The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, volume 15

Мichael Chislett Mara

After my involvement in the revolution of 1848 I was obliged to flee Germany and make my way to England and exile. For a time I resided just outside London, south of the River Thames, at a place called Mabbs End.

My custom was, after a day of study at the British Museum, to return by train from London and on reaching Mabbs End have a walk of about fifteen minutes to my lodgings. My journey would take me across a stone bridge spanning a creek, a narrow finger of the Thames that ran through the district. I then had to ascend a steep hill where the buildings gave way to hedges and market gardens.

This rise was called Mabbs Hill and, once on its crest, a short walk along an unpaved road led to my lodging, in a house newly built, one of a row as yet unconnected to the town other than by the way that I had come.

From this hill, on clear days, I had the most marvellous view of London. The dome of St Paul ’s would gleam in the sun and on the river there were more ships than had besieged Troy. Indeed, all of the Thames, both up-and downstream, then revealed itself to me in a most pleasing prospect. I say on clear days, for most often the metropolis was covered by that thick fog for which it is notorious. Mabbs Hill did not suffer so much from this but frequently, at night, the mist would creep from off the river to lie heavy over the creek so that I would have to cross blind to where a solitary lamp stood sentinel in the murk.

One such night the fog had travelled with me from London and rolled in great grey waves that increased by the moment. Shivering at its chill touch, I hurried along the High Street from the station. The glow of gas lamps did little to light my way, and those few others abroad flitted through the fume like phantoms with sinister, muffled footsteps, seeming to be about on fell missions which had but waited the chance of this complicit shroud to be done.

My native land was by the Baltic and I, Axel Crescentius, had been born to mist and fog, for it had haunted those shores. But I had travelled long and far since then.

Uncanny thoughts of how, on misty nights like this, when all becomes unreal, then we are in another world through which we travel not knowing what unseen companions walk with us, fretted me. After blindly crossing the bridge where the fog muffled the usual splash of water, I heard the sound of weeping, the cry of a child lost in murk-black night.

To my left, where the sound came from, lay an alley, narrow and dubious enough by daylight and certainly no place to linger by with this pall about. Sensing danger, I released the catch on my swordstick and held it ready to be drawn. Hearing another cry, sharp as a vixen’s, I stepped back into a doorway where, doubly concealed, I stood to watch and listen.

There was a disturbance at the alley’s fog-thick mouth and a woman passed barely an arm’s length from me. Her movement disturbed the mist, scrims of which detached from the cottony mass to cling about her body, reminding me uneasily of feeding eels, or snakes. She pulled a hood over her head, but not before I had seen a coil of long dark hair hanging down over her breast. Then she vanished into night and fog, becoming one with them.

“Give it back to me!”

The voice wailed and I tensed as, from the alley, a young girl staggered. Her tear-stained face bore the look of one mortally stricken by some deadly pestilence, a wretch under sentence of death from which there could be no reprieve.

She fled toward the bridge, another wraith lost in the mist, but her voice still cried, lamenting whatever had been taken from her.

It was no more than an affair between street women, but that look of desolation on the girl’s face — she was no more than a child — had been terrible to see. Brooding on this, I made a cautious way up the hill as the mist thinned somewhat until, at the crest, the air grew marvellously clear, the sky cloudless and I gazed down at the still and silent sea that covered the world below.

The heavens were all aglow with stars, the waxing moon their sovereign. I studied the firmament, bitterly regretting the loss of my telescope, abandoned with so many other things upon my abrupt departure from Germany.

For a while I watched the stars until my neck began to ache, then turned my gaze down to the mist. It was rising, steady as an incoming tide, toward me and I formed the conceit that I was some demigod who floated above these clouds which seemed solid enough for me to walk on.

I did not hear any footsteps in the mist until, with a shiver of surprise, I saw a hooded head rise from the cloudy mass, at first seeming to be curiously disembodied before the rest of the figure became visible, gliding through the grey air as though floating.

So uncanny was this apparition that my heart beat fast, but I recognized the woman who had emerged from the alley below by her cowl-like hood. The surprise of her appearance, with wraiths of mist still clinging to her body as if feeding, robbed me of speech and when, after walking a few paces in the clear air she stopped to boldly return my stare, I, who had lectured before congregations of the most learned men, blushed like a boy.

“Pardon me, miss,” I said stupidly, “but can I be of assistance to you?”

“You are not English?” she said. Her voice, the contralto purr of some great cat, issued strangely from beneath the shadow of the hood, where her face was invisible.

“I am of German birth. Dr Axel Crescentius at your service.”

The hood fell back to reveal full and sensual lips, eyes dark as night, face sharp and high-boned as a vixen’s.

“I have no need of a doctor, or of your service, but if you wish to walk a little way with me then come.”

Without waiting for a reply, she set off along the crest of the moonlit hill and I found myself following after.

“Do you live by here?” I asked, after catching up with her.

“Beneath the hill,” she replied, pointing to a fork in the pathway.

The way that she indicated led down the far side of Mabbs Hill, a path untrod by me.

“Would you accompany me, down to my dwelling place?”

Her face glowed silver in the moonlight as she spoke these words and the mask it became dazzled my eyes. A wave of desire, the like of which I had never before felt, filled me as I closed my eyes to clear them of the uncanny glow that lit the woman’s face.

“Yes, let me come with you.”

She was, I told myself, but a streetwalker who, for a few pennies, I could slake my aroused passion upon. I reached out a hand to take her, but with a slight movement she evaded me.

“You think,” she said, “that no honest woman would be out on such a night. But consider, I ask you, what good man would be abroad?”

The woman possessed a lively wit. Then again, without waiting for me, or another word, she walked down the path into the mist. I hesitated for but a second, then followed before she could be lost to me.

As we walked down and the mist covered us again I kept a firm hold on my swordstick, for I entertained a suspicion that there might lurk, somewhere in the obscurity, a bully in league with her to waylay and rob me.

The path fell sharply as the mist became icy, chilling with its touch. She turned a smile on my shivering, and I wondered at how she could show no apparent discomfort at the cold.

“I never feel the cold,” she told me. “Once, long ago I did, but a fever of the blood took me, so now ice and fog are nothing to me.” The woman smiled and her teeth showed sharp and white. “I am of those in whom blood turns to fire in their veins.”

“Such conditions are not unknown,” said I, nodding sagely. “I am, however, a doctor of philology, not medicine.” “Studying words and languages must be interesting. Though I have found” (she smiled knowingly) “that certain things can be understood by all, no matter what tongue they speak. You must be a clever man to know so much about words. My name is Mara.”

I was surprised that she knew the meaning of the word “philology”, and as the woman Mara spoke her name I thought to see, through the mist, a gleam as of smoky embers in her eyes.

“That,” I said foolishly, “is a nice name.”

“It is a terrible name.”

Desire was strong within me, and I thought to take her there on the path, where she had stopped and smiled upon me. None would see us. In this place, concealed by the mist, we could do as we — as I — wished.

“Here is where I must leave you.”

With a swift movement, her head darted forward and her lips sought mine. For a long moment we kissed, and the breath was drawn from my body as my head became peculiarly dizzy. I would have clipped her close to kiss again but she had gone, swallowed by the mist, leaving me alone and baffled at her abrupt disappearance.

My lips felt numb and I tasted blood — she had bitten me during our cold and foggy kiss. It had been long since I had been given a true and good love-kiss, one not bought and paid for. I held a hand before my eyes to see blood, black in the mist, stain the fingers. For she had bitten me on places other than my lips, though I could not exactly recall the bites, and I wondered what the price of her love and kisses might be.

All seemed unreal to me, the boundaries between worlds weak, but I took a resolute step forward, my swordstick held before me like a blind man’s cane and I felt it strike and sound against metal.

Barely inches from my eyes I saw an iron gate, its tall bars vanishing up into the murky air. Padlocks secured it, three of them, rusty and obviously not opened for many a year. The strange sensation of being beneath the earth, in a vault, gripped me. The triple-locked gate the entrance to a place deeper yet.

“Mara!”

My voice was muffled in the foggy shroud but I heard and saw one of the locks open with a dry click and fall to the ground. I listened, but nothing else broke the stillness and silence.

The mist stifled me, choking my throat, and I made my way up the path, hurrying along its length like a grave-robber fleeing a necropolis until, after but a few minutes, not nearly so long as my descent had taken, I found myself once more on the crest of Mabbs Hill and in the clear air.

Through the icy moonlight I hurried to my lodgings, shivering as one possessed by an ague. I was soon abed, but it took a long while for sleep to claim me.

Strange thoughts flitted batlike through my brain, night-frights rising to vex and nag at me. When at last I fell into a restless slumber, my dreams were all of tomb and sepulchre, dreadful hollow vaults beneath the earth, in which I was lost. Something had me in a smothering embrace, pressing down on my chest. I thought myself to be immured in a grave, and that which lay atop me was feeding horribly upon my still-living corpse.

With the first light of dawn I lay awake, weak as one sucked dry, the woman Mara haunting my burning thoughts as my drained yet unappeased body hungered for her.

The day dawned bright and chill, and I resolved to explore the pathway that I had walked with Mara. The mist had gone, and I looked from the crest of Mabbs Hill toward London and wondered at how long it would be before the metropolis engulfed this quiet place and its environs.

Swinging my cane at the weeds by the side of the path, my night-fears forgotten, I made a way down. After but a minute the trees closed in above to turn the morning into twilight. I soon found the gate, set in a high wall that ran to either side for some distance. Thick spider webs, glistening with dew and long undisturbed, clung to the bars. With my cane I tore at them and looked within to see gravestones and broken tombs, all much worn by time.

Though I searched, no dwelling could I find. I saw the fallen lock and the two remaining. They, though rusted, seemed secure. I noted how the trees that twisted above and about me were oddly flourishing, even though it was winter. Perhaps their nourishment was drawn from that ground.

I soon left that place and stood again atop the hill. Looking down I could see nothing but the waving branches of trees, covering the graveyard on Mabbs Hill and wherever Mara dwelt.

Something odd struck me, for I realized that all the time I had been down there, by the cemetery, no noise of birds had I heard. But there was no leisure to confirm that, for I had a train to catch and so I set off, at a run, down the hill to the station.

The evening was bright with starlight. I stood on the bridge above the creek, watching the moon’s reflection break in silver shards amid the flow, and I became lost in a reverie. Hearing a soft voice, I turned to see a girl staring intently at the moon-glade.

“Give it back to me, moon-witch. I can see you there, laughing at me.”

It was the girl whom I had seen crying the night before. She leant over the bridge to throw a stone into the stream and the moon’s face there shattered into a thousand pieces.

“Killed you!” she cried triumphantly. But her voice changed to a sob as the moon gathered up its shards to grin sardonically back at us.

She hurried away past me, and I held out my hand to stay her, asking if I could be of aid. She was a pretty thing, or would have been but for the look of utter desolation marring her face. Her red hair had been sheared short and uneven, sticking out at odd, uncombed angles about her head, and I was again reminded of one condemned.

“It’s a mask.” She pointed to the water below. “I know, the moon-witch told me. That grave-woman who said I was a moonchild… me who was just me mum’s love child. The moon’s a thief!” She screamed these words and buried her face in her hands. “I’m a dead one now because of what she took from me.”

“What did she take?” I asked gently.

Her eyes peeped at me through parted fingers and she giggled, as though I had said something amusing.

“You’ve had yours taken too, I can tell. But you don’t care. I hope you was happy with what you got for it. I didn’t get nothing, nothing at all. I want it back.”

Her distracted face was bathed white as a mask by the moonlight and she held out her hands towards me, as though making an offering. I looked and saw a moth sitting upon her palm, its wings fluttering ever so slightly. There was something unusual about it and I looked close.

“It’s a strange thing, but the moon is really under the ground and no one knows that except me and you and her.”

I could not look into the girl’s eyes, so intently did they watch me as she spoke.

Then, lowering her hands, she fled away, across the bridge. Whether she still held the moth, or had dropped the thing, I did not know. But uselessly I searched the stone bridge, washed grey by moonlight, for it; and as I sought, the girl’s voice was raised in a distant, wistful song:

“I am just a love-child, “Lost in moon dreams am I.”

Giving up my search for the moth, I listened for a space of time to the girl’s song. It seemed that, though gone, she was still close by, but invisible, a ghost conjured by the moon to trill for its amusement.

I forced myself away and up the hill. My meeting with the girl had been distressing, bringing more disturbing thoughts and memories to my mind, for all that day the woman Mara had haunted me. Thoughts of her sensual mouth sucking on mine, biting with those sharp white teeth so hard that I bled. Strange and lurid sensations ran through me at the memory of it.

Mabbs Hill shone before me, lit by moonlight. A heavy frost sparkled the ground, a purse of silver thrown to Earth by the moon. No living thing had I seen since the girl and she, poor thing, bore the certain mark of one who soon would not be.

A footfall in a rime of frost sounded behind me, ominous as the snap of breaking bone.

I turned to see the hooded figure that followed.

“Is this not well met by moonlight?”

Her voice thrilled me as moonlight and starlight played with silver fire on the frost.

We stood regarding each other and the hood fell back. Eyes, dark as grapes, captured me, and her feline smile beguiled.

“I knew that we would meet again,” she sighed, a sound almost a moan of pleasure as she looked up to let the moon bathe her face. “How I love the moon and so do you. I saw how you gazed at her last night. She is my mother. Ah! The mist and the moonlight, they are my elements.”

“I have already met with a moonchild tonight,” I said, “who told me that the moon is beneath the earth.”

“That pretty little thing did not wish to give me a little pretty thing that I desired from her. Soon she will not be so pretty.” Mara looked searchingly at me. “A moonchild indeed! Perhaps she is your wish-child? Would you rather her than me? Surely not!”

“What did you take from her, Mara? She said that the moon was a thief.”

“Her hope, her youth, her flowering beauty. Her red hair was so long and lovely that I grew jealous of it and made her shear the tresses. Such a silly girl, so easy to beguile. She would never have missed her pretty little soul and I would have sent her out into the world to seek others for me.”

A great fear seized me. Instinctively I released the catch on my swordstick and eased the blade slightly from its sheath. My action caused Mara some amusement, for she laughed.

“I shall leave you if you are so afraid and must draw your weapon on little me. But I promise that no great harm will befall you, on this night, unless you so wish it.”

The blade slid back into its sheath as Mara’s cold hand lightly brushed my face. She then took my hand and we walked up Mabbs Hill, at the top of which we looked down on the city below, the lights of which blazed — a town of fire lit by the flames of Hell — which, as the poet said, is a city much like London.

“All this could be yours,” whispered Mara the temptress. “Better than knowledge, Herr Doctor Crescentius of the mouldy old books.”

“No! There is nothing better than knowledge,” I denied her.

“Shall I call you Faustus?” she mocked. “There is something better than that. Did not your hero sigh for the love of Helen?”

What was knowledge compared to the mystery of Mara’s body? Mara, who could read my thoughts. For, secretly, I would often beguile myself with the conceit of being a new Faust, and learn the secrets of the natural world and of that occult one which is so close but yet so far from us.

Cold hand in mine, she led me down the path that led under the hill.

“You know who I am,” Mara teased. “But you have put it from your mind. A wise fool indeed.”

“You are Lilith, you are Hecate.”

“Just Mara,” she said, as clumsily I tried to kiss her and she easily evaded me.

A strange silver light, like a will-o’-the-wisp, danced before us as down, ever down we went, showing a way through what else would have been grave-dark. For it seemed that walls of earth surrounded us, until we came to the gate of that city of the dead, beneath the hill.

Mara fell into my arms at last, like one surrendering to a deep need whose satisfaction had been long denied to them. Her lips burnt mine with their cold as she bit and sucked, and a feeling of release from all care took hold of me as I let her drink.

“It is gone already.”

Mara stepped back, out of my arms, and I saw the smear of blood on her lips.

“My soul, you mean. That is long gone,” I answered truly. “Taken by another, freely given by me. Why, even your little moonchild knew that… recognized a similar loss in herself, perhaps.”

A veil clouded my sight as I spoke, and Mara slipped away like a shadow.

Confounded, I peered into the dark, calling her name. Tearing at the spider web on the bars of the gate, I looked into the necropolis that was washed with a pale light like that from a subterranean moon. A place of luxurious foliage of horrid nurture it was, and I thought of how by day it was above ground, of that I was sure, but by night below.

Those who walk restless when by rights they should lie quiet made themselves known, drawing near between the tumbled graves to call and to beckon. None of them was Mara — she was not of those poor spirits, but a much more terrible thing.

A lock fell from the gate, leaving but one now to bar it. Those that walked within shuddered and drew closer. I recoiled from them, and hurried back up that tunnel through the hill, that grave-mound, until at last I was in the open with the light of moon and stars blazing above.

Soon I was home and abed, but again my night was one of fret.

An invisible bed-mate clung leech-close to me, draining my body. My tired eyes conjured shadows into phantasmagorical shapes, all becoming that of Mara, who tantalized me so that I cried out aloud for her. Until, with the dawn, I looked from my window to assure myself that I was still on the Earth and had not yet been taken below.

Later, as I approached the bridge over the creek, I saw that a crowd had gathered there and curiously joined them to look.

On the mud of the bank stood a group of men, who raised a figure covered by a sheet to silently bear it upon their shoulders. They used her more gently, I think, than anyone ever had in her poor life. The cover fell to reveal her face, the shorn red hair, the blank eyes that looked up at me. A woman cried out and another began a prayer; a man said what a shame it was that such a pretty thing had done that to herself.

The sheet was pulled back over her face, dead and white as the moon’s, and I hurried down to the station, reaching it as the rain began to fall as tears of grief.

That evening, on my reluctant return to Mabbs End — I should not have returned at all, perhaps then Mara might have left me alone — the rain had become a downpour. I found my perversity in daring this danger, for that was what I knew it to be, quite frankly, amazing. By the time I reached the bridge I was soaked through, but I ignored this chilly discomfort for I anticipated meeting Mara. That we would encounter each other again I did not doubt.

I stood on the beach watching the torrent of water run down the creek and the reflection of a gas lamp flickering in the flood. Or was it the pale face of a lost girl, a moonchild, a dream child, a love child, my wish-child, seeking for her soul?

Wearily, I climbed Mabbs Hill, looking all around me for Mara. But the murk-black rain fell in sheets, and I could see little. I kept vigil under the shelter of an oak until, when I was on the point of giving up, I felt her presence by me and saw that she stood near, watching me with a raptorial smile. Her uncovered hair gleamed slick with the rain that ran down the valley between her breasts.

“I cannot escape you,” she purred. “We meet together in mist and frost, now rain, you strange man without a soul. I am curious about what you were given for it. Was it a good price?”

“That is no business of yours. It is long gone and there is nothing that you could give me that I would want.”

“I have a web, cunningly fashioned, in which souls are trapped. When I wish to feed, I pluck one out and drink.” She laughed, and her teeth showed sharp. “I like to play with them too, pull their wings off. For they take the form of moths, each with a human face, and yours, I think, is one among them.”

Mara came close to me, and I was like to fall into the trap of her eyes but turned mine away. Her lips touched my ear as she whispered, and I thought of those sharp teeth and my blood in that mouth, and could not help but flinch from them.

“Come with me,” tempted Mara, “and I shall show you such wonders. I know where your soul is. Shall I give it back?”

“It is not yours to give,” I answered, and remembered the red-haired girl, the moonchild, with her pale-dead face, and knew what I must do. “But you may take me there with you, under the hill to see, for I am curious.”

The earth of Mabbs Hill parted before her, it seemed, and we were at the gate of the necropolis, a city for those dead interred deeper than any could imagine, save in nightmare.

The third lock fell from the gate and it drew open, pulled, it seemed, by invisible hands. Through the gate we went and to a great tomb about which, shining silver in the light of that mock-moon, a thick web clung. Pale as bone, the orb shining below ground. I knew it for the face of Mara by the smear of blood, the Grave-Queen’s mask watching over her dominion.

In the web were held poor struggling things, those caught in the moon-spider’s net, trawled by that Mara.

I looked closely, on the web. Seeing her, I plucked the moth-girl carefully from the holding strands and blew my breath on her until a shiver throbbed there. Unsteadily, with beating wings, she rose from my hand and flitted about, unsure of which way to turn.

I watched her unsteady flutter, willing her to fly away. But, after a few moments of confused flitting, the moth-girl fell back, straight as an arrow, to the web, willingly caught again in its toils.

“You should have taken her with you,” said Mara. “Perhaps put her in a bottle to look at when it pleased you to. A curiosity to show your friends — a moth with a girl’s flower-face. No better off than she is in my web. I could have given her to you, your little red witch, bound with thongs made of her own hair. It was very long, and there was more than enough for that.”

Enough, too, to tie a tether about my heart. Though my soul was gone, I still had that to my sorrow. I knew that between myself and Mara there could be but one thing. My hand shook as I unsheathed the swordstick’s blade, and she looked at me with such terrible desire.

“Would you like to cut me with your steel?” she mocked as I hesitated. “See me bleed? I can always obtain a sufficiency of blood, so will take no harm. I will scream most prettily for you too, if that is your need. You may do anything to me, anything you desire, and all I want from you is but a kiss.”

The guise fell from her like a discarded garment, and she snarled like a beast — the fangs that bite, the lips that suck, and the tongue to lap the blood.

I did not hesitate but, with one swift motion, sunk my sword into the creature’s body. Cold iron is a sovereign remedy against the powers of the air, the undead, those too much alive for the good of mankind.

She uttered a groan at my thrust, the sound of one far gone in passion. Then, to my horror, with a mocking and ironic bow, she herself withdrew the blade from her own flesh to hand it back to me. In a moment the deep wound that I had caused her miraculously healed itself before my eyes, leaving not a mark there.

“You have had your will of me,” purred Mara. “Now I will take from you. That is only fair.”

She seized me, and I was held helpless as she bit. I felt a brief instant of vertigo, sickening in its intensity, followed by a burning joy that was too soon over. My head spinning, I fell to the ground and lay there, looking up at her like a drunkard gazing at the moon.

“You are mine for ever, but then you always have been — all men are.”

I saw my blood smearing her grinning lips, and staggered to my feet. Again, in a frenzy, I struck at her with my sword, slashing at the flesh as she mocked. Her blood steamed molten as those fires within the earth. At last my arm grew weary, and the glamour fell from my eyes to reveal what had been destroyed.

Hacked and black with blood, the poor carrion lay before me. I was no longer beneath the mound of Mabbs Hill, as it had seemed, but upon our middle earth where the rain had ceased and the betraying moon burst through cloud to reveal what I had done. A hand, completely severed, pointed up in accusation at me, and I shuddered in horror at my crime.

Then, uttering a laugh such as demons give, Mara rose up before me, bearing no trace of a wound upon her bare body. Again I was in that netherworld where she ruled her get, who gathered about to mock and jeer me.

I fled, uselessly trying to pull shut the gates against her, but they would not move. Three locks had fallen and now naught could keep them down.

Wildly I ran. Reaching the crest of Mabbs Hill, all out of breath, I had to stop. Mara danced past me, leading her children — dancing like moths then changing before my eyes to human form — beautiful and tempting to a man… and to a woman too. Her sons and daughters who mockingly saluted me, their liberator, as they passed to plague the world with their dreadful appetites.

Mara had been playing a game with me, using me for sport and to free her progeny, who now walk among us, another legion among the many who torment humanity. The moonchild was among them, her red hair was long again, enough to bind a man’s heart and soul, and she tried to take my hand. But I fled from her, though she cried out a promise to always follow…

I soon left London, and at Cambridge I found one of Mara’s spawn. She tried to drink from me, but I overwhelmed her and threw the body into the river Cam. I can never look down over a bridge since, nor into water, for she revealed her true form as Mara’s long dark hair spread out like a Medusa and her black eyes stared at me.

In Berlin I carefully dissected and left parts of her body scattered about the city. While about this task, she accosted me in the Alexandraplatz and laughed at her joke.

I have tried so many times but should know this: one cannot slay the slayer, the cruel mother, bringer of nightmare, blood-drinking grave-queen, the moon-witch Kali, Mater Tenebrarum, call her as you will. She who rules the dark places, Our Lady of Shadow and Darkness, who is after all the true queen of this world and of the one below.