Page 24 of Blood on Her Tongue

Chapter 24

When Lucy finished reading, she wanted to crumple the letter into a ball and throw it in the dirty water at her feet. She resisted the urge. Instead, she stood, her teeth gritted against the pain, and dropped it onto the chair, then wiped her hands on her skirt to get rid of the feeling of the oily paper against her skin.

“Remember how you said that journalist was making things up because Arthur would never share sensitive medical information with such a hack writer? I think you should revise that opinion,” she said coldly.

“I disagree. A doctor may write to another doctor and ask him for his opinion without harming the confidentiality he owes his patient. In this case, it would’ve been better if he had broken his oath and told me. Then Mrs. van Dijk might still have ten fingers.”

“All the same, you can’t send Sarah to an asylum.”

“What else am I supposed to do? Hush it up and hope she won’t do anything crazy ever again? That’s what I did after she brought our daughter’s rotting corpse home, and see what good that did!”

“I know. Of course I do, but please, Michael, please don’t send my sister to an asylum. If you do, she’ll die.”

He laughed, and in that moment, Lucy understood exactly what Not-Sarah had meant when she had said he could be unbearably cruel. “Could you try for, I don’t know, maybe five minutes—no, make that three, five is too ambitious a goal—to not be so goddamn dramatic? This is not the Middle Ages, Lucy! Asylums are places of refuge for the insane, places where they get treated, not places of abuse.”

Tears sprang up; she couldn’t help it. “But m-my Aunt Adelheid…” she stammered.

“Ah yes, your poor Aunt Adelheid! She died in an asylum, therefore every single asylum on Earth must be dangerous and horrible. God, woman, somewhere in that pretty head of yours must reside a brain. Use it, will you?” he thundered.

She couldn’t speak. She looked away, trying not to cry, but that just made it inevitable that she would.

She hated him.

She hated how he treated her sister. She hated those two extra teeth that grew behind the others. She hated his sulking, his intense self-pity. She hated his beautiful hands. She hated his rigid opinions on what was right and what was wrong, what was proper and what was not. She hated how her body smoldered under his touch. She hated how she had loved him, how she had lusted after him, how he had so easily persuaded her to betray Sarah.

She hated, and loathed, and detested.

Everything that had once attracted her to him repelled her now. Such was the force of this feeling that made her body burn from sole to crown. It raged within her, not the sort of sickly flame that would flicker in the slightest draft but an inferno, the sort that might light people on fire like candles and reduce them to twisted corpses if they got too close, if one let it.

And she’d let it.

She wanted to see Michael burn.

“Besides, who are you to meddle?” he raged on. His cheeks were flushed, and spittle flew from his mouth. “If I decide to have my wife committed to the excellent care of a private institution, then there’s no one who can stop me. A man must keep his own counsel or he’s no man at all, goddamn!” He slammed his fist on the desk, making her and the papers on top of it jump. He dragged a hand through his black curls, then moved to stand at the window. His breathing was fast and loud.

She could see the exact moment Michael saw the spider from his reflection in the glass. His mouth twisted with revulsion. He unfastened the window and threw it open, tearing the web to shreds, and killed the spider by crushing it with the heel of his hand.

Lucy hated him even more.

When he spoke again, his voice was strained with all the emotion he tried to suppress. “You must see this is the only solution. At this moment, she is a danger to herself and a danger to society. She must be placed where she can do the least amount of harm.”

“I’m telling you she’ll die if you send her away,” Lucy managed to choke out. Either the fear would kill Not-Sarah, or she’d starve.

He turned around, his eyes flashing. “Then she’ll die. I’ve suffered enough!” he said.

“I won’t survive losing her again!”

He rubbed his eyes hard. His brows drawing together gouged deep lines into his forehead. “Don’t dramatize, please. It’s hard enough as it is. I’ve got my own health and sanity to consider, too, Lucy. These past few weeks have drained and pained me.”

“If you send her away, I’ll die .” Her throat felt as if it were laced with thorns; each breath was agony. She balled her hands into fists, letting the pain of forcing her bruised fingers to bend ground her. Her nails dug into her palms; she hadn’t had time to file them yet.

“Then so be it. My mind is made up. Sarah will go wherever I deign to send her. She is my wife, and wives must submit to their husbands,” he snapped.

I shall kill you first.

The thought came clear and cold, like ice water running down her spine. She shuddered, briefly closing her eyes. Her mind was empty in a way it had never been. When she opened her eyes again, Michael was staring at her.

“Oh, Lucy,” he said. His face had softened, as if someone had wiped at a wet window with a sleeve and blurred the glass. “You must see there’s nothing else we can do, my sweet. I can’t in good conscience leave Sarah where she is. It wouldn’t do to inflict such a burden of care on you. Besides, no matter how much you love her, you can’t guarantee there shan’t be another incident, and if there is, it shan’t be on your head but on mine. Any reasonable man can see this is my only option.”

I shall kill you first.

He came to her, then brushed the tear tracks from her cheeks with his thumbs. He had a dark scab just below the last joint of his left thumb; it scraped painfully against her cheek.

“And when you think about it,” he went on, “wouldn’t it be better if she died? She suffers so unbearably, with no hope of respite nor relief. Oh, I know you think she’ll recover her wits at some point, but don’t you see that would be worse? She shall discover what she has done—there’s no keeping such a thing from her—and it shall torment her, as shall the knowledge that she might at any time fall into madness again and repeat the horrors she has already inflicted. I imagine death must be a mercy to such a suffering soul as Sarah. I know it’ll be hard on you, Lucy. It’ll be hard on me, too, but we must remember that to force her to keep living just because we can’t stand to lose her is both cruel and selfish.”

I shall kill you first.

She couldn’t utter a sound, but that didn’t seem to bother him. He tilted her face up, studied her swollen eyes. “Your eyes are all red, you poor thing,” he said, then blew on them. His breath smelled of smoke. It made her eyes sting worse, and her lids blinked rapidly of their own volition.

She didn’t resist him when he began to kiss her.

“Oh, Lucy,” he murmured, “I have a need of you. I know sending my wife away is the only right choice, but that doesn’t mean it comes easily to me. To be the sane one, the responsible one, the one others look to for guidance, well, it’s a heavy burden. I’ve been bred to carry it, but it’s a heavy burden all the same. I have a need of your comfort tonight more than I ever have before. I imagine you, too, must be desirous of comfort. Let’s find it in each other, my sweet little fuck.”

He slung an arm around Lucy to pull her body flush against his, and it was like being wrapped in winding sheets. His kisses turned hard; she felt the press of his teeth behind his fleshy lips. He wound a hand in her hair and held the other at her throat, his thumb digging into the tender spot where her lower jaw curved upwards to be jointed with the upper one.

All the while, she stood in his arms like a cold thing, like a dead thing. His touch would have enflamed her with passion once; now it merely stoked the fires of her hatred. He had to die. There was no alternative she could see that would allow her to keep Not-Sarah out of the asylum, and she would damn herself before she would let anyone take her sister from her again.

But how to go about it?

If you are ever attacked, remember that eye gouging is extremely effective at incapacitating an attacker. For someone as small and slight as you, it’s probably the best way to defend yourself. Thrust hard and thrust deep. You must crush the eyeball or at least cause severe hemorrhaging if you are to take out your assailant.

She brought her hands to his face. Her heart stuttered in her chest and her throat, still sore from the onslaught of emotions she had experienced throughout their conversation, now felt tight and parched. Her mouth, too, was dry, her tongue lying inside like a piece of leather. How could Michael stand kissing her? Didn’t he feel as if he were kissing a corpse? If the bog woman had still had her tongue by the time they’d found her, it might have felt like that.

Perhaps he didn’t notice, or he didn’t care. His standards were never particularly high when he was in heat, and he was definitely in heat now, the way he was grinding against her, his cock straining against his trousers, his breath punching out of him. She needed to act, or she’d have to couple with him again. Somehow, she did not think he’d stop even if he found her slit was as dry as her mouth, and dry she was.

“Slowly,” she whispered, and the tightness of her throat made her voice husky, sensual, even. She put a hand at his throat, pressed hard against his Adam’s apple to get him to stop pawing at her. “Slowly,” she repeated. She kissed his throat, doing it mechanically, feeling nothing but the thundering of the blood in her veins and the nerves tearing her insides apart. He hadn’t shaved very well; his throat had large patches of stubble scraping her lips raw.

“God, Lucy, the things you do to me. It has always been you, do you know that? You I should have chosen. You I should have married,” he groaned. He leaned against the desk, his beautiful hands gripping the wood till the tendons stood out. A vein writhed just under the surface of his skin like a snake. Funny, the things one noticed even when one was sick and anxious because one was about to murder someone…

She placed the tips of her thumbs over his eyes, gently, gently, the eyelids flickering at her touch, his mouth twisting into a smile—that’s how gentle she was, touching them as if she loved him, that is, barely touching them at all, for she only had one chance to do this right and should position her fingers just so…

She thrust her thumbs hard into his eyes.

She had expected it to be harder, somehow. Perhaps she and her sister had a particular affinity for bursting eyeballs. It was, she thought hysterically, as easy as puncturing a grape with her finger. First, there was the resistance of the cornea trying desperately to keep the eye whole, but once that had ruptured under the pressure of her nails, her thumbs sank into the jelly of his eyeballs just fine.

For a heartbeat—though it felt much longer, almost unbearably so—nothing happened. He stood there, Lucy’s thumbs up to the joint into his eyes, and took it in silence.

Perhaps he’s a parasite, too.

The thought flashed through her mind, but there was no time for another to follow it, because at that point, Michael found his voice and screamed.

She had only heard him scream once before, when he was told Lucille had died. That had been a scream of grief. This was a scream of pain, and of rage, and of betrayal.

She had known it was coming, but it startled her all the same, so much so that she took a step back, extracting her thumbs from his sockets.

His hands flew to his face. There he encountered Lucy’s hands. He managed to clasp her left wrist, squeezing with such force that she felt the bones of her arm buckle. “My eyes! You fucking bitch!” he howled. “You scratched out my fucking eyes!”

She tried to pull away, but though her hands were slick with blood and other fluids, his grip held. “Let me go!” she screamed.

“You bitch!” he roared, throwing a punch. It hit her in the eye, the flesh and bone still tender from Magda’s slap, and the pain was both immediate and sickening. She stumbled. He raised his fist to hit her again. In a moment of pure instinct, she jabbed her free hand into his face, raking it with her nails. One of her fingers struck true, tearing his eyelid to shreds and ripping more jelly from his ruined eyeball.

This time, Michael didn’t roar.

He groaned, then crumpled.

Lucy tore her hand from his grip and dashed behind the desk, clenching her teeth against the screaming pain of her feet. Her heart was pounding, and her breaths came in ragged gasps. Her wrist throbbed, the pain worse than that of her eye, which felt hot and swollen. She didn’t look to see how badly he had mangled her wrist; she didn’t dare take her eyes off Michael for a moment. He had already overcome his fainting spell and was sitting up, moving his head from left to right as if to look for her even though there was no chance of him still being able to see.

There was simply not much left of his eyes.

He swung his head from side to side, his nostrils flaring, as if trying to sniff her out. That, more than anything else, terrified her. His head snapped to the side. And he lunged, his arms windmilling as he tried to take hold of her. She hadn’t been where he’d thought she was, and he fell hard, his jaws snapping shut.

“You crazy cunt! Where are you? WHERE ARE YOU? I’m going to kill you, you hear?!” he raged. The words came out slurred, as if he were holding a bit of drink in his mouth and trying not to swallow. A little blood mixed with saliva dribbled from between his lips, and she realized he must have bitten his tongue when he’d fallen and his mouth was filling with blood.

He flung his arms this way and that, trying to find her. She stood as still as she could, trying to get her breathing under control so as not to give away her position. She didn’t think he could hear much over his sobbing and raging and spitting, but she didn’t want to find out.

I should’ve pressed down past the occipital bone to damage the nerves there. That would’ve killed him , she thought. Too late for that now. If she came within reach of him, he’d strangle her or bash her head against the flagstones till they were splattered with her brains.

And she’d come within reach of him. Of that, there could be no doubt. The surgery was small after all, with almost no places to hide, not even from a blind man. If she could get in reach of the back door, she might be able to flee into the garden, and that way out into the street and out of his reach.

Only, she couldn’t leave him alive.

Her sister wasn’t safe unless he was dead, and neither was Lucy; she couldn’t imagine a single scenario in which she could justify blinding him and be believed, at least not while he was living and able to contradict her.

Meanwhile, Michael was still looking for her, crawling through the room. He knocked into the desk with his shoulder. A stack of journals tumbled to the ground, hitting him on the head and back. He grasped at them, crumpling them in his fists as he gnashed his teeth in rage. Either he was beyond pain, or the pain in his head was all-encompassing, because he bit his lips to shreds but didn’t seem to notice. The blood trickled down his chin and stained his cravat. In the faint light of the lamp, it looked as if he were spewing ink.

The pen , she thought.

Her hands flew to her pockets. Here was that spool of thread, and there that wad of paper she still didn’t remember putting there. Needles, some pins, and then the smooth case of the fountain pen Sarah had bought for her, the one with the split nib that doubled everything, just as they had been doubled in the womb. Lucy pulled it from her pocket, then took off the cap. It was warm from where it had lain against her thigh, feeling almost like a living thing.

She threw the cap against Michael’s head, where it tangled in his curls. He snatched it from his hair and tried to crush it between his fingers. He was beyond words now, grunting and growling and groaning.

Lucy took her chance. As quietly as she could, she climbed on the desk. Her gore-smeared hands almost made her slip on the polished wooden surface, but the bandages on her feet were rough, and that helped. She crouched there, holding the pen aloft so she could strike straightaway.

“Michael,” she said.

He looked up at the sound of her voice, exposing his throat. Once, she had loved that throat. How she had kissed it, scraped her teeth over the bulge of his Adam’s apple, rubbed her face against the stubble that sprung up during the day. It had seemed like such a common miracle to her, the way his throat could be smooth in the morning and rough as sandpaper by nightfall. He had never grown out his beard, having his manservant shave it each morning. How she had imagined doing it for him: stropping the knife, then scraping it over his skin, smelling the soap and desire thick around them.

Lucy fell upon him, aiming for the artery that wriggled in his throat with every spurt of blood being pumped through. He hadn’t expected this and toppled under her weight, which helped to drive the pen in deeply. The nib snapped when it hit bone. She felt it more than she heard it, this soft jolt that didn’t travel beyond her fingers.

For a moment, nothing happened. She lay on top of him. He didn’t move but still breathed. She pushed herself away from him, crawled to the chair, then dragged herself up. Michael swallowed wetly. She pulled up her legs, rested her chin on her knees, and studied him.

He lay on his back, his eyes ruinous caverns, the pen sticking straight up. He felt his throat with unsteady hands, encountered the pen, shied away from it, then gripped it after all and tried to pull it out. It was too slippery. He kept trying to grip it, then yank it out, but could not. Again he swallowed; again the sound was labored and wet. His swallowing caused the pen to move. Blood welled around it, then ran down the side of his neck. Finally, he shook his sleeve over his hand and grabbed the pen. This time it came when he pulled.

A jet of blood spouted from the wound. Lucy got caught in the spray. It rained down on her, hot and salty, but only for a few seconds. She wiped the worst of it away with her skirt, making sure to keep the muddied hem away from her eyes, then watched Michael bleed out.

He had pressed his hand hard against the cut. The blood spurted from between his fingers in time with his heartbeat. Eventually, it slowed to a trickle. By then, he had lost the strength to keep his hand clapped over the wound. It lay limp in the spreading puddle of blood, which soaked into the carpet and ran down the seams of the flagstones in small rivulets.

I should’ve brought a flask and caught some for Not-Sarah , Lucy thought. She had to laugh then, softly, hoarsely. Soon the laughter turned to sobs, but that didn’t last long either. By the time Arthur came home, she was quiet.