-5-
I returned to the cemetery the next evening, alone. The stories and images that had once haunted me now drew me. For an hour, I sat by Don’s grave, sometimes talking to him, sometimes just thinking in silence.
“I never told you about this,” I said. “It seems silly, now, but I want you to know.” I talked about the way I’d been. It felt good telling Don the truth.
But I was confessing my past, not my future. There was no fear in me. None at all. Nothing in this land of graves and death brought terror to my mind. To test myself, I wandered deeper into the cemetery. There was an open grave, empty, awaiting. With the strange belief that it was waiting for me, I climbed down inside of it, feeling the trickle of soil fall from the edge to join me at the bottom. I lay flat on the damp earth and thought of being buried alive. It felt right. It felt good.
I imagined the earth dropping over me. First, a shovelful, spreading as it fell. Then another. Falling like thick rain, covering me, burying me alive.
The images didn’t bring fear. They excited me.
Like a thirst, the need rose within me, bursting to the surface of my mind, grabbing me so hard that I sat up and scrambled from the grave.
I needed it to happen for real.
But where?
I searched through the cemetery, failed to find what I needed, then returned to the street. Up the road, I saw the lights of the old supermarket. Then I knew. I closed my eyes and thought of the gaping hole that had once filled me with dread. I had to go to the east side of town where they were building the new supermarket. I’d slip in tonight and wait for morning. They were constantly moving earth, shoving piles of dirt from place to place. Within the rush of bulldozers and trucks and tons of earth, they’d never notice me.
It would be easy.
I climbed from the grave and went to my car. I drove, looking forward to the feel of the earth as it covered my still-breathing body.
A car at the cross street ran a stop sign. I hit the brakes. My tires squealed, the rear end fishtailed—but I stopped in time. The shoulder belt pressed against my chest, like the hand of a friend trying to keep me from harm.
Don would have had a fit if he was with me, I thought.
But Don was dead.
Nick would have said something funny.
But Nick was dead.
I started to move my foot from the brake.
My leg froze. Don and Jennie. Nick and Jennie. Me and Jennie. I remembered another moment like this. It had been three days before Don had died. We were riding to the city so Don could get a present for Jennie at this fancy gift shop. I’d jammed on the brakes after deciding at the last moment not to run a light. Don had leaned pretty far forward. He couldn’t have moved that far unless he hadn’t been wearing his seat belt. I tried to remember the details, but they were hazy. I tried to think of other moments from Don’s last month.
Small things came back, things I’d seen but not really been aware of before. Don cutting an apple, slicing toward himself with a sharp knife. Don running down a flight of stairs. I saw it now—Don had grown less and less cautious over the last few months. Finally, he’d lost all of his caution, and his life.
I did a U-turn and headed toward Jennie’s house. Something was forming in my mind. It wasn’t easy to think. I still wanted to embrace a suffocating mound of earth.
And it was late. I hoped her parents wouldn’t mind, since I still hadn’t met them. Jennie always waited for me in front. She never invited me in. I guess the time had come for us to meet.
I knocked at the door.
After a long while, Jennie answered. She seemed surprised to see me. Then she spoke and it was my turn to be surprised.
“Weren’t you going somewhere?” she asked. “Don’t you have something you need to do?”
“Yes,” I said, too surprised to deny my plans. I took a step inside. The room was empty except for a chair. There was no way to tell from where I stood, but I sensed that the rest of the house was also empty, both of furniture and parents. I suspected Jennie had been on her own for a long time.
She stroked my cheek. “Tell me what you want,” she said. Her hand didn’t linger. She dropped her arm quickly, as if the touch meant nothing. “Tell me what you need.”
“To be buried,” I said. “To end my days beneath tons of earth. Buried but still alive. Alive, but knowing there is nothing ahead except death.” Even the sound of it excited me. Combined with the lingering feel of her touch, it was almost more than I could bear.
“Go. It’s waiting for you.” Her voice was like a soft caress against the most sensitive folds of my brain.
Yes. Of course. She was right. My Jennie knew what I needed to do. I turned to leave. Behind me, I heard a sound—perhaps a sigh of relief. I turned back. “What are you?” I asked.
She smiled. “Surely you know. You’ve touched me, felt me. I’ve had no secrets from you.”
I didn’t understand. But I had to understand. I waited for her to speak again.
“You took what you wanted. I took what I needed. I’m like you—we all feed on each other. But you’re empty. You have nothing more for me. Go to your destiny.”
What had she taken? Fighting the urge to run to my car, I tried to think. I began to see the pattern. Don had been robbed of his caution. Nick had been robbed of his humor. Each had lost —as it hit me I spoke aloud. “The strongest feeling...”
She said nothing.
I knew. From each, she had taken the part that had been the strongest. She had stolen my fears. Just as she had stolen Don’s caution, leaving him to run across a highway no sane person would try to cross. She had stolen Nick’s humor, leaving him empty of life. No reason to laugh, no reason to live. Whatever remained—the bones, the pits, the peelings-was thrown in the garbage. Jennie had chosen each of us because we had so much for her to take. Then she’d drained us.
“Do you know what you’ve stolen from me?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t pay that much attention.”
My hands clenched into fists. As bad as it was to have been robbed, it was almost worse that she didn’t seem to know or care what she had stolen. “Don’t you even know what you have taken?”
“Can you tell me what you had for breakfast last week?” she asked. “That’s all you were to me. An egg. A bowl of cereal. A piece of meat. Nothing more. I’m interested in my next meal, not my last one. A girl like me has to plan ahead. You young ones are most tasty. Your emotions and feelings are so strong.”
Slowly, she licked her lips. “I think it’s time for me to move to another town. I almost left after the last one. Nick? I think that was his name. I almost left, but you were so very hard to resist. So full and juicy.”
I stared at her, with no idea what to do. She’d stolen my fears of the imagined and the unseen. Under any other circumstances, that would have been a huge favor. But now I was supposed to follow Don and Nick. To her, I was nothing but the inedible scraps and gristle left after a two-month feast. Still, I had to know. “What are you?”
Jennie smiled. “This happens, sometimes. Once in a while, the waste refuses to flush itself. That’s not a problem. I’ll show you. It’s kind of fun—for me. But you won’t survive. Your heart will burst. Your brain will drown in blood from exploded veins.”
She stepped back several paces. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go to your destiny? Don’t you want to be buried alive beneath all that nice, damp, suffocating earth?”
“No.”
“Last chance.”
“Show me.”
She shimmered. She shifted. She became what she really was. Maybe. Perhaps this was her true form. Perhaps it was just an illusion she could cast as her ultimate protection. Before me was a creature unlike man or woman. Ancient, dry, and withered, with insect eyes in a skull of wrinkled, flaking flesh. Small, at first, hunched, no more than four feet tall.
She rose. Her skeleton, beneath the brittle skin, extended as she grew five, then six, then seven feet. Her arms spread, glistening chitinous wings draped from ribs to elbows. Her face alone would have stopped the heart of anyone who looked upon it. Her weapon was fear. She could scare mortals to death, turn them to stone like a modern Medusa.
But I was empty of fear.
Anyone else would have died at the sight of her. This was her ultimate weapon. But she had dined on my fear and stolen it from me.
“Guess what, bitch? You don’t scare me.” I stepped forward. My foot struck a hard object. I reached down, needing to grip something real. My hands met wood. I grabbed the chair and swung it at her. I was empty of fear, but I had rage. I had rage and anger and strength. The chair smashed against her. She crumpled as she rammed into a wall, then slowly stood again. Something thick and brown oozed from the side of her head. It smelled like burning hair and rotting flesh. I swung again. The chair shattered in my hands. I leapt on her, this time with a lust for vengeance.
I seized her neck, or whatever it was that led from head to body, and squeezed and shook. The flesh felt dry and brittle.
Her mouth opened. Her jaw unhinged like the jaw of a snake. Pieces of what she had stolen from her victims splashed over me like acid. Remnants of the strongest feelings and emotions of hundreds of her victims spilled from her.
Perhaps some of my own fear returned. I grew afraid enough to open my hands and let her head drop to the floor. It hit with the sound of a straw basket dropped on concrete.
But by then she was dead.
I stood and looked at the mess of brittle bones and skin and other things I never wanted to know about. It didn’t look like anything that could be mistaken for human remains. Already, it was crumbling, losing its identity among the dust and dirt on the floor.
“For Don,” I said as I stood and backed slowly from spot. “For Nick. For all of them. And for me.”
I left the house and walked to my car. The night was dark and still, and, within the deep shadows, a little bit frightening. But it was nothing I couldn’t face. Nothing I couldn’t handle.
– End of Feelings –
