The Cleansing

by Shane Staley

  Suddenly it seemed hard to breathe. I flashed back on that awful nightmare I had at the hospital, the one that lured me to this place. Visions of the space beneath the trailer rushed back, along with my father’s face inside that black body.

  Cold chills ran through my body. I felt myself actually shivering in the hot, humid night.

  “Gary.”

  “Yeah,” he replied, concentrating on the barrel, and fighting his pair of glasses that kept sliding down his nose.

  “I never got a chance to tell you something.”

  He didn’t respond, so I continued. “The night my father died, I had a dream about him underneath the trailer.”

  Gary looked at me surprised.

  I told him about the dream as he began pouring gasoline into the barrel.

  When I finished, he shook his head, like he was trying to shake the image from his mind. I saw goose bumps on his arm as he held a towel around the barrel opening.

  “I believe he was trying to talk to you,” Gary said. “I think a lot of people take dreams for granted. I know the dead can talk to the living through dreams. But I think sometimes the interpretation is lost in translation from the dead to the living.”

  I took a deep breath, smelling gas fumes, then exhaled.

  “Your father knew I needed help,” Gary said. “He was supposed to talk to you about this. He knew he was too weak to take care of it himself. He had planned to ask you for help.”

  “He never did.”

  “Maybe not while he was alive,” Gary reasoned. “Maybe that was what the dream was about.”

  Gary poured gas on the towel and draped it from the opening of the barrel. “I’d get way back.”

  I started walking when he lit the end of the towel. It quickly took off.

  Gary ran by me and yelled, “Faster!”

  Before I could catch up, the barrel exploded. The force of the explosion lifted the barrel several feet from the ground. It landed, toppled over and shot fire into the marsh.

  Gary pointed in the trailer’s direction. “Now let’s go see what happened to the goat, shall we?”

  “Remind me to call PETA when we get there.”

  Gary laughed hard until it turned into a raspy cough.

  “You think they frown on whipping or starving animals,” I informed him. “What do you think they’ll say when I tell them that you stuck a leech up a goat’s nose, sucked out half its soul, then torched it?”

  “They’d probably say you’re nuts,” Gary replied, smiling his normal wide and cheerful smile. “Probably have you hauled away to the funny farm.”

  “Probably so,” I agreed. “After experiencing all of this, that might be where I’m headed anyway.”

  Chapter 11

  The trailer’s porch was occupied on our return. A man with a dark beard was sitting on a chair, his legs propped against the goat’s cage.

  “What’s all the ruckus back there?” the man asked.

  Gary looked up and smiled. “Mason!” he yelled back.

  They shook hands on the porch and Gary introduced me. Mason was a big man with a broad chest. He looked like the stereotype for the burly outdoorsman. A thick black beard hung to his chest and his eyes were deep set with dark circles beneath them. He wore a torn pair of blue jeans and a button-down plain shirt. His boots were huge and caked with dried mud. Rest an axe on his shoulder and he would have easily passed for a scaled-down Paul Bunyan.

  “Nice goat,” Mason commented. I noticed there was a small cut on Mason’s forehead, near his scalp. In the porch light, the wound looked like it was seeping.

  The goat shuffled quietly in its cage. Gary knelt to get a better look at the animal and said, “The goat is nice, which is good!”

  Mason looked at Gary inquisitively, so Gary told him about the experiment.

  “Good,” Mason said. “In the morning, we’ll burn them all.”

  Gary nodded his head in agreement.

  “We should have done it a long time ago,” Mason said.

  “But back then we didn’t know anything about the process.”

  “We still don’t,” Mason replied.

  Gary shrugged his shoulders, obviously coming to terms with the comment. “We were young. We didn’t really think much about the consequences thirty years down the road.”

  “There weren’t supposed to be any consequences,” Mason countered.

  “Who would have thought—”

  “This all feels like one big nightmare,” Mason said. “I get up this morning and fix me a cup of coffee. A few steps into the kitchen, my vision blurs and then everything starts spinning. Fifty years old and I’m already taking nosedives against kitchen counters. Busting my fucking head wide open. I just laid there on the kitchen floor and thought about that stupid commercial for that medical alert bracelet. ‘Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!’ Then my son comes home and finds me there. How embarrassing! And the whole time I’m thinking that I probably won’t even get to see him graduate from high school next spring. All because of something I participated in when I was eighteen!”

  “I’m sorry, man,” Gary said, patting him on the shoulder. “Let’s get some sleep.”

  “You have air conditioning in there?” Mason asked. “It’s hotter than shit out here!”

  Gary waved at me and Mason said, “Nice to meet you, Chris. I was sorry to hear about your dad, man. I wanted to come to the funeral, but I was in the hospital having some tests done.”

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  “We’ll be at your place at seven A.M. sharp,” Mason shouted. “We’re going to burn off some leeches.”

  Chapter 12

  I stopped at the property line to my father’s trailer. It was pitch-black except for flashes of lightning that continued to streak across the sky. The storm had never arrived, although the neighboring towns were obviously getting hit hard. Dark clouds swirled in the distance.

  I stopped in the driveway and opened the car, extracting my flashlight from the glove box. I flipped the switch and the light flickered, then went dead. I pounded on the side and the light flashed into the trees.

  I aimed the beam back at the skirting around the trailer. Deep in the darkness, beneath the trailer, I felt something watching me. My mind kick-started the turbo engine that was my imagination. Suddenly the ground itself seemed to slither.

  I quickly interlocked the segments of skirting back into place and headed indoors.

  The couch was more comfortable than it looked. I settled in, fixed myself a cup of coffee and prepared for the long night ahead. I watched the lightning through the blinds for what seemed like hours. Then I messed with the television, but the rabbit ear antenna failed to pick up a single station, quite possibly due to the bad weather. I flipped open my cell phone, but there was no service.

  I pulled out the strange little black book Gary had given me earlier. Book of Eclipse was a strange title to a religious book. I flipped through the thin pages and came across several illustrations.

  One of the pictures spooked me. It was a picture of an infant with tiny horns on its head. It was curled in a fetal position. Beneath the picture was a caption that simply said, the unnamed one.

  I read the following pages:

  The birth of Jesus has been chronicled in many ancient texts, including the Holy Bible. Ecliptian records tell of a similar birth of the messiah through the mother who was Mary. The Biblical Immaculate Conception, however, is challenged by Ecliptians. Ancient Ecliptian texts reveal that Mary conceived twins, one who was later known as Jesus of Nazareth, the other, a stillborn infant, was unnamed. This other child had such skeletal defects as long fingers and a narrow skull. Atop its skull appeared two bony projections some theorists referred to as possible horns. This twin of Jesus has been refuted by Christians as never being born at all, as an immaculate conception is one that is thought to be occurring pure and without sin. The existence of The Unnamed One proves Ecliptian belief that God is both good and evil. Ecliptian hig
h priests have possessed and deeply concealed the body of The Unnamed One throughout the millennia.

  I flipped through a few more pages and came to a section called God’s Covenant.

  Christ was sacrificed not for the sins of man, but due to the fear of the Romans that the presence of The Unnamed One was living inside him. However, The Unnamed One was stillborn by God’s will, as a promise to mankind that he wouldn’t rise until mans own evil, known as Legion, resurrected him. Until that time, God’s wrath would wait.

  Lightning flashed onto the pages and the text seemed to crawl before my eyes. I found myself biting my fingernails, feeling even more chilled by what I could only make out as an alternate Bible of some sorts. The text seemed more straightforward than the cryptic teachings of the Bible, but the entire Book of Eclipse read like The Book of Revelation almost, with an apocalyptic theme running through its entirety.

  One final passage caught my attention. It was entitled Legion. I remembered reading the Bible in elementary school and recalled the part about Jesus casting Legion into the pigs. The Book of Eclipse told of a different story.

  The essence of The Unnamed One had infected one of the carriers of its corpse. This possessed man would later confront Jesus in the midst of one of his sermons to a crowd of believers. Jesus looked on this man and knew that The Unnamed One could not be unleashed onto the world yet. And that this man who was possessed needed to be freed in order to confirm God’s covenant. This confirmation would prove that Jesus was the son of God. So Jesus took the possessed man and cast out the evil inside. Pieces of the evil were dispersed into every person in that crowd, to be passed down through their bloodline. It was not to harm them, but to fragment the greater evil concentrated in this man’s body. Jesus preached that living without sin would keep the beast of Legion at bay. Living for God would contain the evil within each of them from being unleashed onto the world.

  My eyes grew tired of the small print and I shut the book. The strangeness of the content was beginning to affect me. Some of it sounded believable, much more so than anything I had ever read in the Bible. But the theme of the Book of Eclipse read more like occult fiction than ancient historical facts translated through thousands of years.

  But the text haunted me nonetheless. Probably due to the fact that I always felt that ancient scripture, passed down from generations and translated from dead languages, is bound to lose pieces of the original story. And could be easily edited to fit most any religious belief system.

  Could this Book of Eclipse actually contain facts lost from the original Bible?

  I tossed the book on the floor, vowing not to think about it anymore. I was getting worked up over some religious freak’s spiritual manual.

  I settled back on the couch and looked around the trailer. The silence was unsettling. It was then that I started to think about how lonely I felt.

  Back at the Beck trailer, Gary and Mason were catching up on things. Gary was still keeping a watchful eye on Audra. I, on the other hand, was sitting in my father’s old place, feeling empty, like I didn’t belong.

  Everyone here had a history together. I felt like I had no real connection to anyone. Back home, it was no different. I had no wife or even a girlfriend. I felt uncomfortable being around my mother since my father passed away. Instead of getting closer, I think we just reminded each other of the family we once were with Dad.

  Everywhere I looked in the trailer, I could see my dad there. Making coffee at the stove, sitting in the chair by the window, relaxing. I looked down at the carpet and spotted a fingernail shaving. Another piece of my father, I thought sadly. I picked it up, rolled it in my hands and started crying. I closed my eyes and held the fingernail fragment to my cheek, wishing things could have been different.

  I placed the fingernail on the end table and drifted to sleep.

  Chapter 13

  The fingernail was gone.

  I looked around the carpet, but didn’t see it.

  The sound of water trickling drew my attention towards the bathroom.

  I shuffled through the kitchen area, into the hallway, and turned left into the bathroom.

  The carpet below my feet was wet. It squished beneath my socks.

  I flipped on the light.

  My father’s head rested on the edge of the bathtub. His head turned, his eyes looked surprised to see me.

  I jumped back in the doorway. My heart raced.

  “Dad?”

  His body was fully submerged in the tub of water. His face was pale and blue, his eyes looked desperate.

  The bath water was cloudy, concealing anything beneath. I couldn’t tell if he was fully clothed or naked.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but there was no sound. I tried to read his lips, but all I could make out was the word “Legion.”

  My hand reached out to touch him, but he suddenly became frantic. One of his arms surfaced and he splashed water at me.

  Drops of water landed on my arm. I looked down, feeling something burning. Each drop was smoking on my skin. I flicked away the water from my arm and found that my skin was hairless and red in spots.

  My father splashed more water at me. I felt my thighs singeing.

  My father’s head slowly slipped beneath the surface and disappeared.

  I hovered above the water, seeing my own reflection in the clouded pool. My own image looked distorted and fading.

  A black rope-like mass shot from the water. It wrapped around my neck. I fought to see, but fell forward into the water.

  My skin burned, my organs felt like they were boiling inside me.

  Darkness soon enveloped me.

  * * *

  I gasped, sitting straight up on the couch. The burning was centered on my thighs. I looked down and noticed that I had spilled half a cup of coffee in my lap.

  I stood up, pulled the jeans from my legs and cursed out loud.

  I glanced over at the end table and noticed the sliver of fingernail still sitting there.

  After the burning subsided, I settled back down and drifted off once again, this time to a deep and dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 14

  Three A.M. is a strange and lonely time to be awake. I walked out onto the deck, into an enveloping darkness. There was no moon or stars, just the faintest lightning flashes cast through rolling gray clouds.

  When I was young, I would find my father on our front porch whenever a storm started. I’d join him outside and it was our special time together. We watched, awestruck at the workings of Mother Nature’s light show. The frightening claps of thunder would crackle and boom, rattling the glass in the windows. And no matter how loud it got, or how much the wind would howl through the branches, I was never scared, because I was with my father. And as long as he was near, everything was safe.

  Tears burned in my eyes. The safety I felt when I was young was now gone, replaced by an empty feeling. I felt ashamed, being a grown man and feeling like a helpless child without his father.

  I had never felt more lost. And, at the very moment, it seemed like I’d never be found.

  Then came the voice.

  “I brought a white flag this time.”

  I jumped slightly at the sound. After a moment, I collected my breath, nonchalantly wiping the tears from my cheeks before I turned to face her.

  “I don’t need another wound this week,” Audra said, laughing.

  “Don’t worry, I left the flashlight inside,” I replied.

  Audra walked up a few steps, then stopped. “Well go get it and take a walk with me.”

  “Shouldn’t you be asleep?” I asked.

  “Ha!” she said. “Well, for one, I slept all day. And you try sleeping with what sounds like two bears growling back and forth.”

  I laughed. “Ah, they’re both snorers, huh?”

  “Oh yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Drunk ones at that.”

  I chuckled again, as I opened the sliding glass door and grabbed the flashlight off the table.

>   Audra and I walked for some time in total silence as I took in the surroundings the best I could. The campground was a maze of narrow roads, each paved with loose gravel, travelling between a series of endless lots that possessed structures such as campers, park models, and sheds, most covered in tarps or boarded up for the off-season.

  “Damn, you can really get lost here,” I commented. “This place is like a maze.”

  Audra giggled. It was a nice sound, something I hadn’t heard a lot of recently. “I know it like the back of my hand. I’ve been camping here with my father since I was little.”

  “You like it here?”

  She nodded her head, confirming the fact.

  “You have friends here, in the summer?” I asked.

  “Well, yeah,” she said, “mostly the people who camp around us. I mean, I’m friends with my dad’s friends. That sort of thing.”

  “No boyfriend then?”

  “Nope. I really don’t have a lot of time to get involved. I’m what you would call a daddy’s girl...for obvious reasons.”

  “Well, your dad’s a great guy.”

  “He’s crazy,” she said, “in a fun sort of way. I love him. He’s definitely my hero. Not too many men would raise a daughter by himself and do such a good job.”

  “Yeah, that must’ve been tough, “ I said, feeling awkward.

  “Still is,” she added, and smiled mischievously.

  All of a sudden, my mind went blank. I struggled to keep the conversation going. I felt the nervous butterfly-effect in my stomach. I found myself sneaking glances at Audra as we walked. She was quite beautiful, as I focused on her shoulder-length dark curls and dark eyes. And her smile was contagious, much like her father’s.

  Her voice broke my train of thought once again: “Well, I don’t see a ring on your finger.”

  “Nope.” No other words came to mind.