196) The Salvation of Eden, Chapter 29 -- Murder, Suicide, Insanity, and Child Abuse

“It’s been hard, living here the past few years. We’ve lost a lot of people, even entire families. Kids. People just like you, Reilly, out picking apples, having a picnic. Just living, you know? One girl, young Ermine Thrasher out at the Burnham’s Farm, was taken while she was hanging up laundry one day last summer. It’s, it’s been terrible. That creature, whatever it is, it’s evil. That’s what I say. Just plain evil.”

         There was a long silence. It was one of those moments that happen in life, those somber, awkward moments when everybody wants to say something, wants to express something that will make a difference to the person who is sharing so much of their pain. But what can you say? What will possibly not sound inane, or even disrespectful? When you know only that you stand on the outside of someone else’s grief (which is always the case with grief), then you can’t even say “I know how you feel,” because you don’t. So, as often happens in such moments, everybody said nothing.

         Eventually, Juanita looked up at Dominic. “Anyway, I know what you’re asking. You’re not the first person to inquire, head full of dreams of killing the beast. But ten times the reward ain’t worth it. The only thing I can tell you that will be any help is if I can convince you to leave this place and forget all about us.”

         “But there has to be a way to fight it!” Dominic insisted. “Every creature has weaknesses! You just need to understand them.”

         Juanita shook her head in resignation. “Maybe it’s not a creature. People say it’s a spirit, a Demon. Many people, many good people, have tried to hunt it, trap it, ambush it. They’ve tried everything. And you know how many have come back? Four. That’s it, Dominic. Just four. So maybe you can understand why we’re not too eager to talk about it; the last thing we need on our consciences are more people throwing away their lives.”

         “I’m so…sorry”, Dominic responded awkwardly.

         Juanita managed a half-smile. “Thanks. I know.” She reached forward and grasped both of his hands with hers, looking straight into his eyes. For the first time since they’d met, hers were mirthless, like a fireplace gone cold.

         “The first one, nice young chap, Denry, the baker’s son.” She shook her head as she remembered. “He committed suicide after he returned, maybe two or three days later. He left a note. Everyone at the time knew about it. His family posted it around town in his memory. And then they left and never came back.”

         She fell silent for a moment, eyes downcast, forehead creased. “Denry’s note merely said, ‘There is no hope for our souls. Leave now, while you still can.’” She paused, wiping tears from her eyes. “I knew him well, Denry. He’d just gotten engaged that spring. When he came back alive from the hunt, we rejoiced, thinking he had been spared for a reason. And then…. I never understood why he would do that.”

         She sat down heavily at their table, accepting a drink from Gorb’s mug. “The second one, Elliah, was the youngest child of the Harrison’s. She was a firebrand, that one. The Reaper attacked their farm. Killed the whole family, except her. She was hiding in the hayloft.”

         “She’s alive?” Kohra asked hopefully, not so much interested in information about the creature, just desperate for some kind of happy ending.

         Juanita shook her head. “She wanted revenge, so she joined the militia. She was only 16. Went through their training and everything. Then first chance she got, she volunteered for a hunt.” She faltered again, accepting Gorb’s handkerchief and blowing her nose.

         “We never found out what happened to them exactly, but another party found her, four days later, still hiding in the tree she had climbed to get away. The bodies of the rest of her group were strewn about all over the place. It didn’t look like a battle. It was just…a slaughter.” Juanita paused again to blow her nose in Gorb’s handkerchief.

         “They brought her back, and it was like she wasn’t there. She wouldn’t speak, barely ate or drank anything. She just stared, all day long. Sometime during the night, she disappeared. Didn’t leave a note, nothing.”

         “Maybe she left? Started another life somewhere?” Reilly looked hopeful, clearly also wishing for some kind of happy ending.

         Juanita forced a smile. “Maybe. But honey, she took nothing with her, no food, no provisions, no extra clothes.”

         “So she also committed suicide,” Devona murmured.

         Juanita nodded, then continued talking quickly, like now that she’d gotten this far, she just wanted to get it over with. “The third, the third one was a friend of mine. I went to his wedding. Klem. Klem Haroldson. He was a good man. No matter what happened after, he was a good man.”

         She accepted Gorb’s mug again, raising it upwards as though sending a toast to the sky, and drained it. She belched, setting the mug down with a bang loud enough that Kohra flinched.

         “The Reaper took his brother, so just like Elliah, he went out for revenge.” She shook her head ruefully. “He was so confident. There was a whole squad of them, the biggest we ever sent, and they were well prepared. Klem’s family owned the biggest coffee plantation around here, and they spared no expense. Thirty-seven men and women, full armour, shields, helmets, pikes, swords, cross-bows. They trained together for weeks. And now their names are all written on a plaque under the Dragon statue in the market. All except Klem’s. The town council voted not to put his name on it.”

         “Why not?” Devona was indignant. “That’s not fair!”

         Juanita’s eyes were hollow. “Like Elliah, he was the only one that came back. Said it attacked them at night, picked them off one by one. They fought hard but it seemed to be nowhere and everywhere at once, he said. It sounded….”  She shook her head. “It just sounded impossible. He said that more than once it was right in front of him, like right smack in front of him, impossible to miss, but he’d stab at it and somehow it wouldn’t be there, it would be somewhere else, and more people would go down, throats slit, chests flayed open. He said it bloody tore them apart. Thirty-seven well-trained hunters, and they never had a chance.”

         She closed her eyes, keeping them closed for several long seconds, like she didn’t want to acknowledge the reality of what she was about to say next.

         “When he came back, he didn’t want to go home right away. He seemed, I don’t know, just odd. Wrong. I knew Klem a long time, and it was like I didn’t even know him anymore. He said he wasn’t ready, so I let him spend the night here. He drank, well, he drank a lot. I should have cut him off but, after everything he’d been through?  He passed out at the table and I gave him a bed, took care of him the next day while he, you know, hangover and everything.”

         She blew her nose again, absently unfolding and re-folding Gorb’s now gooey handkerchief. Then she looked up, straight at Dominic, snapping out the words like she wanted to bite each one.

         “He stopped at the florist on the way home and bought flowers for his wife and daughter. Later that night, he stabbed them both to death.”

         She paused, swallowing hard several times, leaning heavily on her elbows, staring at her hands to avoid their eyes. “Klem’s wife, Julia. Yeah, she had two brothers a few houses down the road. They heard Julia screaming and ran over but…. He was kneeling in the dirt outside the house, covered in blood, their blood.” Juanita stopped abruptly, eyes squeezed tight, barely breathing, as though taking in anything more, even air, right now was too much and she would explode.

         She opened her eyes, fixing them vaguely but determinedly on the floor, and spoke in a monotone. “If I had a daughter.” She paused again, clearing her throat. “I tried. You know.” She shrugged. “Some things weren’t meant to be. But.” She looked up, again straight at Dominic like she wanted her words to bore right into his ridiculously optimistic soul. Which she did. “He was outside his house, like I said, ranting, yelling about how we’re all doomed and ‘They are coming for us.’ Whatever else he was saying, we never found out. Her brothers, they beat him to death on the spot.”

         She blew her nose again, choking back a sob. Her voice was shaky and too-high-pitched when she spoke. “So, Klem never got his name on that plaque.”

         Gorb put a hand on her shoulder. Nobody else moved.

         Kohra did everything she could to stay neutral, to give nothing away on the outside. But on the inside, she couldn’t stop the images, the memories. Some were precise and crisp, every detail intact. Others, vague and inchoate, more like an overall feeling, a state of being that represented years of repetitive experiences. She usually tried not to think of these things anymore.

         She wondered about the state of mind that Juanita’s friend, Klem, must have been in when he did all that. After losing all those people, suffering so much violence, why would he not go home, hug his wife and child and thank the Gods for his blessings? It just didn’t make sense that he “snapped” like that. What Reality was he living in so that murdering his two most beloved could possibly be seen as the right thing to do?

         She imagined the little girl, his daughter, hearing him enter the house, opening the door, his familiar footsteps coming inside. Her heart must have leapt with joy, knowing her daddy was finally home, and he was going to just run in and swoop her up into his arms like he always did, and she would giggle and squirm and they’d laugh, like they always did.

         And then, what in the worlds happened to him? He’d stopped to buy flowers! Had he somehow “turned” on the way home? She had heard of soldiers, after a war, suffering from episodes where they would seem to be back in the war, or where they would collapse in despair or cower in terror. Or lash out in anger. Is that what happened?

         Her thoughts raced back to the little girl. What was her first clue that Things Were Not Right? Did he throw the door open with a bang? Was he scary, loud, yelling? Or did he sneak in quietly, shamefully, part of him already horrified at the knowledge of what he was about to do? Or did he bound in joyfully after all, intending only to hug his family and tell them how much he loved them?

         Did he hold his dear wife and daughter close, one last time before making the final decision? Did he call them by their special nicknames, hug them, smell their hair? Did he pause and think of how much he loved them, try to remember everything he knew about them, every moment he had spent with them? Did he at least give them that?

         And then, Kohra lost control, memories, images, bombarding her, everything in the room around her taking on a weirdly enhanced significance, like every moment was life-or-death, and everyone around her was shouting incomprehensibly. She knew, in a sense, that she was still sitting at the table, and the conversation was continuing, but none of it made sense, just shapes and sounds blurring into a tumble in her mind. This had happened once before, years ago, that night she stood on the bridge, right on the edge, thinking about the pros and cons of jumping, feeling like what was happening inside was just Too Much, too much for her to contain, too much for any person to feel without burning up.

         But now it was worse. There was no bridge, nowhere to jump. She couldn’t even run from the room; her body felt much too far away right now to do anything that complicated.

         The torrent inside slowed, the flood of images consolidating into specific memories, some seemingly random, dream-like snippets, and others, excruciatingly detailed moments of crystal clear recollection, so clear and vivid it was like she was there all over again.

         She remembered when “She” used to come home, drunk, angry, doors banging. The yelling, swearing. The arguments in the hallway. The blame – Kohra doing everything wrong, ruining every day, ruining their lives, ruining their family.

         Then, the criticism. For years. Everything she did was wrong. There were always rules she wasn’t following, standards she wasn’t meeting, no matter how hard she tried. It drove her crazy, and was exhausting, every day, knowing that no matter what she did, it would result in “Her” being disappointed, and even worse, disgusted.

         That was the worst, being told, over and over and over, that there was “something wrong with her”, that she was filthy, she was embarrassing, she was stupid, she sounded like she didn’t know how to talk right. Everybody asked what was wrong with her (she was told). Everybody asked if she was “retarded” (she was told). She was an embarrassment to the family, and everybody in town knew it (she was told). 

         Her dad tried to defend her, lamely. It always felt like he would rather not get involved. He never did stop what was happening. And eventually, he did turn away. She was never sure if he just didn’t want to hear about it anymore, or if he was also afraid of “Her.” In any case, he shut down and turned away. For all his apparent strength and confidence, when it came right down to protecting his own daughter, he failed.

         Kohra closed her eyes, her face a mask of neutrality as she went inside herself, into “that space” you go when…when you have to.

         She remembered the cursing, the swearing, the names, the looks of disgust, like she was sick, like she was diseased, somehow so loathsome that she should be hated. She remembered the feeling that, at any moment, things could explode, and somehow, it would always be her fault.

         She would cry all the time, all the time, every day, asking for forgiveness, begging for forgiveness, saying “I’m sorry” over and over, hoping that somehow if she was contrite enough, if she admitted her terrible awfulness enough, that it would all stop, somehow it would stop and she would be…loved?

         Waking up at night, fighting in the kitchen, yelling, a loud thump, a plate smashes, Kohra comes out, apologizing, trying to stop it, knowing it’s about her, it’s because she’s in the family, she makes it impossible for them to be happy, impossible for them to be a “real family.”

         Screaming in the hallway, doors slamming, glasses tinkling, drinks pouring, more screaming, more slamming. Kohra comes out crying, apologizing, begging them to stop but she is drowned out, her little voice no match for unbridled adult rage. “What the Hells is wrong with you?” ”Why can’t you do anything right?” “You are disgusting.” “You are useless.” “You are stupid.” “Why are you crying?” “What is wrong with you?”

         That was maybe the worst, the constant refrain, every day like a perverse chorus:

         “What is wrong with you?”

         “What is wrong with you?”

         “What in the Hells is WRONG with you?”

         The day of her uncle’s Betrothal. She remembered looking in the mirror. She was wearing the prettiest dress ever. Her feet looked so strange in fancy shoes. She wanted to dance. She felt like she was a fairy, like she could just jump into the air and fly, she was so happy.

         Then they were walking, and Kohra smiled up at Her, but all that came back was a frown, nose wrinkled with disgust. “Fix your hair. Gods, can’t you even look good in a dress? What have you done, roll around on the ground?”

         She remembered when it all started. Well, not the actual day, but she remembered the beginning. Kohra was nine when She moved in. It was beautiful, intimate, overwhelming. Kohra was EVERYTHING to Her, and had Her undivided attention, especially at night. They played games at bedtime. It was “special,” she was told. Only a little girl as special as Kohra would be able to feel love like that, she was told.

         And she’d never felt anything like that before. This would be their Secret.

         How long did it go on? Summer turned to autumn, and then winter. But time was meaningless. Life was a whirlwind of confusion and desperation and, perversely, excitement and other “feelings” that Kohra didn’t have words for. Sometimes, things felt wrong, and she felt incredibly alone, but then She was there, and Kohra would cry and She would make everything feel good again.

         And then it ended. One day, it just ended. No explanation, no discussion, not even any acknowledgement that anything was different. But one day, she was Loved, and the next, she was Hated.

         After that it twisted, turned into the nightmare that it turned into. Kohra believed it was her fault; she must have done something terribly wrong. Why else would someone who Loved You So Much turn on you so suddenly?

         Kohra had exhausted herself with trying to make it better, trying to fix whatever had gone wrong, trying to “be better” so she would deserve love again. Months, then years, and eventually the rest of her childhood disappeared in a blur of tears until she was finally broken from the futility of it all.

         That’s when she started to realize that it wasn’t anything she had done. It was her. Kohra herself was wrong; she was sick somehow, terrible somehow, impossible to love, somehow.

         She remembered how adults always said “You are so mature for your age.” She wondered sometimes why adults would so readily interpret a child’s lack of childishness as a sign of “maturity.”

         She remembered discovering that if you bang your head hard enough, little white lights dance in your vision. Laying on the floor, they looked pretty.

         And she remembered how she finally left. It was a day like any other day, a fight like any other fight, crying like any other crying. But this time, there were hands on her throat. Cold hands. Fingernails digging into her neck.

         It only lasted a couple of seconds.

         They never spoke of it afterward. Like nothing had happened. Just like, just like everything.

         Then Kohra left. That was last year, and nothing of the last half a dozen years of her life made any sense whatsoever. Except she knew, somehow, it was all her fault. She was sure of it.

         She moved in with Col and her mom. It was great, sort of. But she didn’t belong there either. She didn’t belong anywhere. And she couldn’t tell anyone the things that had happened, let more people see how deeply horrible she was. So she stayed away from people, mostly. Except Ms. B, of course, and the other kids in her class. There, Kohra was accepted. Not for who she “really was,” because nobody could EVER know that. But, she felt more accepted by them than by anyone else.

         She opened her eyes. She was still sitting at the table. Nobody was paying any attention to her, still caught up in Juanita’s story. Reilly was asking a question. Juanita answered. None of the words made any sense to Kohra.

         Then she heard Dominic ask, “There was a fourth person?” She tuned back in, relieved to escape the confines of her mind, even if it was just to hear another tale of death.

         Juanita nodded. “Yes. Kylryvyn. He’s an old drunk now. He was one of the lieutenants in the militia, and his story is much the same. He went out with a hunting party and was the only one who came back.”

         “So he’s still alive!” Dominic noted, much too eagerly, Kohra thought.

         “Yes,” Juanita sighed. “He lives in the north end, in one of the shacks behind the stockyards. Just ask people up there; everybody knows him. But….” She stopped, putting her hand back on Dominic’s. “Just leave, Dominic. Get out of this town in the next caravan.”

         “Why don’t you leave?” he asked.

         Her eyes fluttered down, then back up at him as she smiled sadly. “Because this is my home.”

         After Juanita had left their table, Lenny yawned out loud. “All right, can anyone explain how all this Reaper-stuff affects me? Cuz if it doesn’t, then I’m not spending even one more second worrying about it. We aren’t Slayers!” Then, almost like an afterthought, she added, “And anyway, I’m heading down to see that psychic.”

         Gorb replied with more than a hint of anger. “It affects ye because people arrre dyin’!” She looked blankly at him. He glared back. “An’ no psychics! D’Light does not apprrrove o’charlatans!” He spat the last word with disgust. Clearly, there was more to this than he was telling them.

         Lenny listened with faux-politeness, nonchalantly clinking a handful of coins in her pocket. “I won’t ask the Light for permission then.” She winked at Reilly, who giggled.

         “Hey! Where’d y’ get dem coins? If ye —” but she didn’t let him finish.

         “Bye!” And she was out the door. It took Gorb several seconds to wriggle out of his chair. They all remained silent as he rushed outside, cursing and threatening in an incomprehensible combination of Klliik, Anthorrian, and evidently some other tongues he knew.

         Dominic and Reilly grinned, and Kohra weakly grinned back. Devona just stared at nothing. 

         Kohra felt a pang of guilt. It seemed wrong, somehow, to find any humour or happiness, when things were so bad. She imagined asking her mom about this, and the answer was blindingly obvious. Of course you should be happy in the moments that allow for it. Especially when things are bad! Any good moment, even one second, is a treasure. And there’s no guarantee what the next one will bring.