GRAND GUIGNOL

Gentle reader:

I finished reading Gaetan Soucy's novel, The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches.  I won't be searching for his three other novels. 

The Random House Dictionary says, "Grand Guignol:  1. a short drama stressing horror and sensationalism.  2. noting or pertaining to such a drama. 

Well, this post notes and pertains to such a drama, although strictly speaking the book is not a drama.  However, it is short. 

I have nothing against horror as a genre, but I don't like sensationalism; I find it to be the last resort of a cynical writer's mind.  Also, I don't appreciate a critic taking in vain the sacred name of Samuel Becket when drawing comparisons, if you know what I mean.  I mean, one critic did that, compared St. Beckett to Subvert Soucy. 
For shame. 

The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches really is a character, the twin of the narrator, but she's so hideous a monster she makes a grown man sick to see her.  She's chained to a wall beside her mother's glass coffin in a vault.  The cadaver is not described very much; it's twelve or thirteen years old.  When the lovely, virtuous narrator discovers her grotesque twin and All Is Revealed, her cretinous brother begins shooting at her.  She flees to the mysterious mansion, and as she begins to deliver her incestuously-conceived child, the place burns down. 

I tell you, The Monk, that 19th-century piece of offal, couldn't be sillier. 

I was intrigued by Mr. Soucy's clever use of language.  He made up a whole new mode of expression out of the narrator's freaky girlhood with her mad, power-junky father.  What's more, his skewed language (Soucy's) efficiently doles out clues to serve the mystery.  Sometimes the words are poetic, sometimes comic.  They're always intriguing.  However, it's like having someone address you while staring right at your ear.  I think he took a really wonderful schtick and turned it into a Cheap Trick. 

There: that's off my chest.  Here's Chapter Nine of Dead on Dutcher's Mountain. 
 
NINE

“Well, I was walking along, picking flowers and you know, just enjoying the beauties of nature, when I found it.  I know I shall never forget it!  It’s not as if one could ever be prepared for something as ugly as that, but I mean, really, it was such a shock!  Those bones showing through the skin, and I just got so sick.  I don’t remember much more.”  Thus Mrs. Bailey, the pharmacist’s wife, to Hillary as she took notes for the paper.

“Gross,” said the girl with spiked hair.

“Yeah,” agreed her unhappy father.

Confusion was general, and Altstock’s living room was again filled with people.  Nervous and awed, they clotted together or wandered silently.  Those who had not been on the tour, Jessica, Rosalie and Hillary, received differing reports.  Hillary had called the paper; she would accompany McCoy and get the story.

“I got a very good look at the remains.  Too good,” affirmed Lewelleyn Jones.  “I did what I could to get people away quickly, especially your niece.  I doubt she saw anything.  She didn’t?  Excellent.  Yes, largely skeletal, the clothes rotting.  The leg is in a heavy, toothed game trap.”

The realtor said, “I didn’t see anything, but did you hear about the cave?  I’ll bet the body was inside there and got washed out.  There’s been a lot of rain...”

“No, I didn’t see much, sis,” Brian told her.  “Sorry.  Mrs. Bailey collapsed and I ran over to help.  It’s a good thing Lewellyn had his wits about him; Karen might have seen it too.  Not,” he admitted as he found an armchair and sat with his belated lunch tray, “that she wouldn’t have been fascinated.  Academically, at least.”

Hillary sat on a hassock by Karen’s seat and filched smoked salmon from the girl’s paper plate.  “Let’s hear it for academe,” she said, and pulled a face.

Karen, teasing, grabbed to retrieve the fish.  “What’s academe?”

“In this case it’s theoretical life, to get you ready for the real thing,” Hillary said.

“Practice,” her father put in.  “You can hear about the dead person, but you can’t see the remains.”

“But when I practice the piano I play real music,” Karen objected.  “Why can’t I see real life?  Or I mean real death?”

Hillary let Brian answer about easy and hard while she continued to pirate lunch from their plates.  She eyed the crowd for someone else to question.  Rosalie refilled platters of cold cuts at the bar and gestured to a man carrying trays.  Jessica tended a big coffee machine.  Voerst spoke with Altstock by the spiral stairway.  He had escorted Mrs. Bailey from the find; he was strained and intent, without gesture, very different from last night. 

Overhead, Gunderson tracked him from the mezzanine. 

When she heard McCoy’s siren, Hillary got her camera bag and went to meet him.  Her professional formality kicked in.  Even so, when his eyes found hers she felt them like a physical touch.  Voerst followed from the house: he would be their guide.

“I’ll take photos for Brad,” Hillary told McCoy.  “He doesn’t have a reporter to send.  I can take some for you at the same time, if you want.”

He nodded, helping a deputy pull equipment from a van.  “Great; you’re better at it than I am.  I’ll tell you what shots I want.  You can use our gear, if you want.”

“Did you bring lights?”

“Strobes.”  He turned to Voerst, with a nod acknowledging recognition from the Whole Tribe.  “Are we ready?”

“Yes.”  The big man slid a curious look at Hillary.  “It is about a mile and a half by the fastest route, over rough terrain.  Is your equipment heavy?”

“Not very,” McCoy said.  “We’ll go the quickest way.”

“Ms. Webster?” Voerst asked. 

“Ms. Webster will come in her professional capacity.”

“Gracious that she should do so for such a small newspaper.” Voerst turned to Hillary.  “Very generous.  However, should you?  The sight will be ugly, and as I say, the walk will be rough.”

“That’s all right, Karl.  Thank you.”

The sheriff began walking.  Hillary ran to catch up, then Voerst passed  them, and the deputy.  They walked north past the office and up the steep, sparsely wooded hill.  The degraded surface skidded from under their boots.  After half an hour the whole party was winded and lingering beside occasional trees where the ground has more level.  Hillary fell behind; McCoy dropped back.  She smiled at him, panting. 

He took her hand.  “Too much, Hill?  You’re pale.”  She shook her head.  “We can take a rest, if you want.”

“Having second thoughts about me seeing a corpse?” she asked.

“Sort of.  I’ve never watched you at work.”

“I’m all right, Earl.  No problem.”

“Well, I’m beginning to feel the climb.  This altitude makes a difference.”

“Too many years behind a desk,” she tweaked.

“Not funny.”

The others disappeared around a shoulder of rock.  “Seriously, Hill.  Are you sure you want to do this?  I’m a good-enough photographer.  I can take a couple of shots for the paper.”

She could tell he meant it; that he wanted to spare her. 

“It won’t rank as a peak experience, Earl, but I’ll do it.”

He wasn’t convinced.  “You quit reporting real life; Rosalie told me.”

“I’m going to do this.”

McCoy surrendered.  “I remember that look.  You’ll do it even if it makes you sick.”

They rounded the rock and saw the others; McCoy released Hillary’s hand.  He spoke more loudly, as if granting an interview; Hillary almost smiled. 

“This could be a tourist,” he said.  “We’re missing a couple of them from last summer.  On the other hand, somebody’s bones washed onto a road at Low Divide in the spring; turned out to be a miner from about fifty years back.  This could be something like that, that old.”  He resettled the equipment on his back.  “But you’ve got to wonder why a person would walk where a bear might step, and not see that trap.  If it was on a trail instead of beside a cave, I want to know why.  And if it was in that cave, I want to know who set the trap in such a weird place and what the dead person was doing inside.  Lots of questions.  It could tie in with the marijuana farmer we’ve been looking for, too.”

“So you’re going to look closely, do an autopsy, all that sort of thing?”

“It was a violent death, so yes.  This mountain belongs to the mine, not the park service.  That puts it within my jurisdiction.”

She dropped her voice.  “But not even Sheriff McCoy can be the catcher in more than one little field of rye.”

McCoy’s voice lowered too.  “It that how I sound, Hill?  Obsessive?”

“Afraid so.”

He shrugged.  “So be it.”

She regretted the widening distance between them.  It took a long time to reach the cave. 

Hillary immediately knew there was no front-page picture here; the gnawed, grinning half-face lying in the bed of blond curls, the blued steel teeth biting into the relatively complete slacks, and the protruding leg bone spoke too clearly of grue.  She and McCoy set up lights and took general shots which established the relationship to the bluff and the cave’s entry.  She shivered.  She swallowed, twice.  No, she swore to herself, she wouldn’t cough.  She always did that.  One time, after a butchery in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, she had seen so much and coughed so long she was hospitalized.  A silly reaction. 

She didn’t cough.

Voerst, like the deputy, watched Hillary and McCoy from the clearing.  Once near the corpse, though, McCoy watched Voerst.  He even took a side-step for a better view.  Finally he called, “You all right?”  The big man was startled; he nodded.  “Come over here, will you?  We can use your help.”

Voerst glanced pointedly at the deputy, who was fussing over the litter of straps and totes, but he approached.  McCoy placed him against the cave mouth and handed him one of the strobes, then resumed his work with the camera.  Voerst looked steadfastly straight ahead, visibly controlling himself.

“There, Hill.  That shot, please, from the head.”

Obediently she squeezed it off, also framing Karl’s full-figure profile against the bluff.  The light in his hand, of course, did nothing.

“Here, let me see that,” McCoy said, and Voerst wordlessly handed him the strobe.  “Try it again, Hill,” the sheriff ordered, and held the light himself.  The light worked.  “Good.”   

Hillary squinted at the ground.  “Wait a minute, Earl.”

“What?”

“Something sparkled.  Reflected.  I can’t see it now, but it’s down there.”

“Where?”

“Down there by the trap.  By Karl’s foot.” 

The big man edged aside.

“Here, Bennett,” McCoy called, “You through?  Take Ms. Webster’s light.  Just hold this button down for me, will you?”  He handed the light to the deputy and followed Hillary.  Voerst moved again.  They bent over the trap.

“See?  You can almost see something in the shadow,” Hillary was saying.  “Just there, sort of caught in under the shoe.  Use one of those sticks and get a look; the ankle has separated.”

“I see what you mean, Hill.  It’s--a chain, very fine.”  There was a sound of fiddling, of a twig being broken to use as a prod.  “There.”  McCoy straightened slowly in the intense light from the strobe.  “It’s an old-fashioned anklet chain, by God!  Maybe we’ll get identification right away.  Here; you can take a picture of it for the paper.”

But Hillary found she could not.  She stared at Gail’s anklet, the initials plainly carved; GW:BW.

“Get Bri,” she said, and finally began to cough and cough and cough.