Bottled Abyss (11 page)

The River is not deep, is not shallow,

     
An Abyss is never bound,

Not by up and down.

He moaned and rested his head on his outstretched arm. With all his hateful thoughts of the Fury, he wished the monster would return to keep him company, to give him, he supposed, some meaning to still be.

A scattering of rocks outside made him start and bump his head on the low ceiling. Next came the crackling of weeds and sticks. The Ferryman shifted his body as much as the cave would allow and poised the bottle before him.

“Please,” he yelled. “I need help! I’m stuck in here.”

He had to spill the waters on the person. Once that happened, they would renew, because another coin would be in existence…

He tried to uncork the bottle with one hand with little success. The other hand had been long pinned at his side. He took the malodorous cork in between his teeth and yanked it off. All it would take was one sprinkle—then it would start all over again. Surely the Fury would not accuse him of stealing a life, not from such an accident like this.

The sunlight fluxed outside.

“Here, here!” he cried, giddy, but focused.

The bottle possibly had only a drop left in it, but that was enough to exchange a death.

He waited.

“Hello?” he called.

The bottle grew heavier, began to fill. His nostrils twisted at the scent. These waters were different… it wasn’t from the
Styx
.

What’s happening?

The Ferryman gasped and looked around. The cave also wasn’t retreating. How could this be?

Nyx? Have you risen again? What is this new game you play, mother?

Outside the hole, darkness loomed. Someone stood out there.

“Help me, friend,” said the Ferryman, pushing the bottle out of the hole. He wagged it violently and the fresh waters sloshed inside.

Fangs drove down into his hand and ripped it from side to side. He dropped the bottle and reflexively brought his hand back inside.

One of those accursed coyotes…why should they want the bottle?

The walls edged in. He could feel the ceiling pressing down on his skull.

“Fury! Fury, please come back. Come back and say goodbye. Fury, I’m not mad anymore. This was great fun, wasn’t it?”

A great stress built in the Ferryman’s head, such that he imagined a dam about to burst apart. Threads of river water and mutilated fish blood squeezed out from his wounds, flooding into his mouth, choking him. He could hear the squishing and cracking and realized it was his body making these sounds. One of his eyes went oblong from the pressure. The quivering orb finally burst and jetted across his arm in a warm slime. It was the last thing the Ferryman felt before a searing hot curtain of dark fell on everything.

6

Janet had her head pressed into the leather headrest and felt forever stuck there. Two days in the hospital and this house was alien. Looking at the façade was like bearing witness to one of those human zoo exhibits in a
Twilight Zone
episode. Here is where they live, folks. They’re shy right now, but keep watching and perhaps they may come out to get the mail, or better, we can peer through a window and see them inside, eating, shitting, fucking, drinking themselves to death. Such a noble animal, the human beast is.

A strain of Lester’s rapid fire barking came from the backyard. Janet missed her dog. She needed to go be with him, cuddle up and go to sleep. Just sleep.

Faye was on the phone with Evan. They’d been talking for a few minutes now but Janet hadn’t processed any of the conversation. She guessed they were still concerned about Herman. As long as they’d known him, they still didn’t know her husband the way she did. He was a good guy. He tried to be a good guy, for all his faults. However, when things got difficult, he left her alone. He ran. Even before Melody died, Herman became ghostlike when a burden weighed on those big shoulders of his.

“The truck is still here, like you said. How much longer do we need to wait before we call the police?” Faye asked, the phone pressed hard to her dainty pink ear.

Janet had heard enough. She popped the door open and put her hand out for the house keys. Evan had them earlier when he came to check on house again. Now Faye had them but she wouldn’t hand them over. Instead, she got out of the car herself, still talking to Evan.

It’s my friggin’ house,
thought Janet. She pushed the passenger door closed and its metal frame shocked her. “Ouch.”

Faye froze, eyes widening as they appraised her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, the door.”

Faye’s brow furrowed and she continued with Evan, “We’re going inside now…she’s okay. Sure, like we said, it all goes. I’m going to throw everything away, just like—yes, okay, when will you be here? Sure. Love you.” She put her phone into her sweatshirt pocket and gave three compulsive shakes of her key ring. “We’re going to get you cleaned up, get you back into fighting shape, babe.”

“Thanks,” mumbled Janet.

“Don’t thank me yet.”

Addressing the crisis boldly, that was the new Faye. Janet supposed she was partly to blame. Faye had been sort of a lost soul through much of her young adult years and had taken direction from Janet ever since meeting her in college. Now she was looking at a copy of the woman Faye thought Janet used to be, when by all accounts Faye had more nervous energy than Janet ever had. Everything was a mission that had to be carefully tasked out and pragmatically resolved. It was a silent competition that none but Faye could ever possibly enjoy the fruits of victory, if she even did.

Despite loving and appreciating her friend dearly, Janet just wanted her gone. Faye was part of a world removed from the primary players in her life. Herman and Melody, even Evan all perched like protective gargoyles on the gothic skyscraper of her life. Little Faye, she was merely a pigeon that, while determined to keep busy and left its mark everywhere, could never have permanent residence with the other stone fixtures.

Janet felt like a bitch for thinking this way, but she just wanted to curl up and be left alone. Hopefully Herman would return and she could wake up and…

Thinking that mattered was a ruse. Janet didn’t know where to go from here. There had been a way out before but right now the thought of alcohol made her burp something up that tasted like the bottom of a barbecue pit. She would be lying to herself, after so many tries before, if she didn’t yearn for the sickness all over again.

She didn’t know the rewards back when she was younger. A good drink could send you to a hazy place, make you forget how cold it was by warming you down to your soul, and in the aftermath of a binge, the suffering made moral sense. It was payment, wasn’t it? You can’t have something so joyous for nothing. Janet even began to look forward to throwing up and breaking out in cold sweats and even the hammering headaches. It made her feel terrible, which was what she deserved to feel every day until her miserable body quit.

Here it was, a year after the murder, and she couldn’t resolve any of the guilt for insisting on taking Melody to that “award winning” daycare.

Guilt was easy though. The anecdote to the pain was fast at hand.

That is, until Faye started roaming around the kitchen with a trash bag, stuffing bottles of whiskey and vodka into its great black hole of a mouth.

Janet rubbed the raw feeling in her forehead. It hurt to talk after having tubes down her throat but this was worth it. “What are you doing, Faye?”

“Cold turkey, babe.” Faye stooped near an open cupboard. She pulled out a bottle of cooking sherry, looked at it for a moment, then stashed it. “You made it out of the hospital and you’re never going back. Evan and I, and Herman, we’re all going to help you get better. I’m sorry I didn’t do this sooner. I wanted to give you time, you know,” a sampler of Jim Beam struck the other bottles inside the bag, making Janet flinch, “and I think that was a big mistake. I should have been a better friend.”

“It was an accident. I forgot how much I drank earlier that night. I thought I could handle it. I won’t drink like that ever again. I’m not a drunk. You know that.”

Faye stood and the bag made her sway from its weight. “Any hiding places?”

Janet rolled her eyes. “Go ahead and search this house if you like. I’m going to feed Lester and then I’m going to damn sleep.”

“Great idea.” Faye marched off on her mission, trash bag wagging on the carpet behind her.

“Fuck,” Janet breathed, heading for the laundry room.
As if I even need hiding places with Herman always gone.

She grabbed a can of dog food from the cupboard over the washing machine. As she pulled off the lid, the metallic rasp, followed by the rich odor gave her a nauseating chill and another charcoal burp surfaced in the back of her throat. She smacked her dry lips together. Water would be a nice, but it could make her throw up again too.

Janet opened the back door and was surprised Lester didn’t nearly knock her down as usual. Across the yard, she saw the Border Collie in the threshold of his doghouse, but though his ears were at attention and his eyes were bright and keen, he didn’t move.

“Les, come and get it.” She shook out the gravy laden meat chunks into the crusty dish. It needed to be cleaned, like everything else in this house, but she didn’t have the energy, and Herman wasn’t home.

He still wasn’t.

His wife could be as cold as a popsicle in the morgue and he wouldn’t have even known. Then again, after all she’d put him through, could she really blame him?

“Lester.” She suddenly reconnected to the moment. “Lester, get your butt over here and eat!”

The dog didn’t move.

She wasn’t in the mood for this, and was about to go back inside, when something between the dog’s paws caught her attention. It wasn’t a stick. He’d found some sort of bottle out here. A jerk-off kid probably tossed it over the fence.

“There’s real food over here. Come on boy,” she said, patting her leg.

Lester started panting.

“What have you found there, you weirdo?”

Janet crossed the yard and stopped a few feet from the dog house. Lester moved his paws inward and growled, his gaze turned down in warning. She’d raised him since a puppy and had never heard him growl.

“Lester!” She stomped her foot. The Border Collie’s ears dropped in self admonishment and the bottle fell sideways against the doghouse. The unusual tempered glass was different than any she’d ever seen, like overlapping blades of shadow. She reached again for the bottle and jumped back as Lester let out a snappish bark. Lester retreated inside the doghouse, bringing it back with him.

Janet decided to leave things alone.
Let him cool down
. “But don’t think I won’t be back, mister.”

She returned for the house.

In the kitchen, Faye sat at the cluttered table. The bag of assorted alcohols had been neatly twist-tied and rested against the wall with three other trash bags taken from throughout the house. Janet planned to head straight for the bedroom, but then she noticed the tears peaking in Faye’s eyes.

Faye scrubbed the tears away as Janet approached. “So how’s Les doing?”

Janet folded her arms. “What did you find?”

Faye slid out something from under a stack of Herman’s various water pump manuals. “This.”

Janet knew the photo well. It had been taken at Melody’s one year-old birthday party at the park. Faye was spinning her around, background set to brilliant slopes of green grass and the distant, ghostly presence of weeping willows near a duck pond. That had been a really fun day. To think it had only been a few years ago too… Faye looked quite younger, and Melody, as with all photos of her now, was astonishingly beautiful and alive.

Faye got up from the table and hugged Janet tightly around the waist. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if you…too…”

“I’m sorry.”

She pushed back and pecked Janet on the cheek. “Don’t be. I’m not being that helpful, am I? Blubbering idiot is what I am.”

“Now stop… Hey, I’m just gonna…”

“Yeah.”

“…lay down now.”

“Of course. Go.” Faye slid her overlarge purse off the table and began to rummage through it, probably for something she didn’t need right now.

Outside, a car horn blared.

Faye smiled crookedly. “I don’t know why he’s honking, the silly guy. Probably isn’t thinking, worried about He-Man and all. I told him he needs to stay here with you. I have other errands to run and I don’t want you alone.”

“No,” Janet’s voice squeaked. “He’ll be bored here.”

“He’ll be fine. He can watch ESPN.” Faye went through the front door. Her eyeliner was smudged from crying and the streaking made her look more exotic, rebellious, something Faye definitely wasn’t. “Be back in a little while, babe.”

Within minutes, Evan was walking resolutely through the door. He wore an orange sherbet colored polo shirt, khaki pants, and despite the relatively cooler
Southern California
weather, carried himself like an overheated car salesman after a summer blow-out sale. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve and took off his glasses to examine them.

Janet dropped on the couch. There wasn’t a chance Evan would let her take a nap. She waited for him to say something and when he didn’t, she knew exactly what type of conversation this would be and her headache instantly grew new roots.

He put his glasses back on and stood there, wary of her, a Clark Kent with only one identity. “I don’t know where he is, Jan,” he finally said, “but you know what, I’m beginning not to care.”

“Herman’ll turn up. He just freaked out and went to hide. It’s his way. Did you call all his jobs?”