by Jon Bassoff
Puputan?
A Balinese term that means…
But it was at that very moment that a woman staggered out of a room, wearing a nightgown bespeckled with blood. Her black hair was long and wild, and her face was that of the dead.
Oh, my Lord! the doctor said, his voice suddenly frantic. Mary Lou, what in heavens are you doing out of your room? And what do you have in your arms all mangled and bloody? Oh Lord, oh Lord, help us all.
Put it back! she said, face changing into something terrible. Please, doctor! Put it back!
Darling, darling, it’s too late for that. You really shouldn’t have gone poking around into those bins. Terrible! I wish it didn’t have to be this way, you must believe me. It’s the Cowboy and his Book of Edicts. A travesty, I say, an absolute travesty! But what can we do? You shouldn’t have gone poking around, my dear girl. What’s done is done. The town must die with us, so it is written!
And she began walking toward me slowly and I couldn’t move; it was the most terrible thing I’d ever seen, bloody and dead, and she begged me to help her, please, please help her, but there was nothing I could do, the town must die with us…
In Dr. Byrd’s office, more destruction. Graffitied walls crumbling down. Rubble everywhere. A hospital bed frame, no mattress. Operating lights dangling from the ceiling. On a wooden table, some sort of an antique operation kit, instruments badly rusted.
If you wouldn’t mind lying down, he said, but there was no place to lie except the metal frame and I did so, sharp spikes digging into my skin. He turned on the hospital lights and I was blinded. Terrible wound, he said. Badly infected. How did this happen?
I don’t know. Nothing makes sense.
In any case, we must get this taken care of. Unfortunately, flesh wounds are not my…specialty.
But you’re a doctor.
True. But I was forced into this position. I am an insurance salesman by trade. When the Cowboy issued his edicts, he trained several of us in a particular bloody art. The other doctors are gone. Now it’s just me. Overworked. And not qualified to make a judgment on your wound. But I would say infected. Certainly. I could write you a prescription. But for what? I haven’t the slightest idea since I don’t have pharmaceutical training. Perhaps if we just clean it with some lye…
I was taken by surprise. He pressed a cloth against the wound, and my skin was on fire, and I screamed. I tried pushing him away, but I was weakened by the pain, and he kept the chemical firmly pressed against my temple.
This is what we do to naughty boys, he said. It would be best, Mr. Carver, if you mind your own business from now on. Stop the poking around. You are not a dime store detective. You understand, ja? and now his accent was that of a German.
I nodded my head vigorously, sweat pouring down my face.
Dies ist gut, Mr. Carver, and he removed the cloth. I could feel the wound bubbling, my face forever disfigured. The doctor smiled at me. His teeth were sharp and narrow, his gums purple. Speaking again: But I just need to make sure…
He limped back to the middle of the room and removed a tool from his kit. On one end of the tool was some sort an old rusted drill bit. On the other end was a plastic handle. The doctor smiled. Braun’s Cranial Perforator, he said. You have heard of this device?
My hands were suddenly tied to the bedframe. Black magic. Dr. Byrd, the doctor, the masochist, placed the metal bit against my wound. And then he started twisting…
* * *
When I awoke, I was all alone. My hands were free, my head was bandaged. Dr. Byrd was nowhere to be found. His torture tools were gone. I sat up. My temple was pounding, shrapnel ricocheting in my skull.
I got to my feet and hobbled over to Dr. Byrd’s desk. I opened the drawer and fumbled around for a while. A portfolio of photographs: fetuses recently extracted. Bloody faces, crushed skulls, missing limbs. And uncashed checks. Ten thousand here, sixteen thousand there. A letter from the Cowboy praising him for his dedication to the cause. A form letter to be sure.
* * *
Back in the hallway, now completely darkened. I couldn’t even see my hand six inches in front of my face. I walked slowly, cautiously, hands reaching ahead into the blackness. I heard sounds. Rats screeching. A train horn, off in the distance. My own footsteps and breath…
I don’t know how much time passed. I continued through the corridor, a blind man, feeling the walls for an exit, finding nothing but peeling paint and dampened concrete.
I began to panic, afraid that I would wander through the darkness forever. I tried shouting for help, but my voice left me and I couldn’t make a sound. I was a man condemned, again and again.
And then I remembered Ms. Marcell from my childhood and the stories about her, told from generation to generation, how she stole children from their houses, tiptoed into their bedrooms and placed them in a gunny sack and then took them into the forest and buried them, still alive, and if you listened closely you could hear the muted screams through the dirt, and I never saw her except for once on a cold winter’s evening when I’d wandered too far from my house, and she was standing at the end of the block beneath the glow of a streetlamp, and her hair was white and wild and her skin was pale, almost translucent, and she grinned and it was such a terrible grin, all the evil in the world in that grin, and she started walking toward me, her back all hunched, but still with that terrible grin, and I knew it would be the end of me, that I’d be in that burlap bag and I’d be beneath the dirt and I’d die and rot there, and I knew that I should run but I didn’t move—a part of me wanted her to take me, to be damned forever—and she continued walking and I remained still, and then she stopped and glared at me and the grin faded away slowly, and there was nothing but blackness where her eyes should have been, but she came no closer, instead walking up her walkway, overgrown with weeds, and into her crumbling little house surrounded by shovels and sickles and chaff cutters and breast plows, and her windows remained darkened until her death.
And now she was speaking in a hushed voice, I knew it was her: I’ve had my eye on him… He’s done some terrible things… We’ll take him to the forest… Bring the pointed shovel… It won’t be long now… We’ll mark the grave with his teeth…
I was on the precipice of sanity, certainly, and so it was a great relief when I saw the dull glow of a light up ahead. At first I thought it was some sort of a lantern hanging from the wall, but then I realized that the light was moving, swinging side to side, and no matter how far I walked I couldn’t reach it.
I began jogging through the darkened corridor, wondering about the light, wondering about the sack woman, wondering about Alana, Alana, Alana, the last vestige of innocence.
And then soon I was out of breath, my lungs burning and my legs heavy. And still I kept running, on one occasion tripping over a jutted drain, smashing to the concrete floor.
Finally, I reached the light source. It was a very old man with a mining lantern hanging around his neck. He wore a black suit, badly torn, and was pushing some sort of a shopping cart with a tarp thrown over it. I shouted out to him, but he didn’t turn around, just kept pushing the cart, one of the wheels spinning erratically. I lunged forward and grabbed his shoulder and he stopped, spun around. He was tall and undernourished, just like so many in this town, the features of his skull pushing against his skin. His gray eyes were bloodshot and sunken. He didn’t say a thing.
I was hoping, I said, that you could help me get out of this building. I’ve been wandering for a long time. Everything is dark. Everything is lonely. I’m tired and I’m hungry. I’m confused. I’m looking for a girl. Her name is Alana. I believe that she is in terrible danger. I believe I may have had my first real break in the case. I saw a woman who I recognized from long ago. She might know something. I’d like to talk to her. But I’m stuck here. I can’t get out. I haven’t slept for such a long time…
The man only grunted and then continued walking. I followed after him.
The world was falling apart, piece by piece. W
e walked for a long time, he leading, me closely behind. At some point he turned and handed me what appeared to be a dried fig, an odd gesture. I stuck it in my mouth, but it tasted rotten and so I spit it out. He smiled a toothless grin at that.
We came to a thick metal door. The old man pulled it open revealing a narrow and seemingly endless metallic staircase, ascending steeply. He grabbed the front of the shopping cart with one hand and pointed to the handle. I quickly realized that he wanted me to help him carry the cart. I nodded my head and got a good grip on the handle. The cart wasn’t light and I was amazed that the old man was able to lift the front section.
Up, up, up we walked, our feet and the wheels of the cart echoing loudly on the metal stairs. Every so often we’d reach a platform with open steel gratings and we’d rest, but then he’d nod and grunt and we would begin our ascent again.
After this went on for some time, I began to get frustrated and agitated. Once again, I’d been sidetracked from my mission. It seemed the harder I tried, the further away from answers I got.
And then, just when I was beginning to lose all hope, just when my anger was reaching a tipping point, we reached another door. The old man shoved it open and pulled the shopping cart behind him. With that familiar sense of dread, I followed. After a few steps, I realized that we were on the roof of the building, the crumbling little town below. The sky was dark. There were no stars, no moon. Standing in the middle of the roof was a group of people, all dressed in various hues of black. A woman with gray hair stretching to the ground sat on a stool and played a mournful song on a strange harp.
When the people saw the old man, they quickly rushed up to him and started hugging and comforting him.
It’s so terrible, one of them said. Dead, dead!
Yes, yes, said another. Dead. He was a good man, a noble man.
And another: We must remember him in a positive light. We shouldn’t let his occasional failings overwhelm his true nature.
A good man! Yes, he had failings. Don’t we all?
They never proved a thing! Not beyond a reasonable doubt.
Confused, I approached a woman who wore a long black shawl and dark sunglasses. Excuse me, I said. But what is going on here?
She removed her sunglasses. One of her eyes was covered with an eye patch. The other was badly swollen. Isn’t it terrible? she said. He killed himself.
Who killed himself?
She pointed to the shopping cart. The tarp had been removed. For a long while I just stood there, looking down at the profound sight. A naked body, the skin purple and waxy, blood pooling in his calves and feet, eyes sinking into his skull. A face unrecognizable, having been obliterated by a shotgun shell.
CHAPTER 13
The old man, a deaf mute, moaned mournfully, rocking back and forth. A pair of burly men walked across the tarred roof carrying a simple pine casket ornamented with a cross. They opened the lid and then carefully lifted the mangled corpse into the casket. They closed it shut. The woman playing the harp began singing in a haunted voice. It was a song I remembered from my childhood.
Oh, the Deacon went down to the cellar to pray
He found a jug and he stayed all day
Oh, the Deacon went down to the cellar to pray,
He found a jug and he stayed all day
Ain’t gonna grieve my Lord no more.
And then, after the song, one of the mourners, a very short man with blonde hair plastered onto his forehead, a pair of broken spectacles on the tip of his nose, and a walking cane in his gnarled right hand, stood on top of a ledge, cleared his throat, and began speaking in a quiet, reedy voice. The mourners immediately hushed and gave him full attention.
Here lies the body of a man, he said, banging his cane against the metal platform. He was a son and a husband. He laughed often and cried perhaps not enough. But now what do we do with him, now that he is trapped in this simple wooden casket, breath forever gone, skin and blood and muscle eventually decomposing, leaving only bones in that casket; a skull with a fleshless grin? I have been asked to pay tribute to him, to tell his story in some way. And, most importantly, to explain the circumstances surrounding that tragic day, nearly six years ago…
What you must know is that he came from a difficult childhood. A depressive mother. An abusive father. Yes, yes, who can forget the havoc his father wreaked on the town? Remember Tyler Yancey? How he tore off his ear and stomped on his face? Or Daniel McClure? Snapped his neck, left him a cripple. But the havoc he wreaked on the town pales in comparison to that of his own family. Physical and emotional. Year after year after year. And remember our own role, our own complicity. We sat in the tavern and drank our beers and tapped our fingers and spoke in hushed voices and listened to the screaming and the moaning and the pleading, and we didn’t move from our chairs; we just sighed and hung our heads, and certainly that makes us guilty, too, condemned as well.
For we can only imagine what it was like for him spending his whole life trying to avoid his father’s horrific prognostication. Fearing that he was, indeed, a prophet of the devil. Do you understand this agony? Every time a seed of anger was planted in his gut he became petrified that this seed would grow into something unmanageable and unimaginable. He worried that he would lose control of his rationality and that the animalistic him would attack and assault while the old man sat at the kitchen table sipping whiskey and sharpening his work knife and laughing, laughing.
He was just a boy, don’t you understand? Just a boy. His mother was six months pregnant. And she used to let him touch her stomach, feel the baby kicking. But the old man, he was bitter. And he got it into his head that he wasn’t the father. He got it into his head that his wife was a whore and that the father was the plumber or the sheriff or the doctor or the minister or, God forbid, his own brother. And the irony, the terrible irony, is that the old man was fucking everything with a hole, including a girl who worked at the filling station who wasn’t more than fifteen years old. But his wife was the whore, that’s what he said.
And so this one night he came home, and he’d been drinking, and he was looking for a fight. And the boy was in his room reading his superhero comics, wishing that he had a power or two to stop him from hurting his mom. And as his father shouted, as his father berated his mother, the boy remained huddled in his bed, and he reached under the bed and pulled out his black mask and his plastic sword, and he tried getting the courage because he knew something bad was going to happen—he had premonitions, too.
Then he heard the sounds of furniture being overturned and walls being punched. And not long after, his mother screeching, sounding more like an animal than a human. He covered his ears with his hands, but he could still hear her. And his father, shouting, Who’d you fuck? Who’d you fuck, you little whore? You think I want another little bastard running around this filthy world? Fuck you! Fuck you, you goddamn whore!
The boy rose from his bed. Outside the rain was falling, crashing down on the tin roof. Thunder boomed and lightning flashed, lighting up his darkened boy’s room. He wore a mask and a cape, he carried a sword, and still he trembled. But he knew that courage was challenging fear, not overcoming it. He opened the door and stood in the hallway, shrouded in the shadows. Slowly he walked. The thunder was so loud, the lightning so bright, that he feared the house would be destroyed. His hands wouldn’t stop trembling. His teeth clattered metronome-style.
He walked down the hallway and through the living room. He came to their bedroom door, a sickly light glowing beneath. Cautiously, he turned the knob and pushed open the door. His eyesight became blurry. His head became dizzy. His mother was sitting on the floor, fully nude, rocking back and forth. His father stood in the middle of the room, gripping a large metal wrench. His white T-shirt was soaked through with blood. His cowboy hat lay on the chair. The man looked at the boy and his expression was that of the damned. It ends with us, he said. Don’t you get it, boy? It ends with us.
The boy raced out of the bedroom and out
the front door and the rain pounded the pavement and he ran until he thought his chest would explode and then he found a ditch and he stumbled down there, shielded by black poplar trees, and he stayed there for a long time…
Years passed, and his mother died a terrible death (just skin and bones was she), and his father died by his own hand (nobody found him for nearly a week, and by the time a neighbor named Mrs. Wickland did discover him, the stink was so bad they had to have his old shack fumigated), but I fear those corpses were but illusions. Violence and sin and hatred passed from generation to generation. And so they were passed to him.
The son grew to be a man, and Lord knows he tried to avoid the cycle of violence. He left the filthy town of his childhood and moved to a quiet town of homogeneity. He got an honest job, a desk job. He met a woman and they fell in love, or at least they convinced each other that they were in love, and eventually they got married. He tried his best to be a good husband. This is undeniable. Happy days and loving nights. But he soon suspected a terrible truth: that his wife was a devilish woman with aims of destruction. Spitting on their vows. Whoring her body. Laughing in his face. Yes, he began to hear her having hushed conversations on the phone. He found suspicious receipts. He smelled unfamiliar colognes on her body. And he noticed her skittishness, the vestiges of guilt. How was he to handle this situation? How had his father handled the situation?
When she told him that she was pregnant, the suspicions only intensified. He wasn’t the father, he was sure of it. But without proof, without certainty, he hesitated to accuse…
And now I ask you to close your eyes and imagine. Picture the setting. A cold dark night. No moon. No stars. She was gone again. Missing from his bed. So he went searching. And when he finally found her, he saw that she was with that man from October Hill, the man with the bowler’s hat and the vulture eye. They were drinking cherry brandy from mason jars and they were laughing, laughing.