The Serpent Papers (58 page)

‘I have a secret. Would you like to know?’ He laughs. ‘You’re the only guest tonight. Forgive me.’

I hesitate, he continues talking.

‘I thought – Oriol? Who would you like to spend time with? The girl who has come to recover Natalia? The world is such a dangerous place, I would like to keep you safe.’

His eyes linger on me. He does not say the words but I feel him thinking.

‘Where’s the bathroom?’ I ask.

Hand fixed to the base of my spine.

‘Cover yourself,’ he whispers. ‘It’s cold. First door on your left.’

I walk in a daze, shut the door, perching on the enamel toilet seat, head in my hands. Time slows. I look up – focusing on a blur left of the bathroom sink . . . a cigarette pack on white enamel –
American Spirits
 – I reach out – turn the object over –
So light. I’m slow, what has he put into me?
Don’t wait. I feel my breath panicking, crouched on the toilet seat, a wetness between my thighs, my bowels shake and discharge. An ornate mirror and a bowl of potpourri on the marble surface. Nausea rocks at the base of my stomach, my hair dishevelled, a dark blue thumbprint on my neck – a welt like an egg on my forehead – my lip is split –
don’t look
 – I think – the dull aches, the throbbing, the pain beneath the fog of this – there are two firm knocks on the bathroom door. My heart races.
Clear as a bell.

‘Are you alright in there?’ Oriol asks.

He knocks again, rattles the door handle. Arrange my hair – the key turns in the lock from the outside – Oriol is standing outside the bathroom door. He stares directly into my eyes.

‘What were you planning to do in there?’

‘Nothing.’

He takes my hand, leads me away, back to the kitchen, the hot stove.

‘What have you discovered?’

My temper flares.

‘A mix of things.’

‘You’ve finished?’ he asks, curious.

‘Yes.’

‘You were about to go home. When?’

‘Tonight.’

‘Why?’ He pauses. ‘Have you found what you’re looking for?’

‘Yes.’

‘Anything
original
?’

‘A name.’

‘Oh really?’

‘
Aureus.
’

‘Aureus?’ He scowls. ‘Means nothing to anybody else.’

‘I found a book.’

Oriol picks up the knife beside the cutting board.

‘What book?’

‘A book she hid.’

Oriol turns the knife in his hand. He sighs once. Deeply. Calculating something. ‘She was an artist,’ he murmurs. Steam clings to the clear glass lid of the stew. Flames lick the steel pot. Oriol frowns. His hands drop to his side. He goes to the sink. Smiles. ‘Everything happens for a reason. She has led you to me.’

I pause, uncertain.

‘Best not say anything yet,’ he says. ‘Such a shame that it had to come to this.’

The water very hot, near scalding. Cutting knife resting on the marble counter beside the sink. His fingers blush pink from the heat. He cleans his cuticles first, pushing back the flesh from his nails, then takes up the knife left limp on the side of the sink and returns to slicing his
fuet
, irregular cuts on a wooden board. Suddenly he stops. He lifts his face to heaven, closes his eyes and mumbles. A prayer? A word of warning? What happens next comes so quickly I barely remember the beginning of the movement. With the speed of a swordsman, Oriol takes the knife and slams the blade through the fingers of my outstretched hand, pinning me to the table. The blade rips through the web of flesh joining my thumb and index finger so cleanly I don’t feel any pain – the shock is so great.

Behind him on the stove, the lamb stew bubbles, an open garlic bunch, skin cracked, displays its white flesh to the kitchen.

‘Does it make you feel alive? I find pain like that – well . . . profound.’ The pounding in my head clears
.

Oriol takes the knife out of my hand. He examines the blood on the blade.

‘I want to know your impulses, your motivations, your desires,’ Oriol continues. The smells from the stew are sweet. Sticky and warm. Bouquet of Rioja marrying rosemary.

‘What do you want? What did you come for? I want to learn from you.’

Sing-song, playful. I do not respond, feeling the terrible sharp pain in my hand.

In the confusion I see him twofold – a sink where he runs the water hot – my vision sways – the water is running so hot it’s scalding. The flesh of his hands turns pink and raw, and yet he keeps them there, scrubbing his fingernails. The soapsuds thick on his hands.
Witness my knife’s sharp point
. He looks into the mirror. Smoothes back his hair. His lips part. They are fine and strong. Above him he can hear the music. The tones of techno-grunge. European house. He keeps time with his foot on the tiles. Dries his hands on a towel. Studies his features. There is no doubt in his mind. The players take their places. The river runs its course. And so the thing they had started would come to an end.

How silent is this town! Ho! Murder! Murder! What may you be? Are you of good or evil?

The stones beneath me are very cold and quiet. The ground slopes gently where I rest. I can feel the cement cold underneath me. A pool of dampness wells around my hair in the dark, and I wonder if the clouds will part and I will see the lights of the stars. A dog barks somewhere distant. But not before the horror grips me, and I sway. A hand touching – a hand caressing – I feel a dampness on the place where he entered, a mouth, a tongue – he is tasting the life of me – until, sharp, the pain turns like a screw.

It is not real.
In the living room he asks her to wait. She is looking at me. A stranger.
Don’t speak
, she says. Alone. I struggle to stand.
Can you help me?
When he comes in, he wears a mask made of burnt leather, thick nostrils folded out over his face. Small slits for eyes.

The mask ties round his head with a buckle, a metal clash against his hair, and ends above the lower lip of his mouth, so that his chin and jaw are visible, shaved and clean. He goes shirtless.
I wanted to show you what I do.
Naked from the waist up, and about his loins, the thin jeans he had worn in town for the night. He will not use them again. He gives the girl a knife and asks her to dip into the blood in a bowl and taste it. First she refuses.

A sacrifice. I found her yesterday. And kept her waiting. For you.

The girl looks at me.
Before we begin.
Life has already gone out of her. He hits her across the back of her head where her hair will hide the bruise, smashing her face down into the bowl, so that her nose touches the blood. When she lifts her face, and he sees her eyes, he sobs, and apologizes. Then he takes her away. I see him from the kitchen, by the roses and chrysanthemums, dragging the girl by her hair. She stumbles down the steps, calling out,
Stop! Stop!
He lifts his head. Smiles back at me. Through the glass.

You can have her if you like.

She’s yours if you want her.

He shows me to the door.

See how far you can run.

The girl convulsing. She sobs again.

The forest, we will be safe in the forest.

I take her hand.

Now we are running, running over the grass, past the fountain.

He emerges from the open French windows, aims the gun and fires once. The girl falls – like a ghost felled in the forest, blood and fragments of bones spurt from her head, and over into the black forest she goes, white limbs uprooted, bare and naked as I watch.

I am paralysed.
A deer.
Drunk on horror. I cannot move.
Is she alive?
I sink to my knees.
Are you alive?
Trying to put the pieces of her back together.
I feel him hunting me.
Still wearing his mask, he takes the gun and presses the barrel into my breast, mashing down the flesh.
Leave her
,
he snarls.
I wanted you to see what I do.
With his other hand he caresses my ear.

Vomit rises.

This is a nightmare, this is a dream.

It is not real.

Past, present, future. I do not know where I am. If I am watching through Natalia’s eyes or my own, or all their eyes. I have exited my body.

I look back but cannot see her. The mask reaches me. I am hallucinating. There is no girl. The blood is my own.

‘My darling? Don’t you understand?’

He whispers, kissing my neck.

‘She was a witch. She was a witch.
Querida
.’

The leather of his mask hard against my skull. ‘Don’t you understand, my darling, what I am giving you? All that you have asked for I have given you.’

Hard against my cheek, his breath snags against my mouth. There is no point in screaming.

‘Come.’

He shouts, pulling my shoulder.

Lifting me up from the ground, he brings his masked face closer.

I am weak.

I am a monster.

‘Come!’

That familiar tolling of a bell.

‘I could smell it on you.’ He drags me panting through the woods. ‘It’s a scent like camphor and oil, they taught me to smell – a
witch
reeks!’

Twigs crack beneath my feet, the thorns of a bramble rip through my skin, I fall and stumble on the rocks, crashing onto my knees.

I feel the silk scrape away from my chest, he is pulling me by the hands and wrists, the sash falls to the side, and I am naked and terrified.

Deeper we go into the forest, the trees rise up around us and groan, their branches hiding their faces, tangling in the dark, they pull at my skin, the wild boar rushes through the underbrush, following our path, hungry for blood, and the fox watches us from the sidelines, ever curious.

I shout and hurl a rock at the violator, he pulls at my wrist harder until we reach a clearing, too dark for me to discern, I see only that the thorns and trees part and my knees collapse onto gravel as the fear chokes in my throat and I gag on my heart beating in my mouth.

The forest opens. Moonlight streaming into the clearing and between my horror and my fear I catch the flashes of enormous statues; ascending, he drags me towards the carved mouth of a monster, the face of a Titan roaring from a cliff, as the mountain rises above the forest; before me a lake, on which the moonlight glints, flanked by two marble nymphs attacked by stone hunting dogs in noble regalia.

The women’s bodies twist and turn away from the animals, which hound at their legs and arms, as he drags me forward, down the path that cuts across the lake to the mouth of the giant, on whose forehead I see, by the light of the moon, a mighty cross and then?

I wake in an enclosed room, cave-like, without windows, marked by black ornamental marble, the lower walls covered in shelves of strange jars. The smell is one of damp soil, water trickling somewhere – water dripping from an underground source. The light is dim round the edges of the room, the focal point of illumination comes from a single hanging chandelier. A dull throbbing in both my hands, followed by a sharp jolt of pain. I cannot bring myself to look down.