Now, however, he could cry and he did. It was okay to do so here, in this temple before the Giant Jesus and Ellis the Priest. He let it all out, or so he hoped, sobbing and moaning with pain that wracked his body. If the other praying people in the room noticed, Brendan didn’t know and didn’t care. This crying, this purging, felt so good. It was like jumping into a freezing pool on a scorching summer day. First there was shock and then relief.
Ellis placed a hand on Brendan’s heaving back and rubbed slowly in circles. This touching was wrong—Ellis was a stranger (danger!)—but it helped soothe Brendan’s tears. He knew the stories about priests who molested altar boys, but wasn’t that just in the Catholic Church, all those unmarried men seeking sexual pleasure? He wanted to ask Ellis if he was married, but that would ruin this moment which, at least to spectators, would appear to be a soul-wrenching exchange between sinner and priest. What was it really? Just a chance for Brendan to get some very heavy shit off his mind before it cracked.
So, Brendan told Ellis everything. He started with his ideas about the gods which, he admitted, now seemed silly before this Giant Jesus. He talked about his baby brother who died before he even reached a week old, some type of sudden infant death thing, was all his parents had said. He talked about his mother. How he worried about his father. How his brother had done something stupid and Brendan was afraid things were only going to get worse. And then, he yanked the final ton of weight off his brain and confessed to killing Delaney.
Ellis took it all in without a trace of surprise. His face spoke of empathy and pity, not shock and ridicule. How could he not think what Brendan did to Delaney was unspeakably horrible? While waiting for Ellis’s response, Brendan began to worry that the other people in this room were not deep in prayer, but were spies with hidden recording devices. They had caught everything he said and now they were going to run to the police and the cops would run to Dad and Brendan would be in prison by morning, maybe sooner.
“You have paid a terrible price,” Ellis said. “Yet, there is hope. With God, there is always hope.”
“What should I do?”
“First, we will pray and then I will take you home.”
“Pray for what?”
“For the path, of course.”
Ellis faced the Giant Jesus on both knees and Brendan followed likewise. Some tears still trickled from his eyes, but he felt so much better than he had only minutes earlier. He felt he could return to the wake and look Delaney in her dead face and tell her he was sorry and not feel like some psychotic kid in need of therapy. He had been misguided, he saw that now, but Ellis would show him the way. Ellis would open the true path and Brendan would finally be able to keep his family safe.
Brendan waited for Ellis to say something, but he simply kept his eyes shut, hands folded together before him, head tilted toward the flickering Giant Jesus, who twitched again. It’s like he’s trying to break free from the cross and come down. If he did, wouldn’t he be slightly upset about being nailed to a cross in the first place? How could God be so kind and forgiving after what Man did to Him?
These thoughts trailed after Brendan while he dove deeper and deeper into the darkness of his own mind where he assumed prayer occurred. He was quite good at finding this place; it was where he went when he took Pilly Billie, where he imagined the stories in his composition book and where he went when he invoked instruction from the gods.
Almost as an afterthought, Brendan wondered again about the potent flower aroma. He hadn’t seen any flowers. Were they being kept someplace, perhaps for some type of ritual? No, he knew where the smell was coming from. Mom used to buy Yankee Candles, which burned different smells for different holidays—Christmas Wreath, Candied Apples, Jellybeans. Some were foul. Some smelled of fresh flowers. Like this smell. It disturbed him that a temple of God would have scented candles. When you closed your eyes, you’d think the place was full of flowers. When you opened your eyes, there was only flicking flames. It was like they were playing make believe.
Then Brendan was deep in prayer, begging for a way to keep his family safe.
7
He had to stop thinking about Sasha (naked, legs spread) and her deranged mother (sac rice luff chide). It had been stupid going over there. What had he been thinking? Well, he hadn’t been thinking. Simple as that. But no, that wasn’t true. He had been thinking and now he had to accept that his thinking had been wrong, hell, totally off the mark. Before he could do that, however, he would have to admit what those reasons, no matter how stupid, were.
He had expected a simple face-to-face with Sasha and her mother and hoped that such an interaction would put all the messiness away, like shoving dirty clothes under the bed. He would say his peace, they would protest a bit but ultimately realize he was right, and then he’d walk away, leaving Sasha with her fucked-up mother. That hadn’t happened, of course. Instead, he had walked into another world, an insane one where mothers offered up their daughters on home-made witchcraft altars and chanted morbid tones while their naked offspring waited spread-eagle for someone to penetrate them.
He hated to admit that such a situation seemed enticing, even erotic, while sitting here in his bedroom, elbows on his thighs, hands juggling his cellphone back and forth like a game of hot potato, but being front and center for the actual event hadn’t been arousing in the least—it had been horrifying. Thinking on it now, Tyler wanted to vomit. Small tremors of cold raced through his body every few minutes and he shook off each one like an un-welcomed touch.
What had he been thinking?
It was time to be honest, now if ever, and especially with himself. He couldn’t sit here in his silent room and try to rationalize his way out of his own thoughts. The problem wasn’t that he hadn’t been thinking or that what he had been thinking was idiotic. No, the problem was that the motivation driving his thinking had proved unbelievably and horrifyingly correct. He couldn’t deny it. With a sister in a coffin waiting for burial, a mother in a pill-induced coma, and a father sitting in the car in which his daughter had died (Dad didn’t think anyone knew why he had had his car towed back to the house but Dad was fooling himself more than anybody; he was in the garage right now, probably sobbing in the front seat where Delaney’s blood still looked fresh), Tyler couldn’t turn away from the truth. To do so now, after all the damage that had been ravaged would be like trying to drink a glass of water while underwater. He either acknowledged what was going on or he drowned in his own madness of denial.
Ultimately, it was simple: he believed Sasha’s mother had cursed his family because Sasha believed Tyler had raped her. Now, now, he might as well be totally honest—no one was listening but himself, after all. He had raped Sasha, even if he hadn’t realized it until after it was over. No matter the intent, he was guilty and she had seen fit to punish him. She seduced him at her house into a trap and then he stupidly believed he could reason his way out of the mess. You can’t reason with a witch; you can’t make sense out of something insensible. How could witchcraft even exist? What sense was in that? Why would she kill Delaney instead of make his balls rot off or something? Why was she punishing his whole family when only he was to blame?