[Trigger Warning: suggested past child abuse but no explicit depictions.]
The package:
-A battered old shoebox wrapped in brown paper and clumsily tied with fraying shoelaces. No postage stamp. No return address.
Its contents:
-A page torn from a cheap motel bible. One passage is underlined three times in a shaky hand. “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.”
-A little white marble figurine of the Virgin Mary. Her features have been warped with a red sharpie-her serene smile now a hideous crimson ruin, her soulful eyes now weeping bloody tears.
-A stack of grainy Polaroids. The pictures are all of children. Smeared on the forehead of each child is a cross of ash. The children all appear to be between the ages of eight and thirteen. Their lips smile but their eyes do not.
-A Glock 17 9mm pistol and a box of bullets.
-A hastily handwritten note in pen.
The note:
“I’m going back. I’m going to set us all free. I don’t think you’ll see me again. I love you. I’m sorry.
Please don’t throw the gun away. If I could find you, They can too. Keep it for her sake.”
It’s 3 AM, June 20th. I’m typing this in a dingy motel room somewhere in west Arizona. I can’t be more specific than that. Sleeping soundly on the room’s other bed is my daughter, Autumn. She’s clutching tight to her favorite teddy bear, Mr. Fuddles. Four days ago, as soon as I got the package, I told Autumn we were leaving for a trip and that she had to pack her things and be ready to go in five minutes. She had started to sob. It wasn’t the panicked look in my eyes that did it, or the fact that we were leaving home without warning for a trip of indefinite duration. It was choosing which stuffed animal to bring. She agonized for twenty minutes, picking up each one and weighing its merits, and it was only when I scooped her up into my arms and made to leave that she made a desperate grab for Mr. Fuddles and held him tight.
So he was the favorite after all. Lucky him.
I think about the animals she left behind. Maybe they’re sitting on her bed right where she left them, presiding over an empty and more or less orderly apartment. Maybe. Or maybe they’re scattered across the floor, the apartment ransacked: doors broken open, drawers ripped out of their chests and their contents scattered across the floor. Men and women with hollow eyes digging through our belongings, picking up my daughter’s toys and weighing them, just as she did.
I almost didn’t bring the gun. The feeling of its weight in my hand made me nauseous. It’s not that I don’t know to handle them. I do. That’s the problem. I was setting it aside when I locked eyes once more with the statuette. Its knowing eyes, its taunting smile. That’s when I put the gun and the rest back in the shoebox and threw the lot into a backpack.
After the fit of mourning for her lost toys had passed, Autumn warmed up to our road trip. I made a game of it.
“Monsters are chasing us, “ I told her solemnly as we picked up snacks at a gas station.
“Monsters? Why?” Autumn’s eyes were wide and watery, but I knew she was more excited than afraid. This is a girl who loves nothing better than to sit beside me as I watch scary movies, half-watching behind her knotted fingers and laughing gleefully at every jump scare.
“Because we’re special, “ I said as I grabbed bags of chips and jerky. “Because we can see them. Most people can’t, you see. They can pretend to be people. But we don’t fall for that.”
Autumn gazed around the gas station, regarding the people around us with sudden suspicion. The scrawny cashier ringing us up, the trucker gazing at the beer. “How do we know who’s a monster and who isn’t?”
“It’s small things. They’ll look too long, smile too wide, be too friendly. Maybe they’ll ask if you’re alone, or if you’re travelling with your mother. Maybe a car will follow us a little too long. “ I was buckling her into the car seat. “That’s why I need you to keep your eyes wide, okay? I’m the wheel woman and you’re my scout.”
Autumn was thrilled by this newfound responsibility, and long after we had exhausted every other car game, she would keep her face pressed to the glass and call out any suspected monsters.
Four days we’ve been on the road, eating only road snacks and fast food, stopping by day only to refuel and use the bathroom, sleeping by night in cheap motels with stained coverlets and dead roaches in the shower. No life for a kid, I know. Autumn has been brave and patient, seldom crying, but she won’t be able to go on like this much longer. Maybe I won’t either. If we can hold out for just another two days, we’ll be safe. For now, anyway.
My daughter is tossing and turning in her sleep. Spread out on the bed before me are the contents of the package. The photos, the statuette, the letter, the bible passage. I’ve been looking at them over and over again the past couple days. What new information I hope to glean from them, I don’t know. My daughter is very curious, though.
“What are you looking at, Mommy? Does this have something to do with the monsters?” She’s asked, more than once.
“Just work, sweetie. Don’t distract Mommy.” I say every time.
The pictures of the children in particular fascinate her. Two days ago, in a motel room one hundred something miles back west, she pulled a photo from the stack and looked at it. “Who is this, mommy? She looks like me.”
I grabbed the photo from her and my heart skipped a beat. The girl in the photo was me, not much older than Autumn. There is a striking resemblance, but the girl in the photo had eyes that were much older than they should have been.
“It’s you, isn’t it, Mommy?” Autumn asked. I didn’t respond, and after a while, she moved on and forgot about it.
An old nightmare replayed that night. I’m standing at the top of a rusting metal staircase leading down into a dark cellar. The air is fetid with human feces and the hot metal scent of blood. Standing at the bottom of the staircase, half-shrouded in shadow, is a young woman with pale white skin. She wears pristine white robes and there’s a crown of flowers in her hair. Her small white hand rests on the railing and her foot is poised on the first step. She calls up to me in a voice sweet and soft.
“It’s coming, Annie,” she says, her tone hushed, conspiratorial. “Just like Mother said it would. You can feel it, can’t you? It’s time to come home.”
I remain frozen where I am. I want to run away and slam the door on this place, on this memory, but I can’t move. The woman shakes her head at my folly and begins to climb the staircase. As she mounts the first step, deep gashes rip open up and down her arms. Second step. Her hair falls out in tufts that float feather-like to the ground. Third step. Her teeth begin to fall from her smile and clatter at her feet. Fourth step. Her eyes melt and run down her cheeks. With each successive step, her body deteriorates, a time-lapse study in decay, until a shambling, skinless thing halts two steps down from me. The light that shines on her face is swallowed up by the empty sockets of her eyes. I want to scream but I cannot move my mouth. My lips are sewn shut. The thing was reaching for my hand when my daughter shook me awake . Autumn stood at my bedside and in a momentary trick of light, she had no eyes.
My daughter sobbed for over an hour after that. My fear had frightened her beyond her limit. The motel manager had come and slammed on the door to complain about the noise. I had to bribe him to let us stay the night.
I knew better than to sleep after that.
I’m picking up the letter again. Scattered across the paper are little dried watermarks that could be rain or could be tears. I’m imagining Thomas writing in a fury, throwing everything in the box. I can see him standing on my doorstep, raising his hand to knock and then thinking better of it. He knew I’d talk him out of it, or try to. He left the box on my doorstep and sped off into the night. Back to the Garden. Back to home. “I’m going back. I’m going to set us all free.”
He’s gone. I can feel it, a fact cold and certain as a corpse on a metal slab. What did he dream of, in his last days? Did he see the girl at the bottom of the stair? Did he see Mother?
Sorting through the stack of Polaroids, I find young Thomas. A sweet boy. How I loved him back then. Nights we would sneak out of the boys and girls dormitories and meet up in the darkness of the compound. We’d listen to the wind off the desert and make up stories to make each other laugh until the sun came up.
We seldom laughed in the harsh light of day.
Gazing at the figurine again. “Life is full of pain, “ Mother told us. “Pain that seems meaningless. No rhyme, no reason, no lesson. But you know different, don’t you? You know why you suffer. You know why I have to hurt you.”
Enough ruminating. The sun is coming. Soon I will shake Autumn gently awake and we’ll gather our things and hit the road again.
The figurine I will leave here, another abandoned toy for them to find.