You Let Me In

by Camilla Bruce

  It was with a sickening feeling in my gut that I let him leave that evening. Pepper-Man came to hold me as we watched his taillights disappear down the road.

  “So it has begun, then,” my lover said.

  “I’d rather say that it has.” I startled when I heard the exhaustion and fear in my own voice.

  “He is willing to commit, then, to Mara and her cause?”

  “She has him so hard wrapped up around her little finger that I’m surprised he can still walk and talk without her aid. He has nothing, you know—nothing that he values above all.”

  “Now he has her.”

  “Yes, and I can only imagine what she tells him, that no one can help her but him, that he is the glimmer of hope in a world that ruined her and left her out in the woods…”

  “She will break that man.”

  “She will suck him dry.”

  “Maybe, if he’s lucky, he will die.”

  We were quite proud of our girl, Pepper-Man and I.

  * * *

  I’ve often wondered what Dr. Martin would have said if he’d been alive to witness what followed. How he would have tried to twist and bend the story to make it abide by his truth. Doubtless he would have called Mara my weapon, a piece of myself that I didn’t want to be, so I separated myself from it, calling it my daughter.

  My daughter who brought on my revenge.

  Only she didn’t, though, did she? It is not her name in the police reports, neither is it mine. It’s only his—Ferdinand’s. She used him so I wouldn’t bleed.

  I know that now.

  Ferdinand couldn’t say anything by then, not to defend himself, not to defend me, not to defend his niece—my brother was good and utterly dead.

  I remember his casket: pale pine. Mother wasn’t at the crematorium, she probably couldn’t bear to be there. It was only me, the funeral director, and two men from the police. It seemed such a sad ending for a gentle soul. I hope he comes back, soaring like a dove, but I don’t think that he will. He never struck me as the type to fight for life, to cling to it with all his might—rather he was the opposite of that, all too ready to let his life go, give it all up for my daughter’s mad agenda.

  * * *

  Dr. Martin would have said it was I, and not Mara, who talked my brother into it. That I used our shared history of abuse to manipulate him and force his hand. That is what Olivia thought, once she’d been forced to give up the idea that it was I alone who’d done the deed. She said I had spun poor Ferdinand in with my lies, and spat him out again, broken and cruel. For her, all evil comes from me. It never even occurred to her, I think, that Ferdinand might have had his own reasons, that I hadn’t been the only one to suffer in that house. Your mother wouldn’t know anything about that, though, tender little tangerine-marzipan girl that she is.

  She’ll never know the taste of pale fruit.

  XXVII

  I know what you are thinking now: if I was so convinced that Mara would do something bad, why didn’t I do more to stop her?

  Well, I did—did all I could—everything within my might. That night, after Ferdinand left the lilac house for the last time, Pepper-Man and I walked out to the mound. We found Mara by the brook, cleaning her teeth with a crow’s bone.

  “I know why you are here,” she said upon seeing us. “But there really is no need. I won’t listen to your advice, no matter how wise you think it is.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Why is this so important to you? Why can’t you just let those people be?”

  “Those people are your family—and mine, too. If I don’t deal with them, who will?”

  “No one will, that’s the whole point. No one will be dealing with anyone—”

  “Why not?” She looked me square in the eyes.

  I suddenly felt lost for words, I didn’t quite know what to tell her. Maybe it was my upbringing, some deep-set fear and loathing, or a habit of keeping quiet that made me so reluctant to touch the subject of family, of them, and the deeds that went on in the white room.

  “Ferdinand hasn’t done anything. He is blameless, and still he’s offering you his heart.”

  “And I am very grateful for it too.”

  “Why do you want him? What are you planning?”

  “Are you worried that I’ll bite?”

  “I know what you are capable of, Mara, I don’t need a demonstration. But why him? Why Ferdinand? The softest man alive…”

  “Because he wants to.” She dropped the bone and stretched out her legs. “He wants me to come and infuse his petty life with blood. He wants to feel something, Mother … anything will do.”

  “And what will he do for you? What’s the purpose of it all?”

  “If I told you, you would try to stop me, and what is the fun in that?”

  “There’s no fun in any of this, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Revenge I can understand, Mara, but the destruction of an innocent—”

  “No one is innocent,” she said lazily, fingers trailing the mossy ground. “You have taught me that yourself.”

  “He only wants to help you—”

  “I know.”

  “Stop this, Mara, before it’s too late.”

  “Too late for what, Mother? It’s already too late.” She jumped up to her feet, eyes blazing. “Here I am, cast aside like a rag doll to the mound. Never have I tasted salt, never have I shared your roof, never have I felt the sun upon my brow … I was gone before I even began! I was nothing from the start! You should have let me stay that way: nothing!”

  I shook my head, utterly confused. “How can you say that? At least there was life, and we loved you so much, ever since you came—”

  She laughed then, dry and bitter like autumn leaves. “You could have spared yourselves the effort. What is born of cruelty begets cruelty. You cannot love darkness back to light, can’t love death back to life. What is dead is dead, what is hate will hate. I was born to this, Mother. I was born to be your spear.”

  “No!” It was as if she slapped me. My chest ached as my heart split open, flooding me with bitter salt. I gathered my cardigan close to my body and wiped tears from my eyes with the back of my hand. “You were born to be mine,” I said in a whisper, “you were born to be my daughter, and I will love you and cherish you and keep you close always.”

  She stood before me, straight as a rod. “I am your voice, when you will not speak.”

  “I spoke in Dr. Martin’s book—”

  “I am your hand when you won’t make a fist.”

  “It is so pointless, Mara. Anger gets you nowhere—”

  “I am your knife, when you will not cut.”

  “It will ruin you, Mara, I know it will—you should never go near that evil man.”

  “But I will,” she said, “when you won’t.”

  Pepper-Man had stood back until then; now he approached us by the brook. I remember the water dancing down the stream, the night air still heavy with heat. Above us hung the ripe full moon, a large pale fruit, like me.

  “She said she didn’t want you to,” Pepper-Man said to my daughter. “She doesn’t want you near that man—nor her brother, Ferdinand.”

  “She has no right to tell me no. They are my kin too, I have a say in the matter.”

  “No. How could you? They are boiling flesh and blood, you are dry as a root. You have no say. You have no life.”

  Every word he said hit me like a fist. They were cruel words. Harsh words. Mara seemed to crumble before him. Then she hissed from deep within her chest:

  “Say you, child thief. Say you, who led her by hand into the woods, when she was nothing but a little girl. Say you, who guided her every step of the way, until you took her husband’s place—stole life of your own, when you had none. Dare you tell me what I can and cannot do?” And then she went for his throat, I swear. She flung herself at him with teeth bared, hands like claws, slashing. Her skirts billowed, her legs barely touched the ground, her eyes shone with rage. He flung her aside with the bac
k of his hand, a sound like the crack of a whip. She flew through the air, all across the brook, and landed in the thicket of junipers. There she crouched on the ground, staring at us across the water; eyes searing, searing with heat.

  I ached for her then, I ached … that pain she felt, that pain …

  “Well, have him, then,” I whispered, not really knowing if she’d hear me or not. Not really knowing which “he” I meant. “Have him, then, if it can help you … help you ease that pain.”

  Pepper-Man held his hand pressed to his neck where her nails had grazed his skin. The dark matter underneath his hide peeked through the half-moon imprints she’d left.

  I felt guilty too, I suppose, for bringing her into this world, to a life she didn’t want. Born of pain—born in shame. Maybe she was right, maybe it was up to her to decide, end it the way she saw fit.

  “Come”—I took Pepper-Man’s hand in mine—“leave our daughter to it.”

  “But Ferdinand—”

  “Is a grown man. Nothing we can do can help him now, not if he’s decided to quit living the lie.”

  And that is how it was, Janus and Penelope, there was nothing more we could do. Nothing but sit back and wait for the sirens, wait for the storm to hit. And when it did—when it did, what a storm it was.

  What beautiful and blazing spears of lightning.

  XXVIII

  It was a tabloid reporter’s dream, that’s what it was, the abrupt end of our family. The violence struck out of nowhere—or that’s what they thought, anyway. The two caskets so differently treated: surrounded by flowers and nothing at all. Two bodies in the ground.

  Your mother might have told you about it, or you read it in the newspapers. You will know how our father was found down there in the bear pit, wooden spikes pinning him in place, and that huge red hole in his chest where the spear went in—came out. I suppose you imagined what it looked like, your grandfather splayed on spikes. I never saw it myself, but I too can imagine: red rims in his beard, red in his eyes, red on his gray-striped pajamas shirt. The rifle by his side down there—useless. Where his heart ought to be, there was just gristle and flesh, torn and broken, red, pink, and white.

  Spear went in—came out.

  I told you before that the day on the porch was the last time I saw my brother, but it wasn’t the last time I spoke to him. He called me the night of the murder, just after it was done. That’s why I wasn’t surprised at all when the police came knocking on my door. He called to warn me, I think, about it all.

  “It’s over,” Ferdinand said when I picked up the phone. His voice was bubbling with jubilant excitement.

  “What is?” I felt cold.

  “He is dead! I watched him go myself.”

  “Oh no,” I breathed—not from sorrow, mind you, but from the implications of it all, what it would do to my girl—what it would do to him. A little piece of me even wondered what it would do to me. In my mind’s eye, I saw it again: the hospital bed, the sad tray of food and the white, bitter pills in a plastic cup. “What did you do?” I asked Ferdinand. “What did she do?”

  “She trapped him.” He sounded amazed.

  “Trapped him, how?”

  “She came to me last night. Wanted me to help her dig a hole in my garden.”

  “A hole, huh?”

  “Yes, and I did. It was fun.”

  “Digging a hole isn’t ‘fun,’ my brother. I think you may have had far too little fun in your life.”

  “With her it was,” Ferdinand insisted. “We laughed, and we sang, and she told me all these amazing stories—”

  “I bet she did.”

  “—about the woods and the mounds and the places she had gone with her hawk.”

  “And?”

  “Then I brought a bottle of wine outside, and I drank a few glasses while we whittled the spikes.”

  “You drank wine while you crafted weapons to kill your father?” I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry.

  “Yes.” The exuberant tone in his voice had dwindled some. “And we made holes for the spikes at the bottom of the pit, and planted the spikes down there.”

  “Yes—and?”

  “She cut down a young birch, removed all the bark, and made a spear out of it.”

  “Really now?” I felt sick.

  “Then dawn was coming and she said I was to get some sleep, because tonight it was all about to happen. She took the spear with her, I don’t know what she did with it, but when she came back it was all black with letters—”

  “From Away with the Fairies: A Study in Trauma-Induced Psychosis, no doubt.”

  “Yes, how did you know that?”

  “Oh,” I sighed. “Just a hunch I had.” That book had become the very symbol of everything that she loathed. “And then what happened, when she came back?”

  “She told me to go and fetch Father. I was going to tell him there was an intruder on my—their—property. A crazy woman, she said. I was to tell him that there was a crazy woman…”

  “And did you?”

  “Yes. I let myself in with the spare key and woke him up, very careful as not to wake her up. We didn’t want Mother out there, it would only cause unnecessary trouble…”

  “Of course.”

  “He came at once, lumbering in his pajamas, even brought his old rifle along. He always liked a hunt, you know. When we came to the garden, though—he saw her, Cassie, I swear he did, dancing before him in the wan moonlight. She danced and she laughed and she egged him on. ‘Come and get me, old man—let’s see if you still can, you vicious worm, you filthy bear…’ She kept saying things like that. It was actually kind of vile, but I don’t get how he saw her, Cassie…”

  “The faeries have their ways…”

  “Do you think he had the sight like us?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “But you don’t know that for sure, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Anyway, he finally had enough of the teasing and came launching at her, bellowing from his chest. It was so loud and ugly I felt sure all the neighbors would wake up and come running.”

  “But they didn’t?”

  “No, and not when he fell in, either, though the sounds he made then were even worse. Those screams, Cassie, those screams … and the mess down there … I didn’t know there could be so much blood. Didn’t know it could come from so many places at once. I think, Cassie”—his voice became brittle and shivering—“I think it wasn’t all real to me before then. I don’t think I realized what I was part of—that we were actually going to do it … kill Father…”

  “What did you think was going to happen? That you and Mara would sit out there under the moon drinking wine and whittling stakes just for the ‘fun’ of it?” I couldn’t keep my voice from shaking, couldn’t keep the acid in check.

  “No, I … I just didn’t think—”

  “No. You really didn’t, did you?”

  “But then she lifted the spear. It was already there, resting on the grass by the pit, and she took it in her hands and she ended the screaming. Easy like that, with one single blow. She must be terribly strong.”

  “You’re not saying…”

  “I think she rammed it into his heart. There was a big, black hole there afterward, where his heart should have been—but wasn’t.”

  “Maybe he never had a heart?”

  “I threw up then, in the flowerbed. My head was buzzing like crazy.”

  “And she?”

  “She laughed and declared them even. ‘A life for a life,’ she said, and then she took off, into the woods, as she does.”

  “… As she does. And now you are stuck with a dead man in your garden. What are you going to do about that?”

  “Fill in the pit, I think. Fill it in and plant some bulbs. It’ll be a nice tulip patch in the spring.”

  “Easy as that, huh?”

  “What else am I to do? Call the police? Call Mother?”

  “What does Mara say?”

&n
bsp; “Nothing. She hasn’t been back since she left for the woods.”

  “She might be, though, brother, and if she does come back, please don’t let her in.”

  “Why not?” Again that shiver in his voice. Maybe on some level, he too knew that after the night they’d just shared, Mara wasn’t safe company for him. “You ought to be pleased, though,” he said at last, when the silence between us stretched, “even if just a little…”

  “Why?”

  “The bear is gone, her pain has ended.”

  “If you really think that, you’re a fool. Pain like that doesn’t go away, and she is the fool for thinking that it would. The rush from the kill will end, and what then? She still has a very long life to live.”

  “I won’t be sorry that I helped her, though.” He sounded like a child.

  “Not yet,” I warned him. “You’re not sorry yet. Doesn’t mean you won’t be.”

  “Doesn’t mean I will.”

  “As you wish.” I gave up. “I’m sure you feel like quite the knight, but hurry up, now, your night isn’t over. You still have a hole to fill in.”

  “Yes, yes, it really wouldn’t do if Mother came over and saw him down there.” Again, there was that shiver.

  “No, my dear brother, it certainly wouldn’t.”

  “I didn’t expect there to be so much blood, and those sounds that he made—”

  “Go, go, go—fill in that hole!”

  “Yes, Cassie, you’re right, I should go. I should go fill it in. I’ll do that now.”

  “Good Ferdinand, you do that now.”

  And that was the last time we spoke.

  * * *

  He never did fill in that hole, though, did he? Something happened between the time we hung up and the time he was found that prevented him from going outside to finish the job.

  Could it have worked?

  Maybe.

  Maybe filling it in and planting tulips was just the right choice.

  Maybe Mother would have thought that Father had left her, ignoring the fact that his valet and jacket were still there, the car in the garage, and—