Каарон Уоррен - The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten

Caught by some faint movement on the wide and elegant staircase behind us, I looked up and saw, standing in a line, five women of different sizes, all of them sheaved in curtains of hair that gleamed in the faint light as if they’d dressed it with something oily. The sight of them was worse than the thought of suddenly disturbing a snake’s nest and discovering a coiling mass of vigorous young when you least expected it. I stared upwards in horror and my heart began a shuddering thump that I could not make quiet for a good while, although later, I believe the women connived in rendering me calm.

Eddie raised his hand and showed his palm to them, and in return, they each curtsied as the first two had done, and as they did, they made a flurry of small noises—squeals and sighs and whisperings that pitched my stomach over.

I turned to look directly at Domescia and Carboh to find them studying me with keen intensity, and at that moment my impulse was to run from the house, but as much as I despised Eddie, I could not leave him there alone.

The five at the top of the stairs shifted away and us four moved through a wide doorway and into a large, poorly-lit room. The windows in there were tall and curtain-less, and through them I could see the moving forest trees and the different ever-changing shapes they were making. I kept close to Eddie on one side and was aware that Carboh was sticking close to him on the other, while Domescia guided us to the centre of the room and had us all sit down together in a nest of cushions. I could see no other furniture, and its absence alarmed me further.

I decided that Eddie was getting off on the novelty of the situation, it being so opposite to his normal life of bars and drinking and gambling with men who had big opinions but led sloppy, repetitive lives—and the whole woeful mess propped up by restless, troubled women who waited vainly for the men to morph into guys they could admire.

Domescia was touching my arm. I cringed, and she saw that, and took her hand off me. But I felt the imprint of her fingers all through that evening.

“Domescia was asking you if you were hungry, Ross,” Eddie told me.

“We have plenty of food tonight,” Carboh said.

I looked from my brother’s face to that of the woman beside him and could not abide the closeness I felt there. Her hair was now arranged so that very little of her was visible. In the shadows of the room it was like looking at a mask-like disembodied face.

“It certainly is hungry work fixing that house,” I exclaimed, attempting to smile at her. “Eddie had thought of asking his girlfriend, Cherie, to come and help us out with the cooking.”

Although she regarded me steadily, it wasn’t consternation that flickered across Carboh’s features, but pity. It was as if I was very far behind in this game. She knew about Cherie and didn’t care, perhaps. Ross laughed in a light and happy way, and taking Carboh’s hand in his, he played with her fingers, while she gazed at me with what I took to be distain.

“Our mother will come to meet with us later,” Domescia announced. “She doesn’t eat any longer, so she does not attend when we gather, but she was concerned you might think badly of her if she was absence at our feast.”

I found myself shrugging in a surly kind of way. “But this is the first I’ve ever heard of her,” I said, “… and she doesn’t have a clue who I am.”

“But we have talked to her about you at length,” Carboh said, “and she has a great desire to meet you.”

“Me?” I asked, “to meet me?”

“In particular, you.”

“Why?”

“You don’t know our ways. She would like to help you with them.”

“And Eddie does know your ways?” I asked, pointing at him.

“He senses them rather than knows them; in that regard he is generous.”

I could feel a surge of fury rising in me at her words. Eddie senses them? Eddie is generous? I clenched my jaw and studied my own hands so that I could get a moment’s relief from looking at the faces of those women.

Before I could think of what next to say to them, the door opened and the other five entered, and with them came a perfume—a scent—so exquisite and lingering, that I could scarcely help myself, I threw my head back and inhaled deeply and the long drawn out sigh that I heard came from my own lips.

I try to remember the moment often. The women came in, walking one behind the other, and arranged themselves, cross-legged on the floor in a circle around the cushion nest. At what point Domescia and Carboh shifted to join the outer circle, I cannot be sure, but it ended up with Eddie and me facing each other within the circle of women. The drowsiness that overcame me was utterly delicious, and the only other time I can remember smelling a scent as compelling, was when I was taking photographs in the concrete suburbs of Tangiers, and the scent of the Night Queen wafted across the neighbourhood. Someone told me that on the night the single flower blossoms, dogs and quarrelling lovers become silent in the hypnotic miasma. I tried to read my brother’s face through my curious other worldliness, because surely it was happening to him as well. He seemed very composed, but nothing about his expression told me he was wallowing in the same way I found myself to be.

We ate things; how and when it happened, I do not know, but we ate things. We ate sticky messy unidentifiable stuff, and I found myself so ravenous that I didn’t care to question what it was I was putting into my mouth. Eddie and I were talking, I know we were, and from time to time, one of the women made a remark, or someone laughed behind us. But I don’t remember the details. At a certain point, a change occurred; the mother entered the room, and however mesmerised I’d become, her presence demanded utter attention. I sat up properly on the cushions and looked above the heads of the daughters to a tall, gaunt woman in dark clothing. She had no hair. I glanced at Eddie who was smiling up at her in an obsequious way that made a flare of anger arise in my belly.

“You should be happy for your brother, Ross,” the mother whispered as if she could see instantly what I was feeling. “He has discarded his earth bonds so he can forever float.”

After that, I know a conversation took place, and I believe it went this way with me replying: “You’ve just said something that means diddly-squat to me, Mam.”

“That is no more than I expected,” the mother murmured, “I was told about you.”

I looked quickly at Domescia and Carboh, the only two of the seven weird sisters I had met. They smiled benignly at me between their curtains of hair. “You will forgive me, Mam, but I cannot see how it could be any concern of yours what and who I am.”

“But my daughter Carboh is winding with your brother, so of course you are interesting to us!” She laughed then, and it really, really frightened me. In my panic, I wanted to claw my way out of the cage of scent, because that’s how it seemed to me then.

I grabbed hold of Eddie’s arm, but he shrugged me off. “Don’t do that, Ross,” he whispered.

“Stand up Sissiol,” the mother said, “where you can be seen.” One of the seven arose and walked around the outside of the sitting women until she was facing me. Like the others, she was sheathed in hair, and hers was the colour of river mud. Her face was angelic, her lips embarrassingly sensual. I glanced at the other women, at their glinting eyes, their white brows, their delicate hands. Each was smiling at me, in the way a woman does at a baby, full of warm love, openness and delight. Sissiol slowly extended her hands through her hair and held them open to me in a manner that suggested that I should rise and go to her.

I stood up suddenly, and kicked my brother on his ankle as hard as I could. “For Christ’s Sake, what’ve you got me into here, Eddie?”