Sacrifice (10 page)

Once he’d made up his mind, Joe pressed the pedal to the floor and, despite the incline and twisting road, raced up the mountain to return to the campgrounds. He had too many questions. Too many things he had to know. He couldn’t leave with that much unanswered. It was against his nature.

When the turnoff for the campground came up, he almost passed it by. He turned the wheel hard to the left and felt the car skid on the gravel as he slipped off the asphalt and onto the mountain path that served as a road for the campground.

The shower building passed in a blur, and then one by one he sailed past the campers and tents at the front of the campground, kicking up a cloud of dust behind him to hide his trail into the depths of the park.

Finally the blue tent came into view, along with the tiny stream of smoke that still rose from the anemic campfire they had built together.

Alex sat next to the fire, wearing a faded blue T-shirt and old blue jeans. She looked relaxed, but as soon as Joe pulled into the grassy area beneath the tree where he’d parked the night before, she jumped up and ran to the car.

“I thought you’d ditched me,” she said, as soon as she put her face to the window.

Joe motioned her away from the door, and then opened it and stepped out. He popped the trunk, and grabbed a bag to carry, leaving one for her. She picked it up and followed him to the tent.

“I thought about it,” he said finally. “It would have been nice if you’d given me the whole story.”

He stalked back to the car, and pulled out the 12-pack from behind the driver’s seat. Then he grabbed the newspaper from the front and slammed the door behind him.

“What do you mean?” Her voice trembled, just a bit, and he nodded at the fire. She took a seat next to it, and he dropped the paper beside her, bottom half up to reveal her incriminating pre-dye-job picture.

“Well, for starters, you might consider telling me why you knocked off your parents.”

Alex picked the paper up gingerly, as if it might carry poison ivy. She skimmed the article for a moment without answering.

“Damn,” she said. “Principal Linelle said this? About me?”

“I was a little more concerned about the brutal slaying part myself,” Joe said, voice oozing sarcasm.

“Yeah,” she said, absentmindedly, still scanning the paper. “You’re a guy, you would be.”

Joe stepped over to her and grabbed her by the shoulders. She looked up in surprise, eyes wide.

“I’m serious,” he said, squatting down next to her. “I really almost didn’t come back. But something made me give you a second chance.”

“Something named Malachai?” she said, a small smile slipping over her lips.

“Maybe,” he admitted, letting her go. “But that won’t keep me here. You spun a nice little story last night. I want to hear an even better one now.”

Alex’s face grew dark, and her gaze dropped to her lap.

“I didn’t tell you a story last night,” she said. “That was the truth.”

“Okay, fine.” Joe put his finger under her chin and pressed upwards until her eyes stared directly into his own.

“Then tell me the rest of the truth. What happened with you and your parents?”

She pulled away from him.

“They hurt me,” she said. “So I hurt them back. That’s all you need to know.”

“Bullshit,” Joe said. “Give me the story, or hitch yourself another ride off this mountain, ‘cuz you ain’t going with me.”

Alex said nothing for a moment, and then sighed.

“Get comfy,” she said, “This is going to take awhile.”

She eased over to lie on her side, head on her elbow, facing Joe and the fire. “It really all started when my dad found out that I saw things. He started surprising me, you know, bursting into my room to see if I was talking to the air. Sometimes he’d listen at the door, and if he heard me say anything, he’d slam it open and crack me across the face.”

“I thought he exorcised all the ghosts?”

“He did, but over time, some new ones turned up. And as the years went by, he got more and more weird about it. He was convinced I was some kind of witch, and it was his Godgiven mission to beat the crap out of me until I gave up my ‘evil ways.’ As I got older, he wouldn’t just spank me or send me to bed. He had a special room for me. He called it the Cleansing Room. And last week…”

Joe shifted position, and lay down on the ground next to her, settling in for the story.

“So what happened?”

“This has been coming for years,” she said. “But last week, it finally got completely out of control…”

Alex tossed her book bag on the bed and flopped down on her beanbag. The day had totally sucked. After getting back her history test with a weak C-(she thought she’d scored at least a B), she’d had a run-in with Jason, who backed out of their date on Saturday claiming that his parents weren’t going to let him have the car. She knew better though, because Jen had already told her that some of the guys from the football team were putting together a kegger at one of the guys’ houses, since his parents were away for a few days.

“Has Jason asked you to go yet?” Jen had said. “I know he’s one of the guys putting it together. If he takes you, can you get me in too?”

“Sure,” Alex had promised, a little apprehensive about the idea. She didn’t need to get caught at a house party. Her dad was already enough of a nutjob with her.

But those worries were all for naught anyway, because when she saw Jason after sixth period, he bailed out of their previously planned date on Saturday. She didn’t even confront him with the house party information. If he didn’t want her there, he didn’t want her. And it saved her from coming up with an excuse to get out of the house Saturday anyway. She hadn’t cleared the date yet with her parents.

Still, the deceit weighed heavily on her. She’d thought he really liked her. She settled into the beanbag and pulled her arms tight around her shoulders in a self-hug. Pulling her knees up in the fetal position, she let a tear slip down her cheek.

“It’ll get better, child,” a voice said.

Alex raised her reddening eyes to see the hazy shape of an old woman in front of her. The woman looked like a film projected on smoke; her face and figure were clear, yet, transparent and wavery.

“Who are you?” Alex sniffled. She didn’t jump or cry out at the intrusion, she was used to ghostly beings walking in and out of her life.

“I’m Gertrude,” the aged ghost said. “Now I want you to save your tears for someone who deserves them.”

“How do you know I’m crying about a boy?” Alex asked.

“Is there anything else that a girl cries for?” Gertrude said, cocking her head and raising a vaporous eyebrow.

“Sometimes I cry because my dad hits me,” Alex admitted.

“Again, because of a boy,” the ghost said. “A big boy, admittedly, a bad boy surely, but just a boy.”

“I guess,” Alex said. “Why are you here?”

“Well, because you called me, girl, why do you think?”

“I didn’t call you.”

“Like a policeman on a bullhorn, you did. Your cries were playing and crackling like a bad skip in a record. I thought I should stop by and see what was going on here.”

“I’m sorry,” Alex said, hanging her head. “I didn’t mean to be so loud.”

Gertrude placed a see-through hand on the top of the girl’s head. Then she knelt down to be at eye level with the teen.

“It’s alright,” she said. “I don’t really mind. Though you’re gonna have to learn how to control yourself in that regard. Most of the living can’t reach the dead the way you can. You keep up that noise, and who knows what kind of miscreants you’ll call over.”

“How do I keep quiet?” Alex asked, rubbing her eyes and nose dry with a quick swipe of her hand. “I don’t even know that I’m doing it.”

“Maybe that’s something I can help you with,” Gertrude said. “Stand up a minute. I want you to put your hands out and close your eyes. Like you are flying blind.”

Alex stood and did as she suggested.

“What am I supposed to be feeling?” she said.

“Don’t feel anything. Focus on hearing,” Gertrude said. “When you think everything is quiet, I want you to think hello to me. Don’t open your mouth, just think it at me.”

Alex kept her eyes closed and thought
hello
over and over, pushing the word with her mind. She tried to picture Gertrude in her head, and see herself speaking the word to the spirit.

Hello yourself,
came a loud voice in her head.
Think about how this voice sounds, here in your head. It’s different than when you speak and hear with your tongue and ear. You need to feel the difference; talking—and learning to keep quiet—on the spiritual plane will be like learning a whole new way to talk.

Like this?
Alex said, projecting herself through her mind.

Quieter, child, you’re screaming.

Alex laughed out loud.

And that’s when he backhanded her in the face.

She stumbled backwards, opening her own eyes to see the fury in her father’s.

“Dad,” she gasped, grabbing the edge of her dresser to stop her fall. “What’s the matter? I didn’t know you were here.”

“Witch,” he accused, advancing on her. “I have put up with it for long enough. You have brought wickedness into this house again and again. The Lord will not forgive you for consorting with the damned. And he won’t forgive me for allowing it to go on. You have put all of our souls in danger.”

“Dad, I’ve done nothing wrong. Sometimes ghosts come by and I talk to them, that’s all…”

He slapped her across the face.

“You’ll speak not another word to me of
ghosts.
You are through with summoning demons under my roof. Come with me.”

He grabbed a handful of hair and dragged the girl after him down the hallway to the kitchen. There, he opened the door leading into the cellar and pulled her after him down the steep flight of wooden stairs.

“Dad, no, what are you doing?” she begged, but he didn’t answer.

He pulled her past the laundry table, covered in piles of clothes that her mother had left fresh from the dryer in piles for folding and putting away. He pulled her past the washer and dryer and the shelves of canned goods.

He pulled her to a dark corner of the cellar near his workbench, and then lifted one of her arms into the air. With a metallic click, Alex felt something close over her wrist. Then he repeated the same step with her other arm. He stepped away and Alex looked up to see the chains leading from the cuffs on her wrists to the wooden beams above. He had planned for this. But what had he planned to
do,
exactly?

“In the Bible, it talks of wearing sackcloth and self-flagellation to make restitution for our sins,” her father said from somewhere in the depths of the cellar behind her.

“I’m sure that you will not do either of these penances yourself,” he said again, this time at her shoulder. His hands began to unbutton her school blouse. She tried to move away from him, but could only step a couple feet in either direction before the chains restrained her. It didn’t stop her father, whose fingers fumbled and yanked at her buttons, at last ripping the shirt open to uncover the white cups of her bra. He held up a pair of long shining pruning shears, and slit the shirt in half from the neck down. Then he put its cold metal blades against her sternum and forced it to slide up, underneath her bra until a sharp and deadly tip poked just beneath her throat.

“No daughter of mine will consort with demons,” he promised. His eyes frightened Alex more than his actions. She’d never seen him so angry. The brown pools of his pupils seemed rimmed in red, and his forehead maintained a constant ripple of wrinkles. The side of his mouth twitched, and he put a hand on her bare shoulder to hold her still.

“You are my daughter, and I love you,” he said. “But I have to do this for your own good.”

He brought the teeth of the shears together and clipped through the front of the bra, each half of which fell down to hang at the side of her ribs from her shoulders. Her breasts were exposed to her father, and her normally pale pink nipples were erect with the chill of the basement and the adrenaline of fear.

“Daddy,” she pleaded, tears running down her face.

With the shears, he walked around her, cutting off the remains of her shirt and bra, and then sliding a blade down the crack of her ass.

“Daddy no!” she screamed, and he slapped her again in the back the head.

“Shut up,” he growled, forcing the shears together with both hands to open the waistband of her pants. They slid down to her feet, exposing her sky blue bikini briefs. The pair she’d hoped Jason at school would have gotten to see on Saturday. The cold touch of the blade against the inner cleft of her buttocks made her clench, but her father only shoved the shears down harder, yanking the elastic of the pan ties down before he closed the blade to loosen and cast off her underwear. Now she stood naked and chained before her father, goose bumps covering her body.

Her face flushed red as he walked around her, examining her exposed body with a fierce gaze. Alex closed her eyes and whispered, “This isn’t happening. This cannot be.”

“It is happening,” her father snapped, cracking her in the mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s time you paid attention to the real world, instead of talking with ghosts and spirits. You will give up your witchcraft, girl. Or I will do to you what must be done.”

“What?” she asked.

“Witches are burnt,” he said, walking away from her again. But his voice came back from the far reaches of the cellar.

“At the stake. Alive.”

Alex shivered at the image of her father tying her arms to the wooden post of the clothesline in their backyard and piling cords of firewood around her feet. Would he actually burn her alive because she saw ghosts?

“You must repent and do penance,” he said. “It pains me to have to do this, but your mother agrees that it must be done.”

Alex jumped as a white-hot crack slapped against her back. She turned to see what he had hit her with and saw his arm in motion, bringing down the long brown rope of a whip. The second stroke caught her across the ribs and she shrieked.