The Hanging Wives of New England

by Ellis Brightwell

  Lily looked back at the dock. The tugboat-sized fishing vessel had broken the wood into heaps of watery timber. Beyond the rubble lay three corpses wearing overalls and rubber boots. They bled motor oil into the snow.

  “One of them might have been her husband,” I said.

  “And her sons are probably dead, too,” said Lily. “I’m sorry.”

  Lily pulled the trigger and painted the white exterior of the captain’s cabin with the woman’s brains. I sank to the ground. Lily jumped from the chair, kicked it over, and sat down with me. Red blood from a hole in the woman’s head ran down her legs and onto the deck.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I said.

  “She said the fog gave her nightmares,” said Lily. “Now it won’t.”

  “You’ll have to do that to me, then. That’s why you’ve been with me this entire time. You feel guilty about killing Rick, and you want me to forgive you before I leave you.”

  “No.” Lily took my hand. “I felt nothing when I killed your husband. I thought I should, but I didn’t. It was the same with Derek and everyone else in Yamata whether their blood was black or red. I told myself I killed them so that thing in the air ducts wouldn’t get them and hang them from the ceiling by their own intestines.”

  “Why didn’t you kill me?”

  “I couldn’t. I could never…”

  I set my hand on hers.

  “You were scared,” I said. “You did what you thought you had to. I don’t hate you for what you did.”

  “And I really, really don’t hate you,” said Lily.

  “Good. I’m going out there to find forgiveness.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “When I let Alyssa fall from that bridge, she took the sea creature and some of his fog with her. If I drive this boat out there and give myself to him, that might be enough to send him and his poison cloud somewhere else. The boat will keep him from coming back. Amy and Maria and Rusty might have a way out of here.”

  “Those three looked like they wanted to be here. They just didn’t want you around. I do.”

  “You want to keep my sweater?”

  “Fuck your sweater. Did you forget our promise? ‘Together forever.’ I’ll drive us out there. I hope Maria remembers to carve our names into that oak tree right outside their shop. That way, her mother won’t be able to forget about us even if you do.”

  Lily pulled me up onto the plastic-backed bench next to the captain’s chair and gunned the throttle. A violent lurch sent the boat smashing through half the remaining docks. As we headed out into the misty fog hanging over the sea, rolling waves brought the siren’s song back to life within my heart. Lily’s shoulder became my pillow.

  “I have half a mind to go back there and tell Rusty to put a heart around our names when Maria’s done carving them,” she said. “Sweet dreams.”

  The soft hum of the fishing boat’s engine and the lullaby from somewhere out on the sea came together to bring my heavy eyelids lower, ever lower. My children played on the playground behind our house, now, beneath a sea of sleeping stars blanketed in midnight black. Rick was there, waiting for them at the bottom of the slide to take them in his arms and swing them around as they laughed and struggled against his endless tickling. Rick let Caroline go so she could come running alongside her brother to meet me at the back gate. Jason had a big grin on his face. Caroline took the rainbow-colored sucker out of her mouth long enough to give me a sloppy kiss. And Rick… there he was with his short-cropped hair, his handsome face, and his day-old beard smelling of musky smoke.

  I took him into my arms and kissed him. His breath became hot with ichor that flooded down into my breast and limbs. Jason and Caroline took one more trip down the slide and melted into black sludge in their autumn jackets before they reached the bottom. The midnight sky above us shook the world at its foundation: it was the sea creature come to devour us, and the twinkling stars were its innumerable teeth.

  9

  The Abyss

  I woke with a start. Lily set her hand on my shoulder to still my chattering teeth. I took in a heady lungful of misty fog and blew it back up into the clouds like an old locomotive’s steam stack.

  “Back so soon?” Lily said.

  “You weren’t there,” I said.

  “Did you return from the afterlife just for me? I don’t know whether to be flattered or frightened. While you were muttering to yourself about floating out to sea and letting go of life, your friend showed up and blotted out the setting sun. Take a look at that ugly mug. You really want to sacrifice yourself to that thing?”

  Out on the horizon loomed a giant, black, sun-shrouded bubble as dark as the night sky from my dream. Its apparition bore neither eyes nor teeth nor any semblance of human visage. Only a siren’s winsome melody called to me from somewhere within that midnight dome. Her soothing song lightened my limbs and lifted the heavy millstone from my heart. I sat up straight and exhaled rejuvenating mist.

  “I feel better,” I said.

  “Check your bite and tell me whether that matters,” said Lily.

  I slid my pant leg up: the six puncture wounds that had run red with blood were now minor indentations with no trace of bodily fluid. I set my shoe on the dash next to the steering wheel to show Lily. She ran her fingertips over the marks on my leg, then slid her own shirt sleeve up to her elbow. The wretched, purple welts she had shown me earlier were nothing more than dark blue blemishes.

  Lily pulled the throttle back. The boat’s engine stuttered into silence. We floated on gently rocking waves while that massive dome approached from the horizon. The maiden’s song in my head grew stronger as the sea creature drew nearer.

  “Maybe the fog cured the fishermen,” said Lily.

  “They still bled black,” I said. “And we didn’t know that until you shot them.”

  “You think the women are the same way?”

  “Keep your gun in your skirt. I don’t want to find out.”

  Lily laughed to herself.

  “You’d fit right in at Yamata,” she said.

  “Because I let Alyssa fall.”

  “Well, shit.”

  “She made the creature and some of his fog leave. I think she must have been an ‘offering’, like Rusty said.”

  “She did have a wedding ring. Probably accepted a proposal from a lawyer studying to be a doctor on some tropical island halfway through college.”

  “Some of her classmates might be on this fishing boat,” I said. “Do you think the sea spirit would accept a proposal from us on their behalf?”

  Lily’s eyes brightened.

  “Fuck, yes,” she said. “I mean, he might.” Her thick eyebrows arched down toward her nose. “Did something happen to you?”

  “I met you.”

  “Yeah, you sure did. You have enough strength to carry them?”

  “With your help, I will.”

  Lily set that little, blue, plastic chair upright and stood on it as she loosened the noose of a red-haired office worker whose gaunt cheekbones bore no mark of life. She collapsed into our arms like a bag of potting soil and was just about as heavy. When we tossed her overboard, she floated on the water as though her bones were made of styrofoam. She didn’t make it fifty feet from the boat before her flesh dissolved into black sludge, leaving behind nothing more than a toothpaste-white skeleton in ill-fitting business casual.

  The sea creature towered over us as he approached her. If he had a mouth, he didn’t open it.

  “Why doesn’t he want her?” I said.

  “She was all the way dead,” said Lily. “I think he only wants women with his life still in their blood, like Rusty said.”

  “Should we prick our fingers open and see what color our blood is?”

  “Your pant leg was red, not black. Your bite’s almost gone. He doesn’t want you. He wants someone who’s infected. We should give him a better offering, one who talks. You see how skinny most of them are? They’re already as
good as dead. We’d be doing them a favor.”

  “Don’t talk like that. They’re still people.”

  “Is that why you told me to ‘finish off that thing’ in Yamata? Because it was still your husband? Or did you know something you didn’t want to admit?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “None of this is fair. You know that. Now, get your ass moving before this sea creature eats us.”

  Among the hanging women, the first ‘one who talked’ was a fleshy-faced, brown-haired librarian in a light gray sweater and dark gray slacks still wearing her name badge. Her white loafers stepped in place against the plastic chair, as if she had forgotten what it felt like to walk.

  “Wh—what’s going on?” she said.

  Lily shook her head at me. Don’t think, just do. We took the woman down from the chair and hauled her heavy body to the side of the boat with shuffling steps. She writhed against the handcuffs on her wrists and ankles.

  “No, no! Please! I don’t want to die!”

  Her words made her even heavier. We had to swing her three times to get her high enough to toss her over the side of the boat. Her cries drowned in the frothy water. The wind picked up as if to punish us, but it came from the shore, not the bay.

  It was then that we learned where the sea monster’s mouth was: everywhere.

  Rows of white teeth from the water to the clouds awaited the woman’s thrashing body. Pungent breaths from the monster’s belly met a sea-sprayed crosswind that threatened to send our boat straight into his stomach. Lily slammed the throttle, thrusting our boat forward against the unrelenting pull of oncoming waves. Even at top speed, it was barely enough to keep us from being sucked into the sea creature’s vortex maw.

  “Why doesn’t he leave?” I said.

  “Because he knows there are more,” said Lily.

  “So turn the boat off…”

  Lily dashed away. She stood with shaky legs on that flimsy, plastic chair as she freed another woman from her noose. I set my hand on the boat’s throttle. The woman fell to the deck and struck her head. She cried out in pain. Her pleading sobs turned to desperate howling when Lily dragged her along the deck by her hair. I rushed to Lily’s side and slapped her hands away.

  “Take her arms under her shoulders,” I said. “I’ll get her ankles.”

  We hauled the woman to the boat’s black side rail now indistinguishable from the sea monster’s looming form. His gaping ridges of hook-like, white fangs awaited our sacrifice. No sooner had the monster’s constellation of twinkling teeth shredded our screaming offering than the siren’s song from deep within his belly flooded my limbs with a soothing mist tempered by the fear of death.

  I was the one who took the next body down. Lily said nothing. We threw it over the side. It dissolved into viscous sludge like the first woman had. The next woman kicked and screamed all the way into the creature’s gaping mouth-chasm, as did the two that followed her. I worked with all my might, though my lungs burned with fiery exhaustion far beyond anything I had ever done. Lily even started panting and sweating. She rolled up her sleeves—the bruises on her skin were almost gone. I checked my calf. It was as if I had never been bitten.

  Fog whirled and swirled toward the distant horizon like stage curtains drawn up and away for the final act of one last performance. The sea spirit’s teeth had become two rows of white fangs stacked atop each other twice the length of our vessel. Our boat’s engine sputtered, faltered, and died. Rushing waves threw themselves against the side of the boat yet left us where we sat. The siren’s song was but a memory, a dream that came to me from some distant shore.

  One more, she said to my most vulnerable heart, and I shall leave you be.

  The last ‘one’ was not a woman. It was a child in a rainbow-sleeved, pink t-shirt and blue jeans. Whether she looked more like Maria or Caroline, I didn’t want to know. I took the rope from the young girl’s neck and tried my best not to stroke the tufts of black hair that shrouded her ashen, brown face. I couldn’t keep myself from kissing warmth into her lifeless cheek.

  “Mama?” she said in her sleep.

  “Why did they take a child?” I said.

  “She looks like an adult to me,” said Lily.

  She was so light that I only needed one arm to hold her upright against me. I reached inside her pants pocket and fished out a high school identification card.

  “Kenzie Williams,” I said. “Queensport High. Twelfth Grade. Seventeen. She’s still a child.”

  “An infected child.”

  “Her legs are working just fine.”

  “The rest of her isn’t.”

  “Williams. That’s Linda’s last name. The police deputy you swore at. The one I talked to on the radio. She’s still out there. Maybe… maybe they know Ted and his son. What if that’s her family? Were two of those fishermen you shot wearing blue overalls?”

  “I didn’t look,” said Lily. “I try not to dwell on the people I’ve had to kill. You need to stop doing this. She’s already dead.”

  “Then why did she talk to me?”

  “The fog. It keeps them alive, whatever that means when you’re a skeleton with a layer of flesh on it.”

  “She’s still here. Most of her.”

  “Probably only for as long as she stays close to the fog. You take her away from that for more than a night, I bet she turns into one of those things and starts eating people. We’ve freed the others from that burden. Look. He’s almost at the boat. Let’s give him what he wants.”

  I lifted Kenzie up into my arms and cradled her head against me as I walked to the front of the boat to stare down the monster who demanded I give him a child to be his wife.

  “I won’t let him have her,” I said to Lily.

  “Shannon…”

  “You didn’t fall asleep like I did and dream of a great, black nothingness. You don’t have his ink in your blood. Neither did Alyssa. She would have lived. Honor her memory and take Kenzie back to Queensport. Find her mother or keep her safe or do whatever you can to make up for what we’ve done. Maybe we can’t make things right, but we can try.”

  “‘Together forever.’ That’s what you said. You let Alyssa go because you trusted me. You can do it again.”

  “That was a mistake,” I said. “So was running from the police station. I should have trusted Linda.”

  “So… meeting me was a mistake?”

  I turned to Lily. Tears ran down her cheeks. A fire extinguisher rolled across the deck and stopped between her shoes. She lifted her gun and pointed it at me. I faced away from her and crouched down to shield a child whose mother was without her daughter.

  “Do it,” I said.

  “Put her down,” said Lily.

  “Never.”

  “Just set her down. I won’t hurt you.”

  “Amy protected Maria because she knew I was a monster,” I said. “If Linda had found a bite mark on me at the police station, she wouldn’t have hesitated. That’s why I ran away. I was afraid. Afraid of doing the right thing. But I can’t run now. So do it. You want to kill this little girl, you’ll have to do it over my dead body.”

  The boat creaked as waves rocked us from side to side. Something struck its prow with a dull thud. The sky above had married the lingering amber glow of dusk to the starless emptiness of night’s eternal void. The sea monster would bring his dark dreams to fruition whether we wished to be part of them or not.

  “I love you,” said Lily.

  I half-turned to look at her but couldn’t meet her eyes.

  “You’re acting like a child,” I said.

  “Yeah, I probably am. My mother died when I was fourteen. I’ve never met my father. Derek asked to sleep with me on the first date, and I said yes. I’m pretty sure that’s why he likes me. My uncle gave me a place to eat and sleep but was too interested in drinking with his gambling buddies to pay me any attention. ‘Here’s your weekly allowance, Liling. Go buy some friends.’ So, yeah, you’re right. I grew up
without anyone around to give a damn about me. But you stayed with me. You stuck with me through the worst day of your life and mine. You’re the only reason I have left to live.”

  “Is that why you have a gun pointed at me?”

  “It’s lowered.”

  “Toss it overboard.”

  A loud thunk sounded in the water. I stood up and turned around with Kenzie in my arms—her head exploded inches from my face. Black ichor dripped down onto the deck between my feet, hissing with misty steam as it burned into the wood. I laid her down as gently as I could without getting the black stuff on me. Lily stood frozen with her gun held out in front of her. The fire extinguisher at her feet was no longer there.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  She threw her gun out into the water. There was no sound to receive it, this time. I set my hand on the child’s forehead to stroke her hair but couldn’t. The black stuff was taking her over. It was time to say goodbye.

  “I hope you make friends with my daughter,” I said to her. “Her name is Caroline. Her favorite color is rainbow, just like the ones on your sleeves.”

  I took my wedding ring from the third finger of my left hand and slid it onto the young woman’s bony thumb. I picked her up—the top of her head melted into black sludge. She became lighter by half as I lifted her over the side of the boat and let her go. She floated, in her pink teddy bear t-shirt and blue jeans, into the waiting embrace of fangs that sank into her dissolving body and took her from our sight. In my head, the siren bid me farewell and ceased her singing.

  The giant, black dome left behind a bloody wake of skeletons as it drifted off toward the horizon. There, shrouded by a setting sun that shone ill through gray clouds, the dome became a bubble; and the bubble burst into nothingness. We drifted on a sea of black beneath an ashen sky among lifeless forms that looked like they could have been alive, once, but I knew better. Lily took my elbow.

  “I meant what I said,” she murmured.

  “Fuck you, Lily. We left everyone else without a cure.”