by Rosa Sophia
“Do you like her?” David asked.
“Who?” His brother had wandered across a few rocks and was looking at the fish as they darted to and fro below the trickling water.
“Kat. Do you like her?”
“No,” John replied quickly.
“Why?”
“Dad looks at her the way he used to look at Aunt Lizzy before she died.”
“So? She does look kind of like his sister.” David shrugged and walked over to the bank.
“I don’t care. I don’t like her. There’s something about her that just isn’t right. Kind of like something from a nightmare.”
“That’s stupid.” David laughed.
“Say what you want, I still don’t like her.”
The two boys headed back home and the sky grew darker. The sun had already disappeared behind the thickening clouds and the air was balmy and humid, begging for rain to dig through the sizzling heat. A storm was on its way.
***
August went quickly. Kat helped Julie with household chores and the two of them grew quite close. It was easy for her to almost forget this woman was her grandmother. She had become her friend.
Other things were forgotten by both, like their argument in the department store. Julie allowed Katherine to remain the ignorant victim of amnesia.
Meanwhile, Kat was trying to remember when she had first started having dreams about her grandmother. She still couldn’t understand what Julie needed or why she had come to her. Certainly she didn’t have the happiest life, but as far as Kat could see, things would work out. And in her old age, Julie was going to die in her sleep. That was the ending that almost everyone preferred, including Katherine.
It rained for three days and nights, off and on. Whenever Kat thought that it had stopped for good, it would start up again, as though it were reading her thoughts and taunting her.
It was a particularly drizzly hour, though the rain was finally holding off for a few minutes, and it was six-thirty in the evening. It was the thirty-first of August.
Kat plopped down on one of the armchairs in the nearly barren living room and set a pile of books on the end table beside her, ones she had gotten from the upstairs library. Phillip Maslin was sitting beside her in his own tattered chair, and he smiled broadly when she set down the books.
“Ah, more Shakespeare? You certainly have good taste, Katherine,” he said cheerfully. It seemed he was always happy to be around her, despite hating guests. He’d remarked once that she was familiar to him, and it wasn’t just that she reminded him of his sister. It was something else. Something around the eyes.
“Remember when you mentioned Lady Macbeth was a horrible woman who manipulated her husband into killing Duncan?” Kat asked, recalling their past conversation concerning the play. Phillip nodded. “Well,” Katherine continued. “I think Lady Macbeth wanted to be a man.”
“Oh?”
“If you pay very close attention to some of the things she says and the way she’s portrayed, then it’s obvious. She uses her husband because she wants to be a man. Since she can’t be a different sex, she becomes a different persona, rejecting all femininity in a desperate attempt to become, at least, androgynous.” Kat didn’t think that Phillip would have considered such a thing. He seemed the type to examine only the surface of something, like a person who looks immediately at the dust on a table, rather than the ancient charm of the antique furniture. Therefore, what he said next surprised her.
“Sounds right.”
“Really?” Kat asked. “In that case,” she continued, feeling brazen, “I think she’s gay.”
This made Phillip’s eyes widen slightly. He dug his fingers into the arms of his chair and turned and stared at Kat with both shock and disbelief.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope. There were many rumors that suggested Shakespeare himself was gay. He left his family temporarily—I think it was temporary—and there were some who claimed that he was sleeping with men.” As soon as she’d said this, Kat regretted it. She saw Phillip’s eyes glimmer with sudden anger.
“It’s a shame,” he said gruffly. “Such a literary man, turning into something like that. Such a shame.”
Kat decided not to dignify that with a response. Part of her burned up inside. She wanted to defend herself, to defend gay rights, but then she remembered where she was. She remembered whom she was talking to, what this man stood for. Then she wondered if the rumors about Shakespeare were even known in 1960, or if she’d just rattled of theories that weren’t even present in this time period. Kat might have inadvertently placed herself in the future, her future, where Phillip had yet to go.
Phillip looked up from the book he was holding, his expression betraying disgust. “I hate those gays. Damn nuisance.”
Kat cringed. Then she thought of John. A horrible thought dawned upon her. This abominable epiphany worked its way into her mind and settled like a slimed, rotten fish on a riverbank. She thought back to her dreams. She looked down at the ring on her finger and wondered why no one else had noticed it was there. She wondered why Julie had never seen it, and why it had remained hidden to all but David, as though it were almost invisible.
She thought of the reasons behind all dreams. John would not leave her thoughts.
The gay issue soon excused itself from Kat and Phillip’s conversation, sinking into the ground where hatred lay, to bed itself with fear that would soon grow out of the soil like a weed that couldn’t be killed.
Fair is foul, and foul is fair; hover through the fog and filthy air.
For some reason, the witches’ spell-like recital in the beginning of Shakespeare’s play reminded Kat of Phillip, though she couldn’t begin to explain why, even to herself.
***
Sometime around eight-thirty that night, when it was still relatively light outside, Kat watched Phillip drop his book on the table by his chair and stalk to the nearest window. From there, he could see David and John trekking toward the barn.
“I’d better go check on the boys,” he said. “You never know what trouble they could be getting into. I’ll be back in no time, Katherine.”
“Okay.” She set down her book and leaned back in her chair, waiting for Phillip to exit the room.
There was something strange going on, something she couldn’t place. An urgency overtook her. Kat followed that feeling—and she followed Phillip.
The rain came down harder as she left the house. Again, it seemed in response to her own disagreeable thoughts about the downpour. She wrapped her arms around her body and took her time, walking slowly toward the barn.
Fair is foul, she thought.
She began to hear voices yelling. First Phillip’s, then one of the boys. She thought of Julie, standing in the hallway in her dreams, yelling at someone who couldn’t be seen.
And foul is fair.
She could hear feet scuffling in the barn, something hitting the wall. Another yell. Her heart pounded as the rain turned icy. Terror washed through her. She thought of Julie, wherever she was in the house, not knowing what was going on. Completely oblivious.
Kat started running.
The dream—who had Julie been yelling at?
The barn wasn’t that far away. She was getting closer. She could still hear yelling behind those old doors. Who, who had Julie been so upset at in her dream?
She touched the barn doors.
Phillip.
Standing behind her in that recurring vision, the person Kat couldn’t see, no matter how hard she tried to turn around and find the subject of Julie’s anger. That’s who Julie had been so furious with, in every one of those dreams. Her husband. Kat had dreamt of Frank Ruth as well. Who had he been angry with? It had to have been Phillip.
Julie wanted help so badly. She wanted it so much she’d reached across years, across generations. Suddenly, Katherine knew why she was there. If only she could stop him, before it was too late—
She threw open the doors and
rushed into the barn.
Chapter 4
Congregation of Ghosts
It was August thirtieth of the year 1989. Katherine Maslin was sixteen years old and her father was forty. Tomorrow was an important day in David’s memory, one that was always painful. No one but his father knew why.
Fuck him. He hadn’t spoken to him for years and he was all the better for it.
David was sitting in a bar and it was two o’clock in the afternoon. His wife wouldn’t have been pleased at that fact, but he didn’t care. He was getting old, in his opinion, and things that would have mattered years before were no longer of consequence.
He had brown hair and it was quickly receding. His dark blue eyes had rings and creases around them. He was beginning to wonder if he was like an old tree. If he counted all the wrinkles on his face, it might add up to how old David felt, because the number was certainly higher than forty.
“Get you another beer, Dave?” It took a moment before this question registered in David’s mind. He looked up and saw the pretty blond bartender, then nodded. “A little out of it today?” she inquired, smiling.
“Just a bit, Nancy. Nothing new, though.” And that much was true. Tomorrow was like an aging yellow tabloid in the back of someone’s dusty basement. Ever since David had been a child, August thirty-first had been old news.
For the past three years, in the tiny town where he lived in Colorado, David had been spending more and more time in the bar. And by midnight on weekends, he would stumble out drunk and head home to a wife who’d already grown quite tired of her husband’s late indulgences.
When the bartender asked David if he wanted a third beer, he surprisingly declined.
“Hon, this is not like you at all. You usually stay a lot later than this.”
“Maybe I’m not me anymore,” he said, standing. He dropped a five-dollar bill on the bar. “That’s for you. I’m heading home.”
“Hey, Dave?” Nancy leaned against the bar, her large bosom spilling against the counter.
“Yeah.”
“What’s going on? What’s wrong?” The sensitivity was clear in her eyes. She wasn’t asking for the sake of conversation. She truly cared.
“Memories. Why else do people get drunk? Bad memories.”
The bartender laughed, but her mirth sounded hollow. “You’re right, Dave. I guess I’ll be seeing you?”
“Eventually.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
David shrugged. He waved goodbye. Then he walked out the front door, knowing he would never be in that bar again.
He was a mechanic, and he owned his own shop. Many of his customers owned antique or classic cars, and David restored them. However, his everyday car was a Plymouth Acclaim. He knew almost everything there was to know about cars. Besides knowing how to make one perfect, he knew how to make it imperfect as well. He knew exactly what he was doing when he crawled under his car on the night of the thirtieth with one intention only—to puncture the brake line.
It didn’t take him very long. When he went to bed, he kissed his wife goodnight, curled up beside her, and thought about tomorrow.
He didn’t want to know when he would die. He wanted it to be unexpected. His brother’s death had been unexpected, so it made sense that his should be too. David had always been unsure of himself, and it made sense that his death should be the same way.
He had gone through life in complete misery. Every day, he thought of the one person he loved more than anyone, the one person he would never see again. He would never get to hold that person close. Not unless he believed men like him went to Heaven, which he didn’t. But he figured he shouldn’t put it off. If he was going to Hell, he may as well go now, rather than wait until he was an old bastard, even more miserable in that distant future than in this sorrowful present.
David decided his fate had already been planned out, and there was no going back. After all, if he couldn’t avenge the only person he’d ever really wept for, then what good was living?
He dreamt of horrible things that night. When he woke up the next morning, he took his bowl and a small bag of weed into the bathroom with him. He smoked in front of the mirror, for the thousandth time. Self-medication was his forte. He had almost forgotten about the situation with his brakes until he climbed into the front seat of his car. Then he remembered. Had he kissed his wife goodbye?
Yeah. I did.
Was his living will all planned out, all perfect?
Yes, it is.
Was he ready?
That was a question he couldn’t answer, which was why he had decided upon an unpredictable suicide. He didn’t know when or where he would die, he only knew why and how. There was always a chance he would live, so David planned to not worry too much about how fast he was going or whether or not he was being a cautious driver. He didn’t care anymore, about anything.
David pulled out of the garage and backed out of his driveway, then took the car out of reverse. He thought about John. He remembered how they’d held each other after one of them had gotten beaten. Usually, it was John. Their father had hated him the most, because he was too feminine.
Cars honked around him when David ran a red light. He hadn’t even noticed until the last second. He tensed up for a moment, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. Normally, he would be going to work right now, but he didn’t care about that either. He figured he would drive around for the rest of the day and wait for death to come calling.
He could remember the day John had led David into their mother’s room and opened her closet. John pulled out a pair of her high heels and put them on. He admired himself in the mirror and pranced around until David told him desperately to put them away, before their father caught him. The two boys had fought after that, because John hated it when David tried to tell him what to do. Nevertheless, John had tossed the shoes carelessly back into the closet.
David hated to think of his brother. He hated to think of him because it was like looking into a mirror. He had seen himself in John’s eyes, the reflection of something that his father would have called unholy and sick. He had seen himself in his eyes, when he’d kissed him—
“Goddamn it!” David screamed. He had run a stop sign. He screeched to a halt and parked. He was still alive. His brakes hadn’t died yet, and neither had he. David collapsed against the steering wheel and wept. He jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
When he turned to see who was sitting next to him, there was no one, just empty space. Part of him wanted to believe it was John watching over him. The rational side of his mind rejected the idea and tried to fight off the other thoughts in his head. But he couldn’t do it anymore. He was tired of lying to himself, of lying to his wife and his daughter. He slammed his fist on the dashboard and sobbed heavily.
“Goddamn it,” he muttered, tears soaking his face. He could feel his heart expand as though it were about to explode. He had hidden so much.
‘You tell anybody about this and I’ll send somebody to get rid of you.’
His father’s voice was so clear, so close.
‘Nobody would remember a useless sinner like you, anyway.’
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” David screamed. People on the sidewalk were passing by and looking at this strange man as he screamed at nothing but his memories, his face turning redder and his eyes filling with more and more tears.
“Fuck me,” he murmured, slumping against the back of the seat. He was sitting there in a suit and tie—why he had worn such nice clothing, he wasn’t quite sure—allowing his body to go limp against the upholstery, like a tortured prisoner who was finally giving up.
“Jesus Christ.” His voice was soft and sad. Ghostly. “My God. I’m a fucking faggot.”
No one would have heard him. He whispered those words, hoping even God wouldn’t hear him. But David heard. It was an admission he’d never allowed until now.
He was calmer than he’d ever been. He started his car again and turn
ed slowly into traffic. He drove for about an hour, then attempted to stop. When he couldn’t, it didn’t come as a surprise. For once in his life, he was sure about something.
There was a bridge in front of him.
Then a bank, chock full of weeds and brambles. His car plummeted into the river and rather than die of a broken neck or his head through the windshield, David Maslin drowned.
The last thing he thought of before his car hit the water was Katherine. Yes, she had been there, by the creek in 1960, near the Maslin farmstead. He had known it as soon as she’d started looking like that lovely young blond woman on her fifteenth birthday. Although his daughter’s friendship had been comforting, it hadn’t saved him from his own self-loathing. His father’s accusations and threats echoed in his mind. And with those words came his reply:
Will I really go to Hell, Dad?
***
What Kat had witnessed behind those barn doors was something that would haunt her for the rest of her life. If all that Julie had wanted was to save her son, Katherine Maslin hadn’t succeeded in helping her.
It was the most hideous thing she had ever seen.
She screamed when she watched the axe come down on John and break his body as though it had been nothing more than a twig. David was on the ground, out cold. And before Katherine could think twice, there was blood everywhere. John’s skull split like a melon and emptied its contents on the barn floor. Two swipes with the crude weapon and the less manly of the brothers was dead, murdered by his own father.
Kat stood shaking by the barn doors, too weak to even cry. Her legs trembled and she fought the urge to collapse, to faint. Phillip turned, covered in blood, the axe held firmly in his right hand.
“Why,” Kat muttered, but it was all she could say. She wanted to vomit. The stench of blood was on the air, and the barn was like a slaughterhouse. Kat wanted to grab David and drag him out of there, but the sensible part of her jumbled mind knew he would live for years to come.