The Gate 2: 13 Tales of Isolation and Despair

BLACK MARY by Mercedes M. Yardley

The other girl, she has eyes like oil. They’re dark and black and slick. They widen like holes and one day they’ll swallow me completely.

I tell her this. She smiles, just a little.

“Maybe.”

I go outside to drag some heavy wood to the house. I wear a large pair of men’s boots that I tie as tightly as I can, but I still step out of them. I’m not allowed to have a pair that fits.

The wood is running low and this worries me. I remember the first nights here, the howling of the wolves in the freezing darkness, venturing from the forest that looms on the edge of the fields. The dank little house doesn’t have windows that fully shut. There’s no way to keep the wind out.

“If you bring me an axe, I’ll chop my own wood,” I had told him. I stood there in bare feet, hugging my arms around my torn dress. “You won’t have to do anything. I’ll do all the work for you.”

He hit me then, once, hard enough that it knocked me to the ground and I couldn’t get up right away. Black Mary crouched over me like a cat, hissing at him. He didn’t seem to notice her.

Later he took me to his bed, gently rubbing my freezing arms and legs. The black-haired girl stood in the doorway, silently. I met her eyes over his greasy shoulder.

“Little girls aren’t meant to use axes, honey,” he said. “What if you hurt yourself? Nobody is here to help you, not for miles. It isn’t safe. Do you understand?”

I wanted to tell him that I would be careful, that I was almost eleven years old, but I only nodded, my hands clasped between my knees.

“Tell ya what I’ll do. I’ll bring in wood when I come, okay? Lots of it. Will that make you happy?”

I nodded, and the gentle caress on my arm turned into something different. The girl turned away and I squeezed my eyes shut.

That was two days ago. Now the black-eyed girl stands behind me, brushing my hair. “He wears a wedding ring,” she says. “That means he has a wife. Maybe some kids. Maybe his kids are the same age you are.”

I turn my head to the side and throw up. “Sorry,” I say, and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.

She steps in front of me and crouches until we’re eye level. “Don’t you ever apologize to me, get it? I’m your friend. I love you, real love, nothing like what he says love is.” Her eyes burn, scorch, like watching fire rush across oil. “I’d like to kill him.”

“You wouldn’t!”

Black Mary was fierce. “I would. He knows it. Why doesn’t he leave an axe here, huh? Because he knows I’d kill him one day. I’d take it and swipe at his head when he wasn’t looking. Or even when he is. Either way.”

I back up a little. She snorts.

“What, I’m too harsh for you? Are you scared, sweet little thing?” She stands up, tossing her hair back. “This is why he takes you, you know. You and not me. Because you give in. Because you’re so good and quiet, and men love little girls who are quiet. Me?” She shrugs. “Nobody loves me. Not anymore.”

She turns and walks away. It hurts me to see her go, but I have other things to tend to. I still have bruises inside and out. I still have the nightmares.

Black Mary is gone for several days. I look for her on the horizon, but there isn’t anything besides fields of weeds. The food is almost gone. I’m hungry and sick and almost want the man to come again so that I can have something to eat. Almost.

“That’s what he wants, you know,” Black Mary says to me. She’s sitting on a large rock out in the field. Her pointed nose and shiny hair remind me of a raven. A crow. Something that could simply fly away.

“Why did you come back?” I ask her.

“Didn’t you miss me?” She tilts her head, again like a bird. I wonder if she sheds her skin at night and there are feathers underneath.

“Of course I missed you. I missed you so much. But weren’t you free? Didn’t you get away? Why would you come back?”

She reaches for my hand but I pull it away.

“Do you remember your mother?”

I freeze. “Why?”

My mother wore yellow dresses and grew lavender in the front yard. Her eyes were brown, like mine. Or maybe they were blue.

“Do you think she’s out there looking for you?”

I sit down, my back against the rock. My stomach is hurting.

She isn’t letting it go. “Do you?”

I want to think so. But it’s been so long. She’s probably given up by now. I wipe my face with my sleeve.

“Know what I think?”

I shake my head.

She slides off the rock and grabs my wrists. She’s careful of the bruises. She always has been. “I think moms never stop looking for their kids. Not ever. No matter how long it has been.”

“I don’t look the same anymore.”

“No, you don’t. You’ve grown a lot in the last few years.”

“What if she doesn’t recognize me?”

“I think she would.”

I cough and the black-eyed girl pulls away. “Come on. We need to get you inside. You’re getting sick and you remember what that’s like. Maybe when he comes back, he’ll bring more wood.”

He doesn’t. He doesn’t bring much food, either, just a cheeseburger from a fast food place and a shopping bag full of apples.

“Is…is there anything else?” I ask, and I pay for it. The girl with the black hair helps me up and stands behind me while I wash the blood from my dress. I meet her eyes in the mirror.

“Something’s wrong, did you notice?” Her arms are folded across her chest. “See how he’s pacing like that? Be careful.”

He barks for me and I come. The girl was right. Something is wrong.

“Have you been out of this house, Mary?” he demanded.

My name isn’t Mary. I told him that once, but he didn’t care. We’re all Mary here.

“Yes, sir. Just to the field and the wood pile.”

“No farther?”

“No, sir.” There isn’t anywhere else to go. Nothing but fields and rocks and animals that run through the grass.

He leans close, his face red and his eyes wild. I flinch and this seems to make him angrier.

“You afraid of me, girl?”

I don’t know what to say. His fist rises. The girl with the black hair stands behind him, her eyes huge. They’re leaking oil. I’m still staring at her when he hits me the first time. A few more blows and I squeal, “How come you only hurt me and not Black Mary?” The second I say it I wish I could take it back. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I tell her, but she crouches in the corner, her hands over her ears, facing away from me.

The man demands to know if I love him. I try to say no. I try to say yes. My mouth is too swollen to work properly. The man stares at me in a new way and leaves. He’s never left before morning before. Even though I’m grateful, my stomach twists and I’m afraid.

A new girl arrives with the sunrise. She’s younger than I am. She has curly red hair and freckles. Like me, she’s in a torn dress. Like me, her feet are bare.

“Who are you?” I ask. It hurts to move my jaw.

“This is Red Mary.”

The girl with the black hair has bruises around her eyes. Her long hair has been cut, shaggy and boyish, like mine. She has displeased him.

“What happened to you?” I want to ask, but I’m afraid that she’ll tell me. He found her. He went to her. I pointed her out and she isn’t safe anymore.

Red Mary speaks. Her voice is tremulous, soft like tiny bells. “He asked me if I liked toys. He said that we could play games.”

I turn and look at her. Seize her arm, yank up her sleeve. Her skin is white, without marks in the shape of his fingers. Her eyes are scared but not horrified. Not yet.

“He said that to me,” I told her. I grab her hand. She grabs back.

“He said that to me, too.” Black Mary’s voice has changed. It sounds tired, more like mine. Like she’s given up.

I’m not giving up. Not if we can save Red Mary.

“We need to go,” I say. The girls look at me. I swallow hard. “We need to go.”

“Go?” Red Mary asks. She’s so trusting. She’s holding onto a grey stuffed bunny that I hadn’t noticed before. I had one just like it when I was little.

“He’ll hurt you,” I tell her. “He’ll keep you here and do…horrible things.”

She starts to tremble. “What kind of things?”

My breath hitches and I can’t talk for a minute. I catch Black Mary’s eye. One is starting to swell shut, but she still tries to smile at me.

“If he catches you, he’ll kill you,” she says. “You know that he will.”

I know.

I don’t have anything to take with me except the apples. I shove my feet into the too-big shoes and stuff them with newspaper. It had snowed during the night. I wish that I had a coat.

“Now we run,” I say, and take Red Mary by the hand. My muscles ache and new cuts from last night open up. But we keep moving.

“I’m tired,” Red Mary says after a few hours. “I want to go back.”

I shake my head. “You don’t.”

Black Mary climbs beside me. She isn’t even breathing heavy.

“Do you remember,” she says, “when we tried to run away before? You were little, just like Red Mary. We got about this far and then you turned back.”

I’m shocked. “Did I? Why would I do that?”

She shrugs. “You didn’t know any better. You didn’t know what he was like then.”

My sides hurt. My feet are blistered, but I know that if I stop he’ll catch me. There was something wrong last night, something in his eyes that makes my mouth go dry.

“He’s in trouble. Maybe somebody knows. Or maybe,” Black Mary says, blood running from the corner of her mouth, “you’re too old.”

“What do you mean, too old?”

“You know what I mean.”

The snow starts to fall again. The cough from earlier deepens in my lungs.

“Are you going to die?” Red Mary asks. She’s skipping through the snow, not seeming to feel the cold.

“That’s not a nice thing to ask,” Black Mary scolds. Her hair is back to its long, shiny length, her black eyes healed.

“But is she? Are you?” Red Mary turns to me. I don’t know what to say.

Black Mary lies down in the snow. “Maybe I’ll just wait here until he finds me. Oh, he’s going to be so mad.” Her eyes glitter. “Don’t you think he’ll be mad?”

“You need to stand up,” I tell her, and pull at her arm. Suddenly I realize that she is the one who is standing. I’m lying in a snowdrift, my hair blowing over my face. I had almost fallen asleep.

“Run,” she says, and Red Mary echoes her. “Run.”

It’s getting dark now. I scramble to my knees and crawl through the snow, not strong enough to run. At least the burning pain of freezing to death makes me think of something other than my bruises.

There’s a light. It’s small and beautiful. I ask the girls if they see it.

“What light?” Black Mary asks, and she falls.

“I’m cold,” Red Mary whispers, and she also falls.

I try to drag Red Mary but I only get a few feet. She’s too heavy. I’m too cold.

“I’ll get help,” I say, but they don’t answer.

The light is coming from a window in a small house on the edge of a field. It looks like it might be painted yellow. I think my mom’s house was yellow.

“It was, when you were younger,” Black Mary says. She’s crawling through the snow with me.

“Feeling better?” I ask her.

Her eyes are like ice. “No.”

We make it to the porch. I’m on my knees, hesitating. Black Mary puts her hand on my shoulder.

“We can always go back if you want.”

I knock on the door. The bones in my hands feel like they’ll shatter from the cold.

A shadow moves in the window. I want to scream, and I do. Shadows hit and twist and bite. Shadows hurt you from the inside out.

The shadow opens the door. It is a woman. She looks at me and her hand goes to her mouth.

“Oh my goodness. Oh no,” she says. She calls over her shoulder for a blanket and some hot chocolate and the police. She looks back at me, reaching out with both hands. She touches my skin and we both draw back.

“Are you alone, sweetheart?”

Black Mary sweeps past her into the house. Red Mary sits on the porch, sucking her thumb.

“You’re too old to do that,” I tell her. I look back at the woman.

“My mom had a yellow house, I think. Do you know my mom?”

The blanket arrives. She spreads it out and I gingerly step into it, my eyes on Black Mary. She nods, and I let the woman wrap it around me and lead me inside.

“What’s your name, sweetie?” The woman is all eyes, taking in my tattered dress and ratted hair, the bruises and dried blood. I want to say that she should check on Red Mary, but the little girl seems happy. She seems okay.

My name. It’s been too long. I scribbled it on the page of a book once, but he threw all of the books away one day when he was angry.

“I can’t remember. I’m just one of the Marys.”

The woman’s voice is patient, carefully so. “One of the Marys? Which one?”

A man enters the room, saying something about the police being on their way. I see him and shrink back. He is big and tall and his hands could wrap around my throat so easily. The man looks like he wants to say something, but he only uses his big hands to pass a mug to the woman and then steps away.

“Which Mary?” the woman asks again. Her eyes are soft. She shows me that the mug is full of hot cocoa.

“I don’t know. Maybe White Mary. Do you think my mom will remember me?”

Red Mary taps the woman on her thigh. “We’re all Mary here,” she tells her, but the woman doesn’t look at her. Not once. She doesn’t even seem to notice.

Mercedes M. Yardley wears red lipstick and poisonous flowers in her hair. She has been published in John Skipp's Werewolves and Demons anthologies, The Pedestal Magazine, The Vestal Review, and A Cup of Comfort for Parents of Children with Special Needs. Mercedes is the Nonfiction Editor for Shock Totem Magazine.Visit her at http://www.mercedesmyardley.com.