Page 21 of Blood on Her Tongue
Chapter 21
Lucy whirled around. At the other end of the room, she found Mrs. van Dijk. Her former employer huddled in a corner. She clutched one hand with the other. Both were slick with blood. It covered the front of her blouse, her skirt.
“I only came to tell her goodbye, and to ask her to talk to you, to make you reconsider. She smiled and gripped my fingers. I thought she might kiss my hand, only she didn’t. She put my fingers in her mouth and then she bit me,” she said in a small voice. She looked down at her hand in disbelief, as if to verify that Not-Sarah had indeed ripped her fingers off and she wasn’t imagining it. A little blood spurted from one of the stumps, hitting her in the face. When she looked up at Lucy, the blood had run into one of her eyes, making her blink convulsively.
Lucy knelt next to her. “Let me see,” she said.
Mrs. van Dijk shook her head. Lucy peeled away her remaining fingers to assess the damage done, gritting through the pain in her own two fingers that had gotten caught in Pasja’s collar.
Mrs. van Dijk’s index finger, middle finger, and ring finger from her right hand had been bitten off, the middle finger and ring finger down to the knuckle, but the index finger only partly.
A soft ripping sound behind Lucy, then a crunch.
She’s eating them.
Her stomach twisted with nausea. The pain was as acute as being knifed. She took a deep breath and pressed her hand against her belly to calm the organ, but her breakfast rose mercilessly, burning her esophagus, her tongue, the ribbed roof of her mouth. She forced herself to swallow her sick and focus on Mrs. van Dijk instead. Those fingers couldn’t have been reattached anyway. Better that Not-Sarah eat them. Though how she was to explain where they had gone once it became known her sister had torn them off with her teeth, she didn’t know.
Where were the servants? The dog was making an infernal racket. They must’ve heard. If they didn’t come soon, Michael would fire them all. Another worry for later. First, she had to make sure Mrs. van Dijk didn’t bleed out. Three fingers unorthodoxly amputated was a lesser crime than murder.
“Put your arm around my shoulder and hold up your hand as high as you can. That should slow the bleeding,” Lucy told her. She dug into her pockets and found her pen, a spool of thread, some needles, a folded piece of paper, and a handkerchief. She wound the handkerchief around the stumps. Mrs. van Dijk let out a little shriek and tried to pull away, then slumped, her eyes rolling back into her skull. The eye where the blood had run into it was no longer white but a dark pink. Lucy bound the stumps as well as she was able, but the blood still came, soaking the fabric. She pulled a blue ribbon from around her wrist and used that to try tying off what remained of the fingers to slow the flow of blood.
Suddenly Magda was beside her. She propped Mrs. van Dijk up with her shoulder, then held Mrs. van Dijk’s right hand steady. Lucy wove the ribbon around her stumps and remaining fingers, tying it around the wrist to keep it in place. Still the blood came through.
“We must cauterize the wound,” she said.
“Shouldn’t we let the doctor do that?” Magda asked, frowning.
“Probably, but it’ll be a while yet until he can get here. We can’t risk Mrs. van Dijk losing any more blood. Go run down and send someone to fetch him, then come straight back up.”
“All right.” Magda straightened herself and looked at Not-Sarah. “You stay right there,” she ordered. Magda spoke loudly and slowly, as if Not-Sarah were deaf, or very small, or just plain stupid.
When she took off, Lucy looked around the mess on the ground for Sarah’s letter opener. Her own fingers had turned blue and would hardly bend. “They’re going to crucify you for this,” she said. She didn’t have to raise her voice; Pasja had ceased barking and now merely stood growling, her eyes tracking every move Not-Sarah made.
“I know,” Not-Sarah whispered. “I knew it even as I did it, but I couldn’t stop myself. I was so hungry… Have you never done something you knew was stupid and you’d come to regret later, but it was stronger than you?”
Lucy remembered the press of Michael’s teeth as he nipped at her earlobe, the wild, animal smell of him as they rutted, his guttural groan when he spent himself. “Yes, but not as stupid as this. How am I ever going to explain this away?” She looked up. Not-Sarah still balanced precariously on the headboard, her eye trained on Pasja.
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
“Stop looking that dog in the eye. Don’t you know that’s an act of aggression? She’s already this close to ripping out your throat. The last thing I need right now is to lose you, too.” Though that was inevitable now, wasn’t it? There was only so much that could be explained away and otherwise hushed up.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I wouldn’t have done it if I knew you’d help me,” Not-Sarah said, but her voice lacked conviction.
Tears of frustration and anger temporarily blurred Lucy’s vision. She shook her head hard to get rid of them. “Of course I was going to help you, you stupid dolt!” she snapped, her voice high and thick with emotion. “I may at times feel like only half a person when compared to you, but I’m not disloyal, and I’m more than willing to help you even if it inconveniences me! You are my sister, aren’t you?”
As she spoke the words, she knew them to be true. If she had thought of Not-Sarah as a mere parasite, their fight wouldn’t have hurt as much as it did. Only her sister could injure her so, and she could because she had Sarah’s thoughts and feelings and memories, and what was a person if not an agglomeration of those?
“Do you mean that?” Not-Sarah asked, her face torn between hope and doubt.
Lucy nodded grimly. For better or for worse, cannibalistic needs or no, the rotting woman in front of Lucy was her sister now, and she’d do anything to protect her.
A tear ran down Not-Sarah’s face, creating a clear track through the blood drying into rust on her chin and cheeks.
Lucy resisted the urge to go dry her tears with the hem of her skirt. Instead, she said, “Not that it matters now. You’re in all likelihood beyond help. Fuck!” The last word, she screeched. She gave the writing desk a hard kick in frustration. Then she forced herself to be calm and reasonable again and look for the letter opener. She found it under one of the diaries. It was a small blade, beautifully wrought; Michael had bought it for her sister on their honeymoon in Florence. Lucy heated it over the fire with a pair of prongs, then dropped it on the stones of the hearth, wrapped the handle in a piece of her skirt, and took the searing thing to Mrs. van Dijk, who had started to come around.
“I’m sorry, but this will hurt. Try not to move,” Lucy said, and before the other woman could do much more than blink, Lucy pressed the blade against the stub that was left of her ring finger. The raw meat sizzled as it burned. Mrs. van Dijk howled and tried to yank her hand back, but Lucy had her wrist clamped between her knees.
“I know, I know,” she muttered as she moved on to the next finger, then the next. The smell of cooked meat made her stomach contract.
Alarmed by Mrs. van Dijk’s screams, Pasja began to bark again. The dog seemed torn between keeping Not-Sarah cornered and flying at Lucy’s throat. She opted for the latter and might have succeeded, had Michael not run into the room at that moment. He grabbed the dog by the scruff of her neck as she streaked past him. As he hauled her out of the room by the bruised flesh of her neck, Pasja yelped and writhed, the whites of her eyes showing.
Mrs. van Dijk tore her hand from between Lucy’s knees and struggled to her feet, using the wall as support, smearing it with blood. She grabbed her cane with her good hand and beat Michael with it. “Don’t hurt my Pasja!” she wailed.
Michael raised an arm to defend himself. “Stop beating me, woman! Can’t you see the dog is rabid? It attacked you!”
“Pasja didn’t bite me, you fool! Your wife did!” Mrs. van Dijk screamed.
I should’ve let her bleed out. I could’ve blamed it on the dog then. Why didn’t I think of that?
The thought cut through all else like a blade. Lucy tried to push it away as she grabbed the cane and ripped it from Mrs. van Dijk’s hand, then embraced her to keep her from falling, but thoughts could hardly unthink themselves.
Michael threw Pasja out of the room and shut the door. He helped ease Mrs. van Dijk down, then looked at her mangled hand. “Give me that pitcher over there and tear off some strips from the bedclothes,” he commanded.
Oh, but it was a relief not to be in charge anymore! Lucy did as he asked, then washed Mrs. van Dijk’s face and throat and hand for her. The linen soon took on shades of pink and red and brown.
“I can help. Tell me what I must do, and I’ll do it,” Not-Sarah said softly.
Michael looked at her over his shoulder, his face a fiendish mask. “Stay where you are, and shut your mouth!” he snarled.
“Don’t talk to my sister like that!” Lucy said.
Michael locked eyes with her. “Don’t you start as well,” he said, and his voice was soft and dangerous.
She looked at the ground and was silent, hating herself, hating him.
Pasja kept whining and pawing at the door, her breath coming in great sighs as she sniffed at the crack under it. By the time Arthur arrived, a servant had taken her away. Two other servants helped Mrs. van Dijk to a different room where the light was better, which Arthur needed to more accurately assess the damage done to her hand. Katje was roped into helping him. Before being led away, she looked helplessly at Not-Sarah, her eyes brimming with tears, though from fear or sadness or shock, Lucy didn’t know.
Lucy and Not-Sarah were sent to the Silver Room, allowing the servants to clean the scene of the crime. Lucy washed her hands and face, then dabbed at the dried blood on Not-Sarah’s chin with a piece of flannel, careful not to damage the skin. They couldn’t speak; Magda had come to sit with them at Arthur’s instruction. She had locked the door and held the key.
So they don’t trust Not-Sarah to be alone with anyone anymore, and they fear she might try and escape, Lucy thought as she dipped the cloth into the basin and wrung it out, then brought it to Not-Sarah’s face. She even had blood behind her ears.
Not-Sarah fit her hand around Lucy’s wrist and leaned hard into the palm that cupped her cheek, her eye closed. Her fingers no longer felt like ice. They were merely cool now. Her lip began to tremble.
I won’t let them take you away , Lucy mouthed.
“You can’t stop it. They’re coming for me, and they’ll take me away, and you’ll never see me again. Whatever place they’ll take me to, I shan’t leave it, not even when I’m dead,” Not-Sarah murmured. A tear got caught in her lashes.
“Let them try to take you away from me! Let them try, and they shall see the stuff I’m made of,” Lucy growled.
She rested their foreheads together, then stroked a line across her sister’s cheekbone with her thumb.
Let them fucking try.