Dark Things I Adore

by Katie Lattari

  Where a Bird Should Be

  Thesis

  Her Dark Things by Audra Colfax

  Piece #9: Dread Project

  Oil and mixed media on canvas. 8″ x 8″.

  [Close-up of an intricately knitted, blue baby blanket, the textures almost agricultural in their shaping, ocean-like in its expanse. Found objects incorporated throughout by layering.]

  Note on scratch paper found in the living room wall during a renovation for accidental damage in the Dunn residence.

  I am the dead COAL of a

  ROTTEN tooth I am the tar-black MAW of hell I am his

  DREAD project a

  swollen midnight WOUND

  I am BOUND to him in this

  in his glorious ascension

  and I am bound to him like EVE

  choking on the apple

  for what I know

  I am BOUND to them

  in the final hour

  he can make me that way KEEP me that way in my highest

  form my HIGHEST

  SELF forever

  we PROMISED each other, C

  the night the forest swallowed us whole

  it’s time to become the

  golden sunshine starshine canary goldenrod bright bright golden girl

  he’s going to

  HELP me

  and he’s going to help me

  I’m going to let him.

  —March89. CD.

  Juniper

  March 2, 1989

  “Well, let’s go to my place and take a look at the roster from last session,” Gus offers. “Maybe we can get it returned to him somehow. I think I know who you mean.” I’m carrying the expensive-looking watch I found this morning outside one of the cabins that have been shut up for the winter season. We trudge our way down the mucky path to his cabin, the air unseasonably mild, the temporary snowmelt conjuring swatches of fog in various surprising locations.

  “Stork, maybe? From Pittsburgh?” I offer as we get to his door. “Or Heron?”

  He lets us in, and as he does, he points to the new lens he just got sitting out on his workbench. I stay on the welcome mat and turn to look at it while Gus slides his muddy boots off.

  “It’s a beaut, huh?” he says. He creaks forward a step or two, and then he goes suddenly still. I look up, setting down the lens where I found it.

  “Alright, Gus?” And then the reason for his silence becomes clear. His enormous wall collage of camper photos faces us. There are easily forty-dozen up there. At an average of sixty campers a year, that’s about eight years’ worth. He has previous years’ pictures archived elsewhere. I’ve seen the wall countless times. We all have, whenever we come in to visit with Gus.

  But something is terribly wrong with it.

  All of the eyes in each and every photo have been scratched out to white, blank nothingness. Four hundred and eighty faces, blinded.

  And they’re not in their usual grid. They spell something out. I have to let my eyes settle across the massive breadth of it.

  ART OUTLASTS ALL

  My stomach plummets to my feet.

  Gus drops into a crouch, hand over his mouth.

  “Why?” he croaks. “Who?” His voice is tremulous.

  But I know who. Of course I do.

  March 10, 1989

  I’m half sitting on the stool in front of my easel. I’ve been sitting here with a paintbrush in my hand, stymied and distracted so long that the smears and scrapes of paint on my palette are starting to dry out.

  I can’t stop thinking about the photos in Old Gus’s cabin.

  I can’t believe I didn’t tell him what I suspected—what I know. Even when he called us all to the communal bonfire in the commons via the dinner bell and described, heartbroken, what had taken place. Even when he begged plaintively for someone to come forward if they knew anything. Even when he asked the group why this had been done to him, tears in his eyes. I stayed quiet. Because I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear what might happen to Coral if anyone found out. What I’ve done is keep my distance. And pretend there’s nothing to be said.

  I swallow and set down my paintbrush and palette. I rub my face and eye sockets hard and deep, trying desperately to chase the tension away. I look at the pathetic canvas before me. Unbroken expanses of white with insecure swipes of black here and there. I sigh and get up, crack the window for some bracing air.

  Two figures are emerging from the forest at the far side of the commons. From the direction of Coral’s Clearing. I squint.

  It’s Moss.

  And Mantis.

  They keep walking, not talking to each other. Moss’s eyes and face are cast down. Mantis faces forward, confident. What the fuck is Mantis doing here? What are they doing together? Are they coming from the clearing? My gut clenches. The Holy Trinity hasn’t been down to Coral’s Clearing since the night of the Autumn Francis story. Since the night that seemed to change everything.

  When they’re almost halfway through the commons, I suddenly break from my trance, from the feeling that I’m watching something on a TV screen, separate from me.

  I stumble down my front steps in my moccasins onto the muddy pathway.

  “Hey!” I cry. “Hey!” The two men pause and turn to look at me. Moss looks both nervous and relieved, somehow. Mantis looks agitated. I watch Mantis clap Moss on the shoulder, hard. Moss flinches under his touch. And then Mantis starts striding toward the parking lot like he doesn’t even see me. “Mantis,” I call, heading toward him, but his longer stride outpaces me easily. I start to trot after him, not sure what I’m even doing. Why I’m chasing after a man who on some deep, elemental level now terrifies me.

  I slip a few times on the embankment down to the lot, and by the time I get there, he’s already in his truck and starting it up. “Mantis,” I say again over the noise of the engine, breathing hard. He looks at me now, hands on the wheel, and there’s something like pity in his eyes. Like he finds me pathetic. “Where’s Coral?” is all I can think of to say. His features turn stony. Unwelcoming. I wrap my arms around my body, shivering. It can’t be more than forty degrees.

  “Go ask Moss,” he finally says. A small smile curls his lips. Icy, dislocated panic floods me. Then he yanks his truck into gear and speeds down the driveway. Gone.

  I stalk off toward Moss’s cabin at a half jog. My breath comes in quick, nervous bursts. When I get to his door, I rap on it hard three times. Silence greets me. I knock again. Then again. “Moss! I know you’re in there!” Then I start slamming the side of my fist ceaselessly against the door.

  The door flies open.

  “Christ, June. Fucking give it a rest,” Moss snarls. He rubs his forehead like a headache is splitting it wide open. He looks pale. And cold.

  “What the fuck was Mantis doing here?” I bark, trembling. Moss just shakes his head and turns away from me. He sinks to sit on his bed like he can’t hold himself up.

  “Where’s Coral?” I demand.

  “Not here,” he replies, voice impossibly weary—unlike I’ve ever heard it.

  “Where is she, Moss? I’m serious.”

  “June, please.” It’s a plea. The desperation in him makes me pause. My eyes flicker around his face, which is wrought.

  “Moss. Talk to me. Tell me right now. Where is she? Where is she?” I’m begging. Almost crying.

  “She’s not here anymore, okay?” he shouts, finally locking his red, watery eyes on me. He looks exhausted. Like he’s been chased by the devil. His skin looks anemically white. I’m so startled by his appearance that I lose my words for a moment.

  “Where is she?” I ask, nerves making my voice tremble. “Moss.” I breathe. “Where is Coral?” Moss swallows and shakes his head. “Moss,” I whisper, a terrified tear creeping from my eye down onto my cheek. I w
ipe it away.

  “She’s where she wants to be.” His voice cracks, and that one small vocal imperfection sends a shudder of deep, nebulous terror through me.

  I don’t remember turning away from him or leaving his cabin. I don’t remember rushing into the woods. I don’t remember slipping and mudding my way down the path to Coral’s Clearing. But eventually I get there, dirty, cold, trembling. I push my way past the trunks of trees, until I make it into the center of Coral’s favorite place.

  And in the heart of it, a shock of lemon yellow. A shock of blond against slate gray, arctic white, pearwood brown. The cragged rhinoceros boulders, the elegant arc of ballerina birch trees. Soil and bark. Mud and snow.

  And Coral in the limbs. Where a bird should be. Weightless, and free, high above the ground, unburdened—

  Or too terribly earthly, much heavier than air, gravity pulling her down, down.

  I can’t tell which.

  A rope gone taut. Her body gone slack.

  I shake my head no in disbelief, big and naive, like the motion might serve as an eraser.

  Then I scream.

  Thesis

  Her Dark Things by Audra Colfax

  Piece #10: See You Later

  Oil and mixed media on canvas. 36″ x 36″.

  [Close-up of a frayed rope, coiled, rough, animal-like. Found objects incorporated throughout by layering.]

  Note on water-stained, linen-woven stationery found in the landscaped stone wall outside the Dunn residence.

  It’s all set

  EVELINE is still with my parents she is

  SAFE

  Brady is off living his life

  I think he knows I think he

  understands

  I have made the deal with M with M

  M took my wish

  Saw my deepest heart

  and provided a narrowness

  something I could not back out of

  a girl who could not go on knowing

  a kind of courage

  and M will make me a

  golden WONDER forever

  forever his goldenbright girl

  M slipped me a note it said

  MEET ME IN THE PLACE YOU SHOWED ME UNDER THE STARS

  and so I will

  (and I kept the note—special place with EE)

  mom and dad, I’m SORRY

  everyone, everybody, even Brady

  I’m sorry

  Eveline Audra

  I do LOVE you I want you to

  know that

  I tried so HARD

  I want you to

  know that

  —March89. CD.

  Eleven

  Signature Color

  Max

  Sunday, October 21, 2018

  The sound that I hear—whether in real life or in a dream—is a sharp pop. Or a bang. Or a crack. In the space of milliseconds, I see a yellow balloon snapping and giving way. I see a ninety-mile-per-hour fastball hitting the broad side of a sun-splashed barn. A golden firework exploding into an opaque blackness.

  My eyes open into tar-thick darkness, the black wings of ravens, scorched and piled on me. A different kind of drowning. In the feathers of those birds. Coral’s birds.

  I blink and blink, trying to shake the blindness. Trying to shake Coral.

  There are other suggestions of shape. Of light.

  I am rocking. Swaying. Bobbing. Something. I wake in phases, it seems, rising out of a viscous swamp, disoriented. I lift my body to my elbows, feeling dense and heavy. Slow. I sit up. Ripples frosted with diamond dust from the heavens. All around me. Water. I am in a small, wooden boat. The boat is in the lake. I am in the small boat in the lake.

  “Coral?” I rasp, garbled.

  Coral, falling backward. Arms spread wide, a black raven. Down, down she goes.

  No. I shake my head out. I have to get it together.

  This is…Audra’s boat. The boat from shore. Kress Beach. I knew it as soon as we arrived.

  I am alone. There is no Audra.

  My cardiac system bursts into high gear, my sudden, clumsy movements making the boat sway and rock more violently. Straight ahead of me is more lake. Endless lake. The silence profound. The air freezing. I look around me. No oars. I twist my head all the way around, panic rising ever higher, and see that the shore I had so recently been walking on, then standing on, then sitting on inside this boat, is about a hundred yards behind me.

  Coral, half-naked and shivering, standing painfully close to the flames of the fire Mantis built for us.

  I blink and make myself look at it how it is now, not as it was then. Don’t get confused. The fallen logs. The stump with those strange initials. But no Audra. What has happened? What has happened to Audra? Is she hurt? I look at my hands and wonder—with a searing shock—if I have strangled her. Had I simply blacked out? Pushed her into the lake? Killed her? Dropped her body into the depths? Bile rises inside of me.

  Why would I think that? How could I think that? I peer madly around the perimeter of the boat but find no ghostly hands or faces in that black water. Not Coral’s face. Not Audra’s.

  I didn’t reach for her that day. I don’t reach for her now.

  Audra is simply gone.

  I force my body to one side of the boat, bracing the edge of it with my left arm and dipping my other arm into the freezing water. I hiss. My coat’s arm is immediately soaked from the elbow down. I start splashing and paddling the boat wildly so the prow is facing in the right direction. Toward land. Toward the beach. Toward Audra.

  “Audra!” I call, but my voice is weak, rusty. I clear my throat and call again, with more success: “Audra!” But the word, her name, only echoes emptily back to me. I listen above the paddling noises of my rapidly numbing hand and forearm.

  BANG!

  “Fuck! Fucking Christ!” I rip my hand from the water and cover my head. A gunshot. A fucking gunshot. It sounded like a big one. Maybe like a…like a shotgun? I drop down in the boat. I lie on my belly. I listen. I wait. The sound seems to take a lifetime to finally fade from the air, from its own echo. I peer over the lip of the boat, looking all around me. But there is only water and dense, black, forested shoreline in every direction. I see no one. I hear no one. Where did that shot come from? How close is the gunman? It felt close. It sounded close. Who is firing a gun in the night? Can you hunt at night?

  I swallow. I close my eyes, feeling nauseous from fear, from booze, from lying flat on my stomach. Heartburn creeps up my throat.

  I’m shivering.

  I take a breath.

  It takes several moments to gather myself, but then I push up again and start paddling sloppily, loudly toward shore. I don’t care about the noise I’m making. I have to get off this water. I have to get to shore. I have to find Audra. Get to the car, far away, down that damned trail. Get to her house. Any house. The one-armed paddling from the right side sends the boat into a left turn and then nearly a circle before I realize it’s happening. I go to the left side and dunk my left arm in and course correct. I groan, both arms soaked and freezing. I imagine Coral, standing in a similarly spinning boat. Her deep voice, arguing, I think I need to stop, M, I need to be better. Meds, therapy. Brady. Me, refusing. Me, defensive. Me, disappointed. Me, awestruck. I want to cry out. I am still bobbing, wide open on the lake, no closer to shore. Panic and frustration seize my chest and throat and limbs—I sit there dumbly for a moment, body painfully tense and erect. A sob grips my throat, my chest.

  My phone. Relief floods me in a way I have rarely felt in my life. I stab my hands into my jacket pockets, sniffing, wiping my face, feeling the familiar square shape of my wallet. But there is nothing else. No phone. I feel around more aggressively. I turn out the pockets. I shove my hands into every pocket on every article of clothing on my body
. Wallet, yes. Phone? Nothing. Knife? Gone. My teeth clench in my skull. I drop to my hands and knees, struggling to see clearly the nuanced shadows in the bottom of the boat, and begin to feel around. It just slid out of my pocket. It’s here. I was lying down. It just slipped out. Stay calm. You’ll find it. But I don’t find it. I scour three more times. My body. The boat. It’s not here.

  I sit heavily on the bench, my back hunched in cold resignation. I look up into the dazzling sky. I look out onto the shimmering lake. My breath mists before me. I think of that gunshot and force myself to go to the very farthest point of the prow, as far as I dare, the nose dipping more and more into the lake, but it stays above the waterline. I hunch low and rest my chest against the front point. I drive both arms into the water on either side of the prow and start paddling. The water soaks my coat and makes my arms heavier and heavier to move with each minute that passes. My progress is painfully slow, but there is progress.

  “Yes,” I whisper. “Come on. Come on.” It takes, I’d guess, a solid fifteen or twenty minutes for me to travel the fifty yards or so that marks the halfway point back to shore. Maybe longer. I pull myself back up into the boat to rest my arms, which are throbbing in pain from the freezing water and exhausted from the rowing. I close my eyes, trying to catch my breath. How could this have happened?

  “Audra!” I call again. Silence returns to me. “Audra!” I try harder, louder. “Someone!” I scan the shoreline, the tree line.

  Nothing.

  I’m alone out here. On my own. I have to make my own way back. There’s nothing else to do. I resume my post at the prow. I sink my arms into the water and begin paddling. I need to get to shore and get to the car and get to somewhere I can call 911. They can help find Audra. I need to get somewhere safe. There’s someone with a gun within earshot, and Audra is missing.

  The cold seems to dismember me, make parts of my body not my own anymore. Every segment of my fingers is blindly, baldly numb—absent. My arms are leaden. By the time I get to be fifteen feet out from shore, I’m so eager to get to dry land that I make my way over the side and splash into freezing thigh-deep water. My ankle screams at me. I grab the boat, and I crash and struggle through the lake to pull it to shore—using it as a brace for my ankle, a crutch for my fatigue and wooziness—far enough up so it won’t drift out into the lake like it did with me. I sink down onto the cold beach, flat on my back, my breath misting above me as I try to catch it. I swallow, close my eyes momentarily, then turn my head to the side. There is Audra’s log. EAD & MFD inside of a heart. Did she say it was us? I certainly recognize my own initials, but EAD?