Dead Souls
Page 12
“No!” she shouted and pushed the blade in. The heat of the flames was nothing compared to the fire in her gut. She gasped open-mouthed, and dragged the line of fire across her middle. Panting and moaning, she jerked out the blade and dropped it.
“For you, Lord.” She took up the scroll in her fist and pushed it into the wound. The room brightened as flames licked across the ceiling. Despite the heat, she felt cold. As her robe smoked, darkness flowed in from the edges of her vision as she fell over. I didn’t fail!
****
Lord Ieyshu knelt in the quarters of his summer home in the mountains where he normally stayed once the heat of summer was upon the plains. He bowed to the family shrine and held up the Watanabe family scroll. It was blotched with stains, but otherwise whole.
“Father, forgive me for the condition of the scroll, but I will not have it cleaned. They are marks of honour. She deserves our thanks. I have added the name of Saito Otsu to the list of members of the Watanabe clan. I should have adopted her while she still lived, but I have corrected that mistake. She has a son, Matsu, who will be my grandson and heir.”
With care, he set the bloodstained scroll into its niche.
****
the beast within
****
mercy hathaway is a witch
Ken Goldman
“Sleeping or waking, we hear not the airy footsteps of the strange things that almost happen.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne — Twice-Told Tales (1837)
The sight of the handsome couple wandering off together toward the blackest part of the forest might have raised eyebrows back in the town despite the excellent reputation of the soon-to-be-wed gentleman. A hardworking physician’s son who would someday assume his father’s practice, Jonathan Browne attended The North Church each Sunday and had captured the heart of Amelia Worthington, Boston colony’s finest specimen of both Christian upbringing and womanly charm.
But today the young man chaperoned not Amelia but her comely dark-haired seamstress. They travelled a lonely wooded path, far from Boston’s muddy roads from which they had set foot an hour earlier. The two did not walk side by side as lovers might; instead, in a most uncommon fashion, the woman led while her fellow traveller trailed in silence several paces behind. After a tiresome tramping along the forest’s twisted and untravelled paths, the gentleman could keep his silence no longer.
“You requested that I attend you to this place, Mercy Hathaway, and I have done so. What is of such import that we have traversed half of New England in search of?”
Despite young Browne’s irritation his voice managed to fall short of reproach. Still, the raven-haired girl remained silent.
“Mistress Hathaway, nightfall is near. You must know my fiancé expects me this very moment, and there are those in the village who will talk. What do you entreat that you must ask it within this dark wood?”
“I desire nothing of you, Jonathan,” the seamstress insisted. “Nothing you choose not to give freely, that is. Besides, we are almost there.”
The girl turned from him before Browne might discover her amusement, for in all of Boston town there seemed none more likely than he to misjudge the power of a woman’s enticement.
“You speak with such displeasure, Jonathan. Is my sin that I desire a gentleman’s company to my most secret of places? When have you set eyes upon a part of the forest so abundant with wildflower? I wish only to share this place with you.”
Browne responded with an awkward grin. Mercy’s words flattered him, although concerning the womanly emotions that lay hidden behind such words he understood little.
“Yes, this wood is unquestionably enchanting compared to the muddy tow paths of Boston, Mistress Hathaway. But you must agree that the hour is late. I shall try remembering by which paths we came so that I may return some later time.”
“You could not find it, Jonathan,” Mercy teased. “Not if you searched for a thousand years. But I shall be happy to bring you here any time you wish. You need only ask.”
Browne placed his hand upon the woman’s shoulder, but there was little warmth in his touch.
“And shall I bring my bride as well?”
The smile faded from the girl’s lips.
“This place is a secret, Jonathan. Mine, and now yours.”
“Then never will I return here. I am sorry, but you know I must not join you here again. It would not seem fitting.” If the young man’s words were meant to have bite, then Mercy Hathaway matched him tooth for tooth with words of her own.
“You flatter yourself in your assumption that you know me, Jonathan Browne. Do you really believe I have no understanding of what is fitting? I assure you that what I regard as fitting has little to do with what other people think!”
The two walked on in utter silence. The path they travelled could hardly be called a path at all, and fallen tree limbs impeded their progress practically every step of the way. Dappled sunlight winked through the evergreens and cinnamon ferns made plush by late summer rains. The place had its enchantments, enough of them to soften the heart of any man.
“Forgive me. I never meant to suggest that you would ever...that your intentions could be anything less than honourable, Mistress Hath—” She stopped his words with a finger to his lips. Their eyes met for a moment longer than seemed necessary.
“Mercy.”
“What?”
“You may call me Mercy, Jonathan.”
“Well, Mercy, then. You must know that I never intended to offend…”
“—Hush... ” she interrupted, cupping her hand delicately behind her ear with a dramatic flourish worthy of the stage. “Do you hear what I hear?”
The sound of cascading water nearby, a torrent of it, filled the forest, as if its immediate appearance from nowhere resulted from the girl’s suggesting it was there.
“A waterfall?” he asked, glad for the diversion from unpleasant matters. “I swear I heard nothing, or I would have certainly been curious to see it.”
“So strange that these surroundings have not captured very much of your attention,” Mercy suggested with conspicuous innuendo. Her air of whimsy did not elude the young man’s notice. She leaned closer with such measured deliberation Jonathan pulled away.
The young physician studied the roundness of the girl’s cheeks and the fullness of her lips. Every proper instinct he owned shouted that he must not kiss Mercy Hathaway, but his desire proved another matter. Perhaps if he envisioned her differently, if he concocted a large brown wart on the bridge of her nose, teeth gone to rot, aged skin shrivelled and festering with boils, gave to her a dozen misshapen features common among Boston hags, perhaps if he could envision her thus, then desire would fade.
It was idiocy to try. Mercy Hathaway appeared far too magnificent a specimen of ripening womanhood. As she stood motionless before him Jonathan could not help himself. He touched her face while his heart fluttered like a hundred windmills and the voice within him stirred.
[Can you speak words of love to her, Jonathan Browne? And can you speak these same words you have whispered so often to your Amelia? Once you embrace this seamstress, shall you tomorrow speak similar words of love to your betrothed?]
“You have bewitched me, Mercy Hathaway,” he told her as her cheek brushed his. “There can be no other explanation for what I feel this moment.”
Her lips went to young Browne’s ear. She whispered close to it.
“Speak not words of what you feel, Jonathan. Show me.”
Now a thousand voices whispered to his brain, and each uttered that he should flee this woman before the next moment passed.
Jonathan ignored them.
Taking Mercy into his arms he carried her towards the sound of the cascading waters, setting her in the glade alongside the rushing falls. Unravelling the cumbersome frock she wore with little of the studied grace he usually displayed, Jonathan placed one hand flat on the girl’s breast in the unschooled manner of a curious child reaching out to touch a m
ysterious object. The girl let escape a little squeal of pleasure. Encouraged, Jonathan reached to remove the flimsy blouse she wore.
Her hand stopped him, and for one terrible moment Browne almost fell to his knees to beg the young woman’s forgiveness for his audacity. To his surprise, Mercy tore open his shirt and kneaded his chest with her long fingers. She undressed herself for him and stood without so much as a blush, her naked flesh like burnt gold in the fading sunlight.
“I promised to bring you to my most secret of places, Jonathan Browne. And so I have.” Guiding his hand she set it firmly between her thighs, permitting his fingers to explore the warm moistness inside her.
Mercy broke free laughing like a school girl. Jonathan first watched, then rushed to follow her beneath the waterfall while dropping articles of his clothing along his path. The cascade turned Mercy’s silken flesh to soft cream, and he hungrily tasted her mouth like a ravenous animal. He could not receive enough water-soaked kisses from the woman. Mercy’s guttural moans became shrieks as he explored skin turned slippery smooth by the cascade. Upon a large flat stone he pressed against her. A hot rush churned within, and were he able, he would have climbed inside the woman’s skin. Together they shared a baptism intended to eternally wash clean all memory of Amelia Worthington.
****
Eternity proved short-lived. It lasted not one hour.
As Jonathan lay upon the dry grass he grew pale with the realization of what he had done. Unable to breathe, he muttered as if Mercy Hathaway rested somewhere other than upon his bare chest.
“My God, I have yielded to temptation! What atrocity have I committed toward Him and the woman who is to be my wife?”
Browne’s entire body shook as the demons inside him took full possession, yet all the while Mercy seemed to battle none of her own.
“We have committed no wrong here, Jonathan. Would God not allow that you and I have merely satisfied a hunger we have shared since first we exchanged glances? Not all acts require His consecration to be acceptable to Him. Where, then, is the sin?”
The woman spoke with such assuredness her words might have becalmed Browne’s internal mayhem had they come from anyone other than she. Instead, her companion in sin almost sickened himself with bitter laughter.
“A consecration from God, you say? For this? Tell me instead we have received approbation from the devil himself! Say we have together consigned our souls to eternal hell! God has abandoned this black forest, and with it, the both of us!”
Browne turned himself abruptly from Mercy Hathaway with his soul on fire. Although desiring no sleep, his exhaustion left him without choice. But complete repose immediately yielded to the rabid dreaming of a conscience heavily burdened with newly found shame.
****
Time lay still within the forest as a crescent moon drifted behind ghost driven clouds. An indistinct consortium of voices interrupted Jonathan Browne’s sleep, a cacophony whose volume he could not isolate from the wild ramblings inside his head. The strange music awakened him, if the pandemonium within the forest could be called music. The aberrant strains seemed more of a chant, the tumult resonating throughout the sycamores.
Rising with a start Jonathan discovered Mercy Hathaway no longer by his side. The woman’s absence brought his apprehension to a boil. Stumbling in the darkness he followed the cluster of voices to a small clearing. As he peered through a thick mesh of shrubbery Jonathan’s jaw dropped like an unhinged latch.
Many were gathered around a crackling fire, perhaps two dozen male and female shapes. Some undulated grotesquely with hands poking the air in an exhibition no sane man would call dancing. Every soul among them was naked.
“Hoof and horn, hoof and horn,
All that dies shall be reborn!
Corn and grain, corn and grain,
All that falls shall rise again!”
“Demons...witches...and in our midst!” Jonathan muttered, bringing his hand to his mouth for fear he might be heard. A realization struck him like buckshot. Could these same shadowy denizens be citizens of Boston town to whom he nodded his good mornings?
Impossible to tell...Too terrible even to consider...
“She changes everything she touches,
And everything she touches changes!
Changes...Touches
Touches...Changes...”
He could not see their faces clearly amid such deceptions of darkness and light. Instead his mind sketched images of hags and wretched beings too abhorrent to reveal their warted hideousness in the light of day. He conjured creatures so old and deformed as to prove unworthy of any human reaction excepting disgust.
Another image issued from his mind’s eye and hammered his brain until it would not fade. He pictured Mercy Hathaway among these fiends with the surging fire flame dancing upon her naked breasts, her flesh glistening as it did beneath the waterfall. The more fervently he wished his thoughts of her gone, the more intensely he tasted Mercy’s lips a hundred times over.
[Give yourself to me, Jonathan Browne! Give to me everything that you are, and join us now and forever!]
During one misguided moment he had permitted his soul to become twisted like a child’s mold of clay by the charms of this woman. He would not make that mistake again. If he succeeded in detecting Mercy Hathaway among this coven of fiends, she could burn in hell before he gave her another thought.
The ceremony turned suddenly solemn, and the revellers formed a circle around a large robed figure. He alone now delivered the chant.
“Come we all from the horned one, And to him we shall return.
Like a spark of fire, Rising to the heavens,
To him we shall return...”
Someone carried a squirming horned creature into the circle’s centre. Its brays indicated a kicking live goat, and the poor brute shrieked as the throng surrounded the animal. The robed silhouetted figure raised a butcher’s knife above his head while another lifted the animal for all to see.
The circle tightened. The coven, chanting, drew nearer.
“...and to him we shall return...”
The goat’s wails lasted for only a moment before thick gurgles replaced them. The shadowed man was cutting the animal’s throat, his knife continuing to slash at it even after the creature’s whining ended. Dripping with blood and held high, the head had been hacked completely off. The incessant chanting grew louder as the blood soaked vessel passed from hand to hand. Each among the gathering drank its sopping gore directly from the skull.
Jonathan strove to keep his revulsion silent. He determined not to remain another moment and stumbled through the darkness searching for any sign of the seamstress. Beneath the dull moon the forest's shadows went unseen, and every obstacle proved treacherous. He struck his forehead upon a hanging bough and toppled face first to the ground. A fire storm of colours exploded inside his brain, then turned quickly to black.
Browne’s fevered insensibility seemed neither sleep nor stupor. The sinister images reinvented themselves in muddled dreams, and there they remained murmuring into the night.
...Everything she touches changes...touches...changes...
And then, another voice, softer and more familiar.
...We have committed no wrong here, Jonathan...
...No wrong...no wrong...
...Where is the sin, Jonathan...? Where is the sin...?
****
When he awakened his head throbbed. Browne had no idea how much time had passed, but morning could not be more than a few hours away.
Shaking off sleep Jonathan felt uncertain he had witnessed the outlandish revelry at all. Mercy slept alongside him as before. Perhaps he had suffered frenzied dreams, the creations of a mind fevered with wrong-doing and shame. Running his fingers through hair matted with sweat he discovered a small lump near his scalp. He shivered with cold but resisted moving closer to the woman, having had his fill of the seamstress’ enchantments.
He waited until the sliver of moon drifted into a sm
all patch of open sky, enough to illuminate the girl's milky flesh. Jonathan saw her face clearly for only a moment, but it was enough to make him gag. Plum coloured stains smeared Mercy Hathaway’s mouth and chin. Thick streaks of goats blood sopped down the girl’s neck.
“Not a dream,” he muttered. “Damn all witches to hell! Not a dream at all...”
Browne took to his feet. He could ill afford awaiting daylight to stumble his way back to Boston. Becoming lost within these sycamores seemed a small peril compared to spending another moment in the company of the treacherous seductress who had passed her midnight hours engorging herself with blood. The devil alone knew what further sinning the woman had devised.
He chose a measured and steady escape, not wishing to crack his skull upon another unseen bough. The shrieks of bull frogs and night crickets caused Jonathan to investigate behind him with every step he took forward, and he cared little where his journey carried him. Only one thing concerned him; he had to leave this place and its witchcraft behind him.
He floundered for over an hour through utter blackness. It seemed daylight never had visited this forest. If dawn ever arrived, only then would he find his way free of this Godforsaken maze of wood.
Godforsaken...
Was ever a word more appropriate? Dark sycamores suffocated him from every side. Satan himself could not have uncovered a place more suitable for his minions. In this black forest did it matter how much distance he put between himself and Mercy Hathaway? She had already done her worst, and he had bartered his soul for a few moments beneath a waterfall with the raven haired witch. Could he ever again greet Amelia Worthington at her father’s door, then seat himself at her table to say grace and enjoy a meal? How could he return to his home pretending nothing had happened? He was a man lost beyond all hope and redemption, as lost as any of those who drank blood beneath a pale slice of the moon...