The Bighead (40 page)

“
You switched babies,”
Charity realized. “You switched a live baby for a dead
one—”

“
That’s right!” Annie
shrieked, her guilt finally pounding down on her. “I made ’em think
it was The Bighead whose head I crushed, but it was really a baby
who were already dead!”

“
Calm down, calm down,”
Charity attempted to console. But—

“
Annie,” Charity said. “I
need to know what happened to the
live
baby. I need to know what
happened to the
real
Bighead—”

(IX)

She’d had to hurry. Before
the men came back, she had to stow the living child that had eaten
its way out of her sister’s womb. But it wasn’t the child’s fault,
was it? How could it be? How could any newborn child, forbearance
notwithstanding, be held responsible for its deeds?

It’s not the baby’s
fault…

She meant to leave the
living baby in the woods and pick it up later. But that’s when the
old rattling truck had come down the road. It stopped. And it’s
driver had seen her. The driver had seen what she was doing:
dumping a baby in the woods…

A crackly old cracker, an
old creeker. Inbred. Only had one full arm—the other wasn’t nothin’
but a little stem’a flesh with fingers wrigglin’ out.

“
It’s prover-dence,” the
man said. “Here I is, drivin’ away from the world without the one
thing I’se wanted most, an’ heres you are, dumpin’ the same
thing.”

“
I—I wasn’t dumping it!” a
young Annie tried to explain. “I was going to come back for it
later!”

“
Ands do what,
hon?”

“
Well, I—I—” Annie blinked
at the inbred man. “I don’t rightly know, but I shore’s hail wasn’t
gonna let it sit ta die!”

“
Give me that baby, hon,”
the inbred man said. “I’ll’se raise it like God planned. Ain’t had
nothin’ in my life work right so’s far. But I’se kin swear to ya,
I’ll’se raise that baby so fine…”

Annie stood stock still,
staring at the man’s eyes. What would she do with the baby?
Honestly, how could she possibly raise such a hideous child without
any of the townsmen knowing?

So maybe it
was
God. Maybe this was
God’s way’a makin’ a miracle.

“
Take good care’a this
child, I beg ya,” Annie said. “It’s ugly, but it ain’t its fault.
So…please. Take good care’a it, and raise it proper.”

The man in the truck was
crying at the gift. “I’se will! I’se will! I’se promise
ya!”

Annie, then, not thirty
years old herself, handed the monstrous infant over to the
stranger.

And watched him drive away
with it.

(X)

“
I gave it to a
man—”

“
A
man!
What
man!”

“
Some ole inbred fella,
said he was dyin’ ta raise a kid hisself. There was nothin’ else I
could do.”

Charity’s throat made
audible clicks. “You substituted a dead baby for The Bighead, and
you gave the
real
Bighead to some
man
driving down that road?”

Annie’s knuckles turned white on the
steering wheel. “When the men come back an’ looked in, they saw
Geraldine’s stillborn baby on the kitchen table, with its head
crushed. They thought it were The Bighead. I told ’em I drugged the
baby’s broth and done it, smacked its head with the skillet,
smashed it flat, ands they believed it was The Bighead. And then I
went out’n buried it. But the real Bighead was already bein’ droved
off by that inbred fella. And that’s when I stopped thinkin’ ’bout
it…an’ started punishin’ myself fer it. Burnin’ myself. Hatin’
myself for the fact that maybe I done the wrong thing.” Annie,
then, her cheeks wet, looked over at her niece. “I couldn’t think’a
nothin’ else ta do.”

(XI)

But what then?

There was more, wasn’t
there?

God Almighty have mercy on
me fer what I done!
Annie thought to
herself.

There was still more to
tell—

About the abbey.

(XII)

“
That’s why I ain’t too
keen ’bout going back ta the abbey, to pick up the priest and yer
friend,” Annie continued.

“
I don’t get it,” Charity
said.

“‘
Cos that’s shorely where
The Bighead’s headed right now.”

“
They abbey? Why would he
specifically be heading for the abbey?”

She couldn’t tell it all,
could she?
No!
But
she could at least tell some.

“
It weren’t like Father
Alexander said,” she explained. “The abbey never closed because the
nuns were sent ta Africa. The abbey closed ’cos the nuns
died.”

“
Died? How?”

“
They was all murdered. By
The Bighead. It was twenty years ago, just a few years after the
Church reopened the abbey ta take care’a dying priests. Before
that, it was closed fer years’n years, since the fifties. It was, I
don’t know, early seventies maybe that the nuns moved in ta make
the hospice. Couple years after that, though, The Bighead came
back. Couldn’t’a been more’n ten years old when he done so. Ands he
kilt all them poor nuns and the dyin’ priests ta boot. The young
boy must’a wandered off from where the inbred ol’ man raised him,
and that’s what The Bighead done when he returned to the
abbey.”

“
But I don’t understand,
Aunt Annie.” Charity’s expression was flushed with inconguenty.
“
Returned
to the
abbey? What do you mean? What was he returning to?”

(XIII)

Charity stared through the
windshield; the heat lightning throbbed, so far away it scarcely
looked real. But Charity’s life didn’t seem real either. Her mother
hadn’t committed suicide at all; she’d died giving birth to
that
thing,
a year
after Charity herself had been born. But what had happened in that
year? Something horrible. Something that had to do with the
abbey.

What was it?
she tensely wondered, numb now in all that had
been related to her.
What
happened?

“
Yer mama, dear—” Annie was
choking on stifled sobs. “You weren’t probably but three months old
at the time. Yer mama an’ I, we’d go fer long walks through the
woods, and one night when we were doin’ so we found that we’d
moseyed on up to the abbey. We didn’t go in, a’corse, ’cos at the
time the building was sealed up, had been for years. It wasn’t fer
ten years after that the nuns moved in and got ta runnin’ their
hospice fer priests dyin’a cancer and such. But—”

Charity grabbed her aunt’s
arm. “What—
happened?
”

Annie’s eyes gazed forward, as though
the lids were stitched open on the memory. “There was a man…” Her
voice waved. “A man come outa the woods behind the
abbey…”

(XIV)

It happened so fast. One
moment she and Sissy were strolling along by the lake, and the next
moment…Sissy was screaming.

It was fate that the man
had chosen Sissy rather than Annie; at first all Annie could do was
stand pinned to a tree and watch in horror, paralyzed. The shadow
loomed, engulfed her sister like a cloak, tore her clothes off her
body in one motion.

The hulking figure’s body
pinned Sissy to the ground, raped her right there on the lake’s
mucky shore. Each thrust of the rapist’s hips sent a scream
exploding from Sissy’s throat, a sound like a cat on fire. In the
dim light of the winter dusk, all Annie could see of her sister
were her arms and legs jutting out from under the man’s humping
body. But soon Sissy’s screams ground down; she lost consciousness.
Yet the sick wet sounds of rape continued as the assailant’s hips
pumped onward, in and out, in and out, for what seemed
forever.

A guttering grunt rose up.
The rapist withdrew a softening penis that looked large as a tube
of cookie dough. Sissy lay still beneath him—Annie thought she was
dead until her head lolled once and her eyes fluttered. But it was
then that Annie’s paresis broke.

The figure stood up, was
beginning to turn—

Annie screamed and ran off
into the woods.

(XV)

“
Yer mama was raped, hon,”
Annie went on. “Right there in the mud. Raped worse than you’d ever
think rape could be. I shoulda done somethin’, I shoulda tried to
fight him but—but I was just too scared. So I ran, I ran all the
way back to town an’ stormed into the old Sallee Place. It was the
grace’a God that a lot of the townsmen was there, havin’ a card
game, Wayne’n Brian, Johnnie Pelan, the Ketchum boys, and that nice
bearded fella, Davy Barnett, I think his name was. I told ’em
what’d happened and they was outa there like gangbusters, grabbin’
their rifles’n shotguns an’ tearin’ down to the abbey fast as they
could…”

(XVI)

Annie followed them,
barely able to keep up, her lungs aching. It was close to full dark
when they got to the lake, and sure enough, he was still there,
having another go at Sissy, humping her nearly to death in the mud.
The men’s exclamations were not surprising. “Tarnations!” “What’n
holy hail?” “Punch’m up fulla holes, boys! Ain’t no sick som-bitch
gonna do this ta one’a our womanfolk!” The figure rose halfway when
the shooting started, ear-splitting claps in the night. One volley
after another until the bullets picked it up and dropped it dead.
But Sissy—

(XVII)

“
They killed him, they did,
but yer mama—” Annie’s choked out sobs broke into full crying. “Yer
poor mama was so tore up from bein’ raped. Tore up
real
bad, you know, down
inner private place. We got her back the house and Doc Nutman come
over, said it were a miracle she was still alive. But she never
really recovered. Partial comatose was what the doc said. Fer the
next nine months Sissy just lay in bed, never sayin’ a word. Just
starin’ at the wallpaper’n gittin’ bigger ever day.”

There. Finally. After all these years,
Annie had finally had out with the truth of that horrid December
night, and the even more horrid scene that took place nine months
later. Wasn’t fair that Charity should learn what really happened
to her mama like this, but sometimes that’s just how things worked
out.

Annie drove the truck up off the
Route, up the entry road. She thought that telling the truth would
make her feel better, but it didn’t.

It didn’t, she knew,
because there was still a little more truth to tell. The fine
details she could
never
tell.

And before she could even think of it
anymore, the abbey’s odd brick front shone grainily in the
headlights.

—
| — | —

TWENTY-ONE

(I)

chink! chink!
chink!

A familiar sound to Alexander, and
with each report, he took another step down, shirtless, his black
cleric slacks still damp with—

chink! chink!
chink!

—
lake water.

Zombified, that’s how he felt, walking
back up the trail and through the lamp-lit abbey the same way he’d
walked back to the firebase, coming in from beaucoup shit with
Charlie Comm in the field. The man with the thousand-yard
stare…

No, nothing would surprise him now;
hence it came as no surprise at all, once he descended to the
basement, to discover the identity of the pick-ax
wielder.

Jerrica.

“
Jerrica?” he
asked.

She remained stark-naked but maniacal
now—

chink! chink!
chink!

—
as she heaved the pick ax
time and time again into the gouged wall, bits of mortar and brick
exploding out of each strike, spraying her cheeks, stinging her
face, all to no effect.

The lit elements in the alcohol lamps
looked like phosphoric halos. The strange light licked the priest’s
face, his bare chest.

“
Jerrica!”

chink! chink!
chink!

She didn’t hear him, her task all
consuming. She’d made quite a bit of headway, though: she’d
perforated the wall completely, and was now digging out around the
rim of the hole.

“
JERRICA!” his throat
belted out the name.

chink—

She stopped mid-swipe, turned. Her big
blue eyes shined wide-open.

Her nudity raved in the alcohol
light.

“
Where have you been?” came
her coy, meek query.

“
I think you know,” her
answered, stern-voiced. “I saw you, Jerrica. I saw you coming out
of the lake.”