Dividing Earth: A Novel of Dark Fantasy (13 page)

“Exactly,” grinned Dan, puffing out smoke. “Can you accept it?”

4

Mary awoke early the next morning. She went to the kitchen, found her father up, making coffee. “Morning,” he said. “Sleep okay?”

She nodded, and he watched her cross the kitchen. She couldn’t read his eyes, but when she neared him he, much to her relief, opened her arms and took her in. She nestled her head under his chin, asking herself why she had been embarrassed of him all those years. Her father was, and quite suddenly, not skinny, but fit from his daily walks; not geeky, but studious; his face not bony, but austere. “I love you so much, Daddy. You know that?”

“Sure, honey. Me, too,” he said, rubbing her shoulder. “Your mother will come around. You’re all she’s got.”

Mary’s brow knotted; she’d wondered often, and knew she’d guessed right. “It wasn’t that you didn’t want another, was it? You couldn’t.”

Her father drew away, eyed her cautiously a moment. “Not after you came out so awkwardly. They tied her tubes out of caution.”

Mary thought of her mother, wondering if she’d ever hated her little girl. Women, especially beautiful women such as her mother had been, were aged by the godlike gift. Women who reveled in their fecundity became haggard quickly; by fifty they looked shriveled and puffy all at once. Progeny was vampiric, parasitic, stealing from their hosts those quiet nine months in the abyss. It was worth it, she supposed, only if the gift remained—even if it was, in the woman’s mind, only the illusory promise of option. “Sorry, Dad,” she said, all the while hoping that she would never lose it. She’d always dreamed of a big family.

“You kidding? We’re crazy about you.”

They embraced, then her dad poured himself a cup of coffee. “Want one?” he asked with a smile, knowing her answer.

She smiled. “I still hate coffee.”

“You’re older now.”

“I’ll never be that old.”

“We’ll see,” he said, opened the refrigerator. “Would you like some breakfast? You know, for the little one.”

Mary looked away, hiding her smile. Would he be upset if he knew she was happy about it? “Yeah, why not?”

George fixed her a bowl of cereal, himself oatmeal, and they sat beside each other, ate silently for a few minutes. Then he asked what sort of girl Grady was, and why she’d brought her to Florida.

“What do you mean?” As a child, she’d often adopted stray cats. This was different, but she found herself wondering if her dad saw it that way.

“Sorry,” he said, smiling timidly. “We’ll get to know each other. Tell me this, though—why did she want to come?”

Mary stared at her father. “Rough life,” she answered.

Chapter Nineteen: The Edge of a Dark Wood

1

Sarah knocked on Montague’s door the evening after her botched baptism. Somehow, despite it all, she felt just stable enough for contact. It opened, and behind it was the boy who’d sat with her last night. He looked unsure, but he stepped back, motioned for her to enter. The room was bare but for two beds. “You feeling any better?” the boy asked.

“A little.”

The boy stepped back, as if she were feral.

“I’m Sarah.”

2

They talked about innocuous things for a while, and Montague found that his words were coming out all wrong. It was as if his mouth was only partially connected to his brain. True, he was flummoxed by her, but what did that have to do with his mouth?

And then she had to go and say it, a name that made everything make sense. Daniel, she said, and Montague went cold. He’d never met the man, but there were stories. Daniel was a wanted felon allowed to hide out because he and the preacher were old friends. Daniel was Reverend Durham’s brother and was wanted for stagecoach robbery. Daniel was the preacher’s father, and of course was wanted by the government for one reason or another. A hiding Confederate soldier, a deserter. A witch who was allowed to live on the outskirts of town only because he deposited a large sum of gold on the steps of the church every week. None of these tales carried much weight with Montague, who, like his father, was a slave to logic. Unlike his father, he desperately wanted to believe each of them. “What do you want with him?”

“He’s the reason we were coming here.” Sarah winced when she said
we
.

“What was he going to do for you?” asked Montague, who was reexamining each of the strange tales for veracity.

“I’m not sure.”

“He lives two or three miles past the church,” said Montague, suddenly understanding why she’d mentioned him. “It’d be dangerous,” he told her.

Sarah’s face darkened. She smoothed down her dress and took a step back. “I’m going,” she told him. “And I’m going tonight.”

3

Sarah snuck out after Joseph began snoring. She opened the window and crawled down the shingled roof.

The saloon made noise a ways off, but otherwise all was quiet. She was careful to remain in the shadows until she’d reached the edge of town, where the tenement house loomed against a pale night sky. Hollow noises rang out on the upper floors and a dank smell permeated the air around the place, and as she passed it she kept her eyes on the blank stare of its windows, on the wet walls that wrapped their acrid stink around the poor. She veered away, then stopped when she saw the moonlit cross. She went cold, shuddered, and wrapped her arms around herself.

She started for the cross.

4

Nathaniel Durham had locked himself in his study all evening. When the bell tolled midnight, he tossed his spectacles onto the thick pages of The Gospel According to Matthew, stood, and stretched. He shuffled from his office, passing the depictions of Christ’s Passion, and went to the window overlooking town. He thought he saw something and squinted, not believing it. Was that the girl coming toward the church?

“Well, I’ll be—”

But she turned from the path, trudging up the road beside the cemetery, and Nathaniel suddenly understood where she was headed.

5

When the woods opened up on the plain, Sarah could find no dwelling.

She turned, but there was only space. Endless land, the promise of the New World. She smiled sadly, thinking of Papa.
It’s not a new world to us
, he’d said.
We were here when the world was Pangaea. Before men rose out of the muck, we were here.
This he’d said during their last walk together, perhaps no more than a week ago.
Our last walk,
she thought. Standing at the edge of a dark wood, the limitless expanse of earth before her, Sarah closed her eyes and began to cry. “Bastards,” she whispered, or perhaps she only thought it. If only she’d had a little control. If only her body hadn’t gotten away from her.

An owl screeched and Sarah opened her eyes. A man stood before her. He wore no shirt and some type of ill-fitting slacks. He was nearing her with every step.

She backed away.

“I’m Daniel,” he said. “And I’m sorry.” With that he closed in, looked her deep in the eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

At first Sarah couldn’t meet his stare. It was so direct it was nearly confrontational. Then what he’d said hit her: How did he know?

Daniel’s blue eyes, startling in the moonlight, watered. He turned toward the plain. “Would you like to come in?”

“Come in where?” asked Sarah. Around them, nothing.

Now his smile took, and he shoved his hands in his pockets, kicked at the dirt. Stones skipped.

Sarah stepped to the side. Her mouth hung open. There, right up where there had only been darkness, a dimly lit window hung. But only a window. She could only stare. Then her eyes were drawn above it, to where smoke lazily exited a chimney. She blinked, and there was a roof. In seconds an entire house appeared, and a coop behind it, insane with the screams of chickens.

She must have looked terrified because Daniel got down on his haunches, put his elbow on his knee, and reached out to her, saying, “Come along, Sarah. It’s okay.” And although she didn’t know how he knew her name, she edged forward, took his hand, and allowed him to lead her through the open door. He closed it behind them, and suddenly the world silenced. Sarah felt like they’d closed a door on the rest of creation.

Chapter Twenty: A Vase Shatters in Gibsonton

1

For Veronica, it was a time of endless roads, long nights, and filched identity.

She’d been staying at the Motel 6, sans Chris, and going to work from there, and Robert hadn’t called, hadn’t dropped a note, nothing. Nothing, that is, until he’d had her served at work. She’d signed, bid the messenger good day, then tossed the papers into the garbage beside her desk. After that, she’d stood up, taken a deep and cleansing breath, performed a check on the teller line, dropped several clips of hundred dollar bills into her purse—a dozen, maybe; maybe a few more than that—and had, not two minutes later, strode from the bank calmly, as if exiting the confessional.

The romance of a new life had long appealed to her. Driving to the office or on errands, she’d often imagined what it would be like to skip the designated exit. Where, and when, would she stop? What would it mean?

After taking the money she drove to the edge of town, paused at a stoplight. East, and she would hit Daytona; west, and Tampa wasn’t far. The light turned green, and she tensed a moment, then got in the westbound lane. She tapped the brakes once at cruising speed, five miles under the limit, and remained in the far right-hand lane, her hands clutching ten and two, her mind, for perhaps the first time ever, completely free.

That night, she decided on a town called Gibsonton, though she was somewhat sorry to be stopping, to be yielding to another exit, another town.
Towns,
she now thought,
existed to keep you, to trap you.
She felt hopeless: she’d been born too late. The ideals and dreams of earlier times were dead; price tags and million dollar yachts, tax exemptions and gated communities—these made up the new Eden. She’d long felt an overwhelming wanderlust, but had squelched it in order to live a socially acceptable life, but it had been unbearable, and it wasn’t Robert’s fault, or little Jenn’s, but her own.
To vanish,
she thought with a smile. Now that’s romantic. A new life, a new name, and new dreams.

For miles there were only trailer parks and fields in which cows grazed under the setting sun. Dusk now, the moon a white thumbprint following her. She saw boarded-up filling stations and abandoned cars, but no people, and she began to wonder if Gibsonton was a ghost town. Another mile brought a series of sparsely populated trailer parks, and a truck stop café sporting only one car out front, an old Pontiac Firebird, the phoenix dull on its hood.

Then she saw something. It was huge and round and partially concealed by a tree. Below it an old double wide trailer seemed to rear back, as if in fear. She slowed down, leaned over the steering wheel, shook her head, staring blankly. She’d been stopped nearly a minute before she realized what she was looking at. The construct was a mess, some of its seats had rusted through, and it leaned precariously over the street. “A Ferris wheel,” she said. “A fucking Ferris wheel.”

She heard the low sound, a low grating sound to her left, and turned her head, screamed, raised her hands defensively, kicked up her knees and stomped her feet against the window.

There was a head at the window, a huge head with yellow-green eyes. She was in the passenger’s seat now, her hand out defensively. Then she realized, I’m in a car, there’s a window between me and that, that thing. Is it a tiger? It watched her, one eye showing through the pane, and then it turned, trod off lazily toward another beast, this one lazing in the sand surrounding a dilapidated trailer. The first collapsed beside the other, licked its paw, and ran it over its head.

Veronica sat up, back flat against the door, then leaned forward, peered out the window.
Tigers,
she thought.
There are two tigers roaming the street not five miles off the highway.

She crept back in the driver’s seat, peering cautiously around, as if the beasts across the street were attuned to movement, like a T-Rex in that Spielberg flick. She pressed on the gas, but the car didn’t budge. In her excitement, she’d knocked the transmission into neutral. She pulled down the lever, and drove off.

She pressed on, slower than she would have liked, until a motel appeared. At first glance, it was desolate. It curled around a gravel lot like a serpent, and behind it palms and pines lilted over the Spanish tiled roof. She turned in, stopped in front of the office, got out, and strolled under a portico columned with whitewashed wood. The sidewalk dropped into a swale lined with bedrock.

The lobby was spare. The foyer consisted of a coffee pot, in which a half inch of black smoldered, and a rack filled with brochures. On the counter were a computer, a ledger, and a bell. There were tow doors behind the counter: one was closed, the other cracked. Darkness lined the crack. She slapped the bell. “Be right there!” called a deep voice.

The black behind the door widened, and a figure stepped out. She gasped, flinched back, tripped on her heel, and fell unceremoniously onto her rump.

The man leaned over the counter, opened his mouth, and chuckled.

“You—“ she began, staring. “You look like a wookie.” The man laughed softly, and she joined him, still staring. He was covered in hair. It spilled from his head, covered his face, pooled around his white T-shirt, grew on the backs of his hands. “You look like Lon Chaney,” she continued, and he laughed harder. They shared this until she flew into a coughing fit.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded, fist to her mouth, still coughing.

He turned, opened the office door, loomed over her, reaching out an immense hand. She took it and he pulled her up. His filthy T-shirt, the kind businessmen wear under suits, was at eye level. She looked up. “How tall are you?”

“Six eleven and one-half,” he said. “But when you get that close to seven feet, does it really matter? Would you like a room, ma’am?”

“Sure,” she answered, her mouth still an O of shock.

The man brought his hands up to his eyes, turned them over. “I was the Wolf-Man for Magica Carnival for twenty years, ma’am. Twenty good years,” he told her, a look in his eye that might have been anger or nostalgia. He turned slowly, ducked under the door. At his computer he used one finger, struck each key softly. “Name?”

“Veronica Lieber.” As soon as it was out she wished she’d thought to say
Mona Lipschitz
or
Candy Browning
or even
Jane Doe
.

“Address?”

“Do I have to tell?”

The man glanced away from the screen. “Wouldn’t dream of making you,” he told her, typing in three letters. “How long you staying? Or is that a mystery too?”

“I . . . don’t know.”

He studied her. “Thirty dollars a night, or a hundred a week.”

“This is a weird place. I might need a week,” she said, opening her purse. She withdrew her billfold, removed a crisp bill.

“Did I saw a hundred?”

“You did,” she said, sliding the bill over.

“You want a travel guide?”

“You offering?”

He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Slow season.”

Veronica nodded.

“A hundred twenty.”

“I’ve only got hundreds.”

“I’ve got change. You want to go out tonight?”

“I think maybe I’ll rest tonight.”

The Wolf-Man nodded as if he understood. He eyed her as she made her way out.

Veronica stopped. “What’s your name?”

The man smiled. “My name’s Sal, Ronnie.”

The instant he said she decided that after tonight, she’d introduce herself to people as Ronnie. She opened her mouth to speak.

“Just Sal, Ronnie. Don’t know my folks,” he said, raising his enormous hands. “And they don’t know me.”

* * * * *

Veronica didn’t leave her room that night—the remainder of the day she vegetated on the huge bed and flipped through cable. At some point she drifted off, and didn’t wake until noon the next day.

Disoriented, she stared along the ceiling before attempting the walls, and didn’t recall anything until she saw her open purse on the chair. She cursed, sat up, pressing back into the headboard. Her head was throbbing, her back aching. Her decision seemed more real today.

The room, which she’d thought so cozy last night, now looked dingy. The lamp light was yellow, the shadows along the walls long and hazy, the top sheet stained. She went to the bathroom and was displeased to find the bathtub’s molding tearing like an open sore. Mildew lined the grout, and the shower curtain was rusty and blotched.

“Disgusting,” she said, deciding to dress without a shower. “That freak had better give me my money back.” After dressing, she tore off for the office.

Sal was asleep on his stool. His huge frame was bent into the wall’s corner, his arms crossed, his combat boots flat on the carpet. He was wearing overalls, and no shirt beneath them; his hair was so profuse that she could barely make out straps.

“Sal?”

His head rolled to and he opened his eyes. “Hey there, Ronnie.”

She was set to complain, but stopped short. “You, uh, you busy?”

“Hungry?”

She leaned over the counter. “Famished.”

“You mind eating in a bar?”

“Not if there’s food behind it.”

“Then we’re set,” said Sal, flashing a smile that shocked Veronica with its warmth. The effort of getting upright erased it, and he lumbered to the door, bent in half to pass under the threshold. “Your ride or mine?”

“Will you fit in mine?”

“Not unless you remove the front seat so I can sit in the back.”

“What do you have, a van?”

“Not exactly,” said Sal, smiling again and ducking under the front door. He dragged his fingers along the top of the awning, then his arm dropped heavily to his side, and he turned, left the sidewalk, strolled by the swale, then glanced back at her.

The Humvee was parked in the shadows of an ancient oak. The tree, squat but with an encompassing wingspan, did not allow sunlight to warm the ground beneath it; in its shade, grass lay thick and green while twists of weeds surrounded it like a rainforest in miniature.

“Nice, huh?” beamed Sal, his arm outstretched.

She smiled, but felt sad for some reason. Here was this man, a sideshow by both fate and profession, undoubtedly single, showing off a treasured possession. He was covered by hair, some of it golden and rich in the sun, some of it course and black, some of it graying, all of it obscene. But this steel frame, empty enough for his own, built especially for the rough terrain Florida didn’t have, made him happy. He must have saved for it week by week, shitty paycheck by shitty paycheck. “It’s beautiful,” she said stiffly, as if praising a child.

“Yep, it’s my baby,” said Sal, producing a keyfob from his pocket. He hit a button and the doors unlocked. “If you wait a second, I’ll edge it out from under the tree.”

“It’s alright,” she said, bending under the branches.

Sal got in and reached over, opening her door. He started up his prize, pulled out, said, “You’re gonna love this place,” ten nothing else during the rest of the drive.

Half a mile from the motel, the two-lane road curved to the left. Every hundred feet or so a dirt driveway swathed in cypress and pine snaked away from it, and she imagined these paths led to corpulent trailers surrounded by scampering Welfare kids.

The road ended after another sharp bend, opening onto a large gravel parking lot. A chicken wire fence stood between the macadam and the gravel. Beyond four old cars, a shack teetered on the crest of a hill overlooking the highway. Scrawled into the wood above the smacking screen door, the bar’s moniker was apt: The Hilltop.

In the back, a shirtless man unloaded kegs from a dump truck’s bowels, and when he turned to ease one of them onto a dolly, she uttered a clipped scream. Sal looked over, laughing. Protruding from the man’s hair were two bony horns.

And that’s when she remembered Gibsonton claim to infamy. A few years back she’d caught a show about the murder of a man called Lobster Boy, a man confined to a wheelchair with a congenital condition that fused his fingers into pincers, his legs into flippers. He was killed by a teenage neighbor commissioned by his wife, shot in the head as he sat in his underwear watching Cops.

G-Town was a stretch of trailer parks that had started out as winter quarters for circus performers, and had grown, as the years passed, into the carny capitol of the world. Fat ladies, midgets, and sword swallowers had cleared the swampland to create a retirement village for sideshow luminaries.

“You okay?” asked Sal, parking.

“Sorry, I’ve never been here.”

Sal shut off his baby and stepped down, his boots crunching in the gravel. He raised a hand, called out a name, and the horned man waved.

The Hilltop was an old fashioned saloon. Three wooden steps led to a porch, where Veronica all but expected batwing doors to flap on piano hinges; instead a screen door enshrouded the bar’s insides in darkness. Inside, Johnny Cash bawled about a ring of fire. Ozone and an old-egg smell, like sulfur, assailed her as they closed in.

Sal held the door open. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom inside. She glanced around nervously. The rustbox jammed into the corner: a plastic-faced jukebox. Scattered: tables surrounded by rickety stools. Darkening the windows: black shades. At the bar: three people, and one behind it.

The bartender nodded merrily at Sal, shuffled from the far side of the bar. Twined around his head, a black handkerchief hid a bulbous deformity on his forehead; his eyes roamed behind sunglasses; his mouth twinkled with gold. “What ya havin’, Sal?”

“Two beers. This is Ronnie, folks. She’s staying at my place.” He said it firmly, as if to protect her from them.

Seated around an immensely fat person—Veronica thought it was a female, but couldn’t be sure—three midgets waved their stubby arms in her direction. The large person wore a beer helmet; the straw flattened and curled.

The midget seated at the last stool hopped from it. His hair licked around a bald spot; thick lines wove around his face; a cigarette bobbed in his mouth when he said, “This here’s Jed, the big girl’s Martha, and the stout fuck there we call Stout Fuck on account of his stout fucking below-the-belt surprise. And I’m Lump. I’ll leave you to figure it out.”