by Amy Cross
“It happened, Serriah,” he mutters, staring at me with wild, shocked eyes. “I knew it would, I... No, that's not true, I didn't know it would. I hoped it wouldn't, I thought... I worried about it, I -”
“Just tell me,” I reply, putting my hands on his arms. “Just focus and tell me what happened.”
“It's not my fault,” he continues, and I swear there are tears in his eyes this time. “I got so mad. So, so mad. Pa tried to beat me again, and Ma was encouraging him, all because I came to see you. I should've taken it again, the way I took it all those other times, I should've taken it like a man but...”
His voice trails off, and after a moment I realize that he's looking past me, as if he's replaying something in his mind's eye.
“What?” I ask, trying not to panic. “Jesophat, what did you do?”
He stares at me. “Nothing,” he says finally. “I just... Usually during a beating, I get through it by imagining what I'd do if I fought back. This time, I did fight back. I don't know, Serriah, something just snapped and I gave back as good as I got. Better, even.”
“You hit your father?”
“No.” He pauses. “Yeah. Kind of. It's complicated. I don't wanna talk about it.”
“I got a beating too,” I tell him. Reaching down, I lift the front of my shirt to show him the large bruises on one side of my chest.
“Your Pa did that to you?” Jesophat asks, clearly shocked.
“Mostly Joe did it. Pa's teaching him to... Well, Pa's teaching him stuff. How to be a real man. If you ask me, beating on a woman's kind of a short-cut.”
He stares at the bruises for a moment, before turning and limping toward the door.
“I think I saw Ma's ghost again last night,” I tell him.
“Quit with that.”
“I mean it!”
“Serriah, there's no such thing as ghosts.”
“I saw her! Unless you think I'm crazy or making it up.” When he stops in the doorway, framed against the bright morning sunlight, I limp over to him. “She screamed at me. Right in my face this time. She's never done that before. What do you think it means?”
“I think it means you imagined the whole thing. You dreamed it.”
“I don't -”
“There's no ghosts, Serriah. When people are dead, they stay dead.”
“But what if there's another place? What if, after all the misery of this world, we get another chance to -”
“Shut up!” he hisses.
I pause, aware that I'm annoying him but still wanting to get it all out. I know what I saw last night, I know Ma was on that bed, and I know she screamed at me. I have hope in my belly, and I want Jesophat to feel the same.
“I think the dead go someplace,” I say after a moment, putting a hand on his arm so I can comfort him. “I think sometimes they find a way back, I don't understand it all, but I figure I'll figure it out some day. I think the dead have some way of persisting, and the lucky ones, or maybe the unlucky ones, sometimes leak back into this world. I don't know if they can control it, or whether they have a choice, but there's something going on. I've seen Ma too many times to have any doubt.”
I wait, but Jesophat doesn't reply. He never likes my talk of ghosts, but usually he just makes fun of me. This time he seems locked in some kind of darkness.
Maybe I'm getting through to him.
“Remember that night I told you about, when I said Ma's ghost was scratching at the wall?” I pause, thinking back to the sight of her hand in the shadows, and her nails scrabbling at the wood. “The scratches are still there,” I continue. “I see them every day, which means she must've really been there. If you ever came to my house, you could see them too. They're right there, they're real, I've even run my fingers over them. That means she was there that night, and what I saw happened! Pa and Joe won't admit they've seen her, but I know -”
Suddenly he turns and hits me, slapping me hard across the face and sending me stumbling back. Losing my footing, I fall and land hard on my ass, with Jesophat towering over me.
“Don't you talk about ghosts!” he shouts. “Not one more word! It's all lies!”
Shocked, I reach up and feel the side of my face. The flesh is stinging, but I guess there's no real damage. I probably deserved that.
“Did you hear me?” he yells, as if he's losing control. “No more talk about that stuff!”
“I promise!” I stammer. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to!”
“There's no such thing as ghosts,” he continues breathlessly. “People can cause all the muck and trouble they want when they're alive, but when they're dead, they're dead, and dead means gone!” He pauses. “Dead means gone,” he mutters again, turning to look back out at the light. “Shut off, taken away. There's no coming back from that. When you're dead, you're just a corpse waiting to be buried, and there's no way for you to ever do or say anything again. It has to be like that, it just...”
His voice trails off.
Still on the floor, I feel the stinging pain starting to subside.
“Maybe we should get out of here,” Jesophat adds finally. “Maybe we should leave, maybe you were right.”
“Do you mean it?” I ask, not daring to get my hopes up quite yet.
“Maybe. I need to think on it a lot more. I need to work out...” He pauses, before putting his head in his hands and muttering something I don't quite make out. Stepping out into the light, he stops for a moment, and I see his whole body starting to tremble.
“Jesophat?” I say cautiously, wondering whether I should get up off the floor yet. “What happened last night? What did you -”
Suddenly he lets out a cry of anger and he turns, punching his fist against the door-frame. He gasps, clutching his hand, and then he turns away.
Scrambling to my feet, I hurry over.
“Did you hurt yourself?” I shout, trying to see his hand. “Jesophat -”
“I'm fine!” he hisses, although he turns his back to me so as to block my view. “Sometimes you talk too much!”
“But if -”
“I just need to think,” he continues, his voice filled with fear. I've never heard him like this before, and it scares me. “Serriah, maybe we should just quit it for today and see each other tomorrow instead. I need to work out what to do here, there's just...” I watch as he holds his damaged fist out and slowly clenches and unclenches his fingers. His knuckles are red raw, but at least his hand isn't broken. “I need to make a decision,” he mutters, “and I need to make it real fast, and it needs to be the right one 'cause there won't be time to go back and make it again. Do you understand?”
“Something happened last night, didn't it?” I ask, trying not to get too scared. “Tell me, Jesophat. If you tell me, maybe I can help you think of something. I'm good at that kinda problem.”
“Your job isn't to think of anything,” he replies, turning to me. “I just need time, on my own, to straighten things out. You should go home, or go do something else. Leave me alone for a while.”
“But you're okay, aren't you?”
He doesn't reply immediately, and then he turns and heads into the darkness of the barn.
“Jesophat?”
“Leave me alone. Let me think, girl.”
“I'll meet you here again tomorrow,” I tell him. “Right here, okay? And then we can talk properly.”
I wait for a reply, but it's clear he doesn't want to say anything right now. Touching the side of my face, I feel a faint sore patch from where he hit me, and I know he'll do the same again if I rile him. Jesophat never means to hurt me, I know that, but sometimes his temper just rises up and it's not his fault that he lashes out like that. It's my fault when it happens, on account of me not respecting the boundaries and... Well, sometimes I say dumb things. I'm smart, I know that, but I say things that aren't so smart.
“I'll be back tomorrow,” I mutter, before turning and heading out into the bright yard outside the barn. This isn't the first time Jesophat's seemed up
set, but somehow it feels different today, and the whole world feels different too, like there's blood at all the edges of everything.
***
“Someone's coming,” Joe mutters, looking up from the dining table as the light from an approaching truck fills the dirty kitchen windows. “Who the hell's got business out here this late?”
“Stay at the table,” Pa replies, getting to his feet. “Whoever it is, I'll see 'em on their way.”
As he heads through to the hallway, I turn to Joe.
“Who do you think it is?” he asks cautiously. “What kinda person comes visiting at dinner time?”
Looking back at the window, I see that the light from the truck is still bright out there in the darkness. A moment later, I hear footsteps coming closer to the house. I don't know why or how, but deep down I've got this feeling that something's not right.
“Who's there?” Pa calls out. “What do you want?”
Getting up from my chair, I run around the table and stop at the kitchen window. The glass panes are so dirty and smeared, and the light from the truck is blinding, but I can see Pa's silhouette stepping forward.
“Who are you?” he shouts. “What -”
Before he can finish, a gunshot rings out, and the top half of Pa's silhouette explodes as the bottom half falls back. My eyes widen with horror as I see a figure stepping toward the front door with a rifle in his hands, but after a moment I realize that I recognize the figure.
“Jesophat,” I whisper.
“What the hell was that?” Joe stammers, damn near knocking the table over as he runs to join me at the window. “Oh God, oh God, oh -”
I turn to him. “It's -”
Suddenly Joe pushes me aside and hurries to the gun cabinet on the wall. With fumbling hands, he opens the front and takes out a rifle.
A moment later, I hear footsteps entering the house.
“What are you doing?” I ask, as Joe quickly loads the rifle.
He doesn't reply. Instead, he carries the rifle to the door and takes aim.
“No!” I shout. “Stop!”
Grabbing a knife from the counter, I run toward him. I see his finger on the rifle's trigger, and I hear Jesophat's footsteps coming closer, and in a moment of panic I know I have to do whatever I can to keep Joe from shooting. With no other options, I let out a cry as I drive the knife into the back of his neck and then use it to pull him aside. The rifle fires as it falls from his hands, blasting the ceiling, but Joe slumps down to the floor and I land on top of him with my hands still firmly holding the knife's handle. All around us, plaster is raining down from the hole above.
I pull the knife out, and immediately a torrent of blood flows onto the floor.
“What did you do?” he squeals, his whole body trembling as he tries to push me away. “What the hell did you do to me?”
“I'm sorry,” I stammer, looking down at my hands and seeing blood on my fingers. “I just... I panicked, I -”
He pushes me aside, slamming me into the wall and then grabbing the knife.
“You goddamn bitch!” he shouts, raising the knife above my face. “Why are -”
Before he can say another word, a gunshot rings out and his head explodes. I close my eyes, but I instantly feel blood and chunks of flesh hitting my face. Some of the blood even goes in my mouth, and I cry out as I turn and try to crawl away. Joe's body slumps down against me and then rolls to the floor, but in a state of blind panic I haul myself past the side of the dining table while spitting out the chunks of soggy brain that hit my lips.
Suddenly something grabs the back of my dress and I'm hauled up. I scream, but I'm quickly pushed against the wall and turned around, only to find myself face-to-face with Jesophat.
Not more than two minutes ago, I was sitting with Pa and Joe, eating dinner. Now they're dead and Jesophat's here, his gun still smoking as light from his truck streams through the windows.
“It's okay,” he says firmly. “It's me.”
I open my mouth to cry out, but then I put my arms around him and hug him tight. My whole body is trembling, and after a moment I spot Joe's body on the floor with blood sprayed all across the wall.
“We have to get out of here,” Jesophat says firmly. “I thought about it all day, and this is the only chance.”
“It was so sudden,” I stammer. Staring at the stump of Joe's neck, all I can think about is the sight of his head being blasted away.
“Are you listening to me?” Jesophat shouts, putting his hands on the sides of my face and forcing me to look at him. “Serriah, there's no time to waste! Your folks are dead, my folks are dead, and there's nothing left for us to do but get the hell out of here! People'll come looking for us but we'll be okay if we run! Tell me you understand that!”
I try to tell him that I do, but I'm trembling too much to speak.
“Tell me!” he yells, leaning closer with a hint of pure madness in his eyes. Pushing me against the wall, he seems to be looking for the answer in my eyes. “We're getting out of here, Serriah! If they catch up to us, they'll kill us! Do you understand? They'll kill us both. If I hadn't lost my temper and killed my folks yesterday, we might still have a chance, but I've been thinking about it all day and... We have to run, but we'll be okay. Trust me.”
“Do you promise?” I stammer.
“I promise. I've thought it through, and I promise.”
“Stay at the table,” I remember Pa saying just a few minutes ago. “Whoever it is, I'll see 'em on their way.”
And then Joe's voice: “Who do you think it is? What kinda person comes visiting at dinner time?”
Now they're gone. Both of them. So quick. I should feel bad, but I don't. I should be mourning them, I should want to stay and give them proper burials, but all I can think is that now I finally get to be with Jesophat all the time. If that makes me a bad person, then maybe I just have to work extra hard to be good in all other ways, to make up for it.
I pause, before holding up my right hand with my pinky finger extended. “Do you promise we'll get somewhere good?”
He sighs. “Not now, Serriah...”
“Do you promise?” I ask, with tears streaming down my face.
Sighing again, he links his pinky finger with mine, the same way we always do whenever we promise each other anything. He tries to pull away after just half a second, but I force him to come closer.
“We're gonna be good people,” I stammer, my voice trembling with fear. “After this, we're gonna go far away and be good people.” I pause, before hearing a faint creaking sound from above. Looking up at the ceiling, I realize there's one final thing I need to do before we leave.
***
“I'm going now,” I say out loud, standing in the doorway and looking at the empty bed. “There's no need for you to be here anymore, I guess, so I hope you can go to wherever the next place is.”
I wait, half expecting to see Ma again, but I guess it's not the right time of night for her to appear.
“You don't have to worry about me,” I continue, knowing that she'll be able to hear me. “I've got a good man, and we're getting out of here. It's a shame about the farm, but...”
“Are you coming?” Jesophat calls out from downstairs. “We need to get moving!”
“Give me one more minute!” I shout.
Taking a deep breath, I realize I'm close to tears. I don't care about leaving Pa and Joe's bodies behind, but suddenly it occurs to me that Ma's ghost was actually kinda comforting all these years.
“I know it's real,” I say finally, as the first tear rolls down my cheek. “I know there's something after this life. Like, I don't just think it or hope it, I know it, and that's 'cause of you. I know there's something out there, something beyond death, and that thought fills me with hope.”
“Serriah!” Jesophat shouts, banging against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. “Get down here!”
“Gotta go,” I say, forcing a smile. “My man's calling. He sounds decent, doesn't he?
I wish he could've met you. I wish I could've met you. Properly, I mean.” Turning, I head to the door. “Goodbye, Mama,” I whisper under my breath, while sniffing back tears so that Jesophat won't see that anything's wrong.
When I get downstairs, I find that he's dousing the kitchen with gasoline.
“We're burning the place,” he tells me. “Don't even argue with me, Serriah. We're burning it good.”
Serriah
“Fucking cop,” Jesophat mutters as the siren rings out behind us.
“What does he want?” I ask, looking back and seeing the flashing blue lights. We've only been on the road for a few hours and the sun is still just peeking over the horizon. I was just starting to relax, to think we might get away without anyone interfering, and now a police officer is suddenly on our tail. My heart is pounding again. “Do you think he knows?”
“He can't,” Jesophat replies. “It's too soon. It must be that broken light on the back.”
He pulls the truck over to the side of the road and cuts the engine, and the police car pulls up behind us.
“I killed my brother,” I whisper, looking down at my trembling hands. “I killed Joe. He'll see it in my eyes.”
“I killed that sack of shit,” Jesophat replies. “You just cut him, that's all.”
“It's my fault,” I continue. “I'm not a good liar, Jesophat. If he asks me outright, he'll surely know!”
Reaching into the back seat, he grabs the rifle.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He doesn't reply. Instead, he quickly loads the weapon.
“Let's just get out of here,” I continue. “Tell him you're sorry about the light, and then we can leave!”
“Can't take that risk,” he mutters, as I hear the cop stepping out of his vehicle. “There's no way I'm letting some fat asshole put our plans in jeopardy. What's one more body to add to the pile, huh? Satan himself probably sent this asshole to mess with us.”
“Jesophat -”
“Mind yourself, Serriah. This is for me to decide.”