Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlin R. Kiernan (Volume One) (3 page)

Mina Harker woke up in the hollow space between lightning and a thunderclap.

Until dawn, when the storm tapered to gentle drizzle and distant echoes, she sat alone on the edge of the bed, shaking uncontrollably, and tasting bile and remembered garlic.

January 1922

Mina held the soup to the Professor’s lips, chicken steam curling in the cold air. Abraham Van Helsing, eighty-seven and so much more dead than alive, tried to accept a little of the thin broth. He took a clumsy sip, and the soup spilled from his mouth, dribbling down his chin into his beard. Mina wiped his lips with the stained napkin lying across her lap.

He closed his grey-lashed eyes and she set the bowl aside. Outside, the snow was falling again, and the wind yowled wolf noises around the corners of his old house. She shivered, tried to listen instead to the warm crackle from the fireplace, the Professor’s labored breath. In a moment, he was coughing again, and she was helping him sit up, holding his handkerchief.

“Tonight, Madam Mina, tonight…” and he smiled, wan smile, and trailed off, his words collapsing into another coughing fit, the wet consumptive rattle. When it passed, she eased him back into the pillows, and noticed a little more blood on the ruined handkerchief.

Yes,
she thought,
perhaps.

Once she would have tried to assure him that he would live to see spring and his damned tulips and another spring after that, but she only wiped the sweaty strands of hair from his forehead, and pulled the moth-gnawed quilt back around his bony shoulders.

Because there was no one else and nothing to keep her in England, she’d made the crossing to Amsterdam the week before Christmas; Quincey had been taken away by the influenza epidemic after the war. So, just Mina now, and this daft old bastard. Soon enough, there would be only her.

“Shall I read for a bit, Professor?” They were almost halfway through Mr. Conrad’s
The Arrow of Gold
. She was reaching for the book on the nightstand (and saw that she’d set the soup bowl on it) when his hand, dry and hot, closed softly around her wrist.

“Madam Mina,” and already he was releasing her, his parchment touch withdrawn and there was something in his eyes now besides cataracts and the glassy fever flatness. His breath wheezed in, then forced itself harshly out.

“I am
afraid
,” he said, his voice barely a rasping whisper, slipped into and between the weave of the night.

“You should rest now, Professor,” she told him, wishing against anything he might say.

“So much a fraud I was, Madam Mina.”

did you ever even love

“It was
my
hand that sent her, by my
hand
.”

“Please, Professor, let me call for a priest. I cannot…”

The glare that flashed behind his eyes – something wild and bitter, vicious humor – made her look away, scissoring her fraying resolve. 

“Ah,” and “Yes,” and something strangled that might have been laughter. “So, I confess my guilt? So, I scrub the blood from my hands with that other blood?”

The wind banged and clattered at the shuttered windows, looking for a way inside. For a moment, an empty space filled with mantel-clock ticking and the wind and his ragged breathing, there was nothing more.

Then he said, “Please, Madam Mina, I am thirsty.”

She reached for the pitcher and the chipped drinking glass.

“Forgive me, sweet Mina.”

The glass was spotty, and she wiped roughly at its rim with her blue skirt.

“…had it been hers to choose…” and he coughed again, once, a harsh and broken sound. Mina wiped at the glass harder.

Abraham Van Helsing sighed gently, and she was alone.

When she was done, Mina carefully returned the glass to the table with the crystal pitcher, the unfinished book, and the cold soup. When she turned to the bed, she caught her reflection in the tall dressing mirror across the room; the woman staring back could easily have passed for a young thirty. Only her eyes, hollow, hollow, bottomless things, betrayed her. 

May 1930

As twilight faded from the narrow rue de l’Odéon, Mina Murray sipped her glass of chardonnay and roamed the busy shelves of Shakespeare and Company. The reading would begin soon, some passages from Colette’s new novel. Mina’s fingers absently traced the spines of the assembled works of Hemingway and Glenway Wescott and D. H. Lawrence, titles and authors gold or crimson or flat-black pressed into cloth. Someone she half-recognized from a café, or a party, or some other reading passed close, whispered a greeting, and she smiled in response, then went back to the books.

And then Mlle. Beach was asking everyone to please take their seats, a few straight-backed chairs scattered among the shelves and bins. Mina found a place close to the door, and watched as the others took their time, quietly talking among themselves, laughing at unheard jokes. Most of them she knew by sight, a few by name and casual conversation, one or two by reputation only. Messieurs Pound and Joyce, and Radclyffe Hall in her tailored English suit and sapphire cufflinks. There was an unruly handful of minor Surrealists she recognized from the rue Jacob bistro where she often took her evening meals. And at first unnoticed, a tallish young woman, unaccompanied, choosing a chair off to one side.

Mina’s hands trembled, and she spilled a few drops of the wine on her blouse.

The woman sat down, turning her back to Mina. Beneath the yellowish glow of the bookstore’s lamps, the woman’s long hair blazed red-gold. The murmuring pack of Surrealists seated themselves in the crooked row directly in front of Mina, and she quickly looked away. Sudden sweat and her mouth dry, a dull undercurrent of nausea, and she hastily, clumsily, set her wine glass on the floor. 

That name, held so long at bay, spoken in a voice she thought she’d forgotten.

Lucy.

Mina’s heart, an arrhythmic drum, raced inside her chest like a frightened child’s.

Sylvia Beach was speaking again, gently hushing the murmuring crowd, introducing Colette. There was measured applause as the authoress stepped forward, and something sarcastic mumbled by one of the Surrealists. Mina closed her eyes tightly, cold and breathing much too fast, sweaty fingers gripping the edges of her chair.

Someone touched her arm, and she jumped, almost cried out, gasping loud enough to draw attention.

“Mademoiselle Murray,
êtes vous bien
?”

She blinked, dazed, recognizing the boy’s unshaven face as one of the shop’s clerks, but unable to negotiate his name.

“
Oui, je vais bien.
” And she tried to smile, blinking back sucking vertigo and dismay. “
Merci…je suis désolé.
”

He nodded, doubtful, reluctantly returning to his windowsill behind her.

At the front of the gathering, Colette had begun to read, softly relinquishing her words. Mina glanced to where the red-haired woman had sat down, half expecting to find the chair empty, or occupied by someone else entirely. She whispered a faithless prayer that she’d merely hallucinated or suffered some trick of light and shadow. But the woman was still there, though turned slightly in her seat, so that Mina could now see her profile, her full lips and familiar cheekbones.

The smallest sound, a bated moan, from Mina’s pale lips, and she saw an image of herself rising, pushing past bodies and through the bookstore’s doors, fleeing headlong through the dark Paris streets to her tiny flat on Saint-Germain.

Instead, Mina Murray sat perfectly still, watching, in turn, the reader’s restless lips and the delicate features of the nameless red-haired woman wearing Lucy Westenra’s face.

After the reading, as the others milled and mingled, spinning respectful pretensions about
Sido
(and Madame Collete in general), Mina inched towards the door. The crowd seemed to have doubled during the half-hour, and she squeezed, abruptly claustrophobic, between shoulders and cigarette smoke. But four or five of the rue Jacob Surrealists were planted solidly and typically confrontational, in the shop’s doorway, muttering loudly among themselves, the novelist already forgotten in their own banter.

“
Pardon,
” she said, speaking just loudly enough to be heard above their conversation, “
puis-je…
” Mina pointed past the men to the door.

The one closest, gaunt and unwashed, almost pale enough to pass for albino, turned towards her. Mina remembered his face, its crooked nose. She’d once seen him spit at a nun outside the Deux Magots. He gave no sign that he intended to let her pass, and she thought that even his eyes looked unclean.

Carrion eyes
, she thought. 

“Mademoiselle Murray, please, one moment.”

Mina matched the man’s glare a second longer, and then, slowly, turned, recognizing Adrienne Monnier; her own shop, the Maison des Amis des Livres, stood, dark-windowed tonight, across the street. It was generally acknowledged that Mlle. Monnier shared considerable responsibility for the success of Shakespeare and Company. 

“I have here someone who would very much like to meet you.” The red-haired woman was standing at her side, sipping dark wine. She smiled, and Mina saw that she had hazel-green eyes.

“This is Mademoiselle Carmicheal from New York. She says that she is a great admirer of your work, Mina. I was just telling her that you’ve recently placed another story with the
Little Review
.” 

“
Anna
Carmicheal,” the woman said, eager and silken-voiced, offering Mina her hand. Detached, drifting, Mina watched herself accept it.

Anna Carmicheal, from New York. Not Lucy.

“Thank you,” Mina said, her voice the same dead calm as the sea before a squall.

“Oh, Christ, no, thank
you
, Miss Murray.”

And Mina noticed how much taller than Lucy Westenra this woman was, her hands more slender, and there was a small mole at the corner of her rouged lips. 

Then Adrienne Monnier was gone, pulled back into the crowd by a fat woman in an ugly ostrich-plumed hat, leaving Mina alone with Anna Carmichael. Behind her, the divided Surrealists argued, a threadbare quarrel and wearisome zeal.

“I’ve been reading you since ‘The White Angel of Carfax,’ and last year, my God, last year I read ‘Canto Babel’ in
Harper’s
. In America, Miss Murray, they’re saying that you’re the new Poe, that you make Le Fanu and all those silly Victorians look –”

“Yes, well,” she began, uncertain what she meant to say, only meaning to interrupt. The dizziness, sharpening unreality, was rushing back and she leaned against a shelf for support. 

“Miss Murray?” And a move, then, as if to catch someone who had stumbled, long fingers alert. Anna Carmichael took a cautious step forward, closing the space between them.

“Mina, please, just call me Mina.”

“Are you…” 

“Yes,” but she was sweating again. “Forgive me, Anna. Just a little too much wine on an empty stomach.”

“Then please, let me take you to dinner.”

Lips pursed, Mina bit the tip of her tongue, biting hard enough to bring a salted hint of blood, and the world began to tilt back into focus, the syrupy blackness at the edges of her vision withdrawing by degrees.

“Oh, no. I couldn’t,” she managed. “Really, it’s not…”

But the woman was already taking her by the arm, crescent moon smile baring teeth like perfectly spaced pearls, every bit the forceful American. She thought of Quincey Morris, and wondered if this woman had ever been to Texas.

“But I insist, Mina. It’ll be an honor, and in return, well, I won’t feel so guilty if I talk too much.”

Together, arm in arm, they elbowed their way through the Surrealist blockade, the men choosing to ignore them. Except the gaunt albino, and Mina imagined something passing between him and Anna Carmichael, unspoken, or simply unspeakable.

“I hate those idiot bastards,” Anna whispered as the door jangled shut behind them. She held Mina’s hand tightly, squeezing warmth into her clammy palm, and surprising herself, Mina squeezed back. 

Out on the gas lit rue de l’Odéon, a warm spring breeze was blowing, and the night air smelled like coming rain.

The meal had been good, though Mina had hardly tasted the little she’d eaten. Cold chicken and bread, salad with wild thyme and goat cheese, chewed and swallowed indifferently. And more than her share from a large carafe of some anonymous red Bordeaux. She’d listened to the woman who was not Lucy talk, endless talk of Anna Carmichael’s copious ideas on the macabre and of Mina’s writing. 

“I actually went to the Carfax estate,” she’d said, and then paused as if she had expected some particular reaction. “Just last summer. There’s some restoration underway there now, you know.”

“No,” Mina answered, sipping her wine and picking apart a strip of white meat with her fork. “No, I wasn’t aware of that.” 

Finally, the waitress had brought their bill, and Anna had grudgingly allowed Mina to leave the tip. While they’d eaten, a shower had come and gone, leaving the night dank and chilly, unusually quiet. Their heels sounded like passing time on the wet cobblestones. Anna Carmichael had a room in one of the less expensive Left Bank hotels, but they walked together back to Mina’s flat.

When Mina woke, it was raining again, and for a few uncounted minutes she lay still, listening, smelling the sweat and incense, a hint of rose and lilac in the sheets. Finally, there was only a steady drip, falling perhaps from the leaky gutters of the old building, and maybe from the eaves, striking the flagstones in the little garden. She could still smell Anna Carmichael on her skin. Mina closed her eyes and thought about going back to sleep, realizing only very slowly that she was now alone in the bed.

The rain was over and the drip – the minute and measured splash of water on water, that clockwork cadence –
wasn’t
coming from outside. She opened her eyes and rolled over, into the cold and hollow place made by Anna’s absence. The lavatory light was burning; Mina blinked and called her name, calling