They walked toward the sound cautiously and saw a slim pale leg sticking out from the bracken, an arm resting on a bed of pebbles, a streaming flow of golden red hair rippling in the water towards them. The old man went closer, keeping Simon behind him. It was Ivy Farthing, her face half covered in water. Simon gasped, as much from the startling sight before him as for the fact that he’d never seen a woman naked before.
The old man visualized a small black bird in his mind and called out in his soundless voice. “I need you, my beauty.”
A moment later the old man had a response. A small black bird flew to his shoulder. “Fetch her and bring her here,” the old man whispered to the bird and it flew off.
***
Mitch got up, went to the tent and came back with a crow bar. He shoved the end under the thick concrete plate and drove it deep, wedging it far enough to dislodge it and push it away with his hands. “Simon, are you down there, please? I’m coming.” But what he saw wasn’t Simon.
It was the skeletal remains of a creature, the lower body structured like an animal; small bone remains of wings, the skull bearing horns and fangs; in its arms the same creature but smaller, an infant. He heard a voice, a woman’s voice, calling from above him in an ancient language that he didn’t understand, but again, did understand. He looked up.
The wind began to blow furiously, gusts so strong the trees bent under the pressure, swaying in all directions. He heard the call of owls, screeching and fluttering, thousands of them calling from the forest around him. “Dig! Son of Adam. DIG!”
He looked back down to the hole. The soil was churning, falling away, deep heaving breaths; mounds forming under his hands as he pulled the soil away.
A gritty moan, hitching and coughing; a chest taking deep breaths. He pushed more soil away, breasts, arms around his neck and a…face; Ivy Farthing’s face. “Mitchell,” a breathless, sandy, grit filled whisper came into his ear. He pulled back, looking into her eyes; wide and hungry with lust.
Fluidly, she got up on her hands and knees; sleek and sensuous like a tigress. Her face smiling, she backed around, exposing herself, reaching behind with her hand to part herself for him. “Smell her scent as mixed with mine, son of Adam, and become strong in thy loins,” she cooed, panting and wagging herself in front of him.
Still on his knees, he backed away. She laid herself down on the mosaic tablet facing him, her arms outstretched to him seductively, grinding her buttocks against the mosaic, welcoming him.
A wave of disgust and revulsion washed over him. “Fuck me,” she cooed. “Fuck me, son of Adam, so that I may become hot of thee and bear thee many demons and spirits,” she said working her hips up and down, parting herself further with her fingers to entice him. “Seed me with thy manhood as thou would seed the field of wheat from whence thou came.”
Entranced by her movement, hypnotized by the sound of her voice, his head whirling from her scent, he felt himself stir, his hips wanting to sway rhythmically with hers. He moved to crawl toward her, his hand reaching for his belt buckle.
“Yes, that’s right,” she purred. “Show me thy fertile man-hood so that I may gaze upon thy staff and know from whence my children will spring.”
He moved closer, unable to resist the scent and movement. Enveloped in it, his head swam with desire, his hips moving more and more to her rhythm, like a snake to the flute of a snake charmer.
He pulled himself out, letting himself dangle as he crawled.
“Fuck me, Mitchell,” she demanded, turning over again, back on her hands and knees. Reaching from behind her, he took her by her long red hair and pulled her toward him. He looked down and was right behind her, his pants at his knees, throbbing wet with lust from the scent of her.
Flesh disappearing, no longer Ivy Farthing, she slowly covered herself with another flesh, thick serpent-like brownish green flesh. Her tail wrapped around his leg, her many arms pushing herself up as she slithered against him, her wings retracted.
The creature moved; upright on her knees, her tail pushed between his legs, running up his back; an arm reached behind and took hold of him, then another and another, rolling him onto his back, taking a position on top of him. Her buttocks raised, she put a hand between her legs, parting herself again.
***
From their cover deep in the brush at the edge of the ruin, the old man sat watching, his hand clamped over Simon’s mouth, muffling Simon’s attempt to cry out at the tableau of carnality he was witnessing. “Nay, boy, nay. Tis not yet the time. We must wait until she is full in her prime, weak with ripeness. Thou art a powerful young shaman now, but she is a demon as old as time itself. She will not be robbed of her prey lightly,” he said in his soundless voice.
Simon backed down, his hands sweating and trembling with incendiary heat, the power the old man spoke of raging through his veins, pulsing in his ears. He couldn’t bear the sight of the creature putting her hands on Mitch.
***
Mitch looked up, knowing that he was going to die. He saw the image of the great twenty foot statue rise behind her, the wings, the breasts and many arms; the face, rows of teeth and pointed ears, eyes alive with desire. The pores of his skin opened wide, scalded as she licked at him, his blood cells bursting as she leaned over and kissed him, her long thick tongue, working its way down his throat, burning like a red hot poker. He tried to cry out in pain but the sound choked within him.
His eyes darted back to the she-creature on top of him as he felt the heat coming from between her legs, burning him as she spread herself to plunge down on him, the sensitivity in his loins about to unleash.
An ear-splitting, shrieking cry, then the sizzling sound of meat searing and the smell of burning flesh came from above him, behind him. She flew back, rearing up on her haunches, blisters broken and leaking down her face. His eyes glanced up.
Simon stood above him; a sack cloth shirt, his face painted, fierce; a wooden spear in one hand and a carved wooden Celtic cross in the other; the old man not far off to his side.
The ground shook beneath them, splitting the earth with fissures, steam erupting into the air. The wind began to blow as she crept back, arms flailing, wings outstretched to take flight; her tail whipping at the air.
Hovering above them, she swooped first at the old man, shadowing him with an enormous wing. When the wing drew back, the old man was on the ground covered with leaking boils.
Simon turned, waving the hand that held the cross over the old man. “Heal!” he commanded, and the old man was free of boils and coming back up on his feet. They turned as Mitch cried out, a bolt of pain shooting up his spine as the long sharp tail wrapped around him, dragging him away toward her, throwing him behind her as she turned back to face Simon coming at her.
She glared back, her mouth opening to let loose an echoing, warbling call into the sky and backed over Mitch, straddling him with her legs. The forest around them suddenly came to life, snakes, hundreds of them slithering out of the forest toward Simon and the old man; growling of mammals, wolves, wild dogs; screeches from above their heads, birds, large birds, owls, vultures, hawks, all swirling around their heads, surrounding Simon and the old man; snakes almost at their heels, beasts encircling them, snapping at the air around them, birds diving at their heads. The old man held them off chanting in the old language and sent Simon a message,
“Use thy power boy!”
Simon hesitated then raised his hands to the blackening sky, forcing himself to pull in all the forces of nature to his finger tips, chanting in the old language that the old man fed him, beckoning them to his command. “Open!” he shouted to the sky.
Thunder clapped and an enormous flash of lightening lit the sky. The snakes slithered away, the animals cried out in fear and ran, the birds ignited into flames, dropping like hail stones; disintegrating before they hit the ground. Simon moved toward the creature, limping and dragging his brace behind him and ripped open his sack cloth shirt to reveal the words ‘Snvi… Ssnevoy’
painted in black on his chest.
“You cannot hurt me,” Simon raged at her.
She screamed in a thousand voices when she saw the words, knowing she could not kill him and backed away, pulling Mitch close to her, blanketing him in her wings, yellow light flashing from her eyes, speaking into Simon’s big blue eyes, “Cripple! Jealous, sexless dwarf child! Unnatural creature! Born of swine to be neither son of Adam nor daughter of Eve, unnatural thing!” she seethed, taunting him.
Her words hit him with the force of a storm, physically staggering him. His mind splintered. “…neither son of Adam nor daughter of Eve, unnatural thing!” echoed in his ears. The truth of it ripped into his soul.
“Listen not, boy!” the old man called out from behind him.
“Excrement of swine. Mistake of God,” she gloated, glaring at him triumphantly.
Simon screamed in anguish. The cut of her words making him feel like they were peeling the skin off of him, rending open his most private secrets, revealing him to be exactly what she said, God’s mistake.
She changed her form again; Ivy Farthing, long golden red hair, tall and lithe, supple pink-nippled breasts, beautiful and feminine, Botticelli’s Venus come to life. “This is what he loves. Thou art an ugly mongrel changling, a vessel for his pity. Nothing more.”
Simon let his head hang down, deflated and…defeated, a flood of tears rolling down his face, broken inside now as well as out; deformed inside as well as out.
The old man came to his side, “She lies, boy. Remember how he hast loved thee and protected thee, comforted and nurtured thee. ‘Twas not false as is this,” he said and flicked his fingers at the image of Ivy Farthing standing before them, splintering it into shards to reveal the creature in her true form once again. Simon turned away.
Reaching back into Simon’s soul, the old man heard Simon say quietly, sadly, “I am an unnatural thing. God’s mistake.” The old man saw the mortal wound gaping open inside him, bleeding him of all that ever made him special.
“Nay boy, thou art as natural as thy name, Holly,” he said, warming Simon from the inside with the strength of his conviction. The effort of seeing into Simon again weakened the old man, forcing him to withdraw, but before he did, the old man came upon an image, hidden deep in the recesses of Simon’s mind. The answer.
He took the boy’s face in both his hands, forcing him to look into his tiny black eyes as they changed, no longer tiny and black but green, turned up at their corners. His lips began to move, the voice coming out of his mouth not his own, “I didn’t pull you out of Holy Family to sacrifice you to a jail cell. Do you understand me?” When the old man saw the reaction in Simon’s eyes, he pushed harder, “Just promise me that if we’re caught you’ll let me protect you and save yourself.”
“Save myself? Save myself? Why, so I can be left alone again. . . without you? NEVER! I…I…I…” Simon shouted angrily at the Mitch in the old man’s eyes, stopping in mid-sentence, afraid to say what he really felt. A flush of hot color came into his face. The old man’s eyes changed back to tiny black beads, nodding his head. Simon understood and turned back to the creature screaming. “Abitu, Abizu, Hakash, Avers Hikpodu, Ayalu, Matrota…I know who you are. You cannot hurt me.”
Enraged at the thought of the mongrel being given the blessings; powerless because Simon knew her true names but still as clever as time itself, she spat back, “But I can hurt him which is the same thing,” and she flung Mitch into the far tower wall with the whip of her tail; his body sliding down to land in the corner. Then wailing with the frustration of her purpose failed, the shattering sound of her screaming voice shook the already weakened walls around them making them crumble and fall.
The atmosphere around them whipped itself up into gale force winds; the ground quaking violently beneath their feet; rocks tumbling to the ground from the larger walls of the ruins as Simon strode toward her, power radiating from his otherwise innocent blue eyes. He saw she was afraid…of him. She changed again and Sister Mary Immaculata was standing before him. “This is God’s will, Simon, you must not interfere,” she pleaded. The image of the love Sister Mary always had for him weakened him and he hesitated. The old man saw it too, understood and flicked his gnarled old finger at her.
“Be gone, demon harlot!”
Sister Mary screamed, her image shattering.
Seeing her for what she was again, Simon thought back to that Christmas Eve at Holy Family when Mitch first came to him, beautiful, strong, loving. Then saw him in the corner; broken and dirty, blood oozing from his pores at the feet of a monster. His heart filled with the anger of a lifetime; hatred beyond all imagination welled up in him with an intensity of just one purpose.
Her wings opened and she leapt into the air, escaping into the sky above them. Simon heard a weird sound come from behind him. Twang, whoosh, thunk and a startling ear splitting scream as the old man’s arrow with a Holly flight soared through the air, piercing the creature’s shoulder, sending her plummeting back down to the ground. Simon rushed forward and hurled himself on her, driving a long stake with a holly shaft under her ribs.
The old man suddenly appeared behind her, pulling her head back to shove another holly shafted stake down her throat. Throwing them off violently, she stood up on her haunches, screaming another high pitched shriek, writhing in pain as she tried with her many arms to dislodge the holly stakes from her ribs and throat.
Simon was up again and on her with another stake, shaped like a dagger, rampaging, erupting, surging more with each blow, tears of love running down his cheeks, power and strength coursing through his veins; every cell, every nerve, as he looked into her eyes, roaring like the lion he’d become inside.
Her head began to shake violently from side to side, her face changing with each turn. She was no longer the demon harlot, she was…Sister Mary Immaculata; she was his mother. She was an ancient Mesopotamian goddess; an Egyptian princess. She was Melanie Woodward; a Greek oracle. She was an African fertility idol; then an Asian prostitute. She was Lady Madeline, then Sandrine. She was Ivy Farthing, then a beautiful Italian Renaissance aristocrat. She was a French Queen with powdered wig, then a Balinese dancer. She was a blonde American film star; then a raven-haired pop singer; then she returned to her true self, horns and teeth, hair and scales.
With just her eyes open, she shifted them from Simon to the half ruined tower above where Mitch was lying semiconscious. In the wild rage of his fury, Simon brought down his stake one more time ramming it through her forehead. The life left her eyes, but not before the ground beneath them shook again, one last enormous rumbling heave.
The wavering towers crumbled and pitched until the weakest of them collapsed, sending a hail of boulders showering down on Mitch’s body.
The next thing Simon knew, the old man was dragging him, kicking, screaming and crying off the creature’s body, “I am not God’s mistake,” he sobbed as the old man brought him up to his feet.
“Nay, nay, boy. She is finished. Thou must go to thy Master.”
Simon got up and ran, limping over to Mitch. The old man went in the other direction, kicking the creature’s body until it rolled back over into its grave; disintegrating back into the bones it came from.
Over at the pile of rubble, Simon could see that Mitch was all but buried; his face half smashed, a bloody pulp; one arm and both his legs. He screamed to the old man in panic. “Help him!”
The old man came over and looked at the body. “Hurry, boy, get me some wheat, straw, anything grassy, quickly!”
Simon’s mind scattered, reaching in every direction for what he needed. He ran to the tent, coming back with a large cardboard box. “Will this do?” he asked the old man breathlessly. The box was filled with packing straw that they’d brought to crate artifacts.
“Cover his wounds with it, quickly,” the old man ordered, and they covered him.
“The essence of thy spirit is the wheat of the fields,” the old man chanted nervously, “And so I give
thee back to the wheat.”
“No! No!” Simon shouted.
“Hush, boy!” the old man shouted back, then took out the small knife from his pocket.
Simon knew then. The old man sliced a small cut in his wrist, sprinkling the blood over the packing straw. Mitch’s body started to twitch. His eyes opened, filled with pain. He saw Simon kneeling over him, his lips moved slightly. Simon leaned in to hear. “Save yourself,” Mitch whispered. There was only one answer Simon could give. He looked deeply into Mitch’s pain filled eyes, touching his face gently. “Where you go, I go.”
The old man waved his hand in front of Mitch’s face. “Sleep,” and looked at Simon, his tiny black eyes full of worry. “I am old and weak, and sick. I don’t have the strength.” He looked at the knife and then at Simon. Simon grabbed the knife from the old man’s hand and punctured his own wrist, deeply. A shower of blood spurted out over the straw covering Mitch’s wounds.
“The essence of thy spirit is the wheat of the fields and so I give thee back to the wheat from whence thou came and through which ye shall be restored,” Simon repeated, following the words as fast as they were put into his head, his little body shaking, a flood of tears mixing with the blood as he showered Mitch’s body.
“The essence of thy spirit is the wheat of the fields and so I give thee back to the wheat from whence thou came and through which ye shall be restored.”
Neither Simon nor the old man noticed that Gayle had arrived and had wrapped Ivy Farthing in a blanket and was taking her away until she came back with another blanket for them to carry Mitch’s body away.
***
Fi was taking the garbage out to the back of the inn when they got there. Before she could even open her mouth to ask what was going on Gayle was on her. “Forget,” she said with a wave of her hand. She had to do it one more time with one of the bus boys who saw her taking Ivy to her room to clean her up and make her…sleep…and forget.
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