Quasimodo
"We shall not attempt to give the reader an idea of that tetrahedron nose-that horse-shoe mouth-that small left eye over-shadowed by a red bushy brow, while the right eye disappeared entirely under an enormous wart-of those straggling teeth with breaches here and there like the battlements of a fortress-of that horny lip, over which one of those teeth projected like the tusk of an elephant-of that forked chin-and, above all, of the expression diffused over the whole-that mixture of malice, astonishment, and melancholy. Let the reader, if he can, figure to himself this combination." (p. 62)
"The owl goes not into the nest of the lark." (p. 502)
Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
There are lights on in the Swan house. Bella's father is moving around inside, folding the last of a laundry. I see his daughter's clothing in his hands, as his thoughts drift outward across the small lawn.
… make a billy goat puke …
A man in the neighboring county has been killed by a bear. The body, partially eaten, not whole by any means, floats ice-soaked and white in his consciousness, surrounded by the dark woods where it had been dragged. The dogs mill about, whining, their tails between their legs, unable to pick up a scent, no matter how their handlers encourage or exhort.
Better call Billy tonight. Nowhere near the rez, but still. Doris's alerted all the schools.
Perhaps Emmett and I should look for this bear, when next we hunt. If it is a rogue, it should be easy enough to find. Blood tainted by disease, or an infected wound, stands out even more strongly for us than for the dogs. Usually, like the dogs, we avoid. But a man-eater … ... We will deal with it, when we find it.
Swan is in his daughter's bedroom now, shuffling through notebooks and papers on her desk. He has a complete set of her clothing, down to underclothes, socks and sneakers, already folded in a small cloth satchel.
She said it was the blue binder. Better bring it all, just in case.
His gaze turns to her bed. It is disheveled and unmade.
Must've been in a hurry this morning.
The man sets everything down, and carefully makes his daughter's bed. Other images flit through his mind. A small hand, holding a baby tooth in the open palm, one tiny drop of blood drying on the lost root. The scene of today's accident intrudes from one side. The green van came off far the worse, supposedly having struck the red truck's fender at an angle. There had been blood at the scene, but none of it Bella's.
Chief Swan smoothes the coverlet, and finds himself kneeling. Clumsy and unaccustomed, he clasps his hands silently. Blackness overtakes my vision, as he closes his eyes.I can almost feel the weight of his forehead, resting heavily against interlaced fingers.
Pictures of what might have been, of other accidents, other people's children, are pushed aside, only to return. Blood and bone. Red and white. His vehicle's lights. Red and white. Flashing in the rainy dark.
His breathing slows, roughens. Patiently, he waits for the past to relent.
At last he sees his daughter again. On the gurney, but whole.
Thanks, old man … , the Chief whispers.
… for sending your angels to look after my baby girl.
He takes his leave quickly after that. I see in his mind that he is going to the hospital, to spend the night on a cramped chair in Bella's room.
...
And now I have the house to myself.
I'm never going to get another chance like this again.
I enter through the front door, using the spare key shown to me in a flitting thought as Chief Swan locked up behind himself. I wonder, when Carlisle changed me, if he could have imagined what a shameful thing I would become.
The house is dark. Not just because it is nighttime and no lights have been left on. The spaces are narrow, the coloring dull, the window-curtains heavy. There is no parlor, but a cave-like "family room" off to the left of the stairs. I wander in. The furniture is old: a sagging brown couch, a worn coffee table with water marks and heat stains on its wooden top. A glossy flat screen television covers a large portion of the opposite wall. Behind it are built-in shelves that might once have held books. Now they are bare, except for the small portions still exposed on either side of the television. One side is stacked with magazines: Field and Stream, In-Fisherman, a cumbersome antique volume of The Fisherman's Digest. It is the other side that draws me. Square after square, three and a half by five, fading in flimsy paper frames. Bella's school portraits. I examine them one by one.
Kindergarten. Very close to the memory that I had stolen from her father. Hair still wispy, cheeks still round. But the smile is different. The eyes seem to be glancing away, or searching for something. Or apprehensive, perhaps? Perhaps it is just my imagination. I don't know how to read expressions any more.
I count eleven photographs in all, and assume that they show every year except the most recent one.
Third grade is striking: sober, studious, but perhaps content. The small smile does not seem forced or self-conscious.
The photograph that follows is shuttered and closed. What happened between those two?
In seventh grade she started to let her hair grow down past her shoulders. In ninth she tried parting it on the side. I suppose she didn't like it, because in the last photograph, and every time I see her now, it is always parted in the middle.
I leaf through them all again, watch as this child grows up in my hands. Humans change. In a handful more years, she will be a young woman. I think of the woman who had carried her on her hip in the kitchen. I think of Isabella with a child on her hip.
The pictures go back to their places on the shelves. Exactly as I had found them. No one will ever know that I have touched them.
I should leave, but instead I wander back past the stairs to the kitchen. It is tidy and uncluttered. I wonder who does the cooking. The odors of food linger. Pot roast with potatoes and carrots. Some sort of cake and fruit. I can't remember what my mother's kitchen smelled like. Esme's is pristine. I only know that the aromas here, which should be homelike and comforting, only leave me faintly nauseous.
The dining room beyond the kitchen is a still life. Clearly unused. They eat here, in the kitchen. At the hearth itself. With the fading yellow cabinets, and yes, there is Bella's small handprint beneath the sink. I think of where I and my family eat.
I cannot stay here even a moment longer.
I should leave. I have no place in this house, none at all. But the stairs are beckoning. I climb slowly in the dark.
My journal pulls heavily at my shirt, and I tuck the shirt-tails tighter to keep it secure. The stairwell is so devoid of light that even my vampire vision is foiled. I feel like some leviathan surfacing slowly from the deep. The creak of one step under my foot disputes the image, but only for a moment. Bella's scent leads me straight on up to her room.
The outlines of her furniture are so familiar to me: her desk and chair, the low book case lining one wall, her bed, of course, and the rocking chair, my favorite perch. I take my place there, now, strange master of all I survey. Without her restless form swimming fitfully under the quilts, my attention is free to roam. There are drawings taped on the wall, of horses: grazing in a paddock, looking out from stall windows. I leave the chair to examine them. Each of the horses has a name penciled in slow cursive underneath: Colonel Sandy, Double Stuff, Boss Mare, and Peaches. Under this last is written, My Best Friend. I miss you. July 18, 2001.
I trace the images with my fingertips. All are carefully done, all the colors kept within the lines. The eyes are large and luminous, even in crayon, even in the dark.
Isabella.
"Just Bella," she said, all that endless first day. But I like Isabella better.
It is so strange to be able to move about freely in this room. A scrap of knitting on the bedside table catches my eye. Not knitting, but crochet, I see, as I pick it up to examine it. I wonder what it was going to be. It is done in a spiral pattern, with pastel colors of the rainbow. For now, it seems to just be collecting dust. I place it back, exactly as I found it.
I am never going to get another chance like this again. To learn her secrets.
I walk around her bed, and crouch down between it and her book case. What fills her head, her heart, her soul? I will find out.
Little Pig, Big Trouble.
Goodnight Moon.
Stella Luna.
I leaf through them, and see that these are all children's books. Why are they here? According to everything I have been able to eavesdrop from her classmates and teachers at school, she did not grow up in this house at all. So why are these books here?
The Kissing Hand. This one is inscribed. For Bella, on your first day of school. With love, Gran. I read it slowly, from cover to cover. My chest feels heavy, or perhaps it is just the weight of my journal, crimped against me as I sit here, squeezed awkwardly between Bella's bed and books. I take it out, and lay it on top of the bookcase. It helps a little. Perhaps.
There is more.
Fairy tales, with gorgeous, intricate, hypnotically beautiful illustrations by an artist named Craft.
Twelve Dancing Princesses.
Baba Yaga and Vasilisa the Brave.
East of the Sun, West of the Moon. This one, too, is inscribed: Dream deep, my little one. Gran.
Is this why her sleep is so often restless?
I pore through them all. Right beside the myths, is science. The books are surprisingly old. Stamps on the back show that they had once belonged to the Calvin S. Smith Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. I suppose she, or a parent, bought them at a library book sale. I can hardly imagine Bella stealing books, or even neglecting to return them.
Quaint and out of date though they are, the information they contain is still serviceable.
ABCs of Chemistry.
One, Two, Three, Infinity.
The Lives of a Cell.
The Immense Journey.
I see her.
I see her.
Quiet. Intelligent. Curious.
Lover of old things. And beauty. And thought.
She is like me.
She is like me.
It is not possible for me to feel tired, and yet, that is what I feel. I want to stand up. But upon standing, I realize that I want to lie down. There is her bed, right before me. Her scent, like the breath of heaven, all around me. Her father made the bed. I can re-make it before I leave. Everything will be as I found it. Everything.
I sink down. The mattress, the quilts, the pillow. Soft: as she must be, being human. And fragrant, oh, fragrant: as she is, as I most certainly know that she is. Her scent, everywhere. I want to stay. Never leave.
This is dangerous, terribly dangerous, but I cannot bring myself to care. She is not here. No one is here except for me, and so I will have what I long for, the only way that I can without murdering her.
I turn my face into her pillow, and breathe. Just breathe. Drink in her scent. It is almost like drinking her blood. Almost. So close. My mouth opens, to taste that fragrance as I draw it in over my tongue.
I will not bite.
I will not bite.
No shredded fabric. No snowfall of feathers. No.
I gulp down the venom as it gouts and flows, all bitter and hot. I don't even know if it would leave a stain, but I will take no chances.
Hurts … God in heaven, this hurts; but I cannot stop. I want, oh, I want. Her scent. Her blood. The pain is like an arrow, a red arrow snaking into me through my mouth, all the way down to my most private parts. The pillow is not her, but I wrap it in my arms desperately. Soft, soft. Sweet scent of her. I will never get enough, not in this life or any other.
My fingers scrape against something underneath the pillow. I have just enough curiosity to search for it and pull it out. I roll onto my back and stare at the thing in my hand. Of course I recognize it. I wrote it and folded it. Placed it in the brown paper bag with the medicine. She has kept this under her pillow all these days? Keeps it here still. Whispers my name in the dark.
And what of hers? Shreds of white and green and red, lost to ice wind and black water. It is no more than fitting. No more than truth. No more, nor less than what I am. But it hurts.
My fist can push my cry back down my throat, but I cannot stop myself from writhing and rolling on her bed. Her quilts tangle and wind themselves around me. Like Iphegenia at Aulis. Like Agamemnon at his bath. I am pierced and hacked through and through. And still all I want is to drown myself in the scent of this girl. My face burrows into her pillow again. It is soft and fragrant and all I can imagine is her neck. Sweet, tender. The pulse right there. I know what it's like. I have done this. Cold mouth upon hot skin.
The images blossom, like wine-dark poppies. Fantasies born in that first scent of her, all over again.
The small, unfamiliar body. Pinned on the ground beneath me, or against a tree, or crushed to my own chest by the vise wrap of my arms. Her scent filling me, her struggle inciting me. The tender, tender flesh shearing open as I bite down. The blood, so warm and sweet, filling my mouth in luscious pulses. So good, so good, so good.
Pain, and joy, and this thing between my legs spikes hard against the mattress.
God, no!
But it is there, and won't go away. Memories flood me. Sharp and vivid, indelible and eternal, as only a vampire's memory can be. The creatures that I hunted. Their fascination with terror and pain. Their thoughts as they stimulated themselves in the midst of the most depraved of acts. I thought I would rid the world of such thoughts. Such acts.
Nothing - not all the aching, siren scents I had endured until then, certainly not the unwashed sweat of the beast at my feet, and least of all anything that Carlisle had told me - nothing in all my young life had prepared me for that first bite, that first taste, of human blood. Not even the retching horror I had felt at the beast's thoughts could undo the ecstasy of that taste. I drained him to the last drop. And found myself in the same state that he had been when I tracked him down, there in that basement, reliving in his mind the piteous deaths he had inflicted.
My life as an avenging demon. It was not what I thought it would be. I thought I would rid the world of such thoughts. Such acts. I only drank them in. The intoxication of their blood lured and goaded, whispered to me of justice and right, slicked over and hid from me the poison that it carried inside. Until all I wanted was more. Until, in the end, I could carry no more.
And here I lie on Bella's bed. Wanting. Wanting. Her blood is not poisonous. Every article in this room testifies to her pure and innocent thoughts. No wonder her blood smells so sweet. No wonder I want it so badly. More than I have ever wanted anything, ever. And yet, what have I done? Rutting to the thought of her bleeding out into my mouth. I have despoiled this room of hers, her bedclothes, the very thoughts in the air. I have polluted it all.
The ugly creature will not lie down. It is impervious to my panic and shame. It is all I can do not to crash out through Bella's window with her quilts still binding me. Extricating myself without ripping anything takes so long. And still my body refuses to be tamed.
Put everything back. Everything back exactly as it was. Exactly in its place. Even the pitiful folded missive. Under the pillow. There.
If there is a God, let him please come. Let his hand pass over this room and take away my stain. Take it all away. Let it be clean again for her. As though I had never been.
I leave through the window, and run, aching arrow of stone still lodged in the joint of my thighs.
A/N: All of the books on Bella's shelf can be found at Amazon. The fairy tales illustrated by Kuniko Y. Craft are exquisite. East o' the Sun and West 'o the Moon, also exquisite, is illustrated by P.J. Lynch.
Iphegenia at Aulis, and Agamemnon at his bath: these are vignettes from Greek tragedies written about the Trojan War that would be familiar to our scholar Edward. For the curious, I have posted the details here: http(colon double slash)miaokuancha(dot)livejournal(dot)com