Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [136]
The circle keeps out the monsters, the wicked things that are gonna crawl up from Hell at the end, will keep out the radiation when the bombs come down, when the sky burns and falls down to smash them and everyone in the world scorched flat. She isn’t sure what radiation is, but he says it will kill her even though she’ll never see it coming, and she doesn’t want to know any more than that.
And this is the time that her mother didn’t go down with them, the only time she said no, and so he hit her. Her mother a ball on the floor, skinny arms folded like a shield over her head while he punched and kicked and Lila watched it all from the shadows in the hall. Obedient, good girl standing beside the trapdoor, waiting, praying that he’ll stop, praying Jesus that he won’t really let her mother stay up here alone to burn, to get eaten by the radiation monsters. That they’ll make it down before the black sky outside begins to smudge and drip, squirming rain blood drops on the window-panes; her mother begs No, Carl. Please, she’s watching. Please, and he stops, steps back and looks lost, tired and lost and sad. Her mother holds her stomach where he kicked her, cries and says words Lila’s not supposed to use.
“Please,” she says. “For god’s sake, don’t take her down there tonight!”
And he reaches down, helps her mother up off the floor. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, my head hurts Trish or I would never hurt you, but my head hurts. It’s too small to hold it all in, everything I’ve seen, everything I know.”
“I just can’t do it anymore, Carl. I just can’t sit down there anymore. Please let me take her. Let us go.”
“No,” he says, turns around and looks at Lila, like she said something and he’s trying to think of an answer, like he’s forgotten who she is.
“We’ll go to the church. I’ll take her to the church, okay? We’ll be safe there, Carl. You could even come with us. It’ll be safe there.”
“There’s only one church,” he says and her mother starts screaming, fuck you fuck you fuck you you crazy drunk bastard shit she’s my daughter and there they sit, he in his chair, Lila in hers, her mother’s chair empty and both radios turned up loud. He’s been sitting for a long time with his head down in his hands, shaking hands, like his head’s gonna fly apart if he doesn’t hold it together, and there’s a muddy spot on the floor between his feet from the tears.
“They’re tellin’ me what I got to do,” he says, and by now her mother’s stopped banging on the basement door, she’s stopped screaming at him to let her in. So the monsters must have taken her away, but Lila would rather believe she ran away to hide in the church, that Brother Taylor and the woman who plays the organ are watching over her.
“They’re tellin’ me, and I’ve been tryin’ not to listen, Lila. ’Cause it don’t seem right. It don’t seem right at all.” She can hardly understand him, he’s crying so hard, wet face in the lamplight from crying and snot. “But it’s the only way, and this is the last night. They’re runnin’ out of patience with me. If I don’t listen and the trumpets start, they won’t take us with them….”
He stops, opens his red Bible and reads something from the back that she tries not to hear, locusts and seals, locusts and seals, and then she sees the jar beneath his chair for the first time when he reaches for it. Big Mason jar and there’s something inside, but she can’t tell what, except it moves when he picks it up. Her father holds the Bible up in one hand and the jar in the other, holds them high up, and he stands so that his long arms almost reach the ceiling. She watches his lips, moving and making words but no sound coming out until finally, Please don’t make me do this. Someone else, Lord. Not me.
“Daddy?” and there’s a sound above them like thunder, and she’s too