Mother Would Not Have Been
Pleased
Carmen glanced nervously at
her reflection in the elevator’s mirrored walls. She looked tired
but otherwise OK. It was late, and Billy was going to “give her
something” as he put it if she didn’t beat him home. She wouldn’t
have risked coming tonight, having worked two shifts already, but
Mother always got restless around the anniversary of her death.
Mother usually appeared to be shouting, and Carmen knew
her mother was trying to tell her the name of her killer.
The upper floors of the
library were usually deserted at this time of night, except of course
for the shades, who floated translucent and silent within the old
stacks. She no longer tried to speak to them. Perhaps it was true
that the shades were images of those who inhabited the library at
other times, and they were not truly present. Certainly they had
never responded to her overtures. The elevator doors opened and she
hurried towards the back stacks. It was nearly midnight. She pulled
out the book she had been reading and turned to the page she’d
marked last time she was here.
The gloom pervading certain
regions of the castle could neither be dispelled by incantation nor
thorough cleaning, both having been essayed as recently as the
lifetime of the present owner’s great-grandsire. Legend told that
the spiritual miasma infecting the Great Hall, the topmost floor of
the North Tower, and the Winding Stair had its origin in events
dating back six centuries or more; from the time, in fact, when the
castle was the political hub of the former Empire. Rumor no more than
suggested that certain experiments
led both to the impregnation of the castle with the distasteful
ethereal residue and to the collapse of the Empire itself, through
the hideous wasting of the last, and unlamented, Emperor. However,
where the so-called Happy Emperor was concerned, rumor was commonly
accorded a rank of veracity just slightly less than that of
pronouncements in the antediluvian inscriptions copied more than five
millennia before from the fabled Stone Tablets (vanished under
uncanny circumstances at the height of the Mind Plague of the 13th
century, itself merely legendary). Indeed, some suggested,
anonymously, that the cryptic fourth couplet reported to have been
deliberately omitted from the official transcriptions of the Stone
Tablets, referred obliquely to both the Happy Emperor’s nativity
and the haunting itself. Accordingly, few expressed any surprise
when, after word of his exploits reached the ears of the Baron,
current lord of the castle, the Mage was sought in yet another
attempt to rid the castle of its unwanted magical odor.
Carmen looked around. She felt
like someone was watching her. Had she been followed? She saw no one.
The presence she half-sensed behind her had actually passed through
the hall many years before. The residue of its passage was like an
ectoplasmic videotape of post-mortem somnambulism nearly obliterated
by overuse, but Carmen had always been sensitive. She shivered
slightly and drew her sweater tighter around her shoulders. This book
had seemed to promise an avenue to the spirit world at last, but now
it appeared to be simply another fanciful tale in an endless series
of crumbling leather-bound volumes. Still, she had found useful clues
in such places before. Billy had made fun of her when she began her
search, but lately she had caught him with an expression that almost
looked like fear as she told him what she had learned. She shook her
head and stared at the book again. Now where was she…
When the Mage consented to
make the attempt, the Baron ordered that the best guest room be
prepared for his use. However, the Mage himself arrived before
preparations could be completed. Indeed, his arrival followed so
closely on the heels of word of his agreement to visit the castle,
that many wondered by what means he had made the journey. He swirled
through the front door of the castle, unaccompanied, and bearing on
his azure garments no dust from the road. He surprised them again by
insisting he spend the night in the Great Hall … alone. After a
show of reluctance the Baron acquiesced. He asked if the Mage
required any equipment, but was told that the seer already had
everything he needed for the exorcism. The Mage planned to transfer
the curse far from the castle, an operation considerably less risky
than attempting to simply remove it.
This time Carmen smelled
something -- what was it? Really there were two smells: one of
something very old, like the inside of a full garbage can left out in
the sun too long. The other scent reminded her of hot copper. She had
smelled it the night her mother died. She looked behind her. The
first thing she saw was the body, or the pieces of one. Blood was
everywhere, and she wasn’t sure really how many bodies were
represented. There appeared to be several. Surprisingly, there had
been no sound. A few scraps of fabric, some a bright blue, surrounded
the largest chunks. Were those bits of rope scattered with the
fragments of the corpses? Then she saw movement in the corner.
Something huge and crooked rose from a shapeless heap and stepped
towards the light. It was gnawing on something, and held another
piece of rope in its right hand. No, that wasn’t rope, it was slick
and wet, and it dripped. The creature opened its mouth, dropped the
femur it had been gnawing and reached for her. Carmen leaped out of
the chair and ran for the door. She could hear the beast’s claws
behind her scrabbling on the linoleum and she wet herself. Ahead of
her stood a ghost; she ran right through it.
In the doorway she stumbled
over the sill and hurtled face first into the hall. She felt
something like a cold wind pass over her in an instant as she shut
her eyes, curled in a ball, and screamed. After a time she realized
that she ought to be already dead. She sat up, shaking, and looked
back into the room. It was silent, empty, peaceful. She crawled to
the door, pulled herself to her feet, and tottered back to the table.
There was no sign of what must have been simply the latest
apparition, and the horrible odor (had she imagined it?) was gone.
She visited the bathroom and cleaned up as best she could, then
cautiously made her way back to the reading room. She felt …
peculiar, a little dizzy, and her balance was off. She sank into the
chair and put her head down until she recovered her composure. She
knew she shouldn’t stay much longer, but Billy probably
wouldn’t be home for hours yet. The damnable thing was that she had
this feeling that both she and her mother knew
the killer. Sometimes it seemed that Billy knew something too, though
he swore he didn’t. She opened the book impatiently and began to
read. This account of haunting and exorcism didn’t really seem
likely to help solve her problem, but she was caught up in the story
and wanted to finish it.
The Baron never knew
exactly what happened that night, but it was clear that something had
gone terribly, terribly wrong. The stench in the Great Hall was
unfamiliar – and overpowering – and there was no sign of the
Mage. The Hall itself appeared to ripple,
as if seen through unquiet water. Those brave enough to enter reached
a point near the center of the hall, appeared to be attacked by some
large and powerful creature that was utterly invisible, and were
dismembered before the horrified gaze of the Baron and a few of his
knights. About midday the appearance of the Hall returned to normal,
and the next morning a knight entered the room. He was not attacked,
and he found no trace of those who had entered the day before. The
curse appeared to have been lifted at last.
Something made Carmen
uncomfortable, and she paused in her reading. At first she couldn’t
place the feeling, but the unpleasant sensation quickly developed
into an itch. Centered between her shoulder blades, the itch
intensified until she found herself writhing on the floor, eyes
streaming, tearing at her back. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the
itch spread quickly to her entire body, awakening nerves she’d
never suspected existed. The itching became so intense she could
think of nothing else. She staggered to her feet with some vague
notion of seeking help. Stumbling around she found the doorway,
squeezed through it, and ran down the hall, tripping on the tatters
of her clothing. She reeled into the elevator and jabbed at the
buttons, hoping to find the one for the ground floor. She leaned
against the wall, hunching her shoulders to avoid bumping the
ceiling. The intensity of the itching diminished somewhat and her
mind cleared a bit. Incongruously she began to feel very hungry. Then
another thought struck her. There might be people downstairs. How did
she look? She vaguely remembered tearing off some of her clothes. She
peered at her reflection. The
monster she’d seen upstairs was in the elevator with her!
She screamed and hurled herself backwards, scrambling as far away
from the horror as she could get. She covered her face, waiting for
death that once again did not come. ‘It’s another ghost,’ she
thought in relief, though something didn’t seem quite right about
that interpretation. Just then the bell chimed.
The doors opened and she
squeezed out. Hunger pangs wrenched at her belly and her stomach
growled. What had come over her? She’d never felt this way before.
Her stomach was telling her she had to eat NOW! She started towards
the candy machines, but the lobby began to whirl around her and she
felt a wrench of nausea. She clutched her belly, moaning.
When her vision cleared the
library was gone. She saw a huge stone chair, tapestries, and an
angry man in a blue robe. He struck her in the shoulder with a wooden
staff but she barely felt it. Reflexively, she slapped him and he
fell to the floor. She glanced down. His head looked odd. Then the
demands of hunger drove all other thoughts out of her head. When
Carmen came to her senses she was kneeling on the floor. She stared
at the moist fragments lying beneath her and screamed in revulsion.
She looked up to see herself reflected in a large mirror on the wall
and real screaming began….
THE END
From "Drowning Atlantis", draft version
From "Drowning Atlantis", draft version
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