Save Johanna!

by Francine Pascal

  “From the top of the steps your door looked closed. You never closed your door. You were too afraid of being alone. The strangeness of it registered on me, but it was too small for any alarm. I continued down the hall, perhaps a bit more cautiously, and when I got there I saw that the door wasn’t completely closed . . . but it was meant to be.”

  “Sephra . . . no more.”

  “Let me say it, Johanna, listen to me. You need to know, and I have to tell you.”

  “No . . . no.”

  “I need to tell you.”

  I could put the phone down, but that wouldn’t end it. It’s too late for anything but the truth. I listen, and she continues in a passionless voice. “At first I could only hear your voice,” she says, “but then there was another voice, a whisper, and before I looked I knew he was in there with you. I wanted to turn and run, but instead, very carefully and quietly, with one finger I poked open the door a tiny bit and looked in.”

  Now anger and hate rip open her control, and she screams her fury at that vile and hideous creature who was our father. I listen, mesmerized, as she places together the pieces that have been floating around in my brain, tormenting me all my life. And the fright and the pain and the terror come back at me and still I listen, but now her horror is even greater. Sephra cries as she speaks. “I wanted to kick open the door and rush in and save you. I wanted to rip you away from him and hold you safe in my arms. Tight! Tight! He’d have had to kill me to get you. I swear it. . . . I wanted to, Johanna, I wanted to . . . but I couldn’t. Instead I stood outside the door and watched, as if in a dream, as powerless to help you as I had been to help myself. I heard the agony of your sobs . . . to this day I hear them, and the sight of that scene still flashes in my brain with tortuous frequency.”

  I am weeping. For that little girl, for my whole life, and now for Sephra too.

  “I didn’t hear your mother coming up the stairs. I wasn’t aware of her until she flung the door open and raced in, diving at him and tearing at his arms. He jumped up in horror, shouting, ‘No! No! It isn’t so!’ And then in anguish cried out for God to forgive him, that he couldn’t help himself, but he saw that she was insane with fury and, rushing past me, fled down the steps and out the front door. She grabbed you off the bed with one arm, half carrying you, and with the other hand holding mine took us both down the hall to her bedroom.

  “Somehow during that short walk she managed to compose herself, and by the time she got us onto her bed, she was calmer. She told us that our father was a very sick man and that she was going to go out and find him and bring him to the hospital because that was the only place he could get the help he needed. We were to wait here, and she would be back as quickly as she could. And then she left. I watched her from the window. He was waiting for her in the car. She walked around to the driver’s seat and they talked, but he kept shaking his head no, and then she walked around to the other side and got in. When the car pulled out of the driveway, Father was driving.”

  The line goes deathly quiet. I hear Sephra’s breathing, quick, shallow breaths at the other end. Or is that me?

  “I remember it, Sephra,” I say softly. “I remember the car leaving, not when it happened but in the nightmare I have over and over again. I’m watching you and crying. In the dream I’m being punished for something. My mother is angry at me, and that’s why she’s leaving. You’re crying too, and I think you’re also angry at me. I never know why, but I feel I’m to blame. And the end is always the same. We wait for her. But she never comes back.”

  Sephra says, “No, she never did. They said it was an accident, but I never thought it was. He crashed that car on purpose. I know it. He couldn’t face the world, not as a sinner, contrite and human, not him. Not when he thought he was God.”

  “He killed her.”

  “I say he did, but no one would have believed me. People were very kind to us. They said they’d never seen children suffer so much. They talked about what a great loss to the community Father’s death was, and I never said a word about him or what happened. You were so traumatized that you barely spoke for almost a year. You couldn’t even go to kindergarten.

  “We were living with the Winstons by then, and you stayed home with Mrs. Winston. You cried every morning when I left for school, and when I came home you would attach yourself to me and silently follow me around, never letting me out of your sight, loving me as if I were the only person left in the whole world. But the heavy guilt I carried wouldn’t allow me to accept that love. I turned away from you, making my guilt even greater.”

  I’m overcome with a profound misery. Sobs break into my words. “It’s all so ugly and awful,” I say, “and so much a part of me, I’ll never get away from it.”

  “It’s a part of me too, Johanna. Please, I failed you once, and I can never forgive myself for it. Let me help you now. I’ll do anything. I love you so. . . .”

  “I love you too, Sephra, and I forgive you, but you can’t help me.”

  “I can. I know it. Just tell me where you are. Please, Johanna . . . ”

  The possibility of allowing myself to fall into her strong hands and be taken care of, loved, helped . . . it’s all so tempting.

  I yield and tell Sephra where I am.

  “It’s going to be all right, Johanna,” she says. “I promise you. We’ll work it out together. I’m going to make the first flight I can tonight and be in New York by tomorrow morning. Stay where you are and wait for me. Trust me, Johanna, please.”

  “I do, Sephra. . . .”

  “Together we have the strength, something neither of us have had alone. Promise you’ll wait for me, Johanna, promise me you won’t do anything alone.”

  But suddenly I’m frightened. Maybe it was a mistake to tell her where I am. She’ll certainly call David, and then both of them will move into my life and take control from me. They might not let me finish the book. Sephra will recognize the dark shadow of Father and know who Avrum really is. She’ll never let me continue. But I must write them, exorcise them from my life, both of them—Avrum and my father.

  “Johanna?” Sephra is talking to me again. “Johanna, are you there?”

  My mind is in turmoil. I must complete the book. I could be finished today. I have only a few pages left to write. If Sephra told David and he left right now, that would still give me three hours before he got here. And then he would be here, with me, loving me, protecting me. . . . Oh, God, I need David so desperately.

  I hear Sephra’s voice. “Johanna, are you there?”

  While she waits for me to answer, I quietly place the receiver down on the hook and move quickly to the computer. I could do it in three hours, but I feel so tired. There’s a terrible exhaustion weighing me down. I won’t be able to work unless I can take some Dexedrines, but I can’t seem to remember what I did with them. Then it comes to me. I put them on the windowsill in the kitchen. And that’s where I find them, but I have only six left. I thought I had a full bottle.

  I take one and wait for the sleepiness to lift. While I’m waiting I make my plans. First I have to work quickly and finish before David gets here. I should have told Sephra not to come. She’ll bring all those nightmares into my life again. And then David will know all about me. I don’t want that. I have to stop her, but how? I’ve lost track. I feel so heavy that I must lie down for a while. Just for a moment. Here, on the floor.

  Why did I choose Avrum, the most terrible of people; why have I polluted my life with him? Or do I deserve him? No, that’s not true.

  If they’re one and the same, I have a chance now to wipe both evils from my life. I’ve caught Avrum in my book. I have him trapped. In one last chapter I can write him out of my life forever. Both of them at once.

  But I can’t do it like this. I have only a few pills left. If I take them all it will power me through to the end, and by then David will be here, and I will be free to go to him.

  But I must finish this last chapter. I take all the pills I have left
and wash them down with wine. Seconds later I feel a charge of energy shooting through my body, and I can do it.

  I know I can.

  Souls in Darkness

  Chapter 13

  It was nearly two-thirty in the morning when the dark blue van slipped past the brick stanchions that led to the Wyndam Estates. The night was clear and so bright with the gray light from the full moon and the blaze of stars that it seemed as if dawn were only moments away.

  Immediately inside the gate the terrain became hilly with gentle mounds of velvet lawns topped by long, low, expensive brick and stone homes barely peeking out from the lush of the shrubbery. In the valley, the road curled around each grass mountain, and every house had its own perch. There were no streetlights, but most houses had their own lights that either traced the long driveways or wove up the footpaths to the front doors. Most of them had been turned out for the night, and, except for an occasional dim hall light, the houses were dark inside.

  They didn’t pass a single person, not even a stray dog. Swat was driving, and the four practice runs she had made earlier in the week, along with her natural ease at the wheel, took all the guesswork out of the complicated circles and crossroads. She took the turns as if she’d lived there all her life. Sitting back in the seat, her face aimed straight ahead at the road, she seemed relaxed; only the veiny tightness of her hands gripping the wheel gave any hint of tension.

  Avrum was next to her, silent, almost in a trance. Directly behind him, Imogene sat leaning forward, her hand lightly, almost reverently, caressing the back of his hair. If he was aware of her, he made no sign. For a long time all were silent; then softly, in the high pitch of a child, Imogene began a monotonous four-note hum. Minutes passed, and neither Swat nor Avrum seemed to notice; then abruptly Avrum jerked his head away, and Imogene snapped her hand back and stopped in mid-hum. Now again all were silent.

  Swat, who had kept herself in a state of controlled calm, began to be aware of a rising excitement. It started as easy waves that rolled up from her stomach and over her chest, but then they grew stronger, intensifying to a pounding power that charged her body and changed her breath to quick gasps. She knew where she was going and what would be done, but when she tried to imagine how it would happen, the actual feel of the bodily contact, a dizziness swept over her, and it took all her strength to wrench her concentration back to the empty road. And when she did, she was aware of Avrum, and the power of his presence quieted her, and she could empty her mind until the next assault.

  For Imogene there was no terror, not even much excitement. As always, she had removed herself from the firsthand experience and instead focused all her concentration on Avrum. From the beginning he had seeped into her very being and now was a presence always, shielding her from the rest of the world. When he was out of her sight, she thought of him constantly, and when he was near, she had to touch him. However lightly, inconspicuously, she had to be in contact with that energy, had to feel it flowing into her body.

  Sitting there in the back seat, she wanted to caress his hair, but he had shaken her hand off before and she felt timid about trying again. But she had to; so great was her need that any kind of touch would do. She curled her fingers around the back of his seat, close enough so that any slight movement would make his shoulders brush against them. Each gentle bump of the car allowed her to inch closer until, when Swat swayed to avoid a pothole, Avrum lurched forward slightly and Imogene put her hand directly behind him so that when he leaned back he would be pressing against her fingers.

  She allowed her free hand to slide between the buttons of her thin cotton blouse to her naked skin and move slowly and gently over her breasts, the tips of her fingers tracing tiny circles around the stiffened nipples. She wasn’t aware that she had resumed humming. Nor was she aware of the tightness that had come over Avrum’s body. All she felt was the pressure and the heat of him, and it was enough.

  Avrum sat straight in his seat, his deep brown eyes riveted to the road ahead. Their luminosity darkened to near-black and glowed with red pinpricks of light that flashed without stop like a trapped electric current trying to escape. Except for a slight pulse in each cheek where the jaws met, his face was frozen still. He hadn’t uttered a word since they’d left the house twenty minutes before, but now he spoke softly of their mission. A small smile creased Swat’s lips, and she shook her head in tiny, emphatic nods of agreement.

  “Yes . . . yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, it’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen and I want it to.”

  “Because you have love,” Avrum said, and she opened her mouth in surprise. She didn’t realize that she had spoken the words aloud and her face snapped instantly back to empty, but she was pleased. She was always pleased when he noticed her, when he spoke to her beyond an order. She loved him alone, deeply, blindly, but with a misery, sometimes even an anger, and always a frustration. Avrum spent little time alone with her. He had made love to her only four times in the two years she had been with him. Three of those times he was so high on coke and booze that he hadn’t even remembered that it was she. He never touched or caressed her the way he did Imogene, yet he was not unkind to her.

  Once when he chose her, he was so stoned he’d passed out inside her. She remembered every detail of those moments, had played them over and over again in her mind. It was the only time she felt she had ever possessed anyone, and the rush of love she felt had overwhelmed her, and she held him tightly and wept, something she hadn’t done since childhood. That was more than five months ago, but still she waited, trying not to show her longing in front of the others. She gave as little of herself as possible to the others, always holding herself apart from them. She hated them all. It was only Avrum who held her to the group. The power of his brilliance mesmerized her, and she became the physical hand of his spirit, ready and waiting for his command. She felt her normal awkwardness dissolve to grace under his powers.

  “I am that love,” he was saying, “and you are part of my essence. I have taken you into my body and now we are connected and my spirit floods you and our love is joined and filled with power. Nothing is stronger than that love. Nothing on earth.”

  Swat was silent, luxuriating in the sound of his voice, but in the back seat Imogene heard nothing. She never listened to Avrum’s words unless they were a direct order to her. She was still fixed on the feel of him. By now her fingers had gone numb and pinpricks of pain charged up her arm, and she squeezed her thighs together tightly to relieve the aching in her groin. When he leaned forward briefly to check the location, she flexed her fingers but didn’t move them away. She felt nothing but the physicalness of Avrum, no anxiety, no apprehensions, not even an interest in where they were going or what they would do.

  “Swat.” Now he was talking business, and Swat snapped back to alertness. “There’s a wooded area a couple of blocks up at the start of a dirt road and enough room to park the van. Watch out for it, it’s just past that white wall.” He pointed to a whitewashed brick wall that wrapped around yet another of the grassy mounds. Swat slowed down as she came to it and continued alongside the wall for two hundred feet until it ended. A thick, black wooded area abutted it.

  “Bring it down to a crawl,” Avrum said softly, tapping her lightly on the hand. “As soon as we hit the entrance to the road, cut the lights.”

  Swat nodded her head and slowed to ten miles an hour. They both leaned forward, watching for the dirt road. Avrum spotted it first. “Lights!” he said.

  Instantly she cut the lights. In the brightness of the night they could easily make out the dirt road not more than twenty feet ahead.

  Carefully Swat pulled the car off the cement road and onto a deeply rutted muddy clearing. The clanking noises of all the loose pieces bumping around in the old van resounded in the silent night. Both Avrum and Swat squeezed up their faces at the noise.

  “That’s far enough,” Avrum said. “I just want it to be out of sight from the street.” Swat brought the van to a slanty sto
p in a deep rut. “Don’t open the door yet,” Avrum said. He turned around to Imogene. “Just pass me that stuff from the back.”

  Without a word Imogene started handing the coiled rope and the tools to Avrum. He passed the rope to Swat and shoved the wire cutters and screwdriver into his back pockets. Now Imogene picked up a bulging knapsack and handed it to Avrum, but he shook his head no. “You hold onto that,” he said.

  Avrum leaned back in his seat, took a deep breath, and the women waited while he held it. Slowly, as they watched, he allowed his breath to escape in one long, uninterrupted hiss.

  “Open your mouth,” he said to Swat, and she turned toward him and, with her eyes locked into his, slowly parted her lips. He took another deep breath and, holding it, leaned over into her face, his mouth open, his tongue wiping shiny spittle over his lips. Just as his open lips touched hers, he exhaled, words and breath together, “Inhale me, take me into your body. Breathe my breath.”

  And she did with such passion and power that his lips were pulled into her mouth as if she would devour him. He whipped his face away, and she fell back, overcome by the contact.

  Now Avrum turned to Imogene and, with his hands, brought her face close to his and again he inhaled deeply, but now, when he let his breath out, the exchange became a kiss and his tongue drove deep into her mouth, and her whole body seemed to move into his, and Swat watched them. She saw him holding Imogene’s head, his fingers buried in the soft red curls, and a wave of weakness broke in her stomach. She turned away and stared at her reflection in the dirty window. And she waited. Hating. Then she felt Avrum turn back in his seat, and for a moment only their breathing was heard as their passion subsided.

  “We are one,” Avrum finally spoke, “and that one is me. You are of my breath and my body now.”

  “Avrum . . .” Imogene whispered, and it was as if she said, “Amen.”