Monstrous Affections (3 page)

Judith looked down at the photographs. She felt cold in the pit of
her stomach. “So you want me to go there with you, is that it?”

Mrs. Sloan took one last look out the window then came back and
sat down. She smiled with an awkward warmth. “Only once since I
came here have I felt as strong as I do today. That day, I chopped these
off with the wood-axe — ” she held up her three-fingered hand and
waggled the stumps “ — thinking that, seeing me mutilated, Herman’s
father would lose interest and let me go. I was stupid; it only made
him angry, and I was . . . punished. But I didn’t know then what I know
today. And,” she added after a brief pause, “today you are here.”

The Sloan men had not said where they were going when they left in
the pickup truck, so it was impossible to tell how much time the two
women had. Mrs. Sloan found a flashlight, an axe and a shovel in
the garage, and they set out immediately along a narrow path that
snaked through the trees at the back of the yard. There were at least
two hours of daylight left, and Judith was glad. She wouldn’t want
to be trekking back through these woods after dark.

In point of fact, she was barely sure she wanted to be in these
woods in daylight. Mrs. Sloan moved through the underbrush like a
crazy woman, not even bothering to move branches out of her way.
But Judith was slower, perhaps more doubtful.

Why was she doing this? Because of some grainy photographs
in a family album? Because of what might as well have been a ghost
story, told by a woman who had by her own admission chopped off
two of her own fingers? Truth be told, Judith couldn’t be sure she
was going anywhere but crazy following Mrs. Sloan through the
wilderness.

Finally, it was the memories that kept her moving. As Judith
walked, they manifested with all the vividness of new experience.

The scriptorium near Lisbon was deserted — the tour group had moved
on, maybe up the big wooden staircase behind the podium, maybe down
the black wrought-iron spiral staircase. Judith couldn’t tell; the touch on
the back of her neck seemed to be interfering. It penetrated, through skin
and muscle and bone, to the juicy centre of her spine. She turned around
and the wet thing behind pulled her to the floor. She did not resist.

“Hurry up!” Mrs. Sloan was well ahead, near the top of a ridge
of rock in the centre of a large clearing. Blinking, Judith apologized
and moved on.

Judith was fired from her job at Joseph’s only a week after she returned
from Portugal. It seemed she had been late every morning, and when she
explained to her boss that she was in love, it only made things worse. Talia
flew into a rage, and Judith was afraid that she would hit her. Herman
waited outside in the mall.

Mrs. Sloan helped Judith clamber up the smooth rock face. When
she got to the top, Mrs. Sloan took her in her arms. Only then did
Judith realize how badly she was shaking.

“What is it?” Mrs. Sloan pulled back and studied Judith’s face
with real concern.

“I’m . . . remembering,” said Judith.

“What do you remember?”

Judith felt ill again, and she almost didn’t say.

“Judith!” Mrs. Sloan shook her. “This could be important!”

“All right!” Judith shook her off. She didn’t want to be touched,
not by anyone.

“The night before last, I brought Herman home to meet my
parents. I thought it had gone well . . . until now.”

“What do you remember?” Mrs. Sloan emphasized every
syllable.

“My father wouldn’t shake Herman’s hand when he came in the
door. My mother . . . she turned white as a ghost. She backed up into
the kitchen, and I think she knocked over some pots or something,
because I heard clanging. My father asked my mother if she was all
right. All she said was no. Over and over again.”

“What did your father do?”

“He excused himself, went to check on my mother. He left us
alone in the vestibule, it must have been for less than a minute. And
I . . .” Judith paused, then willed herself to finish. “I started . . .
rubbing myself against Herman. All over. He didn’t even make a
move. But I couldn’t stop myself. I don’t even remember wanting
to stop. My parents had to pull me away, both of them.” Judith felt
like crying.

“My father actually hit me. He said I made him sick. Then he
called me . . . a little whore.”

Mrs. Sloan made a sympathetic noise. “It’s not far to the ruins,”
she said softly. “We’d better go, before they get back.”

It felt like an hour had passed before they emerged from the forest
and looked down on the ruins that Judith had seen in the Polaroids.
In the setting sun, they seemed almost mythic — like Stonehenge, or
the Aztec temples Judith had toured once on a trip to Cancun. The
stones here had obviously once been the foundation of a farmhouse.
Judith could make out the outline of what would have been a
woodshed extending off the nearest side, and another tumble of
stonework in the distance was surely the remains of a barn — but
now they were something else entirely. Judith didn’t want to go any
closer. If she turned back now, she might make it home before dark.

“Do you feel it?” Mrs. Sloan gripped the axe-handle with white
knuckles. Judith must have been holding the shovel almost as tightly.
Although it was quite warm outside, her teeth began to chatter.

“If either of us had come alone, we wouldn’t be able to stand it,”
said Mrs. Sloan, her voice trembling. “We’d better keep moving.”

Judith followed Herman’s stepmother down the rocky slope to
the ruins. Her breaths grew shorter the closer they got. She used the
shovel as a walking stick until they reached level ground, then held
it up in both hands, like a weapon.

They stopped again at the edge of the foundation. The door to
the root cellar lay maybe thirty feet beyond. It was made of sturdy,
fresh-painted wood, in sharp contrast to the overgrown wreckage
around it, and it was embedded in the ground at an angle. Tall,
thick weeds sprouting galaxies of tiny white flowers grew in a dense
cluster on top of the mound. They waved rhythmically back and
forth, as though in a breeze.

But it was wrong, thought Judith. There was no breeze, the air
was still. She looked back on their trail and confirmed it — the tree
branches weren’t even rustling.

“I know,” said Mrs. Sloan, her voice flat. “I see it too. They’re
moving on their own.”

Without another word, Mrs. Sloan stepped across the stone boundary. Judith followed, and together they approached the shifting mound.

As they drew closer, Judith half-expected the weeds to attack, to
shoot forward and grapple their legs, or to lash across their eyes and
throats with prickly venom.

In fact, the stalks didn’t even register the two women’s presence
as they stepped up to the mound. Still, Judith held the shovel ready
as Mrs. Sloan smashed the padlock on the root cellar door. She pried
it away with a painful-sounding rending.

“Help me lift this,” said Mrs. Sloan.

The door was heavy, and earth had clotted along its top, but with
only a little difficulty they managed to heave it open. A thick, milky
smell wafted up from the darkness.

Mrs. Sloan switched on the flashlight and aimed it down. Judith
peered along its beam — it caught nothing but dust motes, and the
uncertain-looking steps of a wooden ladder.

“Don’t worry, Judith,” breathed Mrs. Sloan, “I’ll go first.” Setting
the flashlight on the ground for a moment, she turned around and
set a foot on one of the upper rungs. She climbed down a few steps,
then picked up the flashlight and gave Judith a little smile.

“You can pass down the axe and shovel when I get to the bottom,”
she said, and then her head was below the ground. Judith swallowed
with a dry click and shut her eyes.

“All right,” Mrs. Sloan finally called, her voice improbably small.
“It’s too far down here for you to pass the tools to me by hand. I’ll
stand back — drop them both through the hole then come down
yourself.”

Judith did as she was told. At the bottom of the darkness she
could make out a flickering of light, just bright enough for her to see
where the axe and shovel fell. They were very tiny at the bottom of
the hole. Holding her breath, Judith mounted the top rung of the
ladder and began her own descent.

Despite its depth, the root cellar was warm. And the smell was
overpowering. Judith took only a moment to identify it. It was
Herman’s smell, but magnified a thousandfold — and exuding from
the very walls of this place.

Mrs. Sloan had thoroughly explored the area at the base of the
ladder by the time Judith reached her.

“The walls are earthen, shorn up with bare timber,” she said,
shining the light along the nearest wall to illustrate. “The ceiling
here tapers up along the length of the ladder — I’d guess we’re nearly
forty feet underground.”

Judith picked up the shovel, trying not to imagine the weight of
the earth above them.

“There’s another chamber, through that tunnel.” Mrs. Sloan
swung the flashlight beam down and to their right. The light
extended into a dark hole in the wall, not more than five feet in
diameter and rimmed with fieldstone. “That’s where the smell is
strongest.”

Mrs. Sloan stooped and grabbed the axe in her good hand. Still
bent over, she approached the hole and shone the light inside.

“The end’s still farther than the flashlight beam will carry,” she
called over her shoulder. “I think that’s where we’ll have to go.”

Judith noticed then that the tremor was gone from Mrs. Sloan’s
voice. Far from sounding frightened, Herman’s mother actually
seemed excited. It wasn’t hard to see why — this day might finish
with the spell broken, with their freedom assured. Why wouldn’t
she be excited?

But Judith couldn’t shake her own sense of foreboding so easily.
She wondered where Herman was now, what he would be thinking.
And what was Judith thinking, on the verge of her freedom? Judith
couldn’t put it to words, but the thought twisted through her stomach
and made her stop in the dark chamber behind Mrs. Sloan.
A little
whore
, her father had called her. Then he’d hit her, hard enough to
bring up a swelling. Right in front of Herman, like he wasn’t even
there! Judith clenched her jaw around a rage that was maddeningly
faceless.

“I’m not a whore,” she whispered through her teeth.

Mrs. Sloan disappeared into the hole, and it was only when the
chamber was dark that Judith followed.

The tunnel widened as they went, its walls changing from wood-shorn earth to fieldstone and finally to actual rock. Within sixty
feet the tunnel ended, and Mrs. Sloan began to laugh. Judith felt
ill — the smell was so strong she could barely breath. Even as she
stepped into the second chamber of the root cellar, the last thing
she wanted to do was laugh.

“Roots!” gasped Mrs. Sloan, her voice shrill and echoing in the
dark. “Of course there would be — ” she broke into another fit of
giggles “ — roots, here in the root cellar!” The light jagged across
the cellar’s surfaces as Mrs. Sloan slipped to the floor and fell into
another fit of laughter.

Judith bent down and pried the flashlight from Mrs. Sloan’s
hand — she made a face as she brushed the scratchy tips of the two
bare finger-bones. She swept the beam slowly across the ceiling.

It was a living thing. Pulsing intestinal ropes drooped from huge
bulbs and broad orange phalluses clotted with earth and juices thick
as semen. Between them, fingerlike tree roots bent and groped in
knotted black lines. One actually penetrated a bulb, as though to
feed on the sticky yellow water inside. Silvery droplets formed like
beading mercury on the surface of an ample, purple sac directly
above the chamber’s centre.

Mrs. Sloan’s laughter began to slow. “Oh my,” she finally chuckled,
sniffing loudly, “I don’t know what came over me.”

“This is the place.” Judith had intended it as a question, but it
came out as a statement of fact. This
was
the place. She could feel
Herman, his father, God knew how many others like them — all of
them here, an indisputable presence.

Mrs. Sloan stood, using the axe-handle as a support. “It is,” she
agreed. “We’d better get to work on it.”

Mrs. Sloan hefted the axe in both hands and swung it around
her shoulders. Judith stood back and watched as the blade bit into
one of the drooping ropes, not quite severing it but sending a spray
of green sap down on Mrs. Sloan’s shoulders. She pulled the axe out
and swung again. This time the tube broke. Its two ends twitched
like live electrical wires; its sap spewed like bile. Droplets struck
Judith, and where they touched skin they burned like vinegar.

“Doesn’t it feel better?” shouted Mrs. Sloan, grinning fiercely at
Judith through the wash of slime on her face. “Don’t you feel
free
?
Put down the flashlight, girl, pick up the shovel! There’s work to be
done!”

Judith set the flashlight down on its end, so that it illuminated
the roots in a wide yellow circle. She hefted the shovel and, picking
the nearest bulb, swung it up with all her strength. The yellow
juices sprayed out in an umbrella over Judith, soaking her. She
began to laugh.

It does feel better
, she thought.
A
lot
better.
Judith swung the
shovel up again and again. The blade cut through tubes, burst bulbs,
lodged in the thick round carrot-roots deep enough so Judith could
pry them apart with only a savage little twist of her shoulders. The
mess of her destruction was
everywhere.
She could taste it every
time she grinned.

After a time, she noticed that Mrs. Sloan had stopped and was
leaning on the axe-handle, watching her. Judith yanked the shovel
from a root. Brown milk splattered across her back.

“What are you stopping for?” she asked. “There’s still more to
cut!”