CHAPTER 7
"Hey."
Pastor K looked up from her notes and entered into a meaningful silence. Mae didn't know anyone else who could give meaning to her silences like that, except maybe Bea.
"Mae. You did say you'd stop by today."
She walked into the pastor's office. "I know it's not office hours, and I'm sorry to interrupt. I'm guessing you're writing a sermon or something?"
"I'm in the brainstorming phase," the pastor admitted. "What did you want to talk about?"
Mae took a breath. "Just so you know, I'm gonna get all heavy on you. But that's just 'cause I know you can take it. Okay?"
Pastor K rose slowly from her desk, then walked around just as slowly to lean back against it. "Okay," she said.
"So… you know how killing is wrong, right?" Mae began.
The adult's expression seemed to say, Well, this'll be a doozy. "I am familiar with that concept."
"I know this sounds terrible, but… I just… I need someone to explain to me why exactly it's wrong."
The pastor tightened her posture. "Are you considering killing someone, Mae?"
"I'm sorry. I can't tell you why. It's one of those things. This is just something I really need right now." She sat down on the floor, holding her knees in her hands. "Is… is that okay?"
"Sure it's okay. What I was working on is part of my job, but this is part of my job too. Still, I have to admit I'm a little troubled by the question. You don't feel like you have a good handle on what's wrong with killing?"
"I kind of do. I think I do. But I need a strong authority figure to really nail it down. I can't trust my own wandering mind."
"Because it wanders?"
"Bingo."
"Oh, so now you know what bingo is."
"I always knew what the expression meant," Mae clarified. "Just not what the game looked like."
"Right. Well. Are we talking about… killing people, or just living things in general?"
"I think we're talking people," said Mae, squeezing her knees tighter.
The pastor made a visible effort to keep her composure. Mae could only wonder what was going through her head. "Right. Well, really there are several reasons why killing is wrong. Are you more interested in the scriptural reasons, or the ethical reasons, or the social implications?"
Mae sighed. "Maybe we'd better just go through from the top."
The pastor paused. "Right. So." She drew her chair around to the near side of the desk and sat down. "God, as you know, is the only being who can create life. We reproduce, passing our power of life to the next generation when we have children, but the life we make isn't original with us. It was given to us by God."
"Right." That seemed reasonable enough.
"The commandments we're given tell us that if we can't make life, it isn't right for us to take it away," continued the pastor. "That's a rejection of God's gift and an encroachment upon their purview."
Purview? "I guess that's fair," said Mae. "Don't make a mess if you can't clean it up."
"Exactly. So one of our most cherished and oldest rules is that we don't kill each other. Aside from the consequences to society, it would be hard to find a clearer way to reject God, short of saying 'I reject thee.'"
"Thee."
"Thee. Now, you may wonder, then, why do we consider it acceptable to kill animals? Since they're also living, and we can't create their life either."
"Good question."
"I personally try to avoid hurting anything if I can, and I don't eat meat," the pastor said. "But the groundwork is there in Boons 4 and 5, where God grants the first tribe dominion over the animals. This is seen as an exception to that rule—a gift God gave us so that we could eat and provide for ourselves. It still means that no creature may be harmed without a specific purpose, and arguably, it no longer applies now that we have synthetic fabrics and plant-based ways of getting all the nutrition we need. Then again, if shooting a deer and harvesting a field of grain both destroy living things, who's to say that one is more acceptable than the other? Scripture never specifically sets animals above plants in their worthiness to live, so we're forced to use our judgment when…"
Mae's set her head on her arms, which were still squeezing her knees. She sat up against the wall and let the pastor talk while she drifted off. She didn't catch it all, or even most of it, but it was good for her to listen. She knew it must be good for her.
"Hey Lori?" Mae asked.
"What happened to 'kid'?" said Lori, turning to face her a little more. The town was beneath them, the rooftops about them, the winds above.
"I guess I wanted to ask something serious," Mae explained.
"Oh. Okay! You can go ahead."
"So… you love talking about death and all, but you've… never actually killed someone, right?"
The kid went a little pale, looking away and back. "Oh gosh, no! You think I actually killed someone?"
"No! I was just checking."
"I'm just a horror fan. I love movies about grim stuff but I don't want anyone to actually get killed."
"Me neither!" said Mae. "But… okay, here's the question. Are you ready?"
Lori took a moment to calm down. "I think so."
"You're sure?"
"Yeah. You can ask."
"So… if you did have to kill someone… who do you think you would kill?"
The kid stared at her. "Is this a serious question?"
"I already told you it was!"
Lori gave it due consideration. "Probably someone who deserved it. Someone really awful. Like a dictator."
"Do you… know any dictators?"
"No. Does it have to be someone I know?"
"Someone that you, like, have access to, yeah."
She thought hard. To her credit, she didn't try to get out of it by saying she wouldn't kill anyone. Mae had asked if.
"I guess I'd try to figure out who deserved it the most," she said eventually. "I might walk around with something and let everyone know it meant a lot to me. Something from my movie prop collection, maybe. And then I'd leave it someplace, just sitting out, and I'd find a hiding spot, and I'd watch to see who stole it."
"And then you'd kill them?"
"I'd give them time to return it to me. But if they didn't return it…" She shrugged.
"That's how you'd decide?"
"I guess. If I had to kill someone. I'd really rather not."
"Wow. I don't know if you're scary or not, Lori, but you're a pretty cool kid."
"Thanks. You're pretty cool too."
Mae didn't feel even halfway cool these days.
"So."
"So."
"You're probably wondering why I came all this way," said Mae.
"I was figuring I would find out eventually," said Angus.
"I hope it's not annoying. Having me show up for a visit when Gregg's at work. Eating into your quality alone time." At least she'd called ahead, since it would've sucked to spend two hours on the bus to find Angus out with Gregg somewhere when she arrived.
Angus was just standing there in the middle of the room. "It's fine."
Mae was already on the couch. "You're sure you don't want to sit down?"
"I'm fine. You're sure you don't want something to eat?"
"Maybe later. I wanted to talk first."
This seemed to make him nervous. "About what?"
"Well okay. So, you don't believe in God, right?"
"Mmn. Well, I mean, I didn't."
Whoa. "What, you changed your mind?"
Angus shuffled his feet uncomfortably. "Not sure. But I know one thing. I know that guy wasn't in the mine elevator when we went up."
"Eide? Yeah, he…" Mae shuddered. "He did something."
"He did something," Angus agreed. "And that isn't something he should have been able to do. Even if you just hallucinated everything else you said happened to you… the dreams, the thing calling to you, the conversation in the water… and even if the fact you blacked out during the eclipse was just mental illness… there's still that guy. And he appeared in the elevator from out of nowhere."
"Yeah."
"So." Angus took a deep breath. "So there's something more out there. Something gave him the power to do that. And that means you aren't entirely crazy."
Mae stared. "Thanks?"
"It's a lot to process, if you know what I mean. And I'm still working on processing it. Putting everything in its proper place. Working through the hypotheses."
"And so one of your hypotheses is that God is real and the whole religion thing is real?"
He hesitated. "Yes."
"Well geez. Here I came all the way to Bright Harbor because I wanted to get the atheist's perspective on my problems, and now I find out you're only what, agnostic?"
"Something like that."
"Huh!" Mae leaned back into the couch's embrace. "So, wow. This must be a big time of life for you? You're acting just like normal, but on the inside you're moving everything around, trying to make sense of it all."
His expression tensed just a little. "Pretty much."
Mae shrugged dramatically. "And here I am wrapped up in my own junk, as usual. You want to talk about it?"
He stood still for a while. "I'm going to make some brownies. You want some?"
Brownies sounded pretty good. "Sure," said Mae.
They sat later in the apartment's kitchen. "So what have you decided?" Mae asked. "Anything?"
Angus sipped his glass of milk. So far he'd only nibbled his brownie, but seemed glad to have it at hand. "Well, for starters, I know evolution is still true."
"Evolution? Like how they say we came from lower forms of life?"
He nodded sagely. "There's too much evidence to discount. It's clear evolution really happened, even if there are such things as gods and devils."
"Why does that matter?"
"It's about where we come from. If we were created, then we might owe a debt to whoever created us. Or we might bear some direct mark of whatever being did it. But the fossil and DNA records are clear. We weren't made. We happened."
Mae sat up straighter. "Just happened?"
"More or less. And that means we don't owe anyone anything. Not for our birth, at least."
Mae mulled this over while she savored a bite of brownie. "So where does that leave us?"
"Stumbling in the dark, I want to say."
Mae shivered. "You really think so?"
"We can't see the things around us. We can't tell they're there ninety-nine percent of the time. That's what darkness looks like."
"But then what can we do? Light a match?"
"Maybe," said Angus. "But I'm not sure that's possible."
Mae threw her arms out. "Well we can't just stumble around forever, can we?"
"It may be that we need to forge alliances. Join up with some otherworldly creatures to defend us from the others."
"You think maybe that's what the church is doing?"
"I think they're trying. But they may not know what they're doing."
"If they don't know what they're doing, then how come they were right about God being there?"
"I don't know that they are. I'm actually more inclined to think about it from a relative point of view."
Mae tilted her head. "How do you mean?"
"Look at it this way. The animals don't have any idea what to make of us. We're mysterious. If we were less interested in expanding our societies and more interested in… hiding, then we could probably hide from the animals. And they'd have no idea we were there."
"So what, we could just jump out and spook some deer or something and make it lose its shit?"
He looked gravely at her. "If we could do that to the animals, who's to say there aren't creatures that much higher than us who've been hiding all along?"
"Dude. Angus. I know they exist and you're still giving me chills."
"Sorry."
"No, it's good. I actually think you ought to go talk to Pastor Kate, or whoever the local pastor is. They might help you work out what to believe."
He froze. "I… I'm actually kind of… reluctant to."
"How come? Pastor K doesn't bite."
"I've been… opposed to the church my whole life. It doesn't seem like it would be… entirely appropriate."
"Angus. She doesn't care. Whoever leads the church here probably won't care either. Go talk to someone, seriously."
Angus nibbled his brownie and followed it with a gulp of milk. Even through his milk mustache, he said nothing.
The receiver felt chunky in her hand.
"Aunt Molly? Is that you?"
"Mae? You've never called me before. And I don't know when the last time you called me Molly was."
"I just wanted to know. Do you love me?"
"…Do I what? Love you?"
"Yeah. You know… like family members do."
There was a long pause.
"Wow. Did not expect to ever hear that question from you."
"Still waiting for an answer."
"…Don't you know I love you? Seriously? Don't you know that, Mae? Why do you think I keep trying to get you on the straight and narrow?"
"'Cause you want to make my life hell?"
"Mae. Do you really believe that?"
She thought for a moment. "I guess that's why I called. To find out, once and for all."
"I live in fear that people I know and love will die, Mae. Or have something else happen to them that can't be taken back. Do you know that?"
"…I didn't know that."
"That's my life. That's a cop's life, and it's mine even more. Eighteen people disappeared last fall. A few of them were folks I once counted as friends."
Mae didn't know whether to ask about those people, or to admit she knew what had happened to them. "That sucks, Aunt Mall-cop. I mean Molly."
"When I think of you, part of me wants to think of you as already gone. Because it'd be easier to just give up on my sister's wayward kid now than suffer someday when I get that phone call, or that dispatch report, and find out something's happened."
"I'm sorry, Aunt Molly. If something does end up happening to me… I want you to know it's not your fault. You did everything you could."
"Land sakes, Mae. Are you calling 'cause something's wrong?"
"Kind of. But it's nothing you can help with. I just… wanted to hear you say you loved me, or didn't. Just to know either way."
"Mae, whatever mess you're in, get out of it. You understand me?"
"Yeah. I understand."
"Don't make me call your mother."
"I'll be fine, Aunt Molly. Thanks." Mae wondered if she should say 'I love you' too, but she wasn't sure she would mean it.
"Mae. I mean it. Stay safe. Okay?"
"Okay, Aunt Molly," Mae whispered, and hung up the phone. She hoped she wasn't lying.
It was time. Time for the last talk.
"So," said Bea. "That's a walloping big pile of pierogies."
"I guess so," Mae agreed, staring at it. Her stare wasn't a longing one… more like mourning.
"You really think we can eat all these?"
"Maybe. Nah, probably not." That wasn't really what was on Mae's mind right now. "Maybe it's just good to have some left over. To have more than we need."
"You think it's good to be wasteful?"
Mae shook her head. "Sometimes you just need extra. To feel comfortable. A slack margin."
"A slack margin."
"Look, I'm paying, okay? Dinner's on me, and that's the first time I've ever said that in my life and meant it. Unless maybe when I was a kid I got my mashed potatoes all over myself, but aside from that it's the first time."
"I appreciate it. No one ever takes me out to dinner. But what's the occasion? You said you wanted to talk?"
Mae wanted to just blurt it out, but couldn't. That was what these pierogies were for. They were a cushion. She grabbed one and jammed half of it in her mouth. While she was chewing, she couldn't say anything horrible.
Bea sighed and started in on a pierogi of her own.
Mae washed down her bite with a swig of soda. "I was kind of drunk at the time," she blurted, "but I sort of remember you saying that you would push me out of your moving car if it meant you could go to college."
Bea's reaction to this was a complicated mixture of shock and pity and wonder and shame. "I shouldn't have said that," she finally said.
"Why not? Because you didn't really mean it, or you meant it but it was the sort of thing you should keep to yourself?"
She sipped her cola. "Oh, I meant it. But I shouldn't have. We'd drifted so far apart I hardly knew you. I wasn't being fair."
"So you're saying you wouldn't do it now?"
Bea was silent, biting her lip.
"Look, I understand if I'm not worth a ton," Mae began.
"—It's not like it probably would have killed you," Bea interrupted. "You're always falling from places and recovering like a cat. You might have had to go to the hospital. But…" She looked away in shame. "You would have forgiven me, wouldn't you? If for some strange reason I had to hurt you to get what I needed?"
It felt strange for the words to come so easily. "Sure I would've forgiven you," said Mae, her fists full of pierogies.
Bea looked a little fainter. "Then I guess the answer is maybe. I'm not a good person, Mae. Maybe I was, once, a long time ago. But that's lost. Now I'm just… this."
"You're a good person," Mae insisted.
"A good person wouldn't have said something like that. A good person would have refused to answer a crazy question like yours in the first place."
"So, it sounds like you're figuring that pushing me out of a moving car wouldn't push me out of your life," Mae surmised. "Lemme ask you another question then."
"Oh god."
Mae clenched both hands around a big pierogi. "What if you could go to college… but it meant losing me as a friend? Would you do it?"
"Geez, Mae. And people say I'm emo. Why are you asking these horrible questions?"
Mae stared, hungry for an answer. "Would you?"
Bea didn't answer right away. She ate an entire pierogi, over the course of two minutes, before answering. "No."
"Seriously?"
"It's a close call. I won't say I'm not really tempted. But no. That's not what a decent person does. If I go to college—"
She broke off. Bea looked down, holding a half-eaten pierogi, and a tear glistened in her eye. More than a tear. Holy shit, Bea was crying. Mae couldn't remember ever seeing her cry. Bea had to wipe her eyes and look away and catch her breath—
"—I would theoretically be trying to make something of myself. To be a better person. Smarter. Career-ready. But how could I be a better person if…"
She broke off, holding her face in her hand. "Wow. Sorry. I don't cry like this in front of other people. Holy hell. Mae, I wouldn't go to college if it cost me you."
"What if I were okay with it?" Mae asked softly. "What if you weren't giving me up because I was angry… but just because…" Because I'm doing twenty to life in the slammer? she couldn't say. So she finished with a shrug.
"You're actually… good god, you'd literally be willing to give up your life to let me have my dream, wouldn't you?"
Mae gulped, her own tears welling. "I know my own isn't worth that much," she said.
"Oh my god, Mae. What did I do to deserve a friend as ridiculously loyal as you?"
Mae realized that she knew the answer. "You suffered. You lost your dreams and your apartment and the life you knew and your fricking mom, your sweet wonderful mom, who made special artsy flapjacks for you, I remember now… and your dad fell apart, like who wouldn't, like anyone would, and you could have fallen apart too… but you didn't. You hung in there, and yeah you started smoking and wearing black and stopped being cheerful but you hung together, and then you had to put up with your best friend, who'd stopped talking to you years ago 'cause she's a dipshit, showing up again after dropping out of college and expecting you to be friends again like nothing ever happened, and forgetting about your mom dying and getting drunk and ruining your chance of a date at a college party, and still you drove her around and let her spend time with you, and still you humored her when she started talking about ghosts, and still you went into the woods with her when she went crazy and was being hunted by cultists, and when finally she decided to strike off alone into the nest of vipers… still you followed after. You think I'm a loyal friend? Is that what you think? Am I the one in this diner who's ridiculously loyal?"
"You can't…" But Bea was rendered speechless by Mae's avalanche of words.
"If you want to go to college, Bea, just say the word. Just tell me that's what you want to do. Because it'll happen. I'll probably be gone, but it'll happen. All I have to do is kill someone. All I have to do is sacrifice someone to Black Goat, and Black Goat'll make it happen. All you have to do is enter this contest." Mae slapped the glossy postcard on the table. "It's perfect. You've got stories about Donut Wolf. You know how to use a video camera. You're at the top of the age range, so you'd be competing against dumb teenagers, and you've got the whole goth thing going on to make you stand out. I think Black Goat made this contest happen just for us. Just so it had something to bribe me with. It's hungry, Bea. It's so hungry. And I'll feed it, if you say the word. If you won't let me feed someone else to it, I'll go jump in myself. Your dad can't say no if the money's in a scholarship. You know he can't. Non-transferable, seventy-five thousand dollars. No excuse not to let you go. …You can have college, Bea. You can have it! All it'll cost you is me. And I'm fine with that. I'll take the sin onto myself. Just say the word, Bea, and you can go."
Bea's mouth hung open. A drop of cola fell from it onto the table. She glanced at the flier, turned it over. Looked in astonishment back at Mae.
Mae looked at her mournfully, wondering where, if anywhere, she'd be in twenty years, five years, a month from now, a day.
"Holy fucking Christ, Mae. How…" Bea shut her eyes and wept openly. "How cheap do you think I am? Do you honestly…" She wiped her eyes. "Do you honestly think I would sell off one of my best friends for seventy-five thousand dollars? That's like… that's like one luxury car. That's less than the real value of our inventory at the Pickaxe. God dammit, Mae." Again, Bea had to wipe her face clean. "Have some fucking self-respect," she sobbed.
"It's not the amount of money," Mae maintained. "It's the dream."
"Then fuck the dream," cried Bea. She tore the postcard in half and collapsed with her face on the table, crying.
Mae watched her in disbelief. She didn't know what to say or how to feel.
"Fuck the dream," Bea repeated. "And fuck this Black Goat. Let it starve. Just let it starve." She didn't take her face off the table.
Mae slowly set down her fistful of half-eaten pierogies. She wiped her face clean and watched her friend cry.
Bea cried for a long time. A really long time. Mae offered her a clean napkin from an unused place setting. She went around and patted her back and held her lightly from behind. She wanted to say something, anything. It's okay, maybe, but she didn't know if that was true. If nothing else, she was there for Bea.
"Dammit," Bea muttered. "How the hell did I end up with a best friend like you?"
Best friend? Mae smiled through her tears. She hadn't been Bea's best friend for a long, long time.
"I dunno," she answered. "But does this mean you have something better than college? Because you like being friends with me more than you'd like going?"
Bea rose from the table and swiveled her head around to look at Mae, looking fearsome.
"Fuck. I guess it does," she finally whispered.
Mae hugged her wholeheartedly, relieved that she wasn't going have to give up her life and her innocence, but relieved even more for Bea's sake. "You're welcome," she said.
THIS BONUS SONG IS A COUNTERPOINT TO THE LAST ONE
Love You Bea
(To "Let It Be" by Paul McCartney)
When I find myself in times of trouble
Mae Borowski comes to me
Speaking words of comfort:
Love you Bea
And in the weirdest, darkest times
She keeps repeating endlessly
Annoying words of comfort
Love you Bea
Love you Bea, love you Bea, love you Bea, love you Bea
Stubborn words of comfort
Love you Bea
When all the broken a-holes have me
Drowning in futility
There's one guilty comfort:
Love you Bea
'Cause even though this town is doomed
There's still a chance for humanity
Tears when Mae reminds me:
Love you Bea
Love you Bea, love you Bea, love you Bea, yeah, love you Bea
When I'm down, she tells me:
Love you Bea
Love you Bea, love you Bea, love you Bea, love you Bea
Stupid words of comfort
Love you Bea
BRIDGE
Love you Bea, love you Bea, love you Bea, hey, love you Bea
Needed words of comfort
Love you Bea
And when I want to cry because
I think I have no family
Mae comes to the Pickaxe:
Love you Bea
I wake up to the sound of wheedling
Mae just wants me to agree:
I'm a decent person
I love me
Love you Bea, love you Bea, luv u Beeahtwiss, love you Bea
You're the strongest person
Love you Bea
Love you Bea, love you Bea, love you Bea, yeah, love you Bea
Constant words of comfort
Love you Bea
A/N: Sorry about the delay in putting out this chapter! My excuse is that for several weeks I've been really, really lazy.
The next chapter should be out next Monday. Will it be the final one? I honestly don't know.
Did I use the word 'weird' enough in this chapter? Is there anything else that strikes you, whether about this chapter or the story in general? Please tell me—I love getting comments!
NOTE: I originally wrote the Angus scene in this chapter forgetting that he and Gregg had moved to Bright Harbor. I've revised it a bit to reflect that.
Edited 11/27/17 to add a bonus song. :-)