Chapter Text
Chapter 3
Hail Mary
1910
Alastor sat in the heated church sanctuary next to his parents, shifting uncomfortably in the pew until his father cast him one of his sharp, warning glances.
Feeling a tightness in his belly, he looked down at the rosary in his hands. Alastor had long lost track of how many Glory Be’s and Our Father’s he was along into the beads, and he surely could not remember now. He simply fiddled with them uselessly and longed to go home, because there was an itch on his neck directly at the back of his collar.
Our Father, who art in heaven—
No, that wasn’t right.
He stopped thinking long enough to listen to his father beside him murmuring the prayer and was relieved to catch up, though he stuttered a bit and slipped: “Hail Mary, full of grates, the Lord is with thee—”
Not grates, Alastor, but grace—oh, it was hot in here!
As the prayer ended, Alastor finally tried to listen to the service. But the procession, the guilt-ridden recitations, filled him with leg-itching boredom. He resisted the urge to kick the pew in front of them just to see what the woman there might do, and stifled a sneeze when incense from the passing censer stung his nose.
He cast a look to his right, across Father’s lap, to see his mother’s head bowed, her dark curls framing her profile like a curtain. She peeked her eyes open and dared a jaunty wink at him, making him smile.
Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Such repetition, full of stomach-clenching guilt. Hail Mary, full of blah, the Lord is blah blah.
When it was time to take communion, his father nudged him to stand. Alastor rose, Father just behind him, and stared at the man in front of them in line, noticing the man’s shirt was slightly untucked in the back.
He couldn’t help but stare.
It was an imperfection. If that were me, Alastor thought, Father would beat me for that.
A sinful little giggle rose in his throat. He smothered it with a cough that echoed just a bit, drawing glances. He received a squeeze on his shoulder for it, which made him tense. He’d pay for this. Oh no—that was no good. This wasn’t even funny, not in the slightest—
“The body of Christ,” the priest said—oh, it was Alastor’s turn, finally. His response was needed—
“Amen.”
The wafer was dry. The wine, tangy and disgusting.
More and more repetition.
At last, they got home. They did not have money for an automobile, but Alastor didn’t mind. He sat in the back of the simple wagon and stared at the gravel road moving under his church shoes. If he stayed silent, he wouldn’t be chastised for nearly falling off when Father directed the horses over an unexpected bump or bend.
He was told to go play while Father discussed something with Mother. They did that sometimes, in quiet murmurs, Mother’s voice taking a defensive soft lilt while Father rumbled something Alastor couldn’t hear. He would often catch his own name in their whispers.
He didn’t wait to be told twice. He ran, unbuttoning his itchy collar as he went, chalk in hand—something he’d found in the hymnal pocket at church—as he made his way back down the streets of Tremé.
He drew nonsense lines on brick walls as jazz music floated into the humid afternoon air from a nearby café. He scrawled some messy voudou shapes on the bricks, then crossed them out, tapping his foot to the rhythm. He drew a cross, then swiped it away.
The body of Christ.
Huh.
If anything was of Heaven—anything that filled his body with a buzzing sweetness—it was this new music, the sounds warming him like the sun. Alastor had heard adults say jazz was of the devil, but that sounded far too much like Father’s silly rhetoric.
If Heaven could be like this instead—he’d like the streets to be paved with these colorful bricks. Tremé’s sidewalks alive with people in their Sunday finest, greeting each other while horses and carriages rolled down the road in rhythm with the chatter and laughter.
He scuffed his feet in the dry dust on the pavement, listening to the music. It had an airy beat, a swagger, a crescending sort of personality that struck his chest and mind. Eventually, when the sun grew too hot, he made for home, his church shoes crunching on rocks and earth.
Alastor’s heart began to pound in his ears as he approached the little white house. It suddenly seemed both too large and too small, as if he could squint his eyes or take off his spectacles and it might vanish entirely.
The thought of the house being swallowed up in a sudden earthquake filled him with rapid, unexplainable pinpricks all over his body. His mother was in there. His cat, his Trudy. What if it all disappeared one strange evening? What would a nine-year-old boy do without it? And even if it simply left, something—something dark—would stay. Something bad would stay. He knew that. Like the shadow that stared at him when they thought he wasn’t watching.
His knees felt like jelly as he hurried up the four creaky steps to the kitchen doorway, slammed it open with heated haste, and skidded to a stop on the slick linoleum. Silence.
“Mama?”
Had his fears been realized?
But no. A wiry, strong hand grasped his hair, and he yelped, crying out hoarsely.
“Mama ran away,” his father gruffed. He still smelled of Going To Mass—cologne and incense. It filled the dark kitchen and Alastor’s nose. He went limp and quiet. Maybe if he stayed still enough, Father would let go of him.
Then what Father had told him suddenly hit.
“She ran away?”
“Yep. Left us high and dry. Guess it’s just you and me now, boy. Now do you care to explain your behavior at Mass this morning?”
He did not move. He couldn’t. Every breath was shallow, and hurt.
“I—I didn’t mean to—”
“You know what happens to sinners who disobey the Lord, don’t you, Alastor?”
Father finally let go of him.
He stumbled, knowing what was coming—remembering, actually, as if the sliced pieces of him had once tried to forget. The sight of that basement door, yawning open against a backdrop of deep darkness, closed his throat. He already remembered how the rats down there had crawled over his feet and squeaked from the corners; and the bugs. It was summer, and roaches and pillbugs thrived in the damp, dirty undercorners of the old unbricked fireplace shaft that ran from basement to roof.
“They go to—h-h-hell,” Alastor repeated softly. “Don’t send me down there again. I don’t like the bugs—”
“You know the rules, son. I can’t send you to Hell myself, but I can remind you what it’s like. Maybe a couple of days down there will jar that twisted noggin of yours. Now go.”
He said it as calmly as if he were sending Alastor to his room. In the hush of Maman’s clean kitchen, the church-smell still cloying his nose, Alastor’s breath drew up so tight he thought he might not have any left to scream.
His feet moved without him. He walked silently down the dusty stairs.
The door shut behind him, and with a final click of the lock, he felt his way down and sat beside the metal shaft of the old fireplace as he always did, breathing into his knees.
“Un,” he whispered into the cloth of his knees, “Deux, trois—”
A rat scratched nearby in the silence.
There was a pile of rat bones in the corner where a shaft of wood had shifted just enough to leave a gap. Alastor had put them there on previous stays. There was a way to pass the time down here: counting, wringing rat necks. He had to be fast, like with the bird—
But he didn’t feel like it now.
A thin beam of evening light peeped through that corner, staring like an eye. He didn’t enjoy it, but he stared until the glow resembled something he had once seen in a dream. Shadows.
He picked up a small pile of bones and began counting them one by one. A skull slipped from his fingers, clattering against the iron shaft. The sound rang through the stifled dark, making his ears ache—
He stopped breathing.
Wait.
He banged the skull against the shaft and listened.
Silence.
Then, from far, far above—through the old creaking wood—came the unmistakable sound of knuckles on metal.
One, two, three.
“Maman,” he whispered. “Mother—” He banged rapidly on the metal shaft.
She answered again, from the attic. He had locked her in the attic.
One. Two. Three.
Un, deux, trois.
“Ma—”
His face crumpled. He hugged the dirt-smelling metal, angry tears tracking down his cheeks.
Bang.
One.
When he didn’t answer, her rap came again, insistent: one.
He sniffed, raised his hand, and brought it down on the shaft. Dust rose and fell. Rat bones scattered. He did it again.
Two.
I’m here.
Alastor leaned there, forehead pressed to the soot-streaked iron, his fingers digging into the bones and dirt by his knees. He would fall asleep knowing that at least—
She hadn’t run away.
She never did.