Brimstone

by Daniel Foster

  She was worn out, weighed down by the grey clouds in her mind. She’d lied to her parents, left a false trail to mislead them, and then she’d run away from New Jersey on her own. She’d been accosted by all manner of vagrants and unshaven, sweating drunkards on her way. Her luggage had been stolen at a Maryland train station, her money and even her favorite hat disappeared as she tried to sleep in a dingy Pennsylvania inn. The hat made her saddest of all. It was modest by modern standards, but with a wide white brim, and a bright blue ribbon which trailed behind her in a breeze. She missed the hat because it had made her feel free. Mostly, though, she missed the hat because it had belonged to Charity.

  I wish you were here.

  Molly’s face crumpled. She traced a finger down Garret’s neck, willing him to awaken, take her in those thin, corded blacksmith arms of his and tell her it would be okay. Or say nothing at all, just hold her and not let go. Not now, not ever.

  But she knew he would not be able to move, even if he awoke. His back was torn to shreds, deep lacerations as if somebody had been trying to skin him alive. Where his skin was intact, it was a mass of dark, angry bruises.

  She’d managed to get Garret into the house, but he was out of his head, and she knew she wasn’t going to be able to get him farther than her father’s study, so she directed him onto the bearskin rug before he collapsed. He was such a mess of blood and cuts that she had been afraid to cover him up. She had lit a fire, gotten it roaring to keep him warm, and ridden to find Dr. Grey, who had come quickly and without comment. He had acted strangely about the ordeal. Joseph Bendetti was with him, and insisted on coming, too. Grey had worked quickly, cleaning, stitching, and bandaging Garret’s wounds without a word. Joseph stood to the side and starred daggers at Grey as if expecting him to try something terrible.

  Molly didn’t know much about medicine, but she knew Garret was in a very bad way, and she was too spent and worried for him to give much thought to Grey and Joseph’s odd behavior. Now she and Garret were alone, as they had been for hours. Grey had said not to cover Garret’s injured back. So he lay there in the firelight. She had tried to stop tracing his small form with her eyes. His legs were sinuous and thin, but tight even in rest, as were his buttocks and back in the orange light. She scooted closer to him and laid a hand on the back of his neck. She told herself it wasn’t sexual. She just wanted to feel his warmth, to know he was alive.

  As badly as she wanted him to sit up and hold her, she knew he could not. She bit her lip and ran her fingertips down his side, carefully avoiding the bruises and stitched-up rips that covered his back. Her poor, frustrated Garret had been beaten within an inch of his life, and she suspected her father had everything to do with it. That brought a well of nasty feelings up inside her that she didn’t know what to do with.

  “Garret,” she whispered as she kissed the back of his neck. “Please hold me.”

  To her surprise, he groaned and started to turn over in his sleep. “Garret!” she squeaked, reaching for him here and there to try to stop him, but everywhere she reached was an injury she didn’t want to touch. He settled to his back and his face scrunched in pain.

  Oh god why did I do that? She put one hand over her mouth and laid the other on his forehead as if he might suddenly flare into fever.

  His brow relaxed at her touch. His face settled. Peace at her touch. It was childlike and trusting. She didn’t understand why he trusted her that way. He didn’t seem to trust anyone else. If he knew what she had done to the last person who trusted her, surely she would lose him. It was her worst fear. Guilt washed over her.

  Please hold me, Garret, she begged silently.

  As if in response, Garret groaned again and squeezed his eyes. He was about to wake. She had to say it now, before he could hear her. Keeping one hand on his forehead, she placed the other on his warm chest, and felt his slow, solid heartbeat. She leaned close and whispered in his ear.

  “Garret, I love you. I have to tell you something. I—”

  His eyes opened halfway, and awareness crept into them, bringing light and life back to the blacksmith who was always dirty with coal dust. She stayed close to watch him come back into his eyes, like watching a small sunrise. The first thing he became aware of was her. When he saw her, he didn’t give the drowsy half smile she expected. Instead, his face broke as if the weight of the world had slid off of him, as though the person he loved most in the world was dead, and now miraculously returned to him, alive.

  “Molly,” he said. “You came back.”

  She smiled and watched him, recording everything he said and did in her memory.

  “You came back,” he repeated, then torn body be damned, he sat up and pulled her onto himself and kissed her. The kiss went on and on, passionate and strong. She felt him give himself to it, to her. It was nearly overwhelming, holding her with every ounce of his strength, but not hurting her, his rough hands caressing her neck and back, pressing her into his warm body.

  She went with it, allowing him to hold her up and hem her in. He held her as if she was all that existed in the world. As if she was the only thing that mattered, and she leaned on it, surrendered to the kiss. One of his arms, twice as strong as she remembered, closed tighter around her. With the other, he supported them both as he turned over, laying her softly beneath himself on the bearskin rug.

  He laid his warm weight down atop her and began to kiss her neck and chest. Despite how tough and strong as his hands were, his lips were gentle as he laid them on her. Once, then twice, she felt a warm tear fall from him onto her skin. He gripped her tightly then, not painfully, but firmly, possessively. She couldn’t have resisted his strength if she wanted. But she didn’t want.

  As he kissed her all over, she felt their spirits mingle, reaching for one another, straining to lace fingers through her dress. He slid his hands down her back, removing buttons, tearing fabric if it resisted, yet it was all smooth, one fluid motion, as if he’d been waiting to be with her all his life.

  Her dress loosened, and he bared her breasts in the fire light, his nose and lips touching, his tongue caressing. She inhaled as he fondled her, body, heart, and soul. She ran her hands through his hair, surprised at the softness of his dark locks.

  With a simple tug, he pulled her dress in two down her front, her panties following just as easily. She hated for him to move away, even for the moment of removing her clothing, but then he laid his nakedness on hers, and their warmth joined. As he kissed her, he slid his hand down the small of her back, under her buttocks, and pulled her legs apart.

  His entry into her took her breath. Garret went gently, but with a firmness that made her grip handfuls of his hair.

  That was when it all changed. One second he was loving her tenderly. The next second, something took hold of his dark eyes, coming up from a place Molly had seen once before. But that was long ago, and it had not been from Garret. Molly shrank, but his iron hand pulled her arms above her head, stretching her in a way that would have been pleasurable a moment before. He pushed deeper into her.

  “Garret,” she whispered uncertainly.

  He continued to hold her wrists to the floor. Oh God, she’d seen that look before, but not from him. How can this be happening? She was scared. He was pressing too hard on her wrists.

  “Garret, you’re hurting me!”

  The statement seemed to bewilder him. He released the pressure on her wrists and the look faded from his eyes, leaving confusion. “Molly? What’s wrong?” He backed out of her.

  His eyes went from hers to her wrist, which she was holding to her breast. She watched all the color drain from his face as he realized he’d hurt her. The pain wasn’t bad, but that didn’t matter. He was horrified. He backed away from her on all fours, eyes still on her wrist.

  He looked down at the rug. He started panting, started hyperventilating. “Oh God I’m sorry. Oh Jesus.” It came out as a whimper.

  Molly wasn’t sure what was going on, but it was confirming some long
held suspicions in her mind. A few suspicions about Garret, but mostly about someone else. He sat on his bare butt in a dejected slump and burst into tears. “Oh Jesus, Molly, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Garret,” she said. “I’m alright. You stopped as soon as I said so.”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. He was crying like a heartbroken child.

  She held out her wrists. “See, I’m okay.”

  He didn’t look.

  Molly eased to her knees and reached out to him. His bruised chest was heaving.

  “It’s okay, Garret.”

  He had his head down, but when she touched him, the effect was electric. “Don’t touch me!” He scrambled away on all fours like a wild animal. The bruises and stitches all over him glared in the firelight as he scurried away to hide in the dark.

  Molly sat for a moment, getting control of her breathing. He hadn’t said it aggressively or in any way that made her fear he might hurt her. In fact, it seemed rather the opposite.

  Garret was banging his way through the dark. She heard her father’s stool scoot when he crashed into it, then she heard a solid thud which was probably his head and her father’s desk. She winced for him. Eventually she heard him stop moving off to her left. He’d probably boxed himself into the corner. He sobbed like a child.

  “I’m so sorry, Molly,” she heard again.

  Gingerly, she went after him. She found him in the corner, curled up in the fetal position. She sat down beside him, and after a moment of tensing up, he turned over and hugged her naked body to his own. He kissed her wrists and wet them with his tears. He reached up to the wingback chair in front of them and pulled down the thick afghan that hung over the back of it. He wrapped her in it to keep her warm, and then held her. She ran her hands over the stitches and swollen bruises on his back and tried to reassure him, but it took a long, long time for his tears to settle. It took her even longer to get him to wrap the afghan around himself too, to stop his shivering.

  Minutes passed into hours. Hours passed into nothing. Neither of them spoke. Eventually he fell into the exhausted, death-like sleep of the badly injured.

  * * *

  Hours later, Molly slipped into the woods. She’d left Garret alone in the house, asleep on her bedroom floor. She hated to leave him, but she had no choice. At least she’d left him warm and well-fed. He’d eaten like a ravenous wolf.

  He refused to sleep in her bed. With his back as torn as it was, she wanted him to lie somewhere soft. She’d wheedled until he’d firmly refused, “No, Molly.” He hadn’t looked her in the eyes when he’d said it. She knew what he was thinking. He was afraid of hurting her again. But she knew it hadn’t been him. She didn’t know how, and she pretended she didn’t know why, but she knew who had pinned her to the floor.

  So, after Garret had eaten and fallen asleep again, she stole away into the night. On her way out the back door, she reached up and retrieved her coat, and the other furry article she had hung there earlier. She turned it over in her hands as she descended into the woods. It was too dark to see it now, but she had seen it clearly enough when Garret arrived. She didn’t know for certain what it was or how it worked, but she had a theory about that, too.

  Theories, however, were not enough. She wanted answers. Her chin quivered. She wanted to fling the furry thing away, run back to her house and sleep on the floor in Garret’s arms, but she pressed on, deeper into an older part of the forest. She had to do it, for him. She had to try.

  She was searching for a particular place. She had never been to the place before, and she didn’t know what it would look like, but she knew what it would feel like when she found it. It took her more than an hour to do so, but she let her heart be her guide, and it directed her unerringly.

  Molly was tired, cold, and her clothes were muddied by the time she found the right place. It wasn’t overhung with sinister moss, nor was it littered with the bones of dead animals, nor was it blacker than a nightmare. It was, quite simply, lonely.

  It was a small glade at the bottom of the oldest part of the forest, barely as big around as her family’s galley and den combined. But it was the right place because it was forsaken. It felt as if nothing had ever lived there. As if the glade had gone unnoticed since before the first animals came to these mountains. As if no warm heartbeat, save her own, had ever stepped into it.

  The glade was bare and empty of all but some weeds, and there, she knew, she would find what she was looking for. Molly stood in the wan moonlight and scanned the wall of trees rising above her. She began to feel a presence. It was here, somewhere.

  “Why are you doing this?” she whispered.

  There was no answer. No wind. Only silence.

  “Please, just leave him alone. You’re hurting him so.”

  To her left, Molly thought she heard something. She turned. The open glade ended in dark trees. Guilt rose up in her again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But hurting him won’t make it better. It won’t help anything.”

  The presence had shifted. It was now on the other side of the clearing. It had moved a hundred yards in a span of heartbeats, and it had done so in perfect silence. Molly pressed on, though her guts had turned to water.

  “Please, just leave Garret alone.” She extended her hand, from which dangled a long loop of fur. An animal pelt, a wolf pelt, as best she could tell. “Here. I’ve brought it back to you. You can…”

  Molly trailed off. She sensed growing hostility. It was colder than the night air. Hostility was to be expected, but not in this manner. The presence was angered, offended. It didn’t understand what she was trying to offer. It thought… that she was taunting it?

  Molly dropped the pelt in the weeds and started trying to soothe, but its fury only built. “I’m sorry. I misunderstood. I didn’t mean—”

  Molly spun and cried out in fear, but it was too late. It was upon her, swift and final as a black avalanche. There was nothing she could have done.

  Chapter 16

  Garret snapped awake. The edges of a piercing scream were just escaping his ears. He sat up, pushing off the layers of blankets Molly have given him. His back punished him for the motion. He reached around and felt the bandages placed there by Dr. Grey, who had been eager to help, according to Molly, but had also been too ashamed to look anyone in the eye while he did so. Joseph Bendetti had been there too, apparently. None the worse for wear.

  What’s wrong with this town?

  Garret came to his knees. “Molly?”

  No response.

  Garret forced himself to his feet. He hurt all over. “Molly, answer me.”

  He leaned against her bed. It was empty. He was instantly wide awake. He knew he needed to follow her scent, so he began calling the wolfstrap to himself, but he stopped abruptly. It didn’t want to come. Or he didn’t want it to come. Or that part of himself knew that the other part shouldn’t want to come, or whatever-the-hell that meant. Anyway, it needed to stay where it was.

  Garret ran out of Molly’s room, still naked. He’d been without clothes for so long he was starting to get used to it. He didn’t shout her name; he knew she wasn’t in the house. He stopped at the top of the steps and tried to see if he could draw on his wolf senses without pulling the strap physically from where it was.

  It worked, a little. The staircase in front of him became clearer in the dark, he heard a mouse walking along up in the ceiling, and he caught the edge of Molly’s scent on the banister. It wasn’t much, but it should be enough.

  Garret sprinted down the steps and out of the house. Even though the scent trail was fresh, it was barely on the edge of his hybrid olfactory sense. He kept losing her trail as he stumbled down into the woods.

  Why did you leave in the middle of the night? Garret slowed as his conscious mind caught up with the subconscious questioning. Molly had taken his wolf-strap, that was why it wasn’t nearby. She’d left it lying wherever it was now.

  Garret sprinted, but had to keep forcing himself to slo
w down to pick up the scent again, because when he ran, it made him gasp through his mouth, which meant he couldn’t smell much of anything. Several eternities later, he stumbled into a small glade. He followed Molly’s scent to the middle until it was intersected by the scent of rotting death.

  Garret panicked. He felt frantically through the weeds on hands and knees. He crawled around tearing up both rocks and plants, but he found no blood. A shiver of relief went through him. Perhaps it had not hurt her. Yet.

  He sprinted down the creature’s scent trail. It led him to the edge of the clearing where it disappeared. Garret ran his hands through his hair.

  It didn’t hurt her, he told himself. She’ll be fine. She’s gonna be alright.

  He caught sight of his wolfstrap. It lay twenty feet away, crumpled on the leaves. It had fallen there, dropped by Molly. He picked it up and buried his face in her scent. He inhaled over and over, letting it bring him some hope. From where he knelt, he drew an imaginary line back to the edge of the clearing where the creature’s scent had vanished. Then he turned, extending that line into the dark forest beyond him. He didn’t know why the creature had taken Molly, or what it intended to do with her, but thanks to Molly’s placement of the strap, he at least knew which direction they had gone. It was little information, but it was something. Garret buried his face into his pelt one last time and inhaled her scent. Then he transformed into the wolf. It felt better this time. Easier, less painful. The pelt was beginning to heal. They were healing together.

  Now on four legs and covered with the grey fur, he wore her scent like a badge. Garret darted away into the dark to find his beloved.

  * * *

  It took many hours for Garret to admit he was lost. As a wolf, he was never without a sense of direction, but just because he knew which direction he was walking didn’t mean it was the right one. He kept going anyway. For miles and miles he journeyed, because the only alternative was to admit that Molly was lost, and he had no way of finding her. He couldn’t do that. So he kept on until even his wolf feet began to tire, and the shades of night lifted towards dawn.