Chapter 12: Skin And Bones

(FOO FIGHTERS)

Pitch black silence surrounds her when she wakes. Grits grating in her eyes every time she opens and closes the lids. Lead weighing down muscles, pressing down on bones. She is in the car, sleeping. Last night she stood in her old bedroom, contemplating sleeping there, but the memories were too loud. Also, the bone song was too loud inside her head.

Blaire pushes the old Mustang’s door open. Leaving the car in her own driveway, she returns to the house to use the facilities. There is an unfamiliar pressure in her lower abdomen. She touches it carefully, mentally recalling her recent bowel movements. Everything seems normal. Nothing out of the ordinary.

“Probably just stress,” she whispers to the stranger looking back at her from the bathroom mirror. “Just stress. This has been a week from hell.”

Returning to the vehicle on unsure legs, she crawls onto the backseat, covering her shaking body with the only thing she took from the house: grandmother’s crochet blanket. It was a wedding gift. Granny squares with patterns of flowers. Shades of purple, pink, gold and green. She falls back into a dark abyss of sleep, her body too tired to allow her mind to fight back. Pure physical exhaustion pushes memories and concerns aside.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tock.

An enormous clock looms overhead in the night sky. One of those old ones, with the arms that spin around and around. Time trapped in a loop. Forever going, but never leaving or arriving. Stuck.

She feels thin; a shadow of herself. Half in the real world, half in the dream world. Her eyes fixate on the arms of the gigantic clock in the sky. They turn faster and faster until they are nothing but a blur. Her heart beats in tune to the mad rhythm. Ears ringing. Sweat on her brow. An urgency. A warning, perhaps.

It is another type of warning, but the message was the same as that of the bone song.

Blaire feels out of sync with herself. This can’t be her life, can it? This can’t be how it all ends. This is not what is supposed to happen. This isn’t her mind. These aren’t her bones. This isn’t her flesh. Everything she is seems borrowed, as if she’s living in someone else’s body, and forcing the unyielding flesh to obey.

Out of nowhere, a chilly wind blows over her, rising gooseflesh on her arms and sending an icy cold shiver up her spine. She crosses her arms over her chest, longing for some comfort. Even standing on her ancestral land, she feels untethered, a fallen autumn leaf drifting on the wind. In the dream, she turns away from her car, towards the funeral pyre.

“You look like a skeleton,” a voice says suddenly.

Blaire stumbles to a halt and turns, searching to find Catriona’s dark brown pupils. The familiar eyes pin her down to the ground as if she’s stuck in a tar pit. She has to fight the urge to rush forward to… what? Hug her? Slap her? Both?

“I’m fine,” Blaire says, trying to pin down how she feels about her sister.

The pendulum hangs in the air above them, swinging from love to hate. She wonders if Catriona can see the struggle. She turns away, breaking eye contact.

“No, you’re not,” her sister insists. “You are about as far from fine as a person can be. You are running on alcohol and cigarettes.”

I missed her, Blaire thinks to herself, hoping her sister can’t read the thought. Even after what she did, she is still my oldest sister. Always will be. She protected me, sheltered me, defended me, and taught me the lessons only sisters can teach each other. How to know when you like a boy? How to know if he likes you? How to kiss. How to use a tampon. Sex. Condoms. Not getting pregnant.

“Alcohol, cigarettes and hatred,” Blaire mumbles, turning to give her sister a stern look. “Don’t forget the hatred.”

Catriona’s mirage shimmers in waves. Her skin is gray and dry like an empty riverbed. Like a drought affected riverbed begging for rain from the sky, her sister’s soul begs for forgiveness. Catriona is wearing the sheer gold evening dress with the ruby red shawl which she had on the last time Blaire saw her truly happy. It was at a family celebration. Someone’s engagement. They danced together, twirling across the dancefloor. The laughing faces of family and friends passed them by in a colorful blur. They ended up with arms around each other, screaming with laughter. In Blaire’s current dream, soft visions of the memory flashes between them, a reminder of something precious which they lost.

“That is a wonderful memory,” Catriona says. “We were happy, carefree. You still loved me.”

“And you didn’t love me.”

“That’s not true. I always loved you. Still do.”

“Did you love me while fucking my husband for years? In my marital bed? If that is how you love, I don’t want it. Keep it to yourself.”

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“Why should I?” Catriona sneers. “It’s not as if you have a significant other right now that I can fuck, is it?”

Anger rises from Blaire’s painful abdomen. She lifts herself on her toes, leaning closer to Catriona’s face.

“Fuck you!” Blaire screams. “Fuck you and your entire…” she stops the moment she realizes what she was about to say. Her mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water. “….and fuck the horse you rose in on.”

Blaire turns around, stumbling and falling to the ground with a loud thud. Sobs tear out of her. She doesn’t try to fight it. She cries loudly, tears and snot mixing on her face when she wipes across it with the back of her hand. A soft touch on her head makes her jump. It is Catriona, comforting her like she did so often before, but her touch is cold now.

“I’m sorry,” Catriona says. “I am the worst sister in the world. I won’t lie or make excuses. I shouldn’t have slept with your husband. I shouldn’t have let him talk me into it. Sisters don’t do those things to each other.”

Again, the soft caress. Blaire’s sobbing ebbs out slowly. She lifts her shirt to clean her face.

“I’m sorry too,” Blaire says. “I know Luka had a silver tongue. Fuck, he talked me into marriage and having a child. I wanted neither.”

“I blame the sex…” Catriona says.

Blaire laughs. “Yeah. The sex was excellent.”

They stay like this, Blaire sitting cross-legged on the ground, Catriona softly caressing her head from time to time. Slowly, home crawls back into Blaire’s heart. This is home. Her home. Her family isn’t alive anymore, but they are still here. They still care for her. They don’t blame her. Have they ever?

“You are too thin,” Catriona whispers. “Weak too. I didn’t notice how bad it was before.”

Catriona watching over her is a foreign concept. She wonders if other members of her family did the same. A blush tints her neck and cheeks at the thought of her parents or grandparents seeing the way she lived the last few years.

“It’s because this is a dream. Everything looks different in your dreams.”

Catriona snorts unladylike, lips contorting in an upside down smile. “Don’t lie, sister. Do you believe I don’t see the truth? I know what you are doing out there in the world. And what you are thinking of doing in the future. Do you think nobody knows you want vengeance?”

“It’s my new frame of mind, don’t you know? My system runs on revenge. You, of all people, should know this is part of my nature. Hate moves me. Hate is keeping me alive right now. And sane too. Without it, I would have been with you already. I’ll avenge what happened here, believe me.”

Catriona shakes her head, those dark eyes never leaving her sister’s face. “Liar. It is love that moves you. Love that makes you hate. Love which requires your vengeance. If you didn’t love, you wouldn’t want revenge.”

Blaire snorts, looking away from Catriona’s piercing eyes. Her sister could always read her like an open book. She feels emotionally fragile, even in this dream.

“Believe whatever you want,” Blaire says. “You always do. But don’t worry about me. I am just fine.”

“I don’t worry about you,” Catriona whispers, the lie thundering through the wilderness between them. “Mother does, though. Red King too.”

Blaire snorts. She can hear the lie from Catriona. It is clear from the tone of her voice. How was she able to hide the affair for almost two years?

“Well, I’m doing fine,” Blaire whispers. “Tell mother, from my heart to hers, that I’m all set and living the good life here without you all to bother me.”

Catriona appears next to Blaire in an instant, poking her ribs with a gnarled finger. Blaire yelps, moving away quickly from the icy touch.

“Skin and bones,” Catriona says. “Don’t you know it? You are nothing but skin and bones. A skeleton.”

“Don’t measure me like this,” Blaire shouts, stepping away from the truth-seeking eyes, the provoking finger. “Not by what you perceive right now. I’m stripped to the core, down to the fucking bone. Been that way for years. Of course I’m only skin and bones. I have lost everything I care about. Drifting through the world alone has a toll that not everyone can pay. Never coming home. Not even calling. Constantly fearing that the Bull Tribe will find me. And now everyone is gone, and my soul left with them. I swear, in here,” she beat a fist on her heart, “in here, everything is gone. I have nothing, you hear me, nothing.”

Catriona turns her head aside, as if listening. She nods, closes her eyes, swallows, and opens them again. Those dark eyes bore into Blaire’s soul.

“Red King says if you can’t move forward without finding revenge, you must recall where all this started,” Catriona says, waving a hand across The Farm. “Now is the time to remember, he says. Recall your history.”

She sighs, rolling her eyes. “Remember what exactly?”

The gossamer gray face comes to within an inch of Blaire’s. The horrible mouth opens wide. For a moment she wants to lunge backward, away from the gaping opening. There is a hunger in Catriona. A fierce dark desire. Insatiable lust.

But for what?

Blaire watches Catriona’s dead tongue travel in her mouth like a bat in a cave of dust. It moves slowly, with the clicking sounds of dry pebbles in your pocket when you run. It doesn’t speak, the tongue inside the hungry cavity. It sings.

“The devil’s going to make me a free man,

The devil’s going to set me free.”

Blaire wakes with a start, the song lingering in her head. She leaves the car, but takes the blanket with her, wearing it like a cape. The air is cold for this time of year. Or maybe she just feels cold because of the utter loneliness that has settled in her heart. Her feet find their way to the funeral pyre.

The fire is still burning. She sits down on the paving stones to watch the smoke swirling up into the air. Already the sky is tinting with the light of the new day.

“It is time to remember,” Catriona said in her dream.

Blaire sighs. Remember where all of this started? How it all started.

The dream experience follows into her reality as Catriona’s song ringing in her ears. No, not Catriona’s song. It is Red King’s song. He sang it all the time. This was the story of his crossroads. The song connects to their Genesis. Snake Clan’s origin. The cradle of their power.

Therefore, he ensured they heard the tale at least once a week. This is their heritage and birthright. Each new generation learns the story. Everyone heard him sing the song a hundred times. No, a thousand times. In the house, waiting for Grandma Sophie to serve the meal. Walking in the fields. Smoking on the porch. Driving to town or back. It was his victory song. The foundation on which he built a new life and this family.

Every one that is… was part of the clan by blood, inherited the gifts from Red King. It was a blood gift transferred directly to his descendants and Blood Oath family. The gift comes at an enormous price. It cost Red King his soul.