Nursery Rhymes 4 Dead Children (26 page)

He realized it was what she had taken from his father’s black lacquered box and he wondered why his dad had hidden it, what purpose it had served in his past. “You’re a natural liar. Fuck you.”

“Your words fall forever. You know I speak the truth. And it scares you. Slit his throat or I will.”

Mike looked down at John, the bowl next to him.
Why would he bring a silver bowl down here?
Distracted by what waited when they came down, the house dark, he hadn’t even noticed it. John’s blood covered the metal lid. Mike looked at Angela, hoping to get her to talk while he figured out what the hell to do. “Through all this bullshit, you’ve shown me what happened though, didn’t you? That’s what you meant by the truth, and how family can destroy us, our secrets—because you knew from experience. My dad dug my sister’s grave at the back of the pool after my mother murdered her. Then what happened to him?”

“I’m sorry, Michael. I wanted to see you be who you can be. We could have given each other hope. Hope made of our own imagination, the possibilities limitless. But I don’t think you’ve got it in you.” She held the knife out, tip of the blade near his throat.

“Your god and our god aren’t the same. You used us.”

“I have a handle on it when I’m moving, but when I rest, I dream.” Her eyes looked big and sad, but he wasn’t sure if she was just continuing her game. “No, they’re not the same. Your god is a dictator and a manipulator. I worship Mother.”

“Dream about what?”

“All-Mother calls me back to her breast. It’s my constant curse. When I dream, I do bad things to earn her favor.” She shook her head. “I can’t help it. You can’t blame me.”

“Why do you need us?”

“Baal-beryth is my brother. I love him the way you love Natalie, even after death. The Hierarchy is my home and when God crushed my heart with his macho bullying only my brothers cared—and like the men made in their image, they only cared half the time. But it was enough. It’s not a matter of how often, but how intensely. My god is Passion and she wants you at her breast, to drink of her cool, rushing milk. Only one of you can. You or him. It’s an honor I’ve marked John for destruction and you for glory. It’s an honor to be recognized. All-Mother, from whose womb worlds formed, from whose heart the Hierarchy expanded, chose you, Michael. You see madness where I only feel warmth. And you can too, if you trust me.”

“It’s never going to happen.”

“You cut him, or I kill you.”

“I already cut him. It’s your turn.”

You can’t do it, can you? It has to be someone who cares about him that finishes him off.

He smiled, even though she ran the knife down his left arm and blood trickled in a fine line and dripped from his fingertips, wet the toes of his boots. “You kill me, you lose.”

“No, then you would. There are pacts to make before I can get what I want. You owe me, I’ve showed you what you’ve most desired.”

“Where’s your brother?” The air shifted, cooler. Smoke curled on the ceiling. John groaned from the floor, his left hand plopping off the lid of the bowl. Mike didn’t know how he could fight them and win when the weapon he needed was stuck in his best friend’s chest.
If I pull it out he’s going to die before anyone can get here to help him. If I don’t, I’ll never win.

Smoke spiraled down from the ceiling in a long column that brushed the floor. Baal-beryth ripped the veil aside and stepped through, his hands clenched, mouth wide and horrible. Mike touched the area around the weeping black nothingness in his shoulder and shivered. Proserpine smiled and whispered, “We can both get what we want if you follow through.”

He nodded and grabbed her wrist and spun her in a circle, sweeping his boot in front of her feet. She tripped and crashed face-forward into the ground. Mike held her wrist, bent it back, trying to free the black glass knife so that he could use it against them. The demoness beat her head off the ground and something popped in her shoulder, but then she faded and he fell through her, his knee colliding with the hardwood floor once the resistance of flesh had vanished. Baal-beryth roared and an arm longer than Mike’s body shot out with blinding speed. A hand wrapped around his waist and squeezed. Mike felt his bladder burst and flood his pants with heat. He screamed.

Proserpine danced naked along the wall, her arm healed and Mike shook his head as she winked at him and Baal-beryth slammed him off the bricks. Blood coated his face, he felt it gushing from a gash in his forehead. He smiled through it and said, “You’ve got nothing without us to make it happen.”

Baal-beryth slammed the floor with its left hand, near John’s leg. Mike punched its wrist, trying to break its grip. Proserpine knelt next to John and ran her fingers over his scalp. Mike yelled, “Leave him alone!”

John’s head tilted to the side, eyelids fluttering. He coughed up a mouthful of blood that wet his chin. Angela stared at Mike, at her brother, and said, “Make him do it. He doesn’t have a choice. We can’t be flesh without the pact.”

But as she looked at them, Mike saw John open his eyes, mouth open half way, grimacing against the pain. John’s dad’s voice came out of his mouth, all fire and brimstone, “Pride before the fall!”

Proserpine laughed, her lips brushing his ear. John pulled the knife free of his chest and stabbed her in the side of the neck. Her hands came up, closed over the wound and she dropped the glass knife. John’s head lolled to the side. Baal-beryth grabbed Mike’s right shoulder and left ankle. Mike thought—
You can kill me. But you’re not getting what you want, motherfucker—
as he kept his eyes on John.

John coughed again, wedged Mike’s knife beneath the dented silver lid. He popped it free as Proserpine stumbled back toward her brother, her hand extended as if pleading for his help. John stared into the bowl, black light shining up into his face, and Mike thought—
Okay, now you’re looking like them, bro. Not good
.

John looked at the black glass knife Proserpine had dropped.

The wind stilled as he tossed the lid to the side and it rang a solitary note that echoed off the brick walls, the bloody hardwood floor. John wrapped his fingers around the bowl, and Mike’s knife, and worked his back up the wall, face pale and strained.

Baal-beryth roared as his sister fell at his feet. Mike felt its grip loosen. He kicked out, stretching for all he was worth, and his boot connected with its chin. Its head whipped back, more substantial now than it had been on the roof at Rusty’s. John stumbled forward, he stopped next to Mike, blood dripping from the tip of his nose. He slipped the K-bar back into his chest like it was a sheath, like it belonged there, and held up the black glass dagger. Mike closed his fingers over the handle, felt an electric charge climb his arms, raise gooseflesh over his whole body as lightning flashed and thunder boomed and John fell next to Angela and the bowl spilled a black tar out over the floor.

Mike slashed at Baal-beryth’s wrist and heat washed out from the wounds like boiling water and seared his face. The creature dropped him and stepped back, stamping its feet, eyes mad with hate. The black tar ran in a circle, slowly at first, circle upon circle, eating itself as it widened and accelerated. It spun like a whirlpool of darkest night and the lone light on the ceiling flickered.
Don’t go out!

Mike grabbed John by the shoulder, fingers tacky and wet and slipping as he dragged him back toward the steps and clocks, the blowtorch they’d used on Herb Miller, and tools, slid across the floor breaking the silence. He felt its pull, the whole of nothing, of nowhere, spinning faster. His shoulder burned with that same churning and it brought tears to his eyes, afraid it would consume him. Baal-beryth tried to pull his foot free of the swirling black mass but it sucked him in up to the knee. His lower half changed form to that of a snake and he writhed and bucked against it but only sank faster.

It grabbed wisps of Proserpine’s hair and pulled her inch by inch toward a world Mike didn’t want to imagine, worse than hell, a void so endless that forever wasn’t long enough to find a single thing to bring your mind peace. John shivered in his arms. The mortar between bricks trembled as the whirlpool hit its peak and lightning flashed inside it. Mike wrapped his legs around John’s waist, drove the knife into the steps and screamed, “Hold on!” Hoping John could hear him, that he wasn’t clutching a corpse. The workbench screamed as nails pulled free and pieces flew toward the hole. Mike bit his lip and his stomach shrank, as the hole took Proserpine’s head, her body still on the floor, inching toward their oblivion. Baal-beryth was up to his waist and batting at it with his hands. John squeezed Mike’s calf around his ribcage and said, “Ease up, I can’t breathe.”

Mike grinned, feeling like a lunatic, glad John was still there with him as the demons howled and the hole slammed closed like a giant door. The wind outside stilled. Crickets chirped. Dully, Mike heard sirens. He wrapped John in his arms and cried against the back of his neck, feeling the knife in his chest, feeling him tremble, skin colder than a live man’s should feel.

Chapter 37

Wednesday, Oct. 20
th

I woke to a hand tickling my face, only it felt like velvet, soft, silky. I turned on my side, eyes straining against bright sunlight shining through a window to my right. Someone stood between me and a landscape of barren trees, rising hills, browning valley. Sunlight spilled around the form like a black aura. The hand stroked my cheek as the shadow leaned forward.
Gloved
, I thought, and smiled. I’d had a nightmare that a beast rose from dark, damp soil and swallowed Uncle Red whole. I took a deep breath.

“You know people used to joke about your gloves. But you have to keep your hands covered, don’t you? You don’t want anyone to know.”

Red said, “I’ve never cared what people think about me. You’re right though, I have to keep them covered, but not just because I don’t want anyone to know, because something bad happened once. Sometimes I can harness it, most times not. This is safer for everyone.”

“So, are we alive or dead? I had a bad dream.”

“You been to hell and back, but you ain’t dead. Bet you’re hurting.”

I lifted my hand and something tugged at my wrist. I looked down, saw a white sheet draped across my legs, an IV in my arm, a spot of dried blood staining the snowy fabric between my left collar bone and heart. My head felt thick and heavy. Tears stung my eyes because I knew that something horrible happened and I couldn’t remember what exactly.

Red wiped sweat from my forehead with a blue handkerchief and said, “You did good.”

“Did I?”

“They have you drugged up.” Red pointed at the blood stain. “You have a hole there and they didn’t want you tearing the stitches out in your sleep. It’s gonna itch for a couple weeks, but it could have been worse. Those two played hell with your mind—Proserpine, Baal-beryth—and lucky for you your friend didn’t drive the knife in three inches lower. You’ve got to take it easy.”

I struggled to remember, tear through the haze, but I only caught glimpses of the woman with the black dagger telling Mike that he had to finish it, but he hadn’t. Something else had happened. “Is Mike okay? Did she kill him?”

“You saved each other, Johnny. In many ways.” He nodded toward the door as my eyes adjusted to the sunlight glaring off the window, the floor. “Michael was here earlier. He spent quite a few nights by your side in that chair there.” He looked back over his shoulder, a slight smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, eyes locked on a tan pleather-covered chair to the right of the window. “He’s good people, as the kids say nowadays.”

I nodded, eyelids threatening to close on me, though I didn’t want them to. I wanted to get up, get back to life. Pain blossomed in my chest and shot down my left side as I shifted, trying to lean up against the wall. Red raised his hand. “Pain killers must be wearing off. Here, you stay still, I’ll raise this thing.” He hit a button and the bed pulsated, inclined. Red repositioned the pillow behind my head.

“Thanks.” I looked at the chair again, hoping April’s jacket or purse was draped over the back. “How long have I been in here?”

“A week since that night in the manor’s basement. It’s Wednesday morning.” Red looked at his watch. “Seven-thirty.”

“How much longer before I can go home?”

Red moved the IV line and sat on the edge of the mattress, a joint popping, the wrinkles in his face deeper than I remembered them being. “Things ain’t ever going to be the same for you boys. I wish I could tell you it’ll be easy, that the worst has come and passed, but I doubt that’s so. You’ve been touched by something greater. Life tests our character, all of us. These others test our souls. There will be sacrifices to make. It won’t be easy.” Red rubbed his gloved hands together. “The doctor said you get to leave today. But remember, you gotta take it easy. You’ve been in bed a week, pumped full of morphine.” He drew in a deep breath and shook his head. “I’m surprised…”

“At what?”

“Your courage.”

I wanted to snort but didn’t have the energy. My fingers played with the wound my best friend had left me. “I guess this is my badge of honor, huh?”

“It is.”

“Is this the part where you pass the torch? And I carry on whatever fight our families fought forever?”

“Not exactly. And I already passed the torch, before you ever went in that awful basement.”

“When you gave me the bowl and said that Mark had left it. But he didn’t, you did.” I remembered my sojourn into the miniature manor in the woods, how Mark had told me that April would devastate me, and how Mark had no idea what bowl I was talking about. “Thanks, Uncle Red.”

Red squeezed my hand gently.

I said, “I’d like to go home as soon as possible.”

“I know.”

“Cat, April I mean—”

Red shook his head. “Don’t think about her.”

“She’s gone, isn’t she?”

Red wiped his eyes. “I shouldn’t have showed her things she could never understand. The Looking Glass haunts her, I’m sure. What she saw inside it. I just didn’t want to see her live with the consequences of what would have happened if she went up there with you. I think I messed her up inside, Johnny. I’d known she couldn’t handle
seeing
, but I didn’t know what else to do. Sacrifices.” I shivered. I saw a black hole swirling in the floor, heard waters churning, the cry of a dear friend, my father’s weeping as he wrestled his own regret.

“Did she say where she went?”

“You have to know when to let go, son.”

It sounded
final
. I wanted to ask more, but I wasn’t sure I wanted the answers to those questions. I pictured her in New Wave hospital, a straight jacket trapping her arms at her sides, as if constantly hugging herself could fix what was wrong inside. I rubbed my forehead with my left hand, skin cool, clammy. “I want to forgive her for something. I want her to know that I know it wasn’t her fault. She did what she thought she had to do.”

“All you can do is keep her in your prayers, Johnny. Her and the boy. Especially the boy.” Red ran his thumb over the back of my hand. “Pray for them.”

“Can you call Mike for me? I need to talk to him, find some stuff out.”

Red tapped my leg with those long, gloved fingers. “Ain’t got no cell phone, but there’s a pay phone out front. While I’m up and about, I’ll find the Doc too and have him start your discharge paperwork. The pain gets to be too much, press this button.” Red pulled a cord with a box attached to the end of it from beneath my side. I thanked him and closed my eyes as I pressed the button and tranquil peace wound through my body like wind.

* * *

I stood at the foot of the bed and strapped my watch on.
Noon
. I turned around, faced the rolling table full of cards and flowers. I looked through several of the cards—from my sister, from people who had attended Father’s services before he’d disgraced himself and run away. Some surprised me. A black card with a red heart in the center made me smile as I opened and read:
I’ll probably take you up on the offer for a conversation sometime. Get better. Beth Ann.
I closed it, thinking about the goth girl who worked at the police station, not really any different than anyone else once you got past her protective layer. I set the card down and whispered, “Anytime you need an ear, kid.”

Another card, white background, an angel perched on a branch of cloud watching over a small town. Someone had used a black ink pen to draw horns on the cherub. The card smelled like earth, damp soil. I opened it. Mike’s choppy writing took up the whole left flap:
Remember her? As evil as she was good in the end. Kinda like people, huh? I’m sorry about sticking my knife in your chest. When you feel up to it I’ll buy you a coffee and make you forgive me. We won. For now. Whatever that means. I’ll see you soon. Your uncle is supposed to call me when you’re coherent and not rambling in your sleep like some kind of lunatic. I’m playing, man. I saw Wylie the other day. He’s home. Drinking too much, we need to be there for him. He’s fighting his own demons. I’m glad our friendship has lasted all these years. You’re my brother. Mikey.

I wiped a tear from my eye, left hand shaking. I swallowed a deep breath that made my chest ache, thankful that God, or whatever was out there, had given me people who enriched my life, that really cared, even when we’d been separated by years and thousands of miles. I tried not to think about April and Ethan, but they clung to my heart and I coughed as I set Mike’s card back on the table.

A knock on the door sounded to my left. I turned, heart heavy and light at the same time, such an odd feeling. Mike smiled. He held an empty cardboard box under his left arm. “Crying over the card I left, huh? I knew you were really a pansy.” He looked rested, strong, as if an awful chapter of his life was behind him, and he’d had the courage to leave it there, not keep sneaking a peek, rereading.

Smart. You’ve always been smart, Mike.

“You look good, Mikey.”

“I thought you’d like that. No one’s called me that since school. Let me get that stuff for you and we can get out of here.” He walked into the room and placed the box on the cart and started stacking the cards inside. “You want these flowers too?”

I nodded, staring at Mike’s shoulder, wondering if the hole One of Three of Seven had torn into it remained. Or if maybe Uncle Red had performed some magic, mended it. I guessed it didn’t matter in the end, even with a part of him missing, Mike had magic of his own. I rubbed a damp hand on my pant leg as Mike took the two vases into the bathroom and dumped the water down the sink. When he came back he placed the flowers in the box with the cards. “What do you remember, Mike?”

“More than I’d like to.”

“I don’t remember much of anything. Red said it’s probably the drugs.”

“Probably.”

I touched the healing wound above my heart. Mike tucked the full box under his left arm, braced the bottom edge on his hip. “You saved my life. Remember that?”

“No.”

“Well, you did, and I owe you.”

“Like I don’t owe you.”

“No,” Mike shook his head, smiling. “You’re all paid up.” Mike wiped his lips. “Did your uncle tell you about your woman?”

I swallowed, nodded, eyes stinging. “I don’t blame him though. He had to show her what would happen if she went up there with me. It’s not his fault.”

“You ready?”

“In a minute.” I wiped my forehead again as the room spun. I put a hand on the wall. “How’s Duncan?”

“You’ll see him shortly. He’s coming down today, said he has something to show us, updates probably on Jim White. His friends have been working overtime on the case since Dunc’s daughter was one of the victims.” Mike looked around the room. “You got any clothes to throw on, Tonto? Red said he’d bring you some.”

I looked beneath the foot of the bed, saw my shoes tucked below the clipboard hanging from the frame—someone had cleaned all the mud off them. A pile of neatly folded clothes sat in the recessed casing of the window: jeans, a button up red shirt that looked thirty years old, clean underwear. A jacket hung on the back of the door and it reminded me of Mike hanging on the antenna of Rusty’s house. Mike smiled when I looked at his shoulders. He said, “It’s still there, the holes, if that’s what you’re wondering about. Showers are a bitch. I don’t like to let water get near them.”

“Maybe Red can help.”

“Maybe. He’s told me a few things. Shown me something.”

“What?”

“Go ahead and get dressed, there’s plenty of time to catch up once we get you home and comfortable.”

I dressed in the bathroom, beneath a flood of emotions—relief, hope, a gratefulness for the good people in my life, those I didn’t feel I deserved. When I stepped out of the restroom, the shirt hanging from my bones, Mike took my right arm and helped me into the hall, saying, “I got your prescription. We’ll stop and fill it before I take you home.”

“I don’t want to go home yet.”

A nurse in a purple smock passed us, smiling. My shoulder flared with heat.

“Where do you want to go?”

“Out to the river. You know the spot.”

Mike smiled. “I do. It’s sunny out, but not as warm as it looks.”

“I don’t mind.”

Mike shifted the box higher on his hip. “The river it is then.”

I put one foot in front of the other, thinking,
This is how life goes, a bunch of small steps that lead us back to the beginning.

* * *

Mike unfolded two lawn chairs with lime green crossed-strapping and helped me ease into the one on the left. I thanked him and thought,
He knew I’d want to come out here
. The wind was crisp, the sky clear, sun bright off the water. I saw me and Mark as boys, being baptized by our father and then as men, dealing pain that never would have hurt us quite the same if we’d just been honest with each other from the start. I wiped my eyes, wanting to blame the sunshine, the dust curling off the bank of the river as the wind gusted and Mike coughed into his sleeve.

It starts with being honest with yourself. If you hadn’t blown up at him or April and let it control you, they’d both still be around. If…

Mike said, “Don’t think like that. The past is behind us. Leave it there.”

I nodded, glad the pain was rushing in, stinging my eyes. I caught glimpses of a whirlpool swirling at insane speeds, a girl’s cry that never ended, a brother who held on when all hope was lost. I thought about Angela and what she’d said about my Soul-Birth, and the ache in my chest made me wonder if she was right and if it was still happening. “Why did they need us?”

“Maybe it’s best that you don’t know. Just heal up. There will be plenty of time to talk about everything when you’re rested.”

“I remember a pit that runs so deep it’s endless.”

“Like hate?”

“No, hate can only go so far. Endless.”

“Okay. It’s not a dream, is that what you want to hear? It’s in the basement, in a silver bowl.”

“How’d it get back in the bowl?”

“You called to it and it flowed to you like a river.”

“I remember Angela—”

“Proserpine.”

“Yeah, I remember her telling me that when I gave her the key, I actually gave her two.”