CW: Child abuse, alcoholism, religious zealotry
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The waters of the millpond stirred. As the wretched scent of death and decay spread thick upon the air, the whippoorwills screamed and the egrets trembled. The insects and the belly-crawlers, with stomachs gorged and appetites quenched, retreated into their oozing mud holes while the rotting willows swallowed the first rays of the sun.
He arose with the smoothness of an approaching serpent; his naked, emaciated form luminescent in the growing dawn. Droplets of marsh fled from his skin as thick strands of hair clung to his cherub cheeks and thin, Pinocchio nose. A young boy, he seemed to be, yet with the vacant, doll-like demeanor of a child found drowned on the surface of a lake. His impish nature evident in the smooth, sarcastic grin stretched upon his face, and the cloudy expression in his eyes. The remnants of a long rotted mill wheel stretched out before him, barely visible through the moss growing thick along it’s rungs. Ghostly cracks echoed out from the settling wood as the sun crept farther up the horizon.
The Urisk is what the Scottish had called him, so long ago; a solitary hobgoblin forever haunting the lonely pools of the marsh. As he sat within the palm of a dying swamp laurel, one leg tucked up underneath him, he twitched excitedly at the onset of a most glorious scent.
Flesh.
Never before was this scent so enticing, and he knew upon the entrance of his watery lair, that a new friend was drawing near.
Chris sat silently. Her floral print taffeta dress spread out over the grass like the dome of a parasol. The long, golden-brown hair trailing down her back was pulled up delicately by an elegant pewter clasp.
She stared down silently at the book of goose poetry perched idly in her lap. Her large, doe-like eyes watered with boredom. This, of course, was not enough to hold her interest. She had bigger and better things on her mind. In a dreamy loss of interest, she let her young, milk-white face turn in exasperation toward the unfurling branches of the willows. Her stockinged legs and saddle shoes stretched out like a little boy’s, twitching in anticipation. Squinting her eyes from the soft white glare of the sun, she let a low agitated huff flare her tiny nostrils.
This was too much to ask! Way too much to ask of a six year old girl! How could they possibly make her sit here and read a book of boring rhymes when there was so much out in the world to explore? What new and unusual slimy creatures lurk under every stone and stump! What an array of curiously colored amphibians lay waiting to be chased upon those green leafy pallets! Scrunching up her nose, Chris threw her book aside. Echoes of her mother’s voice thundered all too loudly.
“Christie! Get up off the floor and act like a lady. The dogs will make friends among the dogs and you, my dear, will make friends with other young ladies!”
She had not much to say about this. In fact, she never really spoke at all. Comfort was the ability to hold her thoughts within her own head and not having to share them with anybody else. She understood speech. In truth, she understood it very well, yet she never felt the need to utter a single word for herself. Intelligence was a given and evident in the Mona-Lisa smile that would occasionally curl along her face. She understood the curiosities of the world and the fallacies of parent logic and this infuriated her mother.
Jumping to her feet, she wandered impishly around the marsh. Her tiny, delicate hands grabbed at every interesting twig and rock that seemed to catch her eye. The twitch of a rabbit’s ear sent Chris dashing after the nervous creature before sending her tumbling over her own feet. Chris watched the rabbit dash into a burrow and crawled, hands and knees toward the opening. With the courage that only young children seem to have, she jammed her arm into the hole up to her shoulder hoping to catch it. Without much luck, and a few red scratches, Chris lifted herself back up and turned back toward the Manor.
Her mother was a “sophisticated” drinker. At least that’s what she told everyone. “Drunks drink alone” she always said “I only drink with friends and family!” Yet, when you are one of the most popular women in the social circle, time spent alone was few and far between. Lifting onto her tiptoes, Chris strained to see where her mother was perched and to make sure she had not noticed her casual meanderings. The woman sat at a small wicker table and chairs. Three glasses of Sherry rested in front of each frumpy old gossip that sat with her, giggling and whispering as if nobody else in the world could see them. Chris noticed that her mother was wearing her “special” hat, the one she only wore when she was trying to impress somebody -- or make them jealous. It was a hideous hat in Chris’s opinion. An intoxicated cat upon a hornets nest would have been more lovely settled on her mother’s obsessively groomed wig.
In any case, the woman was not paying attention. Chris was free to reign her Faeryland as much as she pleased. That is, until her mother sent the servants and the dogs out to find her. Chris loved those bloodhounds almost as much as these little moments of freedom and when they greeted her after a long night of exploration, she was almost happy to be discovered. She enjoyed the servants company as well. They were always kind and accepting of her.
But why think of this now?
Chris skipped along the base of the creek. The silver bodies of the fish darted this way and that as she threw flower petals along the surface.
The Urisk lurked obsessively in his dark pond. The tar-like waters bubbled up gruesomely as he swam. Since he had first detected it, his slender nose had tried to locate the origin of that addicting aroma, yet as of this moment, his eyes were blind.
Many times he had awakened to similar scents. Many times he had skulked toward the bank to greet those gorgeous babies as they wandered too far from their parent’s call. All he had ever wanted was a companion. He had asked them nicely. He had been humble. But as he felt those trembling bodies, as he struggled to hold their tiny faces under the turgid waters, they always slipped from his grasp and fell limp into the brine.
But, alas! There is was again--a scent winding its way through the cattails. This time, it would be his. This time, it would stay. The hunger smoldering inside him was too much to bear and this time he would not be so gentle. He longed to touch the baby skin; the soft, delicate flesh as the blood pulses in it’s veins and he admired that misty warmth of breath that is anxiously exhaled to form a scream.
There was something vaguely familiar to the Urisk, as he waded in the pond. The sludge and muck of decaying foliage seeped through the spaces between his fingers and the crevices of his pruned fingertips. He new he could not stray from the edge of the pond. The pond was a place of refuge. A pond that was also his prison.
Suddenly he stopped. The thick black waters consumed his shoulders as he blinked blankly into empty space. Something was drawing near. He could hear the willows rustling softly against themselves and he sensed that alluring pheromone like never before. With a small snicker, he let himself sink entirely into the darkness.
Chris let her hair out of the clip and threw it like a pewter missile into the mud. Her hair now hung in wild strands as she swirled about the faery rings. A small toad, olive and pimpled, struggled helplessly in the lace pocket at her breast.
As her tiny feet carried her deeper and deeper within the forest, the light of the sun grew evermore shaded by cloud and tree. She held no notice as her attention darted from this to that, but deep inside she knew there was something unusual waiting for her.
Her mother always said there was something wrong with her. She was born on the 6th day of the month, or during a blue moon. Ever since she could remember, her mother was reminding her, “You were never an easy child. You’re faery offspring.” Chris could even remember her mother’s dramatics the first night she ran away. After returning home with her, the woman sobbed profusely, collapsed sickly into an armchair and groaned, “Oh, where! Where, Dear Lord, has my baby been taken too? What have I done to deserve this devil in replace?” Her father, his usually meek self, paced back and forth across the living room tending fearfully to his wife’s draining martini.
Chris couldn’t say she hated her mother, as many children might have. At the least, Chris was severely entertained. Her mother drifted dreamily into the background like much of the human world while Chris’s tribe dwelt in the lazy bodies of those two red bloodhounds.
Upon first glance it was easy to see Chris’s unusual connection to the animal world. The amazing power she held over the hounds was more than any could bear and as the usual array of colorful characters ran out and about the family’s manor house, they noticed that the dogs could do more than any of them had ever accomplished--they could hear her.
And they understood.
Precisely why they now lived chained to the wooden beams of the garden shed.
But at times like this, personal thoughts were adrift and Chris focused more upon the escapade at hand. It was tougher to walk as she moved farther and farther into the marsh and the mud slopped up around her ankles. At this point, her tender senses could tell that something was odd about this place. The blue jay’s churrups had ceased as soon as she entered the marsh and the air was cold and wet. There was something vaguely familiar to her as she explored the crippled forms of the trees and the whispers in the air told her that she was not alone.
When she reached a pond, the thick waters bubbled. The forms of naked branches reached out of the mouth like the pleading arms of a penitent while the thick grey haze of mist began to form hauntingly above the surface. Everything was rotten. Dark green sludge frothed at the ponds edge and waves of methane rose from the muck like heat. The air stank of sulfur and decay and moisture dripped from everything. As Chris walked along, every other footstep plunged into the filth of the marshy floor.
She stood fixated. Her large, watery eyes gazed into the braken at nothing in particular, but something about the pond made her hesitant to proceed. She could not see a fish nor frog, yet the surface was overwhelmed with large, black lily-pads. As if she were a spectator in a world that held no immediate danger, Chris let her gaze carry her toward a disturbance at the other edge of the waters. Within the darkness, she could see it: a long current of water meandering toward her like the sideways wind of an eel. It was unusual to see no trace of bubbles, yet the movements were fluid and alive. The tension that simmered underneath her skin forced Chris to take another curious step, but as she did so, the waters were suddenly still.
Just a few feet from where Chris stood, a figure began to rise. Slowly he emerged as if the strings of a marionette had lifted him from the pond. The seaweed tangle of hair slapped against his face while blank eyes stared out with absent emotion. Although they were fogged over, Chris knew he looked at her; a smooth smile spread over his face as his hairless body stood before her. His long arms lay at his sides as he looked down from where he hovered.
Suddenly, without warning, the creature exploded with excited laughter. His giggles echoed off into the swamp. With no other sound to disturb it’s silence, the laughter never seemed to end. After what seemed like hours, a sudden gasp for air rattled the Urisk’s body and he fell into a crumpled ball and floated idly above the pond. Chris just watched him. A sliver of fear darted behind her eyes but her stance was firm and her face blank. She could hear a soft, childlike coo whisper from the creature as he rocked back and forth crying:
Sit here, I, among the brine
Doomed from land and higher skies
I have no friends to call my own,
But mine would be a better home!”
As the Urisk’s browless face turned toward Chris, the emotionless expression suddenly changed and he stared at her with haunted, lonely eyes. He held out his bony arm and unraveled five long fingers for her to grasp. With an invisible push, Chris waddled into the oily black pool.
It was as if she couldn’t get to him fast enough. The movement of her legs felt light as she approached this strange boy-elf and reached out for his bare hand. Her tiny figure was dwarfed next to his tall and slender body as it drifted silently over the mud hole, and she was seduced by the marvels that lay undiscovered within the darkness. Images of naiads and water babies filled her imagination--tales of the stories that filled the pages of her nursery books. Even as the waters engulfed her waist and creeped up towards her armpits, her heart filled with an exciting thrill.
But then something strange happened. As the cold clammy palms of the sickly imp seized her wrist, she screamed in utter horror. An overwhelming nausea rose within her stomach and the morbid darkness of the marshes faded from her mind’s eye. Chris could feel her body writhing uncontrollably as she struggled with the force that grabbed her, but she saw nothing as the scenery melted around her.
The smell of rot that stung her throat was gone, replaced by the lovely scent of fresh water and pine. As the rising sun glared dreamily through the rustling trees, the image of a young boy, tall and slender, waded playfully through a pond. His pants were rolled up sloppily at his shins and his hands darted in and out of the waters toward the fish that danced there. He bit his lip in concentration as he prowled and waited. A large tree of egrets bloomed up along the bank while the songs of their noisy cliques decorated the air. Not far behind, the creaking wood of a water mill churned away into the afternoon.
With a sudden explosion, Chris could hear a man’s voice--a deep, guttural roar pounding out of the reeds like the bellows of a dragon. The boy’s face drained in horror. With trembling arms, he let the tadpoles fall from his pockets and collapsed at the lip of the pond. A bible lay resting upon the long waving grasses, but he had been too slow in retrieving it. As a large man crashed through the trees, his well-dressed countenance was a surprise to Chris. He dressed in well-made black cotton and his beard was groomed neatly across his broad jaw. If it weren’t for the enraged glare burning from his eyes he would have looked much like a Southern minister.
The man picked up his son as if he weighed nothing. The boy screamed aloud as he was pinned against a tree and Chris could see the damp stain that suddenly soiled his trousers. The father’s large barrel of a fist came crashing down into the boy’s face again and again before he threw him like a poppet to the earth.
“Damn you, devil child! Lord God almighty send this demon back to the hell in which he came!” The man then picked up The Good Book and threw it at the boy’s chest. Chris could hear the breath leave him as the boy heaved and lay defeated at his feet.
“Next time I tell you to read, I expect you to listen to me, boy! Pray! I said pray for forgiveness so that you may climb upon the stairs to glory! Pray so that you don’t burn like that bitch of a mother in the fire’s of hell!”
The boy didn’t cry anymore but lay motionless. The shadows of former bruises decorated his face and along his bare shins. The man stood before him like a towering gargoyle before yanking him up by the collar.
Chris could still feel the force around her wrist, but as the imagery around her changed once more, she lost her sense of awareness. The pond glowed orange as the sun arched pensively toward the west. Again she saw the young boy. He sat upon a small wooden pier, his long legs dangling toward the waters. The large black and blue shiner that swelled along his brow accentuated the blue of his left eye. The boy sat playing with a young doe that had wondered in from the marsh. He smiled despite the pain that stretched along his face and Chris recognized that smile. She recognized that delightful spark within his pastel eyes for she knew it well. Somewhere deep in her mind, she could almost smell the comforting scent of dog fur.
Suddenly, as the she-deer bent down to nuzzle her nose in the boys pale blond locks, Chris whimpered. A shot rang out in the dusk and the deer fell limp to the ground. The man she had seen before walked into view. His face was serious as he grabbed the boy up by his hair and carried him away.
And the scene changed. Color bleeding into color, swirling around Chris’s vision and forcing the pond to smear into view once again. She saw the large man standing up to his waist in water. The sleeves of his neatly pressed white shirt were rolled up past his elbows and black suspenders stretched across his chest. Chris could see the boy standing right next to him, gripped within his father’s right arm. At any other moment this could have been dear, but as Chris’s heart pounded, she knew this was far from the truth.
The father held up his left hand and began reciting the baptismal rights. The red rage ignited in his eyes as he held firmly onto his son.
They were alone. Father and son. The minster screamed out his emotional sermon, holding his son’s arm so tight his fingers were turning purple. With an ending note to his long and overbearing words, he whispered arrogantly into his son’s ear:
“Let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave.”
The man then shoved the boy’s head down into the pond, and as he struggled to stand up, the man pushed him deeper. Chris cried out as she saw frantic bubbles rise as the boy’s arms flailed, hitting desperately at his father with weak fists. Tears flooded the man’s bloodshot eyes as he turned towards the heavens. A hoarse, heartbroken scream rang out into the sky “ . . . and deliver us from EVIL!” The veins in the man’s arms pulsed within the tense bulges of his arms. Spit foamed along his beard and shirt.
Then all was silent. Chris could see the man’s grip relax and the boy’s body rise to the surface, motionless. The sunlight that shone through the emerald willows faded and the waters grew thick and dark. The scents of fresh water and pine were blotted out by the heavy, rotten stench from before. She was aware once again of the grip around her wrist, but it still didn’t matter as she watched the scene spill out before her like a fever dream. She watched the Urisk over and over again as he lured child after child into his watery lair. Each time she felt the pain in his heart after the body fell limp in his arms and the spirit escaped, leaving him alone. Finally, she understood.
Chris awoke with a jolt. She let the awful air fill her lungs as the marsh came to life around her. As her eyes opened, she could see the boy as he stared at her in misery. The grasp he held around her wrist relaxed and he sank with a splash into the water. Hugging his legs with his arms, he rested his head upon his knees, gently rocking back and forth.
A boy he had been, so long ago. A boy just a few years older than herself--with similar gifts. Yet as he sat, wailing into the empty silence, he felt the pain of a thousand worlds. Chris watched in sorrow as he lay broken and brittle. His ribs rippled across his chest as he sobbed. He had seen it too. Everything Chris had witnessed had come flooding back to him. Memories within memories, some good, but many horrible. The bones within his translucent skin seemed to tremble and he held his face in his hands.
Chris approached him tenderly and placed her hand upon his shoulder. The transfer of warmth sent a shiver down the boy’s young body and as he lifted his gaze to stare into her face, his eyes began to glow a soft, pale blue. What once had been a sickly tangle of seaweed hair, blossomed into a head of gilded curls. Hiis dead cheeks flushed and his skin thrived.
There stood before her a young boy of eleven; his cherub cheeks beautiful under mischievous brows. A delicate smile kissed the corner of his lips. Rocking nervously on the balls of his feet, he clasped his hands behind his back and leaned over to give her a kiss. He let a loving laugh escape his throat, his eyes widened with shock by it’s strength.. A sense of giddy excitement seemed to boil from within him and he tilted his head as if hearing something far in the distance.
With a boyish clumsiness, he mussed Chris’s hair and gave her a delicate wink. The rain clouds began to part and the sun glared a brilliant white light. Willows stretched their beautiful bows and the birds sang once again. The pond’s black oils filtered through the depths and the waters glimmered a crystal blue. Newly hatched tadpoles darted about while glorious green lily-pads settled calmly along the water’s surface.
The air smelled of life. The cattails twitched and the flowers bloomed. Chris watched the butterflies leap up and dance from invisible perches and when she turned to look at the boy once more, he had walked away. The trees seemed to bow as he skipped off into the marshland while the faeries followed and the grasses grew at his feet. Burning white light beamed in from the sky upon his golden head while pollen glittered in the air like snow.
As Chris watched the young boy fade like a sylph into the trees, she stopped to hear the excited yelps of dogs. Tiredly, she stifled a long innocent yawn and smiled.
And the waters of the millpond were calm.
Copyright Stevie Aubuchon-Mendoza 2004
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