by 19
–Mar, if I didn't...do what I’m doing now, you would’ve lost me already. I wouldn't be the person you love anymore.
–I know. Oh, God, I know, but it's so hard.
–It's not all that easy for me, either, he said, and reached up to his chest, exploring the damage. It was bad. It was worse, in the places where it had cut into old scars. The pain there was frightening, where the skin had already been too thin, too twisted.
–It didn't exactly hurt when it was happening, but it hurts now, he whispered, and he wasn't talking about the cuts, not really.
She climbed into bed beside him, and pulled him close, carefully, and no, she wasn't mad at him. Not at all. He could read that in the texture of her skin.
She kissed the back of his neck, and whispered, –You never let me hit you.
He had to laugh, even though it was excruciating. –Give me a week or so before we do any pain experiments, okay?
–Then you've got one fucking week, and I'm going to beat you senseless. You scared me to death. I love you, she told him again.
–You know, you could say that, and only that, all day every day for the rest of our lives, and I would never get tired of it.
–Are you okay? Seriously? she asked him.
–I'm just trying to...
He stopped, searching for words.
–I guess I'm just trying to hold it all together. For as long as I can.
–Where were you born?
That was out of the blue. He tried to remember. –In the stockroom of a truck stop. I think. I don't know what city. That's where they found me. My mother almost died. She was young. She hated me. Finally I left. Then I came here.
–Was her name Mary?
He looked at her, sad and adoring. –Mar, you already know I don't have that kind of answer. I left her. I met Jordan in school, and he's...you know how he is. He's kind of damaged, or something. He's like a little kid. And he never questioned me. I took him away from abuse. And we were each other's family, and then we ended up here.
She pushed herself up on one elbow, looking down at him. Her hair was a sleek curtain, irresistible, and he reached up and tucked it behind her ear. –That's it? That's your life?
–No. That's my history. You're my life.
–Zillah looks at you funny when he doesn't know anyone is looking. Like in that Shakespeare play: a lean and hungry look.
–Zillah can take a flying leap. I'm taken, he told her.
–I don't think it's that kind of look. Not exactly, she said.
I don't either, he thought.
–Oh, come on, Mar, he said, joking. –What's the matter? You think he's out of my league?
–I don't think he could handle you, she said, with that possessive look he liked. It was nice to be owned, in that way.
They lay there, silent for a long time.
–What will they do next? she whispered, hardly daring to ask.
He thought about it for a long time. –I don't know.
He got better, more slowly than he would have liked. The cuts closed. A week after he was horsewhipped he was sitting outside, scratching in the dust with a broken pool cue, and a little girl wandered up and stood, chewing her finger and staring at him. He tried ignoring her, and when she showed no signs of going away, he looked at her and said, –I remember you, he said. –I helped your face get better.
She nodded. –Why dontcha make your tummy better? she asked him. He wasn't wearing a shirt, and he had taken the bandages off.
–I keep these cuts so that the man who did them will remember he didn't kill me.
She frowned, making no sense of this.
–What's your name?
–Rachel, she whispered, and glanced at her feet, blushing.
He wrote RACHEL in the sand.
She crept nearer, finally sat beside him, fascinated. –What's that?
–That's your name, he told her, –It says Rachel.
Her eyes got wider. –Like in a book?
He nodded, trying not to smile and failing. –Just like in a book.
She took the stick from him when he offered it, slowly, as though he might have some trick in mind, and after several tries she copied her name.
–Like in a book! she said, delighted.
He taught her star, moon, sun, sky, and candy before she wandered away in a sudden fit of shyness or boredom. He wasn't sure which.
He'd watched her go, amused. She'd taken his pool cue.
Mary opened the door behind him. –You know you're eating today, if I have to sit on you to make you.
He rubbed RACHEL out of the sand with his foot. –I was just coming in, he told her.
(37)
They had two good months after that. Elijah did some whining from his pulpit about sodomy and demonic possession, and then apparently gave up.
Mary's stomach got rounder and tighter. She didn't look completely pregnant yet, but you could tell where the baby was. One night she woke him out of a dead sleep, and whispered, –Give me your hand.
She put his hand over her stomach, pressing his fingers in hard, and he said, –What is it? Are you okay? Did-
And it happened, like a butterfly inside her skin, trying to escape.
Christmas went off inside his chest, so bright and beautiful and pure that tears blurred his vision. –It kicked! he said, nearly yelling, delighted. –Can you hear me in there? he asked her stomach. –I'm your dad!
She was laughing at him, and he cradled her close, kissing her, and leaned over and covered her stomach with kisses too, feeling that tiny impact against his lips, twice.
–Won't it be weird to have sex now? she asked, giggling. –What if it annoys him?
She had started calling the baby a he, and not an it. He was beginning to imitate the habit.
–So he'll grow up to be a sex prodigy, he told her, kissing lower than her stomach.
She wound her hands in his hair, pulling, and said, –Will you stay with me? When he's born?
–Of course I will. It's half my fault, he said.
–I think it's all your fault, she said, pretending to be angry, and pulling his hair harder until he did what she wanted.
(38)
It was Halloween, a month later. Jordan and Zillah threw a party at Spectre's–they still called it that, even now.
They were dressed as what Mary called the Odd Couple. He was wearing red and black, with a black feathered mask glittering with red stones circling the eyes. She wore solid white, with a tinsel halo over her head. The dress almost hid her tummy, and he joked with her about a shotgun wedding, and did angels get sent to Hell for getting knocked up by demons?
–Fag, she told him, still getting dressed, and threw her brush at him.
–Oh? And how did this happen? Was it immaculate, Mary? he asked her, putting his arms around her and patting her stomach with both hands like a drum until she relented and giggled.
He fishtailed on the way to Spectre's, carefully, to make her laugh, and her hair snapped around her face, and she held her hand out the window to catch the air. His mask was sitting on the seat between them, a spooky half-face with empty bird eyes. He didn't like it, staring up at him, and he managed to push it under the edge of her skirt.
The moon was full, a perfect yellow Halloween moon.
(39)
Loud, harsh music was blasting out of the house. Paper lanterns had been set up along the path, and there was a weird sculpture that looked like half-voodoo doll and half mummified gorilla set up beside the front door.
–That has to be Jordan's work, he told her.
–The music, or that monkey-thing?
–Yes, he said.
She helped him get his mask on straight. Angels didn't really have masks, he supposed, but that would have ruined the fun of the party, so she had a dainty white half-mask studded with clear and pink and purple rhinestones. He had mounted it on a dowel rod for her, wrapping the bare wood in white ribbon, and drenching it in glitter.
H
e climbed out of the truck, went around and opened her door, and offered her his arm. She took it, gracefully, and stepped out like a princess.
–You're breaking my heart. Let's go home, he whispered, near her ear, running his finger along the neckline of her dress.
She laughed and pushed at him. –Behave! It took me an hour and a half to get dressed for this party. We're at least going to go inside.
–Greetings, Jordan told them, meeting them at the door. He was dressed as a priest, in full makeup, with the front half of his dreadlocks either dyed or sprayed red.
He almost dragged Mary back down the stairs because he was laughing so hard at the costume.
–What? she and Jordan were both asking him.
–It's just that I bet Zillah is–
He was right.
Zillah walked up behind Jordan and did a slow turn for them, his arms outstretched. He was wearing a butchered nun's habit with a corset and bondage gear underneath. The headdress, or whatever you called it, was the only thing intact.
–I like that, Zil, he said. He meant that he liked it in an artistic way, and he was also trying to make some kind of overture of friendliness. He wanted nothing more to do with hate and death. His hands still remembered that butterfly convulsion in Mary's stomach, and he wanted the world to be like that, filled with things that were beautiful and new.
Zillah smiled at him, his mouth carefully painted fuck-me red. –Do you really? he said, his voice seductive, slippery and dark.
There were about thirty people there, all together, some of the more-friendly people from town, and a few of his more dedicated disciples, Peter included.
There was the usual round of hugging and small talk that always happened at this kind of a freak convention. There were three women dressed as the vampiress trio from Dracula, and there was another couple, both male, one wearing blue cadaver makeup, the other painted with eye makeup like Alice Cooper, but with the mouth different, painted in an elegant exaggerated black smile, with electrical tape adorning his hands. They weren't familiar to him.
(liar you know them both yes and you know)
The one in the black paint hugged him anyway, and he surprised himself by hugging back. –Do I know you? he asked, over the shoulder of the blue zombie, who was hugging him too.
–No. But we know you, one of them said. He wasn't sure which one. They were a strange binary entity, and he had a feeling that neither of them spoke only for himself anymore. He liked them. They vanished out onto the porch, wound together, whispering. He looked after them, feeling a vague deep loss. He would have liked to know them.
–They know who you are, Spectre said near his ear.
He turned, expecting to see nothing at all. Someone was standing there, dressed in a sheet with holes cut for eyes, like a child's first ghost costume, wearing a straw hat over the sheet with a rainbow scarf tied around the brim.
He reached out, frozen and trembling, thinking please, please.
–Don't, Spectre said gently. –None of them can see me, and you look like an idiot poking around in the air.
–How...
–It's Halloween, he said. –Tonight the world of the dead is very, very near.
–Not that near, or they all could see you, he said, terrified, and where was Mary? Where was Mary? He wanted her beside him again, he wanted her to hug him close, hold him hard. She was captive by embraces and people patting her stomach across the room, and she didn't see his frantic pleading look.
–No, Spectre agreed, the sheet damp over where his eyes would have been. –Not all of them are this near. To where I am.
–I don't want to hear this. I don't want to play this fucking Shakespeare game, he said, and turned away from the ghost.
–It's not a game, (......), Spectre said.
The sound of his name hit him like a heart attack. He turned, not giving a damn if they saw him talking to thin air. –Don't!
–Remember that I'm never far away, Spectre said, and stepped back. He vanished into the crowd, or maybe someone stepped in front of him, and maybe it was a cruel joke, except that he knew damn well that Jordan had Spectre's hat, and that he kept it in a hatbox in a closet with a shrunken head and a bong that supposedly had once belonged to Jimi Hendrix, his treasures, and he would never have given it out or lent it to anyone but its owner.
(40)
He was sitting on the porch, with a drink in his hand, and a bowl of something heavily laced with opium that the blacksmile angel had given him.
–You can smoke it all. I have a shitload of it, and you look like you need it, the angel said.
–What's your name?
The man shook his head, smiling. –I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours.
His eyes widened. He was stunned. This being, whatever it was, could see through his glamour.
–Don't worry about it. Just kidding, he said. It's Luke.
–No, it isn't, he whispered, horrified, touched, knowing that this being had only one reason to be here.
–Sure it is. It could be. That gorgeous thing in the blue is-
–No, don't tell me, he said. –Why are you here?
Luke smiled, very sadly. –Would you want to do this without angels?
–How long? he whispered, beyond tears, and drew in Asian violet smoke and held it as long as he could, in desperation.
–Not long.
–Mary.
–Go to her, Luke told him.
He did, so quickly and so clumsily that he tripped over a Bela Lugosi and a Tinkerbell and he found her in the kitchen, and he picked her up, physically picked her up and ignored her squealing and took her into Spectre's bedroom, and laid her on the dusty bed and made desperate love to her, trying to show her, trying to tell her, trying so hard, and it was over, over too fast. It was over too fast.
–I love you, Mary, he said, and then, an awful joke he had to say anyway, –Happy Halloween.
They came out, amidst catcalls and applause, and his heart was cold and heavy inside him. He was holding her hand, and he let go, deliberately, and she gave him a hurt confused look he didn't have time to see.
Zillah was walking towards him, in his nun-from-Hell regalia, with two of Elijah's enforcers flanking him. –Happy Halloween, he said, mocking, and he drew him close and kissed him, and in one spiteful moment he bent Zillah backwards and returned the kiss, hard, forcing him to feel things he pretended he could not, and he let him go off balance, so that Zillah sprawled on the kitchen floor in his leather and paint.
He looked up at the enforcers and held out his hands to be handcuffed.
Jordan was standing there with a potato chip in his hand. –NO, he shouted, and he swung with one huge heavy hand, and one of the enforcers fell with a bleeding ear and a crooked jaw and potato chip crumbs on his lapel.
–Jordan, don't. It's all right. I'm all right, he said, groping comfort at Jordan, ducking under the hands of the other policeman, snatching just enough time to lean over and touch the wounded man and repair that damage, before something heavy hit him with incredible force in the back of his neck, and the world went red, with Mary screaming, and then to merciful black.
(41)
–Where is it?
He was tied to a chair in a white room with six men and Elijah. They had stripped him naked. He was terrified, and trembling, and something dangerously like contempt and rage was at a slow boil in the back of his mind. –Where is what?
–All of it. The book. Sexual...devices. The candles. All the instruments of your witchery.
He could only stare at Elijah, with no idea what the man was raving about. –What do you need sexual devices for?
Elijah gestured, and one of the men struck him twice, hard, across his face, with a hand heavily studded with expensive rings. His nose started bleeding immediately, and his neck started aching again, already bruised, from his head being swung back so hard. He hung his head forward, spitting blood, and the man who had struck him grabbed his hair and pulled him up t
o look at Elijah again.
–We know everything now. Now we know how you have done these things, these false miracles, Elijah hissed at him. –You have entered into a covenant with Satan.
–I don't even know the guy. Not in my clique, he gasped out. –You probably have a better chance of getting into his parties than I do.
He was hit again, with fists this time, and he felt the left side of his collarbone snap. He made a sound that started as a scream and ended as a laugh. –Where's Aaron? Doesn't he want to watch the fun? he choked out.
Elijah ground out a low ugly sound of rage and hatred. –This mockery will not save you. You started a coven. We know all about Haven. You have been going from city to city with this dark ministry of yours, corrupting people's minds, turning their hearts from Jesus. We know about this, he said, waving his battered notebook at him.
His notebook. Poetry and random phrases and sketches and thoughts and as much as he knew of his own mind put on paper, oh fuck, oh fuck.
He had begun it in an attempt to piece together his own life, to figure out why he didn't have the things others did, memories, a name. And now that attempt at self-repair would be his death sentence. It wasn't a grimoire, but he could imagine what they would make of it.
I could ignite it. I think I have the energy to do that, he thought.
No. That would prove his "guilt" beyond any hope, and it would prove their crooked self-serving point, and it would brand him a witch as certainly as three sixes on his hand would have done.
–I'm no Shakespeare, but I do what I can, he said. Why are you doing this? Do you want them to beat you to death?
He didn't, really. He knew they would do whatever they had already decided to do anyway, and he would be damned if he'd make it easy and pretty for them.
Elijah leaned very close to his face, so close he could smell the man's breath and his cologne and the dirt and sweat underneath all of that. –Listen. It is no longer a question of your guilt.
