"Sleep, Pale Sister" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harris Joanne)

24

It was an accident, I tell you. I never meant to kill her. I was going to tell you about it, but it was so long ago…

Her mother always made me feel uneasy: she was too solid. I felt dwarfed by her, fascinated and repelled by the abundance of her. She seemed barely human: as if beneath her rosy skin I should find, not the blood and muscle of an ordinary woman but some strange compound of black earth and granite, like an Egyptian idol with agate eyes. Her scent was a corrupt sweetness, like a million flyblown roses; a lingering, occult caress from all the secret places of her woman’s body to the shameful longings of my heart. And that woman had a daughter!

I saw her peering out at me through the banisters. Eyes as green as glass fixed me in the half-light from the landing and, as my own gaze focused upon her, she gave a little laugh and jumped to her feet, ready to disappear up the stairs if I moved. She was barefoot and the light outlined her body through the fabric of her nightdress. She had none of her mother’s fearful solidity: the little changeling was almost insubstantial, with straight black hair falling over a hungry, pointed face…and yet, there was a resemblance. Something in the eyes, maybe, or in the fluid grace of her movements: so might golden Ceres have been mirrored in pale Persephone.

I asked her name.

She tilted her head at me; her eyes filled with lights. ‘I’m not supposed to tell.’ The Cornish accent was light, almost imperceptible, like her mother’s, a soft blurring of the syllables.

‘Why not?’

‘I shouldn’t be here. I promised.’ If it had not been for her smile and the way her body stood out against the light I might have believed in her innocence, but I knew that, standing there above me, like a parody of Juliet on the balcony, whatever her age she was her mother’s creature, conceived in sin and bred to pray upon sinners like myself. I could almost smell her perfume from where I stood: a troubling, deceitful combination, like amber and swamp water.

‘I promised,’ she repeated, drawing away from the banister. ‘I have to go.’

‘Wait!’ I could not control my response. Hastily I began to climb the stairs, sweat prickling my temples. ‘Don’t go. I won’t tell. Look’-fumbling in my pockets-‘I’ll give you some chocolate.’

She hesitated, then reached out her hand for the sweet, which she unwrapped immediately and began to eat. Pushing my advantage, I smiled and put my hand on her shoulder.

‘Come now,’ I said kindly. ‘I’ll take you back to your room and tell you a story.’

She nodded solemnly at this and ran quietly up the stairs in front of me, her bare feet like white moths in the darkness. There was nothing I could do but follow.

Her room was tucked away under the eaves of the house, and she jumped on to the bed, legs tucked beneath her, and pulled the bedspread around her. She had finished the chocolate and I watched as she licked her fingers clean in a gesture so potent that my knees almost gave way beneath me.

‘What about my story?’ she asked pertly.

‘Later.’

‘Why not now?’

‘Later!’

The perfume was overwhelming now. She shook it from her hair like a fall of flowers, and in the midst of it I detected the rank smell which might have been my own lust.

I could bear it no longer. I stepped forwards and seized her in my arms and buried my face in her, drowning in her. My legs gave way and I fell with her on to the bed, holding on to her in desperation. For an instant she seemed awesomely powerful, her eyes widening like ripples into the darkness, her open mouth screaming silent curses. She began to struggle and kick, her hair like a flight of black bats fanning out over my face, smothering me with its weight. At that moment, with her lithe, serpentine body coiling against mine, her hair in my mouth and the sickly smell of chocolate in my nostrils, I was certain she was going to kill me.

There was a rushing in my ears and a terrible panic seized hold of me. I began to scream aloud in terror and disgust. I was the sacrifice, she the granite death-goddess gasping for my blood. With the last of my sanity I grabbed at her throat and tightened the grasp as hard as I could…the little witch fought like a demon, screaming and biting, but I found that my strength had returned…

God was with me then: if only I had had the courage to leave the house and never return, perhaps He would not have turned His face away from me…but even in the trembling aftermath of that dreadful battle I felt a kind of unholy excitement, a triumph, as if, instead of quelling the rising tide of lust within me, I had simply opened up the door to a lust of a different kind, one which could never entirely be slaked.