The Burn Palace

by Stephen Dobyns

  “Start by talking to teachers at the schools, I guess. Maybe Nina’s friends. Or start with Peggy.”

  Bobby stared at the ocean. He tried to find comfort in the waves’ steady repetition, but no comfort came. Back in May he’d borrowed Woody’s truck and he, Shawna, and the kids had come to collect stones to line the walk from their driveway to the house. They were rounded, many colored, and weighed anywhere from ten to forty pounds. It seemed a hundred years ago.

  “You know, things are getting incredibly messy,” said Bobby.

  Woody didn’t answer. He had said much the same thing a few minutes before.

  Last night they had gone to the farmhouse belonging to the two Wiccans. Police had already talked to them, and now the women were sweeping up the glass. Sister Asherah had been crying: big, honking sobs, for which she kept apologizing. Sister Isis couldn’t see why anyone should hate them. “We’re perfectly harmless,” she said.

  A few people had seen the cars rushing down Whipple Street—Ford and Chevrolet four-door sedans, a few years old, dark colors. Though the descriptions weren’t clear, Woody knew they were clear enough. Fred Bonaldo and the Brewster police had been charged with finding them, and in a day or so the men would probably be arrested. Since the status and legality of Wicca had already been established by the courts, the men were in serious trouble. Whoever broke the windows would be charged with hate crimes and violent assault, among other things. Woody wanted this to happen as soon as possible.

  “This whole fucking town’s about to explode,” he said.

  It was clear the window breakers weren’t unique in their anger, even if, for now at any rate, they were the most violent. News of Nina’s death had spread through Brewster, and people already knew of the rape of the two girls, the strange ceremonies in the woods, and the skull mask. Many approved of what the men had done, and Woody and Bobby knew the violence could worsen, which was why the men had to be caught right away.

  Monday afternoon, one of the officers searching the swamp had found a silver triangular amulet hanging from a black cord. Within the triangle was a complicated knot formed by more triangles. Woody had shown it to Sister Asherah, who recognized it.

  “Brighid’s knot, the exalted one,” said Sister Asherah, “Irish priestess of poets and healers. The Celtic knot confers these gifts on the bearer. Her day is February second, one of the Sabbats. Among pagans, it’s the feast of Imbolc; among Christians, it’s the Feast of Saint Brighid. She was an absolutely wonderful woman. A role model.”

  “Was she, you know, violent?” Bobby had asked.

  “The very opposite; she’s the protector of hearth and home.” Sister Asherah had glanced at the wreckage around her. “Not that she helped us very much.”

  News of the amulet also spread through town as further evidence of witchcraft. As he had sat with the two women, Woody imagined people phoning one another and talking about the amulet in the woods. Already Woody had called Bonaldo and asked that a patrol car be stationed at the women’s house all night. “And make sure the guys stay awake,” he had said.

  The two women had reminded Bobby more of worried hens than witches. As neopagans or Neo-Heathens they believed in animism, that every living thing, every object, the rain, the wind, the clouds, had a soul, which would pass on to other creatures, plants, and inanimate objects after death. They believed in gods of the forest, gods of fertility; they believed in the power of the matriarchy. Talking to them and trying to see into their deception, Bobby had seen only self-deception. But wouldn’t he say the same about most believers, whatever their religion? It was clear the two women would be pleased to talk about Wicca for hours, much like Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons who went from door to door seeking converts.

  With prodding, Woody had got the names of others in their coven and some men and women in other covens. Even if the police didn’t question them, they should be warned about what had happened. Only one other lived in Brewster; the rest were scattered between Westerly and Newport. Still, he intended that all would be questioned.

  “How d’you define matriarchy?” Bobby had asked.

  Sister Isis, who was thin to the same degree that Sister Asherah was fat, and about the same age, was happy to answer. “I see it, and I’m sure Sister Asherah would agree, as a woman-centered society with an emphasis on goddess worship. Many of the oldest societies were matriarchal, and many think the world would return to its natural balance if those societies came back again. Less violence, if you know what I mean.”

  As Sister Isis had talked, Bobby thought that nothing seemed harmful about the women’s religion. Surely it was less harmful than many of the more conventional ones.

  Sitting in the truck, Woody said, “You know that guy I was telling you about, Chmielnicki, at You-You? Maybe you could come with me to talk to him later. He kept guessing things about me that gave me the willies, like true things. Anyway, he might straighten out some of this Wicca stuff. You can’t convince me that the Wiccans are connected to anything we’re doing, but Chmielnicki also mentioned Satanists. Maybe they’re the ones we need to locate.”

  Bobby was unable to take his eyes off the ocean. With the approaching daylight, he could see past the breaking waves to a farther gray. “I keep thinking of when that girl was cut loose, when Janie cut the rope. She fell onto my shoulder. I still feel the weight of her. I can’t explain it. She felt incredibly heavy. Then her wet hair pressed against my face and I nearly lost it. I don’t know how to say this—like my whole world disappeared, everything I love. It all went right out the window. In its place was just darkness. I can’t get it out of my mind.”

  Woody didn’t know what to say to this. He and Bobby never talked about emotional stuff, were never affectionate, and rarely shook hands. But none of that came to mind when Woody reached out and put a hand on the other man’s shoulder. What he felt was that all his words had been taken away and only his hand on Bobby’s shoulder could help. He kept it there for a few seconds. The waves crashed and crashed.

  • • •

  Hercel McGarty Jr. sat at the breakfast table poking at his Cheerios in a bright orange bowl, his favorite. Some floated on the surface of the milk and some sank. Some clustered together; some floated alone. He poked one with his spoon and then another and watched them bob. All this was of interest. He wasn’t very hungry. It was six-fifteen, and in an hour he would leave for school.

  He could hear his sister in the bathroom down the hall splashing in the tub, while his mother kept saying, “Are you sure you aren’t clean yet?”

  Randy, his mother’s miniature dachshund, sat at Hercel’s feet with an expression that swore he hadn’t eaten in several days. Randy loved Cheerios, but then he loved all cereal, and almost everything else, except celery and mustard.

  Outside, it was dark and raining hard. Hercel was sorry about that. The previous evening Tig’s grandmother had brought him a new bicycle. Well, actually, it was a very old bicycle, but it was new to Hercel. “An English bike,” Bernie had called it. The bike had Sturmey Archer three-speed hub gears, a chain case, a generator headlight, and a spring carrier over the rear fender. It was black but pretty rusty, and the chrome on the flat handlebars was pitted and flaked. Both fenders were dented. But the tires were new and the brakes worked. It was a Raleigh and heavy. Bernie said that Barton had bought it as a student in college. “And that was several centuries ago,” she said.

  But Hercel had yet to ride it, though he’d sat on its leather saddle in the garage. He wanted to ride it to school, but maybe he wouldn’t. He didn’t mind getting wet, but he hated to get the bike wet. After all, it was a new bike.

  Hercel was still poking at his Cheerios when Carl came downstairs: thump, thump, thump. Hercel and his stepfather glanced at each other but didn’t speak. Mr. Krause didn’t like Hercel to talk unless Mr. Krause initiated the conversation. Carl went to the refrigerator and removed a large Virginia ham, from which he planned to cut a few slices. He liked ham, and he liked to fry
the slices a little and eat them with buttered toast.

  He set the ham on a cutting board across the table; then he sharpened the chef’s knife, maybe ten strokes on a steel sharpener. Hercel glanced at him and glanced away. Carl positioned the knife at the top of the ham, eyed it, repositioned it, and eyed it again. Slowly he eased the knife into the ham, cutting a thin slice that peeled away like a wood shaving from a plane. Carl stood back and looked down at it, satisfied. Then he again positioned the knife at the top of the ham, eyed it again, positioned it again, and cut an even thinner slice.

  “Do you know about flaying, boy?”

  Hercel looked up from his Cheerios. “No, sir.”

  Carl didn’t say anything right away. He repositioned the knife again at the top of the ham and went through the process again. He held up the third slice toward the ceiling light; it was thin enough to let the light shine through.

  “I’m talking about human flaying, cutting the skin off a man or boy.” Carl began to cut a fourth slice. “D’you know a man has eighteen square feet of skin on his body? But a boy like you? I expect only ten feet. Some people are flayed when they’re dead, some are flayed when they’re alive, like a punishment. There’re books covered with human skin taken when the man was alive. You like books, boy. How’d you like one of those?” Carl paused for a beat before saying “boy.” He kept doing it.

  Hercel stared at the knife slicing the ham. “I don’t think I’d like it, sir.” He heard the bathroom door open and his mother say, “I’ll help you get dressed.” Then the sound of Lucy running down the hall to her room.

  “They can be very pretty,” said Carl. “Like works of art. Cutting the skin off a man, or a boy, that’s delicate work. You don’t want to cut into the meat, so you slice very slowly, maybe one-hundredth of an inch.” Carl held the fourth slice of ham up to the light. “Maybe less. You don’t want fat slices if you’re covering a book. If I was going to slice the skin off a man, or boy, I’d start up at the neck. I’d cut a line from one side of the neck to the other, around the back. Then I’d ease my way down. How’d you think that’d feel, boy?”

  Hercel’s mouth was dry. “Not nice, sir.”

  “No, not nice.” Carl was cutting a fifth slice. The other slices lay on a plate, pink and fresh. “I’d cut from one shoulder to the other. You’d want a substantial piece of skin for a book. You don’t want bits and pieces; you don’t want pieces of skin you’d have to patch together. It wouldn’t look right. What’s your favorite book, boy?”

  Hercel didn’t answer. He couldn’t take his eyes off the knife.

  “I said, what’s your favorite book?”

  Hercel looked up. Carl was staring at him. The dark furrows on Carl’s cheeks looked like long gouges. “I don’t know, I guess Harry Potter, sir.”

  Carl smiled. “Wouldn’t it be nice if you had your favorite book covered with a nice soft piece of skin, boy?”

  Hercel didn’t answer.

  “I said, wouldn’t it be nice?”

  “I don’t think I’d like it, sir.”

  “How’d you know unless you tried it?” Carl smiled again. “And your own skin, boy, wouldn’t it be nice and soft? How’d you like it if someone flayed the skin from your back? You think you’d scream? I bet you’d scream bloody murder.”

  Hercel didn’t speak. He thought of the skin being sliced away from his shoulders and how it would feel. He thought of himself screaming.

  “What d’you say, boy?”

  Hercel jumped up, knocked the table so a little milk slopped over and pooled on the surface. “I got to go, sir.” He hurried to the door.

  “You spilled your milk, boy,” said Carl behind him. “It’s not good to spill your milk.”

  Hercel grabbed his coat and backpack, and ran out onto the porch. It seemed to be raining harder than ever. He ran around to the garage to get his new bike, his new old bike. He didn’t like to get it wet, but he wanted to get away faster than Mr. Krause could run. As he pedaled down the driveway in the rain, he saw Mr. Krause staring at him through the kitchen window.

  • • •

  The previous day Woody had imagined he would again have breakfast on Tuesday with Jill Franklin at the Brewster Brew. But as the events of Monday unfolded he saw the likelihood of that prospect diminish until at midnight he gave up the hope entirely. So he phoned her, and when she answered he again realized he had woken her up. It was stuff like this, he thought, that made Susie call him insensitive.

  “You keep long hours,” she had said, the sleep muffling her voice as if she were speaking through a sock.

  As he listened, Woody imagined what she looked like in bed—what the room looked like, what the bed looked like, what she was wearing or not wearing. It took his breath.

  “I’ve been busy all evening.” He briefly told her of the bricks thrown through the windows of the two Wiccans. As he talked he listened to her breathe and continued to imagine her room. He wanted to ask if he could come over but was unable to summon up the courage. It was a stupid idea, in any case.

  “That’s terrible,” she said. “Those poor women.”

  “It could get worse.” He tried to think what else to say. “How’s your son?”

  “He’s great. He’s sleeping right now, as a matter of fact; otherwise I’d let you talk to him. We watched a DVD earlier and he loved it. Have you seen WALL-E?”

  “What’s it about?” The movie didn’t sound familiar.

  “A garbage-compacting robot who’s the last creature on earth. He falls in love with another robot named EVE who shows up on a spaceship. Actually, I don’t think you can call a robot a creature. But this one moves and thinks and feels.”

  Woody liked hearing Jill’s voice. “Any sex?”

  “None to speak of. Maybe a little oiling.”

  “That’ll work. It sounds like you had a good time. I mean, anything different from what I’m doing sounds like a good time.”

  “D’you always work such long hours?”

  “It’s pretty rare. But this business is unusually nasty, and there’s no clear way into it. Just a bunch of separate bad things happening. The colonel’s afraid of everything going down the tubes. That’s Colonel Schaeffer; he’s head of the state police.”

  “So we’re not going to have breakfast?”

  Again Woody felt momentarily out of breath. “I’m afraid not. But I’ll call you later.”

  “That’s what you said last time.”

  • • •

  At eight o’clock Tuesday morning, Woody and Bobby Anderson went to You-You to question Todd Chmielnicki. They found him in his small office on the third floor. He looked, Woody thought, as if he’d never left. His blue eyes seemed bluer than before. After the usual introductions, Woody took the straight chair by the desk and Bobby sat on the couch. Chmielnicki’s desk was bare and Woody couldn’t imagine what he had been doing before they’d arrived. He himself got bored easily. If he was in a small room like this and didn’t have at least a magazine, he’d be climbing the walls in no time.

  “You know those two women?” asked Bobby. “Sister Asherah and Sister Isis? You know some guys threw bricks through their windows last night?”

  Chmielnicki leaned forward with his elbows on the desk and the tips of his fingers pressed together to make a little tent. “I heard about it. One could have anticipated this.”

  “How?” asked Bobby.

  “The popular mind takes a small threat and turns it into a large threat. That’s not to denigrate the popular mind, or to reduce the extremity of the threat. It’s small because it’s unlikely many people are in danger. Perhaps just a few.”

  “Do you know who?” asked Bobby. His voice remained businesslike, with no trace of emotion.

  “How could I possibly know that? The abduction of the baby, the scalping, the raping of the two girls, the snakes and strange ceremonies in the woods, and the girl’s apparent suicide. These suggest extreme threat and imminent social collapse. Six days ago, howev
er, everything looked fine. But was it fine? Think how termites eat their way through a timber, perhaps a beam supporting a house. Then the house collapses and people say it ‘suddenly’ collapsed. But it wasn’t sudden; it was the next step in a steady progression. All that happened was the progression came into view. Something popped to the surface. The same thing may be said of Brewster: the progression is continuing and we only see its advance as elements pop to the surface. You look at the surface and seek a cause, but the cause lies within the crisscrossing tunnels underneath. You look for evidence and expect to find it in the surface manifestations, but what you need is not evidence. You need to discover an inference; you need to know what questions to ask.”

  “What questions would you ask?” said Bobby.

  Woody turned from Bobby to Chmielnicki as he followed the conversation, but he had no wish to join in. No way could he have sounded as calm as Bobby.

  “This isn’t my area of expertise. But I expect I’d examine each of these manifestations and strip away all but the basic event.”

  “Like what?”

  “Look at the baby’s abduction as just an abduction. Look at it without the snakes, without the hospital, without the mother, without the circumstances of the baby’s birth.”

  Bobby kept his eyes on Chmielnicki’s face. He didn’t necessarily like him, but he was impressed, and not necessarily by what he was saying but by his self-containment. Actually, he was also interested in what Chmielnicki was saying, but he would have to think about it. What he understood was nothing would be gained by threatening him. Chmielnicki might know everything about the whole business, though Bobby doubted it, but they wouldn’t get it out of him unless Chmielnicki chose to give it.

  Woody was less impressed, but the man made him uneasy, which was why he’d brought Bobby. He’d hoped Chmielnicki would read Bobby’s brain just like he’d read his, just so Bobby could see what bothered him. Not that he believed in telepathy, of course.

  “What about the Satanists?” asked Woody abruptly.

  Chmielnicki turned his blue eyes in Woody’s direction. “What about them, Woody?”