His skin was gray and gnarled, black warts clustered at his joints, and his long white hair hung nearly to his knees, ragged and dry as old hay. He was very tall. His fingers were long. They had just swept the newly filled flowerpot off the white-painted windowsill and now his dark eyes, the color of moss, were watching the door expectantly—curious.
Pepper-Man’s black lips drew back from his teeth when my mother came into the room. The gray tatters that clothed his ungainly body shifted and moved in the draft from the door.
“Oh, Cassie,” my mother said, hands on the hips of her navy blue skirt. “Why do you keep doing that? I told you to leave those flowers alone.” Her gaze was on the red petunia, petals crushed by dirt and pottery shards.
“It wasn’t me.” I twisted my sweaty hands in the skirt of my yellow summer dress. “It was Pepper-Man—”
“Oh, won’t you stop with that already.” She crossed the floor swiftly, midsized heels clicking on the floorboards. “Where is this Pepper-Man, then? Flew out the window?” She bent down, collecting sharp pieces of pottery in her hand. My friend was towering above her, still, with that curiosity in his gaze, that smile plastered to his black lips.
“No,” I said, breathless, watched as my mother’s stiff hair nearly brushed Pepper-Man’s body when she straightened up again.
“You are a big girl now, Cassie,” said Mother. “I think it’s time you stopped blaming someone else for your mistakes. This is the fifth flowerpot this week, why can’t you just leave them be? What did the poor flowers ever do to you?”
“Nothing,” I muttered, my gaze on the floor, where Mother’s black and shiny shoes stood next to the twisted toes of my friend. I just wanted her to go away, didn’t trust Pepper-Man around other people. He was capricious and sometimes cruel, too curious about everything. His hand reached now, for the top of her head; fingers flexing, rubbing together; long nails stretching through the air. “They are stupid,” I said quickly, to grab her attention and get her away from Pepper-Man’s fingers. “I hate the flowers! They are stupid flowers! They are ugly and red and I hate them!” I spun around, grabbed another flowerpot from the windowsill, this one topped with fluffy, white blossoms, and threw it hard to the floor. Dirt spattered everywhere. This pot didn’t break but rolled across the floor, coming to a halt by my mother’s feet. Pepper-Man’s hand retracted.
“Cassie!” Mother cried, dropping the broken shards she held. They landed on the floor, in the heap of dirt and greenery. “Look what you made me do,” she held up a finger. Fat droplets of blood trailed her white skin, aiming for her golden rings.
“Good,” I said and stomped my foot. Pepper-Man’s thin nostrils flared, his black tongue came out to lick his lips. He liked blood a lot. It made him perk up like a dog with a treat. It felt like a stab to my tiny chest watching him watch her like that, so I ran. I brushed past her, tears streaming, and slammed the door behind me; up the stairs; feet like drumsticks, into my room, where I threw myself on top of the bed and let my tears soak into the mattress.
Pepper-Man was already there, as I knew he’d be. That was the point of the whole charade, to lure him away from Mother. He sat perched on top of my crocheted bedspread, humming a gentle tune; fingers braiding, twisting, and shaping the birch twigs in his hands. He didn’t look at me, didn’t have to.
Ours was an intimate relationship.
* * *
I cannot recall a world without Pepper-Man; he has always been around me, coming and going, mostly just there. Sometimes a menace, other times bliss. Pepper-Man is very old.
Once, he told me he had found me as a toddler, playing on the banks by the river. He had been floating downstream, he said, when he caught sight of my gleaming hair in the meadow. My mother and father, young then and still in love, were having a picnic nearby. He said they had sandwiches and pears, drank tea from painted china. He was riding the water on an oak leaf when he saw me sitting there alone, all round cheeked and plump. He wanted me, he said, so he jumped.
When I said I didn’t believe that he would want me like that, for no reason at all, he laughed and said that all of his kind wanted hair like mine to stroke and braid and play with, but maybe I was right.
In truth, he said, he had been traveling the sky as a crow at the time, his bird’s eyes trailing the ground for prey. He was very hungry, he said, for meat. Then he saw me, just a baby then, lying alone outside our home. He swept down and perched on the edge of my basket, talons curling around the edge. He thought I had the loveliest eyes, and wondered how they’d taste. But then my mother came out and shooed at him, chasing him away. He said that was why he remained with me; still wondered about the taste of my eyes, how it would feel to have them slip down his throat.
I didn’t quite believe that, either, and told him as much. Why would he wait so long to eat them, if my eyes made his stomach growl like that? He laughed again, said I might be right, and told me I’d tripped on a faerie mound. He’d been strolling nearby, minding his own business, when a terrible wail rose from the ground. That was me, knees bruised and hands dirty, white dress all ruined. He felt sorry for me then, and wanted to make me something pretty, like a wreath of flowers or a crown of twigs, but then my mother and father came rushing and carried me away, shushing and kissing and tending my wounds. He followed me home and slipped inside, making me gifts ever since.
There is another story too, where Pepper-Man and I are born from the same pod. Siblings in spirit if not in flesh, forever connected through unbreakable bonds. We are the same, he and I, even if we don’t share DNA. We have always been together and will always remain so.
I will not speak of that other option, so brazenly launched at the murder trial. There will be time for that later. Unlike the others, the latter was not among the stories I heard as a child, when I was lying in his hard arms, breathing against his still chest, his dry hair a blanket, his pepper scent a comfort, feeling the paper-thin leather of his pointed ears against my fingertips as I trailed their shape against the lace of my pillows. His voice sounded only in my head; a soft whisper, like wind rustling in leaves. I used to close my eyes and drift on the sound of his voice, losing myself in its rise and fall. Like being submerged under water, that feeling; that falling into him. A rattle would start at the base of my spine and push its way through my body; push and push, rattle and shake, until I split open and rushed from my skin; sped like a lightning bolt through the roof, toward the sky, while images and noises flashed past me. I saw people I hadn’t seen before walking unfamiliar streets. Once, it was a woman in a black coat looking through her purse, the pavement under her feet was cobbled, the buildings surrounding her made of brick. Another time it was a man with a mustard-colored tie, chasing a blue bus. The bus driver glanced at him in the mirror and drove on, while the man stomped his foot and threw his hat to the ground. I saw children with brown skin in a playground, wearing gray uniforms, munching soft candy. And other things too, twisting, coiling among the roots of ancient trees: pale snakes and old women licking black juice from the trunks, men with goat’s heads running through the woods, and girls with snapping jaws spinning dresses from spider silk in hot, dry caves underground. Sometimes I was at sea, moving with the waves, salt on my lips and seaweed in my hair, moving with the shadows beneath me.
When I woke up from these trips, Pepper-Man was always there, his teeth buried deep in my throat. He lifted his head to whisper in my ear: “I love you, Cassie, I do. You taste like the finest buttercups and wine.”
* * *
At Sunday dinner it was Mother who poured the wine, letting it slouch off the rim and down on the table. Her lips were crusted with crimson. There were chicken and mashed potatoes. Caramel pudding for dessert. In this memory, I am eight years old.
“Eat,” she wheezed at me. Her eyes were shiny and blue. They reminded me of the stained glass window at church. The one with Mary and the baby, the color being the only likeness. The pearls around her neck swung back and forth between her breasts;
cool white globes, shimmering and hard.
Father asked: “What has Cassandra done now?”
Mother lifted her hands in exasperation. “Well, look at her! Look at that hair. Why couldn’t she at least try to comb it before church?” In truth, I had given up on that hair. Pepper-Man kept twisting it at night, braiding it and curling it, licking it even, with his long, black tongue.
“What does it matter?” Father’s eyes were bloodshot, his tie all askew.
“People will think I run a zoo,” said Mother. “They’ll think I have no control over my children.” Her hand shook as she fetched the salt.
“There is nothing wrong with Cassandra’s hair,” said Father.
“Nothing wrong? It’s a wilderness. And it’s not just the hair. Her clothes are stained and her knees are bruised. Why can’t you ever be neat, Cassie? Why do you always have to ruin everything?”
“Cassie is bad,” said Olivia, only five then. Her feet under the table shot out and hit those bruised knees.
“That’s right, Olivia.” Mother’s voice went sweet but not warm; she stretched a linen napkin between her fingers, pulled until the fabric strained. “Promise me you’ll never be like your sister.”
“I’ll never be like my sister,” said Olivia. Her neat braids were tipped with velvet bows.
“Maybe she’s waiting for a bird to come flying and nest up there.” Mother’s voice verged on hysteria; she was looking at my hair again. Suddenly she laughed, or cried, it was hard to know the difference.
“Maybe not so much wine,” tried Father.
“Maybe I wouldn’t need all this wine if she could only behave!” She didn’t look at me at all.
Ferdinand, seven at the time, pushed his food around on his plate. “I don’t feel well,” he said. “May I be excused?”
“No,” Mother snapped, “you may not be excused. You may stay put and eat your pudding.”
Something dark entered Father’s gaze. “Go on,” he said to Ferdinand. “You may be excused.”
“What?” cried Mother. “He did that very same thing last Sunday—”
“And you drank too much wine then, too, and picked on Cassandra, just like you’re doing now.”
“Well.” Mother rose from her chair, the napkin fluttered to the floor. “Someone has to discipline her.”
Father started to laugh then. It was a deep and scary sound, like those first rolls of thunder on a warm summer’s day.
V
So, what is this to you, you may ask? This isn’t the story you expected. You were expecting a repenting sinner’s last confession. Expecting me to cry on the page, admit my wrongdoings and beg your forgiveness. Instead you get this: childhood memories. I am sorry about that—sorry to disappoint, but the truth of it is, I cannot recall a world without Pepper-Man in it, and him being in it was the beginning of it all.
We will get to the bodies eventually.
* * *
I remember elementary school as a string of days of aching belly and sleep deprivation, a fear that my classmates or teachers would somehow see through me and figure out how I spent my nights. See it and punish me, like Mother did. You’d think it would make me shy, wouldn’t you? Think it would make me seek out the shadows, but it didn’t. It made me angry.
It wasn’t easy to blend in with a companion like Pepper-Man. The other girls in S— were sensible creatures stuffed in ruffles and lace. They had well-groomed hair and polished manners. Much like Olivia: good to the core. Mother was most adamant I kept quiet about it all: my visits in the woods, the sharp nibs at my flesh, and the gifts of bones and feathers that I got. I was never to speak of, draw, or in any other way express my wraith’s existence.
“They’ll think you’re mad,” she told me. “They’ll think you’re mad and then they’ll lock you up.”
I didn’t want that, of course, so I tried the best I could to abide by her rules. But it wasn’t easy. I was straddling two worlds: the one everyone could see, and the one that was forbidden. No child should be subjected to a fate like that. It wears you so thin, is such a burden. There is shame in there too, in that sense of being wrong.
And I was always worried that Pepper-Man would hurt someone. He was a wild thing on a leash, my friend, something I ought to, but could not, control.
It was quite a mission for a very young girl. A dreadful responsibility.
I remember Mother’s pale face when yet another parent had been at our door with her crying daughter in tow. I’d seen Pepper-Man watching her one day when he walked me to school. This girl, Carol, had been out playing in the schoolyard with the sunlight illuminating her butter-colored curls. Pepper-Man paused by the wrought-iron fence and looked at her for a very long time. The hunger I saw in his gaze then worried me so much I decided I’d rather just hurt her first, before he had time to braid her a crown and sink his teeth into her neck.
I was nine then, one of my worst years. Pepper-Man had been a snarling beast all winter, dancing around me always. I fell asleep with his teeth in my throat more often than not. He took to ogling Olivia’s fresh-faced friends with hunger in his gaze, even Olivia herself, with her polished copper braids. No matter how often he tasted me, it never seemed to quench his thirst. No matter what I did to appease him—telling him how I loved him, how much his gifts meant to me—he never seemed to be satisfied. I think I screamed and thrashed and lashed at those girls just so Pepper-Man wouldn’t. He had promised he needed only me, after all. Had promised me I was his only princess. The red marks that I left on their skin were warning signs, what little pain my scratching nails, hard little fists, and teeth could inflict were really nothing in comparison to what he could do.
“How dare you?” Mother cried at me, all flushed and angry, reading another letter from my deeply concerned teacher. “How dare you ruin our reputation like that? Fighting like a street rat! They’ll think you have no manners—no manners at all!”
I was rinsing beans by the kitchen table, guided by our housekeeper Fabia’s stern hand. Pepper-Man was sitting on the kitchen counter, sprawling, more like it, long limbs extended on the clean surface; looked like a spider, gray and spindly. I didn’t give a word in reply. What was there to say?
Mother shook her head, didn’t look as angry anymore, more afraid, or sad. “This won’t end well, Cassie. Not for you, not for anyone. Just think of your brother, what this will do to him. He doesn’t react well to all this upheaval.”
I nodded once. We both already knew there was disaster in the brewing.
“You are jealous, I think,” Pepper-Man said that same night, as he folded me in his embrace. “You do not want me to taste another, you want me to have only you.”
I reddened then, beneath the covers. I didn’t want it to be true. “You’ll hurt them,” I said. “You’ll make them bleed.”
“But so, my love, do you.”
Just as I said, two peas in a pod. We were always the same, my Pepper-Man and I.
* * *
I should have been unhappy that the other girls didn’t like me, but I wasn’t. I had many other friends to occupy my time, way more entertaining than my classmates. I was seven, maybe eight, the first time Pepper-Man took me to see his kin. It was early autumn, the leaves on the trees barely tinged with yellow. It was a Saturday, I believe, since I was home from school but had not been to church and the household was preparing for a dinner that night. Mother, always the perfectionist, was on a mission to make our home as spotless as possible before the important event. In consequence, she and Fabia were tearing my room apart. They had removed all the books from my shelves, laid them out in colorful rows on the soft white carpet on the floor. Golden-haired, red-lipped heroines and dark-haired sidekicks were grinning up at me from the covers. Mother and Fabia were looking for what was hidden behind them.
“Why do you keep doing this?” my mother complained, tossing wreaths of birch and oak, jewelry of bone and fur, down on the floor by my feet. Fabia held half a robin’s eggshell between two
fingers, pinching her nose lightly. I looked down. There was a bracelet of dead raspberry leaves, a ring made from deer spine, a necklace of frogs’ legs and hawthorn. It was the debris from these gifts that gave them away. My mother couldn’t stand clutter, and natural matter tends to leave a trail, especially in a very white room.
I kept silent, bit my lower lip. I knew it would do no good at all, telling them the truth. The older I got, the less patient my mother grew with Pepper-Man and his antics. Telling her that these were his gifts would only anger her more.
“We can buy some nice glass beads,” she said. “If you really want to make things, there are classes for that. You could learn embroidery, or knitting.”
Fabia bent down and looked in under the bed, her scrawny behind jutting out in the room, auburn hair bun bobbing. “Oh,” she uttered, pulling forth a gaggle of fresh finds: owls’ eyes, dried up and shriveled in a nest of roughly woven twigs. A crown made from pine needles and apple wood, a bird made from rowan and daisies.
“If you want to keep running around in the woods alone, you have to stop bringing these things home,” said Mother. “What do you want all these dead things for, anyway? It’s not pretty, Cassie. It’s repulsive.”
I didn’t disagree.
Fabia crossed herself as she tossed a pendant of claws and teeth onto the growing heap. Mother caught her in the act.
“Don’t be foolish,” she said curtly. “They were already dead when Cassie found them, weren’t they, Cassie?” I nodded. “She isn’t that mad,” Mother muttered, sending me a furious look.
They tore apart the bed next; fluffy pillows in lace casings, sheets and mattress, everything was thrown to the floor.
“Oh, Cassie, again?” Mother complained when she saw the rusty stains I so stealthily had tried to hide, first by scrubbing the mattress with a washcloth, then by turning it over. “I don’t get where this comes from, why won’t you tell me?” She was looking me over, searching my skin for scabs. I rubbed my neck, knowing very well that like Pepper-Man himself, she couldn’t see the damage done. I could, though. Every day in the mirror, I could see the traces of his love, etched onto my skin in deep punctures. The wounds were just as much part of me as the color of my hair, or the freckles on my nose—just there, and there was nothing I could do about it.
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