"Spread me open, sticking to my pointy ribs; are all your infants in abortion cribs?"
~Marilyn Manson, "Man That You Fear."
June 17, 1927
While he was out cold, he dreamt. An unfocused, flickering nightmare in which he couldn't tell what sort of torture they were inflicting upon him; all he could feel was the scalding pain, the warmth of his own blood, and his screams ripping apart his already severed throat. Abruptly, the agony ceased, and he found himself laying in a wooden box. Flowers everywhere. A body approached him, a familiar face hovered over him, looking down at him, tears streaming and soaking her face.
"Mama!" he screamed. "Mama! Help!"
She didn't appear to hear him. She continued looking down upon him, weeping desperately. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides, her teeth gritted. A broken moan leaked from her throat and she slid down to her knees; she tipped her head back and howled.
Someone else approached him in his coffin. Flash.
The familiar blinding white of the camera flash broke through the darkness clouding his mind. His eyes flew open. Suddenly remembering the horror currently surrounding him, he gasped and sat up on the floor. He glanced around. A wave of nausea crashed through him―he gagged and clamped his hand over his mouth at the sight:
The people that had once sat around him in awe were now strewn around the séance room, their flesh charred, melted away from their blackened bones. Their remains steamed and sizzled like meat being tossed on a scalding pan. They smelled of burnt up meat, too.
He swallowed the sick rising in his throat and pulled himself up. Everything felt like it was happening in slow motion, as if time flowed through a thick honey. He ventured to the other side of the room looking for his master.
Ramsay Aickman sat upright on the floor, observing the sickening carnage as well. A huge burnt, bloody gash covered the side of his head but he hardly seemed to notice.
Jonah knelt down next to Aickman. "Sir?" he asked, his voice hoarse and broken. He tasted blood when he talked.
Aickman turned and glared at his apprentice. "Look!" he hissed. "Look what you've done." He would've hit him on any normal day, maybe even killed him for the deaths of four patrons, but now he was too numbly angry and in pain to do anything besides glare.
"It wasn't my fault!" Jonah cried. "The spirits, they've had enough. They made this happen. We have to set them free tonight, right now this instant, or they will proceed to kill us, too. Sir, we need to! Or we'll both die!"
Aickman wordlessly stood. "But how?"
Jonah was amazed at himself, how he could concentrate and plan through his blinding horror. "We need to make it look like an accident," he declared. He stepped over the fried bodies to the far right corner of the room, where a tall stand of four candles burned. He knocked it over; the candles tumbled to the ground and the floor and nearby curtains caught fire. "There."
"Jonah!" Aickman roared. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Get the matches," he commanded. It felt sadistically good to be ordering Aickman around for once instead of vice versa. "We need to burn the whole place down and set them free. There's no hope for this house―it needs to go up in flames."
Aickman reluctantly obeyed, muttering something about "My work…my precious work…"
Meanwhile, Jonah grabbed spare bottles of formaldehyde out of a storage closet. He unscrewed caps and poured the clear harsh-smelling liquid around the room, but eventually he resorted to simply chucking bottles against the walls and floor. It became a sort of emotional release for him, allowing his built up misery and rage to pour out of him with every bottle he smashed. It was like throwing a toddler-esque fit, to express his anger by yelling and breaking things.
Aickman returned with the matches. He stood there dumbly with shaking hands. "My work!" he moaned. "I can't―!"
Jonah violently pried the matches from his master's fingers. "Let me do it." He struck the match and tossed it into a big puddle of formaldehyde, hysterically sobbing and laughing at the same time, like a madman. The flames travelled along a trail of formaldehyde. It was like watching a crooked line of dominoes falling, except with fire.
They slipped out through the narrow doorway that led to the foyer just before it, too, caught fire.
Out the front door and onto the front lawn, Jonah stumbled weakly off in a different direction than Ramsey. He walked toward the end of the driveway as far as he could until he vomited with brutal force and collapsed backward into the cool grass. His face was soaked with sweat and tears. His hair clung to his forehead. He felt so filthy―so filthy…
No. He would not allow himself to pass out; he had to stay awake, stay alert. For the longest time he laid there and stared up at the night sky. Tearlessly he sobbed up at the stars, clinging to a stupid hope that an angel would hear his cries and save him. Black spots clouded his vision and after a while he no longer had the energy to cry. Just lay there and breathe, and hurt.
Dangling between consciousness and unconsciousness, he glanced sideways at Aickman, who laid motionlessly on the other side of the lawn. Jonah knew without closer inspection that he was dead.
He gave in to his weakness and let himself fall into the shadows…
###
June 19, 1927.
When he came to he didn't know anything. For the very first split second of consciousness, he stared into the blurry whiteness surrounding him and hadn't the slightest clue where he was, what had happened, who he was. What was his name? He could not remember the tiniest detail.
It wasn't until he heard a woman's voice say, "Jonah? Baby?" that things began to rearrange themselves in his head again. A blissfully cool hand swept across his face, stroked his bangs out of his forehead.
"Alma,"―a man's voice!―"I'm going to get a nurse. Stay with him." He became ecstatic―he knew exactly who Alma was.
As his eyes focused, he noticed the white walls that surrounded him, the white blankets that covered him, the cozy mattress underneath him. A woman's face entered his sight, with an expression so loving and caring he considered the possibility that he was dreaming.
"Baby," she said while she ran her thumb over his chapped lower lip, "Shhh. It's going to be all right. Everything will be fine, my love." She spoke so softly to him, it soothed him beyond anything he'd felt in the better part of a year.
"Mama," he choked in a hoarse, barely-audible whisper. "What happened?"
Alma took his hands in hers and brought them to her lips for a moment before saying, "There was a fire, honey. You don't remember anything?"
Jonah shook his head, even though he did remember much of it. Immediately he regretted doing so. His head throbbed mercilessly, his brain feeling like an over-swollen mass pressing against his skull. "Ow," he whimpered.
"That's okay, dear. Don't try to move your head. You fainted on the front lawn and fell backward. You hit your head on a particularly firm patch of ground. You've got a concussion."
He swallowed. "What else? What else happened? What else is wrong with me?"
"They think it was a combination of bad electrical wiring and a tipped over candle in some room on the first floor. You and Mr. Aickman were the only two that escaped―the other four attending your, um, show―they perished. Aickman was burned very badly on his face and died shortly after escaping. You were the lucky one."
He wanted to start crying at that statement. All those poor innocent customers. He choked down his emotions and implored, "What else do I have? Besides the concussion?"
Alma combed her fingers through her son's moist bangs. "Well, you inhaled a little smoke, for starters. You also have a lot of bruises and scrapes," she added gently, "but we don't think they're from the fire; they're too old. You're much too skinny for your age and height, and you're obviously very weak and overworked." She said nothing more, but Jonah knew what she'd figured out for herself. He squeezed his eyes shut and wished to disappear.
The mother and son were silent, until his father came back with the medical personnel.
After an hour or so―or maybe some minutes, for his perception of time was so messed up and fuzzy―of unimportant events that involved nurses and a doctor, drinking a glass of water and using a bedpan, Jonah steadily became more awake and alert. The nurse gave him an aspirin, and he was able to sit up in bed without much discomfort in his head. He sat on the edge of the bed, nestled between his mother and father. Between the two of them, he favored his mother like normal, laying his head on her shoulder and clinging to her while his dad looked on.
No words were said except for the occasions every few minutes where Alma would mutter his name and a term of endearment. "Jonah…sweetheart…"
All he knew was himself, Mama and Father, and his hospital bed. It would be some time before his senses returned to their supreme normal sharpness.
###
Jonah spent one more night in the hospital, sleeping not one bit. He merely stared up at the ceiling in the dark, for he knew if he fell asleep voluntarily in this strange place full of death and suffering, night terrors were certain to creep into his subconscious. They would make him wake up screaming, or worst of all, make him wet the bed. How awful that would be.
Thus, he remained awake and tried to count the seconds and minutes away until morning would come and he could return to his family's estate, the cushy perfect home that he'd missed so dreadfully.
No matter how much he tried, he could not convince himself that it was over. A long path of macabre still seemed to stretch miles before him―perhaps his stay at the mortuary was only the beginning, and he was doomed to a life full of never-ending supernatural encounters. That would be his luck―never allowed to be normal again.
Still, he liked to think that inside all that extensive darkness, a glimmer of hope and promise flickered, like the tiniest speck of gold in a pan full of rocks and mud.
A yellowish morning sunlight peeked through his window. Not long after he was looking out to window and saw the family's Cadillac Landau pull up in front of the hospital. His father, James, let himself out. Their driver, an amiable black man named Marty, then stepped out and opened the door for Alma, who climbed out more slowly and carefully than Jonah might've expected her to. She had her hand cast over her belly, another rubbing her lower back.
Jonah's face twisted in confusion―she appeared to be pregnant. He couldn't tell if it was a plump belly or a baby making the hill under Alma's loose-fitting purple dress.
The mere thought of it made his heart pump so forcefully that he clamped his hand over his chest and gasped.
His family and a nurse entered the room. Alma carried an old department store shopping bag. The nurse chirped, "All you need to do is get yourself dressed and you are free to go home to continue recovering, young Mr. Herrell."
Alma handed him the bag. "Do you want any help, sweetheart?"
No, he really did not. Although he may have needed help, he did not want it. He took the bag of clothes into a nearby bathroom.
Jonah climbed out of the scraggly, too-big striped pajamas the hospital had provided him with to sleep in. Once in his underpants, he paused to use the toilet, tensing up and holding his breath at how much it stung to go. It had been that way for some time, probably due to the séances stripping him of his health, and his rarer bathing as he grew weaker and lazier―his hypothesis.
The clothes his family brought for him were unusually dressy for the mere occasion of riding home from the community hospital. Brown tweed trousers and jacket, a white shirt, and green tie. However, he could not protest―perhaps it would help him feel more back into his normal life, putting on his own nice clean clothes instead of the ratty work clothes and suspenders.
He emerged from the bathroom. Alma's face melted into a proud smile at the sight of her son in the semi-formal outfit she'd picked out for him.
Jonah noticed how she'd aged: crow's feet and laugh lines folded up the face of her youthful demeanor. Her hair was not as tidy as he remembered it; her bob had gone frizzy and the her finger waves were returning to straight.
Then he took one more glance at her belly. He swallowed.
Though he kept the pressing question to himself as they walked out to the car, once they reached the Landau, he and his mother took the back seats while James sat up in front with Marty.
"Mama?" he whispered in her ear.
"Yes, my love?" she answered with a peck on his nose.
His voice broke while he said it. "Are you―might you be―carrying another child?"
Wordlessly, she took his hand and set it upon her stomach. He felt nauseous. "Oh, my sweet little dove…we wanted to tell you first thing when you woke up in the hospital. But we weren't sure how to say it. We did not want to upset you."
James had turned around in his seat to eye the conversation with a stern look.
Jonah began to stutter, "But―but―what about―" His parents' faces drooped when he didn't express the greatest jubilee, but instead sadness and protest.
His father snapped, "Jonah. That's enough. We will discuss this when we reach the house," he concluded, taking a suspicious glance at Marty, who continued to drive as if nothing was happening.
Jonah leaned back against his seat, arms folded. Inside, his heart was breaking. They had been planning to move on without him, to make another child to replace the dud they'd previously spawned. They would never admit to it, but he knew that was their reasoning to conceive another child.
He was returning home to a family that was nothing like the one he'd left behind. Everything had changed, and would continue to change in all the wrong ways.
What if the baby was a boy? What then? Surely he would be kicked aside like before, only this time it would be in favor of another son, not just in shame and spite?
It took every bit of his frail emotional strength to hold the tears in.
AN: Random experiment. I have a personal belief that there needs to be more "What if Jonah survived?" stories. So I'm going to experiment with it, using the backstory I invented for Jonah in "Out of the Valley." The parents, the house, the names, everything will be the same; EXCEPT NO VIRGINIA. She does not exist here; she is confined to OOTV. Romance will take the backseat for a while. Our Jonah has to focus on his family issues for the time being.
So yes, this will be a side-project while OOTV approaches a close.
Yes, I will be providing a quote at the beginning of every chapter in lieu of chapter titles, which get difficult to do at times. It'll be a worthwhile historical quote or a song lyric that I find striking and fitting. I'll try to use the latter as little as possible; I don't like to flaunt my musical taste to my readers, don't like it when other authors do so.
Anyway, please, PLEASE give me input. Should I continue or give up before I get too far in?