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Maligoth

Chapter Three

Wallace McFerguson tried sleeping on a bed of leaves and pine needles in the woods behind the house and discovered the woods infested with mosquitoes and other carnivorous bugs intent on eating him alive. He returned to his room an hour or two before dawn covered with welts, and awoke later in the morning to a soft hand caressing his forehead.

While still cocooned in a very pleasant dream, the hand belonged to the lovely Sasha Abdul. Gentle fingers drawn across his brow drew him from the depths of sleep and he thought it more likely that the hand belonged to the equally beautiful Sylvia Carleton-Abdul, Sasha's mother, as he lay injured and unconscious at the foot of the toppled sapling.

But he opened his eyes to bright sunlight and the familiar confines of his bedroom, and Aunt Bernice's worried face hovering above him. "What did that wicked woman do to you, my poor boy?"

Wallace looked down at himself in horror. A nocturnal hard-on strained the fabric of his briefs. He sat up in alarm and stuffed his pillow into his lap.

Bernice beamed a benevolent smile, practiced at refusing to acknowledge offensive bits of reality. "Such a handsome boy. If only you would allow Brother Sebastian and I to counsel you on the temptations of the flesh and help you follow in the footsteps of our Lord."

She leaned across his mussed bed, her eyes bright with fervor. "Satan tempts us all, Wallace. Truly, he does. Only those whose souls are already condemned to everlasting hellfire are free of his vile offerings. Temptation is the hallmark of the godly."

Wallace leaped to his feet. He turned his back on his aunt and pulled on his dew-dampened pants. He shoved his bare feet into his tennis shoes and grabbed his comb and wallet from the dresser before rushing from the room.

"Wallace, are you hurt?" Bernice called after him. "You took a terrible fall last night!"

A terrible fall taken by a total fool.

"Wallace, where are you going?"

Nowhere, he decided. The incipient panic in his Aunt's voice restrained him. If he ran away now, she'd panic and call the police. "I'm just hungry is all," he called over his shoulder.

Breakfast was waiting for him downstairs. He sat at the kitchen table and ate. Aunt Bernice prattled on about the evils of foreign woman, the temptations of the flesh, and the wisdom of her only ally in life, Brother Sebastian Grieg of the Willington Last Days of Our Lord Penance Church. Wallace tolerated her lectures with as much compassion as he could muster. She had been alone in the world for so long, whose business was it if she had gotten a bit eccentric along the way?

"Brother Sebastian told me that Mr. Nicholas is looking for a boy to sweep the hardware store after hours. I asked that he put in a good word for you."

Implying that idle hands were the devil's tools. Not that Wallace enjoyed his idle days and sleepless nights worrying about upcoming college. "I'll take it if I can get it," he assured her.

It hardly mattered at this late date. The fall semester started in another two weeks, and he had his parent's trust fund to see him through a degree in business administration, just as they had suggested in their will. The future seemed secure, if a bit droll and tarnished following their death.

For the immediate moment, his thoughts were still on Sasha. For one night alone with Sasha and the opportunity to satisfy his every adolescent fantasy, he'd give up the balance of his very life.

"Coming to church with me tonight?"

He glanced up at her from his plate of sunny side down eggs and pork links, irritating by her mildly challenging tone of voice. "I don't believe in that stuff, Aunt Bernice."

"But Wallace, the Bible says..."

Another particularly stern look stopped her. She sat and primly folded her hands on the table surface. "I have been told that I must be patient. If only your mother and father had set you on the path to the Lord before..."

The sound of his fork striking the china plate stopped her. His mother and father had died in a plane that had exploded at thirty-six thousand feet somewhere over the Rocky Mountains. Five years had passed since that terrible day. He could discuss the facts of the incident calmly, but his tolerance of Bernice's criticism of his upbringing was nil.

Bernice folded a napkin in her lap. "My, but it's a pleasant day today. Would you mind picking up a few things at the store while you're out and about?"

He picked up his fork and continued eating. "No problem," he said, and Aunt Bernice knew better than to mope over her transgression.  Once, five years ago when he had been caught up in the throes of grief, he had slapped Bernice, his mother's sister, for a careless remark about his dead father. Afterwards, he had hid in the woods for three long and cold February days wallowing in remorse. Three days in the hospital recovering from exposure and frost bite taught him to control both his grief and his temper. And Aunt Bernice had learned to quit before she tested his new level of self-control.

"Good food," he said.

Bernice beamed. "The Lord doth provide."

She had a grocery list ready when he finished, and he determined that everything would fit in the baskets he had fitted to the sides of his old ten-speed bicycle. Rather than waste part of his trust fund on a car, he had let Bernice save the money for her own living expenses when he was gone

It would be over soon, the pennies saved and life with Aunt Bernice in general. An entirely new existence awaited him at college. He didn't much look forward to being thrown cold turkey into complete independence. Neither could he endure the tension-laden atmosphere of Aunt Bernice's anxiety much longer.

When he left for the store, he rode past Sasha's house without risking a look. He had window-peeked enough and had been caught at long last. For the rest of his life, he'd have to make do with memories of Sasha tainted by guilt and humiliation. Sylvia and her beautiful young daughter had tempted him beyond the capacity of any nineteen-year-old to resist.

A rusty beige pickup parked out front reminded Wallace that Sasha had a boyfriend to boot, a shaggy blonde bully named Duke. Wallace looked about in alarm for the husky twenty-year-old, assessing his chances of reaching the top of the street uninjured as nil should Duke take notice of him from inside the house, particularly if Sasha or her mother had tattled on him.

He tore up the short hill, turned onto the boulevard and peddled furiously. His adrenaline level eased off a bit a block or two away, but his heart sank in his chest when he heard the familiar roar of the worn truck engine coming up from behind him. When he could see the dented fenders in his rear view mirror, he pulled in between some parked cars and slowed down. Hopefully, the young tyrant would drive on by and leave him in peace.

No such luck. The truck stopped in a shriek of worn brake linings.

"Duke, don't you dare!" Sasha cried out from behind the dusty windshield. "I told you it was none of your business!"

Wallace raced away with the truck door slamming in his ears and heard Duke's boots pounding the pavement. Given another few seconds, he would have built up the speed to make a clean getaway. Shy of that brief moment, Duke struck from behind.

Stunned by Duke's fist striking the side of his head, Wallace lost control of the bike. The front tire struck the curb and tossed him over the handlebars. He hit ground at an awkward angle. Stunned by the impact, he was helpless when Duke gathered a fistful of his shirt and dragged him to his feet. Wallace was swung bodily around and slammed him against the trunk of a nearby tree.

Duke's face twisted with a sneer filled his field of view. "Get an eyeful, pervert?"

"Duke!" Sasha screamed, "I said no!"

"Fucking creep."

A fist slammed into his gut with devastating impact. Duke then threw him to the ground. Wallace looked up in time to see Duke studying his fallen bicycle with a twisted grin.

"Not the bike!" he cried.

Duke kicked in the spokes of both wheels, then turned back to the truck with amused satisfaction. Sasha began a screaming tirade of verbal abuse and fought with the passenger door to let herself out.

"Okay, so I'm not going to waste him!" Duke assured the girl. "I just want to teach the creep a lesson!"

"But you had no right! Let me out of here this instant!"

Wallace never saw the struggle that transpired in the cab of the truck. Sasha apparently lost her bid for freedom. The rear wheels burned rubber and he could hear her shrill protest for half a block before the truck turned a corner and was gone.

Wallace dragged himself to the curb and took a seat. He looked about to see who had witnessed his humiliation. None of the passing traffic slowed to lend aid, so he dipped his head and let a few tears spill to the ground.

Sasha had been enraged by Duke's behavior. She wasn't at all afraid of the bastard. His own cowardice made his disgrace that much more painful.

Sasha and Duke made a good couple, self-confident and good-looking with families that had the money to buy luxuries that they took for granted and chalked up to their own personal genius, cars and clothes and the gobs of unthinking arrogance that went with it.

Wallace climbed to his feet and brushed himself off. The spill on the bike had hurt worse than the punch to the gut, but the ruined wheels hurt worse of all. He stood over the battered bicycle fighting back his tears.

Why was he so different from Duke and his friends? He had seen them passing condoms around like candy at school. They probably had all the sex they wanted. How long had it been since any of them had bothered peeking in windows, or jacking off behind locked bathroom doors in the middle of the night?

Wallace wheeled the crippled bike back home, hiding it in the trees around back. Then he walked to the store. When he returned to the house with two bags of groceries an hour later, he could hear Bernice praying behind the closet door in her bedroom. Personally, he could thank God for Brother Sebastian who seemed content to allow him to claim himself an agnostic. According to Brother Sebastian Grieg, agnostics were potential believers, and Bernice needed to learn patience if she hoped to save the soul of her wayward nephew.

Wallace put the groceries away in the kitchen and went out the back door to spend some time alone in the woods. He wended his way deep into the woods behind the house to the magical grotto where he had played for so many summers of his younger years.

Sunlight sparkled through the dense canopy of oaks. Countless little spotlights shone down into the gloom and illuminated carpets of ferns and mushrooms and tiny blue flowers. Slugs and toads and countless species of spiders and beetles with iridescent carapaces inhabited the exotic flora. He sat on a ledge of shale overlooking its sparkling beauty. This was his favorite place in the world. Here, he was confident that whatever God might exist knew what he was doing after all.

He spotted a mushroom just below his position. Eat me, it read on its pinkish surface. Alice in Wonderland, he thought to himself. Wouldn't it be great? He dropped down to the ground and reached for the mutant fungi, chuckling in nervous amusement.

Gooseflesh rippled across his back.  Eat me, it said, and calling to him as it did from the mysterious depth of nature, it was indeed the commanding voice of an unknown God.

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