A Gentle Hell Read Online Free PDF

gone off and killed herself,” Mimi said, “she was too strong. I mean, Julie, well, she was a little fucked in the head. I caught her smoking Mary Jane once, can you believe that.”
    “You know these things can sneak up on you,” Thatch said.
    His cell phone rang.
    “Hold on, I’ve got to take this call,” he said. “Bill, you can take over from here?”
    “How long has she been missing?” I asked as Thatch walked across the back of the house talking on his cell phone.
    “Ever since that night I found you and her being chased outside by that crazy fucker,” Mimi said.
    “And you didn’t call until now?” I said.
    “Sometimes the kids go missing,” Mimi said. “They usually turn up eventually. But Tuesday, she wouldn’t be gone for this long. She’s a good girl.”
    “How many are in the house now? Kids, I mean.”
    “Well,” Mimi said, “about eight. Any idea what could have happened to her?”
    I didn’t want to say, well, the woods swallowed her. We have a new god but our faces remain the same. You cannot be protected by cold bones and cross chains when you cry in the night. Tuesday was right. Loneliness is our origin and epitaph.
    “Officer Redding, she didn’t run off with some boy, did she?” Mimi asked.
    “No,” I said, “I think she's dead.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    I broke out into a run around the trailer and into the fields. Mimi called after me. I passed by Thatch on his cellphone . He yelled out my name as I jumped over a low, broken fence and into the grass. I ran toward the tree mouth, hung with mistletoe, gaping, and bent-fanged. I stopped. I had to get down on my hands and knees and crawl through the trees.
    In Tuesday’s faery hollow I found the four missing children, dead. Their limbs intertwined, their mouths and eyes socketed with spring dogwood blossoms, skin growing gray and grayer. I found Tuesday on her back with her dress pulled over her hips, her skin bruised purple around her wrists and throat and thighs. Her mouth was open. Fingers broken and nails scratched into the dirt. Her wrists slashed.
    Thatch found me a few minutes later with my hands in her hair.
    “They're dead,” I said. I choked. “They're all dead in here. Call somebody out here to get all these bodies.”
    I crawled out of the faery den, sick with vertigo.
    “Jesus Christ,” Thatch said.
    Mimi walked over to the two of us, followed by some of her feral, green-eyed children. “What's going on?” she asked. “What happened to Tuesday?”
    “She's dead,” I said. “Somebody killed her. She's dead.”
    Thatch put a hand on my shoulder. “You going to be okay?” he asked.
    Out across the field near the prophet's house I saw movement in my periphery. I turned my head and saw the prophet of the Triple Goddess standing on the porch, holding a ragged cat. He looked straight at me, his eyes bleary pale, then turned and went into the house.
    “Hold on a minute,” I told Thatch.
    “Where are you going?”
    “To talk to the prophet,” I said. “Wait here.”
    I walked across the field toward his house. I pushed a lounging cat out of the way of the steps with my shoe and knocked on the door. No response.
    “Gregory?” I called. “Open up, it's me, Bill Redding. You had me over for dinner one night, you remember?
    The door opened. The prophet of the Triple Goddess stood heavy in the doorway. Up close I could see his eyes were bloodshot, with dark and puffy lids.
    “Hey Bill,” he said, “What's going on?”
    “You knew Tuesday, didn't you?”
    “Yeah,” he said, “Yeah. I did.”
    “She's dead.”
    The prophet said nothing.
    “Can I come in?” I asked.
    “Oh well,” the prophet said, “I think not.”
    My hands curled into fists. I dug my nails into my palms. I felt a sharp pain in my forehead where I'd scraped my nails against it last night.
    “Explain to me why your goddess did this to that girl.”
    He said nothing.
    “Can you do that, Gregory? Can you explain why