Page 2 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
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Oh, Hell Again
Twisted Sister,Cass Leigh’s debut novel, takes elements of both traditional Gothic horror and the fairy tale, and weaves them into something altogether darker and nastier. While the horror genre is not generally noted for restraint, Cass Leigh drives her narrative along with the brakes of good taste permanently in the ‘off’ position.
Fiction Today
By December, Max’s luxurioustrappings littering my cottage had ceased to be poignant and tear-provoking mementoes of our love and more a reminder thatI’dbeen discarded for the duration, too: an abandoned Abandoned Woman.
He’d left traces of his presence everywhere like he’d been marking out territory, yet when it came to packing his possessions up they made a pathetically small heap of boxes. (Or rather, Fortnum and Masonhampers, Max having profligate tastes in food and wine.)
When I came down from stashing them away in the attic the answering machine was frantically winking at me.Three messages. Three messages. Three messages.
‘Play it cool,’ I advised it, ‘you know you’re the best offer I’ve had all year.’
And no, loneliness had not reduced me to the depths of talking to inanimate objects because I’d alwaysdone it, particularly with my worn (but still handsome) black leather Italian handbag, Guido.
When I pressed Play Messages, Pa’s voice boomed with unchristian fervour: ‘You’ll burn in hell, girl!’ Then he added on a rising note: ‘Spawn of Satan! Seed of Beelzebub!’
‘And the Season’s Greetings to you, too,’ I said, deleting him right at the start of what was clearly destined to be one of hislonger, brandy-sodden rants.
Pa had phoned me at least once a month with the same message since I became Max’s mistress, so Hell hath rather lost its sting over the years.
As you may have guessed, Pa (who converted to the Charismatic Church of God as a young man on a trip to the USA) has had quite a strong influence on my life, some of it good, some bad. Or maybe it was all bad, and I’ve turnedit into good?
I mean, think about the way he frequently locked me in the cupboard under the stairs in order to force the devil out of me! (And had he never tried to take it out of me, I might never have known it was in there in the first place, although his habit of addressing me as ‘Seed of Satan’ and suchlike from my infancy onwards, should have given me a pointer.)
You know, I never realizedhe was crackers until I was sent away to boarding school and could compare him with other people’s fathers. Mind you, I don’t think he was quite so unhinged before the demon drink took hold of him, but even so, my childhood experiences seemed to be pretty unique among my peers.
Still, it was great training for a horror writer, because I now know I’m invulnerable to ghosts, spectres, ghouls orany other supernatural manifestation. I often felt their inimicalpresence in the darkness of the cupboard, and if any of them had been capable of physically harming me they would surely have done so then when I was at their mercy.
…she heard others breathing a different rhythm in the darkness, and hearts pounded to a different beat from her own until sometimes the cupboard walls seemed to wildlypulsate…
But sometimes now I wonder if such apparitions only exist because I let them escape from some Pandora’s box in my brain, so that they owe their existence to me, their creator, La Frankensteina?
Who knows? The denizens of my novelscertainlyowe their existence to me, though on paper my monstrous creations have a more tangible presence in order to better curdle the blood and chill thespines of my readers, who do not believe in ghosts and their like but are afraid of them anyway.
Of course with me it is quite the reverse: I believe but I am not afraid – or not afraid of physical harm, anyway, though I do admit to an unnatural fear of birds and have a terrifying recurrent nightmare about cupboards.
Still, I believe I am a walking example that good can come from bad, thoughif you read some of my book reviews or listened to Pa, you might think that bad was coming from bad.
Emerging from my reverie, I listened to the second message, which was from my sister, Jane, and just as predictable in content as Pa’s. After briefly gloating over her immaculately conceived verse, life, and marriage to her adoring spouse, Gerald, she proceeded to plant as many wasp-like stingsas she could into my quivering flesh.
Max’s leaving me for a year’s sabbatical at a Californian university, taking his wife, Rosemary, with him, had given her fresh ammunition. She could sense vulnerability, and hisabsence had left me feeling strangely exposed, especially since his communications had slowly dwindled to sporadic and unsatisfactory phone calls.
Jane was erroneously consideredby many, including Ma and Pa, to be the nearest thing to an angel in human form, so she needed to say these things to me, because her pedestal would probably corrode and crumble under her if she couldn’t drain the poison from her fangs occasionally.
I deleted her pretty swiftly, then listened to the third and last recording.
‘Hi, Cass, it’s Orla. Guess what, I’ve got a Perfect Partner tonight!I’m meeting him at a restaurant, but if he’s as useless as the last one I’m climbing out of the back window and coming home.
‘Oh well, hope springs eternal in the female breast.
‘By-ee!’
I wiped that, too, hoping against hope that Mr Perfect Partner would at least be approaching human this time, for poor Orla was getting desperate.
Could this be me all too soon? Old banger, high mileage, onecareful owner from new, reliable and in good running order?
