Joanne Harris - Sleep, Pale Sister

And yet, I was cold, so cold…and as I turned resolutely from the alley into the lights and sounds of Oxford Street I could have sworn that all the doors in that lonely alley were boarded shut; yes, and all the windows too.

I awoke to the sound of bells: great clanging, discordant bells which rolled across my dreams, forcing them into sharp, brutal recollection. Outside the club the street was white; the air white. In the distance I could see a small group of people struggling through the haze towards the church. I rang for coffee and, ignoring the maid’s cheery ‘merry Christmas’, I drank it and found that, as the warmth coursed through my veins, I could begin to face the previous night’s events with my usual detachment. Don’t think I wasn’t rattled; the night had taken its toll in dreams and uneasy imaginings, but they were only dreams.

That’s the difference, you see, between me and Henry Chester. He turned his terrors upon himself like hungry demons; I see my own for what they are, fictions of a restless night-and still somehow they duped me, as neatly as we duped poor Henry…But it isn’t in me to be bitter: a gambler has to know how to lose with grace-I just wonder how they did it.

I dressed in my clothes of the previous night and began to consider my next move. God knew what Effie had told Fanny by now; last night I hadn’t been able to guess whether she even understood that I had abandoned her. But Fanny would know; and Fanny could make a great deal of trouble if she set her mind to it.

Yes, Fanny was the woman to see before I even thought of paying my visit to Henry.

So I pulled on my overcoat and made my way on foot to Crook Street. My head cleared as I walked-the air was sharp and tinselly and pungent with the scents of pine and spices-and by the time I arrived at Fanny’s door I was ready to confront her with the most dangerous hand of bluff I had ever played.

I knocked for minutes on the door and received no answer. I was beginning to think that no-one was home when I heard the latch click and Fanny’s face looked out at me, as white and expressionless as the face of the clock in the hall behind her. My first thought was that she had been to church because she was in black. Great folds of soft velvet swathed her from throat to ankles and, against the opulent fabric, her skin was startlingly white, her agate eyes more catlike than ever, but reddened as if she had wept. Strange and somehow uncomfortable to imagine that. In all the years I had known her I had never seen Fanny Miller shed a tear. I shifted uneasily, my smile stretching, grotesquely mobile, across my face.

‘Fanny, merry Christmas!’

Unsmiling, she beckoned me to enter. I knocked my boots against the step and hung my coat in the hall. There was no sign of any of Fanny’s girls and for a moment I had the eerie impression that the house was derelict. I could smell dust-or the illusion of dust-an inch thick on the rotten floorboards. For a fleeting instant I heard the ticking of the hall clock amplified into a deafening pounding like a giant heart…then it stopped abruptly, hands frozen stupidly at a minute to twelve.

‘Your clock’s stopped,’ I said.

Fanny did not answer.

‘I…I came as soon as I could,’ I went on doggedly. ‘Is Effie all right?’

Her eyes were unreadable, the pupils tiny. ‘There is no Effie,’ she said, almost indifferently. ‘Effie is dead.’

‘But…last night I…’

‘There is no Effie,’ she said again, and her voice was so distant that I wondered whether she, like Henry Chester, had developed too much of a taste for her own potions. ‘No Effie,’ she repeated. ‘Now there is only Marta.’

That bitch again.

‘Oh, I see, a disguise,’ I said lamely. ‘Well, it’s a good idea; it means she won’t be recognized. Ah, about last night…’ I shifted uneasily from foot to foot: ‘I…well, the plan went…I mean…Henry fell for the whole thing. You should have been there.’

No answer. I could not even be certain she was listening.

‘I was worried about Effie,’ I explained, ‘I was going to come back for her straight away, but-Effie must have told you, I ran into some difficulties. There was a policeman at the cemetery gates. Must have seen the lantern and come to get a closer look…I waited hours. I went back at last but Effie had already gone. I was worried sick.’

Her silence was more and more unsettling. I was about to speak again when I heard a sound in the passageway behind me; a whispering of silk. Unnerved, I turned abruptly and saw a shadow, grotesquely elongated, flicker across the painted wallpaper: in the dimness of the passageway I could hardly see her. I half guessed at her features in the pale oval of her face, the folds of her grey dress falling softly to the ground in a perfect curve, her black hair loose and straight…

‘Effie?’ My voice was hoarse, attempting joviality.

‘I’m Marta.’

Of course. I tried a chuckle, but the sound was lost, grotesque in the silence. Her voice was bleak, bloodless: the sound of snow falling.

Lamely I said: ‘I just called to see if you were all right. Ah…not sickening for…anything, you know.’

Silence. I thought I heard her sigh; her breath the rasping of skin on frozen grass.

‘I’m going to visit Henry later today,’ I continued doggedly. ‘You know, a business visit. Talk money.’ My words were unbearable in my throat, like ulcers. I felt physical discomfort in speaking. Damn them, why didn’t they speak? I saw Effie’s mouth open-but no, it wasn’t Effie, was it? It was Marta, that bitch Marta, black angel of Henry’s desires, temptress, torturess…She had nothing to do with Effie, and though she might be a fiction born of ochre and powders I realized she was all the more dangerous for that. For she was real, damn her; real as you or me; and I could sense her passive delight as I stumbled through broken phrases in search of the explanation which had seemed so clear to me a few moments before in the snow. She was going to say it: I knew what she was going to say. Suddenly I could hardly breathe as she stepped forwards and touched me. Her rage was searing but her delicate touch against my skin was anaesthetic-I felt nothing.

‘You left me, Mose. You left me to die in the dark.’ The voice was hypnotic; I almost admitted it.

‘No! I-’

‘I know.’

‘No, I was telling Fanny-’

‘I know. Now it’s my turn.’ The voice was distant, almost expressionless; but my raw nerves were quick to sense that rage-and with it a kind of humour.

‘Effie-’

‘There is no Effie.’

Now, at last, I could believe that.

I took my leave as best I could; at the last fighting for breath as I struggled through fathoms of thick brown air with the smell of dust in my mouth, my nostrils, in my lungs…Fanny did not speak another word as I grabbed my coat and staggered out into the snow. Glancing fearfully over my shoulder, I caught one last glimpse of them, standing side by side, hand-in-hand, fixing me with their silent feral gaze. They might have been mother and daughter in that moment: their faces were identical, their hate mirrored. Panic slashed me and I fell in the snow, damp seeping into my clothes at the knees and elbows, my hands numb…

When I looked back again, the door was closed, but their hate remained with me, cruelly, delicately feminine, like a breath of perfume on the air. I found a gin-shop and tried to force my nerves into submission, but Marta’s rage followed me even into drunkenness, souring my warmth. Damn them both! Anyone would think that I really had murdered Effie. What did they expect? I’d helped her to escape, hadn’t I, even though the plan might have miscarried just a little? I’d fooled Henry, and I would be the one to get them the money-I was sure that they would have too much delicacy to dare to confront Henry themselves. Yesterday it was ‘I need you, Mose, I’m counting on you, Moses’ but today…No use wrapping it in clean linen, I told myself; they’d used me. I certainly didn’t need to feel guilty about my own behaviour. I looked at my watch; half past two. I wondered what Henry was doing. The thought immediately cheered me somewhat. Soon it would be time to pay my little visit to Henry.