Gary A. Braunbeck - Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys

The Reverend almost smiled at that. “Let’s go.”

And we started down the stairs.

9

When I was eleven years old, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. She went fast, lasting just over one year, but it was an agonizing year. My dad, who never was worth much of anything, put her to bed and left her there, leaving it up to me to make sure she got her medicine on time, to change her sheets, and to clean her up when she didn’t make it to the bathroom on time.

Toward the end, I became so angry with him, with his cowardice and drunkenness, that I actually made the mistake of hitting him one night.

He beat the shit out of me, then threw me out the back door into the yard. It had snowed a lot that week, and there was about a foot of snow and ice on the ground.

I remember landing on my side, half my face buried in the snow.

I remember that I couldn’t move because it hurt so much.

And I remember thinking how cold my ear was getting.

I regained consciousness about five hours later. A neighbor had come home and seen me laying in the yard. They took me to the hospital where I stayed for almost two weeks. I had pneumonia and frostbite. They had to remove my ear, which was okay because I was deaf on that side, anyway.

Somewhere in there dad took off and just left Mom alone. The whole time I was in the hospital, I was so scared because she had no one there to take care of her (one of our neighbors was keeping an eye on her, but I didn’t know that).

By the time I was released, Mom was all but dead. She lasted just two days after I got home.

There was no money to cover the hospital bills, so the house was sold, and I was put into the care of the county.

I remember that as I sat there in the courthouse, waiting for someone from Childrens’ Services to come and collect me, that I had never felt so alone and afraid in my life. I hated myself for not being there for Mom, and I hated Dad for being such a worthless coward, and I hated looking like a freak with one ear, and I hated everything.

But mostly, I hated feeling that afraid.

And I promised myself that I would never, ever, ever feel that afraid again, no matter what.

A promise that I had kept to myself until the moment the Reverend, Grant, Sheriff Jackson, and I hit the bottom of those stairs and turned in the hallway.

And I came face to face with the Mudman.

10

The east wall had almost completely collapsed, spewing out wood beams, bricks, and mud. So much mud. And it was moving. “Holy Mother of God,” whispered Grant.

A demon with three bulging red eyes and a four-fanged grin rose up from the muck before us. It was draped in corpse skin and riding a huge black bear. It carried an axe in one hand and a skullcap of blood in the other…and from every side of its form, faces peered out, faces made of black mud, their dark lips working to form words.

I saw them all; Hendrix, Morrison, Garcia, Ms. Holiday, Cobain, all of them.

And I felt the buzz in the center of my head as their words began to come clear.

I Am, I Am, I AM the darkness…I AM, I AM, I AM darkness’s empty belly, the pit at the end of your days…

It rose up to its fullest height, cracking the ceiling with its back, and lumbered forward, blood spilling from the skullcap, snot and foam dripping from the bear’s snout and mouth, smashing holes into the wall with every swing of its axe.

Its eyes glowed brighter with every step.

The Reverend was the first to fire. The bullet slammed into the muck with a loud splat! that did no damage at all. No sooner was the hole made than it oozed closed, healing.

And with every step, the thing grew larger, the singer’s words louder.

I AM, I AM, I AM Kichar Admi, I AM, I AM, I AM the source of all the songs you sing …

Grant McCullers pumped four rounds into it but it would not stop coming.

I AM, I AM, I AM the song the darkness sings, in the pit of my starving belly… We continued backing up, all of us firing into its center, none of the bullets having any effect. The mud dripped and oozed, clumping into the face of a beggar woman, the body of a dead child. The singers continued:

I AM, I AM, I AM what you made me, what you wanted me to be, I AM, I AM, I AM only my song and nothing more… The lights flickered again, and the building shuddered. I ran out of bullets, as did everyone else. And then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned and saw Byron Knight beside me. His face was a mask of peace and acceptance. I had to watch his lips, because I could no longer hear anything; the roar of the gunfire was still screaming through my head. “I’ve had this appointment for a long time,” he said. “Just…let me go.” Cradling his guitar, he pushed past us and walked forward. The Mudman stopped moving. The singers fell silent. And the bear rose up on its hind legs.

The axe swung down swiftly and surely, deeply burying itself in Knight’s chest. The demon threw back its head and howled with laughter, then pulled Knight from the floor, his legs dangling as blood from his wound pumped down in heavy rivulets, splattering across the floor.

The demon opened its mouth, its jaws dislodging, dropping down, growing wider, until its face was nothing more than slick, dark maw, big enough to swallow a man whole.

Which is what it did.

Then spat out Knight’s guitar, that hit the floor and shattered into half a dozen pieces, the snapping strings a final death groan that echoed against the walls.

The demon turned around and walked toward the collapsed wall, then crouched down and began to move into the mounds of dirt, sludge, and muck, becoming less and less solid until it became what it had been; just mud.

I closed my eyes and began to cry. The Reverend came over and put his arms around me.

It didn’t help much.

11

We don’t talk about that night. Oh, every once in a while, when the four of get together to play cards, Grant McCullers will call us “The Wild Bunch” and everyone will get this look on their faces, but that’s as close as we come to discussing it.

One night Ted Jackson told us a story about something he’d seen after a recent labor riot that made me cringe, and Grant told us what had really happened at the Hangman.

We listened, and we all believed, but we don’t talk about it.

Like the Reverend says, this is Cedar Hill. Weird shit happens here.

Grant gave Beth and her kids five hundred dollars and put them on the bus to Indiana himself. Lump even got a seat, but he had to ride in a carrier, which didn’t please him too much from all reports. Beth and the kids promised to write and call Grant as much as they could, but if they’ve ever been in touch with him, he hasn’t said.

The basement was finally repaired after the Reverend got really pushy with a couple of local contractors. So far, it’s holding up fine.

Linus is touring with another carnival, once again as Thalidomide Man. He sends us postcards all the time.

I’d almost managed to learn how to live with what I saw, until one afternoon a couple of weeks ago when I was waiting at a crosswalk for the light to change. A bird chirped. A car backfired. A child laughed somewhere. The wind whistled.

And those four notes, in succession, in the right tempo, began that tune , and I remembered Knight’s words: The notes, they’re out there. They’re everywhere. A bird, the sound of the wind, a car backfiring…the notes are all over the place. And every so often, enough of them come together in the same place, at the same, and in the right tempo, that the doorway opens and he comes shambling in. And there’s not a goddamn thing you can do to stop it.