Mercy of St Jude

by Wilhelmina Fitzpatrick

  He heard a thud above him. He ran to the stairway. The noises were more pronounced - muffled grunts, gagging noises.

  Callum took the stairs two at a time.

  Through the open doorway of Mercedes’ bedroom he saw him - Paddy Griffin, naked, his gut hanging out, his arse a sickly white. In one hand he held a bloodied filleting knife, in the other, a switchblade. He was leaning in slightly, talking to someone on the end of the bed that was hidden behind the wall. Callum leapt forward.

  Paddy turned. He looked surprised, disoriented. “You? Already—?” Callum was on him before he could finish. Paddy staggered backwards. His arm swung out hard to the side, goring the knife into the neck of a man sitting naked on the bed. There was a throaty gasping sound as the man pitched sideways on top of Mercedes, who lay gagged, arms tied to the bedpost.

  Callum froze. God, no! It couldn’t be! But one second of eye contact with his sister told him all he needed to know. As the blood spurted from Farley’s neck, Callum yanked at the rope tying Mercedes down, but then she began to moan frantically through the cloth in her mouth. Her head jerked toward the foot of the bed.

  Callum spun around. Paddy was stumbling towards the door. Callum hurled himself after him. Catching a leg, he pulled. Paddy fell to the floor but quickly wriggled free and hopped up. He was surprisingly agile.

  “Had this all figured out.” Paddy spit on the floor. “Now you shows up. Fuck.”

  They circled each other, closer to the door one moment, closer to Mercedes the next, Callum always with an eye on the switchblade in Paddy’s fist.

  “She was some good.” Paddy cackled. “Fucking virgin, tight and bloody like I likes it. All bloody and smeary now.”

  Callum assumed Paddy was referring to the blood of first sex, but when he looked past him at Mercedes, he saw that she’d managed to get a hand free and push Farley’s body away. Scarlet lines oozed across her stomach. His eyes found Paddy’s; they looked inhuman.

  “You bastard!” Callum roared. “How could you do that to her?”

  Paddy looked over at Mercedes as if to admire his handiwork. Seizing the opportunity, Callum lunged and knocked him to the floor. But Paddy was at least fifty pounds heavier and soon managed to gain the advantage. He knelt on Callum’s wrists and pressed the blade to his throat. Callum was afraid to move, yet his mind registered the smell of rotting teeth and stale booze, and the grotesque sight of the man’s penis crushed against his chest.

  “Three Hanns in one night.” Saliva flew from between Paddy’s remaining teeth. “I’ll get away with it, too…”

  Behind him, Callum watched Mercedes rise from the bed. Terrified that Paddy would become aware of what was happening, Callum deliberately kept eye contact with him, yelling and swearing as loud as he dared.

  “…they all thinks I’m gone,” Paddy gloated, “said goodbye days ago…”

  Mercedes pulled the gag from her mouth and reached for the knife.

  “…and gone I’ll be when I gets done with you.” Paddy let out a high-pitched shriek and raised the switchblade.

  In one continuous motion, her bloodstained hand yanked the knife from Farley’s neck, swung around and swept down to plunge it into Paddy’s back.

  A look of stupefaction spread over Paddy’s blunt, drunk face.

  The reverberating impact seemed to stun Mercedes as well. But as Paddy tried to get up, she pulled the knife out and thrust it back in. Her eyes were wild, frenzied. In. And out. Again and again, each stab a visceral charge straight from her gut and her heart and her throat. Even after Paddy lay still on top of Callum, she kept stabbing at his back, her arms weak, her mouth open in a silent cry. The feeble jabs barely made contact anymore but she seemed unable to stop, unable to halt the movement, the deathly rhythm of back and forth.

  “Merce, stop!” Callum begged. “Let me up. Please Mercedes, stop it!”

  Callum struggled to push Paddy away. The dead weight surprised him. He shoved harder and managed to free himself and grab Mercedes’ arms. The knife fell to the floor next to the one Paddy had dropped moments before.

  Blood was everywhere - on the walls, the bed, the blankets, the floor. The dim ceiling light shone down on the four of them, two still breathing, two forever still. There was no other sound.

  The storm had died too.

  Callum held Mercedes to him, her nakedness no longer relevant. The air seemed to convulse in her throat as she shuddered with each breath. He felt as though she was trying to say something but the words were lost in the spasms that rocked her.

  Very gently, he helped her up off the floor and into the tiny bathroom. Together they stared, mesmerised, at the crosshatch of lightly bleeding lines. Mercedes’ eyes were riveted on her belly, as if their focal point was permanently fixed there. Seeing the horror on his sister’s face, Callum swallowed his own revulsion. Without warning, she collapsed against him.

  “It’s all right, Merce,” he whispered. “Shh, it’s all right now,” he said, over and over, smoothing her bloodied tangled hair until at last she stopped shaking.

  As her trembling subsided, he felt a peculiar tension come over her. With each deep deliberate breath, she seemed to gain strength. When she finally raised her head, her eyes were crystal hard, and except for the smeared blood, her cheeks were dry.

  Callum noticed a small puddle collecting on the floor, then saw the red streaks on her legs. “Merce, you’re bleeding…there…”

  She looked down. As her hands reached out to cover her nakedness, her face contorted with pain. “It’s just…it must be…the monthly…I need a towel.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” Suddenly embarrassed, he found some clean towels and a blanket to cover her. “Merce, we got to get the police and go to the hospital.”

  She pulled the blanket closer. “No.”

  “We need to get these cuts looked at.”

  “No hospital. Just help me clean myself up.”

  “They could get infected.”

  “Infected?” Her voice was tight with fury. “That’d be a blessing, a big old gangrene they could just cut out. Wouldn’t that be the ticket?”

  “We’ll get a doctor to come here. The police can bring him.”

  “Callum, there will be no police or doctor in this house tonight.” She said each word slowly as if to a child.

  “Don’t be crazy. We got two dead men in the other room and you’re cut to smithereens there. We got to take care of this now.”

  “Yes, we, you and me, no one else,” she declared, as if the indignities she’d endured gave her indisputable authority. And even though she flinched in pain, her voice was strong. “I was the one sliced to bits by that bastard. Well, now I get to decide what to do with him. And I say we keep it just between us.”

  “But why? It’s not like this was your fault. Everyone will understand that.”

  “My arse they will! If I ever want to show my face in this town again we got to handle this ourselves. You think people will understand? Like hell! Paddy was living here for months, with no one to keep an eye on things but my crazy drunken father. They’ll think he was doing it to me all along, or worse, that I let him.” Her eyes, briefly young once again, looked past him towards the bedroom. “But even if we could explain that, and even if they did understand, how do we explain him?”

  Callum’s eyes followed hers to the blood-splattered room where Farley Hann lay naked and dead, a senile drunk who’d had little dignity in life, even less in death.

  Suddenly, the memory of that grey-white body, the blood flooding out as it lay on top of Mercedes, flashed at Callum in all its obscenity. “Merce, I’m so sorry this happened to you. What came over him? Did Dad ever, you know, before, try...?”

  “No, never. Paddy dragged him in after he was done with me. I heard him say he had a surprise for him. Dad always passes out with his clothes on, so Paddy must’ve taken them off him.” She paused. “Dad didn’t mean it, Callum. I know he didn’t mean it.” There were tears in her eyes now. “He kept call
ing me Mary.”

  Mercedes’ stomach wounds were superficial. Paddy had used the tip of the blade to just break the skin, creating razorthin lines haphazardly across her belly. As Callum swabbed iodine on his sister’s cuts, leaving a dark russet trail of tea-coloured paths across her abdomen, he remembered removing his father’s clothes when he’d put him to bed. The notion that he might have helped Paddy made the vomit rise in his throat. He forced it back, and then he decided he would do as Mercedes asked.

  Two things occurred to him. First off, there was a good chance they hadn’t been seen or overheard because of the late hour and the house’s isolation. Secondly, no one in St. Jude knew about his visit, and the driver of the truck who gave him a lift was hundreds of miles away and would soon be on the ferry to Nova Scotia. After their night from hell, Callum would take his luck where he could.

  “Here’s how I see it. Paddy and Dad talked about going away, right?”

  Flinching from the sting of the iodine, Mercedes nodded.

  “Everyone thinks Paddy already left town, so when someone asks, you say you never saw Paddy or Dad since they drove off a couple of days ago. When it’s obvious they’re gone, let everyone think they finally went to Toronto like they bragged about. You can act worried or upset or pretend like you don’t want to talk about them. People will just think you’re angry or embarrassed.”

  Mercedes winced again. “Do you think we can pull this off, Callum?”

  “I hope so, Merce. But we got to get organized before the sun comes up. We can’t risk anyone taking any notice of us. And I’m worried about you, if you’re up to all the work that’s before you. Every move you make seems to bring on more pain.”

  “If it’ll wipe this away I promise I can handle it. Just tell me what to do.”

  “It’s not that simple. Once it’s done, we can’t take it back, and you’ll be here all alone because part of the plan means I was never here in the first place. So I can’t come back and help you. I just got to disappear. But I’m worried about those cuts?“

  “They’ll be fine.” She pointed towards the bedroom. “If you can get rid of that, then I’ll take care of the rest of it.”

  He studied her face for signs of weakness. She stared straight back at him.

  There was no time to discuss ways or means or what-ifs. Callum rolled his father onto a blanket. As they started to lift, Mercedes shivered. He stopped. She inhaled a sharp breath and lifted again. They carried Farley’s corpse to the truck, then repeated the process with Paddy and covered them both with blankets and an old fishing net. There was no room for words; the air was filled already with the fact of what they were doing, their limbs moving automatically, eyes averted from each other and the bodies under the blankets, enclosing them both in a final covenant. It wasn’t until they threw Paddy’s things into the cab that the spell broke. The suffocating air lifted. The metallic odour lingered on.

  By five a.m. Callum was dressed in his father’s clothes, ready to go. “You’re still sure about this, Merce?”

  “Yes. But this is our secret, right? You won’t tell your wife?”

  Judith was the last person Callum would tell. “What about Joe?” he said.

  “God no, not Joe. You know what he’s like.”

  Callum nodded. Joe had never been able to keep a secret, especially when he was drinking. And he’d been drinking a lot since Sheilagh had taken ill.

  He gave Mercedes a gentle hug and carried his belongings to the truck along with the jug of water he would wash with later.

  The Chevy started without hesitation. Whispering a prayer of gratitude, he drove slowly away.

  As the town receded behind him, he turned on his headlights and picked up speed, his windows fully open despite the harsh chill of the predawn. Less than an hour later, as the night evaporated into a misty half-light, he pulled onto a side road and drove a quarter of a mile through ruts and overgrown weeds to a bluff overlooking a partially frozen cove. Below, the ocean curved into the rock to form a bay within a bay. Jagged cliffs rose up on three sides. Callum looked across the water to Bay D’Esprits. A lone moose stared back for a moment then lowered its head and retreated into the woods.

  Callum searched the area around him for signs of life. Nothing moved. The trees, even the air, seemed eerily still.

  He went to the back of the truck. He inhaled deeply, bracing himself, then removed the net and blankets. But nothing could have saved him from the impact of seeing those two dead men. He couldn’t swallow. The pain in his head pounded against the back of his eyes. Vomiting and gagging, he staggered to the trees and held on until he finally managed to overcome the awful conviction that it was his life that was coming to an end.

  He took slow deliberate breaths until his heartbeat settled. Returning to the truck, he dragged the bodies into the cab and placed their possessions and the knives between them. He wasn’t sure what he intended people to think if they were ever found. He was too tired and weary and confused to think the deed all the way through. This was simply the only scenario he could dream up.

  Quickly, he washed and changed into his own clothes, tossing those that had belonged to his father in with the bodies. He rolled up the windows and gave the truck one last inspection, then clasped his hands together and looked up to the overcast sky.

  “Dear God,” he prayed out loud. “I know this isn’t right, but for the life of me I don’t know what else to do. Please forgive me and take care of Mercedes. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.” He made the sign of the cross over the truck. Then he shifted it into gear and pushed it forward. It rolled easily to the edge. With a final shove, over and down it went.

  Callum stared in perverse fascination as it bounced off a large outcropping on the side of the cliff. The impact propelled it out into mid-air so that it broke through the sish some distance from the cliff’s face. As he watched it sink below the thinly iced surface, he thought of his father. Not the dead man in the truck, but the other man, the man whom his mother had loved, who had once upon a time tried to be a decent parent, especially to Mercedes. Even when his mind was no longer quite his own, Farley Hann had loved his daughter as best he could. And yes, once upon a time before that, he had done the things that good fathers do. Callum forced himself to remember those times – the family picking blueberries in the back woods, a much younger Farley laughing, carrying a giggling Joe on his shoulders through the thickest parts; Callum and Farley fishing off the dock, just the two of them, alone and quiet. Callum thought about this man who was his flesh and blood, a man he had never known well despite that. That man’s blood, along with the blood of Paddy Griffin, would stain him forever.

  Rooted to the earth, Callum prayed for the soul of his long ago lost father. He felt water on his face and was surprised that the spray of the crash could reach him at such a great distance.

  As his mind caught up to the moment, Callum felt the rain kiss his forehead, diluting the salt trickling past his lips. He looked again across the water to the quiet desolate landscape of Bay D’Esprits. He longed to be there, alone, on the other side of that Godforsaken cove.

  12

  “Callum!” Judith stood in the doorway, her lips pursed in an angry pout.

  Callum shoved the envelope aside.

  “That’s the third time I called out to you.” She cupped her palms to stare at her cuticles. “It’s like you don’t notice I’m here lately.”

  Callum felt the sweat on his forehead. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “How could you not hear me?” Her eyes skimmed the small sitting room.

  The house that Judith’s father had bought them for a wedding present was not as big as Judith would have liked. They would buy a larger one when they could afford it themselves, Callum had told her. “Can we at least get a maid?” she’d replied, extending one perfectly manicured hand. “My nails are a disgrace.” He’d said no, that he would take over washing the dishes. She’d looked annoyed at first, but then
she smiled as only Judith could smile. He reached out and drew her close, still amazed that she was his wife, that he could take her in his arms whenever he wanted. She leaned back to look up at him, her finger tracing his jaw line. “What beautiful children we’ll have. A boy, then a girl. She’ll play piano and take ballet, and he’ll be tall and strong like you.” Her hands and eyes caressed him. “He’ll study law or medicine, and she’ll have the most splendid debutante ball. Can’t you just see them?” He could, almost. He could certainly see why he’d fallen for her, with her sky-blue eyes and full red lips, her soft brown curls that nestled just so against her high cheekbones. She was more exciting than any woman he’d ever known. Besides, Judith had a plan, for her and for them, a plan with a family. “You’re so different from Daddy, Callum,” she told him. “I thought all men were like him until I met you.” At moments like those he could ignore the things that bothered him, like her want of a maid and a bigger house, or when she corrected his speech or his table manners or picked out his clothes. She was just trying to help, she insisted, so that they, and, some day, their children, would fit into New York society. Didn’t he want that, she asked, pulling him closer still so that the heat from her body against his erased everything else from his mind.

  She still had that effect on him.

  “I’m sorry. I was…thinking, that’s all.”

  Judith held out her hands. He started to reach up to take them until he realized she was still studying her nails. “I’m going to have to get these done.”

  “Good idea.”

  She peered at him over the tops of her fingers. “This from the man who thinks manicures are a waste of money? Maybe now’s the time to mention that maid again.”

  Callum could only nod. He knew he was supposed to laugh, but he wasn’t sure what sound might come out of his mouth if he tried.

  She eyed him suspiciously. “Callum?”

  “Yes?” he said, hoping only to survive the next few moments undetected.