Note 2: Thanks to Jude, who suggested this long long ago.
Chapter 40
Sir
Sir
The barn was musty yet cool, and Donny hunkered down in the shade for a minute or five. This morning his father had gone to town to see a man about crop-dusting, or so he said. Donny hadn't said a word to him all last evening or this morning, beyond the obligatory, “Yes, sir,” or “no, sir.” He could still hear his father's screams, sunny Sunday afternoon napping screams, and the memory chilled him. The idea tickled the back of his mind, and he let it rest there, afraid that his father would somehow see it if he brought it to the front.
His coveralls were patched and dirty, there was a new rip near the crotch. He couldn't sew worth a darn, and a short blaze of anger at Tara surfaced. She had abandoned him. He needed her, and she left. Donny took a long pull on his Molson's, and forced himself to remember why he needed her. It would help with his idea.
Why does any oppressed animal need something smaller, even more oppressed? Just to feel a lick of power over something. With the abuse heaped on him by his father, Donny needed Tara; not as a confidante or a friend, but as a punching bag. He had to have a little control over something. If he made his sister bleed, it was only because he had already bled more. If he made his sister cry, it was only because he couldn't afford to.
That was then.
(Now, Donny?)
A long grocery list of regrets, topped by the fist that day in the hospital. How like him, to go for the already wounded eye. How like him, to use fists instead of words. Could he not have just told Tara how she used him that day, how awful and small that made him feel? That he resented her, her escape from the farm, a place he was still trapped? That he ached for courage like hers, for getting up, and walking away?
(From the Sir.)
He knew he had no ability to show love. That emotion had been cauterized from him by the abuses heaped on him by his father. He had no ability to show sorrow or remorse such as normal human beings did. What he had was his idea, and how it was going to change their world. This could get his sister back.
Since she left, and Donny was alone with the Sir. And the secrets.
The secrets would tear him apart.
The beer was gone; he rolled the cool bottle over his forehead before chucking it into a wastebin. He had something to do, and he wasn't looking forward to it. Most of the morning he had stalled, but if he left it any longer, he'd regret it. Donny packed the quad with water, an old sheet he took from the stale linen closet (it had probably been folded by his mother seven-odd years ago), and a shovel. After a moment's hesitation, he also brought a bolt cutter.
Careful, now.
Donny put his cap back on; the Monday morning was turning out to be nearly as hot as yesterday. Yesterday, when he sat on the porch swing, listening to his father scream in his nightmares, knowing about the blood stains and the shed. How hot would it get in that corrugated tin shed in the summertime?
He knew it, for he remembered, and he let the memory come, and fill him with pain.
(So hot the sweat would pour in sheets, stinging the eyes, so hot it would burn a finger if touched. Baking, parched, far enough from everywhere on the farm that no one could hear a scream. Sir's favourite torture chamber. Even the dirt wept.)
There would be a padlock. Hence the bolt cutters.
It was a jolting twenty minute drive to that shed in the quad. He bumped over gopher holes, and wondered if there was any way possible that he could atone. Maybe his idea was enough. Just enough.
Maybe Tara would come home. To stay.
The shed loomed up ahead, the grass surrounding it dead and brown, parched by the unrelenting reflected surface. Donny pulled the quad up and killed the engine; it ticked softly as it cooled, the sound almost lost in soft summer noises of crickets and hawks and wind through the grasses. He stood and took a swig of the warmish water, grimacing at the taste. He looked at the shed door. It was padlocked, just as he thought it would be.
Bolt cutters heavy in his calloused hands. He took a deep breath as he approached the shed door, then lifted the cutters and with a powerful crunch, the padlock cracked open. He picked it off the cheap hinge and dropped it in the dust.
The police would find it later.
For a moment, Donny stood by the closed door. The sun beat hard on his shoulders, on the top of his head. He spit into the ground.
Finally he opened the door.
A cavern breath of long stink, smell that would sink into the pores and remain there for a thousand washings. Fingers of stench, extending on long pale hands, out to throttle his neck as if he were the one responsible for this atrocity.
It wasn't me!
The girl was dead.
Dirt under her fingernails; she had tried to dig under the door. The earth was packed hard, mortared by sweat and tears and set in the blaze of the summer sun. No windows in the little shed; she had died in utter darkness, but not always alone. Donny didn't want to wonder what his father did with the girl out here, but he could guess by the old smears of blood on her thighs. Her skin was puffy and thin; a tourist trap for blowflies. Donny looked at her with an eye of unwanted apprenticeship. Three days dead, four maybe.
He wrapped her body in the sheet, grateful that rigor had passed to make her more bendable, and placed her in the back of the quad. He couldn't bury her here, the ground was too hard. He would bury her with the others, with Tara's kitten, out by the back dugout where the ground was softer. It was another ten minute drive. He didn't mind.
Donny wished he didn't know her name, but she was on the news. Fourteen year old girl, disappeared, if you have information call this number. Donny felt culpable. His guilt swallowed his tongue. He was afraid of jail.
It was an unspoken arrangement with his father that had him trundling about the farm, collecting the bodies of dead girls. Sir would not be surprised when he next opened that little shed and found it empty. Donny was certain his father was pleased Donny took such a role in their game, cleaning up the pieces. He was the accomplice, and his mouth was as good as sewn shut. No matter how he hated it. No matter how he despised himself.
Her eyes accused him of the crime, as he rolled her into the shallow grave, the sheet falling from her face. He hurriedly spaded the earth over her eyes, sweating great drops in the early afternoon sun. He worked like a man possessed, using every ounce of energy in his stocky frame. A moment of heart-stopping terror, as he uncovered the shrivelled hand of another victim. She had a gold band on her finger.
Dirty and irritated, Donny returned to the house.
Where Tara waited for him on the porch.
His sister was sitting next to a beautiful young woman, a girl with long red hair that would shine like spun gold in the sunlight. They were holding hands. Tara looked as if she'd been crying, as her eyes were reddened, blue orbs hazy. Their fingers were interlocked. Tara's body was rigid, her entire carriage was wary, distrustful.
Her eye and face had healed already. Did she suck the life out of this girl, as she did to him that day?
He could just see it. Her fingers over this girl's body, lifting, caressing, eliciting a forbidden moan. Teeth nipping here and there. And a parade of cells to heal herself, taken by force, taken without permission. Did she rape this girl as she raped Donny that day in the hospital?
Careful, now. Remember your plan?
Screw the plan. He had to ask. No preamble. No hi, how are you, how is your day (Oh, spent it burying a dead girl, you?). Her face was clear, so she had used her magic. As much as he wanted her forgiveness for himself, he wanted to forgive her. It was hard, seeing her there, knowing she hadn't learned a single thing. “I see you learned mom's last lesson well,” he grunted at Tara, gesturing with his head toward the girl, sarcasm colouring his speech. There was a spigot on the wall, which he used to wash his hands and face, drying himself on his crusted overalls.
They both had stood as he approach. The girl held Tara's arm, solicitous, caring. Tara wavered, the words striking her as if they were fists. Perverse pleasure and a measure of guilt flooded him. He was a changed man, wasn't he? Wasn't his idea for her?
“No, Donny,” she quietly disagreed. “I don't have any more magic.”
He could see by the surprised expression in the other girl's face that this was news to her as well. Tara glanced at the girl, then pulled a heavy amulet from its resting place on her chest. “This has chained me, in more ways than you can possibly imagine.”
Donny didn't look at his sister, he looked at the girl. Her face had gone pale and stricken; she clutched at Tara's hand as if to beg forgiveness. This was not the face of someone who had been coerced, and Donny suddenly believed Tara's words. He was also immensely pleased to discover that her admission didn't cause him to rejoice as it once would have, never having been blessed with magic himself. Instead, he felt a measure of her own sorrow at the loss.Tara looked between them both as she introduced them. “Donny, this is Willow, my girlfriend. Willow, this is my big brother, Donny.”
An awkward moment, as they each tried to decide how to handle this introduction. Willow was holding Tara tight, about to let go if only to shake hands, when Donny just grunted and nodded. With a small measure of thanks on her face, the girl nodded at Donny, even as she looked at Tara, and he began to understand.
This girl, this Willow, was in love with his sister.
But more.
Not merely in love, but in mourning as well.
Tara didn't look sideways at Willow, she only looked at Donny, taking in his appearance with a single glance, reading him the way she always could. It used to make him mad, that she could see so much of him. There was no privacy with her around. No secrets.
Except the big ones. And they loomed behind his eyes and he knew she saw them there. She saw that the secrets existed, and he wondered if this was the day his mother had prepared him for.
It was.
The three of them sat on the porch, Tara and Willow sipping iced tea that Donny rustled up for them, while he drank another beer. The girlfriend was resting against the porch wall and Tara sat between the girl's legs, rested her head on the girl's chest. Donny sat on the ground as well, stretching his legs out, conscious now of the rip near his crotch.
The news, when it came, was no surprise to Donny. He could see that his indifference bothered Willow, but she clamped her teeth over her anger. Donny had known this day would come. Ever since that day he forced her near that solitary cow, he had known that she would rack up the blood debt. Tara would take the easy way out, just as she always did. Just as he never could.
So, a brain tumour. A bad one. Four months, tops. What good was his idea now? What did he have left to prove to her?
Well, maybe it would be just for him, then. He deserved it, didn't he?
“Are you going to go back to work?” he asked, deliberate in not looking at her.
“No,” she replied. She looked over her shoulder at Willow, and smiled, a small and weak smile that gave him a momentary flash of old anger. For all the years they spent together, she never realised what really set him off. The meeker she got, the fiercer he became. If she'd just stand up to him, just once, instead of always turning the other gorram cheek, he'd respect her for it.
The silence was corroded. Time rusted between them. Awkward minutes spent in avid contemplation of the peeling paint on the porch.
Donny formed and discarded many sentences in his mind. He had to spill one of the secrets now, but how?
“Are you also a witch?” he finally blurted out, but he couldn't look right at Willow. She shone too much. He contented himself with looking at the wall just beyond her head, streaked with dust and grime.
“Yes,” Willow replied, slowly. Carefully. Made him mad. Made him wonder what Tara had told her about him. Would Tara never understand how much he protected her over the years? Or would she just blame him for what he did to her, never realising the necessity of it all?
“Can't you stop this, somehow?” he asked, and that tiny note of desperation crept into his voice, startling him and Tara both. He cared what happened to Tara, he always did, but he always had to hide it. Did she never see why?
He did not miss the look of agony that crossed Willow's face. Tara, immured as she was on Willow's chest, could not see it, yet she squeezed Willow's hand. Willow opened her mouth to speak, and found that the words were lost somewhere between her throat and her lips. A deep breath, and then a shy, “No. While she wears the amulet, I can't.” It was obvious that Willow meant to say something more, opening and closing her mouth a few more times, but nothing emerged.
“Why can't you take the amulet off?” Donny asked, sipping his beer, looking sideways at Tara.
It was Willow who answered when Tara could not. “There is an evil embedded in her mind, in the form of a priest of The First.” A thrill passed through Donny as he heard those words; they capitalized in his mind as they always did, from the first time his mother spoke of them. “I... she...” and Willow stopped, gulping, tears flowing freely down her cheeks.
Donny turned his head aside as his sister twisted in Willow's lap, stroking tears away with her hands, kissing Willow softly on the mouth two, three times. “It's all right,” he heard her whisper to Willow.
A few moments later, Willow regained her composure enough to address Donny again, and he occupied his gaze at the peeling floor as he heard the words spill from her mouth. “Caleb, that's his name, he had me imprisoned in a coma. Tara came in to my mind and battled him, sucked him into her own mind. He is now the prisoner, as long as the amulet touches her skin. If the amulet were removed,” another deep breath here, “then he theoretically could gain control of her body.”
The unspoken words seethed in Donny's mind. His gift to Tara, his most wondrous idea, meant nothing now because of Willow. It's her fault.
HER fault.
She must have seen something rising in him, or been alerted somehow by Tara, for Willow continued, “I thought I had time to save her, Donny. I had been blessed by the gods with gifts of magic. I have all my books and spells. I thought I had time!” Her voice broke.
Tara kissed her again. And again.
This time Donny watched. Love blazed from them, white and healing; he felt it as he felt the rays of the afternoon sun. That love took a portion of his anger, his need to blame, and transformed it into a sigh. What perfect alchemy.
He took another sip of beer, and waited. Finally, “So, you are dying,” he said, addressing Tara, “and there's nothing that can be done about it.” Tara nodded, her face wary. “What will happen to this priest fellow then? When you die, does he die as well?”
This time Tara answered. “No. His soul will be free to seek another host. He will keep jumping until he has fulfilled his purpose.”
Donny sat up a little straighter. “What is his purpose?” he asked, taking another sip of beer as if to minimize the impact of the question. He noticed Willow listening with cautious intent.
“He is going to open the Second Seal of Danzalthar through a blood sacrifice. He, he said,” and Tara's soft voice faltered a little, as if she was trying hard to remember something she didn't want to. Patience was never one of his strong points, yet Donny waited, his secret boiling up inside him. His mother's second and final lesson. “He said that he doesn't want my blood to open it, that he needs the blood of another.” Anticipating his question, Tara continued, “We don't know yet who he needs to open the Seal. It may be a specific person, it may not.”
“What happens when he opens the Seal?” Donny asked.
“His armies will pour out, demons and vampires and all the soulless ones, and when half the world bows their knees to the power of The First, the greatest evil in the universe will take on flesh, and Caleb will be a god. They will rule the world for a thousand years of terror and bloodshed.”
Silence, as the words struck him, bored into him. Made all the more real by the environment in which they were said, the dusty heat of the farmyard, the shimmering blacktop beyond, the peeling paint on the porch. Maybe he understood now his heritage, the unfathomable sacrifice another woman made, far in the past.
“What are you going to do?” he asked. His bottle was cruelly empty. He yearned for another.
“There is a way to shut the Seal forever. Willow and I, we go to close it.”
Too easy. Tara was hiding something. Donny looked at her, harsh. “Don't mince words with me, Tara. How are you supposed to shut it when you have no more magic? With that... thing hanging on your neck?”
Willow cried as Tara told him, the Seal, the scythe, the sacrifice. For Donny there was no pain left to feel. He had felt it all long ago. That's why there were no tears as he shovelled dirt on that girl's corpse. That's why there were no tears now. Tears were useless. Willow didn't know it yet, obviously. The lesson would come to her, in the end.
“What I don't understand is, why me?” Tara asked, a little plaintively. The question hiccupped in her voice and Donny felt a great weight descend upon him.
(It's time, Donny.)
Thieving little goddess guttersnipe, Donny didn't need her words in his head to tell him what he already knew. Shunting Aranaea's voice away, Donny sighed.
No more secrets.
“This is your last lesson, Tara,” he began, picking at the label of the beer bottle in his hand, pulling long strips of paper from it, as if to belie the depth of the secret he was about to impart. He glanced up and saw both of their faces, avidly watching him. “This is something mom told me just before she died, to share with you when the time was right.”
The story had been drilled into him, that week before Anna passed away. It was rusted with time, but nothing was forgotten. Bit by bit, the story emerged from him: how the child goddess Aranaea conspired to be born in the New World, to fulfil prophecy. She grew up, and married, and had children. And then her secret lover, a female Guardian, took up the scythe and slew her with it. Aranaea was banished in exile, and so was the spirit of The First.
And Anna? A descendant of Aranaea. Which meant...
Willow sputtered first. “You mean, you and Tara are descendants of a god?” Her face was round, open with shock and dismay, though understanding quickly flooded through. Understanding, and another heaping spoonful of love, as her eyes melted in devotion so strong it nearly made him blanch.
“Where did you think the magic came from, Tara?” Donny blasted back, a little angry again, and discomfited by Willow's face. How could she be so obtuse?
Her eyes glittered a little coldly. “I believe father told me it was a demon spirit, Donny. Which is why he kept mom confined to the attic all those years!”
Speak of the devil, and he appears.
They heard the car, first. Donny looked at Tara with a vigorous shake of his head at Willow. Tara nodded and said, even as Willow helped her get to her feet, “Will, go invisible. He can't see you. But please don't leave me.”
In an instant, Willow had vanished. Donny thought of Tara's words, of what Willow had to do to fulfil prophecy, and he writhed in frustration. His dream future could have come so close. Tara and Willow could have had the farm – he didn't want it. He could have had a place in town, with occasional dinners at Tara's place. Would he have become an uncle?
No time. Not anymore.
The car crunched up the gravel, and Donny's heart froze in his chest. Did he wash enough? Was there grave-digging dirt on his hands or face? Sir would be able to see. Somehow he could see all.
The car stopped, and the man stepped from it. Such an ordinary man to house extraordinary evil. He was plain, with graying hair; he kept trim and fit. His arms belied the strength they housed, as those unfortunate girls must have discovered. To the outside world he was a pious man, a man slow to drink and slow to anger. To Donny, who now could see with goddess-given eyes, the man roiled in pitch and tar, endless streams of malevolence reaching from him like the stink of that three days dead girl. The goddess-given sight didn't come to him often, so he turned to look at Tara, wondering what vision Aranaea wanted him to see in her.
He forced his mouth to remain shut. At times throughout his life, Aranaea had shown him people who were god-touched or the opposite. To him they looked like candles on a stick, or, rarely, a torch burning bright, with the opposing side looking much like his father, only less so.
Tara burned like a city afire.
(Your sister is going to save the world, Donny.) Aranaea whispered to him.
Then why does she have to die?
(Only a god can kill a god, as I discovered so long ago.)
I hate you, you know.
Silence.
“Hello, Tara,” his father was saying, his voice oil and filth.
“G-good afternoon, sir,” Tara replied, stammering and ducking her head.
“To what do we owe the pleasure?” He had taken bags of groceries from the car, lettuce leaves already looking wilted. There was no air-conditioning in there.
“I come with some... bad news, sir.” As she said this, Donny's enhanced eyes could see the dent in the fabric Willow's hands made as they wrapped around her from behind. Donny prayed, actually prayed, for Willow to be careful. Sir had strange powers lately. He saw a lot more than he let on.
“Oh?” his father said, pausing in his single-minded track up to the house. His eyes flickered to Donny, then back to Tara.
“I discovered, just this morning, sir,” Tara said, dithering a little on the porch. Donny could see his father's eyes grow flinty and impatient, so he silently willed Tara to hurry it up. Tara lifted her face and said, “I am dying of a brain tumour.”
Not much flitted over Mr. Maclay's face. Certainly no shock or sorrow. He resumed walking to them, and swung the grocery bags into Tara's surprised hands. “Did you hear what I just said?” Tara cried out, and there was a note of quiet desperation in her voice, as if she expected her news to somehow change the man. Donny knew better.
At Tara's cry, Mr. Maclay turned sharply in the doorway. “Of course I heard you. You and your... magic.” Donny knew the word 'magic' had two connotations when it came to Tara. One was obvious, and blocked now because of the amulet. The other was the unspoken realisation of Tara's choice of lifestyle, which her father knew of and completely condemned. It was good that Willow was invisible. Good that she could see their father exactly as he was, and not as he appeared to others to be. Meanwhile, “I always knew it would kill you. You are a selfish, ungrateful daughter. Nothing more than an abomination.”
Tara reeled from the words, as she always did. Donny expected her to drop her gaze, admit defeat, as she always did.
Tara stared at him, a burning city assaulted by the forces of hell. She didn't drop her eyes, and Donny mentally braced himself for what was about to occur.
Mr. Maclay looked stunned by the display of force in her eyes. Tara didn't say anything. She didn't need to. “You know your duty,” Mr. Maclay said, his voice harsh, scraping them both raw. “Now make us dinner and wait on us as you've been taught.”
Tara straightened, and dropped the bags on the porch with a loud thunk. The sound seemed to reverberate through the still afternoon air. She glared at him. “No, sir,” she said. “I don't think I will.”
Mr. Maclay's arm was stronger than most people believed. Tara knew what the fist felt like. Donny saw the fist form up, knuckles white and taut, then it would speed through the air to crunch on Tara's unprotected face. He had cracked her jaw, once. He had made her nose bleed dozens of times. Which would happen now?
A gasp from the air, from a voice not belonging to a Maclay, and Tara vanished. His father's eyes widened in surprise as he hit naught but air; he somehow regained his balance. Immediately he looked at Donny, as if Donny had something to do with it.
Donny knew his place, his role to play.
“She's a witch, dad,” he said. His father grunted, leaving the groceries on the porch where Donny picked them up. Before he entered the house, Donny looked around, knowing he wouldn't be able to see them, but looking all the same. A small smile graced his lips.
Good work, Willow.
TBC by next Tuesday, March 4 with Chapter 41: Stardust
Phoenix
I can wait as long as it will take you. Because it will be worth the wait - your writing has been exceptional, I love the details and the imagery to each scene, as if I'm looking at them through a one-way mirror. Being in the medical field, I'm really curious in how you'll get Tara out of that brain tumor situation.
