The Bleeding Season (35 page)

The only emotion I felt now was growing anger.  “Look, the woman I told you about, the one Bernard attacked when they were teenagers, she acted the same way you do.  Like there’s some big fucking secret everyone knows except me, and I’m sick and tired of it.  I want to know what’s happening.  I want to know what all this means.  And I don’t give a shit what kind of strings are attached to it, you understand me?”

“Oh,
I
 understand,” she said.  “You just better hope you do.”

Claudia lingered near the counter and folded her arms across her chest, crushing her breasts together in a swell that revealed a considerable amount of cleavage and created the illusion that she was bustier than she was.  The pose, and its result, were executed in a wholly blasé manner and had not been intended as a means of affecting me.  She clearly could not have cared less if I took notice or not.

“That’s the problem with people like you,” she said in her throaty voice.  “You want and think everything’s out in the open—explained and seen and safe.  Things are only like that on the surface.  The real world is the one underneath.  The one I moved in for years.  The one Bernard moved in.  That world’s different.  It’s shadows.”  

I nodded.  “Then show me the shadows, Claudia.”

She grimaced but quickly masked it, as if specters of what lived in those shadows had suddenly flashed before her.  “I got into drugs real early in life, had a lot of problems,” she said.  “I lived with my grandma, she always took care of me.  She was the only one who ever gave a shit about me.  When she died I was only twelve, and I pretty much been on my own ever since.  Met my mom a few times when I was a kid, but never really knew her.  Wouldn’t know my father if I fell over him.  My mom died when I was nine.  Somebody strangled her and threw her in a dumpster in Fall River.  I found out later she was a drug addict and a hooker, my mom.  Apple don’t fall far from the tree, right?  I had nothing, no family, only the system, and when you’re a kid going through that—foster homes, shelters and halfway houses—all that bullshit—you can just slip away and let the world take you.  And nobody cares.  See, unless you kill somebody, try to kill yourself or do something real bad, the system can’t be bothered.  It’s not about helping people, only punishing them, so until you do something the system thinks needs punishing, they got nothing for you.  Thing is, there’s so many runaways, lost and fucked up kids, and so many real crimes and shit that the cops can’t cover it all.  Half the time they don’t even go through the motions, and kids like me just fade away.  We either die or we survive.  Period.  Either way, it ain’t pretty.

“So I’m my mother’s daughter, right?” she continued a moment later.  “It don’t take long.  The streets love girls like me, swallow them right up.  One fucking gulp and you’re gone.  And it’s like a maze, you know?  You go a little ways before you get stuck, only there’s always somebody there to take you by the hand…or the hair or the throat…to take you to that next level.  And on and on.  ‘Cause they never tell you the only way out of that maze is death or fucking insanity, and that’s only if you get real lucky, because the deeper you get, the meaner and darker those shadows get.  And the Devil, he gets closer. So close you can feel him.  It’s his game, his maze.  That’s how he works.  Devil don’t want you to fear him until it’s too late to get out from under him.  Like a trap, you know?  No cheese, no motherfucking mouse.”  She looked at me with a hard stare.  “It’s tough to understand if you’re a mark.  No offense, but—”

“None taken.”

“I’ll try to put it in a way that’ll make sense to you.”  A thoughtful pause, and then, “You ever watch porn?”

I hadn’t expected the question but answered it honestly anyway.  “Well, I’m not an aficionado or anything but I’ve seen it before, sure.”

“It’s kind of like that,” she said.  “Works the same way.  Pulls you in, but slow.  Gradually.  It don’t want you to fear it at first.  It’s fun.  Be happy.  No harm.  And for a lot of people that’s just how it is, they get whatever it is they get from it and walk away.  But some don’t.  Some can’t, and those are the ones the world wants.  Starts with a little T&A, then it gets harder.  Pretty soon straight sex gets boring, right?  Seen it a million times.  Been there, done that.  So you wonder, what else you got?  And the Devil, he’s got plenty.  He offers it, and you look.  A little while in you’re watching shit you never would’ve believed could turn you on.  Fantasies you keep pushed way down because they’re more powerful than you are.  But now they’re on the loose and you want more.  You want to see what else they can do to that cunt in the pictures or in the movie, in the magazine or on the web site.  Cum on her face, piss on her, shit on her, get a dog, let’s see the bitch fuck it—how about a horse?  Rape the little slut, beat her ass, cut her throat and watch her bleed.  And one day—”

“Christ almighty, I get the point.”

“
And one day
,” she said again, “you realize the person you were is gone, and somebody else is there instead.  Somebody as mean and dark as the shadows you’re living in.  Somebody who forgets and then doesn’t care that on the other end there’s a person too.  And what you don’t see is all the shit that person went through to get that far in, to do things so fucked up.  Not a picture or a movie but a fucking human being.  Or what’s left of one.  And the Devil, he just smiles.  ‘Cause by then he’s got you both.”

I was unsure of what to say.  Picturing Bernard with this woman required a healthy dose of imagination.  It seemed outside the realm of possibility that he could have manipulated someone as savvy and streetwise as Claudia.  But if manipulation hadn’t been the culprit, then what was?  I hadn’t expected her to open up to this extent, to pour out her life history as if she’d been waiting for years to have the opportunity to do so, and I still wasn’t sure what any of this had to do with Bernard.  What I knew for sure was that her pain was palpable, so hideous and utterly her own that it had become as much a facet of her being as any physical characteristic.  Regardless of who or what she had been, was now, or hoped to be, she was demanding respect, and I gave her mine.

“So you drown in it,” she said.  “You close your eyes and you drown in it, and all of a sudden life’s not about survival anymore.  You stop giving a shit.  You open your veins and slide in whatever gets you through the day or night, and you wonder every time you stick that spike in if that’ll be the time you don’t ever wake up.  Before long you start to pray for it.  You don’t really want to live anymore, but you’re afraid of death.  Devil’s waiting on the other side of that long sleep, right?”

“Maybe God’s waiting there instead,” I said.

“Maybe.”  Her tone was flat.  “But when you been throat-deep in evil as long as I was you ain’t about to lay money on it any time soon, you see what I’m saying?”

“You keep talking about evil.  What—cults or something?”

Claudia waved as if deflecting the words from the air between us.  “That’s always there, those kind are never far from that world.  They’re either right in the mix or hanging nearby, Satanists and those types.  I ran with people like that for a while, when I had to.  But they’re no different than the Bible-thumpers when you get right down to it, because both of them are banking on the easy answer, and both are convinced they’re right.  Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t.  All I know is that evil is whatever it needs to be.  It’s not a simple answer like both sides of that old fight want it to be.”  She leaned back against the counter and crossed her feet out in front of her, at the ankle.  A long time ago, she might have looked demure and childlike in such a stance.  “The truth is deeper, beyond all that other stuff.  The truth is that evil is different for everybody.  That’s the power, and that’s why it preys on Man.  It’s the perfect predator because it’s totally individual.  It touches everybody, no matter your religion or belief, and it does it on your terms, whatever they are.  So how do you stop something that manifests itself in totally different forms to different people, that can be anything to anyone; that can be whatever you need it to be?  It knows who we are, our fears and worries and dreams, our weaknesses and strengths, and it uses it to twist its way through our fucking minds and bodies.  And when you get past all the formal crap on both sides and you look closer, you figure out that Evil doesn’t give a shit who you are or what Church you go to, what you do or what you don’t do.  None of that matters, because it’s coming for you anyway.  And you can’t stop it.  All you can do is learn to deal with it, to keep it caged up more than you don’t.   Because just like good, it’s inside of us, it’s a part of us, and you can’t just cut it loose.  Like they say, personal demons, right?  Well that’s exactly what they are.”

I remembered Julie Henderson, the crucifixes in her windows, and how she’d told me that they were “her reality,” and therefore worked for her.

“That’s what you see when you get beyond the cults and bullshit and see evil for what it really is.  It doesn’t give a shit about rules or laws or books written by either side, ‘cause that’s just the point.  There are no fucking sides.  There’s the light and the dark.  They just are what they are, and somewhere along the line somebody or something decided to drop us all right into the middle of it.  From there, you draw your lines in the sand and fight your fights, whatever they are.  Or you close your eyes and let one or the other take you.”  Claudia drifted closer to the table.  “By the time I was in my mid-twenties I was already too old for the crowd I’d been running with, the crowd that owned me.  I’d been through the blood and gore and sex and crazy-ass shit and I was still here.  Used up, drugged out.  That’s when that world tosses you aside and they go looking for the next wave of twelve-year-olds.  So I did what I’d been doing for years, I peddled my ass.  I stopped running with any crowd, just kept pumping shit into my veins and started working the streets to pay for it, all the while hoping sooner or later my body would give out and the shit would just take me, let me drift off to wherever the fuck I was going.

“Did that for years,” she continued.  “Ended up doing a lot of time in jail, and one two-year stretch in prison for drug possession and prostitution.  Figured out quick that prison makes jail look like a fucking motel.  Ain’t much to do inside besides fuck with people, get fucked with, eat pussy or read.  I learned everything I could while I was inside, read everything.  Some people find God in prison.  Some find the Devil.  I found my brain.  Hadn’t used it since my grandma died.  But it still wasn’t enough, ‘cause the nightmares never stop.  The shit I saw and did, the shit that happened to me again and again, it wouldn’t ever go away.  And when they finally let me out they just pushed me right back out onto the street.  So I ended up where I was before, shooting up and selling my ass to pay for it.  Fucking zombie.  Still part of the dark.  Still a piece of shit on the bottom of somebody’s shoe.  I’d known some scary motherfuckers, some seriously evil bastards.  But they knew how fucked up they were, they got off on it.  I figured by then I’d seen it all, wouldn’t nothing surprise me or show me any corner of the dark I hadn’t seen.”  She clutched the back of the chair across from me, applying a grip that turned her knuckles white.  “And then one night I met Bernard.”

CHAPTER 26

A mosaic of memories regarding Bernard unexpectedly appeared in my mind, though this time they were random—his face, a smile, quick flickers of trivial past events—a reflexive parade of flashes and subconscious recollections of no particular import.  They grew fainter the moment Claudia continued speaking.

“The first time I saw him it was just after dark.  He was cruising Weld Square.  A lot of the girls on the street knew him on sight as a regular, he cruised the square three, four times a week.  I hadn’t worked that area in a long time and I’d only just started working it again, so I had no idea who he was, but a lot of the girls liked him, said he was an easy date, never any hassle, always paid and usually just wanted head or a straight lay.  They all saw him as the harmless lonely heart type, you know?  The kind who’d take you out to breakfast afterward or try to be your friend.  The kind you can string along, work for extra cash or whatever.  I was in his car ten seconds and figured him for a pure mark, and let me tell you something, Plato, I’m not wrong very often.  I had way too much experience to misread people, especially men, and in that world a fuck-up can cost you your life.  But I was wrong about him.  Totally wrong.”  She spun the chair around so that it faced her then straddled it and sat like a rebellious teenager.  “Bernard played up the sad sack image, and same as the other girls, I bought it at first.  Like I told you, he was a trickster.  That’s what Bernard did.  He deceived.  But every now and then he’d let his guard down, the mask would slip a little and you’d see pieces of the demon behind it.”

The sun shifted in the sky, betrayed by a fresh beam of light that crept from the front of the cottage and struck a small section of kitchen just over Claudia’s shoulder.  There must have also been a slight breeze, as ash from an ashtray on the counter momentarily swirled and flew a few inches into the air before gracefully spiraling to the floor like tiny black snowflakes.      

“I’m sure you know what I mean,” she said.

“Yeah,” I answered.  “But I guess I just never knew there was anything behind that mask besides an eccentric, sad and lonely guy.  A childlike, harmless sort of guy.”

“You and everybody else.  And that’s what he found his power in.
Deception
.”  Claudia scowled.  “The only thing behind Bernard’s mask was evil.  I know.  I saw it.” She reached into her back pocket, pulled out a red bandana and mopped her forehead with it.  “Fucking hot,” she mumbled.  She moved the rag to her neck then slid it across her chest, over the tops of her breasts and between them, soaking up the perspiration as she went.  “Bernard got to be one of my regulars.  I built up a group of them.  They’d call me and we’d meet on neutral ground for dates.  It was easier and safer than walking the street, and these were clients I knew I could count on to pay me and not give me a hard fucking time.  Bernard was a steady for a couple weeks before we really started to get to know each other.  He had this dork side to him but there was something else there too.  It was below the surface and it took me a while to see it, but once I did I knew he was more than just some stupid mark like the rest of them.  There was shit going on behind those eyes, you know?  In that head.”  Another far off look overtook her as she absently wiped herself with the bandana.  “When you’re in the life, and especially if you’ve walked the darker roads out there, you get like this radar almost, this sense where you just know when you come across somebody else who’s been there too.  Everybody who’s been in the dark—the real dark—has a way about them, and we can see it in each other.  It don’t go away no matter how far from the dark you run.  It’s always with you, like a brand.  Kind of like the way all us jailbirds can pick each other off.  I can spot somebody who did hard time in a second, and they can spot me.  Same thing.  I knew Bernard was moving in the darkness, knew he was more than he pretended to be, and I knew he had some sort of plan, too.  People in the dark always got some sort of plan.  Most of them never pull it off because the dark has a way of beating you down to where you just don’t give a shit anymore, but I could tell Bernard wasn’t like that.  The dark didn’t control him like it did me and all the others I knew.
He
controlled
it
.”  She dropped the sweat stained bandana on the table.  “And that told me something very important about him.  It told me he wasn’t new to the dark, that he’d been moving in it and mastering it for a long time.  Years.  Nobody who moves in the dark is ever that confident unless they’ve been there for years.