Chapter 8:
Like Father Like Son
Macbeth belongs to Shakespeare, who is too dead to know what the hell I'm doing.
Gruoch sat on top the brick room, watching her brother. Her legs were folded under her and she sat up straight in an almost feline pose. She looked worriedly down to where Mac sulked in the shadows, one leg dangling over the edge of the roof while the other was pulled up so that his arm rested on his knee. He hadn't moved for a long time, reminding her of a ragged version of one of those little statues people left beside their garden ponds to gaze forever at the surface.
The pond Mac stared at was a churning river of mist. The fog had not yet cleared up, becoming so thick at times that Gruoch could barely see the rooftop around her. The air was cold and smelled like rain, promising the two demons a miserable, if not deadly, night if they were still there when the rain finally broke loose. She didn't intend to be, or at least she was sure they wouldn't be on the roof. At worst, they would move into the building, taking shelter among the props in the dusty old storerooms.
She was hoping, though, that they wouldn't have to stay in the theatre long. She had planned to get to a production as soon as possible and get Mac into the action again, even if it was only to retry an old spell they'd done a while before. Her thought was to get him to stop thinking about Mr. McCorrey and their failure to pray away the curse. After she'd heard him muttering darkly in his trances about stolen blessings and cruel, hell-born traitors, she'd wanted to get him killing for the solution again so he wouldn't feel he'd double-crossed their parents anymore. But now that he's starting reciting lines from the play, she changed her mind, not wanting to bring him any closer to it.
The only thing she was completely certain of was that her brother had lost his mind. She knew exactly when it had happened, but she didn't know how. For maybe five days after they'd left the last theater and Mr. McCorrey behind, they'd been as happy as ever. It had been like their childhood, roaming freely through the Highlands and creeping through ruined castles. They were cheerful and well-rested as they searched for another theatre, until one night when they had built a fire in the woods to stay warm through the cold, dark hours, and Mac had been thinking hard about something. She didn't ask what it was. " Wouldn't you have thought," he asked thoughtfully, "That if a blessing could do this much for us, it could have freed our parents?" She remembered his tone exactly. It was cold and empty, the words slow and deliberate.
The question had caught her off guard. She hadn't given their latest failure much thought. "No, not really," she answered lightly, "There must be long way between making people happy and breaking curses."
He didn't reply, but made a short thoughtful sound, almost a grunt but softer and more drawn out. He had been this way, depressed and insane, since then. The first of his trances had begun at some ungodly hour of that morning.
His behavior didn't scare her all that much. He had been moody like that for a long time, although not as much so. Even the trances were only much more intense reappearances of former periods of staring and muttering. The ones before, though, were light enough that they would end abruptly in few minutes or as soon as someone said his name. What really bothered her was that Mac didn't seem to know what was wrong himself. Not only did it indicate some deep mental issues, but it meant that she couldn't do a thing. All she could do know was to try and keep him safe and alive until she could figure out how to help him. The other thing that scared her was that Mac was beginning to act almost exactly like Shakespeare's cursed and immortalized version of their father, even repeating some of his lines, so that Gruoch wondered whether he'd acquire the character's thirst for blood as well.
Standing up, she turned and slid off the edge of the little stair-house and wandered to her brother's side. She sat down beside him, crossing her legs in front of her like a yoga student and waiting silently with her hands resting in her lap.
Mac looked up at her, his golden eyes hollow and tired. "Our father wasn't even a Thane, Gruoch," he said softly, "He was a Mormear. How could we be thane-lets if he wasn't a Thane?"
" I don't think we are, Mac," She said gently, " Who said we were?"
"They did."
"Who?"
"Three of them. The ones from yesterday."
" But who were they? "
He looked back over the edge of the roof. "...they met me in the day of success and I have learned by perfectest report that they have more in them than mortal knowledge..." His voice trailed off, and he looked back up. "Do you know what they told me?"
Gruoch shook her head. "Mac, they don't exist. You were hallucinating."
" Cause I told you when you woke up but I mixed them up. We kill actors for our father and break curses but we're their poor sad little thane-lets. If we aren't thane-lets, do you think we can be everything else?"
"Mac, I think you should try to get some rest. You don't look too good," she said her voice beginning to tremble. He was very pale, making the cuts and burns on his face, the healing gash from his encounter with the frightened actor, the dark patches beneath his eyes seem much more obvious. His dark red hair, so dark it was almost black, hung over his forehead, casting jagged shadows over his face. He looked like something from a nightmare, something from the deepest darkest depths of William Shakespeare's imagination. He looked like a Macbeth, with all the inaccurate connotations of the name, a damned, murdering, psychopath.
"I'm fine, don't worry about me." His voice was dead. "You look worried. Why?" he asked staring into her face.
" I just thought you looked a little sick, that's all," she said. "Here, hold still." She reached out and pressed the back of her hand against his brow. He was freezing cold. "Jesus," she whispered, "Your like ice! Aren't you cold?"
He brushed her hand away roughly, shaking his head. " No, Gruoch, I'm fine." He wrapped his skeletal fingers around her wrist, his hand like a band of frozen steel against her skin, and forced her hand against her own face, " You're just too hot. See?" He released her, her hand dropping as far as her throat and hovering there nervously. " Maybe you should lie down."
Slowly, she reached out and took his chilling hand in her trembling one. "I want you to come with me, Mac," she said, starting to rise. The fear in her voice was obvious now. Her brother didn't move, only looked up at her.
"Where?"
"Inside. I just want to make sure to stay warm."
"I am warm. I want to stay out here."
"Mac, please!"
"Alright." He rose and followed her towards the stair house. Gruoch picked up the pack she carried from theater to theater, bidding him to do the same. He obeyed, and she led him down the stairs to the old storeroom where she'd found the old costumes.
"Here," she said finally, pushing him to the floor against the wall. "Just stay here and don't move. I'll be right back." Her words were quick and racing with fear. She found another old costume from the dusty pile and threw it over him, and then dashed around the room, looking for something to burn that would not set the whole building on fire. Looking around, she saw a metal pail. Grabbing it, she ran back to where Mac was waiting, where she filled it up with rags and pieces of wooden props. Taking a match from her pack, she lit the bucket's contents on fire.
"This is a little much, isn't it, Gruoch?" Mac asked. He had been watching her the whole time, his expression blank and his eyes empty. He leaned back against the wall, his legs stretched out in front of him, the same way he was sitting when she had pushed him. Only his head moved to watch her as she made a fool of herself. He was like a puppet that wasn't designed to move at all, only to talk, a ventriloquist's dummy played expertly by Shakespeare's image of their father. "Maybe we should put the fire out. I don't want you to get too hot. If your brain gets hot, daggers come out of it."
"No, Mac, your the only one who has knifes popping out of his head."
Mac looked at her a moment, then smiled, his grin splitting his devilish features. "No. What about the man I stabbed in England. There's a knife in his head."
"That was almost three hundred years ago. He doesn't have a head anymore. He's all dirt now. And the knife is in your belt right now!"
The smile faded, and her brother looked around the room, terrified. " He's here. He's here right now, with the knife in his head and all on fire, and he laughs at me cause now he can sleep forever and I can't even shut my eyes but they all crowd around me and scream bloody murder all dripping with blood and torn open and their guts falling out and I didn't even notice how bad it was when I killed them but know I have to look at them all the time cause sometimes when I open my eyes they're still there and still screaming and no one helps me get away from them and you just look at me like you think they'll tear me to pieces but you only think I'm cold when I'm not and bring me inside but they're still here and Mother and Father are crying and those three... there are three of them who scared me yesterday and they're here, they're here, they're here!" The words tumbled out of him one after another at a terrible speed, and as he ranted he moved back against the wall, pushing himself against the smooth painted surface as if he were trying to shrink into it. He lifted a shaking hand and pointed over his sister's head, crying, "Gruoch, look out, they're here!"
Gruoch had almost never seen such total fear and panic on her brother's face, and it terrified her to hear him rambling and screaming about the imagined ghosts that haunted him, so much like the jeering blood-soaked throng that cursed her in her nightmares. For a moment she was caught up in the intensity of his fear and spun around, her heart leaping and bounding in her chest. She froze as she found herself staring into a withered face. The old woman's coarse gray hair hung wildly around her face. Icy blue eyes looked cruelly back into hers. "Hello, little Lady," the crone said, revealing toothless gums as she spoke. "You're so like your mother!"
Gruoch whirled around to look for her brother. He stood silent and unmoving against the wall, his back rigid. He was dead still, not shaking anymore, not breathing, his expression blank, his eyes locked in an empty stare. Two more hags sat at either side of him, their hands on his tense body, as though they were holding him back, but she knew they weren't. She recognized the look on his face. It was another trance. No one needed to hold him in that position. He would stay that way until it was over. Still, she didn't like the way they leaned on him like was their toy, a foolish statue, or a horse or dog of theirs. Their withered fingers traced his ribs through his shirt and felt where there used to be flesh that had melted away as he sunk into madness, probing healing injuries, ruffling his hair. "Get away from him!" she barked at the witches, prepared to launch herself at them and tear them to shreds if she had to. "Macamfea--"
The first hag, the one behind her, clapped a knobby, ancient hand over her mouth before she could finish calling her brother's name. Gruoch turned again. "So, so like your mother..," her voice was dripping, and the malicious look on her face made Gruoch choke on her fear. She lay her free hand on the young demon's brow. "Just go to sleep, Lady..."
Mac found himself staring off at the opposite wall. The ghosts were gone. He wondered a moment where they went. They had been below them beside building earlier that morning, trying to leap up out of the mist to snatch him and kill him and scatter the pieces of his mangled hide through the theater, but they hadn't been able to jump high enough until Gruoch brought him inside, and then they'd climbed over edge of the roof and followed them. Now they were gone. He closed his eyes and shook his head to see if they were just waiting to rattle out of his brain, but they didn't. He shuddered, vaguely feeling as though he had been touched by something even filthier than himself, his privacy invaded a thousand times over, and his body caressed by some ghastly thing of which he had no memory. He decided he didn't want to remember, and tried harder to shake the feeling off. Opening his eyes, he jumped with alarm. Gruoch was lying on the floor, sprawled out on her back as if she'd fainted or been dropped there by someone. He went to her side as fast as he could, kneeling beside her. Her easy, if a bit rapid, breathing reassured him very little, and he desperately wanted to know if she was okay. He laid his hand gently on her shoulder, but loathed to wake her. As he hesitated, she stirred, opening her clear blue eyes and lifting her head.
"Mac?" she asked groggily, "What...?" Remembering, she leapt upright. "Oh, God, what happened? Where are they?" She looked wildly around the dusty space.
"They're gone," he answered, "I think they went back in my head." He sat back and waited for her to calm down.
"No, the witches are real, Mac, I saw them, too." She looked hard at him. "Are you alright? Did they hurt you?"
"I'm okay, Gruoch. I'm not even cold. They aren't the ones who want to hurt me. Are you alright? Are you too hot?"
"No, I'm fine, they just....they were...if they did anything to you I'll kill them. I mean it. Are you sure you're alright?" She looked at him, trying to judge if he had been harmed, but she couldn't tell. She did notice, though, that he was no longer wearing the worn jeans and patched plaid jacket he had on earlier. Instead, his kilt was belted around his waist, it's gray-blue, green, and yellow tartan marking him as a part of the Tiamhaidh clan, and his rough wool shirt covered his boney frame. A ragged plaid ran over his left shoulder, and old worn pieces of leather were tied around his skinny legs. "Why are you dressed like that?"
"Huh?" He looked down, a look of fear spreading across his face. "I don't know. I wasn't earlier. Gruoch, I don't know what happened." He drew his bare knees up almost to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. The course fabric of his old sweater absorbed his tears as he pushed his face against his arms, frightened and surprised by the sudden appearance of the kilt he'd longed to wear for years. "Gruoch, I don't know. Help me, Gruoch," he moaned.
He felt her hand on his shoulder and looked up. She had come to sit beside him. "It's alright, Mac. Don't worry." Her hand burned like a hot coal against him, but it was comforting to know she was there.
"But if I got dressed and didn't even know it, how do I know I didn't do anything else?"
"I'm not sure it was you that changed your clothes," his sister growled, disgust and hatred thick in her voice, "And I don't know what else they might have done either. Or why they'd want to dress you up like this."
"The witches?"
Gruoch didn't answer.
He dropped his head again. "I will tomorrow (And betimes, I will) to the weird sisters: more shall they speak; for I am bent to know by the worst means the worst. For mine own good all causes shall give way..."
"Macamfearnachtill, stop it," Gruoch snapped.
"Don't call me that," he said without moving."
"Huh? Weren't you just in a trance?"
"No. I was just talking."
"But you were quoting the play!"
He looked up. "Do I do that when I..." His voice trailed off.
"Yes, almost every time now." He was silent for a while. "Are you sure you weren't in one just now?"
He nodded. Gruoch shivered. "Well, never mind then. Listen, you try your best to sleep tonight. And try to remember that if you see the ghosts, they aren't there, they can't hurt you. It'll be alright. We'll figure all this out tomorrow morning."
"Gruoch?"
"M?"
"Thank you."
"Any time, Mac," she whispered as they lay down to try to sleep.