Embracing Darkness

by Christopher D. Roe

  Before her body finally went limp, Sue Ellen was able to pull the mask off her attacker. Behind the pig’s grotesque features was the handsome face of the man with whom she’d fallen in love, the same one who was now killing both her and the child he had begotten in her. While she mouthed his name silently, Jack White continued squeezing her neck as hard as he could.

  “Come to Zachary, little piggy,” he said, grinning fiendishly at Sue Ellen as her life ebbed away. “Come to me.”

  Even after Sue Ellen’s body went limp, he throttled her for several more seconds. He knew she was dead, but the enjoyment he felt from strangling her gave him a greater sexual pleasure than raping her had. He finally released his grip and violently threw her down, causing the back of her head to slam hard against the porch’s floorboards. The sound reverberated over the hill.

  Zachary Black stood there a while with his feet on either side of Sue Ellen’s head. The insides of his boots pressed up tightly against her ears, and as he stepped forward several strands of long hair were pulled from her head. Retrieving the pig mask, he stepped over Sue Ellen’s corpse and calmly returned to the rectory. His erection had since subsided, and he now felt relaxed enough to go back to bed.

  Twenty-Six

  Duty Calls

  It was on the sunniest and warmest of October mornings that friends and family of Sue Ellen Hartley came together at Eternal Rest Cemetery on the edge of town. Among those in attendance were Walt Hartley, his sister Jane, her husband Milton, and their daughters Fiona and Alice. Friends made up the majority of those who came to pay their last respects. Among the neighbors were Father Poole, Jessie Benson, Theo Thomas, Jordan St. James, Lou Conner, Gabe Sparks, Charlie Ryder, and I. To our surprise Captain Ransom also attended the service.

  Conspicuously absent was Jack White. The boys and I expected to see him from the time we’d all gone downstairs into the common room dressed in our Sunday best to wait for Father Poole and Jessie. As we left the rectory and began down the hill together, we attempted to see where the stranger could be.

  “Oh boy!” exclaimed Lou. “He’s not coming.”

  “Good!” replied Charlie. “I don’t wanna see him.”

  “He shouldn’t come anyway,” said Gabe. “No one likes him.”

  Father Poole stopped walking. As the leader of the St. Andrew’s delegation of mourners, he turned and gave us a disapproving glance. “There is no room for anger today,” he told us. “A dear friend of ours is lost to us forever. And we’d do well to remember that, however much the Romans tortured Jesus, he loved and forgave them for their transgressions.”

  Before asking us to bow our heads for what he called a simple prayer, Father Poole had some practical counsel. “Children,” he began. “If any strangers ask who you are, or if anyone you know but haven’t seen for some time asks where you’ve been, tell them you work for me at St. Andrews. That’s all. Jessie, the same goes for you. You’re a niece of mine visiting from Portsmouth. Now we’re going to a Protestant funeral, so I won’t be in charge. Therefore, I’d like us to say a little prayer for Sue Ellen Hartley consistent with our Catholicism.”

  This last remark caused Jordan, Theo, and me to jeer. With the exception of Father Poole, none of us was Catholic.

  “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

  All but Jessie, Theo, and Jordan made the Sign of the Cross as Father Fin began. “Dear Lord, we call upon You to watch over the eternal soul of our dear friend and neighbor, Sue Ellen Hartley, who has been taken so prematurely from us. We pray that the Blessed Virgin Mother also watch over Sue Ellen’s father, as he is now alone. We pray that Jesus give him the strength to persevere in his time of grief.”

  This prayer was anything but simple. As the youngest of us began to fidget, the older ones lifted their heads, unlocked their interlaced fingers, and even began humming softly to themselves. After another two minutes Jessie let out a loud sigh, causing Father Poole to stop for a brief moment. He put an erect index finger against his lips to hush her. She responded by rolling her eyes.

  “Well then,” said Father Poole, resuming our journey down the hill.

  “Why did he make it sound like we just have to accept Swell’s death?” asked Lou as we followed Father Fin. “Why can’t we be angry about it? I mean, someone killed her. Why can’t we pray to God that the cops will catch the killer?”

  “That’s because there is no God,” said Jessie calmly.

  “No God would have let Ziggy die like that,” added Gabe, “or Swell.”

  “Yeah,” I said softly. “There can be no God.”

  “I think we let Ziggy die,” remarked Jordan.

  “That was an accident,” replied Jessie. “And I’ve told you guys already that you can’t blame yourselves.”

  We didn’t need to worry about speaking low enough so that Father Poole wouldn’t hear us. Since Jessie’s rude interruption during his prayer, he had begun walking about twenty feet ahead of us. By the time we made it halfway down the hill, we’d gotten Jack White completely out of our heads and had stopped looking out for him altogether.

  Dwight Mason didn’t like the idea of putting the Nazi uniform in his shop window, but he was persuaded by his brother-in-law who’d been in France some months earlier and got it off a general who had died during a skirmish in the hallway of a brothel.

  The brother-in-law had been enjoying the pleasure of a French whore’s company one night when all of a sudden he heard a ruckus in the hallway. He got out of bed and went to the door of the bedroom. Upon further investigation he noticed a Nazi officer of high rank beating a whore who, as much as the brother-in-law could make out from his minimal French, had done nothing more than reject the officer’s advances until he’d arranged payment with the establishment’s madame.

  Without thinking twice, the young officer picked up the empty bottle of wine that he’d downed earlier, ran up to the officer, and smashed him over the head with it. The German fell, unconscious, onto the whore, who in turn screamed and pushed the limp Nazi off her. His body fell over the railing onto the staircase below. The brother-in-law immediately ran downstairs and felt the German’s neck and wrist for a pulse. Deeming the Nazi to be dead, he called up to the whore, “Il est mort!”

  After much debate in loud voices to accommodate for the lack of mutual comprehension of each other’s language, the brother-in-law and the madame agreed that since the German had come alone, no one apparently knowing he’d been there, they would bury the body out back. The American, however, wanted a souvenir that would knock the socks off everyone back home. He removed the Nazi officer’s uniform and tall black boots for shipment to Holly.

  Dwight backed up from the display window of Mason’s General Store and stared at the mannequin attired in the black uniform and boots. He shook his head while his wife was still in the display window fixing the officer’s cap atop the mannequin’s head.

  “What?” she asked while placing a price tag on top of the cap.

  “I think this is an insult to every American who died fighting these bastards.”

  Mrs. Mason was accustomed to not listening to her husband and doing as she pleased, yet nothing seemed worse to Dwight at that moment than allowing his wife to put a Nazi officer’s uniform in the store window, complete with swastika armband, medals of honor, and shiny black dress boots. He hoped that it would sell quickly, and so it did.

  Zachary Black had come into town after realizing that the hill, with the exception of Mrs. Keats, was deserted. He grabbed an apple from the barrel just outside the store, not intending to pay for it. As he took the first bite, something caught his eye in the window. The shine of the black boots and the white and red of the armband, contrasting with the black of the uniform, immediately grabbed Zachary’s attention. He’d read extensively about the Nazis and their treatment of Jews living in area
s that the Nazis now controlled. He took another bite of his apple and circled the uniform in an attempt to locate the price. He came across the white tag that showed $20.00. He happened to have the exact amount in his pocket.

  “I just want to get rid of it, you understand,” said Dwight to Zachary Black. “I don’t want people thinking I’m anti-American or pro-German. I just want it out of here.”

  Zachary threw his money down on the counter. “Twenty dollars for everything, I believe was the sign I saw in the window. Give it to me.”

  Dwight remembered this strange man from a few months back and hadn’t liked the look of him then. Now that the man was purchasing a Nazi uniform, Dwight mistrusted him even more. “But the customer is always right,” said Dwight to himself as he mounted the step ladder in the window and slowly handed over to Zachary the boots, cap, breeches and coat.

  Zachary Black began removing his dirty clothes in the middle of the store, intending to don the uniform then and there. Dwight thought it fortunate that Mason’s General was completely devoid of customers.

  “Are those boots ready?” snapped Zachary Black, who had already put on the breeches and coat.

  Dwight Mason promptly handed them over to his customer.

  After slipping on his new boots, which reached to just below his knees, Zachary walked to a long mirror off to the side of the store’s counter. Putting the cap on his head, Zachary saw just how menacing he looked.

  He then noticed Dwight standing behind him, stupefied. Without so much as turning around, Zachary stared at the young man in the mirror. The two locked eyes for several moments, yellow eyes fixed on blue ones, and soon Dwight began to tremble slightly.

  The ceremony of Sue Ellen Hartley’s funeral was routine. Reverend Alfred Baines of the First Congregationalist Church of Holly, where my own parents were members, prayed and croaked out the usual eulogy. Father Poole seemed uneasy, no doubt due to his surprise at the attendance of Captain Ransom, who would indubitably question the cleric about all these children he brought to the funeral, just as soon as the opportunity presented itself. We all bowed our heads as Reverend Baines blessed the soul of Sue Ellen one last time and walked to her coffin with a handful of dirt and paused there to sprinkle it on top of the casket.

  As I stared into nothingness, as was my wont when I wanted to be somewhere else than where I found myself, I saw a fresh grave not more than four yards from Sue Ellen’s. The name engraved on the stone in large, plain lettering read PATCH. It was where little Ziggy had been buried just weeks before. The ground was lumpy because it was still settling over the coffin. Although his first name had not yet been etched into the stone, I knew this was where Ziggy had been laid to rest. Under the surname was ELIZA 1928 and next to it DOUGLAS 1923. I assumed that these were Ziggy’s grandparents. Ziggy’s mother and father probably didn’t have enough money for the boy’s own plot, so this was the best way to give their son a proper Christian burial at minimal expense to the family.

  In the background I could hear Reverend Baines droning on about the evils of man, the Resurrection of the Lord, the importance of brotherhood, and a whole lot of other rubbish to which neither I nor my brothers and sister paid any mind. I kept my eyes on that tiny mound of dirt at the PATCH plot, thinking about what lay beneath the soil and wrestling with the guilt I felt for Ziggy’s death.

  Suddenly a pair of boots stepped on top of the mound of dirt over the little boy’s body. They were tall black boots, shiny as a brand new nickel, and they stomped on the mound with force. I was stunned to see that they were the feet of none other than the man we’d come to know as Jack White. The way he was dressed was a shock as everyone saw a Nazi officer standing on top of a fresh grave and eating an apple.

  The uniformed stranger smiled and arched his eyebrows in the direction of Reverend Baines as if to say, “Don’t let me disturb you, preacher. By all means please continue.” More likely Jack White had in mind Father Poole, who was standing next to Reverend Baines, and was probably thinking, “You can’t control me, Father Fin. Did you really think you could?”

  I was anxious to see Father Fin’s expression, which had morphed into a look of terror. I could even make out what the priest was saying under his breath: “Jack, what are you doing?”

  Still standing on Ziggy’s grave, Zachary Black dropped his half-eaten apple on the mound of dirt, brought his foot over it, and began driving the pulp into the ground with the toe of his boot.

  “Young man,” said Reverend Baines. “You are intruding on a private funeral.”

  Having completely buried the apple, Zachary Black spit out a piece of its skin that had been stuck between his teeth. Within seconds, his smile widening, he replied, “Sorry I’m so late, Reverend. The truth is that I wasn’t invited to this little gathering. I knew Swell, knew her real well. Probably knew her better than any of y’all here.”

  Captain Ransom took out a little pad and began writing. At first I thought he’d remove White from the scene, but he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t do anything other than write briefly on his notepad, put it back in his breast pocket, and fold his arms across his chest.

  “Isn’t anyone going to do anything?” cried Jessie. “He’s a disgusting, awful person. You wouldn’t want him here if you knew what he was like!”

  The children watched as the grownups in the crowd put their heads down, turned away from the stranger, and focused all their attention on the rest of the burial, which now required a dozen or so of them to drop their handfuls of dirt into the grave. When they had done so, people began to leave, as did the last of the mourners. It seemed to us children that Jack White instilled the same fear in adults as he did in us.

  Within half a minute only the Holly Hill contingent, Mr. Hartley, and Reverend Baines were still there staring at Zachary Black.

  “I didn’t mean to steal your thunder, Reverend,” said the stranger. “I just can’t seem to make a quiet entrance.”

  “Jack,” began Father Poole, almost running up to him. “What is this all about?”

  “GO AWAY!” Theo screamed at White.

  “Thorry, Theo!” mocked the man. “Theeing ath how I’m tho late, I thought I thould at leatht pay my latht rethpecth to Thwell.”

  “Jack!” Father Poole scolded.

  “Go away!” said Charlie Ryder bravely.

  “Is that little Charlie Ryder again?” said Zachary Black. “There’s only one way to take care of the likes of you.”

  Father Poole’s stern appearance did not diminish. In a low voice he told Jack White to go back up the hill and take the rest of the day off. Zachary Black seemed to not be listening to the priest as he was staring intently at one person. We followed his yellow eyes over to Jessie.

  Flashing another of his baleful smiles, he walked off the mound of dirt and made his way out of the cemetery. As he did so, his tall black boots gleamed in the sunlight.

  The day after the humiliation that was Sue Ellen’s funeral, Jessie decided to take matters into her own hands. She no longer trusted Father Poole, and with the exception of Theo, Jordan, and me she figured that the rest of the boys were too young to get involved. At dinner that night she told us that she’d be going into town the following morning and asked us to cover for her with Father Poole.

  Jessie woke up at around 5:00 in the morning so as to avoid Jack White, who usually got up an hour later. She left the Benson house, where she was now again residing since Sue Ellen’s death, and started down the hill. She grew lightheaded as she walked but attributed the sensation to the rising sun’s glare and the anxiety of confronting Captain Ransom. As she thought about what she was going to say to him, she began to get a sick feeling in her stomach since she didn’t know what the repercussions would be of her pointing an accusatory finger at Jack White.

  She made it down the hill and to the police station in fifteen minutes. As she walked
into the building, she noticed three police officers on duty, none of whom was Ransom. She assumed that he would be in soon and would rather wait for him than go back up the hill and risk being seen by Jack White.

  The officer at the front desk greeted her kindly and asked how he could help her. She saw by the name tag on his lapel that his last name was Rickman. She asked politely to speak to Captain Ransom.

  “Sorry, miss,” said Officer Rickman, “but the Captain’s not seeing anyone right now.”

  “But he’s in?” asked Jessie.

  “Yes, he’s in his office. You can wait if you like, but he… .”

  Jessie didn’t wait to hear the rest of what Rickman had to say. Without hesitation she started toward the frosted glass door that bore Ransom’s name in bold capital letters.

  “WAIT! MISS!” Rickman called out, just as Jessie reached the Captain’s office door. She didn’t bother with knocking but swung open the door.

  To her astonishment Ransom was sitting on his desk with a woman who from her age appeared more apt to be his secretary than his wife. The woman’s legs were straddling Ransom around his waist.

  When Jessie entered, the woman screamed in surprise. At the same moment Rickman ran up behind Jessie, panting and shaking his head as if he’d just finished running a marathon and couldn’t believe he’d accomplished the feat.

  “I’m sorry, Captain,” began Rickman as the secretary unwrapped her legs from Ransom’s waist. “She was too fast for me.”

  “You don’t say,” Ransom replied sarcastically.

  “Yes sir,” continued Rickman. “I told her you didn’t want to be disturbed, but she wouldn’t listen.”

  “It’s alright, Rickman,” said Ransom as his secretary left the office. “I’ll handle it from here.”