Authors: Avery Stark
Emily dropped her hand down with a sigh, "Yeah?"
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I just, uh, got lost in thought there for a second."
"I can see that."
Barbara moved down a few steps so that she could rest both of her forearms on the attic floor and then leaned forward and rested her soft chin on them.
"Do you want to talk about something?"
Emily sat down on one of the cross-beams.
"It's just that," she hesitated, "I don't know if we should be having this party at all."
Barbara smiled in a pitiful kind of way, "Why not?"
"You don't think that it's wrong?"
"Of course not. Carl and Caroline would want you to get some fresh air and have a good time."
Emily couldn't help but feel overwhelmed by the feeling that her mother might not have cared so much.
"I'm not so sure."
She scanned the organized boxes again and it made her feel like her insides were tying themselves up. She was so angry with her mother, furious even. Not only was she a coward when Emily came to her for help, but she also took away her loving father in one selfish act of recklessness.
Out of all of it, however, the one thing that made Emily the angriest was how she had tried so hard to forgive in all of the years that had passed. She lived every day under the assumption that her mom would never hurt her like that again, even if she never totally believed it. But as Emily sat there in the hot, sticky attic and ran her hand over the dusty cardboard that she would never again have the chance to help her parents with, she genuinely started to believe that her mother might have been the biggest monster of all.
"Come down," Barbara said to her, "it's far too hot to be up here much longer."
Emily nodded but said nothing. By the time she and Barbara finally found their way back down the creaking stairs, it was several minutes past noon.
"Girls," Tex called from the living room. "What on Earth were you doing up there?"
The two women-both of them covered in cobwebs and dust-made their way into the room.
"It sounded like an elephant was up there," Gary exclaimed.
Barbara put her hands on her wide hips, sending up a dirty puff, and replied, "Are you calling us elephants?"
Gary smirked, "I'm not calling you anything. I know better than that."
"You're darnn right you do!"
Tex folded the newspaper that he was holding and set it down on the couch.
"So what were you gals doing?"
Emily rubbed her cheeks with her hands, allowing the gritty layer to scratch her finger tips, and answered, "We were looking for the stuff for the party."
Gary leaned back in his chair, "Party?"
"We have one on the fourth every year. It's usually pretty fun."
Tex slapped his hands together and rubbed them back and forth, "You bet your ass it will be!"
Emily always enjoyed his enthusiasm, whether or not she believed that it was genuine. With him, it seemed, everything was genuine.
Behind her and Barbara, the front door popped open and Adam poked his head through the crack.
"Emily?"
His voice suddenly made her feel warm inside. She turned around and tried to dust herself off.
"Yeah?"
Adam cleared his throat and tapped his paint-flecked fingers on the door, "There is someone here who wants to talk to you."
She hadn't been expecting anybody, but it didn't come as too much of a surprise. Random people had been filtering by since the funeral, whether it was past guests or friends of the family. All of them just wanted to give her their condolences.
"Do you know who it is?"
Adam shook his head.
"He didn't want to come inside."
Tex interjected, "Why the hell not?"
"I'm not sure. He just asked if I could send Emily out alone."
Emily sighed and licked her lips absentmindedly. Before she realized what she had done, the musky taste of attic filled her mouth. She grimaced and headed toward the door.
"Okay. Thanks, Adam."
Emily grabbed the door just below his hand but he stopped her from opening it all of the way.
"Do you want me to go with you?"
His obvious concern for her made her heart flutter. She gently stroked one of her dusty fingers over his. It was so fleeting that she was sure nobody had noticed. Nobody that is, except for Adam, who looked at her with a smile.
"It's okay. I'll be back in soon."
Adam stepped in, allowing her to move by and close the door behind her. Unfortunately for her delicate existence, there was a monster waiting at the base of the stairs.
When Emily turned around and saw Father Hall standing with his hand on the railing, her breath froze in the middle of an exhale. In the same moment, the rising bile in the back of her throat burned with an acidic tang that she hadn't forgotten over the years.
She squeezed her hands into fists and gritted her teeth to keep from screaming.
"What are you doing here?"
"Emily, I-"
He raised a foot and moved like he was going to climb the stairs.
"Don't come near me, you sick bastard."
Her words came through her teeth like a growl.
"Emily," he pleaded, "I've come to offer my respects."
"Respect?" Her voice started to rise and she pressed herself against the door to get as far away from him as possible. "Don't talk to me about respect."
An almost believable frown turned his mouth down toward the ground.
"I have repented and made myself right with God."
Emily was almost speechless. Her heart raced and her palms turned clammy, making it harder and harder for her to grip onto the door knob like the lifeline that it was.
Of all the people who could have come, why did it have to be him?
Finally, after a long silence, Emily stomped her foot onto the porch and screamed at him, "
Fuck
you and your forgiveness!" She pointed a shaking finger at him and started to weep openly, "You ruined everything!"
"Now Emily," he raised a hand to her-the same one that he used to violate her so many years ago-and tried to come up the steps again.
Emily could feel the years of pent-up anger -and outright hate- beginning to boil over. There were so many things that she wanted to say, so much of her pain that she wanted him to feel, that she simply lost control.
The young woman flew down the stairs and landed both of her balled-up fists square in Father Hall's chest. He stumbled backwards, gasping for breath, and eventually landed right on his ass a few feet away.
"
Fuck you
," she screamed again and charged after him, kicking up clouds of dirt as she barreled forward in a blind rage. "You disgusting sack of sh-"
When she reached the cowering pastor, her words simply stopped. Instead, she fell down onto her knees next to him like a baseball player sliding into home and grabbed a fist full of his thinning hair. Once she had a firm grip, Emily forced him further into the dirt.
"Emily," he raised his hands in front of his face, "think about what you are doing!"
She tightened her grip on his hair until her knuckles had turned to a snowy white and forced the back of his head into the dirt. The young woman hadn't been in a fight in her entire life, but the torrent of emotions suddenly gave her a kind of blood lust that, later, would startle even her.
"Shut the fuck up," she wailed through her tears.
Though she couldn't see it, the front door flew open and the Inn's guests ran out onto the porch. What they saw shocked all of them.
Emily raised her free fist up and brought it down onto Father Hall's long nose with a sickening crack. The cowering priest screamed and thrashed in an attempt to get away from her, but it didn't do any good. Her fingers were curled around his hair like a bear trap and, as was made apparent by the distant look in her eyes, she wasn't anywhere near being done with him.
Father Hall tried to shield his face with his arms, but it was no match for Emily's pummeling fist. She brought it down onto his face over and over again, sending out increasingly violent splatters of his blood like red fireworks.
Cartilage and bone crackled under her already swollen knuckles with every unrestrained swing that she took. To Adam, along with the other guests, she looked like a rabid animal. By the time that he reached her, Emily had succeeded in landing almost a dozen blows to the Father's face, leaving him bloodied and dazed.
"Emily," he yelled and locked both arms around her waist, "
stop
!"
She thrashed her body against him in a desperate bid to escape and continue her assault.
"Get off of me!"
"No, Emily. You need to stop!"
She kicked and bucked under his powerful arms.
"I won't stop," she screamed and pointed a bloody finger at Father Hall, who had scrambled to his feet, "until he pays for what he did!"
Adam's heart was pounding in his chest, but as her squeezed Emily against him, he could feel that hers was even more erratic. What had this man said to her? Who was he?
Had she finally snapped?
Father Hall staggered back and nearly collapsed over the trunk of his car. He cradled his face with both hands, allowing a steady stream of blood to drip from between his fingers.
"I'm calling the police," he slurred through some early swelling and a couple of loose teeth.
Emily clenched her fists and tried to charge again. Adam gritted his teeth and pulled her in so close that he could smell the alkaline, sweet mix of blood and perfume wafting up from her shaking body.
"Call the police, you piece of shit," she cried, "so I can tell them what you did to me!"
Father Hall tried to balance himself on the heavy car but continued to stumble as he made his way toward the driver's side door.
"Please," she begged sarcastically, "call them so they can hear about how you…"
Her voice trailed off. Adam, with his hands still pinning her to him, could feel the fight leaving her petite body. The muscles in her back started to relax and the shallow breaths that she had been taking began to slow down. The change was subtle, but he knew that she couldn't go on like that for much longer.
Father Hall jerked the car door open, threw himself inside, and fumbled with the keys that he had left in the ignition.
In a heartbeat-a fleeting blink of an eye-he was gone.
When the car disappeared from sight, Emily slipped through Adam's arms and took off down the road, her bare feet slapping down into the hard earth. Tiny pebbles stabbed and ripped dozens of little cuts on her tender flesh, but she didn't feel a thing.
Not far behind, Adam was following and calling her name.
By the time that he got close enough to grab her arm, they were almost off of the property completely.
"Emily," he hollered and wrapped his fingers around her thin wrist when she swung it back mid-stride, "please stop!"
When their skin met, Emily felt like she had been slammed into a brick wall. It was only then, as his finger tips dug into her flesh, that she started to come back out of the haze of her anger and stopped dead in her tracks.
They stood there, each one of them breathing heavily, as a hot wind rolled past and made the surrounding wild flowers dance around them.
"What," Adam gasped and brushed some of the scraggly hairs out of his face, "what was that?"
She didn't answer.
"What did he do to you?"
Emily turned around slowly. Her red cheeks were smeared with Father Hall's blood and her usually bright eyes were red and swollen. The corners of her lips had dried out and, on top of the blood, a thick layer of dirt was caked to her otherwise soft face. Cutting through all of it were long, clean trails of skin that led from her eyes to her chin where her tears had wiped away the grime.
"He," she stammered, "he…"
Adam turned her hand over. All four of her top knuckles had been torn open and were slowly weeping blood onto his hand.
"You can tell me."
Emily lowered her head for a moment and considered her next words carefully.
"Rape," she forced the word through her soiled lips. "He raped me."
The word alone was like a punch to the gut for the young artist. In all of his time at the Inn, all of the time that he had spent with her, never once did imagine that the beautiful girl standing in front of him had been so deeply scarred.
He suddenly felt immensely guilty for assuming anything about her. Then, as he stood and watched her start to cry, it felt like his heart was going to break. He knew how it felt to lose everything; how badly it hurt to see your life crumble before your eyes. What was worse, he knew damn well that there was nothing that he could say or do to make the young woman's pain go away.
He pulled her in and pressed her face against his chest.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."
July the second dawned over the quiet Chickweed Inn with a slight glimmer of things to come. By five that morning, it was already a muggy 70 degrees and climbing. The shimmering beads of dew that normally spotted the landscape had evaporated into the air, making it thick and heavy.
Earlier, before the sun had managed to peek its golden head above the horizon, Emily was woken by a passing wren and her own restless conscience. And while the bird's high-pitched warble was often a welcome noise, it did little to soothe the girl's tired heart.
Emily, dressed in a pair of denim shorts and a wrinkled, pink tank top from the day before, rolled out of her bed and smoothed her hands over the hair that had been pushed up by her pillow. When that was done, she struggled to twist the loose shirt back into the right position. It was wrapped around her like a cotton candy spiral, put there by the lack sleep that tormented her ever since the accident. Every time that she closed her eyes, Emily swore that she could hear the Sherriff muttering through his tears:
They're dead.
Once she knew that any more sleep was impossible, Emily slipped her bare feet into a pair of sandals and crept silently onto the back porch. Though her steps were light, it was hard to avoid the countless squeaky boards that wrapped around the Inn. Their groaning sighs announced Emily's presence to the deserted expanse spreading out behind the house, to which the only response was the crickets' chirping cadence.