It was four days past his first visit that Shine came back. I was in my room, ready to hop in bed for the night, when I heard the crackie yap. Without a second’s hesitation, I lunged for the windowsill and jumped. The second my arse touched the ground, Josie’s was hitting dirt as well. We stared at each other, then scrambling to our feet, took off for the woods.
It was a night in hell. Swatting flies and ants and whatever other unimaginable creatures that were most likely crawling over us, I curled into a tight ball beneath a blanket and tried to force my way through the night. Aside from a few swats and a square dance of twists and turns, Josie slept like a baby. Once, when the sky was still littered with stars, I bolted upright, terrified to hear a bone-jarring screech coming from the house. It sounded like Pirate. Or was it a screech owl? Then the air was filled with the crackie’s yapping and hoarse roars from Shine. Lying back down, I took deep breaths, shutting out everything I’d heard Nan say about the minds of liquor-poisoned men. No runt of a dog would get close enough to hurt Pirate, I soothed myself. Must’ve been a screech owl. And for sure if it was Pirate, most likely it was the crackie who got the worst of that one.
Morning came early. Climbing the black spruce, I sat on a branch and watched the front door. The last star was still in the sky when Shine finally opened it and lurched out through, the crackie at his heels. I waited till he disappeared down the gully, and then some before shaking Josie. She woke like the baby, eyes and mouth opening at once, and all limbs flailing.
“Careful!” I cautioned as she came grumbling to her feet and leaped off the platform before she had a chance to take in where she was. But she was gone for home, any thoughts of Shine evaporating with the morning dew. Keeping up with her, we both came to the house at the same time, yet despite her rush to get home, her step quietened alongside of mine as we opened the door and peered inside. It was a sight that drew a gut-wrenching shriek out of us both and petrified us in its terrifying cruelty. Pirate was skivvered to the floor with a pig knife, his blood in a thick pool around him and his eyes and mouth shocked open, staring at us—as if he, too, was witnessing the horror of his death alongside of us.
I stumbled backwards and Josie began turning around and around in circles, making little whimpering sounds. I tried to reach out to her, but bent over instead, retching out the cries that were coming from somewhere so deep inside of me that they sounded like someone else’s.
“Get Doctor Hodgins! Get Doctor Hodgins!” Josie cried.
“Wait for Sid!” I managed to get out.
“Doctor Hodgins! Doctor Hodgins!” She made to run up over the bank, but I grabbed hold of her arm and pulled her back.
“No!” I said more strongly. “We wait for Sid.”
Surprisingly, she dropped down onto the stoop and wrapped her hands around her face. I slumped down besides her and waited, one eye on the gully for fear of Shine coming back, and the other on the path leading down from the road, praying it would be Sid that came and not May Eveleigh or Doctor Hodgins or Aunt Drucie …
It was Sid. About an hour later. Seeing him, Josie leaped off the stoop and dashed towards him, shouting and barking. I saw the concern on his face as he put together what she was telling him, and then he was holding out his arms and cradling me.
“We’ve got to get you out of here,” he said, finally. “There’s no telling what he’ll do next.”
“No … ohh, I don’t know. I can’t think, not with … ” I choked off, and Sid tightened his arms around me.
“It’s O.K.,” he soothed. “We’ll talk later. First, I’ll take care of Pirate.”
Not wanting to see, I went down to the gully and splashed some cold water on my face and neck. A few minutes later, Sid was sitting on a rock besides me.
“I’ve put him in a brin bag,” he said. “Josie and I’ll bury him out back.”
I nodded.
“Kit, perhaps you should stay with Drucie until something’s done about Shine.”
“What about Josie? She isn’t safe, either.”
“She’ll come with you.”
“No. She’ll keep comin’ home.”
“We’ll talk with her. She listened before.”
“I don’t know,” I mumbled, rocking back and forth. “I just don’t know any more.”
“Kit.” Sid took me by the arms and made me stop rocking. “I can’t let you stay here.”
“I know,” I said. “I just can’t think right now.”
Fear, shame, it was hard to tell which was causing the trembling in my voice, but Sid saw them both, and his eyes pained at the little comfort he could offer.
“Bury Pirate,” I whispered, rising to my feet. Taking a long shuddering breath, I went back inside the house. Ripping off another scrubbing rag from the tail of Nan’s nightdress, I dropped it into the bucket of water and started cleaning the piss, spit and butts off the floor. Tears welled up in my eyes as I started on Pirate’s blood, but I gritted them back and kept scrubbing. The door nudged open behind me, and thinking it was Sid, I dropped the cloth and wiped at my running nose.
“Oh God,” I cried out in horror as the crackie scampered across the floor and started lapping up Pirate’s blood. The doorway darkened and my limbs became like water as Shine lunged in, his eyes filled with pus, and a white froth crusting the corners of his bearded mouth. He stood there, panting, his body shaking like a distempered dog.
I opened my mouth to scream, but it felt like the air had been sucked from the room and all I was gulping in was the stink off his body and the sharp, bitter fear reeking off my own. I managed a yelp before he was on me, smashing me across the face. I fell back onto the floor, my face numbed by the blow, and watched in shocked horror as he straddled a leg on each side of me and looked down, grinning. I opened my mouth to scream, squirming to get away, but he dropped to his knees, imprisoning me with his thighs, and clamped a dirt-grimed hand across my mouth. Smiling a row of rotted teeth, he reached inside his pants and pulled out his dick, as big and ugly a thing as ever I’d seen, with purple veins snaking around its sides, and the smell of rotting dogberries dripping from its head.
He bobbed it in front of my eyes, and I stopped struggling against the hand that was smothering me, prepared to die rather than have that living thing touch me. And just when the light was fading to black, Sid was leaping onto his back, his hands raking across the sneering, whiskered face.
Shine reached back his hand, and grabbing Sid by the scruff of his neck, hauled him over his shoulder and whammed him hard on the floor. Sid groaned, his breath knocked out of him, then shook his head and struggled to sit up. But Shine had let go of me and was now crawling on top of Sid. Stretching a leg across his chest, he straddled Sid the way he had sat astride me and, squealing like a stuck pig, started batting Sid across the face with his purple, swollen dick. Sid screamed, wrenching his head from side to side as Shine continued to playfully bat him in the face, all the time laughing and grunting, laughing and grunting. I managed to get onto my knees and started crawling towards the stove, thinking of finding something that I could beat against the side of Shine’s head, but he caught me by the ankle and yanked me back besides him.
“Lemme go, lemme go!” I screamed, clawing at the floor to get away. But my nails scraped uselessly across the smooth surface of the canvas. Sid’s cries became muffled, and I knew that Shine had placed his hand over his mouth to silence him—or smother him. “Lemme go!” I screamed, clawing harder at the floor, but his grip was an iron band around my ankle and I collapsed sobbing. Giving one last blood-curdling scream, I swung around to chew at the hand holding me down, and widened my eyes incredulously. Coming through the doorway and swinging the axe up over her shoulder was Josie.
“Oh God!” I cried out as she stomped towards Shine, but my voice, hoarsened by my frantic screams, sounded no more than a piteous moan. I stared hypnotized as the silver arc of the axe, glinting in the morning sun, came full across the back of Shine’s head, then fell sideways. A soft g
roan gushed from Shine and he toppled forward, his hand falling away from Sid’s mouth and a growing stream of blood spewing down over Sid’s terror-stricken face.
Retching wildly Sid wriggled out from beneath Shine and ran out the door. I lurched to my feet, staggering after him. At the door I stopped and looked back. Josie was still standing there, her body arched forward, her hands held out in front of her as if they still held the axe. Not knowing whom to run to, I sunk down onto the stoop and dropped my head in my hands.
“Kit!”
Sid was standing in front of me, water dripping off him from where he had dunked his head in the gully’s brook. His breathing was coming in quick, heavy spurts, and his face, cleaned of blood, was as white as a sun-bleached sheet. Inside the house, Josie had dropped to the floor and was rocking her body to and fro, to and fro, like she had done on the day of Nan’s passing. Only she wasn’t moaning and crying on this day. She was quiet, as quiet as sin, staring at the blood-soaked face of the man she had just killed.
Then Sid was stepping past me. He grabbed hold of Josie’s hand and, grabbing hold of mine, hauled me up from the stoop and led us both down to the gully. We sat there like statues, excepting for Josie’s rocking, rocking, rocking.
“We’ve got to hide him.”
I was still, not able to think past the motion of Josie’s rocking.
“We’ve got to hide him.”
It was Sid. He fell to his knees before me, his hands grasping mine.
“Do you hear me, Kit? We’ve got to hide him. Nobody knows but us. And we’re not telling.” He had taken off his glasses somewhere, and his eyes were bare without them. “We’re going to drag him down the gully,” he was saying. “Then we’re going to put him in his boat and send him adrift. Nobody’ll ever know.”
“Someone will find him,” I whispered.
“It won’t matter.”
“They’ll know it was us.”
“No! How can they? No one’s seen Shine since he’s come back. Why would they connect him with us?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. The reverend’ll find out. And then he’s goin’ to send us away.”
“No he won’t,” Sid yelled, shaking me hard. “Do you hear me, Kit? I told you and I told you. Nobody’s going to take you away from me. I won’t let them.” He let go of me and gripped Josie’s rocking body. “Stop it! Stop it, Josie, do you hear me? It don’t matter that you killed that fuckin’ animal. It don’t matter. Now listen here, the two of you. We got to get Shine’s stinking body down the gully. All right?”
Sid was back to gripping my hands again, but my eyes were closed and all I could think was that Josie had killed Shine and he was bleeding all over our canvas floor and she was never gonna stop rocking, never gonna stop rocking.
“Kit!” Sid’s hand smacked across my face.“Kit, it’s shock! You’re both in shock, but you’ve got to come out of it. We’ve got to get rid of Shine. Do you understand me? We’ve got to get him out of there!”
I nodded.
“Thata girl.” He smiled weakly, then taking my mother’s hand, squeezed it gently.
“Josie, Kit and me’s going to get rid of Shine. Now, you wait here, do you hear me? You just wait right here till Kit and I gets back.”
Josie kept staring straight ahead, rocking to and fro, to and fro …
“She’s going to be fine,” Sid said, leaping to his feet. “Come on. She’s going to be fine.”
We walked back to the house. The smell of blood and fear drenched the air, and the room was alive with black fish flies swarming around Shine’s bleeding head. Covering my mouth with my hand, I watched as Sid kicked the axe to one side and turned Shine onto his back.
“Take a leg,” he ordered weakly. “I’ll take the other one and we’ll drag him. Be easier once we gets going down the gully.”
We lifted a leg each and started dragging. Josie looked up as we come out through the door, and seeing Shine’s body bumping over the stoop behind us, scrambled to her feet and ran up to the woods.
“She’s gone to the camp,” I said.
Sid nodded and we kept on going, sweating and panting in the heat. Once we came to the gully we dragged him straight down through the brook, the water washing away the bloodied trail as we went. His boat was hauled up on the beach, right in front where the gully ended, and after a spell of tugging and pulling and shoving, we finally got Shine into it. Putting our shoulders against the bow, we shoved it off from shore and watched as it bobbed gently over the growing swells.
There was a bit of a southerly picking up and the boat would be in the middle of the bay soon enough, moving away from Haire’s Hollow and drifting further down the shore. And perhaps, I was thinking, if a big enough wind picked up, it might take it straight out to the open seas, and nobody would ever see it or Shine again.
“Let’s start cleaning,” Sid said quietly.
We retraced our steps, tossing every blood-soaked rock and blade of grass that we come across into the brook. When we got to the house, Sid went to the camp looking for Josie, while I went to the well for water. She wasn’t rocking so bad when Sid brought her back. Still, she wasn’t talking either, and her eyes were dazed, and as soon as she come inside, she ran to her room and slammed the door.
Ripping up one of Nan’s sheets, Sid dropped to his knees and began soaking up the blood. I kept bringing in buckets of water from the well, and after an hour of steady scrubbing, there wasn’t a trace left of Shine.
“The crackie!” I burst out.
“What?”
“Shine’s dog! Where is it?”
Dropping to my knees, I searched under the daybed and crawled across the floor to search behind the stove.
“Kit, the dog’s gone,” Sid said, helping me up off the floor.
“No! It was here. It was here,” I cried. “Help me.”
Pushing Sid away, I ran down the hall and searched under the bed in Nan’s room and in her closet while Sid looked through mine and Josie’s.
“He must’ve run off,” Sid said, coming back in the kitchen. “Come on, we have to get rid of our clothes.”
“Our clothes?”
“They’re full of blood,” he said quietly.
“Oh.” I looked down at my blood-stained shorts and blouse, and at his shirt.
“Are you going to be all right, Kit?”
I nodded.
“I’ll find you a T-shirt,” I said and went down the hall to my room. After I had changed, I searched through the closet and found an old shirt of my mother’s that looked close enough to a man’s and brought it back to Sid. “What about Josie?” I asked, stuffing my stained garments into the stove besides his.
“I already checked her. She’s clean.” He went outside the door and, returning with the kerosene can, poured the flammable liquid over the clothes. Standing back, he lit a match and tossed it in the stove. Flames shot up through the top hole, and Sid pulled the cover back in place.
I looked around the kitchen. The sun poured through the windows, showing dust motes floating through its beams and casting splashes of yellow around my feet and the clean canvas floor. Clean! Everything clean! Except for the pictures burning through our minds. How now were we to clean those? I looked to where Sid was standing by the stove, watching me, and if there were birds living in this house, then the silence that fell between us would’ve been the storm that they’d still their singing for.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
GOD’S LAW
IT WAS LATE EVENING WHEN THE WINDS SHIFTED. Roaring up the bay, they brought with them the lacing rain and fog—and Shine’s boat. I watched it from my room window, ploughing through the white caps and heading for the beaches of Haire’s Hollow like some ghastly phantom ship, heavily toiling beneath its burden of death, and with the prowling winds at its helm. Fear set my teeth chattering and I pulled back from the window and stared instead at my reflection, and seen how the yellow of my hair blended into the yellow of the lamplight behind me like a g
reat, flickering halo, and I seen what I first thought were raindrops squiggling down the pane were tears streaking down my face. And then I heard what I first thought was the wind howling was the sound of someone screaming. Pressing my face back against the window, I strained to see through the dark, and there, standing on the edge of the gully, her face whipped by lashing strands of red, was Josie, her rain-drenched clothes clinging to her body, and her fists aimed at Shine’s boat. I raced outside and, coming up behind, grabbed her by the arms. She kept screaming and shaking her fists until I got her back inside the house and shut the door.
I scolded her, gentle like, as I skinned off her wet clothes and wrung the water out of her hair. Wrapping one of Nan’s knitted shawls around her shoulders, I sat her in the rocker by the stove and poured her a cup of tea. Her lips were blue and she was shivering out of her skin. I stoked up the fire to warm her, and all the while I talked to her, like Sid would’ve done.
“No need to be scared of Shine no more. He’s in God’s hands now, and Sid’s not goin’ to let anything happen to you. No one’s goin’ to know we did it. And don’t go worryin’ about what God thinks. He seen what Shine was doing to Sid and me. And if it weren’t for you, Shine might’ve killed me and Sid—or just as well as killed us both. And if all of that don’t come across to God, you can be sure Nan’s watchin’ all what’s happenin’ and is doin’ her part to fix things right. She always said you were given to her on account of her being smart enough for the two of you. So don’t think she’s not remindin’ God now, of how it was him that took her away in the first place, leavin’ you behind to fend for yourself.
“Hell, it wouldn’t surprise me if she got a flock of angels together right now pointin’ the finger at God himself and hoverin’ over our roof this very night, makin’ sure nothin’ more happens to you. No sir, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit, no matter how much she hated feathers. It’s other things we got to worry about, like keepin’ what happened to Shine to ourselves. And this is where you got to listen real good. You can’t tell nobody nothin’, if they starts comin’ out here askin’ questions. We never seen Shine. Just keep sayin’ that, and anything else that they ask, act like you don’t know what they’s talkin’ about. They’d rather believe that of you, anyway.”
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