For Those Who Dream Monsters (14 page)

“No!” I called out in alarm. “Don’t.” But the girl merely laughed
and immersed herself in the river, the water covering her nakedness. She waved
to me to join her, and I waved back, pleading with her to come to my side. The
girl laughed and swam over to my side, then swam leisurely back to the middle
of the river and floated there. The ease with which she swam and floated in
that rushing water made me wonder whether perhaps the current was less strong
that it looked and sounded. Perhaps the water wasn’t as deep as I’d thought.

The girl beckoned me again and I shook my head, indicating for
her to swim to me and come out. I held a hand out to her, and eventually she
swam towards me, stopping just a little out of my reach. I extended my hand out
further, and she pushed herself up from the water and reached out to me. As she
did so, the drops of water on her breasts sparkled like diamonds. I couldn’t
take my eyes off her. She moved away again and I lost my balance, toppling into
the icy water.

Fear – all the more dreadful for its long-forgotten familiarity –
seized me as the dark waters closed over my head. I flailed my arms wildly,
managing somehow to right myself and get my head above the surface. Eyes
screwed shut against the lashing current, I coughed up water and finally
managed to scream for help. Then I felt arms around me – arms colder than the
river against which I fought.

“Help me,” I begged through the roar of the raging water – water
that no longer looked silver, but black and threatening. I felt the brush of
wet hair on my face and of icy lips against my ear – lips colder than the spray
that blinded me. The girl whispered my name, and her voice was the sigh of the
wind and the murmur of the sea. For a moment I remembered my mother and how she
would hold a large shell to my ear when I was little, and say, “Listen, my
love, it’s the sound of the sea.”

The girl’s grip on me tightened and I prayed that she would save
me, but the water closed over my head once more.

I try to draw breath, but swallow river-water instead. I don’t understand. I
kick and writhe, but cold hands pull me down and hold me firm.

Gradually I weaken and stop fighting. My terror subsides and I
open my eyes. In the blackness, the girl’s face looms white before my own. She
lifts her heavy lids and I see her eyes clearly for the first time. Fear seizes
me once more; the last of my air escapes in a flurry of bubbles as I panic. She
holds onto me and smiles, gazing at me with those eyes – a corpse’s eyes:
milky, opaque
…
like pearls.

My lungs swell with water. A strange calm descends on me and I
stop struggling for the last time. The girl cradles me in her arms.

I wonder if the current
will carry me down to the sea…

A TALE OF TWO SISTERS

II

They chased the fleeing girl relentlessly, their horses snorting and
sweating in the sultry air. Sooner or later they would catch her – she knew
that, and headed for the lake at the edge of the village. For a while she lost
her pursuers among the dense trees. A fresh wave of tears stained her youthful
face as she burst out onto the bank. There she paused a moment, trying to catch
her breath amidst the beauty of the desolate place with its vast expanse of
dark water and row of weeping willows, their leaves rustling uneasily as she
moved past them towards the water’s edge. She could hear the shouts and the
thunder of hooves coming closer. Dizzy with fear and exhaustion, she leaned for
a moment against a willow tree. Then, casting a final glance over her shoulder,
she threw herself forward. In that final second, her thoughts turned to her
beloved. Her heart was broken even before the dark waters closed over her head.

The willow trailed its leaves in the
water like verdant tears. Its branches stirred restlessly as the horse and cart
struggled past, headed for the village guesthouse.

“Splendid!”
remarked Henry, looking in the direction of the lake. Dan followed his gaze,
expecting to spy some new marvel amidst the stunning rural landscape, but
instead saw two local girls, one with long brown her plaited down her back and
the other wearing a traditional flowery headscarf. Henry waved at them, and
they waved back, giggling. He turned back to his companion. “I think we’re in
there, old man,” he informed Dan with a grin.

“Right,”
Dan was unconvinced. Then again, the ladies seemed to go for Henry’s ex-public
schoolboy charms and, the two of them being exotic foreigners, even Dan was
getting a bit of female attention.

“Aren’t
you glad we didn’t take a cab after all!” It was a statement rather than a
question, but Dan felt that a response was expected nonetheless.

“Right,”
he agreed uncertainly and tightened his grip on the side of the cart, his eyes
glued to the peasant’s back and the horse’s rump beyond. Dan came from a
stalwart middle class family in Birmingham, and horses were not something he’d
ever planned on getting this close to. But Henry was evidently loving the whole
Eastern European thing. Dan couldn’t help but wonder how strange it was that
Henry of all people – Henry who, despite his foreign surname, was to all
intents and purposes more English than the Queen – should go haring around
Poland, looking for traces of his ancestors. Still and all, perhaps it was less
un-PC than exploring the colonialist past on his mother’s side. In any case,
Dan enjoyed Henry’s company and was happy to tag along.

Eventually
the road led away from the lake and uphill a little. The horse snorted and
strained onwards, foamy sweat dripping from its sides. Dan sighed with relief
as the cart rolled to a halt outside the quaint old building that served as the
local guesthouse.

“Good
evening,” the receptionist smiled at Henry in a manner that Dan was beginning
to find a little annoying.

Several
hours and a considerable number of vodkas later, Dan turned up the Polish
sitcom on his TV in a vain attempt to drown out the sounds of Henry
entertaining the receptionist in the room next door. Henry and Dan had dined
together, then sat at the hotel bar, where the receptionist doubled as barmaid.
The two Brits seemed to be the only visitors at the small guesthouse, and Henry
had taken advantage of the lack of other customers to persuade the Polish girl
to join them in a few drinks. Eventually Dan had made his excuses and gone up
to his room, leaving Henry and the girl to their own devices. It hadn’t been
long, however, before he’d heard them entering Henry’s room.

Dan
flicked through the channels, trying to find something he could actually watch,
but even the American blockbusters had a lector reading the Polish translation
over the English dialogue in a way that rendered both languages less than
audible. He turned off the TV. The moaning, creaking bedsprings and banging of
Henry’s bed against the wall stopped temporarily, and Dan became aware of the
wind sighing outside his window. He opened it wide and leaned out. From his
vantage point on the top floor he could see the lake along which they had
travelled on their way to the hotel. From what Dan had worked out, it formed
part of an extensive complex of lakes and waterways, stretching for miles, many
of them hidden among the dense forest that still covered this part of the
country. The lake was surrounded by trees – willows by the looks of them –
which glowed a pale silver in the moonlight and rustled in the wind that
animated their branches. Dan shivered and closed the window. When he finally
fell asleep, his dreams were disturbing, alien.

The girl’s beauty was spoken of even beyond the village boundaries. She
could have had any of the local youths, but she chose the blacksmith’s son. Her
mother’s bakery stood opposite the smithy, and she had frequently watched the
young man helping his father shoe horses. While the blacksmith nailed on the
iron shoes, his son tended the beasts, rubbing their tired legs and speaking to
them gently. The couple fell in love, and their parents saw no reason to stand
in the way of their happiness. Their wedding was not grand, but the whole
village turned out, and the sun shone brightly for the bride and groom. But their
joy was not to last long.

As
was the custom, the lord of the manor had been invited to the wedding feast. As
was
his
custom, the lord had
failed to turn up. Then, just as the sun was beginning to dip behind the trees,
and the newlyweds were starting to wonder when they would be able to slip away
from the festivities, the assembled villagers heard excited shouts and the
sound of horses’ hooves approaching rapidly.

“Good
evening!” It was the lord of the manor and a rowdy party of his companions. He
jumped off his horse and his fellows followed suit. The villagers rose from the
tables around which they were seated, bowing and curtsying to the newcomers.
“We shan’t be staying,” informed the lord, “we’ve just come for the bride.”

A
stunned silence fell on the wedding party, broken only by the drunken guffaws
of the lord’s companions. The girl’s already pale face turned as white as her
bridal gown, and she looked to her husband for protection. The blacksmith’s son
stood rooted to the spot, and the lord addressed the girl.

“Don’t
look so frightened, my dear; I daresay we shan’t do anything you haven’t done
before!”

“Please,
my lord,” a woman’s voice rose from the crowd. “She’s a good girl… A virgin.”
The lord was caught off guard for a moment, then spotted the girl’s mother, and
laughed.

“A
virgin?”

“Yes,
my lord.” The nobleman exchanged amused glances with his companions, then
turned his attention back to the girl’s mother.

“All
the better, woman. I’ll teach her everything she needs to know to please her
husband … tomorrow night.” The lord glanced at his cronies again, and they
obliged with peels of raucous laughter.

“Please,
my love,” the girl took her husband’s hand and whispered urgently to him as the
young lord toyed with her mother. “Let’s slip out the back. They’re drunk.
We’ll take a horse and ride away. By tomorrow he’d have lost interest.” Her
husband looked at her sadly, but made no response. “Please, let’s go. You are
my only one. I’d rather die than lie with another.”

“It
is his right,” the blacksmith’s son finally replied. Those quietly spoken words
shattered the girl’s world. Tears welling up in her eyes, she pulled her hand
from her husband’s and fled from her wedding table. It took a moment for the
lord to notice that his prize was gone.

“Well,
what are you waiting for?” he shouted to his companions, angry and amused in
equal measure. “Bring her back!”

The following morning, armed with a
map and directions from the somewhat embarrassed receptionist, Henry and Dan
set off in search of Henry’s ancestral home. Henry seemed uncannily refreshed,
considering how much vodka and how little sleep he’d had, and it was Dan who
felt tired and uneasy. He still had vague memories of a bizarre dream he’d had
– of the weeping willows that grew along the lake coming alive and forming a
circle around him, trapping him and closing in on him. It was all he could do
to keep up with his energetic friend.

The
guesthouse that Henry had chosen – not that there was much choosing to do, it
being the only one in the area – was not far from the manor house that had once
belonged to Henry’s ancestors. So the two young men set off on foot, following
the road along the large lake. Dan avoided looking at the willows, gazing
instead at the open fields on the opposite side of the road.

Eventually
the lake curved away to the right. Henry and Dan kept to the road, and carried
on straight ahead until they came across a large dilapidated stone gatepost to
their left. A couple of metres away, obscured by brambles, stood a second
gatepost.

“This
is it,” Henry grinned at Dan and turned off the road. As they passed between
the two posts, they paused in wonder. Ahead of them stretched an avenue of
ancient linden trees, seeming to go on forever. The friends exchanged awed
glances, then headed up the avenue. Eventually they could make out a large
grassy area with a circular grey stone structure in the distance, and beyond
that the red bricks of a building. As Henry and Dan approached the end of the
avenue, their excitement grew. Finally they were out of the shade of the trees
and in the open: in what had once been a sizeable courtyard. Even now, overgrown
with grass on which a cow was grazing, the courtyard was impressive. The stone
structure in the centre of it was an old fountain – cracked and drained of
water, the dry leaves inside it crackling in a breeze that stirred as the young
men walked past. Something about the broken, empty structure unnerved Dan.
Beyond the fountain and the courtyard stood the manor house. The render had
long since fallen off, revealing the red brick that Henry and Dan had seen from
the avenue. But the manor was still a thing of beauty. The main building was a
vast rectangular block. On either side of it a curved colonnade led to a
smaller, cube-like building. Together, the central block with its two wings
formed a perfect horseshoe.

From
what Henry had managed to find out while researching for their trip, the
stately home was the work of an Italian architect – an unsung genius – who had
been brought to Poland by a wealthy Polish count for the sole purpose of
building him a palace fit for a king. The Italian had subsequently returned to
Italy, where he was killed in a bar brawl in a village inn. The manor had since
withstood attacks by Cossacks, Tartars and a variety of other hostile
foreigners, before finally falling victim – in 1945 – to the Polish Communist
Security Agency, whose officers set fire to the main building on account of a
unit of anti-Communist Polish Home Army partisans hiding within its walls. The
partially burnt-out shell of the manor remained and, in a humorously symbolic
act of class-war – the intentionality of which would never be known for sure –
local representatives of the Polish People’s Workers’ Party used it to house
pigs. By the 1980s the porkers too were gone, and the manor remained in the
derelict state in which the two young Brits now found it. The roof had caved in
– in places, and here and there a shattered roof tile lay upon the ground.

“So
this belonged to your great grandfather?” asked Dan, visibly impressed.

“And
to his great grandfather before him,” grinned Henry. “You never know, with the
Commies gone, maybe my dad can claim it back or something!” Henry moved towards
the main entrance. “Come on!”

The
front door was gone without a trace, and the two friends entered slowly,
careful not to fall down a hole – of which there were many. There were piles of
rubble lying around, the obligatory quasi-Satanist graffiti on the walls, and
two vast, symmetrically positioned spiral staircases, but no banisters. After
an inspection of the ground floor rooms, which revealed the odd partially
standing chimney breast and more graffiti, the two friends headed cautiously up
the stairs. The first floor was equally devastated, with bird droppings beneath
the gaping holes that had once been the windows. Dan was already slowly
mounting the stairs to the second floor, when Henry spotted a doorway to a room
that he hadn’t noticed before.

“Go
on up,” he told Dan. “I’ll be along in a minute. Just be careful.”

“Okay.
You too.”

The
second floor laid bare the full extent of the damage to the roof. It was dark
here, despite the daylight outside, and, the ceiling long being gone, shafts of
light fell through the many holes and cracks in the roof. Motes of dust danced
and glistened in the shafts, mesmerising Dan for a moment. Then, feeling uneasy
alone in the vast dark space, he moved cautiously to one of the windows and
peered out. He caught sight of movement and panicked on seeing figures in the
park at the back of the building. He moved back a step – out of the light –
but, on looking out again, realised that they were willow trees, hunched over
like people. Unnerved, Dan called out to Henry, then went back down to the
first floor to look for him.

“Henry?”
No answer. Not finding him on the first floor, Dan carefully descended the less
damaged spiral staircase. “Henry!” Dan figured that his friend must have gone
back out – perhaps to explore the two wings of the palace – although Dan
couldn’t understand why he hadn’t said anything.