Piercing the Darkness: A Charity Horror Anthology for the Children's Literacy Initiative Page 25

  Billy said nothing. His eyes were huge and round.

  “You ‘member Cooter said I could magic, white boy. Pretend I’m a genie in a bottle and you can ask one wish. What that wish going to be?”

  Billy looked at the urn and down at the melted flamingos and then up at the endless blue sky. “I guess I’d want two wishes,” he said.

  “What wishes, boy?”

  “I’d want to see Cooter again. He’s my best friend, you know? He’s the greatest, Cooter’s the king. I’d want to see him again. Not with burns on him, though. Like he was last week. Laughing and happy, singing to himself like the way his mom used to. That’s what I’d wish for.”

  A tear broke from Uncle Conch’s eye and wandered over the million seams and lines in the old man’s face, burning like hot silver.

  “And what’s your second wish? You want me to burn those boys who burned Cooter? You want me to raise the devils of hell to burn them? Or how about I call the loas of vengeance and we turn these melted gnomes into a pack of monsters to hunt that pack of monsters. I could do that. That’s dark magic. I call Kalfu and I could do that.”

  But Billy shook his head. “No…if I only had one more wish after that, I’d want Cooter and me to fly out of here. Far away. Like flamingos, but not melted ones. Not fly like we’re smoking ice, but really fly. All the way into the sky. That would be the shit, man. That’s what Cooter would want.”

  Uncle Conch stared at Billy for a long, long time.

  “That’s all you want? You can have all the revenge you want and instead you want to fly away with my Cooter like a couple of birds?”

  Billy closed his eyes. “Big pink flamingos, man. So high…so free…”

  -5-

  Billy thought he said more to Uncle Conch, but he couldn’t hear his own words. Another sob hitched his shoulders.

  But it wasn’t a sob, of course. He knew that. When he opened his eyes, he knew that much.

  Far, far below the Passaic River curved along the edge of Newark, but from up here it looked like a blue ribbon. Billy turned to say something to Uncle Conch, but it wasn’t the old man. It was Cooter. Big and pink and riding free. Billy called out to him, but his voice sounded different. It didn’t sound like his voice. And it didn’t sound wrong. It sounded right. It sounded so right.

  Billy closed his eyes and he laughed in that strange new voice as he and Cooter flew free.

  -6-

  Uncle Conch took his time getting to his feet. He was old but parts of him were even older, used up before their time. He braced himself on his cane and began lumbering toward his car.

  In his chest, his heart hammered like old drums. Fast, insistent, powerful. Pain darted up and down his left arm.

  But he hummed as he walked to his car. He knew that he wasn’t going to die in the next five minutes. Not that soon. When he got to the curb he turned and looked at the debris in the yard. The flamingos were gone, and that made him smile. For just a moment. It would be the last of Uncle Conch’s smiles to touch that face.

  Then his eyes fell on the little singed and half-melted gnomes. Nasty looking little things. Stupid things. White man’s idea of what looked good on a man’s lawn.

  The eyes that looked on the gnomes was Uncle Conch’s for one blink longer. Then with the next blink the eyes changed from dark brown to fiery red. The smile on the old mouth changed, became broader, brighter. No longer the pained smile of a dying man but the vital smile of something far more powerful. In his chest the old heart began hammering to a rhythm that was many times older than the body around it. A rhythm many times older than the pavement beneath the scuffed shoes. Many times older than the country in which he stood. As old as hate, and that was so very old.

  “Rise up, my brother spirits,” said the voice that was no longer Uncle Conch’s. Nor was the language English, or French or Creole.

  On the lawn, there was a small sound, a tiny groan, a rasp of plastic. One of the lawn gnomes raised its singed and sooty head. The white beard was streaked with ash, the eyes were melted holes. The mouth was stamped into the plastic. But then the plastic lips trembled and the whole body trembled with effort and finally there was a popping noise as the mouth opened. Broken, twisted plastic in a zigzag gash. The little creature smiled, and its wide and wicked grin was exactly the same as what was now stretched across Uncle Conch’s mouth. The mouth that had belonged to Uncle Conch, when there had been an Uncle Conch.

  “Rise up, brother spirits,” repeated Kalfu, using Uncle Conch’s borrowed mouth. Each word was exhaled on a hot breath that blew through the open door of hate in the ancient body. “They are serving dinner on Seventh Avenue. White meat, served rare. All you can eat.”

  One by one the melted gnomes opened empty eyes and ripped open jagged mouths. Hungry mouths. They rose unsteadily to their feet, tottering toward the open car door beside which Kalfu, their brother, waited.

  — | — | —

  MIZ RUTHIE PAYS HER RESPECTS

  LUCY A. SNYDER

  Andrew Dockholm straightened his navy blue JROTC uniform and stepped through the automatic doors leading to the Hillsonville Regional Airport’s baggage claim area. He spotted a tall, silver-haired woman in an ankle-length black dress by the lone conveyor belt. She clutched a leather purse and a bouquet of yellow roses and white lilies in her left hand, and was leaning over to try to catch a small blue suitcase with her right. The woman looked just like her pictures on Facebook, except for the black dress; she was mostly dressed in flowery hippie clothes in those.

  “Let me get that for you, Miz Ruthie!” Andrew shouldered his way through the sparse crowd so he could get to the light suitcase before his cousin did.

  “Oh! Andrew. Hello there. I could’ve gotten that, but thank you.” Ruthie blinked at him, looking surprised, then glanced past him, her expression darkening. “Is your mother or your father with you?”

  “No ma’am. I got my regular driver’s license last week, so I just came on out here in my truck after drill practice.” Andrew beamed at her.

  “Do your folks know you’re picking me up?” She looked a bit worried, and maybe a touch suspicious.

  “Not exactly, ma’am…I got the feeling they don’t cotton to you much. Don’t know why ‘cuz you seem like a real nice lady in your emails, and you always give me good loot in Mafia Wars, and we’re family, right?”

  Andrew’s folks had never made the cause of their disapproval clear, although once when his pa had too much Wild Turkey and had gone on a drunken rant he’d called Miz Ruthie “That Frisco witch.” His pa never had much compunction about calling women the b-word, so the witch thing had made Andrew curious, but later his pa denied having said it and went silent as a lowcountry clam about their cousin. Miz Ruthie had posted stuff supporting Obama on Facebook, but Andrew supposed he could turn the other cheek on that because women usually had stupid ideas about politics. And she’d posted stuff about doing Tarot readings, which his grandpa preached was Satanic, but Andrew had seen a Tarot deck at a gaming store once and as far as he could tell it was just paper and ink like a regular playing card deck. He didn’t see what was so bad about it besides that one devil card. It wasn’t like she was a Muslim or something.

  “It’s only right you want to pay your respects to my grandpa,” Andrew continued. “The whole county came out for his funeral last weekend. It wouldn’t be right to make a lady like you take a taxi or somethin’.”

  After all, Miz Ruthie had to be at least fifty, practically as old as his own grandma, but he knew better than to tell her that. Old ladies didn’t like you pointing out that they were old. Andrew figured he wouldn’t be much of a man if he didn’t step up and offer to take his cousin out to the family graveyard. Besides, he liked showing off his new truck, a Dodge Ram with a hemi V8 engine. He’d worked three solid years of weekends and summers down at the sawmill to save up for it—had to get his pa to lie about his age to the owner at first—but at fourteen Andrew had been as big and strong as any sixteen-year-o
ld. And besides, like his pa and grandpa had always said, all those labor laws were just dumb government meddling.

  Ruthie still looked worried. “Well, I wouldn’t want you to get in any trouble….”

  “I ain’t gonna get in no trouble! I stay out late all the time, and my pa don't care as long as I do my chores.”

  “What about your mama?”

  Andrew blinked at her. “What about her? She don’t wear the pants.”

  Despite Miz Ruthie’s gentle protestations, Andrew insisted on carrying her suitcase out to his truck. He took a moment to pop the hood to show her the engine, clean and pretty as a prom queen’s pussy, and tell her how fast it went up the road to Table Rock Mountain. And then they were off, speeding down the highway toward the turnoff to the old stone church where all their kin were buried, including Andrew's grandpa, the Reverend Robert M. Dockholm, who’d presided over New Bedrock Baptist Church for over thirty years.

  “So are you going into Air Force ROTC in college?” Miz Ruthie asked, gesturing toward his uniform.

  “No ma’am, I’m gonna be an Army Ranger. I already got it all worked out with the recruiter. I’m only in Air Force JROTC ’cuz that’s all they have at my high school.”

  “What about college?” she asked.

  “College? I already got a job, I don’t need no college.”

  “Ah.”

  Andrew pulled his truck into the gravel parking lot in front of the old stone church; since it didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing, the congregation only used the 180-year-old building for weddings and funerals in good weather. The lights of the New Bedrock Baptist Church were visible on the hill beyond. The evening sky was a solid ceiling of gray clouds, and the piney air hung moist and heavy. Thunder rolled somewhere in the distance.

  “Well, I’ll do my best to keep this quick so you don’t have to wait out here too long,” Miz Ruthie said, glancing out the window at the ominous sky.

  “Oh, I’m gonna go into the cemetery with you.”

  Miz Ruthie bit her lip. “It would probably be better if you just stayed here.”

  “No ma’am! It’s getting’ dark out there, and what if you was to trip on a root, or twist your ankle in a gopher hole? I’d be failin’ my duty if I didn’t escort you proper.”

  “Okay.” She frowned; clearly she was turning something over in her mind. “But I need to pay my respects in my own way, and I want you to promise you won’t interfere with me.”

  “Sure, I promise.” He drew an X over his heart with his finger. “Soldier’s honor.”

  “All right then.” She opened her door and stepped out onto the gravel with her funeral bouquet, then gave him a sharp look. “You better remember your promise; if you don’t like something, don’t look."

  Andrew squinted at her, wondering what she meant, and followed close behind as she made her way up the path into the graveyard. The first part of the cemetery was the oldest, some graves dating to the early 1800s. They walked among the mottled, decaying marble stones, some so worn that he could barely make out that there had ever been inscriptions on them. The ground was a patchwork of velvety dark moss, gravel-embedded soil, and short green grass.

  Andrew ran his hands over the tops of the headstones as he walked, the worn stone rough and gritty. Some of these people were born before the nation had its independence. All had died before it was torn by the War Between the States. He felt a surge of pride; he and his JROTC squad had spent several weeks after school cleaning up the cemetery, clearing brush and weeds away from the old markers and headstones and crypts. His grandpa had told him they’d done a right fine job.

  Old stones gave way to newer markers and crypts. The inscriptions became recognizable, and so were the family names. Hillson. Harris. Keller. Smith. Calhoun. Dockholm. Andrew watched as Miz Ruthie went to her mother's grave, pulled three lilies from the bouquet, and laid them on her headstone.

  But then, instead of heading to the Reverend Dockholm’s freshly-mounded grave near the edge of the trees, Miz Ruthie went to a headstone tucked back amongst the graves of townsfolk who weren’t their kin, except maybe by marriage. She knelt at the forgotten grave, laid the bouquet down, and spent several minutes kneeling there with her head bowed.

  Andrew tried to stand at easy attention while she paid her respects to whoever it was, but just as he was starting to feel really antsy she got up and headed toward his grandfather's resting place, her hands empty. Shouldn’t she have some flowers to pay proper respects? Frowning, he followed her over to the grave.

  She held up her hand. “Remember, you promised: no interfering.”

  She pulled a travel pack of Kleenex out of the pocket of her long black dress—

  That’s good, she’s going to have a big ol’ cry over him like my momma did, Andrew thought.

  —which she shoved down the front of her dress, apparently into her cleavage. And then she unzipped the dress from neck to hem. Andrew felt his face flush crimson as she shrugged out of the dowdy old-lady garment, revealing that she was wearing a short stoplight-red cocktail dress and gartered fishnet stockings beneath. Miz Ruthie had a really nice ass, and Andrew felt his blush deepen as he realized he’d gotten a rubbery boner at the sight of her in the clingy satin. She was old enough to be his granny, for sweet Jesus’ sake!

  Miz Ruthie folded the black overdress and set it on a nearby headstone, then strode to the Reverend’s grave and began dancing, sweeping the flowers off his headstone with her lean legs.

  “Miz Ruthie, what are you doing?” Andrew was aghast.

  “Paying all the respects I owe your grandfather.” Her skirt rode up with each Rockette kick, and he saw a sterling silver flask strapped to the outside of her left thigh. “Remember, you promised. Crossed your heart and promised.”

  Once she’d cleared the headstone of flowers, she stood facing the headstone with her legs on either side of the grave, did a half-squat and hiked her skirt up to her hips. She wasn’t wearing any underwear. Andrew watched, horrified and hard, as she made a V with her fingers and pulled up on her pussy, and suddenly she was peeing in a strong arc right on the headstone, urine spilling down the words “In Loving Memory of the Reverend Robert M. Dockholm.”

  Andrew was rooted to the spot, unable to move or speak in his shock. A thousand thoughts crowded in his head, which was about 999 more than usually occupied the space. She was defiling his grandfather’s grave! Vandalizing it! And she. Could. Pee. Standing. Up! Andrew had never heard of women doing such a thing. Was she one of those freaky chicks with a dick? He couldn’t see anything like a penis, not even a little Cheeto-looking one like that kid in gym class had. No wonder his pa thought she was a witch!

  Ruthie’s pee stream faltered, stopped, and she swiveled around and did a deeper squat so that her ass was nearly touching the soil. And she began to shit, the poop coming out of her in a long, smooth coil, mounding in perfect circles like soft-serve on the grave. As she grimaced in concentration, gritting her teeth, grinding her hips in circles to squeeze out the poop just so, he began to suspect she’d been practicing. And also probably eating a whole lot of prunes on the plane ride from California.

  Andrew’s vision was starting to darken at the edges, his legs shaking beneath him, so he went with it and fell to his knees, shutting his eyes against his cousin’s abominations and loudly repeating every prayer and psalm he could remember.

  As he spoke, “The Lord is my strength and shield; my heart trusts in Him and I am helped,” inside he was praying, Dear God, strike this wicked witch down with your Almighty wrath, please dear God, oh please, strike her down.

  His hair rose on end, the air going electric, and a heartbeat later there was a sudden crack of lightning in the trees nearby and one of the tall pines shrieked as its trunk was sundered near the roots, and Andrew could hear it falling—

  “Andrew, get out of the way!” Miz Ruthie shouted.

  He opened his eyes to see the pine tree plummeting straight down toward his head, no time to
stand up. He frog-hopped forward, but the tree slammed down on his right leg, pinning him to the mossy ground, the pain a bright blue spark arcing from his ankle right up into his spine.

  Miz Ruthie was still in full squat, but was vigorously wiping herself clean with a handful of the Kleenex she’d stashed in her bra; she dropped the crumpled tissues neatly around her poo-swirl, completing the first-glance illusion that it was some kind of ice cream dessert. Then she stood, pulled her flask out of her thigh holster, unscrewed the cap, and poured the liquid inside over her shit sundae. Andrew smelled strong whiskey. She stepped aside, pulled a packet of matches out of her bra, and lit up her pile, filling the air with the stench of burning feces.

  Miz Ruthie strode over to him and squatted near his head, frowning down at him. He tried not to stare at the dark furry fringe peeking beneath the hem of her dress.

  “Is your leg broken?”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t think so.” His voice was a dry croak. He’d broken his leg when he fell off a pile of logs at the mill once, and aside from the initial pain his leg wasn’t hurting nearly as badly as it had back then.

  “Did you pray for God to strike me down?” Her sharp blue eyes bored down into his, daring him to tell her a lie.

  He tried to shrink back into the tree’s branches. “Yes, ma’am. I did. But…but you deserved it for what you done to my grandpa!”

  She laughed at him. “Oh, I did, did I? Let me tell you a little something about just desserts, boy. Let me tell you a little something about that dead old bastard over there that you hold in such high regard.

  “Dear ol’ Uncle Bob there took over the church when I was about your age, still in high school. My best friend in the whole world was a girl named Jenny; she was the finest fiddle player in the whole state, sweet as orange blossom honey, smart. Would have made a hell of a doctor some day. One afternoon, one of her older cousins offered her a ride home from school, only he didn’t take her home; he drove out to the old bridge and raped her. She was so wrecked she wouldn’t even talk to me about what he’d done to her, but when she realized she was pregnant, she went to Uncle Bob for help. She thought he surely knew everything, and would make things right. And Uncle Bob, ever the student of Christ’s wisdom and forgiveness, cussed her out for telling lies about her choir-boy cousin and accused her of being a whore. Jenny left the church in tears, went to her room and wrote me a letter, then went out to the woods behind her family’s house and killed herself. Her father passed her suicide off as a hunting accident so she could be buried over there in this rusty old cemetery.”