Brimstone

by Daniel Foster

  She needed everyone to know so that her mother would never be allowed to forget. Never again hide behind her money and her delusions. She did not want to destroy her mother, she wanted to hurt her in a way that would never heal. She wanted her mother to look in the mirror every day, see the truth of herself and be devastated by it, just as she had devastated Charity.

  But how can I do that? She ran a hand down William’s back and moved with the rhythm of his love. It’s not just me anymore. I don’t have to do anything alone ever again. The thought brought a knot to her throat. William is with me to the end. How can we make Mother see?

  A tiny idea took root in a corner of her mind. She thought about it as William massaged her hips and lower back. The idea bloomed. The pleasure of the massage doubled as she imagined the look on her mother’s face.

  She needed to think about the idea. Refine it. Sharpen the edges of it. It was huge, it was crazy, but it just might work. And if it worked, it might set Charity free. It might finally break the monster who held her prisoner.

  * * *

  Journal Entry

  Esslingen, Germany. July 7, 1902

  It killed a little girl today. I curse the angels and the gods of yore, because only the mystical and fantastic could damn me to this degree. I have charted every part of the human mental construction, trying to discover what It is seeking, what makes It stronger and weaker. Yet I have nothing to show for my efforts.

  As I was told by a mentor long ago, and as I have told my pupils, no one is ever a master of the mind, only a student. Naturally, then, I turned first to psychology, in the belief that a creature of emotional drive and need would draw Its strength from psychological composition. I think therein lies the key, but as I never know who It will take before It does so, and It never leaves them while they are alive, my efforts are frustrated by my inability to perform psychological and phrenological analysis on the victims. I can only ask questions of the grieving family and friends once It is done.

  For the first few years, It took seemingly at random, sometimes growing stronger, other times weaker. But It makes few mistakes now. It is growing bold. And I am being left behind.

  — J.S.G

  The Appalachian Mountains. May, 1910.

  Mrs. Malvern stared out the window while her husband bustled around his study, tossing things into one of his alligator handbags. He was not fussing or fretting. He never did either. His motions were methodical. Precise. As he rounded the desk, a neat stack of papers in hand, she watched him pass. His body was heavy and aging beneath his day robe. His face had grown puffier and more pallid over the years, but his eyes glinted with the same steel which had attracted her to him thirty years ago.

  She loved seeing him like this. His dual nature gave her strength, reminded her how she should exercise power. She loved him as a chortling father because he demanded nothing and gave everything, and she loved him as a glittering-eyed barracuda, because he demanded everything and gave nothing.

  His hands were soft, but his mind was a blade. It cut through the world like a battle axe through a pear, parting the profitable from the charitable, the failures from the successful, and the fools from the wily. Not even the loss of the largest purchaser of his timber, Bowson and Associates, would slow him. Mrs. Malvern had been at the table with him when he’d received the letter. He’d regretfully laid his chicken leg aside and opened the letter with his greasy, slightly drunk fingers.

  As he’d read, she’d been privileged to watch the change take place. She had leaned towards him, soaking it up. It aroused her as easily now as it had the first time she’d seen it. She watched the sunny smile fade from the surface of his personality. His hands steadied as if the alcohol had suddenly become irrelevant. His eyes darkened, became sharp and remorseless. Like a predator.

  She was watching the predator now, the cold-blooded thing swimming past her and round her husband’s study. He would be gone into New England for months. But when he returned, not only would he have replaced more than he had lost, but Bowson and Associates would be no more. He would have them if only so he could dismember them.

  A chill rain was falling outside, pelting the ten-foot-tall lead-glass windows. Mrs. Malvern walked to one of them and laid a hand on the metal scroll work. It was cold as the rain, but dry, and solid as the world’s foundation. She prayed for similar coolness and solidity in herself. The timing of her husband’s departure was perfect, as would be its duration. She couldn’t help wishing he could stay, though. She did not want to do this alone. But she had to. She didn’t dare tell him what she was about to do.

  So she collected the run-off of his determination, hoarding it into her mind and heart. She would be strong—unbreakable, she told herself—and she hoped it wasn’t a lie. If Charity was any other person, this would be easy, but Charity was her daughter. Mrs. Malvern swallowed. It has to be done. There is no other way.

  According to Dr. Bentley, destroying the object of Charity’s pathology, her paintings, should have been enough to shock Charity out of her delusions. It hadn’t. Mrs. Malvern had finally been forced to accept the truth she had fled for so long. Charity was not well, and she was sliding.

  Charity was fortunate, though. She would never believe it, but she was fortunate because her mother loved her dearly, and no matter what it cost, her mother would not abandon her.

  * * *

  Journal Entry

  The outskirts of Munich, Germany. July 11, 1902

  Its hide thickens with each new host It takes. It last appeared more akin to leather armor than living tissue. I do not know if a handgun round would penetrate it. I think a long rifle, with sufficient powder, may be able to inflict damage. If my luck does not hold, I may have opportunity to test this. I still do not know what It searches for, but I think It is beginning to.

  It is becoming quicker than the eye. It beat me here by three days, free to murder while I toiled over the roads. I killed two horses. It endures now, like a thing not made of muscle and bone.

  — J.S.G.

  The Appalachian Mountains. May, 1910.

  Charity stalked down Main Street. William rattled along behind her, pushing the wheel barrow as quietly as he could, grunting in annoyance when he hit a pothole and jounced the cans in the barrow. It was a warm night. So much the better. Even the gods of the weather were supporting the rightness of Charity’s cause.

  Charity knew they needed to be quiet. They didn’t want to attract attention until they were finished, but at the same time, she was already liberated, ravenously excited over what she had devised. She couldn’t wait for the world to know. To see, and be dismayed.

  Charity pointed to the boardwalk in front of Orem’s grocer. William wrestled with the barrow until he had it up on the boardwalk, then began opening cans in the moonlight.

  Three cans of whitewash, stolen from Mr. Halstead, the sheriff. One big can of tar and one even bigger can of axel grease pirated from the railroad yard, and finally, two cans of red barn paint, liberated from Mrs. Morgan’s house, one of her mother’s best friends. Her creative juices had come gushing back, and she was letting the current sweep her away. Charity slung the bag off her shoulder, letting its contents clatter loudly when they hit the boardwalk.

  William shushed her, a sheen of nervous perspiration on his forehead, but she kissed him lasciviously and said, “The whole world’s gonna know tomorrow morning, darlin’.”

  She hadn’t yet told him what she was going to do.

  She dug in her bag, which was loaded with every kind of brush imaginable, from a few of her canvas brushes to big horsehair brushes, everything she thought she might use. It was all an experiment. She’d never done a painting this large before. Come to think of it, she wasn’t sure Michelangelo had done a painting this large. The Sistine Chapel? Ha! Cathedrals were for amateurs.

  She stood before the blank board walls of the shops along Main Street. The walls were plain, relatively flat, and almost unbroken, save for periodic windows and doors. Eve
n those were only slightly recessed. The rows of shops extended at least a block in all four cardinal directions from the square. It was the largest canvas an artist could ask for. It was a blank slate, acres of it, waiting for the expression Charity had so long deserved to make.

  She grabbed a white wash bucket, dunked a brush, and whipped a white line across the wood, and another, and another. She’d never painted in this manner, no shading or filling and little blending, just line drawings, really. They were fast and stark, the white images made brilliant with tar accents, and the emotions made bloody with the gallons of red she had available. When she’d finished her first attempt at the face, she stepped back to look at it. It was recognizable. Effortlessly so, even in the dark. Charity laughed out loud.

  She covered a hundred yards of shops with her images, each proceeding into the next in less than an hour. Grey hovered nervously by her at first, but as he began to see what she was doing, he fell back, staring at the pictures as though in shock. Charity went on, lining in white, emphasizing and shadowing in black, feeling in red. Scrawling her truth across shop after shop. At first she thought she might try to work the windows into the montage in some way, but she found it was easier and quicker to paint over the glass. And more satisfying. Her mother had stopped for nothing important, regarded nothing sensitive, so why should Charity’s declaration be any different?

  She painted onward, crossing the street and waving William to follow her. He did, as obedient as a frightened puppy. The exhilaration of release was taking over, driving her to paint pictures even she had not planned. With each passing minute, she continued to be amazed she hadn’t been caught. Even the Red Stallion Tavern, boisterous though it was, had offered no one to stop her. Every now and again, the door would open and vomit out a wash of hot air, immoderate laughter, and a drunk or two, but they offered her no resistance.

  One drunk man stopped and stared at an image she’d painted across the street, removed his hat and held it to his chest as if saluting the flag. An hour later, two more drunks stumbled down the street, staring at the work in wonder, as if touring a museum. Charity had no intention of stopping until either she was finished with the entire square, or someone caught her and forced her to stop. She didn’t know which she would relish more.

  She took off her clothes, baring the full truth to the world in the form of the light scars her mother’s switches had left across her buttocks. She picked up speed. Paint and tar and whitewash flew, covering her with the pigmented shrapnel of her explosive work.

  The night passed in slow shades of black, navy, and rising purple. Charity painted until her arms and back ached, until her legs burned for rest beneath her. Until her mind turned to clay and only her creativity guided her hands—both of them. She’d given up on a single brush hours ago. One was too slow. Too restrictive. She would never be restricted again.

  At long last, she collapsed to the boardwalk at the end of the street, having painted a life’s worth of angst onto the face of the town.

  “Well honey,” she cackled as tears from the pain in her wrists ran down her face. “We painted the town red!”

  William was beside her, trying to get her up off the ground, trying to wrap his coat around her bare, paint-speckled breasts. She pushed him away. She had finished. Against all odds, against her mother, she had finished her truth. Now everyone would see. So why hide anything now?

  With William pleading, begging, then finally gathering up the paints into the barrow and fleeing, she began her slow walk down Main Street as the sun rose.

  The rutted road was not kind to her bare feet, but when had this town ever been kind? The sun rose in brilliant lances, hitting her body and revealing her naked, color slathered curves to the morning air. The first few shop owners were arriving. Exclaiming, cursing, or most often, just standing, dumbfounded as she walked past them.

  You did this, Mother. You and no one else. She raised her arms and turned as she reached the end of Main Street, displaying her work to all the world. She took a bow.

  What do you think of your achievement, Mother? Do you like it?

  Charity laughed, and with the eyes of the world watching, she turned slowly up the road to her parents’ mansion.

  * * *

  Journal Entry

  The Black Forest, Germany. December 18, 1904

  I am lost. I was foolish to follow It into the wilds.

  I am driven by the rising burden of death upon my shoulders. Though I know It is ultimately to blame, it is my hands which must now wield the spike and hammer.

  So this time, I followed It as It fled and attempted to capture It. I was surprised to find that It allowed me to do so. I laid It upon the frosty ground, knowing It does not prefer the cold. I let It escape again to see what It would do. I thought if I followed It and was able to watch It choose a victim, I might gain some insight. Indeed I did, but not in the manner I had expected.

  It joined with the young woman in a manner even more gruesome than I have yet seen. She screamed for quite some time, while I, horrible thing I have become, did nothing to aid her. It took her, but only for a moment. Suddenly, It retreated from her as might a rat tasting poison in a cleverly laid dish of food. It withdrew, nay, It fled from her. That was when I struck upon the question: even if a rat tastes poison, and knows it will be made sick, can it be coaxed to consume despite its instincts? Certainly. A rat will eat its own death, if only it can be made hungry enough. If it can be made to starve.

  Does It avoid those which weaken It because It fears, in Its weakness, It could become vulnerable? Everything which needs sustenance can be starved, I must only learn how. It has been gone from me for over a month now, but I will escape this wilderness, I will hunt It down, and we will begin our deadly dance again. It flees because It knows I am learning of It.

  — J.S.G

  The Appalachian Mountains. May, 1910.

  Mrs. Malvern stood in the middle of the town’s square, staring. Her closest friends clustered around her, some aghast, some laying comforting hands on her shoulders and elbows, some crying and dabbing their eyes daintily with their handkerchiefs. Her husband left too soon, she knew that now. She should have been upfront, asked for his understanding and his help. Now it was too late.

  The entire town square had been painted in violent shades of black, white, and red. The images covered the shop fronts in all four directions away from the square. There was no art to the paintings, no creativity or beauty, only insanity.

  All of the paintings were of either Charity or Mrs. Malvern herself. Both women were caricatured, exaggerating their more prominent features to make sure no one could mistake their identity. The representations of Mrs. Malvern were all enormously fat, with small stubby legs. Her round face was portrayed as nearly circular, her button nose made ridiculously small, and her hats larger than life. Charity was similarly grotesque in form, but not nearly so grotesque as the things Mrs. Malvern was represented as doing to her daughter.

  Across the front of the tailor’s shop, a black-and-white Mrs. Malvern drove some sort of corkscrew into the back of black-and-white Charity’s head. Charity’s mouth was open in a long scream of agony, her eyes blank ovals, red blood gushing everywhere. In the next illustration, spanning the apothecary and the blacksmith’s shop, Mrs. Malvern’s fat hands were depicted holding a large pair of pliers with which she had ripped loose most of Charity’s fingernails and teeth.

  Around the corner, Mrs. Malvern’s naked, caricatured body was shown in all its unattractive glory, mounting a struggling man, not her husband, whose expression was one of pain and revulsion. Bright red blood, probably barn paint, ran from his eyes and mouth. So it went, around the square, each picture worse than the last.

  At first, Mrs. Malvern had been horrified and humiliated, but as she’d stood in the square with Mrs. Davalos, her other friends came to comfort her, too. Mrs. Davalos tried to talk her into leaving the street, coming to her house for a cup of tea in her parlor. But Mrs. Malvern realized wh
at she had to do. She did not let her anger show. She did not allow herself to appear aggressive, hateful, spiteful, vengeful, or any of the other things she felt on the inside.

  She had been attacked by her own offspring. Charity had made their private battle into a public display. A horrific show of uncivilized heathenism. Mrs. Malvern knew it, and as her friends saw her there, with her rules broken, her love defied, they knew it too.

  And they came to comfort.

  Mrs. Malvern felt like a flag in a hurricane, whipped and tossed, jerked and torn by feral elements which had no concern for what she represented. Like that same flag, though, she would stand tall and endure. She let the tears flow, running down her face and ruining her dress, but she kept her face placid. Strong. Resolute.

  Even among the faces who had secretly mocked her in months past, she began to see a grudging respect. Whether they liked her or not, Charity had made her into a martyr, and that was a position of fortune and pity which they dared not assail.

  Mrs. Davalos tried again, encouraging her to leave the square, tugging gently at her elbow and saying things like, “This is too much for you, dear. Too much for anyone. Come with me.”

  But, when the emotions were high, when the moment was right, Mrs. Malvern allowed all her hurt, but not her anger, to peek through. She said, “She’s still my daughter. I can’t abandon her. I will not let her go to this madness.”

  The town’s women crowded closer, competing with one another to see who could be the most understanding, the most compassionate. The war with Charity had been hard and hurtful, but at long last, Mrs. Malvern knew she had won.

  * * *

  Journal Entry

  Lucerne, Switzerland, July 5, 1905.

  God help me, It came to me tonight. The man It took made It stronger than ever. Even though I crept upon It as It slept, I was sore afraid, and the fear stole the strength from my hand.