13 Views of the Suicide Woods Read online

  Em grabbed Lamb by the elbow, yanking her away from Tchort and said, “Show me where to refill this.” Lamb led her toward the kitchen. Behind them, she thought she heard Tchort say something to Jay that sounded like “delicious.” Her stomach turned at the thought of his mouth touching any part of her body, erogenous or not. But then, he hadn’t tongued her hand.

  It seemed everyone wanted a taste of Lamb.

  After a couple more drinks, Em enlisted the help of the apartment wall to keep her upright. She closed her eyes, trying to pretend that she didn’t feel light-headed. The night was shit and drink wasn’t helping her attitude. In fact, it was making it worse. The apartment was getting hotter and more humid and the thumping of the music pressed against her eardrums like the pressure of sliding down into deep water. The way she felt, however, it was too late to cut herself off. She did her best to stay conscious and not slump on the floor like some black balloon low of helium.

  “Hey, you okay?” Lamb asked. As the evening had progressed, the girl had been the only bright spot. The party was all right, but the crowd was unfamiliar—despite having thought she knew everyone in the scene in Boston—and she felt isolated in it. Lamb alone kept her company when all of the other partiers ignored her.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Just tired.” She was also disappointed that her fantasy of the police putting an end to the revels never materialized. She craved Tchort’s humiliation almost as much as she wanted to leave and join her friends at ManRay. Still, she hadn’t found it in herself to go—she doubted she could remember how to find the front door let alone the subway.

  “Drink this!” Lamb pressed a cool drink into her palm. Thirst and sufficiently lowered inhibitions handily defeated her desire to sober up enough to leave. She tipped the cup to her lips. It was good. Cool and strong and sweet. Just what she liked.

  “I think I need some fresh air,” she said after a sip. “Take me outside?” She’d meant it as a double entendre, but couldn’t tell if in her state she’d said it seductively or just slurred the words like some old soak asking for change at a red light. Lamb smiled and slipped an arm around Em’s waist, nestling her face near the taller woman’s breast. Instead of taking her toward the front door and the sidewalk downstairs, she led her through the back, past the kitchen and the line for the bathroom and the bedrooms. Em wondered what had happened to all of Tchort’s furniture as they threaded through the apartment. The place was cleaned out. She glanced to the side as they passed a bedroom. Inside, she thought she saw a twist of writhing bodies on the floor. And then before she could reconcile the image, she was standing in the cool night air on the third floor balcony. Blinking, she tried to clear her head and get her balance so she wouldn’t topple over the railing into the brick “yard” below. The image of the bedroom swam behind her eyes. No bed or furniture of any kind—just naked people and a hint of a glimpse of a design painted on the floor.

  “Had a little too much?” She opened her eyes and an image of Jay standing at the opposite end of the balcony smoking a cigarette swam in and out of focus. Em shook her head trying to suss out if he’d followed them or been out there already. She couldn’t remember seeing him since they’d arrived. How long ago that had been, however, was something she couldn’t wrap her head around either.

  “I just need . . . some air. It’s . . . warm in there.”

  Jay pushed off the rail. The weather-worn boards beneath their feet trembled at his steps making Em feel for a moment like it had given way and she was falling. She blinked until the multiple images of him shrank to a single approaching form. Despite her plans to remain in control, the evening felt like a defeat. She surrendered. “I don’t feel good, Jay. Take me home?” She leaned forward, resting her head on his shoulder.

  He pinched her chin between thumb and forefinger, lifting her face so he could look her in the eye and said, “No.”

  “But I said I don’t—”

  “No,” he repeated. “Tonight is important to Tchort. He’s been very generous and you’re being rude.”

  She felt tears welling in her eyes. How had she gotten here? Four drinks? Maybe five. She could hold her liquor and drank more out at the clubs. Someone had to have slipped her something. She tried to remember if she’d ever taken a drink from Tchort or someone else at the party she didn’t know well. She could only ever remember Lamb serving her.

  “Please? Take me home,” she whispered.

  Jay kissed her. She tasted whiskey and clove cigarettes as his tongue probed her mouth and felt the world swim off kilter again. She wrapped her arms around him as much for stability as she did out of desire. His hands slipped over her body searching for the places that pleased them. She felt his fingers gliding, squeezing, probing her flesh with insistence. Although, her passion was dampened by the effect of whatever-it-was rushing through her bloodstream, poisoning her brain with confusion and lethargy, she reached for the front of his pants. Another set of hands blocked access to his fly. She opened her eyes and pulled away, seeing Lamb behind him, kissing her boyfriend’s shoulder and fondling him. Jay sidled out from between the women. He laid a hand gently on the back of Em’s neck and he pushed her toward the girl. Lamb eagerly filled the empty space. Lamb’s mouth tasted like rum and sugar; her skin smelled like leather and orchids. Em fell again, this time into a deep wave of lust that left her memory of the balcony feeling unreal and ephemeral.

  Hard, smooth boards groaned beneath her as she arched her back, a shivering, electric Jacob’s ladder skipping up from the crack of her ass to the base of her skull. Lamb’s hot hands and velvet tongue explored her body. She opened her eyes to see a red-shrouded light in the corner, not the moon above them. When had they gone inside? Lamb’s crimson hair stuck up from between her thighs and Em forgot about the moon and the night on the balcony, thinking instead of her missing clothes for only an instant before another swell of pleasure upended the room and she drifted on the wave away again, into another time where the voices chanted.

  Corpus edimus!

  Lamb’s hands on her thighs, sliding over goosepimpling flesh.

  Sanguinem bibmus!

  Lamb’s mouth on her pussy and a slender finger in her ass.

  Gloria tibi, Domine Lucifere!

  Kneeling behind the girl, hands on her china white buttocks, Lamb’s elongated coccyx extending out of her body like a tiny tail. Em looked up and gave The Lamb an infernal kiss.

  Per omnia saecula saeculorum!

  Into the deepening flood again.

  Rege Satana!

  Em awoke in a corner of the room, slick with sweat and naked. In the center of a red seven-pointed star painted on the floor, a man in a black wolf mask thrust himself into some woman whose eyes rolled like a cow in a slaughterhouse kill box. She felt the arms embracing her tighten reassuringly as she took a startled breath and tried to get to her feet. Behind her, Lamb whispered, “Sit still. He’s almost done.” The man continued fucking until his flabby butt cheeks clenched and he pulled out and tried to come on the girl like a porn actor, but slipped and ended up spilling his seed on the floorboards. Lamb gave a loud throaty laugh. The man stood up and ripped off his mask, shooting her a nasty look. He yanked a red satin robe out of the hand of another masked figure standing nearby.

  “Shut up, bitch!” Tchort said. Em could barely hear him over the music and chanting of the masked men and women standing in the circle around the room. But Lamb’s laughter was right in her ear and eased her discomfort. Still, the throb of the house and the heat conspired to steal her breath. Gasping, she tried again to stand. Lamb held on. He slipped the robe over his head, concealing his flagging erection, and stomped toward them.

  Em held up a hand to ward him away. “Back off,” she choked.

  “Think that’s funny, cunt?”

  Hands fell upon her and Em felt herself yanked up from the floor. Jay twisted her around roughly and restrained her with hands clamped tightly on her upper arms. She struggled, but couldn’t slip from his
grasp. He shushed her. Tchort leaned down and grabbed Lamb by a wrist, jerking her to her feet.

  “Leave her the fuck alone!” Em yelled.

  Tchort wrenched Lamb’s arm and shoved her into the heptagram, where she fell on her knees. A pair of black clad acolytes parted, revealing an altar adorned with a collection of candles and dime store Halloween props. Tchort strode toward it and plucked a real-enough-looking dagger from the table. He turned toward the star, grinning gums and porcine eyes burning with malevolence.

  “What are you doing? Stop!”

  Tchort glared at Em, his face filled with stupid hate and said, “She’s The Lamb, Marianne. Blood must be spilled.”

  Em wrenched her body, freeing herself from her boyfriend’s grip. She sprinted toward the girl. Her head pounded with hangover, she swooned for a second before the room righted itself and she made it in between them, pulling the sobbing girl to her feet. Tchort took a step forward with his knife. Em pointed a black-nailed finger at him and he stopped. Despite his size, Tchort was a lazy coward. She’d told him off a dozen times in the past and he’d never had the balls to stand up to her. Even naked and surrounded by his “flock” she wasn’t about to let him threaten her or anyone else without a fight. “You’re not doing a goddamned thing to her. We’re getting out of here.”

  Lamb pulled Em’s face around with a hand and kissed her delicately on the mouth. Before Em could argue that it was not the time, the drowning sensation returned for real and she coughed, trying to ask, “why?” as she felt the knife pierce her chest.

  The girl smiled madly and pulled the blade from Em’s body. Behind her she heard Jay say, “I could bring you to the party against your will, but you had to enter the sigil freely.” He said something else she couldn’t hear as the sound of the world all around her faded to nothing but a quickening heart throb. She felt his hand in her hair and hot pain as he jerked her head back and dragged a knife along her throat, opening it like a blooming flower. Blood sprayed and splashed Lamb’s face and bare chest and the lights dimmed. Em fell to her knees. And to her side. And into the darkness a final time.

  Jay held his breath. The CD in the player ended, the black-robed members of Tchort’s grotto stopped chanting, and silence descended upon the room. He watched his girlfriend’s blood spill onto the floor and listened as she struggled to breathe. Soon, she stopped, and all he could hear was the thump of the music playing at the party downstairs. A cheer went up from below as someone presumably landed their ping pong ball in a glass of beer. The members of the grotto pulled a few strips of Visqueen off the wall and moved in to wrap Em’s body. Tchort stood in the corner staring blankly at the dead woman on his bedroom floor.

  “I don’t understand,” Jay whispered.

  Lamb absently traced a finger in the blood staining her chest, drawing a down-turned star over her sternum and laughed. She reached out and painted a line from Jay’s forehead down his nose and touched his lips. He turned his head and wiped at his mouth with disgust. “What were you waiting for?” she asked. “Thunder and smoke and the fire of the summoned Beast rising up out of the floorboards, come to bestow upon you his infernal blessings? You’re cute, but dumb,” she said. “Did it ever occur to you that Lucifer is about as interested in your worthless soul as he is in buying the Brooklyn Bridge? Or maybe—just maybe—there’s no such thing as the Devil. Either way, you killed a girl for no good reason. Wasted her, literally.”

  She tasted the tip of her finger and turned to leave. Scooping up her clothes, she sauntered into the hall and turned for the door. Jay thought he saw her vestigial tail wag a little before she turned and said over her shoulder, “I had fun, though.”

  THE BOY WHO DREAMT HE WAS A BAT

  A breeze blew across the water making ripples that sparkled under the blue sky like diamonds, but the boy was still afraid. He stood by the car, away from the sand at the edge of the pond, clinging to a library book and wanting to climb back in to wait for his stepfather to grow tired of fishing. They’d only just gotten to the pond, though, and he knew that would take a while. His grandfather could fish all day long, sitting on the shore, watching the bobber float on the tiny swells, dipping down as the “bait robbers,” as he called them, nibbled at the worms speared on his hook. His stepfather had never come with them on even one of those fishing trips. But today, he’d gotten the boy up early, telling him they were going to go and how great it would be. He hoped that Bobby grew tired of it faster than Grandpa did.

  It was a long drive to get there, and Bobby had spent the bulk of it telling the boy how excited he was going to be when he saw this secret fishing hole. How full of bass and walleye it was, and how they were going to catch all of them and Mom would be so excited that men had brought home dinner. He emphasized “men” as if including the boy in the word with him was a conspiratorial bond. The boy knew, though, that Bobby didn’t think of him as a man. Bobby made fun of him for playing Barbie and Ken dolls with his best friend, Heidi, from up the street. He called him a “puss” and teased him about being a girl. He didn’t care. Heidi was nice and shared her toys, even if they were mostly Barbie dolls. More importantly, her parents would always let him stay as long as he wanted. If he was there at lunchtime, they didn’t send him home; they made him a sandwich. Bobby never fixed him lunch. He said the boy was six and a half and he could make his own peanut butter sandwich if he was hungry. Sometimes, the boy spent all day with them, pretending out loud that Barbie and Ken were having adventures, while pretending in his head that Heidi was his twin sister and that he lived with her and her parents and would never ever have to go home to Bobby again. Barbies, baby dolls, or makeup, he’d play with anything in the world if he could just stay there.

  His stepfather walked to the edge of the water with a single pole in one hand and a tackle box in the other. He set everything down in the sand and motioned for the boy to come closer. “Come on. You can’t help me from all the way over there.” He opened up the box and started rooting around in it, looking for something.

  Grandpa never had to search for anything. He always knew exactly where everything he wanted was.

  The boy clutched his book a little tighter and stammered, “Can I . . . Can I . . .”

  “Hurry up.”

  “Can I wear the . . . life preserver?” The boy had seen one in the back of the car. It was there for when his mom wanted to go in the boat when they drove out to the ocean. She couldn’t swim, and always wore it. The boy couldn’t swim either, and he was scared of the water. They’d tried enrolling him in swim lessons, but his fear overwhelmed him and nothing they tried to teach him took root. His mom eventually gave up sending him.

  Bobby looked up with a knitted brow and asked, “Why in hell would you want to wear one of those?”

  “In case I fall in.”

  Bobby laughed at him as walked over to the boy. The boy stepped back and bumped against the car door. It was unexpectedly hot through his thin shirt and the door handle jabbed in between his shoulder blades, making him take an involuntary step toward his stepfather. Bobby grabbed his thin arm and pulled him toward the beach. The boy almost fumbled his book, but he managed to hold on.

  “You don’t want to wear a life preserver. Don’t you know how they work?”

  The boy tried to pull his arm out of Bobby’s hand, but not too hard. He’d learned what struggling earned him. “Mom wears one. If you fall in with one of those on, then you float on top of the water.”

  “Well, yes. That’s true. But your mom is bigger than you are. With little kids, it depends on how you go in. If you fall in the water head first, your body isn’t heavy enough to flip you over and you’ll float with your legs sticking up in the air instead of your head. A kid your size’ll drown quicker with one than without.” The boy wasn’t sure if Bobby was teasing, but the idea of his head being held under the water was terrifying enough. It put a knot in his throat and he didn’t ask again.

  Bobby dragged him over to the small beach and let
go. The boy sat down reluctantly. Grandpa always brought a big towel for him to sit on. Bobby didn’t. The boy didn’t want to get his pants dirty; he would get in trouble for that. He remembered how Bobby had shouted the time he’d discovered the grass stains from when the boy and Heidi had gone to the big hill behind the Tildens’ barn and tumbled down it over and over. They’d laughed and shouted, “As yooooou wiiiish!” as they rolled and bounced in the tall soft grass. Both of them had come up with dark green stains on their clothes. He didn’t know what Heidi’s parents had done, but the boy had been made to do his own laundry in his underwear. He had to sit in the chilly basement next to the washer/dryer for the duration of both cycles. At the end, shivering from the damp cold and wheezing from the mold, nothing had ever felt as good as those hot clothes fresh out of the dryer. But they were still stained and Bobby made a big show out of throwing them in the trash, telling him he was lucky to have someone like him in the house. “If your mother saw those, she’d cry and cry.”

  He brushed a spot as free as possible of leaves and things he thought might stain as he could, and sat carefully in the sand next to the tackle box. He opened his book and picked up where he’d left off. Bobby said, “What stupid thing are you reading now?”

  The boy said, “It’s not stupid.” Bobby’s face darkened. Even if it was true that the book wasn’t stupid, the boy wasn’t allowed to contradict an adult, even when they were wrong. Especially when they were Bobby. He tried to roll over the transgression by rattling on quickly about the book. “It’s all about bats. I’m reading the chapter that says how a mom bat can go out to get food and then come back to the colony and still find her one pup out of all the millions of other bats in the cave. It’s all about sound and how they smell, and she can remember where she left her baby and—”