Chapter XX. 1953
CHAPTER XX
Vera and Gerry spoke nothing else about what happened with Sharon, but Gerry took to calling home three times a day.
To check in on her, he said. And there were a handful of times when she saw Robert’s truck drive by the house in the afternoon even though he was on the opposite side of Hawthorne Springs now that he was staying with his mother and had no reason to find himself on Vera’s street.
She found herself startling over the smallest things.
The sound of the wind chimes hanging beside her kitchen window.
The oven timer buzzing. The marked slap of the newspaper delivery in the mornings.
The percolator once the coffee started to boil.
Even without Gerry there, she felt eyes on her and a mounting sense of dread.
The men finally came for her on a Tuesday. She’d just finished mopping the kitchen, her cheeks flushed with effort, her hairline damp with sweat. She heard the cars in the driveway, the sound of doors slamming, and she straightened and went to the door because she’d been expecting it.
Gerry stood on the porch, his hat in his hand like it had been when he came to pick her up for their first date all those years ago.
Pastor Brighton and a handful of the church leaders stood in a loose semicircle behind him.
Robert was among them. She wondered if Pastor Brighton would make him a church leader as well.
“Let’s take a ride, hon,” Gerry said.
“To where exactly?”
“You’ll see. You’ll like it, I promise.”
Gerry took a step forward, and she retreated into the cool depths of the house as if it wasn’t his house, too. As if he couldn’t come inside and toss her over his shoulder if he wanted and throw her into the back of the car like a rag doll.
He held out his hand, and she wondered if she had ever really loved him.
When she did not accept his hand, he took it anyway, his grip tight, and tugged her forward. “Come on,” he said.
Gerry held her steady as he tugged her down the steps, and there was a part of her that wanted to bite, and kick, and scratch, but it would only make things more difficult for her.
They’d not answered her unwillingness to cooperate with violence, but she saw the possibility of it in the muscle hidden under their button-downs and jackets.
Robert opened the car door for her and guided her inside.
Gerry took the driver’s seat, while Pastor Brighton slid into the passenger seat.
Robert and the other leaders followed behind.
Gerry drove slowly. Carefully. As if she was some breakable doll rendered beautifully mute as they made the turns Vera had known all her life. They were taking her to the church.
“I hope you’ll see this as a blessing, Vera,” Pastor Brighton said, and turned to give her knee a reassuring pat. “We’ve been working on this for quite some time.”
She pulled her knee away, and he chuckled. “That’s fine. That’s just fine. Ah, here we are!” he said.
Again, Gerry opened her door and took her hand, but she wrestled it away. “I can walk just fine on my own,” she said, and squared her shoulders. Gerry glanced at Pastor Brighton, who nodded, his eyes still twinkling with amusement.
“This way then,” Pastor Brighton said.
With the men flanking her, Vera followed him inside.
Down the long corridors that now felt haunted, their footsteps the only sound in all that sanctified quiet.
They led her into a small room at the very back of the church that had clearly once been an office but now held a small cot, a dresser, and a single chair.
It was when Robert closed the door that she felt the first stirrings of fear.
Pastor Brighton gazed at her; whatever enjoyment he’d taken in her earlier rebellion was now absent.
“Your husband has come to me with a heaviness on his heart, Vera. There have been … rumors. Rumors you have gone against God’s will for your body, and that you have found means to prevent yourself from having a child.
He believes these rumors to be true. An immoral man would have left you, Vera.
” His voice was dangerously quiet. “But God has commanded that a man cleave to his wife. They shall be one flesh.”
The other men muttered their assent—a chorus of amen, brother that left her feeling hollowed. As if Pastor Brighton had reached inside her and scooped her clean.
Gerry grasped her chin, his thumb stroking a line up her jaw. “We only want to help you, Vera. And all this business with Mary … it’s confused you. We want to help you find your way back to your true self. Back to the woman God intended you to be.”
“We’ve prayed on it, and God has put it on our hearts. What you need is quiet. Some time to find your way back without intrusions. Without influence,” Pastor Brighton said.
“A place to rest and immerse yourself in His word.” Gerry gestured to the room around them with its cot and scant furniture.
“A retreat, if you will,” Robert added, and the men murmured their agreement.
“What if I don’t want to go?” she asked.
Gerry threw his head back and laughed. “Now why wouldn’t you want to go, you silly goose? Of course you want to go.”
She glanced around the room. “There’s no bathroom. Am I supposed to piss and shit in a bucket?”
Gerry’s eyes widened at her profanity, but Pastor Brighton’s face remained smooth.
“There’ll be someone here to take you to the facilities when you feel the need to visit,” Pastor Brighton said.
Robert called it a retreat, but this room was intended to be a prison.
Her heart accelerated. “I’ll need to pack a bag,” she said, hunting for any reason to delay.
“I’ll make sure you have everything you need,” Gerry said.
“We want you to be comfortable,” Pastor Brighton added. “To remind you of how blessed you can be when you walk The Path.”
“Could I at least visit the powder room to freshen up?” She swiped at her eyes, hoping for the first time in her life that her mascara was smeared. That they would fall back on their learned politeness. The expectations they carried that women should always look presentable.
“I’ll take you,” Gerry said.
She nodded and let him guide her back out into the hallway. No point in telling him she knew where it was. She needed him to think she was complacent. To think she was going to do exactly as she was told.
She wasn’t going to let them lock her in that room. She would rather brave the outside world, would rather starve or find herself on the streets, than let them imprison her.
“It’s only a week. Maybe two,” he said, pausing at the entrance to the restrooms. “It really is all for the best. What happened with Mary was a horrible accident. But is it not God’s will that we strike down wickedness before it takes root?”
“Of course,” she whispered, and forced a gentle smile.
“Don’t be long.” He swung the door open for her, and she stepped inside.
Immediately, she turned on the tap, hoping the stream of water would cover any sounds that might give her away.
The window was a thin transom near the ceiling.
She would have to climb on top of the sink to reach it, and even then, she would have to haul herself up with only her arm strength.
She kicked off her heels and set a knee on the sink. It might not work, but she had to try.
Balanced on the sink’s edge, she reached for the window sash and ran her fingers along it.
Her fingers bumped against raised metal, and she nearly cried out with relief.
The lock was small and she had to push until her fingers hurt, but it finally gave way.
She pushed against the window, but it did not budge.
Her fingers were damp with sweat, and they slid across the glass.
“Come on,” she whispered, darting a glance at the door. How much longer before Gerry realized she wasn’t cleaning her face and burst through the door?
She shook her hair back and tried again, biting down on her lip so she would not grunt aloud, and inch by inch, the window opened.
The air that swept against her face smelled of mown grass and earth, and she grasped each side of the window, braced one foot against the wall, and pulled herself upward.
Her feet scrabbled against the wall, but then she was up, her torso through the window as she pushed herself through.
She heard her dress rip, and she grit her teeth, her hands clawing at the grass, at the dirt, anything that could help as the window edges bit into her lower back. The window was too small. She wasn’t going to make it out. There was no more time.
Whimpering, she dug her elbows into the earth and heaved herself forward, biting down on a scream as the frame ripped the skin from her back.
But she was out and scrambling on hands and knees and then on her feet and running because the door was opening behind her.
Because she had minutes before they were on her.
She ran without any awareness of where she was going.
There was only the need to get away. To find a place where she could hide and think.
Of where she could possibly go. Once, Mary would have helped her, but Mary was gone, and it was her fault, and she didn’t have family.
Her mother and father were long gone, and she’d been an only child.
No one in Hawthorne Springs would offer her sanctuary, and she had no money of her own.
No car. She could go to the police, but they wouldn’t believe her. She was just another hysterical woman.
It was cooler under the trees. She slowed and tried to orient herself as she shivered.
She’d run for the woods that bordered the church, her subconscious knowing it would be easier to hide there, but now, she had no way of knowing where she was.
There was blood on her back and feet. It fed the earth as she continued to walk, and she wondered what monstrous thing would scent her.
There was no one behind her, and the woods were quiet.
Birdsong and a slight rustle as small creatures scurried about.
Her body ached, screaming at her not to stop; the threat had not vanished simply because she was cocooned in the trees.
There was no safety in the small distance she put between herself and the men.
But she needed the stillness. Needed to pick apart the chaos in her mind and find a way past the limitations surrounding escape.
Leaning against a tree, she struggled to deepen her breaths, closed her eyes and focused on letting her lungs fill with air, on the raw, bloodied taste in her throat. A count of five and a slow exhale.
There was Sharon. Maybe Vera could find her in the city. Go to her and ask for her help. Even as she considered the possibility, Vera knew it wouldn’t work. Sharon would not forgive her.
She sobbed through another breath. Held it in. Let it out. It was so quiet. As if a bell jar descended from some unknowable place in the sky. A suffocation meant only for her. And then, so delicate it might not have been a sound at all, a thin scrape. Another.
Opening her eyes would mean seeing whatever made that sound.
Would mean facing the possibility that Gerry or Robert or any of the other men had caught up to her and were trying to move very carefully.
Quietly. Easier to let her feel a false sense of safety.
Easier to capture prey when it didn’t hear you coming.
Her entire body tensed, every muscle burning, and she let her eyes open. Before her, there was only the tree. Immediately, she recognized it and pushed herself away. It was the tree where she’d last seen Mary. The tree where she killed herself.
She stared up at it, the bark all twisting, bifurcated lines that looped back on themselves. It made her dizzy. Like so many mouths opening, hungry or screaming, it didn’t matter which.
The sound came again, that thin, soft scrape, and she let her gaze drift upward into the unending green that held it.
Two sets of eyes stared back at her. A gnarled rope of braided hair swung, that soft sound suddenly filling Vera’s head, so loud she didn’t realize she’d begun to sob.
She had not believed Mary, but she believed her now.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered as she looked up at the Dark Sisters, at the stories she’d been told since she was a girl brought to life.
She dropped to her knees, her legs going damp as her bladder released.
That soft scrape sounded once more, and she screamed because it was the only thing she could do.
When the men found her, when they dragged her from the tree, she did not fight them. She hoped they would kill her.
They didn’t.