Heretics

by Greg F. Gifune

  The air had grown thicker.

  “For Christ’s sake, is it humid enough in here?” Harry pulled the handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away another wave of perspiration blanketing his face. “No matter where I go it keeps getting hotter and hotter.”

  “That’s what happens.” A drop of sweat trickled from behind Rip’s sunglasses and down across his cheek. “The closer you get to Hell.”

  8

  The house was small and set back from the road, a sparse patch of forest behind it. Just outside Harry’s bedroom window was a sloping section of roof where he and Rip would often sit and talk. It was a quiet spot removed from everything and everyone, where they could watch the stars and night skies, or the fishing vessels docked at the wharf across the street. Whenever Rip slept over, or on those nights when he didn’t want to go home until late, when he knew for sure his father would have already drank himself into unconsciousness, he and Harry would spend hours sitting up on the roof talking and dreaming. On the two occasions Rip had been arrested as a juvenile and sent away to reform school, once for six months on a drug possession charge and once for four months on a breaking and entering charge, Harry had refrained from climbing out onto the roof until Rip returned home. It never seemed right unless they were both there.

  Since the previous spring, they’d spent most of their time up there talking and dreaming about Madeline, and just days after Harry had first seen the inside of her home and met her father, the two found themselves laying on the rooftop contemplating their next meeting. Most of the snow that had accumulated had already begun to melt and had slid away from the sloping roof, but the shingles were still damp and cold, so they brought an old blanket with them.

  “Little chilly for this tonight,” Rip said, pulling his jacket tighter around him.

  Harry checked his watch. “Still got almost an hour.”

  “We’ll leave in about twenty minutes then, okay? We’ll take my bike up as far as the dunes then we’ll ditch it down in the tall grass where no one will see it and climb straight up to Madeline’s house.”

  “Cool,” Harry agreed.

  “It’s freezing on the bike this time of year, so get ready. This ain’t exactly motorcycle weather, but until I can afford a car it beats walking.”

  “Definitely.”

  Rip lit a cigarette. “Hey, you think anything’s gonna happen?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You know how I mean. One of us might end up in the sack with her.”

  Harry took the cigarette from him, took a drag and handed it back. “I don’t think Madeline thinks of us like that.”

  “Yeah she does. She just can’t make up her mind which one of us she wants.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Cut the shit, this is me you’re talking to. You telling me you don’t think about her like that?”

  “That’s not what I said.” Harry allowed a slight smile. “I don’t think she thinks of us like that.”

  “And I’m telling you she does.”

  “Okay, stud, like you have any clue.”

  “Fine. Remember all those times we went skinny-dipping last summer? What the hell you think that was about?”

  “Just having fun. Shit, it was too dark to see anything anyway, and nothing ever happened besides swimming.”

  “Well what girl’s gonna even do that if she’s not thinking the same shit we are?”

  “Madeline’s not any girl. She’s a one and only.”

  “True, but what do you think tonight’s about? You think she’s inviting us both over in the middle of the night when her father’s out of town so we can go over there and play cards or something? Use your fucking head, dude.”

  Harry stuffed his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket as a breeze kicked in off the ocean. Even the sea smelled different in this neighborhood, like work, not play. “Besides, we shouldn’t talk about Madeline like this. She’s not some tramp. She’s our friend.”

  “You’re in love with her,” Rip said through a smoky sigh.

  “So are you.”

  “Never said I wasn’t, dude.”

  Harry smiled but looked away. “Wait until you see the inside of that house. It’s like something on TV.”

  “Creepy though, you said.”

  “Yeah, definitely.” Harry struggled to find the appropriate words before he spoke again. “Rip, there’s shit going on there. I don’t know what, exactly, but it’s bad.”

  “You think it’s got something to do with that maid? From what you were telling me it sounds like Madeline can’t stand the bitch.” He took a hard pull on his cigarette then flicked it out into the night. “Or you think it’s about her old man?”

  “I don’t know, but—”

  “Yeah, but what do you think?”

  Harry shivered from what he assumed was the cold night air. “That it might have something to do with both of them.”

  “Well, you said her father was a dickhead.”

  “Yeah, real fancy-ass piece of shit.”

  “We all got our shit to deal with, Harry.” Rip shrugged.

  Sadly, parental abuse and horror at home were nothing new to him, and although they had never discussed specifics, Harry knew the kinds of things that happened to inmates even in juvenile prisons. Rip was too young to be littered with such scars, his torment not the typical maudlin teenage angst found in so many young people, but pain that had been realized, and in comparison Harry often felt less worthy, as if the darkness clouding his soul was more abstract and therefore not entirely valid. As for Madeline, perhaps it was worse for her, perhaps not. Like usual, she remained just beyond his reach, her mysteries safely tucked away.

  “I have a feeling she’s going to tell us tonight,” Harry said.

  “Maybe so.”

  “I’m not sure I want to know, Rip.”

  “Me either.”

  “You believe in all that stuff she talks about?”

  “Don’t matter if I believe it. It gets her through the day and night, right?”

  Headlights emerged below, broke the darkness then vanished quickly as a car sped off along the bend in the road.

  “I wonder sometimes,” Harry said. “I wonder if it’s all real.”

  “Let me tell you something.” Rip laid back, stretched his legs out. “Sometimes people go off in their minds, you know what I mean? It’s like…like when my old man’s on the fucking rampage. I learned a long time ago to just go someplace else in my mind. So when he’s screaming and pounding on me it’s like—like I ain’t even there while he’s doing it. I’m gone. Just gone to a place in my head where nobody can find me. But it’s just my imagination, dude. It ain’t for real. It’s all in my head. Just a thing your mind does to help you out, like a kind of escape. It’s the same with Madeline, it’s just dreaming.” His dark eyes reflected moonlight. “But I know this much: like you said, some fucked up shit must be going on, ‘cause you don’t escape that deep unless the real world is so harsh you can’t deal with it no more.”

  “What if it’s only innocent daydreams, Rip? What if nothing that bad is happening to her but she’s just an eccentric girl who needs to dream about other places that aren’t really there? What if that’s all it is?”

  “Is that what you think? You just got through telling me bad things were going on in that house.” He shook his head as if hoping to dislodge annoying thoughts. “It’s in the air, dude. I can feel it. It’s like when I was in juvenile last time. Some nights bad shit goes down. Nobody says nothing but you know it’s coming, you feel it. Something’s gonna happen. Something bad. It gets all quiet—the only time that happens in there—real still, like now.”

  “The calm before the storm.”

  “Yeah. Well I got that same kind of feeling tonight.”

  “Me too,” Harry said. “Maybe we should forget about it and just hang here.”

  “You afraid?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “The Ripper Man’s no
t afraid of nothing.”

  “Jesus, man, swing by an English class now and then, will you?”

  They sat on the roof laughing quietly so as not to awaken the rest of the house, and for a few minutes all was right with the world.

  In time, the moment passed.

  “Seriously,” Harry said, “maybe we shouldn’t go.”

  Without answering, Rip checked his watch then crept across the slope and onto a flat shelf of roof closer to the ground. He swung his legs over the gutter and dropped away into darkness, a muffled thud breaking the silence a second later. Harry sighed but followed, careful to move quietly along the shingles before rolling off the edge to the ground below.

  They pulled Rip’s motorcycle from where he had parked it behind the house and wheeled it along the driveway and across the street. The night winds increased the closer they got to the water but they continued on without speaking until they had put enough distance between themselves and Harry’s house to start the engine without waking anyone.

  “Rip, maybe we—”

  “Hold on tight and keep your face low.” Rip tossed him the only helmet. “It’s gonna be cold as a bitch riding tonight.”

  “Rip,” Harry said again, “maybe we shouldn’t go.”

  “Fuck it.” He straddled the bike and looked back over his shoulder at him, smiling his mischievous, shark-like grin. “Let’s go see what we can see.”

  9

  A single shaft of bright sunshine spilled through the only window, splitting the small room in two. Harry watched dust motes dance in the beam, ignored a strong desire to smoke a cigarette and instead wiped a trickle of sweat from the corner of his eye. The walls had begun to perspire too, but with blood. It ran slowly to the baseboards, leaving behind streaks and stains of watery crimson, the only wall unaffected the one behind the bed bearing the crucifix. Harry shook his head. Come on, Madeline, you can do better than hackneyed effects from some low-budget horror movie.

  “Is that what’s happening, Rip?” he asked softly. “Am I getting closer to Hell?”

  Rather than answering the question, he asked one of his own. “Remember how cold it was that night?” He smiled quickly, as if fearful it might be noticed. “What other damn fool besides me rode a motorcycle all year round, even in the dead of winter?”

  Harry closed his eyes, saw them on the bike, flying along the winding coastal roads of Virtue, the night air so cold his ears were ringing, the headlight cutting the darkness in a single pool ahead of them, trees rushing past on one side and the blur of ocean on the other.

  When he opened his eyes and escaped the memories, the room came back into focus.

  The blood was gone.

  “Her old house,” Harry said, “it’s still there?”

  Rip gave a nod. “The ruins are. I didn’t know if it was still standing, hadn’t been there since that night, but they never did nothing with the property.”

  “They couldn’t have sold it anyway,” Harry said. “Not after what happened.”

  This time, without closing his eyes and still watching the sunbeam, he remembered hopping off the motorcycle and helping Rip walk it down across the dunes and into the tall grass. The wind was fierce near the water’s edge, biting and stiff, the waves deafening as they crashed the beach. The smells and sounds and sensations had brought him around that night, awakened him like a sleepwalker gradually breaking the bounds of some shadowy netherworld, and as they headed toward Madeline’s house his anxiety had only increased.

  “I knew there couldn’t be much left,” Rip said.

  The sound of his voice dissolved Harry’s memory of them at the end of the long driveway, crouched in darkness and watching the house.

  “I saw it burn,” he went on. “I remember the flames shooting so high in the sky it didn’t seem real. Even after the cops got there, it—”

  Harry felt his pulse quicken. “But you were gone by then.”

  He gripped his cane with both hands, tapped it gently against the floor. “I left but I was scared, man. I was so fucking scared, I didn’t know what to do. I ran down the cliffs and out to the beach, ended up sitting out on the stone jetty. I saw the flames, saw the lights from the cops and the fire trucks when they showed up—saw everything from down there.” The cane tapped the floor a bit harder. “Sat there for—shit, I don’t know how long—seemed like hours. I wanted to step off into the water and swim until I couldn’t swim no more. Kept telling myself to do it, to just let the ocean take me.” He sighed heavily. “Most days, I wish to hell I had.”

  His final statement was the first admission that despite his affliction perhaps his life hadn’t been put back together into such wonderful order after all.

  All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…

  “I saw you come down onto the dunes,” Rip said a moment later.

  “Why didn’t you stop me?”

  “I wouldn’t have gotten to you in time anyway. I was too far out, at the very tip of the jetty. The ocean was so noisy no one would’ve heard me even if I had screamed to you, but I wasn’t thinking straight.” His grip on the cane was so severe that it began to bow and quiver. “I watched you go, watched you run back across the sand toward the road and then you were gone in the dark. Never…never did see you again.”

  “I wanted to talk to you,” Harry confessed, “but with the cops and all it was too dangerous to see you. Rip, I tried everything I could think of but they were on my ass, they—”

  “They were on mine too.”

  “They would’ve thought we were working out our stories or something.”

  “They picked me up the next morning,” Rip told him.

  “Me too.”

  “They wanted us bad, Harry.”

  “Dunham was convinced we were guilty.”

  “Dunham. You know that motherfucker’s still chief of police?”

  “Christ, how old is he now?”

  “Early seventies. He’s retiring this year, right after all the tourists go home.” His grip on the cane loosened. “If he could’ve found anything even close to evidence on us—anything at all—we would’ve rotted in prison for the rest of our lives.”

  Harry turned, stepped into the sunlight and looked out the window at the street below. “Guess there’s more than one kind of prison.”

  “I burned my clothes that morning in the wood stove at home before my parents got up,” Rip said. “There was blood all over them.”

  “I did the same thing, got into bed before my parents got up or even knew I’d been gone. They swore I’d been home all night. Saved my ass, probably. But people acted different afterward, even them. People were afraid of me. Me.” Harry let out an irritated laugh. “People in town, even my own family didn’t know what to make of me. They never had but…things changed after that night.”

  “Nothing like that ever happened in Virtue, Harry. This is a small town. We were weird, we were friends, I had a record—most people figured we had to be involved.”

  “The day after, when they picked me up, Dunham and those other assholes questioned me for hours, kept me there until well after dark.”

  “I was right down the hall,” Rip told him. “Every time they left you they came to see me. Kept telling me all this stuff you supposedly said, but I knew it was bullshit. It was killing Dunham too, ‘cause he’d always won before when it came to me, he was always the one with the cuffs and the power, but that time, that one fucking time, he couldn’t prove shit. He knew if I stuck to my story he’d have to let me go and there wasn’t a goddamn thing he could do about it.”

  “My father sat in on the questioning,” Harry said. “Poor bastard just sat there in the corner in this folding chair with his hands in his lap. Couple times I looked over at him and he had his eyes closed and his lips were moving but he didn’t make a sound.”

  “He was praying.”

  “Yeah, only I didn’t know then what he was praying for.” Harry leaned against the wall next to the window, his gaze stil
l fixed on the street below. “When we finally got home I went into my room and collapsed on my bed. I was lying there staring at the ceiling and trying to figure out what the fuck I was going to do when he came in and sat at my desk. He never looked as old to me as he did that night, my father. I never saw him cry but I knew he had been because his eyes looked the same as my mother’s had when we’d walked through the door. All red and puffy, dark circles beneath them.

  “I sat up,” Harry continued, “and he just sat there staring at the floor. I knew somewhere inside him he was trying to understand, trying to do in a couple hours what it takes a lifetime to do, trying to get to know his other son, trying to figure out just what the hell it was sitting across from him. We sat there for a long while before he said anything, and when he did he looked up from the floor and said, ‘You did it, didn’t you, Harry?’ He said it softly, without a trace of anger in his voice. But it wasn’t a question, not really.”

  “What’d you say?”

  Harry looked back at the wreckage that had once been his best friend, sitting there on the edge of the bed with his black sunglasses and white cane and the nightmares both shared. “Nothing.”

  Both men remained quiet for a time.

  “Just like us, he never really recovered,” Harry said. “He had a bad heart for as long as I can remember, but my mother was always strong. She could’ve survived without him, just never wanted to. When I heard he’d died, I knew she’d follow right after him. She never forgave me for him. Far as she was concerned, I’d killed him. I thought running would work—going away and staying gone—that leaving this town behind would make things right again but…”

  “That’s how it is when you go back up to the cliffs,” Rip said, sitting forward as if worried Harry might not hear him. “You think it’ll bring you peace or closure or whatever the hell you want to call it. You think it’ll make it so things might finally make sense, but it only gets worse, Harry. Madeline gets worse, you understand?”