by Peter Ponzo
bought it at the same store. I spent some time thinking of some fantastical, mysterious and mystic reply but eventually wrote simply:
You're dead too!
I saw Leah at church the next day. She was talking to Father Pollicciano after the service, standing on the front steps. Most of the congregation had left but she was still talking, and she looked nervous. I waited, then caught up with her at the corner of Almond and Chelsea. I just sneaked up behind and whispered:
"Sister of the devil, you're dead."
She jumped a mile high and when I saw her face I was really sorry I had said it. She was pale as a ghost.
"Gee Leah, I'm sorry if I frightened you. I just thought ... well, you know."
"Oh Connie, I'm so frightened." She blurted it out as though it had been building inside. "Somebody wants to kill me!"
Then I really felt badly about the pink letter.
"No, no. Leah, it was me. I'm sorry. I was so thrilled with your note that I thought you'd like one too ... you know."
Then she just stared at me, saying nothing, as though she wasn't listening.
"The letter, the pink letter you slipped under my door yesterday?" I said it as though it were a question. "Remember? I gave you one too, last night."
She stared at me then whispered. "I didn't give you a pink letter." Then, as though she just realized that I had given her a second pink letter, she said "What did your note say?"
I tried to recall what mysterious words I had decided upon and felt a little embarrassed at my lack of imagination.
"'You're dead too'. That's what I wrote."
Leah began to cry and put her arms around me and I knew I had been stupid. But wasn't life a game and wasn't she playing it too?
"Not that note," she sobbed. "I knew that note was from you. It was the other notes, four of them. All on pink stationery, all threatening to kill me, all calling me the sister of the devil."
We sat for an hour in my apartment and she told me of the threats. She hadn't sent me my note. She would never do a thing like that, she said.
We were both getting notes addressed to sister of the devil. I tried to tell her it was somebody's strange sense of humor. It was exciting and she should enjoy the thrill, but she wouldn't listen.
After she left I took a hot bath and went right to bed.
Leah Farrel was seeing bunnies and imagining dragons.
But the following week I found another pink letter at my door:
Sister of the devil, thou shalt be deformed unto dust from whence you came
Within the next ten days there were two more:
Sister of the devil, thy body shall be torn asunder and cast to the swine
Sister of the devil, no more shall man covet thy body
These things shouldn't happen, not to me, not to Connie Fenton.
Then, on Sunday, August 16, someone killed Leah Farrel, tearing her poor body to pieces. She had been wearing my pink bathing suit, and I knew that I would be next.
I stayed awake all night. The next day I left Haversville without saying a word to anyone.
My magical life - where had it gone?
Pink
And I found her as a harlot garbed in pink and I cast her riven body to the dust so that she would no more defile the essence of woman, no more evoke the lust of man.
Great Lord of the World, Breath of Life, weep not for the damned for I have cleansed the world of the devil's kin.
Connie Fenton
I stayed in the town of Dunnborne for nearly a month, working part-time as a waitress. The pink letters had been a dream, a nightmare, a fantasy. Yet I knew in my heart that they were real and that I was in danger. I spoke little to anyone except, of course, to Clem who I had known since I was a child.
Leah Farrel was dead.
I had thought about it every night and I knew that I was partly to blame.
She had been wearing my bathing suit.
On Sunday, I took the first morning bus back to Haversville. I needed to talk to somebody.
I knew that the service would end at ten, so I waited across the street. I couldn't let anyone see me. I had read the articles in the Chronicle and the Press and knew that the police thought I had been murdered that Sunday in August, at Miller's Creek. Yet I knew. It was Leah's body they had found, in pieces, mutilated beyond recognition.
But I had seen Leah speak to the priest, just two weeks before she was murdered, that day she had told me of her pink letters and I had told her of mine. Had she not gone to Father Pollicciano for help, for guidance?
I must do the same.
The doors of Saint Teresa's opened and the people began to wander down the wide concrete stairs. Father Pollicciano was standing at the top, talking and shaking hands. It took nearly thirty minutes for the crowd to leave. I waited, then walked slowly across the road to the church, pulled open the heavy door and walked in. Outside it was cool and I had pulled my coat collar about my face, for warmth and concealment, but inside the church it was stifling hot.
Father Pollicciano was speaking to the altar boys before the statue of the Virgin and I waited. Soon they left, filing out through the small door to the right of the altar, and Father Pollicciano stood alone staring up at the Virgin Mary, his hands caressing her feet, his lips moving in silent prayer. Then he stopped and turned his head, slowly, then he looked straight at me. We were alone in this great dark cavern of polished wood.
When he beckoned I walked to him, slowly. He leaned forward and squinted, then I could see him stagger a little and place a hand upon the bronze feet of the Virgin Mary.
"Constance, my child," he said in a hoarse voice, "you are alive. Dear God, you are alive."
And he came to me and embraced me and I began to shake, but he held me tightly and whispered in my ear.
"We thought you were gone, departed of this world, risen to the heaven to sit at the hand of God."
When I looked up at him he was crying - and I began to cry.
"No Father, it was not my body they found at Miller's Creek. It was Leah Farrel. She had been frightened, she was getting threatening letters, she was tired, she hadn't been able to sleep. I told her of the pond, by Miller's Creek."
Father Pollicciano looked with gentle eyes and listened to every word. We stood facing each other, a thin ribbon of colored light running brightly across his face from the stained glass window above the Virgin Mary. He was leaning forward slightly, staring at me, his hands clasped by his waist.
"I said she should spend the afternoon, resting. She had no bathing suit. I gave her mine. It was small for her, but she took it and went to the pond. That day is blurry in my mind, but I know that ... that ..."
He pulled me to him and held me and I began to cry again.
"I do remember that she didn't come home that evening, and I got worried. I rode to the Creek on my bicycle and found her body. It was ... it was dismantled ... and -"
Again he held me, very tightly, too tightly. I could feel his body shaking. Father Pollicciano was trembling. When I didn't continue he held me away from him and I could see that he was disturbed.
"My child. What a tragedy to behold."
He paused and stared at me with a strange, wild look. There was a glow in his eye. He was clothed entirely in black and looked frightening.
"Great God of the World," he whispered, "Breath of Life, weep for this child who has been witness to the work of the devil's kin."
Then he led me to his rooms beyond the altar.
Rita Bullas
When this jerk first walked in, I knew who he was and what he wanted. Terry Cleaver, and he wanted his job back. No way. I'd earned it. I deserved it.
Sure, he'd done some neat things on the system files but some of it was pure crap and the prick thought he was some sort of genius. But I wasn't takin' no chances. I'd butter him up, kiss his ass, make out like he was a big fart and even if Bucky gave him his old job back there'd still be a place for m
e.
I needed the cash. My aunt was no Spring chicken and the doctor's bills came every week. Besides, you should have seen his face when I just happened to mention that he was screwin' around with the police computer. After that he was no more big fart. Bucky was splittin' a gut one minute then the next he went white in the chops. 'Police recruiter', what a laugh.
After that, Cleaver came around. He's not a bad guy actually. I'd read about that Fenton dame and it seemed like a cool cha-cha to actually go after the guy who did it.
So I crashed into the cop minicomputer and came out with a dozen files, all labelled Fenton-something. That weekend we met in the park by Teaker's Lane and I showed the stuff to Cleaver. He was only interested in one file: Fenton.letters.
"Jesus Murphy," he'd said, "this is what Jonah was talking about."
Well, I didn't know this creep Jonah but I knew Cleaver would tell me, so I just kept cool.
"Connie has two brothers. One is Jonah. He said something about 'pink letters'." Cleaver read the Fenton.letters file at least a dozen times. I just waited.
"Connie was getting letters, on pink paper. The other girl, Leah something, she was too. They were threats. Look, here's one."
Cleaver held the printout up so I could read it:
Sister of the devil thy body shall be torn asunder and cast to the swine
"The bastard! He cut her to pieces! The dirty rotten bastard!"
I waited and Cleaver turned his head and I could see he was about to bawl so I got up from the bench and walked to the lake. I can't stand it when men bawl. The ducks was quackin' and the geese was honkin' and the sun was so