The Journal of Bloody Mary Jane: My Florida Idyll, Episode 1

by Chuck Miller

  ***

  I'm quite strong, though I don't look it. The third time I hit Borden with the ax, it sank in so deep I could not extract it again. There was blood everywhere, and the man was dead, and I breathed all of that in, and it was wonderful.

  Until it stopped being wonderful. The glow disappeared and I saw what I had done. I stared at the ruins of my cherished dream.

  "Oh," I whimpered, sinking to my knees to regard more closely the empty shell whose erstwhile occupant I had just dispossessed. "I have done it again."

  I placed my hand on Borden's temple to hold the head in place as I yanked the ax from the crown of his head. There was a small outrush of blood and brain matter. I wiped the blade clean on the man's shirt and sat there for I know not how long, holding the ax in my lap and contemplating this awful thing.

  My black reverie was ended by the sound of the front door opening and swift footsteps approaching. They stopped abruptly, just a few feet from where I sat.

  "Grandpa?" came the voice of a young girl. I turned to have a look at her, tears of frustration and anger running down my cheeks. She was small and blonde, no more than fifteen years of age. Her eyes met mine and seemed to become stuck there. She did not look at the dead Mister Borden.

  "Grandpa?" she said again, though her eyes never left mine.

  "What is your name, girl?" I asked. I scarcely knew what I was about. I saw the child before me through a haze of red, a curtain that stained my vision and seemed to seep into my lungs and the pores in my skin.

  "I..." she faltered. "I... My name is Deb. Deborah Borden. I was... My grandpa is..."

  I blinked, releasing her gaze from mine. Her eyes went to the newly dead form of her grandfather and she started to scream.

  She never finished. I took her head completely off with one sweep of the ax. It tumbled through the air for what seemed like weeks before it hit the floor and rolled off out of sight behind a wooden crate.

  As her body sank slowly to the floor, I rose to my feet, as though we two were counterbalanced. There was a good deal less blood than I would have expected. I looked at the ax in my hand, then at the two bodies on the floor, and my mind was a blank. A warm red blank, not entirely unpleasant. My heart was equal parts triumph and revulsion.

  Then came another voice from the front door. "Deb! Come along, girl. Dad! Are you ready to go?"

  I looked at the doorway as the owner of the voice came into view. It was a man, a younger version of the shopkeeper I had murdered. His age was perhaps forty or forty one. He looked puzzled, and seemed about to ask a question of me, but then his eyes went to the floor and the things that I had done.

  He shouted something. Still gripping my ax, I whirled and dashed around the counter toward the back of the store, scooping up the leather pouch into which old man Borden had transferred the contents of his cash register. I sped though a small storeroom to the rear door. It was padlocked on the inside, but I made quick work of that with a swipe of my ax and ran off into the night.

  I was in a small town to the north of Lake Okeechobee. I skirted around the huge lake and made my way south, into the region known as the Everglades.

  This, as you may know, is a vast area in the southern part of Florida given over to subtropical wetlands. Trees and vegetation of all kind abound, as do insects, swamps, heat and disease.

  Soon, I found myself deep in this damp, hot, inhospitable region, utterly lost. The positions of the stars in the sky meant nothing to me.

  I plowed through trees and swamps and habitats given over to loathsome dark creatures. Clouds of insects bedeviled me. I stopped for a moment to lean against a tree and think. I had no need of rest, but slogging around in this muck with no idea where I ought to be going was pointless.

  I tried to collect such thoughts as I had. There were precious few. I felt horrible about what I had done back in the town. My demon had absented herself from my conscious mind for the time being, but I had no illusions that she would remain hidden for any great length of time. Disgusted, I threw away the bloodstained axe and began walking, with no clear goal in mind.

  After a time, I became aware of a new sound there in the sodden wilderness. Human footsteps! I pressed myself against the tree and moved around it until I was on the side opposite the direction from which the steps seemed to come.

  I saw that it was a lone man, not the mob of police and angry villagers I had envisioned. When he got close to my hiding place, I stepped out into view, my arms extended at right angles from my body, so he could see that I held no weapon.

  The man was tall and gaunt, and strangely dressed in clothing from an earlier century, complete with a polished metal breastplate and matching helmet. He seemed more intrigued by my sudden manifestation than startled. I sensed immediately that he was not an ordinary human being. Perhaps he saw the same in me, for he stood for quite a while, studying me there in the moonlight. At length, he spoke a few words in a language I believe to have been Spanish. I merely stared back at him, the look on my face conveying my lack of comprehension. He switched to heavily accented English.

  "What is your name, Senorita, and how do you come to be here?"

  "My name is Mary Jane Gallows," I told him, giving myself the surname at that very moment. I knew not where it came from, but it seemed most appropriate. "I am here because I have been pursued by fiends from hell."

  He looked a bit startled at that, which I suppose was an appropriate reaction.

  "Indeed? Do you speak in metaphor, or may I take your words literally?"

  "You may take them as you wish," I replied. "I speak only the unvarnished truth."

  He looked all around, casting sharp glances into the dark trees surrounding us, as though he sought to detect the presence of demons.

  "Indeed? Well, that shall never do. This place is meant to be secure against such incursions. If you would come with me, I shall take you to a place of safety.”

  Having nothing to lose, I joined him and we fell into step together, him a few inches ahead of me, leading the way.

  “There is a small, private village near here,” he explained. “We shall go there, and present you to our Wise Man. He will help you.”

  Presently we came to an area of relatively dry ground and an abundance of thick vegetation of all kinds. There was, however, a distinct, obviously manmade path through the thicket, and this we followed. Elaborate crucifixes were nailed to trees, along with hand painted placards in Spanish and archaic English, rendered in elaborate, all but unreadable script.

  At last we emerged into a large clearing.

  It looked like a small shanty town. There were huts and other buildings constructed in a variety of styles and materials clustered around a central point. I saw a few shadowy, indistinct human forms moving about here and there. They remained on the periphery of my vision and I never got a close look at any of them.

  My guide led me though the “plaza” toward a building much larger than the rest. I saw that the center of this area was occupied by what appeared to be a pit of noxious, bubbling mud. As we passed, my new benefactor waved a hand at this cesspool and said very grandly and with much evident pride, “La Fuente de Juventud.”

  I nodded, but made no verbal reply.

  The building we were approaching was large, and, by the prevailing standards of the community, impressive. It was made of wood, hewn from huge logs stacked together in an intricate weave.

  “This,” I was informed, “is our Council Hall. Here you shall see the Wise Man.”

  We mounted the short flight of log steps leading to the front door. This he held open for me, standing aside to let me precede him in.

  The inside of the place was dark. We were standing in a large hall. Numerous benches took up the floor space, arranged in a sort of fan in front of a large podium on a raised platform against the far wall. The walls were bare but for crucifixes in a quantity that seemed quite excessive. We made our way through the hall, toward a door that stood halfway open, th
e wan light of an oil lamp visible from the room beyond.

  We stepped into a somewhat cozy room, furnished with what appeared to be genuine antique furniture from some stylish and affluent age. There were massive bookshelves too, a pair of them lined up facing one another from against the opposite walls. And, at the far end of the room was a large mahogany desk, behind which sat a man. This individual was scribbling something onto a sheet of paper with an old fashioned quill pen. When he became aware of our presence, he set the pen aside and his mouth stretched into a rather grotesque approximation of a smile.

  “Senorita,’ said my guide, “May I present to you the Wise Man.”

  "Good evening, Miss," said the strange apparition, rising to its feet and moving around the desk. He looked as bad as my guide-- hollow-cheeked, eyes sunk deep into their sockets. His hair was brittle and without luster, but there was a great deal of it, piled atop his head in outlandish fashion, parted in the center and straggling nearly to his shoulders. He wore what looked like a black clerical robe of some sort.

  He looked me up and down, and I detected the presence of appetites I wouldn't have thought compatible with such a moribund looking shell. I also sensed that these appetites had gone long unsated. There were the remains of a rusty spring in his step as he moved toward me, cadaverous hands outstretched.

  "You are a charming creature indeed," he flattered. "Not at all what we are accustomed to seeing here.” He looked at my guide and said, “Juan, I suppose you neglected to introduce yourself to the young lady. You Spaniards, for all your other sterling qualities, have atrocious manners.” He looked back at me and said, “Allow me to do the honors, Miss."

  He took my right hand in one of his icy claws. "My colleague here is called Juan Ponce de Leon,” he told me. “And My name is Cotton Mather."