Jenny Pox

by JL Bryan

  “My dad’s in the next room,” she whispered. “And you need food. You’ve had enough strain today.”

  Jenny slid out from the covers and got to her feet. Seth gazed at her. His eyes seemed to tickle her, making her skin tingle wherever he looked. She wanted to giggle and cover herself, but she didn’t. She kept her hands at her hips and let him see her.

  “You know,” Seth said, “I could handle a little more strain…”

  “Ha.” Jenny slung the thermal shirt to him. She dressed herself in dry jeans, sweatshirt, and gloves. She scrubbed her hair with a towel, and watched herself in a mirror as she tied it back. Seth came up behind her, dressed now, and wrapped his arms around her. One hand just happened to land on her left breast, near her heart. He kissed the side of her neck. He was hard against the back of her jeans.

  “You better put that away,” Jenny said. “We’re fixing to have chili with my dad.”

  “Then give me one more.” He turned her head and kissed her until Jenny’s dad knocked and announced they should come eat.

  Some of the chili had scalded against the bottom of the pot, since Jenny hadn’t moved it from the hot burner in her panic to leave. Her dad had salvaged most of it. All three of them sat at the kitchen table with steaming bowls of venison chili in front of them. Jenny was too nervous to eat with Seth so close to her. Her dad stirred his chili again and again, looking somber.

  Seth, on the other hand, tore through three full bowls of it, spooning it fast, not talking until he was full.

  “That was really good.” Seth sighed and leaned back. “Best chili I’ve ever had. Thank you, Mr. Morton.”

  “Huh?” Jenny’s dad looked up. His eyes were a thousand miles away. “Oh. Jenny made it.” He went back to his slow stirring.

  “Really?” Seth looked at Jenny and raised his eyebrows a couple of time, which made her laugh.

  “Jenny,” her dad said without looking up. “I think I died.”

  “Almost, Daddy,” Jenny said. “Seth brought you back and healed you up. So, can I date him now?”

  He raised his eyes to look at Seth, who was scraping his spoon around the bowl for stray sauce.

  “How’d you do that?” he asked Seth.

  “I always could,” Seth said. “Whenever I touch people. They just heal.” He dropped the spoon in the bowl. “I’ve never done it like that, where everyone could see it. It’s always been secret.”

  “He’s just like me, Daddy,” Jenny said. “He’s my opposite.”

  “Healing.” Her dad shook his head. He lifted out a spoonful of chili and tilted it, letting it drizzle back into the bowl. “That sounds a lot more useful than what you got.”

  “I don’t know,” Seth said. “You should have seen Jenny today. She was ferocious.”

  Jenny rolled that word in her mind a little. Ferocious. She liked it.

  “I do thank you, Seth,” he said. “I guess there’s no way I can ever repay you.” His eyes shifted to Jenny. “And I guess I know what you want for it.”

  “Daddy, don’t say it like that!” Jenny said.

  Her dad looked at Seth a long time. Seth straightened up in his chair, aware he was being inspected.

  “You just be good to her,” Jenny’s dad told Seth. “You treat her like she ought to be treated.”

  “I will, sir,” Seth said.

  Jenny’s dad set his spoon down in his chili. He looked very tired.

  “Jenny, can you clean up?” he asked. “I think I need to go to the bed for a while.”

  “Sure, Daddy! I’ll take care of everything.”

  “I guess you already did.” He stood and walked back to his room, shaking his head. He closed the door behind him.

  “Good-night, Daddy! I love you,” Jenny said. She took Seth’s hand. Their fingers curled together. She looked at him, and she couldn’t stop smiling.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Seth’s parents returned to Florida the day after New Year’s. Until then, he could only sneak out to see Jenny for a couple hours at a time. When they talked on the phone, Seth sometimes had to pretend he was talking to Ashleigh instead of Jenny, if his parents were around. He had told Jenny about his father’s decree. He’d also called the phone company and blocked Ashleigh’s cell and home numbers from his home phone, as well as Cassie and Neesha’s numbers, to reduce any chance Ashleigh would talk to his parents and give the game away. Jenny couldn’t wait for the Barretts to go back to Florida. Jenny had thought Seth’s dad was nice, since he’d covered for Jenny at the party, but apparently he was a real tyrant in his own way.

  Jenny drove the Lincoln, which she hadn’t yet returned to Merle, up the wide brick driveway, past the old dogwoods. Last time, she’d been scared to make this drive up to the house. Today, she was giddy.

  There was no valet service this afternoon, but Seth directed her down a side spur of the driveway so she could park in front of the four-car garage, which was as wide as her entire house. He opened her car door for her and held out his arm, which she accepted.

  The door in the garage led to something Seth called “the mud room,” where apparently you took off your dirty shoes and raincoats to hang them up. There was a big laundry room here, too, and a narrow staircase to the upper floors.

  Another door took them through a pantry, where there was a deep freezer as tall as Jenny’s waist, and into the kitchen. Jenny stared at the vast sub-zero refrigerator, the vistas of tiled countertop. All the cabinets looked antique, with elaborately molded door pulls, but the appliances were sleek and black, with digital touch screens.

  “Is this where you’ll be cooking for me?” Jenny asked.

  “No, I promised you a nice dinner,” Seth told her. “I’m having something delivered later.”

  “Oh, just having something delivered, huh?” It sounded like an insane luxury to Jenny, though they had ordered pizza a few times, on special occasions like her birthday.

  “Until then,” he said. “What do you want to do? The place is ours.”

  Jenny liked the sound of that.

  “Just show me around,” she said. “So I don’t get lost in here.”

  Seth took her to the dining room, where the table seated twenty-four, and big portraits of Colonel Ezra Barrett and Jon Seth Barrett I glared down from either side of the massive brick fireplace. They crossed the receiving hall, the scene of Jenny’s latest humiliation by Ashleigh. There was also a library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and its own fireplace, and probably the only antique chairs in the house that actually looked comfortable. There was a billiards room. There was the office, which was frightening and sad at the same time, with all the dead animals. The whole house was dark, not only because of all the black and brown wood, and the dour paintings and photographs, but also because the windows were narrow and stingy. If they had intended to create an oppressive, melancholy home, the designers had succeeded.

  They reached a gallery at the back, where French doors opened onto a giant porch with two swings and a row of rocking chairs. Nearby were the stairs leading up to the second-floor gallery where she’d spent so much time watching the people on the veranda, and now Jenny learned that upstairs gallery was called the “music room.”

  Seth opened one of the doors and took her out to the porch. The back yard sloped away below them, filled with rows of peach trees that faded into pine woods on either side of the orchard. Another hill rose beyond the peach trees, and Jenny thought she could see little buildings there.

  “What’s that?” she asked Seth, pointing to structure on the far hill.

  “Oh, that,” Seth said. “You want to go there? It’s not a long walk.”

  “Just a second.” Jenny unlatched her black high heels. After a moment’s reflection, she removed her gloves, too. She stepped barefoot onto the cold grass.

  “Don’t you worry about snakes?” he asked. “Spiders?”

  “Never have. They don’t live long enough to hurt me. Only you can do that.” She took his hand and let him le
ad her into the orchard. She loved the feeling of even a little of their skin rubbing together.

  In January, the trees were just skeletons, looking dead to the world, their life slumbering in hidden places inside their roots. The rows of bare trees made her feel a little wistful as she passed among them.

  They crossed a footbridge over a small irrigation canal.

  “This whole area used to be orchards,” Seth told her. He gestured at the pine trees rising up on either side. “My grandfather said any land that could be put to use, should be. My dad doesn’t care as much. He just keeps a few trees for tradition and all that.”

  “I bet it’s pretty in the spring,” Jenny said.

  “Good peaches, too,” Seth said. “Did you know South Carolina actually produces more peaches than Georgia? They totally ganked our title as the Peach State.”

  “You are full of fascinating information, Seth Barrett,” Jenny said.

  “Come on. I want to show you something.”

  They reached a clearing with knee-high weeds, fenced off by wooden rails, some of which were broken or rotten. At the back of the clearing was a long two-story structure, the bottom floor divided into little compartments with rusty gates.

  “That used to be the stable,” he said. “We haven’t had horses since I was little. You can also find barns, if you look around the woods. And there’s a house with tree grown up through it, used to be my grandfather’s cottage.”

  “We should make a horror movie,” Jenny said.

  “My house would be enough for that,” Seth said. “You should see the third floor.”

  “Then we’ll make the sequel out here.”

  “This way.” Seth led her along a trail up the hill. It grew steep near the top, and several giant stairs had been placed in the ground here. They looked hewn from the same slab of dark gray granite as the big chimney in the house. They also looked intended for beings much larger than humans, and Jenny had to take a huge step up each one, then a few steps across to reach the next one.

  At the top stair, a wrought-iron gate opened into a high brick wall. Through the gate, Jenny could see rows of dark granite megaliths. Seth took out his Audi key ring and found an iron key inscribed with elaborate scrollwork.

  “What is this place?” Jenny whispered.

  “The Barrett burial ground.” He slid the key into the big lock, and it squealed as he turned it. He pushed the gate inward on heaving, grinding hinges.

  “You carry the key to your family’s graveyard around with you?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Seth said. “It’s tradition. My father carries one, too.”

  “That’s kind of…”

  “Creepy?” Seth asked. “Check this out. Turn around.”

  Jenny turned. Behind her, the gloomy house rose on its hill above the bare orchard.

  “You can see the cemetery from any bedroom in the house,” Seth said. “My great-grandfather designed it that way. It’s supposed to remind you of your mortality, and death, and all that. I guess it’s to encourage you to hurry up and make money quick.”

  He stepped through the gate.

  “That’s so weird,” Jenny said. “I’d have nightmares.”

  “It gets weirder,” he said.

  Jenny stepped over the threshold into his graveyard. A crushed-gravel path led the way ahead, through rows and rows of identical granite slabs, all of them blank. At the very back, Jenny could see a little church, complete with a steeple and bells, just large enough for a couple of people to stand inside, crowded together, or for one person to kneel and pray. The sun was setting behind it.

  “There aren’t any names,” she whispered as they walked past the rows of stones.

  “There are some back here.” When they were only a few rows from the miniature church at the back, he stopped. He brought her to a stone on the left side of the path. “Here’s my grandfather. Look.”

  The inscription on the left side of the stone read:

  JONATHAN SETH BARRETT II

  1923-1995

  “Now, look at these.” Seth led her back across the path, to the same row, on the right side of the path. He touched an inscription on the left flank of the first stone. It read:

  JONATHAN SETH BARRETT III

  1962-

  “That’s my father,” Seth told her. “And my mom’s here.” He pointed to the inscription on the right flank of the same stone:

  MATHILDA IRIS MAYFIELD BARRETT

  1965-

  “Wow,” Jenny said. “That would be crazy to see your name like that, wouldn’t it?”

  “Over here.” Seth moved to the next stone in the row and reached for the name inscribed on the left flank of it. His fingers curled back at the last second, not wanting to touch it.

  JONATHAN SETH BARRETT IV

  1992-

  “This is where I end up,” Seth told her. He moved his fingers to the right flank of his gravestone, which was smooth and blank. “And over here…some lucky girl.”

  “Is this why you brought me here, Seth?” Jenny asked. “To invite me to your grave?” She meant it as a joke, but he looked at her solemnly for a moment. Then he laughed a little, but it was forced and cold.

  “No, I actually wanted to show you this.” Seth took her to the third stone in the row. “This really should be mine. It’s for the second-born son of the third J.S. Barrett. Crazy old great-grandpa got ahead of himself with the inscriptions, though, because my dad named his first son Carter.”

  Seth wore a deep, serious frown as he touched this inscription. It read:

  CARTER MAYFIELD BARRETT

  1986-2000

  “I didn’t know you had a brother,” Jenny said.

  “He died in a car crash,” Seth said. “Riding with a friend’s family on the way to the beach. He was trapped for a while before he died. If I’d been there, I could have saved him.”

  Jenny held Seth’s hand tighter. Then she decided to go ahead and embrace him. It was the third time her touch had ever helped anyone.

  “It was hundreds of miles away,” Seth whispered. “I didn’t know he was in trouble. That’s why I never told my parents about how I can heal people. By the time I really figured it out myself, Carter was already gone, and all I could think about was how I could have saved him.”

  “Seth, that’s not your fault.”

  “We kept it quiet around town. Otherwise everybody wants to get involved, go to the funeral, make a big production of it. Because, you know, the Barrett family.”

  “They want to pay respect,” Jenny said.

  “Like hell. Every time a Barrett dies in this town, everybody just thinks, ‘There’s one more bastard I don’t owe money to. The rest drop dead and we’re free and clear.’ That’s why they like our funerals.”

  Jenny was quiet, not sure what she thought of that.

  “I’ve saved a lot of people,” he said. “Did you know that? Anytime I see an accident on the road, I pull over, and I heal anybody who’s hurt. Then I just get in my car and drive away while everybody’s still freaking out. When I saw you by the road that day, I thought there’d been a wreck.”

  “There was,” Jenny said. “My dog was wrecked.”

  “I’m glad I stopped.”

  “You didn’t run away when you finished, either.”

  “I had to rebuild his whole leg,” Seth said. “That sucked out everything I had. I never felt anything like that, until I healed your father. That was a big one.”

  “A very big one.” Jenny kissed him.

  Seth showed her the older rows of graves, including the original J. S. Barrett. The very back row was a little different. Indentations had been carved out of the megaliths, and older, much smaller gravestones had been cemented inside to provide identification. These ran back to Elijah Samuel Barrett, 1803-1849. The night was falling, and Jenny could barely read the eroded inscriptions.

  “My great-grandfather had his ancestors disinterred and moved here,” Seth explained. “He wanted everyone to be part of the s
ame plan. Up there, all those empty rows we passed? I’m supposed to fill those graves with generations of future Barretts.”

  “Is this where you take all your girlfriends?” Jenny asked.

  “No.” Seth gave another humorless laugh. “I don’t tell people about my great-grandfather’s personal death cult. I kind of keep that to myself.”

  “Then why did you want to show me?”

  Seth looked at her, gathering his thoughts.

  “I wanted you to know this is really me,” Seth said. “I’m not doped up on Ashleigh anymore. This is who I really am, part of my weird family.” He shrugged. “You probably think we’re crazy.”

  “No,” Jenny said. “But can we leave the creepy graveyard before it gets dark?”

  “Yeah, good idea,” Seth said. “We don’t want to run into Great-Grandpa’s ghost.”

  “Why did you have to say that?”

  “I vant to vrite you a mortgage…” Seth said in a ghostly voice, “…on a mortuary!”

  “Seth!” Jenny shrieked. Seth ran after her, arms raised. Jenny raced up the path between the gravestones, her bare, callused feet slapping the gravel.

  “Interest rates are spookily low!” he said in the same voice. Jenny ran faster, laughing and shrieking at the same time. He chased her out of the cemetery, bounding after her down the steps.

  He caught up with her in the orchard, picked her up, and slung her over his shoulder. He continued running, holding her legs while she hung upside down behind him, clinging to his back, laughing uncontrollably.

  Seth finally set her down on the back porch, and he kissed her. She looked over his shoulder, past the orchard, to the brick wall on top of the hill. In the moonlight, she saw the open gate gleaming.

  “We left the gate open,” she whispered. “Won’t the ghosts get out?”

  “They’re already out,” he whispered back. “They’re everywhere.”