The Captive Condition (13 page)

“Her friends? I suppose she was pretty lonely,” he said, more to himself than to anyone else. “She never even left me a note. But I guess she didn't need to. No, I already knew what was wrong.”

There was a moment of awkward silence before Marianne said, “Don't hesitate to stop by the house. We'd love to see you and the girls.”

Kingsley took his wife by the hand and led her away. To him the casket had started to resemble a confessional box where he could bury all of his evil deeds. But as he and Marianne retreated to a far corner of the crowded funeral parlor, he noticed how the twins occasionally looked in his direction, their eyes small and hard and filled with a larval hatred, two conquering graveworms eager to feed on their mother's foul secrets and to spread her corruption.

Now it was my turn to speak to Emily's husband. Odd that I didn't feel any jealousy toward him, none at all, but then it was hard to be jealous of a cuckold. Bereft of his wife, the poor fellow appeared lost in a fog so thick he didn't realize, or perhaps didn't care, that he'd never met the stranger now offering his sympathies. Charlie Ryan didn't ask my name or how I knew Emily. For the hundredth time that day, he mechanically spoke the words, “Thank you so much for coming,” and I mechanically replied, “I'm sorry for your loss.” We shook hands, a pair of impotent Prince Charmings unable to liberate Sleeping Beauty from the powerful spell of eternal darkness. The entire exchange lasted no more than thirty seconds.

I stepped aside, afraid to linger and appear ghoulish, and walked casually around the perimeter of the room, overwhelmed by the nauseating bouquet of carnations and gladioli and the ostentatious serenity wreaths hanging from lopsided tripods. Pretending to read the cards and admire the flower arrangements, I considered approaching Kingsley and giving him Emily's note, but then I decided that the best thing to do, the most
devious
thing, would be to wait for the right opportunity to deliver the note to the person for whom it was originally intended.

I made my way to the exit, but as I was leaving I noticed how the two little girls smiled queerly at me. Like two trolls skipping along moonlit stones in a dark wood, they vanished behind their father's massive trunk and tugged on his sleeves. With a small shudder, I hurried from the funeral parlor, and somewhere behind me I heard them say, “That's him, Daddy, that's the pirate. The
pirate,
Daddy.”

That night, plagued by troubled dreams and unable to sleep, I removed the pink stationery from the pocket of my suit coat, laid the pieces side by side on the Formica countertop in the kitchenette, and for the next hour transcribed Emily's words onto sheets of crisp white paper. I intended to deliver the note to Mrs. Kingsley in the morning and wanted a copy as a keepsake for myself. It was a slow and methodical process that became a kind of meditation, and soon my mind entered the dominions of monastic thought. Strangers walking by my window might have mistaken my threadbare apartment for the scriptorium of a medieval monastery, and they might have mistaken the hunched and solitary figure perched near the lamp as a pensive and diligent Trappist trying to cleanse his tortured mind of dark visions by transcribing lines of deathless verse. For an hour I focused intently on this work until my concentration was broken by the sounds of a terrible struggle next door and a series of frightful screams.

I was more or less accustomed to loud and sudden disruptions in this part of town. After the civilized world had turned out the lights in preparation for another working day, the squalid row houses came to life, and because the walls were so thin, my apartment often reverberated with a madhouse chorus of the damned and downtrodden—the snarls of a Rottweiler, the impossibly high-pitched and inconsolable cries of a small child, the lusty laughter of a drunk couple. The place was rife with dangers of all kinds. After sundown the addicts, thieves, and squatters broke into abandoned buildings to share needles and build fires. Maybe they thought the apartment next door was still unoccupied and had entered through a back window. The police typically put a stop to the anarchy, but never at night and never right away.

Convinced that Morgan was in serious danger, my irritation turned to genuine concern, and I was about to leap to her rescue when I stopped and listened more closely. Taking care not to let the floorboards creak, I tiptoed across the room, crouched low to the ground, and pressed my ear against the register. To describe Morgan's cries as bloodcurdling would not be too great an exaggeration, but gradually her squeals and shrieks transformed into those familiar whimpers of pleasure I still longed for, and soon the terrible struggle on the other side of the wall became the repulsive and rhythmic squeaking of bedsprings.

As I listened to her gasps and moans and hearty bellows of pleasure, I imagined an assortment of low-class Lotharios in her bed, trailer trash, rednecks, hayseeds, their dirty coveralls pulled down to their hairy knees. Some of the scenes I envisioned were, even by the depraved standards of the modern age, appallingly vivid, pornographically obscene: a former high school running back with small, murderous eyes pressing his pulsating, foreskinned scepter against my darling's flushed face; an affluent college kid wearing brand-name clothes and a smug smile, ripping open her blouse and snorting a fat line of blow between her fabulously tight tits; an emaciated, inbred bumpkin with greasy black hair and bad skin, asking her, with the nervous laughter universal to all sexual deviants, to massage his prostate with a rigid index finger.

The horror show went on and on, and to block out the constant drumming of devils in my head, the cancer spreading in my brain, I clamped my hands over my ears and vowed to match Morgan, lay for lay. A lofty goal, no doubt, and one not without its challenges. I had never been particularly skillful when it came to talking attractive, young ladies into the sack. What's more, our breakup put our mutual friends in an uncomfortable position, and because they wanted to postpone for as long as possible the awful business of choosing sides, they no longer extended invitations to the kinds of parties where I might actually meet an available woman.

After an hour, as I was starting to nod off beside the window, I heard Morgan's door creak open. I squinted, my good eye serving as a spyglass.

Flickering votive candles cast wildly shifting shadows across the threshold, turning her apartment into an uninviting cavern covered in prehistoric cave paintings that pulsated with a terrible inner energy. I glimpsed a glossy reprint of a pair of morose-looking, strung-out absinthe drinkers. From a distance they seemed to come alive and turn their pitted faces toward me, their lips parted as if to serenade me with a mournful and maniacal song.

A tall silhouette appeared in the doorway. Draped from head to toe in a black cloak, her face concealed under a hood, the woman could have passed for the mad governess in a Victorian ghost story or the high priestess in some bizarre backwoods cult that allowed women to preside over high ceremonies, perhaps the ritualistic slaughter of the innocent, but there was something so unmistakably beguiling and Circean about the way she carried herself that, despite her entreating eyes and the grim severity of her wraithlike disguise, she made for a striking and alluring figure.

Morgan appeared beside her in an unknotted robe, and from her sweaty flesh I thought I caught the odor of sweet fulfillment. She touched Lorelei's shoulder and said, “Please stay.”

Lorelei shook her head. “I really need to go.”

“But I have plenty of room. You can stay as long as you'd like.”

“No, it wouldn't be right.”

Morgan pressed an empty bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape into Lorelei's arms. “Here, take this, then. A memento.”

Emboldened by the wine and using the chilly night air as a pretense, they embraced and exchanged a long, lingering kiss in the guttering candlelight. With bottle in hand, Lorelei climbed on a bicycle that looked as though some demented sculptor, using a blowtorch and a welder, had assembled the frame from dozens of spare parts. She pedaled away, her mouth hanging open to gobble up the black and gritty winds of midnight, her cloak trailing behind her like the spectacular rags of a witch.

In shock I stumbled away from the window, and all at once I felt entangled in a hundred dark and twisting arms, thousands of fingers pressing down on my throat. The accusing mirror in the corner only seemed to confirm just how worn down I looked, not prematurely old exactly but grotesquely boyish. My infected left eye now wept a viscous yellow discharge, and the first faint wrinkles on my forehead had noticeably deepened and spread into forking tributaries of misery and self-loathing.

I sank into a chair at the counter, wondering if I would ever again experience an evening of passion, and when I looked once more at the note I'd transcribed earlier that night, I saw several new lines that did not appear in the original and that I could not recall jotting down—an extraordinary instance of automatic writing! With trembling fingers I picked up the page and read aloud the cryptic words that the restless spirit of Emily Ryan, trying to communicate through my humble pen, must have written while I was in a trancelike state.

I know about the terrible longing that exists in the hearts of loveless men, and I can lead you to a love that is unconditional. This favor I will do for you if you will first do a small favor for me. Now listen…

Saturday, October 25–Monday, October 27, 2014

On a Saturday afternoon in late October, Madeline and Sophie Ryan marched in step through the high grass of a fallow field while listening to the piercing notes of a police siren. The sustained wails shot sharply across the soughing treetops and disappeared with mechanical precision through a window near the peak of a lichen-spotted barn that sat on a rise in the distance. One shard of glass dangled from the sill like the rotten tooth of a jack-o'-lantern and glimmered in the brilliant light of this unusually warm October afternoon, momentarily blinding the girls whenever they looked in that direction. Moribund, sun scorched, dead silent in its wild seclusion, the old post-and-beam horse barn seemed to lean forward as if to eavesdrop on the precocious pair stomping determinedly through the brush like emissaries from an enemy army's camp.

Madeline, the older of the twins by fifteen minutes and therefore the more perceptive of the two, smiled with satisfaction. “They're finally coming to take her away,” she said. “See, I told you so.”

Sophie, the younger but wiser one, gave her sister an apprehensive look. “No, they're not. They're after somebody else. The siren is far away now. Listen.”

Madeline, swinging a hot-pink plastic pail in wide arcs, stopped to inspect the bottom for holes and cracks. “I bet she heard the squad car and ran as fast as she could.”

Sophie's expression turned stony. “She'll still be there waiting for us, just like she said she would. You'll see.”

“The barn was only temporary. That's what she told us. It isn't safe. The floor is about to collapse. Probably she found a better hideout.” She glanced over her shoulder and said, “Besides, there's werewolves in this valley.”

“Coyotes,” Sophie corrected her.

“Werewolves,” Madeline insisted.

“How do you know?”

“Everybody knows. Neighbors won't let their dogs out at night anymore. Werewolves eat everything. Dogs, cats, rats, people. Maybe they already ate Lorelei. Betcha we find a big pile of her bones and clumps of red hair.”

Sophie shook her head. “Lorelei can protect herself.”

“Yeah, thanks to us.” Madeline pointed her right index finger at her sister and pretended to cock her thumb. “I bet she's a good shot, too. Bang bang! You're dead.”

“She wouldn't leave without telling us first.”

Madeline snorted with derision. “You think she'll marry Daddy, don't you?”

“I do not.”

“You think she'll come live with us and be our new mommy.”

“You're stupid.”

Madeline laughed and sprinted ahead. She pushed open the iron gates looming large at the edge of a wasted field and ran along a stone wall that marked the property line of an ancient farmstead. Using a long stick that swoosh-swooshed through the air, one wide arc after another, she cleared a path through a dense patch of purple coneflowers and yellow fox sedge, a last glimpse of nature's ephemeral beauty before the lacerating winter winds trapped them for the next five months in the domestic desolation of a motherless home.

Sophie followed at a safe distance, shooing away a cloud of sluggish greenbottle flies, her knees and shins crisscrossed with angry scratches crusted with blood, her fingers stained with dark juices from having ventured into the bushes where she'd picked wild berries, a dozen varieties, and placed them gingerly in mason jars that clinked together in a satchel slung over her shoulder. She already had three jars filled with red, purple, and white fruit. Pausing beside a thicket of jewelweed, Sophie dabbed at the blood with a handful of orange petals and wished badly for someone to hug her and make the stinging go away. What she required was nothing less than a mother's solicitude, but the job of comforter and protector had fallen to their father.

At a rocky creek that twisted through the field, the sisters stopped to scan the surface for signs of life. With pail in hand Madeline slid down the clay slope and jumped into the stagnant green water. She giggled as her new sneakers sank slowly in the thick silt, her ankles pinned in the cool ooze, and when she tried to scoop up a school of scattering minnows with her pail, she swayed dangerously back and forth and nearly fell into the bubbling, burping film of algae. After regaining her balance and catching her breath, she announced, “Must be a thousand of 'em!”

“Minnows don't live in dirty water,” said Sophie with revulsion. Taking care not to soil her own shoes, she skipped across a crooked causeway of slick rocks, and when she reached the other side, she looked back and made a prediction: “Daddy's gonna kill you.”

Madeline scrambled up the embankment and peeled away a moldering brown sash of cattails from her legs. “Oh, he won't care. He went to Metal Mayhem. Won't be home till late. Besides, it's worth it.”

“Why?”

She set the pail of minnows down and said, “Because Lorelei will like me more than she likes you. Minnows are better than those poisoned berries you picked. She can fry them up in a skillet. Or use them as bait to catch bigger fish in the river.” She reached into the pail and threw a handful of minnows high into the air. A flock of blackbirds exploded from the swaying broomsedge and circled overhead. “Look! Bats!”

Sophie kept her distance, taking one tottering step back. “Crows, dummy.”

“No, they're vampire bats. Just like the ones that live in our attic.” She lobbed another minnow, and this one slapped against her sister's neck and slid down the front of her shirt.

“Stop!”

“Oh, no! They're coming to get you! They're coming to suck your blood!”

Shrieking with outrage and fear, trying to keep the mason jars from shattering, Sophie dashed through the nettles and ragweed and headed for the shell of the abandoned barn. The birds descended. Stumbling through the open doors, Sophie shook her T-shirt, desperate to wipe away the slimy residue, and she reeled in disgust when the minnow flopped on the floorboards. Beyond the threshold the birds gathered in a semicircle and regarded her with eyes filled with cunning. They sang and danced as though participating in a pagan ritual, a dozen black-clad supplicants daring to mock the god to whom they pled for sustenance. Cowering in the gloom, Sophie tossed the minnow outside and cringed as they fought over it in a frenzy of feathers.

Afraid the birds might find this scant offering unsatisfying and raid the barn to pick at her body until another fish fell magically from her shirt, Sophie waved her arms wildly back and forth and shouted, “Shoo! Go on! Get away from here!”

Sensing that the fun was over, the birds scratched at the dust and made strange rattling sounds deep in their throats, and then with cries of protest and a vigorous flapping of wings they took to the sky, eclipsing the sun before vanishing like a passing storm. From the field there came the unceasing drone of crickets and grasshoppers, and the wooden doors of the barn squeaked on rusty hinges.

Sophie tried to assure herself that nothing scary had happened. After catching her breath, she set the satchel off to the side and walked into the shadows.

“Hello!” she called. “Lorelei?”

Her sister's voice echoed, “Hello! Lorelei! Lorelei! Oh, help me, Lorelei! The bats are trying to suck my blood!”

Like an agitated insect, Madeline buzzed into the barn, flitting through the hazy beams of light, before crashing against a small corncrib and dropping the pail to the ground. The remaining minnows jumped in the dirt, dying a grim, waterless death.

“Dummy!” Sophie jeered.

Madeline ignored her, picking pieces of straw from her knees. “She isn't here, is she? See, I told you!”

Aggrieved and sullen, Sophie turned away. “She'll be back.”

“Sure she will.” Madeline went to a ladder near the center of the barn, its rungs dusted with chaff, and peered into the darkness above. “I'm going up.”

“We're not supposed to.”

Sophie attempted to stop her, but Madeline had already climbed the first few rungs and knocked her sister in the chin with the heel of a muddy shoe before disappearing through the opening.

Sophie rubbed her bruised face. Lorelei was sure to be back any minute now, and if she caught the girls in the loft she wouldn't let them visit her again. Lorelei didn't trust them, thought they might give away her secret, but Sophie would never tell, she was not like the other kids in the neighborhood, not like Madeline at least, she could keep her mouth shut, and so she waited, but the longer she stood there, listening to the creaking crossbeams and the shotgun crack of planks above her head, the more frightened she became. Those conniving blackbirds might erupt from a swale to feast on her flesh. She refused to budge, but when she heard a sudden rustle of grass, she slung the satchel over her shoulder and climbed to the top of the ladder with astonishing speed.

Like everyone else in town, Lorelei knew about their mother, and during those sunny autumn afternoons, whenever the twins came to visit her, she tried to impress upon them the many dangers of the valley, a place where ancient cultivators lay like steel traps and where the broken blades of enormous combines and rusted tractors waited,
just waited,
for the unfortunate day when careless children tripped and impaled themselves on the jagged tines. “A land so dangerous,” she warned them, “that boys will not build tree forts here and grown men will not hunt for pheasant and farmers will not plant crops in its tainted soil. Nothing grows but briars and thistles and diseased plants that bear poisonous fruit.”

When she failed to dissuade them from coming, Lorelei took the girls on long hikes to gather pawpaws and wild grapes and tried to teach them how to identify different types of berries—deadly, edible, therapeutic. “Ah, but this,” she said, bending the stalk of a tall plant to eye level, “this one might have the most medicinal properties of all.” With great care she harvested its brown and green buds and then crushed them up and spread them onto rolling papers. Lounging in the tall grass, she attempted to explain the peculiar behavior of adults, using big words like “addiction,” “dependency,” “clinical depression,” and once, after taking a drag of her “hippie lettuce,” as she called it, she used the puzzling phrase “death with dignity.”

“You girls need to understand something. It's not weakness but the unraveling of the lies people tell themselves. After all their means of coping have disappeared, and they're faced with the certainty that their dreams will never come true, some people decide that a quick death is preferable to one more agonizing day of bitterness and resentment.”

A passage quoted from one of her books, no doubt, and far too mysterious for the twins to fully grasp, but these observations sounded somehow right. Books were a cabinet of wonders that contained secret wisdom and magic formulae that could alleviate suffering, at least temporarily, and in the coming days and weeks, whenever they needed quick answers to a life that seemed increasingly confusing and chaotic, the girls returned to the barn to consult Lorelei and ask that she recite a paragraph or two that might help them make better sense of their troubles at home. She sat near the window, listening to spiders mend their damaged webs, and if the twins looked particularly morose she offered them a rueful grin. “Now, now,” she said, “no need for tears. Everything will be fine, you'll see. I'm always here if you need me. And if you ever feel sad or lonely, or if you need anything at all, you can always close your eyes and call my name. Just imagine you're sailing through the air and across the valley to the barn. Let's see you try it now. Close your eyes, close your eyes…”

Lorelei had always been kind to them, and this was why Sophie, now poking her head above the trapdoor, was aghast to find Madeline running wild through the hayloft. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the diffused sunlight in the loft, but then, like the darkened auditorium at school with its red curtain rising above the stage, Sophie gradually saw beyond the swirling dust motes and found her sister, with her impressive aptitude for mindless destruction, rummaging through the objects of Lorelei's private world—an empty bottle of wine, a shattered mirror that divided her image into a dozen dazzling specters, a menagerie of stuffed animals, a coffee can filled with matches and candles, a small Styrofoam cooler packed with the good things the girls had pilfered from the refrigerator and pantry back home, thick slices of salami, a jar of kosher pickles, a bag of carrots. Madeline overturned Lorelei's cherished collection of paperbacks carefully arranged against the far wall, old books with faded covers, some stolen from the college library, others scavenged from yard sales. Lorelei had a passion for tales of the macabre and supernatural, and sometimes, when the sky was overcast and the wind was up, she read to the girls from an omnibus of ghost stories compiled by an eccentric old sorcerer named J. R. Montague.

Madeline lifted a corner of the mattress from the floor, and Sophie wrinkled her nose. Stained with mysterious brown and yellow patches, the mattress emitted a high, sour odor, and the girls wondered if Lorelei actually slept there. Didn't she worry about field mice burrowing into the stuffing in the middle of the night or rat snakes slithering under the sheets? Didn't she cringe at the thought of slimy salamanders creeping across her body and stinging centipedes covering her legs and arms with angry red welts? Didn't she dread the possibility of those ravenous birds rocketing through the window, tugging at her hair and pecking at her eyelids?

Most frightening of all were the strange wind chimes hanging from wires above the mattress, small creatures cut from scrap metal and painted cobalt blue, maroon, indigo. They reminded Sophie of the diseased fish that fed on dead things at the bottom of the river, brindled madtoms and frog-faced mottled sculpins. Here they were, snagged by hooks, tamed to dance fantastically to the discordant tune of their own incessant clanging.