by Ed McBain
SACRIFICE
Is she breathing?
. . . Christ!
She isn’t . . . is she? Is she?
She is. She’s okay.
. . . like maybe she’s being . . . poisoned?
We were getting so scared! Anita was crying a lot, then Anita was laughing like she couldn’t stop. Denise had this eating-thing, she was hungry all the time, stuffing her mouth at meals and in the cafeteria at school then poking a finger down her throat to make herself vomit into a toilet flush-flush-flushing the toilet so if she was at home nobody in her family would hear or if she was at school other girls wouldn’t hear and tell on her.
More and more we could see how they were watching us at school, like somehow they knew.
Since giving the white flowers to the Corn Maiden’s mother nothing felt right. Denise knew, and Anita. Jude maybe knew but would not acknowledge it.
Mothers don’t give a shit about their kids. See, it’s all pretend.
Jude believed this. She hated the Corn Maiden’s mother worse than she hated anybody, just about.
Anita was worried the Corn Maiden was being poisoned, all the strong drugs Jude was making her swallow. The Corn Maiden was hardly eating anything now, you had to mush it up like cottage cheese with vanilla ice cream, open her jaws and spoon it into her mouth then close her jaws and try to make her to swallow, but half the time the Corn Maiden began choking and gagging and the white mush just leaked out of her mouth like vomit.
We were begging, Jude maybe we better . . .
. . . we don’t want her to die, like do we?
Jude? Jude?
The fun was gone now. Seeing TV news, and all the newspapers even The New York Times, and the posters HAVE YOU SEEN ME? and the fifteen-thousand-dollar reward, and all that, that made us laugh like hyenas just a few days ago but wasn’t anything to laugh at now, or anyway not much. Jude still scorned the assholes, she called them, and laughed at how they ran around looking for the Corn Maiden practically under their noses out Highgate Avenue.
Jude was doing these weird things. On Monday she came to school with one of the Corn Maiden’s butterfly barrettes she was going to wear in her hair but we told her Oh no better not! and she laughed at us but didn’t wear it.
Jude talked a lot about fire, “immolation.” On the Internet she looked up some things like Buddhists had done a long time ago.
The Sacrifice of the Corn Maiden called for the heart of the captive cut out, and her blood collected in sacred vessels, but you could burn the Corn Maiden, too, and mix her ashes with the soil Jude said.
Fire is a cleaner way, Jude said. It would only hurt at the beginning.
Jude was taking Polaroids all the time now. By the end, Jude would have like fifty of these. We believed that Jude intended to post them on the Internet but that did not happen.
What was done with them, if the police took them away we would not know. They were not ever printed. Maybe they were destroyed.
These were pictures to stare at! In some of them the Corn Maiden was lying on her back in the bier in the beautiful silky fabrics and brocades and she was so little. Jude posed her naked and with her hair fanned out and her legs spread wide so you could see the little pink slip between her legs Jude called her cut.
The Corn Maiden’s cut was not like ours, it was a little-girl cut and nicer, Jude said. It would never grow pubic hairs Jude said, the Corn Maiden would be spared that.
Jude laughed saying she would send the TV stations these pictures they could not use.
Other poses, the Corn Maiden was sitting up or kneeling or on her feet if Jude could revive her, and slap-slap her face so her eyes were open, you would think she was awake, and smiling this wan little smile leaning against Jude, their heads leaning together and Jude grinning like Jude O and the Corn Maiden were floating somewhere above the earth in some Heaven where nobody could reach them, only just look up at them wondering how they’d got there!
Jude had us take these pictures. One of them was her favorite, she said she wished the Corn Maiden’s mother could see it and maybe someday she would.
That night, we thought the Corn Maiden would die.
She was shivering and twitching in her sleep like she’d been mostly doing then suddenly she was having like an epileptic fit, her mouth sprang open Uh-uh-uh and her tongue protruded wet with spittle and really ugly like a freak and Anita was backing off and whimpering She’s going to die! oh God she’s going to die! Jude do something she’s going to die! and Jude slapped Anita’s face to shut her up, Jude was so disgusted. Fat ass, get away. What the fuck do you know. Jude held the Corn Maiden down, the Corn Maiden’s skinny arms and legs were shaking so, it was like she was trying to dance laying down and her eyes came open unseeing like a doll’s dead glass eyes and Jude was kind of scared now and excited and climbed up onto the bier to lay on her, for maybe the Corn Maiden was cold, so skinny the cold had gotten into her bones, Jude’s arms were stretched out like the Corn Maiden’s arms and her hands were gripping the Corn Maiden’s hands, her legs quivering stretched out the Corn Maiden’s legs, and the side of her face against the Corn Maiden’s face like they were twin girls hatched from the same egg. I am here, I am Jude I will protect you, in the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will protect you forever AMEN. Till finally the Corn Maiden ceased convulsing and was only just breathing in this long shuddering way, but she was breathing, she would be okay.
Still, Anita was freaked. Anita was trying not to laugh this wild hyena laugh you’d hear from her at school sometimes, like she was being tickled in a way she could not bear so Jude became disgusted and slapped Anita SMACK-SMACK on both cheeks calling her fat ass and stupid cunt and Anita ran out of the storage room like a kicked dog crying, we heard her on the stairs and Jude said, She’s next.
On darkspeaklink.com where Jude O bonded with the Master of Eyes Jude showed us IF THERE IS A PERSON THERE IS A PROBLEM. IF THERE IS NO PERSON THERE IS NO PROBLEM. (STALIN)
Jude had never told the Master of Eyes that she was female or male and so the Master of Eyes believed her to be male. She had told him she had taken her captive, did he give her permission to Sacrifice? and the Master of Eyes shot back you are precocious/precious if 13 yrs old & where do you live Jude O? but the thought came to Jude suddenly the Master of Eyes was not her friend who dwelled in several places of the earth simultaneously but an FBI agent pretending to be her soul mate in order to capture her so Jude O disappeared from darkspeaklink.com forever.
YOU ASSHOLES! A SUICIDE NOTE
Jude O knew, it was ending. Four days preceding the Sacrifice and this was the sixth day. No turning back.
Denise was breaking down. Dull/dazed like she’d been hit over the head and in morning homeroom the teacher asked, Denise are you ill and at first Denise did not hear then shaking her head almost you could not hear her no.
Anita had not come to school. Anita was hiding away at home, and would betray Jude. And there was no way to get to Anita now, Jude was unable to silence the traitor.
Jude’s disciples, she had trusted. Yet she had not truly trusted them knowing they were inferiors.
Denise was begging, Jude I think we better . . .
. . . let the Corn Maiden go?
Because because if she, if . . .
The Corn Maiden becomes Taboo. The Corn Maiden can never be released. Except if somebody takes the Corn Maiden’s place the Corn Maiden can never be released.
You want to take the Corn Maiden’s place?
Jude, she isn’t the Corn Maiden she’s M-Marissa Ban—
A flame of righteous fury came over Jude O, SMACK-SMACK with the palm and back of her hand she slapped the offensive face.
When spotted hyenas are born they are usually twins. One twin is stronger than the other and at once attacks the other hoping to tear out its throat and why, because the other would try to kill it otherwise. There is no choice.
At the table at the very rear of the cafeteria where Jude O and her disciples pe
rceived as pathetic misfit losers by their Skatskill Day classmates usually ate their lunches together except today only Jude O and Denise Ludwig, and it was observed how Denise was whimpering and pleading with Jude wiping at her nose in a way repellent to the more fastidious girl who said through clenched jaws I forbid you to cry, I forbid you to make a spectacle of yourself, but Denise continued, and Denise whimpered and begged, and at last a flame of indignation swept over Jude who slapped Denise and Denise stumbled from the table overturning her chair, ran blubbering from the cafeteria in full view of staring others, and in that same instant it seemed that wily Jude O fled through a rear exit running crouched over to the middle school bicycle rack, and fueled by that same passion of indignation Jude bicycled 2.7 miles home to the old Trahern house on Highgate Avenue several times nearly struck by vehicles that swerved to avoid the blind-seeming cyclist and she laughed for she was feeling absolutely no fear now like a hawk riding the crest of an updraft scarcely needing to move its wings to remain aloft, and lethal. A hawk! Jude O was a hawk! If her bicycle had been struck and crushed, if she’d died on Highgate Avenue the Corn Maiden would molder in her bier of silks and brocades, unseen. No one would find the Corn Maiden for a long time.
If is better this way, we will die together.
She would not have requested a jury trial, you had to utter such bullshit to sway a jury. She would have requested a judge merely.
A judge is an aristocrat. Jude O was an aristocrat.
She would have been tried as an adult! Would have insisted.
In the gardener’s shed there was a rusted old lawnmower. A can of gasoline half full. You poured the gasoline through the funnel if you could get it open. Jude had experimented, she could get it open.
Her grandmother’s old silver lighter engraved with the initials G.L.T. Click-click-click and a transparent little bluish-orange flame appeared pretty as a flicking tongue.
She would immolate the Corn Maiden first.
No! Better to die together.
Telling herself calmly If will only hurt at first. Just for a few seconds and by then it will be too late.
She laughed to think of it. Like already it was done.
Stealthily entering the house by the rear door. So the old woman watching afternoon TV would not hear.
She was very excited! She was determined to make no error. Already forgetting that perhaps she had erred, allowing both her disciples to escape when she’d known that they were weakening. And confiding in the Master of Eyes believing she could trust him as her twin not recalling the spotted hyena twin, of course you could not trust.
Well, she had learned!
Forced herself to compose the Suicide Note. In her thoughts for a long time (it seemed so, now!) Jude had been composing this with care knowing its importance. It was addressed to you assholes for there was no one else.
Smiling to think how you assholes would be amazed.
On TV and on-line and in all the papers including The New York Times front page.
Whywhy you’re asking here’s why her hair.
I mean her hair! I mean like I saw it in the sun . . .
So excited! Heart beating fast like she’d swallowed a dozen E’s. Unlocking the padlock with trembling hands. If Denise had told, already! Should have killed them both last night. When I had the chance. Inside the storage room, the Corn Maiden had shifted from the lying-on-her-side position in which Jude had left her that morning after making her eat. This was proof, the Corn Maiden was shrewdly pretending to be weaker than she was. Even in her sickness there was deceit.
Jude left the storage room door open, to let in light. She would not trouble to light the scented candles, so many candles there was not time. And flame now would be for a different purpose.
Squatting breathless over the Corn Maiden, with both thumbs lifting the bruised eyelids.
Milky eyes. Pupils shrunken.
Wake up! It’s time it’s time.
Feebly the Corn Maiden pushed at Jude. She was frightened, whimpering. Her breath smelled of something rotted. She had not been allowed to brush her teeth since coming to Jude’s house, she had not been allowed to bathe herself. Only as Jude and her disciples had bathed her with wetted soapy washclothes.
Know what time it is it’s time it’s time it’s timetimetime!
Don’t hurt me please let me go . . .
Jude was the Taboo Priest. Seizing the Corn Maiden’s long silky hair in her fist and forcing her down onto the bier scolding No no no no no like you would scold a baby.
A baby that is flesh of your flesh but you must discipline.
The immolation would have to be done swiftly, Jude knew. For that traitor-cunt Denise had babbled by now. Fat ass Anita had babbled. Her disciples had betrayed her, they were unworthy of her. They would be so sorry! She would not forgive them, though. Like she would not forgive the Corn Maiden’s mother for staring at her like she was a bug or something, loathsome. What she regretted was she would not have time to cut out the Corn Maiden’s heart as the Sacrifice demanded.
Lay still, I said it’s time.
A new thought was coming to her now. She had not hold of it yet, the way you have not yet hold of a dream until it is fully formed like a magnificent bubble inside your head.
Jude had dragged the gasoline can into the storage room, and was spilling gasoline in surges. This could be the priest blessing the Corn Maiden and her bier. The stink of gasoline was strong, that was why the Corn Maiden was revived, her senses sharpening.
No! no! Don’t hurt me let me go! I want my mother.
Jude laughed to see the Corn Maiden so rebellious. Actually pushing free of Jude, so weak she could not stand but on hands and knees naked crawling desperately toward the door. Never had Jude left the door open until now and yet the Corn Maiden saw, and comprehended this was escape. Jude smiled seeing how desperate the Corn Maiden, stark naked and her hair trailing the floor like an animal’s mane. Oh so skin-and-bones! Her ribs, bony hips, even the ankle bones protruding. Skinny haunches no bigger than Jude’s two hands fitted together. And her hinder. Hinder was a funny word, a word meant to make you smile. A long time ago a pretty curly-haired woman had been humming and singing daubing sweet-smelling white powder onto Jude’s little hinder before drawing up her rubber underpants, pulling down Jude’s smock embroidered with dancing kittens or maybe it had been a nightgown, and the underpants had been a diaper.
Jude watched, fascinated. She had never seen the Corn Maiden disobey her so openly! It was like a baby just learning to crawl. She had not known the Corn Maiden so desired to live. Thinking suddenly Better for her to remain alive, to revere me. And I have made my mark on her she will never forget.
The Priest was infused with the power. The power of life-and-death. She would confer life, it was her decision. Climbing onto the bier spilling gasoline in a sacred circle around her. The stink of gasoline made her sensitive nostrils constrict, her eyes were watering so she could barely see. But she had no need to see. All was within, that she wished to see. It will only hurt at first. Then it will be too late. Click-click-clicking the silver lighter with gasoline-slippery fingers until the bright little flame-tongue leapt out.
See what I can do assholes, you never could.
SEPTEMBER
THE LITTLE FAMILY
It was their first outing together, at the Croton Falls Nature Preserve. The three of them, as a family.
Of course, Zallman was quick to concede, not an actual family.
For the man and woman were not married. Their status as friends/lovers was yet undefined. And the girl was the woman’s child, alone.
Yet if you saw them, you would think family.
It was a bright warm day in mid-September. Zallman who now measured time in terms of before/after was thinking the date was exactly five months after. But this was a coincidence merely.
From Yonkers, where he now lived, Zallman drove north to Mahopac to pick up Leah Bantry and her daughter Marissa at their new home. Leah
and Marissa had prepared a picnic lunch. The Croton Falls Nature Preserve, which Leah had only recently discovered, was just a few miles away.
A beautiful place, Leah had told Zallman. So quiet.
Zallman guessed this was a way of saying Marissa feels safe here.
Leah Bantry was working now as a medical technician at Woman/Space, a clinic in Mahopac, New York. Mikal Zallman was temporarily teaching middle school math at a large public school in Yonkers where he also assisted the soccer/basketball/baseball coach.
Marissa was enrolled in a small private school in Mahopac without grades or a formal curriculum in which students received special tutoring and counseling as needed.
Tuition at the Mahopac Day School was high. Mikal Zallman was helping with it.
No one can know what you and your daughter went through. I feel so drawn to you both, please let me be your friend!
Before Zallman had known Leah Bantry, he had loved her. Knowing her now he was confirmed in his love. He vowed to bear this secret lightly until Leah was prepared to receive it.
She wanted no more emotion in her life, Leah said. Not for a long time.
Zallman wondered: what did that mean? And did it mean what it meant, or was it simply a way of saying Don’t hurt me! Don’t come near.
He liked it that Leah encouraged Marissa to call him Uncle Mikal. This suggested he might be around for a while. So far, in Zallman’s presence at least, Marissa did not call him anything at all.
Zallman saw the girl glance at him, sometimes. Quick covert shy glances he hesitated to acknowledge.
There was a tentative air about them. The three of them.
As if (after the media nightmare, this was quite natural) they were being observed, on camera.
Zallman felt like a tightrope walker. He was crossing a tightrope high above a gawking audience, and there was no safety net beneath. His arms were extended for balance. He was terrified of falling but he must go forward. If at this height your balance is not perfect, it will be lethal.