Heretics

by Greg F. Gifune

  “How’d you like it if we lit your ass on fire?” Rip says. “Aren’t you supposed to burn witches?”

  Laughter. They’re laughing. They’re laughing and Harry feels the anger boiling inside him, coming close to the surface, rising…rising…

  He stepped over a fallen beam, into an area where no structural evidence remained, just a patch of charred debris and dead earth. The bedroom. This was where her bedroom had been. His eyes panned the ground to one corner of the area. There. The bed had been right there.

  In the corner is a small stone altar above which is hung a metal sculpture of a sun god with feline-shaped eyes and a ring of flames encircling his face, his mouth a grim thin line. The altar is slight, only a few feet high and designed to be knelt in front of. Madeline smashes the nearly empty gasoline container into it and pushes it over. Her bare feet slip and slide about on the wet floor, and her breasts shake, bounce as she stumbles, reaches for the sun god and tears it from the wall. Harry remembers that she is still nude, has been throughout, and there is something absurd and disturbing about it all at once. She and Rip howl with delight, their amusement the laughter of the insane, the diseased.

  Careful to avoid a particularly large pile of wreckage, Harry approached the far corner. Once there, he crouched down again, looking for any trace of what had been destroyed. Madeline had followed him, he was sure of it, but he continued to ignore her.

  Rip seems to notice her nudity again as well, and turns to the beaten woman on her knees next to him. He pulls down the front of her nightgown, rips it open with a single savage tug. Heavy tan breasts fall free, and she begins to struggle, to plead with them. “Leave me,” she says, “leave me, leave me.”

  Rip slaps her, looks to Madeline. “Hold her,” he says.

  She runs to help, grips her by the throat and pushes her back so that her head hits the edge of the mattress. Fortunata’s eyes slide to the side and find Harry. “Don’t let them do this.”

  Them.

  Harry feels the dagger slip from his hand. “Stop it!” It bounces along the floor as he rushes between them, pushes Madeline out of the way and grabs Rip by the front of his shirt—a shirt wet with Fortunata’s blood—and slams him against the far wall. “For Christ’s sake, stop it!”

  “Aldea del sol.”

  This time Harry took the bait. Fortunata stood where the doorway to the bedroom had once been. Her hair was long and full, her dark eyes clear and bright. She looked much healthier than he remembered, much better than when he’d taken her in his arms and placed her on the gasoline soaked mattress that night, all those years before.

  “Aldea del sol,” she said again. “It means Village of the sun. It’s where I was born, where I was raised and lived until I met Madeline and her father. It is a place of light, of goodness and beauty, do you understand? A place of healing, a place to find protection from evil.”

  Harry nodded, and just like that night could not find the words to express the conflicting thoughts and emotions surging through him.

  He kneels next to the bed, looks into her swollen eyes and battered face then rises to his feet, fists at his side. “We can’t do this, we—it’s wrong, it’s all wrong,” Harry says, and then, as if to himself. “What…what the hell are we doing?”

  Rip is still leaned against the wall that Harry slammed him into moments before. Madeline watches from near the bedroom doorway. “Punishing her,” she says.

  Harry whirls around, notices that she has retrieved the dagger from the floor and now holds it in her hand, down against the side of her thigh.

  “Think about what she did to Madeline,” Rip growls. “Think about what she’s been doing to her for years.”

  Fortunata moved through the rubble with a long, carefree stride. This version of her, Madeline’s version, the pristine version she was allowing him to see had a nightgown free of blood and gasoline and a nearly angelic aura about her. Just one more lie in a string of many, Harry thought.

  “Her father had been through a great deal with Madeline,” Fortunata said. She studied the remains of a half wall then gazed beyond it to the distant ocean. “Her mother was a tortured woman. Maybe the same things that touched Madeline haunted her—I don’t know—but I believe that when she saw those things in her daughter it was too much for her to bear. Madeline’s father explained to me that she had left them, and that he was having problems with his daughter, that she was seeing things, talking to things that no one else could see. He had taken her to doctors and priests and all else he could think of.” She looked at Harry, a slight smile on her full lips. “But this is an ancient evil, older than any medicine, older than any church. I saw in her from the first day that she was touched, marked by these beings. Demons were all around her, ancient and very powerful. I saw them in her, knew what they were even before she did. She was still a young child when I met her, she did not yet know the nature of the things she could see and hear. I went with him, not to hurt her but to try to use the things I knew to help her, to move her toward the light and away from the darkness.”

  Rip pushes himself away from the wall, the rage still evident in his face. “We’re gonna teach that bitch a lesson,” he says.

  Harry blocks his path to the bed. “What if she didn’t do these things?” He waits for Madeline to object, to ask him why he suddenly no longer believes her accusations, but she remains silent.

  Rip moves closer, so close their faces nearly touch. “What if she did?”

  She touches the jagged edge of the wall in remembrance. “But the older she became, the more powerful they allowed her to be. When she finally realized her promise, it frightened her. Like most mortal souls selected to become saints or evil spirits, it makes no difference, in the beginning they believe they’re insane, that their world and visions are not, cannot be real. Madeline believed this, at first, and as long as she did I could control her, I could protect her father, and protect her even from herself. But she wasn’t meant to remain in this world, and once she embraced the power, she knew—just as I did—that nothing, no magic, no prayers could stop her. It wasn’t her father and it wasn’t me, but there were things crawling into bed with her at night, she wasn’t insane.” Despite the intolerable heat, Fortunata hugged herself as if cold. “She was damned.”

  Harry remembered those words, remembered when she had first spoken them that very night, lying on the bed and struggling to remain conscious, hoping to warn them even then that they had no idea what they had become a part of. Still shivering, she turned toward the sea. Harry followed her gaze. The sun was beginning to set, its earlier brilliance slowly receding and dimming the sky as it moved closer to the watery horizon. Even before he returned his eyes to the spot where she was standing, he knew she’d be gone.

  “Just you and me, Madeline,” he said. “Same as always.”

  A gentle breeze blew up off the water and over the edge of the cliffs, but it was a hot wind, not a refreshing one. As it passed the ruins and slipped in among the trees at the far end of the property, rustling branches and leaves, he heard Madeline whisper…

  “Madeline giveth, and Madeline taketh away.”

  Rip paces slowly back and forth near the doorway, his hands to his head. His gait is joyless and plodding, like a circus animal walking its cage.

  Harry turns his attention to Madeline. “Is she telling the truth? Did she and your father really do those things to you?”

  Madeline smiles, the dagger gently taps her bare thigh, but she offers no answer.

  Rip drops his hand; his eyes moist and glazed, the anger in them subsided and replaced with frantic sorrow. “Of course they did,” he says quietly. “Tell him, Madeline. Tell him it’s true.”

  Fortunata moans, distracts them.

  “What if I told you that my father really isn’t on a business trip?” Madeline asks playfully. “What if I told you that he’s been here all along, that he’s been in the house the entire time? Would you be angry with me?”

  A rupture o
f anxiety disguised as laughter escapes Rip. “That’s not—there’s no way, he—he would’ve known we were here.”

  “Oh, but through me all things are possible.” Madeline giggled nearby. “I always have enjoyed blasphemy so.”

  “Blasphemy. Interesting word choice,” Harry said, still watching the sun. “Believing in God these days, Madeline?”

  “Even a heretic has to believe in God on some level,” she told him. “There has to be something to be heretical about, doesn’t there? Otherwise it’s dissention against nothing. Without God, how can there be true sacrilege?”

  “Why would you betray God?” Harry sighed. “Why would you betray us?”

  “I didn’t betray anyone. I loved you. I loved you both.”

  “You used us.”

  “No, I set you free. Look at me, Harry. Look into my eyes.”

  Harry’s heart violently pounds his chest. “Where is he, Madeline?”

  “No, he’s not here, he can’t be, he—Madeline, he’s not here,” Rip says as his eyes dart between her and Harry. “He can’t be here, he would’ve heard—would’ve—”

  “If you’re quiet it’s amazing what you can do to someone while they’re asleep, what you can do to them before they wake up, and…and when they do, it’s too late for them to stop you, isn’t it? It’s too late, and they’re only awake long enough to know that they’re in pain. Agonizing pain.”

  Harry staggers toward the doorway, grabs Rip by the arm and pulls him along.

  “Don’t leave me.”

  They stop in the doorway, look back. Madeline has climbed onto the bed with Fortunata. She is on her knees, the woman’s back to her chest. She wraps one arm around her midsection, holds the dagger against Fortunata’s throat with the other.

  “Madeline, don’t.” Harry steps back into the room.

  She tightens her grip on Fortunata, shakes her like a ragdoll, the point of the dagger pressed against the soft skin at the base of her throat. “Tell them the truth.” She tries to speak but gags on the blood and gasoline still seeping from her mouth. Madeline throttles her again. “Tell them the fucking truth!”

  “Ella esta’ del oscuro.”

  “She is of the dark,” Harry said, drifting among the ruins. Slowly, he made his way from the bungalow and returned to the path that lead back to the main house. “I’ll never forget those words.”

  “Mmm, terribly melodramatic right to the end, wasn’t she?”

  Madeline smiles, punctures Fortunata’s flesh with the dagger then runs it across her throat in one fluid motion. Blood sprays the air and walls, mixes with Rip’s screams, Fortunata’s gurgling and gagging and the deafening pounding in Harry’s temples. Madeline releases her, watches as she slumps over, collapses to the mattress, lifeless arms flopping at her side, her throat slashed so deeply that her severed windpipe is exposed and her head hangs by mere threads of skin and muscle, dangles over the edge of the bed, eyes rolling back to oblivion as blood gushes from the wound and her wheezing slowly subsides. A series of spasms wrack her body, and then she lies still.

  Rip stumbles backward through the door.

  Madeline stabs the body again and again, washes in the blood, rubs it over herself with each spraying burst. Her bloody mask of a face and naked crimson flesh glisten beneath the light of the moon, the whites of her eyes accentuated in the near-dark.

  “Look at me, Harry.”

  Ignoring her command, he continued along the path toward the main house.

  “Come with me.”

  “Is that why I’m here?” he asked without turning around. “Is that what you want?”

  “I’ve always wanted us to be together, Harry. The three of us, forever.”

  “And you don’t think we will be?” He stopped, studied the ruins of the house. “How could we not? Besides, what any of us wants or doesn’t want is fundamentally irrelevant, you saw to that years ago.”

  Harry runs from the room, pushing Rip ahead of him. They stagger through the door and into the night, disoriented as the cold air hits them. Rip is shaking so violently he can barely control his body. “I can’t be here.” He repeats the phrase again and again, along with a string of indecipherable gibberish.

  “We never were,” Harry tells him. “Go.”

  Rip stares at him helplessly.

  “Go!”

  As if suddenly cognizant of what the word means, Rip bolts across the yard and disappears in the darkness.

  Harry runs for the main house.

  The night is dying. It is nearly dawn.

  “You’re the best of me. You and Rip always were.”

  “We only tried to be your friends, Madeline.”

  “Oh, you had more of a taste for me than that.”

  It’s true, he thought. Their innocence was long dead even then.

  “Tell me,” she said, pausing to run the tip of her tongue along the side of his throat. “Do you pray for me?”

  Harry charges through the sunroom, across the destroyed remnants littering the anteroom floor and hits the staircase at a full run. The hallway sways before him, blurring then returning to focus, his breath labored and his chest aching. Without breaking stride he slams into the first closed door with his shoulder. It gives way far easier than expected. He staggers through the doorway but the shades and curtains on the windows have been pulled, casting the room in total darkness. He regains his balance, searches the wall until he locates a switch and flips it, flooding the room with light from a large ceiling fixture.

  “I pray for all of us,” Harry answered.

  Madeline nibbled his earlobe. “How noble.”

  “Why did you do it, Madeline?” he asked, still refusing to look behind him, still refusing to look at her. “Why the hell did you do it?”

  “People get what they deserve in this life.”

  “No. You’re no martyr.”

  “Why are you so sure I’m a devil? What if I’m an avenging angel?”

  Harry stands frozen. The bed and furniture—everything in the room—has been destroyed nearly beyond recognition, the result of an incomprehensible violence and rage beyond anger, beyond malevolence. Blood covers the walls and floor in indiscriminate sprays and puddles but has been purposely placed in certain areas, as there are handprints everywhere—like child’s play—palms covered in paint then pressed to paper. On the opposite wall there are markings in blood, strange symbols and words he does not recognize. Rancid smells like those from an open sewer waft about, lure his eyes to what lies at the foot of the bed, and the floor beyond it.

  Bruce Martin. In pieces.

  Harry’s eyes filled, and the ruins blurred. “God help me.”

  “In addition to a rather substantial stock of gasoline for the boats, my father kept a wide range of tools in the boathouse, among them the most beautiful ax. He was dead long before either of you arrived. That’s why my hair was still damp when you got to the house. I’d just gotten out of the shower. He was asleep when I crept into the room. The first swing I brought down across his shoulder. I was actually quite stunned at how easily his arm came right off. It took three swings before his head came free, but in all fairness, he’d started moving around and screaming by then.”

  “Why did you do it?” he asked again.

  “Because they told me to.”

  “Why did you listen?”

  “Because it was time.”

  Harry stands looking down at the dismembered body. One leg is draped over the foot of the bed, bent at the knee, the foot dangling, not quite touching the floor. The other is on the opposite side of the room, as if thrown there randomly. The trunk of a torso is on the floor just feet from him, the genitals removed and mutilated to near obliteration, the chest and abdominal cavities crudely torn open and emptied, viscera strewn and trailing dark red wakes from one end of the room to the other, as if she’d been skipping while tossing them about. The arms and hands are scattered, and like bloody ropes of demonic garland, his intestines are strung across a floor
lamp, the remains of a bureau, and the edge of the bedpost. The head is missing.

  Harry falls back through the door and runs down the hallway, but even before he reaches the balcony and the top of the stairs, he can see the orange flames through the windows downstairs, hear them crackling, lighting the sky as fire sweeps through the bungalow and heads toward the main house.

  Dusk had settled in. The ocean was calm and the humidity had begun to lessen as the once fiery orange glare of the sun had been reduced to a dull red ball just barely visible on the horizon. Harry moved from the ruins of the house and started toward the cliffs. The tall grass brushed his waist, and the uneven ground made walking difficult, but he trudged through it to a narrow section of sandy dirt at the very edge of the precipice. Madeline made sure he could hear her following him through the grass, made sure he could again smell the sickening stink of burning flesh.

  “But why then?” he finally asked, still without turning around. “Why that night?”

  “I wanted us to cross as one, for it to be the three of us forever,” she answered. “Forever, Harry.”

  As he descends the stairs he sees Madeline in the anteroom below. She has donned a frock-like garment apparently taken from the bungalow, and dances around with a fresh container of gasoline. Beforehand, she has poured a good amount of it over herself and now splashes it about the room as she dances, eyes trained on Harry throughout.

  He moves down the long staircase, no longer bothering to run, and by the time he reaches the floor, the container is empty and Madeline has retrieved a burning candle from the corner of the room.

  Before the flames, the screams, the smoke and the acrid stench, before the blood, her hair is wet. The strands dangle near her jaw line, matted, twisted and dripping with gasoline. She smiles at him then, the squat candle clutched in her hands and held out before her as if in sacrifice to unseen gods, the tiny flame dancing, casting shadow-spirits along the pale walls. The look in her eyes signals nothing can ever be the same; that nothing will ever be all right again. She offers a bloody hand. “Come with me, Harry.”

  He slowly shakes his head in the negative.