James Jenkins - The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories. Volume 1

‘That’s just stuff and nonsense, right, mutt?’ but this time the dog didn’t agree with her. The book didn’t lie.

‘Fine, even if that’s how it is,’ she said, reading his thoughts, which she could do because she was the one who made them up, ‘I burned the pact the old woman had with Old Nick, and thus she was off the list of sorceresses. So it’s all the same whether she’s buried or not.’

But, unable to deceive herself with that argument, she finally decided to return to the fortress and take care of the corpse. And one night she went out from the river mill with Lupo, took the rough road along the walls and circumvented the ditch on the western side, climbing the embankment covered in nettles, which cruelly punished her audacity by breaking the crystalline capsules of their poison on her skin like Bolognese tears breaking at Carnival. The old mutt was no longer up for adventures. He gasped for breath on the way up, but followed his mistress indefatigably. The cancer of love had grown until it completely took over his heart, turning him into a gooey emblem of fidelity.

Ángela was scared. She had learned from the book that a dead person’s hatred was a poison worse than a viper’s venom. She had supplied herself with a crucifix and some branches from a white hawthorn, a good remedy against bloodthirsty spirits. Around her neck she wore a silver choker with a sapphire stolen from Crisanta, and a jet amulet a pilgrim had given her in exchange for letting him touch the budding firmness of her breasts. But the terror of the serene night was so great that it flooded her spirit, opening ulcers in it for which there was no cure.

The turret rose in the middle of an ocean of silence, enveloped in the scent of the wild fig that grew in the ditch, fed by the putrefaction of the corpse of a large animal that had fallen to its death. Ángela was surprised there was no smoke coming from the heights of the fortress like before, when the old woman kept the hearth fire lit. The door was neither closed nor open: it was now no more than a dried-­out piece of wood, the wind’s plaything. She fumbled for the table in search of the candle, but her hand found only dust and some small dry objects. Finally she came upon a stub of a candle. She lit it and stuck it to the dirty table with wax drippings. In the doorway leading to the old woman’s­­­ bedroom she thought she saw eyes like coals watching her malevolently.

‘It doesn’t smell of death here,’ she said aloud, and Lupo appreciated the information, since he no longer had a sense of smell.

In the bedroom there was nothing. No bed, no corpse, no dresser, no trunk. Only the bare walls, which were beginning to crumble from dampness and neglect.

The heat of the night was beginning to give way to the coolness of dawn. The girl shivered as she leaned against the door jamb, staring like a madwoman at the empty bedroom, inhabited only by uneasy echoes.

One day the hand of glory was ready. Large, well cured, shiny with grease, its fingers seemed candles capable of burning for a long time. She made a little base for it so she could stand it on its wrist like a five-­armed candelabra. She felt that the hand loved her, could imagine it caressing her hair or giving her pats on the shoulder. It kept her company. She remembered that she had met Madruga once at a crossroads and the bandit had given her a handful of nuts and spoken to her kindly, calling her daughter. But she didn’t know if that had happened in her dreams or in reality.

She chose as her victim a usurer named Catuja who was as rich as a queen. She was said to have great treasures, guarded with the help of three very ferocious mastiffs. No one went near her house without being invited. When a peddler tried to, they ate him up on the front steps.

The day recommended by the stars arrived. The girl had gotten a sack for the plunder and carried the hand of glory in a pocket of her cloak. She had thought about leaving Lupo locked up so he wouldn’t bother her, but the mutt was obstinate. He stuck by her, assumed the bearing of a greyhound to hide the fact that his lungs were destroyed, that he could hardly see, that he stayed alive only through force of will. She brought him with her, not out of pity but out of habit.

There wasn’t the slightest breath of wind. She could light the talisman outdoors in front of the garden gate. It was like Madruga’s hand was impatient to go into action. The fingernails caught fire with a cheerful crackling, five perfect, serene little flames arising from them, whose light, at first bluish-­gold and then orange, filled her soul with confidence. Scarcely had the light started to shine when Catuja’s garden gate opened without a sound, as if it had recently been oiled. The garden was a tangled mess of confused plants, whose life seemed to be in their center, like animals, and not spread out through cells and fibers. Rose bushes and nettles embraced. In a bed of lilies a poisonous oleander bush grew. In the back the house rose up, silent and unlit, like a mausoleum.

Hearing the sound of steps on the gravel path, the mastiffs came. They were enormous and so similar to each another that one would have said it was just a single dog that had inexplicably multiplied, like a Cerberus duplicated beyond just the heads. Their eyes shone in the darkness, their butchering fangs, their drool. But when Ángela held out towards them the lit hand that she held in hers, they dropped drowsily to the ground. Lupo, who had been terrified at seeing them approach, stood still with his ears perked up, looking at them incredulously. Then he approached them with great caution, with movements more of a cat than a dog, and seeing them so docile, he dared to confront them, showing his teeth and growling.

Black like the night thanks to her cloak and light as a breeze, Ángela headed for the door of the house. The dogs followed her, wagging their tails. And this time too the dark door opened soundlessly, slow and solemn, leaving an open passage towards the shadows of the hall. Everything was perfectly calm and in darkness. Lighting her way with only the light of her bandit father’s hand, she ascended the stairs to the bedrooms of the upper floor, where Catuja’s chamber was.

It is bad to let a sorceress rot away alone , sounded an echo in the girl’s head. She couldn’t allow herself to be scared, but fear comes whenever it wants. It had entered the house like a breeze and it was in her heart and in her legs. Lupo felt it too. He trembled and was wary of the other dogs, although they remained docile and behaved with Ángela like loving pets.

The old usurer’s door opened, at first so slowly that Ángela feared the talisman was failing. But it ended up opening all the way, revealing the immense room, whose size made it seem an attic or a barn. There were dozens of candles burning in it, whose light cast a glimmer on the objects placed on the furniture. On one rough and peeling wall hung many floor-­to-­ceiling mirrors that cried out for a return to reflecting scenes from palace ballrooms, and paintings and tapestries dulled by dust, in which the gold threads gleamed and the silver ones were turning black. On a sideboard there was a little coffer with the appearance of containing jewels.

Catuja was sleeping in a bed that was somewhere between a straw mattress and a nest. One would have said she was dead if it weren’t for her breathing, which though not quite a snore, was at least a happy snorting. She must have been dreaming of something pleasant, for in her face was reflected a happiness that came from within.

Ángela had placed the hand of glory on a nightstand and took the coffer in her hands. It was small but very heavy. When she opened it, she was dazzled. Diamonds like raindrops wounded by the sun and a bleeding ruby necklace sparkled in the light of Madruga’s fingers. Let’s go, don’t get bewitched now , said a man’s voice, and another: There’s no need to rush, kid, you did enough of that when you left the sorceress unburied. The girl looked around. She didn’t know what to grab. Everything was within reach and everything was tempting. The fingers of the talisman had burned down halfway. There is time. But when she was putting a handful of beautiful, worthless necklaces that she had found in a drawer into the bag, she heard a loud noise behind her. Lupo had stumbled against the nightstand that was serving as a pedestal for the hand, which had fallen to the ground. Bad, very bad. Three fingers had gone out, and on the others the little flames were in their death throes. They didn’t take long to go out.