Cattle…
Nothing more.
Their lives amounting to nothing more than a constant nighttime vessel of dark red fluid.
Virgin wine…
Her shoulders burned. She held the pitchfork’s tip in front of her, turning it slowly left, right, left, as she advanced to the far end of the room and the two steps that would carry her onto the altar, too near the dark pulpit which anything could be hiding behind, her gaze shifting to the open beams above her, alert for any shape that might jump in her path, or upon her.
“Nothing there,” she whispered, but feeling at odds with the words that had left her mouth. She knew she needed to trust her instincts but it was hard to do when her life previous to this experience had little call for instinct at all.
The girls on the wall were as still as slaughtered lambs. She thought they might already have been killed, but couldn’t know for sure until she was close enough to touch them and check for a heartbeat, and if they still had a fleet flash of life she could find something to break the shackle around their necks and let them drop to the altar. There was no way she’d be able to lift them. She was too sleight for one, and them too heavy. And there was a leaden weight of exhaustion threatening to overcome her, burned up adrenaline that had left her ready for a long, long sleep.
Her body was already weak from the beginnings of her menstrual cycle, and that troubled her most of all because she feared that the creatures I had told her now ruled this hidden place might smell the scent of her blood purging itself.
She blinked, climbed the steps and pointed the pitchfork at the pulpit.
Closer, the wounds decorating the twin girls’ limbs grew grotesque. There were not just dozens, but hundreds of needle-like holes in their skin, as if they had been perforated by a machine. Natalie couldn’t imagine the pain they’d endured, and worst of all, she didn’t want to imagine how long they’d endured such torture.
Once would be too many times, but moving nearer, she could see that some wounds were healing while others looked as if they’d only been performed hours ago.
“God,” she said, shaking her head. “What did they do to you?”
She leaned the pitchfork against the cross, tines down. After a deep breath she moved to the twin on the right side and extended her hand, afraid she would not be able to reach the girl’s heart. She shook her head again, took hold of the wrist, and felt a shiver run through her. She jerked her hand away. The holes dotting her arms were puckered as if the vampires’ teeth had drawn out mounds of irritated meat upon removal.
She wasn’t sure if she wanted the girls to be alive or not. It would be easier for all of them if they were dead. She was going to have a hard enough time getting out of there by herself, and an even harder time if she had to carry two girls twice her size with her. It’d be next to impossible and her odds were slim to begin with.
She bit her lip, studying them, ashamed for how she felt. It would also be easier for them if no pulse tapped softly beneath their wrists, better to not suffer anymore, better to give up, sometimes, than to struggle against the chains that bound you, and the monsters that returned nightly to leave you weaker and more hopeless than the night before.
Tears burned hot in her eyes, she felt weak, like the child she was, because she couldn’t prevent them falling.
She forced herself to take hold of the girl’s wrist again.
She turned the palm out and pressed her fingers to the inside of the girl’s wrist.
*****
Brooke felt the knot that had burned against her breastbone loosen by degrees as she plucked at each strand. It seemed a massive victory, but one much too late as she worked harder to break it open, her gaze moving to Angel’s corpse draped over a nearby centaur.
There wasn’t time to cry. It was nearly dark.
Dusk settled heavily over the bowl and windows in the faces of every storefront winked dark eyes. Her fingers flew over the knot, finding and manipulating its weakest areas. Another strand loosened. She said, excitedly, “Yes!”
She scanned the street for my presence but saw no sign of me.
Brooke didn’t concern herself with where I’d gotten off to since it was beyond her control and she had a task to tackle, one nearly conquered, and then she would find Natalie and they’d bring the National Guard back once they were safe.
Her fingers slowed as her mind turned to her daughter. The kid had a hard life, like most other kids, all of them trying to find some semblance of balance, desperately believing that the lives they would live in the future were better than the lives they lived now.
They struggled, she knew that, for acceptance, some of them for popularity, some simply for recognition that they existed, especially those who came from broken homes where their parents were barely more than action and reaction and inertia, mindless really, discarding their responsibilities as parents for more carnal and immediate pleasures: booze, drugs, money, sex, work.
Her fingers attacked one problem while her mind tumbled over another.
She had to decide, and quickly, whether to stay here once she was free and look for Natalie, or to run for the road now that it was cooler and heat stroke presented less of a chance of attacking.
She wondered, Where would Nat go?
To the road was the smartest move, and her daughter was smarter than Brooke or anyone else usually gave her credit for. But she also knew that Natalie was more courageous than she gave herself credit for, and it would take the world shifting from its axis for her to run away when Brooke was still held prisoner.
Realizing that made her want to cry again so she looked up the street, hoping to catch sight of her daughter, pale and scared, or pale and determined, peeking from the corner of a doorway.
No such luck, of course.
The street was empty. But she could hear something, dull and distant, like thudding feet.
“She’s still here somewhere,” she said, as her fingers finished the knot and the rope fell away and hung limply from the down rod between the centaur’s arms. Her wrists were bruised a dark purple. She rubbed them, hoping her circulation would improve quickly.
She climbed from the beast slowly, unsteady, and stumbled to where Angel’s body lay. His hair glistened with blood. It dripped from his throat and onto the platform. She glanced up the street again, fearing the same fate for her and Natalie, but the fear was good because it got her moving.
She took the steps down and stood shaking in the dusty street. Her stomach hurt as she climbed back up to Angel’s corpse. She rummaged his pockets until she found his lighter and a crushed pack of cigarettes. She had never been one to smoke but she needed something to calm her nerves and she didn’t have time or the availability for anything else.
She lit up, inhaled, and coughed severely, eyes watering.
By the time she finished the cigarette, she didn’t feel any better, and placed a hand on Angel’s back and rubbed it gently. Shock was wearing off and she hated to see it go. Her spine felt chilled, her limbs stiff and heart hollow.
She thought, I’ll never love again. Not when it hurts so fucking much.
She slid the lighter in her pocket, then removed it, trying to remember where she’d dropped her purse, or if I had taken it after Angel had attacked and Natalie ran away. Usually, on the job, she had her act together. But she didn’t know where to go or what to do. It’d take her an hour or two to run the streets looking for Natalie, and a whole day to search every house.
She lit another cigarette and smoke trailed behind her as she fled into the darkening streets, knowing she had to start somewhere. All she really knew for certain was that the story I had told her was a complete fabrication.
She entered the motel first, almost expecting to see me sitting on the bench where Brooke had held me earlier, in daylight, meaning to help me find a family that didn’t even exist. It made her angry. She didn’t like being tricked, or played for a fool, and finding out that she was one. The repercussions were sometimes
too grave.
She went into the kitchens again and grabbed another butcher knife.
She resisted the urge to light another cigarette. The day was gone now, surrendered to the quickly cooling night, but sweat beaded like oil on her brow.
In the street, she headed toward the first house around the corner, the first sidetrack that led to cross streets, thinking that maybe she’d get lucky and find her daughter right away.
She moved clumsily, her limbs stiff, and her mind working hard on the problem she faced now of finding Natalie before I did. She could do it, she told herself. A mother had a gift, she’d heard somewhere, and she called on that gift, willing it into existence, trusting that whatever direction her feet pointed her would be the correct one.
It was easy to nurture that hope when it was the only hope she had left besides the two of them escaping.
But one depended on the other.
Her feet pounded the hard packed earth, her movements growing easier, quicker, as her resolve and circulation improved.
The air smelled of her blood, and Angel’s, and sweat, and late fall flowers growing from the outcrop of rock and planted in flowerbeds. But beneath it all, another scent rose, something acrid, sulfurous, spoiled. It was the smell of a death camp, she imagined. And she imagined hundreds of ghosts laboring about the streets, unaware that their time had expired, but pretending, to the best of their sorry eternal lives, that it wasn’t. And she imagined Angel’s childish and guileless face among them, kneeling in the dirt and trying to adjust.
It pained her chest because she feared that shortly, if she didn’t turn the situation around, she and her daughter could be among them.
She yelled Natalie’s name.
It rung hollowly in the air, off buildings and cliff face, dulled by windows and old, sun faded timber.
She stopped, listened for any reply.
Something rustled in the distance, then something else thudded in one of the houses as if someone had stumbled into a coffee table or door.
Her breath caught in her throat.
Sweat stung her eyes.
She squinted in the gloom.
The butcher knife she held lost substance, faded, and she became aware of it doing so, and tried to wrap both hands around the handle to keep it from disappearing completely, but it did, just like she knew it would, only much sooner.
She stomped the ground in frustration, tears in her eyes, scanning for her child and for me and for the strange boy-man they’d seen on top one of the buildings earlier. In her distress and single-mindedness, she’d forgotten about him. He was an unknown variable that presented a very large problem, possibly an insurmountable one.
The house she and Natalie had entered earlier, where they’d found the dead man in the upright coffin, bustled with noise—a soft churning, the shuffle of feet, the knick of fingernails against plasterboard.
She waited, defenseless for a moment, before running to the alley and squatting behind a wooden dump box that smelled of cardboard and old paper. A stick lay on the ground next to her knee. She watched the house in the distance, expecting someone or something to step from the darkened interior, a mere shadow that would gain substance with every step it took into the dusky lawn. The stick felt real. She doubted it would disappear. It felt too real to be anything but what it was.
She fumbled Angel’s lighter from her pocket. Her nails clicked against hard plastic. She didn’t know what she was doing until she was doing it. She ripped one of her sleeves off and squinted into the darkness, winding the cloth around the end of the stick, and tying a tight knot to keep it in place.
A shadow took shape in the back door of the house across the way.
She peered through the gloom, past the dirty white baby shoes dabbed with blood hanging from the many leafless trees. The club she held leant her some strength and a little confidence. She’d played softball in high school, then had rekindled that passion on the police force, taking part in many precinct games. She wasn’t their best player, but she knew how to swing, how to generate maximum power from her hips, her stance, and her reflexes were quick.
Whoever else was here, she’d knock their heads from their shoulders. At least knock them unconscious with one whack, and still keep some distance between herself and any attackers.
She studied the gloom enveloping the gray scab in the distance, nearly a football field’s distance, and waited for sign of an opponent.
A moment later it came.
The shape stepping into the yard across the street was definitely a person.
Brooke stood slowly next to the dump bin, heart pounding, her breath growing rapid, and she wanted to scream a primal scream and charge forward swinging, but the shape stumbled toward the street running adjacent to Main and the trees bordering it.
It was not a man, but a girl, dimly lit by a moon arcing low over the horizon.
Brooke’s breath caught in her throat. Tears burned her eyes.
She thought, It’s Nat, and she’s stunned or hurt…
Other noises sounded in other houses, more shuffling, more smacking into doors as if the owners were waking from an incredibly deep sleep.
She ignored the sounds.
Natalie was right there in front of her, shambling, maybe seriously hurt.
The moon shone a little brighter as she withdrew from the darkness of the stores and into the open, running forward, arms pumping, across the street.
A slow patter of feet, a dark blob of movement on her right peripheral slowed her, she turned, saw them, ten or so men and women like ivory pegs, razor sharp in their leanness, their eyes dark hollows and their throats making a twisted, slurping sound.
Natalie stumbled closer.
Only it wasn’t Nat, she could see now, with only forty yards separating them. It was one of them of Gossamer, a young girl around Nat’s age, only thinner, her clothing hanging from her, lank hair washed of the gloss of life by something just as potent.
Brooke skidded to a stop, lifted the club. The piece of her shirt flapped against the end, having come a little loose. She thought she should turn, run back around to Main Street where she was certain I waited on the carousel, and she was about to, but several things happened too quickly for her to follow through.
The dozen or so walking corpses limped toward the baby shoes.
The sucking sounds they made grew louder.
The moon grew brighter.
Brooke’s stomach ached with hunger and with disgust as the town folk clawed at the baby shoes, fumbling over each other, all of their backs to her except for the young girl she had thought her daughter in the darkness, from a distance, hoping, hoping, letting her mind play tricks on her, and the night folk fumbled each other’s arms, and the baby shoes, as they fought to get to them, a head darting forward, tongue outstretched wet and black, tasting the dried blood, the sucking noises paramount over every other sound…
Until the young girl facing Brooke made an awful screaming sound, only thirty or so feet away, having closed the gap between them while Brooke was watching, horrified, the others lick dried blood from the infant shoes.
The young girl’s dark eyes were locked on Brooke and it seemed nothing in heaven, earth or hell could break such intense focus.
Those that were struggling to take the baby shoes from those that possessed them, turned, expecting easier prey.
Brooke swallowed hard, afraid that her legs wouldn’t function. She thought, I can outrun them, I have to outrun them…
But the girl took a few strides forward, much faster than she had first appeared. And Brooke cursed, flicked the lighter and lit the cloth wrapped around the tip. She swung the torch against the gathering forces.
The fire was hot and felt amazingly reassuring for a split second, but the flames destroyed her vision and dark shapes blurred, rushing forward like a tide of arms, legs and bright white teeth.
*****
Natalie pressed her fingers to the hanging girl’s wrist. She half expected a fai
nt pulse, believing that the vampires must have kept the young plump bodies alive, thinking that they couldn’t drink the dead’s blood or they’d feed on each other and corpses.
But she didn’t know for sure how these things worked. And she doubted they were alive at all since they were dangling by their necks and it seemed to her that there was not a chance in hell that they’d have been able to breathe for long like that.
The girl’s flesh was damp with light perspiration but the sweat was cool and the flesh at her wrist even cooler. Natalie didn’t find a pulse.
Moonlight stabbed through the high windows and peppered the altar in patches of twilight. Whispers echoed softly, a chant-like sound, around the sanctuary, a boy’s voice, or a girl’s, she couldn’t tell. The pitch was frantic, and worried sounding, the syllables rushed, staccato.
She peered above and around her, thinking that something else was definitely there with her and the two corpses.
She inched away from the girl on the right and passed the cross, snatching the pitchfork as she moved to the other dangling bait. She glanced around again, her imagination getting the better of her for a moment as the pews flickered and she saw a few dozen still, frozen bodies sitting silently in the pews. She jump, startled, because they seemed so real, so there, but when she blinked they disappeared, the image of them, but the fear remained.
Natalie tried her best to slow her mind and focus on what was actually there.
The whispers fell from the ceiling, heavy and sharp objects, full of pleading, a message slowly taking shape in her head. A simple message… Get away…
But she couldn’t flee, not yet.
She grabbed the second girl’s arm, pressed her index and middle fingers to the hollow of her wrist.
Natalie felt the muscles in that arm quiver with life and she heard the girl suck in a quick breath. She raised her head, dragging her gaze from wrist to face.
At first the expression the plump girl wore was one of confusion and pain, possibly hope. And it was those things, but not from the perspective Natalie believed. She still held the girl’s hand, and they were looking into each other’s eyes. The sufferer had been hanging there for a long while with her sister. Peter had moved them in the morning while the others slept. He’d dragged one into yesterday’s morning light, hoping that it would burst into flames and die a wretched death. It broke my heart to see him attempting such a thing, but he did it from love, to protect me. And the poor boy was disheartened, despite my private relief, to learn that sunlight didn’t bother them while they were sleeping. He was unable to wake her. By the time he’d carried the sisters into the church and chained them, he was weak and disappointed that nothing he had done had improved our situation. He went back in for Julian but was too afraid of him because Julian slept with his eyes open. But he stood watching him for a while, waiting for him to sit up and smile, or sit up and leap on him. The cross with the blue eye in the center of it troubled him, as did the chainmail shirt. He left Julian undisturbed, and turned his attention back to the prey he had captured.
Gossamer: A Story of Love and Tragedy Page 20