Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

“What apple, miss?” he sneers. “You didn’t carry off no apple of mine, did you? So there’s no debt between us, nothing exchanged except that which was promised. My mother’s gone to visit you, she’s gone down and down and into the mouth of that awful beastie. You’ve done with her what you’ve done with all the others, it’s monstrous!”

“It’s not monstrous what Nan did, I promise and I promise!”

“Oh, go on and take your potatoes,” he says, “go take them and feast on them, Caroline Eve Arkwright.” He’s shoving the potatoes into my arms and his mouth is so twisted, it’s evil looking. “But just think on this, will you? I got these potatoes from deep underground, I dug them out special for you. These potatoes, they been growing amongst the worms and spiders and every nasty thing, and I just pray some of those nasty things’re living in there still, small and deadly, just like you, like you and her !”

I stumble away from him with my arms all full of potatoes. How I want to cry, but I mustn’t cry because Nan has told me I must never show the villagers I’m afraid of them. But what am I to do? Oh, Tom! I turn away from him very quickly. For a moment he looks as if he might strike me! And thinking that, I start to run — I know I shouldn’t but I can’t help myself. Dum, dum, dum go my feet as they hit the cobblestones but the noise is very little, almost nothing. I run for at least a mile before I can stop myself from running any longer.

It is only once I’ve reached the edge of the village that I remember he has not given me the onions at all.

Nan is disappointed with me, I can tell from the way that she scowls ever so slightly and clutches at the hem of her cardigan but she’ll not tell me that I’ve done badly.

“They’re a vicious lot, absolutely vicious ! But they daren’t harm you, dear, not an Arkwright, whatever that boy might’ve said.”

“Then— you don’t think he might’ve put something in the potatoes? He was so angry !”

It’s this thought that has been haunting me, that perhaps he’s poisoned them.

“It’s not a thing to be worried at.”

“But you didn’t see him, Nan. Not his face, or his— his eyes! I’ve never seen him like that before. And he might’ve put something in them, mightn’t he? And if he did, what could we do? There’s little enough left from before and I didn’t even remember the onions, there’d be nothing at all to eat for days and days!”

“I expect we’d manage somehow. There are things you don’t know,” she says.

There’s a way Nan has of shaking her head when she has well and truly had enough of my questions so that the skin wobbles around her neck. This is the headshake she’s given me now but I can’t stop myself from going on and on.

“But how? What other provisions? Not fish, nor flesh, nothing that has lived and nothing that has died, nor any other thing but what they give us, isn’t that right?”

“Look to your studies, Caroline—”

“Caro,” I remind her.

“Shush now, granddaughter, I don’t like that other name! It isn’t a good thing, whatever you might think, and I shan’t call you by it. You’re far too loose with your words. A thing is what it is. You can’t change it just by asking and you are Caroline Eve Arkwright. Now enough of all this fretting, I’ll go to the village tomorrow and be straight with them.”

“But you can’t , Nan!”

Now I’m thinking of her shuffling walk. I’m thinking of the sound her chest makes when she breathes in and out heavily.

“I’m not so far gone as you would have me, not yet. There’s still some good I can do. It’s like when they put their thumb on the scale, they know it doesn’t break with the bargain. We’re allowed the onions and they must give them over.”

“But the potatoes?”

“He hasn’t poisoned the potatoes, Caroline! Now hurry along and fetch your books. We’ll try the passive periphrastic today. Your mother made such a fuss over that in her day, but we’ll see if you can’t master it quicker than she did!”

It has been three days since Nan went to the village.

For three days I’ve eaten little flour pancakes. To start with they were as big as my fist, but now they’re no bigger than a mussel shell. I tried to make the coffee just as Nan does, but my hands were shaking so badly that I spilled the grounds. I’ve tried to collect them, but I can see plainly that it isn’t only coffee I’ve got but salt too.

And I haven’t dared to touch the potatoes, whatever Nan said!

Nan came to visit me this morning. I’d been so anxious I could hardly look at my books! But then I heard the winch turning and turning and I knew it was her coming back to me at last!

The villagers wrapped her in a beautiful, winding sheet of red silk. I’ve only seen that color once before. Nan told me that it was called carmine and that it can only be made with the shells of certain insects. It’s very expensive.

The word carmine is very like the word carmen , carminis which is charm, prayer, or oracle .

Her body was very light, so light I thought, for a moment, that perhaps there was nothing wrapped in the silk at all — but when I moved her, the silk fell away and I saw her hand. The nails were a colorless yellow and the veins were a colorless blue and I’ve no other words for what I saw except that I knew the hand could belong to no other.

It was a kindness they did her, wrapping her up in red silk.

I took her in my arms very gently and still she was so light.

I unhooked that platform just as she used to do but Nan was so much better at it than I am! It’s very hard when you’re all by yourself. The hook was difficult to manage and the fourth wheel was broken off completely. But they wrapped her in red silk and that was kind, I think, for they mightn’t’ve done that.

They might’ve taken her away and never sent her back to me at all.

Still I can’t come to the thought properly.

Moriturus est .

She has died.

The platform moves very slowly.

It isn’t balanced very well but I don’t know how to make it better. I don’t want to touch Nan. I can’t bear the thought that she’s underneath the red silk. It’s as if she were sleeping and not actually dead. It’s as if she could wake at any moment. But when I touched her she didn’t wake up, when I shook her she was so still! Her skin was very cold and it made me think about what she said last time, about how it’s very cold where we must go and I take a blanket for myself and the blanket is pale green with golden flowers and it’s one of my favorites but then I think I don’t want to take my favorite blanket because then I’ll always be thinking on the red silk when I wear it, so instead I settle for my second favorite blanket which is old and gray.

But then the blanket is bulky and it’s difficult to move in. It keeps getting trapped under the wheels of the platform. At last I let it lie beside the rail. I shall return for it eventually. I must come this way again.

But am I being foolish?

“Will I be warm enough, do you think?” And then: “I’m frightened of the way. Please. Please wake up. I don’t want to go by myself.”

Her silence is terrible.

I decide not to leave the blanket after all. Instead I wrap it around myself the way I’ve seen the Romans in the pictures do it so that it falls like a heavy dress around me. If I had string I would cinch it around my waist but I don’t have any string.

I pass the pantry and the sitting room. The blanket catches again and I must adjust it. I pass the bedrooms. The sunlight is still very bright here. It echoes the way that sound echoes and sometimes the colors it makes upon the walls are beautiful. There are all sorts of colors but none is the same color of red as the winding sheet of silk.