Mist upon the Marsh: The Story of Nessa and Cassie (4 page)

“Well?” said the waitress.

“Of course,” said Nessa, coming finally to her senses. “We are all very grateful to you, I’m sure --  but still I must give you this.”

She reached into her pocket, and came out with a small roll of money. She threw rather more than seemed required, down upon the table; and then returned her eyes to the waitress, who was smiling again.

“I’ll just take the fact that
you’re
grateful,” she said, “and be happy with that.”

Nessa nodded stupidly, and slid out of the booth. Dechtire followed, but looked back at the waitress with a countenance quite identical to that which she had worn, when she looked upon the blue-haired girl. On this occasion, however, her impoliteness made Nessa somewhat cross; and so she pinched her arm, and tugged her with no little force from the diner.

“Do that once more!” warned Dechtire. “Only do it once more, and see what does happen to you!”

“Oh, shut up, Dechtire.”

“I’ve half a mind to take off this damned Turin –”

Their spat was interrupted by the voice of Caramon, which cut suddenly and cheerfully through the height of their raised voices.

“Hello, all!” said he, walking forward with a bright smile upon his face.

Nessa looked from Caramon to Orin; and said to the latter, “You’re quite good, you know.”

Orin made a low bow.

“You know,” said Caramon, “perhaps I should just go inside, and apologise –”

Nessa caught him by the arm. “I think
not,”
she said. She pushed him back into place beside the driver’s-side door, rounded the truck, and slid into the cab beside Dechtire. Orin took his seat, then, and swung the door shut after him.

Yet Caramon stood in the gravel for rather a long moment, hand poised just above the door handle. Dechtire rolled the window down, and poked her head out to ask after the cause of his hesitation.

But then there came a familiar look into his face; and all three occupants of the truck flew into a flurry. Nessa and Orin shouted for Dechtire to hurry. Dechtire jumped out of the cab, shoved Caramon into it, and then took up the place behind the wheel. There came a tic into Caramon’s left eye. He fell down into Nessa’s lap, and began violently to convulse.

“Drive!” shouted Nessa.

Dechtire slammed the truck into gear, and peeled out of the lot like a stock-car driver, flinging dirt and gravel in every direction. Fortunately, the road was empty, and there came no vehicles from either hand; for, at the speed with which Dechtire was manoeuvring the old truck (which seemed more, Nessa had to admit, than any that she herself had ever been able to wring from it), a collision most certainly would have killed at least one of them.

Next moment, the truck was racing along down Junction Road. Caramon had broken out into a cold sweat, and was flopping about on Nessa’s and Orin’s legs like an electrified fish. He seemed to be growling beneath his breath, but his teeth were jammed together as if cemented. The fingers of his right hand dug painfully into Nessa’s thigh.

“Get the Turin off of him!” said Dechtire, glancing down at him worriedly.

“I can’t take it off
now!”
returned Nessa. “We’ll all lose our eyes!”

“Then let me pull over,” pleaded Dechtire.

“No,” said Orin firmly. “We’re too close to town.”

“It’s hurting him, Orin!”

“He will have to wait!”

Orin’s voice rang so loud, and so definite, that Dechtire could not find an argument to put to him. She only continued to guide the truck in its hurtle towards the triple-junction: the left of which led West, the middle of which ran on into Baton Rouge, and the right of which wound down to Old Johnson Road. Dechtire veered precariously onto the last of these, and kept up speed as she plunged down into the lowering darkness. But then the accelerator began to stick, just as it sometimes did; and the truck glided to a stop in the middle of the road.

“Damn it!” screamed Dechtire.
“Damn it!”

Caramon’s teeth were beginning to grind together. There came a low groan from deep in his throat, that sounded as an attempt to cry out. Nessa put a hand to the back of his neck, but it only slid off again, with the slickness of the sweat.

“Do something, Dechtire!” she hollered.

Dechtire pushed open the door, and leapt into the road. She knelt down, so that she might gain some leverage upon the accelerator, as she tugged it from its sticking place. When it jolted loose, she shoved it down again; and the engine revved successfully.

“We must speak to Dahro about obtaining a new vehicle,” said Orin thoughtfully. “Goodness knows we can afford it.”

When they came near to their plot of land, Dechtire swerved early from the road, and went careering North-East through the high grass. She braked violently before the barn, and slid quickly from the cab, so as to assist with the moving of Caramon. He could
scarcely walk on his own, and needed be dragged away from the truck. Once in sight of the trees, however, Dechtire whipped the chain from round his neck; and he fell down to the ground, where his shape changed in an instant. Without a sound or a glance, he staggered to his feet, and went bounding towards the wood.

“I will go with him,” said Dechtire. She removed her Turin, and handed it to Nessa.

“Do you wish us to come?” asked Orin.

“No,” answered Dechtire. “We will be fine.”

In the blink of an eye, she added her low and loping shape to the shadows, and hurried on to gain pace with Caramon. Nessa looked after them for a moment; but then tucked Dechtire’s Turin into her pocket, and retrieved both her and Caramon’s clothing from the ground.

“Come on, then, Orin,” she said, starting for the house.

“Are you sure we should not go with them?” he asked.

“They are swift, and strong,” said Nessa. “They will be all right on their own.”

“Dechtire is not as swift or as strong as you.”

“And neither are you,” said Nessa with a smile.

Chapter V:

Birdie Post

N
ow we shall turn aside, for a moment, from the happenings at the house of Dahro. The present would be a better time than any to proceed with a short narrative concerning an individual soon to be a prominent figure in this tale, considering the fact that she is as of yet unaware of this circumstance. This lack of awareness assures us a description which is not biased by anything said or done, or thought or felt, as surely it would be, if we were to wait even several days.

It was midnight when Wiley’s Diner shuttered its windows, and locked its doors. The two cooks put the kitchen in order, and departed before the waitresses, who had still to vacuum the carpet and wipe down the tables. Working together quite as efficiently as ever, the three young women concluded their employment within the hour (having even refilled the salt and pepper shakers, and the ketchup bottles) and fled the diner as if from someplace evil and haunted. A single one of them, whose little blue nametag read Cassie, climbed into a barely-functioning Pontiac, while the remaining two clambered into an older-model Honda.

The women hollered hurried goodbyes and goodnights to one other, and then proceeded with their flight from the diner; a process that could not be completed quickly enough, and the object of which was to gain between the diner and themselves just as much distance as it was possible to gain, without accidentally passing their own homes, and having to turn about in pursuit of them.

Having gone on in the opposite direction as had her work-mates, Cassie MacAdam was heading North-bound on Junction Road. She took the West-fork, and drove along for perhaps twenty miles, before she turned into the short drive of her mother’s house: 245 LeMontagne Boulevard.

Entering the house, Cassie was blessed by a rare escape from her mother’s drunken clutches, and was graciously pardoned from her stepfather’s identical inebriated ignorance. She went slowly up the stairs at the back of the house; crept into her bedroom without a sound; and closed the door silently against any future attempts upon her valuable but scant supplies of peace and sanity.

It was Friday night. Fridays meant checks from old Wiley at noon, and a lunch-time visit to the bank, where she cashed the bit of paper for more bits of paper, which totalled four-hundred-and-eighty-dollars, all bits accounted for. The wiser thing to do, one would think, would be to deposit the check into an account, and draw upon it as needed. In reality, it would be so.

But no, this was not reality. One way or another, no matter how Cassie strove to keep it from her, Birdie ever and again attained the number to her daughter’s checking account. Armed with such information, she had on several occasions bled Cassie’s funds dry. Cassie, of course, had spoken many times with the bank manager; but he only ever looked at her with rather an idiotic expression upon his face, not quite understanding why Cassie should want to withhold the contents of her account from her own mother. And so, whether because he had disapproved of Cassie’s instructions, or simply forgotten all about them, he allowed Birdie on each and every occasion to draw on her account – despite the fact that her name was not on it.

After having been rendered destitute, more times than should have deemed excusable the murder of Birdie Post, Cassie came to a new conclusion. She bought a small lock-box (one which was, as the salesman did say, quite unbreakable) and began storing her money inside it. But only two months ago, the Pontiac’s transmission failed her, and she found her box nearly empty. What with additional expenses, which were not few (considering Birdie’s irresponsibility, and her husband’s laziness) her box was only just beginning to shake off its deathly pallor, and resume a look of health.

Presently, she locked the bedroom door, and went to the closet – in the floor of which lay a board she had broken, and then replaced, to create a small and foolproof hiding place. She removed the board, and extracted the box, whose combination she quickly dialled in. With a small smile of anticipation (every time she opened the box, she removed all its contents, and counted them over and over, in rather a miserly fashion), she opened the lid, and peered into the tiny, dark cubbyhole.

Initially, of course, she thought her lack of sight only a product of the lateness of the hour, and the darkness of the closet. So she refrained from panicking, and exited the closet calmly, so as to stand in the light which streamed in at the window. Here she held the box aloft once again, and looked for a long while inside it – though it took not very long at all to understand the state of her affairs.

Five hundred dollars, the box had contained. Quite every penny of all the money she had in the world. She looked now into the box, and saw that it was empty. She patted the wad of money in her pocket, nearly all of which would be spent within the week.

She would kill him. How had he done it? She would kill him.

With a scream of anger, she thrust the box away. It went sailing across the room, and into the wall, where it created rather a large hole in the plaster.

“I’ll kill you, Tommy!” she cried, dashing as little more than a madwoman from the room.

Tommy Wells was fast asleep, held tightly in the angelic arms of a sottish stupor, when Cassie charged into her mother’s room. Hesitating not a moment, she took up the lamp from the bedside table, and bashed him over the head with it.

“What in the blazes . . .?” shouted Birdie, brought to attention by the sound that the lamp made, when it collided with the back of Tommy’s skull. “What in the Sam Hill are you doing?”

“Your
husband
stole my money!” shrieked Cassie, waving the lamp to and fro. Its colour was white, and there could be seen clearly upon it the stain of Tommy’s blood, which seemed to be oozing now from his wound. He groaned softly, and reached for Cassie; but succeeded only in falling off of the bed, and injuring his ugly head even further with a corner of the table.

“He didn’t steal nothing,” said Birdie. “I took your damned money.”

The lamp fell from Cassie’s hand, and onto Tommy’s upturned face; where it did finally the service of rendering him unconscious. The lamp dropped down, and shattered across the hardwood floor, as Tommy slumped against the side of the bed.

“You don’t know how to crack a lock!” hollered Cassie.

“Well, I s’pose I learnt,” said Birdie.

“I’ll kill you, you filthy whore!”

Cassie flew at Birdie; but Birdie held up a hand to halt her flight, and wrapped it round her throat. “Ah ah ah,” she said. “Now, why would you want to go and do a thing like that? Only imagine, sugar, what would happen to you, if I was dead. Old Tommy here would lose the house – and you would be back living in that trailer, with that no-good Bobby-Ray Williams. Now, what you think, sugar? You missing Bobby-Ray?”

Cassie shook herself free of her mother; but allowed herself a moment of indulgence, wherein she glared at the woman so very fiercely, that should expressions have been capable of murder, as the saying goes, she would most certainly have fallen down dead.

Yet there was too much pleasure, and too much victory, in Birdie’s Revlon-smudged countenance. So Cassie turned on her heel, and fled the room.

Safe behind her own locked door, she retrieved an old guitar from the closet, and sat down upon the bed. She took her fingers to the strings, and began to sing softly.