Entry # B18

                                         WRITTEN FOR AND DURING

                                                by Bruce Hesselbach

     Take a look at yourself!  I’m talking to you, Miss Victoria Smith!  Your eyes are baggy; your hands are red and clammy; your tongue tastes like cotton; there’s stringy hair in your face; why, your very breath is evil!  How long has it been since you’ve had a bath?

     Get a hold of yourself, girl; grab that pencil tightly; sit up; close mouth; wipe away that  -- Now, now girl!  Chin up!  You’re shacking up at the old man’s.  Cold – cold – Oh the hell with it!

     Goddam mirror never worth a shit anyhow.

     Funny story how I got here.  Tell the story, girl!  Oh, well, you know, I’m weird.  So my old man says.  Isn’t that strange when you look in the mirror and you can see two faces inside your eyes looking out at you, all distraught and pale, just faces disconnected?  Well, never mind that.

     I was feeling pretty bad.  No sleep, no food, no water.  Threw up once into a paper cup laying outside an ice cream store.  Nobody even wanted to look at me, I could see that.  It was terribly cold, though I couldn’t stop sweating; it felt like it was freezing on my back.  What a mess.  Then I went over into the lobby of the Manchester Hotel.  Cramps, as if I was having my period two weeks early.  I could hardly walk for being drug down, yanking at me all inside.

 

     The paper boy was there.  “Hey P-P-Powlo,” I siz, “throw me a f-f-few pills for Chrissake, anything.”

     “No go, Vicki.  I’m broke.”

    “You can get me s-some, Powlo.”

     “I’m sorry.”

     “Sorry my ass.”

     So I got out of there fast.  Crummy place.  The bar there sucks.  Mostly only bums go there, cheap as all hell.  But outside the hotel was what I wanted.  Cabs usually come down there at nights.  A cold wet night like that, nobody there but me.  Coat I had on was too short.  Shoes pinched, gave me a sore.  The room I live in is so lousy I use my shoes to kick the big rats when we had them but they all died they starved to death.

     Waiting seemed like hours for a cab.  Hell it was about 12 midnight the Phone company gets off then and cabs go away.  Felt very cold and wet.  I was shaking and sat on the sidewalk.   God I wished I had some prune juice at least.  That was colder and it hurt my back.  Maybe I should go back inside the Hotel.  If they threw me out it would be worth it and not freeze my ass off.  But just then a cab came.  Young cab driver, pretty good looking, so I said, get up, kid, do your stuff.

     “Okay, Lady, get in!  Where ya going?’

     He had this long black hair, combed back at the sides.  Out of the 50’s, you know.  His face was cute and he was young for a cabbie. 

     “Take me down ta Furrows Road in Goodwich.”  The car had already taken off.  Then he had to call up because Goodwich was far out of the city limits.  A set rate to go there.  I forget how much.  I was just wishing I could fool around with his hair from the back and I would too if he’d stop talking and trying to get me to talk.  Hell, I couldn’t follow what he was saying, the motion of the car made my stomach too tied up I could puke.  Something about a new road needed in Goodrich to cut down on consumer traffic or something.  I siz, “Yeah.”  “Yeah right.”  “Yeah sure.”   Eventually we started getting close to where I wanted.

     I siz, “Juh-just over dis hill.”

     “Okay; where’s the house?” he siz, stopping quickly.  Then he stared at me like I was some kind of nut.

     I stared right back.

     Then I siz, “You can let me out here if ya want.”

     He dint know what to do.  It’s so many dollars, he siz, repeating what he said before.  He was getting nervous and afraid.  

     “I can’t pay you,” I siz.  “I ain’t got no money.”

     Now he started to act sore, like rays of lightning and fire shooting out from his mouth.

     “Listen,” I siz, “you’ll get paid if you take me down ta the other side of the cemetery.  I ain’t got no money on me.”

     He pulled the car up to the front entrance of the almost endless, rotted cemetery.  It was black as hell in there.  No stars were out because of fog and clouds, and in Goodwich it gets so dark you can’t see in front of your face although you think you can.  The graves were all white and shadowy and the highbeams showed trees with no leaves, they died too, and no sounds except a little from toads and stuff.  There are some snakes and birds and raccoons in the cemetery that people will mistake for stiffs that were just buried there by accident and hadn’t really died yet.  They revived and broke out, though not in their right minds of course. 

     This happened years ago to my twin sister.

     And then there’s some kids in Goodwich that hitch around in the dark and one kid got drunk on a bottle of straight Southern Comfort and slept on a grave all night then he woke up and thought he was dead because he was so stiff and couldn’t move, his body was asleep and numb. 

     There’s things in the cemetery by and by that nobody ever sees.  Nobody lives long enough to, it happens very slow, from year to year.  All the people taking out what’s not theres for laughs or else putting in things that they want to get rid of, like dead babies and five year olds beaten to death and dogs run over by cars with their guts bashed out and strangled cats and suicides go there and they sort of decay while the animals get to them and spread things around in the leaves and the mud, where the greenflies, the slugs, the maggots, the millipedes, the ants all live in the stinking purple flesh like spaghetti. 

     It’s all a big mystery with three or four skeletons exposed by erosion running through a little grove, the skulls have graffiti on them and headstones back from the 1700’s where the bodies were dug up and now there are no names on those headstones. 

     I ain’t superstitious you can tell.  Most people are really scared as hell to go in there at night because the knotted trees and branches look like they’re half alive and then you thinks of ghouls and partly rotted flesh and dried up brown blood like shit, and the darkness all surrounding with no ending as if you could never find your way back out again; but that’s only how it looks to a corpse.

     After some time the young cabbie made up his mind.  He probably worked hard for his money, for his family, who knows?  He wasn’t old enough and dint have enough guts to go back without the money. 

     “Okay, I’ll take you to the other side,” he siz and jams down his foot and leaves a patch.  This cab whips through the cemetery from zero to sixty in ten seconds and it was a narrow bumpy little road and he lops off a few branches as he goes through. 

     Then way at the end of the cemetery he saw a little light; it was a very little house, and he slammed on the brakes , and some more lights went on outside the house.  An aging balding man came out .

     “I’ll pay you the fare,” the man siz.  “She lives here with me.  I’m her father.  She’s on drugs and when she runs out of money she comes home.  I think she likes to make fun of cab drivers this way.”

     “You mean, for kicks?”

     “Yes, I think so.  If she knows what she’s doing.” 

Entry # 25

THE CAPTAIN’S INHERITANCE
by Bruce Hesselbach

Remembering how Emily had raved about her five brothers during her bouts of fever, Brian inquired of the elders of the town whether Emily had any living relatives at all. They took his inquiries as fear and reluctance to visit the witch’s cottage, and yet they honestly had to assure him that no, there were no relatives whatsoever.

And so, late one day in fall, Captain Brian Aille rode up to Dedman’s Mountain. The land was spectacular with all the trees in yellows, reds, and browns, with the air so light and fresh, and the sky so brilliantly blue. The trails on the mountain seemed somewhat overgrown. Bindweed flourished as a groundcover under the stately trees, as if to grasp the mountain in its grip and pull it underground. 

The clearing, once full of flowering magical herbs and plants, was being choked by weeds, and looked rather blighted. The house, once so like a tower, had the door ajar and two windows broken. Inside, the art and calligraphy had all been removed, either stolen or burned.

“This is terrible,” Brian thought. “It was once a beautiful place, and the old woman who lived here was a good person.”

It being late in the day, Brian decided to spend the night. He built a fire in the chimney and found some blankets. He decided to sleep on a couch on the first floor, not wanting to go in the bedroom upstairs where he had strong memories of the plague. Soon twilight came on, and Brian rested on the couch thinking about the lives of the herbalists. What fine people they were, devoting their lives to healing others. 

All the same, the octagonal house had an eerie feeling to it. One could hear the wind in the trees sighing like dead souls. The associations of the house with a reputed witch were somewhat unsettling. Creaking of the house in the wind seemed to give it a life of its own. 

Looted, gutted, the poor house itself seemed to have suffered as much as its owner did in the grip of fanatical and evil persecutors. Was there still some spirit left in this remote and darkened place? The sparks of the fire shed a faint dancing light on the old wooden walls and beams. 

Suddenly he heard a kind of coughing sound, like someone clearing his throat. Instinctively, he grabbed his snaphaunce pistol and tensed for a fight. Instead, he heard a deep, rather apologetic sound.

“Brian Aille, we mean you no harm. We are the five brothers of Emily Dwergma. We will show ourselves if you are prepared. We do not want to frighten you.”

“Where are you? Come out into the open.”

“Our appearance will resemble spirits, but we are not ghosts. Please understand that we are your friends.”

“Just come out where I can see you,” said Brian, and he laid his pistol on the bed.

Out from the wall across from him emerged a figure. It resembled the transparent outlines of a ghost of a handsome young man, except that nose looked like actual human flesh.

Next came a ghost of another young man, except that the ears looked like actual human flesh. 

After that came a ghost of a young man whose eyes looked like normal, non-ghostly eyes.

Next came a ghost of a young man with a normal human mouth.

Last of all came the ghost of a young man with feet and hands that looked like regular, tangible flesh. 

“Are you Emily’s five brothers? Are you ghosts? Was she really a witch after all? Am I just dreaming this?” Brian said, his head spinning.

“We are not ghosts or spirits but beings that have existed since the world began. We were created by the curators when this world was first formed. Our duty was to test the living things as they were first created. We reviewed their features by sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell and we discovered which ones were good and which were flawed. When our work was done we were buried under stones and a mountain stream was diverted to flow over us. We slept for centuries. 

“Then Emily came. She had great powers of second sight and she knew that we were sleeping below the stream coming off this mountain. She built a dam and moved the stream out of the way. Then she dug through our stony prison and let us see the light again.

“We thanked her and vowed ever to be the brothers that she never had. We helped her to find and grow magical plants and we taught her many things. However, no one can escape destiny, and we could not prevent her from being killed. 

“Before she died she asked us to look after you. She said we could help you in many ways.”

“Thank you, thank you,” said Brian, not knowing if he wanted to banish these spirits or befriend them. “What magical powers do you have?”

“We can only be seen or heard by our friends, and, at present, that means only you. We can travel anywhere in the world and back in the blink of an eye. We can walk through walls.”

Each being then introduced himself in turn by pointing to his fleshly part. The one who called himself Eyes said: “Eyes can see for hundreds of miles. Ears can hear for hundreds of miles. Touch can feel the vibrations from feet approaching hundreds of miles away. Taste can detect poison as well as superior food. Smell can tell who is present within hundreds of miles, can distinguish between people, and can even tell if people are related to one another.”

The one with the nose said: “But these are not magical powers to us; they are how we are made. To us these talents are no more magical than the operation of your own senses.”

Brian stroked his chin. “These talents, as you call them, could be very valuable to a military man. One would never need scouts or spies. You would be better than a whole regiment of scouts.”

“We are pleased to be of service, Brian,” Ears said. “When you need us, just pound your fists together. We will see and hear it, and we will be there.”

And, with that, the five brothers vanished.

“Well, wouldn’t you know it,” Brian thought, “I’ve got an inheritance after all, and me an orphan. Who would have thought.