Page 16 of Blood on Her Tongue

Chapter 16

Sarah was sitting at her writing desk, her diary open before her. Her shorn head was covered by a cotton cap. She had opened the window, dispelling the smell of sweat and sex until only the lingering reek of sickness that permeated everything around her nowadays and the cool, soft scent of rain remained. The rain drummed on the sill and pooled there until the puddles grew too large and the water ran down the wall to be sucked up by the carpet. Despite the cold and the wet, Sarah sat in a thin nightgown and nothing else. The collar had turned brown with crusted blood. If not for that, Lucy could almost have told herself she had imagined everything; Sarah had scrubbed away any trace of blood from her hands and face.

For a moment, neither said anything. They simply looked at each other: Lucy straight on, Sarah from the corner of her eye.

Does she know that I know? I mustn’t let on.

Lucy tried to force her mouth into a smile, but the muscles felt taut and her lips trembled. “Why aren’t you wearing your dressing gown? You must be cold. You must take good care of the body that was given you, don’t you know that?” She picked up a shawl from the back of a chair. As she walked to her sister, she felt for the pin with her other hand. Just the fabric of her skirt against her fingertips, rough and thick. What if it had fallen out without her noticing? Her mouth turned dry.

Sarah turned to her, one jaundiced hand on the pages of her diary. It must be an old entry; the pages were covered in her neat copperplate. No doubt the creature that possessed her was studying it to more accurately impersonate her. That was why Lucy had to confront it until it had no choice but to confess. She would, if only she could find this fucking pin…

And then, mercifully, she felt the smooth hard head of the pin as her nail brushed against it. Quickly, she plucked it from her skirt, then folded her hand around it. The shaft lay hot and hard in a crease of her palm. “Here,” she said, then threw the shawl around Sarah’s shoulders. Lucy fussed over her, smoothing the fabric over her shoulders, trying to knot it at her throat without touching the crusted fabric of her collar, all the while looking for the right moment to strike. Up close, her nose almost pressed against her sister’s throat, the sweet smell of rot was so thick, she had to fight not to gag.

Her hands trembled, and no matter how she tensed them, they wouldn’t still. She held the pin between her fingertips with such force, the pink of her nails blanched to a sickly yellow.

“Enough!” Sarah said, laying her hand on Lucy’s. It was cold and strangely smooth; the top layer of skin still hadn’t grown back. “I know why you’ve come.”

Without looking, Lucy struck. There was no resistance as she drove the pin deep into her sister’s hand, doing it at an angle for fear she’d hit the bone. She didn’t want to hurt Sarah any more than necessary.

What am I doing? I’m acting like a lunatic, driving pins into my sister because I believe she’s possessed , Lucy thought suddenly, and panic squeezed her heart. She took two large steps back, her mouth so dry that it hurt.

But Sarah hadn’t noticed the pin. She took hold of the edges of the shawl, held them closed at her chest, and turned to look at Lucy. She didn’t look as sickly as she had the previous few days; her eye was clear where it had been cloudy before, and her skin had lost its grayish tinge.

And yet, even without those signs of the corpse — though the fact she was marked with them before proves something, and she still smells like one — there was still very clearly something wrong with her. She must be impervious to pain, else she would’ve realized her sister had stuck a pin into her, and that was a sign.

Lucy glanced at Sarah’s hand and saw she had thrust the pin as far as it would go. Only the head—red, shiny—remained. Afraid of drawing attention to it, she averted her gaze and began to wring her fingers instead.

“I know you must hate me, that you must think me vile and ungrateful and horrible and mad, but is it so bad that you can’t even look at me?” Sarah whispered.

Lucy stared at her in surprise. Was her face that naked? It took her a moment to realize Sarah wasn’t talking about the fact something had eaten her brain and now lived inside her head, but that Lucy had caught her with Katje.

“There’s no need to keep this secret from you anymore. I’ll make a clean breast of it now,” Sarah went on, oblivious still. “Katje and I are in love. We have been…intimate for a few months now. We have tried to resist it, but there’s only so much you can withstand until you must succumb. I’ve always found unhappiness unappealing, and before her, I was unhappy.”

Lucy stood, tongue-tied. The insane urge to laugh brewed in her chest. This whole conversation had the unreality of a dream to it.

“Please say something, Lucy dear! I know how all this must sound to you who have loved Michael for a long time.”

Sarah’s words struck Lucy like a railroad spike. She had been so careful, guarding her love for Michael even before Sarah knew of his existence; perhaps Lucy had known even then to keep him from her sister. She felt faint. “I have to sit down,” she mumbled, then did so on the chair next to Sarah’s desk. Still, she was dizzy. She stuck her head between her knees so the blood could rush into her head and dispel the weakness she felt.

Sarah stroked the back of Lucy’s head. “Did you think I didn’t know? You’re my twin; there’s not a lot you can keep from me. You must think me very selfish, to chance throwing away all I have here for a few stolen moments of happiness with someone you probably consider poor and disturbed. Almost everyone does, you know. They can’t see past the abuse, which is a damn shame because Katje is tremendously interesting. She’s much smarter than most people think, much more passionate. Stronger, too. I consider her a fully realized person.”

How did she know about Michael and me? It’s as if she can read my thoughts. Didn’t Marianne’s husband say she knew things she couldn’t possibly have known? Fear stroked its icy finger down her spine. She realized Sarah was waiting for her to say something. She managed to choke out, “I don’t think Katje is just a disturbed girl.”

“But you do think that you’d have made Michael a much better wife than I have. You are probably right, though I must say you’ve got no idea how beastly Michael can be.”

“He can be surly, but he’s no brute,” Lucy said. The blood throbbed in her temples, and she sat up straight. For a moment, black dotted her vision. Then everything looked as it should. She no longer felt faint. Now she just felt insubstantial again, less than half a person. Everything seemed so strange, so thin , as if one wrong word or move could tear reality apart like tissue paper.

“It makes sense that you would think that,” Sarah said. “I’ve kept most of his cruelty from you because I didn’t want you to worry and didn’t want you to think less of me. What’s more shameful than a failed marriage?”

“How can you think of your marriage as failed? He loves you terribly,” Lucy exclaimed.

“So much that he barely spends five minutes a day with me now that I’m ugly and ill.”

Lucy winced. It was true that Michael didn’t know what to do with Sarah in her current state. One evening, he had sat down with her and tried to play a game of chess, but she had unnerved him so much that he had gotten up halfway through and left. “He’s a man. They never know how to behave in a sickroom.”

“How you defend him!” Sarah marveled. “Let’s see if you can defend this: he’s unfaithful to me.”

She knows , Lucy thought. Panic blanched her. She knows somehow. Oh my God, she knows what Michael and I did, but she never let on…

Sarah registered Lucy’s shock, and her face twisted with triumph. “That’s right,” she said. “He is unfaithful. I wouldn’t mind that so much if he didn’t flaunt it so brazenly. I once walked into his study and found one of the maids sucking him silly. They’re not his mistresses, just girls he ruts with. Do you know what he said when I confronted him? That I should be pleased. He told me men often have certain needs that are really quite unsavory, and I should be grateful that he respected me too much to use me to sate those needs.”

Her mouth puckered in distaste, and she shuddered once, violently. The contraction of the muscles made the pin in her hand move; Lucy could see the shaft twisting slightly, like the hour hand of a clock.

Not-Sarah went on. “All that is horrible and vulgar in and of itself, to treat our staff as if they’re no more than napkins for him to frig in, but to do it right under my nose, too? That it matters so little to him that he does it in our home and doesn’t bother to hide it from me… Well, it’s degrading. It’s one of his many infractions against me.”

She doesn’t know after all , Lucy thought. Shame and relief mingled until she wasn’t sure anymore what, exactly, she felt. “You could’ve told me,” she said.

Hypocrite, hypocrite, hypocrite.

Sarah chuckled without mirth. “And have you hate me for making such a mess of my marriage when I knew full well you desired to marry him? No, thank you.”

“I wouldn’t have hated you. I could never hate you. Don’t you know that I would choose your happiness over mine, always? That you matter to me more than any man ever could?”

“You don’t even hate me now?” Sarah fixed her remaining eye upon her, and Lucy experienced the horrible sensation that something else was looking through it, not her sister, but something sly and intelligent.

She’s toying with me , Lucy thought.

For a moment, she had forgotten it wasn’t her sister she was talking to.

Anger rose in her like heat. She did hate then, both the creature possessing her sister for manipulating her and herself for being manipulated so easily, for forgetting what it was she had come here to do.

To gain the upper hand, she looked pointedly at the pin in her sister’s hand. The blood, having no place to go, had begun to pool underneath her skin, discoloring it. Sarah followed her gaze and finally, finally noticed the pin. She frowned at it, took it between her thumb and index finger, and extracted it. The shaft was coated with black blood, dulling the otherwise shiny surface. Blood now beaded from the wound, and this, too, was black. It rose sluggishly because it had the consistency of tar. It had a smell to it, not the healthy, normal blood smell of wet coins and salt but a sweet thick reek, like overripe fruit. That is old blood , Lucy thought, stagnant blood, blood gone to rot.

Sarah looked at it, then at the pin in her other hand, then back at the puncture wound. A trickle of blood crept down her hand, following the dip between two veins. “Did you do this to me?” she asked, her voice threaded with disbelief.

“Yes.”

Her face was contorted with sadness and bewilderment. “But why?”

“Oh, stop it!” Lucy snapped.

“Stop what?”

“Stop pretending to be my sister!”

A range of emotions flickered over Sarah’s face: hurt, fear, uncertainty. “Lucy, what are you talking about?” she asked, and her voice was small and frightened. It ate away at Lucy’s resolve.

What am I doing? Oh God, what on earth am I doing? A voice inside her wailed, but she could not give in to it.

She sprang to her feet and yelled, “Don’t try and manipulate me with that look! You are not my sister! I know you’re not!”

“You’re frightening me. You’re acting like Aunt Adelheid,” Sarah whispered, her lower lip trembling.

What am I doing? Am I mad? Lucy thought. She began to pace wildly. “I’m not mad! No, no, not mad at all. I know what you are, and I know you have possessed my sister. You’re trying to confuse me with lies about Michael, and…”

“I never lied!” Sarah cried. “He truly is a beast sometimes. You know how firmly he believes women should be one thing and men another. Do you really believe he can be courteous and gentle with a woman he deems unnatural? Worse, a woman who is more intelligent than he is?”

“Don’t!” Lucy screamed. She tore at her hair, and the burning pain this produced grounded her a little. She took three heaving breaths, then continued. “Stop trying to distract me. I know you are not my sister.”

Sarah bent over as if stabbed. “Oh, Lucy.” She sobbed. “How can you say such a thing? Of course I am your sister, your twin, your Sarah. How could you not know me, you who have known me since the womb?”

Lucy looked at her, at that darling face that had been altered so much by disease, and this, too, calmed her a little. “Don’t you understand? Precisely because I’ve known my sister as long as life itself, I can tell you aren’t her.”

Sarah began to cry. “Why would you say something like that to me when you know that I’m not well, both in mind and body? Why would you be so horrible to me when I need your love and compassion more than anything else right now?”

It took everything Lucy had not to break down and apologize and move to comfort her, but she managed.

When Lucy didn’t move, didn’t even lower her eyes, Sarah’s face changed. The best thing Lucy could compare it to was as if the muscles had snapped like bands of India rubber. Sarah’s face relaxed almost to the point of slackness, and Lucy wondered how she could ever have thought this was her sister.

“What gave me away?” Not-Sarah asked.