Читать книгу Fauna - Christiane Vadnais - Страница 9

Even just a few kilometres from Shivering Heights there was no foretaste of apocalyptic weather, just a grey gloom and puffs of fog lapping at the car’s headlights. As far as Agnes can see, vaporous white patches lie skulking on the ground. They look almost hungry, she thinks, checking her rear-view mirror. The car chugs along at a steady pace, piercing a wall of cloud that closes behind it like a curtain.

For a few moments now she’s been so engrossed by these clouds she almost missed the sign for the Nordic spa. Yet they had clearly told her it would be hidden by the forest, scarcely visible from the road. She yanks the wheel, fearing she’ll veer into a clump of trees, but her nails dig into the leather steering wheel and she comes to a stop in the middle of a clearing of gravel interspersed with yellow weeds.

There’s only one other car in the lot. Bales of fog roll over its chassis and along the ground to the welcome centre, before tumbling down the steep slope to the foot of the mountain.

The dense fog engulfs Agnes’s hands while she pulls her bag from the trunk. She came here straight from work, and regrets not putting on something more comfortable. Her high heels sink into the ground, where the leaves that have amassed lie rotting under steady rains. The surrounding forest is a tapestry of pine needles and soaked wood. A muffled roar hints at the steady, truculent flow of the river below.

Tendrils of cold creep under Agnes’s clothing and skin and seem to burrow down to her skull.

In her raincoat pocket, her phone vibrates. The office can’t live without her any more than she can without it. She’ll have to turn off her phone. Gripping her bag tight to stay her shivering hand, she takes a deep breath like her therapist taught her, imagining a great wind of freedom blowing through her, from the inside out.

In the welcome centre, two women are in a heated argument. Behind them, massive windows like the walls of an aquarium magnify the forest below. Breaks in the cloud cover afford glimpses of small cabins and pools of a paranormal blue. Shrouded in shadow and mist, this landscape has a lugubrious charm. The arguing women ignore it. The taller one claims there’s nothing to be done: the spa is closed, weather warning, torrential rains. In a raspy voice, the other, whose back is turned to Agnes, asserts her right to stay. Her shaking hands have a curious gleam in the chiaroscuro, as if wrapped in a watery film, or skin so thin and pale it lets a sliver of light shine through. At the sight of the newcomer, the women fall silent. Then the guest’s face lights up.

‘See! No one got your message!’

The owner doesn’t back down. Every guest was informed of the closure the night before.

‘But we’re here now. You don’t really expect us to postpone our vacations?’ asks the young woman. She turns and winks at her new ally.

Taken aback, Agnes stares into the face of the stranger before her. Her features are youthful, symmetrical, and clean, except the pointed, chalky teeth set in her crooked smile. Her round eyes bulge. Her freckled skin seems to conceal nothing of what lies beneath, and on its surface beads of water shine, as if the vapours outside had condensed on her.

‘I’m too tired to get back on the road,’ Agnes concurs.

‘See? We’ll leave if the river overflows. Promise.’

The woman yanks the keys from the owner’s hand and takes her new accomplice by the arm, like an old friend. Agnes notices her eyes: at once splendid and shallow, two small pools shimmering like tiny fireworks.

In Shivering Heights, life is an enigma of water and sky. Rain is frequent. Some days it falls in perfectly formed pearls or drops honed to a knife’s point, leaving nothing visible beyond and no prospect of escape. But there is a peace of sorts at the heart of a downpour so precious and violent. On other days, the showers mist down like gossamer, enveloping forests and outcroppings, snouts and claws. Then the river gains the upper hand, forces mergers, annihilates the delicate invasiveness of the rains.

As Agnes and Heather, the stubborn young woman, sink into the scalding baths of the Nordic spa, the air begins to turn to rain. All around, in faraway mountains and up in tree branches and under the earth in warrens and dens, creatures great and small get ready for the coming downpour. The women are content to watch the fog twist and knot itself before their eyes, hiding and revealing snatches of landscape.

‘I love water,’ says Heather suddenly.

Though it’s pointless, she paddles her arms like fins to stay in place.

‘You’ll see. We’ll be completely new women after this,’ she rasps.

Submerged in turquoise water in the middle of the mountains, Agnes still feels like the stagnant, lethargic woman she has become at work. She inhales, to take in the moment and hold it tightly in her lungs and stomach, but it seems to be constantly dissipating.

‘Are you from around here?’ she finally asks.

‘Not really. You?’

‘I needed to get far away. From work.’

A little laugh pierces the fog.

‘You came to the right place. We’re far away from everything, here.’

Heather’s voice shifts strangely between deep and high-pitched, but she doesn’t seem to care, and shoves her head under the water.

Agnes finds this young woman’s forthrightness dizzying. Such lightness inhabits her every move, her very being, as she dives right into the shallowest section of the water and out again, and traverses the pool with the ease of an undine.

This might all seem less strange if Agnes weren’t emerging from a drawn-out corporate restructuring. In recent months she’s laid off so many people that their tears and sobs have come to seem more normal than the beatific, almost unsettling joy emanating from the bather beside her.

Truth be told, Agnes needs more than a week at the spa; it would take a thousand years of ablutions to rinse off the worries encrusting her body. Her muscles remain tense even as she sinks ever deeper into the hot water. All around her torso and her arms, small whirlpools live and die, leaving a wake of sparkling foam. Hot steam rises to caress her face. She’d like to fill herself up with emptiness, but she’s breathing in less and less air, more and more water. Her skin drips with sweat and vapour.

When Agnes gets out of the water to head to her cabin, Heather follows, bent on further interaction. Soon, in Shivering Heights, two trembling shapes in Lycra bathing suits and flip-flops will make their way through massive clouds of fog. They’ll tiptoe along, so small and alone next to the forest and mountains and river and upside-down abyss of the sky, the source of all this smoke.

The two women spend the following day in the spa’s many pools, sweating or shivering, shedding dead skin. Without other guests to welcome, the owner leaves them to their own devices, then stops appearing altogether. Eager for new experiences, Heather slips into every bath, tries out the hammam and the sauna. Agnes becomes less disconcerted, learns to be still. Like the herons that sometimes come to rest in the spa in Shivering Heights, or the black bass riding the river’s current, she’ll drink, and eat, and wait, soaking wet, for the day to pass. Her muscles will relax; her breathing will slow down.

Little by little, the downpour smudges out the borders between spa and forest. In the afternoon, seams of muck seep down from the undergrowth in small furrows, extending their black tentacles into adjacent pools. Under cover of rainfall, Heather strips off her bikini top and throws it skyward. She swims easily, with precise strokes, but there is something forced about the way she stands: erect, shoulders thrust back, streaming water accentuating the contrast between her muscular body and soft, full breasts.

‘Loosen up, Agnes. We’re the only ones here.’

Heather lifts up her arms to redo her ponytail. As her chest thrusts out and lips part to reveal her small, pointy teeth, her wide-apart eyes gaze at Agnes, who looks away.

In Shivering Heights, the ambient humidity obscures vision. Drop by drop, it distills its musty aroma. Agnes reluctantly undoes her bikini straps and dives right back into breaststroke position. Heather’s strange lightness is both seductive and somehow disconcerting.

‘You have a great body,’ she hears through the splashing.

Agnes wishes she could be left cold by the sight of Heather’s dappled skin, whose suppleness accentuates her bone structure and musculature, or the athletic stomach scored by the thin, glistening line of a scar. But shivers run down her legs and arms. She suddenly feels an invasive presence in the cold water and another, even more sinister, beyond.

She grabs a towel and heads toward a distant yurt that’s almost hidden by the trees. From the corner of her eye she sees Heather flapping in the water, then shedding the final patch of colour, her bikini bottom.

Occupied by even the most trivial things, the human mind can stay calm. That’s what they say, or at any rate what Agnes’s therapist believes. That’s why she booked a stay at this spa. Stretched out in a hammock that encloses her like a cocoon, Agnes focuses on the crackling of the fire in the centre of the room, the squeals in the distance every time Heather is shocked by the steaming-hot pools or the icy cold river, and the points of light that dance inside her eyelids when they close.

After a few minutes, she falls asleep.

In her dream, Agnes is back in the fog. She sees ill-defined animal shapes, a forest of pinwheeling silhouettes brushing up against each other. Deer, foxes. Elongated creatures that are neither garter snakes nor worms emerge from the vaporous mass and slither off into the waters. She sees them swarming together in a writhing knot, a floating vipers’ nest that morphs into a woman whose pale transparent skin reveals bones and veins and the blood circulating through her body. This infrared apparition opens its mouth unnaturally wide, exposing its skull. Agnes is drawn to the gaping chasm, as if pulled by a magnetic force she can’t possibly resist toward this opening as wide as a storm drain. When her eyes open and her arms thrust out into the pitch dark where they find no hold, Agnes discerns that she has seen this girl’s true nature.

A spasm runs over her body, then she wakes.

The ceiling above her is worn, cracked, water-spotted. When she gets out of the hammock, the woodsmoke makes her cough. She runs her fingers along the hammock’s fabric and feels an honest roughness, a profound materiality.

Through the window she can see Heather singing to herself, draping a towel over her shoulder and putting on her flip-flops.

Above, the rainstorm marshals its forces.

That night Heather makes a meal of roots and berries, fragrant herbs, and other items foraged from the grounds. On the dining room’s sole table she lays out a black mushroom stew, a tart earthy soup, and tiny whole fish with fire-blackened heads. She eats voraciously. Determined to relax, Agnes sits at the table and deliberately chases all thoughts from her mind. She has taken her time getting dressed, called her assistant, then turned off her phone again – for good this time, she is determined. With a few important matters dispatched, she can relax. Rest has brought on a new-found clarity, even as the edges of the world blur behind a curtain of rain.

‘So,’ asks Heather. ‘Feel like a new woman?’ A half-smile creeps over her pale face.

‘I feel totally calm,’ Agnes lies.

‘Great. That calls for a celebration,’ says Heather.

She bends over to get something from under the table, re-emerges with a bottle of red, drinks straight from the bottle, and passes it to Agnes.

In Shivering Heights, between four walls assailed by rain and wind, perched up among the blackbirds and the clouds, a woman breaks out laughing, and another shrugs and sips sour wine. Why not? Agnes feels a surge of guilt for not trusting her more. It might be no more than fatigue preventing her from taking Heather’s innocent enthusiasm at face value. Under that soaked hair, behind that bran-flecked skin, there seems to course an unaffected joy.

Had Agnes even a dash of Heather’s temperament, the corporate restructuring might have gone more smoothly. Perhaps the episode wouldn’t have marked her so; maybe she wouldn’t now find herself overwhelmed by lassitude.

‘You’re changing already,’ Heather mumbles, sponging her lips with a gleaming hand. ‘You’re learning not to worry so much.’

The trust Agnes was coming to feel for her fellow guest is shaken. Heather leans forward. From her neck, a brackish smell, mud and chlorine. Outside, visibility is next to none; it’s a chaos of water and forest and air, all jumbled together in the storm.

‘Now you’re ready for the end of the world,’ the young woman says gravely.

Increasingly powerful rain pummels the windows with the fury of disoriented birds. Heather’s bizarre eyes, twin sloughs on the hinterland of her face, do not blink.

Agnes’s heart leaps.

Across from her, a hearty clanging laugh runs off its rails.

‘You should see yourself. You’re a nervous wreck!’

Agnes hesitates a moment, then lets a relieved laugh escape her lips. The tension in her shoulders falls away. Tonight, no matter what apocalyptic jokes and dreams of aquatic peril visit her, she wants to believe in her power to throw off not just this burden weighing down her shoulders but sensation altogether. She finishes her drink in one swig.

‘Let’s go to your room,’ says Heather, waving a second bottle of red.

The rain soaks them so swiftly and fully that, once inside Agnes’s cabin, they have no choice but to strip off their clothes and put on robes. The cloth clings to their skin. The humidity is inescapable. Little streams of water drip from their hair and down their backs. Inside, even the walls seem to sweat.

It might be the late hour or the intimate surroundings or fatigue, but Heather’s irrepressible joy seems to have ebbed. She sits with Agnes on the floor. They drink their wine in silence. Outside, the rain keeps hammering down and the wind makes off with anything not firmly rooted to the ground.

‘You look so sweet. I can hardly imagine you laying off all those people.’

The words come as Agnes is approaching total relaxation. But at the slightest mention of her work, she feels her fist clench and unclench, clench and unclench. It’s as if her rebellious nervous system were performing her therapist’s relaxation exercises, against her will. She closes her eyes. Her heartbeats can be felt in every part of her body, all the way down to the tips of her toes.

‘You need something to take your mind off it,’ says Heather, coming over.

Soon Agnes feels the faint touch of two wet lips on her skin, just in front of her ear. She starts, tenses up. But she lets Heather’s hand slide across her stomach, into the folds of her robe, and come to rest on her thigh. The young woman kisses Agnes up and down her throat and jaw, then slowly works her way to her mouth. She tastes of alcohol and seaweed. Agnes’s breathing quickens. Despite herself she feels her shoulders fall back and her chest rise up, untensed and weightless.

Heather straddles her thighs and holds them down in place, spreads the wings of Agnes’s robe and runs her tongue along her breasts.

‘Stop … Stop…’ Agnes mumbles weakly.

Heather doesn’t seem to hear, and presses her hand between Agnes’s legs. ‘You’re already wet.’

Those eyes stare at her ravenously: two voids ready to swallow her whole. Heather doesn’t stop; her fingers glide along Agnes’s wet lips, seeking a way in, though she must be able to read the nausea on her face, sense the refusal in legs suddenly leaden. Heather seems oblivious to Agnes’s unwillingness, or sees it as a challenge, like everything else. She smiles as she takes off her robe, and her eyes cloud over as her pubis inches toward Agnes’s. She kisses her harder and harder, cinches her like a harness, urges her on with words that are drowned out by the storm.

Agnes is petrified, stilled by a deep torpor. She feels Heather not just leaning over her body but entering her veins, flowing through her bloodstream. She has no strength left to fight off this unchecked desire swallowing her whole. Soon not one particle of her will be left unpenetrated by this moist, avid being whose sweat and saliva and other fluids are spreading all over and inside her body.

When Heather orders her to lie down, Agnes complies despite herself. Her mind is already elsewhere, swept away by the rain hammering the cabin windows. A grey curtain obstructs the view; a dark aurora borealis descends over Shivering Heights.

The cracks in the ceiling drink in their moans.

Agnes wakes to the weight of damp sheets on numb limbs. Her tongue seems stuck to the roof of her mouth, and when she tries to get up a wave of nausea hits.

She gropes the floor around her and finds she is indeed alone.

The room spins. Despite her heavy head, unresponsive legs, and flesh that seems somehow drained of blood, she manages to get to her feet. A single purpose drives her: find her keys and get out of this place. Flee to the Border, and beyond. This lucid thought is not enough to chase the knot from her stomach, the nausea that has her reeling. The keys aren’t on her dresser, or in her suitcase. Her coat pockets are empty.

Agnes vomits.

She flings on her clothes and opens the cabin door.

The flood surges in like the sea breaching a sinking ship. Agnes stands knee-deep in cold, dark, slimy water.

Outside, the storm has died down, the rain calmed. A grey sun crouches on the horizon. Somewhere in the forest a raven caws, but its sharp cry only emphasizes the deafening force of the torrent, the incessant raindrops on the floodwaters. The spa is underwater; the cedar cabins nearest the river submerged. Agnes fights her way to the welcome centre, which appears to float on the water’s surface.

While she wades over, a cramp cleaves her stomach in two. Agnes can see that her car is no longer in the lot. She fights through water strewn with flotsam, surrounded by chips of wood and other debris swept up by the flood. She has lost all sense of which way to go.

Then Agnes sees Heather showering in the rain. She’s naked, dripping dark streams, her body offered up to the elements. Her legs are stuck in mud as the rain cleanses her of sludge. She leans into the water to splash her arms, shoulders, and stomach. Her voice rises as she turns around; it is by turns husky and reedy. She is singing a tune whose finer points are lost to the wind.

A broad smile twists Heather’s lips when she sees Agnes. She slowly waves a hand, illuminated in a spectral white that makes it seem almost transparent. Heather holds up a shiny object, then tosses it into the water.

A set of keys.

Agnes sinks into panic, spins around in its eddy. As she is swept back toward the spa, toward the most heavily flooded areas, she feels her heart rising in her throat. She is running, then swimming, until she once again reaches the river whose current, fed by torrential rains, has grown more powerful than ever.

The surge sweeps her away.

She is surrounded by the river’s detritus, tonnes of dead leaves and branches, chaise longues and fence posts – all things accustomed, like Agnes, to resting on terra firma. Sharp objects slash her thighs, pieces of wood smack her from all sides, but only one thing matters. Get away. Get far away from Heather’s voracious eyes, far away from the spa and the office, far away from all of it.

The waves upend Agnes and spin her around. Then, while raindrops harrow her stomach, while the world is swept away as the waters form a mighty river, a lake, an inland sea, her eardrums are pierced by the long shrieks that ring out on wet days in Shivering Heights.