by Amber Benson
He pointed into the distance.
“She’s right there,” he said. “Can’t you see her?”
But no matter how much she squinted, her mama did not appear to her.
“I’m sorry, Papa,” she said, shaking her head. “I just don’t see anything.”
Papa tried to drop her hand, but Eleanora held tight to him, an alarm sounding in her head as she realized she didn’t know what would happen if she lost hold of him in this place.
Don’t let him go! she thought, holding fast to his fingers while he fought to break her grip. Whatever you do, don’t let him go!
“Sister,” he said, sounding both disappointed in her and frantic to escape. “You gotta release me.”
“No,” she said, though her own hands were becoming slick with sweat, making the task of keeping him as futile as holding back the crash of the sea with a plastic bucket.
He stopped struggling and turned so he could look her right in the eye.
“Sister,” he said, his voice firm. “You’ve done right bringing me here, but now you have to let me go.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head violently.
“You’ve got to, sweetheart,” he said, eyes overflowing with love. “I know it. You know it. She knows it.”
He looked back into the distance. To the place where her mama—whom she could not see—stood, waiting for him.
Finally, she understood where they were.
“Papa, I don’t want you to go,” she said. “Please, don’t leave without me.”
He shook his head.
“It’s not your time, sister.”
She didn’t want to believe it, but she knew he was telling her the truth. She threw herself into her papa’s arms, and he hugged her back fiercely.
“Good-bye, Papa,” she whispered. “Tell Mama I love her. As always.”
Then she let him go . . .
She knew he was gone before she even opened her eyes.
The Rite of Spring was long over, and something else had taken its place, but her heart was broken, and that was all she could think about. In a daze, she got up and walked over to the radio, turning it off.
“The Devil has your foot, sister.”
Mimi stood in the doorway watching her, eyes flat and devoid of emotion.
“Mimi?” she asked, her mind bleary with exhaustion.
“The Devil has your foot, sister, and that’s not all,” Mimi said. She shook her head and walked out of the room, the thump of her metal brace jarring in the silence.
Eleanora returned to her papa’s bedside, the hardness of the wooden chair biting into her back and shoulders as she sat down again—as if she needed reminding of what reality she was inhabiting. She looked over at her papa. His face was still, the light of life extinguished from his eyes.
I have done something good, she thought. And there will be hell to pay for it.
* * *
The man arrived a week after they buried Papa.
Eleanora was in the kitchen fixing dinner when the knock came. She set down the knife she’d been using to chop spinach and wiped flecks of green onto the white apron tied around her waist. She pulled the clip from her hair, running her fingers through the tangles and smoothing down the wild bits before pinning everything back into place.
“Mimi?” she called as she left the warm kitchen behind her, walking through the living room and heading for the front door.
There was no response from her grandmother, but she hadn’t really expected one. Since Papa died, Mimi had been frozen in grief—silent, even, where the Devil was concerned—but Eleanora knew this was only the calm before the storm. Things were brewing behind her grandmother’s rigid façade, and Eleanora was already making secret plans to escape the house before things became unbearable. Besides, she wanted to travel, to see strange new places and meet people who were wholly different from the people she grew up with in Duxbury—and none of that would ever happen if she allowed Mimi to continue to control her.
Her papa’s death had not been easy for Eleanora, but it’d brought with it the realization that there was no reason for her to stay in Massachusetts anymore. With him gone, she was free of her human bondage.
“Yes?” Eleanora said, as she opened the front door—unaware that this singular action was the beginning of the storm she’d been anticipating.
“Is this the Eames residence?” a man asked, taking off his black fedora and holding it between his hands, revealing a close-cropped head of blond hair.
He wore a light wool jacket over his dark gray suit, and brown horn-rimmed glasses perched back on the bridge of his nose—but the conservative attire and thick glasses did nothing to mask how incredibly handsome he was.
“It is,” Eleanora said, blushing. “How may I help you?”
He ran the brim of his hat between his fingers and gave her a warm smile.
“You must be Eleanora. I’m a friend of your grandmother’s. From church.”
It was such an absurd idea—this man being friends with Mimi—that Eleanora almost laughed. Instead, she nodded politely and invited him in. The man followed her through the doorway and into the sitting room, where she indicated he should take a seat on the couch.
“Is Mimi expecting you, Mr. . . . ?” She let the question mark linger, wanting him to know she thought him a bit rude for not giving her his name.
“Mitchell R. Davis,” the man said, bowing his head in greeting.
“Nice to meet you, Mitchell R. Davis,” Eleanora replied. “I’ll let Mimi know you’re here.”
She turned to go fetch her grandmother but went only a few steps before she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Yes—” she started to say, but then a handkerchief covered her mouth.
She struggled against her attacker, a sickly sweet smell filling her nostrils, and the world faded slowly, painfully, to black.
* * *
Love is a four-letter word that can be as evil as any curse.
The terrible things done out of love—because the end somehow justifies the means—are innumerable to count.
Had Mimi done this to her out of love?
This was the question most often on Eleanora’s mind, pondered without answer over the many weeks of her incarceration.
She once asked Mitchell (after hours spent in his company, she’d come to call him by his first name) if a person could love someone to death. He’d laughed but then proceeded to answer her question with the utmost seriousness:
“Human beings are fallible. They try to live as God would have them live, but they can only fail at this because of their imperfection. Man is made in the image of God. He is of God, but not a God.”
Mitchell was in his shirtsleeves. It was his turn to stay with her, to watch and see what incarnation the Devil would take. She hated the other men and would cry when they came to stay in the room with her. Their eyes were forever staring, waiting to see what evilness inside her they could testify to having witnessed.
Only Mitchell she could tolerate. In him, she saw something redeemable, and, unlike the others, he wasn’t afraid to talk to her. This was the reason they hadn’t broken her yet, though she didn’t want them to know this. Having Mitchell was her saving grace.
“So, that’s a yes, then?” Eleanora said, swallowing back the bile always lingering at the back of her throat.
She’d vomited so many times in the past few weeks she couldn’t keep count. Fear was the main culprit, and when they’d tried to baptize her . . . that’d been the worst. Getting baptized was too similar to Mimi’s scalding baths, and she’d clawed at the men like an animal when they’d tried to force her under the water. This they took as another sign she was in Lucifer’s thrall.
She protested her innocence, begged them to let her go, but to no avail; she was trapped—and, after a while, it seemed
as if anything she did or said was proof of her possession, so she became mute.
Except with Mitchell.
“I don’t know if there’s a correct answer to the question,” Mitchell said, as he took out a cigarette and slid it between his lips.
Under different circumstances, she would have still found him attractive, but locked in a tiny, cell-like room whose walls and floor were colder than ice, and where she only had one meager woolen blanket to keep her warm? Here she was immune to his charm.
“I’m not possessed,” she said, fingernails digging into the flesh of her upper arms. The scratching was becoming obsessive. She did it constantly and unconsciously, her tormentors documenting the red welts she brought up on her arms and legs as visible signs of her demonic possession.
It was strange that where they saw evil, she saw a way to cope with an untenable situation.
She spoke to Mitchell of her innocence as often as possible. She didn’t know if he believed her or not, but she felt better when she did it. Of course, this lasted only a few hours, and then the hysteria was back, threatening to overwhelm her.
“Can you prove it?” he asked.
She sat up on her elbows, the metal cot she’d been lying on squeaking under her weight. There was a large, wooden cross nailed high up on the wall, but the cot was the sole piece of furniture in the room.
“Are you serious?” she asked.
This was his first-ever deviation from the norm. Usually, he responded to her protestations of innocence with, “That’s not for me to judge.” Now he was asking her for proof—and she felt her heart lift with hope for the first time since her incarceration began.
“Deadly so,” he replied. “I want to hear why you think you aren’t possessed.”
She sat up on her knees, toes pressing into the spongy mattress of the cot, until she could feel the outline of the coiled metal springs underneath her. She assumed Mitchell’s interest wasn’t real, that it was some kind of trap, some new way of testing her. Still, it was also a chance to say her piece.
“What happens to me isn’t the work of Lucifer—”
Mitchell stood up and began to pace, the lit cigarette smoking in his hand.
“You say that, but what about your grandfather?” he said, shaking his head. “His death had all the hallmarks of the Devil’s work.”
Eleanora was determined not to cry. She was tired of these men—stupid, ignorant men—being able to wrest so much emotion out of her. If she could learn to keep her feelings under control, to treat them as she’d learned to treat Mimi, then maybe she could survive this.
“Papa died,” Eleanora said. “I was holding his hand when he passed. That had nothing to do with the Devil.”
Mitchell moved closer to her, his chiseled face showing nothing of what he truly felt. He knelt down beside her and offered her a drag from his cigarette. She wondered if this was a trick to manipulate her, to create some kind of false bond between them.
“I don’t smoke,” she said, waving the cigarette away.
He grinned up at her.
“Good for you. It’s a nasty habit.”
“You wanted proof,” she said, crawling over to the edge of the bed so her bare knees were clearly in his view. “I can show you, but you have to take my hand and close your eyes.”
He shook his head.
“I don’t think so.”
She reached down and raised the hem of her nightgown, revealing a slice of one pale white thigh. Mitchell stared at her exposed leg and swallowed, hard.
“Are you trying to tempt me?” he asked.
“If that’s what it takes to get you to help me,” she said, as frankly as she could manage. “And I’m a virgin.”
He sat back on his heels, and she could see his faith warring with his libido. She prayed his libido would win out. He lifted his hand, and in the sickly yellow overhead light she could see it was shaking. It hung there for a moment, uncertainty playing across his face like a frenetic concerto, and so she did the only thing she could to sway things in her favor.
She took his trembling fingers in her hand and guided them toward her mouth, gently pressing his hand against her lips, kissing his knuckles.
“My grandmother hates me. That’s why I’m here,” she said, leading his hand to her cheek and letting him stroke her face with the pads of his fingertips. “That’s my proof.”
To his bafflement, she lowered his fingers toward the delicate flesh of her inner thighs, then firmly pushed his hand between her legs.
“Lord, please, help me,” he moaned, dropping his cigarette and reaching for her.
Eleanora
The weight of Mitchell’s body pushed Eleanora back onto the cot. His fingers were rough, unused to dealing with the delicate parts of a girl, and her body stiffened as his fingernails scraped against her skin. She forced herself to relax. She was inexperienced, but she knew she couldn’t let him sense her fear, or this would all be for nothing.
“I think I love you,” he whispered in her ear—as if saying those words made everything all right—and then he slipped her white cotton panties down from her hips, pressing himself against her.
He was still fully dressed, his gray twill pants scratching against her bare skin. As nervous as she was, the itch of the twill on her skin was unbearable, and she wanted the pants off—couldn’t bear the itchiness—and she gritted her teeth to stop herself from speaking. He pulled on his zipper, undid the button, and yanked them down himself. He was wearing white briefs, but she could feel the hard part of him through the softness of the fabric, and the strangeness of being so close to an almost-naked man made her stop breathing for a moment.
He planted his lips on hers, and she forced herself to remain calm, to be pliant as he kissed her. She closed her eyes—then, ever practical, decided it was better to see what was going to happen to her rather than to be a coward about it.
She tried to participate in the experience by kissing the side of his face but pulled away because his cheek was so scratchy. Like the twill pants, anything rough that touched her skin set her teeth on edge and made her start itching.
“You’re so beautiful,” he moaned in her ear. “From the first moment I saw you, I wanted you.”
From the moment you kidnapped me, she thought, but pushed it away.
She couldn’t think like that if she wanted him to help her. She needed to give over to him, to entice him however she could—even if there was something abrasive about him that reminded her of sandpaper.
“You were so handsome,” she whispered back to him. “When you came to the door. I wanted you, too.”
She felt sick the moment the lie left her mouth. She realized then that this was a terrible mistake.
“Oh, Eleanora,” he whispered into her throat, kissing the tender flesh there.
She felt him take off one of his shoes and heard it clatter to the concrete floor, where the other shoe quickly followed, the sound echoing in the windowless room. He yanked at his underwear until they were awkwardly bunched around his ankles, then stopped kissing her long enough to remove them and his pants altogether.
“That’s better,” he murmured into her ear as she felt the length of his naked body pressing against her.
He slid his fingers underneath the thin cotton of her nightdress, touching her with clumsy hands.
Against her will, she cried out, heat burning between her legs as her own traitorous body responded to his touch.
This is a mistake and I’ve let it go too far, she thought as the bile rose in her throat.
“I want you,” he said, his voice almost a growl.
She tried to open her mouth. To tell him to stop, but she was scared. Afraid that telling him no would only make her time in this place worse. She wanted out, and maybe letting him do this to her would make that happen. Maybe the best thing she could do was
to just close her eyes and let what would be . . . be.
He leaned down to kiss her, his lips parting hers, so he could taste the sweetness of her mouth. She breathed against him, her own lips moving instinctively.
He reached down, grasping himself, and she cried out as a white-hot pain shot through her middle, and she felt something snap. Going into shock from the pain and fear, she began to dissociate from her body, floating up and over their combined flesh, eyes pinned to Mitchell’s back as he moved on top of her. She searched out her own face and was surprised to find calm eyes staring back at her.
She blinked and the image reversed. Now she was back in her body, staring up at an empty ceiling.
Reconnected to herself again, she felt a deep ache inside her. She wanted to scream, to push him off, and she grabbed him around the shoulders, scratching her nails into the soft skin of his back as she tried to make the pain stop. Her actions had the opposite effect, seeming to drive him to distraction, and the pain only became more intense. She stared at him, his eyes almost black with desire, and prayed this awful moment in her life would be over soon.
As if he’d read her mind, he bit his lip and squeezed his eyes shut tight, his body shuddering against her.
“Unh . . . unh . . .” he moaned in between gasps—then fell limply onto her chest, his breathing ragged.
She wanted him off her body. He was deadweight crushing her, making it hard to breathe. She pushed at him, but he was so much bigger than her that she couldn’t budge him.
“Please,” she whispered. “Can’t. Breathe. Get off.”
“Oh,” he said, his voice sated and dreamy. He kissed her lips before she could turn her head away, then climbed off her.
The door to her room was thrown open, and angry voices filled the air. Mitchell shot to his feet, grabbing his pants from the floor to cover his nakedness. She didn’t get up from the mattress, just lay there, limp and ashamed and in pain, hating herself for what she’d just done. She heard Mitchell protesting with a loud, hysterical voice, and then she closed her eyes.