The Dampness Of Mourning

by Lee Thompson

  After I poured us each a scotch, I sat next to her and we stared at the darkening sky for a while.

  I said, “Did the police tell you about Tripper?”

  Kim set her tumbler on the end table and folded her hands in her lap. “Yes. And Doug.” She sighed, nibbled on her lip and looked at me. “The world is so goddamn messed up.”

  “I don’t think it’s the world. I think it’s the people in it.”

  “Exactly.”

  She grew quiet again, rubbing her thumb over the back of her left hand. “I don’t buy that Tripper was that careless. If that group was dangerous he would have noticed, he would have said something. He is—wasn’t—a careless person.”

  “I saw him. He trusted them. And then it all went to hell really fast.” I waited for her to ask me if he suffered, if he fought back and took a few of them out with him, but she didn’t. She just cried and trembled for a moment before pulling herself back together, saying, “Not the Jack I knew. He wouldn’t have been fooled by some backwoods preacher.”

  I could have told her that April never would have murdered her son and self, not the April I knew, but I didn’t want to wrestle that grief, and I didn’t want to make it all about me when Kim only needed to talk and have someone listen.

  I said, “What was Jack like?”

  She took a deep breath and released it slowly. She said he’d grown up in foster homes, some good, some horrible. He’d been molested by one of the foster parents when he was twelve, and Tripper knew from then on that he didn’t want anyone else to ever hurt like that. Kim said she thought he had worked off the clock sometimes with some of the kids, and she suspected he’d hurt a few men, maybe badly. From the guts he showed me when my pistol was buried in his face, I didn’t doubt it. She crossed her legs and stared at her heel. “He was careful, observant, passionate.” Grief and confusion and frustration nestled in the lines of her face. I held her hand and asked if there was anything I could do. Her eyes cleared and she said, “Thanks, John. Really. But you can’t replace him.”

  “I didn’t plan to.”

  “Listen,” she said. “McCoy called me as soon as he caught you and your friend out there in the forest.” She glanced over her shoulder, then looked back to me. “I don’t blame you for wanting to help them find Doug, but if you get in their way you’re going to jeopardize their mission, your job, and your life. Understand?”

  “You’re saying if I go back out there you’ll fire me.”

  “I’m saying you’ll go to jail and I won’t approve work release. McCoy doesn’t play around, but he is fair. He could have charged you for several things earlier today.” She shook her head. “But you don’t even care, do you?”

  “I care about finding Doug.”

  “I don’t need any cowboys on my team.”

  “Jack wasn’t a cowboy?”

  “We’re working with the police on this, John. I’ve known a lot of these cops for years. Some of them are friends of my family.”

  “Was your dad a cop?”

  “I’ll tell you what I think is the best thing for you to do. Take some of Jack’s cases. I can clear up some of my morning tomorrow and walk you through procedure. We’ll stay in contact with McCoy, don’t worry about that, and the moment I hear something you will too.” Her face hardened as if cast suddenly from plaster. “I don’t want you getting in the way. I want them to find Doug and catch the motherfuckers who murdered Jack. Are we clear?”

  I grasped at a few choices. The idea of lying to her didn’t appeal to me. I nodded, said, “Okay. I’ll be at work in the morning.” Kim stood and walked over to the piano. She glanced out the window and I wondered how different this place was than where she’d grown up. Sometimes it bothered me to be at the manor, not so much from envy, though sometimes that played a part, but because I simply couldn’t imagine having a house like this, the money to buy whatever I wanted, the drive and talent to make all my dreams come true. I stood and poured another drink. Kim said, her back to me, “It’s so surreal.” She wiped her eyes and her shoulders trembled. “I just saw them both yesterday.”

  I remembered how that felt. Remembered how hollow and disbelieving and helpless it’d been to have April in my arms one day, hate her the next night, fight a battle with monsters, and come home to find her and her son gone. There was no closure, no Dear John letter, no begging or excuses. Only silence and emptiness and questions.

  But it wasn’t exactly the same. April chose to walk away, to take her life, while Jack and Doug were merely performing their jobs. I moved alongside Kim and put my arm on her shoulder, pulled her into a hug that felt brotherly even though beneath the sincerity of it, my blood thrummed and my cheeks reddened.

  After a moment, she said, “Thanks,” and pulled away, running an index finger along the piano’s lid before she headed to the door.

  After she left, Mike came back in carrying a pillow and blanket. He laid them on the couch, said, “The beds all have a lot of dust in them. The rooms haven’t been opened in a while.”

  I nodded.

  Mike said, “So you’re going to work instead of looking for Doug?”

  “You said it yourself, they’ll come to us.”

  “They will. But with you out there working they’ll be able to come at us individually. It’s not a smart move.”

  “She’s right. McCoy will arrest us if we interfere.”

  Mike frowned, cracked his knuckles as he considered. He said, “You said the sisters were behind the falls?”

  “Don’t go out there alone, man. Cops will be all over that area.”

  “We need to know what they want.”

  “We need to find a way to get that information without much risk.”

  Mike smiled and rapped my shoulder. “There’s going to be a lot of risk no matter what. Get some rest.”

  After Mike shut off the lights and disappeared in the hall, I kept an eye on the window for a while, lying on my side, afraid again of what the future held; afraid of faces surfacing beyond the glass, pale skulls crystallizing among the murk. The manor lay mostly quiet, only a soft tink, like coins dropped in a cloth-lined bucket to lull me to sleep where one of the sisters waited.

  * * *

  She knelt naked at the foot of my bed. Rotten wisdom teeth fell from her hand—one, two, three—and plinked against the bottom of an onyx vase. My bedroom walls hummed with electricity and cackles of the mad. She said in an old black man’s voice, “You pine for her,” without looking in my direction. She smiled slowly, sitting in profile, left hand holding an olive branch she scraped across the floor. The wisdom teeth rattled in the vase as if under their own power. Images spun around the surface and reflected off the ceiling—dark and deep as outer space, galaxies exploding into existence and extinguished as a golden snake bearing red bands devoured them. I watched it replay over and over, then turned to her as her chest heaved, eyes transfixed, nipples stiff and glinting with sweat. She said, “What if there is no god? What then? Would love be possible? Or only a label for something you create to purge your nightmares for a short time? Or would it only be a tool to connect with someone so you’re not alone anymore?”

  I shivered and climbed from bed. I’d spent my life searching for something greater, sometimes believing the things my father had pounded into my head and that others had attempted to knit to my soul, but my rational mind bucked them all. The best things I’d seen still came from the smallest gestures and from human hands.

  The teeth stilled in the vase. She laughed softly as shadows deepened in the corners and spread along the walls. The air chilled quickly, and slowly, with something akin to faces submerged beneath water, phantoms leaned forward and their faces shone in the darkness. I stepped back, glanced over my shoulder, and noticed more behind me.

  Heart hammering, I said, “Did Nutley kill all of them?”

  “He’s a monster,” she whispered. “You need to stop him.”

  “Or what?”

  She lifted the vase, t
ilted it, and dumped the rotten teeth onto her palm. “Your heart is heavy with grief. If it kills you there is no hope left for anyone.”

  Ghosts murmured.

  Rain dotted the window.

  She said, “We want to see you make the proper choice.”

  She closed her fingers, shook her hand, tossed the teeth like dice and studied them.

  My breath came in shallow gasps. I told myself, It’s just a dream, that’s all, but I had trouble believing that because I was awake, only this room was not my bedroom, this room was wrong, as if things had shifted slightly off-center.

  “It’s real,” the children whispered. “We need you.”

  The sister looked up, held my gaze as the children stretched like taffy, their hands stroking my arms, shoulder, chest, and back. I tried to jerk away. They dug their fingers into my mouth. I tasted soil, blood, vengeance, like a thousand horns blaring around Jericho in my head. They pulled my feet and my back hit the floor. Stars blurred overhead, beyond rattling branches, and I squirmed and screamed, feeling like a woman overpowered as they licked my eyes, their tongues like barbed wire, showing me a stand of dark trees clawing a gray, weeping sky, where the dead were piled into mountains, whispering pain to rocks and dirt, valleys filled with ruined flesh and half-mangled faces.

  EIGHT

  Wednesday…

  Morning light warmed my face. Mike sat at the piano, his fingers hovering over ivory keys, his gaze upon the window. I shook grogginess from my head and stretched, imagining that somehow Nutley and the others would discover I was working a job, turning my back on them and the friend they’d taken, and they’d come for me even if they had to cut a bloody swath through the forest.

  Part of me was tempted to sit and wait, to borrow the money from Mike to pay my bills, but I already owed him more than anyone could imagine. I shuddered, thinking of the manor’s basement and half-remembered faces of demons, the searing pain of a knife in my upper chest, and the cold chill of betrayal.

  Mike said, “Are you thinking about April and Ethan again?”

  I shook my head. “Thinking about Proserpine and One of Three of Seven.” I stood. Mike had set a folded suit on the arm of the couch for me. It was elegant and soft. He said, “It’ll help you look professional. Half the battle with your new job will be image.”

  I nodded. “What will the other half be?”

  “Handling your temper when you see something horrible. What are you thinking about Proserpine for? She’s gone.”

  “Thinking about how human she seemed.”

  “Greed and lust aren’t just a human condition. Angels and demons, animals and vegetation, all fight for what they need to survive. Don’t take it personal. She’s gone. I doubt she’s coming back from wherever you sent her that night.”

  But I hadn’t sent her anywhere. Whatever magic Uncle Red had worked did. I’d never had the courage to ask him, and neither had Mike as far as I knew, because being ignorant is so much less burdensome than being aware. I said, “What’s your plan for today?”

  “Be careful out there. Walk with your eyes open and your mind clear. I’m guessing that they’ll fan out. They’re not all going to stay together. We’re going to have to figure out what we’re up against, and find a way to destroy them…”

  Before they destroy us, I thought. Like daily life wasn’t hard enough. I looked at my watch, figured I had an hour before I had to be in LaPorte, which gave me a half hour to get ready. I dressed quickly and wished Mike luck, then stopped in downtown Division, parked alongside the curb, and stared up at Uncle Red’s hardware store. The lights were out this early, but that didn’t mean he was sleeping. A dark, enclosed stairwell ran the north side of the building to his apartment up top. I got out and glanced at the boarded-up windows of White’s veterinarian shop. One of April’s last moments with me had been in there. Far as I was concerned they could knock that building down. It was like a stain upon the town now. But people averted their eyes, pretended it wasn’t there, the way they do when they don’t want to acknowledge that they didn’t know what was happening right beneath their noses, right down the street from where they tucked their children into bed, while lying and telling themselves that the world was safe, that they could have anything they wanted if they just worked hard enough.

  Blood and chaos were all around us, and this was how we dealt with it.

  At the top of the steps I rapped on the door, trying to glare around the curtain, half expecting Nutley to draw me in to where Lucas waited on the couch with Red’s withered head braced upon his knee. I stuffed a hand in my pocket and waited. A floorboard creaked inside. Red said, “Who’s there?” because he hardly ever had company. Most of the folks his age didn’t associate with him, thinking him some kind of eccentric because he always wore these black velvet gloves, and he isolated himself by nature. But they missed out on a lot because he gave as much of himself as he was able, and he cared deeply for everyone despite their hang-ups.

  “It’s John, Uncle Red. You got a minute? I’m in a hurry.”

  He opened the door. His hair stuck up in all directions, his hands fiddled with the unbuttoned striped pajama top he wore. He smiled, glad to see me, as his eyes began to sparkle before he sniffed and said, “You in trouble?”

  I nodded, feeling weaker around him than I felt in the presence of others. He was my mom’s brother, and when she’d died of a stroke, while my father played tough, Red had held me and we’d cried together, unashamed, any image we’d built to project to the world crumbling beneath the weight of death and closeness and honesty. He had that look on his face again, as if he knew something tragic had happened. He placed a gloved hand on my shoulder and pulled me inside, then shut the door softly. On the couch, I told him about the new job, about Nutley, Lucas, and Duncan, how the mist had risen from the trees like bands of roots, and lastly I mentioned the three sisters who had saved me from the cult, but in turn demonstrated powers that terrified me far more than Nutley and his followers ever could.

  Red said, “What do you plan to do?”

  “I’m going to work. Mike will probably go back into the woods looking for Doug.”

  “He shouldn’t go alone. And you shouldn’t be working right now.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Face them,” he said, as he leaned forward. “Call them out. They want a battle, pull up what you have inside and give it to them. Things like this don’t just go away. Didn’t you learn that from what happened months back?”

  “Whatever happened in the manor’s basement was luck. Nothing else. And you know what it cost me? A big hospital bill. It cost April running away and killing herself. And Ethan.”

  “You’re wrong. You won that battle because you have so much good and bad tangled up inside you, but you chose to use the good anyway. Because you fought with your heart and imagination. That’s all that was ever in that bowl I gave you. Those two things. You’re special, John. You always have been. But with it comes more responsibility than you can imagine, and I hope and pray to whatever gods will listen that you never destroy yourself.”

  “Thanks. That’s just what I want to hear.”

  “Truth,” he said. “You’re going to sit back and wait for them to come to you? While they do whatever the hell to your friend?”

  “What am I supposed to do about it?”

  “Call them out. Make a stand.”

  “And what about the sisters?”

  “What about them?”

  “I don’t know where they stand. They killed a cop like this…” I snapped my fingers. “No trouble. No remorse. Yet in my dreams they want me to stop Nutley. It doesn’t make any sense. They could do it themselves.”

  “Maybe they can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Who knows. Maybe they want to teach you something.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to be taught. I didn’t ask for any of this. And I’m sick of people throwing their hate onto other people.”

  “That�
�s life, John. Cold, hard, and brutal. It’s never going to change.”

  I glanced at my watch. “I have to leave in ten minutes.”

  “Says you.”

  “I can’t skip out on work. I already told her I’d come in.”

  “If she loves Duncan as much as you say then in the end she’ll understand why you had to cut out, because no one is going to bring him back but you and Michael. You boys have destiny waiting on you. And if it waits too long it builds momentum. Then wham!” He smacked his hands together. “You’re caught in the middle of night and day, broken and bleeding beside those you could have once saved. But by then it’s too late.”

  Jesus, I thought, I came to him for direction, but nothing changed there. He’d always been bent on men making their own choices and standing by them.

  “You going to go help your friend instead of making him face this alone?”

  “I’m doing what I promised Kim. I’m going to work. If nothing turns up by tonight in regard to Doug then I’ll find the sisters and I’ll find Nutley.”

  “I think you’re making a mistake by waiting. Nothing ever gets better by avoiding it.” His aged face surrounded young, angry eyes. They were my mother’s eyes, Piccirilli eyes, and a side of him that people seldom saw. He said, “All we have in life hangs by a thread.”

  I shivered, thinking of the thread-bearing sister. I said, “No kidding. I was reminded of that just recently.”

  “It’s fine to be frightened. Normal. But those things that took Doug could destroy his mind while you dilly-dally around. Look at Wylie, what price he paid for waiting to bring it all out into the light. Look how Michael’s mother died without anyone to love her because she hid her deepest darkness away and let it poison any good she might have once had. The time for action is always now. Follow your instincts. Commit.”

  “What if I’m a coward?”

  “You don’t know cowardice, John. But I do.” His eyes drifted toward a picture on the wall and he frowned. Sunlight glared through the window and blurred the image and I was tempted to stand to see what it was that disturbed him so much, what had made him feel he’d once been a coward, when all he’d ever done is stand for what he thought was right. I’d known him my whole life but only knew fragments of his history, though from what he’d shown me in Jim White’s shop I knew he was far from ordinary, so much more than what people saw on the surface. I said, “Can you help us?”