A Gentle Hell (4 page)

Darling, darling, this world never changes. Your brothers and sisters are ghosts.

**********

Tuesday’s dead sister was named Julie. We didn’t know the name of the other missing child, and we never got a call, but both Thatch and I knew another child was gone. When I pulled Julie's blue and congealed body out of her drawer Thatch said, “
a
regular sleeping beauty, don’t you think?”

“It’s definitely a suicide,” the coroner said, “don’t know why you had to make me come down here for this.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Well, her wrists are slashed.”
           

“So she’s the only one who can slash her wrists?” I said.

“Come off of it, Bill,” Thatch said, “obviously this guy isn’t winning any coroner-of-the-year awards, but who would kill a girl like this? Probably didn’t have an enemy in the world.”

“You don’t need enemies,” I said, “just predators.”

I turned back to the coroner. “I’m not going to let this rest,” I said.

“She’s going to rest whether you want her to or not,” the coroner said.

“Julie wanted to be married under the dogwood tree,” I said.

“What are you talking about?” Thatch said.

“That’s what Tuesday told me. Julie wanted to be married under the dogwood tree. Why would a girl kill herself if she was going to be married? It doesn't make any sense.”

“I don't know, Bill, you know that family out there is crazy,” Thatch said.

“Yes,” I said.

I looked over at the coroner.

“What are you wearing?” I asked.

He wore a necklace consisting of three interlocking rings.

“It’s a symbol of the Triple Goddess,” he said, reaching up to touch the necklace. “My wife was still a Jehovah supporter, even after he died, but I made her throw away all of our crucifixes.”

I looked back at Julie. Her face shone in sick fluorescence, the congealed blood black against her cut wrists.
          

On the way out of the building Thatch’s cell phone rang. He answered.

“It’s for you,” he said. He held the phone out to me.

“Another one of my sisters is missing,” the person on the phone said.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“It’s Tuesday,” she said.

“How did you get Thatch’s number?”

“Can you come over?” Tuesday asked. “Momma won’t mind. The boyfriend went out last night and got drunk, so he’s hung-over now, passed out on the couch.”

“Tuesday-”

“-Bill.
Please come over,” she said. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”

“I tell you what, Bill,” Thatch said when I handed him back his phone, “you fuck that girl and you’re going to hell.”

“Everyone’s gone mad,” I said.

“The Triple Goddess said madness has gone down thirty percent since Jehovah died.”

“Was this a double-blind study?” I asked. “Who funded this study?”

“I think the temple of the Triple Goddess funded it,” Thatch said.

“Of course,” I said, “so it’s biased.”

“Well, yeah,” Thatch said, “but maybe people have something to hope for now, you know what I mean.”

“Have you converted?” I asked.

“Hell no,” he said, “
you
know I’m an atheist.”

**********

I had a dinner of ramen and headed out to Mimi’s trailer alone. By the time I got there, the night dark settled down in a haze and Tuesday stood in the driveway waiting for me.

“I'm going to die soon,” she told me when I got out of my car, “now that he knows I know what happened to Julie.”

“Who are you talking about?” I asked.

She smiled.

“Why did you want me to come?” I asked.

“I can’t be alone anymore,” she said.

“You’re not alone,” I said, “You have Mimi, and all your brothers and sisters.”

“I'm still alone,” she said.

I said nothing. The lights were on inside the trailer and I heard the children playing inside, with Mimi screaming, “Keep it down, goddamn it, or I’ll smack you kids to sleep!”

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” I said to Tuesday.
       

She slipped her hand into mine. “We’re not doing anything,” she said. “I want to show you something.”

She took me around the back of the trailer. I saw the prophet's house across the field, past the darkened deadwood and gray atmosphere like ash. His lights were on.

“Do you know who that is?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said, “he’s lived there all my life. His name is Gregory. He used to be Momma’s boyfriend. Before the one she has now.”

“Did you like him?” I asked.

She turned toward me, walking backwards as she led me through the field.

“No, not really,” she said.

“Do you like any of your Momma’s boyfriends?”

“No,” she said, “not really.”

I stopped walking.

“Don’t stop. Why did you stop?” she asked.

“I’m not really sure why I’m here,” I said.

“But you came, that's all that matters.”

I let her lead me to the mouth of sickened trees, their branches heavy with parasitic mistletoe, crushed under the weight of smoke and black and feral green.

“I used to go in there when I was a kid, she said, indicating the mouth of the trees, “and I’d hide. I’d pretend I was a fairy and I hid.”

“You’re still a kid.”

“But now I’m scared to go in there. Isn’t that funny? You’re supposed to get less scared when you get older, not more. I wonder why I’m so scared.”

I said nothing.

“Are you going to marry me, Bill?” she asked.

“No,” I said, “no, I can’t.”

“You know what happens in nature when a male and a female get together?” she asked me. “He pretends he loves her, and then when she runs away he hunts her down. Then she leaves him with the children. All animals do this. That’s why we have marriage. So we don’t run. So we’re not alone.”

“I thought that’s what love was for,” I said.

“Love doesn’t exist,” she said, “just children.”

In the dark, Tuesday had no face. Her gray skin ran down her collarbone, her flavor cold, her animal eyes fixated on a point far beyond me. For every world there is a lower world. Beyond her world of Mimi’s trailer and bruises beneath the hips there existed a fairy world in these asphyxiated, hollow nested trees.

“Julie was going to get married. Then she died,” Tuesday said.

“I know, you told me. Did Julie kill herself?” I asked.

“No, but you already knew that.”

I said nothing.

“What do I have if I don’t have you?” she asked.

“The Triple Goddess, I guess. Or God, if he hadn’t died,” I said.

“You won’t marry me because I’m not a virgin,” she said.

“No, that's not it,” I said.

“Then why not?”

“Because I don't know you.”

“That's not so strange,” she said, “I've never known anyone before.”

The coyotes began to howl. We shrank. The deadwood rose up like ribcages, like the dead fields where my father used to drag horse corpses to rot and return to the earth. Sometimes death happens, he said to me once. Death always happens.

A shot rang out.

I grabbed Tuesday’s hand and we ran out away from the
copse
, toward Mimi’s trailer, jumping over wet fennel and thick weeds and death death death, the color flash of her dress. Another shot. Mimi’s back porch lights came on and we appeared in the light, flushed and wild-eyed. Mimi came busting through the door in her blue flannel nightgown with a .12 gauge at her hip. The children peered out from behind her with dripping fists and red arms.

“Tuesday,” Mimi said, “you hear that shot? What the hell is going on out here? What you doing out here, girl?”

“Momma,” she said.

“Terribly sorry about this, Mimi,” I said.

“Officer Redding, is that you?” Mimi asked.

The coyotes stopped howling. The grass rustled behind us. I grabbed Tuesday by the shoulders and whirled her around in front of me to try to protect her. Mimi raised her gun. I ducked down, caving my body around her.

The prophet of the Triple Goddess came through the grass into the light, squinting, sweat on his glass-fish skin, his shotgun raised above his head.

“What the fuck are you doing out here, Gregory?” Mimi said.

“I heard trespassers. They were talking outside my house. They were going to steal my Grandma’s old rocking horse. That thing is probably worth five hundred dollars by now. It's a real antique.”

“You’re still a damn fool, Gregory; it’s just Officer Redding and my girl Tuesday. They don’t want to steal your Grandma’s damn rocking horse.”

The prophet of the Triple Goddess lowered his gun.

“Officer Redding,” he said. He looked at me. “You came to my house earlier.
For dinner.”

“Yes,” I said. I realized I was still holding onto Tuesday, my nails constricting her collarbone. I released her. She took a few steps back, toward Mimi. Mimi still pointed her gun at the prophet's chest.

“Ah,” the prophet said, “hello Tuesday.”

“Hello Gregory,” Tuesday said.

“I suppose if there isn’t going to be any issue, I better get home,” I said.

“Bill,” Tuesday said.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just really sorry.”

I left with the sweat sticking to my scalp, with the warm imprint of Tuesday’s hand in mine, her kiss on my forehead like a mark of Cain.

I got back home and turned on the television and lay in bed with my head between my elbows and my nails in my scalp. They were still constantly running coverage on the new policies of the Triple Goddess on the news channels, and the Triple Goddess often appeared in persons and made speeches about how much better the world was going to be now, how much different, now that the evil demiurge Jehovah was dead.
    

I scratched at my forehead and scraped my skin underneath my nails and cried.

**********

The next time Thatch and I got called back to Mimi’s trailer, it was because Tuesday was missing.

“I know that girl wouldn’t have gone off and killed herself,” Mimi said, “she was too strong. I mean, Julie, well, she was a little fucked in the head. I caught her smoking Mary Jane once, can you believe that.”