by Greg Herren
Faye just stood there, she could look at the people eating the woman to her right or she could look at the woman back from the grave to her left. She felt faint. Morgan said, “I did see that piece. It was very hard to look at. I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been to actually be there. I admire your—fortitude. Some stories beg to be told, but it takes a certain guts to tell them.”
A small group came up to Keiko then and she turned away from Morgan and Faye to talk to them. The two women stood, not saying anything for minute. Then Faye spoke.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but I really do need to leave. I have so much left to do and I only came tonight because Keiko and I are such old friends.” She put her hand out toward Morgan and said, “I hope we will see each other again. And I don’t mean to stare, it’s just you look so much like a—teacher I once had.” It was so hot, Faye felt so hot. She wanted to sit down with this woman, she wanted to have a moment of Sister Anne Marie–ness before the opening tomorrow. She wasn’t sure what it meant, meeting this woman now, right before her exhibit, but it felt important, somehow. And yet she couldn’t bear to be in this room another minute, not with the people with their mouths all over Mika just outside her periphery. A wave of nausea came over her as she saw the plates with the pieces of female flesh and organs on them in her grandparents’ house and now she could hear the sounds, the sounds of women’s flesh being eaten.
“There’s a lot of us black Irish girls here in New York,” Morgan was saying to her, “and we all look alike, with the black hair and blue eyes. I’m only second generation, myself. My grandparents were immigrants. My mother says the nuns had to drill the brogue out of her.”
Faye swiveled around, remembering how Sister Anne Marie had said the same thing to her, years ago.
“Would you like to have a drink sometime, after you’ve recovered from your gallery event? Here’s my card—give me a call when you come up for air.”
Faye took the card, her hand brushing Morgan’s fingers. She wanted to stop seeing the slide show that had begun in her head when she’d first seen Mika laid out covered in sushi. Maybe she should have a drink with Morgan now. Maybe it would distract her. Or maybe she’d wake up screaming in the middle of the night again, seeing Sister Anne Marie’s mutilated body in her apartment, her mouth filled with blood.
“I will, definitely,” Faye said, “but now I just really have to get going.” She wasn’t sure what she should do next, so she reached for Morgan’s hand again, this time turning it over, looking at the palm. “I’ve never read one, but perhaps if I get to examine it further—” Then she laughed, a forced little laugh that she hoped wouldn’t actually sound forced and which would lighten the strange vibe she’d thrown over everything with her vision of Sister Anne Marie. It was past time for her to go. Faye did a half wave to Keiko, who was heading back toward them, and went down the stairs as quickly as she could, moving briskly through the store, then out, into the chill air. She wasn’t sure what she should do next. The panic was washing over her in waves. She just had to get through the next few hours until she went to the gallery to hang the show. Then it would all be over. The exorcism she was hoping for would be complete. She would be free of all these memories, all these images. She would lay them out on the tables and hang them on the walls of the gallery. And then she could begin her life, free from all those ghosts that followed her, clung to her, night and day.
33.
The day Faye left St. Cecelia’s there were only a few things to do: go to the biology lab and memorize the contents of the jars there, run her fingers through the slashes on St. Cecelia’s neck a final time, and say a last prayer at the grotto to Mary for all that had come before and all that was ahead of her.
She had said her good-byes to the friends who were still there, and to Sister Mary Margaret and Mother Superior and the other nuns. She had said good bye to the ghost of Sister Anne Marie as she stood at the spot where she had always heard her crying.
And then she had left. Everything she owned, what little there was from the decade she’d spent there, had been taken to the small apartment she was sharing with one of the Theresas for her freshman year. Theresa was going to Fordham, she to NYU. It was small, but what they could afford and they were used to sharing a far smaller space than this. It was their new life, but they were as scared as they were ready.
The second week she was living in Manhattan, Faye had gone to the public library and searched for her grandfather’s case. She had gone back every day for a week and read everything she could stand to read. About how it had been Sister Anne Marie who had undone him with her murder. None of the other women—evidence of at least seventeen murders had been found in the house—had been traced to him, but Sister Anne Marie had.
They’d never found Faye’s grandfather, or her grandmother. When the police came to the house, it was as if the two of them had just gone out for a walk. The car was there, parked on the street as it always was, in front of the house. They hadn’t taken anything with them. All that seemed to be missing was her grandmother’s purse, which she took with her every time she left the house, regardless of whether she was going to the store a block away or somewhere much further. The purse, and, it seemed, some camera equipment.
What the police had found, there, in the basement, had been Sister Anne Marie. Raped, mutilated, her tongue cut out, sliced into pieces, and stuffed back in her mouth. The medical examiner’s report stipulated that she had been alive through all of it.
Other stories Faye read explained that the house had gone into foreclosure and been sold at sheriff’s auction. There had been a granddaughter, who had been sent to the orphanage at St. Cecelia’s in Brooklyn. Her name was not released to the press, but she was said to have been a witness to at least some aspect of the killings, according to homicide detective Tom McManus.
It was more than Faye had wanted to know. Especially the part that he was still out there, her grandfather, taking pictures of girls who were disarmed by his calm demeanor and simple charm.
She’d been safe at St. Cecelia’s. Now she was on her own. And there was a murderer, a serial killer, who was the only one who knew for sure who—and where—she was.
34.
When Persia and Nick had each pulled the drapes on the photographs before a rapt and packed audience at the gallery, there had been a collective sound that had rippled through the men and women standing in front of Faye’s work. When she herself had pulled the pieces of velvet from table after table, the sounds had been both louder and more—she wasn’t sure what the word was—repelled? Awed? A few people had turned and left the gallery immediately, but most had, as Faye had expected, stayed to look hard and long at all the things they didn’t want to admit they wanted to see.
Persia had come up to her after she had looked at the tables and had said simply, “I didn’t expect this. I really didn’t,” and had moved on before Faye had had a chance to speak. Faye wasn’t sure what Persia meant, but she had looked stunned and slightly sickened. Perhaps she wasn’t as hard-core as she thought she was.
Faye overheard a flurry of comments as she walked through the gallery, a glass of red wine in her hand.
“Look at that, look at that, did you see what she had there, in the vise, in those jars?”
“It’s not real, though, right? I mean that wasn’t human, right? None of it was human, was it?”
“Did you see the pictures? The ones in the frames on the table?”
“Omigod—I’ve never seen anything like that in my life!”
“Why would anyone pose photographs like that? How did she do that? How could she do that?”
“Can you do that with Photoshop? Really?”
“What about those jars? Is it even legal to have that here?”
There had been a scream, suddenly, and Faye turned to see a woman fall to the floor. Persia rushed toward her, looking around for Nick as she did. Faye looked at what the woman had been looking at. Oh yes, Shihong’s jars. That
was worth screaming over. But then, to Faye, it was all worth screaming over. She’d screamed and even fainted over all of it herself. And yet, there was nothing that unusual here, really. It was all the work of other humans, and for some that “work” had a dailiness to it that made it absolutely mundane and ordinary. She thought of how her grandfather had explained his torture murders to her as work, work to be proud of. Explained it to a six-year-old whose parents had just been killed as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world to say. Ordinary mayhem. That was the very worst kind, Faye thought. Very worst.
Faye moved toward the door, then turned and looked back over the room. It was different from what she had imagined. There had been gasps and a few stifled screams. As more people had entered the gallery after the initial reveal, there had been other noises—other little shrieks, some choruses of “Oh no!” And then, mostly, silence. The food at the back of the gallery had gone uneaten, but everyone had had at least one drink.
Nick had come up to her after the first hour to let her know that every photograph had sold and that there were orders for more, a surprising number. The installation pieces were not for sale, but that hadn’t kept people from asking, from wanting them. No one seemed to understand that everything on the tables was real. It wasn’t mixed media, it was found horror.
“Pretty grisly stuff you’ve got here,” Nick had said, his look of perpetual ennui shaken off for the moment. “You’d never know it to look at you, you know. You seem so—demure, almost. It’s a little shocking, actually.”
Faye had listened as he spoke and wondered what it was that people saw when they looked at her. Wondered what they thought when they looked at her, her work, and her again. It didn’t matter, really. She just wondered, curious more than anything.
Keiko hadn’t come to the opening, but she’d called earlier and wished Faye luck and impressive sales. There had been an incident at the bookstore the night before, after Faye had left. Keiko didn’t want to get into it, but someone had taken the sushi eating too far. She and Mika had ended up at the hospital later that night. Faye wasn’t surprised. There seemed a very fine line between a sensual display like the one at the bookstore and the stoking of some primordial desire in men that turned women into prey. Faye had shuddered at the thought. She had tried not to think about it, about blood running into the sushi and strategically placed lettuce leaves and pieces of fruit. Tried not to think of Mika’s perfect flesh marred by the jagged tear of teeth.
The opening had been a success. Seven or eight critics had come up to Faye and asked her questions. She’d been polite, she’d been vague. She’d revealed what she thought was useful, ignored the questions she didn’t want to answer—or couldn’t answer. When nearly three hours had passed and the gallery was still filled with people, new faces replacing the original ones, Faye had had enough. She told Nick she was leaving. He didn’t try to stop her. He was in his element. He was the gatekeeper to the horror show and he was reveling in it. Faye wasn’t sure if she should be grateful or appalled.
Faye stepped out into the brisk cold in this end-of-winter night, glad that it was clear. She wasn’t sure what she felt. Empty? Relieved? She had put the photographs of her grandfather’s crimes in among her own art because it was part of her story—she was the one who had survived. She had displayed the jars Shihong had brought her because they, too, were part of her story, part of the endless horrors perpetrated on women. Faye wondered, for the first time in a long time, if her grandfather was still alive, and if he was, if he was still murdering women and cannibalizing them. Would he have wanted to be there at the bookstore last night, eating from Mika’s lovely body? Or was solitude with his victims an essential part of the experience for him? Faye wondered if her grandmother was still sharing his bed every night, still pretending that the plates she set the table with weren’t used to serve up the entrails of her husband’s victims.
Faye took a deep breath of the icy air. She wasn’t sure what to do now, wasn’t sure what would happen when the reviews of the show hit, wasn’t sure if it was all over for her now, if she was free to start over, or if she should start walking toward the river, as she had planned for so long.
She stood outside the gallery, unable to decide what to do next. Shihong was still in town, although she had not come to the opening. Nor had Morgan come, but Faye thought that was probably best. Maybe she should just go home and try to sleep a dreamless sleep.
Faye started walking, walking, then stopped, turned toward the curb, ready to hail a cab. As she put her arm up, she looked into the mass of traffic passing by. And then, several cars over, Faye saw something that made her stomach lurch. An attractive older man with gray hair and a camera, leaning out of the passenger side window of a taxi as it headed uptown. Her heart started to race, faster, faster, faster. Is it him? Does he know I’m here? Did he see my name in the newspapers in the promotion of the opening? Has he come for me, finally, after all these years, when just the memories of him had stalked me? Will I become yet another of his victims?
Faye dropped her arm, stepped back from the curb. No, it wasn’t over. The exorcism wasn’t complete, as she had thought. It wasn’t over at all. Faye turned and began to walk. Back to the gallery, or toward the river, she’d know when she got there.
Contributors
Steve Berman’s young adult novel Vintage: A Ghost Story was a finalist for the Andre Norton Award and made the GLBT-Round Table of the American Library Association’s Rainbow List of recommended queer-positive books for children and teens. He’s worked as editor of the genre anthologies So Fey, The Touch of the Sea, and the Wilde Stories series, which has twice been a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. He edited the YA anthologies Speaking Out, featuring inspirational short fiction aimed at LGBT teens, and Boys of Summer, romantic tales for gay boys, both released from Bold Strokes Books. Berman also is the publisher of Icarus: The Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction, a quarterly glossy magazine. His short fiction has been featured in such anthologies as Teeth (ed. by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling) and Wilful Impropriety (ed. by Ekaterina Sedia). Berman is the founder of Lethe Press, which, for the past decade, has released quality books of queer and weird fiction from such writers as Tanith Lee, Livia Llewellyn, Will Ludwigsen, and a host of other authors whose names do not begin with “L.” He resides in southern New Jersey.
Victoria A. Brownworth is an award-winning author and editor of nearly thirty books. Her work includes the award-winning Too Queer: Essays from a Radical Life, Coming Out of Cancer: Writings from the Lesbian Cancer Epidemic, and Night Bites: Vampire Tales by Women. She is a columnist for Curve magazine, the San Francisco Bay Area Reporter, and the Philadelphia Chronicle. She is an editor for Lambda Literary and her criticism has appeared in numerous publications, including Publisher’s Weekly, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, The New York Review of Books, and The Baltimore Sun, for which she was book critic for seventeen years. In 2010 she founded Tiny Satchel Press, an independent publisher devoted to young adult books primarily for LGBT youth and youth of color. She teaches writing and film at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and in 2011 co-founded KITH (Kids in the Hood), a program for reading, writing, and mentoring of inner city youth.
’Nathan Burgoine (http://redroom.com/member/nathan-burgoine) lives in Ottawa with his husband Daniel. Other short fiction appears in The Touch of the Sea, Boys of Summer, Saints + Sinners 2011: New Fiction from the Festival, Men of the Mean Streets, I Do Too, and Fool for Love.
Lisa Girolami (LisaGirolami.com) is the published author of The Pleasure Set, Love on Location, Run to Me, Fugitives of Love, and Cut to the Chase (forthcoming, April 2013), as well as numerous short stories. She has been in the entertainment industry for thirty years including ten years as production executive in the motion picture industry and another two decades producing and designing theme parks for Walt Disney and Universal Studios. She holds a BA in Fine Art and an MS in Psychology, and she is also a licensed
MFT for the GLBTQ community. She currently lives in Long Beach, California.
Jewelle Gomez is the author of seven books including the double Lambda Literary Award—winning novel The Gilda Stories, which has been in continuous print since 1991. Her theatrical adaptation of the novel, Bones & Ash, commissioned by Urban Bush Women Company, toured thirteen U.S. cities. Her fiction and poetry are included in more than one hundred anthologies. Her nonfiction has appeared in numerous publications including The Village Voice, San Francisco Chronicle, Ms, and Black Scholar. Her play Waiting for Giovanni imagines a split second in the life of writer/activist James Baldwin (1924—1987), and premiered at New Conservatory Theatre Center in San Francisco in 2011. The play is part of a cycle, “Words and Music,” which explores the lives of artists of color in the first half of the twentieth century. The next play, Castle Rockin, is about singer/songwriter Alberta Hunter (1895–1984).
Vince A. Liaguno (VinceLiaguno.com) is the Stoker Award—winning editor of Unspeakable Horror: In the Shadow of the Closet (Dark Scribe Press 2008), an anthology of queer horror fiction, which he co-edited with Chad Helder. His debut novel, 2006’s The Literary Six, was a tribute to the slasher films of the ’80s and won an Independent Publisher Award (IPPY) for Horror and was named a finalist in ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Awards in the Gay/Lesbian Fiction category. He recently edited Butcher Knives and Body Counts, a collection of essays on the formula, frights, and fun of the slasher film, and is currently at work finishing his second novel, Final Girl. He divides his time between Manhattan and the eastern end of Long Island, New York. He is a member (and current Secretary) of the Horror Writers Association (HWA) and the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC).
Felice Picano is the author of twenty books, including the literary memoirs Ambidextrous, Men Who Loved Me, and A House on the Ocean, a House on the Bay, as well as the best-selling novels Like People in History, Looking Glass Lives, The Lure, and Eyes. He is the founder of Sea Horse Press, one of the first gay publishing houses, which later merged with two other publishing houses to become the Gay Presses of New York. With Andrew Holleran, Robert Ferro, Edmund White, and George Whitmore, he founded the Violet Quill Club to promote and increase the visibility of gay authors and their works. He has edited and written for The Advocate, Blueboy, Mandate, GaysWeek, Christopher Street, and was Books Editor of The New York Native and has been a culture reviewer for The Los Angeles Examiner, San Francisco Examiner, New York Native, Harvard Lesbian & Gay Review, and the Lambda Book Report. He has won the Ferro-Grumley Award for best gay novel (Like People in History) and the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award for short story. He was a finalist for the Ernest Hemingway Award and has been nominated for three Lambda Literary Awards. A native of New York, Felice Picano now lives in Los Angeles. His most recent book, True Stories, presents sweet and sometimes controversial anecdotes of his precocious childhood, odd, funny, and often disturbing encounters from before he found his calling as a writer and later as one of the first GLBT publishers. Throughout are his delightful encounters and surprising relationships with the one-of-a-kind and the famous—including Tennessee Williams, W.H. Auden, Charles Henri Ford, Bette Midler, and Diana Vreeland. Most recently, Bold Strokes Books published his collection of strange stories, Twelve O’ Clock Tales, and this fall Modernist Press of Los Angeles will publish his fantasy novella Wonder City of the West.
