasts. The robber killed his brother and they ate him. Jane visited the cellar often, in secret, and when there was no food left, began to feed the abomination her own blood. Then she opened her third eye, and carried them both away to the old place, where life mattered. They saw libraries and universities and crowds of dancers wearing soft shoes who pranced in tiny circles. That ugly child grew up without the knowledge of suffering. Jane had only ever showed it love. When it spied on the family, it pitied them.

With the famine, the robber of human life lost his muscle and could no longer hunt. His accomplices left him. The family became destitute.
I must sell our daughter to the whorehouse
, he told his wife.
Then we will live another winter, and you will bear me a son who will help me earn her back
. Jane fought and cried and prayed, and chanted meaningless words, hoping to cast spells, but their situation did not improve. The night before the child was to leave, a murder of goblins tore south through the woods, and knocked down their door. Hungry and too weak to stand, the family saw that they would be eaten.

The cellar door opened just then. With a war-cry so loud and terrifying that their nerves retracted inside their bodies, leaving their arms and legs numb, the abomination lifted her father’s scythe and sliced through the necks of all eighteen men-monsters, then hung them upside down by their feet to drain, so the family could cure and eat them. She’d grown wide-backed over the years, and walked on all fours. She was stronger than any man. Her face was the same as the robber’s.

The robber did not recognize his daughter, for it had been twelve years, and women did not matter anyway.
We owe you a great debt, he told her. Name anything it is within my power to give you, and it is yours
.

I want my sister’s freedom
, the abomination said.
For you will be well fed now, and have no need for her prostitution
.

He understood then that he’d been tricked and he raged, slamming his scythe against the walls of his house and opening them to the wind. But he was superstitious: the gods curse those who break oaths. At last, he agreed.

You are free
, the abomination told her sister. In that moment, the beautiful sister’s back opened up into enormous white wings. She flapped, bursting through the top of the house, and was gone. While the robber screamed obscenities, Jane smiled. A tiny fire ignited inside her for the first time in her life.

As punishment for stealing his most valuable possession, the robber kept the abomination chained to his cellar wall. He beat her daily, until her skin slid from her bones. A week passed, and the moaning became intolerable. The wife missed her children. She missed her sisters. She missed the mother whom she’d never met. The spirits reminded her of the priest her lazy sister had married: smug and full of rage. They reminded her of her sixth sister, who had abandoned her. They reminded her that life could be worse: she could be dead.
Don’t fight
, they told her.
The alternative is almost always worse than what you already have
. Tearing away hooves from goblin legs to stave the rumbling in her belly, she curled herself small on the floor, and listened to the
smack!-smack!
of the whip. The sound hurt her breasts especially, because the child had suckled there for two years.

The abomination did not fight her father. Unfamiliar with violence, and young, she assumed she deserved it. The whip was not nearly as bad as the exile from Jane, whom she missed so enormously that she could not think about her without weeping. Finally, during the third week, she cried out:
Mother! Why have you abandoned me?

Jane remembered being twelve years old, and sold to the man who’d murdered her sister. She remembered working the fields, bare-backed and whipped. She remembered the feeling of life in her belly and the old woman in that cottage, who’d surely been a witch. She walked down the stairs, and charged. The robber did not turn in time. She gutted him with his own scythe.

Then she unchained her daughter. They held each other and it was sweet and good, and she knew then that she’d loved her sixth sister, and been loved, too. She knew then that things unsaid have a way of being forgotten.
Though you are ugly and not human, I love you
, she told the child.

Together, they axed down the house of human scalps and warmed themselves by its fire. Then, carrying the robber’s corpse, they set out to the place where the woods folded. It was dirt now, dry and barren. On the ground, panting and nearly lifeless, was Jane’s other daughter. Her white wings had retracted into her back. Jane took her husband’s carcass and let the blood drip to the north, south, east, and west. From the depths of each spot, stones pushed up into corners, and made a house. It surrounded them, warm and full of food and tinctures and children’s cauls.

This place will be a beacon
, Jane told her daughters. Far and wide, my winged one will travel, and spread the news. My strong one will protect us. We will let the world know that places and people used to matter. One day, they will matter again.

After her daughters had rested and fed, they rose up and fulfilled their duty. Jane made daily offerings with her husband’s bones, and the scalps she’d saved from the old house, including the red-headed one. The house became more houses, that became a village. Small animals returned. The people who inhabited these houses ceased to eye each other’s flesh with desolate grins. They built things of beauty, and carved flutes from trees. The daughters and Jane did not marry, but stayed in the house as years and centuries passed, until the town became civilized, and they seemed strange and frightening.
The three witches
, they were called.
The weird sisters
. By then, only the desperate who wanted children and requited love visited. Jane collected drops of blood from their fingers for potions. She cackled, deep-throated, with a strange, otherworldly joy.

Jane’s reflection in the mirror by then showed a stout woman with warts and missing teeth. On her deathbed, with her children at either side and the sun shining bright, her life flashed before her, and she knew that she’d summoned herself all those years ago, and she’d gotten exactly what she’d wished for in her daughters: strength and freedom.

Elizabeth Massie

Charity did not look back. She did not slow down. Her thin white sneakers, meant for sandy pathways and wooden floors, were savaged on the rock-strewn, hard-packed earth. Her yellow dress caught at her legs and threatened to throw her on to her face.

The heat of the desert was cooling quickly, the sun reduced to an orange smear atop the mountains to the west. The sky was starless and the colour of water in a deep well. Charity did her best to keep pace with her sister-wife, who was several yards ahead, but Fawn was older by a year and taller by nearly a foot.

Though she could not hear anything but her own footfalls and raspy, desperate breaths, she was sure the Prophet had roused a posse and they were thundering along behind in the darkness, truck tyres biting the ground, dogs and correction rods at the ready.

Heavenly Father, help me! God, please do not curse me!

“Fawn!”

Fawn did not look back. She did not answer.

The Prophet and his men would catch them and take them to task, dragging them by their hair to show others what happened to backsliders, claiming any punishments they received at the hands of the elders were mild compared to their punishments in hell were they to escape to live among the Outsiders.

Charity’s foot caught a stone and she fell, wailing, and came up with her mouth and hands embedded with grit. She scrambled up a cactus-covered slope and skidded down the other side. The small Bible she’d pocketed before running thumped her hip, reminding her it was there, reminding her of the vows she was breaking, the chance she was taking, and the hope she might be protected anyway. Up ahead, Fawn’s pink dress flapped like the wings of a terrified bird.

It was forbidden for girls to leave Gloryville. Females were to remain at home in the protection of God and the Fellowship. They were not to travel, nor even to speculate as to what lay beyond the borders of their holy, isolated town. They were to be submissive daughters and brides and mothers. They were to do as they were told, to surrender their bodies and souls to the men in their lives – their shepherds – who had spiritual and bodily charge over them.

“Fawn!”

Fawn called back, “Come
on
!”

An engine revved far behind in the blackness. They were coming. Charity glanced over her shoulder and saw nothing but the outlines of boulders and brambles and the quarter moon, hovering like a cat’s eye in the near-black sky.

The engine sound faded, disappeared.
Maybe it was thunder
, Charity thought.
A storm coming in over the desert.

Baring her teeth, she pushed on. Her heart hammered, her lungs drew in and out like bellows against a fire.

Then Fawn slowed. She bent over, clutching her knees, wheezing, spitting blood. Charity reached her and grabbed her arm.

“Are you all right?”

Fawn nodded.

“No, really!”

“I bit my tongue.”

“Oh!”

Fawn glanced up; her eyes were creased at the edges, terrified, flashing white in the faint moonlight. But she nodded again. “I’m all right.”

“We should rest. Somewhere. We can hide.”

“They’ll catch us, certainly. But Flinton isn’t too far, I don’t think. Just a mile, maybe.”

Mile? I can’t run another mile!

“Can you run with me? Can you be free with me?”