Alabaster Read online

  Alabaster

  Caitlin R. Kiernan

  A collection of stories

  An albino girl wanders the sun-scorched backroads of a south Georgia summer, following the bidding of an angel or perhaps only voices in her head, searching out and slaying ancient monsters who have hidden themselves away in the lonely places of the world. Caitlín R. Kiernan first introduced Dancy in the pages of her award-winning second novel, Threshold (2001), then went on to write several more short stories and a novella about this unlikely heroine, each a piece of what has become an epic dark fantasy narrative. Alabaster finally collects all these tales into one volume, illustrated by Ted Naifeh (Gloomcookie, How Loathsome, Courtney Crumrin, Polly and the Pirates, etc.).

  Caitlin R. Kiernan

  Alabaster

  A book in the Dancy Flammarion series, 2006

  Preface

  I cannot now recall where or when or why I first conceived of Dancy Flammarion. But then I can say the same thing about almost all of my characters, regardless of how fond of them I may (or may not) be. Almost inevitably, that moment when they initially occur to me is lost. Only later, after a story or two, after a novel or three, do those original thoughts take on any significance, and by then it's too late and I've forgotten. Hindsight's a bitch.

  But the earliest mention of Dancy in my notes for Threshold is dated September 16th, 1998. I describe her simply as a "creepy little 'Boo Radley' albino girl." Also, I know that I first came across the name Dancy that summer, while I was collecting fossils from the Upper Cretaceous of western Alabama. If you look at a map of the state-if you look very closely-you can probably find the "town" of Dancy on State Highway 17, a few miles east of the Mississippi line in southern Pickens County. It had a post office, once upon a time, and might have been named for Dr. Edwin C. Dancy (b. 1810). I was there one blistering afternoon in July or August, and the name stuck in my head, as names often do, and so maybe it's fair to say that's where Dancy Flammarion began.

  Now, more than eight years later, I've written a novel, four short stories, and a novella about Dancy, though I'd genuinely never intended to go back to her after finishing with Threshold. But in the summer of 2001, while compiling material for Trilobite: The Writing of Threshold, I was glancing through the novel and lingered on this passage from the end of Chapter Eight:

  This is the ravenous stone face that Dancy's dreamt of so many times, the same yawning, toothless mouth and those vacant, hollow eyes. Face of the thing that killed her mother and the vengeful ebony thing that came to take its body back into the swamp, the face of the smiling man from the Greyhound bus and the auburn-haired woman in Waycross with stubby, writhing tentacles where her breasts should have been, the pretty boy in Savannah who showed her a corked amber bottle that held three thousand ways to suffer, three thousand ways to hurt, before she killed him. All of them dead because that's what the angel said, and she's standing here holding tight to these iron bars so she doesn't fall, too weak to stand and the mountain looming above her, because this is where the angel said she had to go. (p. 134)

  Suddenly, I wanted to tell one of these stories. Specifically, I wanted to know exactly what had happened to Dancy in Savannah when she met the pretty boy with the deadly amber bottle, and I began work on a story called "Les Fleurs Empoisonnées," which I intended to include in the chapbook. But then it proved to be a rather longish story, and Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press proposed it be published on its own as a small hardback. I asked if I could get Dame Darcy to illustrate it, as one of her drawings had been a very important inspiration, and he said sure, but would I change the title to something that wasn't French. I agreed, and "Les Fleurs Empoisonnées" was released as In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers in March 2002. We were even able to use the Dame Darcy piece that had given me the ghoulish women of the Stephens Ward Tea League and Society of Resurrectionists for the book's end papers.

  And, as it turned out, by the time In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers was in print, I'd already written a second Dancy story, a strange little piece about her childhood in the swamps of Okaloosa County, Florida. Titled "The Well of Stars and Shadow," it was written at the very tail end of October 2001 (thank you, Spooky) and appeared first on Gothic.net on the twelfth of that November. It was also included in Trilobite: The Writing of Threshold (which, for one reason and another, wasn't released until 2003). Only a few months later, in March 2002, I wrote my third Dancy short story, " Waycross," which was released as a chapbook by Subterranean Press, beautifully illustrated by Ted Naifeh (those four illustrations are reprinted herein). Like "Les Fleurs Empoisonnées" before it, " Waycross " grew out of that paragraph from the end of Chapter Eight of Threshold, elucidating another of the episodes I'd begun to wonder about. In August, as I was finishing with Low Red Moon, I wrote in my online journal (9/17/02), "I know I still have one more Dancy story left to write, a prequel to ' Waycross,' but it may be months before I have time to write it." I suspected it would be titled "Bainbridge," and by this point Bill Schafer was asking about doing a collection of Dancy stories.

  But then on March 18, 2003, roughly a year after I'd written " Waycross," I wrote an unanticipated piece called "Alabaster." Again, I refer to an entry from my online journal (these things can be very convenient): "…I did something I've never done before. I conceived of and finished a short story on the same day. I'd never even begun and finished a short story on the same day before. It's a very short piece, only about 1,000 wds., for the Camelot chapette book, titled 'Alabaster.' A brief glimpse at Dancy Flammarion on her way to ' Waycross,' set before that story, Threshold, and In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers." In 2004, as I began to plan for the Dancy collection, I expanded "Alabaster" into a full-length short story, which appears in print for the first time in this collection.

  The final short story in this book, "Bainbridge," which I believe will be the last time I write about Dancy, was begun in December 2005 and completed just after the New Year. I'm not going to say much more about it, as it has a few surprises (I know they surprised me) which I don't want to spoil. Among other things, the story deals with Dancy's mother, Julia Flammarion, and her attempt to drown herself off Pensacola Beach in December 1982.

  Also the reader will note that, as with Tales of Pain and Wonder, I have provided the reader with a second Table of Contents, for those who wish the read the stories in chronological order rather than the order in which they were written (my personal preference).

  It seems as though I ought to have more to say here, something more substantial than this simple litany of dates. Dancy has been in my head for a long, long time now. I've returned to her again and again. The word avatar comes to mind, and its original Sanskrit meaning-the incarnation of a god in animal or human form. Dancy has certainly been that, though I think I'll leave the reader to draw his or her own conclusions about the ultimate nature of the god or gods that Dancy Flammarion might be made incarnate. And, of course, Dancy has also served as an avatar for some dark splinter of my own being, the incarnation of my own seemingly bottomless fury at the world around me, the splinter which wants no part of tedious Reason and Compromise, the angry, seething splinter that would be a lot happier addressing this or that perceived injustice with a carving knife than settling for mere words. There's a paradox here, of course. While I doubt I'm quite monstrous enough to ever show up on Dancy's hit list, I'm also pretty sure she'd have about as much use for me as she did for those wicked Ladies in Savannah. That doesn't make me love her any less, though. Like the Gynander and Sinethella, I have no illusions about my own monstrosity. It only makes it harder for me to consider the trails I've seen fit to visit upon Dancy.

  I think this is all about mirrors, more than anything else, mirrors and lost innocence. I think it's also about the
terrible consequences of misguided belief. And insanity. And there's still something more, something I can't quite seem to get at, like a last bit of marrow in some inconvenient crevice of a shattered bone. Maybe you'll see it for yourselves, or maybe I'm only jumping at shadows.

  My thanks to Bill Schafer, because I never would have written this book without his enthusiasm and encouragement. And to Spooky, who hides the knives from me. And to my agent, Merrilee Heifetz. A big thank you to Ted Naifeh for making much more of this book than my words, and to Dame Darcy, for inspiration and for her work on In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers. And I'm sure there are other people who should be thanked. There always are. But now it's time to start the show. Someone get the lights…

  Caitlín R. Kiernan

  16 January 2006

  Atlanta, Georgia

  …abasht the Devil stood,

  And felt how awful goodness is… John Milton, ParadiseLost

  Every angel is terrifying. Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies

  Les Fleurs Empoisonnées

  Miles past a town named Vidalia, town named after an onion, onion named after a town, but Dead Girl has no idea how many miles, the vast, unremarkable Georgia night like a seamless quilt of stars and kudzu vines, and all these roads look the same to her. The Bailiff behind the wheel of the rusty black Monte Carlo they picked up in Jacksonville after the Oldsmobile broke down, Bobby in the front seat beside him, playing with the dials on the radio; the endless chain of honky-tonk and gospel stations is broken only by the spit and crackle of static squeezed in between. Dead Girl's alone in the backseat reading one of her books by moonlight. She asks Bobby to stop, please, because he's getting on her nerves, probably getting on the Bailiff's nerves, too. He pauses long enough to glance back at her, and his silver eyes flash like mercury and rainwater coins. He might be any six-year-old boy, except for those eyes.

  "Let him be," the Bailiff says. "He isn't bothering me." Bobby smirks at her, sticks out his tongue, and goes back to playing with the radio.

  "Suit yourself," Dead Girl says and turns a page, even though she hasn't finished reading the last one.

  "Well, well, now," the Bailiff says, and he laughs his husky, drywheeze laugh. "There's a sight… "

  And the Monte Carlo 's breaks squeal, metal grinding metal, and the car drifts off the road. Dead Girl sits up, and she can see the hitchhiker in the headlights, a teenage girl holding up one hand to shield her eyes from the glare.

  "I'm not hungry," Bobby says as if someone had asked, and Dead Girl stares at the Bailiff's reflection in the rearview mirror. But there's no explanation waiting for her in his green eyes, his easy smile, the secretive parchment creases of his ancient face; she wishes for the hundredth time that she'd stayed in Providence with Gable, better things to do than riding around the sticks picking up runaways and bums. Having to sleep in the trunks of rattletrap automobiles while the Bailiff runs his errands beneath the blazing Southern sun, sun so bright and violent that even the night seems scorched.

  "Maybe this one ain't for eating, boy," the Bailiff chuckles, and the Monte Carlo rolls to a stop in a cloud of dust and grit and carbon monoxide. "Maybe this one's something you've never seen before."

  The girl's wearing dark wrap-around sunglasses, and her hair is as white as milk, milk spun into the finest silken thread, talcum-powder skin, and "It's just an albino," Dead Girl mutters, disappointed. "You think we've never seen an albino before?"

  The Bailiff laughs again and honks the horn. The girl leans forward and squints at them through her sunglasses and the settling dust, takes a hesitant step towards the car. She's wearing a faded yellow Minnie Mouse T-shirt and carrying a tattered duffel bag.

  "Pure as the driven snow, this one here. Funeral lilies and barbed wire. Keep your eyes open, both of you, or she just might teach you something you don't want to learn."

  "Christ," Dead Girl hisses and slumps back in her seat. "I thought we were in such a big, damn hurry. I thought Miss Aramat was-"

  "Watch your tongue, child," the Bailiff growls back, and now his eyes flash angry emerald fire at her from the rearview mirror. "Mind your place," and then Bobby's rolling down his window, and the albino girl peers doubtfully into the Monte Carlo.

  "Where you bound, sister?" the Bailiff asks, and she doesn't answer right away, looks warily at Bobby and Dead Girl and then back at the road stretching away into the summer night.

  " Savannah," the albino girl says, finally. "I'm on my way to Savannah," and Dead Girl can hear the misgiving, the guarded apprehension, weighting the edges of her voice.

  "Well, now, how about that. Would you believe we're headed that way ourselves? Don't just sit there, Bobby. Open the door for the girl and help her with that bag-"

  "Maybe I should wait on the next car," she says and wrinkles her nose like a rabbit. "There's already three of you. There might not be enough room."

  "Nonsense," the Bailiff replies. "There's plenty of room, isn't there, children?" Bobby opens his door and takes her duffel bag, stuffs it into the floorboard behind his seat. The albino looks at the road one more time, and, for a moment, Dead Girl thinks maybe she's going to run, wonders if the Bailiff will chase her if she does, if it's that sort of lesson.

  "Thanks," she says, sounding anything but grateful, and climbs into the back and sits beside Dead Girl. Bobby slams his door shut, and the Monte Carlo 's tires spin uselessly for a moment, flinging up sand and gravel, before they find traction and the car lurches forward onto the road.

  "You from Vidalia?" the Bailiff asks, and the girl nods her head, but doesn't say anything. Dead Girl closes her book- Charlotte's Web in Latin, Tela Charlottae-and lays it on the seat between them. The albino smells like old sweat and dirty clothes, like fresh air and the warm blood in her veins. Bobby turns around in his seat and watches her with curious silver eyes.

  "What's her name?" he asks Dead Girl, and the Bailiff swerves to miss something lying in the road.

  "Dancy," the albino says. "Dancy Flammarion," and she takes off her sunglasses, reveals eyes the deep red-pink of pyrope or the pulpy hearts of fresh strawberries.

  "Is she blind?" Bobby asks, and "How the hell would I know?" Dead Girl grumbles. "Ask her yourself."

  "Are you blind?"

  "No," Dancy tells him, the hard edge in her voice to say she knows this is a game, a taunting formality, and maybe she's seen it all before. "But the light hurts my eyes."

  "Mine, too," Bobby says.

  "Oculocutaneous albinism," the Bailiff chimes in. "A genetic defect in the body's ability to convert the amino acid tyrosine into melanin. Ah, but we're being rude, Bobby. She probably doesn't like to talk about it."

  "No, that's all right. It doesn't bother me," and Dancy leans suddenly, boldly, forward, leaving only inches between herself and Bobby. The movement surprises him, and he jumps.

  "What about you, Bobby? What's wrong with your eyes?" Dancy asks him.

  "I-" he begins and then pauses and looks uncertainly at Dead Girl and the Bailiff. Dead Girl shrugs, no idea what the rules in this charade might be, and the Bailiff keeps his eyes on the road.

  "That's okay," Dancy says, and she winks at him. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, if you're not supposed to tell. The angel tells me what I need to know."

  "You have an angel?" and now Bobby sounds skeptical.

  "Everyone has an angel. Well, everyone I ever met so far. Even you, Bobby. Didn't they tell you that?"

  Dead Girl sighs and picks her book up again, opens it to a page she's read twice already.

  "Why don't you see if you can find something on the radio," she says to Bobby.

  "But I'm still talking to Dancy."

  "You'll have plenty of time to talk to Dancy, boy," the Bailiff says. "She isn't going anywhere."

  "She's going to Savannah with us."

  "Except Savannah," Dancy says very softly, faint smile at the corners of her mouth, and she turns away and looks out the window at the nightshrouded fields and fa
rmhouses rushing silently past. Bobby stares at her for another minute or two, like he's afraid she might disappear, then he goes back to playing with the radio knobs.

  "You too, Mercy Brown," the albino whispers, and Dead Girl stops reading.

  "What?" she asks. "What did you just say to me?"

  "I dreamed about you once, Mercy. I dreamed about you sleeping at the bottom of a cold river, crabs tangled in your hair and this boy in your arms." Dancy keeps her eyes on the window as she talks, her voice so cool, so unafraid, like maybe she climbs into cars with demons every goddamn night of the week.

  "I dreamed about you and snow. You got an angel, too."

  "You shut the fuck up," Dead Girl snarls. "That's not my name, and I don't care who you are, you shut up or-"

  "You'll kill me anyway," Dancy says calmly, "so what's the difference?" and up front the Bailiff chuckles to himself. Bobby finds a station playing an old Johnny Cash song, "The Reverend Mr. Black," and he sings along.

  * * *

  Southeast and the land turns from open prairie and piney woods to salt marsh and estuaries, confluence of muddy, winding rivers, blackwater piss of the distant Appalachians, the Piedmont hills, and everything between. The Lowcountry, no fayrer or fytter place, all cordgrass and wax myrtle, herons and crayfish, and the old city laid out wide and flat where the Savannah River runs finally into the patient, hungry sea. The end of Sherman 's March, and this swampy gem spared the Yankee torches, saved by gracious women and their soirèe seductions, and in 1864 the whole city made a grand Christmas gift to Abraham Lincoln.

  The mansion on East Hall Street, Stephens Ward, built seventeen long years later, Reconstruction days, and Mr. Theodosius W. Ybanes hired a fashionable architect from Rhode Island to design his eclectic, mismatched palace of masonry and wrought iron, Gothic pilasters and high Italiante balconies. The mansard roof tacked on following a hurricane in 1888 and, after Theodosius' death, the house handed down to his children and grandchildren, great-grandchildren, generations come and gone and, unlike most of Savannah's stately, old homes, this house has never passed from the direct bloodline of its first master.