The Matriarch

by Hawes, Sharon;

  Al lunges and gets his hands onto the deputy’s shoulders. He slams Jim-boy up against the bars of the cell. “Are you out of your fucking mind? This is a crime scene, you …” He has no words. “You don’t clean up a crime scene, asshole! You take pictures, you take notes … you … investigate!”

  And this man is my second in command!

  Al knows in his cramping gut that Al Schmidt is the real victim here. And like every other shitty break in his life, it isn’t his fault.

  “Don’t do anything, Collins. And don’t touch anything. If you can manage it, let me know when the coroner gets here.” Al walks off to his office. No way around it, he has to report this sorry mess to the ailing Sheriff Ramirez. For some reason, Manny hasn’t called in for over a day now.

  We decide we had better report Shelly’s death. Now, that is, in order to avoid problems that could develop if we wait and then have to explain why we waited. Frank and I carry Shelly’s body to the house and lay her on the bed in the guest room. I cover her nakedness with a comforter and brush her hair back off her forehead.

  We call Sheriff Ramirez, and again there’s no answer, not even his wife. I realize then I could call the medical examiner’s office instead of Al. I do that and get a Dr. Beaumont.

  “There’s been a terrible accident here, sir, a death.”

  “You’re certain the person is dead?”

  “Yes, sir. She took a bad fall and hit her head.”

  “I’ll have to see and check the body. Give me your address, and I’ll come with an ambulance, just in case.”

  Dott volunteers to stay at the house with Charlotte to deal with the examiner when he arrives. The two come up with what they hope is a plausible story to explain Shelly’s accidental death. They settle on telling the examiner of a fall in the kitchen, where Shelly trips and falls forward smacking her head on a counter edge as she goes down. She was hurrying to the stove, because something in the oven was burning. Not great, but we’re hoping Dr. Beaumont will buy it.

  So Frank, Lester, and myself are free to leave and take care of The Tree.

  It’s just after eight in the morning when we’re finally on our way. We’re in my Ranger and I’m driving. I see the upper branches of The Tree well before we cross the bridge, and my gut registers the fact that she has grown larger.

  We’ve acquired several containers of gasoline, three bales of dry hay, a pitchfork, two rakes, two shovels, one hatchet, and one axe. All this is stowed in the bed of the Ranger. I’ve put together a spray attachment with a ten-foot hose and secured it to a three-gallon jug of gas. We’re all armed. Frank and I have our side arms, while Lester has a 12-gauge shotgun I’ve sawed off so that, God willing, he can use it with just one hand. The guns may prove useless against The Tree, but I welcome the presence of the gun against my thigh.

  I wish Louie were with me but think it best to leave him back at the house with Charlotte and Dott.

  “Lordy-God, Cassidy! Look at the size of that thing!” Frank says in awe. “That new barrier looks like it’s made of twigs!”

  “We’re lucky it stands alone,” Lester says. “With no other buildings or trees near it, we can take it down all by itself.”

  “That is lucky,” Frank says cheerily. He’s excited, like a kid at a picnic. “Look, there’s Georgie, grazin’ up a storm. That old boy’s got no idea what’s goin’ on in his pasture.”

  “He should probably be in the barn, Uncle Frank.”

  “Fire scares the hell outta horses, Cassidy. He’ll stay well away.”

  I stop the wagon some thirty yards or so from The Tree. A huge green creature close to forty feet high now and half again as wide—she’s grotesque. Several small trunks have shot up from the ground and attached themselves to the main one. They twine around it, creating a large glossy-green braid. Large vines from The Tree’s branches have grown down to the ground and taken root there.

  She has changed so much since I’ve seen her! Her obvious power is alarming—not to mention intimidating.

  We all get out of the wagon and walk slowly closer.

  “I’ll bet she can go underground,” I say to no one in particular.

  “What do you mean?” Lester asks. The three of us stop about twenty feet from her and huddle together as if for protection.

  “Well … maybe she can send her roots out away from her … to sprout up somewhere else.”

  “Cart before the horse,” Frank mutters. “Let’s do the mama, then we can look for any little sprouts.” He chuckles at his wit.

  We stand quietly, studying her.

  Many varieties of colored figs grow in profusion on the burgeoning tree. They peek out from behind bright green serrated leaves. It’s an obscene Christmas tree, decorated by a mad person. The ground at her base is deep with mushy decaying figs, and the air is heavy with the reek of sweet rot. I catch a faint nuance of animal matter in the smell. Are squirrels or field mice being done in by the figs, and are their bodies rotting along with the fallen fruit? I wish I’d brought a handkerchief or a cloth mask I could breathe through.

  The skin of her trunk and some of the larger branches has erupted into huge boil-like nodules in various stages of swelling. The tentacles that burst from these nodules are twisting in the breeze as they stretch down toward the ground. Except with my own skin quickly bathed in cold sweat, I realize once again there’s no breeze. Those tentacles are twitching and moving on their own.

  “Cassidy,” Frank says. “I owe you a giant apology. This here tree can’t be anything normal. It’s a monster, just like you said.”

  “Yeah, Frank. You have to see it to believe it,” I say. “Those vine-things, those tentacles … see them moving around? She’s doing that. She’s controlling them.”

  We stand stunned and silent before her.

  “So what are we waitin’ for?” Frank asks in a loud, harsh voice. “You’re the one wantin’ to hurry. Let’s get to burnin’ her.”

  “Not so loud, Frank,” I say.

  “Shit sakes, Cassidy, you afraid that thing’s gonna hear me? Afraid it’ll take offense?”

  Yes, Uncle Frank, I am.

  I feel a jarring in the ground beneath my feet. I hear a muffled thudding behind us and spin around. It’s Georgie. Nostrils flaring, he comes at us from the rise, snorting with exertion. He runs full out. He’ll be on us in less than a minute. I yell and take off to the right. Lester goes left, but Frank stands still, frozen. Georgie goes neither right nor left. As if programmed by a demon, he heads straight for his master. I stare in stricken disbelief. Frank’s beloved Georgie, his hooves flashing, keeps his furious pace.

  “Move, Frank!” I yell, fumbling with the gun at my side. “Run!” I grasp the butt of my gun awkwardly and yank at it.

  Fuck, it won’t come loose!

  The horse is just a few feet from Frank when the gun finally comes free. My uncle stands planted and watches Georgie bear down on him.

  I release the safety and raise the revolver. I fire. Then again, and again. Three wild, panic filled shots. I haven’t a clue where they went, but Georgie goes down. He gives out a shriek straight from Hell. That sound makes me shudder, and I clutch the gun with both hands. The horse is on the ground now just three feet from Frank. Georgie’s eyes roll back into his head, and his body is a quivering mass of dapple-gray horseflesh. He’s whimpering.

  Frank drops to the ground and begins to crawl to Georgie.

  “No!” I yell. “Stay back, Frank. Don’t touch him.”

  Frank looks up at me, his eyes filled with tears. “But Cassidy … my Georgie …”

  “No, Uncle Frank,” I say firmly as Lester joins us. He puts a hand on Frank’s shoulder. I say a thing then that’s just plain crazy. Insane. But I know it’s the truth. “He’s a gelding, Frank, and he ate all those figs. He’s a man-hater now. He’s not your Georgie anymore.”

  I raise my gun, this time taking careful aim. The bullet goes right into Georgie’s head.

  Charlotte hears vehicles
pull up, hears doors slam and male voices. Dott opens the screen door and greets three men who come into the living room. They seem to fill the room with their official law-abiding presence, and Charlotte wants to scream. At the wagon wheel table, she forces herself to look up at them as they introduce themselves. There are the paramedics, Jim Clayton and Andy Carter, and the medical examiner, a Dr. Beaumont. The examiner is courteous with his quiet tones of helpful concern.

  Charlotte sits silent. She decides they probably think her unhinged by tragedy, or perhaps in shock. And why not? Either one sounds good to her and gives her good reason to stay in her trance-like stupor.

  “In here, gentlemen,” she hears Dott say as she leads them to the bedroom where Shelly lies. She opens the door, and they go into the room. Charlotte knows only too well what the men see. Shelly lying peacefully on a bed, covered with a comforter. She looks like she’s had way too much to drink and has slammed her head into something very hard.

  Voices and the rustle of activity come from inside the room. Light flashes from the half open door, again and again. Photos. As if they have a right. Poor Shelly, so vulnerable and defenseless in death.

  Like a tiny coiled snake in the back of Charlotte’s mind is the fact that her anger at Cass for Shelly’s death is decidedly misplaced. She’s angry with herself. Her anger is full of the very tangible pain of guilt.

  She remembers once years ago standing alone in an elevator. The door mechanism has failed and the doors don’t open. For what seems an endless amount of time, she stares at the smooth metal walls that block her exit, and then loses it completely.

  Charlotte pounds on the doors with her fists, and then the walls. Tears course down her face. She wants to scream but can’t because of a sudden presence in her throat. A lump is blocking her voice. And her breathing becomes very difficult. She claws at her throat and tries to suck air in and out past that lump. Her heart seems to grow larger, and it slams against her ribs as her lungs go crazy in frantic, mindless pumping. She pounds her fists at the crushing pain in her chest. She feels as if she’s caught in a huge vise that tightens and presses her ribs onto her tiring heart and lungs.

  The doors finally slide open, and she staggers out of the elevator.

  Later, Charlotte learned she had been trapped behind those doors for less than two minutes.

  She thinks now of that crushing pain—the physical hurt of her fear. Her pain now is more subtle, a deep ache. Its source is guilt. If not for Charlotte and her near breakdown in Los Angeles, Shelly would be alive, reasonably happy, and probably deciding which university she would soon attend. Instead, she lies dead in that bedroom with strangers taking pictures of her when she’s not at her best. This guilty ache Charlotte feels is real and substantial, and she knows it will be abiding.

  She hears footsteps and looks up to see a smiling Dr. Beaumont. He’s an older man in a neatly ironed white shirt and a pair of navy-blue Dockers.

  “Hello, Ms. Russo.” His smile becomes a frown. “Dreadful business this. May I call you Charlotte?” He holds a clipboard in one hand and makes a solid, respectable appearance with his tanned, regular features and his thick salt and pepper hair.

  She meets his eyes, saying nothing. A really nice thing about being unhinged, she’s learning, is that one doesn’t have to be polite. This is a plus, because just now common courtesy is impossible.

  Dott comes hurrying over. “This is the medical examiner, Charlotte,” she says with a worried look.

  “I’d like to ask Ms. Russo some questions,” he says. “Alone, if that’s all right …?”

  “It’s okay, Dott,” Charlotte hears herself say. Apparently, she’s still functioning.

  Dott looks worried but walks back to the bedroom.

  “Tell me what’s happened here,” Beaumont says. He pulls out a chair and sits down, placing his clipboard on the table in front of him.

  “She was hurrying,” Charlotte says. “Something in the oven was burning. She wanted to turn it off and get … whatever … out of the oven.”

  “What was it?”

  “What was what?”

  Dr. Beaumont sighs. “What was burning in the oven?”

  “Casserole. A breakfast thing.”

  “Ah. So she was hurrying, and then what happened?”

  “She slipped and fell. Forward. Hit her head. Hard. We couldn’t find a pulse.”

  “How long ago?”

  “What?”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Several hours ago.”

  “Was your sister a drinker?”

  Charlotte remembers then. Part of her script, if she needs it, is to say Shelly had been hung over and was very unsteady on her feet.

  “Last night, yes. She had too much to drink and felt it this morning. She was a little hung over.”

  The two paramedics come out of the bedroom bearing Shelly on a litter. Charlotte can’t look.

  Dr. Beaumont stares at her, his eyes narrowed. “There will be an autopsy, of course.”

  Horrible. He’s going to cut Shelly open … horrible!

  Dr. Beaumont gets to his feet. “I’ll be in touch,” he says, and Charlotte knows she hasn’t misunderstood the nuance of threat in his statement.

  “Jim!” Al yells, his vision blurred with sweat. His deputy peers around the doorjamb like a buffoon right out of the Three Stooges.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Get me a Goddamned Kleenex!”

  “Yes—”

  “Not right this fucking minute! First tell me when the coroner is getting here.”

  “Yes, well … I was going to tell you, sir.” Al watches in amazement as his deputy produces a small white towel from a hip pocket and carefully wipes his face.

  I guess you gotta know somebody around here to get somethin’ to mop up with!

  “Guy there says Dr. Beaumont’s not available right now.”

  “Not available?” Al is close to losing it. “He’s got to be—it’s his fucking job to be available!” He knows that in the small community of Diablo, the medical examiner and the coroner are one and the same—Jason Beaumont, an M.D. retired from private practice.

  “Guy there told me there’s another death in Diablo,” Deputy Jim says. “Suspicious-like.”

  “Suspicious-like. Is that a technical term?” The deputy opens his mouth and takes a breath, but Al hurries on. “Who’s dead, please, and why wasn’t I notified? I am, after all, the acting sheriff of this county.”

  The deputy closes his mouth and thinks a minute. “I don’t know,” he says.

  “Male or female?”

  “I … don’t know.”

  “Anyone dispatched to go along with the doctor?”

  “I don—”

  “Where’s the body of this person you know absolutely nothing about?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I realize I should have asked more—”

  “Call ’em back,” Al shouts, “and get me some fucking answers! Think you can handle that?”

  Frank kneels by his fallen Georgie, weeping. Lester and I stand near him, my hand on his shoulder.

  “How could you shoot him that way, Cassidy?” He’s stroking Georgie’s velvet nose.

  “He was going to kill you, Uncle Frank. Run you down.”

  “No. Not my Georgie. He was confused, that’s all. He would have stopped.” Frank speaks as if he’s not quite sure.

  I try to make my voice calm, soothing. “It’s natural you feel that way. But Georgie has obviously been eating a lot of those figs, and they changed him. He wasn’t—”

  “Lordy-God, Cassidy!” He looks up at me, his face contorted by anger and grief. “You’re tellin’ me these figs made a killer out of Georgie? A horse? A male horse?”

  “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m telling you.” I glance over at Lester. No help there; he’s just staring at me with a questioning look.

  Am I the only one getting this?

  “Georgie was a gelding.”

  Frank snorts and
staggers to his feet. “And that makes him one of your female killers? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yeah. The sort of female killer that just now tried to kill the man he, or she, used to love. Just like Carla and Lindee.”

  “And a twelve-year old girl … right?”

  I rub at my face. “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “I’ve tried to go along with you, Cassidy. You’re my brother’s boy. My family. The figs are … well … evil, I guess.” He shakes his head. “But what your sayin’ here is plum crazy! Nuts!”

  “Boss,” Lester says softly, “could be he’s right. Georgie was out of his mind.”

  I’m grateful for his support, but I keep my face neutral. I look at The Tree, and I’m alarmed to see her branches moving even more. The tentacles twitch and ripple, as if eager.

  “Let’s get moving,” I say and pull Frank to his feet. “We gotta burn this mother down while we still can. Don’t actually touch The Tree, boys,” I say as we walk to the Ranger. “Just remember, she’s a killer.”

  We unload the hay, the spray jug, and the two backup cans of gas. With rakes, we spread the tinder-dry hay under The Tree and over the soggy mass of decomposing figs. I spray gas onto the hay that covers the figs at the base of The Tree and up into the branches. I spray a gas-soaked circle around it, refill the can, and finish up with more at the base and trunk. Keeping an eye on her tentacles, I work as fast as I can. There’s an almost tangible aura of malevolent hostility coming from The Tree, and I shiver, even in the heat.

  She knows. Mama Tree knows exactly what we’re doing.

  Frank makes two torches with gas-soaked cloths tied onto kindling sticks. He throws one onto the dry hay and the base of the trunk, while I take the other and ignite the lower limbs of The Tree itself. We step back from the edge of the circle and join Lester.

  We watch as the hay and lower branches begin to burn. The fire spreads with satisfying speed, both on the ground and in The Tree.

  “It’s gonna work!” Frank states.

  “Looks good,” Lester agrees, and I allow myself a small measure of hope.