Nursery Rhymes 4 Dead Children

by Lee Thompson

  Jim’s voice came out a whisper, face all crunched in pain. I leaned in. “The jungle rotted men from the inside out. Everyone came home darker than when they left.”

  “What jungle?”

  “Pat,” he coughed. “He took away part of those girls. They could never get it back. It’s all recorded.” He sobbed and blood bubbled from the wounds in his neck, out his right nostril. “I tried to save them.” Jim’s shoulders sagged, his face slackened, fingers clutching his pant leg. He stared at my right knee. I smacked him again.

  Cat said, “He’s dead.”

  I spun, afraid she meant her son. But Ethan held his mother’s index finger and talked gibberish, all the cuter for it. I put the pistol in the holster. I crossed the room, glass crunching underfoot, and hugged them to me—breathed Cat and Ethan in, and squeezed, knowing that feeling that my mother felt, that Cat felt, as she shook against me and her tears tickled my neck.

  * * *

  Uncle Red rapped his knuckles on the door. He had his head down like he was ashamed to see us in such a moment of weakness, and I wanted to hug him too, this relief in my chest, so much swirling around inside with it. Red held a shotgun, finger scratching the trigger guard. “I heard a gunshot. I was upstairs reading.”

  I kissed the crown of Cat’s head. “Jim White killed some girls. Hell, I can’t even remember if I told you about the woods the other day when I saw you.”

  “Yesterday morning, it was,” Red said. “I knew he was up to something when he started going in and out of here in the middle of the night a lot last week. Everybody okay?” He pointed at where Jim sat. “Other than him I mean.”

  I tried to take Ethan so Cat didn’t have to hold him, but she hung on and shook her head. I nodded. “We’re okay.”

  “You ever see what Mark left you?” Red cradled the shotgun in the crook of his arm. “You haven’t, have you?”

  Cat gave me a look, like we were both crazy. But it was light, different than her attitude of wanting me to see a psychologist. Not that I thought it a bad idea now.

  “I’ve been busy.” I let out a long breath.

  “Yep. Do you know your fate now?”

  “I wish I did.”

  “Get the bowl. Help your friends. People you love are all you got in life. Trust me. Everything else is just trinkets.”

  I nodded. “Will you look after—”

  Cat shook her head. “Whatever you’re doing I want to go with you.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” Red said.

  You have no idea, hon.

  I wanted to tell her that I was risking my life, but didn’t want to worry her further. Red scratched his chin and said, “Let me show her.”

  I faced him. “How?”

  “Magic, son. It’s the gears of life. Seldom seen, rarely heard, but it’s what makes things run. It might give you a little more strength you could use, too.” He sat the shotgun against a chair and knelt among the broken glass. “Let’s see if I still have any left.”

  Chapter 34

  Red scooped a handful of broken glass into his right hand. He looked at Cat and said, “Go ahead and sit down.” He nodded at the chair across the coffee table from where his gun leaned. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to, her eyes kept going back to Jim, who stank of so many things, and me who looked and felt so much older than I had two days ago.

  I kept my attention on my uncle’s closed hand. Red repeated himself and Cat moved in a daze, whispering, “I killed a man.” I whispered back that it was self-defense thinking that might make it easier to accept, but it didn’t. Jim White was right there, staring at our feet, the wind blowing through the shattered glass door stirring his stench, his fine white hair. Cat sat and rubbed Ethan’s back.

  Red said, “Don’t blame yourself, honey. You did what you had to do.” He pulled his gloves off and tucked them into his pant pocket.

  She bowed her head, ran her lips against Ethan’s scalp. He cuddled into her, his breath hot on her shoulder. I sat next to her, took her hand and squeezed it gently.

  “John, you might not be as surprised by this, I imagine you’ve seen more than your share of bizarre the past two days. You, my lady, I want to set aside what you refuse to believe is possible, clear your mind and…”

  His voice softened and I could hear her thought, He’s trying to hypnotize me…

  Red ground the glass to dust and threw it at her.

  Cat flinched and grabbed Ethan’s head, shielded his eyes, but the dust froze in the air. Red grabbed it and stretched the corners out until it was the size of our bathroom mirror. I squeezed her hand tighter. She squeezed back, breathless as light emanated from the center of the window.

  Yes, it’s a window.

  It was Red’s voice, not hers, scratching around in her head.

  You can’t go up there where no wind blows. Watch.

  We were all connected for the next few moments, as my uncle showed her and let me see as well. Partly mesmerized, partly horrified, we watched…

  A single light burned on a high ceiling in a room that stretched into darkness; a hardwood floor gleaming, a workbench half-eaten by shadow. Ethan sat in a highchair in the center, beneath the bulb, Oreo cookies plastered to his fingers, tracing lines on the white plastic. The shadows shifted behind him, blurred, then focused. A hand grabbed him by the scruff of the neck like a pup and jerked him from the chair. Cat-in-the-window beat her fists against my corpse leaning against the wall and serpents—small, black, vile—squirmed into my mouth. A slip of tail and they disappeared inside me. Cat looked up and saw Mike, naked, holding her son. Only it wasn’t Mike. This man had eyes like hot coals and from his mouth poured a fountain of blood that a nude woman danced in.

  Non-Mike sank his fingers into Ethan’s soft shoulder, his other hand wrapped around the boy’s left ankle. He jerked his hands, left toward the floor, right toward the ceiling, and Ethan tore in half, diagonally. He wiped her son’s blood over his skin and moaned, Sacrifice.

  Cat’s scream shook the room. The woman noticed her, turned. Her mouth opened and revealed a mouthful of jagged black teeth. Her feet slapped the floor and Cat, in her sorrow, looked from the pieces of her son to me as the wind howled and battered the manors windows.

  Cat shifted in her seat, repositioned Ethan on her lap. I leaned forward, scratching my head. This is all impossible. But she didn’t know how she could explain it away, having seen it. The images clung to a place behind her eyes, wiggled through her head. She shivered and brushed my hand away as I tried to rub her shoulder. Red said, “You see? You can’t go with him.”

  She nodded and looked around the room, its chaos uglier now than it had been when things had blown up in her face. There hadn’t been time to think then, to assess the craziness. Cat wiped a tear from her eye and Ethan pinched her breast. She swatted his hand away. “Is John going to live through this? Do you know? Can you show us?”

  Red shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “That’s not much of an answer.”

  I stood, trying to take it all in. Red clapped his hands and the window fell to the floor in a cloud of glassy dust. Red said, “It’s the only answer I have, honey. I wish I could go with him and help. But I will die. That I’m sure of. And I’m not ready to die yet. Besides, John will need someone to help him once—” Red pulled his gloves back on, his lips pressed tight against each other, eyes wide. “You better get out of here.”

  Cat had a hundred questions she wanted answers to. So did I. She couldn’t believe I was going to go through with it, I could see it in her eyes. To her I’d be throwing everything away and leaving her with nothing. She stood as I moved to the broken door. Wind blew rain in over my shoes. I was wet already, filthy really. She mentioned that she hadn’t noticed it earlier. Her main concern had been making sure Ethan was unharmed. I put a hand on her lower back as she stepped out into the cold. I thanked Red, and then opened the passenger door of the cruiser and helped her inside. She wanted to tell me to stop, sl
ow down, think this through. I stroked her cheek. She didn’t want me going wherever it was I had to go, where that demon woman waited with the thing that looked like my best friend. I felt her emotions like words and colors, but they quickly faded and the residue left me hungry for more, because that kind of connection didn’t exist in the real world.

  I slammed the door and ran around the car. When I climbed in behind the wheel, she sobbed. “You better not die on me. It was hard enough when Mark did.”

  I started the car and pulled out into the rain. “I need to run by Dan’s and grab something out of Wylie’s truck real quick. It’ll only take a minute.”

  “That bowl your uncle was talking about.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded, eyes on the road. The windshield wipers swept rain aside as the car’s headlights sank into the darkness at the edge of town. My mind tumbled. “It’s weird. My dad spent his life pretending to be this great man of God, always trying to earn His favor, hold His hand, but it was Red, who never even mentioned God either way, good or bad, who has done it. Or something similar. Shit, I don’t know.”

  “Did all of that really happen back there?”

  “I’m afraid so.” I reached over and stroked her leg. Cat rubbed Ethan’s head, thanking God, over and over, that not a hair had been harmed. “You thinking about what you did back there, to Jim White? Or what Uncle Red did?”

  “A little bit of everything,” she said, tired and pale. “I don’t want you going up there, John.”

  “I have to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Mike is in danger.” A red barn loomed from the murk like a beacon. A rusty chain link fence encircled the property. She wiped her eyes as I pulled over and parked on the shoulder, both of us trying not to think about everything that could happen before dawn.

  * * *

  I climbed the fence quickly, trying to ignore the grief in Cat’s voice when she’d said Mark’s name. It wasn’t the first time she’d attached some special significance to her tone when she said it, and I struggled with my insecurities. Wouldn’t be the first time a girl I cared about liked my older brother. I threw my legs over the top of the fence and my body followed. Wylie’s truck sat near the gate next to Rusty Wallace’s ruined Corolla. I grabbed the bowl out of the cargo bed and resisted the temptation to look inside it.

  I hope Mike knows what to do with it when the time comes.

  Back at the fence, I tried tucking it under my arm but it slipped out when I started climbing. I was about to call Cat to give me a hand when I saw a depression along the fence line, a path some animal had made underneath. I knelt and slid the bowl below the chain-link, didn’t bother wiping myself off as I sprang onto the fence and scurried over, hands caked with mud and rust.

  In the car, breathing hard, I set the bowl in my lap. Cat said, “What’s in it, John?”

  “I don’t know. Mark brought it for me.”

  “You mean left it, before he died?”

  “No, he brought it since he died.”

  Her mouth opened as if to tell me how crazy that sounded. She shut it and looked out the window as I pulled back onto the road. After remaining quiet for a minute, nothing but the swish of rain off tires and Ethan’s soft snores to accompany our thoughts, I said, “I’m so happy you’re okay. I thought you left me. You know, because you thought I’d gone off the deep end. You weren’t the only one who was scared that had happened.”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to talk about any of it while we ride back to the house? Once we’re there I’ve got to leave right away.”

  She rubbed Ethan’s back. “There is something I need to tell you. I wish I would have a long time ago, but…”

  “Go on.” I watched the road, wanting to look at her, study the thin lines of her face and decipher the meaning of her words, afraid she’d do like everyone else had done most of my life and speak crypticly, skirt along the edges of what she really meant.

  “I fell in love with you. I didn’t expect to. I thought I’d just be there, with you, because it’d make me still part of his life.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Cat.”

  “My names not Cat, John.” She hung her head as I glanced over, my chest tight, lungs burning, but part of me still waiting for the punch line.

  “Catherine.”

  “No.” She stared at the road. “April.”

  Then she wouldn’t shut the fuck up and it came pouring out of her as I pressed on the accelerator, wanting to ram us into a tree, or open the door and push her out. But she held Ethan in her lap, this sleeping babe who had never really been mine, but who I loved anyway. She told me about her relationship with Mark, in Arizona, how happy she was with him—her first true love—though half the time he’d seemed preoccupied, or disinterested, and how she’d known deep down that he’d never commit to her.

  So, she’d planned on having his baby. But things hadn’t worked like she’d thought they would. Mark had been angry. He’d wanted her to have an abortion. But she couldn’t kill something that was ‘of’ them. He’d said, “Fine. Then take it with you.” And she hadn’t known his coldness could run so deep, and it destroyed her, and he seemed to lighten up, told her he had a plan. It was better than nothing. Mark had a brother and he was a good kid in this Gomer Pyle kind of way. He’d love them both—her and their son. And Mark had given her money, told her to go by her sister’s name, because he couldn’t remember if he’d ever mentioned her to John, and since they were both in the same line of work, she could get a job in Division at Our Lady and all would be well.

  Only all wasn’t well. It was hard, and she felt bitter, until she’d spent enough time to realize that maybe she really was better off here.

  She buckled and wept as she told me. When she finished, she waited silently while my stomach tightened further and further. Bile rose in my throat, tears stung my eyes. I punched the dash as rain whipped at the car and wind pushed it in a hard slant across the headlights. “You both betrayed me.”

  She said nothing, only covered Ethan’s ears with her hands.

  I boiled inside, behind the wheel, static coming over the radio. “It’s taken you a year to tell me.”

  April… Mark had tried to tell me. April will devastate you…

  A few hot tears scorched my cheeks. I wiped them away and tried to decide the right thing to do, sick of people’s lies, manipulations. And it made me think of how much Mark had turned out like our father—really good, and at the same time, a major asshole, so selfish that he left burnt bodies in his wake, broken hearts, disappointments.

  And all this time I thought I was lucky that she picked me.

  Cat said, “I am so sorry.”

  “Sorry doesn’t cut it. Did you love him still? When he came up last week and went on the river with me?” I remembered how she’d stayed away from everyone at the funeral, it irritating me that she’d stood beneath a weeping willow, a dark smudge in the shadows as my family and friends pressed around me, trying to take a piece of my sorrow away so that I didn’t have to carry it all alone. “Answer me.”

  The bowl shifted on my lap as I followed a curve in the road. Our home—that made me want to cry and smother her—stood at the end, a quarter mile before the turnaround. We passed the drive leading up to the manor. I slowed the car. Cat said, “I didn’t expect to fall in love with you, John. But I did. You’re like him, but you’re better. You’re kind and you care about other people even when you try to act like you don’t.”

  I pulled in the driveway and something moved on the front steps, a shadow that grew as it stood. At first I thought it was a large black bird taking the shape of a man, and my cheeks puckered as I sucked in a breath. The state cop, Duncan, moved up along the wooden railing that cordoned the yard from driveway. He set his hands on it and ran them back and forth over the rough grain. I put the cruiser in park and shut it down. Cat said, “Who is that?”

  “A friend.” I got out, carrying the bowl, not wantin
g to talk to her anymore, just wanting to get up to the manor and help Mike. I just wanted her away from me. I didn’t care where the fuck she went. I offered my hand to Duncan and the cop shook it. “They didn’t let you go.”

  Duncan shook his head. “Michael didn’t.”

  Cat got out of the car. April, I thought. Holding my brother’s sleeping son to her chest as if afraid the wind and rain would carry him away. I didn’t know how to introduce her. Duncan nodded her way, but she headed for the house. The cop said, “You two have a problem?”

  At first I thought he was talking about in our relationship, then I saw her slipping through the door, Jim’s blood staining her clothes and pale face as she glanced back, eyes large and sad, full of regret. I cleared my throat and choked back a sob. “I have to get up and help Mike, but yeah, we found your daughter’s murderer. She killed him. We can get it all straightened out when I get back.” I almost said, If I get back. But I didn’t want to think like that, hoping that whatever power my uncle possessed had trickled down through the family tree like sticky sap.

  Duncan smiled, mouth a gash, half his face lost in shadow as the rain kicked up again. “Tough woman you got. I’m glad to hear it. I can wait. Did he suffer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good.” Duncan looked back at the house. “You want me to watch over her and your kid while you’re up there?”

  My brother’s kid.

  “Sure. Thanks, Duncan.”

  The big cop slapped my arm and said, “You look scared. It’s to be expected. But you’ve made a new friend, so it’s not all bad. Get out of here. I’ll make sure they stay safe.”

  * * *

  I drove past the cemetery, the road throwing the car back and forth, abusing the suspension. I gripped the wheel tighter and gritted my teeth, pushing April from my mind, thinking of Mike, how our friendship had seemed to go on hiatus for so long, neither one calling the other for so damn long, and unable to answer why. It was a simple thing to place a call, and yet we hadn’t. I shook my head, ashamed of myself and angry with him.