Heretics (12 page)

   
He moves down the long staircase, no longer bothering to run, and by the time he reaches the floor, the container is empty and Madeline has retrieved a burning candle from the corner of the room.

   
Before the flames, the screams, the smoke and the acrid stench, before the blood, her hair is wet.  The strands dangle near her jaw line, matted, twisted and dripping with gasoline.  She smiles at him then, the squat candle clutched in her hands and held out before her as if in sacrifice to unseen gods, the tiny flame dancing, casting shadow-spirits along the pale walls.  The look in her eyes signals nothing can ever be the same; that nothing will ever be all right again.  She offers a bloody hand.  “Come with me, Harry.”

   
He slowly shakes his head in the negative.

   
She believes him.  The sorrow in her eyes tells him so.

     
A burst of flames, horrible screams, and then he is back in the night air, running, eyes watering in the cold, legs aching as behind him the fire explodes through the house and night becomes day.

      Harry moved closer to the edge of the cliffs.  “Bad as it is, it still seems like a nightmare most days.  Like it couldn’t be real.”

      “There was no other way for me to join them,” she said.  “If I wanted to be with them, I had to follow their instructions.  I had to do as they asked if I wanted to go there.”

    “There,” Harry said softly.  “There is no
there
, Madeline.  There are no beings; there is no other world.  There is no power that belonged to you or anyone else.  It’s all lies and figments of imagination, dark dreams, bad karma, that’s all.  You died, Madeline, they found your remains in the rubble.  Just like all your bullshit, you aren’t real, not anymore.  You haunted Rip, but you were only in his mind.  Now you haunt me and this town and these ruins but you only exist in
my
 mind.”

    “Close,” she whispered.  “It’s the corner of your eye.  And it’s wonderful, Harry.  It’s like existing just beyond the world’s reach.  Like being at the very edge of a pool of light, close enough to be seen by those who want to look, but far enough away to stay safely hidden, to do, to
be
, whatever you want or need to be, do you understand?”

      Harry turned.  Madeline’s face and body was bloody and burned so badly she was barely recognizable as human, the skin missing in places, glossy white skull and bone shining through, tufts of her once beautiful hair protruding from singed skin as if pasted to her scalp.  Her mouth opened, extended like that of a python until her jaw reached the breaking point and snapped, freeing it to expand even further.  Leaning closer, her eyes darkened and she screamed, her rancid breath accompanying the enraged screech and assaulting his face in a single hot and sour burst.  Her wrath echoed through his mind, the pain beginning in his temples and forcing its way through his brain like a spike being driven deeper and deeper until he could no longer endure it.

      “You’re not real,” he said evenly, and with both hands, pushed her.

      Madeline fell sideways from the cliff.  Twisting like an airborne gymnast, her arms and legs swinging and kicking for purchase as if she were trying to frantically swim through open air, she plummeted to the ocean below and struck a cluster of large rocks at the waters edge.  Her body shattered, bending and flopping about at impossible angles before the next wave crashed the shore and swallowed her whole.  The water turned dark, and when the wave receded and returned to sea, she was gone.

14

Hours later, with night having come and nearly gone, Harry sat at the base of the dunes watching the ocean.  Waiting.  Knowing.  

     After having climbed down along the sand to the beach below, night had arrived and the humidity had dissipated.  The temperature finally cooled as refreshing winds blew in from the sea, and he now found himself at that oddly familiar point between the conclusion of darkness and the commencement of light, that brief stage right before dawn blooms where it is neither fully night nor fully day.  A light misting rain had kicked up a few minutes earlier, but had quickly transformed into a typically violent and sudden summer storm.  Dark clouds rolled, thunder growled and fierce spikes of lightning crackled across the horizon, veins coursing from the heavens to the ocean below, impaling the distant seascape while illuminating the world in brief flashes of electric blue.  

      Exhausted and growing cold, Harry pushed himself back, deeper into the sand at the bottom of the dunes and hugged himself tightly.  The wind picked up and the velocity of the rain increased.  He wiped water from his eyes, ignored the din of heavy raindrops thumping sand and the growing howl of the wind and focused on the ocean instead.  

      With the next blink of lightning he saw her.

    As if digested by the ocean and only now vomited forth with the storm, she walked toward him across the waves—
on
the waves—in the distance.  Her features had been restored, as if healed by the saltwater.  Her hair was wet and plastered to the sides of her face, and the same dress she had changed into that night so many years ago was draped across her again, sodden and molded to her body.

      He screamed her name until his throat grew raw and sore.

      The lightning vanished, concealed her in darkness.

      When it blinked again, he saw her a second time, closer now, arms at her sides.  In one hand, fingers clutching hair, she held her father’s head.

      Harry wiped more rainwater from his eyes and waited for another flash of lightning; terrified he might lose her in the storm.  But when the next fork split the sky, she was on land, moving closer still, her stride effortless, even in muddy sand.  

      Again, the night closed in around them.  

      “They never found his head, did you know that, Harry?”

      Something wet and cold brushed his face.  Harry fell back into the sand, his hands raised in front of him to ward off what he could not see in the darkness.  

      She had crouched down next to him; he could feel her dripping on him.  “They found his body, bones mostly, but not the head.  Did you know that?”

      “Yes,” he said softly.  

      “The police searched your house, they searched Rip’s house, they even tore up the grounds around the ruins and searched the woods and this very stretch of beach,” she reminded him.  “Never did find it, though.”

      “No, they never did.”

    Lightning brought back the light for a few seconds.  Madeline’s lifeless gray eyes blinked as she knelt in the sand next to him, her father’s head held up before her in the manner one might hold a lantern.  She smiled as it swayed in the wind, decayed flesh dripping rain and ocean water, hair matted and drenched, wrapped about her fingers.  “What more proof of me do you need?”  

      Rip’s words echoed through his infected mind…

   
That’s how it is when you go back up to the cliffs.  You think it’ll bring you peace or closure or whatever the hell you want to call it.  You think it’ll make it so things might finally make sense, but it only gets worse, Harry.  Madeline gets worse, you understand?

      As quickly as it had begun, the rain stopped.  Thunder roared but it sounded far off now.  Dawn struggled to break through the darkness, fractured the black sky with hints of slowly approaching daylight.

      “I think about Rip sitting in the dark all alone for the rest of his miserable life,” she said, “and I think of you tormented and frightened and trying to run from me for the rest of yours and it just makes me angry.  It would have been so much easier if you’d just come with me, Harry.”

      “We would’ve done anything for you.  We would’ve killed for you, and almost did.”

      “Is that how you remember it?  Memories can be so selective.”  

      “Let me go, Madeline.”

    “Do you really think I’m still Madeline?”  She held the head higher, kissed the remains of the cheek, her tongue slithering like a snake along the rotted folds of flesh.  “
Only
Madeline?  
All
 Madeline?”

      Harry slowly shook his head.  “Not for a very long time.”

      “Not since she was a little girl.  Not since she said yes and allowed me entry into her body, into her soul.  Her father and that so-called witch, idol-worshipping fools that they were, never had a chance.”  The thing before him grinned again and spread its arms apart to reveal empty hands.  The head had vanished.  “Once you have the body the rest follows soon after.  That’s why children are so delicious.  They’re pure but also innocent, and therefore vulnerable.  The trust of a child is like that of no other, it’s total, and once you’ve got it they can be easily deceived…easily molded.”

   
This is an ancient evil, older than any medicine, older than any church.

      “Different bodies, different souls,” Harry said.  “Many hosts but the same disease.”    

      “Yes, countless hosts over countless years.”  She motioned over his shoulder.  Along the top of the dunes behind them stood numerous dark forms.

      “So I’m your next stop, is that it?”

      “It’s how it works, Harry, how it’s worked for millions of years.”  She shrugged.  “We’re all spiritual beings, the body is nothing more than a middle ground, a meeting place.”

      “But it has to be given to you, you can’t just take it.”

      “Which is why deception is our greatest tool.  But we’re beyond all that, you and I.”

      “What do you want from me?  Endure or submit?”

      “It doesn’t have to be this way.  Come with me.”

      “Maybe I should just gouge my eyes out too.  But you’ll never leave me, will you.”

      It wasn’t a question, and she knew it, but she answered anyway.  “Never, Harry.”

    He slipped a hand into his pocket, clutched the straight razor he found there.  “You’ve always been with us, but there’s a reason you want us so desperately now.  There’s a reason you called Rip back here and then did the same to me when he wouldn’t play along.  You need us, you—you need me
now
.  Why?”

      “It’s time to move on, Harry.  Time to shed my skin.  It’s what I do.  But there are rules…rituals.”

      “Even for heretics?”

      “Especially for heretics.”

      He looked at her kneeling there in the sand next to him, the wind blowing her hair about, the approaching dawn framing her face.  “You’ll leave Rip in peace?” he asked.

      “I no longer have any use for him.”  She sighed.  “He’s still alive.”

      Harry removed the razor from his pocket, opened it so she could see the blade.  

      “Take my hand, Harry,” she said.  “Come with me to the corner of their eyes.”

      Holding the razor with one hand, he slipped the other into her waiting palm, felt clammy fingers curl around his.

      Harry suppressed a sudden surge of laughter.  “I’m insane,” he whispered.  “You think I don’t realize it, but I do.  I’m insane.”

      “We adore the insane.”

      He looked out to the water, watched the waves for a moment.  “That’s it, isn’t it?”  Harry closed his eyes, felt a burning sensation as he drew the razor deeply across his wrist.  “I’m crazy.”

      Madeline grinned as his blood sprayed the air.  “Crazy as Hell.”

15

Night sounds previously unnoticed had bled through the silence.  The chatter of crickets, the hum of distant traffic and the gentle shifting of the house all became more pronounced once they had stopped talking.

      “Do you hear that?” Harry asked.

      Doreen moved closer to him, held his hand in hers.  “The crickets?”

      “All of it.  Just listen.  It’s as if it stops and then starts again once we’re able to pay attention, once we make ourselves hear it.  But whether we concentrate on it, allow ourselves to listen to it or not, it’s still there.  It’s always there, do you understand?”

      “I think so.”  Her fingers gently traced his wrist, where deep scars crisscrossed his flesh like jagged and long dead riverbeds engraved on a desert floor.

      He gently pulled his hand free, folded his arms.  “It was a long time ago.”

      “I’ve thought about trying to kill myself too,” she confessed.  “Plenty of times.”

      “I know.”  He touched her face, held her cheek in his palm and felt the heat pass from her to him.  “It’s hard when you feel so alone all the time, when you feel like you don’t belong, like you’re meant to be—”

      “Somewhere else,” Doreen said quickly.  “Like you’re meant to be somewhere else.”

    Harry wondered if he should have told her the story instead of only thinking about it himself.  “My friend Madeline believed there
was
somewhere else.  She believed there
was
somewhere better, somewhere for those like you and me who just don’t fit in here.”

      “Did you believe it too?”

      “Not at first.”

      Doreen looked at him as only few could, deeply, and directly into his eyes.  “Whatever happened to her?”

      “She died.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      “It was quite a scandal at the time.  She doused everything with gasoline, murdered her father and their housekeeper and set the house ablaze.  Then, as everything went up in flames, she took her own life.”

      “My God.”  Doreen visibly shivered.  “That’s awful.”

      “Yes, it was, but in the end it was the only way.”

      “But why?”

      Harry sat forward, returned her gaze.  “There were rules, rituals, things she had to adhere to.”

      “Like what?”

      “Are you sure you want to know?”

      Doreen was quiet for a time as she considered his question.  “Yes.”

      “Do you trust me, Doreen?”

      She gave a coy smile.  “Obviously.”

      “Do you believe these things?”

      She nodded.  “I don’t fully understand, but—but, yes, I believe.”

      A sudden knock on the bedroom door interrupted their conversation.  After a second the door opened and a middle-aged man in pajamas groggily poked his head into the room.  “Doreen?  Honey, everything all right?”

      She rolled her eyes and sighed.  “Yes, of course.”

      “For God’s sake, it’s,” he consulted his watch, “it’s nearly three in the morning.”

      “Dad, I’m eighteen years old, almost nineteen, I—”

      “I don’t give a damn if you’re sixty.”  He glanced in Harry’s direction with disapproval.  “As long as you live under my roof, it’s my way or—”

      “Everything’s fine.  What are you doing up?”

      “I was on my way to the bathroom when I heard your voice.”  His eyes swept the room.  “I certainly hope you weren’t on the phone at this hour.”

      “No, of course not.”

      “Well then who were you talking to?”

      Doreen looked to the others, those who rarely spoke, who had been with her for so long, those who preferred to simply watch from the corner of her eye.  

      Then she looked at Harry.  

      He placed a finger to his lips.  “Shhh.”

      “Nobody,” she said.  “I had the radio on for a sec, that must’ve been what you heard.”

      Doreen’s father frowned.  “Go to bed, sweetheart, it’s the middle of the night.”

      “Okay, Daddy.  Goodnight.”

      As the door closed, Harry gazed down at the scars on his wrist, pictured Rip miles away, sitting in some efficiency apartment in Virtue, a seeing-eye dog curled at his feet, a white cane resting against a nearby table…and blood.  Blood seeping from wounds where his eyes had once been.

      In the darkest recesses of his mind, he heard the Ripper Man scream.

      Harry smiled.  “Tell me, Doreen, do you know what a heretic is?”