by Mav Skye
Eyes Open Dark
Deep inside the dark, Jenn floated, naked and curled like an embryo in the womb. Safe. Warm. At peace. Far off, she heard dark waves rushing a soft, sandy shore. They moved to and fro at the pace of her slow, methodic heart beat.
A metallic scent struck her, filled the insides of her, the familiarity of it interrupting the calm pace of the dark waves. She felt a storm stir inside her. The steady throb of her heart rose erratically, a fishing hook dropped into her dark, deep place of safety. It hooked over her thigh and began to reel her in, the metallic scent growing stronger, the feeling of vomit rushing in with the flooding tide. She felt a pounding pain in her forehead as the hook yanked her up higher and higher to where she could see a blinding light beat down into her watery darkness.
Jenn fought against the fishing line, the hook, and desperately tried to squeeze the pounding pain away. She fought for her newfound darkness and its comforting shadows. It was a burrow she never wanted to leave. She didn’t want the light and the pain it illumined, the wrongs she had done, the people she had lost.
And then, she heard a gentle voice from far, far away. “A whole box of kittens will make you happy again, Auntie Jenn.”
And she remembered that in the light, she still had something to fight for.
Jenn stopped struggling against the hook and line.
She relaxed, letting the ebb and flow of the dark warmth enfold her, letting the line and hook drag her up, up, up slowly. The hook wasn’t terribly anxious to bring her to the surface, and she was in no hurry to reach her destination.
7
A Secret
“Tony! Help me!” Tina tried to lift the mummy into the wheelbarrow for the third time. Every time she bore down on the wheelbarrow’s handles, the body tipped out.
This time when she stood the wheelbarrow upright, she sat the mummy against the bed of the barrel as if it were sitting up against a wall. And when she slowly heaved down on the cart’s handles, it scooped up the body, the mummy’s knees bending over the edge of the cart.
Tina pushed the wheelbarrow in the dark. The rain had let up, and the warm spring breeze blew Tina’s cape about her shoulders. The wet grass felt good on her bare feet, and the long wet stems scraped off the wolf’s dried blood. She pushed the wheelbarrow to where the long grass gave way to lumpy ground and rocks. She passed the gate of an old barbed wire fence, glancing at the No Trespassing sign hanging haphazardly from it, before plunging further into the field where she was never supposed to go.
Not far off, there was a deep hole in the ground. Aunt Jenn said it was a ventilation shaft for an old silver mine. She had warned Tina and Tony numerous times to never, ever pass the No Trespassing sign. One step past the fence could mean falling deep and fast into a hole leading straight to hell. And no one would ever find you again. Father Wraith’s grandfather had lost his life that way, and the priest had helped his uncle put up the barbed wire fence when he was little.
Tina had felt Aunt Jenn had taken the story a bit too far. Hell? Really?
During the winter, she and Tony had wandered way out into the field to build a snowman. Everything was covered in glorious white, including the gate and the sign. They had slipped through the fence, and soon discovered the hole in the ground. Tony had almost stepped into it. It was like a gaping black mouth in the pure white snow.
It was a secret she and Tony had kept, and sometimes when Aunt Jenn was cooking or cleaning, they’d go there and throw rocks in, pieces of trash, small tree limbs, anything they could find really.
Tina wasn’t sure, but she thought the hole was wide enough to shove the mummy down. No one would ever find him.
Not even Aunt Jenn.
That’s what a Supergirl did, wasn’t it? Protect people you loved from things that could harm them, like secrets and bad guys. Tina was protecting Aunt Jenn, not just by getting rid of the wolf man, but by stashing his body where she will never find him. Hell.
Aunt Jenn will never know what really happened tonight. Tina and Tony would lie if they needed to, but she hoped they didn’t have to.
The breeze blew her dirty blonde hair back along with her cape, and suddenly Tina wondered if this is how it felt to be a person who saved others. A hero. She wondered if Aunt May felt this way just before she—a small dip in the earth tipped the wheelbarrow from Tina’s hands, and the mummy went flying out.
She needed Tony’s help if this was going to get done before Aunt Jenn woke up. Where was he?
Tina screamed as loud as she could. “TONY! TONY! HELP ME!”
8
Monsters in the Dark
“Tina!” Tony ran to the back of the property, following the sound of his sister’s voice. He slowed while cutting through the tall grass with the big knife, waving his flashlight around at the shadows in the dark. He pretended he was in a jungle, nearing King Kong, who held his big sister captive. “I’m coming!” he yelled.
He heard her voice again, and he sped up, crunching through the wet grass until it died down to the clumps of dirt and rocks. Finally, up ahead, beyond the barbed wire fence, he saw her shape like a shadow. It looked as if she were pushing something—or maybe that something was pulling her.
“Tina! I’ll save you!” He raced towards her beneath a starless sky.
Tina heard a voice from beyond the fence. Finally! Tony was here to give her a hand. She stood and stretched, putting her hand on her back like she’d seen Aunt Jenn do after tilling the ground for a garden. The hole wasn’t far from here.
Footsteps approached behind her, and she spun on her heel. “Tony, where have you be—Ahh!”
A small figure wielding a big knife and wearing the wolf mask lunged at her.
She dodged to the side, and the figure hit the ground rolling. The mask twisted off revealing Tony’s pale, frightened face.
Tina clutched at her heart and leaned over to her knees, trying to catch her breath. “Tony!”
Tony dropped the knife and started to cry. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know it was you. I thought the bad man came back, I swear.”
Tina frowned. The big knife caught her eye, the sharp edge of it, the dried blood. Tony thought she was in trouble and ran out with the biggest knife he could find—the Bowie. She got that, but it still disturbed her. What disturbed her even more? “Why were you wearing the mask?”
Tony quieted and wiped his tears. He picked up the wolf mask and touched it almost tenderly. “I wanted the bad man to be afraid.”
“What do you mean?”
Tony looked up at her. “I’m tired of being afraid. I’m tired of people wanting to hurt us. I want. I want…”
Tina tilted her head to the side, trying to understand.
Tony said, “I want—need the monsters to be afraid of me.”
“I see.” Tina understood, but understanding didn’t make her feel any less uneasy about Tony. He’d seen just as many monsters as she had, but he had the gift of not remembering, at least not consciously, but subconsciously? His mind was finding ways to fight back, to survive.
Aunt Jenn had told them once that survival was one of the most basic of instincts. And when pushed too far, the prey can turn into the predator. She didn’t say whether it was right or wrong, but that it was a simple fact. Tina hadn’t known what that meant at the time, but she thought she was beginning to, and it scared her.
Tina didn’t know how to respond to Tony. She decided to jump into bossy sister mode and ignore his confession. They had a body to dump and an aunt to save. “Cheer up, worm. Toss the knife and the mask, and help me get the mummy into the wheelbarrow.”
“Mummy? You mean the burrito?” Tony wiped his nose on his Buzz Lightyear pajamas.
“I think it looks like a mummy.”
“Oh…” His eyes grew wide, and he gulped.
Tina noticed he gripped the knife tighter.
“I said, drop it, Buzz.”
Her voice startled him. He ducked to the ground and gently laid the
Bowie beside the mask.
“Good,” she said. “Now hold the cart steady while I lift the body back in there.”
Tina struggled with the dead wolf in the sheet. She arranged his body like she had last time, propping his body up on the bed of the barrel as if it were sitting in a chair.
“Now, push the handles down.” The body in the barrel weighed far more than Tony did. He struggled to push it down an inch or two. Tina held the mummy in as she walked around to where Tony was. Then, side-by-side, they both pushed the handles down until the body’s weight adjusted, and the cart plopped level on the ground.
“Phew!” Tony wiped his forehead.
“It’s not over yet, kid.”
“Yeah, but that part is. He’s so heavy.”
“A real dead weight,” Tina agreed.
They both giggled and pushed the wheelbarrow together, aware and careful of the hard bumps and dips in the ground.
Tina said, “Do you know where we are going?”
He nodded. “The hole?”
“Yeah.”
He said, “It’s so dark. What happened to the stars?”
Tina shivered and responded without thinking. “The monsters ate the stars.”
He stared at her, eyes wide. The night bristled with the truth of her words.
She glanced back at him, the bloody body wrapped in the bloodstained sheet, and at that moment, she felt nothing. Nothing at all. “The monsters eat stars one by one until there is no light left.”
He said, “I brought a flashlight. Can I turn it on?”
Tina shrugged.
They carried on in silence for a while. He guided their way with the light while she pushed the barrel over another patch of tall grass. Their pajamas were soaked, but Tina didn’t feel the wetness or the cold. She recognized the rotting stump up ahead. The hole was on the other side of that stump.
Tony said, “I saw on TV once that the sun is just a great big star. The monsters didn’t eat that one.”
Tina said, “Yet.”
Tony didn’t respond, and Tina almost felt guilty. Almost. But should she dumb down the truth to Tony? A kid who was just talking about becoming a monster himself?
She thought of the mask lying beside the bloody Bowie behind them. She wondered if Tony wished he was the monster with a belly full of stars.
9
Belly Full of Stars
Tony shivered in his Buzz Lightyear pajamas. He couldn’t stop. He could have killed Tina with the bad man’s knife. It would have been a mistake, a horrible, horrible mistake. And yet there was a part of him that liked the look on her face when he lunged at her with the knife. He felt power with the weapon in his hand, fearless, and that frightened him.
Everything frightened him these days, and he was so tired of being afraid.
Tina said, “See that rotten old stump?”
Tony flicked the flashlight towards it. “Yep.”
“It’s just beyond. Be careful.”
He guided her way with the light until they both reached the narrow pit. Despite the dark of the night, the hole was even darker. It gaped like a monster’s mouth waiting for something, or someone, to walk into its trap.
He handed the flashlight to Tina, and she walked around to look at it.
Tony wrapped his arms about his Buzz Lightyear shirt, still shivering. His stomach ached. He wondered what it’d be like to have a belly full of stars. He’d never be wet or cold. He’d feel full and bright and warm from the inside out just like he did when he drank hot chocolate after coming in from the snow.
He watched Tina throw a rock down into the deep pit, and he wondered if killing the wolf had made her stronger, brighter—if that was what made her a Supergirl like Auntie May and Jenn. All three of them had killed, but Tony hadn’t.
He wondered if Tina had a secret star inside her right now. She was never afraid. She never cried. Just kept doing what she needed to do.
Tony watched her stand back from the hole. Tina rubbed her elbows and wiped her nose, looking less like his brave older sister and more like a little girl. Despite this, she glowed. There were no stars, and she’d turned off the flashlight, but to him she was an angel in the darkness, just like Auntie Jenn.
She put her hand on her hips, and flung the cape behind her.
“The hole is wide enough, but we won’t be able just to dump him in. I’ll have to guide him down.” Tina looked over the wheelbarrow at Tony. “That means I have to trust you to navigate the wheelbarrow. Tony, I need you to do this for me. Can I trust you?”
The words were out before he even thought of them. “To the stars and beyond.” Buzz used the word infinity, but Tony preferred the word stars, especially just now.
A look entered Tina eyes. One he didn’t often see: Fear.
She licked her lips and looked down the hole. “Good, because if the wolf goes down too fast and I get stuck in front of him, I might end up down there, too.” She motioned down to make her point.
A cartoon catch phrase filled Tony’s head. One he’d watched at the bad house. Down, down below we go—beneath the dirt! The cartoon had shown a fluffy yellow duckling wandering down a narrow path. A red devil with a pitchfork tail sits up from a concealed grave beside the path. It snatches the duckling as it passes by, and laughing, drags the duckling down into the grave. Down, down below we go—beneath the dirt!
Tony nodded his head at Tina. Another phrase struck him; one he also remembered from TV. Shit just got real.
But, had it really? Shit was real as long as he could remember. Which wasn’t saying much. He barely remembered his own mother.
“Okay, so,” Tina squatted beside the garden cart. The wolf’s sheeted legs dangled beside her vulnerable face. “When I say so, you inch the handles up, so the cart tilts forward.” She moved her arms up, exampling it for him. “And I’ll tug out his body, bit by bit. You’ll have to be careful because he’s heavy, and the cart will want to flip forward out of your hands. It’ll be super heavy.”
Tony felt a trickle down his cheek, near the crook of his mouth. He tipped his tongue out to catch it. It tasted like sweat. He was freezing and sweating at the same time. Suddenly, his hands felt clammy and slimy, and when he grasped the cart’s handles and tested the weight, his hands spun around the aluminum handles.
His legs quivered. He whispered, “I don’t know if I can—”
“Sure you can,” she said matter-of-factly. “You helped lift him off the ground. You’re strong enough to put him in it.”
She sounded tough. Strong. Her face radiated. Supergirl.
Tony nodded, licked his lips, tasted sweat.
She moved into a wrestler’s stance. Clutching the sheet that held the bad man’s legs. “Okay, I got his legs. So, pull up a bit on the handle.”
Tony did, and it was easy. The body slid down a bit.
Tina almost disappeared. He saw one leg on the left side of the hole and another leg on the right side. Her butt must have been hovering over the ground behind the pit. One slip and—
“His legs are in! Now, we just need to guide the rest of him down—easy schmeesy.”
Tony thought that meant to lift the handles more, so he did, but it was heavy now. The handles wanted to flip up all the way with the weight of the mummy in it.
He heard an eerie writhing noise, it was the body worming out of the barrel.
Then—“Oh, whoa! Slow down. It caught my cape.”
Tina had fallen to one of her knees. She bent down to who knew where.
Tony held on to the handle with all his strength, but it moved of its own accord now. His hands slipped around from the top to the bottom. He needed to warn Tina.
She said, “Almost got it, I think. No, wait.” He could hear her heavy breathing. He wondered if she still shone like a star over the gaping monster’s mouth.
And he wondered, wondered what it’d be like if the monster swallowed her. If the hole would glow. He wondered what her face would look like—the fear. He wondered i
f she would have the same expression as the duckling when the red devil jumped out of the grave and grabbed him.
The image excited him. He thought of his wolf mask in the field. He mentally slipped it on.
A small voice inside piped up. Tina is my sister. My only sister.
And this was the part of him that was the strongest, at least for the moment. “Tina! It’s slipping. I can’t hold it.” His muscles ached as he pulled against the weight of the cart. His fingers slipped, and then he gripped it again, but he could tell it would flip out of his hands any second. Sweat stung his eyes, slipped into his open mouth.
She said, “Ugh! Hold on, I almost got it.”
He heard the rip of her cape, tearing in the night. “Got it!”
At that very moment, his hands slipped around the handle again and this time the weight of the cart flung forward, the force of it sending him to the ground. As he fell, he saw a white sheet cover Tina’s thigh, then she was screaming as the mummy thumped on top of her, its weight pushing her in.
“Tony!” she yelped. “Tony! Help me. Please!”
He leaped to his feet, grabbed the handle and used his weight to push the cart back up. His young mind thought the cart might bring the body back up, and then Tina could climb onto safe ground, but instead it flung the rest of the mummy’s upper half out.
Tina’s legs disappeared down the monster’s mouth.
She screamed all the way down.
10
Charades
As Jenn drifted up through the dark sea, tiny lights like underwater fireflies buzzed about her. They hadn’t tails or fins or wings. In their center was a blazing blue fire. Yellow flames burst from around it.
Jenn knew they were stars, tiny stars bringing her hope, lifting her through and above the darkness she floated in.
