The woman seemed to be bent over slightly, as if reading something laid out on the floor in front of her. I really, really wanted to know what it was. Was it perhaps The Guardian, choice of all right-thinking people (and knee-jerk liberals) in this part of North London? Or might it be something else, some periodical I'd never read, or even heard of? A book I might come to love?
I took another cautious set forward, barely remembering to keep up the pretence with the mobile phone still in my hand.
With my slightly changed angle I could now see her elbows, one poking out from either side of her chest. They seemed in a rather high position for someone managing reading matter, but it was hard to tell.
My scalp and the back of my neck were itching with nervousness by now. I cast a quick glance either way up the street, just to check no one was coming. The pavements on both sides remained empty, distanced pools of lamplight falling on silence and emptiness.
When I looked back, the woman had altered her position slightly, and I saw something new. I thought at first it must be whatever she was reading, but then realised first that it couldn't be, and soon after, what I was actually seeing. A plastic bag.
A red plastic bag.
Who unpacks their shopping in the living room? Other people do, I guess — and perhaps it was this link with the very first inkling I'd had of this woman's existence (the temporary arrival of her food in the kitchen of my own house, in the very same kind of bag) that caused me to walk forward another step.
I should have looked where I was going, but I did not. My foot collided with an empty Coke can lying near the low wall at the front of the woman's property. It careered across the remaining space with a harsh scraping noise, before clattering into the wall with a smack.
I froze, staring down at her window.
The woman wrenched around, turning about the waist to glare up through her window.
I saw the red plastic bag lying on the rug in front of her, its contents spread in a semicircle. She was not holding a newspaper or magazine or book. In one hand she held half of a thick, red steak. The other hand was up to her mouth and had evidently been engaged in pushing raw minced beef into it when she turned. The lower half of her face was smeared with blood. Her eyes were wide, and either her pupils were unusually large, or her irises were also pitch black. Her hair started perhaps an inch or two further back than anyone's I had ever seen, and there was something about her temples that was wrong, misshapen, excessive.
We stared at each other for perhaps two seconds. A gobbet of partially chewed meat fell out of her mouth, down onto her dress. I heard her say something, or snarl it. I have no idea what it might have been, and this was not merely because of the distance or muting caused by the glass of the window. It simply did not sound like any language I've ever heard. Her mouth opened far too wide in the process, too, further accentuating the strange, bulged shape of her temples.
I took a couple of huge, jerky steps backward, nearly falling over in the process. I caught one last glimpse of her face, howling something at me.
There were too many vowels in what she said, and they were in an unkind order.
I heard another sound, from up the street, and turning jerkily I saw two people approaching, from the next corner, perhaps fifty yards away. They were passing underneath one of the lamps. One was taller than the other. The shorter of the two seemed to be wearing a long dress, almost Edwardian in style. The man — assuming that's what he was — had a pronounced stoop.
In silhouette against the lamp light, both their heads were clearly too wide across the top.
I ran.
I ran away home.
I have not seen that supermarket man again. I'm sure I will eventually, but he'll doubtless have forgotten the corned beef incident by then. Out there in the real world, it was hardly that big a deal.
Otherwise, everything is the same. Helen and I continue to enjoy a friendly, affectionate relationship, sharing our lives with a son who shows no sign yet of turning into an adolescent monster. I work in my study, taking the collections of words that people send me and making small adjustments to them, changing something here and there, checking everything is in order and putting a part of myself into the text by introducing just a little bit of difference.
The only real alteration in my patterns is that I no longer walk down a certain street to get my habitual morning latté. Instead I head in the other direction and buy one from the mini-market instead. It's nowhere near as good, and I guess soon I'll go back to the deli, though I shall take a different route from the one which had previously been my custom.
A couple of weeks ago I was unpacking the bags from our weekly shop and discovered a large variety pack of sliced meats. I let out a strangled sound, dropping the package to the floor. Helen happened to be in the kitchen at the time and took this to be a joke — me expressing mock surprise at her having (on a whim) clicked a button online and thus causing all these naughty meats to arrive as a treat for the husband who, in her own and many ways, she loves.
I found a smile for her, and the next day when she was at work I wrapped the package in a plastic bag and disposed of it in a bin half a mile from our house. There's a lot you can do with chicken, and even more with vegetables.
Meanwhile, we seem to be making love a little more often. I'm not really sure why.
Susie
Jason Van Hollander
Jason Van Hollander's fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Weird Tales, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and other publications. His macabre artwork adorns books published by Arkham House, Golden Gryphon Press, Subterranean Press, PS Publishing, Tor Books, Night Shade Books, and Ash-Tree Press. He has illustrated books and stories by Thomas Ligotti, Fritz Leiber, Ramsey Campbell, William Hope Hodgson, and Clark Ashton Smith. He has won an International Horror Guild Award and two World Fantasy Awards.
Susie, anguished with the burden of a thousand Unborn, curses the frailty of human life as Doctor Farnell clamps cool fingers around her chin. "Sip slowly," urges the physician in a voice devoid of emotion. "We can add sugar to the next dose." He lowers the fluted glass. "Your sister has been asking about you," he adds.
Alkaloid bitterness spirals down her gullet. Sitting up is difficult. The single pillow, which is too thin, slips down the headboard of the hospital bed. As the nurse fluffs the pillow Susie licks her lips, sifts through unfamiliar memories. Sister? Her thoughts are mazy. The little one under the earth? "Emeline?" she wonders aloud. "Didn't she die when she was six?"
Her query floats away unanswered. Doctor Farnell taps her wrists, which she notices are bound with surgical gauze. Even through the miasmas of delirium and the lingering effects of anesthesia the doctor's expression is troubling. Unmanageable anxieties banished her to this Gothic Revival Palace of Moan, whose inmates roam the halls, shuffling in slippers, lost in the folds of ill-fitting stained frocks.
Eventually the nurse explains, "Tomorrow your sister wants to visit."
"Lillie Delora? Annie?"
"One of your sisters."
Susie's bewildered response: "Which one am I?"
Her unanswerable question drifts beyond the curtains drawn around the bed. A late May breeze, sea-scented, mixes with the acrid scent of carbolic acid that wafts down the women's infirmary of Butler Sanatorium. Other than Susie and the doctor and the portly nurse, the ward is unoccupied. Shivering, the dying woman squirms. Her bedclothes and sheets are damp with sweat. Doctor Farnell leans closer, manipulates her eyelids, gawks as if peering deeply into unfathomable pools.