The Bighead (36 page)

One thing was obvious,
though. Annie had a problem, a
big
problem. Self-effacement was a horrible thing,
like people who cut themselves to relieve the stress of depression.
It sickened her to see the fine, elderly woman put fire to her
skin. But—

There’s nothing I can do
about it. I can’t possibly admit that I saw it. And it’s none of my
business anyway…

Hard as it was, she’d have to leave it
at that…

Dust swirled in a tiny
dervish when she pulled open the abbey’s great front doors. No sign
of Father Alexander when she glanced down, just a few alcohol lamps
alighted.
Maybe he’s in the administration
office,
she ventured. Her steps took her
down the dusty hall. The building felt so empty. But when she
turned into the office, whose bricked-up front the priest had
knocked down just two days ago, she saw him sitting up on the desk,
smoking. His black shirt, again, was off, his modest muscles lean
and honed beneath his skin. But he looked up at her almost as if
mystified.

“
Hi,” Jerrica greeted.
“Told you I’d come.”

He nodded dejectedly. “Hi.”

“
Somebody shoot your dog?”
she tried to joke.

The priest shrugged. “I been working
my ass off downstairs, trying to sledgehammer my way through those
newer bricks we saw two days ago. It’s rough.”

But was that it? Jerrica didn’t think
so.

“
Well,” he added, “and I
found something.”

“
What?”

He shrugged again, stood up. His
pectorals glazed in sweat. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

Dumbly, she followed him, down the
main hall, to the end-room with the stairs. Along the way, she
couldn’t help but notice his back: tight skin over lined muscles,
the shrapnel scars pocking around one side like haphazard stitches.
She forced herself to look away; when she did so, however, a sharp
glint caught her eye. “Wait. What’s that?”

There was a lancet window in the
stairwell, broken out like most of the others. It faced the woods
behind the abbey, and the declining ridge. Along the decline,
though, through the trees, she deciphered the glint.

“
That looks like water,”
she observed.

“
It is. It’s the lake,”
Alexander said with no interest at all. What was bothering
him?

“
Damn, I forgot to bring my
camera again. I’d love to get a picture of it, along with the rest
of this place.”

“
Later,” he said dully.
“Right now let me show you this.”

She followed him the rest of the way
down, into sudden darkness. Smears of lights fluttered down the
hall: alcohol lamps where the priest had been working. He picked
one up, held it closer to the wall.

As she remembered, the segment of
newer bricks faced her, as though this had once been a doorway and
someone, for whatever reason, had sealed it up. “See these
strike-marks in these newer bricks?” he said pointing to the
inch-deep gouges.

“
Yeah, but we saw those
first time we came. Someone—”

“
Right,” he interrupted.
“And someone tried to break through them, probably a long time ago.
We’ve already established that.”

Jerrica’s lips pursed. What was the
big revelation? But then the priest picked something up. “Take a
look,” he said. “I found this in the corner.”

It was a pick ax.

“
We didn’t notice it the
other day because it was literally cocooned in cobwebs. I’ll bet
this thing’s been lying here for decades. And check this out.”
Alexander hefted the tool. One end of the head was a narrow
adzeblade, the other a long, sharp spike. The priest fitted the
spike-end into several of the gouges in the wall.

“
Fits perfectly,” Jerrica
noted. But she still didn’t see the mystery. “All right, that’s the
same tool that someone used to try and break down the wall. So
what?”

“
Look harder. You’re not
thinking.”

Jerrica frowned. She still didn’t get
it.

“
I’m six-foot even, a
normal sized adult male,” the priest said. “Watch.” Then he mocked
the act of taking a swing at the bricks with the pick ax. The point
of the ax landed several feet higher than the original impact
marks.

“
If a normal-sized adult
had tried to knock down this wall, the marks would be higher, up
here, see? But they’re two, maybe two and a half feet lower. Get
it?”

Now Jerrica realized what he was
saying.

Alexander lit a cigarette in the
wobbling darkness. “So unless it was a midget down here all those
years ago, trying to bust these bricks, it must’ve
been—”

“
A…
child,
” Jerrica slowly
realized.

—
| — | —

EIGHTEEN

(I)

The Bighead sat under a
mockernut tree, med-er-tate-in’, thinkin’ ’bout his psychical
placement in the you-ner-verse, he were. Somethin’
were…
weird.
Bighead, see, he hadn’t et in two days, nor had he had hisself
a nut since he corn-holed that ay-dult in the farmhouse, who was
punkin’ his kids. You-sure-ally, see, The Bighead scarfed brains’n
guts’n what not as much as he coulds, an’ any chance he had ta bust
a nut—well, he’d be alls over that like like stink on
toe-cheese.

He just weren’t interested right now,
no sir.

What were it? The Voice? The
reck-er-lecktions of his fine ol’ grandpap? His filler-soff-ical
ass-sen-sure-un into the exer-sten-shull domain? Or were it a
comber-nation’a those thingies?

Bighead didn’t know! He didn’t know
doodly-squat! He were a deformed, woods-rompin’, brain-eatin’,
pussy-bustin’ retart!

Didn’t matter, though, ’cos even
deformed, woods-rompin’, brain-eatin’ pussy-bustin’ retarts
experienced moments’a surmisin’ their state’a
self-ack-sure-ull-ization. Like Abraham Masloe’s hierarchy’a needs,
Bighead were realizin’ there were more important things ta life
than eatin’ an’ havin’ a come.

Yesterday, when he’d found
the cemetery, he’d been even more confused’n fog-headed. It were
almost like somethin’ had
guided
him there, it were. But why? Why? A cemetery? A
place where folks in the Outer World buried dead folks under the
ground when they up’n died?

Just one more thing, it were. One more
think that didn’t make a lick’a sense!

He’d slept there till mornin’ then
moved on.

Ands now he were restin’ under that
mockernut tree, starin’ inta the woods, anna big toad hopped
forward, but The Bighead didn’t even kill it. Any other time,
shore, he’d’a squished the guts outa that toad an’ sucked ’em right
up, but not today. Ands even with no pussy or cornhole ta bust,
he’d’a jacked two, three nuts out his pecker by now.

But not today.

Yeah, somethin’ were weird,
an’ gittin’ weirder. His head felt all stuffed up with fog, it did,
confusin’ him like, causin’ him ta wonder ’bout things he didn’t
even understant. Shee-it, how he wished Grandpap were still alive!
Bighead missed the stinky, crackly, white-bearded old fuck, and
that deformed li’l twig of a left arm flippin’ ’round when Grandpap
were riled about somethin’.
We’se alls put
on this here earth fer somethin’, Bighead,
the old man had said many’a time.
And
I knows now that I was put here ta fer one reason: ta raise
you.
Think about that,
boy. That’s what
I’se
was put here for. Ands one’a these days you’ll’se realize
whats
you
was put
here for…

But that were the problem,
see.

How woulds The Bighead ever
come ta know ’zactly
what
his purpose were? Grandpap couldn’t tell him
nothin’—Grandpap were dead.

But then he remembert somethin’ else
the ol’ man said ’fore he died.

You’ll’se know, son, when
the time is fit’n proper. It’ll’se come to ya when ya least ’spect
it to.
Grandpap coughed, hackin’ up a big
black goober.
It’ll come to ya like a
voice whisperin’ in yer head…

The Bighead stood up then, his aura’a
godawful stink risin’ with him. He walked on, with deliberation, he
did. Fer miles. His big feet crunchin’ through the brambles,
crackin’ falled limbs’n branches. The heat beat down on him like
hard rain, but after awhiles, he stopped.

His one big eye an’ one li’l eye
stared though the trees, never blinkin’, and that’s when he heards
it again:

The Voice:

COME.

And that’s when he sawwed it
too:

The house.

(II)

chink-chink-chink!

“
What can I do to
help?”

“
Huh?” Alexander glanced,
if a bit testily, over his shoulder before the next swing of the
pick ax. Jerrica looked bored, and drenched in sweat, standing
there in the dim lamplight. “I guess I shouldn’t have asked you to
come out; you look like you’re about to keel over from the
heat.”

“
I don’t mind,” she
replied, too politely.

The priest rested the pick-ax head on
the floor, exhaled. Not much headway, but at least with the pick ax
he was closer to breaking the brick than with the sledgehammer.
“This is gonna take me a lot longer than I thought. I’ll probably
be down here for hours. Why don’t you just go back to Annie’s?
There’s no point in both of us burning up.”

“
No, I’d rather hang around
and wait for you. Maybe I’ll go for a walk around the
grounds.”

“
Good idea, get out of his
heat. I’ll be up in a while.”

He wiped sweat off his face with his
handkerchief, which by now had become saturated. Jerrica moodily
disappeared down the dark corridor and up the stairs.

What am I going to do with
her?
he wondered.
She’s got more problems than Holy Trinity’s got
prayerbooks.
He’d just have to slowly work
on her, use his priest-shrink savvy to get her into counseling and
treatment.

Soon the heat down here would suck him
dry. It was no joke; he wasn’t a kid anymore, he’d have to be
careful.

chink-chink-chink!
he began again with the pick ax. Mortar dust
billowed in gusts, bits of brick stung his face.

chink-chink-chink!

He paused to rest
again.
Damn it, Spock! I’m a priest, not a
jackhammer!
He was picking along the
outline, where the newer brickwork had been set in to seal the
entry; it stood to reason that this oblong perimeter would offer
the weakest point.

I’ll bust these bricks,
goddamn it! I will!
He wiped more sweat,
hefted the pick ax, and began again:

chink-chink-chink!

(III)

The heat was infernal. Even outside
now, walking down behind the abbey, Jerrica’s sweat poured, her wet
arms grained by basement dust. How did the priest stand it
downstairs where it was even hotter, wielding the pick ax against
the wall?

A lovely, if overgrown, trail led down
the ridge. Bright fungi, like scabs of day-glow orange, red, and
yellow, adhered to tree roots. Heads of colorful flowers burst
forth through teeming weeds. Halfway down the trail, though, she
stopped suspiciously, glanced back up the incline. The abbey could
no longer be seen. Why be suspicious then? Why be paranoid?
Certainly the priest couldn’t see her now, not unless he had x-ray
vision that could bore through the hard earth of the
ridge.

Her hand touched daintily
her cutoff shorts. The stuffed front pocket.
No,
she thought, steeling
herself.
I. Will. Not.
There was no end to it.
Just a
little?
another part of her
suggested.
Look what you had to go through
to get it.
Her guts flinched,
remembering.

Just a little wouldn’t hurt, would
it?

I. Will. Not.

She needed a diversion, something to
get her mind of the cocaine she’d risked her life and swallowed a
drug-dealer’s semen to get. That’s why she’d elected to go for a
walk in the first place, but it wasn’t working. What? What
now?

A sharp glimmer blazed at her through
the trees.

The lake!

Yes! Now there was a diversion! In
this heat?

She scurried the rest of the way down
the trail, as though the silver surface of the lake pro-offered
some temporary salvation. Int a moment, she was standing on the
grassy shore, looking out. The sunlight raved; the water looked
pristine, so pristine in fact, it looked unreal. In D.C., looking
at the Potomac River, she’d been spoiled by reality. In this lake,
there was no pollution, no floating garbage, no shining rainbow
spectrums of oil film on the water. The lake was beautiful. Next
thing Jerrica knew, she was taking off her clothes.