Finton Moon (9 page)

Finton almost believed in her life, so much that he felt his fingers tingling and his hands vibrating. Within moments, his fingers, hands, arms, and chest throbbed so hard that he wondered if he might possibly die from the pain. Obeying some primal instinct, perhaps instilled by the rosary, he found himself squatting beside the body and barely knew how he had gotten there. “Holy Mary Mother of God, Holy Mary Mother of God,” he kept whispering over and over, almost to himself, vaguely aware there was more to the prayer. His knees hovered inches above the black spot in her left side, his bare toes tucked beneath the edges of her dress, bathing in her blood. “Holy Mary Mother of God, Holy Mary Mother of God.” On the kitchen table was the dark shape of a kitchen knife.

Balancing like a baseball catcher, he spread his hands over Miss Bridie's wound, her body taut and unyielding. “Holy Mary Mother of God.” He closed his eyes and gently rocked, feeling dizzy and unsure of why he was acting this way, just knowing it was the thing he ought to be doing. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

“Finton,” he heard his father gasp and clear his throat. “That's enough. Yer mother—she—”

But the boy discerned only a distant presence as if his father was yards away, calling to him through a funnel. The smell of her sweat filled his nostrils even as he rocked and trembled, hands throbbing, body overheating. He would have to let go soon, but if he could just believe, she might actually come back. Suddenly, the darkness was replaced by a galaxy of light, with a swirl of colourful stars and planets all around. In his mind, or so it seemed, he sat beneath an apple tree that appeared long dead and Miss Bridie lay in his arms. She stared up at him with a face as blank as an unpainted wall.

“Oh Tom!” He heard her crackling voice wheeze as if it were the last two words to be squeezed from her lungs. To Finton's amazement, she sighed and said, “You brought 'im.” He heard her lick her parched lips, heard the sharp rise and fall of her chest. As he opened his eyes, her head turned to the side so that he couldn't see her face.

Finton felt his father's hand on his shoulder. Their eyes met for a flickering moment, and then quickly, self-consciously, disengaged. In his father's eyes, he had seen both relief and something else. Maybe that other emotion was fear—but of what?

Sirens filled the house as a wolf 's howl fills a forest: as if it belonged. The banshee cry of sirens and soothing flash of blood-red lights were such common occurrences at the Battenhatch house that they were a part of it, forever associated with it, as much as ticks and lice, stormy nights, or Miss Bridie Battenhatch.

His father held her hand, even stroked her hair as they loaded her onto the stretcher and aboard the ambulance; he sat with her in the back. He looked briefly at Finton, who sat on the dilapidated front step, his bloody feet tacky on the damp wood, sticky hands tucked beneath his armpits. He struggled to catch his breath, muttering a grateful prayer as the ambulance rolled away, bathing him in bloodlight and siren's wail. His lips still tasted the cold stink of her flesh, and his body was wracked with pain.

Although trembling with fear and the faint stirrings of a headache, he crept back into the kitchen, curious to see the knife that Morgan had used to slice open her mother. But it wasn't there. He massaged his temple, blinked and stared. But the tabletop contained only a wrinkled doily, a half-f bottle of Five Star rum, and an upset tumbler. The knife was gone.

By morning, his headache had disappeared. The dried bloodstain on his pillow was easy to ignore. Half asleep, he glanced at the dark spot, drew his finger across its crusty surface, scraping most of it away with a fingernail and flicking away the residue. In the bathroom mirror, he noticed a brown blemish on his face created by a trickle of blood that had dried overnight. Using a wet face cloth, he washed away the stain.

Gods and Devils

Finton told no one about what had happened that night at Bridie Battenhatch's house. For several days after the incident, whenever Finton entered the same room, Tom would grow visibly tense, with a longer drag on his cigarette or a nervous tapping of his index finger upon the Camel package in his left hand. If he was watching TV when Finton entered the living room, Tom would leave. Whenever Finton appeared as if he was going to speak to him, Tom would depart. The police had come around, but Finton overheard his father say that Miss Bridie's wound was self-inflicted. “She gets riled up sometimes when she talks about stuff—probably stabbed herself by accident,” he said. In the end, there were no witnesses, since even her mother wouldn't say a word against Morgan, and Miss Bridie spent only a day or so in hospital.

Two days prior to Halloween, as the other children and the teacher were leaving for the day, Finton approached Father Power after religion class. The sun's golden rays illuminated the classroom as the priest sat on the edge of his desk and listened gravely, nodding wisely and furrowing his eyebrows. Finally, he clasped his hands on his lap and asked, “What exactly do you think you did?”

“Like Jesus did with Lazarus, Father.” He looked down as he spoke, afraid to meet the priest's analytical stare. “Kind of.”

Father Power cleared his throat and gazed out the window into the bright, golden sun. “Why do you think that?” He ambled toward the boy and smiled, though Finton found no comfort in this facial construction, which seemed intended to put him at ease and actually achieved the opposite effect. The priest, only in his thirties, had a thin, angular face and hawkish nose that complemented his raven-like hair and rendered him treacherous on sight alone. “I mean—she likely was never dead to begin with. Don't you think?” The priest planted a firm hand on Finton's shoulder that kept him locked in place and, in a confusing flash, ran his fingers through a shock of the boy's hair.

“She looked dead.” Finton glanced at the floor, happening to see his own hands, which he had scrubbed consistently with scalding hot water and Sunlight soap for the past two weeks, but the stains of Miss Bridie's blood remained.

With one long finger, Father Power lifted Finton's chin. “But we both know there's a difference between looking dead and being dead—don't we?”

“I s'pose.”

“Look.” Father Power placed both hands on Finton's shoulders. “What you're talking about is a miracle, my son. And you—that is to say, your family—”

Finton glared into his dark eyes, daring the next words. That his father was just a hard luck fool who couldn't support his family. That the Moons were poor and couldn't possibly be expected to perform extraordinary deeds.

“You shouldn't misplace your faith.” The priest suddenly relinquished his grip. “Or else you'll be lost. Do you know what I'm saying, Finton?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Besides, what you're suggesting is sacrilege, my boy. And to commit sacrilege is a mortal sin. And you don't want to go to hell, do you?”

With barely a mumbling farewell, Finton took his books and ran home. The farther he got from the schoolyard, the more convinced he was that the priest was right—that Miss Bridie had not been dead. He could accept a great deal of punishment, but the thought of spending eternity doing the devil's dirty work in the dark was enough to pretty much assure him he'd been wrong about the whole thing. It was all just a bad dream, he had decided, just as he was passing by the Battenhatch estate.

For the first time ever, he didn't run past, but stood at the unlatched gate, and tried peering in through the window, piecing together that night in his mind. But the windows were dark. The bloodstain on the front door had been whitewashed away. He couldn't feel or see the resurrection, could barely even recall the particulars. Therefore, it didn't happen. And so there was no need for him to wind up in hell. But as he sauntered up Moon's Lane, he wished he could talk it over with Miss Bridie.

“It's the God's honest truth,” Tom was saying as the boy walked in. “Phonse Dredge says he saw him, plain as day.”

“Who, Dad?” Finton had entered the kitchen in time to see his father banging the table with his fist, making the glass sugar bowl spill some of its grainy, white contents onto the brown Formica. Clancy and Homer sat at the table while their mother stood at her usual spot by the kitchen sink, a wet dishrag in her hands, bubbles foaming and hissing in the dish-filled water behind her. Nanny Moon sat in the living room, tucked mostly out of sight, rocking back and forth, going “tut-tut-tut” whenever Tom swore, and knitting something on brown yarn the colour of a dirty dog.

The boy caught his father and mother exchanging glances. “Tell me,” he said.

“Well,” Tom said in between sips of beer. “Me buddy Phonse Dredge was on duty last night down at the watch shack for the department o' highways. Right at midnight, the lights went out. Black as pitch. But Phonse had his big flashlight. Figuring that someone was up to mischief, he turned it on and went out to search—they don't like people sneaking into the yard, see.

“Phonse was a few feet away from the shack when he heard a noise behind him, like shuffling feet. Then a soft chuckle, like someone was playing a good joke on him. ‘Who the hell is out there?' Phonse shouted out. But he couldn't see no one. Phonse is a pretty big guy, ya know, and he's not afraid o' much.” Tom rubbed his hand over his face, shook his head, and scratched his nape as if bewildered.

“But Phonse told me that he was shakin' all over. ‘I just knew something was wrong, Tom, b'y,' he said. ‘Like every time I turned me back, someone was starin' right at me and gettin' ready to grab me.' He said, ‘I was so frightened that I went back to the shed—there's glass all around so I can see outside and still be seen from outside too—and tried to call Cin.' But the phone at the house just kept ringing.

“Then, Phonse says, ‘All of a sudden, I saw something comin' outta the woods.' It was so bright he couldn't see a thing.”

“What was it?” Finton asked, his whole body tense and his eyes wide.

“Tom, yer frightenin' the poor youngsters to death. Tell me later.”

“No, Mom. I wants to hear what Phonse saw. Was it a UFO?”

Tom shook his head. “Worse. Way worse. It was the most awful thing you can imagine coming out of the woods.”

“Dracula!” Finton's eyes grew wide.

“Jesus, Tom—go on and tell it then.”

“Well, the bright light came closer and closer out of the black woods. And Phonse started to see a little bit of it. And it started to look like a man, but he was covered in orange and red flames on all sides.”

“Sure the woods woulda caught on fire.” Clancy squinted and grimaced.

Tom paused, scratched his head. “P'raps they did. Anyway, the figure came closer and closer, and just a few feet away Phonse could see him, clear as anything—two big horns sticking out of his forehead!” Tom showed them, using his two index fingers as horns on his head. “And a long, pointed tail nearly touching the ground betwixt his legs, and two cloven hoofs like a goat. Phonse knows 'cause he grew up with goats.”

This fact sounded stranger to Finton than all the rest. “He grew up with goats?”

Tom grimaced. “His father had goats.”

“Oh.” Even though that was the answer he'd expected, Finton was disappointed, as it would make a great story to know somebody whose siblings were goats.

“Anyway, Phonse realized he was lookin' Satan himself right in the face.”

“The devil, Tom?” Elsie's face turned pale as she covered her mouth with her hands. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Amen.” She blessed herself three times, faster than Finton had ever seen her do it before. It was the devil, after all. “Did he say anything?”

Tom shrugged. “Phonse never said. Phonse could hardly talk. He's off tonight—called in sick and said he don't know if he can go back.”

“I s'pose not.” Elsie shook her head. “It wouldn't be me goin' back there by meself in the middle o' the night.”

“What made the lights go?” Homer asked.

“The
devil
,” Tom said, as if he should have seen that fact for himself.

“The
devil
made the lights go.”

“Well,” Elsie said, “I'm lockin' the door and saying a novena.”

“Good idea,” Tom said as he stood up and plucked his coat from the back of his chair.

“And where are you goin'?” Elsie asked.

“Down to Jack's to tell the b'ys that the devil is come to Darwin.”

“Lord God have mercy.” She blessed herself again. “I'm half afraid now to let Finton go out for Hallowe'en.” Hands clasped in front of her, she appeared to fall into a trance. “Do what ya wants to do,” she said. “If the devil is anywhere it's down at Jack's. I'm gettin' down on me knees and praying to Jesus to save us all.”

“That's a good thing, Else. To each his own saviour.” Tom nudged his youngest son aside and departed, leaving his family praying to keep the devil away.