The Fates

by Thomas Tessier

  After an hour or so the whole project seemed terribly dull to him. He left the office and walked down the street to Mike’s Coffee Shop.

  Sitting at the counter, idly stirring the muddy liquid, he wondered if he should write an article, a news story, on Bondarevsky’s cow. It was news, at least by Millville standards, but what to say about it? One of farmer Cy Bondarevsky’s cows died a mysterious death late yesterday afternoon… Or: Ritual cow murder? …Or: Local cow blows up? No handle on this story either. It was a bad, hot week. Get more facts, some facts, any facts.

  Back at the office he telephoned the police station and, after a brief pause, was switched through to Chief Sturdevent.

  ‘Yes, Martin?’

  ‘Did you talk to Bondarevsky’s hired help this morning?’

  ‘Sure did. They were in here waiting when I arrived. The two Denny brothers and Manny somebody-or-other, I got his name here on a piece of paper somewhere. Portuguese kid. Nice enough.’

  ‘What’s their story?’

  ‘They help out the old man three days a week, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Start early and go home early. They didn’t see or hear anything unusual yesterday.’

  ‘Why didn’t they stick around until the old man got back from the other pasture?’

  ‘They knock off at four sharp, whether Bondarevsky is around the barn or out in the fields. I called him and he confirms it. Nothing unusual.’

  ‘Do you believe them?’

  ‘They looked mighty scared to me, son. What’s in that shed isn’t a pretty sight at any time of the day, and especially not first thing in the morning.’

  ‘So that leaves you — ?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m trying to get a vet from the county to go out to the farm this afternoon and see what he makes of it. Otherwise it’s closed for good. That mess is rotting fast and Bondarevsky wants to bury it now, but I asked him to hold off till noon. I should know by then whether or not anybody’s coming.’

  ‘Uh-hunh. I’ll check back with you then too.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  ‘Thanks, Chief.’

  ‘By the way.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I did come up with one theory.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Suppose the cow moseyed around inside that garage full of junk and swallowed a small gas cylinder. I saw a couple of them out there and that kind of thing can happen. They’ve fished stranger things out of animals.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If she did swallow a gas cylinder —’

  ‘Then it could explode…?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Want me to print that theory in the newspaper?’

  ‘Hell, no!’

  CHAPTER TWO

  High on West Side Hill, overlooking the Waramaug River which flowed through the centre of Millville, was the R. W. Emerson Elementary School, a squat, dun-coloured breadbox of a building that had been constructed a few years after World War II. It had four hundred students, twenty-one teachers and the usual contingent of additional staff ranging from principal to nurse to janitor. The school grounds included a play-yard, a basketball court, a lumpy football field that sloped at an awkward angle and a parking lot. In the school’s entrance foyer was a bust, which had been a gift from Millville High School’s Wood & Metal Works class of 1949. This pasty-faced creation bore the legend: R. W. Emerson (1803-1882).

  At the other end of the building, just outside the rear exit, Joey Pomar waited for his sister, Maria. Why was she always last? Not one of the last kids to leave school every day, but the last. Joey marched back and forth by the door, kicking the cement walk, the overhang of crab grass, a pebble, sighing loudly at least four times a minute. She would come as always, in her own good time.

  Joey was ten, just turned, and Maria was seven. He had to take her home from school every day before he could go off and play until supper-time. Why was she so pokey? Ladylike and proper, his mother had told him on more than one occasion, when he had complained. But to Joey that just meant stupid. Of course, Maria was cute, and Joey loved her, but she was a nuisance at times. He always felt he was walking in a slow procession when they made their way home.

  ‘Where you been?’ Joey asked the ritualistic useless question as Maria finally appeared.

  ‘Getting my books together,’ she answered simply.

  ‘It doesn’t take that long to get your books together.’ the boy said as they walked along.

  ‘I had to put my pencils in my pencil-box and straighten up the papers in my desk and everything.’ She spoke sweetly and patiently. It was a carbon copy of many previous conversations that they had had on the way home.

  ‘That’s stupid,’ Joey muttered. He just threw his pencils and papers and ruler and anything else he had been using into the desk any which way. That’s what a school desk was for.

  They came to the path at the beginning of the long, hilly tract of scrub brush and woods that took up where the football field left off. It had been used by students for years as a shortcut to the Meadow Street-Palmer Road neighbourhood in which the Pomar family lived. The land was largely undevelopable — too rocky and irregular — but it was a favourite place for schoolboy games and exploration. It had a small stream, and in the summer Joey and his friends would turn over rocks at its edge looking for salamanders. Length and a gold band down the back were the prized features. Joey wished the stream was large enough for fish, but half the time it was dried up altogether and wasn’t any use.

  Not far away from the stream was a stagnant old well. At least, the children called it a well, but it was actually more of a small frog pond, about eight feet across. For the last couple of years there hadn’t been any tadpoles or frogs; just a few rusty beercans and weeds. ‘Nothing,’ Joey said as they skirted the well.

  They came clear of a clump of trees and started up the next hillock. At the top the tall grass gave way to a large rock formation, which was the best site in the area for the boys’ army games. The rocks and boulders provided many natural pockets and passageways, making it an ideal place to attack or defend. The south face was a sheer drop of nearly twenty feet — a giant cliff to Joey.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ Joey shouted as he hopped from rock to rock. He liked the spot. You could see Palmer Road below, about a half mile in the distance. The cars and houses looked very small, like toy models.

  ‘Be careful, Joey, and wait up,’ Maria called to her brother as she slowly, methodically, negotiated each step of the route.

  Joey came to the edge of the cliff. He would stretch out flat on his belly and peer over the edge, while Maria caught up with him. He often got down on the ground here and stared. It made him nervous but excited him too. Maria would never come within ten feet of the edge, but it didn’t frighten him. He wondered if it would be horribly painful to fall, or if you’d black out before hitting the ground at the bottom. Joey wondered if blacking out was exactly the same as falling asleep. Sometimes he thought he’d like to be an ant for a while. They could go off the edge and float all the way down without getting hurt. They were small enough. Sometimes he flicked roaming ants over the edge with his finger and tried to imagine the slow descent.

  The bottom was dull: a small, flat clearing before the woods began again. Usually there was junk at the base of the cliff. Teenagers left beer cans, bottles, paper bags and dozens of cigarette butts. Once Joey and a friend had found a woman’s panties. They couldn’t imagine why someone would leave her panties in such a place.

  Today when he looked over the edge Joey saw a vibrant blue light reaching almost halfway up the stone face. A cold wind hit him, sending his hair straight up into the air, and he jumped back involuntarily. What was that? Joey peered over the edge again, just enough so that he could see. It was a blue light, roughly oval-shaped, and it shimmered brilliantly. The jet of cold air was steady but silent.

  Was it a kind of fire, he wondered? No, there was no heat, no smoke — although the blue colour reminded him of flames. Ma
ybe it was some kind of gas cloud. No, that couldn’t be right; the wind would blow it all away, and although this thing moved strangely it stayed in the same place. What could it be? Joey stared with wonder. He realised he wasn’t at all afraid of it, and he was proud of himself. There was nothing to be afraid of. He didn’t know what it was, but it didn’t seem harmful or dangerous. This was pretty. It was always changing, moving, flickering, glowing. It was more than pretty, he decided, it was beautiful.

  ‘Come on Joey,’ Maria called from several yards behind the boy.

  ‘Come here.’

  ‘Let’s go home.’

  ‘Come here and look at this.’ Joey did not want to leave now. He had never seen anything like this before.

  ‘Look at what?’

  ‘There’s something down here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know. Come on and take a look.’ Without looking back over his shoulder he waved to his sister to join him.

  ‘I don’t want to look. I want to go home.’

  ‘This is fantastic, Maria. Come here.’

  ‘Joey, come on.’

  ‘Just take a peek. I promise, you never saw anything like this before.’

  Maria edged a few inches forward and stopped. She didn’t like these rocks and she didn’t like heights, and she was not going to get down on the dirty ground to look at some dumb thing with Joey.

  ‘Jo-eey. Let’s go home,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t want to look down there. You could fall, and then what? Come on, please. I’ll walk faster,’ she said with sudden inspiration. That should please him.

  ‘Just a second.’ Joey continued to gaze at the incredible apparition before him. Maria had to see this, somebody had to see it. He wished that some of his friends would come by so they could see it too. Maria was just a baby, and a girl, but she was at least better than no other witness at all. Joey scrambled to his feet and ran back to where his sister stood.

  ‘Come on.’ He grabbed her hand.

  ‘Where are we going? Don’t go so fast,’ Maria protested as Joey hurried her across the far side of the stony rise and into the tall grass.

  ‘I want to show this to you. It’ll only take a minute.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Some kind of light down here.’

  They came to the path which skirted the stone face and Joey slowed his pace abruptly. Better to be careful. After all, he didn’t know what this thing was and he had Maria with him. Down here on the ground with it, it might be… Joey stopped before the next bend in the rock, which he knew turned into the small clearing where the thing was. Maybe it wouldn’t be there now.

  ‘Stay here,’ he whispered to his sister, but she would not release his hand.

  ‘I don’t want to wait here, I want to stay with you.’ She spoke in her normal voice, which annoyed Joey. She held on to his fingers tightly. ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ the boy said, ignoring her last remark. ‘But stay behind me.’ He put his school bag on the ground, took a deep breath and stepped forward into the bend of the path.

  *

  And stopped.

  The dazzling rich blue light embraced them where they stood. The wind whirrushed around their ears, but it wasn’t exactly a wind either. Invisible, fast, cool, it was like a wind, a silent, invisible streaming movement. The light danced and shivered in a breath-taking display of changes, never still, never the same. It grew from the ground almost to the top of the stone face, where Joey had been a few minutes before. It was hypnotic and hopelessly beautiful. It was blue, and yet it seemed to be all colours, the only colour. The wild foliage growing at the rim of the clearing, normally a crisp green in June, seemed drab and lifeless, an undergrowth of khaki.

  Joey was paralyzed with fear and uncertainty. His muscles were rigid with tension and he held Maria’s hand very tightly. This was incredible, this was something he had never heard of before, and he thought it must be something no one had ever heard of.

  What was that? Did he hear something? Not the sound of wind, nor of leaves rustling, but something far different, far stranger than anything he knew. It sounded like voices, tiny voices, speaking from a great distance, like a conversation, conducted in some foreign language that drifted up from the bottom of a very deep cave. Joey thought, this can’t be.

  Maria worked her hand free from his and knelt on the ground. She brought her hands together, as in prayer, and stared into the blue light.

  How long had they been there?

  ‘Come on,’ Joey said, surprised at how weak and muffled his own voice sounded. Maria didn’t respond at all. What was he afraid of? Was this thing dangerous? It didn’t seem so. It was just so remarkable, he didn’t know what to do. What was Maria doing?

  ‘Maria, come on.’

  ‘Kneel down, Joey.’

  ‘What?’ He could hardly hear her voice.

  ‘Kneel down.’

  Joey got down beside her on one knee. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Look.’ Her eyes were alive with the fire.

  1 don’t know what it is.’

  ‘Look.’

  ‘I see it.’

  ‘Look,’ she said, never moving her eyes from the light. ‘At the centre.’

  Joey squinted at the brilliance. It was so much change and interplay he couldn’t make out anything in particular. Shapes forming, melting, blending, re-forming. You could see so much, or nothing but deep blue light.

  ‘What is it?’ Joey asked.

  ‘Her.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Our Lady. The Virgin Mary.’

  Joey suddenly began to shake. It couldn’t be, but Maria sounded so absolutely sure of herself. And it was the one explanation Joey hadn’t thought of.

  ‘No,’ he said, weakly.

  ‘It is, Joey, it is. Look.’ Maria’s face seemed to radiate joy.

  Again he looked. Could it be? The sounds he thought he heard, the wind-like movement rippling over his body, that miraculous light… He felt small, helpless and alone in his confusion. The Virgin Mary. It had happened, he knew. She had appeared at Fatima and Lourdes, and other places, but they were all very far away and years ago. This was Millville, now.

  ‘Yes,’ Maria said clearly.

  Joey looked at his sister. Her face was bathed in the glow of the light and her wide-open eyes continued to shine brightly. He turned back to the apparition. Was that a woman’s face in the centre, he wondered? It could be… anything. But sometimes it did resemble a face, or a body, but somehow unusual or different. Then he thought, there’s no reason why She should look like the statues in church, or the pictures on Christmas cards. Nobody really knew what Our Lady looked like.

  The fiery blue light belled over them and the sounds seemed much stronger now, though no more distant than before. The wind-movement was faster, cooler and harder, and Joey became more frightened. It was like thousands of invisible fingers now, running all over his body, pinching, feeling, kneading, rubbing in a terrifying cascade. He thought he moaned to Maria to leave, but he wasn’t sure. He felt dizzy and cold and he ached all over.

  Maria bent over and lay down with her face to the ground. Joey could see her gaily-printed light summer dress swarming and billowing with the same movement as he felt on himself. And her arms and legs — the flesh twisted and rolled and arched as if it were a teeming, living thing unto itself. As if a million tiny fingers had her in their grasp. He knew he looked the same way, he felt it, and he wanted to get out, out, OUT of there.

  ‘Maria!’

  He fell down beside his sister and pressed his face into the dry earth to hide. The swarm of fingers continued to crawl all over his body. His stomach was so tight it hurt and he gasped, then sobbed. Finally he began to cry in great, jagged bursts. His eyes were shut but the blue light filled them and there was no darkness. The droning sound of voices was everywhere. He wondered if this was a miracle, if he was in the presence of the Virgin Mary, or if he was dying a horrible death. He wanted
to reach for his sister but the only movement he was capable of was convulsive crying. He felt flattened into the earth, his body filled with the sounds and light inside, covered with the nauseating creeping-crawling thing outside. Inside — yes, he thought with terror, the noise and light is inside me, lighting my bones, inside my head.

  He thought his brain was burning.

  *

  After several unhappy attempts to write a short piece on the mysterious death of Cy Bondarevsky’s cow, Martin Lasker gave up. He discussed the facts of the matter with his editor, Fred Phipps, who agreed to let it go. Like his junior reporter, Phipps found the idea vaguely tantalizing, but the death of a cow was not, in and of itself, news, and if there were something unusual or newsworthy about the death, then they had to be able to report what it was. Which they couldn’t.

  ‘Animal stories can be good,’ Phipps explained. ‘And in the summer they often get picked up by the wire services if there’s anything to them.’

  ‘Silly season stuff, you mean?’ Lasker asked.

  ‘That’s right. You’ve probably seen the kind of thing I mean. Two-headed calves or an impossibly large litter. One paragraph oddities.’ Phipps ran one hand over his bushy, white, crew-cut hair. Almost time for another trim.

  ‘I don’t think Bondarevsky’s cow really falls into that category.’

  ‘Neither do I. For one thing, it’s nasty, rather than merely strange or amusing. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes, it was very nasty,’ Lasker confirmed.

  ‘Did any vet actually see the animal? The county ag station?’

  ‘No. They were going to try to send someone over but he couldn’t get there in time. The remains just decomposed too quickly in the heat. Bondarevsky and his help knocked down the shed, dug a hole next to it and shovelled the mess in.’