Nursery Rhymes 4 Dead Children (24 page)

Duncan smiled, mouth a gash, half his face lost in shadow as the rain kicked up again. “Tough woman you got. I’m glad to hear it. I can wait. Did he suffer?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” Duncan looked back at the house. “You want me to watch over her and your kid while you’re up there?”

My brother’s kid.

“Sure. Thanks, Duncan.”

The big cop slapped my arm and said, “You look scared. It’s to be expected. But you’ve made a new friend, so it’s not all bad. Get out of here. I’ll make sure they stay safe.”

* * *

I drove past the cemetery, the road throwing the car back and forth, abusing the suspension. I gripped the wheel tighter and gritted my teeth, pushing April from my mind, thinking of Mike, how our friendship had seemed to go on hiatus for so long, neither one calling the other for so damn long, and unable to answer why. It was a simple thing to place a call, and yet we hadn’t. I shook my head, ashamed of myself and angry with him.

The manor clawed at the weeping sky, blacker than the night that surrounded it. My stomach twisted like God or the devil had my intestines clenched in an angry fist. Rain ran wild; it lashed the earth. Dark rivulets ate channels in the road, working their way downhill. I pulled up behind Mike’s Jag and threw the cruiser into park and sat a minute with my thoughts. Sadness and loss enveloped me, a cold arm over my shoulder. I didn’t know if I’d be able to forgive her, if I loved her that much. Or if I even wanted to. I shut the headlights off, opened the door and cradled the bowl in my left arm, frightened by the mysteries it held, worried that I wouldn’t know how to use it when the time came.

Chapter 35

Mike set the cell phone down between them and shook his head. Headlights slashed the darkness shrouding John’s yard down the hill. He killed the Jag’s engine. Angela shifted in the seat next to him, taking his hand in hers, wiping a tear from his face the way his sister once had. She said, “She’s gone, isn’t she?”

He nodded, pictured his mother in her bed, surrounded by white sheets, a figure fading as what lived inside her ate away the last of her strength. Mike wasn’t sure she deserved to go out like that, no matter how crazy she’d been, no matter her heaviest sins. He stared out the driver’s window. “My mom was heavy into the occult. Her and John’s dad used to hate each other. My dad ran off, sick of her downward spiral. I can’t really blame him, but I wish he hadn’t, you know? If he’d stayed and beat some sense into her maybe Natalie would still be around.” Mike cracked his knuckles and pulled the K-Bar from his boot. Visions from Rusty’s roof kept sneaking up on him, darting from the dark. “I don’t know if this is going to be enough. Maybe, maybe not.”

“Maybes only raise more questions. Let me see the key, once we’re in there,” she jerked her head toward the manor, “you aren’t going to have a chance to use it, but I can.”

“They’re not after you. Your family. I can’t help but wonder why.”

“We both know that family is sometimes our worst enemy, our greatest oppressor. And sometimes they take the roundabout in how they attack us, they attack what we’re trying to protect, what we believe in. Do you believe in God, Michael?”

Mike laughed and wiped a tear away. “I believe that doing the right thing matters. I believe that you do your best and that’s all a man is required to do. Excuses don’t cut it. That’s my philosophy, but it’s changed slightly over the last few years. It’ll probably change again.” He scratched his head, caught a glimpse of his reflection in the instrument panel.
I look a lot like my dead mom. More than I want to
. “Part of me is glad she’s dead. I know it’s awful to say, but it’s the truth, my truth. She never really loved any of us. Only herself.”

He tried to remember something significant that could contest the statement, some small act on her part that showed, in a sweeping gesture, how much she cared. His mind grabbed an image of her bringing him and Natalie lemonade, the sun high and sharp, broiling their skin, his sister’s legs draped over the edge of the pool out back, feet treading water like an old metronome. Mother had smiled at them, while Dad worked up at New Wave with the nutters banging their skulls silly against the padded walls. Mom had knelt next to him, a look in her eye that his thirteen-year-old understanding had failed to grasp.

“She used to bring us lemonade in the summer, out by the pool. That’s the only kind thing I ever remember her doing.”

Angela nodded. “You don’t need to worry about her. She’s dead. Worry about the key. Worry about right now.”

Easier said than done
.
Because I don’t know how much of her miserable existence was my fault.
He thought of John and his father—the gap, the fork in the road, that one had taken to the left, the other to the right; how people are like their parents and so unlike them at the same time. He shook his head and picked at his nails with the knife. “This was blessed by a witch in Cuba. It saved my life once. A little girl’s life, too. Didn’t help me out on the roof much.” He slapped the blade against his palm. “What is One of Three of Seven? He said, “Sacrifice.” He wanted to make a deal with John. I know a little about the Hierarchy, but not enough to feel prepared. And that’s a feeling I used to like having before the shit hit the fan.”

“Your kind knows him by the name Baal-beryth. He’s the master of rituals and pacts. It’s why he must come first. He’s the Preparer of the Way.”

Mike leaned back into the seat, tired, anxious. “And who are you?”

She hit a button on the door panel and the window whirred. “Someone is doing magic. They’ve made a sacrifice of their own, to freeze time here.” She sniffed, her nose crinkling. “John’s got the magic, or someone close to him.”

“Who are you?”

She smiled. “Proserpine.”

“Master of what?”

“It means Destroyer. But as you can see, I am trying to get away from that.” She turned in the seat and pressed the tip of her finger over the blade. Her flesh parted, just a sliver. She looked at it as if expecting it to heal. It didn’t. “I chose the name Angela because of what it means. Angel. I miss the innocence. If you look back on the short time you’ve had in this world, I’m sure you do, too.”

Mike thought about it. He did miss the innocence. All of it changed at some point in his mid-teens. The blinders were stripped away.
Light of Knowing
…that’s what John’s dad used to call it, Bible in hand, his voice loud and thick with emotion…
Light of Knowing
… it could blind you with its intensity. “You didn’t just choose the name Angela because you knew Dunc’s daughter’s name? You helped lead him to the forest, you threw John at his feet, right?” He scratched his head. “Where did Baal-beryth go when the door fell on him?”

“As above, so below. Life is sometimes a giant mirror.” Proserpine sighed. “I don’t know where the door took him, but this is a place of power, a doorway, he knows that, and so do the others. They’ll come through here.”

“Why don’t you know?”

“Because some things are beyond my knowledge.”

A soft breeze curled inside the Jag and tickled the back of Mike’s neck. “I thought we were in a hurry.” Then he remembered her saying something a minute ago about someone freezing time up here. He looked past her, at the house. “What should I expect in there?”

Her head bobbed as she said, “The truth.”

“Demons dealing truth. That’s a new one.”

“It’s always been that way. It’s the truth about you, your family, the world around you, from which real nightmares stem, the constant tension you don’t always feel, a thousand times a thousand everyday sorrows that take the luster from your hair, the shine from your eyes. The Bible just dressed it up, made it one-sided. Looking in the mirror, Michael. Honestly, no delusions, that’s what we do, that’s what we’ve always exploited.”

“Why are you against them? Your brothers. The Fallen.”

“I already told you.”

“Tell me again.”

“I want redemption as much as anyone else. I want the Father to hold me to His chest and tell me that there is no one else like me in all Creation. I want the chance to tell Him I’m sorry for the gray I’ve caused in His beautiful mane, tell Him I’m sorry for the luster I’ve stolen from His eyes.” She brushed hair off her forehead. “Look.”

He followed her gaze out his window, saw headlights climbing the long, dark road toward them. Mike smiled. “He didn’t chicken out.”

“You two have so many pains yet to experience.”

She got out of the car.

* * *

Mike tensed as a stiff breeze jerked at his torn suit coat and the wounds in the backs of his shoulders wept heat. Angela sat on the porch. I parked behind the Jag and got out, face paler than the moon peeking from behind heavy clouds. Mike stepped up to me and patted my arm gently. “Are you ready for this?”

I nodded, brow creased, not ready at all. Mike’s clothes hung from his frame and his normal tan looked gray and used. I said, “Just tell me what to do.” I glanced at Angela, pistol filling my fist. “I’m glad you left Duncan down there.”

“Me, too. Did you have a good long think?”

“Enough. I’ll tell you about it if we live through this.”

Mike tapped the K-Bar against his thigh and shuffled toward the steps and Proserpine, the Destroyer, wanting to tell me about his mother at the time but unable to, wanting to say how she’d paid the price everyone had to pay, and he hoped there was a quasi-hell, where after a time she could sweat her sins and coldness out, then be freed to eternal black sleep.

I followed him, and our shadows merged as the door opened on its own and Mike handed Angela the key, and she said, “Once we’re inside you won’t have much time to use it. Truth is waiting. For all of us.”

* * *

Fog clung to the basement walls like billowing slate drapes. A single light burned bright on the ceiling and threw a dim yellow glaze over the polished hardwood floor. Mike stepped off the last riser and dampness clung to his throat. Through the dim light he handed John one of the flashlights he’d taken from the utility closet upstairs, just in case, for God knew what reason, the power went out. The storm bucked outside, flashes of lightning splayed across the eight basement windows on the east side, to their right; thunder rumbled like a growl. Angela stood between them, whispering, “Take my hands.”

Mike gave her his right, thinking,
If we have to fight this thing with one hand each, me with my left, it’s hopeless.

The fog billowed closer, choking out the farther reaches of the basement. Mike swallowed a lungful and it scratched his throat like crumpled sandpaper. He flicked the flashlight and waved it back and forth, hoping to see the creature before it latched onto one of them. The fog reflected the light like a mirror and he caught a glimpse of his own haggard face, the terror-stricken eyes. His stomach sank…

There was no one next to him, only countless miles of orchard, dark and quiet. Apple trees dotted the valley; hard, twisted branches, the ripe smell of rotten fruit. His guts turned. A branch scratched his face as he climbed up into the nearest tree. The sky lit with the birth of new stars, each one brighter than the last, as their forefathers faded and melted into oblivion.

The earth yawned next to the tree and a ladder of kudzu ran down into a pit where a clogged fountain glowed bone-white beneath the brightest star’s gaze. Soft black soil sank beneath his nails as he climbed down the vines, thinking,
It’s here somewhere, Nat’s grave
.

Mountains pitched in sharp relief looked small and distant from the floor of the hole. A raven flicked its wings and its head darted at the scramble of overgrowth around the vertical lip of the fountain’s mouth. The bowl ran ten feet around, filled with black murk, green algae. Mike stepped in, and shivered. He climbed the vines choking the fountain’s jutting column, to the waiting bird. “You want these vines pulled away and the fountain to work again; you have to tell me where she is.”

The raven cocked its head.

His skull hurt, a dull throb. He knew he should be scared, but a quiet, easy peace had settled into his flesh, though his heart stammered a funky cadence. The water bubbled beneath him, an escaped breath. His father sat up, leeches stuck to his closed eyelids. “Who’s there?”

Mike’s heart kicked harder. He slid down the fountain’s column, plopped into the water and splashed over to his dad, grabbed him beneath the arms and hoisted him up, the muscles in his back straining. He was larger than Mike remembered him, bloated with time, neglect.

“Dad.” Mike peeled the leeches from his eyes and they came away with a sickening ripping sound.

His father seized Mike’s elbow, meaty fingers digging into his forearm, jerking him forward until their faces touched. “Natalie.”

Breath cold. Dead.

“No,” Mike shook his head. “It’s your son.”

“What’s that?”

“Your son, Dad. Mike.”

“Michael’s dead.”

“No. I’m right here. Do you know where Natalie is?”

“
You’re
Natty, honey.” His father wept into his shoulder, face sopping wet, hands pulling him down into the murk.

“Let go. Get up.”

“I can’t. I’m a failure. Useless. As a father, a husband, everything. I’ve made the mistake so many men have made, thinking that life was an oyster and all I had to do was pop it open to steal the pearl. I kept forgetting that its friction that makes pearls, and some things are hard to open. Stupid. Don’t marry a man like me. Don’t look for one who is only after the pearl and overlooks the natural beauty that produces it. Don’t marry a thief.”

“Get up. Let’s get you out of here.”

His father shook his head. “I can’t. I’m at work.”

Mike slapped him. “Snap out of it. You haven’t been at work. You haven’t been home in seventeen years. Come on, we have to get you back to the house.” Wind howled through the orchard above. A vine fell free of the fountain. He looked up as the raven clawed more away and the fountain’s mouth trickled blood. Mike leaned back, pulled, holding his father’s wrist. The skin tore above his wrist, peeled off his hand. Mike recoiled, dropped the pile of flesh into the fetid pool as his father flexed bone and thin pink muscle, his eyes wide with disbelief.

The raven hummed.

“That was my good hand!” He splashed around, groping in the water. When he couldn’t find it, his pale face reddened in a mockery of life…

You’re dead, aren’t you Dad? Did she kill you? What’s your secret?

His father sank back, spine propped against the bowl’s ivory rim. He buried his head in his hands, and then threw them forward, finger pointing. A string of bloody mist hit Mike’s face as his father screamed, “That’s why your mother hates you! You destroy things. You can’t leave well enough alone. Can’t you see I’m happy here?”

Happy wandering around in despair? Beaten?

His father said, “You don’t get it. You were an accident. Only your brother was planned, and only half assed at that. Get out of here so I can get back to work with these godforsaken wretches.”

Mike clenched his hands, two tiny projectiles at his sides. He felt lighter than normal, sadder as well. He brushed tears away, knees shaking as he stepped back and looked up. The raven peeled another vine free and it plunked in the darker water around the fountain’s base. The bird winked at him and said in John’s voice, “Sacrifice, huh.”

He shook his head, tried to clear it.

Something hit him in the back. He spun around, watched an apple roll away, his flesh stinging near his right shoulder bone. Their mother scowled, ten feet away. Mike looked at his sister’s hands in front of him, through her eyes. It started making sense. Their mother said, “No one has ever loved you. No one ever will. It’s impossible.”