The Forgiving

by Wesley McCraw

  Though, not in this case, she supposed. Brandon wouldn’t be getting any stitches.

  The sound of her door unlocking had woken her. Brandon had been checking on her for some reason, probably to make sure no one untoward was in her room at night. And then she had heard the scuffle in the hall. He had been repeatedly stabbed in the back, then once through the chest, and left for dead, too dead for stitches. The attacker had fled the scene, leaving Elsbeth unsupervised in the asylum, her room unlocked.

  Darla and Brandon, dead in one night. A coincidence? Providence? It was just enough to set Elsbeth free. After all her hopelessness, it was too easy. All she had to do was walk. With the asylum only attended by the dead, she had been able to get the keys from Brandon’s belt. She had been able to retrieve her baby from the attic. And get her money from the safe.

  She thought that maybe getting the money would be her downfall. Greed: a deadly sin. That it would take too much time to open the safe. But the safe had been a breeze. She put the money in a sack with one hand while cradling her baby boy with the other. She was certain someone would catch her. But she wasn’t caught. She listened but didn’t hear a sound. The asylum was silent. All she could hear was her own wheezy breathing.

  She strode out of the doctor’s office, down the hall, out the front door into the cold, along the gravel drive (ignoring the sharp stones under her bare feet), and came to the chained front gate. She thought that maybe she wouldn’t have the right key for the padlock. She wouldn’t be able to scale a fence with a baby and a bag of money. She would be out of luck.

  She unlocked the gate and walked free down Ferry Street.

  She tried to think of a name for her baby. Not Chris or Christopher. Not Jeremy, or Terry, or even Brandon. Not Daniel or Howard. Not Roy or Justin. There were so many boy names that made bile rise. Orderlies and doctors and men that she hated. Evil men.

  Only when she asked for help from strangers, a young man and woman coming back from a late night on the town, did she realize that her baby wasn’t moving, wasn’t crying, wasn’t breathing. Her baby boy wasn’t so well behaved after all. Elsbeth tried to scream, but the pain in her throat was too intense, and she was only able to cough up blood.

  The couple got her and her baby to the Providence St. Vincent Hospital. The compassionate doctors couldn’t figure out how her son had died, just that he had died recently. They asked questions that she couldn’t answer. They performed an autopsy. Sometimes babies died, they explained. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.

  Before he was put into the ground, Elsbeth named her baby Michael Vincent Miller.

  The asylum was shut down within the year. Elsbeth recovered her voice, but she wasn’t one of the patients to testify. She let others speak for her. The state never charged Dr. Jacobi with a crime.

  The Cross of the Lamb moved in soon after, buying the Jacobi property for pennies on the dollar.

  12

  The Darkness

  In the shame at the bottom of Grip’s skull, convicts wrestled a punk into the empty prison showers.

  “Peter-puffer!” Early said.

  The convicts laughed, mean and cold, malice masking insecurity. Empowered violence compensated for imprisonment, in its way. The eighteen-year-old punk had been drugged numb from sedative-spiked pruno. Had been stripped. Despite the fog in his head, tears flowed. He called for help or just called out; it was hard to tell, his words too slurred. He was vegetable-like. He was reduced to drool, his expression dumb and comical.

  Where were the guards, where was help? Away as a favor?

  Darkness lived and grew and flourished in Grip’s head. There was too much pain to wake. Too much pain to witness. His body was a broken toy.

  In the mess hall, the punk sat with a distant stare, hollowed out like a ghost. Porcelain Boy. No one wanted near that weakness. On the yard, the same. Weeks like this. Months.

  In prison, like any harsh place, there suffered victims. Punks. Fags. And then there were real men, the strut of the joint. Like Early and his boys.

  The violators didn’t stop. The violations became a dirty habit, like smoking. Early was one of many, but he was one. Trade a cig. The fellas strutted. And joked. “Porcelain Boy. Porcelain Boy.” And they had the punk hang around like a dog, fetch them things, play the loyal mutt. Where was salvation for a punk but in the arms of those same men?

  Unspoken shame. It lived like bugs under the skin. Grip did nothing to stop the abuse. What was worse, ratting dead or witnessing horror?

  Would the shame in the darkness ever fade? Would it ever reach the light and burn away?

  ◆◆◆

  Isabel sprung from the carpet, ran down the hall away from Howard and Daniel, and turned the corner at the door open to the dead woman. Isabel picked up speed and skidded around the next corner at the southwest corner of the house, bumping into the wall and knocking a landscape painting to the floor. Stumbling, scrambling up, she didn’t pause for a moment. She ran the rest of the way to the red doors, flew down the stairs, and skidded to a halt on the hardwood floor, before looking both ways, to the chapel and to the coatroom.

  “Grip? Can you hear me? Grip! Answer me!” The house continued its keening from the windstorm. The chandelier flickered. “Please, God. Please.”

  She looked out the window of the front door. The woman with the gun was no longer under the light of the streetlamp.

  Isabel crept through the coatroom and slid her hand along the wall as if to maintain her balance. “Come on, please.”

  Along the south hall, one by one, the sheer curtains lifted and fluttered as a draft blew toward her. She hugged herself against the oncoming chill. She couldn't stop shaking. The hall lights flickered and then went out completely. No! The windstorm had knocked out the power again. She was blind!

  Something touched her arm, and she shrieked and jerked away. It was a fluttering curtain, she realized. She desperately wanted to turn back, but Grip needed her, and a faint light was coming from down in the lower hall.

  She continued on, feeling along the wall, and descended the three steps. Bits of wallpaper flaked off with a muffled crackle. Her bare feet padded the floorboards—she had lost her shoes while running, though she wasn’t sure when—and the boards creaked louder than they had before. Some kind of light shone at the hall's mid-point.

  The flashlight!

  She still couldn’t see where she was stepping, and the boards creaked underneath her like an ancient suspension bridge. Something was horribly wrong with the floor. Each step caused a cracking sound that continued to get worse. As softly as she could, willing herself to be light, she kept creeping forward. The cracking vibrated through her feet. Holding her breath, she lowered and picked up the flashlight. Once in hand, she searched with the light.

  In front of her was a large gaping hole. The floor had given way.

  She said a hesitant, “Grip,” into the void. “Are you down there?”

  It wasn't the lower hall that had been unholy; the evil she had sensed had emanated from the profane cellar below. Its maw had devoured Grip.

  A creaking-cracking complained beneath her, and she braced herself on the wall. Something wooden clattered somewhere down in the black abyss.

  “Grip!” she called out as she slowly backed away from the gaping pit. “Answer me!”

  Once she reached where the floor felt solid, she turned and hurried up the steps; charged blindly through the wafting curtains, the coatroom, and the entry room; and flung open the front door and went outside into the night.

  With purpose, she strode to the east side of the house, over gravel and dead grass. Thankfully, the Puritan woman hadn’t come back. The Maglite spotlighted the ground and leaves blown by the wind but little else. The clouds reflected Portland’s light just enough to keep her eyes from adjusting, but not enough to illuminate her surroundings. Her hair kept getting in her face. She didn’t let it slow her down. She slammed her bare heel, over and over again, into the padlocked, wooden cellar door,
but nothing gave. The door was too sturdy.

  “Grip! I’m coming for you!”

  She moved on, sweeping the light over the well-tread grass and the east side of the house. She had to hurry. Who knew how badly Grip had been hurt? In the back graveyard, the grass became unruly, infested with dead vines and downed cornstalks. She pushed a tombstone over with her foot. Holding the flashlight in the crook of her neck, she bent her knees and lifted. The strain caused her to drop the flashlight. She couldn’t hold it and the tombstone at the same time. It was just too damn heavy. She shuffled away into the darkness, hauling the stone with her.

  Her feet dragged through tufts of grass. A cornstalk leaf cut the tender flesh between her toes. It stung like a paper cut. She hissed from the pain and grunted with effort as she got farther away from the light.

  She moved through darkness. The grass felt shorter here. Though she couldn’t see, she had to be on the east side of the house. There was a square form in the dark a shade lighter than the rest that was hopefully the cellar door. She spread her legs so as not to smash her toes and let go of the stone. It hit the ground with a dull thunk.

  Without its weight, she felt exposed. In a rising panic, she sprinted back to the tiny light in the grass. She snatched up the flashlight and frantically scanned her surroundings. Bunches of corn stalks. The birdbath. The log toolshed at the back wall. The graveyard was still deserted. She ran back to the cellar door and to the tombstone on the ground nearby and dropped the flashlight. She lifted the tombstone a few inches, swung it between her legs like a kettlebell until it had enough momentum, and hurtled it through the air.

  In the darkness, stone crashed into wood.

  She picked up the flashlight and assessed her handiwork. The doors were smashed in, but not completely. She pried the stone off, yanked off the metal latch, and pulled at the center of the splintered wood, careful not to pinch her fingers as the doors opened out and bits fell away.

  She leaned forward and illuminated the stairs. An even deeper darkness lurked below.

  “Grip! Are you down there? I’m coming.”

  ◆◆◆

  On the second floor, in the dark, the skittering sound flittered back and forth again. Howard recognized it from out in the desert, from when he had dug up the Book of Three. It had also flickered back and forth in his car, moments before he had almost killed that old woman. And now it traveled the halls of Jacobi House. He wasn't crazy; Isabel and Grip had heard it too. Something otherworldly had followed him here.

  He used his illumination function on his watch for light.

  “Isabel!” The house swallowed his voice. What was taking so long? Poltergeists didn't exist. God was everywhere, not evil, not the Devil.

  The skittering sound continued and soon felt like an itch he couldn't scratch. He wanted to stand and fight, but his leg hurt and darkness surrounded him, and how could he fight a sound?

  Behind him, in the gap between the 2x4s, Lillian’s eyes glinted from the tiny blue light of his watch.

  “Isabel!” He called out. “Answer me!”

  ◆◆◆

  Isabel descended into the cellar. Her light reflected off ashlar masonry, illuminating her mortified expression. This place felt like the basement of her school, only more primordial, like she was stepping back in time to witness an atrocity.

  She stepped off the bottom step into unnaturally warm dirt. A long, expansive antechamber stretched into the earth, farther than her flashlight beam could reach. Huge crosses leaned on their sides against the stone walls, each cross over eight feet long. The place looked more like a crypt than a basement. The foundation must have been here from the beginning, she thought, the one element of Jacobi House that had remained in each iteration.

  She forced herself to creep forward, down into the earth, to find Grip. Dust coated the cut between her toes and muted the stinging. She heard a familiar squeaking and located it with the light; a rat scurried underneath the crosses. They had also scurried under the bassinets. Rats above and rats below. Webbing clung to the crosses, the first webs she'd seen in the whole house. Someone took the time to sweep away all the cobwebs except the ones down here. The precisely cut stones of the ashlar style gave way to crudely stacked limestone and granite of chaotic size and shape. At the end of the Stygian antechamber, a dry-set stone arch led into the next room.

  She smelled alcohol. Brandy, most likely.

  Dust swirled in the cone of her flashlight beam. She stifled a sneeze. Unlit candles and small piles of skulls lined the perimeter of a hexagon-shaped altar room. A huge stone slab stood in the center, tilted at a forty-five-degree angle to the floor. A mural covered the back wall. It was like one of Grip’s murals. With a bit of scanning, Isabel recognized it was a depiction of the Garden of Eden. The tallest tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, reached the ceiling.

  The ceiling had a gaping hole. Grip had fallen through that hole! She hurried around the rock slab and found Grip lying on the ground amid wood and plaster debris.

  “Grip!”

  She pulled a plank off his legs and scanned him with the flashlight. His shoulder bled, as did his left temple.

  “Oh no!” Was he dead? Was Grip dead? “No-no-no.”

  He moved slightly, groaned, and squinted into the light.

  “Grip! Thank God!”

  He used his good arm and touched his head and looked at the red paint left on his hand. He must have been tasked with painting something red, he thought. But it wasn't paint. He wasn’t in prison, he realized. He'd been released more than a year ago. “Where am I?”

  “The basement.”

  He couldn’t see because of the light shining in his eyes, but he recognized her voice.

  The basement? You mean the boiler room. Grip couldn’t seem to focus. “Just a sec.” He took a breath, trying to get his thoughts in order. Isabel and Howard hadn't pried about prison or Early. Grip was thankful for that. He pictured Howard standing over him in the dark. Is that who Howard is? Is he a substitute for Early? One brute for another. In the prison yard, Howard sneered in contempt. Cat calls at the plucked daisy. The trampled flower.

  No, Grip was out of prison. Isabel and Howard had saved him from the shame of being in love with a monster. “You guys don't have a basement. You mean at your school?”

  “No, the Jacobi House.”

  He sat up. Nothing felt okay. He immediately wanted to lie back down. I fell through the floor, he thought to himself, remembering vaguely. “I tried to hold on. I called out for you guys.”

  “I came. You smell like brandy.”

  Most of it's on me, not in me, he thought and then remembered why he had come downstairs by himself in the first place: “The ax!”

  He rolled onto his knees—despite the pain and lightheadedness—and dug through the debris. Isabel held up the light. He found the ax handle and pulled. The head caught on something, and he had to angle the handle back and forth until the head unhooked from the rubble.

  He tried standing—feet solid and wide apart, with the ax in hand—and almost fell over. He steadied himself on the stone slab. A vice squeezed his head. Any movement, any sharp sound, any change in pupil dilation from the light, made the vice tighten unbearably. The pressure made his teeth ache.

  “Howie is still upstairs.” Her words seemed to shatter like glass against the stone walls around them.

  He cringed. “This is some hangover,” he moaned.

  Isabel picked up a large leather-bound book from a stool beside the altar. “It’s Howard’s book.” She opened it on the rock slab.

  “It can’t be.” It hurt so badly to focus!

  The book she’d found consisted of woodblock prints and handwritten text in biblical Hebrew. Most of the brittle pages were too faded to make out. Christ hung on the cross. Christians suffered on Jewish torture devices. One of the less faded pictures depicted two men hanging upside-down to each side of a pulley device, where a third man with feminine features in the center was bo
und and in torment. All three men had sun-disk halos. Further on in the book, a full moon hovered over a place that looked similar to Stonehenge.

  “You’re right,” she said. “This must be the original or something. It’s not in English. I remember Howard’s being in English.”

  Another page depicted snakes emerging from a gaping wound in a naked man’s stomach, the man tied to an altar by the wrists, an altar that looked remarkably like the altar in the center of the room in which they stood. Still another page showed a woman suffocating a child. The rest of the pages had deteriorated and were unreadable, disintegrating at the slightest touch.

  “Come on, we need to hurry.” She left the book open on the slab.

  Though Grip wanted a closer look, the flashlight moved on and highlighted one of the skull pyramids. “Those aren't human, right?” Grip said, wanting reassurance.

  “Come on.”

  “They're too small.” Unless they’re children’s skulls. “God, we gotta get out of here.”

  They traversed the long antechamber, and Grip thought, Skulls sleep just under the skin. He pictured Howard’s skin peeling away like wallpaper to reveal the skull underneath. Ophelia had said that about her husband, “Like wallpaper.” Grip heard the satisfying sucking sound of wallpaper pulling off in one large sheet. He couldn’t seem to focus. “Just a sec.” He took a breath, trying to get his thoughts to behave. “Okay,” he said. “Just a little foggy up here.”

  Howard Stark. Prison. Fragments that made no sense. Behind the crosses, the walls were the walls of the Penitentiary boiler room. They didn’t at all look the same, but they felt the same. Haunted. Above both stood a prison that housed violation and abuse. He tried to see his surroundings instead of remember them. It was like trying to swim to the surface of an inky lake. As he blindly climbed up steps, he cried silently and felt broken. He had loved a rapist. The past and the present wouldn't stay separate.

  Was he a ghost? Was this what it felt like to be dead?