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

The inspector walked around the tree. The scrap of blouse had been found stuck between two pieces of bark. Here, precisely . He put the tip of his index finger in the hollow of the vertical crease. A grim story. And the family shouting their heads off and his colleagues who were starting to think that yes, You’d be better off retiring. What a fucking story.

The sharp clap of a gate was heard. Despérine turned around. About twenty meters downhill, a little old man had come out of his cabin. Despérine knew him, he was the only witness. Anyway, the last one to have seen the victim.

‘Your Catherine used to come this way to relax, read, or draw little sketches,’ he had squeaked, stretching his time-­worn fingers towards the large beech. ‘The tree’s roots were her favorite place, I guess.’ At the presumed moment of the tragedy, M. Beauligneux was gossiping with a neighbor woman, exchanging fruits and vegetables from his garden behind the little hovel. His alibi had been verified. He wasn’t the culprit.

The old man mumbled some inaudible words into his reddish beard and sat down on a rocking chair. He began to rock, making the chair crack like an old stump and looking at the inspector, his eyes round like marbles and surrounded by wrinkles. Despérine gave him a wave, which the octogenarian didn’t return. He simply took out a pipe, lit the bowl, then rubbed his thighs with one hand, like someone patiently waiting for his dinner.

The sun was setting. Night was coming and Despérine’s stomach was already growling. It was dinner time, but this business – bloody hell! – couldn’t go on any longer. He had to resolve it.

A squawking surprised Despérine in the midst of his worries. He raised his head. Perched on a little branch, a baby bird sang in an imaginary language. The man smiled at it. It was true that this place breathed the beauty of perfect nature. Catherine was quite right to come here and reflect. The grass under his feet seemed soft and welcoming and the gnarled tree roots offered a natural armchair. Sit on my lap , thought Despérine, with a honeyed voice that wasn’t his. There was also that business about the pedophile that he’d have to finish later. Another fucking story. He chased the vision from his brain.

Emptying his mind. In fact, that was what really mattered at the current moment. The inspector breathed deeply and surprised himself when he encircled the tree with his long arms. They went almost all the way around the trunk. He thought he had lost that kind of childish impulse long ago. Nose against bark, Despérine sniffed the beech, which gave off a sugary smell, with a little peppery aftertaste. Exquisite. A spicy candy. Gingerbread and a playground. Good God, what’s happening to me? Despérine relaxed his embrace and ran a hand over his face, letting go at the same moment of the torn fabric that had suddenly become too heavy. He was fine! There. He sat down with his back against the trunk and smiled at the breeze that had risen. Transformed into a chill, it ran down his spine like a shiver as brief as a little laugh. The beech stretched its branches above him. Despérine observed them – had they moved? They had grown slightly and protected Despérine from an ever darker sky. He closed his eyes and he heard. The tree vibrated to the rhythm of a heart of sap. The inspector breathed deeply. It’s in your head. When he opened his eyes again, several branches had added themselves to the others. And other birds had come to complete the first one’s warbling. A fantastic idea awoke in him, of a marvelous creature of which he could perceive only a vague shape, a fuzzy outline behind opaque glass. Despérine rose calmly. He felt deep down that he had nothing to fear. Something told him to let himself be guided by his senses. His surprised smile grew, and he caressed the tree’s bark. The beech crackled slightly with pleasure, a renewed sensation. If the tree had a secret, it would give it to him.

The sweetened scent of this miraculous plant suddenly overwhelmed Despérine’s bronchial tubes. He grew a little dizzy, staggered, caught himself on a branch that was offering him a hand. Its colleagues had now bent down to the ground, and the light of the setting sun filtered through their leaves. They danced, carried away in a fairy dance, addressing joyous giggles to their guest. In its autumnal shell, Despérine found once more the sensations of a forgotten maternal womb. A thousand and one birds, blackbirds, jays, or robins, flew whirling around him. Their thousand and one colors, autumnal orange, poppy red, or tulip yellow, sparkled in a luminous concert. How beautiful it is! Caresses of wings on Despérine’s outstretched arms, kisses of beaks on his cheeks, and branches with a divine feminine sensuality filled him with happiness. God how good it is! Despérine was already laughing softly under the overpowering aromas, carried away by the flight of the birds; he kept his balance on the lowest branches. His hands came to meet the bark which twisted, crackled, reached out towards his touches. My tree! It was a secret that couldn’t be betrayed, nor even shared. It was his alone now! Euphoria. Transcendent joy. Despérine wanted to take it once more in his arms, but the trunk split in two to unveil an inhuman abyss.

The scent in his nostrils became atrociously delicious and the inspector, anesthetized, broke out in a great fit of laughter. The broken bark evoked a myriad of compact wooden teeth, an enormous mouth opened below him whose perfumed breath enthralled his spirit. You couldn’t see the bottom of it. Despérine couldn’t see its hunger. My tree . . . The inspector leaned over to give it a deep kiss, at the height of his pleasure. Unknowingly he put his foot in that wolf trap, and the wooden mouth began a slow and determined chewing, closing a first time. Then a second. The beech crushed his feet little by little, going up the length of his legs. Tears of joy flowed down Despérine’s cheeks, his thundering laughter became painful. He still saw those reddish colors like a young girl’s cheeks. He still felt those brief and inexperienced caresses. And that rare and delicate fragrance, better than a garden of jasmine and roses. Despérine couldn’t help touching, caressing the body within his grasp; or was it the branches which held him by the hands? The beech’s teeth reached his rib cage, which cracked as it pierced his flesh and the torrent of hemoglobin flowed well beyond the bowels of the earth. But that smell of God! easily overcame that of fresh blood. Laughter changed suddenly into a cry of madness, just before Despérine’s reddened head disappeared between the wooden teeth, exploding like the final burst of a fireworks show.

Twenty meters away, in front of the hut on the edge of the park, the little old man was still seated on his chair. He massaged his stomach, looking full. The beech had resumed its initial position; there remained only a piece of shirt, stuck between two sections of bark.

The daughter of a Beninese father and a Congolese mother, Flore Hazoumé grew up in France but has long lived in Ivory Coast. She is the author of ten books, including one of relevance to the horror genre, a collection of short stories entitled Cauchemars [Nightmares] (1994) . The title is appropriate: in Hazoumé’s stories, the everyday quickly takes a turn for the bizarre or nightmarish. ‘Menopause’ is our favorite of her stories, and the author’s favorite as well; she has since adapted it for a play version. The story is set in an unspecified African land not unlike Ivory Coast, in a male-­dominated society where marriages between older men and much younger females are the norm. For the narrator, then, her approaching menopause represents more than just a physical alter­ation in her body; it is also a reminder that as an older, unmarried woman no longer capable of bearing children, she will lack a clear place in society. Hazoumé uses the framework of a horror story both to make a comment on African society and to tell an unsettling tale in which the narrator’s midlife change may be even more terrible than she at first suspected . . .