Seven Wives a' Calling

photo by Katrijn Michiels Photography.

Late one morning, a man in his mid-fifties sat down in his living room with his cup of coffee and a newspaper, and was about to take a sip when an odd noise caused him to pause. Was it coming from inside the house, he wondered. He lived alone. He had only just moved in a few weeks back. Through the windows, he saw crows crowding around outside, cawing like an angry mob and beating the air with their wings, but they were not making the noise that caused him concern. He rose from his chair and pressed his ear to the wall. Quite distinctly, he heard the sound of wood groaning and cracking. As he drew away from the wall, he heard the unmistakable sound of windows sliding open and banging shut, one after another, from somewhere inside the house, loud as gunshots.

He grabbed a butcher's knife from the kitchen and took a tour of the many empty rooms with their gleaming hardwood floors broken up only by stacks of boxes still waiting to be unpacked.

One room after another greeted him with nothing but the mundane. He was about to chalk it up to nerves from living in a new place, when he heard a faint rustling sound in the attic. He climbed to the second floor, pulled on a rope to a trap door in the ceiling, and ascended the steep ladder to the attic knowing that most likely he would find only pigeons or mice. He had never been up here before. Instead he found a dozen mourning doves sitting atop travel chests and perched on the shoulders of a headless seamstress’ dummy. He looked closer and saw that all of their eyes were merely black beads sewn into their sockets, stitches running up their breasts, mottled feathers, and sawdust spilling to the floorboards.

He chuckled, but he started to sweat. Just the heat caught under the roof, he told himself. The silence calmed his nerves, until he noticed that the noises had not died; they only migrated to the cellar, and the sound was less mistakable. A woman, perhaps? She was crying, and it was getting louder.

He plunged down the attic ladder, through the house toward a woman’s cries that steadily grew to the pitch of a wail. He came to a halt when he reached the stairs to the main level. Draped down the staircase, like the shedded skin of a snake, lay a wedding dress. Mildewed lace and torn veil flowed down several steps. The moment he saw the dress, the wailing stopped. He stepped closer, reaching down to touch the fabric, when the sound of shattering glass brought up upright.

He proceeded slowly but steadily now toward the cellar. He had only descended halfway down the crumbling concrete steps, just at the depth where the dank air circled round his ankles, when he saw her standing at the bottom. A gauzy mirage, with a face faintly recognizable, but he wasn’t sure. Was she the first, or the third? Red hair like a slow burning fire. Behind her, another woman in a shredded veil, standing barefoot atop a shattered jar and spilled white powder that left a caustic odor in the air. From behind him, at the top of the stairs, came another movement as another bride slowly descended towards him, this one with hair black as crows feathers, eyes hollowed out and spilling river pebbles from their sockets. He moved away, ever so slowly, but not in an attempt to flee. He had already moved enough times to realize he could never really get away. Instead he brushed past her on the stairs and went to the kitchen to put on the kettle.

He ignored the dozens of dishes shattered on the kitchen floor and routed round the cupboard for the large teapot. It was the favorite tea set of . . . which one was it now, the fifth wife? He gathered up the seven teacups on their chipped saucers, carried them to the sink to delicately clean them until the water boiled.

He had guests to entertain.