The Eye Unseen

by Cynthia Tottleben

  I closed my eyes and thanked God that I wasn’t stuck back in the shed. That time in my life had been maddening, and I couldn’t fathom enduring this with a foot of snow on the ground and the cold metal walls closing in on me.

  But my words didn’t come back to me. If Mom was right and God for some reason hated me, why would I feel so comfortable talking to Him? As I always had? Wouldn’t I feel ill attending church? Wouldn’t something horrible strike me down if God loathed me and I entered His house? I prayed all of the time. I talked to God dozens of times a day. If He couldn’t stand me to the point that He wanted to strike me down as a fetus, why would my words enter the world with such ease?

  I curled up as tightly as I could. The blowing heat made for some company, the noise rather calming. Listening to it, I imagined waves and an ocean that I had never seen, except in pictures and movies. I closed my eyes. Approached the faraway water. Ran into it, my body soaking up the hot sun, my arms outreached toward Heaven.

  Chapter 17

  Joan

  The dog slept with me for a change. We giggled a lot about you, locked downstairs in the dark. The door bolted shut. Sweating away your sins.

  Could God ever forgive you?

  I fed Tippy popcorn, took her on a car ride, even bought her a big bone from the butcher that was almost the same size as her body. We had a blast. A couple of times she pawed at the basement door, wanting you. I pushed her away with the broom and we went on, pretending you didn’t exist.

  I couldn’t help but stare at her face. Her bad eye. The scar from the botched job at the cheap vet her first owners had taken her to still showed the marks from the stitches, made her look like a rag doll. When I tried to touch it, she jumped away.

  We were doing fine until the morning, two days after your venture into the basement, that Aunt Evelyn joined me at the kitchen table. I hadn’t seen her in so long I had almost forgotten how she seemed void of all things feminine. Her skirt was long and disguised the way she sat, slightly slumped in the wooden chair, legs spread wide like a man. I appreciated the length of her hair, the thick braid that adorned her back but looked as though she’d slept in it for a week without brushing it in between times. She looked rugged. Wizened. Old.

  “I don’t know why anyone would allow an animal to live inside the house. Dogs belong in the yard,” My great aunt told me, her fingernails tapping the table. “What will you do next, spread feed for the chickens in the laundry room?”

  “I don’t have chickens.”

  “That’s odd. I could swear I heard them clucking before I came downstairs. Do you have my tea?”

  I served Evelyn the hot chamomile she loved. Remembered, after all these years, to put honey in the bottom of her mug and let the hot water do its trick.

  We said little. I read the newspaper, actually took a bit longer dissecting it than normal, while Aunt Evelyn polished an ax.

  “Must you do that at the table?” I asked. After all, it was my house.

  “Someone has to be prepared.” She ran her cloth over the sharp surface, and I became almost mesmerized with her methodical movements. If I had gripped the weapon like that, my fingers would be lying on the floor. But Evelyn didn’t have to worry about such earthly problems. She folded her fingers around the edge of the blade, practically burned the metal sterile with her tight grasp and frenzied cleaning.

  We exchanged short glares. I knew why she was here.

  “I’m handling things.” The newspaper folded, I took it to the pile by the fireplace.

  “Oh, indeed you are. As I’m certain you tell your mother on a regular basis. How long did it take her to bleed out, an hour? Or much less?”

  “Please. How rude.”

  “Just being honest, dear. You can’t spite me for that.” She pursed her lips, raised her eyebrows in that creepy way she had, and downed some of her tea. “Now, let’s get to work, shall we?”

  I did as instructed: cleaned the table, put a kettle on the burner, brought my aunt all of her files, including the new ones she had carried in with her, and put the dog in my room so she wouldn’t be a nuisance while we studied.

  “This one was always fascinating. She was a half-breed, long before it became fashionable. All of her children died as they pulled them from her womb. Six of them, flexing and stretching and apparently eager to join the world. Until their legs passed through. Then it was downhill fast. All of them dead within minutes.”

  “What a tragedy.” I understood the woman’s pain. The disappointment of longing for your own flesh and blood to appear and instead being handed a corpse.

  My mind flashed to Alex. His laughter. How Brandy was just like him.

  I tried desperately not to think of you.

  “Stay on task.” Evelyn said.

  “But I’ve read these files over and over again. What else could I possibly learn?”

  “What else? How about a lesson in standing tall? That it’s not butchery but the preservation of the human species you’re fighting for?”

  “You’re one to talk. When have you ever taken matters into your own hands? It’s one thing to study something but an entirely different story when you have to do it yourself.” I stared her down.

  “Good God, child. Don’t you know anything?”

  Her astonishment stirred my curiosity.

  “I thought I pretty much knew it all.”

  We both sipped our tea.

  “Do you ever see my mother?” I missed her, even now. Fifteen years later, and I could still see her watching my tragedy unfold, the terror in her eyes, the helplessness she felt written across her face like someone had scrawled it in black magic marker.

  The utter devastation I felt when he took her hands, the blood dripping onto my skin, and used them on me. While my mother continued to watch, knowing that soon she would die.

  “That’s an odd question. But yes, I have. Just not recently. I spend my time elsewhere.”

  “How was she?” I perked up. For just a second I could feel my mother’s embrace. However fleeting, it brought me back to the innocence I used to have.

  “As well as could be expected. She gets along without her hands, but it is quite challenging for her. Alex helps out.”

  My mug slipped from my grip and shattered on the floor. In the room upstairs I could hear the dog barking, afraid I was being attacked.

  “You’ve seen Alex?”

  Sitting across from my great aunt polishing her battle ax, I could smell him in the room. Even in my chair my legs started to give way and I had to push my back flat against the cushion in order not to fall off.

  With my eyes closed, I could swear it was the early 80’s and my husband was just returning home from work. I would watch the clock and wait for him every day. Alex would come in, pull me into him, his breath and sweat and long-since-applied after-shave meeting my nose and overwhelming me with a wave of absolute comfort and serenity.

  That same scent met me in my chair. What would Alex think of me now? He was handsome and pure. When other women walked past us on the street, their eyes lingered on him, then flashed toward me with jealously and even a bit of outrage that he would have me and not them. Alex radiated energy.

  But he was dead, too. Had I passed at the same moment? I’d been numb for so long that sometimes I had difficulty telling whether or not my veins held anything even slightly warm. What a misfortune that I hadn’t been able to hold him as his flame was snuffed and instead could barely even scream beneath the gag in my mouth. Was it my fault he was gone? Had the family curse somehow brought it on?

  “How was he?”

  “It’s not like we had a long conversation. I was checking on your mother, and he was helping her up from the couch. I said hello, he smiled and that was it.”

  That was it? Fifteen years later and this was all she’d give me?

  “Listen, Joan, you need to pull yourself together. Think of your life as a business. These other people, your employees. Would you stand for their shenanigans? Wou
ld it be beneficial to your bottom line if you allowed personal feelings and personality to supersede execution, delivery, profit?”

  “No.” Aunt Evelyn had a valid point. “I wouldn’t.”

  “There you go. It’s a business. If you ran a bakery and had an infestation of mice, would you just lock the mice up in the basement and wait to see what happened or would you eradicate them?”

  “I’d call an exterminator.”

  “But what if you are the exterminator?”

  A point I’d never truly considered.

  “But she isn’t a mouse.” I argued. “She’s actually a pretty good girl.”

  This truth about you was one of the greatest secrets I hid, even from myself. As much as I deplored having you as a child, you would have made another mother happy.

  “She’s the devil’s spawn! Why can’t you see that?” The ax slipped from Evelyn’s hand. I jumped back, the blade barely missing my foot, and watched with horror as it embedded itself in the linoleum, the handle sticking out of the floor like a rudimentary grave marker.

  “I do see it. She’s destroyed my life. She came to this world covered in the blood of my husband. But….” I couldn’t finish. I didn’t want Evelyn to badger me for my weakness.

  “There is no room for your quivering! There are no ifs, ands or buts when it comes to family business!”

  “But each time I’ve tried to…take care of her…it’s like my mother steps in and stops me. My gut screams that it is the worst thing I could ever do. I look at Lucy and see nothing but a white light surrounding her and can’t take that final step. What if you’re wrong? What if she’s good inside? What if this whole…legend…is nothing but that? Or if it is true, what if Lucy turns it around? Have you ever thought of that? Maybe she’s the one to stop the evil and take the stand for righteousness!” I found myself rising at the end of my outburst, towering over my aunt, my fists against the table.

  “Feel better now?” Evelyn dismissed me with a wave of her hand.

  “A bit.” The good thoughts of Alex and my mother were slipping away. The negativity was fogging back into my soul.

  “Do you think that all the mothers before you were heartless fiends bent on killing their own children?”

  “I don’t know what to think.” I was nothing if not honest.

  “They loved their girls, too! Remember the Aussies. Both families. Do you think that mother wanted to give her daughter to the dingos? But when they were all sitting with her, and that little imp was smiling, giving the tell-tale sign with her eye, do you think that her mother said, ‘Yay! Now I finally get to live out my dreams and get to slash the throat of my baby and let these wild dogs ravage her flesh’? Do you? Really?”

  “No.”

  “And Easter Sunday in Norway? Seventeen people killed before the mother put an end to the horror? Do you think that while cooking the ham for dinner, she was mulling over how to destroy her own flesh?”

  “No.” I was getting burnt out on her lessons.

  “But they did. All of these women did. All of them, proving their honor and faith and dedication to the blood line. Without hesitation.”

  “Lucy has never hurt a soul.” Once again I defended you. Such an odd stance for me to take.

  “Not yet. But her role is different, isn’t it? She’s not just a local scamp. She’s not looking to bring down three or four bodies. Her death toll will be in the hundreds of thousands. Millions, even. That child of yours will bring down the whole human race, if given the chance. Why can’t you see that?”

  A vile image filled my mind. You, dancing with your little dog. The two of you in a fancy ballroom, packed with people from all over the world. Your gown was long and black and whipped violently as you twirled around. A cacophony of laughter panicked the room. When you turned to face me, your bad eye was ablaze, and despite their terror, the people fell to their knees before you, your crown of snakes slithering as you glared at me in triumph.

  No, you wouldn’t be content as one of many. You were born to rule. To relieve your father of his position and take control of Hell. Evelyn gestured to her cup, and I refilled it with boiling water.

  From the basement we heard you laughing. Giggling hysterically, your voice razor blades that sliced the walls as it echoed through the room. You took over our conversation. Made me realize what a fool I’d been to stand up for you.

  “I can see it.”

  I had to practically scream for Aunt Evelyn to hear me over your cackling.

  Chapter 18

  Lucy

  Sleep kept me captive for a small eternity. I so wanted to escape my life that I just closed my eyes and let it all slip away. Forgot about Mother’s thoughts on aborting me. Her determination to free me from the devil. The utter starkness that made up her insanity.

  I woke up once, took off the rest of my clothes, laid back down on the comforters.

  They were so wet from my sweat that I pondered wringing them out to save the moisture. The air scorched like hot pavement and I half expected scorpions and lizards to crawl out from under me, sand dunes to undulate the length of the room.

  When I finally came to, I felt dizzy, confused, like I had been unleashed in the dark labyrinth of Mother’s barmy thoughts. Nothing was stable. Everything was off-kilter. Even my skin seemed out of place, my fingers heavy clumps of wood, my lungs embers that glowed bright orange each time I took a breath.

  Still, my thoughts returned, as always, to water. My senses honed in on it and wouldn’t let go. I could hear it dripping, big heavy drops pinging against metal, all a fantasy that I couldn’t convince my mind to disregard.

  No matter how hard I tried to ignore it, my body obsessed. Closing my eyes only brought images of rain barrels and overflowing gutters to mind. My lips, cracked and torn, reminisced about the days when they had not yet uttered the word dehydration.

  I didn’t want to move, let alone crawl along the dark floor until I found the jugs of water. Had I been here for hours? Days? Was Tippy okay?

  My heart cringed at the thought of my best friend. Alone. With Mother. Would she be safe? Did Mom have her chained somewhere, covered in gravy, waiting for the God of Hot Dog Eating Canines to descend and prove that Tippy wasn’t an evil beast?

  At least I didn’t have to worry about her hunger level or how much of my water she might slop up when I wasn’t looking.

  I could barely contemplate standing. Just lying on the floor I felt like an unproven surfer, trying to balance amidst the waves, all wobbly legged and out of sorts. Something was very wrong with me.

  How had I gotten to this place? In all of the great plans I had made for my future, none included being trapped in the coal room, naked and loopy.

  For a while I couldn’t stop laughing. But laughter quickly turned to hysterics. Without Tippy looking to me for strength, my emotions gave way. And the tears weren’t just about my bad situation. They were for my sister, both because I missed her ferociously and because she had completely and utterly abandoned me, knowing Mom was nuts and that I wasn’t safe with her. They kept running down my cheeks as I thought about all of the years I had striven to be a good girl, following Mom’s and God’s rules, living up to my responsibilities.

  But this was where my best behavior brought me. Lying in the pitch black, weeping for a mother who had always hated me, for fathers both dead and divine. Lonely. Afraid.

  Thirsty.

  Crying just added more anguish to my sore throat. I calmed myself. Took deep breaths. Promised myself I had a resilience that others my age lacked. That God couldn’t hate me.

  Maybe I was the one who had gone mad. Maybe I was really lying on the beach somewhere, taking a mental vacation that had gone horribly awry, and had somehow become trapped inside my own mind.

  Thinking of the ocean again led me right back to my current reality, where I was parched beyond reckoning and had no one to help me but myself. I willed Brandy to show up and fetch the water for me. Or at least to prop me up on her sho
ulder and help me get there.

  The jugs were miles away. In the dark room, the walls were tilted, the floor at an odd angle I didn’t think I could navigate. I inched forward, remembering back when our family was functional and Mom had taken us to the county fair. She had found a comfortable bench and was eating an elephant ear while Brandy and I braved one of the rickety rides. The metal base had rolled just like the coal room was doing now. We had screamed at the top of our lungs while we spun around, trying to get Mom’s attention each time we whirled past, waving when we could pull our arms up.

  What fun that had been.

  But this was certainly a different story. A nightmare with no ending.

  I had to stop. My insides threatened violence if I continued.

  Yet images of water filled my mind . Chilling in a frosty mug. So cold that the ice cubes chunked up together, freezing into one big block. Even hot water. The bathtub, steam rising from its belly, bubbles coating the water’s surface like an old man’s beard.

  A cup of hot tea. Spiced orange had always been my favorite.

  And Brandy. Spraying me down with the hose in the dreadfully hot days during our summer vacations. Sometimes we even turned on the sprinkler while Mom was at the bank and spent our afternoons doing yard work, keeping ourselves cool while completing our daily chores.

  My face itched, the drama of having a billion flesh eating ants consume my outer layers running a close second to my raging thirst. The sage and cream were caked to my skin and cracked like desert soil. I had clawed at it until I smelled fresh blood and even then couldn’t stop myself from trying to get it off.

  Which led back to a running faucet. How delicious would it be to turn on the hot water, douse a washcloth, and scrub the crust from my skin? The clean scent of Ivory soap fed my fantasy, and for just a second I could feel the sage loosening from my forehead, my reflection in the mirror that of a younger, healthier me.

  I crossed over the edge of the comforter as though I had made it across state lines. I was on new terrain, the old cement floor, somewhat of a rough shock to my knees as I used up another brief surge of energy. My forehead met the slightly cooler surface of the floor, balancing my body as I took a break. Time was of no concern. If it took me six days to find the treasure on the other side of the room, then so be it.