Candle in the Attic Window Part 28

Her mom squealed as she swatted away the insects from her legs.

Carmelita caught Marianne by the wrist. She stared into her eyes. So, she can see me, Marianne thought, triumphant for a moment.

"Begone, little ghost." Carmelita said, digging a nail into Marianne's wrist. Marianne shrieked as a drop of her blood dripped onto the tile floor.

The insects rushed away as if it were poison. Carmelita smiled, open-mouthed, and Marianne thought she saw two yellow eyes staring back from inside the girl's mouth.

The world went dark.

Marianne tossed the mosquito net aside and ran out of the bedroom. Outside, the moon was s.h.i.+ning again. The storm had gone and she did not know how many days had pa.s.sed. She could hear her parents in the next room and ran to find them. Her father's hands were balled into fists. Her mother's cheeks were red again.

Marianne walked into the room between them. They stepped away from Marianne, so that they were still facing each other, as if to ignore her. She wanted to shout, to get their attention, but she was afraid that Carmelita would hear her. The lights in the room flickered and her parents both looked up for a moment.

"We should leave, Renee. Have you seen how upset Marianne is? This is all too much for her."

"I said no. Carmelita was my daughter, too. I can't abandon her now."

"What difference does it make? You ignored her for 17 years and now she's dead. You never told me. I know you feel guilty, but what about me, Renee? What about Marianne? You never told me you had another daughter. You have no right to make us suffer for what you did."

"It wasn't right." Her father was near tears.

Marianne had never seen her parents cry.

"If I had sponsored her to come to Canada, she could have had better medical treatment. She might never have died. I should have never have left her behind."

Marianne stepped back out the door. She had a sister. She stumbled back against the wall and a lizard ran up it, a black streak. She'd always hated being an only child. She felt numb. Carmelita was her sister.

She hates me, she realized, remembering the look in Carmelita's eyes at the kitchen table. She wants my life. Marianne s.h.i.+vered, pressed up against the wall. She sucked in her breath and walked down the steps. They creaked beneath her feet. She saw Yaya look up, rosary in hand. Their eyes met for a moment and she looked away as she walked straight towards the kitchen.

Marianne saw Carmelita seated with the two children, huddled together as if to tell a story.

Marianne ran past. Carmelita could see her, when everyone else could not, but there was someone else who could see her, too. She raced into the kitchen, heart pounding. The crowd parted to let her past, but no one looked at her. It was as if she were invisible. She walked up to Yaya and placed a hand on her shoulder.

The old woman s.h.i.+vered and adjusted her dress. She turned her back to Marianne and walked out of the kitchen to the piano room. Marianne followed.

"Yaya, I don't know if you can hear me, but I know you can see me. Please, help me." Marianne slammed her hands against the piano. The keys rang loud and off tune.

Yaya shut the door.

"I'm not a ghost. Please," Marianne pleaded, but she could not feel the tears sliding down her cheek. "Carmelita's stolen my life. Please help me. What is this? What's happening?"

Yaya crossed herself and kissed the cross on her rosary.

"Mangkukulam." Yaya looked at her in the eye, but did not go any closer.

Marianne searched for the meaning. Witchcraft?

"Come, anak, do not let her see you. She will try to leave before the nine days is over. You cannot let her."

She opened the door and light flooded back into the dark piano room. She walked straight through the kitchen, the back door, and out the gate into the streets of the town. There were people out, playing card games under florescent lights.

Marianne caught up to the old woman in the street. Yaya was careful not to touch her. She walked a few feet away and did not look at her. Her slippers clacked against the street.

The moon was bright enough to see by, as they moved away from the main road, towards the church. The face was in shadows, ornate and baroque, blackened windows. Marianne felt as if people were watching her from the shadows, but she could see nothing. They kept going until they reached the concrete wall of the cemetery.

The cemetery was not large, but it was full. There was no green, only concrete. Some graves were marked by slabs on the ground, but others were stacked in layers. In between, several larger mausoleums were scattered around. Old bones flashed white in the moonlight.

Marianne stepped back and away from the wilted flowers and graves, keeping to the middle of the narrow path. They walked towards a concrete mausoleum. The door was made of iron bars and, inside, three concrete graves. Her great-grandparents were buried there, Marianne thought. The third ... she shuddered as Yaya tried the door. It swung open noisily.

A dog growled, appearing behind them. Dark fur, yellow eyes, its shoulders hunched low. Marianne saw other dogs moving between the graves.

Yaya held out a hand, said a word and flicked her fingers. The dogs disappeared with a whimper, melting back into the shadows.

"Help me if you can," Yaya said, as she knelt down slowly in front of the newest grave, her knees clicking with the strain. Marianne pushed against the slab. It opened a fraction.

There were growls from outside. Marianne looked back, hoping the bars would keep the dogs out. She and Yaya kept pus.h.i.+ng until the slab was free. Yaya started digging through the coffin. Marianne stared at the girl inside. It was her face that stared back. Carmelita looked as if she were still sleeping. Her body had not yet begun to decay. Her mouth was partly open. Her eyes closed.

Yaya pulled something out from under the pillow beneath the body's head. It was a rag doll made of black cloth, a dark ribbon tied around its waist, holding several clippings of hair close to the doll's body.

Marianne knew whose hair it was.

"How do you ... Who was Carmelita's mother?" Marianne stepped back, seeing, only then, the resemblance between the dead girl and the old woman. Yaya said nothing, as a snake pushed its way out from between the dead girl's lips. Marianne thought she might be sick.

"Close it!" They both shoved at the slab, knocking it back into place, sweating and panting, both. Yaya rubbed at her back, but her other hand still gripped the doll. She walked right out of the mausoleum and Marianne walked after her.

A woman stood there, with long, dark hair, pale skin, almond eyes. Marianne did not recognize her. She scratched at the head of a black dog with long fingernails. Her dress was too large, the flesh on her arms too loose. She looked as if she had been beautiful once. Her eyes were as yellow as the dog's.

"Traitor," she hissed at Yaya. "You always treated the Padilla family better than your own flesh and blood, Mama. Why are you helping that spoiled, fat, coddled child? Her worthless father should never have left Carmelita here. I begged him to take her, but he refused. He gave his new family everything and left us with nothing. Don't you want your granddaughter to have what she should have?"

Clouds hid the moon as the wind began to whip against Marianne's cheeks. The first drop of warm rain hissed down from the sky, hot as blood.

Yaya stepped forwards, blocking Marianne's path. "Not this way. It is not right, you devil girl." Yaya took a small knife out of her pocket.

The madwoman yelled and jumped at her mother, grabbing at the knife. The doll went tumbling. Metal fell onto the ground.

There was a hiss. c.o.c.kroaches, lizards and moths began to come out of cracks between the tombstones, pouring over the wall like a dark wave, even as the rain began to drench them.

Marianne ran for the knife, feeling around the slick earth for the blade. It p.r.i.c.ked her hand as she grabbed for it through a pile of legs and wings, and biting, scratching mouths.

The two women struggled in front of her, swallowed up by the insect horde.

Marianne plucked the damp doll off the wet dirt and cut the ribbon that bound it around the waist. Dark locks of hair fell into the puddles and Marianne screamed. The insects blotted out the light.

Marianne scratched at her leg and blinked awake. The room was full of sunlight. It lit the mosquito net like a cathedral. She jumped out of bed.

She found her parents in the kitchen with her grandparents.

"Where's Yaya?" She asked.

"We haven't seen her, today, Marianne. Why?"

Marianne began to run down the street, past the church, towards the cemetery, remembering the way in the daylight.

Mourners had come to visit, bringing flowers, tidying their loved ones' graves. They looked up at the tall, Canadian-born girl who raced into the cemetery towards the Padilla mausoleum.

She pulled at the door, but it was locked, shut tight with a padlock. She searched through the cemetery and nearly tripped on the body of the old woman, slumped between two concrete graves.

Clutched to Yaya's chest was a black rag doll, a ribbon hanging off of it. A few scattered hairs were caught in the folds of the rags. Marianne tucked the doll in her waistband, beneath the loose top of her s.h.i.+rt.

Her parents found her there, sobbing beside the body. Someone ran to find the doctor and the police, but she knew there was nothing anyone could do.

"I want to go home, Mom, Dad." She cried. "I don't care about the beaches. Can we go home, please? We don't have to stay for all nine days, do we?"

Her father looked pale. "No, let's go home. It's enough."

Back at the house, her sorrow and guilt abated. Marianne re-tied the ribbon around the doll's waist, looped a hair between it, and smiled. All fixed again. She spat a frog out of her mouth and packed it in her suitcase, just in case.

T. S. Bazelli is a writer from Vancouver, Canada. By day, she writes software manuals and by night, she writes speculative fiction.

Vodka Attack!

By Meddy Ligner.

Early 1942, Somewhere on the Eastern Front As he emerged abruptly from the enveloping fog, the building he was searching for finally appeared in front of him. It seemed to be an old factory with grey walls, half-destroyed and turned into a field hospital for the occasion. In the distance, he heard the cannon thunder. The cold and snow froze his bones, as he increased his pace to get away from them.

Once inside, Captain Piotr Simonov received a shock. Before him was a chaos of torn flesh, bloodstained linens, bits of torn skin. Chloroform and the sharp odour of medications mixed with sweat and grime, while moans and atrocious complaints resonated in the immense room. On camp beds, hundreds of eyes, wherein death danced, observed him. Somehow, the visitor slipped past the deformed bodies and finally collared a nurse who was wandering around the vicinity.

Tell me, Comrade! Where can I find Dr. Yuri Iliev?

At the end. In the operating theatre.

Simonov headed in the direction indicated and and finally arrived in front of an old office equipped as an operating room. On the heavy metal door hung a red sign, where was written, "Do not enter. Operation in progress." It was necessary that he be patient a little longer before reuniting with his old friend Yuri.

While waiting, the officer leaned against the decrepit wall. There, an unfortunate who was missing one eye handed him a copy of the evening edition of The Red Star: the journal of the frontoviki the soldiers on the Front who defended the Motherland against the Fascist hordes.

Simonov accepted the gift and flipped through the pages, smeared with mud and some bloodstains.

As usual, the news was generally good. In the various articles, bad news was everywhere restrained, nay, rejected. Under orders of the genius Comrade Stalin, the glorious Red Army would begin the counteroffensive, which would permit them to continue until Berlin, in order to kick dear Adolph Hitler's a.s.s.

Of course, all this was only propaganda. Aided by experience, Simonov knew how to read between the lines. Even if the situation was no more catastrophic than at the beginning of the hostilities, the war was far from won. Because the Germans were still occupying Soviet soil and committing atrocities there. Simonov recalled a young Muscovite student of the name of "Zoya Kosmodemianskaia". The young partisan had been arrested, tortured and executed in the province of Tambov. Before the Fascists had hanged her in the main square of the village, she cried, "You can never hang all of us! My comrades will avenge me!" The officer remembered a photo of the young woman, of her dead body, half-naked, lying in the snow. This shot had made her an icon of the regime that had received the posthumous medal of Hero of the Soviet Union.

The slamming of the door drew Simonov out of his thoughts. Immediately, he recognized his old friend, Yuri.

Piotr! What a surprise! What are you doing here? cried the doctor.

My company has been sent into this sector and I knew that you worked around here. I took advantage of my day off to come see you ... And you? How are you?

Each day, I must butcher these poor devils, said he, referring to the patients, who were lying on the floor. And as you can see, the conditions are more than precarious. We work without stop, in urgency, with few means. But follow me; we'll go into my office. We'll be more comfortable there.

When they finally arrived in his office, Iliev removed his s.h.i.+rt soiled with blood. Then he washed his hands, sat facing his friend and invited him to do the same.

Here, at least, one can talk undisturbed.

You have something to hide?

Not particularly, but I prefer to keep the commissars of the NKVD[1] at a good distance. Here, one can easily fall afoul of them. Those s.h.i.+ts track down any they call "deserters by injury". Once they have a doubt, when they suspect self-injury, they execute the man in question under the pretext that he has betrayed the nation. They are always on our backs, digging ... No counting the number that can always swing should they be considered deviants ... So, that's the routine! And you? How goes it with you?

Nothing original. The war.

As the conversation prepared to turn to another subject, the door to the office opened abruptly. A man with Asiatic features entered the place.

h.e.l.lo, Ruslan! exclaimed Iliev. Let me introduce to you my old friend, Piotr Alexeievitch Simonov. We were born in the same village. Our families were very close and we went to school, together ... Peter, this is Ruslan Solotin.

h.e.l.lo, and welcome to our field hospital, responded the latter. I share the office with Yuri. But I don't want to disturb your reunion. I have two or three things to do and then I'll leave you alone.

No, of course not, Ruslan! You're not disturbing us. Do what you have to do, no worries! insisted Iliev. Can I get you a little vodka? In the name of friends.h.i.+p!

You musn't refuse, said Simonov, smiling.

Ruslan?

Maybe later, thanks!

And the man went into the back of the room to let them go about their business. Iliev revised the conversation.

And since the Battle of Moscow, where have you fought?

I was a.s.signed to a new artillery unit on the central front. We pounded Fritz relentlessly, hoping soon to be sent home. But, as you know, the situation is far from well-regulated. The Fascists are still besieging Leningrad, and it is murmured that they're preparing a vast offensive to the South come spring, and ... and ....

And what? asked Iliev, who was listening.

And ... but what is your colleague doing? asked Simonov in a deep voice.

Iliev turned toward his colleague and called: Hey, Ruslan, can you explain to my friend what you're in the process of f.u.c.king up?

I'm lighting a variety of candles. And here is a small altar dedicated to our G.o.ds, Ruslan explained, showing them the object.