The Drowning Girl Read online

  Praise for Caitlín R. Kiernan

  “Ms. Kiernan is a cartographer of lost worlds and constantly writes about thresholds—those harsh spaces in between two realities that she relishes—being crossed, if not transgressed.”

  —The New York Times

  THE DROWNING GIRL

  “With The Drowning Girl, Caitlín R. Kiernan moves firmly into the new vanguard, still being formed, of our best and most artful authors of the gothic and fantastic—those capable of writing fiction of deep moral and artistic seriousness. This subtle, dark, in-folded novel, through which flickers a weird, insistent genius, is like nothing I’ve ever read before. The Drowning Girl is a stunning work of literature, and if I may be so blunt, Caitlín R. Kiernan’s masterpiece.”

  —Peter Straub

  “In this novel, Caitlín R. Kiernan turns the ghost story inside out and transforms it. This is a story about how stories are told, about what they reveal and what they hide, but is no less intense or suspenseful because of that. It’s a tale of real and unreal hauntings that quickly takes you down deep and only slowly brings you up for air.”

  —Brian Evanson, author of Last Days

  “The Drowning Girl features all those elements of Caitlín R. Kiernan’s writing that readers have come to expect—a prose style of wondrous luminosity, an atmosphere of languorous melancholy, and an inexplicable mixture of aching beauty and clutching terror. It is a ghost story, but also a book about the writing of ghost stories. It is about falling in love, falling out of love, and wondering whether madness is a gift or a curse. It is one of those very few novels that one wishes would never end.”

  —S. T. Joshi, author of I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft

  “This is a masterpiece. It deserves to be read in and out of genre for a long, long time.”

  —Elizabeth Bear, author of Grail

  “Kiernan pins out the traditional memoir on her worktable and metamorphoses it into something wholly different and achingly familiar, more alien, more difficult, more beautiful, and more true.”

  —Catherynne M. Valente, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

  “Caitlín R. Kiernan is a master of dark fantasy and this may be her finest work. Incisive, beautiful, and as perfectly crafted as a puzzle box, The Drowning Girl took my breath away.”

  —Holly Black, New York Times bestselling author of Red Glove

  “A beautifully written, startlingly original novel that rings the changes upon classics by the likes of Shirley Jackson, H. P. Lovecraft, and Peter Straub, The Drowning Girl brings Caitlín R. Kiernan to the front ranks of contemporary dark fiction. Chilling and unforgettable, with a narrator whose voice will linger in your head long after midnight.”

  —Elizabeth Hand, author of Illyria

  “The Drowning Girl is a brilliant work. I am in awe of Caitlín R. Kiernan and her ability to craft sentences with a spiderweb’s elegance. By the end of this novel, you will question the boundaries between dream and reality, the ghostly and the corporeal, madness and sanity.”

  —Benjamin Percy

  “If Shirley Jackson had ever discovered postmodernism, the result might be a little like Caitlín R. Kiernan’s tour de force of a novel. Dense, allusive, eerie, funny, and frightening, The Drowning Girl takes readers into a hallucinatory thicket of desire and mysteries—guided by the voice of one India Morgan Phelps, one of the most compelling unreliable narrators I’ve encountered in quite some time. A wild, strange ride awaits those who open this book.”

  —Dan Chaon

  THE RED TREE

  NOMINATED FOR THE SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD

  NOMINATED FOR THE WORLD FANTASY AWARD

  “You may find your mind returning frequently to this tale, attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable, and you may find yourself, like me, bowing to Kiernan’s artistry and her ability to create Mystery. This is her most personal, ambitious, and accomplished work yet.”

  —Locus

  “Kiernan’s chiller provides a strange and vastly compelling tale on a New England haunting, and captures its spirit unnervingly well. Kiernan’s still-developing talent makes this gloriously atmospheric tale a fabulous piece of work.”

  —Booklist

  “Dark fantasy specialist Kiernan delivers a creepy and engaging tale.…Horror fans will recognize the familiar Lovecraftian gothic horror elements—indeed, Lovecraft, Poe, and other writers are explicitly referenced in the text—but Kiernan’s prose is thoroughly modern…a multileveled novel that will appeal to fans of classic and modern horror.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  DAUGHTER OF HOUNDS

  “A thrilling page-turner that also features the depth, complexity, and unflinching willingness to contemplate the dark that we’ve come to expect from her books.”

  —Locus

  “A hell-raising dark fantasy replete with ghouls, changelings, and eerie intimations of a macabre otherworld.…The complex plot springs abundant surprises…on its juggernaut roll to a memorable finale…an effective mix of atmosphere and action.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  MURDER OF ANGELS

  “In Murder of Angels, the darkness is poetic, the fantasy is gritty, and the real-world sections are rooted in deep and true emotions. Lyrical and earthy, Murder of Angels is that rare book that gets everything right.”

  —Charles de Lint

  “[Kiernan’s] punk-rock prose, and the brutally realistic portrayal of addiction and mental illness, makes Angels fly.”

  —Entertainment Weekly (A-)

  LOW RED MOON

  “Low Red Moon fully unleashes the hounds of horror, and the read is eerie and breathtaking.”

  —Irish Literary Review

  THRESHOLD

  WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL

  HORROR GUILD AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL

  “Threshold is a bonfire proclaiming Caitlín R. Kiernan’s elevated position in the annals of contemporary literature. It is an exceptional novel you mustn’t miss. Highly recommended.”

  —Cemetery Dance

  SILK

  WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL HORROR

  GUILD AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL

  FINALIST FOR THE BRAM STOKER AWARD

  FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL

  NOMINATED FOR THE BRITISH FANTASY AWARD

  “A remarkable novel…deeply, wonderfully, magnificently nasty.”

  —Neil Gaiman

  “A daring vision and an extraordinary achievement.”

  —Clive Barker

  NOVELS BY CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN

  Silk

  Threshold

  Low Red Moon

  Murder of Angels

  Daughter of Hounds

  The Red Tree

  The Drowning Girl: A Memoir

  THE

  DROWNING

  GIRL

  A Memoir

  CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN

  A ROC BOOK

  ROC

  Published by New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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- 110 017, India

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, March 2012

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Caitlín R. Kiernan, 2012

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Kiernan, Caitlín R.

  The drowning girl: a memoir/Caitlín R. Kiernan.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-57719-6

  1. Schizophrenics—Fiction. 2. Self-actualization (Psychology) in women—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3561.I358D76 2012

  813′.54—dc23 2011044675

  Set in Sabon • Designed by Elke Sigal

  Printed in the United States of America

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For Peter Straub, master of the ghost story.

  And for Imp.

  In Memory of Elizabeth Tillman Aldridge

  (1970–1995)

  This is the book it is,

  which means it may not be the book

  you expect it to be.

  CRK

  There’s always a siren,

  Singing you to shipwreck.

  “THERE THERE (THE BONEY KING OF NOWHERE),”

  RADIOHEAD

  In the forest is a monster.

  It has done terrible things.

  So in the wood it’s hiding,

  And this is the song it sings.

  “WHO WILL LOVE ME NOW?” PHILIP RIDLEY

  Stories shift their shape.

  “PRETTY MONSTERS,” KELLY LINK

  THE DROWNING GIRL

  A Memoir

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  Back Pages

  Author’s Note

  Author’s Biography

  1

  “I’m going to write a ghost story now,” she typed.

  “A ghost story with a mermaid and a wolf,” she also typed.

  I also typed.

  My name is India Morgan Phelps, though almost everyone I know calls me Imp. I live in Providence, Rhode Island, and when I was seventeen, my mother died in Butler Hospital, which is located at 345 Blackstone Boulevard, right next to Swan Point Cemetery, where many notable people are buried. The hospital used to be called the Butler Hospital for the Insane, but somewhere along the way “for the Insane” was dropped. Maybe it was bad for business. Maybe the doctors or trustees or board of directors or whoever makes decisions about such things felt crazy people would rather not be put away in an insane asylum that dares to admit it’s an insane asylum, that truth in advertising is a detriment. I don’t know, but my mother, Rosemary Anne, was committed to Butler Hospital because she was insane. She died there, at the age of fifty-six, instead of dying somewhere else, because she was insane. It’s not like she didn’t know she was insane, and it’s not like I didn’t know, too, and if anyone were to ask me, dropping “for the Insane” is like dropping “burger” from Burger King because hamburgers aren’t as healthy as salads. Or dropping “donuts” from Dunkin’ Donuts because doughnuts cause cavities and make you fat.

  My grandmother Caroline—my mother’s mother, who was born in 1914, and lost her husband in World War II—she was also a crazy woman, but she died in her own bed in her own house down in Wakefield. No one put her away in a hospital, or tried to pretend she wasn’t crazy. Maybe people don’t notice it so much, once you get old, or only older. Caroline turned on the gas and shut all the windows and doors and went to sleep, and in her suicide note she thanked my mother and my aunts for not sending her away to a hospital for the mentally insane, where she’d have been forced to live even after she couldn’t stand it anymore. Being alive, I mean. Or being crazy. Whichever, or both.

  It’s sort of ironic that my aunts are the ones who had my mother committed. I suppose my father would have done it, but he left when I was ten, and no one’s sure where he went. He left my mother because she was insane, so I like to think he didn’t live very long after he left us. When I was a girl, I used to lie awake in bed at night, imagining awful ways my father might have met his demise, all manner of just deserts for having dumped us and run away because he was too much of a coward to stick around for me and my mother. At one point, I even made a list of various unpleasant ends that may have befallen my father. I kept it in a stenographer’s pad, and I kept the pad in an old suitcase under my bed, because I didn’t want my mother to see it. “I hope my father died of venereal disease, after his dick rotted off” was at the top of the list, and was followed by lots of obvious stuff—car accidents, food poisoning, cancer—but I grew more imaginative as time went by, and the very last thing I put on the list (#316) was “I hope my father lost his mind and died alone and frightened.” I still have that notebook, but now it’s on a shelf, not hidden away in an old suitcase.

  So, yeah. My mother, Rosemary Anne, died in Butler Hospital. She committed suicide in Butler Hospital, though she was on suicide watch at the time. She was in bed, in restraints, and there was a video camera in her room. But she still pulled it off. She was able to swallow her tongue and choke to death before any of the nurses or orderlies noticed what was happening. The death certificate says she died of a seizure, but I know that’s not what happened. Too many times when I visited her, she’d tell me she wanted to die, and usually I told her I’d rather she lived and get better and come home, but that I wouldn’t be angry if that’s really what she had to do, if she had to die. If there came a day or night when she just couldn’t stand it any longer. She said she was sorry, but that she was glad I understood, that she was grateful that I understood. I’d take her candy and cigarettes and books, and we’d have conversations about Anne Sexton and Diane Arbus and about Virginia Woolf filling her pockets with stones and walking into the River Ouse. I never told Rosemary’s doctors about any of these conversations. I also didn’t tell them about the day, a month before she choked on her tongue, that she gave me a letter quoting Virginia Woolf’s suicide note: “What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that—everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness.” I keep that thumbtacked to the wall in the room where I
paint, which I guess is my studio, though I usually just think of it as the room where I paint.

  I didn’t realize I was also insane, and that I’d probably always been insane, until a couple of years after Rosemary died. It’s a myth that crazy people don’t know they’re crazy. Many of us are surely as capable of epiphany and introspection as anyone else, maybe more so. I suspect we spend far more time thinking about our thoughts than do sane people. Still, it simply hadn’t occurred to me, that the way I saw the world meant that I had inherited “the Phelps Family Curse” (to quote my aunt Elaine, who has a penchant for melodramatic turns of phrase). Anyway, when it finally occurred to me that I wasn’t sane, I went to see a therapist at Rhode Island Hospital. I paid her a lot of money, and we talked (mostly I talked while she listened), and the hospital did some tests. When all was said and done, the psychiatrist told me I suffered from disorganized schizophrenia, which is also called hebephrenia, for Heˉbeˉ, the Greek goddess of youth. She—the psychiatrist—didn’t tell me that last part; I looked it up myself. Hebephrenia is named after the Greek goddess of youth because it tends to manifest at puberty. I didn’t bother to point out that if the way I thought and saw the world meant I was schizophrenic, the crazy had started well before puberty. Anyway, later, after more tests, the diagnosis was changed to paranoid schizophrenia, which isn’t named after a Greek god, or any god that I’m aware of.