by Ike Hamill
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. There had to be a better way.
Chapter 31 : Deidra
“HOW LONG ARE WE supposed to wait?” Deidra asked nobody in particular. She was pacing behind Henry, Sam, and Penny.
“We can’t leave,” Auggie said, glancing at Kate before he looked back to Deidra. “Don’t you understand that?”
She stopped and turned to him.
“Of course, I understand,” Deidra said. “You’ve forgotten what it was like when Allison took her shot. I remember. At some point, we have to decide that June has failed. It’s up to us, really.”
“No,” Allison said.
Everyone at their end of the table—the cousins and the kids—all looked down at her. She was still slumped in her seat, but her head rose up as she rebutted Deidra.
“You might think that it’s up to us, but it’s not. This is between June and the house. They have to settle who is in charge.”
“Come on,” Kate muttered.
“What happened with you, Aunt Allison?” Auggie asked. “What happened when you tried to take the title?”
“She won’t tell you,” Deidra said.
Still, everyone looked to Allison. After a sigh, she pushed herself up a little in her chair and rested her elbows on the table. She looked up with hollow eyes that stared at nothing.
“I’ll tell you,” Allison said. “It doesn’t have to be a secret now that June is on the path. First, you have to understand how I was betrayed by that wicked old pervert at the other end of the table.”
She pointed. For once, Great Uncle Travis didn’t cackle when the attention turned to him.
# # # #
Deidra moved back to her chair as Allison began to talk.
“Tommy and I are the only ones here old enough to remember, but at one point, Travis wanted to take over. I was thirteen when Mumma Peggy died. The house was facing just as much turmoil then as it is now. There were drifters back then. People were swarming here and there, looking for a place to set up a commune and construct their own little societies. Without strong leadership, this house was a prime target.”
Allison paused and rubbed her eyes, like she was tired of what she had been forced to look at.
“One day, I was sitting on the porch when a dirty man with a beard and a walking stick stopped by to ask about the walnut tree out front. He wanted to know if we collected the nuts, or if he could have a cutting. I couldn’t imagine he had a place to plant it, but I told him sure. It didn’t take long before he was asking who owned the place and whether we had a room to let. I told him that I would check with Mumma Peggy. Somehow, I think he already knew that she was gone. He knew that the place was rudderless and that he might be able to make a move.”
Allison pointed down at the end of the table.
“Travis told him to move in. I’m sure of it. I believe that Travis might have told him where we lived in the first place. I saw that scraggly man in the kitchen a few days later and I asked him what the heck he was thinking. We weren’t a collective. Squatters couldn’t just move in because they found an open room. Of course he didn’t take me seriously. I was just a girl. That man told me he had the permission of the mister, whatever that was supposed to mean. Travis wasn’t around much, so I thought that maybe he had talked to one of my older brothers. It seemed like something that Tommy or Andy would have mentioned though.”
A couple of people looked down to Uncle Tommy to see if he would reveal anything. He didn’t appear to be listening.
“After a few days, I thought that maybe I had been hasty. The man stayed to himself and he was helpful. He fixed things around the house, helped pick apples, and he cleaned up after the animals. He was twice as useful as some of the other people who lived here. But Uncle Travis was using him to drive a wedge between us. When Thanksgiving came around, Claire and Tommy were both starting to spend more time at the house. It was clear to me that Claire wanted to throw her hat into the ring and take over for Mumma Peggy. Tommy didn’t like that idea at all.”
Tommy was listening. He grunted at Allison’s allegation.
“His younger sister was going to take over control of the family and Tommy was starting to get agitated about the idea. I had never lived in the house without a Mumma. Peggy had been doing the job all alone. None of us kids had to attend the ceremony because she was the only representative that our branch needed. We were facing the prospect of going to the ceremony for the first time and our sister, Claire, was getting ready to try to claim the title. That was a tense Thanksgiving. It was even more tense because of the interloper—the man with the beard that was living in our house.”
Allison took a moment to collect herself.
“He seduced me while he whipped Tommy into a frenzy. He convinced Tommy that the leader of the house didn’t have to be a woman. The documents never declare that explicitly, it’s only implied. I don’t know why Tommy took that man’s word for it. The bearded man wasn’t a part of the family and he had never seen our secrets. It’s funny, I could clearly see how the man was leading Tommy by the nose, but I didn’t see how he was influencing me. Tommy turned against Claire and tried to oppose her claim to the title. Once Mumma Claire won out, the bearded man disappeared. I didn’t see him again for years.”
Allison looked like her story was over.
Deidra cleared her throat before she asked, “How did that play into your own attempt once Mumma Claire died?”
Allison sighed.
“There’s something you should understand about the imp. He’s not some omniscient overlord who devises the tests by knowing everything about you. Those tests are pulled straight out of the heads of the people at this table. When I tried to claim the title, my final test came from Travis. He knew how much the bearded man meant to me, so it was him that I had to face. My final test was to rid the house of the interloper.
“I thought that it would be easy. I had reflected on that whole affair for almost two decades, and I finally understood how Tommy and I had been manipulated. My righteous anger alone should have been enough to drive him off. It wasn’t. When I saw the bearded man again, all I could think about was what he represented.
“He was waiting for me in the kitchen, sitting at the round table and wringing his hands. He apologized for what he had done and explained how Travis had entrapped him. The bearded man had been manipulated too. For me, the other tests had been symbolic. This one wasn’t.”
Allison shook her head.
“The kitchen timer went off while I was talking to him, trying to understand his perspective on the mess. He got up and opened the oven. It was an apple pie. He said that he had baked it from the apples we picked together. They were stored down in a barrel in the pantry. The moment that he opened the oven, an amazing aroma came out. It was intoxicating. I realized that I had to forgive the bearded man—that was how I could pass the test. The interloper that I was supposed to rid the house of was resentment and blame. Those were the things that I had to cast off.”
“You couldn’t forgive him?” Deidra asked.
“I did. It took me a little bit, but I did manage to forgive him, sitting at that table. He got out a knife and sat it next to the pie. We had to wait an hour, according to him, before we could cut it. While we waited, he told me about his life before coming here.
“The bearded man had been working and living down in New Hampshire, in that little part of the state that meets the ocean. Travis came to visit him and convinced him that he was a wealthy benefactor. He told the bearded man that he would cut him in on the family fortune. All he had to do was show Tommy how Claire was trying to usurp his power. The whole thing sounded reasonable when put in those terms. He never intended to seduce me. That relationship came naturally. It didn’t take long for me to sympathize. After listening, I realized that I could forgive him. I could find it in my heart to empathize with the man and see the world from his perspective.
“That was when I heard Travis start to giggle fro
m all the way down the hall. The people in this room knew before I did—I had failed the test. In this family, you’re never supposed to forgive interlopers. That was my failure.”
“What would have been the right thing for you to do?”
Allison didn’t hesitate. “I should have taken that pie knife and driven it into his eye socket. That was the only course of action that would have proven me fit to be Mumma Allison.”
“How could you have known that?” Deidra asked. “There’s no way you could have known.”
“You’re wrong. I should have known because all of the tests end in death. It’s their nature. Being Mumma is about becoming death in one way or another.”
Chapter 32 : June
JUNE TOOK THE WHOLE ammo case down to the kitchen, sneaking from room to room, making sure that nobody was waiting for her or following her. When she got there, she put the case in the sink. She put in the stopper and opened the window a few inches. The snow was piled up on the sill. That was one thing that was the same in this world. All the furnishings and paint had returned to seventeen years ago, but the snow was constant. June went to the drawer next to the refrigerator and found a box of matches.
She dumped the bags of leaves.
They went up quickly while June waved the smoke towards the window. When they were nothing but ashes, she turned on the water and swirled the pasty mess down the drain. The smoke smelled somewhat of cherries. Anything was in improvement to the stink that she had been assaulted with up in Dean’s room.
The only thing left was the jar of poisonous crystals. She wondered how Dean had pulled it off. Had he dissolved them in Trudy’s tea? Had he added them to her cereal?
June took the jar to the round table and sat it down in the circle of cards. The card closest to her was the jack of spades. When she opened the jar, she tipped the contents onto the face of the jack and peered close. There was no telling how potent it was. She didn’t know how much of it Trudy had consumed.
While Judy was at school, Trudy had ingested the poison and then run out to the yard. June didn’t know if she had been looking for help, or if maybe madness had come over Trudy. It was terrible to think that she had died out there, alone.
“Someday, I’ll die of poison,” Trudy had said. “Maybe a jilted lover or my bitter rival. I’m the type of person who lives too boldly. I won’t survive long.”
Trudy had always made those pronouncements with a sly smile. June had always taken Trudy’s word for it, but in retrospect, Trudy had been anything but bold. Her life had been small, simple, and, unfortunately, very short.
June picked up the card, peering through the crystals at the yellow light.
This was the test—how would she dispose of the poison? It could go down the drain, or be flushed away in the toilet. Those solutions would deliver the poison into the house, perhaps poisoning it. If this test were symbolic, then that would be precisely the wrong thing to do.
She knew what a Mumma would do.
To save everyone from poison, a Mumma would…
She didn’t let herself think about it. June creased the edge of the card, put it to her lips, and let the crystals slide into her mouth. Before they could dissolve on her tongue, she swallowed, feeling the jagged edges carve grooves down her throat.
It tasted like nothing she had ever put in her mouth.
The burn had a chemical edge to it, but the flavor was pure death. She imagined that she was swallowing her own necrotic tissue, dying instantly when it came in contact with the crystals. All the way down her throat, she felt her body rejecting contact with the poison. June gripped the table with both hands as she fought the urge to vomit the stuff back up.
When it reached her stomach, the real battle began. Digestive acid rushed in, trying to neutralize the deadly invader. She felt her stomach churning with the effort. For several seconds, she thought she was winning. Regurgitation doubled her over and she coughed out a mouthful of bile and blood.
June fell from the chair.
She flopped on the kitchen floor, writhing and convulsing. Her vision went red and fresh puke burst from her nose. When the seizure started, she felt almost disconnected from her body. The vibrations rattled her teeth, but June saw it all from above.
This was death.
Her life was over.
Chapter 33 : Gus
“WHAT WAS THAT?” AUGGIE asked.
They all turned towards the door.
“Mom?” Gus asked. The vibration had been fast and uneven. One time, his mother’s phone had fallen into the dry sink. When the alarm had gone off, and it bounced around in the sink, it had sounded almost like that. This was much louder though. It was coming from down the hall.
Gus stood up. His Uncle Jules put a hand on his shoulder.
“We have to wait here. She’ll be okay,” Jules said.
Gus wasn’t sure that he was right. Gus was starting to think that maybe his mother wasn’t going to be okay. She might never be okay again. He shrugged out from under his uncle’s grip and he ducked by when Uncle Auggie tried to reach for him too. As he came around the table, Deidra stood up to catch him before he could make it through the door.
“We can’t go out,” she said. “I know it’s hard, but we have to wait here for your mom to return.”
“She needs help,” Gus whispered to her. He didn’t want the others to hear. He thought that it might be bad to admit that his mom needed help. She was taking a test and she had to be able to pass it on her own.
Deidra seemed to understand.
“You’re helping her by staying here and staying strong,” Deidra said. She looked him in the eyes and raised her eyebrows. “You know how your mom always knows where you are and what you’re doing?”
This made Gus blink. He had never mentioned it to anyone, but he knew what she was talking about. There were only a few places that Gus could hide. One place, where his secret tree grew, behind where the shed met the wing, was really hard to get to in the winter time. If he wanted to visit his tree, he had to slog through enormous snow banks. The snow was always too light and powdery to shovel. If he took one shovelful of the stuff and slung it away, the rest of the snow would collapse on the hole that he had made, filling it up again. The only way to make it through snow like that was to swim, and when he swam, there was always the chance that he might drown.
In the house, Gus could rarely, if ever, hide from his mother. Even in the deepest corner of the house, when she called it seemed like her voice was reaching out and brushing the back of his neck. She wouldn’t come to get him, but that didn’t mean that she didn’t know precisely where he was.
“Yeah?” he whispered to Deidra.
“Well, whatever she’s doing for her test right now, she knows that you’re here. If you go back and take your seat, she will feel that you’re being strong for her. When she feels that, she will be able to tap into her own strength. Do you understand?”
Gus nodded.
“Good boy,” she said. Deidra let go of his shoulders, trusting that he would do the right thing.
After one more glance at the doorway, Gus did the right thing. He went back to his seat and planted himself there, pushing his back against the wooden uprights.
“Good kid,” Jules said, patting him on the knee.
Gus wanted to tell his uncle to keep his hands to himself. He didn’t need Jules to tell him that he was doing the right thing. Jules had barely supported his mother.
# # # #
They heard the steady step coming down the hall. Gus leaned forward, wondering who would come around the corner. He didn’t know who the footsteps belonged to, only that he was sure that it wasn’t his mother. She didn’t walk like that.
He blinked and shook his head when he realized that he had been wrong. It was his mother.
She came through the doorway with her head high. She was wearing a shirt that Gus had never seen before, but she looked fine. Nobody commented. All eyes were on her as she rounded the table and took
her seat next to Gus. She took his hand and squeezed his fingers tight.
June collected herself, gave Gus’s fingers one more squeeze, and then turned to Allison.
“What’s next?”
Allison looked at her niece for several seconds before reaching out to pick up the document. She flipped through to the correct page and then looked up at June.
“You have to ask for the second test yourself,” Allison said.
June nodded. She adjusted her shirt and looked down to the far end of the table. Down there, Tommy and Travis both turned to the darkness as June spoke.
“I request my second test.”
It didn’t seem like anything was going to happen. A small flicker of hope sparked in Gus’s chest. He wished that the test would be over. Even if it meant they had to leave the house forever, he wished that they could be done and his mother could return to normal.
“I request…” June started again. She was interrupted by a cough from the dark.
“Hold on. Hold on,” a voice said.
Gus looked up to his mom. She swayed, buffeted by the old voice from the dark. June found her strength again and stood tall.
An old man appeared from the darkness. The shadows pulled back enough so that they could see his face and the collar of his shirt. Aside from the silver wisps of hair, the rest of him was too dim to see.
He coughed again and raised a hand to his mouth as he cleared his throat.
“For your second test, you must rescue the boy from the flames.”
June put her hand on Gus’s shoulder.
Behind the old man, the shadows seemed to grow even darker than black. Gus stiffened as he saw the tall shape emerge. Across the table, his cousin Sam let out a whimper and cry. Gus heard Deidra trying to calm Sam. They all watched as the enormous man gathered from the shadows and stepped next to the really old man.