Corrosion (17 page)

CHAPTER 25

Just like when I returned from my adventure to the Castle, Aunt Rose and Uncle Horace were happy to see me, I could tell, saying we’ve been worried sick about you, we thought something terrible, absolutely terrible had happened to you, and I clicked my heels and said no place like home, and I ate a meal of trout fishcakes and elk jerky, and they asked me all sorts of questions, about my whereabouts, about my wounded arm, but I just shook my head and said I didn’t much want to talk about it, that all’s well that ends well, and they didn’t press me further although they glanced at each other with anxious looks on their faces.

I slept well that night, didn’t think about Constance hardly at all. Soon, I would go and visit her, make sure she had food and drink, make sure she was comfortable, she couldn’t escape from there, you couldn’t blame my father, he tried his best to save her, it was the Christ Rat that failed. Do you remember how Moses led his people across the desert but couldn’t enter Israel? That was a cruel trick by God, that’s the kind of guy he is sometimes, playing practical jokes for his own amusement, but it’s not funny when people are drowning in tsunamis, when people are burning in fires, when people are freezing in blizzards. I heard about a guy once, and he was a good guy, and he had a wound on his elbow, and he didn’t think much of it, but it started getting infected, and he got a fever of 104, and he went to the hospital, and they said holy shit you’ve got this and this, and it wasn’t 24 hours later that the bacteria had eaten through all of his flesh and he’d lost both his arms and shoulders and all the skin on his torso, and what do you say to him, God, do you say I was just playing, isn’t that a funny joke, well is that what you say, God, well is it, well is it?

But life was certainly looking up for me. Aunt Rose and Uncle Horace were being awfully nice to me, and there was no school on account of Christmas vacation, and everywhere you looked there was Christmas cheer, lights shining, tinsel twinkling, people saying, have you been a good boy, Benton, are you going to get a new train set, or is coal in store for you? And I would wink and say, depends on how closely Santa’s been watching!

Every day or two I hiked up the mountain toward the tundra, toward the Skull Shack, where my wife waited without a care in the world. But Constance wasn’t grateful for anything, you know the way women are. She drank the water and she ate the food, but there were no thank yous, there were no I love yous, there were no how are you, Bentons.

It’s difficult to hear the whispers in the mountains, the wind blows too hard. But I could hear a goddamn pine needle dropping in the snow, blessed as I was with supernatural hearing, so I could sure as hell hear the whispers from my room, even though my door was closed, even though the wind was blowing. Aunt Rose and Uncle Horace saying that is very concerning, saying the boy couldn’t have had anything to do with it, he’s been with us the whole time, he’s really turned a corner, he hasn’t talked about her in such a long time. The mountain sheriff saying, I sure wouldn’t mind talking to the boy. I’m sure he’s not involved, but it would be good just to talk to him, just to find out what he knows. People do go missing in the mountains, usually by their own volition. But I sure would like to talk to the boy, if you don’t mind.

Well, let me tell you about this mountain sheriff. I didn’t trust him, didn’t like him, despite his easy-going nature and comforting smile. He had a mustache, the type of mustache that I associate with child molesters, and he talked like a child molester, too, all nasally and overly friendly. Just want to find out if you’ve seen your friend Constance Durban at all in the past several days.

No, sir, I haven’t. I have a restraining order, in case you don’t remember. Can’t be within 1,000 feet of her. It was her ex-husband who convinced her. Felt threatened by me. Can you imagine that? Threatened by a sixteen-year-old kid? How do you like that?

He smiled again. Now come on, Benton, he said. There’s no ex-husband. You know that. Keeping the pressure on. Trying to catch me in a lie, trying to catch me in an inconsistency. Well, Mr. Mountain Sheriff, I wasn’t going to falter.

I haven’t seen her, I said again. I’d tell you if I had. My aunt and uncle were satisfied and they said, anything else, Sheriff?

It’s just troublesome, he said. Woman complains about being followed, complains about being stalked. A couple of weeks later she disappears. It’s troublesome, that’s all. And then he smoothed down his child molester mustache and shook his head. Well, I don’t want to take up any more of your time. If any of you think of anything that might help us find her, would you mind giving me a call? And he handed each of us a business card. Sheriff Jim Tyler.

Uncle Horace and Aunt Rose each shook his hand and said certainly we will, certainly we will, but I didn’t do any such thing, no reason to kiss up to a devilish troll. And so he glared at me with those suspicious eyes, said, see you around, Benton, see you around.

You think you’ve got it all figured out? You don’t know shit! You hear me? You don’t know shit!

* * *

Two days later, I left the mountain town of Silverville for good, made my way back to the Skull Shack, and they threw me a farewell parade, all the miners and fur trappers and whores lined up on Gold Street with their American flags and noisemakers and wind-chapped faces. Children hoisted on shoulders, babies soothed with bourbon-dipped pacifiers, pretty girls whispering and giggling. From the top of the hill, I could hear the high school marching band play “Auld Lang Syne.”

But there were some strange goings on in the mountain and there is a world outside of my head. A dervish of snow falling and falling, and somewhere in the morning light a bowed psaltery playing a single note, never-ending. A small brick chapel, appearing like a fever dream, and behind it a graveyard. And an old man leaning against a fence, watching while a woman wearing a ragged beaver-fur coat—his wife maybe—digs into the earth with a round-point shovel. I stopped walking, said what are you digging the grave up for, and he said, don’t you know the undertaker was a lunatic? Yes, mister, we have some reliable information that he desecrated all these bodies buried here, fucked their eye sockets and so forth, and now we diggin’ ’em up to make things right again. The dead oughta have some peace, don’t you think?

Well, I didn’t know what to say, so I kept right on walking and I wasn’t sure if the undertaker was crazy or if this husband and wife here were crazy, and then I placed my hands on my ears and I screamed and screamed, trying to exorcise the demons and angels, and the old man and his wife both smiled at me, their faces ravaged and pale.

* * *

We stayed in the shack, me in the living area, Constance down below, and we had enough canned food and soda to live for a month at least. She wasn’t well, she told me she wasn’t well, and she begged me to call for help, but it was too late for that. I’m sorry, I said to her, tears streaming down my ruddy cheeks, I’m so sorry. But if they find out the things I’ve done, they’ll tie me up and lock me up. And if they find out the things I want to do, they’ll take me to the Castle, and there’s no escaping from there…

But it wasn’t just Constance who was ill. My own health was failing: headaches, bloody noses, peeling skin, uncontrollable shaking. Casualty of war. I wondered what the Soldier would do.

He had a woman, you know. Elizabeth was her name. She was captured by a band of terrorists, raped and mutilated. Well, the Soldier came looking for her, and he found her, but they stuck a knife to her throat, said give us the information we need, we’ll spare her life. And he stood there for a long time, and you could tell he was torn, the choice was between country and woman, and he shook his head and said, do what you need to do, and they sliced her throat, and he got good and mad and took care of each and every one of those Iraqis, and when he left, his uniform and face were covered with blood and he shook his head and said, God help me, but I ain’t no traitor.

* * *

The winter was a cold one, and the snow never stopped falling, and darkness came earlier and earlier until there seemed to be no light at all. And there were moments of happiness, moments when I convinced myself that everything was going to be okay, but those moments disappeared like tears in the darkness, and misery crept through a crack in the window and sat on his haunches in the corner of the cabin, glaring at me with grim satisfaction.

CHAPTER 26

A week or more later they came for me. Nighttime and I could see them marching up the hill, a group of men, some in uniform, some in overalls. The authorities and the townsfolk. Holding torches and rifles and baseball bats.

Well, Constance must have sensed their presence because she got excited, started shouting and pounding on the latch. They knew about me, but they couldn’t know about Constance, so I unlocked the padlock, and my hands were shaking and my nose was bleeding, and I opened the hatch door, and Constance had climbed up the ladder, and she didn’t look much like a human anymore, and I kicked her hard in the temple and she screamed, then went toppling down the ladder like a rag doll, and then she was on the floor of the cellar, and she wasn’t moving and I didn’t know if she were dead or alive, I didn’t know if I were dead or alive, and I closed the hatch and locked it and covered it with the throw rug and a stack of wood, and then they were pounding on the door, saying, c’mon Benton, we know you’re in there, but the door was jammed shut with another pile of wood.

I knew this could be the end for me, but I wasn’t going down without a fight, see I had the Father and the Soldier and the Christ Rat on my side, the Holy Trinity, so I used the fire poker to shatter the back window, and then I pulled my body through, and the broken glass cut through my skin, and I could hear them at the front door, pounding with those axes and baseball bats, and then I was running across the mountain floor, and each breath was a terrified scream, and only I knew that every tree was a murdered corpse, forever frozen with gnarled limbs, only I knew that the sky was swirling with tortured spirits and fallen angels, only I knew that the dirt was readying to open up and swallow me into its maw, and where was that music coming from, that strange music, deathly doo-wop from the broken speakers of a transistor radio.

I raced across the side of the mountain, feet sliding in the snow, grabbing a hold of branches when I could. The sky was as black as death itself, the moon a sliver of bone. And from behind, ghostly voices echoing across the mountain, unearthly firelight flashing spastically across the terrain.

I knew the mountain well, but when the moon disappeared behind the clouds, it became too dark and I was disoriented, lost in the cold and the snow, afraid that my frost-covered remains would be found, burrowed at the base of a lodgepole.

And I could tell they were closing in, could hear their voices echoing across the mountain, saying, we know you’re out here, Benton. Show yourself before you freeze to death. We don’t aim to hurt you, Benton. We just want to make things right.

And moments turned into minutes, and minutes turned into hours, and I prayed to God with all of my might, and God showed some sympathy, revealed a hiding place, a hiding place where I couldn’t be found. A tunnel, barely visible in the darkness, and from the back of the cavern, voices whispering lovingly for me to come join them, and I pulled my way through the narrow opening, and it was cold and dark, and I felt like a blind man, unable to see inches in front of my eyes.

But I knew that a safety awaited me, a temporary sanctuary from the motley crew on the side of the mountain, its members howling in anguish at having lost their prey. My body was aching, slashed badly from the broken glass, and every movement filled me with pain, and still I pressed forward, a soldier in desperate retreat from his enemy.

The tunnel went on forever and the voices from the world became muted and then vacant and I never wanted to hurt Constance but it was the only way, and my heart was filled with anguish and fear as I climbed deeper into the cave, and I realized that now I was an animal, and I growled, and then suddenly my eyes sharpened and I could see with perfect clarity, could see the sinkholes and the speleothems, could see the bats and the flatworms and the ghosts…

I crawled forward, and I figured I would never turn back. I could smell the rot of my mother’s body, could hear the screams of Constance’s nightmares, could see the death mask of my own face.

And the men who were searching for me, the men who wished to do me harm, they were gone, all gone, and I’d rather be eaten by the worms than spend my days in the Castle, so I placed my head on the cold ground and closed my eyes and slept and woke and there were bats and there were screams, and they were my screams, and God spoke to me, said I am with you, I will never leave you, my child, and I cried, but the tears were acid and they burned my skin, peeled it right off, and then my head was nothing but a Halloween skull, lolling back and forth, back and forth.

And after a night of forever, morning came, and a streak of light from somewhere, and I pulled myself forward, a soldier badly wounded, and it wasn’t long until I reached God’s temple, a small asylum at the end of the cavern. There was water on the floor and strange-looking crystals growing from the ceiling and for a moment I thought I was dead, but then I felt the slashes on my body and the melancholy in my brain and I knew that I was still dragging my body and soul across this mean old world.