Page 19 of Blood on Her Tongue

Chapter 19

Lucy was so tired, she could weep with it. She thought wistfully of her room—not the silver one upstairs but the one in her parents’ home that she had shared with Sarah when she was still a child. She missed her bed with the carved legs, her little desk in which certain words were scored from when she had written too forcefully on a thin sheet of paper, and the heavy damask curtains she and Sarah had sometimes draped around themselves as they sat on the windowsill at night, looking at the sliver of sky between the roofs of the houses. She wished she were a girl again, listening to Sarah murmur stories in her ear as they held hands under the covers, their heads so close together that their hair tangled.

No use in wishing, though. Better to focus on the task at hand. Once it was complete, she could try and sleep a little.

Mrs. van Dijk sat in the parlor with a book on her lap and Pasja at her feet. The dog showed the whites of her eyes as soon as she caught Not-Sarah’s scent clinging to Lucy’s hands and clothes. When Lucy came closer, Pasja trembled and hid behind Mrs. van Dijk’s chair, showing her little white teeth.

“Poor Pasja. We used to be such good friends,” Lucy said as she seated herself opposite her employer.

Mrs. van Dijk closed her book and smiled. “She’ll be much improved once she has spent a day or two at home with no one to shout at her and nothing to frighten her.”

“She’s coming with you, then?”

Mrs. van Dijk snorted. “Of course she’s coming with us. Did you think I’d leave her here for your brother-in-law to put down whenever she gets on his nerves? She’s a good dog, aren’t you, Pasja?” She twisted to pet the dog, her withered leg dangling from the chair, her shoe rasping against the velvet upholstery. Pasja whined and licked her hands.

“I’m glad you found such a friend in her.” Lucy took a deep breath, then went on. “I’m glad because that means you won’t be going home alone.”

Mrs. van Dijk looked at Lucy from the corner of her eye, her upper body still twisted, one finger stroking the beautiful dip in the skull that ran between the dog’s eyes. “Am I to understand you’re handing in your resignation?”

“I suppose I am. I’ll be forever grateful for how you opened your home to me when I needed it and for everything else you’ve done for me, but I can’t come with you. My sister needs me, and I need her.”

Mrs. van Dijk turned to face Lucy. “After all this time, you are still under your sister’s thumb,” she said, then shook her head in disbelief. “I won’t ever understand it. Perhaps that’s because I’ve got no siblings of my own. More likely it’s because I’m a proud woman. If I could, I’d be utterly self-sufficient. Alas, I’m not. I, too, need company, and since I’ve got no kin, I’ve been reduced to having to pay for it.”

Lucy opened her mouth to contradict her, but her former employer raised a hand to silence her and spoke steadily on. “I won’t debase myself by begging you to stay. You’re not a good enough companion to warrant it, and there are other girls who’ll be glad to take your place. There are always girls of good families fallen on hard times. Yet I’d be remiss if I said I didn’t enjoy having you around. Still, I would’ve liked it if you’d made up your mind a little sooner. No one likes to be strung along, not even an old crippled widow such as myself.”

Chastised, Lucy swallowed against the tears and flush that both rose from her throat. “It was never my intention to hurt you, and if I have in any way, I apologize for it.”

“It is what it is,” Mrs. van Dijk said, then smoothed her skirts over her legs, looking suddenly tired and old, her skin papery, as if the mere touch of a nail could rip it.

***

Lucy’s sleep was fitful and restless, her dreams twisted things, bleak and claustrophobic. Her sister—white, cold, dead—crept over her and sat on her chest so she could scarcely breathe. Sarah tore the fabric of Lucy’s nightgown and pressed her mouth to Lucy’s belly, then tore at the flesh with her teeth till the blood came hot and quick. She drank. She ate. The pain was excruciating, enough to make Lucy break out in a cold sweat, but for all that she wished she might die, she couldn’t move, couldn’t even whimper. When enough organs had been consumed, Sarah dropped something cool and soft into the cavity she had made, something that would in time travel up, find its way into her skull, and worm its tendrils through her brain until nothing remained…

She woke gasping, the sweat-soaked sheets twisted around her like a straitjacket. That horrible stabbing pain from her dream lingered. When she lit the lamp next to her bed, she found her period had arrived. She threw the soiled sheets on the ground and wrapped herself in her dressing gown for warmth. The sky was blush red by the time she managed to fall asleep again.

***

“Whatever we decide to do, we must be careful,” Lucy said.

She was sitting on the windowsill, a flannel-wrapped brick in her lap, which she moved about occasionally, pressing it harder against her tender belly, willing the heat to relax the cramping muscles of her womb. Katje lay on the carpet in front of the fire with her own brick, her eyes large and bright, her mouth slightly slack.

“Naturally,” Not-Sarah agreed. “The last thing we need is to be committed to an asylum because they think we’re absolutely mad. We don’t want to end up like Aunt Adelheid.” She lolled on the sofa. She had the heel of one slippered foot planted firmly on the carpet and swished the foot around from left to right. The intake of blood had done her well. Overnight, her skin had lost its jaundiced look, and her eye was clear and bright. The cuts on her hands and face still showed no sign of healing, though, and the room still stank despite the bags of lavender Katje had sewn into the hems and cuffs of Sarah’s nightgowns.

“What happened to Aunt Adelheid?” Katje asked, a little stitch of a frown marring her forehead like a thumbprint pressed into cooling wax. Her voice, like her movements, was laudanum languid.

Lucy looked at Not-Sarah, who was looking down at her feet. The constant swishing of her foot seemed to mesmerize her. Weren’t revenants said to be entranced by certain movements or heaps of small things spilled, like seeds and crumbs and beads? Katje took hold of the foot to still it, breaking the spell. Not-Sarah blinked, then gave Katje a soft smile, bent over, and kissed her tenderly.

When she was done, she said, “Aunt Adelheid, you asked? The long and short of it is that she went mad, or at least was considered to have gone mad, was committed to a private asylum, and died there within a year.”

“And just the long of it?” Katje asked.

Not-Sarah caught Lucy’s eye and nodded at her.

“The long of it,” Lucy said, “is that she was always unconventional. She was brilliant and headstrong, and she simply didn’t give a damn about what others thought of her. That’s why she never married, I think. Most men don’t want a wife like that.”

“It didn’t help that she was a raging sapphist, of course,” Not-Sarah added. She had found a loose thread and was playing with it.

Lucy stared at her in shock. “What?”

Not-Sarah looked up from the thread, which she had twisted around her wrist and fingers. “Didn’t you know? She wasn’t exactly subtle about it. All those hushed conversations with Vera, the hours they spent together in her little room to work on her various projects … Scientific research can be thrilling, but not so thrilling to warrant all that. Then again, I suppose it takes one to know one.” She extracted her foot from its slipper and gently touched Katje’s shoulder. “You would’ve loved her, darling. She was quite a character.”

“Is that why your parents had her locked away? Because she was like us?” Katje asked.

Not-Sarah shook her head. “They could have, of course. They could have had her committed for half a dozen other things: her obvious aversion to marriage, the obsessive pursuit of the masculine area of entomology, her argumentative nature. All things I am guilty of, too. But you must understand that, in her own small-minded way, my mother loved my aunt and didn’t want to be parted from her. That’s why she lived with us: my mother needed her.”

“Why, then?” Katje asked.

“Vera left. We were told she had to go home and look after her sick mother. I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe someone had found out about her and Aunt Adelheid or something had happened between the two of them. Whatever the reason, she left, and my aunt did not take it well. She couldn’t sleep and she often cried. When she wasn’t crying, she picked fights, especially with my father, whom she had never liked very much. Of course, that was before he took to locking her into her room for hours at a time. He found it all very embarrassing, very unseemly, do you remember?”

Oh, Lucy remembered all right. She remembered all of it: her mother slinking through the house with swollen eyes, her father’s mouth set so hard that it seemed carved into his face, the sounds of her aunt kicking the door until it seemed to rattle in its frame, her screams as she demanded to be let out, saying she was not a small child to be locked in her room until she could behave.

Not-Sarah went on: “My father called our family doctor. He diagnosed her with hysteria, which he thought he could cure by turning or massaging her womb twice a week.”

When he entered Aunt Adelheid’s room, there was always, at first, the screaming and sobbing, followed by pleading. Then silence.

“Of course, that didn’t cure her. If anything, it made her worse. She began to have these fits where she’d fall to the ground and convulse, her eyes rolling back.” Not-Sarah wound the string around her finger, cutting off the circulation. The tip turned white. Even the small puncture wounds left behind by splinters blanched. Her fingers, Lucy noted, were not quite steady, but it would have been strange if they had been.

“Did you see her have such a fit?” Katje asked Lucy, which made her realize that, though she had begun this story, she had only said a few sentences before Not-Sarah had taken over. She had not noticed because it was not unusual. Her sister had always been eager to talk and Lucy eager to sit back and listen.

“Only once. We hadn’t been allowed to see her ever since our father had begun to lock her into her room. Our mother was afraid it would be too upsetting.”

Not-Sarah snorted with derision. “Afraid we might catch Aunt Adelheid’s madness, you mean.”

“She did stab the doctor with a pen—and then herself.” A family habit, Lucy supposed.

“That she did.” Not-Sarah sighed. “Of course, she had to be committed then. Even our mother agreed with that. Madness, attempted self-murder, and the falling sickness are all horrible taints and can damage a young female relative’s prospect of marriage considerably.” Her fingertip had turned red now. She unrolled the string. It had striped her finger.

Lucy vividly remembered the day the wardens had come to take her aunt away. She had been so emaciated, she had to be carried out. They had put her in a straitjacket to prevent her from lashing out and hurting anyone, but she screamed, and she spat, and she thrashed until the attending doctor gave her something to quiet her; their parents hadn’t wanted the neighbors to hear.

After, all her things were thrown out, the floors scrubbed, and the sheets washed. Even the walls of her room were papered over. With time, the animal smell of her, thick and fecal, dissipated, and all that was left of her was a tooth Lucy found in her room. It had rolled under her dresser and was cracked clean through the middle. Lucy still had no idea how it had ended up there.

“Is that what killed her eventually? The falling sickness?” Katje asked. She stroked her brick as if it were a cat, carefully and with great delight.

“That’s what the asylum doctors said,” Not-Sarah said.

“But you don’t believe that?”

“They wouldn’t let us see her body. We went to collect it because our mother wanted her buried in the family plot with their parents, but they said they’d already buried her in their private cemetery. The institution was forced to close down two years later because of general malpractice and mistreatment of its patients. Maybe Aunt Adelheid died of a fit. Maybe she was beaten to death, or she choked while being bound to the wall, or they forced too much food down her throat and her stomach burst. Perhaps it’s nothing as sinister as all that. It could be that she died of natural causes and the reason the institution wouldn’t release her body is because they had performed an illegal autopsy on it. We won’t ever know now.”

“Please let’s talk of something else,” Lucy whispered.

They were all quiet for a moment, until Katje said, her voice forcefully bright, “Are there any others like you, Sarah?”

Not-Sarah dropped her thread, bent to pick it up, and wound it so tight around her hand that the thread bit deeply into the skin. “Not a lot of others, no, and fewer every year, I fear.”

“Why is that?”

“We don’t reproduce easily, and when between hosts, we are extremely vulnerable. When Arthur and Doctor Rosenthaler were autopsying Marianne and they cracked open her skull, I fell straight into Arthur’s hand. I was utterly helpless then. He could’ve killed me simply by balling his hand into a fist. I was so scared…”

She shuddered, then smiled. “Funny, isn’t it? He saw my true form and had me at his mercy, yet he’ll never know the intimacy of that moment.” She jumped up and threw her thread into the fire, then began to pace around, moving from one side of the carpet and back again, holding the cotton of her nightgown in one hand to keep it from swishing into the hearth.

“You’re restless today,” Lucy remarked.

“Your blood has given me some of my energy back. I feel like tearing something small apart with my hands or walking a great deal, anything but this endless lying about. I think it might have given me bedsores, though with the general splitting and rot of my skin, it’s hard to tell.”

Lucy said, “That brings us back to the issue at hand rather nicely, I suppose. You need to feed. More specifically, you said you need to eat someone. What I’d like to know is whether that’s true. Our bit of blood has already done you a lot of good. If we give you a little blood and meat every day, never mind for now how we are to get it, won’t that help you heal over time?”

Not-Sarah shook her head. “If you feed a starving man a little food every day, you prolong his starvation but don’t cure him. Only copious amounts of food for weeks on end could do that. It’s the same for me.” She shuddered. “God, what I wouldn’t give for a big meal!”

“Does that not feel strange to you? I still hear our mother’s voice in my head whenever I’m about to eat telling me that what distinguishes a lady from a maid is how much she eats. A true lady must always leave the dinner table a little hungry. If her stomach isn’t grumbling an hour after, she has eaten too much.”

Not-Sarah made a face. “Don’t put that in my head, please. Eating a human while trying to suppress Marianne’s and Sarah’s rather negative emotions related to what they view as cannibalism shall be challenging enough without adding in Mother’s distaste for a big meal. I need all the calories I can get.”

“You’re still a growing girl, after all,” Lucy said.

Not-Sarah picked up a pillow that had fallen to the ground and threw it at Lucy’s head.

“Must those calories come from human meat and blood?” Katje asked.

“Yes.”

“Why is that?”

“Why can’t you eat belladonna without dying, yet cows and horses and hares can eat it just fine? What is poison to one species is another’s daily fare. I must have human blood and meat, or I’ll starve,” she said, then yawned till the tears ran down her face.

“We could take a leaf out of the book of the resurrection men and find you a body recently buried,” Lucy said, and marveled at the ease with which she proposed common body snatching. Not-Sarah was easy to talk to. It felt exactly as it had when she and Sarah had spoken. Only, instead of talking about child-rearing or a treatise on moss or the pair of gloves Lucy had embroidered as a gift for Mrs. van Dijk for Saint Nicholas Day, they were talking about cannibalism.

It ought to have felt odder than it did, more horrible. Instead, it felt both easy and natural.

“I can’t eat a rotting body nor diseased meat,” Not-Sarah said.

If all her kind were such picky eaters, it wasn’t to be wondered at why they were going extinct. Lucy said, “Are you picky about what kind of person you put in your mouth, too?”

“How do you mean?”

“You ate my sister and became her. If that’s the case for everyone you consume, I think we should be very careful about your next choice of meal.”

Not-Sarah shook her head. “There’s a difference between merging with a host and eating someone for sustenance. I could eat everyone in this house, and my character would remain unchanged.”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Lucy said. She shuddered and wrapped her hands around the brick in her lap to warm them, but it had cooled.

Not-Sarah saw. She gripped the poker and beat hard at the fire in the grate, releasing a cloud of warmth that smelled vaguely sweet; in a previous life, the logs had been fruit trees. “A girl needs to eat,” she said simply.

This Lucy could not deny. “Someone might die in an accident. The body would be fresh then,” she tried.

“There’s no saying when that might happen though, and I must eat.”

“That only leaves murder,” Lucy said. “I don’t think I can commit murder.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s horrible, and a sin, and unnatural…”

Not-Sarah let out a little laugh. “Unnatural? It happens every day.” Her voice was shrill, the laugh forced, and Lucy knew her sister was getting angry. Unlike Lucy, who had left her tantrums behind, Sarah’s anger was still a hot, passionate, volatile thing.

“I know,” Lucy said gently, “but that doesn’t make the matter any easier for me. If I could…”

Not-Sarah interrupted her. “You’ll be committing murder if you don’t feed me. Have you thought of that? Neglecting to help someone and thereby causing their death makes you responsible.”

Lucy looked away from her sister. Her reflection in the window was frowning. She tried to smooth her brow—her mother had told her that lines on a woman’s face were unbecoming—but the frown remained. She breathed hard on the glass until it misted over, obscuring her.

“Maybe we can find someone who isn’t so bad to kill, like criminals or people who don’t want to live anymore?” Katje piped up.

“How would we find someone like that? We might as well wait for someone around here to die of an accident and keep our hands clean,” Lucy said.

“Clean hands? God, you’re infuriating,” Not-Sarah snarled.

Lucy chose her next words carefully in an attempt to douse the flames of her sister’s fury, though she feared she was already too late. Once her sister got riled up, there was often no placating her. “That was an unfortunate phrase for me to use. I didn’t mean it like that. What I meant is that we shouldn’t be hasty.”

“Not be hasty? Can you hear yourself talking? I need to eat, Lucy, or I’ll die. Do you hear me? I’ll DIE. We can joke around about our mother’s silly ideas regarding food all we want, but that’s the harsh truth. No more miraculous resurrections. Your sister and beloved twin will be gone then, forever.”

“Please don’t fight, my love.” Katje pleaded. She sat trembling on the floor. “Lucy will help you, of course she will. She loves you terribly. You know this.”

They ignored her.

Lucy curled her fingers hard into the flannel wrapped around the brick. Her palms were wet with sweat. “I know that. I’m merely trying to find a way to get you fed without having to resort to murder. It’s not as easily done as you might think, and…”

Not-Sarah talked right over her. Her eye blazed in her face. “Sometimes, you need to get your hands dirty for the things you want. I thought you understood that. I thought you’d be willing to do that for me. You wept over my corpse and said all these pretty words when you thought me dead, all these things you’d do to have me back. Well, here I am, but when push comes to shove, those words are nothing but hot air. Don’t you see your promises don’t mean anything if you’re only willing to help me when it doesn’t inconvenience you?”

That stung horribly, but Lucy knew better than to retort. There was no reasoning with Sarah when she was like this; Lucy had known that ever since she was little. Once her anger had spent itself, things would soon be well again. If she could just sit here and pretend to be of stone, let it wash over her…

Not-Sarah snapped her finger in front of Lucy’s eyes, startling her. “Are you even listening, or do you care so little for me that you can’t even be bothered? A fine sister you make! I’m starting to think you wouldn’t mind me dying.”

Not-Sarah was goading her. Do not rise to it , Lucy told herself, but she couldn’t help it. “How can you say that? If only you’d stop interrupting me, I could explain. I could…”

“I’m not interested in anything you have to say. You know why, Lucy? Because you’re disloyal, and spineless, and utterly weak. You’ve so little strength, so little character, you might as well be only half a person!”

The words were as deliberate and agonizing as a brand. Blood rushed to Lucy’s face, tears to her eyes. She got up, put the brick on the windowsill, and took exaggerated care to smooth her skirts in the hope the color would have left her face by the time she turned around to face her sister. What use was it, though? Not-Sarah’s words had found their mark. No one could wound Lucy like her sister could, and right now, she had wounded her to the quick.

“If that’s what you really think,” Lucy said coolly, “then I don’t see what use it is for me to stay here.”

She made for the door, but Not-Sarah wouldn’t let her. “Don’t go,” she said, and her voice was no longer choking on anger.

“Let me pass,” Lucy said, doing her best not to look her sister in the face.

“Please don’t be like this,” Not-Sarah pleaded.

“Like what?”

“So cold and reserved. I didn’t mean what I said. You know I say the most horrible things when I’m angry, but I never mean them. I’m just so hungry, I think I’m going mad with it. I could tear out dour Magda’s throat or take a bite out of Michael’s cheeks. Sometimes, I think I might even be able to eat you.” She tried to take hold of Lucy, tried to kiss her cheek, but Lucy tore her hands from her grip and averted her face.

“Do what you must,” she said. “Eat the maid, for all I care, or your own feet, but leave me out of it. I’ve always been at your beck and call. No more. It’s brought me nothing but grief.”

“You don’t mean that.” Not-Sarah laughed. “Come. You’re upset by what I said, and that’s fair, but there’s no need to retaliate. I’ve apologized, haven’t I?”

“I do mean it. Sometimes, I think of all the things I might have been and might have done and might have had if I didn’t have you to care for, and it makes me sour with regret and longing,” Lucy said, her words as cold as the ice that bloomed on the window where she had breathed on it.

“Is this about Michael? I knew I should never have let on that I knew you wanted him,” Not-Sarah said.

“Not everything is about Michael!” Lucy snapped.

Not-Sarah laughed bitterly. “But for you, it is! You wanted him, but he chose me over you, and that has made you jealous and spiteful. You blame me for your unhappiness, but all the time you spent pining over my husband, you could’ve used to find some meaning in your life, like I have with my many interests and Katje. You could even have found a husband of your own if only you didn’t lack initiative and perseverance.”

The little voice in Lucy’s head told her to hold her tongue, to leave and let Not-Sarah rot. Everything she’d say now, she’d come to regret bitterly.

But the words stuck in her gullet, and she needed to hack them up or else choke on them.

She took a deep breath and said, “I may be all those things you said about me, but you are greedy and possessive and can’t stand for me to have something for myself. You were a parasite long before one ate your brain.”

She didn’t wait for Not-Sarah to respond, rushing outside, where her sister could not follow.