She Walks in Shadows(36)

Everyone cooed to Asenath in Yank, but when we were alone, I would teach her the Deep language. It was through me she spoke her first word: “‘Fhalma.” This embarrassed Mother when she was still sane, while Master Ephraim was greatly impressed. He decided to resume my education and gave me free reign of his forbidden library, thinking that everything I absorbed I would squeeze back into Asenath infused with traces of our innate abilities.

Even so, he assumed I only comprehended a third of what was there and I never let on otherwise. I realized that it was better for him to think I was mostly stupid and beneath him, because Asenath’s precociousness won all of his affection and his attentions were more horrid than his despise.

II.

As we grew older, my love for my sister evolved from unconditional to concerned. Once she grew out of the sweetness of infancy, she became a little shoggoth, especially after she was told Mother had died.

When you said yes, she shouted no, and would destroy whatever porcelain bauble or glass beaker happened to be in reach. Toilet training was a farce and would begin with her running through the house, diaper flapping, and end in the library, where she’d micturate and defecate on whatever ancient manuscript was open on the table. This is how we lost the Pnakotic Manuscripts, a first edition of Remnants of Lost Empires, and Livre d’Eibon (Comte Saint-Germain’s personal copy), while Asenath earned many whippings.

Despite my own rage, I would try to protect her as Mother had protected me. Despite my myriad disfiguring lacerations, she was an ungrateful child. She would thank me by stealing a goldfish — Mother had given me a dozen or so before she left — out of the tank and lay it to dry on Mr. Gilman’s secretaire to go unnoticed for hours. After discovering my 12th fish in this manner, I had had enough.

I found her outside throwing acorns against a tree and I yanked her up to standing by her arm.

“How about I bury you back here? Would you like that?” She twisted under my grip and I only squeezed her wrist tighter. “You are so careless with life; why should anyone let you have your own?”

“But they don’t glow. Only humans have it. Father said.”

“And he says I and mother aren’t human. You think we don’t have the glow?” She stopped her sobbing and looked up at me wide-eyed.

“All living things have a glow.” I continued. “It’s the spark of life. You have it. I have it. The goldfish have it.”

“Says who?”

“Says I. Dig them all up. Now!” I pointed at the impressive pet cemetery that had been plotted in the corner of the garden.

She cupped the earth in her hands until all 11 goldfish in their various stages of decomposition were revealed. I made her take the 12th fish out of my palm and place him with his kin. I hadn’t done it since I walked the docks, and I was unsure I could do it still, but I stared at the corpses until I heard the toll in my ears and my vision blurred. One by one, they began to flap until the shallow grave became an earthen sea of hopping fish. Her latest victim moved towards Asenath, each hiccough like an accusation to the child. When its tail-fin brushed her foot, she ran screaming into the house.

I found her in the library, huddled under the globe, sucking her dirty, grave-digging thumb.

“Did you learn your lesson, then?” I asked sweetly and gestured for her to come out of hiding.

“Why didn’t you do that for Mother?” she muttered.

We had all been instructed not to tell Asenath the truth. That Mother had died was a white Christian lie like the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, except this truth was painful. She hopped into my arms and began to cry, repeating over and over, “You could do that for Mother! You could! You could! Why don’t you?” At some point, she would have to know and I committed my first of many small defiances against Master Ephraim.

“Because Mother isn’t dead.” Her sobbing stopped. She wiped her snotty nose and considered me.

“What do you mean?”

“She went to sea. Now she’ll never die.”

“Can we go see her?”

“No, I am afraid not. But she is in a better place, I am sure.”

She thought on this for a while.

“Will you go to sea?” she sniffed.

“Hopefully.”

“Will I?”

“I don’t know. We aren’t as pure blood as she. I more than you. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

“I think I would like it. The sea, I mean.”

III.

After that, Asenath channeled her energy into learning, devouring any story I could tell her about our heritage and about the mysterious histories in the neighboring towns. We had made a great discovery in the library: a locked trunk full of esoteric lore that Asenath picked with a bobby pin and insisted I pursue with her. At the bottom, wrapped in one of Mother’s black silk scarves, was a yellowed and worn copy of the Necronomicon, in which we found much missing information about the Old Ones and what it was exactly Master Ephraim sought in our race — the subtle art of transformation and transference of the life-glow. This was how I was able to resurrect the fish and we learned it was only the beginning of a great trick, which we immediately practiced all afternoon until Mrs. Gilman rang the dinner bell.

Before we went our separate ways — I to the kitchen to serve and she to be served — I held Asenath back. Every night, he quizzed her on the day’s lesson and I knew he would not approve of our new curriculum.