Poe's children: the new horror : an anthology - By Peter Straub Page 0,252

to return. She is pale and fatigued, and the last of the light is fading; night is falling, and a blanket of blackness will soon cover the house while the lodgers are gathered for the evening meal. The candles in the dining room will draw to the window pale moths, as pale as she is, unable to resist the fiery center, and their wings will beat against the glass, pounding and bruising their plump bodies; they will look like ghosts in the dark, eager and hungry, seeking their shadow selves there in the flame. And all the while the other moths, the specimens she has collected, will remain safe in their cages, quiet in the darkened room. And when the night has fully fallen, the lantern flies will come out with their lights glittering.

She lifts her hand to the back of her neck to wipe the beads of perspiration away. She drinks boiled water left to cool, dips her fingers into the water and touches her brow, her neck. The heat is draining her of blood and spirit, sucking the marrow out from her bones and leaving them to ache at night, her arms and her legs ache each night and she is restless on the bed. She no longer sleeps well from the aching and the restlessness.

She descends the stairs now down to supper, to where the others are already seated in the dining room.

“You are pale, Madame Sibylla. Are you unwell?”

“It is nothing, Doctor Kolb. It is only the heat. No. Nothing. Or if anything, the heat.”

“Yes, the heat. How is your work progressing?”

“Well.”

“And your hand? Has it healed from the accident?”

“Yes.”

“I am a physician, Madame Sibylla. Will you permit me to have a look at it? You would not want it to fester.”

“It is nothing, Doctor Kolb. It was only a reaction to the pathetic creature’s venom. As you see, it has completely subsided.”

Drums are beating. Drums are beating in the night. The sound of the drums comes from the forest beyond Piki Ston where the runaways have erected their settlements. The drums cannot come from the plantations; on the plantations the black slaves are forbidden to drum, forbidden to send their rebel messages. She has seen what happens to those who disobey. She has seen the bloody stump where a hand once was, and the body flogged skinless, and a raw, pulpy mass where the flesh once was, and the body kept alive in ruin.

She is fatigued. It can be seen on her face, and in the way she comports herself, in the way her breath comes labored, and her eyes appear clouded and distant.

It is the heat. And the poison still in her body from the caterpillar’s sting. Night has fallen and the window is covered with moths that are drunk on the light from the flames of the candle. The moths will die, just as she believes that she will die, that the heat of the sun will kill her, that the harshness of this place will end her life. She is still weak, and still vertiginous from the caterpillar’s venom.

The venom in her body has increased her fatigue, and her nights are beset by dreams, and by visions that appear and disappear, alternately beautiful and terrifying.

In a dream she is menaced by an animal, it comes around in front of her, an aggressive look in its eyes.

She is standing listening to the river, the still, glassy surface shining in the sun, the sun’s rays rippling on the surface, she is standing looking out to the bend in the river, a distance farther and white waters start to form, the current goes crazy with white waters, a little while more and rapids, a little while more and the water gushing and pounding, crazy water, a little while more and crazy water, dashing against rocks, the falls to take you to the bottom, and the devil’s egg, the rock that is perched above the water, the dashing crazy water, the falls are Piki Ston Falls, along the riverbank the monkeys with their perpetual screaming, is it with warning? is it with ill intent? the violent screams of the monkeys, but here where she is standing the river is still, there is no ripple, the sun shines in streaks on the placid surface.

Small, sweeter than the alligator pear, the sweet red fruit of the yucca.

The butterflies are made of feathers. She points to all the tiny little feathers.

In her drawings her themes come slowly into focus,