She didn’t bother taking it. Maybe that was a mistake. She guessed she’d find out.
Right now, I can’t give a fuck
. She just couldn’t.
Upstairs Enrique paced outside the room. He looked feverish with worry. Dirt and cuts crusted his face and arms. He grinned and nodded as she approached, all of the pain and anguish vanishing. He took one papoose, not saying a word, maybe thinking he’d jinx the moment if he did.
They went into the motel room, which smelled of cloves and old vinyl, and sat on the bed. The Bearer changed each child and from his knapsack made them bottles. He fed two at a time. Teresa wanted to help but her pulse was racing. She unearthed a well deserved clove and opened the door. She popped the spicy
Djarum
in her mouth and let it hang from her lip as she pulled out a disposable lighter. “What will happen to them? Will they go back to the
Jordons
?”
“They have different homes waiting for them. Different destinies. I will see each of them to their new parents.”
“What will you do then, Enrique?”
The unexpected heartbreak in his face almost compelled her to go put an arm around him. It was one of the most pathetic expressions she’d ever seen. “I will try,” he told her, “to pick up where I left off back home. I do not expect I will be so lucky. But I will try. One must carry on, right?
“Right,” she blandly answered.
“What will you do now?”
She shrugged. “I suppose I’ll start driving somewhere.”
After the clove ran too short, she stubbed it out on the jamb and flicked it off the balcony before shutting the door.
Enrique let her hold the babies, one at a time, for one last time. She whispered a goodbye into each soft seashell ear. Little pink digits tugged at her hair and neck. Glistening eyes beheld her. She didn’t want to get all weepy, so she handed the last, Rebecca, back to Enrique. The man’s small stature rocked under the weight of the loaded papooses. “What have you been feeding them?”
“Only the best.”
The haunted, hunted look hadn’t left Enrique’s features, although he appeared more lucid than last time. “Your friend Martin—?”
“At the market, picking up a few things.”
Enrique pursed his lips, plainly not believing her, but not pressing it. He trudged over and stopped at the door. His head angled as he peered down at his feet. “Did you know there’s a letter here?”
~ * ~
Teresa could not help thinking of the parents she left so long ago. She couldn’t remember if her mother had cried when David came for her. Did her father get drunk that night? Would they have imagined years later their daughter would be in the some seedy motel, exhausted from battling the night, dying slowly from cancer and doing it all, completely alone?
Teresa kicked the Messenger’s letter off the balcony.
That felt great
. She needed some smokes for tonight, maybe a beer too. It would be a six pack kind of day. At the Wrangler, she swept up another envelope and tore it into pieces, which feathered down into a weedy planter nearby.
Up the street she bought a bag of lollipops, a bottle of water and a pack of generic brand cloves. She slammed back down into the Wrangler with her goodies, peeled out without her seatbelt buckled, swerved curbside up the street and parked in front of an inoperative radiator shop. Her eyes wanted to move to the toy aquarium mounted on the dashboard. The fake, trapped fish inside the plastic orb desired attention, but she wouldn’t let them get to her. She was going to smoke and be silent, be silent and smoke.
The window hummed down and the cold morning air rolled in with a nip. She tore open the cloves and breathed in their heavy, sweet poison. She tugged one free and stared at it until everything blurred. Except the black cylinder. It was the only thing left in her life. Why had she not been disgusted by that before? She threw it then and the clove sailed out the window. Next, one by one, she threw the rest, hand moving quicker and more assured. When they were gone she sat there a moment, stunned. Didn’t know what to do now.
Should she go outside and pick them up?
No.
So she screamed.
She pressed her head against the steering wheel. The wind caringly ruffled her hair and though the morning burned bright, she felt encased in dark ice. Her burning eyes lifted. She hadn’t noticed it before, but it had probably been there when she came out of the liquor store. Under the windshield wiper, unsullied, another envelope flagged in the breeze. She reached around and grabbed the damn thing.
This time she opened it.
~ * ~
After more stops and detours than the Priestess of Morning could count, they had finally arrived. Paul could not be helped. He was pulling his somnolent frame through the dirt, making his way to a stained Joshua tree. With
Eggert’s
dagger he resembled an
Ekkian
hunting a spice viper. A bushel of flies spun up from Justin Margrave and went into a fit around Paul. Justin’s black shirt came apart easily to reveal a palate of fishy skin.
Paul worked diligently at opening a gulf in the week-old cadaver. The knife drove past bone with a thick reverberation, as through a porcelain dish. Only a few arches of caramelized blood ran from the wound over the stippled ribs. The Priestess wanted to help, but couldn’t help watching in awe. Justin’s remaining eye might have watched as well, had it not gone missing, now a dark purple hole.
“The children are dead. Ease their song,” Paul mumbled, again and again, and had mumbled for several hours. Watching him carve Justin Margrave’s lumpy muscle away was the most sensual,
real
sacrifice she’d ever witnessed. Hunkered there, Paul nearly glowed with the essence of man, true man. The Priestess’s loins flooded at the sight and overwhelmed her.
Black and orange blossoms sprung from the evisceration in Margrave’s torso and Paul jumped back in surprise. The soil to which they were planted had gone rotten, but the flowers unfurled brilliant petals yet. Paul fell back on his knees and began tearing off the orange blossoms. He stuffed them into his mouth and chewed rabidly. Random marrow seeds fell from under the petals. He gobbled twenty or more, his face bloodier and more alive with every treat. He kept at it a while longer, until it seemed he could eat no more. A look of horror and relief split his face as he gained his feet. He only got a few feet from the maggoty rot before collapsing. He lay there, so divine!
The Priestess could take no more. Giddy like a child, she ran to him, unbuckled his belt and drew off his shoes. He was ready for her. She unfastened her pants and drew them down. Then she kicked her smallclothes off. They landed in a wad over Margrave’s opened chest where the marrow blossoms had grayed and wilted to thin, translucent straws.
Paul smiled. His body and soul reconfigured.
Oh so long!
Waiting in the car for an entire day and not able to—she climbed onto Paul and put him inside her. Their power coalesced. With every grind, she fell farther inside him, putting her sight on his power, realizing it, coming closer to something true.
Paul groaned as they became one and she told him never to worry. They would rest between the worlds, in the belly of the beast, and never take the burning passion that charged them. They would grow stronger and persevere through the night and day. Suddenly she sensed their skin melting together.
A limo pulled through a cape of dust. Four men piled out, guns drawn. One shouted, “Get up and turn around Quintana!”
Five feet away the ground split open and the gateway beckoned. Bats screeched with the pipe organ symphony. The Priestess thought it profound, lovely, true, something she could listen to forever and enjoy.
Priestess/Paul stood up. Turned around. They were one now. They were destiny.
The suited men all wore the same mask of astonishment as they beheld the figure that stood before them.
“Chaplain Cloth?” The others edged back, uncertain why the trail to Paul Quintana had led them to the very monster that sent them here.
“Chaplain?” the lead man stammered, his bony brown face draining.
Cloth’s expression was menacing and they all stood back in terror. “I must rest until the next harvest,” he told them.
The Chaplain stepped into the warmth and security of the gateway’s throat. For Paul and the Priestess separation was no longer relevant. They were diabolically larger than the two human beings that once retained their souls. The earth sealed overhead and the bewildered human faces were left behind in the desert with the
drip, drip, drip, dripping
of the world.
Chaplain Cloth’s black eye soaked up the darkness and his orange eye lit the way in the womb where the lovers could grow stronger. They lay across his design, two devils locked at their poisonous genitals, the beating of their love deafening inside their terrible hearts.
~ * ~
Teresa read in the letter that Patrice Middleton lived just outside
East Highland
. The whole trip had been a dreamy, autopilot type of experience, a series of wheel-turns, signaling, stepping on the brake, stepping on the gas, stoplights, red and green, black and—
Teresa hadn’t cried for hours in that loathsome boxcar to only get choked up now. Things happened, you moved on. If you stopped for too long, your number might get pulled next. It was stupid coming to this place so soon. She wasn’t ready for another partner. She couldn’t go on doing this. Somehow she had to let the Messenger know she was through with this duty.
A Nomad only stops moving when she’s dead.
Suddenly Teresa was on the porch, knocking at the door; this was her strategy, to just let everything play out while she sat back and came to a conclusion about how she felt.
The water-damaged door jerked open. A family hunched in the doorway: a wet-haired mother in a cherry bathrobe, a balding father in boxers and blue t-shirt, and a young platinum blonde girl in a red nightgown, maybe eighteen years old—just about the same age Teresa had been when David first showed.
“Patrice Middleton?” She offered the white envelope to the parents. The father’s face puckered. He showed the Messenger’s note to the mother, who only nodded. He handed it back.
“You can’t do this,” the teenager whispered from behind them.
The father smoothed his glazed dome with a quivering hand. “We talked about this. It’s done.”
“You can’t!”
The mother whirled around. “Just be quiet!”
“We’ll never see her again. That doesn’t bother you?”
The mother glided under Teresa’s elbow. Gently. “Let me show you the way, Ms. Celeste.”
“You know my name?”
The father chuckled. “We’ve known your name since before Patty was born.”
“It was in the letters,” the mother added. “We’ve been receiving them for some time now… even before we crossed through the Messenger’s gateway.”
“Well… I just got mine this morning,” said Teresa.
They guided her around the front of the house and through a wooden gate to a wide backyard of burnt custard grass. The mother leaned into Teresa’s ear. Her breath smelled of black, black coffee and toast. She raised a finger and aimed some place overhead. “Patty’s up there.”
“What, in the clouds?” Teresa joked, figuring she was a little slow in understanding.
The father grimaced. Before he could say anything, the teenager cut in, “Just walk over if you don’t believe us!”
“Knock it off Susan.” The bald man softened then and politely gestured. “Please, Ms. Celeste. Go on up and meet her. She’s all packed. I guess Patty wanted to say goodbye to her special place.”
Teresa didn’t understand what these people were on, but she wouldn’t mind taking some herself. Regardless of any misgivings, she shuffled over where the grass had been crushed under something heavy. At first she thought of an old doughboy pool no longer present, but then she saw the doorway. The opening cut a rectangle into the air, which led to a hall, which in turn led to a spiral staircase, all spray-painted in blues, greens, and some pink. Mantles made the interior and were painted to look... tangible.
The family stood near the garden hose as straight as posts.
“What the hell is this?” asked Teresa.
“Up the stairs,” said the mother.
Teresa gave her a wary look before stepping inside. The hall’s length went three yards up to the staircase. She shook her head and began to ascend. Her feet hit each glittery blue stair with a startling resonance.
These couldn’t all be permanent mantles—could they?
She rounded the stairwell twice before reaching the upper floor.
There, sitting on the false ground between two suitcases, was a little sandy haired girl, possibly eleven years old. At most.
“I love you, Patty.”
Teresa jumped. She hadn’t heard the family come up. The teenager, Susan, ran around her to Patty and embraced her sister. They stood there, hugging, in this strange
treehouse
made of mantles. “Love you too, Susan,” Patty replied, blank faced.
When her sister let her go and backed off, whimpering, Patty turned to Teresa and offered a hand. The girl’s awkwardness made the gesture seem like a weird salute. Teresa crept over, untrusting of the mantle floor, and took a knee—maybe not of her own will—and accepted Patty’s handshake.