Blasted (47 page)

“How much further up the road do you live?”

“Not far.”

“What number?”

“My legs are tired.”

“Come on, you're a big girl. You can walk a little further, can't you?”

We went on up the road, past the big merchant houses, alongside the river. The sky had begun to lighten and I could see the river, flowing in the wrong direction, current flowing the way we walked. Freezing rain began to spit out of the sky. We were almost to the little overpass now. “Do you live past that bridge?”

“Yes. I'm
tired
!”

“Are you?”

“
Tired
! Please,
please
carry me!”

“Well, I guess I could for a while. What about a piggy-back?”

“Yes, yes, yes!” Again she hissed her s-es, jubilant. I crouched down and let her scramble up on my back, small stick arms wrapped around my throat.

“Don't strangle me!”

She adjusted her grip and I stood. She was light as a feather. “Off we go!” I said, and she echoed me. “Off we go!”

I walked up the road. She must live somewhere around here in this cluster of houses, I said to myself. “You'll tell me when we get to your house, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Your people must be worried about you.”

“My
fam-i-ly
?” She tasted the word, stringing it out.

“Yes. Did you sneak out?”

“Yes. Snuck out.” Her voice sounded sad.

Even her small body was starting to feel heavy now. “Are we there yet?”

“Not much further now.” She tightened her grip on me.

“Careful! You're strangling me again!” I trudged on, up the road. “You'll tell me when we get there?”

“Yes, yes. Nearly there.”

God, she felt heavy. Her body hurt me where my back had been pulverized by my bike accident. My steps slowed, and slowed some more. I asked her if she could walk a little, but she whimpered, so I continued. She hummed away to herself, the thin threading voice sounding fat and cheerful now. On and on. Would we never get there? I asked her, and she laughed. So heavy now. I could barely put one foot in front of the other. She shifted her arms, cut off my windpipe again.

“You're strangling me…”

She held her arms there for a second, maliciously tightening them. I stopped, gasping. She moved her arms, twined her hands in my hair. “Can it breathe now?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Don't stop, don't stop! It's nearly there!” her voice high pitched and hysterical. I started my slow progress again.

“I can't go much further.”

Her weight dragged. One foot in front of the other. Her fists in my hair pulled at my lacerated scalp, her thin little legs were practically dragging on the ground. Why was that? It was hard to think… it was because I was bent over, bent nearly double, with the weight of her on my back. Red flickered at the edges of my vision.

“You're too heavy… too heavy.” I stopped, breathing, supporting myself with my hands on my knees.

“It must keep going, go!” she squealed, balling her fists in my hair.

“Can't.”

“GO!”

She pulled so hard some of my hair came away, and beat upon my back with her other fist.

“Get off me!”

“No, no, no, NO!”

I reached around, struggling with her, trying to tear her from my back, but it was like fighting with a cat. She was all over me, limbs clinging like roots, but fast as a snake, a cat, a monkey; I'd no sooner get one leg off of me then the other wrapped around my waist, strong, terribly strong. She alternately laughed and keened, a high-pitched wail like a steam kettle on the boil. Surely someone in the dark houses would hear us; surely someone would come, recognize this monstrous child, take her off me. No one heard, no one came. Long fingers clung to my face, seeking eye-holes to gouge. Her body shifted and changed; sometimes limbs long and tough as strands of ivy enwrapped me. Sometimes she concentrated into a small, hard, rock-heavy thing and tried to perch on my head, fingers and toes entwined in my hair, screeching, my head wobbling, almost breaking my neck. This was no lost child. Stories I had heard. Tales of being dragged below, living forever underground among the roots of trees, eating garbage, eating dust, eating dry bones of fingers, the glam-shabby palace and banquets of Them. Coming out and a hundred years having passed. Or fairy-led around and around, moithered to death. Or one of Them taking someone's place, someone's life, and the people around hardly noticing.

We'd reached a point above the river. The road here surged up so that the bank dropped off steeply, down twenty or thirty feet to the water, houses clinging to the side of the pavement. The river gurgled and rushed. Trees spoke in the wind. Something. Water. They can't cross water? Another bridge lay not far, I knew. I'd crossed it many times to visit the graveyard. My parents were buried there, on the other side of the water. They can't cross water? Can't cross water.

I pitched myself over the bank, slick with freezing rain. Down, down we rolled. She was snarling, biting at my face, screaming. I tried to stave her off with my hands, jolted and falling. I hit the bottom – the smooth unnatural gravel trail where the railway tracks used to be – the wind knocked out of me. There was water running next to us. I staggered to the trees, the monster dragging me down, beating and screaming at me, tearing at my back. Pure rage. White gleamed faintly in the shadows, white gleaming painted rails of the bridge. I fell toward the bridge, the impossible weight on my back, fingers trying to tear my face, toes trying to put roots into my skull. I fell onto the bridge, and… …lightness. She was off me. I lay on the bridge, pinned only by the weight of my own body, gasping. I could hear her voice like the baying of a dog. Things struck me, clods of mud and earth pelted me and stuck there on my body. I lifted my head. The thing stood at the edge of the water, under the bridge-head, throwing dirt and mud at me in huge glommy handfuls. “You'll pay! You'll pay! You'll pay!” Small, squat – long knobbly fingers and toes like willow twigs – huge mouth open screaming at me with each missile. “You'll pay!”

“To you and yours,” I said with my last strength, tongue thick in my mouth, “I've already paid.”

And then her arm darted out, long and quick. Her fingers, woody and thin as twigs, slapped me across my left eye.

The pain. There is only the pain in my left eye. I can't move. The clods of mud keep coming, hitting me until I am covered in it, my eyes and nose and mouth stopped up with it, until I am buried, deep inside it. The screams of rage muffle, and silence at last. Head-first into the ground, my hair pushing down, down, turning white and stubborn like the roots of trees. Always the rustling, murmuring – water – leaves – the air of wet caves, the seething tides. I can't breathe, my mouth is full of dirt. Down, my hair pushing into the earth, pulling the rest of me after it. Down, rock splitting open with the force of slow rooting, opening up to reveal clean lines of pure white quartz, hearts of pink granite. Down into darkness until the rock and earth give way. I fall into an open place.

With my left eye only can I see it, the eye sore from the slap: an underground place of earth, stones. The long banquet table, a rotting cloth of gold laid out upon it. And around it, people. Tall and slender like beautiful women, dogs' tails out the back of their fine dresses, or a cloven hoof where a foot should be. Short, squat, lumpen people with red caps and twigs for hair. Blue men, head lolling, grinning, needle-teeth shining. Small people dressed all in white, lacy shawls, like rotting baptism babies.

A throne looms at the back of the hall, and something tall glimmers on it, cooing, warbling, cloth sliding as it languidly rearranges its limbs. The figure on the throne wears a bony crown. The stench of carrion wafts over to me with each movement, and I gag. Where is the girl? Surely she should be here too. I choke and try to spit.

The table is richly set with platters. A banquet. Wine goblets filled with dirty water, and blood congealing at the rims. A man in a red cap offers me a plate full of seething worms. I cannot eat or drink; my mouth is stuffed with dirt. Pale candles flicker on the table, the flames dancing, spurting. I look more closely – the flames are the terrified faces of children. Something lurches from behind the throne, the girl I carried. With my left eye I see that she is made of clay and twigs and old dark matted hair like the leavings in combs, she is coming apart at the seams, and she looks like me.
Isn't she lovely?
The Queen coos. The girl smiles, and her head starts to crack apart.
She isn't quite ready yet,
the Queen allows
, but when she is, won't she be fine?
I recognize the Queen. She's the one who has been visiting me, who I imagined was my childhood friend. But this creature isn't the last of anything human. She has no people to lose. She glares and smiles, and I cover my face with my hands. Something tears my fingers away, twiggy fingers; it is the broken girl, and although I snatch my hands away from her I am forced to look again.

The Queen's stinking skirts stir. Out from under come two figures covered in dust. One, a hunchbacked shriveled man, black haired, I don't know what he is. Then I see on his ring finger the twisted knot of a mudgrass wedding ring.
Oh, how you fed me in the winters!
he says.
How fat I grew!
My knees give way and I fall, but all the wishing in the world won't make it go away. That thing stood in for my father. I retch, I want to cry but I can't. It is dry here. The thing's eyes glitter; it shrinks, crawls away into the shadows.

The second figure is as ugly as the others, but old, so very old, and her hands are knobs of wood. It is meant to be an old woman. She holds something in her hands, a little headless skeleton, she moves to the banquet table. In the centre where a main dish should lie, some harmless roast or joint, there is a tarnished silver platter garnished with a circle of stones. The thing places the little skeleton on the platter. The delicate bones curl up like a lost child, a skull-less child, curled into herself amidst the circle of stones, and my womb moves within me.
There you are
, I try to say but I can't, my mouth is stopped up.

The Queen rises from her dirt throne. Tall and terrible, her dress hung with feathers, she glides toward the table. She reaches out a hand, scaly and orange, taloned as a bird's. Her eyes glitter. Her crooked fingers reach out and the candle flames shrink away from her, children's mouths silently howling. One by one her fingers pinch out the flames. Dead wicks black, smoking. Greasy smoke. She rakes at the small skeleton, but I force my cold weighted limbs to move. I crawl onto the table and the things around me set up a great howl, they bang on the table with bent and broken knives. The Queen raises a talon to strike me. I reach out and gather the tiny bones to myself.

There you are. I've found you at last.
I cradle the bones to my breast.
You can't have this one.
I cannot speak, but they hear me.
You can't have her any more.

I have walked back down the road, past Grandpa's house, back the way I came, clods of mud falling off me with every step. Rain drizzles out of a dark grey sky, the birds soar white into it. I step across the wet, half-frozen turf of the monument. The Irish cross is broken off at the top. I did that, long ago, didn't I? I walk up the stairs to the stone. I am cold. I curl myself around the base of the monument to Shanawdithit, to the bulldozed church of St. Mary. Except off to one side I see the church, stone, solid, safe. And there is the scent of a wood fire and warm light flickering, a group of people, tall and dressed in skins, sitting around it speaking in a language I don't know.

I lay down my fragile burden of bones. There is dirt all under my nails, my fingers are scraped raw. I wonder why. I am so cold.

CHAPTER 35

Cold. Deep-body cold, marrow frozen, eyeballs freezing and sticking to the inside of eyelids. I lay there, a dumb thing, felt the slow movement of blood, slush in my veins. Heartbeat. Wait. Heartbeat. Wait. Was I underground? Was I dead? Heartbeat. I tried to move, to find my hands, feet, head. Heartbeat. A breeze across my face? A sense of light and space above me, yes, was that it? And then, high up, clear, irritable and familiar, a seagull's cry.

My world righted itself. That cold hardness all along my back: that was the ground, I was lying on my back on the ground. That light and space, that was the sky. That thing there was my left foot, this other, my right hand; could I move them? No, something missing. Heartbeat. What? Breath, breathing, I wasn't breathing, I wasn't breathing —

I convulsed on the ground like a rabbit caught in a snare. My mouth was filled with dirt. My fingers gouged the dirt from my mouth, cracked the mask of it from the raw skin of my face, and the organs deep inside my body shuddered, seized. Lungs opened. I retched. Coughing felt like throat and chest trying to turn inside-out, the pain of that. Then, deep and shuddering, I took a breath. Cough, gag, breathe.