I pleaded with Pepper-Man to find a solution: “What if you eat another heart, and we built a new body from scratch?”
“I wouldn’t look like Tommy then.”
“Maybe we can say that Tommy left me for someone else and then I found myself another husband?”
“Would you really go through it all again, Cassandra? Build a new life with a different decoy?”
“Wouldn’t you?” I asked.
“Not particularly.”
Pepper-Man was not wearing Tommy’s body right then, it had grown uncomfortable and was hard to move around. He was sitting by the kitchen table cleaning his teeth with a straw. The carcass of a bird lay before him on a plate, all void of meat. He’d developed a taste for seasoned flesh as Tommy.
“I have tired of this game. It has been interesting, being Tommy Tipp, but I do miss my freedom. It is hard being a slave to the mortal clock.”
“You did it for me, though, I will never forget that.” I sat down before him, cradling a cup of faerie tea.
“It is just a matter of days now before the body is all spent. We should rid ourselves of it before you have to wheel it around in a chair.”
“But how do we get rid of it?”
“We take it down in the basement and dissemble it with the cleaver.”
“Easy as that, huh?”
“Yes, my Cassandra, just like that.”
“But what do we tell people? This is poorly thought through. They will ask where he is, you know. Barnaby will—”
“You could say that he left you, or that he had an unfortunate accident.”
“I don’t want people to think that he left me.”
“We could put him under the car and say he was doing some tinkering, then something came loose and crushed his skull. Maybe the car began to roll—”
“Maybe he was painting the east wall.” I was suddenly inspired. “It’s been peeling for some time now, and then he fell down the ladder.”
“A very clever idea; such falls may cause a lot of damage.”
“Won’t he be just twigs and leaves when he hits the ground?”
“The glamour will still hold for some time, long enough for people to be convinced he is dead.”
That settled, we went about our day. The next morning Pepper-Man was back in Tommy’s body, showing up at work at exactly 8 a.m.
Things didn’t go so smoothly later.
That same night, as Pepper-Man attempted exit Tommy’s body for his evening revels, the whole thing simply fell apart. Limbs and intestines tumbled to the floor, eyeballs rolled across the polished oak. His skin was like an empty sack, gaping open and stained with reeking fluids.
It was a disaster.
“Oh no,” I said, wringing my hands. “What do we do now? No one will believe he fell off a ladder into all those pieces.”
Pepper-Man was leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, taking in the mess. “I cannot wear it again, that much is certain.”
“But what do we do? I can’t let anyone see him—it—like this.”
“We could always carry the debris down in the basement. It will soon return to what it was before: twigs and stones and downs.”
“How long will it take, before it turns back?”
He shrugged. “That depends.” Of course it did, it always did with Faerie.
“I think that it would smell, don’t you?” I looked at the torn pieces of flesh. “If we left it in the basement, it would smell before it turned back.”
“Outside, then, in the woods.”
“Someone might find it and mistake it for the real thing.”
“It might return to what it was faster out there. It was borrowed from the woods, after all, maybe the woods would welcome it back.”
“What do I say, then, that my husband left me?”
“That would certainly be the easiest.”
“Well.” I considered it. “He is Tommy Tipp.”
“Tommy Tipp would certainly do that,” and Pepper-Man ought to know, having been Tommy Tipp for the last twelve years.
“Well, then,” I sighed. “I guess I am abandoned.”
“Oh, sweet Cassandra,” Pepper-Man said with a smile. “You know you will always have me.”
And so we transported the sad remains of the fake Tommy Tipp out in the woods on a wheelbarrow. We tried to spread the parts out, not wanting make a morbid pile of it—birdwatchers and strollers were far more likely to notice a heap, we figured. So we draped his intestines in the branches, planted a foot by some roots, hung his head from the top of a rowan and disposed of his eyes on a pile of rocks. We dug down the soft parts like liver and kidneys, nestled them into moss hollows and leaves. The lungs went out in the brook. It had no heart left to discard, the body of twigs, though that did not surprise me—since the force that had made Tommy Tipp walk and talk had been Pepper-Man all along.
“What an unusual scenery.” My lover looked in on the glen where we had left most of it.
“I just hope no one sees.” I was feeling sick. It was dirty work, messy and ugly, even if I knew what the body really was.
“Tomorrow is a new life,” Pepper-Man said, and didn’t know just how right he was about that.
XVIII
In his book, Dr. Martin spent a lot of time and pages dwelling on how the Tommy shell fell to pieces. He felt certain it meant something crucial—although, of course, it didn’t. The body simply fell apart, that was all.
I remember he asked me about it in a pretrial session at the hospital. “Were you angry with Tommy when he couldn’t perform?” He had put down his pen, laying it on top of the empty page of his notebook as if sheathing a resting sword. It was a promise, that pen—we were being frank now. Frank and off the record. Just two friends talking, Dr. Martin and I. The clock on the wall in our room at the hospital ticked loudly, filling the silence with wasted seconds.
“No, of course not. It was only the Tommy-body coming apart. Pepper-Man performed just fine, as himself.”
“You know it’s a very common thing to be upset about, easy to take personally, especially when one’s husband has a history of infidelity.”
“I didn’t, though. I knew that it wasn’t.”
“It’s not so common, perhaps, to get rid of one’s husband when he’s ‘broken.’” His eyes twinkled with humor to take the harsh edge off his words. “Most people just settle for divorce.”
“He was falling apart, what could I do?”
“Marriage counseling, perhaps? Or you could search for a medical solution.”
“He was broken,” I repeated. “There was nothing to be done.”
“You fell out of love with him?”
“Fell out of love with Pepper-Man?” I blinked at him.
“No, Cassie, fell out of love with Tommy Tipp. That would ruin a man for you too, don’t you think? Make him ‘broken’ if only metaphorically, if he didn’t make you feel the same way as before.”
“I didn’t fall out of love with Tommy Tipp. Tommy Tipp was already dead—”
“Or maybe—if he suddenly changed, or even reverted, turned into a man who was different from the one you married and made promises to keep. That is a way of ‘falling apart’ too, if his personality or loyalty disintegrated somehow.”
“I don’t know why you keep asking me these questions. I have told you already what happened. The magic was up, the spell was broken.”
“Many married women feel that way, but they don’t necessarily decorate the trees with their spouses’ body parts.”
“It was only natural that he went back to the woods that he came from.”
“Twigs and leaves?”
“Moss and stones.”
“They didn’t find his heart, though.”
“I told you already, Pepper-Man ate it.”
“They are still searching, you know. What would you do if they found Tommy’s heart?”
“They won’t.”
“But if they did, would you still say th
at Pepper-Man ate it?”
“I would say that Pepper-Man made it for some reason, for the police to find, perhaps. Made it from a birch root, or a paw.”
“But the body would still not be Tommy Tipp?”
“No.”
“Just a creature you made?”
“A shell of twigs, yes.”
“And nothing they find out there can change your mind?”
“No. I know what happened.”
But I was the only one who did—and no one seemed to believe me.
* * *
And despite our confidence when we wheeled the remains into the woods, I didn’t even have time to report Tommy missing before the mushroom hunters had found the body.
The two middle-aged ladies were quite hysterical, and very graphic in their descriptions to the press: Macabre feast in the woods! sounded one headline … Body parts hung as garlands … We never saw that coming, to be honest. I was quite unprepared for it all.
I am sure you have seen it for yourselves, on yellowing pages with faded ink. Wife suspected of murder known to be very jealous … She was talking to the devil in class, former classmate says … They tell a story that people were more than happy to believe. The whole affair shed some limelight, too, on those in S— who wanted to seek it. Tommy Tipp’s old lovers came forth, always anonymous with blurred photos, and so did other people that I’d had the poor fortune to associate with. Our neighbors turned against me overnight, shaking their heads and muttering about “poor Tommy.” “We always knew that girl was bad,” they said when asked. “Always knew she was a little ‘out there’—never thought it was this bad, though…”
And there I was, knowing it all to be a lie, and in my fear and confusion I told it like it was, and begged them all to believe me.
Except for that incident with Tommy thirteen years before, I was hardly a murderer. I was a normal housewife.
I have no idea why the detectives claimed to have found Tommy’s blood in the basement. I have no recollection of Pepper-Man ever bleeding down there. Maybe he had cut himself repairing something—he was less graceful when wearing human hands. It could have been when we moved all those crates the year before, lots of hauling and carrying then; he could have nicked himself on a splinter or scratched his skin on the wall.
At the very least, the blood couldn’t have been found in the amounts they were saying. I think the whole thing was a setup from the start, they wanted someone to blame, and the one they chose to put it on was me.
XIX
Well, Janus and Penelope—I’m thinking you imagined more drama, more heated feelings and passionate slashes; a crime of jealousy and rage—Aunt Cassie on a psychotic break.
Especially knowing what you do about those other deaths—or think you do. The things Olivia has told you—the reason why our little family is even smaller, now.
That’s not how it was, though, was not how it happened—I was never crazed—nor ill.
Tommy Tipp’s second death was inelegant and crude, but it was not a murder. It was merely the result of my worlds colliding, human frailty, and the impact this all had on both sides. It was an issue that refused to resolve itself, a wrinkle that wouldn’t be ironed. I can’t even blame anybody involved, they all just see one side of the coin. Pepper-Man cannot, despite his years as Tommy Tipp, quite relate to human rules.
What is the justice system to him, or anyone who lives for a thousand years? How could he properly assess the risks and see the potential consequences for me? My lawyer, Myra Barnes, and Dr. Martin could only see the illusions Pepper-Man and I spun. I know one thing, though: it’s hard having your future hanging in the balance, not knowing what other people will decide about your fate. I had already escaped it once, you know, when I made up that life with Tommy Tipp in the brown house, fooling everyone into believing I had bent my head and abided by society’s rules. Now I was back at square one again, with the good people of S— defining my worth and my measure, deciding where to put me so that I’d make sense.
* * *
I will never forget that corpulent, ugly prosecutor, Mr. Carew, pacing the courtroom floor, painting a picture for the jury to see of an unhinged, jealous wife who dismembered her husband’s body and left it out for the birds to find.
“Imagine her,” he said, “pulling the body across the floor and down those concrete steps. His head is lolling; his limbs are flailing, as she drags him down to the cold basement. There”—he paused to take a breath—“she hauls him onto the workbench and gets to it with knives, axe, and cleaver, neatly dismembering him at the joints. Does she cry? No. She is still filled with a raging jealousy. She thinks Tommy’s erectile problems stem from his countless affairs. To her, the dismemberment and desecration of the body is just a part of the punishment…”
Dr. Martin defended me the best that he could: “She is sick,” he said. “She has been suffering from delusions since she was a child. You cannot hold her accountable for this crime. In her mind he was not a man at all, but a creature made from natural debris, collected from the woods where she spent her happiest hours as a child.”
In the end, Myra Barnes was the most convincing. She looked like an expensive stick of cinnamon in there; all dressed in brown; tall, powerful, tough, and pencil thin. Her hair was a shock of brown curls, sprouting in every direction. She spoke with confidence, knowing she had the support of her expert witness: “There is no way a woman Cassie’s size can move a body the size of Tommy Tipp downstairs to the basement, effectively dismember it, and move it back upstairs to spread it across the forest. If she was involved, she would have needed help, and Cassie doesn’t have any friends—we know that from all we have learned in here.
“Furthermore, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that she was in any way recruiting outside help for the grisly endeavor. Is Cassie sick? Maybe. Is Cassie jealous? Maybe. Did she kill Tommy Tipp? Hardly. It’s much more reasonable to look to Tommy’s own criminal past and the ‘friends’ he made back then. Maybe he owed someone money? Maybe he still had a secret life? We don’t know that for sure…”
Whatever she did, my lawyer convinced them all, wrapped them in doubt and reasoning, and I will forever be grateful for that.
I walked out of there as a free woman, with nothing more than the usual distrust and suspicion tainting my name.
Dr. Martin was happy for me, but sad too:
“I guess there is no way I can convince you to commit yourself to a hospital now?”
“No,” I said, bursting with joy. “No chance at all, my dear doctor.”
* * *
The transition from the hospital wasn’t all painless. On that first day, I paid the taxi driver, dropped my bag in the living room, and set about searching the house for my Pepper-Man, but he wasn’t there. Why would he be, anyway? He was done playing Tommy Tipp, and I hadn’t been home for ages. But I had been worrying about him, wondering how he was to feed while I was away? I imagined all kinds of things; saw him perish among the coiling roots; dried up and shriveled like a mummy; or deserting me for a handsome stag, entwining that life with his instead … I was usually able to calm myself down by reminding myself that Pepper-Man had survived long before me and was in every way capable of taking care of himself, and should he choose to leave me for another life, well—there wasn’t really much I could do about that.
I didn’t dwell on these thoughts for long, though; since building a bond like ours, borne first of need and then sewn up with trust, takes time. I didn’t really think my absence for a few months was enough to break us apart. I was still worried I’d find him changed, though—I knew that I had changed a bit while I was gone. I had gained weight for once, despite the measly hospital food. I had hips for real, and sizable breasts. My skin color was better too, and I was far less prone to headaches and fatigues. The nurse who did my blood work at the hospital even mentioned it to me, how my vitamin B deficiency seemed to be suddenly gone, and the iron levels were rising. It was the upside of being witho
ut him, I suppose.
Physical Cassie had flourished, while the emotional Cassie ached.
When Pepper-Man was nowhere to be found in the brown house, I set out into the woods to look for him and hoping to see Mara. I walked and I walked, but the path never forked, and the in-between place never came. The veil itself appeared to be gone. I will never forget the horror of that moment, when I thought that my child—my only true home—was lost to me. At first, I convinced myself I had done something wrong, taken a wrong turn, and so went back to the edge of the woods to start fresh. I walked the path, waiting for the bend that signaled that the fork was straight ahead, but it never came. Then I screamed and thrashed, and walked around in circles, calling for my loved ones all night. Finally I went home, teary-eyed and weary, voice hoarse. My palms were grimy from hitting tree trunks and pulling moss from the ground, my knees were scabbed from kneeling on the rocky embankment by the brook. My heart felt so empty, as if all feelings had fled.
I felt so fragile in that moment; made of rice paper, so very crisp and thin, just a spark would be enough to set me ablaze and erase everything within. Paper lungs and paper kidneys, paper heart and paper brain. Wind could sweep me off my feet, water could dissolve me. I think I wanted to be gone in that moment, sitting there in my empty house, on the cozy blue couch, staring out in the air. No Pepper-Man was there, no Mara …
Just me.
I brushed my teeth automatically and pulled on a clean nightgown. I looked into my bag of toiletries, stuffed to the brim with prescription drugs. I was long overdue with the big and blue ones, soon to be overdue with the white and bitter. I took them all out and threw them in the bin.
The last thing I did before I went to bed was to pause by the basement door, where I tore the hateful yellow police tape away.
The brown house was mine again, but the bed was empty. Empty and cold, like me.
When I finally slept, exhausted from my wild search, it was a light and dreamless slumber. No woods, no roots, no Pepper-Man in it. Not even a glimpse of my daughter’s chestnut tresses.
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