Каарон Уоррен - The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten

Whatever he was up to, whatever he thought he was going to find on the other side of the door, he was fully engrossed by it. Helen let him have his fun for a few minutes while she poked around the cellar, ducking under the low spines of the vaulted ceiling. On the wall opposite the door, bottles were stacked into head-sized alcoves in pyramids of six. She wiped the dust off a few labels. French, and not that old. Champagne, Bordeaux, Burgundy. More than three hundred bottles. Enough to last the summer.

The cellar smelled salty. It must have been used for aging and preserving meat, in the past. The cold air’s salty tang flooded her dry mouth with spit. What she wouldn’t give for a piece of pork right now, hot and juicy. Her stomach growled. Perhaps the cook could be persuaded to let her explore the kitchen larder.

Helen wandered back to the boy. “Come along, Peter, that’s enough. Mimi is waiting for you.”

The light from her candle jittered across the brass plate bolted to the door’s face. The tarnished metal was crusted with frost. She stepped closer, lifting her candle. It was a shield—griffins, an eagle, a crown.

She nudged Peter’s foot with her toe. “Time to go back upstairs.” He was stretched out on his belly now. “Peter, come along this instant.” An edge came into her voice. She was tired of being ignored by everyone in the house.

He pulled something from under the door and put it in his mouth.

“Stop that.” She grabbed Peter’s collar and hauled him across the cellar to the stairs. He pitched forward onto his hands and knees. The object popped out of his mouth and bounced off the bottom step.

Helen picked it up and turned it over in her palm. It was a tiny bone, slender, fragile, and wet with spit.

She stared at Peter. “That’s disgusting. What are you thinking?”

“Mama,” he sobbed. His thin shoulders quivered under the velvet jacket. “Mama.”

Remorse knifed through her. She tossed the bone aside, scooped him into her arms, and hauled him upstairs. “Hush,” she said, patting his quaking back as he sobbed.

Tobacco smoke leaking from the library had turned the air in the foyer gray. Her trunk still crouched by the front door.

Helen lowered Peter to his feet. He was heavy. She couldn’t possibly carry him up to the nursery. She’d be gasping.

Helen squeezed his bony shoulders. “You’re a good boy, aren’t you?” He wiped his nose on his sleeve and nodded. “Good, no more crying.”

She lugged the trunk upstairs and dropped it in her room. Then she took the boy’s hand and called up the spine of the staircase for Mimi.

When her pretty face appeared at the top of the spiral, Helen shooed the boy upstairs.

“Take care of him, won’t you?” Helen said. “There’ll be no lessons today. Not tomorrow, either. Then we’ll see.”

“Oui,” Mimi said.

When Bärchen came to dinner he was already drunk. The scarlet cheeks above his brown beard were so bright it looked like he’d been slapped.

“So many letters. My brother’s desk is stuffed to bursting.” Bärchen offered Helen a cigarette. “I can’t understand them. I have no head for business, Mausi.”

Helen blew smoke at him. “You always say that, but you seem to manage your own affairs well enough.”

“I must go to Munich for advice. I’ll be back soon, I promise. Two days at most.”

“Don’t stay away too long. You’ll come back to an empty wine cellar and a pregnant nursemaid.”

He giggled. “If that happens, it must be God’s will.”

Helen opened her mouth to make a joke about the furniture, but managed to stop herself in time despite the free flow of wine. The dining room chairs were particularly awful. Each one was topped by a sea serpent, thick and twisting, with staring eyes faced with mother-of-pearl. Under it was a rudely-rendered pair of human forms, male and female. And beneath them were thumb-sized lumps the shape of fat grubs. They dug into the small of Helen’s back.

Portraits glared down at the table from the surrounding walls. Wan blond children with innocent, expressionless faces. Handsome, smiling men and women, brown-haired and robust just like Bärchen. And sickly-looking older people, prematurely-aged, with smooth gray skin and straggly black hair framing hollow, staring eyes.

When the clock struck seven, they were halfway into the third bottle of claret. Bärchen was diagonal in his chair.

“Time for me to play pater familias.” He called out, “Mimi! Ici! ”

Mimi appeared at the door, clutching Peter’s hand.

“Now, Mimi,” Bärchen slurred in French. “Is Peter behaving well? Is he in good health?”

“Oui,” said Mimi.

Helen watched close as the girl spoke. Yes, some of her teeth were missing, but how many? Helen pretended to yawn, making a dramatic pantomime of it and sighing ecstatically.

Mimi’s eyes watered as she tried not to yawn in response. When her lips curled back Helen caught a quick glimpse into her mouth. Her front teeth were gone, gums worn down to gleaming bone. Candlelight glinted on metal wire twisted through her molars.

Mimi clapped her hand over her mouth. Helen reached for a cigarette and pretended she hadn’t noticed. Poor girl. Nothing more sad than young beauty in ruin.

“Peter, come here,” Bärchen said.

With rough hands, he examined Peter’s fingernails and scalp, looked into his ears, then pried opened his mouth and poked a finger along his gums.

She knew what that felt like. Her father had done the same. His fingers had tasted of ash and ink.

One of Peter’s front teeth was loose.

“You’re losing your first tooth,” he said. “Does it hurt?”

Peter shook his head.

Bärchen wiggled it with the tip of a finger. “Let’s pluck it out now, and be done with it.”

Peter ran to Mimi and hid his face in her skirts.

“Oh come, Peter.” Bärchen laughed. “I’ll tie it to the doorknob with a bit of string. It’ll be over in a moment.”

Peter clutched Mimi’s waist.

“No? Then we’ll get an apple and you can bite into it like this.” He mimed raising an apple to his mouth and chomping down. “You can do that, can’t you?”

“No, Uncle.” Peter’s voice was muffled against Mimi’s hip. The girl had backed against the wall and was inching toward the door. Bärchen was taking this too far.

“It’s late, Herr Lambrecht,” Helen said. “Let the girl take Peter to bed.”

“Well then. The tooth with fall out on its own and then this will be yours.” Herr Lambrecht put a silver coin on the table. “Miss York will keep it for you.”

Mimi and boy slipped out the door.

“How was my performance?” Bärchen asked. “Was I convincing?”

“Very. I can hardly believe you never had children.”

“God forbid.” Bärchen shuddered and drained his wine glass. “Did I ever tell you about my nursemaid? Bruna was her name. She was devoted to me. You would have liked her. Very pretty. But like Mimi, not much of a talker. Not like you.”

“Nothing can keep me from saying what I think.” Helen reached into her pocket and set the bones on the stained tablecloth. “For example, your servants are lax,” she said.

He shrugged. “What can be done? They’re old. Who would choose to live here, if they could be anywhere else?”

After dinner they took their wine out the front door and onto the wide front terrace. Evening stars twinkled above looming mountains and a lakeshore veiled in mist. The three sides of the terrace stepped straight down into the water, like a dock or jetty. The skiff bobbed alongside, tied to an iron ring.