Embracing Darkness (74 page)

Even if the Hartley girl stayed true to her word to never speak of her rape, Zachary wanted Sue Ellen dead for an even better reason as he saw it. Having learned that she was pregnant, he knew the child was his and would stop at nothing to make sure that he would never be responsible for bringing another male into this world.

Observing Sue Ellen falling down the stairs again, Zachary assumed that she was trying to beat him to it by trying to cause her own miscarriage, but this wasn’t good enough for him. She needed to die, and he got an erection at the thought of killing her.

Zachary quickly went back up to his bedroom to grab his pig mask. He pulled the satchel out from under his bed and began emptying the contents feverishly. Out came over a dozen marbles, the slingshot he’d had since he was a boy, and the journal whose contents told of everything he had done, and would soon contain what he was about to do. Finally the mask for which he’d been searching fell out onto the bed. He slowly went for it, gripped the supple flesh between his fingers and brought it up to his lips. When he reemerged into the night air, Sue Ellen had already gone back inside.

Just as her foot touched the first step to go upstairs to her bedroom, there came a quiet knock at the front door. Sue Ellen was startled and turned around to face the door. She saw a shadow through the side panel of glass as it moved away. Reaching for the knob, she called out, “Who is it?” her voice cracking. There was no response. She cleared her throat and asked again. For some reason she assumed that it was one of the boys playing a trick.

As Sue Ellen opened the door, two hands seized her by the throat. She tried to scream, but her attacker quickly tightened his grip, squeezing so hard that she could make only gurgling noises. He yanked her outside to the porch, forced her to the floor, and sat on her stomach. With the help of the porch light Sue Ellen was able to see the hideous pig mask. She attempted again to scream, but Zachary Black used all his strength to squeeze the last bit of life out of her.

Before her body finally went limp, Sue Ellen was able to pull the mask off her attacker. Behind the pig’s grotesque features was the handsome face of the man with whom she’d fallen in love, the same one who was now killing both her and the child he had begotten in her. While she mouthed his name silently, Jack White continued squeezing her neck as hard as he could.

“Come to Zachary, little piggy,” he said, grinning fiendishly at Sue Ellen as her life ebbed away. “Come to me.”

Even after Sue Ellen’s body went limp, he throttled her for several more seconds. He knew she was dead, but the enjoyment he felt from strangling her gave him a greater sexual pleasure than raping her had. He finally released his grip and violently threw her down, causing the back of her head to slam hard against the porch’s floorboards. The sound reverberated over the hill.

Zachary Black stood there a while with his feet on either side of Sue Ellen’s head. The insides of his boots pressed up tightly against her ears, and as he stepped forward several strands of long hair were pulled from her head. Retrieving the pig mask, he stepped over Sue Ellen’s corpse and calmly returned to the rectory. His erection had since subsided, and he now felt relaxed enough to go back to bed.

Twenty-Six
Duty Calls
 

It was on the sunniest and warmest of October mornings that friends and family of Sue Ellen Hartley came together at Eternal Rest Cemetery on the edge of town. Among those in attendance were Walt Hartley, his sister Jane, her husband Milton, and their daughters Fiona and Alice. Friends made up the majority of those who came to pay their last respects. Among the neighbors were Father Poole, Jessie Benson, Theo Thomas, Jordan St. James, Lou Conner, Gabe Sparks, Charlie Ryder, and I. To our surprise Captain Ransom also attended the service.

Conspicuously absent was Jack White. The boys and I expected to see him from the time we’d all gone downstairs into the common room dressed in our Sunday best to wait for Father Poole and Jessie. As we left the rectory and began down the hill together, we attempted to see where the stranger could be.

“Oh boy!” exclaimed Lou. “He’s not coming.”

“Good!” replied Charlie. “I don’t wanna see him.”

“He shouldn’t come anyway,” said Gabe. “No one likes him.”

Father Poole stopped walking. As the leader of the St. Andrew’s delegation of mourners, he turned and gave us a disapproving glance. “There is no room for anger today,” he told us. “A dear friend of ours is lost to us forever. And we’d do well to remember that, however much the Romans tortured Jesus, he loved and forgave them for their transgressions.”

Before asking us to bow our heads for what he called a simple prayer, Father Poole had some practical counsel. “Children,” he began. “If any strangers ask who you are, or if anyone you know but haven’t seen for some time asks where you’ve been, tell them you work for me at St. Andrews. That’s all. Jessie, the same goes for you. You’re a niece of mine visiting from Portsmouth. Now we’re going to a Protestant funeral, so I won’t be in charge. Therefore, I’d like us to say a little prayer for Sue Ellen Hartley consistent with our Catholicism.”

This last remark caused Jordan, Theo, and me to jeer. With the exception of Father Poole, none of us was Catholic.

“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

All but Jessie, Theo, and Jordan made the Sign of the Cross as Father Fin began. “Dear Lord, we call upon You to watch over the eternal soul of our dear friend and neighbor, Sue Ellen Hartley, who has been taken so prematurely from us. We pray that the Blessed Virgin Mother also watch over Sue Ellen’s father, as he is now alone. We pray that Jesus give him the strength to persevere in his time of grief.”

This prayer was anything but simple. As the youngest of us began to fidget, the older ones lifted their heads, unlocked their interlaced fingers, and even began humming softly to themselves. After another two minutes Jessie let out a loud sigh, causing Father Poole to stop for a brief moment. He put an erect index finger against his lips to hush her. She responded by rolling her eyes.

“Well then,” said Father Poole, resuming our journey down the hill.

“Why did he make it sound like we just have to accept Swell’s death?” asked Lou as we followed Father Fin. “Why can’t we be angry about it? I mean, someone killed her. Why can’t we pray to God that the cops will catch the killer?”

“That’s because there is no God,” said Jessie calmly.

“No God would have let Ziggy die like that,” added Gabe, “
or
Swell.”

“Yeah,” I said softly. “There can be no God.”

“I think
we
let Ziggy die,” remarked Jordan.

“That was an accident,” replied Jessie. “And I’ve told you guys already that you can’t blame yourselves.”

We didn’t need to worry about speaking low enough so that Father Poole wouldn’t hear us. Since Jessie’s rude interruption during his prayer, he had begun walking about twenty feet ahead of us. By the time we made it halfway down the hill, we’d gotten Jack White completely out of our heads and had stopped looking out for him altogether.

Dwight Mason didn’t like the idea of putting the Nazi uniform in his shop window, but he was persuaded by his brother-in-law who’d been in France some months earlier and got it off a general who had died during a skirmish in the hallway of a brothel.

The brother-in-law had been enjoying the pleasure of a French whore’s company one night when all of a sudden he heard a ruckus in the hallway. He got out of bed and went to the door of the bedroom. Upon further investigation he noticed a Nazi officer of high rank beating a whore who, as much as the brother-in-law could make out from his minimal French, had done nothing more than reject the officer’s advances until he’d arranged payment with the establishment’s madame.

Without thinking twice, the young officer picked up the empty bottle of wine that he’d downed earlier, ran up to the officer, and smashed him over the head with it. The German fell, unconscious, onto the whore, who in turn screamed and pushed the limp Nazi off her. His body fell over the railing onto the staircase below. The brother-in-law immediately ran downstairs and felt the German’s neck and wrist for a pulse. Deeming the Nazi to be dead, he called up to the whore, “
Il
est
mort!
”

After much debate in loud voices to accommodate for the lack of mutual comprehension of each other’s language, the brother-in-law and the madame agreed that since the German had come alone, no one apparently knowing he’d been there, they would bury the body out back. The American, however, wanted a souvenir that would knock the socks off everyone back home. He removed the Nazi officer’s uniform and tall black boots for shipment to Holly.

Dwight backed up from the display window of Mason’s General Store and stared at the mannequin attired in the black uniform and boots. He shook his head while his wife was still in the display window fixing the officer’s cap atop the mannequin’s head.

“What?” she asked while placing a price tag on top of the cap.

“I think this is an insult to every American who died fighting these bastards.”

Mrs. Mason was accustomed to not listening to her husband and doing as she pleased, yet nothing seemed worse to Dwight at that moment than allowing his wife to put a Nazi officer’s uniform in the store window, complete with swastika armband, medals of honor, and shiny black dress boots. He hoped that it would sell quickly, and so it did.

Zachary Black had come into town after realizing that the hill, with the exception of Mrs. Keats, was deserted. He grabbed an apple from the barrel just outside the store, not intending to pay for it. As he took the first bite, something caught his eye in the window. The shine of the black boots and the white and red of the armband, contrasting with the black of the uniform, immediately grabbed Zachary’s attention. He’d read extensively about the Nazis and their treatment of Jews living in areas that the Nazis now controlled. He took another bite of his apple and circled the uniform in an attempt to locate the price. He came across the white tag that showed
$20.00
. He happened to have the exact amount in his pocket.

“I just want to get rid of it, you understand,” said Dwight to Zachary Black. “I don’t want people thinking I’m anti-American or pro-German. I just want it out of here.”

Zachary threw his money down on the counter. “Twenty dollars for everything, I believe was the sign I saw in the window. Give it to me.”

Dwight remembered this strange man from a few months back and hadn’t liked the look of him then. Now that the man was purchasing a Nazi uniform, Dwight mistrusted him even more. “But the customer is always right,” said Dwight to himself as he mounted the step ladder in the window and slowly handed over to Zachary the boots, cap, breeches and coat.

Zachary Black began removing his dirty clothes in the middle of the store, intending to don the uniform then and there. Dwight thought it fortunate that Mason’s General was completely devoid of customers.

“Are those boots ready?” snapped Zachary Black, who had already put on the breeches and coat.

Dwight Mason promptly handed them over to his customer.

After slipping on his new boots, which reached to just below his knees, Zachary walked to a long mirror off to the side of the store’s counter. Putting the cap on his head, Zachary saw just how menacing he looked.

He then noticed Dwight standing behind him, stupefied. Without so much as turning around, Zachary stared at the young man in the mirror. The two locked eyes for several moments, yellow eyes fixed on blue ones, and soon Dwight began to tremble slightly.

The ceremony of Sue Ellen Hartley’s funeral was routine. Reverend Alfred Baines of the First Congregationalist Church of Holly, where my own parents were members, prayed and croaked out the usual eulogy. Father Poole seemed uneasy, no doubt due to his surprise at the attendance of Captain Ransom, who would indubitably question the cleric about all these children he brought to the funeral, just as soon as the opportunity presented itself. We all bowed our heads as Reverend Baines blessed the soul of Sue Ellen one last time and walked to her coffin with a handful of dirt and paused there to sprinkle it on top of the casket.

As I stared into nothingness, as was my wont when I wanted to be somewhere else than where I found myself, I saw a fresh grave not more than four yards from Sue Ellen’s. The name engraved on the stone in large, plain lettering read PATCH. It was where little Ziggy had been buried just weeks before. The ground was lumpy because it was still settling over the coffin. Although his first name had not yet been etched into the stone, I knew this was where Ziggy had been laid to rest. Under the surname was ELIZA 1928 and next to it DOUGLAS 1923
.
I assumed that these were Ziggy’s grandparents. Ziggy’s mother and father probably didn’t have enough money for the boy’s own plot, so this was the best way to give their son a proper Christian burial at minimal expense to the family.

In the background I could hear Reverend Baines droning on about the evils of man, the Resurrection of the Lord, the importance of brotherhood, and a whole lot of other rubbish to which neither I nor my brothers and sister paid any mind. I kept my eyes on that tiny mound of dirt at the PATCH plot, thinking about what lay beneath the soil and wrestling with the guilt I felt for Ziggy’s death.

Suddenly a pair of boots stepped on top of the mound of dirt over the little boy’s body. They were tall black boots, shiny as a brand new nickel, and they stomped on the mound with force. I was stunned to see that they were the feet of none other than the man we’d come to know as Jack White. The way he was dressed was a shock as everyone saw a Nazi officer standing on top of a fresh grave and eating an apple.

The uniformed stranger smiled and arched his eyebrows in the direction of Reverend Baines as if to say, “Don’t let me disturb you, preacher. By all means please continue
.
” More likely Jack White had in mind Father Poole, who was standing next to Reverend Baines, and was probably thinking, “You can’t control me, Father Fin. Did you really think you could?”