Embracing Darkness (58 page)

The continued barking from General Lee caused the man to turn his attention briefly away from Billy and Jessie. When he stared steadily at the dog, the barking turned into a ferocious growl. General Lee showed the stranger his teeth in a wicked snarl that Jessie had never seen him do before.

“General!” she said loudly. “What’s the matter with you? Stop. You’ll wake Sis!”

“You would do well to control your animal,” Jack White snapped. His smile was gone now. “Dogs like that have been known to get a bullet in their heads for much less. Maybe he’s got the rabies. Maybe I need to be the one to put that bullet through his brain.”

Billy cocked his head at the man and said angrily, “You keep away from her, the dog, and me. Do you understand?” Billy didn’t know it, but his index finger was prodding White’s bare chest.

The man’s arm swung up and knocked Billy’s hand away. He then grabbed hold of Billy’s hair and threw him over the stairs and off the porch. Jessie screamed for him to stop, causing General Lee to start jumping up against the glass.

The stranger jumped from the top step onto the grass, as if aiming to land on Billy’s head. Billy moved just in time, but Jack White still pursued him and seized the boy by the throat. Squeezing it tightly, he said in a hissing whisper, “Nobody touches me, boy! Nobody!”

Billy couldn’t break free of the man’s grip on his neck. He writhed on the ground, trying to pry the man’s hands off, but White merely shook his head and tightened his stranglehold even more. Incredibly, White didn’t appear to be using that much force on the boy, yet it was enough to cause Billy to squeal and struggle.

“Looks like you got shit for brains, piggy,” he whispered to Billy. “NOBODY TOUCHES ME!” he repeated loudly.

Billy was turning blue. When Jessie leaped off the porch and onto the man’s back, he released his right hand from Billy’s throat, threw his arm up, and corkscrewed his body so violently to the right that Jessie flew into the rose bush by the front porch ten feet away.

The stranger was now strangling the boy with one hand. “Now Billy,” he said calmly and patronizingly. “Put both hands at your side, and I’ll only squeeze a little more as payment in full for your touching me. Keep fighting, and I’ll kill you.”

Billy was on the verge of passing out. The boy’s hands fell to his side, and the stranger squeezed a few seconds longer. Then, feeling Billy’s heartbeat in his neck begin to slow, he released his grip and tossed Billy’s neck aside.

“Good boy,” Jack White mocked.

Jessie crawled over to Billy, who was unconscious. While she placed Billy’s head on her lap and stroked his cheek, a shadow loomed over them, eclipsing the sun whose rising she and Billy had watched just a few hours before. The man looked at Jessie, and she at him. His face was hard to make out. The glare of the sun behind him obscured his expression.

“He’s going to be
very
sorry he did that, missy.”

“My name’s Jessie,” she said bravely, and bent forward to bring her face closer to Billy’s.

“Oh, yes. Jessie. I remember… Jessica.”

He left them alone on the front lawn of the Benson house and walked back to the rectory. Jessie didn’t take her eyes off him for one second. This time it wasn’t out of titillation but rather sheer hatred. She watched as he paused near the rectory’s entrance and tilted his head to the left, as if looking at the lattice that covered the hole to the crawlspace. She prayed that he’d go no further, fearful that he’d catch Sue Ellen down there with one of her clients.

As the man continued up the stairs, Jessie gave a sigh of relief. Contrary to what she supposed, however, Jack White knew all too well what was going on beyond the lattice under the rectory. He was just getting warmed up.

Jessie waited until Billy came to a few seconds later, by which time the stranger had slipped behind the front door of the rectory. The two teenagers made it up the stairs to the Benson porch. Jessie told Billy to relax while she went through the kitchen window next to the table, which she and Sister had always kept unlatched in case either one of them ever got locked out of the house.

At the back window Jessie hopped up onto some empty crates that Argyle Hobbs, Father Poole, and Sister used to carry groceries and supplies up the hill from town. After pushing up the sill about halfway and crawling through the space, she hit the floor with a crash, landing on one of the table’s chairs. General Lee stormed into the kitchen, almost as aggressive as he had been a few minutes before, but quickly acknowledged that it was Jessie and began licking her face.

“Come on,” she said, laughing. “Stop, General! You’ll wake up Sis.” She then froze, thinking of how Sister Ignatius amid all the recent commotion had never once emerged from her room or called to Jessie from the stairs.

Without wasting another second, Jessie ran upstairs, forgetting that Billy was waiting for her on the porch. When she opened the door to the nun’s room, Sister Ignatius lay there in bed and appeared to be asleep. Jessie drew closer, checking to see whether Sister’s chest was moving up and down as proof that she was indeed breathing. She was.

Jessie exhaled sharply in relief and, sitting on the edge of the bed, nudged her. Sister didn’t respond, so she nudged harder. It was apparent to Jessie that the entire Allied Army could have been in the Benson house that morning, along with every act of P.T. Barnum’s circus, and nothing would have stirred this woman from her slumber.

“Sis,” Jessie said, shaking the nun by the shoulder. “Wake up.” There was no response, yet the nun was still breathing.

Getting nervous, Jessie drew back toward the door, still observing that Sister was not responding. She was ready to sprint across the summit to get Father Fin when suddenly she heard Sister Ignatius moan and attempt to turn over onto her side.

At the bedside again Jessie said, “Sis, are you awake?”

Sister Ignatius opened her eyes halfway. At first she only groaned before managing to say, “I can’t.”

“Can’t what, Sis?” asked Jessie, but received no response.

The nun was asleep again or had lost consciousness. Whatever the reason, she looked like a ghost, and Jessie was afraid for her.

Jessie said softly, “I’ll be right back, Sis. I’m gonna get Father Fin.”

“This doesn’t come as a surprise to me,” Father Poole said, as he paced the floor of the rectory’s common room. “What you’ve just described is how I left her last night. I was by her bed until nearly four this morning. She’s getting worse, Jess. I wanted to keep the severity of her condition a secret from you all because I didn’t want to upset anyone.”

He turned away from her to peak out the window and then continued, “She’s been like this for a few days now. I’ve had Dr. Honigmann’s colleague, a Dr. Walsh come up three times already from town. The first time he said that it looked like exhaustion. The second time, after she’d started having headaches almost every day, he told me that it could be migraines. He came up again the other day. It was bad enough that she wasn’t getting out of bed anymore except to go to the bathroom, but now with her asleep almost the entire day I’m worried. Dr. Walsh says that he’s not sure what it could be, but he wants us to get a second opinion.”

Jessie didn’t know what to say. “What makes a person turn into a breathing but lifeless doll?” she cried, putting her arms around his waist.

“I don’t know, Jess, but I
do
know that there’s a reason for everything. I don’t know what it could be. Only God knows that.”

Jessie pulled away and said angrily, “Go into the church, Father Fin. Tell God to take it back and make Sis well again. He can do that! He’s done bigger things! You told me once that He made the world in six days. Jesus brought people back to life, didn’t he? They can do anything. After all, He’s God, and Jesus is God’s son.”

“Jess,” The priest whispered. “It doesn’t work like that. You remember how I said that we’re all put upon the earth as a test?”

She nodded.

“Well,” he continued, “it’s just like that. God can’t interfere with our actions because He has to test our will, our strength, and our faith.”

“But Sis is a religious person. Shouldn’t He save her?”

“Jessie, try to understand.”

She pushed him away and backed up slowly. ‘I understand, Father Fin. There isn’t any God. God is a lie. Either that or He just doesn’t give a shit.”

“JESSICA!” he said firmly.

“I’m going to go into the church to pray for Sis, Father Fin. And if she gets better, then I’ll believe there’s a God. And if she… .”

She couldn’t bring herself to say the word at first but then completed her sentence: “If she dies, then I’ll know that everything about God is a lie.” Sobbing, she ran out of the room.

From the top of the stairs, just outside his bedroom, Jack White stood there, as stationary as a Roman statue, and smiled.

“Oh, he’s just dreamy!” Swell said to Jessie as the two sat on Jessie’s bed. Swell peeked out the window above the headboard, unable to take her eyes off bare-chested Jack White, who was outside chopping more wood.

“He’s alright,” Jessie said, paying little attention to what her friend was saying.

“ALRIGHT?” Swell erupted. “I’ll have you know, Miss Jessica Benson, that that fox is the most beautiful boy I have ever seen in my entire life!”

“He’s not a boy; he’s a man,” Jessie said.

“I think he likes me too,” added Swell, ignoring Jessie. “He’s even been giving me little gifts here and there. He told me not to tell anyone, but I didn’t think it would hurt if I told you.”

Jessie said nothing.

“Oh, Jess! He gave me a chocolate last Sunday. It was mint cream inside, my favorite. I have no idea how he knew that! Then, I think it was Monday, he bought me an ice cream, but by the time he gave it to me it had nearly melted.”

“I’m surprised it wasn’t all cream by the time he got it up here,” replied Jessie.

Sue Ellen giggled. “Oh, he didn’t give it to me up here. We saw each other in town.”

“You did?” said Jessie.

“Uh-huh,” answered Swell. “He said he’d noticed me and run to get me a nice ice cream, but by the time he came out of the store I’d already left. He spent ten minutes looking for me around town just to give me an ice-cream cone, the poor guy.”

“He just
happened
to see you in town?” asked Jessie. “Are you sure he wasn’t following you?”

“It’s a small town,” snapped Sue Ellen. “You can see the same people walking by in the evening as you did in the morning. Oh, Jack White is the
sweetest
!”

The way Swell said “
sweetest
” made Jessie cringe. She knew how Sue Ellen was, how she’d always seen her and Jessie’s friendship as sort of a rivalry. Jessie figured that if she told Swell that Jack White was dangerous, or that she didn’t trust him, Swell would accuse Jessie of being jealous of the stranger’s attentions.

“He’s been giving me all sorts of things,” Swell repeated, her smile fading as she began to reflect on the other gifts Jack White had given her.

“Look,” Jessie said, sitting up on the bed. “Just don’t accept any more things from this guy. There’s something about him I don’t like.”

Jessie was sure that Sue Ellen was going to play the jealous card on her, but Swell remained in a slightly preoccupied state. She remembered how her presents from the stranger began as sweet things and then graduated to strange if not scary objects. Somewhere in the middle was the stem of a rose complete with thorns but missing all its petals. Attached to the stem, which he’d left on top of her bed, was a poem:

As I dream, I dream of you.

There is a thing I want to do.

I want to take you.

I want to feel you.

I want to love you

Through and through.

Come to me so I can love you.

Love you again and again,

Until you are blue.

Then there was a black wreath he’d left on the inside of her bedroom door. After that came a dead chipmunk, crudely mummified, as White had done it himself. He’d given to her in person, telling her to keep it in a safe place and never to part with it.

Sue Ellen remembered dropping the box containing the dead chipmunk after she’d opened it. While she covered her mouth with her hands to quiet her screams, and perhaps also to keep from throwing up, he knelt down and took the animal out of the box.

“I made this especially for you,” he had told her. “I’d love for you to hang this up somewhere where you’ll see it every day. It’ll be fun to see the expressions on people’s faces when they see it.”

Swell didn’t want to admit it to herself, but it was disturbing to wake up in the morning with a black wreath on the door and the carcass of a small rodent on her wall. Jack White had demanded that she keep the wreath on her bedroom door so that every morning, when she awakened, it would be the first thing she’d see and remind her of him. During the day, of course, it would be hidden when her bedroom door stayed open. It thus would be their little secret.

Jessie thought about warning Swell further about Jack White, but she let the matter go. She was too concerned about Sister Ignatius’s condition to focus on other problems, least of all Sue Ellen’s problematic love life.

Jessie went back to lying on her stomach on the bed and stared off into space. Swell closed her eyes and shook her head, no longer daydreaming. She sighed as she once again found herself gawking at Jack White outside.

“I would just DIE if he were to see me staring at him,” Swell said in such a low voice that Jessie barely heard what she’d said.

As soon as the words had left Sue Ellen’s mouth, the stranger turned around slowly and looked up at Jessie’s window, as if he’d heard what had just been said. Swell gasped and ducked down, causing the mattress to bounce.

Jessie didn’t move a muscle. She just lay there, her head supported by her hand as her elbow dug deep into the mattress.

“What is the matter with you, Jess?” Swell said to her friend, who was visibly lost in a dream. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “I know what it is. “JESSIE’S IN LOVE!”

“What are you talking about?”