Cameron Haley - Skeleton Crew

An image flared to life in my mind of the house where I grew up, the little bungalow my mother still lived in. This was a different time, though, long ago. I’m sitting on the floor in the living room, forgotten dolls scattered around me, watching my mother. She’s sitting in the recliner-an ugly, clumsy, green thing that will vanish from the house in a few years-and she’s sewing yet another patch on my favorite pair of jeans. She’s young and beautiful, and the sunlight streaming through the window sets her long, dark, unbound tresses aglow. My mother is an angel, a Madonna, and the father I’ve never known must be an angel, too. God needed him, though, for something terribly important, and that’s why he had to leave. And I’m so happy, because I know I must be special, too, and that’s why I’m always alone, and no matter how ugly the world is outside these walls, our house is a little corner of heaven.

And I know I can go to this place, and I can stay here, forever. I’m standing on the wide porch, looking in through the window at my mother bathed in sunlight, and I know she’ll always be young and beautiful in this place, and she’ll never grow old, or suffer, or die, and neither will I. The little girl is waiting for me, that happy, hopeful child I lost just like the old recliner, and I can find her again. I can be her again. All I have to do is open the door. There’s only darkness behind me. There are terrible things, but I won’t see them as long as I don’t turn around. I can go into that house and close the door behind me, and I can shut them out so they can never touch me. They can never hurt me.

I only have to open the door.

I was crying when I pulled the trigger on the forty-five in my hand. The weapon bucked and the demon mother’s swollen belly exploded in a shower of thick, black fluid and wet, ragged tissue. I squeezed the trigger again and again, and the demon shrieked and reeled back, grasping at the ruined mess her abdomen had become.

“It’s called a gun, you skanky bitch,” I said. The thing that had been growing inside me was gone, leaving behind a sharp, hot pain that lanced through my abdomen and groin. I sat up and blinked to clear the tears from my eyes. I steadied the forty-five, squeezing off another round that struck the demon between her shriveled breasts. “You want back in my world, you better learn how to take a fucking bullet.”

Still screaming, the demon turned and tried to stagger away. I stood up, leveled the forty-five and shot her in the back. She went down, planting her face in the pavement with a sharp crack. She pulled herself to her hands and knees and began to crawl. I put a round in the back of her skull, and black spray patterned the asphalt. I walked around her until I stood in her path, and then I slammed the heel of my boot into her face. The demon mother toppled over on her side, spasms racking her cadaverous body. I filled my mind with juice and poured countermagic over her.

In twenty-three years of killing, I’d never wanted to torture anyone. More times than I could count, I’d been called on to take a life, but not once did I have any desire to cause pain. I did what I did, but if it was up to me, I did it quick. I wanted this demon to suffer, and I wanted to inflict it upon her. I didn’t have any magic black enough to match what she had done to me. I spun up a ball of flame in my hand, but I was careful not to put too much juice into it. I wanted it to burn, but I didn’t want it to destroy.

“Domino,” Adan said. He walked toward me from the west end of the bridge, his sword in his hand. “Finish it…do it right.”

Rage burned through me and I lashed out. The fireball erupted from my hand and streaked toward Adan. He flicked the sword and spoke a word, and the blade flashed white as he batted my spell aside.

“Master your fear and you’ll master the beast,” he said, and he kept walking.

My lips pulled back from my teeth and I started shaking.

I felt magic flowing into me from the street, and the tags that crawled across the bridge and the box cars that sat rusting on the tracks below. I took it into me and I fed it with hate, and a fiery tide began to swell behind me. I wanted the demon to burn. I wanted Adan to burn. I wanted the world to burn.

I wanted to burn.

My hair ignited but it wasn’t consumed, and flames began to dance on my outstretched hands, spreading up my arms and crawling across my chest and back. The inferno behind me rose higher and fiery tongues licked out, like star-fire erupting from the face of the sun.

A brilliant emerald meteor fell from the sky and suddenly Honey was hovering before me, the dragonfly wings a rainbow blur at her back. Her cheeks were wet, but she was smiling.

“Jack asked me to marry him, Domino,” she said.

The roiling wave of fire collapsed in on itself and snuffed out. I crumbled to the street, falling first to my knees and then dropping onto my side. I stared unblinking into the face of the demon mother, and I saw it dissolve into black tar as Adan’s sword flashed down.

And then I went looking for that sun-kissed bungalow with the wide porch and the ugly green chair, the mother who would never die and the happy little girl. fourteen

I’m sitting at the kitchen table with my legs tucked under me. My arms are crossed in front of me on the Formica table and my chin is resting on my hands. I’m watching Scooby-Doo on the little black-and-white TV set. The Scooby gang is in some tropical paradise. They find a flying saucer, but skeletons with a single large eye try to scare them away. The skeleton people frighten me and I bury my face in my arms when they come on the screen. The eyes are all wrong. They should be normal eyes, but gray and cloudy, like the surface of an old marble.

Mama is with me in the kitchen. She’s making huevos, and corn tortillas are heating in the oven. The smell fills the room and my mouth waters. A commercial comes on and a genie with a bald head and bushy eyebrows is getting rid of dirt and grime and grease in just a minute. The genie is smiling and friendly, but I don’t like him. He’s very old, and he knows secrets, and he’s always trying to sell something. The bright, shining eyes and wide grin hide something dangerous and never to be trusted.

A shadow passes in front of the window. I get up from the table and climb up in the armchair by the window to look out. I part the blinds with my small fingers-just a little-and I see a man with dark hair and large eyes standing on the front porch. He’s dressed all in black, and he has an old wooden gun slung over his shoulder and a silver sword at his side. He’s terribly handsome and I’m not afraid of him. He stands on the porch, looking at the front door, but he doesn’t knock.

“He’s waiting for you to open the door, Dominica,” says Mama. She’s standing beside me, looking down at me with a small smile on her face. Maybe breakfast is ready? The eggs will get cold. I hate cold eggs.

“Should I let him in, Mama?” I ask.

“You will have to decide that for yourself, child.”

“If I open the door, I don’t think he will come in. I think he will try to take me away.”

“He doesn’t belong here.”

“But I don’t want to go with him. I don’t like it out there.”

“You don’t belong here, either,” my mother says. “Not anymore.”

I start to cry, the tears welling in my eyes without warning. I shake my head. “I do belong here, Mama. I like it here, with you. There are bad people out there, bad things. We’re safe here, though. They can’t come in.”

I’m in my room, sitting on my small bed and playing with my favorite doll. She has a name, but I can’t remember what it is. It seems strange that I’ve forgotten her name and it makes me sad. I decide to call her Honey, though I can’t remember why. I’m shining the light on her, the light no one else can see. I don’t know what it is, but I call it Glitter. I’m putting Glitter on Honey and making her walk around the room, as if she were alive. I’m certain if I can just put enough Glitter on Honey, I can make her a real girl, like Pinocchio, and she can be my friend. It makes me sad that I don’t have any friends. No one except Honey.