Scratch, page 30
* * * * *
Holly peered into the small cave. Adam had been gone a long time, and the storm had gotten much worse. The stream in the hollow below her was a torrent, and had risen up the narrow banks. In a very short time it would reach her and begin to run into the cave. She heard trees and branches falling in the woods around her, and jumped with every crash, afraid that something was going to smash her skull. They needed to get out of here before they were all killed by the storm.
“ADAM!” she yelled into the cave, but her voice was swallowed by the earth and the storm. She looked in again, and thought she could see a dim blue glow somewhere at the end of the tunnel. That might be his flashlight, but she couldn’t tell.
What if he was stuck, or hurt? There was no way she could get him out, and the cave would fill with water long before she could bring help.
There was another crash as a small tree lifted its roots from the loose soil and fell against its more secure neighbor. Holly flinched and looked up in the direction of the sound.
And screamed.
Billy stood over her, his face awash with rain and madness. His hands, stretched high above his head, held a huge, ugly club.
Holly rolled to the side as Billy swung the club down. It glanced off her thigh, leaving a throbbing scrape in its wake, and splashed into the mud. Jarring pain shot through Billy’s broken finger and up his arms.
“Hold still bitch!” he yelled. Holly scrabbled backward as he turned to follow her. She grabbed the slippery trunk of an elm and pulled herself to her feet.
“Where’s my daughter?” Billy screamed. “What did you do with her?” His questions resolved the lingering doubt Holly had about whether he still had Michaela or not. She saw the light of unreason in his eyes. He had been a crazy bastard before, but now she saw that he was truly mad.
“Did you lose her?” Billy asked, a cold calm sneaking into his voice. “I bet you did. You’ve always been a bad mother to my child. What else can I expect from a woman who would take a child from her loving father, just so you could slut around with someone else? We could have had a home. It’s what I want for her, you know?”
A million responses leapt to Holly’s mind, but she spoke none of them. There would be no reasoning with him. She saw his muscles tense and jumped to the side as the club fractured against the tree.
The ground shook and loose dirt and mud slid around them. More trees toppled in the woods. Holly’s feet slipped in the mire and she went down hard, bruising her ribs on the ground. She slipped down the bank toward the stream.
Billy threw the broken remnant of wood and dove after her. His body slammed into hers and they came to rest on a rocky clearing at the edge of the rising water. Stones jabbed into Holly’s back and she felt the trembling of a small earthquake.
“Oh no,” he said, resting his full weight on her chest. “You’re not getting away that easily.” He cupped her face in his palm and smeared the mud around her freckles with his thumb.
Holly wanted to scream, but she would not give him that satisfaction. She stared defiantly into his face, and wanted to weep as she recognized where Michaela’s blue eyes came from. She felt the heat that poured from his wet skin, felt his breath against her face, felt his erection against her belly.
“Wish I still had my knife,” he chimed. “Oh, sorry… your Mom’s knife. It did such a sweet job on her. It’s a shame my daughter will never know her grandmother, I suppose, but it’s really no big loss. She did such a crap job of raising you after all.
“And what the fuck was up with all the frogs, anyway?”
Holly screamed and shoved at him with all her strength. Whether it was surprise or adrenaline, she succeeded in pushing him off. Billy grunted as he rolled to the side. He shot out an arm and grabbed her ankle as she tried to crawl away.
“I don’t think so!” he screamed. He pulled at her leg and scrambled back over her. “We have business to fini…”
His look of anger turned to one of astonishment. Blood dripped over his eyes
It wasn’t planned. Holly was simply reacting to protect herself. She couldn’t even remember how the rock had ended up in her hand. It must have been laying where she could grab it, for the next thing that was clear in her mind was the stone buried in Billy’s skull and the surprised look on his face.
Billy dropped to his chest next to her on the ground. She pushed his corpse into the stream with her foot and watched as it was washed away, down the hollow where it would join the others in the quarry. She tossed the rock in after.
Holly stood, shaking with relief and revulsion, unable to believe what she had done. Her tears finally broke free. She put her hands to her face and wept. Her body shook from tension as well as from the shaking of the ground.
It didn’t last long. The night was not through yet. Billy may be gone, but her family was still missing. She wiped snot and tears away from her face with a blood-streaked arm and swallowed her guilt and self-reproach.
The rain seemed to be slacking off. Water lapped around her ankles. The wind died down. She looked up the bank and tried to find the small cave with her eyes. It was still dark, but occasional flashes of lightning still strobed the forest. She couldn’t find the cave. She thought she was looking in the wrong place. She had been turned around in her struggle with Billy.
But then she realized what was wrong. She couldn’t see the cave because it wasn’t there any longer. The hillside had slid over the opening, covering it in a thick mass of mud and rocks and wood.
“Oh no,” she said. “No, no. It can’t end like this. Not now.” She tried to run up the bank, but her feet could find no purchase. She fell forward onto the bank and slid backward. There was nothing to stop her descent this time. With a scream of frustration and fear Holly was swept into the torrent.
She plunged under the icy water and felt her arms and legs tumble around her, scraping against rocks and branches. She swallowed water and began to cough. Her head broke the surface long enough to gulp some oxygen, then she was pulled under again. Her lungs burned. She tried to swim but she could not fight against the current. She was being pulled down the hollow where she would join Billy in the dark waters of the quarry.
She felt herself blacking out. Lights bounced inside her eyelids as she was thrown over the crest of a wave. She didn’t feel herself crash back into the maelstrom. She coughed a gooey liquid out of her throat and guzzled sweet cool air. Her body felt light, and she was sure she was flying, to Heaven she assumed, or somewhere. Sure she had drowned she cautiously opened her eyes.
And saw she was flying.
Gabrielle lifted her above the forest, aided by others of her kind indistinct in Holly’s vision. Light from her healing hands wiped away the scrapes and bruises Holly had suffered. Holly saw the world pass below her body as she experienced the reality of flight, a dream she had carried with her since she was a child. She smiled, and then laughed, lost in the joy of the moment.
But then, once she realized that she was alive and that this was real, the world came back to her. She needed her family, and she now carried a secret, deep within her soul. She could never tell Adam, or anyone, what she had done. It was a burden she must carry alone, no matter how much it weighed her down.
* * * * *
Adam and Michaela followed the being once called Scratch out of the mountain. They passed through many chambers: old mine shafts and tunnels, as well as naturally occurring fissures in the rock. The mountain shook all around them but they were untouched by its violence. Though it seemed to take forever Adam finally felt a breeze of damp, fresh air. He quickened his step and followed Scratch out of a cave and into the meadow he and Jack had traversed a million years ago.
It was still raining, but not as hard. Adam thought he could see the storm beginning to break. A star appeared briefly between the clouds, and then disappeared again.
He heard a flurry of wings and snapped his head around to scan the sky. Gabrielle lifted over the tree line, her white wings spread and glowing brightly in the gloom. She held Holly in her tiny arms. With slow precision the wings flapped and lowered them onto the ground.
“Mommy!” Michaela yelled. Adam set her on the ground and Mike ran to Holly. She was swept up into waiting arms.
“Oh baby,” Holly wept. “You’re okay?”
“Uh huh,” Mike said. “Is the bad man gone?”
“Yeah, baby,” Holly said. “He’s gone.” She raised her eyes to Adam and extended a hand to him. He took it, then knelt beside his family and wrapped his arms around them. There was something in Holly’s voice, something in her eyes, that told him not everything was okay. This wasn’t magic, or even intuition, really. Simply the profound knowledge of another person that love brings. Something had happened between Holly and Billy. Something awful. He didn’t ask. When she was ready to share her secret, she would.
Or not.
“I ran and ran and went into a cave like Buggly lives in,” Michaela said, “and Daddy came and got me and we found an angel, and he was hurt and Daddy made him better, and now everything is better and we all lived happily ever after, the end.” Her face glowed with excitement and happiness.
“Mommy,” she said, “you found an angel too.” They looked to where Gabrielle and Scratch stood. They were holding hands, a look of otherworldly bliss on their beautiful faces.
“It’s over now,” Gabrielle said. “The valley has paid for its transgressions against us. You helped us to be free. Go and live your lives. Be happy. Be free.”
Holly looked at the two beings that stood before her. They were her paintings given life, everything she had ever imagined and more.
“You,” she said to them, and then paused to collect her thoughts. She hugged Mike and Adam closer to her, suddenly afraid of the spirit people. They had healed Adam, saved his life, but she knew they had destroyed Canaan as well. They were not what she had believed. They were something else, some other being that had little to do with human desires or morality. They would never be what people wanted of them, no matter how hard anyone tried to pin their true nature down.
“You are beautiful,” she said. “And wonderful, and magical, and capable of great good.” The spirits stared at her, beatific, unreadable expressions on their faces.
“But you are also terrible,” Holly said. “Frightening in your power and your capacity for destruction.”
“Yes,” Gabrielle agreed. “You are correct. We much like your people in that way.”
She turned to her brother and together they lifted their wings. They rose off the ground and spiraled upward into the sky, following a path only they could see. As they dwindled they became less substantial, blending with the air until they disappeared from human sight.
EPILOGUE
The sun rose in a crystal blue sky over the eastern rim of the mountains. The great shadow of the hills spread over the valley where the village of Canaan had once stood. There was little left.
A huge, circular pool of muddy water sat where the church had been. Bits of wood and debris floated on its surface. The floodwater had receded, though the creeks still ran high. Destruction ran the length of the valley, but there was far less wreckage than one would expect. All of the houses were gone, as were the people, but there were few bodies to be found.
Adam, Holly, and Michaela woke in the tiny structure that had been Jack Hardy’s still where they had taken refuge for the night. It was miraculously untouched by the carnage. There was a scratching on the door and when Adam opened it Blue leapt inside, shaking the water from his speckled coat and putting his muddy paws up on Adam’s legs. Adam rubbed the dog’s head and wondered where he had sheltered from the storm.
Mike laughed when Blue licked her face, and Holly did too. It wasn’t completely over. Carol was dead and they had lost a lot of other things as well. He knew they would have to leave the cabin soon and assess the damage and look for survivors. There would be questions to be answered and forms to fill out, and the broken pieces of a life to pick up.
There were other issues to be dealt with as well, he knew. Holly had screamed in her sleep, and eventually whatever had happened would have to be dealt with. He was confidant that they would make it. He had a beautiful and talented wife, a precious child, and a love for them that would conquer anything.
And now they had a dog.
* * * * *
Abigail Molnar turned the tuner knob on the car radio. She had been driving for hours and had left the broadcast area of another station. She paused on one and heard a man’s voice, loud and strident, shouting something about the wages of sin.
She spun the dial. She had heard enough of that crap to last a lifetime. She stopped on an FM station that blared “Break On Through” by The Doors. She hadn’t heard that in years.
Stephanie slept in the passengers seat. Abby reached over and rubbed her daughters leg. The bump on her head was turning an ugly purple color, but it would heal, on its own, the way hurts like that were supposed to.
She had no idea what had happened back in Canaan and didn’t really care. When she left the Porter house she stopped at the trailer long enough to grab some clothes and the money she had been squirreling away for years. She had thought about leaving Canaan forever, and last night, she decided, the time was right. The creek was rising and she had an intuition that all Hell was about to break loose. It was time to slip the leash and run.
She didn’t know where she was going, but she knew she had options. She had some money, and there were programs to help abused women. She could get a job, and gradually begin to build a new life. It wouldn’t be easy, she knew, but she was determined to do it. She and Stephanie now had something going for them they had never had before.
They were free.
*****
About the Author
Wayne Wise is a writer, artist, seeker shaman and magician, or at least claims to be in casual conversation. He has a BA in History and an MA in Clinical Psychology and in his life has worked as a counsellor, an administrative assistant for a state legislator, an inter-office mail courier, a freelance comic book inker, and a department store Santa. He wrote music and comics-based articles for several local news mags and a couple of national magazines. In 1993 he and his business partner/collaborator Fred Wheaton self-published the comic book Grey Legacy. In 2010 he wrote and drew a follow-up called Grey Legacy Tales. Raised in rural southwestern Pennsylvania he is currently employed by the Eisner Award-nominated comic book store Phantom of the Attic in Pittsburgh and recently taught a course in Comics and Pop Culture as a guest lecturer at Chatham University. You can read his Blog at www.wayne-wise.com.
His other novels (available soon) include;
King of Summer
This Creature Fair
Bedivere, Book One: The King's Right Hand
Wayne Wise, Scratch
