Sleep, Pale Sister

It was then that I saw her: a small slim figure in a dark cloak, the hood pulled so that it partly covered her face. I glimpsed her long enough to see a white hand clutching the wool, and streamers of her pale hair stark in the shadow of an alley…then she was gone.

In an instant all my carefully built pretence was down, folding as completely as a house of cards. I struggled with the insane desire to run after her and tear the hood from her face. But that was ridiculous. Ridiculous even to think she might be Effie; ridiculous to imagine Effie with the mud of the grave still clinging to her skirts and that look of terrible hunger in her eyes…

In spite of myself I found my own eyes darting furtively down the alley where the girl had disappeared. It wouldn’t do any harm to look, I told myself, just to see…The alley was narrow, the cobbles greasy with melted snow and weeks of accumulated rubbish. A thin brown tabby cat was nosing in the gutter after a dead bird, and the girl was gone. Of course she had gone, I told myself angrily. Did I expect her to wait for me? There were houses in the alley, shops for her to enter; this was no Gothic revenant to torment me.

And yet, I was cold, so cold…and as I turned resolutely from the alley into the lights and sounds of Oxford Street I could have sworn that all the doors in that lonely alley were boarded shut; yes, and all the windows too.

55

I awoke to the sound of bells: great clanging, discordant bells which rolled across my dreams, forcing them into sharp, brutal recollection. Outside the club the street was white; the air white. In the distance I could see a small group of people struggling through the haze towards the church. I rang for coffee and, ignoring the maid’s cheery ‘merry Christmas’, I drank it and found that, as the warmth coursed through my veins, I could begin to face the previous night’s events with my usual detachment. Don’t think I wasn’t rattled; the night had taken its toll in dreams and uneasy imaginings, but they were only dreams.

That’s the difference, you see, between me and Henry Chester. He turned his terrors upon himself like hungry demons; I see my own for what they are, fictions of a restless night-and still somehow they duped me, as neatly as we duped poor Henry…But it isn’t in me to be bitter: a gambler has to know how to lose with grace-I just wonder how they did it.

I dressed in my clothes of the previous night and began to consider my next move. God knew what Effie had told Fa

Yes, Fa

So I pulled on my overcoat and made my way on foot to Crook Street. My head cleared as I walked-the air was sharp and tinselly and pungent with the scents of pine and spices-and by the time I arrived at Fa

I knocked for minutes on the door and received no answer. I was begi

‘Fa

Unsmiling, she beckoned me to enter. I knocked my boots against the step and hung my coat in the hall. There was no sign of any of Fa

‘Your clock’s stopped,’ I said.

Fa

‘I…I came as soon as I could,’ I went on doggedly. ‘Is Effie all right?’

Her eyes were unreadable, the pupils tiny. ‘There is no Effie,’ she said, almost indifferently. ‘Effie is dead.’

‘But…last night I…’

‘There is no Effie,’ she said again, and her voice was so distant that I wondered whether she, like Henry Chester, had developed too much of a taste for her own potions. ‘No Effie,’ she repeated. ‘Now there is only Marta.’

That bitch again.

‘Oh, I see, a disguise,’ I said lamely. ‘Well, it’s a good idea; it means she won’t be recognized. Ah, about last night…’ I shifted uneasily from foot to foot: ‘I…well, the plan went…I mean…Henry fell for the whole thing. You should have been there.’

No answer. I could not even be certain she was listening.

‘I was worried about Effie,’ I explained, ‘I was going to come back for her straight away, but-Effie must have told you, I ran into some difficulties. There was a policeman at the cemetery gates. Must have seen the lantern and come to get a closer look…I waited hours. I went back at last but Effie had already gone. I was worried sick.’

Her silence was more and more unsettling. I was about to speak again when I heard a sound in the passageway behind me; a whispering of silk. U

‘Effie?’ My voice was hoarse, attempting joviality.

‘I’m Marta.’

Of course. I tried a chuckle, but the sound was lost, grotesque in the silence. Her voice was bleak, bloodless: the sound of snow falling.

Lamely I said: ‘I just called to see if you were all right. Ah…not sickening for…anything, you know.’

Silence. I thought I heard her sigh; her breath the rasping of skin on frozen grass.

‘I’m going to visit Henry later today,’ I continued doggedly. ‘You know, a business visit. Talk money.’ My words were unbearable in my throat, like ulcers. I felt physical discomfort in speaking. Damn them, why didn’t they speak? I saw Effie’s mouth open-but no, it wasn’t Effie, was it? It was Marta, that bitch Marta, black angel of Henry’s desires, temptress, torturess…She had nothing to do with Effie, and though she might be a fiction born of ochre and powders I realized she was all the more dangerous for that. For she was real, damn her; real as you or me; and I could sense her passive delight as I stumbled through broken phrases in search of the explanation which had seemed so clear to me a few moments before in the snow. She was going to say it: I knew what she was going to say. Suddenly I could hardly breathe as she stepped forwards and touched me. Her rage was searing but her delicate touch against my skin was anaesthetic-I felt nothing.

‘You left me, Mose. You left me to die in the dark.’ The voice was hypnotic; I almost admitted it.

‘No! I-’

‘I know.’

‘No, I was telling Fa

‘I know. Now it’s my turn.’ The voice was distant, almost expressionless; but my raw nerves were quick to sense that rage-and with it a kind of humour.

‘Effie-’

‘There is no Effie.’

Now, at last, I could believe that.

I took my leave as best I could; at the last fighting for breath as I struggled through fathoms of thick brown air with the smell of dust in my mouth, my nostrils, in my lungs…Fa