Mist upon the Marsh: The Story of Nessa and Cassie (20 page)

“And after that?” said Nessa.

“After that, Mama found a boyfriend – now her husband, the infamous Tommy Wells. Moved to his house on LeMontagne Boulevard. Bobby-Ray was always on me for money; so I dropped out of school, and started work full-time at the diner. I wanted – oh, I wanted so bad to leave him – but I couldn’t get by on my own. So I stayed with him seven years.” She looked again at her hands; but this time she wasn’t sure why. “But that last time, after I left the clinic, feeling just about the lowest and dirtiest dog I’ll wager anyone ever felt – I left Bobby-Ray for good. I went almost six months ago to stay with Birdie and Tommy.” She sighed heavily. “And there I am still. I didn’t think I could take Mama so long – but when you’ve got nowhere else to go, I suppose you become a little more tolerant.”

She tried to laugh; but of their own volition her shoulders began to shake; and when she reached up to touch her face, sensing an irksome substance there, she found it soaked with tears. Yet still she strove for laughter, and said in a voice more broken than she had wished for it to be: “It all sounds like one of those Lifetime movies, doesn’t it? The ones that come on during the day? Low budgets, bad actors. A really awful one! The kind you can’t even stand to watch all the way through.”

“I don’t exactly know what that means,” said Nessa, “but I’m sure that you’re right.”

This time, Cassie’s laugh was successful. She had not even, really, to try; it only sprang up into her throat, filled her mouth, and was emptied out into the silent, waiting air.

Chapter XXII:

A Fine Fellow’s Finger

T
hey sat for a while longer on the stump, till the sun sank down past its capability to wreak havoc on tear-filled eyes. But even in its absence, Cassie remained with her face hidden against Nessa’s neck, with breath so slow and patient, she might very well have been asleep. There came a time, when Nessa was quite convinced that she was. So finally she laid a hand against the side of her face, and kissed her forehead gently, to rouse her from her slumber. Cassie smiled, and rose up with her. She made no argument as Nessa settled her into the passenger seat, and took her keys from her pocket. As the engine rolled over, and the car began quietly its humming vibration, she laid her head against the window, and seemed to drift off again.

She slept till the car mounted the hind end of Junction Road. She sat for a little, slumped down in the seat, with her forehead pressed to the window; saying nothing and seeing even less.

“I have a question for you,” said Nessa finally.

“And what would that be?”

“Rather a simple one, I think – nothing too very out of the way. I only wonder, if the Joe that your sister mentioned, is quite the same Joe as your Mr Clocker mentioned?”

“One and the same.”

“Did you know him well?”

“Pretty well, you could say. I used to sing for him.”

“I’m sure that made him very happy.”

Cassie laughed. “You’ve never even
heard
me sing.”

“Well, I’m sure that it’s wonderful – just the same as everything else about you.”

Cassie laughed, and shook her head at Nessa; then smiled through a thin settling of melancholy, as she recollected Joe Clocker. “He was a good boy,” she said. “Only a little younger than Embie. I think they would have been – well, I think they would have got on well, had they ever both been released.”

“What happened to him?”

“He used to have these fits. He – well, he would think he saw something coming for him, coming out of the shadows. Medication helped some, but not enough. One morning the nurses ran in, when they heard his roommate screaming. He’d managed to puncture the screen over the windows, and string himself up by a tube sock, to one of the old metal latches.”

“I’m sorry, Cassie. That’s terrible.”

“You’re telling me,” said Cassie, drying her face. “What gets me the most, is that he had such a good heart! Why is it always the good ones who suffer the most? Why don’t the evil ever pay?”

Nessa shook her head, truly at a loss. “I don’t know, Cassie. I really don’t know.”

They went on for a while in silence. The moonbeams fell gently through the windshield, to ward away the harsh blackness, and replace it with a soft white. The trees ran dark at either side of the road, rushing like high rivers with floating banks, rushing down, down towards the sea.

Nessa became so infatuated with these black rivers, curving with so much strength and fortitude beneath the silver sky, that she did not notice at first the odd sort of
smell emanating from her right-hand. But finally she turned her head, and sniffed the air; and looked at Cassie.

Her face was stuck fast to the window. She was watching as a small trailer park slid past; and seemed unable to disconnect her eyes from it.

The last was just before I left my boyfriend’s trailer.

Nessa lifted her foot from the accelerator, and turned her attention to the trailer park. Cassie seemed not even to notice the decrease in speed.

His name was Bobby-Ray.

I told you about Bobby-Ray, didn’t I?

Still, Nessa could detect that strange smell; and it seemed, almost without a doubt, to be lifting from Cassie’s own skin. It was the smell of terror; of sweat and fearful exertion, with an underlying layer of rage, held down so far that it could never emerge; could never, never emerge, not so far as to keep her safe; but present enough, and evident enough, for Nessa to realise. It was a smell hidden just beneath the skin; pushed down just so far, just so far as to make obvious, that it was originated not so very long ago; nowhere near so long ago as the six months she had claimed. More recently than that. So recently; and Nessa had not been there to stop it.

She swerved past the shoulder, and into the gravel. She sat for a moment, shaking with fury, nearly panting; but then leant towards Cassie, clutched her tightly, and breathed her in. She pressed her face to her throat, where his stinking lips had touched. Oh, she had tried with all her might to scrub them away; and indeed, hardly any but Nessa’s own nose could have perceived them. But perceive them she did.

She burst from the car, and pounded swiftly across the gravel. The scent was caught in her nostrils; and she was searching for it, searching for it upon the air.

She heard Cassie call her name. But there was no stopping her, and there was no catching her. She flew as with wings through a break in the black river, and emerged on its opposite bank, at the high chain-link fence of the trailer park. She scaled it in an instant, and began again to pound, across new ground, new gravel.

She sniffed the air constantly, searching for the scent. The park was filled with the smell of filth, and alcohol; and these were so very strong, that it was somewhat difficult to sift anything from such a foul collection; but she ran on, and pressed her palms to each trailer, and breathed deeply the odours that wafted from the screens of each window, each door.

Finally, finally – through the open door of an old blue structure, which was propped up on blocks, Nessa found the scent. Plain as the rising of the morning sun, or the drifting of the trustworthy moon towards its place of repose in the nighttime sky – that plainly did she know herself successful.

She darted through the doorway, and into the trailer. All was, as anyone could have suspected, in absolute shambles. The floor was covered with muddy boot prints; clothes, on which the scent of putrid sweat could be clearly detected, were strewn everywhere; the small galley kitchen was filled with pots re-used, and re-used, but never washed; the table by the noisy refrigerator was covered with food new and old (the distinction between which could not be so easily made). Long strips of fly paper hung down from the ceiling.

Robert Raymond Williams sat sleeping in his recliner, settled stained and snoring before a blaring television set. The smell of him, taken first from Cassie’s anxious
perspiration, hung heavy on the air; and Nessa could do nothing at all to keep herself from flashing across the room, and taking the stinking man up in her hands. To the wall she pinned him, and the entire trailer shook, threatening to spring free from its concrete supports.

Bobby-Ray’s eyes snapped open; and they grew wide and terrified, as he looked into Nessa’s wild face.

“Hello, Bobby-Ray.”

“M-ma’am,” stammered Bobby-Ray.

Nessa lifted him higher, and slammed him against the wall. He shrieked.

“I’ve come to say one thing to you,” said Nessa; “and one thing only. So listen!”

She raised him even higher. He looked down into her eyes, which crashed in that moment with all the rolling fury of the sea; and cried, “Wh-what are you?”

“That’s no matter, Bobby-Ray. Be
silent!”

“Y-yes, ma’am.”

“You are acquainted with a friend of mine,” said Nessa. “I am sure you are quite familiar, with one Cassie MacAdam? Oh, I know you are!” She brought his face down near to hers; and bared her teeth, grown sharp against her lip. “You will leave her alone,” she growled. “You will let her be. You will never see her again. Do you understand?”

Through the persistent fear of his countenance, there came then also a sort of indignation, which could not be wholly eradicated even by the threat of such bodily harm.

“Now, you hold on a minute,” he said, waving a finger in Nessa’s face. “Now –

n-now, Cassie’s my girl – and I’m her man. So don’t you – don’t you g-go gettin’ all high and mighty on me, you see? You see? There, you see.”

Nessa snapped her teeth; and in an instant, his waggling finger had disappeared. She spit it down onto the floor.

The young man began to scream. So Nessa tightened her fist round his throat; and chuckled, as his face turned to blue. She thrust his head against the wall.

“The cops,” he choked. “I’ll call – the cops – on your crazy ass!”

“They won’t believe you,” said Nessa. “And I will be gone before you wake.”

He frowned confusedly, with a face changed now to purple.

“You let Cassie be,” repeated Nessa. “If you don’t – well, I will come back, and you will lose all the rest of your fingers. Do you
understand?”

He nodded weakly; and a moment later, his purple face slumped forward against Nessa’s hand. She dropped him to the floor, where he lay motionless.

“I suppose you’ll have something of a headache in the morning,” muttered Nessa. “And that hand may require a few stitches. But, other than that – you shouldn’t feel a thing.”

She gave Bobby-Ray a swift kick to the stomach; and then turned to depart.

Cassie stood by the door, with eyes pried wide open. She looked to Bobby-Ray, whose face (although certainly he was not aware of it) was finally taking on again the natural colour of flesh. Then she looked to his blood-smeared hand; and the blood-smeared finger, which had rolled some feet away, and come to a stop in the dust beneath the television stand.

Her eyes swung a final time, up to Nessa’s face; and she fainted.

~

It was a good long while before she woke. Nessa carried her from the trailer, and into the shadows beside the chain-link; then quickly to the car, which Nessa directed immediately from the scene. She paused at the first convenience store they passed, and went in for a bottle of pop, which she used to wash the remnants and foul flavour of Bobby-Ray Williams’s blood from her mouth. She sat for a little, looking at Cassie’s face, still and peaceful in the colourful glow of several neon signs, there in the store window.

When her eyes finally opened, she looked incomprehensively at Nessa. But quickly she remembered; and quickly she started up in her seat, to press her back against the door.

“Don’t tell me you’re frightened,” said Nessa.

Cassie shook her head. “I’m not.”

“Then what is it?”

“I only – I mean – I –”

She took a deep breath.

“What are you?”

Nessa rolled her eyes, and looked out the window. “Perhaps you’ve more in common with Bobby-Ray than you like to think,” she said. “Maybe I’ve only done you a disservice, after all. Perhaps I should have left you to yourselves!”

“That’s not fair, Nessa.”

“Nothing is
fair,
Cassie! Oh – just forget it. I’m leaving.”

She got out of the car, and looked around. A dense patch of greenery caught her eye, there behind the little store. She would change her shape there. She was not so very far from home.

“Nessa! Wait!”

She looked over her shoulder, and saw Cassie running towards her. She gazed coolly upon her, as she came to clutch at her hands, and look into her face.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, Nessa! What more can I say?”

“Nothing at all,” said Nessa. “I think that would be best.”

“Damn it, Nessa!” said Cassie, stamping her foot. “This isn’t all my fault, you know. It’s obvious there are things you haven’t told me!”

“And things that I still can’t. I have to go. Just – just go home!”

Again she started for the darkness, which seemed to shy a little more each moment from the flooding white light of the lot. The farther she walked, the farther she in fact seemed from her destination; and so when she looked back once more, and saw Cassie still staring after her miserably, she turned round, and started back to the car.

She caught up Cassie’s hand, and dragged her along behind her. “I want to take you somewhere,” she said. “I want to tell you something. Will you come?”

Cassie nodded.

“All right, then,” said Nessa. “I’m driving.”