Rachel shook her head at the scowling woman, an outlaw with an attitude, her six-shooter stuffed sloppily into the waistline of her jeans. Her exaggerated stance implied that she was getting a kick out of the whole affair. The little girl, on the other hand, looked as if she were trying to salvage herself from what had been a particularly nasty flu.
Or the loss of a father? she wondered, surprised by the suddenness of the thought.
She bent forward, studying the woman’s left hand, which was resting on her hip. There was no sign of a wedding ring. Rachel then stared at the little girl, regarding the faint smile that had started at one side of her pretty face; a smile that could have been famous for its vibrancy, she determined, had the malaise not been so inflexible.
Yes, that was it. The picture was not whole, not complete. A man was absent. A man who this little girl loved dearly. Not her real father, but someone as tantamount.
A man who had left them both very recently.
Rachel straightened, aware that she was not just pondering that possibility—she actually knew it to be true.
She leaned in even closer, her nose nearly touching the glass. Did she know this woman? This little girl? She didn’t think so. No names threatened to bubble up from the well of her subconscious. No, in fact she was quite sure of it. But still, there was something hauntingly familiar about the little girl’s eyes. And the longer she stared, the more she thought the child bore more than a passing resemblance to…well, to her husband.
Giggling, she threw a hand to her mouth. Hormones, she warned herself. Yessirree, those obnoxious little bastards are already marching en masse out of your uterus and into your bloodstream. Soon they’ll be digging trenches and rolling out the barbed wire like the freaking Gestapo. And when they’re dug in reeeal deep, honey, your moods will swing faster than David Bowie, your taste buds will become psychotic and, of course, you’ll start suspecting every child you see as an illegitimate product of your husband’s virile past.
Christ, she’d almost forgotten the crazy things that happened during pregnancy. She was almost relieved—until she looked at the picture again. The little girl really did look like her husband. Or, more accordingly, like the pictures of him when he was around the same age.
She glanced around to the other photos displayed in the window, hoping that she wouldn’t (but feeling like she might) recognize them as long lost relatives. There was a chubby man and even chubbier woman decorated like Napoleon and Josephine. An older couple sitting at a poker table, cards in one hand, shot of whiskey in the other. A young, shapely woman appearing loose and risqué in a snug corset, garters, and fishnet stockings. And at least a half-dozen more.
Strangers, every one of them. The familiar veneers of tourists, was all. Sightseers turning tricks.
But the little girl...
She looked back at the half-smiling child and was immediately overcome with panic; a feeling of dread so palpable that her knees began to shake and burn with the sudden glut of adrenaline.
A dry knot caught in her throat. A mother’s fear gripped her.
The window display quickly boiled away, evaporating into another image not as crisp in its resolution; time was endeavoring to temper its contours, lull its implications. But time would fail this courtesy, she knew, as this particular travesty—no matter how many years might eventually separate then and now—would never consent to the shushing of its deafening edges. A white crib bathed in morning light now loomed before her. She peered timorously between the slats, upon the infant within. Jessica. Her baby girl. Motionless. Pale. Eyes half open, showing just the whites.
Rachel reached into the nightmare and shakily lifted her daughter from the crib. The child’s arms and legs did not bend as they should. Her head did not loll, but lazed in a strained, macabre way.
Oh, oh…my…God...
What is happening to me?
She tried to shake away the memory, but it remained, steadfast with its accusations.
*****
Heart racing, hands trembling, Eli held the stained glass inches from her face, sunlight filtering through smoky hues. He concentrated the colors upon her wings, then slowly rotated the glass. The effect reminded him of the color wheel his mother used to put in front of the Christmas tree, one of those electric carrousels that swathed the whole display blue, then red, yellow, and green.
He fondly recalled the tin foil angels he’d made for her in Sunday school so many years ago, and remembered how they’d outshone all the other ornaments on the tree. They had been the simple winged kind, thin and flat, as if lopped from a cookie-cutter, their halos made of gold hobby wire. And every Christmas since—up to the one where she no longer gave a damn; had become senile—he’d given his mother a new assortment of his homespun angels. She would always crow, “They’re even lovelier than last year’s.”
It was their wings that had made them special. He’d used real feathers with striking results, having meticulously arranged and layered them on the cardboard cutouts.
Eli stared into the girl’s impossibly wide eyes, then anointed her forehead with the colors of the glass; a bizarre baptism as unholy as it was impromptu. But then, he’d always been impulsive.
When he was through, he kissed the piece of glass as if it were a rosary, returned it to his knapsack, then once again took the camera and brought it to his face.
*****
Rachel stared into the cauldron, watching that nightmarish morning of four years ago gurgle upward like some vile witch’s brew…then spill over the edge and sweep her away.
She’d never told her husband about Jessica; was still too ashamed, she supposed.
An undertow, vile and impeaching, pulled her down. She couldn’t breathe; was drowning.
There is no vaccine, Rachel, reminded the Freudian fuck. I know you don’t believe it now, but there will come a time when those cancerous feelings will seem in remission, when the pain in your heart will scar over. But the disease is insidious. It attacks scar tissue, opens up old wounds, thus allowing the guilt to flow freely again. Only with forgiveness can you suture them. But they will never heal completely. Accept that. And forgive yourself.
“Oh, just shut up, you metaphor-infested quack!” she demanded aloud, startling herself back to the present.
A fat, freckled lady wearing black Spandex pants and a frond-woven sunhat slowed as she approached Rachel. The lady continued on, peering reprovingly down her nose.
Kiss my ass! Rachel thought. Then she felt something warm—a bead of sweat?—trickle down her leg. Oblivious to propriety, she reached under her dress and dabbed at her cotton panties, then her thigh.
Oh God, please don’t let it be—
She brought her hand up and stared disbelievingly at the blood that now stained her fingertips.
Oh dear sweet God no, she silently pleaded. Please, please, don’t let me lose this one, too.
Then something very strange and very wonderful happened: a presence reached inside and reassuringly touched what might have been the shoulder of her mind.
“Don’t be afraid, Rachel,” whispered a remarkable voice. “Your baby girl is fine.”
*****
Her eyes were pleading with him, imploring him, but he just kept smiling behind the camera.
Defiantly then, she closed her eyes, squeezing out the relentless tears, determined to deprive the man the pleasure of ever seeing them open again. But a blast of pain flung them wide. Drawing in a sharp breath, she only provoked the agony.
The pain that had been earlier confined to her back was now pulsing through her entire body, sparing nothing. So thorough was this pain, the horror so transforming, that she literally believed she was melting.
Not the camera! her mind screamed. No more camera!
She turned her head away from the man and began to tenderly caress the soil with her cheek. Then, like some netted beast, she became suddenly rapacious. Grunting and growling, nostrils flaring, she scoured her face bloody as she gnawed feroci
ously at the dirt.
Then she saw the electronic flash wink across the ground.
For just the briefest moment she stopped thrashing, closed her eyes again. She heard another click, then a third. Only able to breathe through her nose, each respiration was carnally expelled. The loamy smell of earth tinctured her nostrils with its vitality, chilling her body and soul. She knew about the soil’s alliance with death.
And then it struck her: He’s not going to bury me. He’s going to–
Her body began to wrench and jerk; some kind of seizure.
She was dying.
Woeful baying rose from the woods. Not just from one dog, but many.
Her spasms quickly subsided; now just shimmers of their former selves.
The man was staring into the shadow-rich timber where, amid the howls, orange dots of light now cavorted like windswept embers. She thought he looked scared, and that gave her some joy. After a few moments, he resumed his picture-taking.
Another flash struck her eyes. She blinked incessantly, but the blinding impression did not fade this time. Instead, the lingering dot of white brilliance kept getting larger and larger until it consumed her. She felt as if she’d been encased in a warm batch of Jell-O, not quite hardened to its full consistency.
The pain now began to quickly bleed out of her, the molten liquid flowing through her body, down into her legs, then finally out the taps that were once her ankles. There was a popping sound, then the sensation of being…rounded, a converging of all sides of thought and memory. This new sensation gave her the ridiculous yet convincing notion that she’d been turned into a bubble.
Then the most soothing voice she had ever heard spoke inside her head, a voice so tender and feminine. And somehow so very familiar. “Forgive your tormentor, for he is seduced.”
“If Donut was here,” she said, her words as clear to her ears as if she’d spoken them out loud, “this creep’d be going home in a body bag.”
The voice had a pleasant, whispering laugh. “For just a little thing, you sound a lot like Charles Bronson. But don’t worry, his time will come.”
“Not soon enough!”
“Not soon enough,” the voice agreed, “as you are only his second.”
“He’s going to kill more people?”
“Yes, more little girls. But if I said that you will pave the road for his eventual destruction, would that make you happy?”
“Sure, but I’ll be dead, so how–”
“Come, Katherine,” said the voice. “Let’s leave the man to his work.”
*****
Eli lifted his angel from the ground, then dangled her over the edge.
Far below them, the sounds of wind and ocean melded to be almost indistinguishable from one another. And in the reaching light, the rocky shore below looked like a gaping, frothing maw of black fangs.
In the distant wood, those glowing eyes flared; bobbing and streaking, ricocheting off the shadows, their yowls rising like suns, competing with the wind and surf.
“Fly,” Eli shouted triumphantly, then released her.
And she did.
*****
Flying, flying…
Glitter and fireflies...
Fireflies sailing off of her, the release of each one a weighty burden gone, making her lighter, lighter...
Goodbye, Mommy…
Going were all the barbed and bitter pieces of pain and loss, the sweet petal smells of crayon marks, the multicolored sounds of silly laughter, plastic bracelets and Valentine candy, her friends and shiny bicycle spokes, carousel rides and Dairy Queen sundaes, dead skates washed upon the beach...
Going were the cameras and pictures and white feather wings.
All the good and bad men.
Memories glimpsed like vestiges of sunlight cast between the twirling blades of a windmill.
A pleasant wind rushing around her, through her. Eroding her.
Erasing.
All that was, all that had ever been, was molting off the orb, the bubble, falling away in a golden, sleeting rain; away into a vastness that was neither light nor dark, just unspeakably empty. She felt like a disintegrating comet plummeting through a strangely thick and infinite atmosphere, becoming even lighter now, lighter–
Someone beside her. Around her. Squeezing her?
Goodbye.
The bubble popped.
Now she was standing in warm, ankle-deep water.
The one beside her had no feet, no legs, but stood nonetheless. Just a faceless form. The one who had rescued her. Her protector.
“Where are we?” Katherine said.
“The Shallows. You’ve been here many times.”
“I have?” She could not remember.
“Many, many times.”
“Why?”
“Because you have.”
“Smells salty, like the ocean.”
“Tears.”
“Tears?”
“Every one that has been shed, and all that will ever be.”
Katherine reached down and wet her fingertips; drew them to her mouth.
“If you do, then you will Know,” said her protector.
She didn’t understand her sudden compulsion, but she had to Know. She brought her fingers to her lips and tasted the warm, briny water.
Instantly, she resumed her fall from the cliff. The wind grabbed her wings, pulling fiercely at the filament, ripping through her skin like talons. Horrible, searing pain. Her confusion was great. She had already forgotten.
Instinctively, she tried throwing out her arms, but her wrists were bound by rope. She screamed and screamed, but the tape across her mouth only permitted muffled barks.
Just a little girl. She began to cartwheel.
Delirious terror. One wing gone, whirling away from her like a dying feather kite. She could feel the icy sting of ocean spray, could taste the salt on her lips. An ocean of tears.
The other wing tearing loose now.
The hungry mouth below, yawning, cocking its jaws.
Closer, closer...
Please don’t let it hurt, please don’t let it–
She bounced upon a trampoline of light—a light of the most extraordinary brilliance and warmth. Her hands and feet were no longer bound, and as she rejoiced in her freedom the trampoline of light imploded, pulling her inward.
She was whisked into an inky, boundless chasm. All around her, as if sensing her arrival, the blackness began to peel away from itself in colossal, billowing sheets, revealing an even deeper blackness beyond. The absence of light did not interfere with awareness. She was observing everything with something much more perceptive than eyes, was experiencing with senses keener than she’d ever dreamed possible.
The sheets fell all around her, millions of them; an exfoliation of the blackest night. In noiseless procession they soared forth. At a great distance ahead, they converged, forming a planet-sized sphere, around which a golden atmosphere began to glow. As she drew closer, she saw that its surface was honeycombed, with each cavity splitting, dividing...
Despite her impression that she was being coerced, she had an underlying confidence that she could stop and turn back at any time. But she did not resist the obliging force—and quickly came to realize that to do so would leave her without subsistence, as it was this very force through which she was feeling-observing these incredible events; was an umbilicus tethering her to the Grandness, bringing her the Nourishment, feeding her the Incredibleness.
And upon that mentation, her Knowing fulfilled Itself. She was in the womb of God.
Nearly upon the surface of the sphere now, she saw one of the honeycombs begin to fill with what looked like molten silver. She instinctively curled into a fetal position—a bubble again—then willed herself into the opening. There was an actual sensation of splashing—
—then she was someone else.
There was a journey of lives revisited. The passing of each lifetime had felt incredibly long, and every one hopelessly unfulfilled. H
ow many people had she been? She did not know. But the retention of all those lives—the cumulated cognizance, the plurality of awareness, the multiplicity of emotion—was unbearably fatiguing. She pleaded to be relieved of those souvenirs.
Now she was standing in the Shallows again, her amalgam of memories fading, fading...
But there still remained the Knowing.
“You see,” her protector explained, “your tears are here, as well.”
“Why did we come here?”
“So that you may Know, if you wish.”
“But…I’ll forget, won’t I?”
“Perhaps.”
“So, why keep bringing me back?”
“Because there will be a time when you will not forget, and that will be your salvation.”
“When will that time be?”
“I am not the keeper of that key.”
“Who is?”
“Your tears have already shown you.”
A bubble again. Her Knowing burst from her into countless radiant shards of silver, tumbling away in all directions, end over jagged end. Away.
Disappearing...
But she wanted to keep the Knowing.
...disappearing...
Goodbye.
A warm, tight place now.
Something began to beat within the orb. Something wonderful.
“Where are we now?”
“The road I mentioned,” said her protector. “The one you will pave.”
The beating grew louder, absorbing the bubble and all transient memories left unshed. She peered within herself and saw the tiny pounding heart.
“Who will I be this time?” she said.
That whispering laugh again. “Hmmm, I wonder.”
As she withdrew ever inward, she saw the second heart; as tiny as her own, and beating just as ferociously.
“Wait!” she called out. “There’s somebody else in here!”
Her protector’s voice was distant now, but no less playful. “Yes, there is.”
…disappearing…
Goodbye.
*****
An internal, dizzying storm. Rachel swooned, the world tilting so precariously that she had to lean against the window to keep from falling. Nausea doubled her over. Sweat beaded across her brow. Bile singed the back of her throat, watering her eyes.
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