A Nest of Nightmares

The words rang embarrassingly in the empty room. I saw that the bed had not been slept in.

My heart thudded sickeningly and I tasted something bitter. If, after all my care –

Then I had a sudden, sane vision of Sylvia, exhausted and sleeping alone on the floor of the attic, worn out with crying. I went up to fetch her.

But the attic was empty. Or nearly. Something glittered on the bare boards and I saw that it was Sylvia’s ring, her half of the pair our mother had left us. I knew how much Sylvia had cherished it. She would never have lost it, never left it behind carelessly. But there it was, and Sylvia was gone.

I searched the house and found that she had taken away a bag of clothes. She had left no note.

The day passed and faded into night, but Sylvia did not return or call. Had she been seduced away, kidnapped? She hadn’t said anything about leaving. She must mean to come back, she must.

As the days blended one into the other in the still, silent house, I asked myself again and again why she had gone. I asked myself how I could have prevented it, and I found a hard answer. By trying to keep her, I had forced her to go. I had been too severe, too self-centered. I had held her too tightly, refusing to let her have any life of her own. She was a woman, not a child, and her rebellion was natural. I had driven her away.

‘Maybe I want something you can’t give me,’ she had said. But what she wanted was so horrible! The memory of that dark, filthy den in the attic, her discarded nightgown shimmering whitely against it, still sent a shudder through me. I would not, could not, follow her there. Our childhood fantasy of marrying brothers had never seemed more impossible.

But why couldn’t we both have what we wanted? Why did I have to live without her? Understanding more now, I was willing to give more, even to share her, if she would only come back. I would no longer try to change or bind her; I would leave the attic, and her life up there, strictly alone. She could bring her husband, or whatever he was, to the house and I would not interfere. If only I could tell her so. If only she would give me another chance.

One day I went up to the attic with the toolkit and set to work on the roof. The hammer did no good at all, and I broke my knife and screwdriver against it. Finally I went down to the village and bought an axe. I was soaking with sweat and rain and my hands were bleeding before I was through, but I got it done at last. The new hole was even bigger than the old; quite big enough for anything to get through. I stuck my head out, scaring off a couple of rooks who had come to examine my work, and I looked around at the heavy grey sky and the bare trees, searching for something large and black flapping on the horizon. I saw nothing like that. The rain ran into my eyes and I retreated.

We hadn’t been in the house long enough to acquire much in the way of rubbish, but I took the old newspapers and magazines we’d been saving to recycle, and the bag of garbage from the kitchen, and carried it all up to the attic. Working fast in the gathering dark and cold rain, I raked up a sackful of dead leaves and twigs from the garden, and picked up broken branches from beneath the trees. Still it wasn’t enough, so I took the axe to a couple of chairs, tore the stuffing out of my pillows, and scissored up a few old clothes.

It’s a start, anyway. A sign of my goodwill. All I can do now is wait. And so I do, lying in Sylvia’s bed every night, listening for noises from above.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lisa Tuttle is an award-winning author of science fiction, fantasy and horror. Her first novel, written in collaboration with George R.R. Martin, Windhaven, has been in print since 1981, and was adapted by her as a graphic novel. Her most recent novels are part of a detective series with supernatural elements, set in 1890s England: The Curious Affair of the Somnambulist and the Psychic Thief and The Curious Affair of the Witch at Wayside Cross. Born and raised in Texas, she has lived in Scotland since 1990.

ABOUT THE COVER

Cover: The cover reproduces the original cover painting by Nick Bantock from the 1986 Sphere paperback edition.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

‘Bug House’, ‘Dollburger’, ‘Treading the Maze’, ‘The Memory of Wood’, ‘The Other Mother’, ‘The Horse Lord’, and ‘The Nest’ were first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. ‘Flying to Byzantium’ and ‘A Friend in Need’ were first published in The Twilight Zone Magazine. ‘Community Property’ first appeared in Shayol. ‘Need’ was first published by Doubleday in Shadows 4 (1981). ‘Sun City’ was first published by Pan Books in New Terrors (1980). ‘Stranger in the House’ was first published by New American Library in Clarion II (1972).