Our Lady Chaos, page 1
part #5 of Bloodletter Series
our lady chaos
the bloodletter collections
iii
Erik Henry Vick
Table of
Contents
Title
Dedication
Book One: Blackest Crow
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Book Two: Nightshade
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Book Three: Harvester
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Author’s Note
About the Author
Copyright
Dedication
For Mildred Adicks, who with her kindness and generosity of spirit, started me on this path by walking me through a Scholastic Book Fair and helping me pick my first book, for Auntie Scrabble, with love, and last, but not least, for the best damn kid a father could ask for.
The haunting never fades, laughter's gone away
It's too late, when you've lost your soul
I left her everything, she only left my ring
My world is darker now than the blackest crow
—Dave Mustaine
Come now my lovely, won’t you take a midnight stroll with me?
Through the misty air the things I keep I shouldn’t dare
My garden’s so inviting, and its deadly blooms are hiding
Be careful what you touch ‘less the grave is what you lust
Draw the blinds, you’re getting tired paralyzed, don’t close your eyes
Gripped with fear, your dreams become nightmares
From the deadly nightshade
—Dave Mustaine
I give, you take this life that I forsake
Been cheated of my youth you turned this lie to truth
Anger, misery…you’ll suffer unto me
Harvester of sorrow
Language of the mad
Harvester of sorrow
—James Alan Hetfield, Lars Ulrich
I hope you enjoy our lady chaos. If so, please consider joining my Readers Group—details can be found at the end of the last chapter.
book one:
blackest crow
Chapter 1
1975
1
January 1975
Apsu moved through the thick black smoke as if born from it. And it made sense she did so—she had been, after all. Bright yellow flames danced across the back of the sofa and licked at the paneling, charring its surface and bubbling the clear coat protecting the stain that colored it. The carpet burned in places—an olive-green plain dotted with lakes of fire.
Behind her, the furniture and draperies in the formal living room went up with a whump, and the demoness grinned, satisfaction humming in her veins. The house’s destruction whetted her appetite—a fine aperitif. She walked across the den and entered the hall.
In the back of the house, a baby wailed in terror, and a woman whimpered with fear. A sigh of contentment escaped her as the anticipation built. She’d been working toward that night for more than a year—twisting the man’s mind with the subtle finesse of a master of human nature, letting his hatred build and build and build until he thought he would pop with it.
There had been other nights on the path to the fire she stood in, arguments that blossomed into slaps at first, then later into blows from a fist, and most recently into a beating that left the wife bloody and bruised. But after every such incident, Apsu allowed the husband to see what he’d done, to suffer remorse. She tolerated his promise to be better, to make it up to his wife with flowers and gifts, but always, always there was a bill to pay for such allowances—and the woman had paid each in full.
On one shame-filled night, she’d allowed them to create a child.
It hurt her to watch the wife’s happiness bloom as the pregnancy developed, to see her glow in her husband’s arms, and, as always, Apsu filed her grief away—a note to be called due at her leisure. She allowed the baby to come to term and gave the couple several months of bliss.
But the bride had made payments toward the balance of that bill of pain over the last several weeks. It wasn’t fair that she had the propensity to bear children, not when Apsu could not.
She hated the wife—the husband, too, though he had his uses—for the affront of being fertile in the face of her own infertility. But tonight…tonight I can finally show her how much I hate her. Tonight, she will know my wrath. The thought excited Apsu and brought her anticipation to new heights.
She walked through the flame and smoke, allowing the baby’s inchoate fear and the woman’s direct dread of her husband to wash over her like hot magma. She savored the man’s confusion, his pain at his own actions. Oh, he regretted setting the fire and tried to rebel, but it was far, far too late for that.
With a wave of her hand, she sent flames exploding through the den behind her, as though she’d tossed a can of turpentine or maybe gasoline onto the blaze. She couldn’t feel the intensity of the conflagration—her own heat was too great—but she pretended the fire warmed her and drew comfort from that fiction.
Apsu turned and walked down the hallway, hurling flames into each room that opened off it. The last door in the hall was closed, and she sent a wave of fire splashing across its surface.
Behind the door, the wife screamed, and the baby screamed, and the husband yelled for silence. With a smile, the demoness raised a foot made only of flame and kicked the door from its hinges.
She stepped inside the master bedroom, and for the first time, she showed her true form to the family cowering before her. She smiled at them, and the wife lost her mind while the husband dissolved into a puddle of regret and self-hatred. The baby looked on in silence.
Apsu saved the child for last. Dessert, if you will.
2
March 1975
Dennis Cratchkin shuffled his feet, dropped his head, and muttered a few choice curse words into his chest. He hated math, and he hated Mr. Dubrovnik, his math teacher. To his mind, Dubrovnik needed a big dent between his eyes—one made by the short-handled sledgehammer Dennis had stolen from his father’s toolbox.
“And what was that, Mr. Cratchkin?” asked Mr. Dubrovnik, except because of his accent, it came out: “Unt vat vas dat, Mister Crotchkink?”
That was why the braver kids in fifth grade called him Crotchking—one more reason Dubrovnik needed a dent in his forehead. If I was bigger, I’d do it, Dennis thought as he scuffed the sole of his new Converse All Star high-tops on the slick linoleum floor tile on which he stood. Dubrovnik always called on him—always—for the hard problems, even though Dennis never raised his hand.
He lifted his head and stared at the chalkboard half a foot from his face. Dennis didn’t understand long division, and yet here he was, up in front of the class, muttering curse words and hating Dubrovnik all the more. Who the hell cares what 258 divided by 43 is, anyway? He grabbed a piece of chalk from the tray at the bottom of the chalkboard and rubbed his thumb along its length, pressing hard enough to break the long piece into thirds.
“Chalk is not free, Mr. Crotchkink. Do you wish to buy me a new box?”
Dennis sneered at the chalkboard and shook his head. He tossed two pieces back into the tray and lifted the other to the board. He dragged the chalk across the slate, making it screech and squeal—a proficiency he’d developed during his long tenure as Mr. Dubrovnik’s student—he’d endured the third grade already the year before, but here he was again, repeating the grade, just as he’d repeated the second.
“Enough of that, if you please, Mr. Crotchkink.”
The other boys who sat in the back row sniggered, and Dennis’s cheeks flamed with anger and shame. He raised the chalk again and began to write as if he were working the problem. Instead, he drew a picture of Dubrovnik licking the ass of a horse. On top of the vinculum, Dennis wrote “FUCK YOU” and dropped the chalk into the tray. He spun on his heel and walked along his row, heading for his desk in the back.
The entire class seemed to have stopped breathing as he revealed his work on the board, and Dennis sneered at the goody-goodies sitting upfront. He lifted his gaze to the boys in the back and scanned their faces. Ari’s face expressed surprise tinged with admiration, but Jasper’s expression made Dennis smile. Jasper stared at him in open amazement, a small, crooked grin on his lips.
“Mr. Crotchkink!”
Dennis didn’t stop walking toward his seat—though he had no intention of sitting. He intended to sweep his jeans jacket off the back of the chair, thrust his arms into it, and storm out the classroom’s rear door. Dennis didn’t intend to stop walking until he reached the hangout he and Jasper had built on the edge of the Thousand Acre Wood. He’d wait for Jasper and Ari there.
He was three quarters along the length of his row when Mr. Dubrovnik’s hand fell on his shoulder like a lead weight and jerked him around. The teacher’s face burned crimson, and his narrowed eyes blazed. The man had clenched his free hand into a fist so tight his knuckles shined white.
Dennis sneered at him. “Go ahead. Hit me, Dumbrovnik. Hit me and watch what happens.” It made Dennis proud that his voice didn’t shake, despite the fear tickling his belly. Dubrovnik’s eyes widened at the play on his name, and his nostrils flared, but he did nothing more than stand there staring down at Dennis. “See something you like, Dumbrovnik? I gotta tell you, though, I don’t roll that-a-way.”
Dubrovnik snarled as he spun Dennis around and shoved him toward the rear of the room. “Read from chapter seven in your text!” he snapped at the rest of the class.
As Dennis walked past Jasper, he tipped him a wink and yanked his jacket off the back of the chair.
“Yes. Take your things, Mr. Crotchkink. I don’t think you will be back before we return from the spring break.”
“Fine with me, Dumbrovnik. I hate this damn class, and I hate your dumb accent almost as much as I hate the way you look.”
Dubrovnik’s hand again fell on his shoulder, his grip pinching and tight. “It would be best for you to keep silent, Mr. Crotchkink.”
“Cratchkin, you dumbass! Not ‘Crotchkink!’ C-R-A-T-C-H-K-I-N. No fucking K on the end. No O in it at all!”
Behind him, Dubrovnik growled, and Dennis wrinkled his nose with glee, though he knew he had earned a paddling from the principal, a suspension for the cursing and disrespect, and that added up to an ass-kicking if his old man ever found out. But his father finding out wasn’t likely, unless the principal could slip a note into the bottom of one of his Budweiser bottles.
Dennis knew his mom would help him hide the school trouble from his dad. They’d both learned that it was best to keep his father drunk and docile. Once the rage took him, there was no telling where his attention might fasten.
His old man, Dennis Cratchkin, Sr., needed a dent in his forehead, too.
3
April 1975
Eddie Mitchell’s father came through the door with a big box in his hands. Grease and wet spots marred the otherwise unmarked cardboard, but it seemed sturdy enough to contain whatever rested inside.
“Kathy!” he called. “Come look at what I got for you.”
“Ted? Is that you?” Eddie’s mother winked at him and grinned. She enjoyed teasing his father that way.
“Well, of course, woman! Who else would it be?”
“Come on, Eddie. Let’s go see what Daddy’s brought home.” She rose with a dancer’s grace, and when Eddie got up from the floor, she took his hand and led him from the bedroom. Together they walked to the kitchen, smiling and jostling one another with elbows, hips, and shoulders.
When they reached the kitchen, his father waited next to the table, holding his hands out toward the stained cardboard box like a magician. “Go ahead, honey,” he said. “Open it.”
“What is it, Ted? It’s not my birthday.”
“Do I need a reason to buy my best girl a present?” He waggled his eyebrows in the way that always made Eddie laugh, and it was no less successful that time.
His mother stepped toward the crate, unfolded the top, and peered inside. Her whole face lit up the way it did when happiness overtook her. “It’s gorgeous! Where on Earth did you find it? How can we afford this?”
Eddie’s father spoke the words he always did in moments such as this, “Don’t worry, Kathy. I got a good price.” He winked at Eddie and showed his special smile—the one that suggested he held the world in the palm of his hand.
Eddie wasn’t sure what “held the world in the palm of his hand” meant, but he’d heard his mother use the phrase with pride to describe his daddy when chatting with her friends. Whatever it might mean, it was a good thing.
Kathy smiled and reached inside the box. Eddie danced with a child’s excitement, shifting his weight from foot to foot. His hands were up in front of his chest, folded as if in prayer, his eyes shimmered with delight, and a smile stretched across his face.
“You enjoy it when I bring Mommy presents, don’t you, Son?” His father reached over and ruffled his hair, and Eddie nodded but couldn’t tear his gaze away from the wondrous thing his mother lifted from the box.
His mom held a lamp with a colorful stained-glass shade and body over a brass base and beamed a smile of pure pleasure at her husband and son. The lampshade reminded him of the bottom half of an upended turnip. Short hunks of tinted glass composed most of the shade, beginning with a ribbon of rectangular glass pieces the color of his mother’s pearls at the very top, then a stripe of teal, and then another ribbon of white. Below the stripes, the pieces of glass took on irregular shapes and a distinct shade of aquamarine. The artist had scattered smaller round fragments of red, dark teal, orange, and olive through the field of aquamarine. The white wings of dragonflies bordered the lowest edge of the shade, and the bodies of the dragonflies had been done in bright yellow. Between the dragonflies and the aquamarine chunks of glass were pieces of green and turquoise—but with the same small round bits of different colored glass. A mix of turquoise, aquamarine, and green irregular-shaped chunks of glass made up the body, and the lamp’s base was bronze, as was the knob at the top, and the pull chains.
His mom’s eyes shone with delight, and she flashed a broad, cheery smile at her husband. “Oh, Ted, it’s perfect!”
His dad beamed at them. “It’s a Tiffany.”
His mother’s eyes opened wide. “A real Tiffany? How?”
Their happiness made Eddie’s heart sing.
His father put his hands behind his back and smiled wider. “Told you. I got a deal.”
“But even with the best deal in the world, this must have cost a month’s salary or more. How can we afford it?”
“Don’t you worry about that.” His smile faltered a touch. “I take care of us, right? Do we ever run short?”
“I didn’t mean it that way, Ted.” His mother set the lamp down on the table and walked toward his father, her hands held out to give him a hug.
Ted shook his head, a sour expression on his face. “Sometimes, Kathy, you don’t appreciate what I do for you.”
“But I do! I absolutely do, Ted. You are a great husband.”
Somewhat mollified, Ted allowed the hug and gazed at Eddie. “Well, tiger? What do you think of it?”
“Pretty! I like the dragonflies.”
“I knew you would, champ. The second I saw it, I got the feeling it was the lamp for this family. It was as if…” Ted stood for a moment, his gaze gone far away, his face slack, and his mouth hanging open a tad.
“Don’t catch flies, Daddy,” teased Eddie.
With a start, his father shook himself and grinned. “Where should Mommy put our new treasure?”
Eddie whirled and dashed into the living room, his regard flicking from the end table to the coffee table to the top of the small bookshelf and to the top of the Zenith console television set. He spun and trotted into the dining room, looking at the hutch and the serving cart. Then he turned and rushed back into the kitchen where his parents were hugging, and his mother was planting kisses on his daddy’s cheek.
“In the living room,” Eddie said. “We should put it on the end table on the side of the couch away from the dining room. Kind of in the corner.”
Laughing, his mom nodded.
“Can I carry it?” Eddie rushed to the kitchen table and grabbed the lamp by its brass base and the pole of the same material between the body and the lightbulb. As he lifted it, something algid and greasy wriggled across the skin on the back of his hands. He cried out and let go of the lamp, leaving it tottering on the edge of the table. He held one hand with the other, up close to his chest as if it had stung him.
Ted darted forward and grabbed the lamp. He turned an angry stare on Eddie. “Watch what you’re doing! This isn’t a toy, Eddie. It’s expensive! Do you understand what that means? It cost a lot of money, and I don’t want you to break it with your carelessness.”
Eddie stood there, shoulders slumped, his mournful gaze slithering back and forth between his mother and his father. It didn’t pay to make his daddy mad—he would be grouchy and snappy for a month.
“You don’t touch this! Do you understand me, Eddie? You never touch this!” Ted’s voice ratcheted up in the way it did when his anger had gotten the best of him.
“I’m sorry, Daddy.”
“Why are you so careless? When I was your age, I knew better than to touch things that didn’t belong to me. Why haven’t you learned that yet?”
“There’s no damage done, Ted,” his mother said in placating tones. “He didn’t mean any harm. He’s just excited.” She put on a brilliant smile. “We are all just thrilled about this beauty.”
