by Aaron Dries
Only one thing had survived—her role as mother, even though she had forgotten how to love. She looked at her daughter and her daughter looked back. Her fingers went to Liz’s hair and ruffled her beautiful bangs.
“I’m sorry, darlin’,” Reggie said.
Sorry for what, Mom?
“Oh, I feel so bad I could just go right ahead and jump off a cliff.”
Don’t say that.
Reggie held her daughter tight. She never wanted to let her go again. “Then what should I say?”
Just tell me you love me and that everything will be okay. Liz smiled at her; she looked so beautiful in the cloudy light, her eyes glowing.
There was a sharp pain in Reggie’s chest. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. I’m sorry for not being there for you. I don’t know what happened to me. I knew you were alone and I saw it, plain as day. I don’t think there’s ever going to be a way for me to forgive myself for what I’ve gone and done to you. Darlin’, you got such a sadness about you all the time. It scares me, always has. I just don’t know how to fix it. I should be able to. I’m your Momma-Bear. I love you. Everything’s going to be okay.” Reggie kissed her on the cheek. “Maybe you can help me put the Christmas decorations up in a bit. You know, together? Take our minds off all this stuff.”
But, Mom, it’s not Christmas.
She smiled. “Baby, that don’t matter. As far as I’m concerned, I’m giving you a Christmas every day from here on in.” They hugged once more. “I’ll cook you up a meal, what you think?”
Jed watched his mother talk to the headless corpse. Behind him the rain and hail fell harder; the voices of his father and the three remaining passengers carried on the wind. Reggie turned to him, her face covered in blood and brain matter from when she had buried her chin in her daughter’s open spine. “Liz, your brother just came in.” She bent close to the body—the remains of the head swung heavily and thumped against its shoulder. “Jed, your sister is asking for you.”
He screamed so loud he feared something in him would snap. His hip knocked over a vase—it shattered on the floor, dead flowers and soiled water splashing over his feet. Gagging, he made a run for the front door, every step a struggle. Heat fired through him and he felt his skin start to itch. He hurt everywhere. Blood poured from his gashed open hands. As he ran, he knocked family photos from the wall. They shattered on the steps.
Wes had climbed out of the bus first and kept the shotgun on the passengers as they crawled through the windshield. They dropped onto the dirt one at a time. Jed, who had joined his father outside, followed, slipped and fell. He bounced back up, almost embarrassed. Wes knew his boy was weakening, could see it in his face. He looked like he had lost weight, even over the course of a day.
“Go ahead and tell your mother that I’m bringing them inside,” he said.
Jed looked terrified. “Dad, I can’t leave you alone.”
Don’t make me go back in there, please, he thought. Mom’s gone.
“Appreciate that, son, but just go tell your fucking mother I’m bringing them inside.” Wes kept his eye on the passengers; especially on the broad-shouldered man with the goatee—that one had life in him. I’ve got my eye on you, buddy.
“Go, now!” he said. His mouth turned into a scowl as he stepped forward with the gun. Jed ran out of his sight—he listened to his retreating footsteps. “Get in a line. Lady first, then the boy.” He studied the man. “And you last. Got it?”
They acted immediately, hands on their heads.
“Now walk towards the house. You run and I’ll shoot you dead. Got that?”
None of them answered.
“You bet your fucking ass you got it. Now march.”
As he said it, hail started to blanket the valley. It crunched under their feet as they shuffled, cracked and jabbed at their scalps. He followed them, watching their every movement for any indication that one of them might dodge from the Indian-file and sprint for the trees. It was the perfect occasion for them to do so. Rest assured, if one of them made a break for it, he—or she—would be dead. There would be no more chances. And if the others scattered, then they too would be shot to pieces. He’d always had a good aim, although there wasn’t much to practice on in James Bridge. The nearest shooting gallery was miles away, and there was little worth hunting in the valley. Just rabbits. He enjoyed shooting rabbits because they exploded when the bullet entered their fragile, disease-infected bodies. One minute a fuzzy little bunny—and the next, a dark splatter on the ground.
I could just shoot them now. I’m in so far over my head anyway. What difference would it make? If I got in real close, a bullet might tear through two of them. Man, that’d be something to see.
His finger tensed on the trigger as he raised the shotgun. He moved in close behind the man with the goatee. In his mind two heads were exploding at once. It was a glorious image.
Jesus, Wes, what the hell are you thinking?
The sound coming from him was not quite a laugh, yet not quite a moan either. It was a girlish sound, excited and wavering. I’m not thinking at all—and it feels fucking great. For the first time in my life, I feel alive.
The old woman with the short, spiked hair reached the first step leading up to the veranda. She turned to him, unsure of what to do next. “Yep, that’s right. Up you go.” He loved seeing the dread in her face. “One at a time. Quick!”
Twenty-Four
Sarah tripped over the threshold and fell into the living room. Her glasses were back in the bus, and the heavy crucifix slapped against the side of her face. She looked up. Though her vision was blurred she could see mother and daughter in bloodied embrace.
As Sarah started to crawl, Michael entered behind her, his hands still on his head. Like Jed, the first thing he noticed was the smell. When he was a child, he had talked his mother into getting him two pet mice, one of which later escaped and was never seen again. This room smelled like the cage his mice had lived in—musty newspapers and urine. And of course, blood. Before the one mouse had disappeared, it ate the other.
He shook so hard he struggled staying steady. He saw Sarah on her hands and knees, bent forward and pulled her upright. She was heavy, yet felt fragile under his touch. Her skin was like paper.
Sarah turned to him and held him close, her hands turning into talons. He smelled her breath; it was sour. They looked into each other’s eyes and knew they were going to die.
She was grateful to him for giving her back some dignity. As foolish as it sounded, she would be ashamed to die on all fours.
Jack walked into the room, saturated. The front of his shirt had lifted up in front to reveal the soft pad of his belly. There was a moment of silence, just long enough for Jack to hear the flies. They zoomed past his ears, making him flinch. There was sudden cold on the back of his neck: the barrels of the shotgun pushing hard against his skin.
“Move forward,” Wes said. The passengers did as they were told.
Sarah, Michael and Jack huddled close together, looking around the room. They saw the designs in the ancient wallpaper, the worn carpeting at their feet. A crocheted rug of many colors was flung over the arm of an overstuffed lounger. In the corner of the room the television was playing. It seemed too bright, as if the contrast was out of whack. The image was distorted by the storm, jagged lines cut through the cartoon characters that ran across the screen. There was a lamp in the shape of two kissing swans on top of a small round table. The mother sat amongst these homely belongings, cradling the headless remains of the driver in her arms. The two women were surrounded by puddles of blood.
Sarah clung to Michael’s arm, their shoulders hunched. They knew that at any moment the gun would go off and one of them would be dead.
Wes stepped closer, trailing his aim on the group and kicked the door shut. It slammed hard into its frame, changing the airflow within the house. The curtains next to him reached out in ghostly grasps. Thunder shook the house, making crockery shake in the kitchen. Wes looked at
his wife and tried to speak. He shook his head, squinting. “Reggie, what the hell are you doing?”
The hailstones fell heavy and lightning tore the sky apart. Sheets of rain swept over the house, the drumming sound as strong as a furnace. Thunder cracked through the valley again.
Reggie shifted the corpse in her lap and grabbed the loose, toothless jawbone. “Oh don’t be scared, darlin’. It’s just Poppa-Bear.” Reggie turned serious. “Time for us to have our grown-up talk.”
Wes’s face turned red, the gun shaking in his hands. He could hear his wedding ring tapping against the metal shaft—it sounded like Morse code.
“Merry Christmas,” Reggie said to her husband.
“For Christ’s sake, put her down, woman!”
Twenty-Three
When his father had told him to get back inside, Jed had ran past the insanity with a quivering hand shielding his eyes, and bee-lined it straight for the stairs. At the top of the flight, he threw the bathroom door open, the handle smashing against the wall, and almost slipped on the tiles. Panting hard and fast, he locked himself in. Scolding vomit threatened to rise in his throat again. He grabbed the porcelain washbasin to steady himself, glanced up, and caught almost recoiled. The man in the mirror was him. It was simple as that. But it couldn’t be. His skin wasn’t red and covered in matted bits and pieces of other people.
The man looking back at him was a murderer. Jed laughed. No, he wasn’t a murderer. He was a young, fucked up, average Australian guy. His worst crime was being a cliché, not a killer. He had seen enough movies to know that murderers lurked in the dark, sharpening their knives. They danced in the moonlight, wearing their mother’s clothes and made lampshades from the skins of their victims.
Nope. Fuck reason. It wasn’t him.
He was just plain Jed. History would not remember him—he wasn’t some future horror icon, not a celebrity. I’m just a country boy, he said to himself. I’m as common as the cold.
The man in the mirror was someone special.
“So you can’t be me.”
Jed pulled his shirt over his head, revealing the eagle on his back. He forced his jeans around his ankles, kicked them hard against the wall, all the time repeating to himself, “…not me, not me, not me.”
He threw back the shower curtain.
Screech-screech-screech.
No, that was from that movie Psycho. That sound had nothing to do with Jed Frost, amateur boxer and so-so drug dealer.
He turned on the taps, not caring if it was hot or cold as long as it was running. Water splashed his face and ran down his chest in a gelatinous red soup. When he looked on the floor, the sight frightened him. There was so much blood.
Blood, Mother! B-b-blood. Blood!
No, that was the character from the movie. Norman Bates—the girly-boy who dressed in his mother’s clothing.
Balance failed him. He reached out, grabbed the curtain and fell into the bathtub. Pinpricks of icy water shot into the air around him. The curtain tore off its rail, the oval brackets spinning. He thumped against the basin and pain exploded inside his head.
His balls drew up into his abdomen and he shifted his weight, his buttocks covering the plughole. The tub began to slowly fill up. The water always ran murky when it rained. Today it was running red.
“Not me. Not me. Not me.”
Twenty-Two
Sarah nuzzled Michael’s neck. His sweat dripped into her eyes, stinging.
He smells like Bill, she realized, trying to place the scent, wondering if the two shared the same cologne. Was it Old Spice? Imperial Leather? No, it wasn’t an attractive smell. Not at all. It reminded her of forgotten corn-beef rotting in the bottom of the refrigerator. Then it dawned on her, and she understood why it reminded her of her husband. It was the smell of almost dead things, of fear.
Sarah was thankful she had the boy, but she wished more than life itself that Bill was with her.
Bill.
They had been married for thirty-nine years, and although happy, their vows had been realigned like dislocated bones more than once. In 1960 Bill had an affair and indulged in his newfound penchant for younger women. He explained to her that his heart was hers forever, but she had to realize he was flawed. Only human. He had made a mistake. Bill said that he was a stinger in a sea, floating around, purposeless and sometimes he clung to others, because that was his nature. His justification hurt the worst, more than the affair itself. Sarah was loyal and loving. He should have clung to me, she told herself, seeing through his bullshit. But she did not leave, or kick him out. They persevered. It took her many years to forgive him.
They had two children and together watched them become adults. It happened quick, and in a blink, they were old enough to look forward to retiring. They blinked once more, and Bill found out he was dying.
She tended to him, gave up her job as an apparel assistant at K-Mart and sold their red Toyota to pay for the medical supplies the insurance didn’t cover. Sarah swept his dead hair off the floor, mopped up his vomit. When he shat the bed, she cleaned the sheets.
That was love.
They were not scared of growing old, as long as they were together. It petrified her to know she would outlive him, the pain an ache she could not soothe. For her, a good day was when she could comfortably say, “Well done, Sarah. You haven’t cried since yesterday.”
She had distanced herself, sitting alone and taking long walks. When he died, she would be the stinger in the sea with nobody around to validate her purpose. She didn’t want to be that person.
On November 12th, 1995, Sarah caught the bus to Maitland because she wanted to escape her husband. It hurt to be apart, but she knew it would help when the time came to bury him, when the sympathy casseroles stopped coming and she was finally alone.
The plan had been to travel into town and walk streets that were just alien enough to distract her from her life. Maybe she’d swing by McDonalds Bookstore in the mall and browse through the titles. Afterward, maybe an ice cream from the newsstand—something with nuts in it would be nice—and a walk near the almost barren Hunter River. Coffee! There was a nice café near the Bridge that linked Maitland to Lorn, the next suburb. Yeah, she’d love a big cup, black and with three spoonfuls of sugar. It would be nice to have strangers do something for her for a change, to pretend to care and fulfill her caffeine cravings, waving to her as she walked out the door.
Sarah told Bill that she had a doctor’s appointment of her own, high blood pressure or something of the sort. It was a lame story and she knew it. In the privacy of her thoughts, she planned for it to sound just false enough to let him know she was lying. This way he would know how much his parting was hurting her, and she wouldn’t even have to say it aloud.
“Bill,” she said.
Michael looked at her. His eyes were an echo of her husband’s, her own, the father’s, the insane mother’s—all of them, except Jack, who seemed lively and prepared. It scared her.
Jack scared her.
“Let him go,” Wes said.
Sarah pulled away from Michael and to her relief, he did not cling on. Jack panted beside her, his hot breath punching at her arm. She turned to look back at the father and saw the gigantic barrels of the shotgun only.
Sarah felt a heaviness grow around her neck. It was her crucifix, thick and gaudy. Faux jewels shimmered. She had often asked herself why she still wore it. Religion was no longer a part of her life. Yet whenever she took it off she felt naked. As she said to her grandchildren, it was her bling. Now it was heavy. She held it in her shaking hands.
Twenty-One
Reggie put her hands over the place where her daughter’s eyes should have been if she had a face. “Don’t look, baby, Daddy’s got his gun. Who’re these friends you’ve brought home? You should have told me. I could’ve had dinner cooked for them.”
Wes stood over the passengers as they dropped to their knees. He felt dissociated from what was happening before him. The gun felt strange
in his grip. He struggled to understand what he had done, and what he was about to do. Who were these strangers, with their grotesque pantomimes and incomprehensible prayers? He shuddered, cracked his neck and felt his mind re-enter his body. None of that shit mattered any more and he wanted it to stay that way. It was better like this.
Sarah put her hands back behind her neck.
“That’s right, that’s right,” Wes said, nodding. He felt lethargic. Water dripped down his back and slipped into the cleft of his buttocks. It was freezing. The small hailstones had stuck to his skin, mixed with the dirt blown against him in the storm, turning into a thick, brown sludge. His hatred for them was worse now that they were in his home. They polluted the carpet they were kneeling on. But he thought it fitting that they should die in the living room of the family they had torn apart. He wished they would beg for their lives so he could reject their request—how sweet that would be. What power he had now.
“Where did you all come from? Why are you here?” he asked. The questions were a byproduct of his wavering attention. His prisoners did not respond. He gestured to his daughter’s corpse. “Look at my girl.”
Michael, Jack and Sarah turned their heads towards the kitchen doorway, though Michael’s eyes remained shut. Wes saw this and stepped closer. He knew the kid could feel his shadow over his bruised and shaking form, that he could smell the engine oil sweating from his pores. “Open your eyes, faggot,” he said.
Michael saw waves crashing on white sand, the tide turning red. Limbs tumbled onto the shoreline, crabs scuttled from their burrows, danced sideways across the beach and feasted—ripping, tearing, nibbling.