Her eyes fluttered like a startled moth. Her arms stretched toward the headboard, revealing a porcelain armpit and the side of her chest through the open nightshirt sleeve. “Mornin’ sunshine.”
TINK.
She froze. “What was that?”
TINK.
“The window,” I said. We stood on my bed and bounced to the sill.
A.J. was fifteen feet below, waving his hands, beckoning us to the woods.
“He looks excited,” Mara said.
“Doesn’t this kid have parents?” I asked.
A.J. flailed his arms, gestured to the trees, then dashed into the brush.
I hopped off the bed, snatched a pair of shorts from the floor, and wiggled them under my nightshirt.
“James!” she said.
“Stay here.” I opened the door, scanned the parlor to assure my family wasn’t privy to the stowaway in my bed, then bolted through the room, down the stairs, out the door, and around the back of the castle.
Mara was behind me, still in her nightshirt, crunching leaves in my mother’s sandals. “I’m coming with!” she said and deftly hurdled a log.
I knew it was dangerous. I knew it was stupid to let her follow. But I was happy to have her at my side.
We arrived at the clearing below our windows. No sign of A.J.
“Age!” I shouted.
“A.J.!” she yelled.
I cupped my hands around my mouth. “A–!”
“Wait!” Mara cut me short. “Look at this!”
I spun around. Floating six inches from her face was a white slipper. “What the heck?” I shuffled through a patch of ferns and stopped at her side.
“It’s from my old pajamas...” she said.
The bootie was laced through a branch with fishing wire. I tore it down, branch included.
“There’s more,” she said, pointing deeper into the woods. It was an arm, part of the same outfit, dangling in the open air.
I grit my teeth, jumped for the fabric, and yanked it from the tree.
“Don’t go, James,” she said.
“I’m gonna kill that asshole.” I noticed another fabric arm at the top of The Great Divide and made my way up the mound.
Mara scrambled to keep up. I tossed back the first arm, then stared down the gulch. “A.J.!” I yelled. “I’m gonna tear your face off your skull!”
I took Mara’s hand. Together, we found solid footing and dodged thorny weeds and prickers. Two dangling legs led us halfway down the incline, and a frayed zipper signaled us to stop on a narrow path on the side of the bluff. The fishing wire was caked with dried worm guts; this was the first piece that A.J. hung.
CLINK.
“Now what?” Mara asked.
I glanced up the hill to see how far we came. Too far to turn back, I thought.
CLINK. It was the sound of metal on metal, not twenty feet down the path.
“Don’t follow him. It’s what he wants.”
“I’ll take care of him,” I said. “You stay here. For real this time.”
She nodded. “Careful, kay?”
“I’m always careful.”
I followed the path to a clearing the size of my bedroom. A green ladder rose from the ground to a camouflaged deer stand strapped to an oak tree. Trent was leaning against the rungs, unarmed, a warped lid to a garbage can strapped to his chest like body armor.
Danny was kneeling at the center of the clearing. His hunting vest hung from his arms like dead, neon flesh. My old camera was on a tripod, watching me. A cat struggled to free itself from the bully’s tremendous grip. It was Dorothy.
“Let her go, Danny.” I stepped forward... so did Trent.
Dorothy thrashed–back arching until her ears touched her tail–then surrendered, reluctantly, to Danny’s impossible hold. I saw the source of the metallic clink. In the bully’s left hand, a Zippo lighter; in his right, a firecracker, stolen–no doubt–from the night we filmed the war scene.
“Danny!” I shouted, but Trent was on top of me in eight brisk stomps. He grabbed my nightshirt’s collar and held me against his chest. Behind him, in the shadows between the trees, A.J. stood with his eyes on the ground.
“Age...” I said. But he didn’t look up.
Without a word or chance to bargain, Danny’s nose puckered against his lips. He flipped Dorothy belly-up, held her ribcage beneath his pit, and forced the firecracker into her anus. She trashed wildly, dicing his left wrist with her claws, then he lit the fuse.
I screamed. I beat my fists into Trent’s chest.
Danny clenched the shrieking cat, turned his head, closed his eyes.
Behind me, Mara gasped.
* * *
The explosion was muffled, but the damage was clear.
Danny dropped the cat and snatched the camera by the tripod. His eyes were locked on the girl behind me, clenched in a steel scowl. “Let’s go,” he said to the others, then looked away and scampered into the brush.
Trent looked at Dorothy, her front paws swimming wildly above her, then back at me. I saw in his expression a glimmer of sadness as if he didn’t believe Danny would actually go through with it. He released my collar, veered a wide circle around the dying cat, and ran away.
I looked past the deer stand and through the trees; A.J. was gone too.
To call an event “indescribable” usually shows the writer’s lack of imagination. But how does one recall in writing the absolute decimation of a little girl? What word other than “indescribable” befits the horror in the heart of the boy who loves her? How does one use the word “shriek” to capture the sound a cat makes when it’s tail is dangling by a dirt-crusted tendon?
There was no consolation, no words of encouragement I could offer as Mara scooped up her writhing cat, her arms soaking the blood from it’s open rear.
I tried to touch her shoulder but she pushed me away. She clasped her hands, bowed before the cat and blood and God, and she prayed.
“Mara...” I said.
She crossed herself. She opened her eyes and looked at the cat as if the healing-power of prayer would be instantaneous. She rubbed Dorothy’s matted mane to calm her. And when it became clear that the prayer wouldn’t work, she bit her lower lip, closed her eyes, and sang.
It was a simple tune, a lullaby this time, familiar, though I couldn’t hear the words.
My mind pushed back the vile sight to make room for the nuance of Mara’s quivering voice. In the moment, I suppose I assumed Mara was trying to sing Dorothy to sleep, but then she stopped, grabbed my hand, and pulled me to my knees. “Make it work, James,” she said, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes, leaping to her cheek with every blink.
“Make what work?” I asked.
“I have powers, you said. I’m special. If I’m special, how do I fix her?” She turned back, hair curtaining her face, naked knees pressing divots in the dirt. And from her lips came a soothing rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, her gentle vibrato besting Judy Garland with every note.
Mara scrunched her face as if she was bending spoons. Her hands hovered over Dorothy, stroked Dorothy, shook and shook and shook Dorothy as she poured her special powers–the best she knew how–into healing her pet.
Her voice never wavered, but by the end of the last verse, the cat was dead.
* * *
We buried Dorothy away from the clearing, two-feet down through a mess of roots and leaves. We laid beside her the shredded pajama that lured us into the trap. We smoothed the dirt with our palms, christened the ground with our tears, then sat together on the incline.
Mara saw it first. Her wet eyes were focused on a distant object, through the trees, just above the horizon. I followed her gaze and saw it too–curved exactly as she imagined, half-covered in evergreen trees, a cylindrical building on top of a dune–the hill from her drawings.
9. NIGHT TERRORS AND THE FLOODED CONFESSIONAL
We told Mom about Danny. We had to. I explained the incident the best I could
, though I cried through the gory parts and used the word “dickface” at least once while describing A.J.’s betrayal.
“You sweet, darling girl,” Mom said, sobbing for Mara and holding her close.
“I’m okay, Mrs. Parker,” she replied as if declining a second helping of potatoes. “Dorothy was a special cat, but I’ll be fine!”
Dad talked Mom out of filing a police report, claiming Danny was a disturbed little boy who only needed a push in the right direction... not jail time. He even offered to call Danny’s uncle to recommend a psychologist. “To help control the violent impulses,” he said.
“It’s not just Danny,” Livy added. “Sometimes, I hear voices in the woods...”
With Mom’s supervision, Dad armed himself with a crowbar and overalls and marched to the mysterious hideout as if he actually had a clue. I stood on my bed between Mara and Livy. Together, we watched my Dad putter around the trees as if he lost a contact. Mom pointed to a fresh candy wrapper and a trio of discarded pop cans. They peered down The Great Divide, then inspected the view of Mara’s window from various positions among the trees. Dad used the crowbar to pry the wooden rungs from the trunks.
Until the grownups deemed the property safe, Mara wasn’t allowed out of the house without supervision, and I wasn’t allowed to ride my bike to Whit’s.
“The weather man’s predicting storms all week,” Mom told us that evening. “We’ll order pizza and camp in the tower! I know how much you love watching the lightning over the lake!” It was a nice offer, but nothing could compensate for the dead pet and castle lockdown.
An hour later, I overheard a phone call between Mom and Mr. Anderson. Whenever we went on vacation, the social worker was Mom’s go-to friend for emergency respite care. She asked him if he and his wife could take Fantasia for the week, a testament to her underlying fear.
(There were three nights between our adventures; three nights of sleeping with the remains of Mara’s wonderful smell. The first night, her imprint was still visible in the sheets like the taut white texture of a perfect snow angel.)
Mara awoke the next morning and dressed herself as if Dorothy had never died, tapping hangers on closet rods to the beat of the FM stereo, gargling, rinsing, spitting... just like any other day. She wore her smile so easily that I found myself drawn to her usual giddiness, not mortified by the memory of Dorothy’s inside-out asshole or the clouds looming on the horizon.
The Fairytale premiere was twelve days away. Arrangements were being made whether the movie was done or not. Mom used her meager artistic abilities to fashion invitations out of card stock and decorative strips of old 8mm negatives.
“Meet James Parker,
writer, director and editor of ‘Fairytale!’
Screening at the Grand Harbor Community Center
hourly during the Lakeshore Celebration Art Show!
Premieres Thursday, August 25!”
“That’s an awful lot of exclamation points,” I said.
“There’s a lot to be excited about!” Mom replied.
The movie was the only way to beat Ryan Brosh. If it was a blockbuster, Mara would pick me. Every scene–every shot and sound effect and line of dialogue–would culminate into the vision that had lived in my head since the beginning, and she would marvel at my writing ability and my directing ability and the killer production value.
The movie was the only way to beat Ryan... and I had let Danny distract me.
(On the second night, the smell of Mara’s moisturized skin still clung to the fibers of my pillow, but my restless sleep had loosened her shape from the sheets. Outside, it began to rain.)
As if to reiterate the Fairytale deadline, Mom scheduled a back-to-school shopping trip to distract us from the buried cat. Mrs. Greenfield came too and helped Mara pick out a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper with a hot-pink kitten on the front. “To remind you of the good times,” she said.
As Mara hopscotched across the laminated tiles from the pens to the markers to the triple-hole punches, Livy seemed unusually fixated on her. When Mara discovered the perfect pencil box, Livy scoured the shelves for one just like it.
My sister wasn’t the only person with her eye on Mara. One man, twenty-something, accidentally plowed his shoulder into a rack of backpacks because he was more interested in a twelve-year-old girl than his path through the aisle... reminding me again that “Mara” and “public” don’t jive well.
Mom and Mara broke into their own clique and meandered toward the jewelry cases. “Isn’t back-to-school shopping fun with the kids?” Mom asked.
Livy and Mrs. Greenfield joined them at the earring display. Livy worked a pair of sterling-silver hoops through her lobes and dangled them in front of Mara. “Cute?”
“Totally cute!” Mara replied and twirled the display. “I wish I had piercings. The social workers won’t allow it.”
Livy looked to Mom. “Hey, Ma,” she said. “Are these cute?”
She nodded. “Very!”
“Think I should get ‘em?”
“That’s what allowances are for!”
Livy rolled her eyes, but decided they were worth the eight bucks.
The outing concluded with a power surge. A peal of thunder shook our check-out lane, and for ten seconds, the lights went out. Livy screamed. The rest of us laughed.
That evening, Mrs. Conrad braved the rain and dropped Whit off at the castle for some much-needed editing time. In my room, he tossed a cellophane bag of white powder on my lap. “Released it early,” he said. “It’s sellin’ like crazy.”
“Who’s buyin’?” I asked.
“Nerds from computer camp.”
I read the price tag. “Two bucks a pop?”
“First taste is free,” he said. “Best-friend discount.”
I laughed, then dropped the sweet temptation in my dresser drawer and slammed it shut. “I haven’t touched candy in a month,” I said.
Whit finagled a mess of cords from the hammock beneath his chair. “My VCR broke,” he said and plopped the wires beside the TV.
“What? How?”
“You left an open bottle of cola next to it.”
“And you spilled it?”
“Looks like we’re stuck with your equipment.”
I held up the wires and spread them between my hands like a mangled spider web. Composite cables, S-Video cables, a giant phone cord... “What am I supposed to do with all these?” I asked.
“Extras. We gotta finish this thing in less than two weeks, so I brought the works.”
I showed my friend a rough cut of the first five minutes of our film (though I turned away during the opening monologue with Dorothy). As The Girl approached the entrance to the Red Room, I paused the video and awaited Whit’s response.
He picked up his left thigh and manually crossed it over his right. The motion gave him an aura of awkward sophistication. “It’s good,” he said. “It’s really, really good.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Now we gotta finish it.”
(The rain was unrelenting on the third night. As the lightning threw tree-branch shadows across my walls, I pressed my nostrils against the mattress and breathed her fading scent. At one AM, the real Mara woke up screaming in the opposite room.)
Four days after Dorothy’s death, as the sun was still hiding beneath the horizon and the rain was still spilling in broken reams from the gutters, Mara made her escape.
* * *
She wore a cream-colored tank top, my favorite with the thin, vertical pleats. Her shorts were denim with purple stitching, a broken belt-loop, and a hole in the back left pocket. Braided pigtails brushed her collarbone. A taupe bath towel served as a homemade knapsack, tied at the top, bulging with the bare necessities as if she was a cartoon runaway.
“Mara?” I rubbed my eyes and took a second step into the parlor.
“Shit,” she whispered. Her shoulders fell slack and she turned around.
“Mornin’ to you too.”
“Go back to bed,
James.” Her eyes jumped between me–standing like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man in my undies and plain-white tee–and the gate to the foyer stairwell.
“Are you runnin’ away?” I asked.
She took another step toward the stairs, then hesitated. “I don’t care if you tattle, but can you give me a ten-minute head start?”
“Wait...” I shook my head to fight the sleepiness, then asked, “Where are you going?”
She groaned, took my wrist, and hauled me back to my room.
“What?”
“You’re gonna wake Livy.”
“Tell me where you’re going.”
Mara’s body responded with a series of micro-spasms in her knees and neck. “I had the dream again.”
“The one with the hill?”
“James... it’s time.”
I blinked. Mara still looked like a kid, but her voice carried a somber undertone; a tone usually earned after years upon years of life experience. “Time?” I asked.
“Today’s the day, James. And I need to go alone.”
“No!”
She covered my mouth with her palm.
I lowered my voice and blurted through her fingers. “You’re not really going up there–”
Her eyes were frantic; scanning my room as if chasing an invisible fly. “Please don’t tell your parents,” she said.
“It’s five in the morning!”
“I need to go.”
“It was just a dream!”
Mara didn’t respond, but looked at me as if I was crazy.
“It’s sunny in all your pictures,” I said.
“In my dream last night... it was raining.”
“You can’t go in the woods by yourself.”
“I’m not afraid of bullies.”
“Mom’ll kill you when you get back.”
“James,” she said and squeezed my shoulder. “I’m not coming back.”
There was a madness in Mara’s gaze that suggested I shouldn’t doubt her. Whether or not her dreams were prophetic, all that mattered was that she believed them.
“I’m going with you,” I said, then burrowed through my laundry basket for a pair of shorts.
“James, you can’t–”
“There were two stick figures in your drawings. If something’s really gonna happen on that hill, maybe the other person is me.”
* * *
“Watch for worms,” Mara said as we made our way across the paver-brick drive. “They sneak from the cracks when it rains.”