He’d stood in the doorway for a long time. And he felt nothing.
I said, “It hurts to know that the place you loved has been ransacked. That’s why I need you.”
Angel nodded, thinking it strange that he felt more now than he had upon returning to the house he’d grown up in. But life was like that, he knew, sometimes what you think should be groundbreaking is but a whisper…
The platform vibrated beneath him again. The centaurs clawed at the thick ropes leading to heaven. He felt bad for them. He wanted to say, It’s hopeless, for you at least.
*****
Brooke was pointing. She didn’t want to take her eyes from the skyline, the ridge of buildings downtown, to see if her daughter was looking too, because she feared she would look back and it’d be gone. Angel’s Explorer was perched on top of a building. The hardware, or a funeral home, or possibly the motel itself, though she didn’t think the building was close enough to downtown for it to be the motel. Not that it mattered. That it was up there, a thousand small tassels of silver thread blowing in the wind from nearly every surface, set her teeth on edge. Sweat stung her eyes. She wiped her forehead, feeling suddenly feverish. It was easy in times like that to believe your eyes are playing tricks on you.
Brooke waited for Natalie to say something but her daughter was speechless.
She said, “Tell me this is all just a bad dream.”
“I wish,” Natalie said.
“There has to be some kind of explanation.”
“Yeah,” Natalie said, “a screwed up one.”
Brooke nodded.
Definitely screwed up, she thought.
The butcher knife she held didn’t offer the security it’d offered before they’d walked into the house and out again. Again, she feared that they’d had a horrible accident up on the highway, and this was the only way her mind could deal with it. This moment they could be up there, trapped upside down in a dry gully, bloody, locked into place in their seatbelts, no one around for miles because people just didn’t travel for Halloween. Bleeding and alone but for each other, such a horrible thought, though the most horrible part for her was to imagine that her daughter was seriously hurting and neither she nor Angel could do anything to help her.
She shook it off. They weren’t up there. They were down here, in this nightmare.
She said, “We don’t have a choice. We’re walking out of here.”
“We need to find water,” Natalie said.
“We’ll ransack a store. It’s not like anybody here is going to miss it.”
“No,” Natalie said, moving closer to her, thinking that it must have been hard for her mother, who was paid to uphold the law, to steal anything. But the child didn’t blame her, she thought it was necessary for survival sometimes to do things that were against your principles. She said softly, “Do you think they’re all like the guy in the house?”
“I don’t even know how to explain that,” Brooke said, then pointed to the buildings downtown and the Explorer sitting on top of them sticky with silky white lines trailing off it. “Or that. All I know is we’re not sticking around to find out what this is all about. We’re getting out and we’re calling the state police as soon as we can.”
*****
Natalie sighed. The cane felt heavy in her hand. It was hard not to look at the roof of the buildings in the distance. It was just as hard to avoid watching their back trail.
She thought, We’re in a place of dead things. That’s why it’s so quiet.
The cane tapped the hard-packed earth. The sun never let up. Sweat slid down her spine. Her clothes were soaked. It felt like it was growing hotter by the minute.
She said, “What time is it?”
“No idea,” her mom said.
She stopped, the two of them coming up on the back side of Main Street. Rundown houses occupied the desert floor to their left, to their right the backs of various shops, all of the doors there open, as if inviting them to explore their depths.
Natalie wondered which one belonged to the motel, and if the person who had been upstairs would be waiting just inside one of the dark doorways.
Worse still, she wondered where all the spiders were. Were they dead? Or had they only shed skin they’d outgrown? It made her skin crawl, just thinking about it. She hated the desert. She hated the quiet, as much as she used to tell herself she loved it.
She looked behind her. They stood in nothing more than an alleyway now. There was nowhere to run if something did come after them, than into one of the dark buildings, or one of the houses where more corpses might wait.
Her mother approached one of the shops. She listened hard, her head cocked, the knife held in front of her as she stepped upon a threshold. Natalie wanted to be close to her, but her knees had locked in place and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t move them.
Brooke glanced back, said, “I think this is a convenience store. I smell candy.”
“Candy?”
“Yeah, come on.” Her mother waved her forward. “There has to be bottled water around. Then we can get Angel and walk out.”
“He’s acting weird.”
“I know,” Brooke said. “He should have come with us to begin with. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that.”
“Why do you want to marry him?”
“He’s a good man.”
“How can you know that?”
Her mother shrugged, searching for an answer, studying the street around them, the back of houses. “He’s never done anything to hurt either one of us.”
“No,” Natalie said.
“Do you think he might?”
“I think he’s kind of dumb.”
Brooke laughed. It felt good to hear it. Natalie smiled a little.
Her mom said, “He is kind of dumb, but better dumb than cruel.”
“People can be both,” Natalie said, thinking about some of the kids and teachers she knew at school. She didn’t believe dumb and cruel were exclusive. They made good bedfellows.
Her mom nodded, quiet again for a moment, before she said, “You’re a smart kid.”
Natalie shrugged.
“I hope you know how much I love you.”
“Mom…”
“I’m serious,” Brooke said. “You mean the world to me and if anything bad ever happens to you again I’ll never forgive myself.”
“Nothing bad is going to happen to me.” She squeezed the cane, traced the slope of the handle. She said, “We could be almost home by now.”
“I know,” Brooke said. “And I’m sorry. We got lost in all the good news.”
“I know,” Natalie said. “I understand.”
“Good.” She waved her daughter forward. Natalie followed her into the store. It was darker than a store should be, she thought. The windows were caked with dust. The floor had more piles of dead spiders, or their forgotten skins. They littered the counters too, the end caps. They were coating nearly everything. Fine strands dangled from the ceiling, the corners crammed with vacant webbing. Brooke ignored them, kicking through it all until she faced a cooler. It was unlit, quiet. She said, “There’s water in here, but it’s probably warm. Help me.”
*****
I beat upon the Devil’s heart as he slept through the day, as innocent looking as a child, his eyes wide open, unfocused and unmoving, the chainmail shirt he wore clinking beneath each strike of the blue-eyed cross medallion bounced against his chest. At dusk, as I sat on the corner of my bed watching him, he stirred, licked his lips, hunger in his every movement. I asked him what he’d done the night before, my tears long dried. He ignored me, pushed me away, and I screamed incantations that were meant to bind men and torment them with delirium, but he walked through it, unscathed.
The spells wound around me like a cloak, and I cried for my children, lost awhile in misery, because I loved them all, and I thought I’d loved him for he was different like me, of darker places, lonely places. But we were so different, where I abhorred the l
oneliness and wanted to spare these mortal souls such grief that death brought as it whisked away the last palpitation of a gentle beating heart, he embraced the pain of his curse and spread it like a disease of tooth and blood.
That night was worse than the first.
Like a fool I followed him. He led three sisters to the barn, which wasn’t difficult for him to do. He could have led them all into one mass suicide, but he was playful like that. The sisters were up anyway, all in the same bed. They were in their mid-teens, plump, needy for men. He knocked once outside their bedroom window and pointed to the first, then again, pointing to the second, then again, pointing to the last. He whispered, “Come with me.”
Things of the night shaped like men have a strange radiance. Nearby I watched them climb from their window awkwardly, one by one, breathing like sows and nervous as lambs.
They didn’t see him because you couldn’t see him in the night if he didn’t move.
He whispered again, “Come with me…”
They followed him across the hot desert sands to where the barn waited, a black emblem like a slaughterhouse beneath millions of stars pricking holes in the heavens. They came in one by one, shakily, thirsty with lust. He stripped quickly, pulled shadows from him and tossed them aside, his skin like ivory in the darkness. “Come,” he said.
They pulled at him, suckled him, dipped their fingers into his orifices, and he tore into them with rage. Bloody stumpy things, whining like pigs, one moment enjoying his prick filling their throat, the next gagging as he held a head firmly in place, his hand looped in their hair. Once they were spent, they nestled together and he crawled around on all fours, circling them. They giggled, thinking it just a game, more foreplay.
He ripped the closest from them by her hair, dragged her into a corner thick with night and sank his teeth into her neck. Her blood spurted into his mouth and she lay limp in his lap. Her sisters grabbed their clothing, held them over their heavy breasts, calling her name, “Astar?”
He took the second, drank deeply, and leaned her against her sister’s corpse.
The spell the Devil cast was beginning to lose its power over the remaining girl.
She screamed, quietly, as if it were a barbed instrument that caught her vocal cords upon release. He darted forward, wrapped his arms around her, and flew into the rafters, cooing her, stroking her neck, pushing the sweat-sodden hair aside…
Angel shook his head. He said, “I don’t want to hear anymore. I should go find Brooke.”
“No,” I said. “You shouldn’t.”
I held a length of rope. It dangled from my hand and brushed the ground. I offered it to him. “Take it.”
He said, “What’s this for?”
“You know what it’s for.”
I smiled a motherly smile.
*****
Brooke had her arms full of water bottles, maybe a dozen, and the bottles were warm like she suspected. She looked for something to carry them in, spotted a rack near the counter buried in spider corpses. The rack had several paper bags folded neatly beneath it, the bags under a half inch of dust. She filled two bags quickly and Natalie carried over an arm load that filled a third bag. Wiping the dust off her hands was futile. The sweat just smeared it against her skin and made it itch. But she nodded to herself, glad they were doing something, glad too that Natalie was holding herself together so well where most adults she knew would freak out.
She wanted to settle on the possibility that they’d hallucinated the Explorer’s new location to avoid finding out why and how it got on top of the buildings, but deep in her gut she knew there was more to it than dehydration or some other common and explainable malaise.
Natalie said, “What are we going to do if Dorothy tries to stop us, or if Angel refuses to come with?”
“Angel isn’t going to refuse,” Brooke said. “And I’ll knock that bitch out if she’s behind all of this.”
“She is,” Natalie said, “I can feel it in my gut.”
Brooke nodded. “Me too.”
“Have you ever had to shoot anybody?”
“What?”
“As a cop? I never asked you, but I’ve had kids at school ask me, like I’m sure other cop’s kids have been asked, if you had ever shot anybody. I told them that I didn’t know.”
“No,” Brooke said. “I never had to.”
“Would you if you had to?”
She thought about it for a moment, knowing that Natalie was asking for more than just an on-the-job situation. “Are you asking me if I’d kill somebody here to make sure we make it out in one piece?”
Natalie put her head down, cradled a bag of water bottles. “I guess. Yes.”
“Yes,” Brooke said. “I’d kill anybody that tried to kill us. It probably wouldn’t be easy, but I don’t think when you’re put in a situation like that that you have much time to think about it.”
“Probably not,” Natalie said. “But you’d have to think about it later.”
“It’d be worth it,” Brooke said, meaning it.
*****
Natalie cradled the paper sack. It crinkled every time she moved and she didn’t like that. Her mother seemed to notice it too, said, “Makes it hard to hear anything else, and hard to use a weapon.” The kid nodded, more scared in that moment than she’d been since they got there. Part of it was knowing that her mother would risk her life to save her, which she didn’t want to see happen, yet knew was a strong possibility.
Her mother had her arms full, the two bags shifting in her grip, ready to topple. Before Natalie could say anything, Brooke said, “We can’t carry this much water out. It’s too much trouble. One bag will do it, don’t you think?”
“It should be enough,” Natalie said. “All we have to do is make it out to the highway and someone is bound to find us, right?”
“We may have a long hike ahead of us,” her mom said, “but I think once we’re out of this bowl we’ll be able to get reception on my cell. The one bag will have to be enough.”
“Do you think one of these stores might have guns in them?”
“They might,” Brooke said. “It’s worth a look.”
“Mom?”
“What, honey?”
“What if we do find guns and they don’t do any good?”
“Guns will be a lot better than what we have.”
“I know, it’s just…” she looked up.
Angel’s Explorer might be on top of this building, she thought. It might be. And there is no explanation for it. None.
“We’re not going to worry about the truck,” Brooke said, grabbing her arm. “We’re past that, okay?”
Natalie nodded, but she wasn’t past it. She started crying, shoulders slumped, and Brooke took the grocery bag from her and set it on the counter. Her mother held her for a while, stroked her back, and cried a little too, before she said, “We can make it through this, whatever it is.”
“I need a bathroom.”
“We’ll find you one.”
“One without dead spiders in it.”
“We’ll have to make do with whatever we find.”
Brooke patted her arm and then used her fingers to wipe Natalie’s tears from her cheeks. Together they searched the building until they found a small room they’d passed coming in, not much larger than a closet with a toilet and pedestal sink in it. Natalie left the door open and Brooke stood outside it. Her mom held the bag of water. Natalie wiped the toilet off, then placed toilet paper on the seat itself. She pulled her pants down and sat.
Wind rustled things in the shop. Dead husks skittered across the floor, past her mother’s feet. Natalie closed her eyes, taking shallow breaths, finished and wiped, then tried to flush the toilet. It didn’t work. The sink didn’t work either, just blew a bit of loose sand from the pipes as she tried the faucet.
Her mom said, “You okay?”
Natalie nodded. She looked in the mirror, nearly jumped as she saw something large and human-like blur behind her. She
spun around.
Nothing there.
Her mom gave her a quizzical look.
Shadows, she thought, just shadows.
And like most people she thought that shadows couldn’t hurt you.
If she had looked up, or if her mother had, they would have seen the boy clinging to the ceiling. He had been sixteen years old when he died a second death in the barn that was now a church. The Devil had come to him last, a swarm of those like him at his heels, and they were all so relentlessly thirsty.
He followed Natalie out of the room, sticking to the high ceiling, hearing the sand scraping the siding and windows, attuned to the pitter patter of thousands of feet.
He liked the smell of her, it was like the wind, the sunlight, airy and sharp.
Peter whispered, “If anything can save us it is your virgin blood.”
*****
Angel said, “There’s a tremor coming from the earth.”
“It’s a horrible thing to live in fear,” I said. “Don’t think about what you dread.”
He couldn’t remember when I’d returned and his confusion was like a scar on his face.
I stood off to his right. The wind gusted again, shook dust loose from my dress. It was a very old-fashioned dress, he realized. Very out of place. To Angel, I looked younger, the wrinkles around my eyes and mouth not as severe.
The sun was slowly working its way west. He wondered how long before dark. He needed to get Brooke on the carousel before the sun set. He wanted to surprise her. For her to take that trip back in time, and to see him fitter, healthier, and for her to walk into the lobby of the motel and gaze into the mirror hanging behind the service counter, and to really see herself and the gift I had given them.
It was a well-known fact: there was less pain when you were young. Less bustle. More adventure. More possibilities. You weren’t looked down on for dreaming when you were a teenager, not like you were when you were nearing forty. By then you were supposed to accept your role, however minuscule it was, and no matter how much the child in you feared such a betrayal.
Adulthood wasn’t about having fun. It was about getting a nice car, a nice family, leaving something behind, all through burying yourself in debt while you hid from your family and your children in a secret attempt to remain true to who you really were.
Gossamer: A Story of Love and Tragedy Page 12