[mathis]
Mathis woke up to voices.
He could hear them from under the floor. Rising low, even, thin. They hid in the darkness that pushed around him. They cuddled up in the humps and valleys of his disturbed sheets, and hung from the walls like earrings. His eyes were heavy. The taste of night was thick in his mouth, nested and pasty. He laid there for a while, figuring, still. Waking up. There were thin mottled skins of the moon shuffled off on the floor – scaly and silvered. He could feel the dust on his skin. He listened. No wind. Stillness and oppressive heat, sitting on his stomach like a housecat. Just his breathing and the voices.
A woman's voice, intoning.
Probably Phoebe. He lived above the jailhouse. When he had left her earlier that night, she had been sleeping. He could hear her walking now. Tremulous steps, pacing. Her voice, murmuring through the floorboards.
Mathis pushed aside the sheets and stepped into his boots, cold and stiff, picking up the .45 on his bedside table. His toes curling, strange shapes in the moving dark, black as dreams, soldiering, bowing. Moving past him, filing by, like gray dirge attendants. Mathis opened his door and found his way down the hall, pausing at each step. The sticky heat clinging. And the dryness of his fingers, cracked and hard, running along the wall. He sneezed. The footfall stopped, a pause of voice. He waited. A few moments passed. The night was silent, subservient, a beautiful, pink-lipped slave. He could almost feel the ricochet of Phoebe's eyes, staring at the foot of the staircase. She started talking again. He could hear her a little now.
“The lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. Through the valley. Through the valley. And my cup. Cup. It runneth. Over. The lord is my shepherd. Valley of the shadow of death. Evil. Evil in the valley. Your rod, your staff. I will fear no evil. The lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. I shall not shadow. Death in the cup, still waters in the evil. I shall not want. Lead me through. Lead me through.”
She stopped.
“Can't sleep, Sheriff?”
Mathis paused a moment and then stepped down the last few stairs and into the jailhouse. He could see Phoebe standing there, harsh and white, like a tree stripped of its bark. Tarnished eyes, thin, dreary lips. Barefooted, hands curled, and moving, moving. Restless, smoothing, tapping. Her body thistled under her nightgown, thin and knobby as a corncob doll. Her eyes were sunk into her skull. Black rims oiling, shiny, and wet. The weak light from the moon fingering her face, like a worried mother.
Peace in her feet.
Chin forward.
“Can't sleep?”
Mathis shrugged. “I guess. No one down here with you?”
“No.”
“Heard you talking.”
“No one here.”
He shrugged. “Okay.”
She looked at him. “Do you fear God, Sheriff?”
Mathis shrugged again. He walked towards her and sat in the chair behind his desk. “I don't think about that all too much.”
“Your parents? Church-goers?”
“Yeah. Methodists.”
“Not you, though.”
“I don't think about it.”
“You should. You have your soul at stake.”
“I don't fear nobody, Mrs. Winston. Much less someone I can't see.”
He picked up an old oil lamp with black charcoal stains on the glass, struck a match, and lit the cloth wick. It shivered up, long and thin, like a toad tongue. He adjusted it. The darkness cupped around it, regarding it, amused by its ribbed, fickle glow. Black, substanceless fingers, stroking, nervous, the hand of a nurse on the brow of a patient. Phoebe's face jumped and tugged in the light, puppetry in her eyebrows and swollen mouth. She looked away, whispering.
Mathis watched her for a while.
“Why'd you do it?” he asked.
Phoebe stopped whispering, closed her eyes, rocked on her heels. The night passing, squeezing in.
“It was my duty.”
“Your duty.”
“Yes.”
“Your duty to kill three people?”
“Yes.”
“Your own daughter, too. Doesn't that make you feel anything?”
“Sure. It was a shame. But she and that boy, defiled, dirty. Sheriff, you can't do things like that and not face some consequences. You're a man of the law. You know that.”
“But death as consequence, in this case.”
“Yes.”
She was looking at him. Her eyes big and black, like flimsy-winged bumblebees. Her chuttering face. Gulping, shuddering features. Sucked, bloodless cheeks and her fingers wrapped around the bars. Something about her made his stomach turn. Something about the fact that there were no curves on her body. Something about the way her chin pointed, her fingers and their slow lifting, like bugs fat with heat. Something about the rotting, bent teeth. The leering, humorless grin. The precise words. Everything ordered, but ordered in the wrong places.
He opened his mouth to speak.
But someone at the door knocked. Rapid, banging, door knob rattling. He got up quickly from his seat, his gun in hand, sweating yellow around his collar, and moved towards the door.
“Sheriff! Sheriff, you there? It's Shaf! Open up, Sheriff. Mathis!”
Mathis opened the door. Shaffer stood on the porch steps, shallow chest heaving, his face mashed and dry, like a wasps nest. Eyes crooked, frightened. Slumped, spoke-backed. Spit on his lips. Stubble on his chin.
“What the hell is going on, Shaf?”
“Mathis, jeez, let me catch my breath. Godssakes, Sheriff. They're burning down the whole town! Six or seven people dead. David Weiss hung from his own apple tree, wife and kids shot clean in the head. And they're on the move! Houses on fire, dead in the streets.They're coming here, Sheriff. I can hear em! You gotta talk to em! We gotta do something!”
Mathis's mouth was cottony, lipless.
“What?”
“We gotta do something!”
“Who? Who's doing this?”
“Everyone. For God's sake, everyone.”
Phoebe was laughing. Mathis heard them, too. Down the road. Strumming, war-drunk feet. Distant cries, breaking glass. Cuddling, squirmy dark. The moon wide and gauzed like a concubine. Laughing, choking, behind him. Picketed, sloppy teeth, weedy and yellow, eating the night.
The heat marched.
[lill]
Crawling over her skin, words in her ear. The shrink of boneless shadow, laughter in the walls. The footsteps, the party sounds, the familiar sigh of the broken springs on the couch in the living room. Sibilant whispers, tinny like the rubbing of cricket legs. The house smelled of death. Cloying, seeping. She smelled of death. It was everywhere. No matter how she scrubbed. Her skin was raw. Red and moist, like the skin of a spanked newborn. There was a terrific pounding in her forehead, and her veins bulged blue from her skin. They seemed to move on her skin in the jumping candlelight. Pink, squirmy rat-tails.
Lill breathed through her mouth, so she couldn't smell the awful stench.
She sat in her kitchen. There were candles all around her, their lit heads nodding tiredly and hot, lazy wax pooling around their bent bodies like shed clothing. Naked attendants. Poor glow, threatening to die. Their light was the only thing now that kept the shadows, the voices, away from her. Lill huddled against the wall and watched them. She tried to hum snatches of songs, far-off tunes, mostly forgotten. It didn't help. The darkness stole away her pitiful music, folded it, swallowed it up. Eyeless black hole. Sucking, calling.
cmon, babe.
There were faces illuminated in the dark. She was used to them. The jowled preacher with his neat hair and his crinkle-edged eyes. Open mouth, hanging, hinged. The sagging whore, her face blotchy as dying crops. Smiling. They both smiled. Distant, once-smiles, like ones from fuzzy, yellow photographs. Sometimes a hand. Sometimes the flash of a leg. They moved around her. Circling. Always footsteps. The floorboards bending and breathing under the weight of their bodies.
The night was hot and frantic. Lill's mind wandered between dreams. Black, clogged nightmares, swelling and ebbing like moonless tides. She kept her hand wrapped around the lighter. She had the gasoline, too. She wouldn't let them get her. She couldn't. She was strong. She would be strong. The candles shook their heads, sweaty, dripping pearls. Promiscuous dark. Sick laughter, and the smiling shadows, black as a rotten smile. The wax was melting, the wicks bending. Lill licked her lips. She drew her knees tighter against her chest. The preacher's fingers crawling through the gaps in the candles, the whore laughing with delight. Knocking on the wall. She wondered how Maggie was getting along in Tulsa. Louder whispers. Feeding on her ear. Soft as baby skin. Stroking, tempting. She closed her eyes, swallowed. A candle went out. She tried to flick the lighter to relight it, but her fingers were too heavy. The wheel wouldn't turn. She saw polished shoes in the candlelight. And fat, naked feet, brown with callouses and age, untrimmed nails. A sudden outbreak of laughter from behind the wall, the whispers, whispers. She moved the lighter to the other hand, but she couldn't get herself to hold still enough to flick the wheel. Her hands trembling, like the last fall leaves on a narrow-hipped tree. She could hear herself breathing. Cupped around her.
Another candle went out.
Lazy and ember-stemmed, little trails of smoke twining, spinning, curling like strands of hair twirled around a finger.
lill.
we cant shake it, lill.
hustled up inside us, broken nosed and pining. cant get enough of you, doll. look at yourself, small and hopeless, child. cant you feel us, too? got this tarbaby black inside of us, warm and gooey. blood still hot, still tasty. clotting in your teeth.
Quiet.
The room buckled, curved – spooned reflection. She was so nervous. Chattering teeth. Goosebumps flaring up, scouring up and down her arms. A chill in her neck. Sweating, droplets beading down her face, salty on her tongue. There goesanother candle. Louder. Groping, she could feel them. Unwelcome touch, eating at the soles of her feet.
cant you feel us?
She dropped the lighter. She was shaking her head back and forth, slowly, eyes closed. There were only four or five candles left, sighing like old joints. Something growing in the dark, red and thick-fisted as a fetus. A thin perimeter. The preacher right before her. The whore in her ear. She lifted the jug of gasoline. Opened the cap.
lets not be rash now, hon.
Heavy, putrid smell. Candles jump. Not gonna get me, ain't gonna catch me. Pour it on, syrup on flapjacks, shivering down her back, oily, glistening. Warm as baby's drool. Clothing sticky, smell invasive. Weeding, soggy. Another candle. Laughter so loud it was right in her ear. She dropped the now half-empty jug. It tipped, spilled. Glugging, sloshing onto the floor. Footsteps. Maggie's etched, scattered features in front of her, too. Mrs. Parris lulling, arms spread, and the preacher drawling. Screeching whore, naked whore.
Smell of sweet gas.
cmon babe. we could have such fun.
Lill picked up the candle. Delicate, tiny flame, pinched like an unopened rosebud. Flutter. Groaning floorboards. Rattling window panes. She smiled at the smiling dark. She toasted the candle.
Nodding, greedy faces, not gonna get me.
She dropped the candle onto her gasoline-soaked dress.
The heat flourished.
I hate to be echo-ey, but I do believe it would allow for greater buildup to switch the Lill and Mathis scenes.