Chapel of Ease

by Alex Bledsoe

  He put his hands on my shoulders. An hour ago, I might’ve melted right there from his touch, but now I wanted nothing but to be away from all these insane people. It occurred to me that I’d never seen the inside of the barn, and wondered how many bodies might hang there, souvenirs of these (I was sure now) cannibalistic hill-dwellers.

  Still, I didn’t pull away, and he didn’t hold me the way you did someone you were about to kill. In return, I didn’t punch him in the throat and run screaming down the road. He said, “I’m going to tell you something, and then I’m going to show you. You won’t believe either, but I’m hoping that taken together, you’ll see I’m telling the truth. Okay?”

  “I seriously doubt that.”

  “Do you know the term, ‘Tylwyth Teg’?”

  “No.”

  “How about ‘Yvwi Tsvdi’?”

  “That’s not even a word. How do you spell that?”

  He laughed. “I’m not sure. I’ve never seen it written down. What about ‘Tuatha de Danaan’?”

  “Aren’t they a Celtic band? Thorn told me about them.”

  “That’s Tuatha Dea.”

  “Oh. Then no.”

  “Then how about … ‘the Good Folk’?”

  I was about to say no to this one as well, but something clicked. I’d heard that term in college, in an English class. “That’s what they called fairies in folklore, right? I mean, fairies with wings, not fairies … like us. So they wouldn’t get mad at you.”

  He nodded, and the indiscreet “us” didn’t seem to bother him. “That’s right. I have a lot of … Good Folk … in me. So do the Parrishes. So does Bliss. Mandalay, the girl you met? She’s entirely Good Folk.”

  My brain turned this around, looking for the hole where I could insert the logic key. I didn’t find it. “Wait, so you’re telling me you—”

  “All the Tufa,” he corrected. “It’s what we are. Some of us have more of it in us, some less. But we all have some.”

  “You’re saying you’re fairies.”

  “That’s not the word we use.”

  “But it’s what you’re saying.”

  He shrugged and nodded, all one gesture. “And I was right—you don’t believe me, do you?”

  I gestured around me at the run-down house, the yard with its dogs and old cars, the trees and sky and mountains, all normal, tangible, real. “You have to admit, this isn’t exactly Never Never Land.”

  I shut up as Thorn joined us on the porch. She stood beside C.C. and also looked at me dead seriously. “Y’all done told him?”

  “Yes,” C.C. said.

  “That explains the look on his face.”

  “You believe this, too?” I asked her.

  She snort-laughed. “I better. It’s the truth.”

  “So … where are your wings?”

  C.C. and Thorn looked at each other. I couldn’t tell what passed between them, but then C.C. said, “Take a walk with us?”

  “Is it the same ‘walk’ all the other Yankees who’ve disappeared took?”

  “What other Yankees?” Thorn asked.

  “He’s being sarcastic,” C.C. said. “We won’t hurt you. I promise. If you don’t trust me…”

  He let it trail off. I looked into his eyes, the same ones I’d gazed into after that smoldering kiss up at the chapel, and saw—or at least hoped I saw—no guile, no danger. I couldn’t read Thorn’s expression, but since C.C. trusted her, I decided I had to go along with it, too. So I nodded.

  “Mom!” Thorn yelled back into the house. “We’re taking Matt out for a walk. Might be back late.”

  “All right,” Ladonna called back.

  “Y’all quit yelling, I’m trying to watch the game!” Gerald complained.

  This resembled no fairy-tale household I’d ever read about. “Wait, I have to ask: Are you absolutely sure he doesn’t need a doctor? He was shot, with a bullet. I saw it come out. He was spitting up blood.”

  “He’ll be fine,” C.C. said.

  “I’m fine,” Gerald said, although it must’ve been to Ladonna, since there was no way he could have overheard me.

  “See?” Thorn said.

  There was no convincing them, and for Gerald’s sake, I truly hoped they were right. So I gestured for them to lead on.

  We crossed the side yard and entered the woods along a narrow trail. C.C. took my hand, and if Thorn, trailing behind us, thought anything of it, she kept quiet. The trees overhead grew taller and thicker as we walked, blocking out the light from the setting sun. Animal noises I didn’t recognize filled the air. The trail rose gradually, until at last it was so steep that C.C. released me so that we could all use our hands to climb the slope. Luckily roots and low branches provided convenient holds.

  I didn’t think we’d been hiking so long, but when we finally emerged onto the flat, treeless top of a hill, it was totally dark. I looked back, and even from this height saw no lights from the town or any of the other farms, no cars traveling on roads or any sign of civilization. There was just mile after mile of treetops in the silvery moonlight.

  “Wow,” I said. “Where are we?”

  “Somewhere special,” C.C. said. The wind blew then, not harsh but enough to make its presence known. It felt great on my sweaty face after the climb.

  “So … what happens now?”

  C.C. and Thorn held hands and walked out into the open space. The shadows from the moonlight hid their eyes from me. Then they began to undress.

  If they’d jumped up and down shouting dirty limericks, it would not have startled me more. Thorn, wearing only a sundress and a pair of cowboy boots, finished first, and stood unashamed, waiting for C.C. He finally also stood naked beside her, their bodies like ivory in the light. The sight was simultaneously innocent and erotic, and I felt myself caught between those two responses, half turned-on and half delighted.

  “Close your eyes, Matt,” Thorn said. Her voice was musical, and the wind seemed to follow its cadences. “Don’t open them until we tell you.”

  I did so. The wind continued to sigh around me, and I seemed to hear distant voices singing melodies I couldn’t quite catch. Then over them rose a voice I did recognize: Thorn, singing.

  Oh, time makes men grow sad

  And rivers change their ways

  But the night wind and her riders

  Will ever stay the same.…

  Past the song, past the wind, past the other voices, I also heard something that sounded for all the world like gigantic wings flapping. Not bird wings, and not the leathery snap of bats; instead, these were graceful sweeps, swooshes that I realized might have been generating the very wind that blew around me. But still, mesmerized by Thorn’s voice, I kept my eyes shut.

  “Open your eyes, Matt,” C.C. said.

  I did.

  Thorn and C.C. were where they’d been moments before. Except … they weren’t. Where two people had been, now stood two magnificent, magical beings with enormous, diaphanous wings, like those of some gigantic butterfly. The wings sparkled in the moonlight, and through them I saw the hazy silhouettes of the trees on the opposite side of the clearing.

  Then my logical brain kicked in. These had to be fakes, appliances of some kind, even though the two were naked and there was no sign of any straps holding them on. I walked toward them slowly, and the wings moved, flexing with their breath.

  “You wanted to see our wings,” Thorn said with a smile so seductive, it almost worked on me.

  “This is who we are, Matt,” C.C. said. He looked more handsome than ever, his shoulders broad and his body sculpted like some romance cover model. “This is what we are.”

  “We’re real,” Thorn added. “We’re the Good Folk.”

  I had no available words, so I reached tentatively for the edge of Thorn’s nearest wing. When I touched it, it felt like silk paper, delicate and fragile. Yet I sensed that it wasn’t, that any weakness was simply an illusion.

  My touch made Thorn gasp in an unmistakably sexual way.
She closed her eyes and sighed.

  I turned to C.C. and, my fingers shaking, caressed the edge of his wing. He responded with a similar sigh, and put a hand on my cheek. He pulled me into a kiss.

  As he held me, I felt Thorn’s hands lift my shirt up, and I let her take it off. I looked up into C.C.’s shadowed, enigmatic eyes as Thorn pressed herself against my back and began kissing my shoulders.

  My voice shook as much as my hands as I asked C.C., “Can you fly?”

  He smiled and pulled me into his arms. And then my feet left the ground.

  As we rose into the night, the wind grew stronger, seeming to help lift me and keep my weight from hanging in space. C.C. and I kissed again, and Thorn’s hands reached from behind me to unbuckle my jeans. It was all so mind-boggingly arousing that I didn’t know or care whose hands caressed me, as long as C.C.’s arms were around me.

  “This is just for the two of you,” Thorn whispered in my ear. And then she was gone.

  C.C. and I kissed some more, turning in the sky, his wings effortlessly holding all our weight. I wondered how I’d ever find my clothes again, and imagined them spiraling out of the sky and landing across some old lady’s porch rail. But truthfully, at that moment, I didn’t care. I just didn’t.

  And then I opened my eyes and saw, unbelievably far below and shining in a moonlit clearing, a gray rectangular shape. It was the chapel of ease, glowing like a beacon in the darkness.

  And then I didn’t care about that anymore, either.

  20

  Things got … fuzzy after that, the way sex does sometimes when you totally lose yourself in it and your brain disengages so it doesn’t ruin the fun. Eventually we came back down to earth, literally and metaphorically, in the same clearing we’d departed from, and our carnal adventure became much more mundane, though no less arousing. Finally, spent and exhausted, we lay looking up at the stars, legs entwined, until Thorn appeared and, amused, tossed me my clothes in a bundle.

  “You’re lucky I found everything,” she said wryly. “Now, get dressed, you two. It’s getting late.”

  I sorted through my clothes so I could put them on. I still couldn’t tell you how long this adventure had taken, or how long we’d been gone from the farm.

  Then, fully dressed and woozy from sex and magic, we walked out of the forest together, me between C.C. and Thorn, and all of us kissed each other good night with the sad resignation of knowing this would likely never happen again. But it had definitely happened … hadn’t it?

  I watched Thorn sashay across the yard toward the house, the hem of her sundress swaying against her calves. She hummed a tune I didn’t recognize, and her arms swung with weary contentment. C.C. and I remained at the edge of the forest, holding hands, silent until we heard the screen door slam.

  I turned to him and said softly, “You don’t have to leave.”

  “I can’t stay,” he said with a sad smile.

  “Then I could go home with you? …”

  He shook his head. “Not tonight.”

  “Are you sorry this happened?”

  “Not at all,” he said, and his kiss convinced me.

  “Then why can’t I go with you?”

  “Because I didn’t get anything done workwise today, so I’ll be heading out in—” He pulled out his phone and checked the time. “—a few hours. But I’ll come by after breakfast, don’t worry.”

  He kissed me again. I watched him climb into his truck and drive away, the noise incredibly loud in the night’s silence. His taillights disappeared as he turned onto the road.

  I was left outside alone. The wind continued to blow through the trees, and I sat on the porch swing, which luckily didn’t squeak when it moved. What had just happened, what I’d just learned and experienced, wouldn’t process; my brain had no context for it. I was numb, not just from physical satiation (and there was plenty of that) but from simply being brain-fucked by all this.

  Still, the night and the swing began to work, and I grew sleepy. The swing sported a pair of musty old all-weather pillows, so I kicked off my shoes and stretched out as comfortably as I could. My overstimulated body gradually wound down, and I suppose at some point I dozed off. That is, until a familiar voice said, “Hey.”

  I opened my eyes and half rose on my elbows. He sat at the other end of the swing, my feet in his lap. He wore the same tattered denim jacket, and grinned like he knew the biggest secret in the world.

  I said, “Ray?”

  He put his finger to his lips.

  “Ray?” I repeated as a whisper, and sat all the way up.

  “Hey, Matt.”

  “Am I … Is this really happening?”

  “Who am I to say, man?”

  I looked around. It was still night, yet somehow I could see everything in exquisite detail. I could feel Ray’s presence beneath my feet, too, so I discreetly drew up my knees. “Shouldn’t you have, like, a blue glow around you or something?”

  He laughed. “What, like I’m some Obi-Wan Kenobi? Foolish you are, yes.”

  “That’s Yoda.”

  “I was never a fan. It didn’t have any good songs.”

  I’d never met anyone who wasn’t a Star Wars fan, so I doubt my subconscious would have made that up. Okay, then, this was reality, at least for the moment. “What is … Why are you here?”

  “That’s the question I’ve got for you, actually.”

  “Why am I here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Because I brought your ashes home.”

  “Yeah, I appreciate that. But now why are you here? Come on, it’s rhetorical, I know why you’re here. It’s because of the chapel of ease.”

  I said nothing, but I couldn’t deny it.

  “And now maybe C.C., too,” he continued. “But the chapel is at the heart of it.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. Maybe.”

  “So back to my original question: Why?”

  “Because you were supposed to tell us the secret.”

  “What secret?” he said with a laugh. “What’s buried there? Dude, I told you, it doesn’t matter. It’s the mystery that counts, not the solution. Suppose you find the bones of a dead baby—what then? Or a box of Confederate gold? Or a diary with its pages all crumbling, telling old family secrets?”

  Those were, in fact, ideas we’d had and pinned on the backstage board, and it made me wonder anew if this wasn’t all coming out of my subconscious. I’d heard of lucid dreaming, but never experienced it; was this what it was like? It made sense that I’d conjure up Ray after everything that had happened, but was this what I’d have him say?

  “So is anything buried there, or did you make it up?” I asked.

  “Oh, no, there’s something there. I’ve seen it. I’m just asking, what will knowing that change?”

  “It’ll mean you kept your promise, for one thing,” I said, a little annoyed.

  He looked away with a scowl. “Yeah, I know. But you want to know a secret?”

  “Sure.”

  “I was planning on weaseling out of it.”

  “So you made a promise you intended to break?”

  “No, I made a promise to give you guys something else to focus on. You were bringing my show to life, I would’ve done or said anything to help with that.”

  I was fully alert now, and close to being pissed off. “That’s pretty fucking manipulative, man. We trusted you.”

  “That’s showbiz.”

  “So you’re not going to tell me, then?”

  “What, now? Is that why you think I’m here?”

  “I don’t have a clue why you’re here. Or even if you’re here.”

  “Are you planning to help my sister get out of Needsville?”

  “Yeah,” I said before I even realized I meant it.

  “Good. She needs it. She’s more talented than I was. But just … be gentle with her.”

  I remembered the way she’d behaved earlier, in the air. My God, that really had happened. “She seems pretty … s
ure of herself.”

  “She is. She’s tough and smart and driven. That’s why I want you to be gentle with her. If you’re not, no one will be. They’ll see that toughness and think it goes all the way to the bone. It doesn’t.”

  I nodded. “Okay. I’ll watch out for her.”

  “Thanks.” He smiled again, then lightly punched my shoulder. I felt the impact as if he were as real as me. He said, “So you and C.C., huh?”

  I grinned. “Yeah.”

  And suddenly I snapped wide awake. I nearly fell off the porch swing before I caught myself. My heart ping-ponged around in my chest, and I gasped for breath.

  One of the dogs—Ace, I think—emerged from beneath the porch and came up to rest his head against my leg. I scratched him behind his ears as I waited for my pulse to calm down. Clearly I’d been dreaming, but did that mean I hadn’t actually spoken to Ray’s ghost? Was there some rule that said ghosts couldn’t show up in your dreams?

  I looked up at the starry sky visible past the porch overhang. Had all that been a dream, too? I mean, could I really have been up in the air with my literal fairy lover?

  I shook my head rapidly to clear the last of the cobwebs, then went inside to my room as quietly as I could. I undressed and eventually fell asleep, half-expecting Ray to return in my next dream. But he didn’t, and whatever I did dream didn’t stick with me the next morning.

  21

  At breakfast, Gerald seemed stiff and cranky, but otherwise in pretty good shape for a man who’d been shot less than twenty-four hours earlier. He still wore the sling, and his shirt was awkwardly buttoned so that the bandage beneath it showed. The rest of the family acted as if nothing had happened, including Thorn: she smiled at me with no hidden mischief or knowing glances. It made me doubt my own memories.

  As I sat nursing my coffee and ignoring my eggs, I looked around at this family and tried to process what I’d learned. If I was right, if my experiences last night had been genuine, then they weren’t human. They were unearthly supernatural creatures, hiding behind the images of regular small-town folks.

  I thought back to the people I’d seen and met at the barn dance. Were they supernatural as well, hiding diaphanous, shimmering wings beneath their old suits and overalls? It seemed impossible, but either I’d hallucinated the previous night, or my whole view of the universe would need to change.