All Who Wander Are Lost (An Icarus Fell Novel) (37 page)

I stuck my finger
in my mouth and chewed at it until I felt the tiny, intrusive piece
of wood on my tongue and spit it out. A line of saliva dribbled down
my chin; I wiped it on the sleeve of my shirt and continued my
climb.

Reaching the
pinnacle of the up-turned pew, I perched for a few seconds, my face
inches from the stained glass. My breath fogged its surface like it
would any glass and the surety I’d felt this was my path back
to Hell took a hit. I touched it with my recently-slivered finger:
solid, but not as solid as a window should be.

Breathed a sigh of
relief, fogging the glass again.

Carefully, aware of
the precarious nature of standing atop an upended pew leaned against
a free-standing wall, I stood. To make sure my finger hadn’t
misinterpreted what it felt, I placed the toe of my shoe against the
window. It passed through sending a tingling warmth flowing up my
leg. I smiled and leaned closer to the glass. The thick, colored
glass of the window hid the crowd gathered on the sidewalk from me,
leaving me unsure whether they saw me or not.

What the Hell.

I spread my arms to
the sides the way Father Dominic made me do for punishment as a
child under his care, leaned my head back and hoped the man with
whom I’d spoken got his view of Jesus.

I fell forward
through the stained glass into Hell.

†‡†

The shack’s
open door gaped at Poe like the toothless maw of a prehistoric
beast. Why a building like this stood abandoned in the forest near
the railroad tracks, she didn’t know. The neighborhood kids
told stories of a hermit who called it home decades before; a
desperate, out-of-work soul banished from his home when the bank
foreclosed during the stock market crash. The same kids said his
ghost haunted the shack, appearing during the new moon with night at
its darkest.

Poe didn’t
believe it, not when she was one of those kids and certainly not
now. She’d always thought the shack had been erected as a
playhouse for someone’s beloved daughter, or perhaps as an
over-sized shed which had outlived its use. None of these
possibilities frightened her—not even the ghost story—but
what actually happened to her here did.

She stared at the
splintered boards, the rusted hinges, the weeds growing rampant at
the base of its walls, and shuddered. More than four decades had
passed since she last saw Hell’s rendition of this horrible
place, and two decades before that since she’d actually been
there, but the latent memory lived in her body, festered in her
mind.

“
Piper,
I--”

She turned to the
woman, intending to ask her to take her away, but her words ceased
when she saw the raven-haired Piper no longer stood beside her.

Instead, she looked
up into the face of Aaron Baxter.

Poe was always
smaller than the other kids, and in the spring of 1946—when
the world still breathed its sigh of relief for the end of the
war—she stood more than a head shorter than the older boy. She
was twelve and Aaron was sixteen. His cousin, whose name she never
knew, was older and bigger. He loomed behind Aaron, leering at Poe a
look she hadn’t seen before at that point of her life but had
seen far too many times since.

On that spring day
in 1946, she wasn’t afraid, not immediately. Of all the kids
in the neighborhood, Aaron Baxter was one of the few who was nice to
her—maybe not nice, exactly, but not mean—and she liked
him for it. His wavy blond hair and piercing blue eyes didn’t
hurt, either. His unnamed cousin looked like he hailed from a
distant branch of the family tree: dark hair and dark eyes, thick
chest, a crooked nose, a cruel tilt to his mouth.

“
Hi,
Aaron,” she heard herself say.

Panic unfurled
inside Poe because she knew it should, but resignation easily
overcame it. She’d been to this corner of Hell before and knew
it unchangeable—she’d tried a hundred times before.

“
Hey,
Paula.”

Her name before she
became Poe, a name she’d neither heard nor wanted to hear in a
very long time.

“
This
is my cousin. He just moved to town.”

“
Hi.”

The bigger boy
tilted his head and grunted.

Poe gritted her
teeth at the sound of Paula’s voice, at the innocence it held
and the underlying longing to be at least accepted, if not liked.
Shrill, girly and joyous, but underneath it screamed to the boys to
like her. The sound of it made Poe’s stomach clench.

“
I
was going to show him the hermit’s shack. Want to come?”

No. Nonononono.

“
Sure.”

They strode toward
the shed, a boy on each side of her. Paula enjoyed their presence
close to her; Poe saw their positioning for what it was: to keep her
from running away. The thought never occurred to Paula.

She stepped through
the doorway first and inhaled the smells: must, rotted wood, bare
dirt. Aaron’s cousin wore cologne, she remembered.
Half-an-hour later, when the reek of the boys’ freshly let
blood overpowered the aroma of the wood and the dirt, she would
still smell the cologne.

The boys stepped in
behind her and one of them closed the door. With her back to them,
she never knew which one shut it but hoped it was the cousin, not
Aaron. It was easier to bear thinking the boy she knew had been
there against his will, that somewhere under the violence he’d
actually liked her. Poe suspected it wasn’t the case.

“
It’s
dark,” Paula said.

She
faced the boys and saw their expressions silhouetted in the daylight
creeping through the cracks between the boards. They looked like
they might have been in one of those monster movies:
Dracula,
Frankenstein, The Wolfman.
Her
mother didn’t want her to see such things, but she’d
sneaked into a matinee. By herself. Even with the light hitting
their faces, highlighting their expressions that were neither joy
nor friendship; Paula still wasn’t afraid.

She didn’t
know what lust looked like.

Run away. Get
out while you can.

The words raced
through Poe’s mind despite their futility. She knew they’d
make no difference. In a moment, the knife would be out and they
would be on her.

The next few
minutes blurred into confusion for the young girl, but Poe relived
every emotion, every feeling, every agonizing second. First, the
surprise and concern at seeing the knife, but Paula brushed those
feelings aside; surely the boys were playing. It was even exciting
when Aaron grabbed her developing breast, though it hurt a little.

“
No,”
Paula said, brushing his hand away like a lady is supposed to do.

Aaron pushed her
and she tumbled to the ground, landing hard on her bum. Her skirt
flew up revealing white panties beneath. Poe remembered choosing her
outfit on that Saturday morning in the spring of 1946. She didn’t
have many outfits to choose from, but she always wore her best on
the weekend, when she might see some of the other kids, especially
the ones she wanted to like her, like Aaron Baxter.

A sliver of concern
entered Paula’s thoughts but she convinced herself it was an
accident. Aaron didn’t mean for her to fall, didn’t want
to hurt her. But she had no time to think before he was sitting on
her, straddling her hips, leaning forward to pin her arms. The feel
of him against her made her excited and the thought of crying out
never occurred to her. He moved his face close to hers; she smelled
the tuna salad he’d eaten for lunch, felt the warmth of his
breath against her cheek. She fought the urge to stretch her neck
forward and put her lips on his.

Paula reveled in
the new feelings of the boy’s attention until she felt the
cousin’s hands under her skirt tearing the white panties
brusquely off. Panic rose in her—he wasn’t supposed to
do that. His hands groped her secret areas, his fingers found her
places as Aaron Baxter sat on her, holding her down.

She screamed once,
then the cold steel of the pocket knife against the flesh of her
throat stopped her, threatened to cut her with every sob, every hard
swallow.

The next few
minutes came to Poe in disjointed snatches, like time lapse
photography with some of the frames missing.

Bare flesh against
bare flesh.

Aaron’s
forearm over her mouth; her tongue tasting the dirty flannel of his
shirt.

Pain exploding
between her legs.

Sobbing.

The knife
carelessly on the ground beside her as the two boys traded spots.

Her fingers
wrapping unnoticed around the knife; the blade sinking into the
cousin’s throat, into a vein called the jugular which Paula
found by accident because she hadn’t learned about it in
school yet; cousin screaming; Paula jumping to her feet.

Aaron reached for
her, pants around his ankles so she saw his thing—the first
and last time in her life she’d seen one. His feet caught in
his pants and he stumbled. The tip of the knife entered his eye and
found its way into his brain.

Poe felt empty
inside, helpless.

Paula
stutter-stepped away from the two boys lying on the dirt floor.
Their blood looked black in the dim light. It was on them, in the
dirt; it covered the knife, her hands. It felt tacky on her face.
She sank to the ground pulling shuddering breaths through her
clenched throat.

“
Don’t
do it.”

Poe heard her own
voice and Paula seemed to pause for a second as if she’d heard
a whisper. Poe tried to repeat it but nothing came out.

Paula hung her
head. Her private place between her legs throbbed and ached, her
heart threatened to explode and add her own lifeblood to that of the
boys muddying the shack’s dirt floor.

“
Why?”
she squeaked. Snot bubbled at her nose, tears washed blood down her
cheeks.

She only wanted to
be liked.

Paula breathed a
sharp breath through her teeth as the keen edge of the blade cut
easily into the soft flesh of her wrist. She closed her eyes and
drifted to sleep.

When Poe opened her
eyes, she stood under the trees outside the shed. She looked down at
her hands: they were clean. A slight spring breeze rustled the
leaves on the trees overhead, stirred the skirt hanging around her
knees and brought with it the scent of cologne.

Paula turned her
head and looked up at Aaron Baxter.

Bruce
Blake-All Who Wander Are Lost

Hell is a pain in
the ass.

I tumbled through
the stained glass window-portal and hit the ground hard, jarring my
shoulder and sending a jolt of pain down my arm. I laid in the dirt,
groaning, cheek pressed against the ground, until I realized this
probably wasn’t the best way to be in Hell. I didn’t
know where I was or who was around, so I untangled myself and
climbed to my feet.

No burbling creek
ran nearby like the last time I went through the window with Piper.
No ferryman to be paid, no city looming on a distant horizon.

On the bright
side, maybe I won’t get bit.

On the
not-so-bright side, I had no idea where I’d ended up or how to
get where I needed to go—wherever that was.