Mother (55 page)

“… safer to stay home …”
the scratchy song played on.
 

Claire opened her eyes and gasped.
 

On the floor near her bedroom door, which seemed miles away, a man’s lifeless body lay heaped in unnatural angles, his clothes rotted and torn. She sat, hand to her mouth, tears blurring her vision, and saw the yellowed ribs where the skin and shirt had disintegrated. A piercing sound, like an infant’s shriek, shook the room.

Claire looked up and saw a massive American eagle circling overhead, its golden-bronze plumage glinting, its white head a shining dot lost in its vast wingspan. It shrieked, and from somewhere within, the great bird ticked -
tick, tick, tick
- and Claire saw the American flag emblazoned on its breast … and the clock embedded there. In its claws, it gripped a small green laurel. It was the awful eagle clock she’d been terrified of as a child.
“If it catches you awake, Mother tells her
,
“it will find you and peck your eyes out!”
Claire remembered that now; she hadn’t imagined it after all.
 

It circled above the dead man, cried out, and dived, perching on one of the corpse’s yellowed rib bones. The eagle looked at her, blinked its glistening pinprick eyes, and cocked its head to one side.

“Go away.” Claire’s words trembled and she felt their vibration in the soles of her feet. “Go away.”

The bird turned its attention to the cadaver, glutting itself on the red, stringy innards, plucking at its intestines. The reek of death fermented the air.
 

Her stomach heaved as crunching noises and wet, sloppy sounds vibrated through the room, loud enough she felt it in her teeth.
 

“… lots of things to eat …”
crooned the record player from the vent.

Another memory crashed down on her:
 

Mother tucks Timothy into bed as Claire watches from the hall. Mother bends to kiss him goodnight. He gives her a quick peck and she slaps his face, fists his hair, and says, “No! You do it like this … kiss Mommy like
this,”
and crushes her son’s mouth to hers. The pink tip of her tongue is writhing like a wet snake around Timothy’s lips, seeking passage into his mouth. He tries to push her away and Mother’s hand is at his groin, squeezing until he whimpers and stops fighting her. “Kiss Mommy like this …” She squeezes again, and Timothy allows the kiss as tears leak from his eyes.

The vulture’s harsh cry shattered Claire’s trance. It flapped its wings, steadying itself as the dead man began to move. The face, a gangrenous ruin of rot and corrosion, grimaced as the cadaver struggled to sit up on decaying, ruined limbs. Leathery gray skin swung from the jawbone as the corpse turned its head to fully face her. When the eyes opened, Claire recognized him. “Timothy. My God …
Timothy!
”

Her dead brother worked his fleshless jaw back and forth, as if testing its ability, then said, “I’m not dead. I’m not dead, and I’m coming back.”

Claire screamed until she thought her throat might bleed and her lungs might burst.
 

On the sofa in the living room, Prissy looked at the ceiling.
My goodness. What is she
doing
up there?
“Carlene?” she called.
 

Silence.

Prissy set her plate down, stood and made her way to the record player where she started the song over
 
- the 1932 version of
The Teddy Bear’s Picnic
by Henry Hall and His Orchestra - and raised the volume several notches.

Jason tried Claire again. It rang then went to voicemail. Next he called Priscilla. “Prissy,” he said when the voicemail picked up. “Please answer. I can’t get hold of Claire and I need to know everything’s okay.” He paused, sighing. “Look, I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful. I’m just … I’m freaking out over here and I need to know everything’s all right. So please, please, call me back.” He ended the call and stared at the phone, and considered giving Babs another try.
She’ll call you right back as soon as she sees you’ve called.
Plus, he didn’t want to wake the poor woman.
It’s not as if Priscilla would let her in to see Claire anyway.
 

Idly, he opened the nightstand drawer, more to give his hands something to do than anything else. There was no bible.
When did they stop putting bibles in hotel rooms?
Not that it mattered - he wouldn’t have read it anyway.
 

“She’s had a minor psychotic break.”
Priscilla’s voice broke into his thoughts. He took a slow deep, breath.
 

Maybe I should just get to the plane and fly home myself. I haven’t had any seizures in …
well, it hadn’t been that long. And he couldn’t bear the thought of dying and leaving Claire and the baby alone with Priscilla Martin. “Claire. I’m so sorry. Please be okay.”

“She’s had a minor psychotic break.”
It was more than that, he knew it. He felt helpless, trapped, as if the hotel room were growing smaller and smaller. Before full panic could seize him, he dropped to the floor and began doing push-ups. He didn’t know if he was overreacting, but if he didn’t burn off some of this nervous energy, he was going to explode.

Let it go, let it go, let it go.
This was his mantra as he shoved off the floor, again and again.
There’s not a fucking thing I can do until tomorrow. Let it go.

Clowns. Clowns were everywhere. Claire was in a gallery of clowns; she couldn’t stop seeing them. It was the same ones she’d thrown out. They leered at her from massive portraits that hung along the hall. She could smell them - cotton candy that had fallen in dirt and straw, cotton candy covered with feces and blood, rank, rancid, moldy. Others smelled like sewer water, like Pennywise. She’d hated Pennywise ever since Mother made her watch
IT
with her when she was five.
 

Why did you make me watch that, Mother? That really fucked me up.
She worked her way down the hall, her crutches seeming to sink deeper each time they touched ground. The walls moved in and out, breathing and rasping, but the shrill giggles of the clowns kept her moving.
 

Somewhere in the dark corners of her awareness, she knew she was imagining everything, that none of it was real -
I’ve lost my mind! I’ve totally lost it!
- but she couldn’t stop to think about that. She needed to get …
Where do I need to get? Where am I going?
She turned a circle on her crutches and stared in the direction she’d come. The hall telescoped on and on, an endless length of closed doors, dried-flower wreaths that pulsed with hunger, and a shifting kaleidoscope of clown portraits that heaved and swayed and changed position with the labored breathing of the walls.
 

She gasped as a clown dressed in a green Bozo suit unicycled its way into the hall, its blood-colored smile expanding to impossible proportions as it pedaled toward her on a squeaky wheel. A colorful balloon bouquet - red, yellow, black, blue - trailed behind it, each one twisted into the shape of a teddy bear.

“… their piiiic-nic …”
The music in the living room floated up the stairs and appeared as a cluster of wet moldering notes behind the giggling and fast-approaching purple-haired clown.

“
No
!” Claire turned tail, hobbling back toward her bedroom as sweat poured from her face and into her mouth. She tasted the horrible, cloying sweetness of cotton candy -
it’s coming out of my pores!
- as she bustled down the hall, heard the squeak of the unicycle - the honk of a toy horn, the giggle of the thing itself - right behind her, so close she could smell the plastic of the balloons, taste their bitter talc.

The clown cackled and the force of its laugh became a pair of hands shoving her to the floor. “Get off me! Get off me!” She writhed, felt the thing clawing at her clothes, giggling, giggling, giggling. She rolled onto her back and stared into the monster’s face - plaster-white skin, blue triangles for eyes, its nostrils like stab wounds, and its mouth a gaping red crater. It smelled of
Opium
.
 

“Carlene!”

Claire smacked at the thing, trying to knock it away with her knees.

“Carlene! Stop it! It’s me!”

Claire shrieked. “Get off me!”

“It’s me! Your mother! Carlene! Stop it!”

Mother?
Claire lowered her hands, watched in horror as the clown’s face rearranged itself, melting and shifting until she stared at Prissy Martin. “Mother?”

And then Claire was on her feet, her crutches at her sides. Mother, wearing a green satin robe, had an arm around her waist. “We need to get you into bed. It’s okay now. Mother’s here.”

Claire was astounded to realize she’d gone only a few feet from her bedroom door. They entered and Mother helped Claire under the sheets. “My goodness, Carlene. I don’t know
what’s
gotten into you!”

“The clowns. They’re everywhere!” She tried to sit up but Mother’s arm braced her down.
 

“Now, now, darling. Be calm. I’m calling Dr. Hopper to come see you.”

Dr. Hopper?
“Is it … it is my fever?” Peggy Lee’s face formed in front of her, then dissolved into smoke.
 

“It must be,” said Mother. “Just be still. I’ll be right back with a mug of warm milk.”
 

Claire watched Mother bustle from the room and sat, staring, listening to the melody that rose from the vents:
“… games to plaaay …”

Games to play.
 

Games to play.
 

Games to play.
 

A new memory, as concise and acute as a bee-sting, pierced her.
This song. This is the song Mother played when she … when she … did things to Timothy.
In her mind’s eye, she saw Mother pinning Tim down on the dining table, securing his wrists and ankles with soft nylon rope.
 

He’s nude … and screaming. Mother looks up and sees her. “Look at him, Carlene! Look at him!”

Carlene tries to turn away, but Mother’s hand is a vise around her wrist. She drags Carlene close to him, yanks her. Carlene cries out and Mother slaps the back of her head. “Look! LOOK!” Carlene looks at her brother’s nude body through a blur of tears.

“He’s been looking at the girls,” says Mother. She stuffs one of Tim’s socks into his mouth to muffle his cries, and says to him, “How dare you sneak into a theater with a girl! I told you never to do that.” She grabs his no-no and pinches hard.

Behind the gag, Tim shrills.

“Let him go, Mommy, please.” Carlene weeps.

“I will when he learns what that dirty, stinking thing between his legs is for.” She flicks his no-nos - all of them - with her fingers.

“Mommy, please-”

“You shut up, Carlene. Just shut up!” Mother’s grip tightens on Carlene’s arm. “Now you listen to me, Timothy. No girl is allowed to touch you except your mother. Do you understand me?”

Timothy nods, tears streaming in rivers down his face.

“I’m going to show you what happens when you let a girl touch you there.” She looked down at Carlene. “Carlene. I want you touch your brother’s no-nos.”

Carlene wails. “No, Mommy, no. Please let him go!”

“Touch them! Touch them!” She yanks Carlene’s arm, forces her hand toward her brother’s groin. Carlene squeezes her eyes shut and tries to recoil when her fingertips touch coarse, curly hair and soft skin, but Mother squeezes tighter. “Open your hand, Carlene.”

Warm, springy flesh fills Carlene’s hand. She chances a peek through slitted eyes and sees his no-nos in her palm. “Mommy, please …”

“Now close your hand and squeeze them!”

“No!”
 

“Squeeze them or the teddy bears are going to come and eat you!”

Carlene squeezes.

Timothy squeals.

Mother releases her and says, “Now go upstairs and wash your hands.” She turns to Timothy. “That’s what girls do, Timmy. They hurt you. But not me. Mother doesn’t hurt you. Mother makes it all better.”

Carlene runs from the room, out of breath, wracked by sobs.
 

Circle of Hell

At 2:30 in the morning in his hotel room in Denver, Jason finally began to nod off. The alarm would go off at 3:30, but an hour of slumber was better than nothing. He closed his eyes, welcoming sleep, never noticing the snowflakes that began falling just before three.
 

The miles rolled by too slowly. Babs and Carl had been on the road over an hour and Carl figured they’d be at the hospital in Pleasanton by three if their luck held.
Please, no fog. Please, no fog.
 

Beside him, Babs stared silently at the road as a rebroadcast of Coastal Eddie’s show played. The jock was talking about conspiracies in the town of Devilswood, down near Lompoc and Solvang, where pea soup and Danish pastries reigned supreme. Coastal Eddie was talking about Devilswood’s early 19th-century witchcraft trials.
 

“If you’d like to visit the odd little village of Devilswood,” he said in his smooth, ironic voice, “I suggest you go in August to attend the Founder’s Day celebration. Why is it special, you ask? Because, dear listeners, the celebration is a murderous one - they’re observing the anniversary of their early witchcraft trials. Yes, my babies, my friends and neighbors, witches were executed old-school style right there in the early 1800s in Devilswood. And the celebration is quite a show - they have an execution reenactment that’s not to be missed … unless you’re a witch of course.” Eddie silenced as the first notes of The Eagles’
Witchy Woman
began playing.

Carl hadn’t heard about Devilswood before.
Maybe we’ll time our next trip to Solvang to coincide. Babs might get a kick out of that witchcraft stuff.
He glanced at his wife. She was a sweet, kind woman, but had a decidedly dark sense of humor. He nearly said something, but now wasn’t the time. She was too upset about her sister. He patted her knee and kept driving.