Brimstone

by Daniel Foster

  I built the pyre, laid the man atop it, and set it alight. The steel spike was driven, but It did not wait to be pushed from him by his death. It burrowed out of his mouth even as he cried for mercy. It crawled across the grass to where I knelt. It touched my knee, and waited for me to pick It up.

  It is in the box again. I am lost. I am destroyed. I think I am the Devil.

  — J.S.G.

  The Appalachian Mountains. February, 1911.

  “La folie circulaire, Mrs. Malvern. My therapies will require a minimum of two months, probably more.” Dr. Goldblume said it with the weary annoyance of a man who is not accustomed to repeating himself. “My terms are non-negotiable. You knew this before you agreed to meet with me.”

  He was a tall man, professional, American in appearance and manner, but with an odd accent that came and went. A long fought weariness lingered behind his eyes, but it was a weariness which seemed only to have battle-hardened him, and it lent an oppressive gravity to his intelligence. Mrs. Malvern tried not to squirm under his grey eyes.

  Even as she drew a breath to object, he cut her off with a knife-like hand gesture.

  “I will not have my therapies interrupted any more than I will have my methods questioned. You must either accept or deny my services on these terms.”

  With anyone else, in any other situation, Mrs. Malvern would have heard a battle trumpet in his words and roused herself to the attack. But not now. Now she was nervous. Afraid. She was afraid for her daughter, Charity. This had seemed like the proper course, as she had corresponded with Dr. Goldblume, but now that she sat across the desk from him, her reluctance had blossomed. Perhaps that was why she had chosen to meet with Goldblume and his assistant in her husband’s study. Perhaps some of her husband’s presence had clung to his chair and would settle on her as she sat behind the acres of polished wood and gold pens and stacks of vellum.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but forgot what she was going to say before she began. She felt terribly off balance, vulnerable, rendered naked by her worry. She hated Goldblume and his toady assistant for the way they were looking down on her. She hated Charity for placing her in this position. She hated her husband for leaving her alone with these horrible feelings, and this terrible decision, and this whole god-awful mess of parenthood in which she blundered about, reaching out in the dark only to be stabbed, and to stab back out of anger and hurt. She could never feel certain of herself, no matter how hard she tried. She could never understand the child she wanted so desperately to save. Or maybe she just wanted Charity to listen.

  Yes, she hated them all. But most of all, Colleen Malvern hated herself.

  “At least I tried, Powell,” she whispered into her handkerchief.

  “I didn’t catch that,” Goldblume said tiredly, assuming she’d meant the mutter for him.

  She didn’t want to wipe the perspiration off her forehead for fear she look even more desperate than she already felt, but it was either that or have it in her eyes, so she pulled out her handkerchief and dabbed as primly as possible. The cloth in her face gave her a moment to collect her thoughts.

  She’d seen her husband use this position so many times before, looking down across the polished wood, with the leather wings of his chair rising up behind him like a monarch’s throne. The person, or in this case people, on the other side of the desk should have been unable to do anything but respect her. Yet she knew they did not. She sat as tall as her diminutive frame allowed, and spoke with the same clipped tone she used when she spoke to the servants, but Dr. Goldblume and his assistant didn’t seem to notice her authority. Not as if they resented it, but as if it didn’t exist in their world.

  “Must it be so long?” she asked, making sure to use a slightly demanding tone. Goldblume’s scant patience evaporated.

  “At this point, she is more feral animal that female human, Mrs. Malvern. If you did not wish her to undergo such a severe therapy, perhaps you should have thought better of your treatment of her.”

  Mrs. Malvern retorted, “What else could I do? You know what she did to the town’s square! She might have hurt someone, or herself. I had to be contentious and think of everyone’s best interests, including Charity’s!”

  Goldblume actually sneered at her. “I’m touched by your selflessness.”

  Mrs. Malvern stood to her full and unimpressive height. “How dare you!”

  Goldblume stood, towering over her. She hated him for it. “This meeting is over,” he said. He leaned in. “No one else can save your daughter, but you, madam, are wasting my time. My assistant and I are departing. You have three seconds to decide whether we are departing with your daughter, to heal her, or departing without her, to leave her to psychological decay until she destroys herself and you with her.”

  Mrs. Malvern was speechless. No one had ever spoken to her in such a manner. She didn’t know how to process it. With supreme effort, Goldblume forced himself to sit and put on a softer expression, though it looked about to tear his face, as if he’d just fought his way into a shirt three sizes too small.

  “The duration is unavoidable,” he said quietly. “You may recall, madam, from our early correspondence, I feared this eventuality.” He lifted his shoulders. “We may never know the exact nature of your daughter’s condition, but we can repair it. Unfortunately, the therapies will be most intense, so they cannot be rushed, if you want your daughter returned to you in one piece, of course.”

  After that remark, Goldblume just sat there boring holes in her with his eyes, as if that had been a perfectly acceptable thing to say. She wanted to scream at them, order them out of her house, decry the horribly flippant way in which Goldblume had just referenced her daughter. She thought about doing it. She yearned to do it.

  But what then would she do with Charity?

  After the tragedy in the town’s square, Charity had become so belligerently violent, even trying to strike Mrs. Malvern, that she had been forced to keep Charity under lock and key for her own safety. She’d boarded up the windows, and she’d even removed all sharp objects from Charity’s bedroom. After two months of being locked away, it took three servants to deliver Charity’s meals without her escaping. Mrs. Malvern’s position was desperate. This could not continue. Without Goldblume and his radical therapies, what options remained?

  The smaller, rounder man beside Goldblume hadn’t said a word since they’d shut the study doors to keep anyone from overhearing. What was his name again, Brokel? Brickel? She wasn’t sure. She only knew that he had never combed his hair in his life, had a slight reek of body odor, and his eyes protruded whenever he looked at something he liked.

  She grasped for control, shoved her voice to a bark without meaning too. “I want progress reports every day.”

  Goldblume set his hands in his lap as if he were laying out surgical knives. “Madam. This has already been discussed. Thoroughly. Neither I nor my assistant can be troubled to leave. Neither do our procedures suffer anyone else to interrupt. Those were the terms from the beginning.”

  “Well I’m changing the terms!”

  Goldblume took a long slow breath. His face didn’t change at all. “No. You are not. You will not come to us and no one will go to you. I will not explain this again. Everything will proceed as I have outlined, or it will not proceed at all.”

  “But—”

  “Period.” He ended the word with a look which closed even Mrs. Malvern’s mouth. She thought about screaming at them again as sweat rolled down her neck. She dropped her hands behind the desk so Goldblume wouldn’t see them shaking. She wanted to tell them how wrong they were, and how useless their new therapies were. She wanted to slam the massive front double-doors in their faces. She wanted to feel the solid thud, hear the resounding boom, shutting these men away from herself and her poor daughter forever. But then she would have nowhere else to turn.

  Seconds ticked away and the three of them sat in silence. Seconds turned into a minute. Then two. Then three. Mrs. Malvern reach
ed into a drawer, pulled out a key to Charity’s bedroom, and slid it across the desk.

  She lingered there for a moment, her finger still on the key, pinning it to the wood. Then she took her finger away. Eventually, there would be nothing in her life she would regret more than that simple action. The memory of it—lifting her finger off the small piece of brass—would haunt her nightmares to the end of her days.

  Chapter 4

  Journal Entry

  Volterra Italy, January 30 1906

  I have tried every manner of poison and potion. It fears neither fire nor blade nor bullet. I have abandoned science and turned to alchemy, to religion. I have considered witchcraft.

  It is gone again. Each time It takes someone new, Its strength grows by an order of magnitude. It is learning, finding what It needs quickly now, choosing a more compatible host. I cry out to deities forgotten for a thousand years, though I know they could not hear me above the screams of all those I have killed to drive It from them.

  It will allow me to hold It in my hands for hours now. I think It enjoys my warmth.

  — J.S.G.

  The Appalachian Mountains. February, 1911.

  Consciousness was slow to return to Charity. Her memory was even slower. Someone groaned. It was probably her. A latent fear lay within her, but she couldn’t remember why. She blinked, but the images didn’t make sense; above her was a ceiling, which meant she was lying down, but the ceiling wasn’t hers. She remembered going to sleep in her bed, so angry at Mother she couldn’t see straight. So it had been a “normal” night then, locked in her room. Something else happened, though. Blurry images of darkness. Struggling, calling for help.

  The wooden rafters above her were cozily close. An Indian weaving hung in the corner. Charity relaxed. She was in her Daddy’s thinking cabin. The one he had taken her to so many times when he said he needed to consider a business issue, but when, in reality, he wanted to spend some time with his little girl away from his wife’s constant nagging. That had been before Molly had come into the picture.

  Charity smiled, almost cried with relief. Daddy must have come home, seen what her mother had done, and he’d taken Charity away. Maybe they’d go fishing in the creek again. She’d be his little girl for him, like she always used to. Like she always was, really. On the inside.

  “Charity,” he’d say as she reeled fish after fish out of the lake. “How am I ever going to bring clients up here, when my baby girl’d have to feed us?” She’d always been better at fishing than he had.

  “Daddy?” she said, or something that didn’t sound very much like it. Her head was clearing a bit, but her speech was garbled. Where was he? What she wanted more than anything in the world was a long hug. She needed his arms around her to shut out the cold for a while. While they were here, she could tell him about William. Daddy would understand. He always understood. Then she remembered what she’d done in the town square. She was embarrassed. Why had she done that? How would she explain it to him? She’d find a way. Maybe this time, she’d finally be able to help him understand what was wrong with Mother.

  She tried to get her lethargic body to sit up. She couldn’t move. Cold metal was pinning her wrists and ankles. She was strapped down, spread eagle on not a bed, but a hard surface. It felt like wood. Panic wrapped itself around her throat.

  Then came the smell. Sour body odor wrapped in a heavy, almost dung-like pipe tobacco smell. Also something else. Lust. It was the only way she could describe the smell. It didn’t smell like the organically pungent scent of intercourse. This was a thinner smell, as if a base instinct over which a person had no control was leaking out their pores. In this case, his pores.

  He brought his wide, flat face down beside hers. His grey lips were drawn into a long, fat line. His eyes were more prominent than his nose as they studied her. He wore a hat of some sort, beaten to shapelessness, which perched on his stringy, oily hair.

  Charity cringed away. Her Daddy had not returned. He was far away. She began to remember being dragged from her bed, fighting against the cloth of sickening sweetness pressed over her mouth and nose. The hands, the spindly hands of the taller man, and the cold, fatty, but immensely strong hands of the man staring at her from a few inches away. Now they had her. Alone. Fright poured through her in a cold rush.

  The body odor and manure smell clung to him and his clothing, but the smell of need was on his breath, puffing lightly against her cheek while she shied as far away as she could. Despite the shock and fright, she also realized fright wasn’t the only thing making her cold. Her clothes were missing.

  Charity cried, wanted to ask where she was and what they were going to do, but only three words slipped through her lips. “Daddy, help me…”

  From behind the frog-man came a voice. “Try to rest, Ms. Malvern.” It was the tall, thin man. He was well-groomed and his speech well-articulated, but the tone had a severe brittleness to it.

  “I’m sorry for such a rude awakening, Ms. Malvern. Such is the path laid before us, I fear.”

  Charity’s heart sank further.

  “Where’s my Daddy?” she cried. “Let me go.”

  The spindly man approached her bed and sat next to her. “I’m sorry,” he said with polite callousness. “But your premature release would be in no one’s best interest.”

  He shook his head as if to clear it. “I am Dr. Goldblume.” When he said it, he straightened slightly, as if she was supposed to recognize the name and be impressed by it. “This is my assistant, Mr. Brommel. You may trust his dedication to his pipe, your health, and my directives.” He sighed. “Probably in that order.”

  Brommel brayed a laugh, like a donkey in heat. Goldblume didn’t smile. Tears slipped from Charity’s eyes. She was in the hands of mad men, and her own mother had handed her over.

  Her mother was always abandoning her, as if forever seeking new ways to do it. Charity began to cry, gently. Not the angry tears always in reserve for her mother, but tears from much older and more damaging pain. They were tears of a little girl who spent all morning making the prettiest mud pie she knew how, planning to share it with her mother. She’d gotten her four year old hands slapped for it, splattering her creation all over the portico stones.

  Charity’s tears ran. She had known it wasn’t proper for a seven year old to cling to her mother’s dress. But some days she missed being held so much she couldn’t bear it. Especially when the boys and girls made fun of her in school. Charity needed to be close to others. She craved her mother’s touch. And touch her mother had—harder and harder until she resorted to boxing Charity’s ears to make her stop clinging in public.

  Charity’s tears rushed out in explosive sobs. She hated her mother. But more than that, she loved her. She loved and missed her so badly it was killing her. She’d missed her for many years. So she loved her more than she could express, and she hated her more than she could contain.

  Charity moved her mouth soundlessly, demanding her mother to listen, to come, to take her home. To say nothing, but only hold her and let her cry. She wanted her mother to come and carry her back into the bedroom in which Charity had slept as a child, the small upstairs room with the pink lacy curtains, and then her mother could sit on the bed and let Charity curl in her lap, as much as she could, and cry in safety and warmth. They could stay there together in the bedroom, shut the door to close out the world. Maybe her mother would stroke her hair and sing her to sleep, Brahms’ Lullaby, as she had done on the darkest nights when Charity was a little girl.

  Charity fought the restraints until she was weak. It did no good. Charity called for her mother, but her mother did not come.

  * * *

  Journal Entry

  San Gimignano, Italy. November 15, 1906

  I will kill It. No matter what comes, no matter how many of these damnable peasants I must execute by fire and spike. A thousand more will die if I do not. And a thousand thousand after them. The fools have not abandoned me, they have abandoned themselves t
o ruin. It will never stop until It finds Its mate. Once It is whole, I think It will be invincible. But I will kill It first though the whole world turn against me. I will find a way. It does not fear death, but It will fear me. Everything in nature has a weakness, and I swear, Elizabeth, I will find it.

  Its victim made It strong like a demigod of Greek tales. When I drove It out with spike and fire, It burst aflame and lay there quivering, reveling in Its own strength, throbbing with Its ever stronger heartbeat rhythm.

  — J.S.G.

  The Appalachian Mountains. Feb. 1911.

  Charity flailed again, but weakly, splashing water and chips of ice on Dr. Goldblume. She was woozy from the cold. It had penetrated every inch of her submerged body, paralyzing her with an aching sleepiness. A wail escaped her mouth as her vision faded towards unconsciousness.

  “Keep her down, Brommel,” Goldblume said. “She’s almost out.” Then to Charity, he said, “I am sorry, Ms. Malvern. Hyposhock is one of the best ways to make a troubled mind reset.”

  Charity cursed him through slurring lips. She pleaded with her deadening body to fight back, to scramble out of the old iron tub brimming with ice water and snow. Everything was shutting down. Again.

  “Charity,” Goldblume said as her head hit the rim of the tub with a bell-like bong. “Charity! Listen to me. Stop fighting us. Don’t force us to break you down. No,” he shook his head angrily, trying to shake off responsibility. “Don’t force yourself to break down under the treatment.”

  Charity’s body slowly stopped shivering. The water lapped gently at her chin. She couldn’t feel it, but she could hear it. Her thoughts swam, and her body rested on the bottom of the frigid tub, as heavily as if it was made of lead.

  Nothing was moving. She couldn’t see. It was because her eyes had dragged themselves closed. The only sounds were Brommel’s horse-like blowing, the clicking of bobbing chunks of ice, and the gentle lapping of water. Lapping against the iron walls of the tub. Lapping against her chin. The gentle pat of cold death on her skin.