The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror(41)

“Come with me,” I told her, and kept her in front of me as we went down the stairs. She clutched at her bleeding neck with one hand and tried to open the door to the children’s room with the other. I had thought of that, too; the door was covered in dozens more of the wire crosses I had made. She shook her head and wept. I prodded her in the small of the back and walked with her toward the little boat tied up at the launch.

“Your man is waiting for you,” I said. “Get in the boat.”

“Give me my children,” she said.

“You are lucky I have not cut off all the hair on your head,” I said. “Trouble me again and I will; I have scissors in my pocket.”

“Give me my children,” she said, falling to her knees in the sand and clasping my feet.

“Your bargain was never with them,” I said. “You will have Johnnie, and you will have your comb, and you will go home, and I will call that fair.”

“Alas, alas, for my fine children!” she cried. “Alas, that I must leave them to live and die on dry land!”

Well, she would have gone on like that for who knows how long if no one had stopped her, so I jabbed her with the fire iron. “Get in the boat,” I said. She snapped her mouth closed and stared at me instead. Then I jabbed her again, once in the leg and once in the side, and she must not have liked that so well, because she shook her head something fierce at me. But she also started walking back toward the sea. She had gray blood like a squid, and it pulsed all over her dress as she swung her leg over the side and stepped into the boat.

So I had them both in the boat then, Gem-de-Lovely, who was wicked, and Johnnie Croy, who was stupid, and upstairs sleeping all six of their children, safe and whole. Johnnie lay quietly on the floor of the boat. I think he was awake then. His mouth hung a little open and he did not look at me, nor move or speak. The woman looked at me still, and so I looked back at her, and would for as long as she remained in sight. I took her comb out of my pocket and set it down next to her.

“Woman,” I said, “I never liked you.” I jabbed the fire iron through the side of her neck, piercing the pulse. It seemed like enough to kill her, although of course one never knows with creatures. It was just as likely that as soon as she touched seawater, all her wounds would close over like a starfish, and she’d sprout new and harder skin, and new and longer limbs.

“And I,” she said to me, glaring as hard as she could (if she’d had a fire iron then herself, I’d have been in terrible trouble), “I have never liked you, nor ever will.” Her mouth was full of that gray blood, and it dripped down her chin as she talked.

“A whip for a horse,” I said, “a bridle for a donkey, and a rod for the back of fools.” I don’t know why I warned her next, but I did. “I’m going to speak a bible over you now,” I told her. “Brace yourself.”

She lifted a hand and tried to smile. “At present, I can do little more than listen and bleed.” Well, that suited me fine, too. I don’t know why I felt like she deserved a warning now. I certainly hadn’t spared her much. But I’ll take credit for a little mercy, if anyone sees fit to add it to my glory. I made the cross over her first, then him. They both shuddered under the sign of it.

“Lord God,” I said, “you gathered all the oceans into a single place; at your command the waters dry up and the rivers disappear. You have set up the shore as the boundary of the sea; though the waves toss, they cannot prevail, and though they roar, they cannot pass over it. We commit the earthly remains of my son, Johnnie, to the deep, and we commit this woman, too. Grant them a sure sinking, and a final baptism, and do not let them pass back over the shore, not even when the sea gives up her dead in the final resurrection.”

I knelt down at the side of the boat next to my son, who would not look at me, and I stroked his hair. “You should never have taken her comb,” I said to him.

The book of Matthew, chapter eighteen: Jesus said to the disciples, “Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. Better that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of those little ones.” Well, I know my scripture, and I know what offends me, and I knew which man by whom the offense had come.

“If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off,” I said to Johnnie, “and cast them from thee: it is better to enter into life halted or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee. Johnnie, thine eye has offended thee.”

Well. He didn’t like that, but he could hardly disagree with it either. He would have taken those children with him. I call that offense to little ones, and I had my knife, so I used it. “Tell me which one you wish to keep, and I’ll spare it,” I said to him. He didn’t want to answer me, so I waited. “I have saved you from the worst of sins,” I said. “Let me help a bit more, and do not make me send my only son full-blind to his death in the sea.” He waited another minute, then jerked his head to the right, and I thanked him.

As he had used it for theft and unlawful gain, and lusts of the flesh, and shirking his duty—as he would have used it to take his children to drown with him—I cut off the left hand of Johnnie Croy. As he had used it to look too long in the wrong direction, I cut out his left eye, too.