Dark Terrors 5: The Gollancz Book of Horror

TANITH LEE The Abortionist’s Horse (A Nightmare)

Naine bought the house in the country because she thought it would be perfect for her future life.

At this time, her future was the core upon and about which she placed everything. She supposed that was instinctive.

The house was not huge, but interesting. Downstairs there was a large stone kitchen recently modernised, packed with units, drawers, cupboards and a double sink, with room for a washing machine, and incorporating a tall slender fridge and an electric cooker with a copper hood. The kitchen led into a small breakfast room with a bay window view of the back garden, a riot of roses, with one tall oak dominating the small lawn. At the front of the house there was also a narrow room that Naine christened the parlour. Opposite this, oddly, was the bathroom, again very modern, with a turquoise suite she would never have chosen but quite liked. Up the narrow stair there were a big linen cupboard, and three rooms, the largest of which was to be Naine’s bedroom, with white curtains blowing in fresh summer winds. The two smaller rooms were of almost equal size. One would be her library and workroom. The third room also would come to have a use. It, like the larger bedroom and the parlour, faced to the front, over the lane. But there was never much, if any, traffic on the lane, which no longer led down into the village.

A housing estate had closed the lane thirty years before, but it was half a mile from the house. The village was one mile away. Now you reached it by walking a shady path that ran away behind the garden and down through the fields. A hedgerow-bordered walk, nice in any season.

The light struck Naine, spring light first, and almost summer light now, and the smells of honeysuckle and cow parsley from the lane, the garden roses, the occasional faint hint of hay and herbivorous manure blowing up the fields.

You could just hear the now and then soft rush of cars on the main road that bypassed the village. And church bells all day Sunday, sounding drowned like the ones in sunken Lyonesse.

Her Uncle Robert’s death had given Naine the means for this venture. She had only slightly known him, a stiff memory of a red-brown August man handing her a lolly when she was five, or sitting on a train with the rest of the family when she was about thirteen, staring out of the window, looking sad at a bereavement.

The money was a surprise. Evidently he had had no one else he wanted to give it to.

The night of the day when she learned about her legacy there was a party to launch the book Naine had been illustrating. She had not meant to go, but, keyed up by such sudden fortune, had after all put on a red dress, and taken a taxi to the wine bar. She was high before she even entered, and five white wines completed her elevation. So, in that way, Uncle Robert’s bequest was also responsible for what happened next.

At twenty-seven, Naine had slept with only two men. One had been her boyfriend at twenty-one, taken her virginity, stayed her lover for two years. The second was a relationship she had formed in Sweden for one month. In fact, they had slept together more regularly, almost every night, where with the first man she had only gone to bed with him once or twice a week, so reticent had been their competing schedules. In neither case had Naine felt very much, beyond a slight embarrassment and desire for the act to be satisfactorily over, like a test. She had read enough to pretend, she thought adequately, although her first lover had sadly said, as he left her for ever to go to Leeds, ‘You’re such a cool one.’ The Swede had apparently believed her sobs and cries. She knew, but only from masturbation, that orgasm existed. She had a strange, infallible fantasy which always worked for her when alone, although never when with a man. She imagined lying in a darkened room, her eyes shut, and that some presence stole towards her. She never knew what it was, but as it came closer and closer, so did she, until, at the expected first touch, climax swept through her end to end.

At the party was a handsome brash young man, who wanted to take Naine to dinner. Drunk, elevated, she accepted. They ended up at his flat in Fulham, and here she allowed him to have sex with her, rewarding his varied and enthusiastic scenario with the usual false sobs and low cries. Perhaps he did not believe in them, or was only a creature of one night, for she never heard from him or saw him again. This was no loss.

However, six weeks later, she decided she had better see a doctor. In the past her methods of contraception had been irregular, and nothing had ever occurred. It seemed to her, nonsensically but instinctively, that her lack of participation in the act removed any chance of pregnancy. This time, though, the spell had not worked.

Abortions were just legally coming into regular use. For a moment Naine considered having one. But, while believing solidly in any woman’s right to have an unwanted foetus removed from her womb, Naine found she did not like the idea when applied to her own body.

Gradually, over the next month, she discovered that she began to think intensely about what was inside her, not as a thing, but as a child. She found herself speaking to it, silently, or even aloud. Sometimes she was even tempted to sing it songs and rhymes, especially those she had liked when small — ‘Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush’, and ‘Ride a Cockhorse to Banbury Cross’. Absurd. Innocent. She was amused and tolerant of herself.

Presently she was sure that the new life belonged to her, or at least that she was its sponsor. With this in mind, she set about finding a house in the country where the child might be brought up away from the raucous city of its conception. The house by the lane looked so pretty at once, the cow parsley and docks standing high, the sunlight drifting on a pink rose classically at the door. When she learned there was the new hospital only two miles away in Spaleby, and besides, a telephone point in the bedroom for the pre-ordained four-in-the-morning call for an ambulance, Naine took the house. And as she stepped, its owner, in over the threshold, a wave of delight enveloped her, like the clear, spotted sunshine through the leaves.

As Naine walked up to the bus-stop by the main road, she was thinking about what a friend had said to her over the phone, the previous night. ‘You talk as if it didn’t have a father.’ This had come to Naine only hours afterwards. That is, its import. For it was true. Biology aside, the child was solely hers, and already Naine had begun to speak of it as feminine.

She realised friends had called her less and less, during the fortnight she had been here. In the beginning their main interest had seemed to be if she was feeling ‘horribly’ ill — she never was. Also how she had ‘covered’ herself. Naine had put on her dead mother’s wedding ring, which was a little loose, and given the impression she and a husband were separated. Once the friends knew she was neither constantly spewing nor being witch-hunted as a wanton, they drew off. Really, were they her friends anyway? She had always tended to be solitary, and in London had gone out perhaps one night in thirty, and that probably reluctantly. She enjoyed her work, music, reading, even simply sitting in front of the TV, thinking about other things.

The bus-stop had so far been deserted when Naine twice came to it about three, for the 3:15 bus to Spaleby. Today, in time for the 1:15 bus, she saw a woman was already waiting there. She was quite an ordinary woman, bundled in a shabby coat, maybe sixty, cheerful and nosy. She turned at once to Naine.

‘Hello, dear. You’ve timed it just right.’

Naine smiled. She wondered if the woman could see the child, faintly curved under the loose cotton dress. The bulge was very small.

‘You’re in Number 23, aren’t you?’ asked the woman.

‘Oh… yes I am.’

‘Thought so. Yes. I saw you the other day, hanging your washing out, as I were going down the lane.’

Naine had a vague recollection of occasional travellers using the lane, on foot, between the stands of juicy plants and overhanging trees. Either they were going to the estate, or climbing over the stile, making off across the land in the opposite direction, where there were three farms, and what was still locally termed the Big House, a small, derelict and woebegone manor.

‘Miss your hubby, I expect,’ said the woman.

Naine smiled once more. Of course she did, normal woman that she was; yes.

‘Never mind. Like a lot of the women when I was a girl. The men had to go to Spaleby, didn’t come back except on the Sunday. There was houses all up the lane then. Twenty-seven in all, there was. Knocked down. There’s the pity. Just Number 23 left. And then modernised. My, I can remember when there wasn’t even running water at 23. But you’ll have all the mod cons now, I expect.’

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘I expect you’ve done a thing or two to the house. I shouldn’t wonder if you have.’

Naine sensed distinctly the nosy cheerful woman would love to come in and look at Number 23, and she, Naine, would now have to be on guard when the doorbell rang.

‘I haven’t done much.’

‘Just wait till hubby gets home. Shelves and I don’t know what-all.’

Naine smiled, smiled, and wished the bus would arrive. But she would anticipate Naine would sit with her, no doubt. Some excuse would have to be found. Or the guts to be rude and simply choose another seat.

Two cars went by, going too fast, were gone.

‘Now the lane used to go right through to the village, in them days. There wasn’t no high road here, neither. You used to hear the girls mornings, going out at four on the dot, to get to the Big House. Those that didn’t live in. But the Missus didn’t encourage it. She was that strict. Had to be. Then, there was always old Alice Barterlowe.’ The woman gave a sharp, sniggering laugh. It was an awful laugh, somehow obscene. And her eyes glittered with malice. Did Naine imagine it — she tried to decide afterwards — those eyes glittering on her belly as the laugh died down. At the time Naine felt compelled to say, ‘Alice Barterlowe? Who was that?’ It was less the cowardly compulsion to be polite than a desire to clear the laugh from the air.

‘Who was she? Well that’s funny, dear. She was a real character hereabouts. When I was a nipper that were. A real character, old Alice.’

‘Really.’

‘Oh my. She kep’ herself to herself, did old Alice. But everyone knew her. Dressed like a man; an old labouring man, and rode astride. But no one said a word. You could hear her, coming down that lane, always at midnight. That was her hour. The hoofs on the lane, and you didn’t look out. There goes Alice, my sister said once, when we’d been woke up, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she shouldn’t have said it. Nor she shouldn’t. No one was meant to know, you see. But handy for some.’

This sinister and illogical dialogue ended. The woman closed her mouth as tight as if zipped. And, before Naine could question her further — or not, perhaps — the green bus came chugging along the road.

‘Old Alice Barterlowe. Oh my goodness yes. I can remember my gran telling me about her. If it was true.’

It was five days later, and the chatty girl in the village shop was helping Naine load her bag with one loaf, one cabbage, four apples and a pound of sausages.

‘Who was she?’

‘Oh, an old les. But open about it as you like. She had a lady-friend lived with her. But she died. Alice used to dress up just like the men, and she rode this old mare. Couldn’t miss her, gran said, but then you didn’t often see her. You heard her go by.’

‘At midnight.’

‘Midnight, that’s it.’

‘Why? Where was she going?’

‘To see to the girls.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Girls up the duff like.’

‘You mean… you mean pregnant?’

‘She was an abortionist, was Alice.’

Naine had only felt sick once, a week after she had moved in. Sitting with her feet up for half an hour had taken it right off. Now she felt as if someone was trying to push her stomach up through her mouth. She retched silently, as the chatty girl, missing it, rummaged through her till.

I will not be sick.

I won’t.

The nausea sank down like an angry sea, leaving her pale as the now hideous, unforgivable slab of cheese on the counter.

‘Here you are. Three pound change. Yes, old Alice, and that old horse. Half dead it looked, said my gran, but went on for years. And old les Alice was filthy. And this dirty old bag slung on the saddle. But she kept her hands clean as a whistle. And her stuff. There wasn’t one girl she seen to come to harm.’

‘You mean — it didn’t work.’

‘Oh it worked. It worked all right. They all got rid of them as wanted to, that Alice saw to. She was reliable. And not one of them got sick. A clean healthy miscarriage. Though my gran said, not one ever got in the family way after. Not even if she could by then. Not once Alice had seen to her.’

On the homeward shady path between the hedges and fields, Naine went to the side and threw up easily and quickly amongst the clover. It was the sausages, she thought, and getting in, threw them away, dousing the bin after with TCP.

Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,

To see a fine lady upon a white horse —

The rhyme went round in Naine’s head as she lay sleepily waking at five in the summer morning. The light had come, and patched beautifully through her beautiful butterfly-white curtains. On a white horse, on a white horse —

And something sour was sitting waiting, invisible, unknowable, not really there.

Old Alice Barterlowe.

Well, she had done some good, surely. Poor little village girls in the days before the Pill, led on by men who wouldn’t marry them, and the poor scullery maids seduced at the Big House by some snobby male relative of the strict Missus’. What choice did they have but those clean strong probing fingers, the shrill hot-cold pain, the flush of blood —

Naine sat up. Don’t think of it.

Ride a cock-horse, clip clop. Clip clop.

And poor old Alice, laughed at and feared, an ugly old lesbian whose lover had died. Poor old Alice, whose abortions always worked. Riding astride her ruinous old mare. Down the lane. Midnight. Clip clop. Clip clop.

Stop it.

‘I’ll get up, and we’ll have some tea,’ said Naine aloud to her daughter, curled soft and safe within her.

But in the end she could not drink the tea and threw it away. A black cloud hung over the fields, and rain fell like galloping.

When Naine phoned her friends now, they could never stay very long. One had a complex dinner on and guests coming. One had to meet a boyfriend. One had an ear infection and talking on the phone made her dizzy. They all said Naine sounded tired. Was there a sort of glee in their voices? Serve her right. Not like them. If she wanted to get pregnant and make herself ill and mess up her life —

Naine sat in the rocker, rocking gently, talking and singing to her child. As she did so she ran her hands over and over along the hard small swelling. I feel like a smooth, ripening melon.

‘There’s a hole in my bucket, dear daughter, dear daughter…’

Naine, dozing. The sun so warm. The smell of honeysuckle. Sounds of bees. The funny nursery rhyme tapping at the brain’s back, clip clop, clip clop.

Naine was dreaming. She was on the Tube in London, and it was terribly hot, and the train kept stopping, there in the dark tunnels. Everyone complained, and a man with a newspaper kept saying, ‘It’s a fly. A fly’s got in.’

Naine knew she was going to be terribly late, although she was not sure for what, and this made it much worse. If only the train would come into the station, then she might have time to recollect.

‘I tell you there’s a fly!’ the man shouted in her face. ‘Then do it up,’ said Naine, arrogantly.

She woke, her heart racing, sweat streaming down her, soaking her cotton nightdress.

Thank God it was over, and she was here, and everything was all right. Naine sat up, and pushed her pillows into a mound she could lean against.

Through the cool white curtains, a white half-moon was silkily shining. A soft rustle came from the trees as the lightest of calm night breezes passed over and over, visiting the leaves.

Naine reflected, as one sometimes does, on the power of the silliest dreams to cause panic. On its Freudian symbols — tunnels, trains, flies.

She stroked her belly. ‘Did I disturb you, darling? It’s all right now.’ She drank some water, and softly sang, without thinking, what was tapping there in her brain, ‘Clip clop, clip clop. Clip clop, clip clop. Here comes the abortionist’s horse.’’ Then she was rigid. ‘Oh Christ.’ She got out of bed and stood in the middle of the floor. ‘Christ, Christ.’

And then she was turning her head. It was midnight. She could see the clock. She had woken at just the proper hour. Alice Barterlowe’s hour.

Clip clop, clip clop…

The lane, but for the breeze, was utterly silent. Up on the main road, came a gasp of speed as one of the rare nocturnal cars spun by. Across the fields, sometimes, an owl might call. But not tonight. Tonight there was no true sound at all. And certainly not — that sound.

All she had to do now, like a scared child, was to be brave enough to go to the window, pull back the curtain a little, and look out. There would be nothing there. Nothing at all.

It took her some minutes to be brave enough. Then, as she pulled back the curtain, she felt a hot-cold stinging pass all through her, like an electric shock. But it was only her stupid and irrational night-fear. Nothing at all was in the lane, as she had known nothing at all would be. Only the fronds of growing things, ragged and prehistoric under the moon, and the tall trees clung with shadows.

Past all the houses Alice had ridden on the slow old wreck of the horse, down the lane, and through the village. To a particular cottage, to a hidden room. In the dark, the relentless hands, the muffled cries, the sobs. And later, the black gushing away that had been a life.

Why did she do it? To get back at men? Was it only her compassion for her own beleaguered sex, in those days when women were more inferior than, supposedly, during the days of Naine?

Go away, Alice. Your time is over.

It was so silent, in the lane.

Clip clop, clip clop, clip clop, clip clop.

Here comes…

Naine went downstairs to the bathroom. She felt better after she had been sick. She took a jug of water and her portable radio back upstairs. A night station played her the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and even an aria by Puccini, until she fell asleep, curled tight, holding her child to her, hard, against the filmy night.

The doctor in Spaleby was pleased with Naine. He told her she was doing wonderfully, but seemed a bit tired. She must remember not to do too much. When they were seated again, he said, sympathetically, ‘I suppose there isn’t any chance of that husband of yours turning up?’

Naine realised with a slight jolt she had been convincing enough to convince even the doctor.

‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘Some men,’ he said. He looked exasperated. Then he cheered up. ‘Never mind. You’ve got the best thing there.’

When she was walking to the town bus-stop, Naine felt weary and heavy, for the first time. The heat seemed oppressive, and the seat for the stop was tormentingly arranged in clear burning yellow light. Two fat women already sat there, and made way for her grudgingly. She was always afraid at this point of meeting the awful, cheery, nosy woman. Because of the awful woman, Naine no longer pegged out washing, and had kept the postman waiting on her doorstep twice while she peered at him from an upstairs room, to be sure.

Somehow, to see the awful woman again would be just too much. She might start talking about Alice Barterlowe. Naine was sure that her child, in its fifth month, was generally visible by now. That would set the awful woman off, probably. No use for old Alice, then. No. No.

When the bus came, the journey seemed to last for a year, although it took less than half an hour. All the stops, and at every stop, some woman with a bag. And these women, though not the awful woman, might still sit beside her, might say, Oh, you’re at Number 23 in the lane. The lane where the abortionist rode by at midnight on her nag.

Exhausted, Naine walked down from the main road. She made herself a jug of barley water and sipped a glass on the shady side of her garden. The grass had gone wild, was full of daisies, dandelions, nettles, purple sage and butterflies.

‘I’m so happy here. It’s so perfect. It’s what we want. I mustn’t be so silly, must I?’ But neither must she ever speak her fear aloud to her child. Of all the things she could tell the child — not this, never this.

And round and round in her head, the idiotic rhyme, compounded of others that had gone wrong…

Clip clop, clip clop.

She must have been courageous. Alice. To live as she did, and do what she did. Especially then. It took courage now. Naine could recall the two girls caught kissing at school, and the ridiculous to-do there had been. Did they know what they were doing? Dirty, nasty. They had been shunned, and only forgiven when one confessed to pretending the other was a boy. They were practising for men. For their proper female function and role.

Naine, of course, was properly fulfilling both. Naine must like men, obviously. Look at her condition. It was her husband who was in the wrong. She had been faithful, loving, admiring, aroused, orgasmic, conceptive, productive. But he had run off. Oh yes, Naine was absolutely fine.

She did not want any dinner, or supper. She would have to economise, stop buying all this food she repeatedly had to throw away.

But then, she had to eat, for the sake of the child. ‘I will, tomorrow, darling. Your mother won’t be so silly tomorrow.’

She had told the doctor she could not sleep, made the mistake of saying ‘I keep listening — ’ But he was ahead of her, thank God. ‘The pressure on the stomach and lungs can be a nuisance, I’m afraid. Ask Nurse to give you a leaflet. And you’ve only moved out here recently. I know, these noisy country nights. Foxes, badgers rustling about. Whoever said the country was quiet was mad. It took me six months to get used to it.’ He added that sleeping pills were not really what he would advise. Try cutting down on tea and coffee after five p.m., some herbal infusion maybe, and honey. And so on.

After the non-event of dinner, Naine watched her black-and-white eighteen-inch TV until the closedown. Then she went next door and had a bath.

She had never been quite happy with the bathroom downstairs. It could be grim later, when she was even heavier, lumbering up and down with bladder pressure, to pee. Maybe when things were settled anyway, she could move the bathroom upstairs, put the workroom here.

The child’s room, the room the child would have; she had been going to paint that, and she ought to do so. Blue and pink were irrelevant. A sort of buttermilk colour would be ideal. Pale curtains like her own. And both rooms facing on to the lane. It would not matter about the lane, then. By then, Naine would laugh at it, but not the way the awful woman had laughed.

Clip clop. Clip clop.

After the bath, bed. Sitting up. Reading a novel, the same line over and over, or half a page, which was like reading something in ancient Greek. And the silence. The silence waiting for the sound.

Clip clop.

Turn on the radio. Bad reception sometimes. Crackling. Love songs. Songs of loss. All the lovely normal women weeping for lost men, and wanting them back at any cost.

At last, eyes burning, lying down. We’ll go to sleep now.

But not. The silence, between the notes of the radio. A car. A fox. The owl. The wind. Waiting…

Clip clop, clip clop.

It was the horse she couldn’t bear. It was the horse she saw. Not old Alice in her dirty labourer’s clothes, with her scrubbed hands and white nails. The horse. The horse whose hoofs were the sound that said, Here comes Alice, Alice on her horse.

Old horse. Try to feel sorry for the poor old horse, as try to feel proud of courageous Alice. But no, the horse’s face was long and haggard, with rusty drooping eyes, yellow, broken, blunt teeth, dribbling, unkempt. Not a sad face. An evil face. The pale horse of death.

‘I’m sorry I can’t sleep, baby. You sleep. You sleep and I’ll sing you a lullaby. Hush-a-bye, hush-a-bye.’

But the words are wrong. The words are about the white pale horse. The night-mare. The nag with the fine lady, the old lesbian. Clippity-clop —

Clip clop clip clop

Clip clop clip clop

It was coming up in her, up from her stomach, her throat, like sick. She couldn’t hold it in.

‘Clip clop clip clop clip clop clip clop here comes the abortionist’s horse!’

And then she laughed the evil laugh, and she knew how it had trundled and limped down the lane, its hoofs clipping and clicking, carrying death to the unborn through the mid of night.

‘It’s my work that’s the problem. I didn’t realise it would be so awkward.’ She was explaining to the estate agent, who sat looking at her as if trying to fathom the secret. ‘I’ll just have to sell up and get back to London. It really is a nuisance.’

‘Well, Mrs Robert… well, we’ll see what we can do.’

As Naine again sat on the hot seat waiting for the bus, she thought of the train journey to London, of having nowhere to go. She had tried her friends, tentatively, to see if she could bivouac a day or two. One had not answered at all. One cut her short with a tale of personal problems. You could never intrude. One said she was so sorry, but she had decorators in. This last sounded like a lie, but probably was true. In any case, it would have to be a hotel, and the furniture would have to be stored. And then, flat-hunting five months gone, in the deep, smoky city heat. The house had been affordable down here. But London prices would allow her little scope.

It doesn’t matter. I can find somewhere better after you’re born. But for now. For now.

She knew she was a fool, had perhaps gone a bit crazy, as they said women did during pregnancy and the menopause. Even the kind doctor, when she had vaguely confessed to irrational anxieties, said jokingly, ‘I’m afraid that can be par for the course. Hormones.’

To leave the house — her house — how she had loved it. But now. Not now.

No one came to look at the house, however. When she phoned the agents, they were evasive. It was a long way out unless you liked walking or had a car. And there had been a threat of the bus service being cut.

Day by day.

Night by night.

Over and over.

Its face.

The horse.

She was dreaming again, but even unconscious, she recognized the dream. It was delicious. So long since she had felt this tingling. This promise of pleasure. Her sexual fantasy.

She was in the darkened room. Everything was still. Yet someone approached, unseen.

They glided, behind dim floating curtains. The faint whisper of movement. And at every sound, her anticipation was increasing. In the heart of her loins, a building marvellous tension. Yes, yes. Oh come to me.

Naine, sleeping, sensed the drawing close. And now her groin thrummed, drum-taut. Waiting…

The shadow was there. It leaned towards her.

As her pulses escalated to their final pitch, she heard its ill-shod metal feet on the floor. A leaden midnight fell through her body and her blood was cold.

Its long horse face, primal, pathetic and cruel. The broken teeth. The rusty, rust-dripping half-blind eyes. It hung over her like a cloud, and she smelled its smell, hay and manure, stone and iron, old rain, ruinous silence, crying and sobbing, and the stink of pain and blame and bones.

The horse. It was here. It breathed into her face.

Naine woke, and the night was empty, noiseless, and then she felt the trapped and stifled pleasure, which had become a knot of spikes, and stumbling, half falling down the stairs, to the inconvenient lower bathroom, she left a trail of blood.

Here, under the harsh electric light, vomiting in the bath, heaving out to the lavatory between her thighs the reason the light the life of her life, in foam and agony and a gush of scarlet, Naine wept and giggled, choking on her horror. And all the while knowing, she had nothing to dread, would heal very well, as all Alice’s girls did. Knowing, like all Alice’s girls, she would never again conceive a child.