Gossamer: A Story of Love and Tragedy

by Thompson, Lee

  Natalie’s breath caught in her throat again. She held her own stomach because she thought she might vomit. Seeing her mother walking stiffly outside, headed for the carousel it seemed, hurt more than anything had ever hurt her. Life’s trivial pains were nothing: the teasing, the judging, teachers burned out on teaching, children being children, her father’s incarceration and estrangement from her life, Angel’s dumb-founded looks and her mother’s sometimes overzealous protection, that all amounted to grains of sand, pain-wise, compared to the desert of grief she felt upon seeing her mom out there in the night, changed, and who she had been destroyed by that change.

  My hand settled on Natalie’s shoulder. The child waited for me to say something wise, or reassuring, but the silence grew so heavy it was a sound unto itself, a booming sound of expectation and disbelief, as even I was at a loss for words.

  Natalie clung to the disbelief, even though her eyes could not be argued with, because denial was easy to cling to.

  Her mother climbed onto the carousel. A soft whisking sound, either near or distant, Natalie couldn’t tell, grew louder. A moment later Peter joined us; she could see him out of the corner of her eye, but all of her attention was on her mother who stood now next to another thing the young girl found too terrible to be true.

  Angel’s body was perfectly still, though she prayed he was only feigning death. Her mother squatted near his head. She seemed to shudder and shake her head for a second, battling herself, and then slowly lifted one of her hands.

  She wiped a finger across his throat—which Natalie could see now was slashed like a dark, horrible grin—and her mother brought the wet finger close to her lips. And Natalie wanted to scream but she couldn’t find her voice.

  The three of us waited, me on one side of her, Peter on the other, Natalie in the middle, ready to lose her mind, and her mother and her lover on the carousel, one a provider, the other receiver of intimacies so twisted the child leaned against Peter for support, and her mother’s tongue darted out and flicked the darkness from the tip of her finger.

  Her hand returned for more of the nectar at her lover’s throat.

  Her back a little straighter, the moonlight a little brighter, she tasted him again, and if her posture or repetition were any sign, she didn’t mind the abominable trespass she was committing.

  Peter wrapped his arm around Natalie’s shoulders and she turned and buried her head against him, wishing Julian would appear. She could hear them out there now, moving in the darkness, their pale hands scraping the sides of buildings, their roars echoing throughout the valley, their feet heavy, stomping instruments until the noise subsided and Natalie feared they had awoken enough to take to the sky.

  For now that she had time to stop fighting for a moment, she knew why the ranks of vampires waited, and it was so simple: to gather strength to erase all existence of life remaining; mine, hers, Peter’s.

  And she knew that they had taken to the sky because the wind came from all directions as their wings stormed above the motel and dust clouds rose, and she could imagine Julian on the street, on the other side of the carousel, watching her mother take her first sip and relishing in it the way evil things did.

  The cacophony above rose in volume, a couple hundred swarming bodies like giant bats.

  She thought, How are we ever going to be able to deal with that?

  She wanted to ask me what our plan was again. She wanted to ask Peter his part. But she lacked the energy, noticing her own reflection, all of our sad, beaten reflections, in the glass.

  The three of us huddled closer inside the motel’s foyer, in the darkness, and Natalie could smell each of us distinctively, and the smell of her period, which always brought her embarrassment, was the strongest scent of all.

  *****

  Brooke had dipped her finger into the gash at Angel’s throat a third time and was about to touch it to her tongue, her stomach gurgling, her soul feeling as if with every taste what was once her was slowly vanishing, and she didn’t want to let it go—she didn’t want to forget her daughter’s face, or her smile, or her laughter, her hopes and dreams and fears, the easy and kind way she had with most people, some of which were no good for her—when the air above her crackled with the sounds of bones snapping, wind breaking around the knife-like bodies of her brethren and her sisters, high in the night sky, backlit by moon she saw as she moved to the edge of the carousel.

  Her stomach gurgled again and a little more of her slipped into nothingness and she wanted to cry but something wouldn’t let her. She felt robbed by the knowledge, cheated. Yet, honestly, there was nothing she could do about how she felt. Like so many things she had learned in that other life, your choices were restricted by your resources and the depth and complexity of your character.

  She stood on the edge of the carousel and watched the bodies in the sky rise and dive, sporadically, Brooke thinking that there was a beauty to it that she would have never seen if her eyes had not opened, if Julian had not welcomed her into the fold.

  “No,” she whispered, breath suddenly ragged. “I’m not giving in to this. I will fight it and I will win.” But her words were as dusty and insignificant as the desert sands, and she came to realize it the moment movement off to her right attracted, and then held her attention.

  Her vision was not superhuman, merely different, and what she saw inside the motel, was three hearts beating. The one on the right was nearly indestructible, as if fashioned from diamonds, built and improved by the pressure life and the world had set upon it over centuries. No blood she wanted flowed through that labyrinth.

  The one on the left beat with the pulse of wind and the scraping of sand stirred by the wings above her. It was a tender heart, soft for all the hardened exterior protecting it.

  And the heart in the middle was even softer, blood red, pale pink, a little miracle that shared her DNA, feeding brain, organs, limbs, the sad, sad eyes that gazed back at her, shining from the darkness enveloping the foyer she stood in.

  Brooke whispered, “Natalie,” and she smiled and then frowned, lowering her head, shaking it.

  She thought, I have to stay away from her.

  But above the carousel the heart she now shared with all of them pounded, pushed her off the edge and she drifted down to earth, arms at her sides, light as a feather.

  Natalie was in the doorway now.

  Her daughter’s face was as stricken as Brooke’s spirit felt.

  The child choked out, “Mom?”

  Brooke wanted to answer, but she couldn’t. That ravenous disease living inside her suppressed the memories she’d only minutes ago relished, and grieved for.

  She moved toward Natalie, the stiffness from her limbs gone, the creatures in the sky swooping lower.

  *****

  Natalie, the sweet, sweet child, broke from between me and Peter and rushed to the open door when her mother glanced her way and their gazes locked. What she most feared had come true and it clouded her mind with despair.

  She sobbed, standing there with her hands clenched at her waist like she’d seen her mother doing earlier, when she’d passed her out in the darkness.

  “Mom?” she said, broken, about to surrender, for it was easier to give in and join her mother than it was to attempt killing her. The thought of that act appalled her. The girls in the church had been people once too, but they had been strangers. They had not fed her, or cuddled her, or encouraged her, or frustrated her, or shared moments that she had not shared with anyone else in the world.

  “Mom?” she said again as her mother stepped from the edge of the carousel and floated slowly to the ground, her arms spread out at her sides as if to balance herself.

  “Please,” Natalie said, “still be in there somewhere.”

  She searched her mother’s face for signs that she still lived on, that her body was not just a vehicle for an evil too great to conquer. Her mother’s eyes were black splotches like Peter’s were, as if she never slept, as if everything she d
esired were constantly out of reach and it burned her even as she burned the night hours, seeking, searching, hunting.

  Natalie saw nothing of her mom’s stubbornness or softness in those eyes.

  She saw something human though, and maybe that was the worst part. That greed, that entitlement of the fittest, lived in her eyes, in her every movement, ten feet away now, walking casually toward Natalie, lifting one hand toward her, fingers curling, her mother saying, “Come with me… Come…”

  Natalie shook her head.

  Her mother took two more steps.

  The roar of the other creatures thundered, lower, their dark shapes blowing overtop the carousel, one way, another, their heads turning and seeing the child, and Natalie, seeing them, unable to breathe.

  Peter pushed by her, breaking whatever spell, or simply the terror, that had seized her.

  He slammed the door shut behind him and Brooke assessed him.

  Natalie could hear her voice even through the closed door…

  “She’s my daughter,” Brooke said, and her voice sounded so weak, so herself, that Natalie nearly rushed outside and into her arms. “Help us.”

  Peter’s army, though miniscule in size, numbered in the thousands, and they came to him from up the street, between buildings, from beneath his clothing as if the body he possessed were made of them.

  It didn’t take great effort for Natalie to remember how Peter had used the spiders to poison the girl from inside her body, to destroy whatever mechanisms drove her, and she watched in horror as the flood of recluses swirled around her mother’s legs, clinging to her arms and fingers and neck, desperate for purchase while Brooke brushed as many as she could away, but too slowly, even if she’d had six arms, and the spiders covered her face, her neck, obliterating the stain of her blood at her neck, the paleness of her skin, as dozens crowded around her screaming mouth.

  Natalie yelled, “No! Don’t hurt her!”

  *****

  Brooke had felt invincible until the boy of the desert stepped between her and her daughter. She knew, and was fighting, what she saw very clearly in her mind before he interrupted her and became a nuisance to deal with.

  She would hug her daughter to her chest and she would break the skin at her neck because it had to be her to do it, not Julian or any of the strangers lost in frenzy upon the winds.

  She blinked against the dust they stirred around her, lower now, any moment ready to land and take what little blood remained in this barren place. And she knew that Julian was holding them off, she could feel him out there in the night, sense him standing on top of a nearby building, enjoying the chaos, anticipating what it was she would do because by that point she was too weak to fight it any longer.

  And she reasoned, with what empathy remained, that it would be easier for Nat if the root of her change stemmed from the one who loved her, even after death.

  And yet, it killed her, the last remaining trace of her former identity swimming against the dark tide rising inside her and flailing at the sight of tears and loss on her daughter’s cheeks, in the shape of her mouth, in the buckled posture.

  And until the boy raised his hands, and shadows flowed down the street like a relentless river, she had believed him no obstacle.

  *****

  Natalie watched a shift take place in Peter’s posture.

  He turned, angry with her, and understanding at the same time, as he lifted his arms above his head and the sand and spiders spun frantically, a strand at first growing wider until a thirty foot wide funnel roared next to the carousel, nearly white in the night, sucking up terrified and disenchanted creatures from the sky.

  It plucked them from the air as it moved back and forth and Natalie stepped out into the open, onto the boardwalk hard beneath her shoes.

  Peter moved away from her, past her mother, onto the carousel itself, his hands still lifted high but taking no joy in what Natalie thought a fruitless effort. He couldn’t hold them suspended in the whirlwind indefinitely and Julian failed to appear and they needed him to do so if there was any chance of ending the night’s terrors and for a new day, one so much like yesterday, to dawn.

  I made no effort to join either Natalie or Peter.

  I watched Brooke and the line of building’s rooftops across the street.

  It was better if they thought I had surrendered.

  Natalie screamed again as the spiders left to torment her mother crawled beneath her clothing and through her hair. Her mother, now on the ground, rolling and shrieking, seemed to quiver like a string plucked savagely by an invisible hand. She jerked left and right, smearing the spiders like paste beneath her convulsing body. Helpless it seemed, and Natalie wanting to help her but afraid to get within her reach.

  Peter stood tall on the platform, focusing his energy on the storm he’d created and manipulated.

  Natalie wondered if those inside the funnel were under attack the way her mother was, or worse, because apparently Peter had merely used them to suppress her mother—Natalie saw no sign that they’d disappeared inside her mouth or nose like they had the girl in the church.

  Not yet at least.

  She glanced back at me again but I wasn’t in the window any longer, I was at the door, walking forward, speaking so softly the child could only see that my lips were moving.

  Natalie thought I had both a defeated and determined cast to my face and I looked much younger as I left the building and moonlight bathed me.

  I felt younger, felt things coming, finally to a head, and decided I’d rather die myself than let those I’d protected escape into the rest of the world.

  Natalie said, “What are we going to do?” as she turned her ashen face from me to the funnel and the empty rooftops, the Explorer right in the street, twenty feet away, but nearly useless with low fuel.

  And even if it had a full tank the young girl would not have left her mother behind, she didn’t have it in her, and she didn’t want to imagine a life without her mother in it to bring her comfort and for her to return it.

  I stood next to her. She quit mumbling to herself, but shook her head slowly as if to rattle something, some brilliant or mediocre plan, loose. In that moment, I could see why her mother loved her so.

  Brooke, seeming to understand that the spiders were not going to harm her, had pulled herself together and was sitting up now, glaring at the two of us.

  Natalie shuddered, feeling a small trickle of blood between her legs, and the scratches to her face, seeping wet from where she’d absentmindedly rubbed her nails in fear that her mother was to end a horrible death.

  But no, her mother let them crawl over her now, somewhat disgusted, but totally unaffected, and Natalie, smart as a whip, realized that by demanding her mother’s safety she had unanchored her own.

  She held her hands in front of her.

  She cried, “Mom, don’t!”

  But her mother flew forward as if jerked by a rope, her arms out as well, her engagement ring catching moonlight and growing larger in Natalie’s vision before her mother’s weight hit her and knocked her off her feet.

  The air exploded from her lungs.

  Her vision went black and fuzzy.

  She blinked, squirmed, felt her mother on top of her, suffocatingly close, Brooke’s stale breath hot at her neck.

  She was incredibly strong, stronger than the child, but Natalie punched her in the face, hurting her fingers in the process, and cried out for help.

  When none came, Natalie hunched her shoulders up to shield her exposed throat, seeing Peter on the carousel, triumphant one moment and terrified the next as he looked her way, his eyes pleading, and Natalie nodding, Yes, do it, send them inside her, because as much as she had loved her mother, she loved living more…

  But the dark air behind Peter seemed to shimmer with movement, a wisp of arms and legs, a tangle of teeth, and Natalie saw him—Julian—rise on the other side of the carousel and cross it in three strides, a short sword in his right hand.

 
She tried to buck her mother off, to issue a warning to the boy, out of the corner of her eye seeing the funnel’s manic spinning and my old, old shoes stepping lightly against the boardwalk.

  Her mother snapped at her face and Natalie drove an elbow up under her chin as hard as she could, crying as her mother whimpered from somewhere deep inside, possibly still at war with what she was becoming, and what she was in the middle of attempting.

  Peter’s arms lowered a fraction of an inch, his eyes on them, looking as if he wanted to help but unable to move his feet, the centaurs’ sorrowful faces waxen in the failing light, and Natalie screamed, “Behind you!”

  Peter didn’t have time to turn around, or to sidestep, the blades deadly thrust.

  Julian drove it forward, into his back, the tip exiting his chest, the boy’s sad eyes gazing down and tremors racking his body.

  He touched the blade with the tip of his finger.

  Behind him, Julian kicked Peter low in the back and the sheath of flesh tumbled face-first off the carousel and into the dirt.

  Natalie screamed again, the funnel tipping heavily one way, the boy squirming in the sand, while I chanted, crying for Peter, for all of us.

  The carousel whined as it jerked into action.

  The centaurs’ moaned louder than the wind, the scraping sand, their arms tugging at the ropes as if to pull themselves from the cliff face of hell.

  Natalie kept her forearm braced under her mother’s chin, her other hand pulling on the nape of her neck, hoping that somehow she had enough strength to hold out until I did something. But her heart was broken for her mother, for Angel, for herself, and for Peter.

  Brooke dug her chin into Natalie’s arm.

  Her eyes were black hollows, her lips bloodless.

  The centaurs’ tugged at the ropes.

  Julian, as much animal as he was, knew a trap when he smelled one, but like Angel, he thought that there was a switch somewhere on the mechanism, too dense to understand that I was the switch.

  The carousel’s jittering start threw him off balance long enough for it to make a single revolution. The second turn was much faster, and the third a blur of black and white.