Rebecca Bavone

Rebecca Bavone Tap I was walking home from Dough Jolie. The sun showered the sky with pinks and reds and oranges, and sweat dripped down my forehead and puddled in my brow. The breeze was dead, and ripping my shirt off in the middle of the road didn’t sound like such a bad idea. No one was around and no one would be. The heat wave beat down on Bela Fotia relentlessly and without judgment, just nature passing by in a hot fury. I turned onto Cora Lane. I watched the boiling, still air ahead of me, dancing in a line between the gravel and the horizon. The road bent down and plunged into a wide circle of evergreens and oaks, and the ground became dirt framed by fallen leaves. I kicked them around and made my way through the forest slowly to savor the shade the arc of trees gifted me. Squirrels skittered and chipmunks crumpled leaves with their tiny feet. I stopped to stare at a bundle of ants trudging up their hill, and silently cheered them on. Birds chippered and flew past me from tree to tree, moving up a branch and down a branch, playing their game. I followed the movement of a certain kind of grey bird. It would hop up and I would hop up. It would jump to the next tree and I would take a big step forward. The little bird flew across the path and I skidded along the dead leaves as I ran, jolting the woods to life and scattering it. Chipmunks dove into their homes, squirrels travelled up the tallest trees, and the birds… oh, the birds. They were beautiful. In a burst of color - cerulean, bright red, gray, yellow, brown, and pure white - they all fluttered up past the dome of oaks and plowed forward in a ripple of beating wings. I smiled and threw my head back, the sun peeking through and hitting my face. I felt it. Something tapped my shoulder. My eyes fell on the end of the dirt road and I listened for a sound. The sound of shifting, tamping, scrambling, and breathing. It was quiet, but there was the heat. An intense heat covered my back in a film of sweat, and rolled off my neck like searing liquid. I saw what I saw, and there was nothing behind me. I swear. Only the forest that stretched down and led back to the gravel road. I faintly heard tires crushing away, and then there was only nature. The crickets sang louder and I rushed away. My childhood home stood as my adult home, empty except for myself and full of quiet. I passed the bedroom door that had been closed for years and entered the one I always left open. There was no reason to go into that shut room. There was no reason to let out the air of the past and clear away the mounds of dust that rolled around, or the closet brimming with clothes or the pendants and signs stuck to the wall and hanging from the ceiling. It was all forgotten by Bela Fotia, so it was forgotten by me. The outlier who carried stones in her cloth shoulder bag, wore her hair long and unbrushed, hissed words at the church and whispered in the diner after Mass where she would wait for the townspeople, staring with foggy eyes at children with crosses around their necks. Everyone shunned her and then beat her with words of God until she retreated back to the woods. She loved me and drove me out of my home. She loved me as much as a mother should and finally died. Bela Fotia forgot her and they forgave me of my cursed lineage, welcoming me back with a hill of raised dirt at the start of my house, a golden cross stuck in the center. Even if I hadn’t moved the body to the backyard, their eyes would have still kept a cautious watch on me. I would always be damned after all. I could not get that feeling away. The heat clung to me like it had never before. I took a shower and sat in front of the fan on high. I went to sleep naked and on my stomach with the blankets pushed down to my feet. It was still dark when I woke up, and I peered through my window at the stars clustered in the black fog of the sky, and marveled at how big the moon seemed. The craters were deep and silver against the smooth illuminated surface speckled with slate. The sun came out to play In the center of the day The moon pushed it aside At the start of every night Soon the light went out So there was no doubt The moon had killed the sun Merely out of fun As I fell into sleep with my head resting on my journal, I heard a tap on my window and then the rain came down. What was left in the morning was dampness and mud. The rising sun of radiating blue and green brought up the moist stench, and it closed in on me as soon as I left my house. My rain boots were lively against the dull brown and the whimpering branches. The birds spoke quietly as I touched the willow tree at the end of the driveway. The trunk was planted to the side, but as it had grown the branches leaned over the path and long, thin leaves hovered over me and wet my hair with drops of water when I passed through. Light filtered through the woods and drew patterns in the mud. I didn’t disturb them, and walked on the leaves. I looked down and noticed the brightened shades of red and yellow and green, and how the centers of some were driven down and held water like teacups. They lit up with every step I took. It was like magic. Dough Jolie was on the main street of Bela Fotia, stuck in a string of stores and restaurants that were already bustling with customers. A man and woman held their daughter’s hands and lifted her above the cracked pavement creeping with weeds. The girl tugged herself free and knelt down to tear a dandelion up and present it to her mother with a toothy smile. The three laughed in the peaceful morning and disappeared into a diner two doors from the vibrant doughnut shop of lavender and baby blue trim. I left my boots beside the welcome mat and stepped inside. “Morning, Lucy.” Rachael came out of the kitchen with a tray of chocolate glazed doughnuts. “Put these in the display case, will you? I have some Boston cream and confetti cake in the back, too.” She carefully slid the metal tray onto the counter and kept speaking as she went back and forth, bringing out a dozen doughnuts and a dozen more. I tied my apron and slid on a pair of moccasins I kept in the broom closet. “You never swept the floors last night, so I did that when I got in. I saw that you dusted, though. I guess that’s something. How were things yesterday? Well, the rest of yesterday, I mean.” The last tray of confetti cake doughnuts hit the counter as I was halfway done with the chocolate glazed. My fingers were sticky, the sugary coating still warm, and I had to get them just right on the parchment. The morning was early, but I could hear the voices of the town up and down the street, coming from Mass for a wholesome breakfast of sweet pancakes, bitter coffee, and greasy bacon. The air conditioner was already on full power, and I realized the heat that was stalking me had let off. “It died down pretty much after you went home,” I said. “People really like the cheesecake doughnuts. You should make more.” “Really? I thought they were too sweet.” Rachael opened the other glass door and put a doughnut inside the case. She eyed my work and then glanced at me. “You look horrible.” I tried to laugh. “Oh, thanks.” “I’m serious.” She touched my arm and I stood to face her. There were faint wrinkles etched into her forehead by the passage of time, and her hair, so full of color, was pulled up into a thick, tight bun that looked like a giant cheese ball. Her dark eyes were soft, lively and full of concern as she pressed the back of her hand to my forehead. “You have a fever.” She pulled her hand to her chest. “Lucy, you’re burning.” “It’s just the heat. I was feeling kind of funny last night, but I think I’m getting over it.” “I don’t know. You still feel funny to me.” “Well, if it gets worse, I’ll tell you.” Rachael’s sigh transformed into a smile when the bell on the door banged against the wood, and in came the first customers of the day. Things slowed when the sun was at its highest, and the air conditioner couldn’t seem to keep up with the weather. I had gone through almost an entire roll of towels, but the sweat never ceased for a second. The heat was circling me. A man strode in as evening arrived. He was tall and solemn, the shadow from his black hat covering half his gaunt face. His walk was a calculated pacing, and he took his time looking at the different doughnuts. I turned, but Rachael wasn’t next to me. “The red velvet, please,” the man said in a low, smooth voice. It almost vibrated the ground I stood on. My hands trembled as I bagged the rich doughnut and gave him his change. As he left, the bell tapped on the rosy door. Rachael stuck her head out of the kitchen and I relaxed at the scent of freshly baked pastries. “Was someone just here? Sorry, I’m making almond croissants. How’d it go?” I looked at her and she dashed over. “Honey, I think you should go home.” “No, it’s fine.” “You’re sick.” She pulled off my apron and folded it. “What do I always tell you, Lucy, huh? It’s not good to live out there. Look what’s happened.” “This is not because of the woods.” Rachael threw her hands up. “Okay, okay. Then go back to the middle of nowhere and rest. I don’t want to see you until there’s color in your skin.” She filled a box with doughnuts and shoved them into my arms, leading me out into the dying day. The wide street was almost barren, and some stores already had their lights out. I followed my shadow to Cora Lane, and by then the moon was almost clear, a circle of blue-gray that outshined the lamp posts on either side of the road. I didn’t want to go. I felt the seed of fear, however small, lodged in my throat, and that was enough to keep me at the edge of the gravel. The air was bearable, so I retraced my steps to a bench that overlooked a stream. The water glowed in the moonlight and tumbled over mossy rocks and pebbles into a shallow fall that lead to a place past bundles of trees. A pair of lightning bugs whizzed by me and I reached inside my bag for my journal. We danced in the moonlight Down by the river We whirled and we twirled Down and down we fell Into a pit of dead leaves The moon is our spotlight I found comfort in the trickle of the moving stream, and the sky was charcoal when my eyes began drifting closed. The heat that spread against my back woke me up. I slid forward. Splashing in the stream, completely naked, were a man and a woman. I went to stand, nervous that I had interrupted something intimate, and in doing so I noticed there were a pile of clothes to my left. My back, sickeningly hot, settled into the wooden bench. The two thrashed about, struggling as they tried to swim up and down, and then they jumped out as if the water was suddenly freezing. Their feet stomped the ground and they spun around and around with glistening skin until they went back in the stream. They seemed to be mumbling something, but it was muffled by little waves crashing and their own frivolous ritual. I was trying to focus and get past all the noise, leaning and tilting my ear toward the two, and that’s when it happened. Something tapped my shoulder. I spun around, expecting a patrolman shining a flashlight or the rest of the taboo swim party, and was met with the moon looking at me through the humid, night air. The man and woman were staring, too, with one foot in the flowing water and the other crushing frail leaves. Pain slithered up my spine, the heat was scraping and scraping up to my neck as I met their eyes in the dark, and I stumbled away from their quiet words that had risen to a chant. “He’ll snuff out the Sun. He’ll snuff out the Sun…” * I went to work in a trance. My feet carried me through the woods to the main street and the clang of the doorbell was merely a low drum. I was so hot I wondered how I walked around half of Bela Fotia without collapsing. Rachael sounded underwater, her voice a bubbling drone. She shook me. “Are you listening? Go home, Lucy! You’re dripping! Your shirt…” The normally pink fabric was deep red and sweat fell in large drops when I squeezed it. “You need a doctor! Now!” It was odd. The temperature was so ferocious I had a feeling I should have been boiling alive or in a coma, but I stood there, part of the way to the counter with Rachael and her wide eyes, accompanied by a perfectly clear mind. I peered outside at the silent street. “Isn’t Mass over by now?” “Oh, why does that matter? Look at you!” My eyes narrowed and I swore she almost backed away. “They… they’ve scheduled extended Mass for the whole week. They’re praying for the heat to pass,” she said. “You won’t go?” “Praying at home is enough for me. I’ve been thinking of just staying home until all this is over.” I gathered the entirety of my fear and hoped it emanated from me when I met the eyes of the gentle woman. “Please, Rachael. Please stay home.” “Why?” A figure came into view and crossed the street with patient steps. I couldn’t move. Rachael tried pulling me to the counter, but I was planted beside the door, and a scream caught in my throat when the bell tapped and in strolled the man with the black hat. “Hello,” he said, going by me as if passing air. He looked in the display case. Rachael threw him a cheery smile. “Good morning! How are you?” I shook my head and she brushed it off. “Waiting for the Sun to take a break.” “Oh, yes, this weather’s dreadful, isn’t it?” The man glanced up. “Yes. The town has been praying up a storm. They have a lot of faith in Him.” “Well, what else is there?” A sound between a hum and a laugh gurgled from the his mouth. “I’ll have a red velvet. Please.” He didn’t turn to me as he opened the door, the doughnut bag nestled in his arm, and I couldn’t see if his eyes moved to graze over my frozen form. Tap. I crumpled, my knees smashing down and my front hitting the cool floor. The heat was cutting me, tearing bloody lines in my skin, and I cried as darkness enveloped me. Red candles lit with teardrops aglow. They converged into a shape like the Sun falling below the horizon, leaving us to the moon. I could see it, too, the pearl in the sky shining through the stained-glass window behind the altar. My body was numb and I startled myself when my hands and jittering fingers hovered over me. I sat up and all comfort left. Bowed heads peeked from the pews as the priest shouted at the church’s high roof. The words were nonsense to my mind filled with static, but the united standing of the town and shuffling of their feet into the long aisle was deafening. I stood and fell back, the wall near the grand wooden doors catching me. The pain from my wounds registered with the image of the priest anointing a young woman with thick wine as dark as blood. The cross on her forehead was opposite, and I watched the same be drawn on the man after her and the child after him, shivers attacking me and livening my discomfort. I thought I was asleep. I had to be asleep. This could not be Mass because it seemed too familiar, and the priest looked much different without his hat. His black robes underlined with white diminished his figure to something faint and ghostly, so that I had to remind myself I could not see the golden chalice sitting directly behind him. He was a stranger to the kind of life I’ve lived, and I couldn’t place him in my memory. I thought back to my mother and Main Street, the church towering over us as people sifted out cleanly with their crisp suits any color but dark and dresses down to the knee. I had chosen a skirt for myself that day, a ruffled thing that stuck out, and left the stockings at home, which invited either hard stares or complete avoidance of the pair of us. While they looked at my mother and she looked back at them, I saw the Father step into the sunlight, guiding a woman with a cane. He was a middle-aged man with a full smile that made me think Catholicism couldn’t be total unhappiness. His gentle hand on the woman’s arm was not the hand that was marking people with the sign of demons. That I knew well. I went further in the church to see him better, to be sure of that uneasiness in my soul. Movement from the back pew caught my eye, and a child peered at me with a tilted head, the red splotch an uneven X. “She is awake. Father.” A sea of faces were wiped of emotion the moment they looked upon my tormented soma, and there was only what I would call enamorment. The Father’s voice swept through the hall. “My friends, you see, faith is not for naught. She has awakened. Fire will cleanse fire and extinguish what reigns above. The Sun will be nevermore and the Moon will release you.” I shivered at his words, and a chant broke into the speech. “The Moon will release us. The Moon will release us…” The candle flames rose in gusts and twinkled off the window, and a man stood atop his seat and began yelling, his bark riling up a frenzy of dance about the church. I saw a pair twirl toward me and I backed into the doors, pushing through and tumbling down the stairs. The lights were going out, the white stone church and the feet surrounding me, and I held it close to me until it slipped from my embrace. My mind filled with a dirty glow like rust and patches of fluttering, warm brightness the color of mustard and neon pink. A deep blue arose and sparked into green, and I watched with horrified eyes a burning river of red soaking the gravel of Cora Lane. The flames slithered forward and climbed into the trees, killing the woods that hid me from the Sun. I was alone on a plain of charred nature. Bela Fotia had turned to ashen gray and the scent of metal hung heavy. The remnants of the river were black and hardened. I looked up at the dying Sun, reduced to a shriveled, dull mass. My breath drifted away in ghostly swirls, and I was thrown back into my world by a sound. I felt it, too, halfway out of the dream. Something tapped my shoulder. Something tapped my window. I saw the white ceiling of my room and at once threw myself to the ground. It was excruciating. A series of gasps and yells escaped me as I tumbled away from the incessant noise, the thing that had been haunting me. My shirt was stuck. I took the hem and lifted it over my head, but it hung from my back, and the added weight was enough to make me lean over to alleviate the throbbing pull. I was on the floor, on my stomach, and it wouldn’t stop. It was louder and more frequent, but it didn’t make sense. It wasn’t a fist banging on the glass trying to break through or a hostile knock on my door. There was no voice. There was only the light tapping on my window. My back was on fire and the only way I could go forward was by crawling, digging my palms into the wood and hooking my nails into crevices. My mother’s bedroom was musty and the kick of the door sent up clouds that had me coughing. I tried to remember something, anything. I searched from my spot on the ground, but the strings holding metal crescents, triangles, and pentagrams ignored my inquiries. The zodiac pendants greeted me. Venus and the other planets were glued to the wall, and I flicked the hanging Summer when I lifted my arm. A zap like electricity shot into me and wrapped around to my ribs, brushing them with a heat that dared to strangle my heart. My head hit the floor and I heard a desperate pleading call out from under the bed. I smiled at the shoebox that hid, the remnants of my mother’s spirit that had waited for years, and dragged it from its place of sleeping. The face of the Horned God grinned from within the tattered, molded box. Devilish, with a serpent for a crown. A fever racked my brain and I held myself up on my elbows, palms pressing into my temples. Nature was in this room. The Sun and Moon came together in an infinite cycle. I knew this. And the loop, that knot impossible to untie, had been disrupted by the only one who could. The one who controlled all. A humming drifted from outside. “He’ll snuff out the Sun. He’ll snuff out the Sun…” Merely out of fun. I screamed and screamed, punching the floor to splinters and jumping up and racing to my room. I stopped. In the night, a flame rose high, and the townspeople threw chunks of wood into an enormous bonfire. Three men dragged a tree and another began chopping it with an axe. The women bounced around the pile of furious heat. Some had stripped to their underwear and others had shed their clothes completely. They all said the same thing, and then I heard it again with the tapping, a face against the glass. “He’ll snuff out the Sun. Won’t he?” The Father stared at me. The Horned God. The Dark God. Pan. He was illuminated by the fire, and I could do nothing as he passed into my room, spilling through the walls of my home in a trail of azure mist. He walked so slowly. The robes were thrown aside and the shadows played on his awful skin, porcelain-smooth and startling against his piercing red eyes. They seemed to sparkle and crackle under the fluorescent lights. A quick hand grasped my shirt, and I was almost grateful, but it tore from my body, taking bits of melted skin that dangled like fondue. He caught me as I fell and I begged for my eyes to close. I begged to pass into an eternal sleep or wake up to the morning woods greeting me and tickling my cheeks with their green leaves. I wished for the pain to stop. Pan looked deeply at me, through my eyes to the unknown, and I had no choice but to glimpse it. Just for a moment. Beyond was a cold darkness that travelled along scorched earth, and a chilled wind picked up a voice and carried it. “Won’t you help me, dear?” A simple place with an endless night. Endless until day was conjured on the palate cleansed for a second life. “They killed your mother. That lovely woman.” The god took in a deep breath and I felt faint at the sight of the curled, sharp horns protruding from his skull. “They are fools. Smaller than ants and weaker than dying leaves. I am never-ending and I am ruler.” His forehead touched mine and I winced at his clear whisper. “You, my own, are knowledged. You are awakened.” The golden cross, turned on its side and plunging into the sunken mound of grass, was dull and chipped in the midst of the raving town fluttering about my backyard. They stepped on her with haughty heels and shined shoes. I was in the city when it happened, but the band of them had pelted stones at her body they had tied to the willow, and had let her drop in the pit that was made just for her. I wasn’t there, but Bela Fotia murdered her. The light of the flames was so irritating, and the babbling of the town had me huffing. The rage seeped into my skull and the haunting warmth merged with my soul. The new redness of my eyes reflected in his own. Bela Fotia was wailing. The moon took over when the bonfire died, and I laughed as everyone scattered, their arms thrown up and feet scampering away from my little house. The tapping was rampant on the roof and the walls and painted the windows dark and slimy. I took my time reaching the front door and stepped into the nightmare, watching the crimson rain collect in my palm. Pan brushed my wet hair over my shoulder, and a wicked smile that stretched from ear to ear slipped onto his face. “The cleansing has begun. They will be reborn.” The power was overwhelming and the heat jumped off my skin in hues of fleeing birds. I ran to the backyard and sliced past the cooling embers. A cloud of royal blue that tapered into plum became my shield and my weapon. I sped through the woods until I skidded to the start of Cora Lane, bringing up a wave of gray rocks. The god rose far above the trees and aligned with the beaming Moon. The townspeople bent their necks as they bathed in twilight and some fell to their knees, lifting their arms to the sky and crying out jumbled phrases. Most of them ran up the hill. A man shrieked when he saw me, and a woman tripped while turning and rolled back down. I travelled like a cool, smoky fog descended from the moonlit sky and felt nothing but delight as one after another they burst into flame. My hands didn’t even touch them. I paused at the edge of the dark woods and took in the scene behind me of which I was the artist. Strokes of baby blue and navy, lime and hunter green, magenta and violet, all running through, and writhing in, bullets of falling blood fuel. Each drop brought out a brighter burn that lasted even after they crumpled dead in the mud and ceased their frantic movements. My own flame expanded and it mingled with Pan’s when he lowered himself beside me. There were more. I knew there were. I could see with the help of the moon their little lavender forms against the black forest that blocks out the light. The closer I got, the more intense they became, until they were purple and I was enveloped by the trees. I moved swiftly, and the bleakness of the woods was transformed into a beacon of hellfire, so full of color as the evergreens’ great flames rose up to a sharp tip, and a space open to the night appeared when a pair of oaks burned to nothing. Above flew a murder of crows. They kept coming - twenty, fifty, eighty, and on and on. All flocking around the crisp bodies and perching on blackened branches. I gazed at the moon and smiled at the crows’ melody. One landed on my shoulder and a group circled Pan, cawing at the one who governed them. He wore a water snake like a bracelet. A tranquility filled me as we walked back to my home. I’d never seen so much vivid color together, such brightness that would eventually vanish into smoke. I could see it happen - the first sprout of green, a second child of the earth, poking through ash and announcing life. The woods would flourish and peace would sing out of the rebirth. My house was shrouded in shadow. My house in the middle of nowhere, beyond the woods, and away from Bela Fotia. The house of my mother and me. The willow stood tall and gestured to an opening in the soaked maroon earth. A hollow that led down and down. I stared until I saw the river of red, far past the end of the world, and laughed as I caressed the leaves of the willow that burst into blue heat. “After you.”