Dividing Earth: A Novel of Dark Fantasy (3 page)

“Chicken?” asked Grady.

“After you,” said Mary, and they started down the hill together.

The kids parted without a word from Grady and Mary trailed behind her, amazed at the magic of it. She jumped when Grady screamed, “Mike!” and ran into a muscular set of arms. She hopped onto him, curling her legs around his hips. Mike Randall’s hair bounced stiffly.

Mary smiled nervously, averting her eyes as the dark boy flanking Mike took her in. He leaned over, whispered something into Mike’s ear and Mike pried Grady from him. His grin was feral. “Who’s your girlfriend?” he asked Grady, running his eyes up and down Mary’s body.

“Mary,” she offered, although she had the feeling he had only wanted to hear her voice, not her name.

Mike stepped toward her, repeated her name, and his eyes fastened onto hers.

* * * * *

Mike told Mary to sit. She obeyed and her senses regained their foothold: The thrum of yelling, conversation and music blasted back. Mike strolled off to the center of the frat house’s living room. There, three rusted garbage cans stood, bound by telephone chord. Sloshing around their tops was something that smelled like fruit punch. He scooped a Styrofoam cup through the red liquid and glanced back, flashing a smile. The room dimmed until all she saw was this beautiful guy making his way back, and she thought,
If only Scott could see me now.

Mike slid his knees onto the couch, placed the cup under her lips and tilted it, slowly pouring the liquid into her. She only stopped to cough once. When the cup was dry, he removed it, patted her head and said, “Good girl,” as if she were a dog. She was too busy wiping the liquid from her lips to notice. “What is it?” she asked.

“It’s called Jungle Juice,” he answered.

“Oh,” she murmured, starting to feel it sliding down into the depths of her. Her chest was warm, her cheeks hot.

“Ever had Everclear?” Mike yelled over the music and screams.

She shook her head. She either needed more or needed to leave.

“Sixty percent alcohol. Good stuff.”

“How much have you had?”

“Almost enough,” he answered.

“May I have more?”

“You sure can, sweetheart.”

When he returned, she was half past buzzing and going on shitfaced. Mike, smiling at this happy discovery, poured the cupful down her, and this time, she didn’t cough. As she wiped her forearm over her lips, she asked, “Where’s Grady?”

Mike pointed to a closed white door beyond the garbage cans. “I think she’s keeping Enrique company in the bathroom.”

“Oh,” she said. Her tongue was thick as a drain stopper. “Water?”

“How ‘bout another cup?”

“Can you get me some water with it?”

“Oh, you bet.”

Mary looked around. People moved, but without meaning.

When Mike returned he had another cup but no water. Mary opened her mouth and downed it, a true pro this time. It didn’t taste good. It hadn’t tasted good from the start.

As the third cup settled in her like a sickness, Mike sat beside her. “You’re gorgeous, a fucking angel,” he whispered, but to Mary the words were disembodied, part and particle of the air. She smiled under the onslaught of the Jungle Juice and the boy’s insistent voice; her eyes rolled up. When she could see again there was a white rectangle, within which an impenetrable darkness gathered. He was carrying her like a bride. The heat glowed in her abdomen, descended toward her legs and she wiggled around, noticing she lay on a bed. Fingers fumbled on the catch of her jeans. She squirmed, too drunk to make sense of it, until hands clapped onto her thighs and lifted them. “Open your mouth,” said Mike, his voice an octave lower than before. Before she could scream, hands pried her mouth open. Her dry, cotton tongue quivered as the flesh shoved between her teeth, drove over her tongue, slammed into the back of her throat. A pulsing, skin and hair, vague of piss. She gagged. Hands took hold of her hair. Fingers clamped over her ankles, shoving them back at her. She struggled.

“Close the door,” someone said. There was a shove, then another boy said, “No, I’m first.”

She thought it was Mike’s voice so she arched her head to see, but could only make out floating silhouettes against the backlit window. Outside, a bloated moon sat on the edge of the world.

* * * * *

Mary awoke to darkness. Her head swirled, her entire body ached, and she felt sick. The odors of beer, sweat, and mildew plunged into her. Looking out the window, she recognized the window mullions as the last thing she’d seen before passing out. Outside, the stars didn’t look so much like pin pricks in the blackness as rips. The moon was opulent and pockmarked. And that’s when she remembered. She was sharing the bed with two naked boys. On the floor was another, wearing piss-stained underwear. Snoring and hissing breaths filled the room. Looking down, she noticed her top was still on, but she was naked from the waist down. Her panties lay neatly over a boy’s ankle. She covered her eyes and tears fought through her fingers, spilling down her cheeks. She cried silently, afraid to wake the boys, afraid they might want another go. She reached down, lifted her panties and stood, careful not to step on the boy on the floor. As she stepped into her panties, her vagina felt afire. “Oh God,” she whispered, thinking of her mother. Shame wrapped its arms around her. She didn’t look for her pants. Tiptoeing out, she evaded the kids strewn about. She stepped on a clump of puke; bits of food and liquid fought between her toes. Upstairs, Kurt Cobain’s muffled and indistinct voice fell to her, a broken voice descending from the top of a well.

Then she saw Grady. She was asleep on the couch, her head on Mike’s lap. She wore only her bra. He was shirtless.

Mary rubbed her eyes. Her heart was a timpani. She stepped over and around sleepers, crossed the porch, nearly tripped down the steps, then was at the street. She turned, as if in need of a picture of the place to burn it on her memory. The dark house seemed to rear up, the screen door slapping against the jamb like the jaw of a predator. Then the world breathed and leaves skittered across the porch, taking flight in her direction.

Mary ran.

Chapter Three: Sarah

1

Once they’d pried the wagon from the mud this morning, Sarah knew it wouldn’t last much longer—the wheels were far more wobbly, and the spokes more brittle, than Papa was ready to admit. She only hoped they reached Tempest by nightfall. But this was a precarious hope, as were all hopes on the plain—there were only the three of them and a team of oxen yanking a rickety wagon through the dust, dirt, and mud. Sarah didn’t want to think about being stranded out here. Winter was coming.

At least they’d left The Five Points far behind. Of course, she’d had the same thought after they’d fled Salem. Although their kind’s blood—
Old blood in a new world,
she sometimes thought—had been thinned out over the years, enough purity remained that Sarah feared they’d never rest, that it was only a matter of time no matter where they landed before they heard that dreaded word: Witch.

* * * * *

She had wanted a simple, quiet day. Indeed, after her display last night she’d wanted to spend the day in the back, riding with the supplies.

It started after supper. Her stomach had been rough for an hour or more, and she had left her tent to take a walk. She thought the night air might do her some good, but instead her belly tightened. When clouds darker than the night sky rolled over the plains, though, she decided to head back. Even if the sky was only innuendo, she knew to be in bed—this land was nastier than back east, and with less warning.

She nearly made it back when the cramps lifted. She stopped, stared down at her stomach. One moment pain, the next nothing. She chuckled, got moving again, but then wet trickled down the inside of her legs. It ran down her calf and her feet and onto the ground. She stepped back. The moon illuminated black dots of liquid. She spread her legs slightly and whatever was dripping from her spotted the ground.

Spears of lightning stabbed at the earth, but she couldn’t see them clearly; everything she saw shook and jumped, as if she were still sitting in the wagon and suffering the endless bumps of travel. The low voice of thunder followed, but to Sarah this was a distant sound. Her hands shook. She crouched down, ran a finger through what was now a small pool of the black—or was it red?—liquid, and held her finger under her nose. She shot up at the smell, broke into a run and yelled for her mother.

“What is it?” Mama asked, appearing beside her tent.

A few feet away Papa rose, his eyes bleary with sleep. He ran a hand through his long black hair, sweeping it from his face. It lifted and spiraled in the quickening wind.

Sarah parted her legs; a dark liquid was smeared over her thigh. Mama’s eyes followed hers. After a moment, she smiled, took her by the hand and led her off.

Papa ducked back under the buffalo-skin tent.

Once they were out of earshot, Mama laid her arm over her shoulders. “Congratulations,” she said. “You’re a woman.”

* * * * *

Sarah hadn’t slept much. Between the cramps and the embarrassment, she couldn’t shut her eyes. So she wanted a quiet day, but after they packed up the wagon and yoked the beasts, her father chuckled, staring at the wagon’s rear left wheel. The ground had turned to mud during the night’s rain, and the wheel was buried. Papa trudged behind it, leaning against the wheel with all his weight, breathing through his teeth, groaning. Then he noticed Mama staring at him in disgust. He glanced back, shrugging his shoulders.

“Why?” she spat. “There’s no need to pretend. Free it!”

Papa stared at her a moment before turning. He brought his hands before his face, seemed to appraise their size and shape, then plunged them into the mud behind the wagon’s stuck wheel. Buried to the elbows, he fished around in the earth, turning it like dough.

Sarah watched him, then the mud. Nothing was happening.
Come on
, she thought.

It was a small detail, but she noticed it at once. To the left of Papa’s arm a tiny bubble grew. It popped and was immediately replaced by others. She smiled. Another bubble or two burst and then the mud began to boil. It spit into the air. As if he’d struck oil, it shot up all around him, some of it spattering the wagon’s top. The smells of mud, linseed oil and hickory pervaded the air. Papa screamed, lowered his head, and mud filled the sky before slopping back.

And the wheel began to shake.

The hubs of elm, spokes of oak, and rims of ash all set to it. The wagon, all ton and a half of it, trembled. The tailgate opened and closed like a chattering mouth. The tongue shook and the oxen craned their heads, their black eyes stupidly concerned. Papa pulled his arms out, held them to his eyes, black and soaked with mud, and watched the wagon lean forward, disturbing the oxen. They took lumbering steps. After five or six of these, the wheel budged. It turned, then rolled. Painstakingly, they yanked the wheel free of the earth’s grasp.

“Why thank you, John,” said her mother, shaking her head, her arms crossed.

Thankfully, the remainder of the morning had been free of concerns. Now, Sarah sat beside her mother, pretending to sleep. “Can we make it by nightfall?” Mama asked.

Papa nodded, but raised his eyebrows. “Think so. Not much past, if it comes to that.”

“And he has no idea we’re coming?”

He eyed her disapprovingly. “You know he doesn’t.”

“But he’ll—”

“Stop it,” he said, glancing past her at Sarah, who quickly closed her eyes. “She’s not like us. We need advice.”

“She’s just started the change, John.”

“And who knows what that’ll bring?”

They rode on.

* * * * *

The sun was bleeding into the west and smoke rose on the horizon. Sarah’s eyes widened and she leaned forward. “Look!”

Papa jumped. “What?”

She poked her finger at the smoke. Light beat back the encroaching darkness somewhere in the distance. The town, she knew, lay under the heat of street lamps. She had heard that Tempest was as modern as they came.

“Must not be far.”

“Aren’t you excited?” asked Sarah.

Papa kept his eyes on the gray twirling into the gloom. He said nothing. Beside him, Mama stirred. She lifted her head, sat up and stared at the horizon.

Sarah watched as her parent’s eyes met and her heart beat faster and faster. She spied a clapboard building. She broke into a sweat. Tempest was coming. It was coming and they weren’t going to turn around.

* * * * *

They rolled into Tempest just after the dusk had dissolved into dark. A farmer outside of town agreed to corral their oxen and keep their wagon on his property. After they took a few essentials, they started for town.

The place was larger than Sarah had expected. Main Street was wide enough for three wagons to roll through side by side, and the buildings on either side of the street were too close—there weren’t alleys between them, as in most towns. Most of them sported ‘Closed’ signs hanging in dirty windows. The right side of the street was dark and quiet, while on the left most of the noise in town—and there was considerable racket—was centered within the bright confines of the saloon. Sarah couldn’t see over the batwing doors, but underneath them she spotted beautiful balmorals next to ankle jacks and brogans. Unlike in the great city, the classes mixed here. Sarah took this as a good sign.

The few denizens they passed on the street did not nod their heads or utter greetings. Instead, the moment anyone caught sight of the family meandering down the center of Main Street, they slowed their stride to a luxuriant stroll, eyeing them as they glided by.

The hotel was a block removed from the saloon. It stood two broad stories tall and was lit by kerosene lamps that hung from the eaves. The aromas of coffee and lintel beans wafted from the lobby. Inside, dishes and silverware tinked, and her stomach groaned: she’d eaten only an ear of corn all day.

Papa turned to Sarah and her mother after he stepped under the awning. “Wait here.” He caught Mama’s eye as she was about to protest. “Just do it.”

Mama sighed, turned, and Sarah followed her gaze. She couldn’t tell if her mother was looking across the street, at the various closed establishments, or at the street itself, where blobs of manure hosted flies.

When he returned, he said, “At least tonight you won’t freeze on one side,” and offered an uneasy smile to Mama. He led them inside.

Looming over a wide counter, the innkeeper looked them over.