We are Wormwood (19 page)

The demon tripped and fell into the gravel on the side of
the highway. She struggled to get up, and then fell again. The locusts in her
hair cried for me. Her hair looked like road kill in the night. I carried her
on my back until I collapsed. Then she carried me.

Nobody pulled over to ask if we needed help.

We arrived at the house just before dawn. I threw the bow
and arrows onto the floor of our bedroom. Pluto jumped onto the bed, mewling.
The dogs gathered at our feet. Despite how exhausted we were
,
we couldn’t sleep for hours. We stayed up and washed our faces in the kitchen
sink. We brushed the dirt and grass out of each other’s hair. The dogs licked
our wounded legs, but we were too tired to push them away. We collapsed into
bed and stared at the ceiling, shivering, drowning,
twitching
.

I don’t know when I fell asleep, but in my dreams, The Nightcatcher
chased me through the woods. She shot fish hooks attached to wires out of her
hands. The hooks tore into my back. As I ran, the wires snarled in the trees,
snaring me, entrapping me, tighter and tighter the more I ran. The hooks broke
the bones in my back. I crawled across the ground, into a grotto.

A doe lay on the ground, heaving in labor. I cut her open
and the pink, foam-mouthed fawn tumbled dead into the grass. I crawled into the
doe’s uterus and closed the skin around me to hide.

The Nightcatcher tied the doe with wires and suspended her
from the trees. She kissed the doe’s cold, clover-stained mouth and I felt the
kiss on my mouth. The Nightcatcher left. I rocked inside the doe, upside down,
cradled in her warmth. I rocked in and out of the dream.

The artist cut the doe down. I crashed to the ground. He
pried her open and found me inside.

“Where have you been?” I asked, and spit my broken teeth
into his face.

He spit them back.

I awoke to Saint Peter standing by the window. She’d become
so thin, her skin like a shredded canvas. She leaned her head against the
window and sighed heavily, like her ribcage shrunk too small for her to breathe
properly.

I sat up and pulled the blankets around me. The demon slept
beside me, Pluto in her arms.

“Are you okay?” I whispered. “They didn’t keep you at the
hospital?”

The moonlight was like splinters in her eyes.

“I’ve missed you so much,” she said.

“I’ve been here the entire time.”

Her brown roots were growing in and her blue hair faded
nearly to white. Her sweater hung off her shoulders in threads, her skirt torn
with holes.

“You don’t understand,” Saint Peter said.

But I did understand. Her clothes were falling apart and I
was making her fall apart. I stopped eating, and she displayed the evidence on
her body, a mirror of my mistakes. Once she carried her stigmata as crosses,
but she replaced them with snake bites and burn marks.
For
me.

“You’re going to destroy yourself,” I said.

“Do you know what they call people like me?” she asked.

She crawled across the bed and pressed her face against my
knee.

“Ecstatics,” she said when I couldn’t respond, didn’t know
how to respond, “because nothing feels better than hurting for the one you
adore.”

“I don’t deserve this from you,” I said.

“Stigmata
comes
from the Greek word
stigma. It means brand. Like you would brand a slave.”

She breathed against my leg.

“I don’t own you,” I said.

“We used to touch like this,” she whispered. “We used to
sleep in a bed covered in yellow flowers.”

“Please,” I said. “I can’t watch you do this to yourself.”

She lifted up her head, her hair like a dirty crown. Once
she walked on water and preached on top of a mountain in all languages of the
earth. Now she was with me, in the depths of a dark city, in a dirty punk house,
stepping over needles and waking up hung-over every morning. Hey, let me total
your van and slap your skin with poison fangs. Hey, we’re out of coffee, why
don’t you let me drink your blood.

Maybe if the stories were true, her other god didn’t treat
her any better – after all, he left her to die as a martyr, crucified
upside down.

She reached for my face and I grabbed her hand to stop her.
Red marks spread on the inside of her arm where the bowstring had slapped
against mine.

“I’m not good at taking care of myself,” I said. “I’m going
to kill you if you stay.”

“You have before,” she said.

“Please”

“I didn’t mind.”

Saint Peter gripped the inside of my thigh. She lifted up my
dress. The demon and Pluto continued sleeping.

“I can’t,” I said in a frantic whisper.

It was as if speaking any louder would shatter all three of
us.

“You’re different this time.”

God, look what I’d done to her - thinned her down, burned
her, branded her, scarred her, scratched her,
punctured
her. And I’d been too wrapped up in my own problems to notice. Here, let me
leave you to die while I lose my goddamn mind. Off to the hospital for a little
vacation - all the while she’s puncturing herself with my damage. What do you
want me to say? Hey baby, get a little closer, there’s still a little cocaine
left on that stomach wound?

“You used to hold me as I slept,” Saint Peter said, “You
kissed me here. And here. We ate mushrooms in the great forest. We travelled to
places I can’t even dream about anymore.”

“And how did that work for us? If any of this is true, and
I’m not just losing my goddamn mind, why are we here and not there? I can’t
imagine getting any lower than this. We screwed up somewhere.”

Though maybe next time, instead of being humans, we’d be
reincarnated as two fighting beetles, or vermin cupped inside a heroin addict’s
hoodie.

“You need to leave me,” I said.

“Don’t say that.”

“Look at you,” I said. “No, don’t even. Look at me, and see
what you're doing to yourself.”

“It’s because of her,” Saint Peter said. “That’s why it’s different
this time.”

Silence.

“Yes,” I said.

“You don’t even see me, because of her.”

“I see you.”

“It’s too late. We used to be best friends. More than that.”

“You need to leave,” I said again.

“I need to keep you safe,” she said.

“By letting me destroy you?”

“I died for you. I’ve protected your woods for years.”

“You said it yourself, you can’t protect me any longer.”

“I won’t leave you.”

I grabbed her arms and wrenched them from my dress. I forced
her to look at them.
Her thin, poison filled, scarred arms.

The demon still didn’t wake.

“Please,” I said.

“I can’t.”

In the dark, she was not only sick but sick forever, her
tears preserved in the cold light. Her skin cracked wherever I touched her. Her
blood was the color of dust in her veins.

“Do you think I’m your goddess? I’m begging you to leave.
I’m begging. Look at me.”

The demon shifted and stirred in her sleep, but she still
didn’t wake.

“The Nightcatcher only wants me,” I said.

“I only want you,” she said.

I bit down on my tongue and blood spilled from her mouth.

“Oh Jesus fuck. Please. Don’t do this to yourself.”

Her fraying skirt touched my lips. I wrapped my hands around
her small, cold
thighs
as she pressed further into me.

I whispered into her ear.

“I won’t do this to you.”

She gripped my dress tight enough to break her fingers. She
wasn’t even looking at me as she tried to kiss me, breathing hard, her knees
pushing in between my legs.

I grabbed her face.

“Look at me. Come back to me.”

For a flickering moment, she looked at me. She loosened her
grip on my dress.

“Things are different,” I whispered. “I’m going to kill The Nightcatcher.”

We probably could’ve stayed on that bed for the rest of the
night with our hips and legs locked together. But, after a few minutes, Saint
Peter’s limbs lost all their energy. She relinquished her grip on me and
slumped backwards on the bed.

The moonlight gnawed at her protruding spine.

“Okay,” she said.

I called a taxi while she covered her face in the sheets. I
grabbed her bag and began to pack her things. Without speaking, she rose and
helped me. Her clothes were strewn throughout the house, along with everything
else, her candles, little ritual books, and psilocybin mushrooms in a bag
underneath her bed.

We must’ve stayed in that house longer than I realized.

I tried to give the hunter’s bow to her, but she shook her
head and wouldn’t take it.

When we were finished packing, I gave her what little money
I had left. We stood by the window, both of us unable to speak.

Already the wounds on her arms were fading. The snake venom
in her arms lost its bright coloring. The scars of bite marks, once ferocious
and red, were now pale pink. When she noticed them disappearing, she pressed
her hand over her mouth and her body shook with silent sobbing.

Outside the taxi honked.

With tears running down her lips, Saint Peter kissed the
sleeping demon and the sleeping cat. She picked up her bag and turned toward
the door to leave, but I caught her by the hips. I drew her into me. I kissed
her on the mouth, kissed her hard until her lips parted. My tongue touched her
bloodied teeth. I gripped her bony shoulder blades and held her tight.

I whispered to her.

“I promise I will find you again. After all this is over. I
will find you, and I will let you rest.”

I gave her my last cigarette and lit it for her. She inhaled
like she couldn’t remember how. I followed her to the front door. I stood on
the porch, in the cold, as she ran toward the waiting taxi. She loaded her bag
into the trunk, her knees barely able to support her. She slipped on the gravel
in her platform boots and grabbed the open door to keep from falling. She hiked
her torn skirt to climb into the back seat. Before she closed the door, spots
of blood welled up on her forehead.

Her own crown of thorns.

THE
WITCH CAME BACK
from the hospital in a wheelchair. Her kneecaps were
crushed and her eyes crossed. There were bandages around her throat and
bandages up to her elbows. Her exposed skin was bruised like an explosion, fire
dark and orange.

“Are you okay?” I said, the stupidest thing I could say.

The dogs ran out the door and surrounded her, whining,
licking. I wheeled her into the house and they followed, tails tucked, heads
down.

“I have bones that will never heal again,” she said, “but
that’s not important. You need to dye your hair. Now.”

Fatigue kept me from asking why.

“With what?”

“There’s dye and bleach underneath the sink. In the
bathroom.”

I went into the bathroom, found the dye and the bleach. I
bleached my hair, washed it out. I sat in the bathtub and massaged the dye in
the hair. Washed it out.

I emerged from the bathroom, a redhead.

The police knocked on the door. They were looking for two
ragged girls who broke into a house on the west side and stole dresses and
jewelry, one blonde-haired and one black-haired.
Skinny girls
who hadn’t eaten in days, ruffians with drugs in their blood.
Seen
coming into this house.

“We’ll let you know if we see anyone like that,” I said.

I tugged on my freshly colored hair. I hugged myself in my
too-thick sweater, hoping it would hide my thinness.

The police left.

“They’ll be back with a search warrant,” Genie said, “If you
have drugs, take them or hide them.”

“Broke into his house? That fake French motherfucker wanted
to show off his cheap jewelry so we’d fuck him, now he’s too embarrassed to
admit it,” I said.

“He smelled like old perfume,” the demon said. “Like his
dead mother.”

At least Saint Peter wasn’t here to deal with this. She
didn’t have to see Genie come back from the hospital in a wheelchair, her legs
bent back, crushed at the kneecaps.

She didn’t have to see me try to cook dinner for the first
time by myself, burned the pasta, and burned the sauce. She didn’t have to
watch me as I tried to cut vegetables with my ruined hands. My fingers wouldn’t
obey me, I sliced my thumb, screamed, and the dogs cowered.

I threw a stainless steel pot against the wall and the dogs
fled.

She didn’t have to see my misdirected anger at the demon.
Exhausted and sick, we fought. I screamed at her, “Bitch. Demoncunt. I’ll never
fuck you again. I blame you for all of this.”

Afterwards, I curled up in her lap. “I’m sorry, demon. I’m
sorry.”

She chewed on the ends of her hair and stroked my back.

I caught a reflection of my new hair in the mirror, and
remembered something my mother once said.

“When you grow older, you'll dye your hair a bright red,
because it's the closest you'll ever feel to being on fire.”

Prophecies. I hated fucking prophecies.

The Witch sat in the middle of the living room in her
wheelchair, covered in tattered blankets, the dogs circling around her. Her
hair was tied against the wheels. With one hand she carved new sigils into her
wrists, overlaying scars. With the other, she shoved blue flowers into her
mouth.

More ghouls escaped out of the cuts in her hands. They
escaped from her mouth in thin, wriggling strands. Sick though she was, crushed
and broken, the ghouls kept coming. They were bigger than I remembered, more
visceral than before. Not only the shapes of people, but of rats and dogs and
cats.

“You’ll die.” I said.

She looked up at me with eyes like rusted fencing.

“So?”

I ran to the demon, through the corrugating shadows, sobbing
and ruined, into her arms.

A walk would make everything better. Get out of the house
for a while, stretch our legs, and remember that we’re not trapped underneath
sigils and dream symbols, in witchcraft and poison. The demon and I checked for
police patrolling the streets then sneaked out together into the cool air.

Winter came, and we hadn’t noticed. Our thin and tattered
jackets were not enough to keep us warm, so we walked together, huddled,
clutching, and shivering. Thanksgiving probably passed while I smoked in my
room to the grind of the machines and my stomach growled for 4 a.m. munchies. Christmas
would be here soon. It would be my first Christmas away from home. My mother,
even wracked with Schizophrenia, still managed to get me a gift every year,
even if it was a knife to chase away ghosts, or a book of matches, or a pink
dress like one I would’ve worn as a child; she tried.

The demon and I walked into a glowing meadow where the moon
hung like a silver crescent in the sky.

“It’s so bright,” I said.

The demon’s hands tensed and when I kissed her she froze.

Then I realized. We’d walked this way a hundred times before
and never seen this meadow, glowing and bright.

“Something’s wrong,” I said, “wrong with the moon.”

I bent down and plucked a flower. In my hands, the flower
turned to smoke.

She tried to pull me away.

The trees collapsed around us. The crescent moon fell out of
the sky and crashed at my feet, a dirty, yellow paper cutout that could’ve fit
in the palm of my hand.

The walls of the meadow slid in, the metallic night sky
crashed on top of my head, and I fell to the ground. I slipped from the demon’s
grasp as the walls threaded together, trapping me in darkness.

The dirt underneath me turned to water, and the river flowed
into my mouth, nose, and eyes. I swam. I had to or I’d drown.

I searched for a way out. The water sucked my shoes under. I
coughed. I called out for the demon. I tried to tread water but the current was
too strong.

And, after days of staying awake, I was tired. So tired.

She tugged at my fingers in the water. She pushed sand into
my mouth. All my wounds tore open and my blood glowed as it leaked out in the
darkness.

On the verge of drowning, I gripped the dirty embankment and
managed to crawl away from the river. The water howled as it moved.
Water for wolves.
I crawled through the mud, my blood a
glowstream tracing patterns across my fingers, illuminating the dirt.

She sat on my back and pulled my hair.

“Stop,” she said.

And I collapsed.

“Look up at me,” she said.

She twisted my hair around her wrists and forced my head up.
. Her fingers smelled of thick machine oil. I couldn’t see her, but I felt her,
thin and dripping like a wet rat, human-shaped, plastic for bones. But she was
strong.
Stronger than me.

“I said look up at me.”

I coughed up mud.

She climbed off my back and hauled me out of the dirt by my
hair, forcing me on my toes.

The hush place my mother spoke about, was real. The hush
place that followed her from the kitchen windowsill to the stomach of a
carnivorous plant was here. It seeped through my skin, sunk its teeth into my
blood, and wailed as it rushed past. It made the air cold here, so cold that I
couldn’t move my fingers, my jaw. My bones would rust in that cold, and no
matter how far I swam in the water and mud, I wouldn’t be able to find my way
out.

“Did you know there’s blood in your teeth? You look like
you’re eating lights,” she said.

She released my hair. I stumbled backwards, trying to keep
from falling into the mud.

“I wanted the other one.”

“The demon?” I said.

“I’m going to let you go now,” she said.

“Why do you want my demon?”

Silence. I couldn’t feel The Nightcatcher next to me
anymore, and I thought that maybe the river swept her away. I took a step
forward. Another. The mud gurgled underneath me. No matter how much I strained
to see, there was only the sewn-in darkness, my blood like little fireflies.

She appeared beside me, the air screaming around her, as she
cloaked me in her hair, and whispered into my ear.

“Everyone needs a pet.”

The river sunk into the ground; she left me alone in the
empty meadow, the mud still caked onto my clothes, the moon paper cutout at my
feet.

I picked up the moon, folded it, and put it in my shirt
pocket. I found the trail leading out and walked back home.

Waiting for me on the porch steps was the demon, head in her
hands. I tried to call for her but my throat was scabbed and sore. I fell in
the lawn on my way toward her.

The ringing in my ears sounded like the river screaming as
it rushed over me. The machine on the lawn, nearly finished, loomed over me.
Not just any machine, but a beast, a bad science fiction killing machine. Its
head was a ragged claw, its nose a gunmetal proboscis, plus two protruding,
rusted limbs, studded with nails. Why had I never noticed until then? All those
months the shadows worked on the machine, and I never noticed its deathskin,
its slobbering mechanical arms,
its
glass-rimmed
mouth. I’d been too busy trying to scrape together money for drugs, and chasing
the demon across planes of ecstasy, to see the terrible thing The Witch was
building.

The demon knelt beside me. She bloodied her hands on my
shirt and spoke. I tried to tell her it was too loud, I couldn’t hear her. I
vomited in the grass. I gasped and gasped. We had to get away. The Nightcatcher
hadn’t just been waiting outside the
house,
she’d been
clawing her way into The Witch’s head and into the shadows carved from her arms
long before we even came here.

I called for the demon. I called for Saint Peter, long gone.

The demon carried me into the house.

She’s coming for you
,
I tried to say
. She’s coming for you. We have to call Saint
Peter. Saint Peter will know what to do. Where’s my hunting bow? Get the bow.
We have to go after her. She’s coming for you. Get help. I don’t know what
she’s going to do with you, but nothing good can happen in the hush place.
Look at me
,
I’m bleeding everywhere
.
You’re getting the sheets dirty. Let me go.
Stop holding me
down.
Stop kissing me. She’s out there. The
machine’s
going to kill us all.

The police are looking for us. They’re at the door. Can’t
you hear them knocking on the door? Aren’t you listening to me?

The noise is so loud it’s going to liquefy my brain. Cut off
my hair already. I won’t be a Viking warrior. Not again. My tongue has turned
into foam. The tongue is always the first thing to go, but you already knew
that. You’re suffocating me. Get my hunting bow. She’s here with us right now.
We have to dismantle the machine. My tongue. It’s turning into foam. Help me or
I’ll never speak again.

The demon pinned me on the bed.

“Listen to me! Why aren’t you listening to me?” I asked.

She whispered.

“The police aren’t here. She isn’t here yet. We still have
time. A little while.”

I was too hot. I tried to throw the blankets off.

“You’re shivering,” she said.

“Why do these wounds never heal?” I asked. “No matter how
much time has passed, they never heal.”

“Just rest,” she said.

The river rushed out of the demon’s eyes. No matter where I ran,
no matter what sort of tranquilizers the hospital gave me, the river would
always be with me. The water filled the bedroom, lifting the bed to the
ceiling.

On the other side of the door The Witch screamed. The demon
rocked me in her arms and whispered.

“Just rest. We still have time.”

Yet, I know my demon. I know when she’s lying. I know when
she’s afraid.

THE DEMON NURSED
and bandaged me.

“I’ve been preparing your palace all my life,” she said,
trying to soothe me.

It would be a palace on top of a mountain at the edge of the
world. The palace would have a roof of glass so that we could see the stars and
the moon. She’d build me a telescope so I could find the planets, and cradle
them to me like pillows. In the winter, snow would fall over our palace,
trapping us inside. She’d wrap me in furs, bring me spiced wine, call me “baby”
and “goddess” and suck my clit until the snows melted.

I scratched at my bandages. She pulled my hand away.

I thought I would sweat out of my skin.

She cradled my head in her arms for hours. She forced me to
drink water, even when I insisted it burned me. When I cried she whispered,

“Pay no attention to the river.”

Later the demon took me into the bathroom and I took a
shower, lying down in the tub. She peeled off my wet bandages; the water turned
the color of tongues.

“Why does The Nightcatcher want you?” I asked the demon.

She rested herself against the wall, her eyes fluttering and
heavy from lack of sleep.

“I don’t know,” she said.

She traced the patterns on the wall with her nail and cut
into the wallpaper. Above her head, a glossy spider spun her web. Her spiders
had insinuated themselves into every corner of the house, including the
bathroom, transforming the ceiling into a silk cityscape.

She told me once that the spiders were psychic, the patterns
of their webs changed, depending on the emotions around them.

That would explain why lately they spun webs ragged and
disjointed, webs that went nowhere, webs that hung down like sad faces.

“I’m a pest to The Nightcatcher. An insect,” the demon said.
“She shouldn’t want me.”

The demon wrapped me in a towel. I lay in bed with the towel
still wrapped around me, my hair knotted around my fists.

The demon opened her hands and spilled dead birds onto the
bed. Little wrens, with mouths gaping, ribbons tied around their necks.

I never got around to telling her, “Stop leaving dead things
in my bed. Those aren’t the kind of gifts you give to people.” I couldn’t,
because it was the best way she knew to show me she loved me.