Night Victims

26

Arkansas, 1978

They were leaving. He’d thought they never would, but now they were going.

Twelve-year-old Aaron Mandle could hear them from where he lay almost naked in the dark closet. He’d be out soon, away from the closeness and the smell and the heat and the sticky sweat. And the spiders.

He wasn’t sure if he wanted to be out. Aaron understood what was with him in the closet and it never surprised him. That was what he was afraid of most-surprises. Bad ones. At least he was safe here from what he didn’t know about. From what confused and terrified him.

If only it wasn’t so hot in here!

He tried to blink away the sweat stinging the corners of his eyes, which only made them burn more.

“The small and the crawl shall inherit the earth.” His mother’s voice. “The weak and the small, the things that fly and crawl, the beak and the talon and pincer and claw.”

The words were familiar to Aaron, always in his mind to be heard if he listened, or to come to him unbidden, no matter what he was doing wherever he was. Walking in the woods, studying in school those few days he attended, fishing in the muddy lake for bluegill, lying in bed late at night in his room and listening to the cicadas crying to each other over what seemed like miles beyond his open window. . The beak and the talon and pincer and claw. .

“The weak shall inherit,” came a man’s answering voice, then a woman’s saying the same words, as if reciting from a book.

Aaron had never completely understood about his mother and her friends, the congregation. Religion. God. And his mother used to have something to do with snakes. Before what she called her awakening. Now it was bugs. Spiders. Religion was one of the things that confused Aaron, what it made people think and do.

“Dust,” said the man’s voice.

“Dust unto dust,” said a woman.

“No, I mean there’s a car comin’.”

“You watch out for yourself, Betheen,” said the woman’s voice. “ ‘Specially now.”

“Like I always do,” said Aaron’s mother.

Faintly, away from the heat and the darkness, the screen door slammed. Even muffled like that, it was a sound Aaron knew. The last of the congregation leaving. The people that got loud and talked and sang together like one person, that got so excited on the other side of the closet door they took to screaming things Aaron couldn’t understand. Tongues, his mother called it. The talking in tongues. He wondered if, when he got old enough, he would understand.

Aaron waited, but his mother didn’t come to open the closet door. He heard her moving around out there, but she didn’t come for him.

He ignored the spiders on his leg and right arm, and lay still, listening. The spiders were still as well, as if they knew what he was thinking, what he wanted.

The screen door slammed again.

“Gonna be Master Sergeant Oakland Mandle, address Germany!” said his father’s excited voice.

His father! What was he doing home? He shouldn’t have been here for two more days. When he drove the old station wagon home from what he called “the base” for the weekend.

“What’re you tryin’ to tell me, Oakland?” Aaron’s mother.

“That I got the transfer. Gonna be stationed at the base near Mannheim, Germany. Motor Pool command.” His father sounded proud. “So ain’t you happy?”

It took a while for Aaron’s mother to answer. “I would say not.”

His father’s heavy footfalls on the plank floor. “We talked about this, Betheen. You knew I was gonna ask for a transfer.”

“We talked like we always talk.”

“There’s no reason you won’t like it in Germany.” His father was beginning to get mad. Aaron could always tell. He wished he could stop them both from talking to each other, right now, so they wouldn’t fight.

“I can’t leave here, Oakland.” His mother’s voice was different, too. Higher, like when she talked to her flock. Or like those times when she didn’t love Aaron. “I know now that here’s where I belong. In this country. Here. With my congregation.”

“What’re you tryin’ to tell me, Betheen? That you don’t belong with your husband?”

“That I’m not goin’ to Germany.”

“The fuck you ain’t!”

“And there’ll be no blasphemy in this house.”

“This cracker-barrel piece of shit ain’t gonna be our house much longer. It’s all been arranged by Uncle Sam. Gonna have new quarters in Germany.”

“Then you’ll live there alone.”

“You’re comin’, Betheen. An’ those loonies you call your congregation can go to hell.”

“We’re in hell, Oakland.”

“The fuck’s that s’pose to mean?”

“We’re in hell but not forever. The weak and the small, the claw and the-”

“Shut the fuck up with that nonsense! Good Jesus! I don’t know why I ever put up with it! I’m the one oughta be the fuckin’ saint in this house.”

“I know what I have to do, Oakland. What’s my command and my duty. You see, you’re not the only one who receives orders and messages. I have my own orders and I must follow.”

“Follow who? What kinda messages an’ who from?”

“There’s legions of the Lord. I’m among those spoken to.”

“Sometimes you scare me, Betheen, the crazy way you talk.”

Aaron moved closer to the door so he could hear better and because his elbow was getting sore from leaning on it on the hard floor. He must have made a sound.

“That Aaron? You lock the boy in that closet again?”

“Not Aaron, no. Not our son.”

“Sweet Jesus! You tellin’ me Aaron’s not mine? Is that what all this goddamn nonsense is about?”

“I warned you about blasphemy in a holy place.”

“You’re mixed up in the head, woman.”

“I warned you for sure!”

“Havin’ one of your spells, is what. This ramshackle dump ain’t holy, an’ neither are you.”

“The web and the law command the chosen.”

“Ha! Now ain’t that some shit?”

“The web and the law. Didn’t I warn? Didn’t I?”

The floor creaked outside the closet door. There was another small, faint sound.

Something stirred in Aaron, some cold knowledge before fact. Something he didn’t want to know.

“Betheen! You damned fool!”

“Not damned, Oakland.”

“Best put down that shotgun ‘fore I take it away from you.”

“Take it away from me an’ what, Oakland?” Aaron’s mother sounded calm now, but there was still something scary about the way she was talking. “An’ you’ll do what?”

“I’ll shove it up your fat ass, is what!”

The roar of the shotgun made Aaron’s ears hurt even in the closet.

He jumped to his feet as if his thoughts had yanked him up, and he hammered on the door with his fists. “Out! Let me out!” His voice sounded so small after the gunshot, as if the world must be deaf around him. The small and the crawl shall inherit. .

The closet door opened and light broke in. His mother stepped back, cradling the shotgun as if it were a baby. Her face was hers, only it was like a mask.

There was his father on the floor, one of his arms twisted behind him, his chest all red. Aaron saw white bone, like smooth, polished stone.

He became aware of someone screaming.

He was screaming. It was his own voice he heard!

“You come here to me, Aaron!” His mother. Loud. As if he’d done something wrong and was being called to task.

He shook his head, backing away but staying clear of the closet.

“I know who you are,” she said, and swung the long shotgun so it was aimed square at him. “Don’t you think I don’t know you.”

He ran and slammed into the screen door. Bumped into it again and it flew open. And he was on the plank porch and down the three wood steps and running.

The shotgun roared again and he felt a rush of buckshot pass close over his head like a storm.

Glancing back, he saw his mother aim the shotgun again, then toss it aside. Both shells in the double-barrel gun had been fired. Empty-handed now, she came toward Aaron, her steps clumsy and long, her face still a mask. His mother but not his mother.

“I know who you are!” she screamed again. “The dark devil’s eye! The secret, sinful issue of the other!”

Aaron didn’t take time trying to figure out what she meant. He sprinted hard for the woods.

But she took an angle to cut him off, so he doubled back and ran around to the rear of the house. High grass and brush grabbed at his ankles, trying to slow him down. He’d run like this in his worst dreams, when he’d come awake sweating and trembling. Is this a nightmare?

More woods before him now, then mountainside.

And the old barn that was about to fall but never did and never would.

The barn where he felt safe, where the webs and spiders were, where Aaron spent long afternoons with the spiders, touching them, feeling their webs, wondering at their lives, what they knew and why. His mother worshipped them, it was said at his school. His mother was crazy. There’d been fights, some of them bloody, then nobody said that about his mother anymore in front of Aaron. But he knew they said it when he wasn’t there to fight.

She might not find me if I go in the barn!

Sucking in harsh, painful gasps, he dashed to the tall plank doors that were open about six inches because their rusty hinges were bent. He squeezed inside, feeling splinters sting his bare chest.

He was surrounded by warmth and rays of sunlight that swirled with dust, with ancient straw and the ghosts of animals. And there were the webs, glistening like decoration in the sun that broke through spaces between old boards. The webs were jeweled with dark creatures and white lumps, with writhing and darting movement. And there were warm shadows behind the webs where Aaron might hide.

He ducked beneath one of the large webs his mother said he must never break, then crawled into one of the empty wood stalls. His eyes burned and his breathing was like crying. Around him was the scratchy strawed earth and old smell of animals.

One of the barn doors scraped on bare ground. A hinge screeched and the barn grew brighter. Less safe.

Aaron saw that his mother had opened the door, saw her silhouette black against earth and sky. Behind her, on the long dirt road from the county highway, he saw dust rising.

Car comin’.

Aaron watched his mother step all the way into the barn and turn her head, looking this way and that. She reached into black shadow and her hand came out holding a long-handled ax.

“You needn’t think you gotta hide from me. From your own mother that bore you. I hear you breathin’ fire, Aaron. I hear the flame of your breath!”

Like an animal that had caught a scent and knew which way to go, she suddenly came directly toward him, fast.

At first he was too terrified to move. Then she was there, bigger than he ever saw her, blocking his way. He scrambled backward, still in a sitting position. His bare shoulders struck hard board and he couldn’t move back away from her any farther.

His mother raised the ax.

Then brought it down.

The pain in Aaron’s right foot made him scream so loud his mother backed away a step. He rose and limped past her, his cheek rubbing the softness of her sweating breast beneath her housedress. He smelled her as he squeezed past, and it didn’t smell like her.

Whimpering and trailing blood, he ran toward the open barn door. But he couldn’t move fast enough. Outside the door in the bright day he saw cars stopping. A sheriff ‘s car with flashing red and blue lights. Long-legged Sheriff Lester in his brown uniform climbing out, reaching back in the car for his big riot gun, like the shotgun Aaron’s mother had used on his father.

The pain in Aaron’s foot made him slow and sit down on the barn’s hard dirt floor. He looked at his poor right foot, the parting of his big toe from the others and the blood and bone of it. His stomach tightened and he felt sick.

His mother was over him again, almost straddling him. Gripping the ax with both hands near the end of the long handle.

“What?” she was screaming. “What?”

Aaron realized he’d asked her something and tried to snatch what it was from his spinning thoughts.

“Why?” someone with his voice asked. “Why? Why do you wanna hurt me?”

“That’s a fair question, Mrs. Mandle,” said the sheriff ‘s level voice behind her.

Aaron’s mother didn’t so much as glance back at Sheriff Lester. She was staring at Aaron in a way he’d never seen, her wide eyes picking up the light but the rest of her almost black against the sunlight and glittering webs behind her. Like an opening into another world.

“How can you believe in God,” his mother asked, “without believin’ in Satan?”

She raised the ax high, high over Aaron.

And the sheriff ‘s riot gun made thunder and blew away half her head.

“What I am,” said the SSF drill instructor ten years later in the searing Louisiana sun, “is your worst nightmare and the devil you know.”

More years later he’d remember how SSF recruit Aaron Mandle, standing rigidly in full battle gear and camouflage paint, had returned his hard stare with one of his own that sent a chill scurrying up the spine.