Sugar and Spice

Chapter 2-2

She ran, hobbling on one naked foot and one shoe with a broken heel. Blood and tears matted her hair, and dirt smeared her clothes and face. Someone had already found the bodies. Ear-shattering police sirens screeched all around her. They were close. Too close. Fear surged within her. She looked around, desperate to find a secure place, a hole, anywhere she could hide.

She saw a church and quickly stumbled toward it, her body half naked, her tattered clothes barely hanging from her body.

A church is the last place they will look, she thought and ran into the foreboding burial ground and hid behind a damaged gravestone.

Her eyes searched for the nearest door or window and found an obscure side entrance only a few feet from where she crouched. The doorway was dark, hidden by trees and shrubs. The obvious questions hammered through her head. What if it was locked? What if someone was inside? What if they saw her? She gave a start when another shrill blast erupted, and suddenly it didn’t matter.

She had to take the chance.

Moving further into the shadows, she hid until the sirens passed and then quickly pushed herself away from the cross of cracked, rough cement and darted toward the nearby door that opened easily. The darkness inside blinded her, but finally she managed to see a dim outline of another door.

Where does it lead? she wondered as she crept toward it.

Careful not to make any noise, she peered inside and saw that she was on a landing above an area that was wide and cavernous. She stepped in softly and immediately saw some stairs made of old, unpainted wood. When she stepped on them, they emitted a soft creak, and the air smelled musty and damp. The walls were crumbling with age, and the cement floor was riddled with cracks. Finding a corner, she wilted down into it and fell into a fitful sleep where nightmares haunted her.

Once again, she relived the awful night in her dungeon. The face of her cursed son swam above her in a macabre nightmare, his hulking body coming closer and closer. Whirling all around her were the sounds of angry growling. She felt the heaviness of the brooding darkness, saw vivid splashes of blood. Oh, God! So much blood!

She woke up screaming when the voices of her guilty conscience began.

“You killed him, b***h!”

“No!” she screamed.

“You killed him, and now you’ll pay!”

The voices whirled; the words stabbed at her heart.

“I didn’t…he was coming at me with death in his eyes. He didn’t know me…he…he would have killed me!”

“How could you do it? How could you sink a knife into the heart of your own son?”

“I don’t know,” she sobbed. “Please leave me alone. Please!”

“I’m waiting for you in hell! I’m waiting with the ones you killed!”

“No! No! I didn’t mean to kill anyone!” she cried while the voices continued to whirl around her head. “Cristo’s death wasn’t my fault. He was going to kill me…I was frightened…I couldn’t let him…I couldn’t!”

“You’ll pay, you little…”

She had to get away, away from the accusing voices, away from the horror, the guilt. She jumped up and ran, bursting through doors, sliding around corners, but the voices followed her. She held her hands up to her ears, but she could still hear them.

Like the hounds of hell, each accusing word nipped at her heels.

* * * *

In the chapel…

A reflection of leaping flames burned in the gaze of Father Jonathan Becker as he stared down into the sea of candles. Swirling colors, blood red, blue, bright orange, melted together, each reflecting on slightly sagging skin and dark hair with a distinguished scattering of gray at the temples. He moved silently about the table as he continued to light the candles.

The chapel was long and decorated with plaster saints that stood in small alcoves along the walls. The burgundy pews and dark, shining wood gave it a feeling of warmth. Having finished, he knelt at the altar on one knee, gave the sign of the cross, and then moved to get up. He hesitated, scowling at the pain in the bunched-up muscles of his legs. He was only in his forties, but already his body reminded him that the years were piling up. While he moved to loosen his stiff back, he suddenly stopped and turned his head.

What was that? A scream? No, it couldn’t be. The squawk of a bird, that’s what it was. With the ocean right outside his door, he heard them all the time, and it never failed to give him a chill, like the crawl of ants on his skin. Dismissing it, he turned back and continued until another sound, louder this time, seemed to make its way up from the basement. It sounded like the scream of a woman, a door slamming, footsteps.

Turning, he hurried down the aisle and into the darkness.

Pushing on the door, he moved out into the foyer, spidery sensations biting his nerve endings, telling him someone was in trouble. He turned into a corridor and went down some steps that led to the basement. He rounded a corner when a burst of lightning illuminated the narrow passage, spotlighting a woman who, at that moment, was racing toward the basement door and out into the night. Although the hallway was dark, he hadn’t missed the look in her eyes and the fear that was etched on her face. He rushed after her, calling out to her while holding the side door of the church wide.

He lost her in the darkness.

Beyond him the ocean crashed and ebbed in an echoing, lonely song. A cold breeze blew against him, matching the chill that climbed slowly up his spine. Feeling a deep concern for the woman, he turned and hurried back into the church and up the steps.

He must pray, and pray hard, for the woman, whoever she was.

God would know.

* * * *

Sugar raced toward the mansion, trying to put as much distance as she could between the voices and her own conscience. Fear spiraled inside her while she ran, stumbling, rising and stumbling again, the single mile stretching into two, five, or was it ten? Just when she felt she couldn’t go another step, at last she saw it, the mansion, dark and sprawling with columns that reached high into the stormy night sky. She managed to drag herself past magnolias and weeping willows until she at last reached the steps of the portico. There she fell, lying exhausted at her front door. It was then that she finally realized that she would never be able to live with what she had become, with the voices and the bloody pictures in her mind.

Like her dead mother-in-law, she would go insane.

With a plan in mind, she managed to get up and make her way to the dark and misty graveyard that lay in the back of the mansion some distance away. She could smell the moisture from the gathering storm that bowed and shook in the wind as she knelt between the graves of her two sons, Cristo and Marcus. Clutched in her hand was the antique dagger that had killed Cristo. It had to be that one, the one that killed him would be the one to kill her. She lifted it slowly, laid the sharp edge of the blade across her wrist, and allowed the glittering edge to sink in deep.

Pain, sharp and raw, made her whimper.

At that moment the skies rumbled and roared while she watched the blood gush deep and red. In spite of the agony she felt, she brought the trembling knife to her lips and sipped at her own essence and then reached out and allowed the blood to drip over each of her son’s graves. Her heart thrashed wildly in her chest, but still she continued.

“My blood pours over these graves,” she coughed and gasped for breath, “soaking into the soil like life-giving rain. Soon the end will come, my loves. My blood will reach your bones, and your spirits will rise, and we will walk together once again.” With that, she fell across the graves, and waited.

But death would not come.

Sugar lay motionless. Seconds, minutes, hours passed, but still the breath of life heaved in her lungs. She shivered with the piercing cold, felt the hard ground press against her body, heard the wind’s eerie voice as it moaned through the trees.

“Let me die!” she finally shouted up at the horned moon, but no answer came, just a winking of the slice of silver that peeked at her from behind ragged clouds. Finally, when the sky opened up and battered her with wind and rain, she dragged herself up from the graves and trudged toward the mansion. Climbing the steps of the portico, a swirl of blackness overcame her and she collapsed.