Sister Wolf by Ann Arensberg

Author:Ann Arensberg [Arensberg, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780283987311
Publisher: Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd
Published: 1980-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

SIX

LUBA DEYM HAD NEVER read aloud to her daughter at bedtime. She had told her stories instead, which began while Marit was undressing, continued through her bath and teeth-brushing, and went on after she was tucked under the covers, with the lights out. There were no ducks, beavers, bears, or orphans in Luba’s repertory, so Marit had been raised on were-beasts, enchanted suits of armor and heath wraiths. These spectral friends were some of Marit’s favorites, as was the child-vampire, but the stories that she liked best belonged to the buried-alive cycle, which Luba had heard at the feet of her own grandmother, Pàla, when she was a child herself, in Hungary.

Luba’s accounts of being buried alive started with someone waking up in a very tight space, raising his arms or lifting his head, and striking a solid barrier, which was then perceived as wood or metal and followed by the instantaneous recognition that he was in a coffin. Then came the horrific shrieks, the banging of the fists on the lid, the bloodying of the fists from much banging on the wood, the calculation of the air supply, and the gasping and heaving from the anticipation of smothering.

Then Luba would switch the viewpoint: she moved outside the coffin, to the dark nave of a church or a side chapel; to a parlor where the coffin stands in the center of the rug, banked by waxy flowers; or to the cemetery where fresh earth shows the outline of the grave and no headstone has yet been planted. In the church an ancient sacristan makes his rounds. He is partially deaf, so he cannot hear the noises until he passes by the candlelit Lady chapel. Fists banging sound like mice scrabbling to his ears, but his attention is fixed by the lid of the coffin being raised, just inches, and falling to. The prisoner within is too weak to throw the lid aside. The sacristan is terrified, suspects a supernatural incident, and stumbles out to wake the vicar. (In some versions Luba’s sacristan was not only deaf but drunk, and went back to his pile of blankets in the crypt to drink himself from delirium to oblivion.)

In the mansion containing the lying-in-state parlor, the children’s governess wakes from a nightmare, and for precious minutes thinks that the muffled screams she hears are a continuation of the dream. Or the overweight housemaid has crept down to the kitchen, lured by a cold meat pie, and is cutting very thin slices so that no one will notice the theft. Five thin slices add up to one thick one, however, and the cook has an eagle eye. With the fifth slice halfway to her mouth, the housemaid hears moans coming from the parlor and drops the pie onto the floor, to incriminate her forever.

In the cemetery, the cries from the coffin alternate with owls hooting, and no human hears them, unless Luba introduced a pair of adventurous lovers into the story. What the grave-robber

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