Gossamer: A Story of Love and Tragedy

by Thompson, Lee

  Hearing him so confident was alarming, although a part of her found it extremely beautiful.

  They stopped at the foot of the carousel. Natalie looked left and right, Brooke thinking, Smart, keep an eye out for Dorothy, as she turned her full attention to Angel. She said softly, “We have to walk out of here, honey,” so softly it was like speaking to Natalie when she had been very young.

  Angel cocked his head as if he had a hard time hearing her, but the smile on his face never wavered, and the light emitting from his eyes burned with such intensity it scared her. On the job she’d dealt with a crazy person from time to time. They had that same eye-shine, that same disconnect from reality.

  She wondered what he saw, felt, heard in the quiet, dark corners of his mind, and her heart was breaking for him when Natalie screamed.

  Brooke jumped, startled. She turned, followed her daughter’s line of sight to the top of the building where the Explorer rested behind and above them. A vague man-shape looked back down at them. His clothing was dark, drawn tight against his gaunt frame, and both his hands and face shown with white brilliance. His eyes seemed patches of black cloth, the mouth twisted in a snarl. He appeared unarmed, but she feared he was the type who wouldn’t need, or prefer a weapon. And she thought it incredible that the thing had had a hold of her daughter and Natalie, bright, loving, loner of a girl, had not gone insane.

  The thing on the roof raised its hands out straight from its sides and tilted its head back, basking in the dying light.

  Brooke nearly fainted. It took all the self-control she had to hang on to her sanity because she knew whatever the stranger was, he was not human.

  Death, she thought. Natalie was right.

  And again her mind turned back to the possibility that they were up near the road still, their vehicle overturned, on fire, flames hot against her neck, strapped into the wreckage and seriously injured. And she feared that if it were so, then the thing on top of the building near their truck would only draw closer as the last of her life flitted away, a dark moth in the night, a soft falling snow covering the tracks she’d made in life, as Death’s visage loomed nearer, and nearer.

  She pulled hard at something inside herself, as much for her sake as for Natalie’s.

  She spun back to face Angel and order him to run with them, even though she thought that an attempted run back toward the road was futile.

  But as she turned she realized Angel was positioned right behind her on the red, red earth, and he had one hand raised.

  It flashed out, filled her vision and her head snapped back.

  Pain flared in her nose. She smelled blood, felt it run from her right nostril and onto her upper lip. She blinked, trying to get a sense of what was happening, but it all happened so quickly, a matter of seconds surely, that she clawed at her pocket and pulled her cell phone and threw it, not knowing why on the surface but deep beneath, in some part of her lizard brain, knowing that Natalie had to take it and she had to run like she never dreamed she could run.

  Her lips parted a second later. Her blood tasted salty and metallic. Angel had her hands behind her back, slid a noose around them and jerked her backwards. Her shoulders screamed in agony and as the pain registered in her brain she screamed with them, gaze on Natalie’s face as she stooped to grab the phone, scared to death, shaking her head, the man on the building above them leaning forward near the edge as if he intended to jump.

  Angel said, “Don’t fight me, please. Just trust me.”

  Brooke yelled to Natalie, “Run!”

  Her daughter stood there a moment longer, shaking her head, her tiny hands near her waist, her fingers toying with Brooke’s cell phone.

  Brooke yelled again, “Run!”

  Angel wrapped his arms around her from behind and leaned back and tossed her onto the carousel’s platform. She hit it hard, on her side, and struggled to find a breath that didn’t burn her lungs, her vision fuzzy as she watched her daughter flee into a building on the opposite side of the street of the man who was once there, as real as anything she’d ever seen, but was now gone.

  *****

  Natalie thought she screamed when she saw Death on the ledge of the building next to Angel’s Explorer, but she couldn’t be sure. Then her mother had screamed and Angel, who Brooke was hoping would come with them and prove something as much to Natalie as Brooke herself, had punched her mother, bound her hands behind her back, and tossed her onto the carousel like a sack of grain.

  She picked the cell off the ground out of reflex more than anything. She’d always had a nasty habit of picking up things other people tossed.

  Her mother had screamed for her to run but she didn’t know which way to go.

  She feared that Dorothy was waiting inside the hotel, and she was afraid of trying to confront Angel whose face had taken on a demonic cast though his eyes glowed with unnatural warmth.

  Looking up again, another second expired, and she noticed the strange creature who looked like a boy barely older than her was peering over the edge at her.

  His mouth was a horrible black hole; his teeth, but for the incisors, blunt and white.

  She broke for the buildings across the street from him.

  The wooden boardwalk threw the sounds of her steps back up, muffled echoes, and she had a hand on the door, turning the knob, when she looked back and saw Death had left his perch.

  Frantically she thought, He’s coming for me…

  She threw one last hopeless glance at her mother and fought her tears as she saw Angel slug her twice more to keep her from springing up and running as well. Her mother’s head snapped back and bounced off the thick horse-like body of the centaur. Blood coated the lower half of her face.

  Natalie prayed, threw the door open, and slammed it shut behind her once inside the building. It was dusty, as the convenience store had been, though no spider husks, or those living that she could see, littered the floor or counter.

  Old portraits, all black and white and unreal, hung from the walls, lit dully by what daylight remained.

  The townspeople looked as if from another time, which made sense to her. They were so isolated here that the rest of the world could not reach them. And something, perhaps just common sense, told her that they had preferred it that way.

  But where all the families had gone, she had no idea, only speculation, the center of which found its heart in the fact that only Dorothy and Death walked the streets. Only they were left, which suggested to her that they were behind Gossamer’s apparent vacancy, and the corpse in the house her and her mother had entered.

  She walked from portrait to portrait, worried that it in itself was a trap because she should have been running straight out the back and up the hill and out to the highway. But she also wanted to understand what the hell was happening. And she wanted to stop it before something bad happened to her mother, knowing that her promise of leaving her mother behind was a lie.

  It was something she could never do.

  She’d die first, and realized she might, given a little more time.

  She stared blankly at several ancient photographs for a while, her mind working on the problem, and for such a young mind, and despite being incredibly scared, she was sharp.

  She thought that I was using Angel for a reason. What she didn’t know, but she didn’t think I or the creepy boy could touch them without using Angel as some kind of attack dog.

  So, she surmised that she would have to wound Angel somehow, hopefully not too severely, and free her mother. She could leave it up to Brooke if they should come back for him with the police. First she had to find something to use against him that would also keep distance between them so he couldn’t hit her.

  A gun was the most obvious choice but she didn’t have one, didn’t know where to find one, was afraid that it would disappear if she did acquire one, or worse, she’d try to shoot Angel and accidently hit her mother. Natalie had never liked firearms, wasn’t even sure how to use one. She scratched it from h
er list. She needed something she could use.

  The wind pushed against the door. She waited for a shadow to fall across the glass, for Death to press his face to the pane and treat her to that wicked smile.

  Heart racing, she skirted the wall toward the front door. She took a deep breath, rushed forward and engaged the lock. It was foolish of course. What was hunting her had no trouble with locks. But it did make her feel better, and she figured that had to count for something.

  She listened.

  All she heard was the wind, her heart beat, dust blowing against the glass. A storm moving in perhaps though the sky had seemed so clear only a little bit ago when her and her mother had made their decision to approach Angel and then flee.

  She thought about the spiders, how they had brushed her legs and she thought about how cold and hard Death’s grip was and how protective he’d been when she tried to kick the spiders off of her.

  Natalie wanted to give in to the hopelessness, because it was hopeless.

  It’s hard enough to fight off a murder when you’re a grown man, and she knew that, and she was nothing more than a weak, lazy child, which she had been okay with up until the point Angel had punched her mother. Now she wished she’d had years of Karate training, or experience with anything that might save her mother any more suffering and help the two of them escape.

  One of the portraits placed above an upright piano near the back wall caught her attention. She moved toward it cautiously. A thick faux gold frame encased it. The photo itself looked as if it were printed on aged cotton. It showed a young dark-haired woman with a grand smile. Next to her, a boy of perhaps ten, with the same dark hair and bright eyes. At first she believed the boy to be Angel because his eyes had shone with that same too-true merriment, but she dismissed the idea. This boy was too small boned to be Angel. This boy also had something about him she knew from somewhere else. She studied him, then the woman, then the boy again, trying to figure out the puzzle, and a puzzle it was, deserving of such a small child.

  Discovering an answer she so desperately needed would encourage her to hang around for just a bit longer.

  *****

  Angel watched from where he stood next to Brooke tied to one of the centaurs as I hung baby shoes in the leafless trees. Brooke hadn’t cried much, which was good because he hated to hear her cry. But she had raged, trying to kick him, trying to bite him, struggling to tear the ropes from her wrists in one herculean effort. She wasn’t nearly powerful enough, but one of the reasons he loved her was because of how much effort she put into acting like she wanted to get away.

  “Shh,” he whispered, stroking her back. “When she’s done we’ll get to take the ride and you’re going to be so goddamn surprised.”

  He glanced in my general direction again, not wanting me to know that he was watching me, and uncertain why he felt that way. Having Brooke so close to him, to see the blood on her mouth and where she’d smeared it across her cheek with her shoulder, twisted an old guilt he’d kept quiet for a very long time.

  He’d never had many girlfriends, and the first one, Clair, had been the hardest. He hadn’t known it at the time, that all first relationships are the hardest, and even harder when you give all you can to another soul, not wanting anything back but for them to feel it. And Clair hadn’t, though at first she pretended she had. After he found out she was fucking around it about killed him, and he considered killing the random guys, her, himself, but was too depressed, and possibly had heart-shock, so did nothing but mope about until the next time it happened. But he’d learned distrust from trust. He learned that what someone says is meaningless without their actions aligning with their words.

  He beat her with his fists late one night out near the fairgrounds, him drunk and her high, just the two of them, nobody to hear a goddamn thing.

  He felt horrible and surprised the first time he hit her, but each jab to her face and stomach felt a little better than the one preceding it. He thought he’d cut her tits off. He thought he’d take a screwdriver to her goodie box and then take her back to the college and stake her naked, distorted body to the football field.

  It was thinking those horrible thoughts, and the good part of his nature being repelled by them, that forced him to stop and collapse next to her. Clair was barely phased, bleeding yes, but laughing at him, telling him he was a real big man, that he reminded her of her father, and he felt hollow. He apologized profusely, not because he was afraid of getting in trouble but because he was ashamed of himself, that he’d ever hurt anyone else at all who hadn’t tried to make him bleed first.

  She never told anyone. He saw her around and when he did, he’d duck the other way. She knew he hurt but she was okay. Bruises heal quickly. And what he’d taught her was that she might as well keep doing what she wanted because she couldn’t accept love, not when she knew its sweet nothings always came down to a flurry of fists or a night full of screaming.

  Brooke moaned. Angel petted her hair. He said, “I’m sorry I hit you, really, I am, but I can’t have you trying to run away and miss all that’s going to happen. I know how hard it is to believe there’s something special here, but,” he raised his arms, took in the carousel in all its dark and forbidden beauty, and said, “but this is it. This is the most incredible thing I will ever see or be a part of. And because I love you I want you to experience it too. Before anybody else does. You deserve it. You—”

  I had finished hanging the small white shoes in every tree lining the street and off around the side of the buildings. They were like ornaments at Christmas in a mad house.

  I stood at the edge of the carousel, said, “It hurts to love so much, doesn’t it?”

  Angel nodded.

  He said, “If you hurt what you love it hurts even more. I didn’t want to hit her,” and he wasn’t sure if he was talking about Clair, or Brooke, or both of them. He shook his head. “I know it will be better when you start this thing up and the years fall away, she’ll see then what she would have missed if she hadn’t trusted me.”

  “Her daughter is still out there.”

  “Yeah?” he said, unsure what I was getting at. He stroked the back of Brooke’s head and she tried to pull away from him but there wasn’t anywhere for her to go. He whispered, “It’ll be over soon, baby. Real soon, you’ll see.”

  I said, “She’s a strong woman. I can admire that.” I looked up at Angel and said, “Will you make sure she stays on there?”

  “She’s not going anywhere,” he said nervously. “But I don’t like tying her up. Can’t we just get this over with?”

  “Soon,” I said.

  *****

  Brooke heard me say we’d get it over with soon, and though the words both terrified and relieved her, it was hard to focus because her head felt jarred and her neck stiff. The rope around her wrists, and looped around her ribcage, chafed her arms and it made it hard to breathe. She took shallow breaths. It was cooler in the shade of the carousel’s canopy but the wind felt hot, pressing the day’s heat to her face and smothering her. She tried to remain as still as possible to avoid letting Angel and me know she was conscious. Better, she figured, to let us think she was worse off than she actually was.

  She really didn’t understand the predicament she was in, but she could guess easily enough where it was headed.

  What worried her most was that Natalie was out there somewhere and that thing that had been on top of the building was out there with her. It stood to reason that whatever it was, explainable or not, I trapped things for it. That’s all they were, meat for the beast, she thought. But she didn’t plan to go out like that, or to see her daughter be robbed of what had the very good chances of being a fulfilling life, no matter how many bumps waited in the road ahead.

  She listened to us talk. Angel seemed nearly his normal self and she opened her eyes to slits, her chin against her chest, and saw that he was naked. It nearly caused her to yell in frustration, her fiancé standing there in front of some old decrepit
creature with his cock dangling in the wind, and she thought she might laugh because it was ridiculous, him doing something that she would have never guessed in a million years, and that made her think of Bill, which made her want to cry because you can never really know someone else. You can trust them, but it’s better to trust that somewhere down the line they’re going to hurt you simply because they’re human.

  She knew she’d hurt others despite the fact that she thought of herself as a good person. And if this was karma, her and her family being torn apart in the middle of nowhere, then fate was cruel. Much crueler than it needed to be.

  Angel tried to stroke her head again, tenderly, and she was surprised she let him, surprised too that it felt good, that she needed it since he was standing there like some kind of pervert, standing with a stranger who was putting them all at jeopardy, and poor, guileless Angel not only standing by and doing nothing, but instead helping.

  It’s not his fault, she thought, doing her best to hug that thought to her chest, keep it close to her heart. What she needed was for me to leave so she could try and talk sense into Angel. They had to find her daughter and take it from there, but she wouldn’t be able to do anything until he untied her.

  She tested the bonds but they were just as tight as before. The blood drying on her face tugged at her skin at the slightest movement. She tried to focus on the good things in her life for a while to distract her until I left them alone, but it wasn’t easy. When Angel shifted his stance, his bare feet thumping dully on the platform, he lifted her face and she kept her eyes closed. She was afraid to look at him. She was afraid she would see that all she had thought she’d known of him had been washed away by the fanatical light that now lived in his stare.

  He said, “I’m sorry. Just hang on and it’ll be over soon, she promised.”

  She pretended to act groggy, pretended to be interested and compliant, mumbling, “When what happens?”

  His fingers were warm against her chin. He stroked her cheek with his other hand and it felt good considering he’d been the one to make her bleed.