SPOILERS.READER BEWARE

Mary’s recollection of her time with Marion Clement (do not read if you do not want to spoil the book but it is one of my favorite chapters)

Torn Apart

(CHAPTER FROM THE GHOST IN MY MEMORY: PHOENIX RISING by L. L. DeMitchel, Copyrighted)

“Our siblings married us in the field of wildflowers, next to the woods, when we were seven.  I liked his black and white hair and black and white thinking, judging those he knew as either strictly good or bad, no room for the in betweens.  And he believed I was above them all.  To him, I was his little wife.  And from then on, he loved me.  Little did I know all that would encompass.”

As I was endeavoring to imagine white light that is holy—black was all I could see.  Outside my walls of dirt, Jacob and Skunk were fighting with sticks as swords.  I could hear them as Skunk got stabbed to death.  Then, Skunk screamed, a real scream. 

“Mary!  Come out!  There’s a critter out here!” he called for me.  “Come on out, Mary!” 

“I am aware.  I’m hiding from it,”  I called back.  Hiding from its gargoyle ears, deer mouse eyes, and piggish snout.  Skunk climbed inside with me and held my hand.

“I will protect you, Mary.”

“You’re a little boy, what can you do?”

“I can bite,” he chomped his teeth together and I laughed.

“Come on out, it won’t hurt you!  I think its wing is broken,” my brother said.

I left the root cellar hand in hand with Skunk and squeezed my eyes shut from the blinding brightness of the sun.  The bat was gray, squirming on the ground, trying to flap its broken wing.  When I was done observing its writhing, I began to sing.  We all held hands and played “Ring Around the Rosie” with the bat in the middle.  Pocket full of posie.  Ashes, ashes we all fall down.  After we were on the ground, Jacob rose and picked the poor critter up, and pulled on its head until it came right off!  The sight…“Why would you do that?” I shouted at my brother, utterly stunned.

“Now it won’t suffer anymore,” Jacob said.  “I am only being kind.”

Skunk would not look away from the trees, and Jacob kept trying to play swords with him.  But Skunk was pale and ill after he saw the bloody mess on the ground.  Jacob kept hitting his head with the stick, eventually making Skunk puke.  My brother ran home laughing.  

“That’s vile!”

While he gagged, I put my hand on Marion's white patch of hair.  The reason I called him Skunk.

“How do you feel, Mary?” I asked him.

“Bad, Mary.  I don’t like looking at blood.  And.  That’s not all.”  He wiped the vomit off his lips and leaned against the hill.  “This may be the last time I see you for a long time.”

“Why would you say something so awful?”

“Father says I’m going to be a servant to a Romanian man.”

“What?  No!  You’re my only friend besides Sarah.”

“I have no say, Mary.  No one listens to me, and my parents need the money.  Here, I made you this.”

He pulled from his pocket a wooden lamb, if you could call it that, carved from birch.  My fingers scraped all the smooth cuts resembling cottage cheese fur.  

“It’s perfect,” I told him.  “But it should have been a skunk.”

“I told you I don’t like that name.  I don’t stink,” he complained.

“You do.”

“Mama says I’ll get better at carving the more I carve.  I’ll carve you something special the next time I see you.”

“Write me a letter, will you?  Tell me what the Romanian man is like.”

“I will.  I will miss you, Mary.  I love you, wife.  Goodbye.”

“I care for you, Skunk.”

“Fare thee well.”

“Wait,”  I stopped him.  I leaned over and reached into Skunk’s pocket, and pulled out his knife.  I cut a lock of my hair for him to remember me by.  “Don’t make me into a doll unless I die, Marion Clement!”

I cried bitterly as he walked away, but wiped the tears off me when he looked back.  Marion and I have known each other since infancy.  Our close proximity made us practically one person.  Our parents were both in the fur trade, but business was declining.  I suppose people stopped wanting to wear beavers as much.  Skunk told me his father was known to bet on cockfights.  So, it was not a great surprise that Marion’s parents indentured their son.  

After he got sold, for a month I only spoke to my sister Sarah.  I believe she was sent by God to watch over me, for she had the wisdom, the heart, and the golden demeanor of an angel.  More beautiful than I, she has had many suitors, but Papa was reluctant to accept any, for she is the only one who possesses the civility to converse with him for at least an hour each day.  Sarah is his pride and joy, but each of us love her dearly for her kindness and sensitive nature.  Once, her horse ran off in a terrible lightning storm.  Without a word to any of us, Sarah ran in the pouring rain to retrieve him.  We searched for the two all night, until the next morning, we saw them walking to the house together.  Spud was an old horse at that, and she wouldn’t let Papa butcher him for meat either.  Her only flaw is that she is a perfect stick-in-the-mud; she never joins me for adventurous walks at night.

She’d been smitten with a boy named George for years.  Jacob warned her not to marry one of them; Sarah and I laughed at him when he said that.  We both regarded Jacob to be as cruel as he was dim-witted and ignored his racist injunctions.

Sarah and I were playing scarecrows one day, wearing top hats and furs, holding still for the crows.  When they’d come in Mama’s garden we’d chase them out and throw sticks at them.

I was watching the crows flap their wings in the dark blue cloudy sky, thinking about what it would be like to be up higher, in Heaven.  I always did what I was told.  I thought I deserved to go.  I closed my eyes, taking in the wind’s embrace when I felt a hard shake on my shoulder.  

“Mary, someone is approaching.  A man,” Sarah watched him across the field in anxious fear.  

As he drew nearer, I saw his white streak of hair in the front draped over the black.

“A man he looks like now,” I exclaimed as I ran to him.

Marion quickly bowed.  “How do you do, young lady?”  One of his eyebrows was cocked high above the other, but he always had that.  His skunk hair was down to his shoulders now, and he had grown into his face; all the baby fat was gone.  Though, perhaps a bit too much.  He was skin and bones and looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks!  But it was him.  My Marion.  I thought at any moment I would wake up, or he would disappear in the air.  I could not believe my eyes.

“Marion Clement, is that truly you?”

“I could have sworn my name was Skunk.”

“I thought you’d forgotten me.  How long has it been?”

“Five years since I’ve last laid eyes on your face.  Look at you!  You’re gorgeous, Mary.”

“Oh, please.  Flattery will get you a mouth full of sweaty socks if you keep it up.”

“As long as it is your socks, I am content.”

“Marion Clement!  How inappropriate!” I gasped in jest.

“Whatever did I say?”

“Marion.  Why did you stop writing me?” 

His bright smile darkened in a shocking instant.  “Mr. Dalca moved us around lots…” he mumbled.

“Oh, I see.”

“I wanted to.  I did, but…” his brightness made its way back on his face.  “Do you remember when we used to salt the slugs we’d find in the garden?  When you found out they were dying you cried and said you hated me?”

“Yes, I was deeply troubled by my role in that offense,” I said.

“I’m afraid if you knew what I’ve done since then, you’d never want to see me again.”

“All I’ve wanted these past five years is to see you.  I’ve thought about you all the time.  Have you thought of me?”

“Not a day went by that I didn’t.”

“Still, not even one letter?” Sarah pressed.  “You’ve gotten taller, Skunk.  What’s that in your hands?”

They were behind his gray frock coat.  

“Come now, let us see,” I coaxed him.

Submissive to my demands as usual, he quickly twirled a bouquet of roses and bones in front of us.  It was mostly jaws with little teeth and small animal bones tied together to resemble flowers paired with a couple of red roses.  

“Mr. Dalca hunts squirrels and coyotes and the like.  I thought it was a waste not to make something beautiful from them.  Though, your beauty is much more apparent.  Suddenly I am unsure if this is an appropriate gift.”

“I adore it.  Such a fine way to honor the creatures we eat,” I took the gift and looked down at it in my hands, the same object that touched his own.  “Thank you, Mary,” I said. 

“You’re welcome, Mary.”

“I still carry that lamb you gave me everywhere I visit.  I quite like to admire it.  Wherever have you been?  I feel as though we are strangers now.  And why are you here?”

“Mr. Dalca purchased a farm not far from yours.  I thought I could say hello and see you again while I looked for his escaped pig.”

“His pig is missing?”

“Ornery girl.  She run off.  I’ll find her.”

“Marion.  Will you please come back?”

“I promise.”

Sarah giggled and I kicked her shin, and we watched him walk away in search of the hog.  

“You love him,” Sarah teased.

“He was a dear friend to me, of course I do.”

“You can marry Skunk, and I can marry George, and our children will play together and be the best of friends.”

“If he is the same Marion as when I knew him, then…yes.  But I am happy as long as you’re near, Sarah.  Marion is very handsome now, though he looks practically starved.  I want him to be in good health so he lives long enough to marry me.  That Mr. Dalca better be feeding him.”

“Or what, will you have a talk with him?” 

“I’ll make Papa do it.”

That night, I was outside with Jolly boy walking around the house when I heard a strange, loud scream accompanied by a greedy squelching sound.  I never heard a sound like it.  When I heard the snorts of a pig, I told Jolly boy to go home.  As I raced down the hill, I saw a white tailed deer with its leg caught in our fence, and the enormous pig eating the deer’s leg caught in the wire.  I saw red and white bone glistening in the moonlight, and I shuddered.  The sight was not at all pretty like Marion’s present, what with the snorts and wheezes and screams.  The sound of the pig tearing meat off the living thing and sucking it dry sent a cold chill down my spine.  But as Sarah would tell me, are we any better?

I ran for Papa, but then the pig ran after me!  When I heard the sound of its rustling, I screamed and ran, looking back behind me.  Oddly enough, the pig was crimson, with touches of purple flush.  With tiny eyes on its enormous block head it scowled at me as it dashed in my direction, huffing and snorting all the way.  I managed to get inside the chicken coop and quickly shut the door.  The beast headbutted the coop a couple times, grunted, and then trotted back to the deer.  I made my escape, and before I ran into the house, I saw Marion running up ahead.

“I heard you!  Are you hurt?”

“That pig is out back!  What is wrong with him?  He chased me!”

“It’s a she,” he said as he flung his coat to the ground, and pulled out a rope from his pockets.  “Did she hurt you?”  

“No.”

“Mr. Dalca wouldn’t be happy if I hurt Beatrice, but if you’re in trouble, she’s going to be bacon this evening, I will tell you that.”

“What an evil beast!”

“Worry not.  It is only a pig.”

“Be careful, Marion,” I called while the deer screeched in terror.

Marion crept toward the chewing hog with his rope.  When Beatrice saw him approach, the crimson pig growled and huffed.  Marion stopped a few feet away, then took another few steps.  Beatrice left her meal, squealed at Marion, and charged at him, her immense body darting across the blades of grass like a giant bullet with her bloody snout.   For a minute, Marion dodged her quick movements and tried to tie the rope around her neck, but she charged at his legs, sending him flying to the earth.  

She was completely on top of him now, and all I could see was his feet.  In an awful moment, I heard Marion cry out, and then, so did she.  One loud, distraught squeal before the beast lay still on top of him.  I ran over, but he had already pushed the dead hog off him.  His white shirt was coated in blood, and when he stood up, I saw his cheek was hanging down.

“Your face!”

“I was almost Beatrice’s dinner.  Looks like she’ll be ours,” he stretched his leg.  “Want me put the deer out of its misery?”

“You better.  Papa and Mama are sleeping, they mustn’t catch us alone together.  When you’re finished, let me treat your wound.  They’ll be happy for the deer.  Of course, you must bring some home.”

“It is not a home, but your kindness is much appreciated.”

Marion winced as I washed his bloody face.  I could see where the teeth sunk in his cheek.  

“What a mean, nasty pig,” I said.

“I am sorry.  You could have been hurt, and it was my fault.  I let Beatrice out on purpose.”

“Why ever would you do such a thing?”

He was silent for a second.

“I wanted to get out and see you.  It was a very stupid thing to do.”

“You are not being truthful,” I asked as I sewed the piece of his cheek to his sweat and blood beaded face.

“He is a demon with furled wings,” Marion winced.  “But, tell me more about what I’ve missed the past five years.  You’re sixteen now.  Is it everything you’ve dreamed of?”

“Hardly.  Mother expects me to wed, but there’s no one I would want to marry…” I sewed a piece of cheek and dared to speak it.  “Not since you.”

“You are my wife.  How could you marry another?”

“I don’t want to, but I hardly know you either.”

“When my servitude ends, I would very much like to marry you, Mary Mayfield.”

“Tell me what you are like before I consider.”

The smile fell quickly from his face.  

“What can I say?” Marion thought aloud.  Then his smile reappeared.  “I must confess, I am fond of the drink.  Fonder of you.”

“Don’t do it too much,” I told him.

“Then I won’t.”

“Not even when you are cross with me?”

“Never,” he promised.

“Tell me more,” I said.

“I follow orders.  I do what I am told.  When I do have time for leisure, I am often too melancholy to read or have any sort of fun.”

“Is it because you miss me so?”

“If you were there, I might not mind the feeling so much.”

“I put my bone flowers next to my mirror, so every time I look at myself I will see them and think of you.  A reminder that I am not alone when I have someone out there in the world that loves me.  Do you still?” 

“Do I breathe air?  Do songbirds sing?  You will always be the girl who kissed my skinned knee….I wrote that down once.  Because it rhymes.  Do you remember that?  Jacob teased me, my father was yelling, and I was crying.  No one else has given me a sliver of such compassion since you.  In other words, my head is your home.  I do wish you’d tidy up the place now and then.”

“But I have you for that.”

Instead of putting me in my place, Marion only smiled more broadly.  “I can hardly believe you are standing here before me,” he beamed.  “It is as if I am seeing Jesus Christ return to flesh.  I can hardly breathe.”

“Jesus Christ is a man.”

“And you are a woman more beautiful than the Madona.”

“Enough tall talk.  Hold still.”

“Sometimes I get a terrible feeling—as if something is wrong outside the house.  I always thought of you, that something was going wrong with you.  We must have a link, you and I.”

“But everything has been just fine with me.  I am sure it is your nerves.”

He smiled a little.  “I don’t want to go back, Mary.”  His voice dipped in such a sad way; I gripped his hand.  “How inappropriate,” he said.

“How many more years are you indentured to Mr. Dalca?”

“Three.”

“We’ll wait three years and then we’ll get married when I am an old maid.  You’ll get your dues, and we can have our own farm.  Though, we’ll have to be very careful around our pigs.”

His half lidded eyes made it hard for me to see him leave.  We both stood on the porch, looking at one another, dreading his departure.  I took a step closer and he took a step back.  Without hesitation or nerves, I put out my hand, and he took another step, forward this time.  I stroked his cheek, right above where Beatrice had put her teeth.  Despite the rules against it, I put my hands around his neck.  I wanted to succeed in what I have fantasized of for years and years.

“May I kiss you, Marion Clement?”

He was red in the face, and I could feel his diffidence before he answered.  “Only if you promise to love me tomorrow.  That is the only way I will sleep tonight.”

“I will always love my husband.”

And we kissed, two hearts beating in rapture, soft and true.  It was too quick until his hands left mine, and his patched up face looked at me for one last bittersweet time before he walked away with his blood stained shirt, until he became a fuzzy dot in the dark.  I was glad he looked back.  That is how I knew he still entertained for me an ardent regard.

After a week, he came to the house, introduced himself to Mama and Papa, and offered to do all of my chores for me as I read.  My parents remembered him, and at first Mama did not let him, but he won her over with his flattery.  That day he swam in the lake and brought me a lily flower because I had said it was pretty.  Our summer passed with bliss.  Marion was of a joyful and talkative disposition, though at times, instead of conversing with me he would sink in the corner in dejection.  I thought it strange he did not pick up a book or praise me as he did in better spirits.  He would speak, but very little, and mostly stare at the wallpaper.  I would always bring him back to reality and encourage him to read more from the poets, though he spent more time looking up at me.  Though he was mostly quiet and undemonstrative near my family, our time was still spent in coquetry; I was simply joyful that we rejoiced in love again.  

Mama accompanied us every time we wanted to see each other, so we kept our conversation superficial.  Still, she could not stop our lovely looks.  Every time I looked at him, he appeared different.  I wanted to memorize every feature of his countenances.  His kiss was still on my lips for months afterward, but I wanted another, everyday after the lovely occurrence.  When Mama was distracted by Jolly boy, I whispered my desire in his ear, but he refused.  

Still, he came back for a walk the next day.  He prattled on about Jolly boy, and I couldn’t help giving him a look of reproach.  

“You are quiet today, Mary,” he managed to notice.

“That is because instead of talking about how lovely I am you can only think of Jolly boy.”

“Mary.  Do not chide Marion for his choice of conversation.  How impertinently big-headed you sound!” Mama scolded me.  “I do not believe it!”

“Please, Mrs. Mayfield, it is quite alright,” he assured her.  “I find everything Mary says endearing, impertinently big-headed or otherwise.”

“You will grow tired of her soon,” Mama laughed.  “She thinks she is the queen.”

“She is a queen to me.”

“You flatterer.  I only hope you are honest in your worship of my daughter,” she said.

“I treasure the day I give her a castle.  That is the honest truth,” Marion said.

Soon we came across a patch of snow on our path, and he asked Mama if he could take my hand.  She said yes, and when I held him, I did not let go until he forcibly shook his arm away.  

“Mary, leave the poor boy be,” Mama scolded.  I could hardly wait until we’d be married.  I could hardly wait until we would be alone again.

When asked of his residence with Mr. Dalca, Marion grew cold and scanty.  He would press his lips together and shrug.  

One spring day, I decided to follow Marion’s dragging footprints to Mr. Dalca’s residence.  As the sun set, my ears filled with a rooster’s incessant nervous clucking that turned into relentless screaming when it saw me.  I walked up to the house that was in the shape of an octagon, with two levels but no windows, its wood dark and rustic.  The door flew open and Marion came out to calm the chicken, petting its white angelic feathers as I strode up to the door.  How his jaw dropped when he noticed me!

“Why are you here?” he hissed.

“Don’t be cross.  I wanted to see where you spend your time away from me.”

“And who is this delight?” a man in the shadows called from the doorway.  His cheeks appeared flushed, and his circular eyes squinted in a friendly semblance.  “My name is Petru Dalca.  You can call me Peter.  Won’t you come inside?”  

“How do you do, Peter?  My name is Mary Mayfield,” I curtsied.

“The famed Mary!  Why, Marion hasn't mentioned a Mary since he started serving me.  Please, enchanting Mary, let us have dinner.”

“It’s late,” protested Marion.  

“Marion, lead her up the stairs.”

Marion stood perfectly still.  

“Don’t make it hard on yourself, boy,” the man winked at me, and the pull of politeness drove me inside.  

The minute I entered I felt something dark, as if a demon was lurking in the shadowed corner.  But there was nothing but a fireplace, an elegant glass chandelier, and portraits on the walls of many children.  I covered my nose from the smell of body odor permeating my nostrils.  As I followed Mr. Dalca in, I noticed drops of blood on his back.

Upstairs there was a large painting of a woman breast feeding her infant and a black bird rustling about in a cage.  Remarkably, the woman looked quite like me!  With auburn hair and a curvy dark blue vein under vacant eyes, she stared at the viewer while her baby suckled.  

“My late wife,” Peter announced with a proud glimmer in his eyes, and a suspicious glint toward mine.  “Curious.  You resemble her quite a bit.  And my daughter, Anamaria.  It’s a shame she grew up looking like a damn horse,” he guffawed.  I laughed out of politeness as I drew closer to the crow in the cage.  I put my fingers through the bars, waiting for it to stop cleaning its feathers.  That is, until I realized the caged creature had no head!  After I gasped, the eyeless thing craned its headless neck and bit my finger!

“Don’t mind Agnes.  She’s a crabapple,” Peter chuckled.  “I believe this bird is my estranged daughter come to bring me smiles once again.  The day she died I found her egg in my hat.  And she thought she could run from me.”

“I have never seen a living bird with no head, besides the chickens we eat,” I said.

“She was born that way,” Marion cleared his throat.  “It is getting late.”

“Quite the observation, my sweet,” I smiled at him, which he did not return.

Around the corner, there was an old wooden pillory in the living area, and a poorly stuffed black bear.  Its teeth were out in one last snarl, set with large fake eyes whose eyelids covering half of the glass looked unnatural.  It did not seem real, but it was.  

That bear was once alive in the forest, eating berries and raising its young.  Now, it was nothing but hair stitched together and cut out holes—an uncanny empty shell collecting dust.  Such poorly made creations such as this made it seem wrong to keep an animal for one's own pleasure when they had no say in the matter—no matter how dear they are to you, no matter how beautiful they would look in a room.  Some things are simply not meant to be.  

I jumped back when I noticed the head of a rabbit, with many black grasping tentacles growing out of its sorry gray head.

“I have a fascination with the ill-fated,” Peter declared.  “Ask Marion.”

“Marion is not ill-fated.  He will be my husband soon.”

“Yes.  You are beautiful,” Peter said with a twitch to his mouth.

“I do think it sad the corpses of these creatures linger when they are no longer inside them.  You can wave your hands in front of them and they would not flinch.  To be alive and then an object is uncanny.  One should be buried properly.”

“Wouldn’t you be glad if someone honored you in such a way after death?” Peter asked.  

“If I wasn’t killed for the very purpose of it.  When my life ends, I would very much like my remains to be put inside a doll-shaped urn of some sort.  So I may live on in a small way, to make others smile after I cannot see it.  But not my own skin.”

“It makes perfect sense to die in the bloom of youth.  To be taxidermied, forever young would be considered a high honor,” Mr. Dalca said.

“Then why haven’t you done it yet?” offered Marion.

“Funny boy,” Mr. Dalca ruffled the hair above my love’s sullen face and kept his arm around his neck.  Just then, the door creaked open, and a red haired woman with a long face entered the stuffy dim room.  I thought she was quite striking, and she would have been had she used less blush.  

“I heard my name, Father.”

“Anamaria, meet Mary,” Mr. Dalca said with a wave of his hand.

“Mary Mayfield, how do you do?”

“Nice to meet you.”  She looked at her father strangely.  “I did not mean to intrude.”

“Why don’t you make dinner?  Rooster won’t quiet.  Would make great soup.”

“Yes, sir,” she smiled a little to her father.

As Anamaria went to the kitchen to prepare the food, I noticed her glaring in Marion’s direction, with curious glances at me.  

“Mary and Marion,” Mr. Dalca said with affection.  “Well Mary, you are quite pretty.  I can see why Marion holds you in high esteem.  I’m beginning to as well.”

“But I’ve barely said anything at all.”

“You’re a beautiful woman.  Does what come out of your mouth really matter?  Stay for dinner.  I insist.”

“I mustn’t.  I should be off, Papa will be getting worried.”

“My meat is the sweetest and most moist.  Anamaria is an excellent chef.  You must try it,” Mr. Dalca insisted, his arm around a sullen Marion, rubbing it softly as I did once, causing Marion to shrink from my own touch.  

“I must be off.  And I request that Marion accompany me.”

Without a word, Mr. Dalca strode towards me, stopping at my chin.  He pressed his lips against my hair, and sighed deeply.  Not an embrace, not quite.  Then he looked at me, smiling again, his eyes eerily simple and flat.  “I need Marion tonight.  But you are welcome to spend the night here.  A woman should not be out alone at night.”

“Allow me to walk her home,” offered Marion.

“No,” said Peter.  “I need you tonight.  There is far too much to do.  Farewell, Mary Mayfield.”

“I must insist upon Marion’s departure,” I said.

“And I must insist upon yours.”

“I will do no such thing without his company.”

Mr. Dalca gave a snarl of a laugh and surveyed the room.  “Let us play the laughing game,” he announced in his pretentious accent.  “She must see what a good boy you are!  The woman fancies a protective companion, doesn’t she?”

“What is the laughing game?” Marion’s frame was frozen rigid, his reluctance chewing at his guts, for I know that look.  Peter suddenly kicked Marion’s fixed leg, bending and crumpling him to the ground.

I watched in shocked silence as Marion crawled on his hands and feet, giving out a horrible false laugh as Anamaria cooked the chicken in silence.  His chuckling was bitter and hoarse as he was kicked every so often, but it went on, loud and constant, his only respite a quick gasp of air in the middle of his forced chortlings.  When Peter told him to sit, he sat with a solemn face except for his mouth, unable to look at me.  When he stopped laughing to swallow his spit, Peter kicked him harder.  Marion lowered himself to drink whatever liquid was in the bowl on the ground, and the slop in the bowl next to it, all while laughing.  Near the end, his laughter turned into a real, wailing relief, however bitter it was.  After ten minutes of this, Peter helped the swaying Marion to his feet and had him drink from a cup.  

Bruised and bloody with mush on his chin, Marion took my arm and practically shoved me outside.  A dark look of dread was the last sight I saw before the door shut abruptly in front of me.

Marion’s mood worsened over time, but he was quite the performer for me.  I did not pay a visit to that house again, until the day I felt I had to.  I was twenty and Marion twenty one.  The day before, Marion had complained that Mr. Dalca would not let him out of his contract.  He was expecting land and a sum of money for our farm after he reached the age of twenty one, which he had turned a month before.

Marion buried his face in Jolly boy’s fur.

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Kill him,” I spoke in jest.  

“We will get married, Mary.  I promise.”  Papa was in the next room, otherwise I would have told him then.  “If you can bear to marry someone so far beneath you.  And I do not mean the way I capitulated to the carnal knowledge against my will.”  He threw back a shot of whiskey.  “The Church says if Peter repents every Sunday, but he still abuses his power on Monday and commits his sins, but he repents, he will get into Heaven.  That is the teaching.  So, if I repent for murdering a nun, will I get into Heaven?” 

“Tell me what you’ve done, Marion.”

“I am no man around him.  And God?  Nonexistent.  Thus we are alone.  All we have is this,” he gestured to the teacups and my face.  

“You’re wrong.”

“No, my dear.  You are.”

“There must be a place where good men and women are rewarded, and the wicked suffer.”

“That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” his eyebrow jumped high above the other.

“How can you question the way we were created?”

“When I stopped believing in fairytales.”

“You say that, yet you believe in fairies.”

“I happen to be undecided on my stance on fairies.  No, all of it.  It is a crutch, you must know this.”

“You’re afraid of him.  You’re afraid to die.  Marion, you will go to Heaven, I swear it.”

“I will get out.  You will have your farm.  I promise.  And that will be my Heaven.”  With that, he kissed my hand when my parents weren’t looking and went to the house.

After the door closed behind him, Sarah came in dancing, twirling her golden hair and robin’s egg dress all around the room.  She grabbed at my hands, but I didn’t feel much like getting on my feet.  Instead she got Jolly boy to jump on his hind legs for almost a minute, singing a song she made up while he barked.  Just like Sarah dancing in the beams of sunlight, everything was beautiful, my future ready to cherish, save for one tyrant ogre in my path.

The next day I marched to Mr. Dalca’s residence.  I could not wait another day, and I didn’t care if I ran into the fucker; I was ready to give him a piece of my mind.  As I came closer, I saw splatterings of blood leading inside the house.  I listened, and with excessive hesitation and dread, I knocked on the door.  Anamaria answered with a shotgun in her hands.

She did not say a word, but stared with her father’s circular brown eyes at me, for the first time unmicking of good nature and will.

“I must speak with Marion.”

“Want to take a look at what your lover did?”  She swung the door in my face, causing me to stumble away from it.

On the sofa lay Petru Dalca with open eyes stained with death.  I put a hand to my face as the headless crow stepped over the pale corpse.  I carefully inched away from the blood.  

“That bastard murdered my Papa in cold blood,” she croaked.  “I shot him, and he ran off.  Won’t get far, if he’s not dead already.  Will you alert the sheriff?”

“Of course,” I lied.  He had really done it.

“You should be scared,” she grunted and then shoved past me to follow the blood, and from a distance, I followed her.

Soon we came to Creature Lake.  It was the lake Sarah and I would sometimes swim in when we were children.  Two people were in the water, one in front of the other.  I saw the long blonde hair of what seemed to be Sarah, and behind her was a familiar skunk-haired figure.  

Anamaria raised her shotgun, and fired at the both of them.

I dropped to my knees in a shock of despair.  I was on the ground for maybe a minute when Anamaria came running past me, calling out for me to run.

This roused me back to the Earth and I ran to the lake, weeping my sister’s name.  I saw red in her long blonde hair, and behind her…Marion’s lips were pressed against the deteriorated side of Sarah’s still, unblinking face half submerged in the water.  Her flesh was falling apart like blueberry pie in his mouth, and his lips pressed against hers as he chewed on them like nature’s candy.  A shaft of sunlight fell upon the two as he hunched over her body and glugged.  He recoiled in pain, fell into the shade and noticed me for the first time.  I pulled out the wooden lamb he gave me all those years ago and held it in front of me, toward the ghoul, daemon, vampire, monster thing that had the face of my Marion.  

“Why didn’t I dance with her?” I lamented to myself. “Why didn’t I speak with her on that night?”

Marion jerked himself up, his face coated with a dripping mask of red.  He quickly splashed my sister’s fluid off and came toward me, standing up in the shallow water.  I held up the cross on my neck.

“I-I didn’t want to,” he said.  “Truly!”

“Look at you.  Look at what you’ve done to her.  Oh,” I wailed with tears blurring my vision and a throbbing throat and heart.  “I cannot marry you.  Your true nature repulses me…”

“Mariana!”

“I will see you at the graveyard when you eat my corpse as well as hers.  Begone, monster,” I spat at him.  The sight was the most sick, morbid, and cruel betrayal of my life that I could not forgive.

“He-he always gave me his medicine to drink before he…since I was twelve and now…I’m like him.  I’m like him,” Marion’s face contorted in the realization, “I couldn’t do another night, Mary.  And then, Anamaria shot me.  Sarah…she was trying to help.  I lost all sense,” he rambled.  “Mary, please.”

“You’re a goddamn cannibal.  You disrespected her life and death!”  I hit him with his lamb, again and again before I spat phlegm in his face through my tears.

“Don’t leave me now,” he said quietly as my spit dripped from his nose.  I ran home after one last sorry look at the wretch, whose eyes never left me.  On the way there, I saw men and dogs running and shouting through the woods. 

“You seen Mr. Marion Clement, Miss Mayfield?” an officer demanded of me.

“No, sir.”

“You must be honest, woman.  He has committed a grave crime and if you do not confess to his whereabouts you will be condemned to his punishment!”

“I do not know…I am looking for my sister,” I said in pale defeat.

“You shouldn’t be walking alone with a murderer on the loose.  No matter who he was to you.  George!  Escort her back.”

It did not take George White long to notice my wet eyes.

“Are you scared, Mary?  Did you know Marion could do such a thing?”

“I do not want to speak of it.  I have a secret that I cannot tell a soul, or I will be known as a ruined woman.  I cannot marry Marion.  And you, George.  You will never marry my sister.  She will be in the ground soon, if not the stomach of a ghoul.”

“Sarah is dead?” George stopped in his tracks.

“Yes.”

“Did Marion kill her?”

“I do not know.  He killed Mr. Dalca.”

“Then he must have killed Sarah.  He is a murderer!  He must be put to death!” George shouted in my ear, “Let us find him!”  

I began to walk in the direction of home again.  “Sarah was shot, but Marion didn’t have a gun,” I defended him weakly.

“Bandits will always find a way to murder.  Tell me, Mary.  Why are you a ruined woman?  Because of your association with Marion?”

“No, not that.”

“Do not tell me you are with child.”

“I am.”

George shook his head and gave me a look of rage, and then a look of pity.  “Come, let’s keep moving.”  

We started through the woods, and I took a deep breath in an attempt to withhold my sobs.  “I am very saddened to hear about Sarah,” he said after a long silence.  “I bought the ring.  Only you can understand the depth of my sorrow.  But Mary, I can see you’re in trouble,” he paused, and we both stopped again.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the diamond meant for Sarah.  “How about I marry you, so no one ever knows you for your licentiousness?”

“You should marry the woman you wish to marry, not a woman you pity,” I told him with a hung head.

“I have great regard for you, Mary.  You would make a fine wife, and I would make a fine husband.”

“But you had a higher regard for Sarah,” I countered.  He smiled sadly in agreement.  “Well then.  My Marion is dead.  And what else shall I do?  I suppose it is decided.”

George kissed me on the mouth, and I felt a sharp stab of sorrow in my heart.  With his sweaty taste on my lips, all I wanted was my cannibal courtship, despite my revulsion for Marion’s wicked action.

We married the next day in my family home.  Some broke down during the ceremony due to the news of Sarah’s death.  Some said they understood why we were getting married and thought it romantic.  Sarah’s funeral was planned for the day after.

After the wedding ceremony I excused myself to cry in my room.  Papa brought me some cake, and told me I ought to be happy.  I finally had my own family before I became an old maid, after all.  That Marion was no good, he said.  I am better off.  That night, while George consummated our marriage, images of Sarah’s jellied face getting slurped up and Marion chased by the dogs plagued my mind.  

Before the funeral, George led me out of the house and deep into the forest.  I trudged through the bristles and slapping trees in dejection, unaware what I would soon witness.  We came across a couple men, but when I got in front of George and saw what was lying and flapping on the ground, I stopped and suddenly vomited in the brush.  It was the body parts of Marion, strung along the forest floor, little red chunks all over—his torso the biggest part intact.  There was his head, ripped in two with his skull poking through.  His arm, near a vine, and his foot was still being chewed on by a bloodhound, the dogs they used to hunt escaped slaves.

“See that?  He’s dead now.  He can’t hurt you,” George put his arm around me and I could feel my semblance darken.

“Oh, I see,” I wiped tears from my face.  “Let me just…put him back together.”  

“Mary?”

I picked up his arm, and weeped at how light it felt.  I placed it near the torso.  I picked up a part of his leg, and George started helping (getting the foot from the dog) and finally, the head.  I tried to press the hanging open halves closer together, but it was no use.  As I set the split open head down in front of the torso, I stopped when I saw something black growing out of the opening of Marion’s neck.  I looked closer.  It looked like…hair.  I touched it, and moved it to the side, where I saw a few patches of white hair, tiny blinking brown eyes, two little nose holes, and a thin line between thin lips.  It opened its mouth, and it already had teeth.  Tiny, sharpened teeth, and a tongue the size of a pea.  It was smaller than an infant, but the face looked grown and shrunken.  I put my hand on his torso and felt it.  Then George took my hand and helped me up.  

“I am sorry.  I know you loved him once.  We can put him in a coffin, and you can bury him.”

“I felt a heartbeat.”

“It is a symptom of your grief.  Worry not, my wife.  A good night’s sleep will do you well.”

“I want to bury him now.”

“That’s fine.  Let’s go, men.”

And so, I put the pieces of Marion in a wooden box, tossed dirt over his coffin, and watched the men shovel the earth onto his resting place.  No one said any words.  Despite my visit to their abode, his parents were absent.  After Marion was in the ground and Sarah’s funeral was over, I walked hand in hand with my new husband to my new farm, trying to ignore the pangs of agonizing sorrow I felt in my chest when I looked at the birds flying high.  The minute I stepped through the door of my new home I began to weep.

“Hark!  He knocks!  The man I married when I was seven years old is waiting at the door and would very much like to meet you,” Mary jittered to me after I had awoken.

The doorbell rang.  This man, what is his character like?  Could he have a vaguely incestuous interest in me because I look like his dead “wife”?  Am I going to have to hide from the wrath of two ancient relatives, a vampire on top of a depraved ghost?  I peeked through the glass door frame.  Through it was Lament Crow, the man from Mary’s vision, stuck in his early twenties.  He wore a brown vest with jeans and cowboy boots, and kept scratching his neck.  His hair was slicked back—black hair with patches of white on the front and back.  The man had kinda a chub to him, with squinty eyes and a mustache, but it was him.  I opened the door with shaking hands.

“Bonjour, mademoiselle,” he spoke in a slightly high-pitched French accent.  “Ze mail order husband is he-er.  Just kidding,” he sang in an American voice.  “That would be immoral.  I try to be funny, but it does not always work.  What can you do?  Oh my whiskers, you look just like her, mon dieu.  The spit and image of Mary.  Those cherub cheeks, wow, how adorable.  You could be her daughter.”

“Marion?”

“Clement, how do you do,” he didn’t wait for an answer as he kicked off his boots, stepped inside, and looked around the house.  “Mary never told you about me, did she?”  Mary smiled at the sight of him, unable to be seen.

“She told me a little.”

“Well.  We loved to run around here.  Too bad we lost our breath so soon.  Here,” Clement handed me two vials; both with dark red liquid inside.  “For emergencies only.  Compliments of me and my queen.”

“Wow.  So.  You’re my real-life ancestor.  What happened to you this past century?  Tell me your story?”

“Pfft. Well.  I’m as much in love with Mary Mayfield as I was when I was a boy, over a century later, what else is there to know?”

“I’m sure you can think of something.”

“Let’s see,” he put a finger to his lips in thought.  “I’m a painter, a dabbler in chemistry, a murderer...a drunk, hm, oh and I collect forks.  That’s about it, really.”

“Mary’s brother wants me to kill all my friends in a couple days,” I confided in the old young man.  “We might have stopped him for now, but maybe not.  I don’t know what to do.” 

“That casse couille?  He is an annoyance, that is true.  But Mary said help is on the way.”

“If it comes fast enough.”

“Don’t leave the house then.”

“Well, I could also get murdered by the serial killer in this town.  Have you heard about the Harrisville Horror?  We’re trying to kill him.”

“Oh.  Really?  You?  Well.  I’d assist you, kid,” Marion pressed his lips together.  “But you see, code says I can’t go after a fellow killer that didn’t go after me first.  Also…I don’t really want to.  My advice?  Don’t go chasing lions.  Enjoy your mortality while you have it.”

“What if the only way I can enjoy it is doing what I want?”

“You are like me after all,” he chuckled.  “But with my Mary’s face.  Bellissima.”

“Shouldn’t you have expired by now?  Does human flesh really have the power to sustain your life?”  

“No.  I am infected.  I am dead with a body that will not die…like a powerful mold that hijacks the brain and does its own bidding.  I feed the virus, you see, and in return it turns me into a different species, one apathetic to mortal life.  I resist my urges daily because of this disease.”

“So, this,” I shook one of the vials.  “What is this?”

“An elixir.  It will save you when you are on the brink of death.  But if you do die, enjoy your rest that I cannot have.”

“Save me, huh.  How old are you, anyway?”

“I was born in 1834.  Any other burning questions?”

“Seems like you meant a lot to Mary.”

“We loved each other since we were children.  She tells me years later I impregnated her.  After my child has grown and died, she tells me.  Never got to raise my Sarah, but Mary, she tells me about you.  I am only here because people already think you’re crazy, so if you reveal me for the monster I am, no one would believe you.  Still, from what Mary says, maybe you would like the life.  For you,” he pulled out a pink chrysanthemum from his coat.  “I heard you’ve been seeing that Lucy, girl.  I dated her mother.  Tragic, tragic thing.  Whatever happens, I’ll be seeing you.  Have fun hunting that serial killer.  And here, take this,” he handed me a cross necklace.  “The dumb never suspect good Christian folk of murder, and there are a lot of them.  Learn to hide in plain sight.  If you need me again, ask Mary.  I’ll be around.  Au revoir.”

After he left, I put the vials in my pocket and turned on the news.