Scratch, p.1
Scratch, page 1
SCRATCH
by
Wayne Wise
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Wayne Wise on Smashwords
Scratch
Copyright 2011 by Wayne Wise
Cover by Marcel Walker – www.marcelwalker.com
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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* * * * *
For Keith and Alberta Wise.
Dad, for keeping me grounded.
Mom, for encouraging me to fly.
PROLOGUE
Reverend Raz Toland balanced the tray on one hand and flipped on the light switch at the top of the stairs. One bare bulb illuminated the basement of the First Church of the Blessed Angel of Canaan, West Virginia, casting harsh shadows to the accompaniment of a static hiss. With his free hand rubbing along the rough stone wall, Reverend Raz descended the warped wooden steps. The air was chilly and damp, scented with cedar, old furniture polish, and an overture of must.
Raz set the tray on top of a crate of old church circulars. The bowl of broth steamed as he fished in the pocket of his ill-tailored dress slacks. He pulled a single key into the light and felt the significant weight of it in his palm. He pushed on the side of a large bookshelf that sat against the far wall. It slid to the side easily on rollers, revealing a thick wooden door. A massive, ornately designed padlock hung from a heavy hasp.
He heard footsteps in the church above his head as people began to arrive for the Wednesday night prayer meeting. The first tentative notes of a hymn limped their way out of the piano under the widow Nellie Claremont’s swollen, arthritic fingers.
With a mumbled invocation Raz stuck the key in the slot and turned. The lock popped open with a screech and a click. Raz dropped the key back into his pocket and picked up the tray. He pushed the door open and stepped through.
“Gabrielle,” he whispered to the girl who slept inside the dark room. “It’s time.”
As her eyes slowly opened, Reverend Raz was overwhelmed for what seemed to be the millionth time at the beauty of his charge. A silent prayer, thanking the Lord for allowing him to be her keeper, winged its way toward Heaven. He wiped a tear from his eye as she sat on the edge of the small cot, illuminated by the light from behind him.
She was small and slender, and though her true age was unknowable, she appeared to be about ten years old. Her hair was long, light silver blonde in hue, and made silk seem coarse in comparison. She opened eyes that were as blue as the sky that must float above Paradise, nearly too blue to comprehend. Thin pale limbs spilled from the shapeless white shift that was her only clothing. Her wrists were nearly narrow enough for her to slip her hands out of the rusty iron shackles that held her chained to the damp basement wall.
“Hurry up.” Reverend Toland handed the bowl of lukewarm chicken noodle soup to the girl. “The congregation is starting to gather.” Gabrielle took the bowl and began to eat.
“I’m expecting a big crowd tonight,” he continued as he took a clean white dress from a battered chest of drawers. “Gonna be a lot of sick folks needing you. You done yet?” Gabrielle wiped some of the tepid broth from her chin and nodded. She ate only because it was expected of her. Raz took the key from his pocket and unlocked the manacles. Gabrielle rubbed her wrists to restore circulation, then falteringly, stood.
“Here,” Raz said and held the dress to her. “Get ready.” He continued to watch as the girl dropped the shift to the floor and began to change. The dress was covered with cheap lace and satin bows, feminine in a little girl way, with the exception of the bare back it exposed. Gabrielle buckled the scuffed black patent leather shoes. She washed her face in a basin of cold water and then took a brush from her captor and ran it through her hair. When her preparations were through, she meekly took Raz’s hand.
“I’m ready,” she said.
As they walked through the basement and up the rickety steps, Reverend Toland once again thanked the Lord for the miracle and the burden that had been given him.
* * * * *
The congregation had swollen to huge proportions. The First Church of the Blessed Angel shook to the foundation with sounds of praise. Gospel songs, as lacking in pitch as they were rich with sincerity, thundered to the heavens. The heavens responded by unleashing a downpour of rain mixed with hailstones that banged upon the tin roof and threatened to shatter the ancient windows.
The prayer meeting was well under way. Nellie Claremont banged away at the out-of-tune piano, each torturous note sending jolts of pain through her joints. Rita Halliway, already possessed by The Holy Spirit, was frothing in the aisle, speaking in a tongue no one understood. Big Jim Tucker, full of God and gin, testified at the top of his lungs. Tears streamed down his unshaven cheeks as he told of his past life of sin when he drove big rigs on cross-country trips.
Reverend Toland stood by the pew and tapped his leather bound Bible in uncertain time with the music. His wife April stood by a tattered red curtain that surrounded the small platform behind him. He glanced at her and she nodded that everything was ready. He smiled and turned back to the congregation as “Bringing in the Sheaves” came to a disharmonious close.
“Amen, Brethren. Praise the Lord-uh,” he shouted out in his best Sunday voice. Those of his flock who were still conscious returned a resounding “Amen!”
“Thank you all for coming here this evening,” Raz continued. “It is time once more to renew our pact with God. To see his miracle and receive. . . a healing. To bind the evil to the earth once more and be lifted on the wings of spirit.
“Come now,” Raz invited, “those who need to be healed.” The sick and the infirm of the audience began to line up in the aisle. “Time to witness the Holy Miracle, our church’s Blessed Angel.” He nodded once more to April and she pulled the curtain away.
Gabrielle stood revealed on the platform and the church was silent except for the sounds of the storm. In the weak light of the building she was luminescent and serene. Her face, the picture of unearthly innocence, stared out over the congregation. She walked slowly to the front of the pulpit, and in a voice young yet ageless asked, “Who needs to be healed?”
“Stephanie does, Holy One.” Abigail Molnar’s head was bowed in awe and supplication as she stepped forward carrying her six-year-old daughter. “She broke her arm two days ago. Unh. . . ” She shot a sideways glance at her husband Ed. “She, um, fell off the porch. . . accidentally.”
Stephanie was pale and fevered. Gabrielle pulled the wrapping away from the broken arm and saw the dried blood where the bone fragment still stuck through the skin. The girl’s hand rested at an unnatural angle.
“We was waitin’ to see you,” Abigail explained. “Ed don’t trust the doctors down at the big town. We knew you could help.”
Gabrielle placed her hands upon Stephanie’s arm and closed her eyes. Silence filled the church, and even the rain seemed to pause in bated anticipation. A warm blue glow began to emanate from Gabrielle’s hands, then to surround her body and suffuse the building with its comforting light. Stephanie’s fever dropped as her arm resumed its original shape and the bones began to knit together. Though they had witnessed this kind of miracle many times before, a gasp swept through the audience.
It was then the true miracle occurred. As Gabrielle performed the healing, she felt a familiar itch in her shoulder blades. As the congregation watched, a pair of large, virgin white wings erupted from her back and spread around her.
Reverend Toland smiled as he watched the angel he had inherited from his father, and from his father before that. The storm dimmed as the healing went on well into the night.
* * * * *
In a chamber deep within the stony heart of the mountains that surrounded Canaan, another being howled its agony, as its chains grew tighter.
scratch scratch
Flecks of rust from the tight iron chains around his wrists become imbedded under his nails. Claw-like fingers scrape moss from the cold stone wall. Contact with the rock sends skittering vibrations through his arms. In the dark of the mountain, eyes stare in anger and pain in the dim unnatural illumination.
scratch scratch
He was trapped here in this deep, deep hole, trapped for generations by the same pact that held Gabrielle captive in the town in the valley. They were chained together as surely as he was chained to this damp stone slab in the dark interior of the mountain.
The people of Canaan called the creature Scratch. It was not his true name anymore than Gabrielle was the true name of his sister. He moaned deep in his chest. The chains went slack once more as he gave up a struggle he knew was futile. He sat on the corner of his stony bed and leaned his back against the moist wall of the cavern. His right arm lay at a twisted angle at his side, a bone sticking through the flesh. It would be fine in a day or two, sooner if he fed, but for now Scratch bore the pain that Gabrielle had removed from the little girl, as he had borne the pain of every healing she had performed in Canaan for a century now.
He closed his eyes and took a slow breath to relax. His body was trapped here, true, but his spirit was unbound. In this way he was freer than Gabrie
Scratch’s consciousness uncoiled from the nest of his brain, slithering through the soft pink folds, and then emerged from his eyes. It hung for a moment, invisible in the dim light. He saw his body, slack against the cavern wall, and then turned away. The night was young, and he needed to feed.
He slid along the air currents that breathed through the caverns, crawling through the passages and wormholes that riddled the mountain. Natural caves led to mine shafts, abandoned long ago when the rich anthracite played out. He passed through the white-hot fires of the burning shaft, then began to climb higher toward the cool breezes that seeped in from the night outside.
Scratch paused briefly in a chamber filled with the bones of miners trapped by a cave-in in 1937. He had been here then, feeding on their fear as they slowly starved and went mad. He had been sated for weeks, enough to barely notice the injuries Gabrielle healed and sent his way. He licked the bones now, tasting the residue of terror that still clung to them like old dust, an appetizer for the night ahead. He moved on then, slipping easily through passages that had been too small for the miners.
The shafts became wider as he approached the surface. Rotting wood timbers, broken in places, shored up the weight of the mountain. A wall of twisted boards blocked the entrance to a side chamber. Scratch drifted through the small fissures between the slats. He then breathed deeply of the air of the Boneyard.
The old miners had not called it that: the men who had filled it over the years had named the Boneyard. The room was full of makeshift graves, packed with the bodies of people who had come too close to the secret of Canaan. Outsiders who had seen Gabrielle were buried and hidden in the mountain like Scratch himself. The chamber was painted with the fear of their last moments, trimmed with the guilt and shame of those who put them here.
Scratch drank, and then moved on. He crawled through a boarded up hole in the side of the mountain and slithered along the floor of the forest, staying to the lowest places. The noises of the night went still in his wake. He passed over rocks and roots, and rode the currents of small streams down into the valley. He skimmed across the stagnant water that filled the old quarry. Secrets were held in its muddy depths; secrets like the bloodstained hammer. He tasted the alcohol vapors of Jack Hardy’s still where the sweetest murder had taken place oh so long ago, then turned onto the well-worn path that led back to Jack’s house.
Jack was still awake, sitting in the porch swing where he had first kissed his best friend’s wife. It had been a long time since Jack had gone to sleep early. Even longer since he had slept well. His guilt was buried deeper than the men he had helped put in the Boneyard, too deep for Scratch to feed upon now. It had been over forty years since Jack had committed murder. Oh, Jack had done what was necessary to protect the secret of Canaan, but his role these days was limited to hiding evidence and keeping his mouth shut, and he was good at that… very good. But the old shame was still there, a memory that time wouldn’t heal, and the demon would scratch at it
scratch scratch
until it bled, as raw as the day it happened. The old wounds, provided they were deep enough, were the most nourishing. Scratch licked at the scab of memory, a promise that he would return later, when Jack was asleep.
When the nightmares came again.
Scratch fled over the hillside, past the empty Porter house and onto the dirt road that led to Canaan. He came to the Molnar trailer and slipped in through the same holes as the rats and bugs. Stephanie was asleep, curled in the protective arch of her mother’s body. There were no scars on her arm where the bone had torn the skin. Scratch knew the scars ran deeper.
Abigail clutched her child tightly to her chest and wept. Ed was still working in the garage. She prayed he would stay there until she was asleep, and that he wouldn’t wake her when he did come in. He was angry. He was always angry, but more so tonight. On the way home from church and the healing he had yelled at her for embarrassing him in front of the whole town. Maybe he did lose his temper and hurt Stephanie, but no one needed to know that. That was what Gabrielle was for, anyway. Abby thought she was safe from his fists for at least a little while. Bruises on either her or Steffie would look bad to everyone right now, and Ed knew it. Still, she hoped he would stay away. She was safe from his fists but not from his cock, which only seemed hard if he was hurting her. At least that didn’t take long.
Scratch ran his tongue over her cheeks and shook with the pleasure her tears contained. Abby felt a chill climb the trunk of her spine. Scratch slunk back down to the floor. It was time to visit Ed.
The garage smelled of burnt oil, beer, and sweat. Ed lay on his back on a mechanic’s cart under a 1984 Buick. As he worked at a stubborn alternator bolt, the ratchet handle slipped and tore into his flesh just under the blue tattoo that read “Stephanie.” Blood erupted on his hand, the same hand that had pushed her off the porch two days ago. It dripped on his grease-dotted face. His teeth clenched in an angry grimace as he pulled on the wrench.
Scratch crawled across the floor of the garage. Its boards were black with the oil of years. He slid under the car next to Ed in a shower of rust flecks. Ed’s rage was a buffet for Scratch. It emanated from someplace deep and dark within him. Ed was mad at the car, and at Abigail, but they were just convenient targets for the fury of a lifetime. Scratch had been there when Ed’s father was beating the violence into him, insuring he would always be a small and bitter man.
Ed was one of Scratch’s favorites. His emotions were raw and close to the surface where they were easy to feed upon. Sometimes, Scratch could grab Ed by his anger and lead him like a dog upon a leash. The strain was terrible, but the rewards were enormous. Scratch couldn’t make Ed do things, but he could influence him.
scratch scratch
She thinks you’re a loser, Scratch whispered into Ed’s ear, and Ed heard it as his own thoughts. She thinks your dick is tiny. She thinks you’re stupid, just like your daddy did. Did you know she laughs at you with her friends?
“Fuckin’ Bitch!” Ed threw the wrench across the garage. Scratch smiled and left Ed’s side. He would be back in time for the rape. Ed’s anger and Abby’s fear and shame would make a delicious dessert. Stephanie’s terror when she woke on the rocking bed would be even better.
Out of the garage and down the hollow into the valley Scratch crawled, until he came to town. Canaan was the postcard image of a picturesque rural village. Small houses, most with their lights out, lined the two streets. A general store and a laundromat, the only two businesses in town, faced each other across the only intersection. A footbridge crossed the small stream that led to the front yard of the First Church of the Blessed Angel and the parsonage that sat next to it.
Scratch glanced around the community, not sure where to begin. There were so many guilty secrets to dine upon. He took his meals piece-by-piece, in every house in town.
Rita Halliwell glanced out of her bedroom window and smiled smugly. The light was still on in Big Jim Tucker’s apartment over the store, like it was every Wednesday after the healing service while the Reverend was still busy with Gabrielle. She dropped the curtain and sat down on the edge of her bed. Rita knew everything that went on in Canaan, or at least believed she did. If secrets were nuts and she was a squirrel she would be well stocked for an ice age. As Canaan’s self-appointed guardian of morality she minded everyone’s business but her own. She would plant seeds of gossip in the appropriate ears, then sit back and watch the results.
And though he feasted on her store of pride nightly, she didn’t know about Scratch.
scratch scratch
Nellie Claremont struggled with the cap on the bottle of Wild Turkey. Her thin fingers, gnarled and swollen with arthritis, were unable to get a good grip. If only she could have a drink or two, just for the pain mind you, she would be able to sleep. The pain was the only thing she had slept with since her husband was buried in the 1937 cave-in. She had been Mrs. Theodore Claremont for less than six months, and the Widow Claremont for over sixty years. Tears filled the crevices around her eyes as she tried to open the bottle. Even Gabrielle’s healing hands did not help the pain for long. A few hours at most, long enough to play the piano for the service. Then, the ache would return. Maybe tomorrow she could get Jim to open the bottle for her. Tonight she would have to make due with the cough syrup, or the vanilla, or maybe there was some of Jack’s homemade brew left in that bottle secreted in the trash.
