Prodigal

by Melanie Tem

  He’ll fall on me, Lucy thought. He’ll squash me. She wasn’t at all scared by that.

  In fact, she hoped it would happen.

  “Sometimes the hunger is all I am. I get ravenous. It’s life-threatening. You understand that, don’t you, Carole? I know my kids do. I have to do this in order to survive. It’s a matter of simple self-preservation. Basic, primal survival. I have no choice.”

  Suddenly Mom tried to pull away from Stephanie and the others who were guarding her. They must have been a lot stronger than they looked, because they didn’t let her get away. She did manage to kick or punch one of them; Lucy heard the impact, like a crumpled paper bag.

  Then they pulled Mom down. She cried out. One leg was twisted under her. Lucy saw that she was wearing Rae’s bright yellow socks and, under her open coat, the Boys’ Club sweatshirt Ethan had had years ago. Stephanie lowered herself over Mom and sat on her stomach. Mom cried out again.

  One of the others slapped her face.

  They were hurting her mother. Before she knew what she was doing, Lucy had gathered her strength and was trying to get to them.

  Somebody grabbed her from behind. It was Rae. Lucy smelled her sweet-sour odor and remembered now that that was the smell Ethan had always left behind, like a snail, when he’d come on those weird visits to Mom. Lucy sniffed quickly at her own skin to see whether she was starting to smell that way yet.

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  Jerry had moved himself across the mat to be closer to Mom. He had a hand on her neck, under her collar, and was trailing the fingertips of his other hand down her cheek, around inside her ear, through the white and dark strands of her hair. In the movies and on the soaps when the cute guys did that and pretty music came up, you knew they were going to kiss somebody and then make love. Lucy’d often wished there’d be music in real life to warn you when somebody was going to kiss you or when the murderer was nearby.

  Jerry cupped Mom’s face in his hand. She jerked away but he got it again, in both hands this time. Was he going to kiss her? Jealousy stirred in her, and moral outrage. This was her mother. This was Jerry.

  Mom’s lip was bleeding where somebody had hit her. Lucy didn’t think she’d ever seen her mother’s blood before, or even thought about it. She started forward, thinking to put herself between Mom and Jerry, but Rae’s thin arms got tighter around her waist, and Rae’s very thin whisper sounded in her ear. “Wait.”

  Lucy sat very still. Her sister’s body heat seeped into her body, and she sent hers back. They were breathing the same air. She felt the beating of her sister’s heart through her own rib cage, the coursing of her sister’s thoughts in her own mind as they started to make sense again.

  But there were her own thoughts, too, and the beating of her own heart.

  Not daring even to whisper, she formed a message to Rae in her mind: You’re so strong. The answer came back as if it had been written in red ink across the pages of her diary: So are you.

  It was almost as if Lucy and Rae had a plan, a secret code. They didn’t.

  They’d never talked about anything like this. But it was clear to Lucy that if anybody was going to save anybody here, she and Rae were going to have to do it. Some things your parents couldn’t save you from, or even tell you what they meant. Some things were yours.

  “It’s a gift that you’re here,” Jerry was mumbling. “A great good fortune…”

  “I came,” Mom said through clenched teeth, “to save my daughters from you.”

  “You’re—a good mother.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Anger,” Jerry breathed. “And grief…”

  Mom wailed, “You killed my son!”

  “And fear…”

  Mom didn’t say any words then, but she made lots of noise. Her sobs were swallowed up by Jerry’s padded and locked underground secret chamber, and because she was trying so hard to stop them, they kept getting more and more ragged and painful. Lucy squirmed. Rae whispered again, “Wait. Not yet.”

  Jerry was having trouble talking, but Lucy understood him to say, “Make the circle.”

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  He stayed where he was, hunched over and panting, while Stephanie and the others dragged and carried Mom toward the center of the low-ceilinged room. Mom fought them. She kicked and scratched and shouted. It didn’t make any difference.

  When Mom was positioned and secured on the mat by all those shaking young hands on her hands, feet, hips, shoulders, neck, Jerry took a deep breath and, grunting, pulled himself into the circle. He reached out both hands and took Mom’s head into his lap. She whipped her head back and forth and spat at him. Grinning broadly, running his pale tongue over his bared teeth, Jerry pressed one huge flat fist hard against each of her temples and made her stay still.

  They hadn’t undressed her. Lucy was relieved, but she wondered why. Jerry’d taught them that you needed freedom of movement in order to have freedom of thought, that it was easier to uncover your feelings if your body was uncovered. He must be in a hurry tonight. All he did was unbuckle Mom’s belt and raise her sweatshirt a little.

  Lucy tried to look away. Something awful was going to happen, and it was going to happen fast. There should be drums, creepy music. “Rae,” Jerry said.

  “Lucy. Join us.”

  “No,” Lucy said. But Rae pushed her forward, and one on each side of Jerry holding Mom, the sisters joined the feelings circle.

  Watching Mom’s face carefully from only an inch or two away, Jerry began. “Ethan is dead.”

  Mom said nothing.

  “Your son is dead.”

  Mom still didn’t say anything, but her breathing was getting fast and harsh. She had her eyes and mouth squeezed shut as if to keep Jerry from getting in, but he was bent so close over her that Lucy didn’t think she’d have to have her eyes open to see him or her mouth open to taste him. His tongue lapped at her lips, and he matched his breathing to hers, breathing in when she breathed out.

  Jerry was chanting now. “Ethan Michael Brill is dead. Your firstborn child is dead. You let him die. You didn’t protect him. You didn’t keep him safe.

  Ethan is dead. Ethan Michael—”

  “Stop!” Mom shrieked; and the instant she opened her mouth Jerry pressed his over it. There was a slurping sound that seemed to go on for a long time. Under her hands, under Rae’s hands, Mom’s body shuddered.

  Rae’s white lips were making motions that Lucy didn’t understand at first.

  Then she saw that her sister was sending her a secret, silent, very important message: “Get ready.”

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  Jerry’s chant was so rhythmic and insinuating that other people in the circle had picked it up. Ethan Michael Brill. Ethan Michael Brill. Rae Ellen Brill. Lucy Ann Brill. Lucy Ann Brill. Lucy Ann Brill.

  Lucy heard herself saying her own name over and over again with him.

  She tried to stop but couldn’t tell whether she did or not.

  Ethan Michael Brill. Rae Ellen Brill. Lucy Ann Brill. All your children, one by one. Lost.

  Dead. You can’t keep any of them safe.

  Mom was screaming now, no words, just terrible raw noise matched to Jerry’s rhythm that made her rise up and fall down under Lucy’s hands. Her screams and the movements of her body got mixed up with everything else, and Lucy couldn’t tell where one thing stopped and something else started, where she stopped and her mother started and Jerry started, until Rae jumped.

  Rae hurled herself at Jerry. He hadn’t seen her coming. She broke the circle, stopped his chanting and his feeding. He gasped, choked, and fell over sideways, away from Rae’s assault and into Lucy’s lap.

  As soon as Jerry’s hands and mouth were off her, Mom tore loose from the others. She and Rae pulled him off Lucy. Nobody was making any loud
noise now. Mom was panting. Rae was making a high-pitched whine in her throat.

  Around the room everybody was quiet, except for Stephanie, who gave a long low moan and collapsed onto the mat.

  Jerry was gurgling. Bubbles came out of his nose and mouth. He lay on his side like a huge baby, or like a mannequin made of light plastic. Afraid to touch him, Lucy forced herself to kick at his arm; it moved as if it didn’t have any weight at all. His enormous bloated belly lay ahead of him on the mat.

  It sank like bread dough as Rae knelt beside it and pushed her fists into it again and again.

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  It was hard for her to climb back up all those stairs, but she did it. Rae was ahead of her, and Mom was behind her with her hand on Lucy’s back.

  Way far behind her were Jerry Johnston and Billy and Stephanie and the others. Way far behind her, under the ground.

  When they finally reached the heavy padded door at the top and climbed through it and were in the dark outside again, it was hard for her to know where she was. But she made herself remember: this was the courtyard in the middle of Jerry’s secret house, the hole at the core of it that made it hollow.

  She heard crackling, and tinny voices. A radio, she realized. A police radio. She heard sirens.

  She heard her father’s voice.

  She stumbled over a prickly bush. She rammed her knee into a wooden box full of sharp dead flower stalks. She heard Dad, calling and calling Mom’s name, but she didn’t know where he was or how to get to him.

  Rae fell.

  Mom crouched beside Rae and yelled, “Tony! Tony We’re in here!”

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  “Car-ole!” Mom’s name sounded much longer than it was when Dad called and called it; it sounded almost not like a name at all. Lucy’s head swam. She swayed and grabbed onto a branch, but it snapped off in her hand.

  All of a sudden there were blinding searchlights and loud voices, and lots of people in uniforms, and Dad kneeling beside and Mom saying over and over again, “I’ve got them. I’ve got both the girls,” and Dad saying Rae’s name and Mom’s name and then, “Where’s Lucy?”

  “I’m here,” Lucy said out loud.

  Dad came through the lights and knelt in front of her and took her in his arms.

  Rae was sitting up. Mom was saying to the cops, “He’s down there.

  They’re all down there. Hurry.”

  “Down where, ma’am? Who’s down where?”

  “I’ll show you.” Lucy twisted away from Dad and ran to the spot among the bushes and benches and hedges where she knew the big trapdoor would be. She didn’t know how she knew it was there; she’d thought she was lost.

  But there it was, still open, and she jumped down into it before any of the pursuing grown-ups could stop her.

  She had to see him again. Nobody was making her. She just had to.

  She went by herself down all those steps. They kept moving around under her feet. All of a sudden they’d curve and dip or get wider or skinnier, for no reason. She wished somebody would be there to guide her, or at least to warn her ahead of time how the steps went. But nobody was. She had to figure it out for herself.

  She tripped a lot of times when the steps rose up or sank. She kept running into walls, because a minute ago they’d been somewhere else. One time she fell and had to turn around and crawl with her hands up the steps behind her in order to get back on her feet. It occurred to her that if somebody had been there to help her they’d have made things worse; in this distorted and shifting darkness, she had to find her own balance.

  The steps kept going down and down. She’d lost count of them. Maybe I’ll never get out of here, she thought, but that was just a habit, self-indulgence. She knew she’d get out.

  And she had to see him again.

  Finally she seemed to be on more or less level ground. She pushed her hands straight out in front of her until they rested against the padded door. Trying not to think too much about it, she drew her hands back in, took a deep breath, and flung herself at the door. It swung open so easily that she almost fell, and she stumbled headlong into the underground room.

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  Teenagers were still sitting and lying around the room, but the circle was so broken now that if you didn’t know there’d been one, you’d have thought there was no pattern at all. They weren’t touching each other anymore, and of course they weren’t touching Jerry. Some were slumped over in a sitting position, legs awkwardly crossed and hands limp in their laps. Some had tipped over sideways onto the mat among the scattered pillows. Their arms were bent and their legs were drawn up and their lips were pursed as if for sucking or kissing. They looked like pictures Lucy’d seen of fetuses in the womb.

  Billy was still on the cot by the door. Lucy made herself crouch beside him and peer into his face, as if she wanted to kiss him. She didn’t want to kiss him. But you had to know the truth. You had to understand as much about the truth as you could.

  Billy was dead.

  The truth was: Billy was dead. Jerry had killed him.

  The truth was: Ethan was dead, too, but he wasn’t here. She would never see Ethan again.

  The truth was: Lucy was alive, and she wanted to be.

  Stephanie and a few of the others had made their own smaller circle around the enormous body of Jerry Johnston. They were holding hands and swaying and trying to chant, but their voices broke. One by one they reached out and put their hands on him. Lucy dropped to her hands and knees, because she couldn’t trust her legs to hold her upright, and crawled across the mat to join them.

  The body was both bloated and collapsed. The eyes were craters filled with brown pus. The belly had imploded so that now it sank in as far as it used to swell out, like a pumpkin somebody’d hollowed out for Halloween.

  The rings glinted and hung loose on the fingers. The tongue, swollen and coated white, stuck out of the side of the mouth.

  Lucy crawled to the top of the head, leaned way over, and put her mouth on Jerry’s. It was cold and still, no sucking. It was so quiet, too; there wasn’t any voice saying darling, saying I need you, saying feel what I need you to feel and then give it to me. There wasn’t any breath.

  Lucy sat back and put her hands on her own rib cage. Her breath went in and out.

  She raised up on her knees again and leaned forward and rested the heels of her hands on Jerry’s chest. She lost her balance a little and her weight shifted, and her hands went through the shell of bone and flesh into the central body cavity. She cried out but didn’t pull away.

  There was nothing inside.

  There was no blood. Her hands were dry and unstained. There was no tis-sue, not even dried-up pieces or little bits like sponge.

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  There was no heart. Lucy cupped her hands and scooped inside Jerry Johnston’s corpse, and there were no organs at all. No lungs, which she’d always imagined as shaped like those seed airplanes that floated down from maple trees in the summertime and you’d find them all over the yard trying to start new trees. No purselike stomach.

  No heart.

  Slowly she withdrew her hands from inside the empty torso and slid them back up to lay them on either side of the head. With her fingertips she traced the eye sockets, the bridge of the nose, the jawline. There were indentations and cave-ins everywhere. Bones bent and moved. The point of the chin flattened under her palm; the nose punched in.

  Then she pressed, not very hard, under and behind the ears, and the skull shattered. Jerry’s head came apart in her hands, and she was holding pieces of his skull and clots of his hair. Once it broke, it wasn’t a head anymore, and there was nothing inside. No thoughts. No power. No brain.

  Jerry Joh
nston was empty. He’d eaten himself up.

  Lucy heard the murmuring of Stephanie and the others around her.

  They were saying a lot of things. One of them was her name: “Lucy Lucy Lucy,” a chant.

  She heard voices and footsteps outside the door, and then it opened and light came in, just as she sat back from the emptied, heartless, brainless body of Jerry Johnston and put her hands in her lap. The police were here. Mom and Dad and Rae were here, calling her name, loving her.

  Lucy thought her own thoughts. She felt her own feelings; many of them had no names, and needed none. She welcomed the blood in her own veins, the air in her own lungs, her heart beating, her brain working, and the rest of her life to live.

  She stood up shakily and turned to meet her family. Just before they got to her to take her in their arms, she slipped one small sharp piece of Jerry Johnston’s skull into the back pocket of her jeans—an amulet, a message, a secret code.

  Then she said out loud, “I want to go home.”

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  About the Author

  MELANIE TEM has been writing since she was five years old and has published short stories in a wide range of magazines and anthologies. Her novels, PRODIGAL, BLOOD

  MOON and WILDING have gained praise from many

  sources and PRODIGAL won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement, First Novel.