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Have Mercy on Me, O God
Past a half dozen trailers and RVs where the edge of the Badlands cozied up to the edge of empty desert, Satsuko led Marco to a gutted, wheelless van raised on cinder blocks, windshield smashed and lacking a door. She ducked down, crouching low, and climbed into the gray, dusty mouth of the van. Turning, she held her hand out to Marco, beckoning him to join her inside the abandoned vehicle.
Marco, however, wasn’t so sure. Looking around, he opened and closed his fists at his side, trying to calm his jangling nerves. “Um, Satsuko? Is it safe to go in there?”
It didn’t look safe. To Marco’s eyes, the van looked precariously balanced, and the inside of the van looked like it might have housed any number of vermin or spiders. But Satsuko’s smile was warm and comforting. “It’s safe,” she assured him. “Mitsuo and I come here before, right, Mits?”
Mitsuo, who lagged a few paces behind Marco, gave a noncommittal shrug of the shoulder. “It’s safe,” he said. Marco didn’t think he sounded sure, either.
“Don’t worry, Marco,” Satsuko said, her voice dropping low. “Mitsuo’s not afraid because the van is dangerous. Mitsuo don’t like what’s in the van. But the cards said you have to see,” she said. Her eyes twinkled with mischief. She held out her hand again. “Come on,” she said.
This time, Marco placed his hand inside Satsuko’s and allowed her to lead him inside. It wasn’t as dark as Marco expected even though the van lacked windows; it seemed to get enough sunlight form the open door and the space where the windshield should have been.
The inside of the van was completely gutted, empty of upholstery or furniture but for a small table at the rear where Satsuko was now crouched. The table was low to the ground, raised on a pair of upright cinder blocks. It was draped in black cloth and in its center stood a small, bronze crucifix. Two tea lights, completely burned out and now devoid of wax, flanked the crucifix. A collection of burned-out matches were littered amongst a collection of curious statues, each more macabre than the last. They were figurines of skeletons clad in robes of every color, from white, to black, to every color of the rainbow. Some of the skeletons carried scythes; others wore flowered shawls about their shoulders and inside their hoods. The skeletons, with their eerie, smiling skulls, sent shivers down Marco’s spine and pimpled his flesh. He shuddered, afraid, but found that he could not look away. As frightening as the figures of death were, he found them strangely alluring. Beautiful.
The statues were arranged near the back of the altar on either side of the crucifix. At the front of the altar were hundreds of blue pebbles arranged in a wave pattern three inches wide, flowing from one end of the altar to the other. The pebbles ranged from sky blue to deep lapis. Some were made of glass, others of plaster, still others of rock, but their pattern was unmistakable. The pebbles composed a river.
With tentative fingers, Marco reached out, stroked the tops of the pebbles. He closed his eyes, heaving a deep sigh. “This is the river from the cards I pulled, isn’t it, Satsuko?”
Satsuko only nodded, her expression somber. She watched Marco with careful, unwavering eyes.
The river of pebbles drew him in, infected him at his deepest level. He didn’t know why the river made him feel such deep sadness, but the more he looked at the small, makeshift waves that traversed the altar end to end, the deeper the sorrow set in his soul. It wasn’t the kind of sorrow that made him want to cry, however; it was instead a kind of helplessness, a deep-seated melancholy that all but emptied him out.
His eyes traveled from the transverse river to the cloaked skeletons. They seemed to beckon to him, their haunting smiles cajoling him. Feet tucked under him, hands in his lap, he settled in, leaned forward, his nose pushed into the middle of the ghoulish scene before him.
It was then that the figures began to sing.
Marco, at eight years old, knew little of death, had never known the feel of its icy fingers upon the heart, or how its foul breath suffocated the lungs. Marco did not know death’s face or the weight of its words, but in that moment, as the skeletons clacked their jaws and delivered into the world their terrible dirge, Marco came to know death’s song.
“Miserere mei, Deus, secundum misericordiam tuam;
et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum
dele iniquitatem meam.
Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea
et a peccato meo munda me.
Quoniam iniquitatem meam ego cognosco,
et peccatum meum contra me est semper.
Tibi, tibi soli peccavi et malum coram te feci,
ut iustus inveniaris in sententia tua et aequus in iudicio tuo.”
The skeletons’ mournful melody filled the hollows the sadness had carved from his soul until all else melted away and he was alone alongside the river, waters flowing silently over a bed of black rocks. That he couldn’t understand the words only deepened his fear and grief; the melody alone told him all he needed to know. The robed skeletons on the far side of the water were facing him, eyeless skulls turned in his direction, their unnatural, long fingers pointing at him. Their singing grew louder until the words and ululations reverberated through him, seeming to collect in his knees until they could no longer sustain the weight of his small body. He fell to his knees at the river’s edge, gazed down into the dark waters, and was unnerved to see his face staring back at him times three.
Except, they weren’t his face. At least, not all of them. One face was his own, the second belonged to Alejandro, and the third was a blend of his own face and his twin’s: Alejandro’s smaller nose, his own inquisitive eyes. To almost anyone else, the faces would have appeared identical, but of course Marco could tell himself apart from his brother. He knew the faces in the river were distinct, though their differences were subtle. His own face elicited from him no reaction, nor did the face of his brother, but the third face, the face that was half his own and half Alejandro’s, filled him with a dread ten times worse than the requiem the skeletons intoned.
Afraid and confused, Marco reached into the water, disturbing the images until the water’s surface stilled, reflecting only his own face back at him. He sat back on his heels, brought his fingers to his lips. He tasted. Salt.
He looked up again, and this time, just a few paces to his right, a woman clad all in black was kneeling by the side of the river, supplicant, her face buried in the palms of her hands, shoulders heaving with sobs. Her tears slipped between her fingers, down the backs of her hands and onto the sleeves of her black dress where the saturated fabric dripped directly into the river; Marco surmised that this was the cause of the river’s saltiness. He watched her silently, sensing that she would not want to be disturbed, and when he looked across the river again, he saw that the skeletons were watching her, too. Their singing was for her. And they were laughing.
“Little man? You okay?”
It was Satusko’s voice that yanked him out of his trance, anchored him once again to the real world, the world of flesh, the world in which he was kneeling before a makeshift altar in the back of an old, empty van. He blinked, lifted his head, found Satsuko’s eyes in the dark. He threw his arms around her, buried his face in the hollow of her neck, and burst into tears. “It’s a sad river, Satsuko,” he said, shivering though the air was still and hot. “It’s a river made of her tears.”
His outpour of emotion was unsettling, and Satsuko wasn’t sure how to comfort the small boy sniveling against her breast. But before long, Marco relieved her of her discomfort. Untangling himself from her awkward embrace, Marco wiped his face. “I was supposed to see that river,” Marco confirmed. “I have to stop those skeletons from tormenting that woman,” he said.
Satsuko, who of course had not witnessed the scene at the river, did not know what Marco was talking about, but she knew enough about the mysteries to know not to question him on this point. Instead she said, “We seen a woman come here a few times. Not one of us. Not from here,” she said. “She always dressed in black, and she come back here, to this van. This is her altar.” Satsuko pushed the hair off Marco’s forehead, held his gaze steady. “Do you know what you need to know?”
Marco swallowed, remembering. He saw Two Rabbit in his mind’s eye, remembered the rabbit’s words. He nodded. “I can find her,” Marco said, “once I learn her name.”
April 7th, 2010
He knows so little, and yet so much.
I think Marco is one of those “old souls” people find occasionally.
Will the old woman be somehow related to the ghost they called with the ouija board? How does Simon’s “cousin” fit in?
I like how we feel we know the characters quite well, but you are still able to show more about them and have them grow.
As much as I understand that most online writers have a “real” life that keeps them busy, and so do understand your posting schedule, I’ll still be hanging out for the next (and the next, and …).
April 7th, 2010
The woman from this story doesn’t turn up in the ghost story; they’re distinct story lines. As for Simon’s cousin, well, all I know for sure is that she’s up to no good.
I’m working on the novel this week, so there won’t be another web update until next week, but it should be a good one. And, thanks for reading
August 30th, 2010
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