Mary Ann Mitchell - Drawn to the Grave.html

by Drawn to the Grave (lit)

  Knowing that she was able to continue on her way safely with the journal lying near her feet gave her the courage once again to face Carl. He wouldn't be able to destroy her the way he had Beverly. Besides, she needed provisions. A lie, she admitted. She could find a town soon enough and get help. But she didn't want to reveal what had occurred, fearing how people would react.

  The boat drew closer to the landing, which was not far from Carl's house. The house was invisible behind the full summer foliage. Her feet splashed into the water, and she dragged the small vessel up onto the land. This time it was unnecessary to upend the boat, since the sky was clear.

  Midway down the path she heard heavy huffing. Turning off into the bushes, Megan came upon Carl, shoulder deep in a hole from which he was pitching dirt. Damn, he has another shovel, she cursed. Quietly she drew closer. On the ground behind Carl's naked back sat a drawing. Her feet inched toward it. It was perfect. It was like looking into a mirror. Her hand shot out to grab it, but Carl turned and she was hypnotized by the change in him.

  His cheeks were sunken, his skin mottled with grayish shadings. The eyelids sagged over a filmy blue, and the blond was gone from his hair, leaving thinning gray strands. His lungs heaved out heavy breaths from a concave chest and his muscles were frail, throbbing, tight balls.

  "My God!" he shouted.

  Then she knew that he had seen her wounds.

  "What happened?" His voice quivered.

  Megan looked again at the drawing. It would have been a perfect creation before this morning. Now it was useless to Carl. Her hand, which had been frozen in her reach, dropped back to her side.

  The air lacked the sweet hyacinth scent; instead, it smelled putrid, like something starting to go bad. Like meat decaying on a hot summer afternoon. Megan glanced down at Carl with a smile on her face.

  She left Carl calling out to her and went up to the house to collect her belongings. She took as much of the food as she needed. Carl would probably no longer have any use for it.

  By the time she returned to the middle of the path, there was an old, stooped man waiting there. He had no shirt, and his pants hung loosely over withering hips.

  "You have to tell me what happened. Where did you go? I couldn't find the boat. I looked for you. The house! You went to the house, didn't you?" Carl reached out to grab Megan's shoulders. She easily pushed away his weakened hands. Detouring around him was not difficult, since he had none of his agility left. Obviously he was much too stunned to reason out clearly what action to take.

  "You promised not to leave me. At least not until the summer was over. Please come back."

  Megan heard the shuffle of tired feet traveling behind her, but she outdistanced him and had already set the boat adrift when he tried to rest his hand on her arm.

  "I'm ill, Megan. Please help me. I don't want to die." A phlegmy cough forced him to fall back. Once free, Megan threw her things inside the rowboat. Before jumping in, she turned to Carl.

  His hands were shaking. He wouldn't be able to alter the drawing even if his memory was good enough to allow it. Megan jumped into the vessel, lifted the oars, clumping them into the water. Carl's tainted flesh looked dewy pale, covered with the river water that had been splashed on him. His head shook.

  "No, Megan, please. Talk to me. Let me explain what's been happening. I don't know what Beverly told you, but listen to me. Believe me. Give me a chance to live. Don't let me die this way. Please, I'll waste away with the flies and maggots, and I can't prevent it, I can't stop it. Megan! Megan!''

  Megan had pushed off, heading away from both the remains of the yellow house and Carl's home. Her arms seemed to build up strength with every push against the water.

  At last, when she was out of earshot of Carl's voice, Megan rested the oars on the bottom of the boat. When she pulled out a fresh white cotton shirt and took off the old one, she was surprised how little blood spotted the shirt. The rain had managed to wash the cloth almost clean. She dumped the shirt into the water, letting it float atop the surface. Before putting on the new shirt, she checked the wounds. Already whitened scars were forming; the scabs had fallen off. She slipped on the new shirt and buttoned it right up to her neck, since she was self-conscious about the scars.

  What would she tell Hester about her trip? Well, she had time to think about that. She was on her way home. No more woods and communing with the wilds of nature.

  43 - Best Friend

  "Hi, I'm home."

  Megan heard Hester slam the door behind her. Hester had many flaws, but this was the one that most irritated Megan.

  "You still studying?" Hester tossed her blazer over the canvas chair.

  "Finishing up a paper."

  "I don't know why you bothered to go to graduate school. Even I, the master of C grades, managed to land a decent position in a small company. You could have done better with your honors."

  "Not with my major."

  "I was a history major, medieval, mind you. You think that made me far more desirable in the eyes of the vast wasteland called Human Resources?"

  "You were lucky."

  "Not true. Talented and attractive? Yes." Hester started to remove her skirt. The mass of pleats fell to the floor. Hester daintily stepped out of the circle of material, and then, with the determination of a football kicker, she banished the skirt to a clump of clothes on the other side of the room. "By the way, whose turn is it to do the laundry?"

  Megan pointed a finger at Hester, who wasn't buying it.

  "I did it last week! Or did I? Let's see, I met that really cute CPA when I was trying to get that awful cranberry stain out of your blouse."

  "Can't get cranberry out of anything."

  "What do you mean? I did a pretty good job."

  "Yeah. Now, instead of a stain, I have a hole in the blouse."

  "A small hole. You cover it with a pretty pin, and no one will notice. Anyway, I think it's your turn this week. We really should make a chart, because I keep getting the impression that I'm starting to know the laundry custodian far better than you do."

  "Maybe he likes you. Probably has a giant crush on black-eyed beauties."

  "Just what I need, a sixty-year-old man with a potbelly, bald, and the mange creeping up his neck."

  "It's a rash from shaving."

  "Are you sure?"

  Megan nodded, not lifting her eyes from the pad she had been writing in before Hester had arrived.

  "Looks like the mange to me. Why did you go to graduate school, anyway?" Hester asked as she wriggled out of her panty hose.

  "I told you, I'm interested in anthropology, and now that Ma died, I have the cash to pay for classes. Besides, I couldn't get a decent job doing anything more interesting."

  "It must have been a shock to find out your mother passed away while you were hiking in the woods. It's a good thing you decided to come home a month before schedule. By the way, have the lawyers cleared up her estate?"

  "Yeah, she left that bozo she married the cat and the car; everything else is mine."

  "Why the cat and car?"

  "Because they bought both of them together. What was left of Dad's estate she left to me."

  "The bozo must have been disappointed."

  Megan shrugged. She didn't care how he felt.

  Hester's 38-D breasts popped out of the brassiere after she unhooked the cloth in the back.

  "It feels so good to get out of these work clothes."

  "I've noticed. Every night you strip as soon as you come in the door. Someday I'll have a visitor, and you'll"

  "Megan, you never have company. All you ever do is read and write." Hester slipped the strings of her black bikini down over her hips and let the silk fabric drape over the tops of her feet. "You think my feet are too big?"

  Megan looked at Hester's feet.

  "Wait, I'll get rid of the bikini."

  "Hester, that bikini is so small, it could never cover those boats."

  "What?" Hester threw the silken f
abric at Megan, who ducked, letting the garment fall behind her.

  "I'm going to take a shower," Hester said.

  "Must be a heavy date."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Just teasing."

  Hester left the room as Megan watched. Hester's slender waist and hips swiveled exaggeratedly, and her sculpted rump quivered to the beat.

  Megan had not told her roommate the true story for ending her vacation so soon, claiming simply that she had become lonely. She had meant to burn Carl's journal when she got back. It would be of little use to her. She had made the decision not to follow Carl's path. She would accept death when it caught up with her. Not knowing how long she had, she decided to go to graduate school. Maybe she could learn more about the tribe Carl had visited, but she didn't need the journal anymore, for she had taken her own notes on the tribe and where they were located. The journal should definitely be burned, so that no one else would be tempted, and yet she had not been able to do it. Instead she hid it in a safe-deposit box at her bank.

  Hester stuck her head into the room. "By the way, if Frank calls, tell him he should be late, because I am."

  "As always." Megan chuckled at the Bronx cheer Hester gave her.

  There was a sudden pain in Megan's chest, sharp, affecting not only the internal organs but her skin as well. Megan's breath halted until the pain passed. Gradually she started to inhale, taking small, careful breaths. A portion of her left breast started to burn.

  "What the heck?" Megan cautiously rose from the couch and went into the bedroom, where there was a full-length mirror behind the door. As she raised her arms to pull the T-shirt off, a stabbing pain crossed the left side of her chest.

  "Damn," she swore as she gently guided the white cotton material over her head. She let the shirt fall from her hand as she gazed at her own reflection.

  "Oh my God!" she cried.

  The scars were reddening into welts. The transition back into wounds was beginning. How long would it take?

  The pain had subsided, and she was able to use her arms freely again to slip the shirt back over her head and shoulders.

  Was she really going to die? she wondered. It had happened over nine months ago. It had almost seemed like a nightmare, not a reality.

  "Is something wrong?" she heard Hester call.

  "No. Why?"

  "I heard you cry out something."

  "A pimple is starting on my chin."

  "Bummer."

  Yes, it certainly was. Megan stared into her own eyes and saw herself shining back from her pupils in the reflection. Then there was Beverly, with knife in hand, raising it to strike Megan. She remembered exactly how Beverly had looked. Would Megan die quickly from her wounds, or would she waste away like that?

  Megan went back to the living room. Her pad and pencil were still on the couch. She picked them up, then dropped her rear down on the striped pillow.

  Next month she may be nonexistent, lying next to her mother under that awful archangel her mother had bought when Dad had died. She recalled the white taffeta lining of her mother's coffin contrasting so garishly with the heavily made-up face, the cheeks puffed up with gauze. Too much gauze; her mother always had a well-defined bone structure with prominent cheek-bones and hollow cheeks. The funeral director didn't know that. Her mother's bozo couldn't even locate a photograph to show the mortician. Would Hester whip out one of those ugly shots she had taken of Megan on their ski trip? Good Lord, who knows what she would look like lying in some pine box. Perhaps like Beverly. Her thoughts halted as images of the past summer months played back in her head. She would suffer the same slow living decay as the hyacinth woman. And then she would die. She would cease to exist.

  Her right hand was working a pencil across a sheet of paper when Hester came into the room, wet and naked.

  "No calls?"

  Megan was silent.

  "Yoo-hoo, Megan?"

  She looked up, seeing the softness and contour of Hester's shape. Megan had always wondered at how light and downy Hester's body hair was, considering that Hester had a shiny black mane.

  "When did you get that?" Megan asked, directing the point of her pencil toward Hester's right knee.

  "Oh, it's nothing. I scraped my knee and kind of cut my palms," Hester said, raising her hands up so Megan could see, "while running up some stairs at work. Don't think I can collect workman's comp, though, do you?"

  When Megan didn't laugh, Hester did.

  "Gee, Megan, you're so serious. It's like living back home with my folks. You don't have to worry about my bruises. I'll be all right. Honest."

  Realizing that she was making Hester uncomfortable, Megan tried to smile, but her eyes were so intent on taking in all the special physical qualities that made Hester who she was that it looked more like a grimace of pain.

  "Are you all right, Megan?"

  "Sure," she said, while her pencil stroked the paper swiftly.

  Thank God, thought Megan, that I have a roommate who's so uninhibited.