Chapter 33
Roishin
T he cloudy day was now night, and the sky filled with roiling clouds, vengeful in their turbulence.
In the time I’d been knocked out Carl erected a stack of wooden pallets, sticks, logs, and other detritus. The odor of gasoline overpowered the ozone and ichor in the air. Red containers littered the grass around me like unlit candles in a gruesome hex circle.
He yanked on the rope he’d rigged to the flag pole and wrapped around my wrists. It lifted me a few more inches above the stack. I kicked and screamed trying to wiggle free, but like a fish on a reel, he methodically snared me in his trap.
Carl studied me. A scowl darkened his face. Suddenly , he brightened. “ Oops ! I forgot something.” He said it almost as if it were an afterthought, but supremely important.
When he came back from digging in the truck, he held my athame in his hands.
I stopped all attempts to find footing and wrapped my ankles around the wooden post. It halted my flailing, which was probably a bad thing, but I’d be damned if I wasn’t prepared for his attack.
Instead , he climbed up on the woodpile and sliced a slit in the hem of my dress. Then he tore it upward, baring my legs and only halting when the fabric met the stitched seam and the layers collected at my waist. Then he got closer. “ Don’t move, Mary - Rose . I might cut you.”
His breath was fetid against my arm. He sliced again, this time with more force, powering through the layers of fabric and seams binding it together, rendering my clothing to rags.
He worked methodically, each time warning me of what would happen if the knife slipped. The cold, misty air hit my skin.
A breeze picked up from the west. It drove away the rancid fumes of gasoline, and brought with it the promise of rain. I inhaled deeply, getting cut as he sliced my bra band.
“ I told you not to move.” His low chuckle slid over me like worms.
The small line of red widened as blood trickled from the wound. He stopped, fascinated by it. As he traced the drip with the point of the blade, I barely sipped air through my nose to keep from moving.
Finally , the trail soaked into the band of my underwear. Only then did he pull the knife through the elastic and fabric twice to strip me of everything.
“ Now you’re ready.” He eyed my figure, not even stepping off the platform of wood and tinder.
I chose that moment to strike. I kicked out, using the post as leverage. My foot connected with his shoulder, driving him off the platform and into the dirt below.
But it was futile. My hands were bound, so I couldn’t run. He brushed himself off and laughed maniacally.
“ You’ll pay for that, Mary - Rose . God will make you pay.”
My eyes watered from the pain and the fumes. He stalked the perimeter and piled up more logs and pallets as he moved from his truck to my funeral pyre. Every few moments, he’d stop, soak the wood with more gasoline, and winch me higher.
“ Just light it already.” I was sick of the torture.
He froze and stared at me. “ Did you know they say witches orgasm when burned?”
My thoughts raced through all of his threats and the memories of his obsessiveness about religion in our childhood.
He’d always been a bit…off, but this? This was sick.
My mind couldn’t rationalize it. But my heart, and more importantly, my will was thinking way ahead.
I struggled to find a board or stick wedged hard enough to push against so I could get my foot on anything to take the weight off my arms. But I only knocked the pile away from my toes, leaving me with less than before.
So , I did what anyone would. I screamed for help. Screamed , “ Fire !” Screamed for anyone to listen.
Deep down, I knew that help was at least a mile away. We were deep into the wooded area leased to the church. Not even the cemetery caretaker was close enough to hear me. The closest person was, or would have been, my grandmother. If she were alive. But she died on this very hill.
I cried to her ghost, hoping she’d hear me beyond the veil and call the Gods down on this asshole.
Carl stopped again to listen. “ That’s right, unburden yourself from your sin.”
“ Fuck you!”
His smile was eerie. “ Another sin.”
It was as if he was keeping a running tally of my… what? Who was he to judge? I spat an appropriate Bible verse at him. Then went further digging up every hypocrisy he committed.
Carl’s unnatural calmness waited me out.
Finally , he quoted Exodus 22, not stopping at verse eighteen, but moving directly into the nineteenth.
“ Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death.” He paused and took a step closer.
“ That’s you , Rose . You didn’t even fight your carnal urges.
You willingly fucked that man. I cannot let you live, you know that, right? ”
My jaw clenched hard. “ Who sold me to him?”
He threw the gas can in his hands to the ground. “ You weren’t supposed to fall in love with him!”
Ah . That was my sin.
“ I don’t regret a thing.”
Maybe one thing. When I was dead, there would be no one to remind Carl he’d promised to help his sister.
But maybe that was what he intended all along.
String me, her, the family, the doctors, everyone through his little game and then pull the rug out from under everyone at that worst possible moment.
“ You have regrets, I see it on your face. I know you, Mary - Rose . I’ve watched you your entire life.”
“ That’s not creepy at all.” My sarcasm was lost on him.
I continued to poke around with my toe for something to brace against. The wind had picked up, and if I had to hang naked on some hill in the middle of nowhere freezing my ass off while Carl got his poop in a group, I’d die of hypothermia before burning.
“ You’re such a bitch.” He kicked the gas can, spilling the contents in an arc over the grass. Then he dug in the cab of his truck and returned with a lighter. He tried lighting some grass first, but it fizzled out.
A light mist blew in from the west. The clouds grew thicker, and the sky hung low overhead.
He bent over the stack, attempting to light one of the smaller sticks. But the wind blew the flame sideways and he scorched his fingers.
I gave up trying to find something near my feet, opting instead to curl the soles of my feet against the wood post at my back. It gave a small amount of relief to my shoulders, but the angle made it difficult to hold.
He went back to the truck one more time and came out with a box of matches.
Meanwhile the mist turned into stinging rain that spat at my bare skin, chilling me.
Carl bent over, close now. I braced one foot on the post and swung the other leg at his head. I kicked as hard as I could, causing my body to swing loose. I screamed at the strain on my arms.
But I made contact, and my target fell on his ass, spilling the matches into the wet grass.
“ You’ll pay for that!” He picked up my athame.
“ Thor , if you’re listening? Fuck this asshole up.”
The wind sucked inward and shifted, heralding a major front barreling down on us. Lightning cracked against the blackness.
Carl startled and dropped the knife.
Maybe he was scared of the Gods ? The thunder rumbled. Three miles away. I’d counted the seconds from flash to sound.
Then there was calm.
In the stillness, Carl flicked the lighter with trembling hands, and caught one of the matches on fire. He tossed it onto the pile and it hit one of the larger logs soaked in so much gasoline it glistened. The match bounced once, then sputtered out as it landed in the puddle of fuel.
Carl skipped the science class about flammability.
I bit back my suggestion that he hold the next match in the fumes.
Another spear of lightning forked across the sky. The air erupted with a loud crack.
In the flash, I saw a creature rise up behind Carl’s truck.
My heart beat faster. I knew that form. I knew that war braid. But Bear was in berserker mode and not the man I bedded. His eyes were streaked with black mud, and when he smiled, the flare of his capped canines flashed in the night.
He moved quickly, running with stealth and speed, knocking Carl from the pile and rolling with him. In the motion, Bear pulled a knife. But Carl managed to knock his aim off, and the blade hit a rock.
Carl grabbed another rock from the ground and slammed it against the side of Bear’s head. Blood trickled down his face as they wrestled. They rolled out of view, and I tried to twist to see them but only managed to get a glimpse of Carl on top before my body swung back to stare at his truck.
The noise of battle was drowned out by the rising storm.
Bolt after bolt of lightning flashed overhead making my hair rise.
The wind picked up again and this time blew in straight across the hill and cold.
Shivering , I tried to scale the post, aiming to free my bound hands from the pulley connected to it.
My feet slipped against the slippery wood and I hung in place, staring at the metal cap at the top of the pole.
Almost directly overhead, the roiling clouds lit up and there was a flash that blinded my good eye.
Pain seared around my wrists, then drove deeper as I fell from the post onto the piled wood.
A spark dropped into the mess and caught.
I scrambled forward, searching for the safety of the grass and ended up tumbling off the stack and rolling onto my back, stunned senseless.
I could barely see, the aftermath of the flare making the center of my vision a bright orange blob.
But out of the corner of my bad eye, something glinted.
I reached for the object and wrapped my fingers around my athame.
With it in hand, I crawled away from the wood pile, but was tripped by my hair.
I flung the mass over my back and managed another two feet before someone yanked on it hard.
Carl had a hank of it wrapped around his fist and used it to drag me back toward the wood pile that was now ablaze. I leaned away, trying to escape my fate, and realized that I had salvation literally in my hand.
Using my body weight to pull my hair taut, I cut across it with the knife. The blade was so sharp it swept through the strands cleanly.
I landed on my ass, and Carl fell forward into the fire.
Bear rose up from the shadows and pushed Carl back in when he tried to stumble out.
Against the backdrop of flames, Carl laughed and pushed to his feet. “ You think you won?” He turned to me and taunted, “ Say goodbye to Beth .”
And with that, he tipped backwards, and was engulfed in the blaze.
“ No !”
One of his feet was unlit, I grabbed it and tried to pull him out of the blaze, uncaring that sparks hit my arms.
Bear grabbed my waist and flung me away from the inferno. He rose up between me and Carl .
“ Do you love him that much?”
“ I don’t love him. He can save Beth . Please ?”
I love you. His words echoed in my memories.
“ Please ?”
Carl’s laughter was little more than a wheeze.