Broken Branch (9 page)

The children were returned to her at Sunday service. Otto, never one to miss a chance to make a speech, talked for a long time about how much God had changed Trudy's heart, how her own boy—once afraid of her—had come to Otto and said he had prayed for his mother and he had “no doubt” that God's cleansing blood had fallen over her.

When Trudy came up to receive her children, she made sure she was smiling. Otto held their hands before placing them in Trudy's. “If you could, Sister Trudy, speak of your journey to the congregation.”

She'd been hoping for this opportunity. “A few weeks ago, I was lost. Now, thanks to the prayers of this community, I am found. I want to thank Otto and my husband, James. I want to thank Broken Branch. And I'm very grateful Otto allowed me to speak.”

The congregation shouted “amen” and began to clap.

Trudy felt the demon inside her stomach, its powerful tail beating against her insides, and it made her feel nauseous. She swallowed hard and kept smiling.

Make them believe you,
she thought.
And then the betrayal will be more powerful.

She returned to her spot in the grass with Mary and Rodney beside her. James was up front with Otto, and he struck up a tune on the guitar. The congregation stood and sang “Amazing Grace,” and Trudy thought how little grace there was to be found here.

One more thing happened before the service ended. During the prayer requests, Hank Burnside raised his hand.

“Brother Hank,” Otto said. “Speak.”

Hank—one of the older men in Broken Branch, and typically very quiet—pushed himself to his feet.

“Brother Otto, some of us have been talking about the activity that goes on in the clearing at night.”

Otto raised his eyebrows. “What activity?”

Hank coughed. “I don't sleep well on account of my breathing. When I lie down I go to coughing, so some nights I sit by the window or out on the porch. There's folks up and moving at night. Going here and there. It don't seem very Christian to do what needs doing in the dark. Folks should be in bed, sleeping.” He coughed. “Or at least trying to sleep.”

There was general murmuring among the congregation. Otto held up his hands. “Well, there are those among us—Brother James, for instance—that find that evenings are the best times to be alone with God. I hardly think this could be considered sinful, Hank. I think—”

“He's not the only one,” Hank said. “I've seen others.”

Otto held out his hands. “As I said, some folks find it conducive. I'm more of a morning person myself.”

“It don't seem right!” Franklin said loudly. “I say things done in the dark are sinful. Maybe this is why we've struggled with the storms so long.”

The congregation broke into a chorus of accusations and denials.

“Okay then,” Otto said, and Trudy delighted in the way he seemed to squirm at this new development. “I'll enact a curfew for the next few weeks while I investigate.” His face shifted to a smile. “Now, let's thank the Lord for his many blessings.”

The rest of the service went like normal, but Trudy couldn't concentrate on either the singing or the message. She kept thinking of something Otto had said.
Some folks find it conducive. I'm more of a morning person myself.

So if Otto was sleeping, where was James going?

Trudy pretended to sleep for the next several nights. On the third night, she felt the mattress shift and knew James was getting up. She thought about confronting him, to see what lie he'd tell, but she decided against it. She lay very still until she heard the back door close.

She was up instantly after that, pulling on a work dress and putting on her boots. Slipping out the back, she stood listening.

The night was quiet. James was careful, but she couldn't imagine him being quiet enough to escape her on a night like this.

She didn't move, listening. She felt herself pulsing out into the night, and every sound was available to her, or to the demon, which was wide awake in her belly and abnormally still. When the stick cracked underneath a boot, she placed the sound well past Ben's house. He was moving fast.

She did the same, careful to make her step light and to avoid the sight lines from nearby houses. There was no telling who watched.

Ducking into the woods, she continued toward the sound she'd heard. That was when she saw him standing in the shadows behind Hank Burnside's house. Suddenly there was a scattering of underbrush as another figure broke out of the woods and stood next to him.

Rachel.

“Are you sure?” she said.

“Completely,” James said. Then he leaned in and kissed her.

When they broke the kiss, she said, “What about Trudy? Seems like we're working out of order.”

“Soon enough. We have to take care of some things first. She doesn't have a will.”

“So? There's no law out here but the Lord's.”

He kissed her again, harder, more urgently. “I know, but God showed me that this has to be done right.”

“Like He showed you that we had to be together?”

James nodded solemnly. “It's only right that I take care of you. You're Otto's wife.”

She flashed him a wicked grin, and Trudy felt befuddled by it all. Clearly James had been cheating on her with Rachel, but what wasn't so clear was if he felt justified in doing this or was simply playing some game with his lover. Seeing the sober look on his face, she was betting on the former, and this, she realized, was by far the more frightening of the two.

“Did you bring it?” he said.

“It's against the tree,” she said, pointing off into the shadows, not too far from where Trudy crouched. “But I don't know why we need it.”

“God told me. It's fulfillment of Otto's prophecy.”

Rachel nodded, as if this explained everything.

“Go on, knock.”

James stepped away, back into the shadows. He stopped just a few feet from where Trudy was, so close, she could hear him breathing, could smell his familiar sweat scent. Except this time it was different, and she couldn't say exactly how.

Rachel knocked on the back door and waited. She turned around and looked at James. He nodded. She knocked again.

Trudy couldn't move. She wanted to warn Helen and Hank, but she also didn't want to give herself away. She decided to wait. To see what was going on. Once she was sure, she'd do whatever it took, she promised herself. The demon in her belly twisted in anticipation.

Rachel knocked a third time. This time, the door swung open after a few moments.

It was Hank.

“It's late. I'm sleeping,” he said.

“I know, and I wouldn't have come except for Otto sent me,” Rachel said in that false sweet voice. “He wants you to see something.”

“What?”

“It's over here.” She pointed at the trees opposite of where James waited.

It happened so fast, Trudy barely had time to register it. James sprung from the nearby trees and swung a hatchet. It gleamed in the moonlight and the reflected light hit Trudy's eyes and blinded her. She felt dizzy and braced herself against a tree to keep her balance.

The sound of it striking flesh was the worst, and Trudy kept hearing it even after it was over. The clean whistle as it flew through the air, broken suddenly by a stiff, wet crunch as it met resistance. Him grunting as he pulled the hatchet out and swung again and again until there was no resistance and the head had been severed from Hank's body.

The head landed in the grass near James's feet. The body stood there a second longer before the knees gave way and it fell softly onto the ground.

Rachel moaned. Trudy looked away to keep from vomiting. When she looked back, James was dragging Hank's torso into the trees. “Get his wife out here,” he said.

But there was no need to get her. She already stood in the doorway, her mouth open in a silent scream.

Trudy knew how she felt. Try as she might, no sound came from her lungs. She was simply too stunned to make a sound.

By the time Trudy finally felt her lungs come back under her own control, it was too late to scream. Too late for Helen and Hank. Too late for James too, she realized, but maybe not for Trudy. Maybe not for Rodney and Mary.

Later, after following them silently through the woods, Trudy watched them twisting the willow branches around Hank's body, until it was as if he were in a cocoon. Except no butterfly would emerge on the other side. Instead, he would rot there among the willow branches, a false warning to all who gazed upon his spinning corpse. When they finished, and he bobbed—headless—next to Simpson, James picked up his head, weighing it in his hand before they tied several branches around it so that it hung like a moss-covered stone.

“I'll bring his wife back on my own. You go inside and write a note. Tell the truth about how they were planning on leaving.”

Trudy didn't hear what Rachel said because they walked off, and their voices were drowned out in the distance. Besides, something had caught her attention. The hatchet lay on the ground, beneath the spinning bodies.

She forced herself not to look at poor Simpson swinging in the breeze or Hank, whose head seemed to dip and nod. She picked up the hatchet and, when she did, she felt the demon shift inside her. It began to climb up the walls of her belly, and it was slippery and hot and it grew. This was what it had been waiting on. This moment.

She reached as high as she could and slammed the hatchet into a nearby elm. Then she pulled herself up and began to climb.

Later, when Trudy had almost given up that James would return, and the sight of the two bodies wrapped in the willow had caused her to shut her eyes tightly and think of the swamp, she finally heard the sound of him coming, dragging Helen's body behind him.

She opened her eyes and saw him standing near the willow tree, Helen's body lying on the ground beside him.

He sighed heavily. “Where's that hatchet?”

Trudy tensed. The demon was in her throat now. It could come out of her mouth anytime, but she realized now that wasn't its goal. Instead, it climbed higher, oozing into her sinus cavities and further up toward her brain. It slithered around, testing the hardness of her skull before settling into the soft refuge of her brain.

It told her what to say.

“You never believed any of it, did you?”

James turned quickly. “Who's there?”

She smiled. He thought she was behind him.

“Trudy?”

“Just answer the question,” she said. “I thought you believed, but it was all a lie.”

“Trudy, I don't know where you are or what you think you saw, but I'm a God-fearing man. These bodies were here when I arrived. The Lord woke me up out of my sleep and told me to come here.”

“I've got a demon in me,” she said.

“Trudy, you're talking crazy. Are you in the tree?” He craned his neck, trying to look through the branches, but it was dark, and she knew she was well camouflaged.

“You put it in me,” she said. “You and Otto with your lies and deceit. You hurt people like that. You say you're godly but then you go and kill and fuck and put demons in people. If there's a God, He's turned His back on this place.”

“I'm only doing what has to be done, Trudy. I knew you wouldn't understand. I won't see Otto's prophecies go unfulfilled. God's work isn't always pleasant. If you'd just come down and listen to me.”

“You're afraid,” she said, suddenly sure that it was his fear, his deep-seated fear, not his faith at all that had caused him to act like this.

James stepped back as if he'd been physically punched, and she knew she was right.

“Trudy, if you'll just come down from there, we can work this out.” He leaned over, gazing up into the tree, trying to spot her. “We can talk it out. Otto will know what to do with your de—”

He never finished the rest. She came down.

Once it was over, she lay in the grass, breathing, looking at the stars, which seemed streaked and blurred across the sky. It would have been easy, she realized, to stay here for a long time, to wait until morning, to wait until someone found her.

The demon was gone, and without it, she felt weak and tired, and full of reasons why she would fail.

Except, maybe it had never been a demon at all. Hadn't G.L. said there was no such thing? She couldn't remember, but it seemed like he'd said something like that once, and the more she thought on it, the more she realized that the demon had just been the part of her that had to act, just like the demon in James had been his fear of losing control, of discovering that his entire life had been built on a sham.

A sham.

No demons, no God. Just people.

And the swamp. That was something. She'd been there. She wouldn't allow herself to doubt that she hadn't.

This got her back up on her feet, and she stared up into the branches of the willow tree—the ones untouched by the bodies—and saw the stars between them.
They fell once, long ago,
she thought.
Only God could make that happen.
She closed her eyes and prayed for strength, but for the first time, Trudy realized she wasn't praying to James's God or Otto's, but G.L.'s God of the swamp. Her God.

When she opened her eyes, she started moving and didn't slow down until the job was finished.

She took Hank down and dragged him and his wife as far away as she could drag them. She shoved them deep in a rolling mess of kudzu, where she felt sure they'd never be found. After that, she came back to do the hard part.

She used the hatchet to hack away willow branches, taking care to pull them as close to the ground as possible before cutting them. Once her arms ached from the effort, she laid them on the ground and used them to roll James's body up. Then she dragged him off into some nearby underbrush and pushed him in as deeply as she could.

She stood back, satisfied that no one would notice, especially when they'd be looking in the tree for Hank's and Helen's bodies.

The last thing she did before leaving the clearing and the willow tree was to retrieve the hatchet. She held it up to the moonlight to make sure there were still bloodstains on it. She was pleased to see that there were. She tucked it under her arm and ran back to Broken Branch.