Garden of Fiends

by Matthews, Mark

  He needed to shoot a move just like that. Or maybe if he promised her he’d go to detox, the way Tara always talked about, but first he needed twenty bucks, or fifty bucks, just a little to get him through. And when Tara came back they would go to detox together.

  He dragged his weight up the stairs. His sweaty hands tried to twist the doorknob but could not. It was stuck solid. Didn’t turn. What the hell is that? He twisted harder and palms spun around the knob, and yes, the damn thing was locked.

  He made a fist and pounded, three times solid. Bamm, Bamm, Bammm.

  “Mom, what happened? Mom! Mooommmm...what is this? Unlock the door!”

  Then he noticed tiny nail points splintering the door jam. They had been hammered through the wood, angled from the door into the frame. The door wasn’t just locked, it was nailed shut.

  “Mom! What the fuck is this?” Jervis screamed. He pounded harder, and with each pound noticed another nail. He smashed his body into the door, but it wouldn’t give.

  “Mom, come on. Please. I know, Mom, you’re right. I’m hurt, Mom. I really am... I’m hurt bad.”

  Silence.

  The tears started to come. Real tears. This was so unfair and he wanted to kill her right then and there. Why would she do this to me? How can she make me suffer?

  As if to answer, his mother spoke from the other side of the door.

  “You think you’ll steal from me? You think you’re slick? I went through this with your father, so I know how to handle you. That gold was your grandmother’s, you little piece of crap. You should have shoved it up your ass instead of your veins. Now look at you. I’ll open up in three days. Three days you can stay down there, and you can come up when you’re no longer full of poison. You got a toilet and you got water. You’re fine.”

  “What? What are you talking about? Mom, come on, open up and show me. I didn’t steal a goddamn thing. Maybe it was Tara. She maybe did that, she does those things. Damn Tara, she’s in jail, Mom. Come on.”

  “Oh, she ain’t in jail, that girl’s better than you and hopefully will leave you for good this time.”

  “You stupid bitch! Open this thing up before I smack the shit out of you.”

  He knew that wasn’t going to work, but still pounded an exclamation point on the door. The solid wood now hurt his hand. God he needed some dope.

  For an hour he sat there, giving the door a bang with his fist every few minutes. Boom, like a deathly drum beat. Boom, but nothing, boom. Screams went unanswered. His brain was being scattered. His insides quivered. It was all so crazy and he needed to get out soon—and where the hell was Tara?

  Revenge fantasies filled the mush in his head and he went back downstairs to search through his arsenal. The room had already been scoured for dope. No Vicodins, no Percocets. No weed. No liquor. No nothing.

  He needed something. Something to make her sad enough, or angry enough, or scared enough to open the door.

  Dad. There was Dad and what was left of him.

  He went to the urn and opened the top. More than once, he had taken the ashes out and sifted through the grey matter. It was chunky, sooty, meatier than a cigarette ash; like the stuff that fell onto the bottom of a grill over time. He had become familiar with the ashes. Time to let Dad out of the urn again, maybe blow the ashes under the door. Maybe that.

  His shaky fingers poured out the contents, and he dabbed at their dryness. So rich, so delicate, hypnotizing. The flakes became a haze, brain matter and ash became one, and then­–the voices.

  JUST SHOOT IT.

  What?

  BOIL IT UP AND SHOOT IT.

  Woozy. He needed water. He needed Tara. He needed something to stop the voices, but only dope would do that.

  Command audio hallucinations was what the doctors had called the voices after he’d been in and out of hospitals as a teenager. Psychiatrists pushed lithium and Zyprexa, but thank God he stumbled upon heroin. It was the only medicine that put the evil to rest and opened up the gates of heaven.

  SON, YOU NEED SOMETHING TO FIX WITH NOW. SHOOT SOME. A LITTLE PART OF IT IN EVERYONE.

  The voice flickered like a candle in his dark head. It was time to curl back up in bed and turn off the world, but the voices kept coming.

  MILK-BLOOD TO KEEP FROM RUNNING OUT.

  He grabbed the metal spoon within reach, blackened from so many days of flame, and used it to push the ashes into shapes. He mixed them around as if they were a bowl of Cheerios. Tiny piles, little mountains, rivers in between, a small land where his father was God. Eyes transfixed at the gray nothingness pile for who knows how long, until he finally scooped some up on his spoon.

  ASHES OF BURNT UP SMACK. GO AHEAD, BOIL IT AND FIX UP.

  Bullshit.

  BOIL IT AND FIX UP.

  Memories flashed before him of crushing, boiling and shooting up Vicodin, of shooting up cocaine, of hitting his veins with whatever got him high. Fixing up was as automatic and involuntary as breathing, and soon water was in the spoon. The ashy matter soaked in the water until the mixture became a dark pool of liquid.

  There’s got to be dope left in there, he told himself.

  THERE IS. THERE IS.

  Where else would it go?

  IT’S HERE.

  No time for cotton filter. This is Dad. Fuck you, Mom. Fuck you.

  The syringe tip was old and used, but it drew the chunky liquid. He held the needle in the air, snapped it for bubbles, and felt his blood start to warm in anticipation.

  The pinprick hit its mark, the needle puncture was bliss. He drew back and saw red blood swirl in the dark oily liquid of the barrel. Yes… ahhh. Angelic music filled his ears when he pushed the plunger in. He felt the warmth spread through his back. Like an army it fought back the evil sickness that had invaded his body. His back loosened as if sprouting wings and ready to fly.

  He looked at his flesh and imagined he could see the new ash-blood traveling dark and fast through his body. No, he wasn’t imagining it–he could really see it, couldn’t he? Lifeblood was going through his veins to the center of his brain. He was being reborn.

  The surge was ecstatic, and as it coursed through his body, the pile spoke to him over and over, summoning him to consume the flesh of his father into his veins.

  Music filled the basement for the days he was down there. His soul hummed on fire. Instruments played from inside of him as if using his veins as strings. Cramping gave way to strength, sweat and shakes left and precision and laser focus grew. Ages seem to pass through him along with the ashes. Unlived memories built in his brain, unfelt sensations of a history larger than his years. Blue veins were being filled with shades of gray and black. Old skin was discarded and new skin grew.

  The basement was no longer a dungeon, but a new kind of heaven.

  The sun rose and fell three times while he filled himself up with Daddy-smack. The pile was near gone when the banging noises from his mom returned from upstairs. Boom, boom, boom.

  I caught you knockin’ at my cellar door, I love you baby can I have some more…

  The noise didn’t make him flinch, not this time. His body was powerful and ready. Ready for the footsteps that were coming down the stairs.

  “Jervis, come on up now. Damn it, you must be hungry. Come on up, the door is open. Let’s talk about this.”

  He said nothing. He felt so large standing there and she had become so small.

  “Jervis. Jervis,” she said his name with each step. “What is going on? Don’t you want to come up?”

  She turned the corner from the stairs and whatever she saw shocked her silent. Jervis felt a voice rise from deep within his gut that he didn’t recognize as his own:

  “THE GOLD JEWELRY. IT WAS NEVER YOURS. IT CAME FROM ME AND BELONGED TO THE BOY. IT WAS HIS BIRTHRIGHT.”

  The words came out with power and rage. His flesh gleamed with a pulsating redness from the blood boiling beneath. His muscles ripped and he cocked back a fist ready to strike.

  She fell to the grou
nd with the first punch, and then he beat on her face until it could be beaten no more. Her eyes were swollen shut, her body limp on the floor, and Jervis stood over her, waiting for her next move, but nothing. Her life couldn’t be over. Could it? She’d always been there, always had something to say, but now her blood was set free and running like a red river on the floor.

  A voice came from up the stairs. Somebody was calling his name. It was Tara. Her feet pitter-pattered on each step, and soon he was looking into her eyes. She seemed fresh, more alive—younger even—but terrified. Neither of them could speak at first. The air of death in the basement gagged them both.

  “Jervis? Is that you? What happened? You don’t look right. And what the fuck did you do?”

  “I…I… didn’t do anything. I was trapped. I had to get out. Where were you?”

  “Detox, like I told you. Me first, you second. We agreed. You don’t remember?”

  “You never said that.”

  “I did too. I did say that. I did and you agreed. I left you voicemails every day to come get me. But when you didn’t, I knew that meant you loved me and wanted me to stay.”

  Tara bent down to the body on the ground.

  “Your mom… she’s… what did you do, Jervis?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know, Tara. I don’t know what’s happening to me. What’s happening to me?”

  The strength had left him. He put his arms to his side and pleaded. He wanted a hug, but she looked at him too scared to get close. Cramps flooded back into his muscles. The army of strength retreated out of his blood. The implosion of cramping cells was returning and nausea spread from his gut up his spine. He needed to be held. He needed the warmth of his mother or his girlfriend or his heroin.

  He fell into her arms.

  Detox. Now he remembered. She went there like they had planned. But he had lied. He never planned on going. He thought she was full of shit, that she wasn’t going, that she’d be back to get high. But she did go get clean. She was something different now.

  The black strings of her spikey hair seemed to have grown softer. Her skin against his own more pure. Three days clean but the history of shooting smack was still there and couldn’t be erased. He sniffed at the base of her neck and it came out of her pores. He felt the dope in her flesh. It was there in each and every cell, and always in her soul. So much money and so many years of smack. No detox could get that out of her.

  JERVIS. YOU KNOW WHAT TARA HAS IN HER BLOOD DON’T YOU?

  The voice of his dad came back in a wave of black nausea. He needed to do something. Now. Get high and stop the evil and swing the gates of heaven back open.

  Tara wasn’t going to get high with him anymore, he could feel it. But she would get him high. All of her. Every last cell. He was more worried about how he could burn her up into ashes than how he was going to kill her. That part would be easy. Just thinking of her flesh boiled up into ashes made his blood warm.

  His hands clutched around her neck. How soft her flesh was. His thumbs pressed against her windpipe. How easy to crack. He began to squeeze.

  The color of her skin changed. She tried to gag so he squeezed tighter and closed her windpipe. Her body finally collapsed to the floor right next to his mom.

  WE NEED TO GET HIGH JERVIS. MILK-BLOOD TO KEEP FROM RUNNING OUT.

  He picked up her wrist. It was still warm with blood running in her veins. He read her tattoo. The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes was inked across her underarm. He gathered the needle from the bed stand and poked her vein to draw some blood the way she had done a thousand times in this basement bedroom. Then he injected her blood into his own. Ahhhhh, yes. He felt like an explorer blasting into new lands when he spiked Tara’s blood into his vein. His dad spoke with approval.

  AHHHHHH. JERVIS, YOU ARE WORTHY OF BEING MY SON. I’M WITH YOU. ALWAYS.

  Tara may still be alive, but her life and her body was all his. He would never run out of dope again. Never.

  WE NEED MORE, JERVIS, YOU RED DEVIL. YOU’VE ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY. ALWAYS.

  Voice of his dad or his own thoughts, it all hurt to figure out which, all of it just a pile of gray matter ash, but it was true. He had tasted her blood and needed more. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

  An axe. There was one in the garage. He’d lop off one of her limbs, chop her up, torch up the flesh, scrape off the ash, and shoot it.

  The sound of paws pattered down the stairs. It was Tara’s old dog. It sniffed at her cheek and then licked as if cleaning a wound. Tara’s eyes fluttered, the kaleidoscope colors inside awoke and looked up at him. She was waking up. Time to get the axe.

  Chapter: The Last

  Lorenzo took in a gulp of air, swallowed, and said no more. The story had to be a lie, but the dog, the descriptions of Tara, so much of it rang with truth.

  “And then what? What happened to her? You’re not done. Tell me.”

  “Oh, my friend, you do not want to know.” Lorenzo shook his head, face down to the earth, one hand gripping his shopping cart.

  “Bullshit. It’s because you don’t know either. None of this is true. This is some urban legend, a myth, names changed, bits of truth tossed in, but just some dumpster-fire ghost story you homeless fucks tell each other when you get bored”

  “Oh, I may be a homeless fuck, but the story is true. And I have proof.”

  My fists clenched, my heart erupted. My brain was full of dread that I wanted to blow back with the whistle of a crack-cocaine steam engine train. The insane homeless man rustled through the plastic bags in his shopping cart, and my hopes for some sort of closure on my daughter’s fate depended on what he might find.

  “Proof, yes, proof, something important to show you.”

  Finally, he did.

  “Here it is,” he said, and raised his catch in the air as if holding a prized fish for a picture. “Your daughter’s forearm, from wrist to elbow, not in the best shape, since it’s been a lot of years, but it’s here, nonetheless.”

  His hand was wrapped around the piece of limb as if it were a big hambone, and it looked partly cooked just the same. Pock marks were dotted all about the piece of meat. Flesh, muscle and tendon dangled from the edges. My hope that this was a cruel hoax, that this was not a piece of Tara’s arm, was dashed when I squinted and looked closer. I could make out the etchings of a black tattoo, written in cursive, irl with leidoscope eyes, part of the phrase covered by his fingers.

  “Jervis must have chopped off a limb, probably wanted the ashes, but I got it now. So you see, it’s true, and this arm is my treasure. Once in a while when I score some dope I shoot some into your little sweet-pea’s arm. She’s a dopefiend’s dream, and it wouldn’t be the same to get high without her.”

  And then he walked off, the rattle-rattle, clank-clank left me alone and disappeared back down the sidewalk the way it came.

  How I did not satisfy my clenched fist by crashing it on Lorenzo’s fragile face, I’ll never know, but I let him walk while the rage burrowed inside me and found a permanent home.

  Perhaps I needed to live with the curse as my punishment, but the horror that filled me made the world go black, not just at that moment, but for all my days. The image of Tara getting strangled, of getting dismembered with an axe by a dope fiend, if it dared leave me, I grasped for it back. I thought of killing myself, of burying a grave right back into the garden, and then laying there with a gun and putting myself down. That might pay penance to some gods who were punishing me for killing Brett, but this seemed too easy. Something was left for me, if nothing else, to suffer for my sins.

  I scraped up cash where I could to smoke some rocks. No longer did I smoke in Russell’s basement, but inside my own living room. The train whistle shot through my head with each inhale and my body tingled electric, but then the paranoia hit. People were outside my door, I was sure of it, and it made me peep out the window shades at imaginary surveillance vehicles. Other times I was too scared to look and had to hide from the demons in my bathroom,
huddled up next to the toilet, chewing on my fingernails, waiting for them to get me.

  That’s where I was hiding the day they did come. I heard the front door open, I pulled my legs into my body, wrapped up into a ball, and shivered against the cold ceramic toilet. Footsteps and whispers followed.

  “Where is he?”

  “He has to be here?”

  “It’s dark.”

  “I got the light.”

  It was the voice of not one but two demon women, walking about the house, opening up each door, searching each room. The bathroom was last.

  “I found him.”

  I heard them but wouldn’t look, just kept my head wrapped up in my arms, waiting for the illusion to fade. They weren’t going anywhere, and I finally opened my eyes and looked up at the tall woman looming over me. She had long, sweeping hair, like a blonde weeping willow. My crack-possessed spirit trembled.

  It was Stacey. Years older, years stronger, but I could tell it was Stacey from NA.

  But she was not alone. Next to her was a girl I used to know back when her skin was baby smooth. I knew her from the days when she rode on my shoulders, when she slept by my side after reading Dr. Seuss to me out loud. She used to look up at me in the crowd in the middle of a soccer game, tie score, and wanted to know I was watching. My baby stood there before me, her skin weathered but her resolve stronger than ever. In one of her hands she held a syringe, but the other arm was just a stub. An inch above where her elbow used to be was the round nob of her amputated arm. She seemed like a store mannequin, a female bust, but completely unbreakable. She’d grown into the aged redwood with wisdom I had always dreamed she’d be. Each cell in her body moved steadfast and sturdy.

  She was not only alive, but she was clean.

  “Sweet-Pea,” I whispered.

  “Your arm,” she commanded.

  I cocked my head in confusion, not sure what she meant.