Jane Was Here

by Sarah Kernochan

  “Collin.” She frowns, insulted.

  He had meant it as a joke; maybe he has been offending people for so long, he can no longer converse without barbs. The two kids are huddled against the door. The Indian girl looks queasy, probably from the skunk stench on his clothes.

  Giving them a ride was an unforgivable lapse of character. He’s annoyed, his neck aching. He decides to convert his good deed into an opportunity to sow terror and disgust.

  “And you know my name, right?” he asks Gita.

  “You’re Mr. Eddy.”

  “Good. ‘Cause you know not to climb into a car with a stranger, right? I might have been a sexual predator. You could’ve been in for some inappropriate touching.”

  The boy Collin glances uneasily at Gita, but she looks unperturbed. A bold one.

  “It’s a good thing children don’t get me excited,” Hoyt goes on. “But someone else might have other ideas. Or maybe that person would be driving along without any ideas, but just seeing you two on the side of the road, with nobody else around, would inspire this person to an unthinkable deed. And he could seem perfectly nice to you. Much nicer than I am. And you wouldn’t suspect for a minute that he’d be capable of harming you, until you’re already in his car and he’s speeding away, too fast for you to jump out, and then he reaches over and gives you…” Hoyt’s hand pounces on the muscle just above Collin’s knee, pinching it in a viselike grip. “…a horse bite!”

  Collin lets out a high-pitched girly yelp. Chuckling, Hoyt releases him. Gita calmly takes out her cell phone, punching in a number.

  “Who’re you calling?”

  “The police.”

  “Be my guest. You’ll look like a little fool. There’s no statute covering horse bites.”

  She slaps the phone shut. “Let us out right now.”

  Hoyt swerves to the shoulder and lets the kids out at the foot of a steep hill. He tosses their bikes onto the road. Jumping back into the cab, he starts to pull away.

  “You suck!” Collin shouts after him, a belated show of audacity for his girlfriend.

  Hitting the brakes, Hoyt leaps out. Collin dives into the bushes. The girl stands fast, pointing imperiously like Moses with his rod: “Get thee hence, demon!”

  Reaching into the cargo, Hoyt pries open the garbage pail, and before she can dodge it, pitches the skunk at her feet.

  THE LOOK ON the Poonchwalla girl’s face when the skunk turned tail and blasted her! Hoyt is still laughing when he stops off at the package store to pick up a gallon of gin and some Tylenol. Still laughing when he parks at his house. Not laughing when he finds his door ajar.

  He often forgets to lock it. The house, a squat 30s bungalow, is at the end of a deeply rutted dirt road, shielded by dense pines, in the shadow of Rowell Hill. People don’t come out here unless they’re invited and they’ve run out of excuses.

  His mutt growls, hackles rising. Hoyt quietly sets the liquor store bag on the landing and retrieves the .357 Magnum he keeps in the wood box, pushing his door open with the gun’s barrel. Pete shimmies impatiently through the gap and bounds into the house, disappearing into the kitchen. Hoyt hears savage barking, plates crashing to the floor.

  A raccoon streaks out, headed for the door, Pete in pursuit. Hoyt steps aside to let them settle up outdoors.

  He enters the kitchen. Shattered dinnerware crunches under his boots: the coon was probably feeding from the tower of dirty dishes in the sink. Still, the animal didn’t open the front door by itself. Nor did it pull up a chair to his table and peel an orange onto a plate. Yet there they are, the curved scraps of orange rind, with seeds from the devoured fruit neatly grouped beside them. A drained glass of tomato juice, poured from the can in his fridge. A box of crackers from the cupboard, the salty crumbs scattered about. An empty cheese wrapper, the final affront. Someone made a meal here.

  Hoyt’s bowels churn; his skin fizzes; the alien presence feels everywhere, touching everything. Standing stock-still, he listens for sounds. The house is silent. Outside, Pete’s collar tags jingle. Hoyt looks out the window to see him trotting to the woods, limp raccoon in his mouth.

  Hoyt moves stealthily through the house, his gun cocked. No one is there. He returns to the living room, where the front door is still open; the first mosquitoes of the evening whine around his ears. Plugging the bug zap-per in, he fetches the bag of liquor from the stoop, locks the door and retreats to the couch, where he wrenches the cap off the gallon jug, pouring three fingers of gin into a smudged glass on the coffee table.

  Who was here?

  He senses something altered in this room. He can’t put his finger on it, just a feeling. The heaps of books around his armchair are undisturbed; the sofa cushion, which Pete uses for a bed, still lies on the floor.

  Washing down four Tylenols with gin, he looks around for something to read.

  On the coffee table beside his cell phone charger sits a book he doesn’t recognize: a small bound volume with gilt-edged pages. He turns to the flyleaf: The Holy Bible, King James version, printed in New York, 1851.

  He flips through the mottled tissue-thin pages, the march of miniscule verses. Though he doesn’t remember buying the book, that doesn’t mean he didn’t. Often he buys a dozen moldy old volumes at a time, enjoying the notion of all the hands that have held them over the years.

  He examines a gold insignia stamped into the leather. Not a cross, as befits a bible, but some weird variation:

  Then he notices something inserted like a bookmark between the pages. He opens to the marked page. In the seam is a long lock of hair, a reddish brown shade, silky to the touch.

  How long has it lain here preserved and undiscovered? Whose was it? Rolling the strands absently between his thumb and forefinger, he glances over the text someone has marked in thick pencil. The verse describes the angel Gabriel appearing to a virgin in Nazareth. A common enough passage.

  Suddenly, the pain returns: a noose ripped tight about his neck. For a few seconds he is unable to breathe.

  A second later, the pain abates. Hoyt feels dizzy, confused. About to reach for the gin, he realizes the lock of hair is still in his hand.

  Its luster has faded, the strands now feel dry, coarse, wiry. Repulsion fills him, as if he holds the desiccated souvenir of a dead thing.

  He tries to shake the strands off, but they cling to his fingers. Bolting to the kitchen, he stamps the foot pedal on the garbage pail, flipping the lid open. He scrapes the tangled hair into the bag, dumping orange rinds on top.

  The lid falls shut.

  In a frenzy, he cleans the kitchen, the sun setting behind Rowell Hill as he sweeps up broken plates, washes dishes, wipes the table clean of crumbs and congealed spills. Tossing the sponge in the dish rack, he turns to leave.

  The garbage pail catches his eye. He halts, disbelieving his eyes. The lid is lifting, forced up by a profusion of snarled auburn hair, which expands, growing over the brim, tendrils searching blindly for the floor.

  As if it lives.

  Grabbing the pail, Hoyt runs out the front door toward the woods, feeling the hair curl like brittle vines over his hands.

  Dusk obscures the path through the trees. Veering off, he crashes through the underbrush, arriving at the edge of his junk pit: a shallow ravine where he chucks old appliances, paint cans, truck batteries and rusted lawn chairs. Hurling the contents of the pail down the slope, he stands panting, peering into the darkness of the pit.

  Somewhere it’s there, growing. Hoyt kicks dead leaves over the edge, to bury the horror, then gropes his way back to the house.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Marly waits until the congregation files out from evening service before approaching Reverend Crowley.

  “Father, could I talk to you in private?”

  The elderly priest doesn’t seem too thrilled by her request, regarding her through cataract-filmed eyes. “Are you a parishioner at this church?”

  “No. I mean,” she adds shyly, “I don’t go anywhere
.”

  “Are you interested in joining St. Paul’s?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” She has not set foot in a church since she was a teenager, at Saint Anthony Parish, when Father Petrelli put his finger up her. But she needs to confide in somebody, and priests are supposed to help. “Please. It’s something important.”

  He ushers her into his office, sits at his desk, and folds his hands, waiting.

  Squirming in the chair across from him, Marly looks down at her own hands in her lap. Last night, she woke to find them spontaneously soaked in blood again. She had been thrashing in her sleep; there were red streaks all over the sheets. But when she returned from washing her hands in the bathroom—again finding no scratches, cuts, or wounds anywhere—the stains on the bedclothes were gone.

  Her howls filled the trailer as she sat and cried. If she had owned a car with enough horsepower, she would have hitched up her home right then and dragged it into another town, another county—shit, another state—someplace where you could sleep without being woken every single night by horrible dreams.

  Worse, her sunny disposition is being borne away like a bright beach ball in a riptide. Who is Marly without hope? Strangely depleted, sick within: a stranger.

  Father Crowley rattles phlegm in his throat. “How may I help you?”

  “I keep having this feeling,” she begins miserably, “that I’ve done something really bad. I’m ashamed, and I don’t know what for.”

  The priest remarks, with a touch of smugness, “If you haven’t attended church for a long time, I imagine you’ve accrued quite a few sins.”

  “Well, some. But here’s the thing—” Marly takes a deep breath, then shows him her palms. “My hands bleed sometimes. The blood comes out of my fingernails and then it runs all over the place. And then it disappears.”

  Father Crowley’s eyes narrow. “Like Christ’s hands on the cross? Are you referring to stigmata?”

  “Kind of. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Congratulations are in order, then,” he comments dryly. “It seems you’re a saint.”

  He regrets his quip when he sees Marly brighten, hope flickering absurdly over her face. He adopts a more compassionate tone: “I’m afraid our church gives no credence to stigmata, spirit possession, and the like. It’s really more in line with Catholic belief. Why don’t you speak to Father Petrelli?”

  Her eyes fall to her lap again, the light of hope dying.

  FIRST SETH POONCHWALLA has to go buy three cases of tomato juice, in the large restaurant cans, at Valyou Mart. But even after his sister soaks in a bathtub filled with tomato juice, she smells; the whole apartment reeks like bloody hell. Now he has to listen to Gita squawk and blubber from the bathroom while he sits at the computer in the motel office, trawling the web for more tips to remove skunk odor.

  Next thing you know, he’s driving back to Valyou Mart, this time to purchase thirty bottles of a feminine douche that online tipsters claim will do the trick. While he’s at it, he’ll buy a case of cold decongestant capsules: tomorrow he needs to head to his lab and cook up some more illegal product for clients.

  Seth is a chemistry prodigy, with a passion for robotics. In a few weeks he will attend MIT as a freshman, on a partial scholarship. Student loans will bridge the tuition gap, which Seth plans to pay off quickly with the proceeds of his drug dealing.

  This sideline had an accidental genesis. Three years ago, Seth’s parents sent him to one of the motel rooms to investigate suspicious fumes in the corridor. He knocked, smelling acetone and ammonia. When there was no response, he used his master key.

  Inside the room, 17-year-old Tyrone Perguson and his single, welfare mom lay passed out on the floor. Glass jars, surgical tubing, hundreds of matchbooks, and a dozen empty boxes of cold-remedy capsules littered the bed. Something was burning in an electric skillet on the bureau. Fluid from a plastic jug of engine starter had spilled across the carpet.

  Tyrone and his mother had apparently been overcome by the pungent ether. Seth turned off the skillet and dragged the bodies into the corridor, where they revived in time to escape before the EMT unit arrived.

  They slipped back the next day, avoiding eye contact. By then Seth had figured out, from the ingredients in the room, that they were trying to make methamphetamine. He was offended by their carelessness and lack of method.

  Tyrone was in the same grade as Seth but they had never spoken (Tyrone was in the remedial classes). The next time they passed in the halls, he muttered “Thanks” to Seth.

  Taking him aside, Seth gave him a short lecture on lab technique. Instead of getting his back up, Tyrone suggested they split the profits, with Seth doing the manufacturing and him selling. Two years later, when Tyrone was convicted on weapons charges, Seth inherited the whole of the business: an enthusiastic clientele of locals intent on murdering their brain cells.

  Seth’s crank is scrupulously made, and near to pure. For someone of his talents, the processing is easy, though laborious. He takes his time with the volatile ingredients— hydrogen chloride gas, ethyl ether, red phosphorus—keeping his focus monkish, revering the equations.

  As for the law, he long ago moved his lab off the motel premises to a safe hideaway. Sales are conducted right at the reception desk when he’s on night duty. He has some $20,000 in cash sealed up in the pool robot, crawling along the underwater floor.

  Night is falling by the time Seth returns from Valyou Mart with the shopping bag full of douche. He chucks it inside the bathroom and closes the door against the horrendous stink.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Soak your butthole in it.”

  He’s outa here. Hanging a “Closed” sign on the motel office window, he disconnects the night bell. Feminine douches remind him of Marly Walczak. He decides to drive by her trailer for a free fuck.

  He would like to pay Marly once in a while. Or buy her some shiny lingerie that would make her look younger, lift up her flattened little boobies. Bring her a box of fine chocolates, to flesh her out a bit. But Seth knows never to flash money around and attract the suspicion of parents, friends, or cops.

  Summer lightning rakes the treetops as he turns into the “Whispering Elms” trailer park. Clouds clump low; the air bulges with humidity. A simmering breeze balloons the patio awnings on the single wides, carrying the odor of backed-up septics.

  Old Dave Gottschalk, who has lived on disability since he shot one foot off in World War II, is out in front of his Airstream, cursing and kicking the satellite dish with his good foot. Further on, 12-year-old Dom Pizzarro and his middle-school mates have their amps all the way up, quaking his mother’s pink RV while she sucks oxygen and cigarettes in the bedroom, a goner from emphysema.

  Marly’s car isn’t by her trailer, whose front door stands wide open. Through the screen, Seth can see the glow of the hanging lamp in the kitchenette.

  PEARL RUMMAGES IN her mother’s bureau drawer, searching for the orange vibrator. The blue one doesn’t show up well on camera. She has been taking pictures of herself to post on the internet: posing on her bed in a satin teddy, aqua with black lace, and a Ninja Turtle Halloween mask.

  Her profile lists her weight at 325 pounds, which gets more responses than her actual weight of 230. There are a lot of chubby chasers out there. At first she writes back to her e-mail suitors in a sweet, seductive tone. Then, when the guy is hooked, she abruptly bombs him: “Choke on my labia you dirtdumb jizzbag hey loser stick yr sucky worm dick in a blender & press liquefy fuckass.”

  A few of them actually like the abuse. She suggests to those ones that they meet her in a secret chat room, and sends a link that takes them to the homepage of the FBI.

  No orange vibrator. Pearl closes the drawer. Thunder rumbles close by; her skin tingles in the electric air. The faraway beep of the microwave reminds her that the nachos are ready. Anticipating the warm ooze of cheddar over salsa, jalapeno slices, ground beef, Baco-bits, and corn chips, she pads into
the kitchenette. As she opens the oven, she hears the bell jingle outside on the gate, then Pook’s bark.

  It’s too soon for her mom to be back from the bars.

  Someone mounts the stoop to peer through the screen door.

  “Hi.” It’s Seth Poonchwalla. “Is Marly in?”

  Pearl strides to the door, slapping it open. “She’s out.” She blocks the door, a boulder on legs.

  He stands dumbly in his camo shorts and wife-beater, black eyes startled, mahogany skin gleaming under the porch light. Lightning flits behind his head; fat drops of rain pock the steps. “Can I come in?”

  “Your funeral.” Pearl steps aside as he enters, making no move to hide her pink acreage. Let this dweeb get the shock of his life.

  She doesn’t notice Pook struggling to get up the steps, and closes the door on the dog.

  The storm cracks open: rain cascades onto the roof. “If you think you’re gonna wait for her,” she heads back to the microwave, “I got no idea when she’ll be back.”

  Seth slides into the banquette, eyes on Pearl’s back: the folds of it, the burst of her rump below the skimpy lace hem.

  “Smells good,” he says, as she removes the platter of nachos from the micro.

  “You can’t have any.” She sets the plate down on the dinette table and sits, buttocks claiming both sides of the banquette’s corner. Her sumptuous breasts toss about like waves as she shakes pepper sauce on the cheese.

  “Why not?”

  “Beef in it. Sacred cow.” Her eyes mock him. The tops of her aureoles swell above the black lace, like tender pastel-pink sunrises. They must be about nine inches in diameter. “Isn’t that your religion?” she adds.

  “I eat anything.”

  “Notice, so do I.” Circling the platter with one arm to hoard it, she lifts a sauce-laden chip to her mouth, tongue snaking out to snap the rope of cheese restraining it. Butterfat and salsa wash over her knuckles.

  His dick has never been so hard. He is ready to cut diamonds with it, and lay them at her feet. He wants to enter her with his whole self, pulling all her soft flesh over him like a stack of comforters, filling his mouth with her pale pink sunrises.